Let’s face it — You didn’t start your business to create yourself a job. Like the rest of us, we wanted to create impact for those around us, help and serve others, and have a means to contribute something back into this world. Somewhere in the mix, though, we got lost in the depths of what business ownership looks like sometimes. Long days and nights, doing things we don’t want to be doing, calendars more full than we ever wanted, and at the helm of our customer’s every needs.

It’s SO exhausting, and often, we find ourselves questioning why we even started this in the first place.

Designing your business so it serves you is something that we don’t often learn from the beginning in our entrepreneurship journey. Instead of being the first thing we build the business around, business owners often leave themselves to the end to be thought about. It just results in exhausted, frustrated, and broke small business owners. None of that sounds fun.

Now, I’m not here to dab another, “It doesn’t need to be that way!” cliche statement, but truly — it doesn’t need to be that way.

Our mentorship practice is named Perfect Day Business Mentorship for a reason. Our goal is to help our clients build their business so it serves them in a manner they need it to — which is ultimately, helping them work towards achieving their “Perfect Day.”

The idea of a Perfect Day is that you’re doing the things you want to be doing, at times in the day you want to be doing them, with the people you want to be around, in a location you want to be. The idea is to achieve ultimate flexibility and freedom of money, time, and mental space. That’s how you know you’ve truly achieved your Perfect Day.

The three big ideas I want to cover in this guide to build out your Perfect Day as a small business owner are:

• You don’t need to know the exact picture of what it looks like, but a fair idea.
• When you have the main concepts, start working backwards so the action steps align in your current day.
• Understand there’s a progression of your schedule, goals, finances, and lifestyle that will progress on your way to your Perfect Day.

Let’s jump in.

How To Plan Your Perfect Day

Getting set up to go through this exercise is probably one of the most crucial steps in the entire framework.

First, start with your environment. The worst place to get in the right thinking space is to do this where you’re surrounded by distractions. Kids, TV, computers, your phone, … all of that doesn’t deserve a spot at the table when you’re getting ready to be in a visionary mind space.

Instead, choose areas that are rejuvenating for you. I, personally, like to take my dogs out to the woods and find a spot by the water’s edge with my notebook as I prepare to get in my visionary space. Everyone will have a working space that helps them get in “the zone.” Find yours. This is a perfect place to attempt this exercise.

Next, shift your mindset. Most people go into this exercise thinking they need a perfect outcome. They need to know every last detail of every question they’re exploring. This is the furthest thing from the truth. Your idea of your Perfect Day will change as you grow through your business career, and that’s perfectly normal. Don’t expect perfect – just expect a generalized “idea” of the way you want things to flow.

Last, know what the main keys are to your Perfect Day. If you hop into The CEO Clubhouse group, we’ve uploaded a document for you to use as a guide as you navigate all of the parameters to think about. Things like your schedule, your location, your wealth, the people you surround yourself with — these are all great places to start mapping out in your ideal manner.

Build Backwards

Once we have a generalized idea of what the future needs to look like, we can start working backwards so that every move we take in our everyday lives – starting today – is with intention. Start to think about breaking this down from a macro to a micro scale.

On the macro scale, what are some of the major things you want to consider? What wealth goals did you have? Do you need to start searching out other sources of information to help you gather your next steps? Is changing location something you want to do? What steps are necessary to start exploring? The ideas that are generated on the macro scale are probably more research based at this point, and building backwards from an information perspective is a great place to start.

As you break the ideas down, you’ll start to narrow down the timelines. If real estate is the thing that is part of your Perfect Day – buying a house in another location, for example – what do you need to do to acquire the funds? What do you need to do to acquire the location? What specific goal can you set for yourself over the course of the next 90 days? As you break down those 90 days, how can you break that financial goal down into more actionable steps related to your business? Do you need to pay yourself more to achieve that? How can you pay yourself more? How many more clients do you need, etc.? What do you need to do today to make that happen?

Using this method, you can see how the grand scale item of acquiring property in a different location can be taken down from a daunting, “I can’t afford this, I can’t achieve this,” type of mindset, to a more actionable and simpler scale: “If I do this every single day, I will make x more dollars, and will get me closer to xyz over the next 90 days.”

We teach this exact system to our PDBM clients, so every move they make, every decision they do or don’t make, and every step they take is intentional.

It’s Progressive

The worst mistake that small business owners make when they set out on this path is that they expect this transition towards their Perfect Day to happen immediately. While for some – a small sample size – can make that transition happen fast.

The idea is to understand that it’s not going to start that way right away. There’s going to be a progression of your schedule, your goals, your finances to match, and your lifestyle. In order to get to the end-game, whatever it is for yourself, there’s waypoints along the way that will need to be met. Each of those waypoints will require you to do different things, level up in different ways, and make decisions along the way.

Instead, what you’ll see is that your Perfect Day starts to get closer and closer. With each day feeling more and more the way you want it to, the deeper you get into this process. It means that if your Perfect Day involves you living in a different state, you’ll have to work on hiring the right staff to continue to grow and operate your business without you there. In order to do that, you’ll need to systemize your business. In order to systemize your business, etc — keep working backwards. As you do those things, your financial levels will begin to creep up. Your enjoyment in your days will also begin to creep up, as your schedule becomes more ideal for what you need it to look like.

Because of this progressive notion to the Perfect Day method, it’s the entire reason our clients progress through our PDBM model in our Good Day program, our Great Day program, and our Perfect Day program. Each program is designed with the intention to focus on certain elements of your business in the right successive patterns. If you follow those patterns, you will get closer to your Perfect Day.

The Perfect Day is not a new concept. The concept of molding your schedule to what you need it to look like, building your business to support the lifestyle you want, and then enacting on the measures necessary to get yourself there are basic principles of being the engineer of your business and your life.

It’s important to know the bigger picture directives, and not be solely focused on needing to have it so intimately mapped out. When you know the bigger picture directives, you can work backwards from a macro scale to a micro level, and orientate each of your daily activities to take you closer there. When you understand that this is a progression in all areas of your life – schedule, goals, finances, and your lifestyle – you’ve carved yourself a path that will get you there fastest.

If you want to go faster down that path, do it with a mentor. Let’s chat, and see if our program is right for you and your business.