Personal business plan

Click here for free tools and know-how materials from the Mud Valley™ strategy & brand marketing community.

Question - how do I balance the many conflicting demands on my time?

Key action points

If you are in any kind of business, large or small, there are at least two strategic aspects to your life:

• what you want

• what the organisation for which you work wants

If you work for a larger organisation, there is a third:

• what your team wants

And if you are any kind of workaholic, it is likely that the needs of the organisation and of the immediate team you work in will dwarf your own. In fact, you may well get entirely lost within the business agenda of your organisation.

You need a personal business plan.

In November and December of 2005, we published the Route Planner, a tool for defining your brand marketing goals and targets, and tracking them through to execution.

Our Personal Route Planner works on the same basis, except that it is just for you. You must believe that you deserve as much time and devotion as you commit to your organisation. "I am worth it", as they say.

The Personal Route Planner tool takes your personal goals, and the options you believe you have for earning an income, assesses those options against those goals, and encourages you to build three steps for each option that you decide to go with. The important thing is that you must pursue several options simultaneously.

So, in my case, I want a solid income, I like the excitement of Mud Valley as it is developing, and its relaxed professionalism and integrity, I like where it allows us to live (just north of Montpellier on the French Mediterranean and, yes, it really is in a sun-baked valley), I also have a yen to go out and save the world, work for Amnesty International, or Greenpeace, or a Voluntary Service Overseas organisation, and I also want to have a joyous family life and bring my children up as happy, balanced, successful people.

How can I balance all these things, and try to make them all possible? And, if I cannot ultimately have everything I want (which, you must admit, is a possibility) how do I decide what I will go for and what I will leave behind?

So, this is a very Personal Business Planner, to help us plan our lives. We hope that it can do the same for you.

In more detail ....

This tool is designed to help you plan and balance your personal and business life.

What do you require of a job or occupation?

What options do you have for generating income?

How much income could each option generate?

What are the three steps for balancing your personal needs and your options?

What are you doing to achieve these steps?

Start by completing the Vision sheet:

• What are your personal visions, missions and goals?
• How close are you to achieving them month by month?
• What are your key personal needs, based on these visions, missions, goals?

• What options do you have for satisfying them, and still getting paid?
• To what extent is each option likely to meet each key personal need?

Then complete the Target Income sheet:

• How much income could each option realistically give you (some options will have several income streams)?

Then complete the Option sheets for each key personal need:

• what are the three steps to get you there?
• have you achieved any of these steps?
• what is your action plan to turn all the steps "green", i.e. achieve your goals for each option?

And once you have defined your plan, review at least once or twice a week!

• Belgium tel: +32 (0)2 747 0945
• France tel: +33 (0)1 76 63 74 09
• UK tel: +44 (0)208 099 7385

or by e-mail at enquiries@mudvalley.co.uk.

© 2006, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

Related answers