Stop planning and start doing (or vice versa)
I'm a planner. I overthink things and often get caught up in details that could be sorted out after I've launched or built something.
When you’re a planner the concept of “messy action” is a hard pill to swallow. We don’t want things to look disorganized, we want them to be well thought out, in tidy little boxes we can check off of our to-do list.
At its best, planning is an incredible tool for gaining clarity on the next steps you need to take in your business. At its worst, it can lead to analysis paralysis, stunting your ability to take action.
On the other hand, you don't want to put something out into the world before it's ready to go. You need a minimum viable service (or product), and a plan to launch it to your ideal customers.
The Goldilocks approach
When you spend the majority of your time visualizing and making plans, you’re just daydreaming. And those dreams will never come to fruition if you don’t start taking action.
Launching too slowly kills a ton of ideas because they never get completed. You need to remember that nothing is truly finished until it’s released and that it's only by bouncing your ideas off of customers that you fully understand what changes need to be made.
If you’re deep on this end of the spectrum you likely have hundreds of ideas (but no actual offers), notebooks full of forgotten or unfulfilled goals, and maybe even a vision board that remains the same each year because nothing’s changed.
Action without vision is also a problem. On the far end of this approach, you might have 20 projects or offerings on the go without any of them truly being successful. You might even be confusing your audience with what your brand is about and how you can help them, and you’re probably overwhelming yourself by taking too many steps in too many different directions.
Launching too quickly can lead to a bad reputation when people try the product or service and can clearly see that there are holes in the process. If your clients aren’t happy they’re not going to come back, nor will they refer you to anyone else.
Instead of being on one end of the spectrum or the other, we need to find a balance of planning and implementation that makes sense for you.
So, where’s the balance?
Good planning involves both vision and implementation. Here’s a general outline to take you from idea generation to execution.
Start with your overall vision for your company and the impact you want to make. Who do you want to help? What are their main pain points? You’ll want to revisit your ideal client and pick an idea that’s both realistic to execute with your current resources, and will bring customers in the door.
Once you have the vision, start to create a plan around the service/product creation. What are your short-term objectives? These should be expressed in terms of days, weeks, and months.
Create a marketing plan for your launch. Where do you need to be focusing your time and energy for the most impact? (You don’t need to be doing everything!) Again, set short-term objectives that are aligned with your larger vision.
Give yourself deadlines and stick to them. If you need to hire a coach or someone else to hold you accountable, do it.
Set targets and mechanisms for monitoring so you can gauge your success.
Get to work! Just start moving. The idea that we need to have things done perfectly before releasing them is debilitating. Take it one day at a time and start taking action on what you need to.
As long as your action is intentional, and stems from your overall plan, you’ll start to see momentum pick up quite quickly. And where there are bumps along the road, start to view them as opportunities for improvement, giving you the next steps you need to make an even bigger impact.
If you’re on the planner side, consider asking
Is the plan “good enough”? Can some of these details be figured out later?
Can I let go of feeling the need to have everything figured out beforehand and instead figure things out along the way?
Do I really need to plan more or am I just procrastinating and avoiding doing the hard work?
What is the first thing I could take action on, within the next week?
If you’re on the implementation side, consider asking
What’s working in your business? What’s not? Look at your conversion analytics, sales, and audience acquisition.
Who’s your ideal client? What would benefit them the most?
What is the main vision for your business? What 1-2 things would really help move the needle on bringing that vision to life?
What would it look like to start saying no to every opportunity that comes your way, and to instead assess if there’s value there first?
Once you get clear on which end of the spectrum you’re on, it will be easier to figure out ways to start balancing the teeter-totter, bringing in more of the opposite perspective and related action steps.