Planning for 2021 is about to commence

I’m about to start planning season for 2021. I know 2020 makes any plan look like a joke, but aside from shows I kind of stuck to my plan for 2020 and it allowed me to actually have a not-terrible year, at least creatively, and while I am NOWHERE near my income goals for 2020, my plan allowed me to survive and hit a respectable amount of revenue that kept a roof over my head and projects moving forward.

How does my process work?

When I start planning, the question I usually start with is “how can I do ten years of growth in one year?”

Unfortunately, I’ve gotten to the point where a lot of that growth is dependent on OTHER people, which is frustrating, but you can only control what you can control.

This is the question that got me from nothing to where I am now, but it becomes harder to do over the long term as the levels become harder to navigate and jump between. I find myself now worrying as much about the fall as the climb.

Now, however, I know what a good year looks like for me, and I can plan around that, at least.

While I’m figuring these big questions out, I’m mapping out what worked and what didn’t in the last year, along with what brought me bliss and what I turned away from.

It’s awesome to cut those things out that no longer serve me, and it’s liberating to be freed of that burden once I pull the trigger.

This will usually take me until December to figure out, but I start around now to give my brain enough time to think.

I want to give myself time to think through every implication before I cut something out or double down on it.

Once I figure out the general “narrative” of the year, I cut everything that’s not working to get my schedule as LEAN as possible so I can build back up from there.

Then, drop-in any events for 2021 that I committed to in RED, and any that I am planning to attend in YELLOW.

This includes fulfillment days when I will be packing Kickstarters and other orders. Book delivery is nebulous, but you can usually peg it to a couple of week window and then be flexible from there.

Usually, my show schedule is full, but for 2021 it will only be virtual conventions and potentially shows later in the year.

Then, I take any planned projects (get a new logo, website redesign, courses, masterminds, etc) that aren’t money makers and place them into my workflow. There are money LOSERS in the short term, but huge moneymakers over time.

Finally, I drop in any planned promotions outside of launches.

I try to make my schedule look like a wave, with 4 different peaks and then four valleys, where I’m going from launch to promotion and back again.

The rest of the days are GREEN, which means a writing day, where my schedule is get up at 6am, write from 9-2pm, go on a walk/nap/read until 4pm, and then meetings or admin work from 4-6 pm.

Unless absolutely necessary, I am trying not to plan anything during weekdays before 2pm. I am doing pretty well already scheduling meetings from 4-6pm only, and I will be doing more of that in 2021, but 2pm is my absolute earliest availability.

Then, I plan out my releases for 2021 and my writing plan for 2022 releases. Honestly, I’m already starting writing 2022 releases right now. The thing I put into production now take 1-2 years to pay off.

By then my calendar is pretty full, and I start getting to work planning the budget for everything, and the expected return for each project, trying to balance my expected cash flow accordingly.

I know this may seem anal to many people, but it works for me to visualize my calendar, my promotions, my cash flow, and make sure I don’t get overleveraged.

In fact, my goal is to be MASSIVELY underleveraged, because I know there will be lots of projects that come up during the year which I want to leap on, and being underleveraged gives me the ability to jump on them when they come up, and gives me elasticity in the rigidity of my schedule.

Every year I’ve cut more and more things, which has given me more and more elasticity to do more and more interesting projects.