What do you have a process for in your life? Do you have a morning routine? Or a certain way you do your laundry? What about how you do your hair? Often times even those who like to fly by the seat of their pants have more routines or processes in their life than they realize. Many have turned into habits and have become second nature.
If we didn’t have processes in place in the day-to-day world things would be mad chaos. Can you imagine going to a restaurant and just having a free for all on food? No system to order, make food or deliver food? Someone that just walked in could walk out with your meal for free. Traffic would be a mess without traffic lights and we would all be mad.
The way I wrangle in my crazy, free-spirited, creative entrepreneurs I work with is through a 3-step process. This exact process is what I take my clients through when we begin to work together. I start out all of my working relationships with a 90-minute strategy call. I truly believe that at the heart of your business success is a well thought out strategy. This process gives my clients clarity and direction for our work together.
Here is my three step process to creating a killer business strategy:
Brain Dump
For those who aren’t familiar with brain dumps, I use them for just about everything in my life. All it is, is a list where you literally empty your brain so that it no longer is holding space for things like “call the groomer Friday” or “email that lead back” or your latest program idea or book chapter or item to add to the grocery list. I usually have an ongoing one for my biz and one for my personal life. These usually then get put in my Asana to-do list at some point. But the point of doing a brain dump with my clients is to get all of their ideas out on paper so that we can organize them and prioritize them based on their goals.
Identify Your Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Goal setting is so important because it gives you something to work towards in your business. Most clients I work with have goals, but they haven’t broken them down into short-term or long-term goals. This matters. If you want to make 6-figures in your business in the next 3-months will require very different actions than if you want to make 6-figures in the next year. I define short-term goals as what you want to accomplish in the next 1-3 months, and long-term goals in the next 4-6+ months. This is where that brain dump list comes in handy. You can pull ideas off of this list and categorize them into that short or long term goal list based on how quickly you want to accomplish them. I typically recommend starting with your long-term goals and then determining what needs to get done in the short term to hit those goals.
Reverse Engineer Your Goals to Create a Strategy
As you’re listing out your short and long-term goals, I use a strategy called reverse engineering your goals to then create your strategy to achieving said goals. To do this, you start with where you want to be 12-months from now. Look at those long-term goals and then break those down to figure out what you need to hit at months 8, 6, 4 and 1 to make that long-term goal possible. Often this is done with income goals, but this can be done for courses you want to launch, or a next step you want to take in your business such as offering a new service. I then go a step further in helping my clients identify what tools, systems, people, etc they will need to put into place to help them reach these goals. I help them organize, prioritize and strategize to get to the end result of a kick-ass strategy that will help them to focus on where they need to go and leave me with the execution of those back-end items.
If you want to dive deeper into this process, I’ve created a FREE workbook for you where I talk about each step of the process in greater detail and ask you questions so that you can feel clearer, more organized and on your way to a killer strategy for your business.
Download your free workbook HERE.
Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.
After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.
Katelyn is also a soon-to-be wife, stepmom, dog mama of two furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.
Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.
