A Strategic Planning Process for Entrepreneurs
Jen Drago 
As an entrepreneur, you are the CEO of your business but you are also the Chief Strategy Officer. Learn this focused process for strategic planning.
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If you're a solopreneur, you wear all the hats in your business. You're the CEO, the Chief Marketing Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Technology Officer, the Chief Human Resource Officer. You are also the Chief Strategy Officer for your organization.
As someone who has been a CSO for a large organization, I think it's one of the most important roles that you can play as a leader today.
I'm going to share with you the easiest way for you to lead the strategic direction of your business and, you know what? If you plot this strategy correctly, you will work less and earn more -- guaranteed.
I'm also going to teach you a simple strategic planning process for entrepreneurs that you can repeat over and over again in your own business to move your business forward. It’s our signature PEAK framework at Peak to Profit. PEAK is an acronym: planning, execution, analysis, and knowledge. Let’s go through each one of these phases.
Planning
Benjamin Franklin once said, "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." You have to have a plan in place but that starts with a vision of where you want to move your organization toward in the future. At Peak to Profit, we create a Vision Narrative and we’ve created a video and a free download to help you craft this vision for your business. It's a step-by-step guide to creating a vision narrative for your business.
A vision narrative quite simply is a set of 6-10 statements that describe in very accurate detail what your organization is going to look like 3-5 years in the future. And by creating a vision narrative, you have a portrait of your business in the future which becomes your destination.
If you were going on a road trip, you wouldn't leave until you knew exactly where you were headed and then you would map your trip before you left. You would know your destination ahead of time and you would plot your route to arrive at your destination. That is exactly what a strategic plan is for your business. It is a roadmap to move forward toward your vision (your destination).
Now, on your trip, you might need to stop for gas or stop to sleep or stop to eat at places you didn't anticipate. Absolutely, but you're still moving in the general direction of your destination. That's what a vision narrative provides: your destination.
Once you know where you're headed, you want to think about what your roadmap needs to look like for the coming four quarters ahead and you do this by thinking of 3 to 4 strategic goals that you should work on. They need to be SMART goals. And remember SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-limited. (I was initially taught that the “A” stands for action-oriented and that the goals should start with a verb so I am adding this as an additional tip!)
So, your goals are going to have a deadline, they're going to be measurable as much as possible, and they're going to be specific. I strongly recommend that they are written in action-oriented terms and start with or include a verb. And they're going to be achievable and relevant meaning that they will move your business toward your destination and you can accomplish them or make significant progress in the next four quarters.
Then, under those 3 to 4 strategic goals that you set as your road map, you want to create 2 to 3 tactics underneath that define the steps to reach each goal.
Then you need to plot a schedule for your goals and your tactics over the next 4 quarters. While one goal may be achievable in one specific quarter, others may span several quarters. Look at sequencing and spacing your goals out in the coming four quarters so that you can make meaningful progress without overloading yourself.
So that's the "P" in the PEAK formula and, honestly, that's at least half the work there. You should be so proud of yourself when you get to this point because Zig Ziglar, who's a famous motivational and business author has said that "a goal properly crafted is half achieved."
Execution
The next step in the PEAK framework is "E" which stands for execution. Look, setting goals is hard work and really important work, but the fact remains that you can’t just put your goals on a piece of paper and then file them away until next year. Your goals have to be visible to you – you should view them daily or, at minimum, weekly.
Even more important, you should have planned time to execute these goals every single week. In fact, once you know what you have to accomplish in a quarter, it's then easier to kind of break that into weekly goals that you need to accomplish.
You want to set aside 10-20% of your time each week to work on tasks that are strategic. Every day, you're going to do all the operational tasks that you need to, you're going to answer the emails, do the social media posts and interact with your clients, sell your products. But for 10-20% of your work hours every week, you should be focused on those strategic initiatives and the strategic goals.
Always remember the Pareto principle which says 80% of your outcomes, of your results, are going to come from 20% of your inputs. Plan to set aside that 20% of your time. Guard it with your life and time block it so that you can work on your strategic objectives.
A couple more tips about execution. Execution is really where you make the best use of your time. I’ve already mentioned time blocking because I do believe when you're working on your strategic work that it should be in big chunks of time. A half-day, a full day, whatever time you're able to set aside in a given week, but do it all at one time or maybe in two blocks at most because you want to minimize your distractions and remain focused on strategy.
Another execution tip is batching. Try to batch similar work in one time period per week to create focus and minimize distractions. For example, when I'm creating videos, I do multiple videos in one day. When I write, I do a lot of writing in one day. When I post and plan my social media for the week, I do that all at one time.
Also, try to systematize as much as you can in your business. Create systems to streamline your processes and then document your processes.
These tips are all key things that help in your long-term execution. They are also helpful when you hire or contract with others to help in your business because you can hand off processes to others who are capable of doing them.
Analysis
Analysis is the “A” of the PEAK framework and it involves keeping track of your results and knowing how you're doing at all times. We do this through dashboards that provide an “at a glance” version of how things are going.
I like to have a strategic dashboard that lists your goals, tactics, and timelines right on one page. I can look at it in one glance and know the status of each goal.
I also like to have an operational dashboard that shows me key operational indicators for my business each month. For example, what are my sales for the month and does this represent an increase or decrease over the prior months? Where are my revenue numbers for the month? My expenses? How many followers do I have now? How many are on my email list?
Whatever metrics you are monitoring all in one place because then you can easily spot trends. Remember one of the key things that you're doing here is you're trying to place your efforts where they're going to have maximum results.
So, for example, if you're working on your strategic goals and you see a jump in followers or jump in sales, you're going to know that that's directly related to the actions that you took just in the weeks before.
Knowledge
Knowledge is the “K” in the PEAK framework and it represents gaining knowledge and integrating that knowledge into your planning cycle.
As an entrepreneur, you should always be consuming new knowledge that helps you grow your business, but be careful in your consumption because you don't want it to be procrastination for other work that you should be doing.
Sean McCabe, who is an author and social media influencer, once said, "create more content than you consume." I think that's a great message that we should all focus on to make sure that we don't overconsume content.
Perhaps more importantly, “knowledge” in the PEAK formula represents taking the knowledge that you learned in the “execution” and “analysis” steps and then making necessary adjustments to your goals in the coming quarter.
Remember you're still moving forward on that road map, If you had your goals planned out for a quarter and you hit a roadblock and aren’t able to achieve a certain goal the way you thought you could, or you realize that a goal is not moving the needle as much as you thought, you're able to adjust your goals and tactics in the coming quarters. You don't need to stick with goals or tactics that aren't necessarily serving you. You always want to be adjusting and moving forward.
Rinse and Repeat
The PEAK framework is a repeatable cycle. It's intended that at the end of each quarter, you're starting with Planning again and adjusting your goals/tactics necessary for the coming four quarters. Then you work through execution, analysis, and knowledge integration.
I’ve created a free download to help you remember the steps in the PEAK framework. You can find it here. I hope that you will try the PEAK framework to help you think and act even more strategically as an entrepreneur.