If you’ve been around the MentoringU blog for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard me get on my soapbox about the benefits of 90 Day Plans. In 90 days you can accomplish amazing things. It’s the perfect amount of time. It’s not so long that you never reach your goal, and it’s not so short that you have to put off everything else in your life in order to make change happen. In 90 days you can Brainstorm, Plan and Execute.

One thing that is so important to remember is that sometimes getting started is the hardest part. A lot of the resources that we develop at MentoringU are intended to inspire action. Our action planner follows along with this concept. When we first developed the action planner, it really was an effort to help entrepreneurs think through what they needed to do to make a difference in their business. We wanted you to break down your goals into actionable tasks that you could put into action.

So for instance, if you want to build your email list to 5000 people… what are the actions that you take to get there? Your 90-day goal likely would not be ‘build my list to 5000 people.’ That’s not realistic for most entrepreneurs. However if the actions that you’re going to take to get to that final goal of 5000 people on your list include things like – conduct 3 webinars, develop a new lead magnet, and run $200 worth of Facebook ads…those are actionable items that you can put on your to-do list that will eventually help you get to your goal.

The action planner helps you take one goal and break it down into what tasks you need to do to be effective. Every one of those items that we just listed has other actions that need to happen before they become an effective promotion. You’re not just going to hop onto zoom and hold a webinar. You would be holding it to crickets.

You might need to

1. Develop an outline of what you’re going to teach.
2. Begin building your presentation
3. Create advertising graphics for social media channels and email
4. Create advertisements on Facebook and Instagram
5. Create a marketing email campaign
6. Hold a trial run of your webinar
7. Hold your webinar

What this really shows us is that even something as simple as ‘hold a webinar to grow my list’ has multiple steps and actions that come before it that will all take time and effort. Using a tool like the MentoringU Action Planner, or even just pen and paper, you can back out things to the lowest common denominator, the smallest task where you start and then begin to put that in play. To-do lists become difficult and we feel like we’re not accomplishing anything because we put big multi-step tasks on our to-do list.  We can’t cross off hold a webinar to grow my list until we have done everything else that it takes to lead up to having a webinar, to maintain momentum and motivation, we have to start thinking smaller.

Our single-minded, somewhat obsessive focus at MentoringU on the 90-day strategy is really an effort to help you start thinking smaller. If we work on the small tasks we begin to see big results. Our entire planner system, the online action planner, and most of the tools and resources that we provide in the skills lab are all focused on leveraging small building blocks to create a big success.

No matter what time of year it is right now is the best time to start planning. It’s never too late and you are always just 90 days from a more consistent and intentional business. What do you need to accomplish in the next 90 days to consider your direction and growth successful? Do you need to grow your list, do you need to develop new content, are you launching a new product, what is going to make this year a success for you? (And be sure you are defining success in both financial and emotional ways.)

Once you what you will consider a success, let’s back it out and figure out what steps we can take to accomplish that in the next 90 days. If you haven’t already given the online Action Planner a try. It’s going to prompt you to define a goal and a timeline, and then begin to break that down into actions that need to happen and tasks you need to tackle. When you finish it’s going to summarize all your inputs, and send it to you via email so that you can plug it into either your MentoringU planner or you can plug it into an online calendar like Google Calendar, just be sure to use something that’s going to hold you accountable. And if you need more accountability, come on over to the EntrepreDOERs Facebook group and let us help you.

Whatever method you prefer…just start somewhere! Pick a goal. Pick a task. Take action.