10 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs by Kevin Sudbury - HTML preview

Trait 8: Entrepreneurs Make Plans

The key to this trait is that entrepreneurs plan without over-planning. In other words, they don’t get stuck with a case of analysis paralysis, which is where fear takes hold and someone never gets out of the planning phase and into the “take action” phase.

If you ask any successful entrepreneur about their plans for the day, week, month, year or even five years, they’ll be able to share their plans with you. The average person, on the other hand, may not what they’re doing in the short-term, but they don’t have any long range plans.

Listen, if you’re not planning, then it’s a bit like sailing a ship without a rudder – you’re just going to drift around in whatever direction the wind blows. This will also make you dangerously susceptible to chasing after money-makers (i.e., bright and shiny opportunities) rather than building a solid business.

If you’re not a planner by nature, take heart. You can learn how to do it. All you have to do is commit to thinking through every major step of your business, and making both short-term and long-term plans to support these goals. It’s really just about committing yourself to planning on a regular basis.

Here’s a tip: set aside at least an hour every week just for planning purposes. If you haven’t done much planning up until now, you may need to set aside more time each week in the beginning.

Here are the types of things you can plan:

• Your overall business. That’s right, you should create a complete business plans that covers everything from how you plan to launch your business, to how you plan to exit it.

NOTE: Many plan for launches and growth, but fail to plan an exit strategy. This is important, because how you plan to exit the business will have some impact on how you run it from day to day.

• Advertising plans. How do you plan to reach your market? Are you planning a one-step ad strategy or two-step?
• Your sales funnel. What all products will you include in your sales funnel?
• How will you bring people into your sales funnel? How will you promote products on the backend?
• Your products. What will your specific products look like? For example, if you’re writing a book, then you should outline it during the planning stage so that you know what all topics you want to include.
• Your publishing schedule. What types of blog posts will you post on your blog, and when will you post them? Similarly, what kind of content will you send to your newsletter subscribers and social media followers, and when will you send it?

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course. But the point is, you need to make plans so that you know where you want to take your business, plus you can think about the best ways to achieve your goals.

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