Do you let your mind wander at times, daydreaming about how life will be when you are finally relieved of the weekday grind?
With holiday advertisements thrown in your direction daily, hobbies that you’re lucky to squeeze in once a year and day-after-day pulling out of your driveway before your family has even woken up, there’s no wonder why you are dreaming of something better!
Personally, I like to see dreams as a form of intangible asset. Dreams provide value through hope for the future and ideas of what this “something better” looks like. If you don’t dream then you will never have anything better to strive for.
The thing is, the road between dreaming and achieving is not linear. In fact, the road between destination ‘A’ and destination ‘B’ is far in the distance and full of twists and turns. To get from destination ‘A’ to destination ‘B’ you need a map or you will drive off course.
The map between dreaming and achieving comes in the form of a plan. As a business owner, there are three key plans you need to consider to go from dreaming to achieving – a life plan, a business plan and a marketing plan.
1. Life plan
Life planning is literally as it sounds. Assess the vital aspects of your life and design/plan how you will achieve optimum levels of success. Areas you may wish to include in your life plan include family, self, money, friendships, community, business, fitness, health and hobbies.
Think about what improvements you want to make to yourself to ‘be’ a better you, think about what you want to ‘have’ (yes, the materialistic stuff we all aspire for) and finally what you want to ‘do’ (where do you want to go, who with and for how long). Then put a price tag on everything and allocate when, a year, you would like this to occur.
What are the ‘this year’ things that you need to prioritise? To see the dream become a reality?
2. Business plan
Owning a trade business can sometimes feel like you have the key to unlock the treasures at the centre of a maze. You can’t quite get there because you keep hitting dead ends. It’s for this reason that business plans are so important.
Business plans allow you to completely map out your business. Through understanding your business, your business goals/visions, the scope of the particular trade industry you are in and your finances, you will be able to see more clearly how to navigate through the maze.
Confusion will be replaced with clarity. Inaction will be replaced with action. Hope will be replaced with certainty.
3. Marketing plan
I do not need to say this, but I am going to anyway, simply because it prefaces the reasoning behind marketing plans so perfectly. There are two hard truths about getting customers for your business.
Truth #1
If you don’t market your business, people won’t know your business exists. They won’t use your services and you definitely won’t make money from them.
Truth #2
If you market your business poorly, and spend money on the wrong marketing channels or collateral, you’ll get a limited amount of customers at a very high price. If you compared the total cost of one specific marketing campaign to your total profits from the jobs resulting from this same marketing campaign, you probably didn’t make any money.
It’s pretty simple. To get from destination ‘A’ (dreaming) to destination ‘B’ (achieving) you need a solid marketing plan. Why? Well, if your destination ‘B’ involves holidays, pursuing your hobbies and taking time off work to spend with your family, then you need money!
The benefit of a marketing plan prevents you from getting distracted, provides clear direction and hence provides consistent ongoing work.
So, let me ask you this…
If you are standing at destination ‘A’ right now, what does your destination ‘B’ look like? Have you even given the thought the time of day?
Without taking the time to create your own destiny and mapping out the path to get there, how else do you go from ‘dreaming’ to ‘achieving’?
Visit Next Level Tradie for our schedule of live events.
What’s next?
- Join our Kick-Ass Tradies Facebook Group, for access to trade business specific conversations, tips and resources, plus a like-minded community of tradies.
- Book a 15-minute Game Plan Call with Andy, owner of Dr. DRiP plumbing and co-founder of Lifestyle Tradie, to clarify your priorities and get clear action steps.
