The 90 Day Action Plan Matrix – One Beautiful Small Business Marketing Tool to help you work out what to do next!
It’s 11:19PM at night and I am tired but I have had one amazing day as I write this article. I have worked with some amazing clients over the last 2 days including the amazing Mariane Barakat and Mark Finch. They are two top operators and you may know them from my previous articles which I have dedicated to them.
Firstly, one dedicated to Mark Finch on how he is substance and many of his peers are all talk and Secondly – the other being an interview of Mariane of her own story of how she lost her sight and husband – yet stayed amazingly positive throughout an extreme challenging experience.
Both of these operators are working extremely hard on their businesses now. They are technically brilliant and like me several years ago, they are going through the extremely daunting experience of getting their businesses set up and learning the ropes when it comes to Sales, Marketing and Entrepreneurship. “Overwhelm” is a very common problem for entrepreneurs and myself once (like 1 week ago) in that you have often an endless list of duties and tasks. For example, it is now 11:24PM and I have a promise with myself to write 1 x Blog Post each day. I have probably at least 30 other things to get done, but I know instinctively know to prioritize them and get to them later.
That is just the true reality of business. You can watch “The Secret” all you want, pick on me for being negative, visualize waking up drowning in $100,000 tomorrow – but unless you get to it, it won’t happen! Overwhelm can be a very distressing emotion and I have found that the best cure is implementing the 90 Day Action Plan as part your day to day Business DNA.
Basically what you do is categorize all your project based items into:
– Urgent: Must do within 30 days.
– Important: Must do within 30 to 60 days.
– Development: Must do in 60 to 90 Days.
– Future Technology: Ideas and Concepts 90 to 120 Days Plus.
It’s really important to make sure you are doing the right things in the right order. For example, if you don’t even have a Logo – then working on your website or business cards is a really silly billy idea, as you can’t complete them till that previous project is complete. This is not only for the pragmatic project planning side of things but also from a clarity viewpoint. As you get closer to a project, it becomes clearer and one starts to figure it out. That is – say items 120 days out under “Future Technology” may be quite “Fuzzy” – but within 30 days you have a closer idea of what it is.
For example, you may think you want to run a “Seminar” 4 months later. That is all you have, but when you get closer you figure out it’s for 8o people, called the Awesome Business Boot Camp teaching Sales & Marketing (which is coming soon actually!).
Going back to awesome Mark & Mariane working away – they get this process and liked my “Cave Man with the Assault Rifle” analogy. That is, if you give a Cave Man a modern Assault Rifle what is he likely to do with it? Stare down the barrel, crack a coconut with the butt or chew the bullets? But if you say give a man with a single shot Pirate Musket a modern day Assault Rifle – they may have no idea as to the power of the weapon, but most likely – he / she would pick it as some type of projectile weapon and know to be careful. Given maybe several weeks – the Industrial Era fellow may figure out how to use the technology.
Like us in business too, we need to get closer to an event to really get clear on it and be ready to handle it. This is where the 90 Day Action Plan rocks.
My advice? Use it right now in your own business and put items in the right order. This can help cure overwhelm and get you doing the right things in the right order.
Thank you for the read and thank you to Mark Finch and Mariane Barakat for being so awesome!
Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor and Action Plan Lover!
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