Have you ever heard this phrase before: “Planning Promotes Perfect Performance!” ? I’ve heard this many times from my inspiring and wonderful Executive Coach, Debbie Phillips. Back in my Corporate America days, when I was the Director of Corporate Communications and we did many employee events, it was always incredibly stressful. And when I had my calls with Debbie, she would always remind me of the 4 P’s of planning – Planning Promotes Perfect Performance. Because once you have your plan, the rest will simply fall into place, albeit sometimes you need to have a good team in place to help. Yet sometimes the team is just you, so planning becomes hugely important.
I found that whenever I had a plan, everything pretty much fell into place, according to my plan. The times when disaster struck was when I didn’t have a concrete plan written out with specific information, who was responsible for each task and the date it needed to be completed by. Holding yourself and others to tasks and ultimately to your plan of success is imperative in order to be successful in business and in life.
The one cool thing about having a plan is it actually helps me get more done, 
seriously. Why you ask? The reason is when you take the time to put your plan together, you create your own road map, and for me, I call it my Marketing Road Map for my business. It’s everything that needs to be done and it’s split into categories – what needs to be done for my clients, for my two businesses, and for my personal life. I’d totally recommend when writing out your overall plan, to do it in categories that work best for you – your business, your clients, your family, etc. The beauty of this is, after I take the time to write out my plan, I can then get a very clear snapshot on what I will do AND (this is a very important and huge step) what I will OUTSOURCE to others to do FOR ME. Did you get that? Once you have your snapshot of what all needs to be done, than you can CLEARLY see how to break up the tasks and outsource to the best people accordingly.
So if you’re stuck in overwhelm mode and have way to much to do, I know the last thing you want to do is put together a plan. Or better yet you already have a huge ”to do list.” I know, I used to have that one too. But really, the key to getting more done is the planning phase, not the old “to do list.” Write out your big plan, then write your weekly and daily “to do list”" from your overall big plan. It’s helped me immensely in both my businesses and personal life. Plus because of my plan, it’s certainly promoting perfect performance for me to end the year amazingly well.
If you’re in overwhelm mode, and want a way to get out of it and have an awesome finish in your business this year, my Marketing Road Map to Riches might be the best thing for you… Here’s a link to my 5 REcession Busting Tip and an Offer to help you put together your Marketing Road Map Plan. You have to HURRY though, my slots for creating these plans are almost all booked up!
Happy Planning!
Posted by Shannon 
It’s fall here in New Jersey and I know that not only because there’s a little chill in the air and the leaves are just now starting to change… I know because now when I go to South Mountain Reservation and walk my rescue dog Lily, she chases after all the chestnuts falling from the trees. The whole scene is actually quite comical, albeit sometimes a little frustrating. We get a pretty good pace going, then all of sudden we come across this huge patch of several hundred chestnuts on the ground and more falling. (In fact, I have to be careful and often dodge those falling from the trees or they get me right on the old noggin.) As soon as Lily sees them, she chases after them, dive bombs the chestnut, picks one right
up and starts to eat it. Ok, she doesn’t swallow them anymore because let’s just say she and chestnuts don’t get along. Yet, she still loves to chase and pick them up (and there are a lot of them now) and chew them and then lets them drop. For those who are visual, like me, I actually took my camera with me to take some snap shots of her. The only bummer was she was too quick to get this on video, maybe tomorrow! So I only have some choice shots of my chestnut chasing dog…
So I got down to brass tacks when I started noticing how my days were not as productive as I’d like. The real crux was reading a few good books on time management (there are many!), getting Eben Pagan’s course on Wake-Up Productive, and having a mastermind group, belonging to two of them really helps keep me on track. The real trick to not going after EVERY “shiny” object that comes across my path is having a big detailed plan of what I want to accomplish. I mean really detailed, like what I will outsource, what skills I need for certain tasks, date it will be completed, etc. The more detailed the merrier. Plus at the start of each day and as I go through my day I’m always asking myself “Is this task going to get me closer to reaching my goal?” “Is this task going to help me create more income?” If the answer is no, then guess what, I’m not doing that task.
Posted by Shannon 
