Monthly Planning: 2 Questions to Set Yourself Up for Continual Growth

Do you have a way that you plan your month to guarantee personal and business success?  I used to have a monthly planning ritual that would take hours- and some months I still do this ritual.  But some months life happens and my world is crazy.  However, I always take time to ask myself two important questions.

These questions will not only give you a game plan for your month ahead.  They will also assure that you are continually learning and growing on a personal and business level.

Chapters

• 0:00 Monthly Planning for Business Growth
• 10:57 Strategic Business Planning for Success

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

you, you, hello. I am so excited to be with you today on this episode. We are most of the way through a month and this is around the time. Two-thirds of the way through a month is around the time that I start looking forward to the next month, and I don't mean looking forward in a like yay, the new month is coming. I mean, that's true too, but I start looking forward in terms of forward planning for what I would like to achieve and like to do in my business specifically, but also in my personal life, in that month ahead.

Speaker 0: 1:32

So I wanted to share with you today two questions that I ask myself at the beginning of every month to set myself up for success, that I set myself up for continual growth, both in my personal life and my business. I will fully caveat this by saying there are times where I plan my month out, and I plan it out to the nth degree. I am looking at every single thing that I have going on throughout the entire month every appointment, every kid, activity I am doing, content planning. I am on the ball and have everything totally mapped out. However, there are other months where that just does not happen, for a variety of reasons, and I have found that there have been seasons in life In fact I am in a season right now where that planning to the nth degree has not really been feeling in alignment, it's not really been serving me. It's honestly become something where it's too rigid. I don't allow myself the flexibility that I want when I plan to that level, want when I planned that level. And it's also really important to have some kind of roadmap, because if we don't know where we are going, we can't get there. We have to know where that destination is in order to get to the destination, and so that is why, for quite a number of years now I would say it's probably been three or four years that I have been using this method, whether I plan out every single second and moment of the month ahead, or whether I am just winging it, if you want to call it that, and rolling into the next month with not a super tight plan and agenda. There are two questions that I always ask myself. So we are going to dive into those questions on this episode. I hope that this sets you up for success and for continual growth, both personally and in your business, using these two questions every single month.

Speaker 0: 3:38

So question number one is what will I learn? What will I learn this month? And I find for myself, this is a really important question, because I love learning. Learning is something that I absolutely love doing. I have always enjoyed learning. I have bought a million bajillion courses out there, I have signed up for a ton of workshops. I have a whole bookshelf of books that I want to read. I have audio books waiting in queue.

Speaker 0: 4:09

There are so many things to learn. I have specific skills I want to learn. I have a lot of spiritual stuff that I want to lean into and learn and work on. I have meditation. There are so many things. And so with so many things, that is a blessing. And so with so many things, that is a blessing.

Speaker 0: 4:32

But I also don't have that much time in my life to. If I was to sit down and say this month I am doing nothing except learning, I still would not get through all the things I want to learn. So for me, it's really important to ask myself this question what will I learn? Because this helps me focus on what it is that I need to learn to take that next step with my business, and sometimes it is that business skill. Sometimes it's a specific skill that I need to learn in my business. Like one month I was like I will learn Facebook ads, I will learn a couple of different types of Facebook ads, and I literally committed myself that month to learn that. Other months I'm like I'm going to learn a new breathwork technique because this interests me and this is going to help me de-stress and I just can't wait to learn all the things about that. I know it's going to help my business, even if it's not a direct skill, right? Or I just want to learn about this topic that I've been curious about, and sometimes it's related to business, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just personal curiosity.

Speaker 0: 5:37

But I think, honing in on what you will learn, why that's important to you, why it's important to your business, and also asking yourself what do I need to learn to take my business to that next level? And again, sometimes this is like I need to learn who I need to become to get to that next level. I need to do some exploration, right, self-exploration, and learn that. So that is part of why this question is so important, because it helps me focus all of my personal development, my personal growth, the courses I'm watching, the workshops I'm attending all of that, or maybe I'm like I don't need to watch a course and I don't need to hop on a million workshops. I need to create space for myself to explore this question. That is going to help me go to the next level, because otherwise, as we know, I go on to any kind of website or especially social media and I'm like, oh, there literally are a billion more courses and workshops I would love to buy and love to learn, love to dive into, but it becomes such a shotgun thing all over the place and it can be an actual distraction from the direction that we're going. So this is really important to help keep on track and not let yourself get distracted by all the noise. It helps you tune into yourself and your intuition and your power of what it is that you want to learn and achieve this upcoming month. It also ensures that you are continuing to learn and grow right, because sometimes we can get so into the hustle and the grind and just getting through the daily things that we're not taking the time to grow. So that is question number one.

Speaker 0: 7:28

Question number two is what will I build? What will I build? And I ask myself this because, as an entrepreneur, we have so many different things in our business that we can put time into. I could put time into building a new course. I could put time into building a new website. I could put time into building a new funnel, a new ad campaign, a new real strategy Like there's so many different things that I could build for my business, and sometimes we have this idea of this really big project.

Speaker 0: 8:04

What if you have an idea to take every single thing that you have ever taught or helped people with and turn that into a library of courses or recordings that you could sell? That is a massive project, right? Especially if you maybe you don't have a website, don't have an e-commerce platform, have never recorded video before, don't know how to host that, don't know how to put it in a platform to sell. There can be so many components of that, and so I found that this question also components of that, and so I have found that this question also number one, helps me stay focused in my business, helps me focus in on the thing that is important, the next right step that is going to make the most impact and push my business forward, rather than just kind of being scattered and one day working on this and another day working on that and then jumping over to this and never getting anything done. It also really helps me take these huge ideas that I have, these big projects of something that I want to put together that is going to take more than a month, because, let's face it, if I was to take my entire recording catalog and put that into courses to sell, that would be more than a month of work. And so it helps me say, hey, this month I'm going to work on this specific thing, I'm going to build this one component of that, and then, once that one component is built, next month, I get to ask myself this question again what will I build? And I can take the next step.

Speaker 0: 9:36

So both these questions are designed to help you focus, to help you look at where you want your business to go and where you want to take it and move it forward. That little incremental degree because it's those little steps that add up to that huge mountain that we're climbing right. If we look at that huge mountain, it can feel very overwhelming and we might not see the path all the way up to that huge mountain that we're climbing right. If we look at that huge mountain, it can feel very overwhelming and we might not see the path all the way up to the top. It's so far out of view, it's so high up, we can't see the whole path.

Speaker 0: 10:07

When we look at one month at a time with these two questions, it helps us stay focused. This also gives us the ability to pivot because maybe something that you were working on and building and learning six months ago is not serving you anymore. You've had a shift of direction. You learned something else that opened your eyes to this whole other place that you could go, or this whole other way that you could go, or this whole other way that you could do it, a whole different route up the mountain that is going to save you time or is going to have scenery that you enjoy more or you want to see more. So it's really important to ask this every month because it helps you be able to make these pivots without completely scrapping your business.

Speaker 0: 10:57

Sometimes we can get so tunnel vision and so stuck on like this is the one path that I set out on and that path is not serving us anymore. It's not working for us, and when we can ask ourselves these questions, it allows us to shift a little bit, shift our trajectory, shift our way and pivot when we need to pivot, but also not throw everything out the window and not be going in a million directions, not be running sideways on the mountain right. We want to keep going up, so I hope this helps you. This is something like I said.

Speaker 0: 11:27

I've used this for quite a number of years and this was a total game changer for me and really was able to not completely replace all the other planning that I do, but it is that kind of base that I always use and then if I build on that base, that's fantastic, but I also don't have to build on that base. This takes me a few minutes. I would say like 15 to 30 minutes every single month. Maybe I spend a little bit more time depending on if it's something more complex, but it really allows me to have that path forward and to stay focused and I cannot wait to hear how this helps you. If you try this out this upcoming month, drop a comment. I can't wait to hear where this gets you and what comes out of asking yourselves these questions. Have a beautiful rest of your day and a beautiful month ahead.