How to Plan 6 Months at a Time in Your Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

Time ManagementMarketing TipsBusiness Tips and Tools

May 6

Have you started thinking about the next 6 months in your business? What if I told you that you could plan 6 months as a small business owner and entrepreneur and feel confident in your business plans as we head into your next phase? Half of your business success comes down to having a plan, and this 5-step process can help. Learn how to make your 6-month calendar for content, launches, and main focuses in your business. Learn more at brandmerry.com! #businessplans #6monthplans #endoftheyearplan

In March 2021, I released a Reel over on Instagram that showed a quick look at how I prepare for every quarter in my business.

The video showed my giant calendar wall in my office where I have exactly six months visible to me at all times. I showcased the process of me planning with my Post-it notes, and the response was, "Michelle, we need a video about this. Michelle, we need to know how you're doing this, all of the details."

So here we are.

We’re jumping in with a six-month, step-by-step, behind-the-scenes look at planning.

Now, before we get into those step-by-step pieces, I want to take a few minutes to talk about why I think planning is important and also talk about one of the key things that I do before planning for six months.

WHY PLANNING IS IMPORTANT

Some of you might be here because like me you love planning!

Some of you might be teetering a little bit. You might have been gung-ho about planning. You might try to do it a lot and then find that you fall off the wagon, but you get back on again, and you keep doing it, and you keep trying new strategies over and over again.

And then there are a few of you that are here because you're super intrigued, but you also have a lot of resistance when it comes to planning because it can feel very restrictive.

So I want to take an opportunity to share with you the mindset shift that completely changed the way I view planning in my business.

I've always been a big fan of planning. Even since I was a little girl, I used to plan out, on note cards (thanks, Mom), my goals for the year.

Then I'd tuck them away, and I'd never look at them again. I think we can all agree that's not how you plan effectively 😂.

Over the years planning took on two different emotions for me, I’d either have these big ambitions to plan, but then I’d feel as if I was setting crazy unrealistic expectations for myself and freeze.

Or the idea of planning would feel restrictive; as if I couldn't do anything else, and so I never really followed through with the plan.

It wasn't until I became an entrepreneur and started my business in 2016 that I realized that I was constantly sitting in overwhelm without a plan.

I would question:
👉 How am I going to make money?
👉 What am I going to share today?
👉 What am I going to email?
👉 How am I going to get new clients?
👉 What am I focusing on?

And every day, I would repeat that kind of overwhelmed feeling, because I didn't have a plan.

This season of life made me realize that by having a big-picture plan in place, I was able to be more creative in my business. By having this roadmap in place I moved out of overwhelm, and I had more opportunities to create and be in my zone of genius, and that has served me as a business owner in so many ways.

So if you're coming into this like me where you might have had a little bit of resistance about the idea of planning and having it all mapped out, I hope that this blog changes your view on what planning is.

So if you're worried about being restricted when it comes to planning for six months, I want to encourage you to look at it a different way, and look at it as a roadmap guiding you, allowing you to be in your zone of genius and have more time and space for more creativity.

PLAN YOUR FOCUS FOR THE YEAR

On my office wall, there are six calendars, one for every month. Now every single day doesn’t need to have something on it, remember this is big picture planning, but the purpose is to map out where you’re going.

So the first thing you need to determine before you start mapping out your steps, is what is the main focus for the year.

Now, many of you watching this video are most likely small business owners and entrepreneurs and might find that your yearly goal is a specific dollar amount, but this works for anything and I often follow the same structure when I determine how many trips I want to take in a year.

When I'm heading into the year, I like to figure out:

What is my purpose?
What is my focus going to be for the year?
How much revenue do I want to bring into the company for the year?
How is that broken up into each quarter?
How is that broken up into the individual offers that I have, or that I'm planning on putting out?

So I never go into six months completely blind. I definitely know, "Hey, by December 31st, 2021, this is what I want to achieve," and this allows me to reverse engineer, and it makes the planning process easier.

So although I'm not going into all the details of planning for 12 months at a time in this post. I want you to know that thinking of the big picture is important, and you want to have at least a number, or something measurable, tied to your yearly goal so you can move forward with mapping out six months, quarterly (every three months) and monthly actions in your business.

5 STEPS TO PLAN 6 MONTHS

Don’t move on until you’ve got your big picture goal established.
Ready?
Ok, let’s dive into it!

PLANNING TIP #1: START WITH THE BIG PICTURE

Number one is kind of a piggyback on what we just talked about, and that's thinking big picture. When you're planning for six months, which can feel like a lot of work, you're thinking about focus.

You're thinking about the bigger picture of…
What am I trying to achieve for these six months?
What are going to be my big three things that I want to hit?

That is going to allow you to figure out all the nitty-gritty details needed to get there.

Sometimes people think when we're talking about content, specifically, that we're planning content for six months. I'm not saying, "Tell me the title of every blog post that you're going to create for the next six months."

That's not necessary, at this stage. That comes later, in step five.

But you do want to understand what the focus will be over the next six months.

So think again:

What is the yearly goal?
Okay, how does that play a role in the next six months?
How does that play a role in the next 90 days?

Because in case you didn't realize, you have to go through the 90 days to get to the six months, and the six months to get to the year.

So reverse engineering from the big picture goal for the year to the focus every six months and 90 days will give you the stepping stones to get to your end result.

PLANNING TIP #2: CREATE YOUR WORKFLOW

Step two is to create your workflow.

Now, in a recent episode of Monday’s with Michelle, I talked about the process of creating a workflow. As entrepreneurs, workflows are so important. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to have the systems in place that are going to support you in achieving your goals.

One of the things that I did a couple of years ago, that changed my business completely, was this idea of creating a very clear content workflow.

So every week, I know how many blog posts I'm creating, how many videos I'm creating as part of Mondays with Michelle, how many podcast episodes I'm putting out there, what emails are coming from that content, where I'm showing up on social media or other platforms. And I have a clear workflow every week that resets.

So we go through our week, tick the boxes, and it resets the next week. The topic will change weekly, but what we're doing behind the scenes to get the content out there does not change.

Having a workflow is going to help you plan out six months with ease.

This calendar that I'm looking at, says every Monday there's a Mondays with Michelle video.
Every Thursday, there's a blog post.
Every Wednesday, there's a YouTube video.
Every other Friday, there's a podcast episode.

That's what I'm able to visually see on this big-picture calendar that I've got up, and that helps guide my efforts. So make sure you have a workflow in place, and if you don't have one, there's an entire video and blog teaching you how to create your own.

PLANNING TIP #3: DETERMINE IMPORTANT DATES

Step three, when planning out for six months, is to determine any big launches, promotions, dates, and vacations. Any big these-are-set-in-stone dates that aren't super flexible.

You want to put those on your calendar because that is going to impact a lot of your content that you're creating. It's going to help you look ahead and say, "Oh, I'm opening the doors to the Academy."

Which I am, at the end of May. Just a heads-up 😉

I know that that's happening and it’s already on my calendar. This helps me determine what content to share leading up to that. I know The Academy is focused on marketing your business, so my content will be marketing-focused.

This clear focus will help build know, like, and trust with my audience so that you're most likely to join me inside of the Academy.

It's also going to allow me to put my promotion dates on there. If you're doing a challenge or a masterclass, what day you're going to open the cart and what day you're going to close the cart. If you're going to run ads, when are you going to run ads?

So putting your actual promotion dates on your calendar will allow you to reverse engineer and add in the smaller details needed for a successful promotion.

So step three is to determine those big launches, promotions, or any specific dates that you have.

Think of EVERYTHING!
Maybe you're launching a podcast. What date is that?
Maybe you're thinking of launching or putting a new product out there. What date is that?
Maybe you're putting out a freebie. What date is that?

Putting these markers on your calendar will help you get ahead of the game and help you embrace more of a forward-thinking mentality so you never “feel behind.”

One of the biggest things that I see entrepreneurs doing is that they aren't planning this far in advance.

They'll do maybe 30 days, and then the end of the 30 days comes, and they're like, "Oh, I have no idea what I'm doing next month." And then they're like, "Oh, I want to start a freebie, and I want to put it out next week." And then they're scrambling and doing mediocre work to get it out there.

Give yourself space.

By me looking at September, I can kind of, in the back of my mind, start thinking about all the things that I am doing and start formulating ideas around that. So when it comes time to create that stuff, it's not just coming out of thin air.

PLANNING TIP #4: PUT UP A 6 MONTH CALENDAR

Now, and only now do we physically put the calendar together.

I like seeing my calendar all of the time in my office, it’s incredibly helpful for me and has been for my clients as well.

Sometimes people feel overwhelmed because things change, but again when we’re planning for 6 months we’re not focused on the tiny, tiny details we reserve for our Google Calendars, we’re focused on “What’s Happening!”

Once you’ve determined your physical calendar, then you want to take those dates that you've determined from step three and use Post-Its to pencil in.

I like Post-its because you can move things around, as things change, which they will and not have to start over.

So once you have your calendar up and Post-its ready you want to do the following:

Add you’re important dates. Think launches, sales, promotions, vacations, etc…
Add your weekly workflow to the calendar. Think blogs, podcasts, videos, live streams, etc… If you write a blog every Wednesday you need a Post-it for every Wednesday.

What this is going to allow you to do is support you in the last step, which is adding the details for the next 90 days.

PLANNING TIP #5: ADD DETAILS FOR THE NEXT 90 DAYS

Now, I am not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you that I know what I'm talking about in September. I don't know what I'm talking about in July, but I know that I will be showing up, and that is super clear.

But what I do know is what's happening in the next 90 days in my business down to the detail.

This blog that you're reading right now, if you are reading it on May 6th, when it's released, was recorded for a Monday’s with Michelle on April 6th. It's an entire month ahead, and that's because I have a clear workflow.

So one of the things that you want to do in step five is add those individual details OFF of the calendar. I prefer a task management platform or Google Calendar for the details because your calendar can get super messy and you’re not able to list out all the tiny micro details on your physical calendar.

We use ClickUp, as a task management tool, and put those tasks and the workflow inside of there.

This allows your 6-month physical calendar to showcase the big picture and focus and your task management software to map out the smaller details needed to achieve that focus.

Or, if you’re visual like me a little something like this:

BIG PICTURE YEAR GOAL

👇

6 MONTH FOCUS
With important dates, general workflow, and promotions

👇

90-DAY FOCUS

Specifics on what you’ll be sharing in your content, topics, etc...

HOW PLANNING LEADS TO CONSISTENCY

While I do have a team to support my business efforts today, I've been doing this since I was sailing the ship by myself. Having a clear idea of how I was showing up every week for my audience allowed me to continuously grow my audience and make sales.

As an online brand wanting to build a revenue-generating business you don’t want to disappear or ghost your growing audience, this is why creating consistent content is important.

Consistently creating content and putting your brand out into the world will allow you to continuously attract new people who have never seen you before, lead them through the process, and ultimately to the sale.

And rather than constantly feeling overwhelmed with, "What should I talk about?" How would it feel if you just took an hour, every quarter, to plan all that out?

I promise you, you get faster at it, and it gets easier.

RECAP

So let's quickly go through the five-step process again, and then I'm going to let you go on your way and start planning the next six months in business. I like to do this every quarter, adding on the next three months, but you can start this now, whenever you're reading this blog. It does not matter, but getting yourself in the habit will do tremendous things for your productivity and creativity.

Number 1: Think big picture. Remember, we're not talking nitty-gritty details for the next six months. We're looking at our goals for the year, and we're saying, "What is my focus going to be the next 90 days, the next six months? And how is that going to get me to my end goal?"

Number 2: Make sure you have a workflow in place. If you don't know what that is, or you need a step-by-step, go ahead and watch this video and grab this free gift. That is going to help you with this process.

Number 3: Determine any big dates, any big launches, and promotions. if you're going to launch a new freebie if you're launching a podcast if you're going on vacation. Whatever it is, it goes on your calendar, so you can work around it and reverse engineer any necessary promo.

Number 4: Put the six-month calendar up. Make it visible. Don't hide your plans. And if you can put it on a wall in your office or have a binder or something like that, go ahead and do that. But get that six-month calendar up. Put the major dates on there that we talked about in step three, and then put your workflow, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, all the different things up there, with Post-its or dry erase or something.

Number 5:Add the individual details for the next 90 days. We add these details into ClickUp but you can use any task management software. Again, the calendar that I'm looking at behind me has very specific dates. How I'm showing up, launches, promos. But all my emails aren't up there. All of that stuff is in my task management platform, ClickUp. This is my big picture. This keeps me focused. This is my roadmap.

CONCLUSION

So I hope that this blog supported you in starting to think about the power of planning and how it can ultimately help you feel more aligned, make better decisions as a CEO, and be more creative.

Let's remove the overwhelm with a plan! And this roadmap is going to make a difference.

Be sure that you save this post, so you can come back to it and you can repeat this process time after time.

If you want to take a look at this layout, I've also linked the reel that I shared with you, if you want to physically see what this calendar looks like.

And make sure you check out the workflow video to walk you through creating your repeatable workflow. And for additional support, go to brandmerry.com/repurpose to grab a complete repurposing guide that talks about creating your workflow.

Branding and Business Coach | Michelle Knight of Brandmerry

Watch the full video here!

P.S. Have you tuned in to The Beautiful Climb podcast? I release new episodes every other Friday on topics around productivity, motherhood, habits, goals and going after the life of your dreams! Check out past episodes and be sure to subscribe at thebeautifulclimb.com