What's the Plan?

Raise your hand if you feel like summer just ended and like me you're wondering how in the world we are celebrating Thanksgiving next week?  I see you all out there.  I don't know where the fall goes but the older I get the shorter they get.  In seemingly a few days we will all be celebrating the New Year of 2013.  Ok, again, just me or wasn't Y2K just a couple of years ago?  Ah, but I digress.

This time of year brings out many thoughts and emotions - mostly good - surrounding a time to celebrate family and friends, reflect on the year's accomplishments and ponder what changes are needed in the New Year.  For a business owner like myself, it's time to take a significant amount of time to evaluate budgets, expenses, cash flows and sales plans and try to project out my company's goals and objectives. 

Some of you may be rolling your eyes at this point thinking this sounds like a business text book.  Maybe so, but if I were you I would stop doing that and stop rolling the dice with your future while you're at it.  In case you haven't noticed we live in some rather trying times.  Many things that we all used to count on like clock work are either gone or have dramatically changed and I suspect that most of your businesses have changed dramatically in the last 5 years, if not the last 5 months. 

My point?  If you don't have a plan, then you don't have a prayer.  I'm serious.  It used to be that with hard work and determination you could accomplish almost anything.  My message today is you better have a serious road map that you're trying to navigate with or you are going to be lost and hard to find.  Especially for your customers.  I am not here to suggest any particular method or system but I am suggesting that you do something to make sure that every day you have a set of goals and objectives that you're trying to achieve in order to increase your unique value proposition in your marketplace.  I don't care if you're a self-employed entrepreneur or the president of a Fortune 500 company it is more true today than it's ever been - if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Don't you admire people who are able to do a seemingly incredible amount of work, always seem to be moving up no matter what the economy is doing and who are always able to take on more and stop to lend a hand or a kind word?  I suggest to you that these people have an incredible set of goals they are working for and towards every day.  They don't have any more time than you and I do, they just make better use of their time and know what they need to do every hour of every day - and what they need to not do to distract them from reaching their goals.

So as you prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving next week with family and friends let me suggest you take some time alone to jot down some ideas and let them baste with the turkey.  Hopefully by the time the left overs have all been eaten up and the Holiday season is in full swing, you will be too!