What Do a Ninja and an Angel Have to Do With Planning?

I don't normally talk about my children when relating to my business, however, what I witnessed this evening was worth sharing.

I’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks setting goals and coming up with a plan on how to get there. I’ve been in tears over this whole process at times, not because I’m not happy with the goals that I’ve set, but I struggled with putting it all on paper.

Since I’ve set my goals, I’ve been more focused and have thoroughly enjoyed marking them off as I achieve them. While I didn’t meet all the goals I set for October, I came darn near close. What it means is that I need to go back and rethink what I did and how I can improve upon them.

Tonight as I prepared my angel and my ninja for a night out on the town, I listened to the two of them discuss the evening.

Ninja Matthew: Samara, I want to go with Nick because his big brother is going and they are taking the tractor. We can go on more streets.

Angel Samara: No, I want to go over to Sondra’s neighborhood. There aren’t any hills and the houses are closer together. Plus, they have that area where no one ever goes and those people give out the big candy bars.

I could just see the wheels turning in their heads as they tried to figure out what the best plan was for them to gain the most candy.

We ended up going over to the next neighborhood where my friend lives. I did influence them slightly simply because there are no hills in her neighborhood and at least I would have someone to talk to.

Half way through our tour, the kids stopped and came up to me asking me to hold their candy. As soon as I took their bags (which were very heavy) they whipped out Wal-Mart bags and took off. I hear the ninja yell to the angel, “Now they will think that it’s late and we haven’t gotten much candy. They’ll feel sorry for us and give us more.” How’s that for marketing? And a plan.

After 2 and a half hours of going door to door (except in the one part where you had to go 4 or 5 doors apart to get the big candy bars) we headed back to our house and ran into Nick. Nick had one bag of candy. Between the ninja and the angel, they had 4. I heard Nick make a comment to my ninja about the amount of candy he had and the ninja simply replied, “we had a better plan.” :)

When was the last time you evaluated your goals and your plans to reach them? I put it off for so long and only did it this time because my coach made me do it. I struggled, I fought it, and now I’m kicking myself for not doing it sooner.

The right planning will bring you more treats than tricks and make you a very happy ninja or angel.

Heather Jacobson is the author of Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer, and is also the publisher of the popular ezine, Marketing Made Simple, a monthly publication filled with simple marketing tactics designed to enhance one's marketing efforts. An expert in implementing marketing campaigns for companies on a budget, Heather thrives on coaching others to achieve financial success. For more information, visit http://www.HeatherJacobson.com