Plan now for September

Mmm, it seems that August is counted as a bit of a nothing month as far as business is concerned - September's when everything picks up again isn't it?

Although it's easy to think this way, if you're quieter in your business or taking some time out, that's when you should be doing your planning for between September to December. If you leave your planning until September though, you won't be able to hit the ground running when September starts.

Here's how to do a quick plan that you can just stick up on your wall. Your plan should be no longer than two pages so that you can remember all the information on it and use it proactively.

1) Write down three personal goals and three business goals that you'd like to achieve between 1 September 2008 and 31 August 2009. These goals MUST be things that you're really passionate about - they must be things that you would happily get out of bed for without getting paid. So, when you've written your goals have a think about whether they make you passionate. If the answer is no, go back and reassess.

2) When you've written your goals write down where you are now with them. Give each a percentage score between 0 and 100% where 0% is nothing has been done and 100% is the goal is completed.

3) Then you need to write down how you will achieve each of these goals. Break each goal down into individual tasks - the aim being that if you completed all of the tasks, your goal would be complete. Once you've written your tasks, you have an action plan then to help you work through your goal.

Unless you're going for funding, this is a very quick way of writing a business plan for your business that you will actually use.