How (and Why) to Build a Quick Project Plan

If you’re running an online business for profit (and not just as a hobby), then one of the most important things you have to do is focus on following through on as many revenue-generating activities as possible. However, as many online businesses are “unstructured and unaccountable” - meaning that you tend to work alone most of the time and no one is holding you to a certain level of performance - it can be very difficult to manage getting these things done on a consistent basis.

As I help internet entrepreneurs in my coaching practice with their follow-through skills, I see a common pattern among those who have been struggling to bring their business to profitability: the people who have taken the short time to write out their project plans (even in a simplistic way) get things done at a much faster rate than those who don’t. It’s clear that a good project plan is a key ingredient in the recipe for success.

The reasons for this are pretty simple, though they can fall into the category of things that are “so obvious we ignore them.” A good project plan tells you three things:

1. Exactly what you should do next
2. Exactly when it should be done
3. Exactly what you should do after that.

Again, it’s so simple that it tends to be ignored. In general, most people tend to ignore simple and helpful advice (like “eat sensibly and exercise”) and prefer to chase after complicated advice that sounds more “guru-like” (like a 300-page book about the latest fad diet). But in this case, you need to appreciate the simple pleasures of the project plan, because they will make you a lot of money.

A good project plan is so important because it helps you bypass a number of obstacles that drain online entrepreneurs of a resource that is absolutely critical to their profits: their time. These obstacles steal your focus, your effectiveness, and ultimately your ability to make money because they cause you to make less than optimal use of the limited time you have to build your business.

I’ll explain how these obstacles work as I step you through a quick-and-dirty project plan that could easily help you achieve five to ten times what you are accomplishing now (and in a lot less time than you would imagine, I suspect).

Let’s start at the beginning. A lot of online entrepreneurs (and maybe even you), have a business plan that looks a lot like this:

1. Get on the web
2. ???????
3. Profit

I know, that looks goofy, until you see how true it is. Substitute “write an ebook” or “start a blog” and you’ll see it can be a pretty applicable example. Far too many people jump into a business “to make a lot of money” without ever stepping through the process of making a detailed plan on how to get there.

And this kills their business. Because they are always focused on the goal (to make a lot of money), they tend not to get bogged down in the details of “what to do next.” And so they spend a lot of time surfing the web, going to seminars, buying products … and not enough time building up their own practice. Then they wonder why they aren’t making any money.

This may describe you, or it may not. Just take a look at the last 90 days of your business and ask yourself honestly how much time you spent taking specific action on things that were designed to create revenue. If you’re truly honest, that may not be as much time as you wish you had spent.

Now, I’m not trying to depress you with all this. I’m just trying to illustrate that there’s a reason why you might not be taking action at the level you need to - you might be lacking a project plan, and because of that, you fall into Trap #1: You’re not exactly sure what to do next.

When you’re not crystal clear on what to do next, you open yourself up to a lot of business-killing risk. You’re less focused on what you need to do, so you end up chasing a lot of avenues. You spend too much time on the web, or on discussion forums, or in your email, and you have all these ideas on how to make more money, but you’re not narrowing your focus on taking enough action to make it happen.

In an internet-based business this is a particularly nasty trap, since anything in the world is just a click away. You can sit down to get some work done on a promotion, see a web page about marketing, and start clicking your way to 3 hours of web “research.”

And then you rationalize, “Hey, that research was important!” because it might help you make more money down the road … but at the same time, you just used up time that wasn’t spent making you money now. I speak from experience - I’ve been there, and I know how easy it is to do when all you have is a “project plan” that’s little more than an end goal.

To avoid that trap and make sure you’re focused on the most important activity at any given time, you need to add some detail to that project plan. Even a little bit of detail helps, as you can see in this before and after:

Before a clear project plan

1. Write an ebook
2. ???
3. Profit

After a brief project plan brainstorm

1. Write an eBook
1. - Decide what niche it will serve
2. - Create an outline
3. - Write Chapter 1
4. - Write Chapter 2, (etc)
5. - Proofread and Edit
6. - Submit to small review team
7. - Edit with their suggestions
8. - Package the eBook
2. Promote the ebook
1. - Build a mailing list
2. - Find Affiliate partners
3. - Find JV partners
4. … etc …
3. Profit

As you can see, just this little bit of high-level detail makes things a lot clearer, and serves the all-important purpose of telling you what to do next (and more importantly, what you should be not be focusing on right now). If writing an outline is your next task, then it is not surfing the web, not building your list, not researching marketing … in other words, you now have the single target that you should place your focus on.

If you can summon up the discipline to stay focused on one thing at a time, you’ll get a lot more done than if you keep jumping from one thing to another. It’s not a popular bit of advice, but it’s one that guarantees consistent (and often rapid) progress. And that translates into more money in the bank for you.

The good thing about a project plan is that it doesn’t have to be terribly detailed at first - it just has to be “good enough” to keep you focused. A ten-minute investment in sketching out the details of your tasks can return dozens of hours of productivity to the next few weeks.

I would highly recommend that as soon as you finish this article, you set aside ten full minutes to sketch out the details of a project that you need to make more progress on. You’ll start seeing the benefit almost immediately.

To take that new project plan to the next level, though, is going to require one more thing - an estimate of the time it should take you to complete that task. Remember from earlier, a good project plan tells you:

1. Exactly what you should do next
2. Exactly when it should be done
3. Exactly what you should do after that.

Why is it so important to put an time estimate next to each task? It’s to avoid Trap #2: Not scheduling a task to be done because you’re not sure how long it will take. Tasks with time estimates are much more likely to be acted upon and completed than tasks without them, because you can wrap your brain around it – it’s no longer a great big task that you have to get around to. Instead, it’s just a task that you can knock out in 90 minutes.

There are two important reasons for setting a mini-deadline in the form of this quick estimate. The first one is that binding your task to a specific time frame allows you to put pressure on yourself to get it done in that time (or less). If your task is to just “Write an outline,” you might have some trouble getting to it, finding the time, and actually getting it done. Or, it might take forever, as you work on it … and work on it … and work on it …

But if you set a time limit of two hours to sketch out that outline, for example, that’s a different story. Those two hours can be scheduled into a particular day, and when you sit down to do it, you can tell yourself to hammer it out - without distraction - and really get it done in those two hours. (And by having it done, I don’t mean having it “perfect,” but instead just “good enough” to act upon). Just having that deadline can be a tremendous source of leverage as you push yourself to deliver in the timeframe you set.

The second reason that the time estimate is important is because it’s a number you can learn from. You’ll find that many (if not most) of your estimates are off (if not way off), especially in the beginning. But that’s really okay. You’ll either realize that you’ve overestimated, - or more likely, underestimated - the time you need to complete a task.

But now since you have an estimate to compare it to, you can plan more realistically for the next time you have to take a similar action. This is a very valuable skill to have in your business since it will help you become more confident you can get a task done in the time that you have dedicated to it. And as you already know, confidence is one of the foundations for generating the willpower to follow through on your profit-producing tasks.

Now that you can see how to avoid the first two traps – not scheduling your next action and not binding it to a specific time block, you’re still going to have to bypass Trap #3: Hesitating (or stopping completely) because you’re not sure what to do next.

This happens to people all the time. They know they need to get up and take some action on their business, but they’re not sure what to do. They need to produce a product, but at the same time, they need to start learning more about marketing. Then they have to work on building their list, but at the same time, they need to start working on some joint ventures and partnerships … so what to do next becomes a minefield. Everything is important, and because of that, everything screams equally as loudly.

With a project plan though, you can see the big picture. You can see how everything fits in with the whole, and you can put things in an order that makes sense. So maybe you’ve put product creation first, followed by joint ventures, list building and marketing. Or maybe you’re working on all four things simultaneously, and you’ve just broken them into time blocks that follow each other so you’re making consistent progress across the board.

You’ve just given yourself a big dose of peace of mind because now that you’ve put things on a schedule, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed at the things you have to do (or feel guilty that you’re not working on something else at any given time). You don’t have to carry that stress, because you know it’s all scheduled. You know you’ll get to it. And you know you’ve already started knocking things out.

So, if you’re not sold on how important a project plan is, scroll way up and start reading this again. If you’re having any trouble following through on the actions that are necessary to build a profitable business, this is probably a subject that addresses one of the core reasons you’re struggling.

So take my advice and set aside ten full minutes, right now, to sketch out a project plan so you know exactly what you need to do, exactly how long it should take, and exactly what you need to next. Get to it and start taking action. You’ll thank yourself for it.