"7 Steps to Successfully Plan for the Long-Term Future"

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe. I believe in you and I want to see that awesomeness inside you explode out into the world so you can do something crazy special. Now to help you on your journey today, we're going to talk about 7 ways to plan for the long term. So one of the questions I get asked often is how do I plan? How do I plan for my business, not just for the short-term and immediate sales, but how do I plan for the longer term? How do we create a plan that's going to work, that'll be realistic, that'll last me for a long time and have that guiding point for me that I can also sell to investors and to customers and to partners and suppliers? So today I'm going to share with you my 7 tips on how to plan for the long term. Way number 1 is to have a mission. You have to have some big overarching goal that never expires. Like, you're here to have a big impact, to change the world in some way. What does that look like? And so it should be something that you can't reach in 5 years or 10 years or ever, but it's an ideal that you're shooting towards. It's a reason why you are here. So for me, I want to help a billion entrepreneurs, and it's not about tracking it to actually know when I hit a billion entrepreneurs. It's a lifetime goal. It's never going to be accomplished, but it's always an aspiration to go out and reach. And so especially when you're playing for the long term, you need to have that thing that's the driving force behind what everybody is rallying for. Because if you hit your big goal, then that's the purpose of your organization, and then you hit it, then what are we doing? And this is confusion, right? And so you want to have some big long-term mission. Here is the change that you want to make on the world, and you can start attracting the team members to help you go ahead and do it. Number 2 is people. So you have this big vision for what you want to do in the world. What are the people that you will need to have on board your team to be able to help you go and do it? And it starts with doing a self-assessment of yourself. What skills do you have? What can you be Michael Jordan at? Like, what do you have genius-level talent at that you want to be one of the best in the world at? And then in order to accomplish your big mission, who are the people, what are the skills that you need to surround yourself with? And so you can have your big vision of when I'm, you know, CEO— or maybe you're not even CEO, maybe you're a different position in the company, you need to bring on a CEO. But this is what you want to do, you know, in the bigger term, the bigger vision. Here's what you want to do. And to make that happen, you just spend 90% of your time here. You need all of these people around you to go off and do their thing. So what do those people look like? What do the skills look like? And what is the order? Who's the first hire? Who's the second hire? All the way up to what does that big org structure look like? Number 3 is then budget. What does your budget look like? What's it going to cost to get there? Both from a perspective of in the next year, you know, who's the person that you need to hire? How much is that going to cost? And then that bigger term vision. If you want to hire 10 people, 20 people, 100 people, how much money do you need? Do you need to go out and raise it? Can you do it from self-financing? What do your expenses look like? This is going to be really important for you, for your planning. But also for investors coming on board. If you have a big dream and you want investors to help fund it, they need to know what your mission is, they need to know who you need to bring on, and they need to know how much money you need to make it all happen and how much you're going to make. Now a lot of this is still assumptions, it's estimations, right? It's looking at what's been done and making an assumption of how much things are going to cost. So it won't be perfect, but having an idea of where things are going will really help. Because if you can't say, here's how I'm going to spend this money you're giving me, Nobody's going to give you the money to fund your dream. Number 4 is understanding trends and understanding do the trends support where you're going or not. You know, if your business is around self-driving cars, that's going to happen. It may not happen right now, it may not happen in the next 2 years, but like 5, 6, 10 years down the road, it's going to happen. So that is a trend that is really supporting you. If you need people to be driving in their cars for your business to be a success, that's not a trend that's really supporting you. And so understanding where trends are going and understanding the realistic timeline for that happening, you want to focus on that and have a clear understanding and put that into your plan. Number 5 is understanding technology. Is the technology currently in place for you to be able to do what you want to do, or do you need improvements in technology to happen? This is one of the things that investors always look at in a business plan. If the technology is ready right now, there's an audience, the tech is right there, you don't need some new things to happen, they're much more likely to fund you than if you need to wait for the cost of some technology to come down for you to go out and acquire it. So if we look at driverless cars as an example, the tech isn't there yet, right? It's not quite ready for you yet. So if you're planning the big mission around it, you need to wait a little bit, right? You can lay the groundwork, you can get it all started, but for you to really hit it home, If you need people to have this as an adopted technology, we're not there yet. And so having that as part of your plan, looking at the estimations, look at the growth curve to understand how far away that is, you want to plan that in. If the tech is already ready, you don't need any costs to come down to make that happen, then again, you want to write that into your plan and prepare for it for yourself and for anybody else who's looking at the business plan. Number 6 is to look at, do you need any other kind of approvals to happen before you can launch this business or for you to be able to grow and expand your business. So an example is looking at laws. If you want to start a cannabis business, for example, you might need to wait for some of the governments to pass laws that are happening. It's a big deal happening here in Canada right now. The federal government here said they're going to loosen the laws on cannabis and allow people to start businesses around it, but it's not ready yet. They haven't said yes yet. And so you can start laying the groundwork, but you can't launch fully until you've got the go-ahead from the federal government. Or are you waiting for some contracts to expire? You know, you have this big potential deal with a customer, but they've already locked in for a couple years with somebody else. You need to wait for that deal to expire before you can come in, or at least come in in a big way. You have a small chunk, you want to take over the whole piece. That can't happen until, you know, the contracts have expired. You look at professional sports teams as an example, right? You might have a player on your team locked in for 3 years, you gotta figure out what's gonna happen after that 3 years. Or you really want to target a player on another team, but they're under contract for 2 years, so you gotta wait for those 2 years to wrap up before you can bring them on board. And so do you need approval for anything? Are you ready to go right now, or do you need to wait for some kind of approval from contracts, from the government, from somewhere else for you to be able to do what it is that you want to do? And number 7 is do the first small step. What often happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, and this happened to me too when I first started my first business, is we get so stuck in the planning of how we think things are going to work out, and invariably it doesn't work out like we think it's going to work out. Like, no matter how good a plan you make, it's going to change. If you look at the most successful businesses, you look at how they started, what their first business plan idea was, it always changed to what actually made them a success. And so it doesn't mean don't plan, because a plan is good, just you have to adapt the plan. What you think of is not what's actually going to be birthed. You'll have to create it and then adjust and adjust and adjust. And what happens too often is we get stuck in planning mode because it's fun and exciting to think about this big new future that we can build and all the customers we're going to help and that new world that we're going to create. It's really exciting. The endorphins are going off. But then we don't do anything. Right? Or we're waiting. Like, well, to do that, I need to get investors, or I need to get funding, or I need to get— all the reasons why you can't go off and be successful. And then you don't do anything too often. And so what I encourage entrepreneurs to do is have the big dream, have the big plan, have the long-term vision for where you want to go, and start small. Whatever that first step is, do it. Now. Today. Right? So if my goal is to help a billion entrepreneurs and I'm going to do that through creating a YouTube channel, don't wait until you have funding to have a camera guy and an editor and a researcher and all this other stuff to happen. Take out your phone and just make your first video. Do that. Do another one the next day, and another one the next day. And so whatever your big plan looks like, break it down into the tiniest, smallest steps of what you can do immediately today to take one little itsy-bitsy tiny step forward, and then start doing that instead of waiting for some magical thing to happen. So that's my advice on the 7 ways to plan for the long term. I made this video because Mohid Abusal asked me to. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover on a future 7 ways video, check out the link in the description, go and cast your vote, and I might make a video just for you. I'd also love to know what do you think of this video? What was the point that really stood out the most that you're going to apply somehow in your life or in your business? Leave it down in the comments below. Did I miss an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Share it in the comments below. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Best You Pro. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting it to Twitter. I really, really, really appreciate the support and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the read. So thank you again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever what your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon. So let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. The most important word ever. If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon. Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.