Are You Planning By The Seat Of Your Pants?

3 planes
4 hotels/Air BnB's
Too many restaurants and coffee shops to count 
4 hikes
2 pools 
2 cars 
45 friends and family members
and tons of photos later... 

we're back home.

This trip was the longest (10 days) we've taken with kids and wow, did we learn a lot

Like, how to take more time to plan better 🙃

We realized the quick questions here and quick text messages there didn't do us that big of a favor.

And while we're pretty good on the fly...this was not the time for on-the-fly planning.

Like our plane landing in Arizona at 9:00 am but not being able to check into our AirBnB until 4 pm. Luckily there was a good park nearby but 2 hours in 95-degree heat with more sand than grass made for some annoyance.

Or when I told Ellie the plan was to go to Santa's Workshop while others took a tram up Pike's Peak only to go on a 3-hour hike...needless to say I walked down the trail with Gracie while Sean, his mom, and Ellie did their thing because I had zero patience left and needed to be around no one for a minute 🙊

Don’t get me wrong - there were way more amazing moments than not and we simply try to find the cause of the chaos to do better next time.

Why do I share this? 

Well, friend, because this is all also true for our business. 

When we constantly make decisions on the fly we can find ourselves in a situation that's not the best. 

That doesn't mean it's going to be completely awful, but you can run into some issues.

Lack of systems that create constant chaos, employees duplicating tasks, or even having offers that don't really align. 

Pausing to look at the big picture often feels tough to do because slowing down can feel scary. 

But what's scarier? Pausing to make sure you're running the business you enjoy/are proud of or running off in the wrong direction? 

If you're on board with slowing down these are some questions you might ask yourself:

For your whole business: 
- Do my offerings still light me up? 
- Am I charging enough and are my income goals on target?
- What is still super exciting about my business? 
- What is pissing me off about my business? (and it's okay to have answers for this and to also not have answers for this) 
- What is something that's annoying that I've just been dealing with? 
- If your goal is to hire are you ready or setting yourself up to be ready? 

For a project:
- Am I on target based on what I currently know?
- Can I hire any of this out?
- Do I actually want to do this?
- What will this actually cost me? (this can be monetary or mentally)

Taking the time to do this doesn't mean you have to fly to a picture-perfect destination to plan it all out (but you do you if ya want!!). It could be taking a half day and setting up at a coffee shop or renting out an office space. It's not sustainable to run your business in a state of chaos and fly by the seat of your pants - IMO. 

Pause. Reflect. Move along!