Weeds is the long-running TV show about a suburban mom who starts selling pot to support her lifestyle after her husband dies. (Spoiler alert: plot points will be given away so if you haven’t seen the show, but want to, skip the next two paragraphs) Nancy Botwin, the main character, goes from being a small-town pot dealer, to making a series of ever increasingly bad decisions without ever thinking of the consequences of any of them.

Nancy joins the business of a Mexican drug lord, becomes a mule transporting drugs across The Mexican border, and ends up marrying a Mexican drug kingpin. Each successive, impulsive decision leads her and her family into increasingly dangerous situations

Nancy Botwin was not a planner. She jumped on whatever wild idea showed up next for her.

And what does this have to do with a Kickass business? Well, I used to run my business just like Nancy.

I would come up with a good idea, throw together a flyer and send an email that very afternoon. If anyone showed any interest, then I would start to plan the program or the class. This led to a series of disconnected semi successful events. I wasn’t able to focus and really serve my clients in a big way because I was being distracted by the next thing to flit across my imagination. And my business wasn’t growing the way I wanted it to grow.

Just like Nancy, who just responded only to the next thing in front of her, I wandered around slightly lost and rarely where I wanted to be. Although never quite so dramatic as Nancy.

And then I found a coach who taught me how to create a plan.

At first it seemed big and scary. I thought a plan would confine my creativity. “I’m a sprinter, not a marathoner,” I would say. I didn’t even know where to start.

But being Kickass requires me to play a bigger (sigh… see what happens when you step into your brand???) So I pulled on my boots and I jumped in.

Creating a long-range strategic plan has enabled me to grow my business by leaps and bounds. It allows me to have a bigger impact on the world and on the people I care about. It serves my clients by giving them more of my creative genius in a focused way.

If you’ve been resisting doing a strategic plan and I encourage you to get started.

1. Get your happy mood on. Since we know that happiness leads to success and fear, worry, and stress lead to shut down, happiness is a key ingredient.
2. Gather your materials. Calendar, colored pencils, fancy pens and sticky notes.
3. Fill in your ongoing networking events, workshop or classes and personal events you don’t want to forget about when planning.
4. Next think of big projects you want to tackle. Write your projects on sticky notes and attach to the appropriate month/day. Use sticky notes so you can move them around the calendar if needed.
5. Work backwards to create a marketing plan for each of those big items using smaller sticky notes to attach your action items to your calendar.

I can’t help thinking, as I’m getting towards the end of Weeds, that if Nancy Botwin had planned this way she would have been able to say no to the drug lord, avoided the Mexican drug kingpin and kept her sons out of the drug business. Ultimately Nancy would have had a happier, more fulfilling life. But that might not have been as much fun to watch.

Please share what you are planning!