When it comes to starting businesses, your brain is trying to sabotage your success based on the way it’s “wired”. Here’s how to defeat the sabotage and grow a successful business…
There tend to be 2 groups of people: the planners and the doers. Which one are you? Does your brain default into planning mode and you never get stuff done? Or does your brain default into action mode and you never really plan what you’re going to do before you do something in business?
In this blog post, I’ll dig into the two types and talk about a path toward success…
If you’ve had an idea for a business, what did you do next with that idea? Did you sit down and write out a business plan, thoroughly researching the competition and the market? Or did you press forward with massive action to just get started and throw caution to the wind?
In my experience, there are planners who spend a lot of time planning their business and maybe eventually get around to actually starting one, and there are doers, who blaze forward with a vague notion of what they want but a whole bunch of energy.
Which Is Better? Planning Or Doing?
There tend to be 2 types of people… planners and doers.
The Planners: Most entrepreneurs are aware that some form of planning is important to business success. We’ve all heard the adage, “those who fail to plan, plan to fail”. However, planning can also become a primary source for needless procrastination. At some point in our lives, we’ve all met people who were great at making “To Do” lists but never got around to crossing things off those lists!
The Doers: Action takers are their own breed of entrepreneur, who seem to apply their boundless energy to the latest idea. Problem is, the idea may not be fully formed, or there might already be a solution available, or perhaps worse yet, the action-taking entrepreneur might bounce from one idea to the next.
If you want to create a business that has the greatest likelihood of success, the best thing you can do right now is figure out which one of the two people above you are most like and then try to adopt some of the best practices of the other person.
The recipe for entrepreneurial success is planning plus action.
Plan… But Keep A Time Limit On The Planning Aspect
Definitely plan. Do your research. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your ideas. See who the competition is. Figure out if someone actually NEEDS what you’re planning to sell.
But at some point, you need to move out of the office and into the marketplace. Limitless planning should not be a default. Your planning should have a time-limit and goal… that goal being how to get things done in order to increase revenue and reduce cost.
To help you plan but keep it from taking up all of your time, try this: Use 1 piece of paper to talk about the market, use 1 piece of paper to talk about the opportunity, use 1 piece of paper to talk about the offer, and use 1 piece of paper to talk about the financials.
If you’re a planner, you’ll squeeze as much info as you can onto those pages until they’re full. If you’re an action-taker, you’ll benefit from the discipline of looking at each of those 4 aspects. But at some point, you’ll reach the end and be forced to move on…
Now break down that plan into a step-by-step process – of every step you need to take to start up your business and take it to success.
Schedule Your Plan So That You’re Forced Into Action
Once you have that step-by-step process in place, now here’s the chance for those planners to turn into action-takers: schedule that step-by-step process into daily activities. Every step needs a date attached to it.
What will you do every day to from your plan on your business? Some activities will be one-off activities, and other activities will be ongoing. Schedule all of it. (If your default is planning, this part will start to feel difficult and all-too-real).
And then start doing it. Take action every day. Work daily to cross off those steps. Be relentless at your activity.
Take It To The Next Level
As you start taking action, push yourself to take your business to the next level in the following ways:
- Reward yourself for actions completed
- Revisit your plan (with a time-limit!) to make adjustments as you go
- Get a mentor to hold you accountable
Striking the balance between planning and action is fundamental… but then you can take it to the next level by doing these 3 things (rewards, revisits, and accountability/mentorship) to keep you on track.
Summary
The steps above may seem simple to you but sometimes simpler is better. The truth is, people make things way more complicated than they need to be but all you really need to do is plan and execute. And since most people tend to prefer one to the other, you can use this simple strategy to help you do both.
By combining the strategies mentioned above, you will effectively plan (but not too much to dampen your action-oriented spirit!) and you will start taking action (but it will be carefully considered action that follows a schedule). This is the simple way to start and grow a successful business.
