Planning Mistakes Solopreneurs Make When Growing Their Business | Business planning for solopreneurs

Creating an effective plan is usually what makes or breaks solo entrepreneurs in the beginning of growing their business. In the beginning you're really trying to do it all because you can't really afford help or a contractor or a part time employee. And there are just so many things that you don't even realize you need to do as a solo entrepreneur. The other thing it's incredibly easy to get distracted by the next best thing. We may see on TikTok, or we may see on Instagram, or we may see on YouTube. And when you're bouncing from shiny idea to shiny idea, you never actually get the thing done that you need to get done. Now I've been focusing on a series here on my YouTube channel that I hope is helping you create better plans. Starting with my quarterly plan video and then breaking it down into planning your month, planning your week and planning your day. I highly recommend watching those videos before digging into this one because I'm going to take everything that you learned in those four videos and talk about the biggest mistakes. I see solo entrepreneurs when they are making their quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily plan. These are planning mistakes that I see that generally keep solo entrepreneurs stuck in their business and keep them in that constant cycle of overwhelm and stress. And yes, I am totally speaking from experience. When I started my business back in 2016 I had no idea what to expect let alone what to plan for. I was just trying to survive with a one year old at home, then a newborn as well at home. Just doing everything that I could could to keep the so called lights on in my business so I wouldn't have to go back to that job that I so excitedly quit because there was no way I was going back to that place. So I was honestly those first couple years in my business lived in a state of epic to do lists and really chronic overwhelm. And I will tell you there were lots of tears, exhaustion and I actually detail my entire first years in my business and a series that I called my era series a while back. I will link it up here for you to check out after this video and I really deep dive into my journey to actually figuring it all out when it came to running a successful multi six figure business. So let's jump into those biggest mistakes. I mean starting as a solo entrepreneur and the mistakes I see all the time with my clients inside a 10k on replay now I could literally make an entire video on how to prioritize what to work on first in your business. I actually do that inside of 10K on replay where I walk through a priority matrix. But when we are starting out in our business, we think we need to do everything. And as a solo entrepreneur, like I said, that's a lot. Because not only are you the salesperson trying to book clients, you are the copywriter, you are the video editor, you are the admin assistant, you are the finance person, right? All of those tasks start to really add up. So before you know it, the hours you do have in a day quickly melt away. So the planning mistake here that you really want to avoid is not focusing on what your business really needs, that is clients or sales, that revenue generating activity and what's the quickest way to do that. So looking at it in another way, what can you first do in your business, like your top priority that will be really quick to set up and or will last you the longest to generate you the most income. So the solution to this particular mistake, not prioritizing the right things, is instead of working on getting consistent on Instagram or posting another post a week on Instagram, maybe you set up a small ticket funnel, a downloadable, a PDF, a mini course, something that's, you know, 17 to $47 that you can start selling today and it can continue to sell for you for the next year, constantly driving you money as you work on other things in your business. That's also going to help you as you want to build your email list, to build an email list full of qualified buyers, people that already bought something with you. Because the hardest dollar to get with anybody is that first dollar. So if you have people on your email list that already spent that first dollar with you, it's going to be easier to get them to purchase that next thing with you as long as that small ticket offer was super valuable to them. Now let's say you don't want to do like a small ticket offer. That's not where you're at. You're more on the services side. So maybe what you need to focus on as your top priority is really j up your work with me page, putting in some testimonials, rewriting it, just make it really good so that you can reach out to friends or family to get referrals and reach out to possible referrals on social as well. And when they go to your work with me page, they really see the value that it is to work with you so it converts better as well. And this is something like I said, can live for months and years to come to generate you that revenue. The next mistake I see when solo entrepreneurs, our Planning is not Getting digital. Now listen, I love a pretty planner just like the rest of us, but if you're going to be running an online business in 2023 and you want to hit consistent 10k months or you want to get to that six figure mark, you're going to have to get digital with your planning. One reason why you really need to get digital is because you're going to be wasting a lot of time writing out your paper planner every single week. And this is time. As a solo entrepreneur, you don't have time to waste. So there are reoccurring tasks I do every single week that are automatically reposted on my to do list in Asana so I'm not writing it another time. Also, you want to think about the future. If you are going to grow your business, you are at some point going to need help. You are at some point going to hire a contractor, hire a virtual assistant, hire a part time employee and they need to be in the loop with what you're working on as well so they can help take some of that stuff off of your to do list. Here's the solution for this mistake. Let's find an online software that you enjoy and move forward with it. I personally use Google Calendar. This allows me to get clients on my calendar and they could book a time that works best for them. This allows my team to look at my calendar as well to see what I'm working on and then it. I also use Asana so that I can get down my projects. I can break down my projects into nitty gritty tasks. So when I sit down every single morning again, I'm not wasting any time when I sit down in the morning. I can immediately get started with work by looking at my to do list inside of Asana. You don't have to use these tools at all. If you're using Trello, if you're using Monday.com, whatever you're using, I just highly recommend getting used to using some type of online software, project management calendar software. Because if you are going to get serious about growing your business, people need to see what you're working on to help you out and they can't see that with a paper planner on your desk. Even if it is super pretty. This one is still one that I struggle with as well. Even being a business owner for about seven years now is understanding how much time you really have to work. Now this can be for those of you that are working a full time job and then doing your business on off hours or on the weekend. This can be for those of you that are working on your business during nap time and you're still a full time mom and you're balancing building your business while being a mom. And this could be somebody like me who I only have six hours a day because the kids get on the bus at a certain time and they get off the bus at a certain time. So you've got to really understand how much time you actually have in a day so that your plan doesn't implode. Because that is the hardest problem that I've really had when it comes to planning is understanding how much time I really had and then only putting the amount of tasks in that day that I could really get done. So the solution for this mistake is I highly recommend time blocking. I dove more into this concept in a Google video that I did that I will also link up here. But it dives into how I block my time so that I can ensure that I have at least two hours every single day to work on things in my to do list. Like I said, I've got six hours a day. I've got two to work on those to do lists. I've got a half hour to do my workday startup routine. I've got a half hour to do my workday end routine. I've got to fit in lunch there. I've also got client calls, podcast interviews, guest experts, all of that that I've got to pack in my day too. So when you can start to time block to see where your time is being spent and how much time you actually have, that's when you can create a plan that doesn't ultimately implode after like three days. Moving right along to the next mistake I see solo entrepreneurs make when they're planning is not batching. Batching similar tasks. Now, I did a poll recently on my Instagram where I asked people, you know, do they block their time or batch their time? And I had a few people say, they're not that organized to do it. And it's not that it's getting organized, it's just teaching yourself a new way of doing something. I didn't time batch either when I got started. I was literally all over the place when I started my business and what I was working on and when I was working on it. And then I just got comfortable and I had to like break out of that comfort blanket and do something that was new to me that I didn't get as quickly. But the more I did it, the better I got at batching tasks. And I ultimately ended up saving myself a lot more time and getting more productive when I was batching. So ultimately what I mean by batching is putting similar tasks together and that time you have to work on to do list things, right? I said, you know, I had two hours a day, every day to work on my business. So I walk through how I do this in my weekly planning routine, which you can check out after this video. But I like to write out all the things that I'm going to be working on that week and then seeing what can I block together. If it's writing tasks like writing Instagram captions or writing email newsletters, anything like that, that'll be all grouped into one particular two hour segment. The same thing. If I'm planning to do YouTube videos, guess what? I don't want to spend multiple days with my hair and makeup done. I don't have time for that. So I will batch where I know I have to be on video. And those are the days that I have to do my hair and makeup because I'm not doing it every single day if I don't have to. So your solution here is, like I said, check out that video on how I plan my week and try to start a new system of batching tasks. Because I'm telling you, this will make you more productive. The more you switch from different tasks to different tasks, the longer it takes your brain to catch up to that new task where if you're in that zone of genius, your brain's going to be able to fire through those tasks a lot faster. And as a solo entre entrepreneur, that's time that you need on your side. All right, this is a big one. And it's really an eye opener to all of my clients inside a 10k on replay. And it's not understanding the right metrics in your business because if you don't understand what metrics, you should be looking at your business every single month. It's really going to affect what you're putting on your plan. And so what happens is you're planning out your month, you're planning out your quarter, and your business continues to stay the same because you're not focusing on the right things. And you're in this constant hamster wheel being overwhelmed because you're doing more things, but the business isn't making a change. So you do more things and the business still isn't changing. And it's because you're not looking at the data. Listen, here's the deal. I am not a numbers person. And for the first couple years of my business, people kept saying, look at the numbers, look at the numbers. I'm like, I don't like numbers. I like to be creative. I like to make videos. Like, can I just get around that? When I actually sat down and started looking at the numbers and tracking the right numbers, that's when, first of all, my business revenue grew faster. But second of all, when I started to have more time. I talk about this a lot in when I talk on stage or on podcasts, but 2020 was really the first year where I realized I wasn't planning the right way. And that was because I had to figure it out super fast because the kids were home. And I literally went from working three to four days a week to one. And that was the year that my business had the biggest increase in revenue. But I took the most time off because first of all, kids were home and we were locked down. And second of all, we went on a three week beach vacation that year as well. That's when I finally accepted. Oh, if I look at these numbers and I continue to track how they're doing, if they increase, my business increases. If they don't, what did I do differently this month that caused them not to grow? That's honestly the entire secret of growing your business to 10k months or six figure years. That's why this is one of the very first exercises that I walk my 10k on replay, coaching clients through. I have a spreadsheet mapped out with all the important business KPIs, key performance indicators that they need to be looking at to have a foundation. And then each month reviewing those KPIs and tracking, tracking what happened that next month. Because depending on what we did that month, did it help the KPIs increase or decrease? If the KPIs decrease, guess what? There's something that we did that didn't work this month. So we need to change it. If the KPIs increased that month, then we know, okay, this is working. Let's continue to do this. This will really eliminate you needing to think about doing something. Shiny over here, shiny over there. If you can see the right numbers moving in the right directions, you know what is working and you double down on that and you eliminate what isn't working. If you need help figuring out your business numbers and you want me to dig into them with you, I really encourage you to check out 10K on replay@trina little.com 10K. There is an application there. Don't worry about the application. We just want to really want to see you know who you are, make sure you're going to be the right fit. I don't want you wasting your money either. That's why we asked you to apply. So don't hesitate to apply. We have about 35 clients inside, so you really get individualized custom feedback and help inside. So the solution to this mistake is to looking at numbers like traffic. How many eyeballs are you getting to your Work with me page? How many eyeballs are you getting to your webinar or your lead magnet or your shop? What did you do that month that caused that traffic? Did that traffic go up from the month before or not? What did you do differently to get traffic there? That is one of the most important metrics that you need to be looking at when deciding what you're adding to your plan and what you're removing from your plan. The next mistake made when it comes to planning for solo entrepreneurs is understanding how long something actually takes. It's so hard for me to generalize and throw out how long something's going to actually take, because even for me, this can vary from project to project. Like writing a sales page. Writing a sales page for a digital product can be a total, totally different timeframe than writing a sales page for a course. And the same thing with YouTube videos, right? It can take me a totally different amount of time to film multiple YouTube videos than it does for the next solo entrepreneur. But when we don't really have an understanding of how long something takes for us and we don't account for that, when we are planning again, this is when our plan just kind of implodes because we put something on our to do list or on our calendar, that's going to take longer than we expect. And so if we put on our calendar for Tuesday and it doesn't get done, it bleeds into Wednesday, and Wednesday stuff gets kicked back to Thursday, and if we still didn't get Tuesday stuff done on Wednesday, it bleeds into Thursday. So now we have Wednesday and Thursday stuff back on Friday. That's where the biggest planning mistake happens. So I do have two solutions here for this problem. The first one is to start tracking how long something takes you to do. You could pull out your phone and literally set a timer and just write on a piece of paper. You know, started writing a sales page, right? And just track how long it takes you to write a sales page, started scripting a YouTube video and track how long that takes you to do. Right? You can also use a tool called toggle and that can help you get, you know, a little bit more automated ish, or see some more, you know, data that way as well. And then the other solution that I have is leaving a day open in your calendar. I personally like to leave Friday open and I don't add any tasks to Friday. So it's my catch all day because I'm going to underestimate how, how long something takes me to do as well. And so if I give myself a little bit of cushion on Friday, it allows me to kind of catch up so that next week doesn't start with a backup of things to do. Planning in business isn't easy because even if you think you've got all your planning mistakes figured out and you plan your quarter in your month and your week in your day, something is going to happen. Kids are going to get sick, there's some client fire you need to take care of, you're going to get sick, deadlines will slip. And that's okay. It is. You just need to make sure you're focusing on the right things so when those things do slip, you can easily pick right back up and see your business continue to grow, even though your plan may have imploded a bit. Because eventually, if your business continues to grow because you're focusing on the right things, you're going to get to the point where you can get help in your business. You can hire a virtual assistant, you can hire a part time employee to cover you when there's unplanned things happen. If you're ready to start making $10,000 or more in your business, go over and check out 10k on replay, which is my hybrid coaching program, slash mastermind, and apply to work with me and my team. Like I said, we have about 35 clients inside, so you really get personalized individual attention inside. And if you're ready to really dig into my entire planning series, from my planning my quarter to my month to my week to my day, check out the series of videos that is on your screen right now.