What can a broken ankle teach you about marketing? Part 2

Enforced stillness and the requirement to slow down as a consequence of breaking my ankle has been both frustrating and surprisingly enlightening.

I've learnt that a portion of my working day was just wasted with "doing things".

Now I can't do so many activities and have to focus on stuff I can do, it's really clear I've been wasting time. I don't think 1 shall be as unfocused as I was, and I suggest that if you get to the end of the day and have missed your objectives you might want to reflect on what got in the way.

Practically speaking the old busted ankle has given me the time to take a long look at what I do and what I want to do over the next few years. But part of that process was a little bit scary.

When was the last time you did a bit of planning?

My Marketing and Business Development Plan was 3 years out of date and most of the action points and milestones I so carefully crafted were just not hit. How the hell did that happen?

Do you have a plan for marketing your business? How's it going?

Well don't break your ankle to find out! - If like mine it's out of date and just a forgotten wish list then do yourself and business a favour and make it a priority to fix.

There are loads of ideas on the web about how to build a marketing and business development plan - if you want to know where to look just email me and I'll send you a list of places that have always inspired me.

It's taken me the best part of 10 hours to get my ideas down on paper and now I'm putting the milestones into my Google Calendar so I get a kick every month. They say if you don't plan you're planning for failure - well I'm not sure. But what I've have learnt is that if you do plan you really should take it out every week and see if you're on track and not leave it in a drawer hidden away.

Next up on the list is a review on the return I have managed to get on the various different marketing comms activities I've used over the past 5 years. The initial results surprised me.