A Business Plan For Your Life (Part 1)

Before you start a business, you make a business plan, right? You plan your goals, you set your objectives and you figure out your strategies and tactics to achieve those goals. You make a budget and plan for eventualities. And then you work your butt off to implement those strategies in order to get to your goals. Because if you don’t make your goals, or at least come close, you’re going to lose your entire investment and your livelihood.

I want to start exploring how a business plan for your life can make or break your life, or at the very least make it better. Join me for a series in which I will explore pivotal areas of our lives from a “business angle” to make them better.

Why Businesses Fail
Those businesses that don’t have a plan are those that fail within the first two years or so. They go out of business because they literally didn’t plan to stay in business. How do you know you’re successful if you don’t have a benchmark to measure it with? You could say “Well, as long as I am profitable, I am successful. Duh.” Not true. You might be profitable, but in 3 years, there’s a major expense coming your way. You don’t know that because you didn’t do your research. Therefore, you didn’t plan for this $100,000 expense and now that it’s coming, you’ve been profitable, but you haven’t been profitable enough to pay for this expense. So now you have to take out a loan and pay that loan back over the next 10 years with 15% interest. And that payment hits you so much that you’re no longer profitable and you still go out of business, and possibly bankrupt. And that’s the reason why you need to have a well researched business idea with a long-term and short-term business plan.

Why Your Life Shouldn’t Fail
Having a business plan makes perfect sense. So why, I wonder, don’t we make a business plan for our lives? Isn’t our life and the long term planning of it (so that we don’t fail in life) so much more important than a business plan? I am not just talking about lofty goals, such as earning one million with a 401K upon retirement (even though a 401K is quite important and a million would be nice). I am talking about daily goals that deal with your health, your fitness, your relationships. Your investments, your home, your education, the education for your children. There are so many things to plan, not just financially. And once the short-term goals are set and make sense, the long-term goals become much easier to attain because you’re walking in the right direction.

I would like to explore this subject a bit more and talk about different areas of my life that need straightening out and planning,  some that I am in the process of planning, and some that I have planned and I am working to achieve. What about you? Would you like to explore this option with me? What are some of the things in your life that need better planning, initial planning or an overhaul? A home purchase? A retirement plan? Kids’ education? Your own education? A promotion? A more organized home? More fun? What in your life needs a plan? Leave a comment or send me an email and I’d like to explore!