es stress, problems, headaches, and sleepless nights. When you’re unplanned, life can be a real pain. You lose clients, create unhappy ones, and find it hard to attract new ones.

You end up “doing” a lot of things. And that makes you f

We all know the saying, “Failing to plan (prepare) is planning (preparing) to fail.” I truly believe in this statement and I hope you do as well. Building your service business, including marketing it must be planned and does take work.

I don’t happen to believe that there really are magic bullets or black magic boxes. My advice – quit looking. This stuff does take work, but you can certainly do it.

If you’re like most people I meet, then planning is something you know is important but doesn’t always happen. We are generally ‘doers’. We need to feel like we’re “doing” something to be productive – whether it’s going to networking events, sending out mailers, or making calls to try and set up meetings. And all that planning sure doesn’t feel like we’re “doing” anything. It’s time consuming when there is plenty of day-to-day work to be done. And truthfully, not everyone knows the best way to go about it.

But being unprepared in your business and life creates stress, problems, headaches, and sleepless nights. When you’re unplanned, life can be a real pain. You lose clients, create unhappy ones, and find it hard to attract new ones.

You end up “doing” a lot of things. And that makes you fe

>I don’t happen to believe that there really are magic bullets or black magic boxes. My advice – quit looking. This stuff does take work, but you can certainly do it.

If you’re like most people I meet, then planning is something you know is important but doesn’t always happen. We are generally ‘doers’. We need to feel like we’re “doing” something to be productive – whether it’s going to networking events, sending out mailers, or making calls to try and set up meetings. And all that planning sure doesn’t feel like we’re “doing” anything. It’s time consuming when there is plenty of day-to-day work to be done. And truthfully, not everyone knows the best way to go about it.

But being unprepared in your business and life creates stress, problems, headaches, and sleepless nights. When you’re unplanned, life can be a real pain. You lose clients, create unhappy ones, and find it hard to attract new ones.

You end up “doing” a lot of things. And that makes you f

s important but doesn’t always happen. We are generally ‘doers’. We need to feel like we’re “doing” something to be productive – whether it’s going to networking events, sending out mailers, or making calls to try and set up meetings. And all that planning sure doesn’t feel like we’re “doing” anything. It’s time consuming when there is plenty of day-to-day work to be done. And truthfully, not everyone knows the best way to go about it.

But being unprepared in your business and life creates stress, problems, headaches, and sleepless nights. When you’re unplanned, life can be a real pain. You lose clients, create unhappy ones, and find it hard to attract new ones.

You end up “doing” a lot of things. And that makes you f

lanning sure doesn’t feel like we’re “doing” anything. It’s time consuming when there is plenty of day-to-day work to be done. And truthfully, not everyone knows the best way to go about it.

But being unprepared in your business and life creates stress, problems, headaches, and sleepless nights. When you’re unplanned, life can be a real pain. You lose clients, create unhappy ones, and find it hard to attract new ones.

You end up “doing” a lot of things. And that makes you f

es stress, problems, headaches, and sleepless nights. When you’re unplanned, life can be a real pain. You lose clients, create unhappy ones, and find it hard to attract new ones.

You end up “doing” a lot of things. And that makes you feel a little better because it’s not for a lack of trying. But the results are often less than what you hope for, and that can be pretty draining. To make matters worse, the longer this goes on, the less you feel you can afford to take any time to slow down and plan. If you don’t get some business in the door soon, all the planning won’t matter for squat.

Don’t let your business or your efforts become reactive to current conditions. If you are failing to plan, then you are planning to fail. I’ve seen it all too often, where even good intentions fall victim to poor execution. Because we’re doers, it’s sometimes easy to short circuit or skip the planning all together.

You start drifting whichever direction the wind’s blowing because “that last idea didn’t work.” It seems rare to admit that it might be the lack of planning and preparation that caused the marketing campaign to fail.

But there is hope! Looking for a place to start? Spend some time working on the