EP # 148 - Plan Your Way to Success: The Significance of Project and Weekly Planning

In today's episode, Maggie talks about the critical role of planning in fostering business growth. She distinguishes between project planning and weekly planning, outlining their respective benefits in saving time, maintaining focus, and enhancing client satisfaction. Project planning is vital for service-based businesses, ensuring timely and successful project completions through realistic deadlines and risk management. Meanwhile, weekly planning allows you to streamline routine tasks and prevent scheduling conflicts.

Key Moments:

Benefits of Project and Weekly Planning (00:01:42) Maggie discusses the benefits of project planning and weekly planning, emphasizing time-saving and stress reduction.

Project Planning and Its Importance (00:02:55) Maggie explains the significance of project planning, using examples of service-based businesses and the need for strategic planning.

Key Considerations in Project Planning (00:05:19) Maggie delves into the essential elements of project planning, including deadlines, milestones, and risk assessment.

Weekly Planning for Business Effectiveness (00:16:38) Maggie highlights the significance of weekly planning, emphasizing proactive time management and effectiveness.

Implementing Planning for Business Growth (00:21:33) Maggie discusses the integration of strategic, project, and weekly planning in business growth and offers coaching services.

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Transcript

Maggie Perotin (00:00:01) - Your business exists because you had the idea to start it. Everything begins in our minds. That's why your business results cannot outgrow your current level of thinking. Do you want to serve more clients, make more money without working more, or burning yourself out? Grow yourself first as a leader of your business because that's who you are as a leader. Even if you're the only person in your business right now, when you lead yourself first, the business results will always follow. My name is Maggie Barton. I'm an international business and leadership coach, an expert in business mindset, strategy and high performance. I created the Diamond Effect podcast to help you elevate your thinking, expand your perspective, and through it, grow your business without overwhelm. So let's get started. Happy Friday everybody. Welcome to Diamond Effect Podcast episode 148. Today we're going to talk about planning. Now I've done many, many episodes about strategic planning. So today we'll talk about two types of planning that if you incorporate them or improve them, maybe you already incorporated them in your business, but improve them can save you a lot of time and keep you focused on your business and growing your business, and also ultimately improve your client experience with you depending on the type of business you are.

Maggie Perotin (00:01:42) - I did talk about those types very quickly in Maggie's moment number 137. So it's like a short three minute version. But I thought it would be great if I gave you some how to's and really taught you a little bit more about those two types of planning. And they are project planning and weekly planning. And there are very different types serving different purposes. And if you have listened to this podcast for more than 1 or 2 episodes, you definitely know I'm a huge proponent of planning. Even my coaching model has planning in it. Write, dream, plan, do. And I truly believe there are so many benefits that not adopting any kind of planning in your business is just detrimental and it costing you a lot of issues, a lot of time missed opportunities. So what are the key benefits of these two types of planning? The first one is of course, it saves you a lot of time by organizing your actions. And first even your thoughts about how do you want to approach a problem or a project or your week.

Maggie Perotin (00:02:55) - It serves you as a roadmap. I always go back to my corporate experience. When I led the team that was dispatching technicians to do different service work, or you can think about like a Amazon driver. Imagine that driver, that technician, being called up after every delivery to say, oh, you got to go here and now you need to go here or you need to go here. That route would not have been optimized. It would get him stuck probably a lot longer in the truck. Going back and forth between different houses or cities or neighborhoods are supposed to, if you plan that route at least a day ahead or a week ahead or whatever, depending on the size and the project and so on. Right. You can organize the thoughts, you can optimize the driving and ensure that, let's say if it's a service technician, they actually serve more customers, therefore make more money rather than spend time in the truck driving. Also, when you plan, it prevents a lot of issues from happening like double booking or certain challenges that you can easily predict.

Maggie Perotin (00:04:08) - If your brain has a little bit of space to think ahead. Because when you plan, you can think about what about this and what about that. There you can assess certain risk and you can prepare for them. It reduces stress and this is a very underestimated benefit. But I remember, especially when I implemented weekly planning into my habits and my sort of the way I run my weeks. Even as a corporate leader, this stress reduction that I experienced was huge. I couldn't believe it myself. And hey, if we're less stressed, of course we feel better, which is priceless. But also we handle things better in our business. We make better decisions. And then the last key benefit that I wanted to talk about, about those two types of planning, is that it's so much easier for you to see what has been done up to, let's say, the point in the moment when you're looking what still needs to be done, and therefore, if there are any unexpected things that come up, it's easier for you to deal with them and you're more effective in dealing with them.

Maggie Perotin (00:05:19) - So let's start with project planning. Project planning will be your bread and butter. If you're this type of service business that delivers your services through a project. So you might be a renovation contractor or a designer, whether you're a web designer or interior designer, right? A client purchases almost like a finished product. And as you deliver it as a project and not an ongoing service, right. So of course you have a deadline budget for it and so on. Now, even if you're not solely that type of business or you're not project based business at all, you. Could be a mixture. You could be just ongoing service. There will be still some projects that you have. So developing the skill of that type of project planning is important. So let's say you are an electrical contractor. So you do an ongoing braking service calls, but occasionally you do installations and brand new homes to run your buildings. And that's more of a project. Or let's say, like me, when you're a coach or consultant, you have an ongoing service to the client with you need.

Maggie Perotin (00:06:32) - But let's say you're creating your writing a book, or you're creating a new curriculum for your program, or you're doing an online course or whatever the case may be, that's more of a project, right? When you have a beginning and an end and you're creating something separate from that effort. And then another great example, if you're like MacGyver, I'm not going to write a book and I don't create a course and so on. For example, implementing a new technology or a new system in your business should be dealt with also as a project that's not ongoing renovation that your husband does on the side that lasts two years and it's never finished, right. So running certain things as projects is very beneficial. So in terms of project planning, it's really a skill. And when you get truly good at it, it can be your competitive advantage, especially if you're running project based business. And of course, when project planning is really part of your service delivery, you want to also have a technology that supports that that makes it easier for you, that's giving you all kind of data and information and reporting.

Maggie Perotin (00:07:43) - Talking about data last episode was about that. So there's other types of data, like for example, project data that you want to track. But if you know, projects are rare in your business and it's just sometimes you might, you know, Excel is great to do it and it's more of a manual process and you're okay with it. But still, having some basic skill set will help you. So there's five things you want to consider. There is whenever you have a project, you will have a deadline, right? An end moment of that project. Sometimes you determine that, sometimes it's a client, sometimes it might be a negotiation. But once you at least set a preliminary date, you want to work your actions backwards from that date. What it does is it allows you to a make sure you meet the deadline, but also see if the deadline is realistic based on what really needs to be done to deliver that project. If the deadline is not realistic, then you have a couple of options.

Maggie Perotin (00:08:44) - The main option is either you extend the deadline. So let's say if it's a project that you decide on, you need to decide on an extended deadline. But if it's a project where the deadline is negotiated or given by the client, you might need to negotiate the deadline out. Now. If it's a strict deadline and client is not budging, or whatever circumstances are allowing, you know, not allowing you to extend it, then the question is, how am I going to deliver it? Maybe I need to add manpower to that project, right? I need to hire help and that means higher cost. So again, if we're going back to a project that maybe you're doing for a client and you've already quoted them a certain number, and you're now realizing that our number was too low or you're about to quote them. Ideally, you want to happen before then you might need to up the quote because you will need more power. Therefore it will cost you more. Your cost of delivering that project will be more right.

Maggie Perotin (00:09:48) - So sometimes there might be an uncomfortable renegotiation of the price with the client back and forth if you know the situation allows you to do that. So once you work it backwards, you also when you plan ideally you want to have some time contingency. So not just plan okay. In the perfect circumstances, these actions will take this much. You want to plan for unexpected things. Now, we don't always have the luxury of taking the double time to plan our projects, but very often that's probably what required from initial planning. But having some sort of contingency is critical. And what I would say is the longer the project and the more complex the project, the more things are coming into it, and the more things you want to manage, the higher the risk and the chances that things will go wrong will not go as planned, that the things will slip. Therefore, accounting for that ahead of time will save you a lot of stress, a lot of unnecessary anxiety, plus of course issues and probably overspend down the line.

Maggie Perotin (00:11:01) - The third thing you want to have is determining milestones. Milestone is something critical in the progress of the project. That needs to happen before you move on to the next stage, right? So again, it all depends on the complexity of the project and so on. But you might have different stages. So I will just give you an example in construction because it's easy. So for example the first stage could be demolition. And then the second stage would be, I don't know doing some rough things. And like so let's say you're renovating kitchen or the first floor of the house. Right. So doing some installation of electrical, plumbing and so on. And then the next stage is the drywall and so on and then finishes. Right. So those are certain critical milestones that until demolition is finished we cannot go in and start installing things. Right. So that would be the finishing of the demolition would be the milestone. Or until the cabinets in the kitchen are installed, we cannot move on with the rest.

Maggie Perotin (00:12:05) - Like, you know, cutting the, let's say marble or quartz for the countertops and installing it and finishing great. So a milestone for let's say installation part could be kitchen cabinets being installed in the in in the kitchen. Also breaking the project down into those critical steps and then determining milestones will also allow you to see the progress of the project and determine if it's successful or not, and know very early if the project is going well, if it's off track, if there is issues, and so on. Right. So it's also very important for tracking and reacting to challenges that might happen as soon as possible and not missing them and realizing very much late into the process and then dealing with larger consequences of that. And just a side note here, I'm giving you this these tips on the assumption that you know what's required, what's going into delivering that service, right, or completing this project. Like, I'm not giving you all to rent out the kitchen. You need this, this, this and that.

Maggie Perotin (00:13:15) - I'm assuming you know that. Or to write a book, I need this, this and that. The assumption is you've already collected that, right? You have the scope of the project when you know what's needed and now you're planning. So before planning, if we're talking about really project management, you need also like the phase of gathering what's required. And some of it comes from your expertise and what you do. Some of it comes from interacting with the client. And if it's something you're doing with your business, some of it can come from business coaching or talking to an expert, depending on what that is. Okay, the fourth point you want to think about when project planning is thinking about the risks that are realistic to happen during the project delivery or during the project implementation, and you want to plan how you're going to deal with those risks. So it's a plan within a plan, right? Because we cannot be 100% sure whether all the risks will happen, whether there will be the same intensity or whether some of them will not.

Maggie Perotin (00:14:19) - And there will be always something that is unexpected. But planning for the risks and kind of playing a bit of devil's advocate, thinking what could go wrong and if it happens, how we can deal with it, or how can we prevent some of it from happening is critical. And then the last part that I want to talk about, that not not a lot of people do, but that can again, save you from trouble or challenges as you implement is validating the plan. So having other people, other sets of eyes look at that and a little bit rip it apart and look at it from different perspective and challenge you on certain things and ask you, what about this, what about that? And so on. Whether it's your team members and especially if you are doing a client delivery project, your team members who will be part of those projects, the delivery, the critical ones should be part of the planning, because they will give you that other sets of eyes and different perspectives. But if you are a solopreneur, ask people right? Again, as a business coach, I very often act as that second set of eyes for my clients in certain projects that they have in their business.

Maggie Perotin (00:15:32) - But maybe you have advisors, maybe, you know, fellow entrepreneurs. So somebody who can help you validate that this project makes sense and you haven't missed any critical, important part. And we're all human. And sometimes when we sit and look at something over and over again, it's actually very easy to miss critical things. So having a fresh set of eyes, fresh perspective to look at, it can save you from a lot of trouble. All right. So that was a quick project management course right there. Okay. Let's move on to weekly planning. So weekly planning in terms of a skill it's actually not that difficult. It's very simple. So it's a low level skill. Whereas project planning it could be like there is you know courses on that and professional certifications on that. So that's a very specialized skill. But even the basics help you. so weekly planning it's more of a habit or you want to make it a habit because it's something that you will do weekly as long as you're running your business.

Maggie Perotin (00:16:38) - Right. So it's very low level skill, easy to learn, but you want to make it a habit to benefit from it fully. So what you plan here is really your ongoing actions that you take in your business regularly. So if you're a business like me, who has more of an ongoing client work, that could be sessions with your client or the client work that you do. So let's say you're a VA and you're doing social media for your clients, and every week you have some tasks to complete, right? Those would be also your SEO activities. So working on your business and planning them out to make sure they happen. Because if you don't plan them, they never do your client service delivery thing and everything else takes over and you don't have time to work on your business, but you will never have time unless you create it through planning. Now all the other things should be minimized, right? So your core activities is client service delivery and being the CEO working on your business. And you have a bunch of admin stuff or non value added work, you should be either eliminating it or automating it or delegating it if it's something that's truly needs to be done.

Maggie Perotin (00:17:56) - So what weekly planning does is ensures you spend your time effectively, that you're not wasting a bunch of time going through your to do list multiple times a day, trying to pick and decide what you're going to do next, and then usually avoiding important things, especially in the afternoon when you're tired and picking the easy stuff, or missing certain things because you don't have your day planned out properly. So whatever comes at you just kind of rules what you do. And then you do the urgent, urgent, urgent stuff which you feel is urgent rather than what's important. It also, if you don't plan weekly, you never know how much really time you need to complete certain tasks and you don't give yourself ability to improve on that. So let's just say you're doing your social media, and if you're doing it ad hoc, it takes you three hours total a week here and there. Whereas if you actually planned it and allow yourself to also get better at it, it would take you one. Okay, weekly planning is proactive.

Maggie Perotin (00:19:04) - It also allows you to predict certain things and avoid issues like double booking, triple booking, missing an appointment and so on. When you do a daily little plan or a to do list, it's very reactive and there is a lot of time and effectiveness lost right there, and it's proven through studies scientifically, in my experience, the way I operate or in my clients. So there's so much evidence and data that you can dispute that you might not want to implement it, but you can dispute that weekly planning doesn't work. It definitely does, no matter what your brain might be telling you, because it might not want to implement it. It might be telling you it doesn't work for me in my business is different and I'm a special snowflake. Even if it's partially true, there is still a weekly planning system that will work for you. When I work with my clients and I use, I give them a tool that makes weekly planning easy dream, plan, do journal I still adopted with them through their way of operating to their business and how they spend their time or not, how they spend their time, but how they operate in their days to make sure they can easily build the habit.

Maggie Perotin (00:20:20) - Right. So I don't try to put them fully in the box of the Dream Planner journal. We adapt it. I have clients who use it exactly like me because it works for them, and I have clients who use it very differently than me because it works for them. But weekly planning works for everybody, I promise. So between strategic planning, project planning and weekly planning, this is part of the top SEO Performance Enhancer formula that I teach my clients in a very simple way, in a very doable way, and we implemented when and how it makes sense in their business when I work with them. Because when I work with my. One on one. We have six months of weekly coaching, right? And ultimately, the goal is to double your business without adding more work. And as we tackle certain things, going from, most important, the low hanging fruit that will give you the fastest results to more complex things, we insert the planning as required. So by the end of six months you have all three and you didn't even notice because you're practicing it while really focusing on doubling your business and eliminating overwork and overwhelm.

Maggie Perotin (00:21:33) - Okay, so if you're ready to do that book sales, go with me. I will put a link to my calendar in the show notes. And other than that, talk to you next week. Bye everybody. Thank you for listening today. If this podcast resonated with you, please come back. Also, you can leave a review on whatever platform you're listening, and if you have a suggestion, question, or a topic you would like me to talk about, let's get in touch via email. Email me at Maggie at Stairway to leadership.com. See you in the next episode.