Bradley HamnerFounder, BlueprintOS · Founder - Above the Business & BlueprintOS

Common mistakes with annual business planning

Name: Common mistakes with annual business planning
Uploaded: 2025-11-17T16:33:15+00:00
Duration: 1 min 5 s
Channel: Bradley Hamner
Description: In this solo YouTube talk, the speaker reflects on his own experience with annual business planning and identifies three major pitfalls he fell into…

17 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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1:05

In this solo YouTube talk, the speaker reflects on his own experience with annual business planning and identifies three major pitfalls he fell into. First, he lacked a clear, structured planning approach, essentially winging it with only vague ideas. Second, he delayed the start of the planning process until late in the first quarter, missing the opportunity to set a roadmap early in the year. Third, he excluded his team from the planning effort, crafting overly ambitious, "pie‑in‑the‑sky" goals on his own without logical grounding or actionable steps. The narrative serves as a cautionary account, urging viewers to adopt a systematic, timely, and collaborative planning process to avoid these common errors.

Chapters

Number 1 is in my own history of planning, I really didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to go about planning. I didn't have, I was just kind of making it up. I was, had some generalized ideas of what I wanted to try to accomplish in the year, but I really did not know. And the second big mistake that I made when it came to annual planning is I really didn't start annual planning. Until January or February. I remember even being close to March, the end of Q1, before I had ever really gotten into planning for the year. The third big mistake that I made when it came to annual planning is I did not invite the team. It was only myself, me, myself, and I coming up and dreaming up these pie-in-the-sky aspirations, which I'll get to that mistake in a second. These pie-in-the-sky aspirations that had no bearing in logic or reason or even having a specific plan to be able to do it. But I did it all myself and did it all myself.