When you’re putting together a business plan, one of the first things that you will do is write out what your goals are for your business. But in having facilitated the Heart-Centred Business Planner for over 10 years now, I have noticed that under the category of goals, people are mixing up two different things.
Especially in business plans, they need to be separated. That’s what we’re going to do in this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast!
Let’s get into this one…
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If I asked you what your business goals are right now, what are the sorts of things you would say?
You might say that your goal is:
- Make $10,000 a month
- Create and launch an online course
- Publish a book
- Grow your mailing list to over 10,000 people
Actually, I have given you two examples of outcome goals and two examples of action goals.
That is what I am talking about when I say that people get these things mixed up.
That’s why, when I help people create and implement their business plans, we get far more specific, and we actually separate this stuff out and really clarify it.
The goal that I gave of making $10,000 per month, is an outcome (a result). That’s a goal that we would set as a result you’re looking to achieve in your business.
However, to create and launch an online course is an action. It’s an output that you want to generate.
Can you see the difference between a $10k month and creating and launching an online course?
When it comes to making $10,000 a month in your business, you have influence over that result, but it’s not something that you would specifically do. Whereas creating and launching that online course is completely within your control. How many people end up buying that course is not. But the fact that the course exists and you launch it is.
Inside my business planning process, we separate these using the terminology goal outcomes and goal outputs.
Outcomes are the results – the things that you have influence over but do not control.
Outputs are the things that you have control over – they’re the actions that you take.
Outputs are the output that you create. It’s what you do. Outcomes are the results that you would generally or reasonably expect to achieve as a result of taking that action.
When it comes to business planning, here’s what I recommend you do:
Step 1: Write a giant list of everything you want to achieve in the coming period
Let’s say you’re creating a plan for your next quarter.
In the next quarter, what is it that you want to achieve?
Write down a big list of all the:
- Things you want to do
- Results you want to achieve
- Things you need to be mindful of
- Things you want to do outside your business
- Lifestyle parameters (ie. working less than 20 hours a week, seeing more of your friends and family, exercising 3 times a week, etc.)
I do business planning as a whole of human business plan. We didn’t create a business to turn into a robot. We are humans, after all.
But I recommend starting the process by just writing down everything.
Step 2: Divide and categorise
Which things are actually outcomes (the results that you want to achieve)?
Wanting to have ten new people sign up to work with you is an outcome. Wanting to have sales conversations with thirty people is an outcome.
You can’t just go and force people to have a sales conversation with you. You have influence over it by making offers and doing lead generation activities, but ultimately, they are results you don’t have control over.
Other things that might be results are things like:
- List growth size
- The reach of your content on social media
- The number of followers that you have
- Your income level
- The number of sales that you make
- The number of leads that you generate
All of those things are outcomes because you don’t have direct control over them. They’re not an action that you take.
Then I would go through and find all the actions.
What are the things in that goal list that are actions that you want to take?
It might be:
- Creating a new course
- Posting on social media daily
- Running some new Facebook ads
- Updating the copy on your website
- Publishing your book
There are lots and lots of different actions that you want to take in your business in that same period.
In your business plan, I then recommend you have a look at whether your outcome goals (your results) line up with your outputs (your actions).
If you put all of those actions into place, would you achieve the outcomes that you want to see?
For a lot of people, we have too many goals.
There are too many things we’re trying to stretch ourselves out over.
I have a beautiful template and process for you for quarterly planning. It’s completely free, and you can grab it at: tashcorbin.com/qplan
This is a quarterly planning template and process that you can use to get clear on what those outcomes and outputs are, but also to prioritise more effectively.
Generally, I recommend focusing on your top three priority outcomes (those results that you want to see for the quarter), and then for each outcome, selecting your top three to four actions that are the most likely to contribute to achieving that goal.
That way, you can stay focused and say no to the distractions that are going to stop you from the things that are most important to you.
Make sure you check the alignment between your goal outcomes and the actions that you’re going to take to achieve them.
Step 3: Check in on the lifestyle parameters
In this step, I check in with myself… with that list of actions on my agenda for the quarter, am I going to be able to do that within the lifestyle parameters and the human parts that I really wanted to focus on?
Looking at those hours of work that I might be willing to contribute and the budget that I have to invest in the ads, is that actually a reasonable expectation for me to achieve those actions?
At the end of the day, I want to finish my quarter feeling successful and like I’ve absolutely nailed it.
In order for me to achieve that feeling, I need to be very mindful that I’m not overloading myself or setting the standard of how much work I’m going to get done far too high.
In order for me to accomplish the results that I’m looking for in my business plan and to achieve the actions that I’ve got mapped out in front of me, if I need to experience the perfect lining up of all of the stars and everything needs to go perfectly (I can never be sick, I can never be distracted, I can never have any time off in order to actually get that stuff done), then I’m setting myself up for failure.
I don’t want to finish the quarter feeling like a failure.
I want to finish the quarter feeling like a success.
The number one way that I do that is by being very mindful of the extent to which I am loading myself up and the level of perfection that I need to achieve in order to implement my business plan.
Most people end up overloading themselves, overworking themselves, burning themselves out, and they don’t just end the quarter feeling like they haven’t succeeded, they end the quarter feeling exhausted and burnt out as well. That is not a joyful way of operating.
If you would like to have a little play with the quarterly planning process that separates out your outcomes from your outputs, then recommend you check out my free planning template: tashcorbin.com/qplan
This is the first part of the quarterly planning process that we use inside the Heart-Centred Business Planner.
I also recommend you check out the Heart-Centred Business Planner at: tashcorbin.com/planner
If the doors are open right now, you might want to come and join us for a year of fabulously upgrading your productivity, working in a way that’s deeply aligned and will work for you, and knowing exactly what you need to focus on each day.
That’s what we do with the Heart-Centred Business Planner.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
