 In this video, I'm going to share with you what I call my authentic planning system. It's a working title, and as you watch this, if you have any other ideas for what the title should be, you can let me know. This is how I vision my business forward, and then how I plan the steps toward it. I hope, as I share the system, you will borrow as much of the system as you want to to plan your own business in an authentic and visionary way, and if you want to share any of your answers from any of these parts, please feel free to comment below. So the system has five parts, aspirations, milestones, systems, or processes, values, and then revisions. Okay, so let's start with aspirations, and I want to say that I have tried many different types of business planning or sort of purpose planning processes over the years, and I think I've borrowed many different ones to kind of craft together what works for me at this time. And of course, I may change it as I go, but this is what's working for me right now. So it starts with aspirations, because I think an authentic and visionary business that really pulls us forward with the joy, so we're building an authentic business not out of obligation, hopefully, and not out of a fear of punishment or something, but we're hopefully building one out of a sense of being pulled forward by joy and by what is possible for the betterment of the world and of our own lives, right, and of the lives of the people, of course, mostly that we touch. So it begins with aspirations, and how do we do this section is to first, I recommend that we first reconnect with what I call our eternal source of inspiration and support. For me, that's called God, but you can call it however you want, the universe or your higher self or life or the community or however you want to call it, but reconnect first using whatever practice works for you with that eternal, that higher source of inspiration and support. So for me, the way I do it is I hold my hands to my heart, and as I breathe, take some deep breaths as I breathe, I imagine myself breathing in love, and I actually do this when I'm walking, kind of slowly walking instead of just being in one place. I'm not going to do that right now because I'm making a video for you, but I would slowly walk as I hold my hands, and I imagine myself breathing in love and wisdom, and I literally believe this, okay, and you can skip forward if you want to hear what my spirituality is, but I literally believe that the universe, all of the molecules and the bits and pieces of the universe is literally made of consciousness, and not just any consciousness, but the highest consciousness that we can imagine. So it's made of this consciousness of love, the most profound love, the most infinite and unconditional, abiding love, forever abiding love. The molecules are all here. We're made of it, and we're breathing it in every moment, and also, again, this highest consciousness possible. So it's both love and wisdom. All the wisdom that we ever need and could wish for is built in to all the molecules that surround us. So I'm breathing it in as I kind of slowly walk. I'm imagining myself surrounded in it. So I reconnect with my eternal source of support and inspiration in that way. And then once I'm in that state, I want to answer these two questions, and I recommend you do the same thing. And for you, again, it could be meditation, prayer, journaling, music, dance, how everyone can reconnect or talking with somebody that you're inspired by, or listening and watching something. And then answer these two questions. One is what are the top values, virtues, or states that I aspire to continually embody in my work, in my business? What are the top virtues, values, or states that I want to continually embody in my business? So you might want to pause it now and go ahead and write down what are some of the words or phrases that come to mind. Go ahead and do that now. All right. Let me now share with you mine. And I ask you to do it first so you don't get biased by mine. Of course, I'm very much welcome you to borrow as much of mine as you want, but we might have different answers. So I want you to write down yours first. All right. Now let me share with you what mine are. Mine are gratitude, enjoyment, service, faith, and experimentation. And I really recommend that we keep it to something like five or even fewer so that it's kind of easy to remember and easy to memorize and so that we can, if we memorize it, if it's meaningful for us, if it's few enough for us to memorize, then we can more easily embody it in our everyday work. And so gratitude that hopefully is fairly obvious. I am so grateful, and I think that I think it's important to be grateful for the fact that we get to do our business. We get to pursue our purpose in our work, and it is such a fabulous life that we live, that we get to do this, okay? Even right now, even if you're not making money yet from your business, you get to work on your business even in your spare time, whatever, maybe you have a job or you do other things. But the gratitude, I think, to me is really important. So I remember that every day that I get to do this, and that not only do I get to do this, I'm eternally supported by love and wisdom. Every single moment, if I would only be conscious enough, any moment I can be conscious enough to tap into some of that, whatever my consciousness allows me to tap into at this state, okay? So gratitude is really important. Enjoyment is super important. I want to enjoy the work that I do every day. And it's not that every single moment of my day is doing fun things. I still have to do some chores or some administrative work or some work that might be a little bit scary for me, fear inducing or whatever. But as I'm doing that, I always try to bring it back to how can I enjoy whatever it is that I'm doing? Even if I'm doing my taxes, literally, the most supposed least enjoyable thing that any of us can do, I still try to enjoy my taxes by noticing the details and breathing and maybe listening to some enjoyable background music or whatever. But just enjoyment is so important to me and it's possible, I believe, to bring into every single thing that we do. Third one is service. Whatever I'm doing my work and my business especially, I am in service to the people that I'm helping in my business, my ideal clients, my audience, you. My business is in service toward your highest good and also, of course, in service toward my highest good. But my business is really, of course, products and services that are built for you. So I have to remember that it's in service to you, it's not just my expression of whatever my passion is. No, it's in service to you. That's really, I believe, what makes a business sustainable is customers and clients. So business needs to be in service truly. What do my ideal customers, ideal clients, really need and want at this time? And I'm always asking myself that question. And then the fourth virtue is faith. I can make plans about, oh, I want my business to grow in this way in 50 years, 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, whatever it may be. But I always come back to faith, knowing that I am taken care of deeply, more than I can imagine, and knowing that as long as I keep embodying these virtues in my business and I keep doing it in service, it will unfold the way that it is meant to unfold and for the highest good of all. So I have that faith and no matter what's happening, whether all sales aren't as good this month or whatever, or someone I reached out to said no to this proposal, whatever it may be, faith, faith that if I just keep embodying these virtues, if I keep doing it in service, it will, you know, gratitude and enjoyment service. And then finally, besides faith, experimentation. I know that whatever I'm doing in my business, I'm just trying out as many different ways of saying my message as I can. I'm trying out different ways of expressing my products and services. I'm always trying something in my business, whether it's trying out a new workshop topic or trying out, doing some split testing in my website, experimentation is extremely important to me in my business. And if I experiment enough, I will find things that work. Because I believe that our calling in our work is the alignment between what we enjoy and passion about doing and what the market wants from us. And that, I believe, takes a lot of experimentation. Okay, so, you know, and these virtues, values and states, I was just watching a video with Daniel LaPorte. Daniel LaPorte calls them core desired feelings. Core desired feelings. Some people call them desires. So however you want to say it. I believe that this is our highest aspiration, is how we want to embody certain feelings or certain virtues or states in our work. And that's really the most important thing in our business. It's not how much money we're going to make or how many fans we're going to have or how many clients we're going to enroll. No, it's really the virtues that we embody every day. I think at the end of our life, that's what we're going to look back on. That was the most important thing, not the numbers that matter. Okay, not the product and services that we created, not the reputation we gained, but really the virtues, the core desired feelings, how we experienced every day. And so if we get that right, everything else, you know, as Jesus said, pursue first the kingdom of God and everything else will be given to you. And that's how I'm interpreting it here, is what are the virtues, values, states or feelings we want to embody every day. Okay, so that's the most important thing. That's question number one. And we're still on the aspiration section. Question two in the aspiration section is, imagine how I would, I imagine how I would want my work to contribute to my ideal client's lives. Okay, what would energize and inspire me in terms of imagining now my business, fulfilling its purpose? What does it look like in the lives of my ideal clients? And another way I could ask myself is, if I could work as my best self, how would I want my business to contribute to the world? Okay, what's the grand vision? Okay, and so I invite you to pause now and write down, if it's a paragraph or if it's a page, however you want it, write down what is your grand vision for your business and its contribution to the world. Go and do that now. Okay, I'm going to share with you mine, and you can borrow as much as mine as you want, but hopefully you've written yours first. So you don't get biased by mine too much, so that you can be uniquely yours. Okay, so mine is this, the authentic business framework, which is the framework that I'm now putting out into the world, through things like how do I, my framework consists of creating content consistently, authentic relevant, consistent content, creating product and services that truly serve the world and what's the launch plans and things like that, mindful networking and joint ventures, authentic joint ventures, mindful networking. The joyful productivity, all my different systems for time and information management, and then optimizing our offerings. So that's kind of my authentic business framework. I'll teach more and more about that over time, but my vision, my grand vision is that the authentic business framework is being successfully implemented by many heart-based solopreneurs worldwide in order to create deeply fulfilling and sustainable businesses that genuinely serve their audiences and markets their message in honest, ethical and effective ways. The framework gives realistic hope to solopreneurs, whether they are just starting out or whether they are expanding their business and it's something they can reliably count on to deliver results that are aligned with their highest values. So that's my grandest vision and this is something that I know I'm going to morph over time and I invite you, don't get hung up on getting the perfect paragraph, the perfect vision. Just write down what you can for now, something that's inspiring to you. Knowing also that you can tweak it over time and it may dramatically change over time as you evolve and as the world evolves. Okay, so but write down what you know to be true, what inspires you, pulls you forward at this time. Okay, so that's the aspiration section of the authentic planning system. So now let's go to the second major section which is called milestones. So a milestone is a specific point along the journey of your business that shows you, when you reach it, it shows you that you are making progress in the right direction. So I want you to create several milestones that shows you that you're moving in the right direction and here's the important thing. It's less important when exactly you reach a specific milestone, but it's more important that you are making progress in that direction. You're advancing towards your vision. Okay, so and also know that your milestones could change over time as you evolve and as the markets evolve, et cetera. So the simplest way of thinking of milestones, the way I think about it, is what would I love to achieve in 50 years? So I know I'm going to be probably working my business for another 50 years, given medical advances, you and I will probably live much longer than we imagine actually and I'm going to be working for another 50 years. Maybe for you, I don't know, if you're 70, maybe you'll be working for another 20 years. Okay, so maybe 20 years is your longest vision, but if you're younger than that, just think forward as far as you can towards the end of your working life. What do you want your business to have accomplished by that point as a milestone? So for me, it's 50 years. And then I have another milestone for five years and then another milestone for one year and then 30 days. Okay, these are not deadlines. These are merely tools for you to pull you forward in the excitement of what's possible. And then I'm encouraging you to change it as much as you need, but have those milestones to pull you forward and know that you're moving in the right direction. In the notes of this video, I'm going to give you my actual milestones, but I want you to pause now and write down what your inspiring milestones are. Go ahead and do that now. All right, so you can look at my milestones in the notes of this video if you want. I'm not going to read them out to you because this video is getting a little bit longer than I expected. Now, a couple of things before we move on to the next section. Milestones in my vision are not meant to create stress. So don't let it stress you, but let it inspire you, let it energize you, okay? So create milestones that really pull you forward. And also milestones are also really important that they help you create the systems that help you advance forward in your vision. Now, before moving on to the next big section of the system, which is systems actually, before moving on, I invite you to close your eyes and feel, imagine each milestone, imagine each, particularly the farthest one out and then the closest one, okay? So I would close my eyes and visualize experiencing my 50-year vision and my 30-day vision. We're just experiencing both, one and then the other. And imagine the positive feelings you're gonna have as you envision those things. Because I think it's really important for when you're planning forward, not to be so only left brain, but to incorporate both left and right brain. So incorporate both logical as well as the feeling. That way it makes it much more real because our planning and our ability to move forward is not just logical, but it's very much gut and heart as well. So that the creativity happens in all three brains, right? Brain, heart and gut have all three ways forming your conscious. Okay, so let's go on to the third major section of the authentic planning system, which is systems or processes. And the question here is, what are the daily, weekly or monthly actions that you need to implement in order to reach your next one or two or three milestones? That's the question. So for me, I look at my 30-day and I look at my one-year milestones and say, what do I need to do on a regular basis in order to reach my 30-day milestone and my one-year milestone? So that's what I do. And in the notes of this video, I will actually give you my actual systems that I am implementing into my calendar, into my daily rhythm to be able to reach my milestones. And I also recommend that before you move on, so go ahead and pause the video and go ahead and write what your systems are. Daily, weekly or monthly processes, things you need to do on a regular basis in order to reach your next one or two or three milestones. Go ahead and do that now. Okay, before moving on to the next major section, I invite you to close your eyes and visualize yourself doing each of these regular actions. See yourself doing it in your mind's eye. Close your eyes or not. However, but see yourself doing it with joy, with enjoyment or however whatever your core values are. Okay, see yourself doing that. Or see yourself doing at the very least with a positive emotion, okay? Because it's no fun to do your business with stress and pressure and anxiety or fear, whatever. But see yourself doing it with courage or with joy or whatever your values are. Go ahead and do that now. Okay, now let's move on to the fourth section of the authentic planning system, which is values, okay? Remember, we wrote out the values or virtues or states or feelings in the first section of our system. And now what I encourage you to do is to bring those values again to your forefront of your mind and ask yourself how can I implement each of these values more into my day, into my day to day working? So I actually want you to, because here's the thing. Too many business planning and purpose planning systems focus so much on the milestones and even on the actions that it kind of, life gets sucked out of it over time. And the highest purpose of why we're here again is not to reach certain numbers, okay? Or to reach a certain fame or wealth or whatever, but it's to implement and implement our highest values and virtues and states and feelings into our day to day. So that's why I specifically focus on that again here in the fourth section, a whole section devoted to it, the values. So another way of saying this is that the ends, your milestones never justify the means, which is how you get there on a day to day basis. Cheating people or whatever, you would never do that, but also cheating yourself out of life, out of life, that the life that you could live. So imagine yourself with these values and how you would then implement these values into your day to day. Go ahead and do that now. In the notes of this video, I will also show you what mine are. I will write that out for you. And finally, in the final section is revisions. Revisions is so important because it's important and reminders, I would actually, I should call it reminders and revisions. You need to remind yourself of your aspirations, milestones, systems and values on a regular basis. Otherwise you forget about it and you let other people's agendas become your agenda, okay? So set yourself a reminder and a plan to regularly review it. Now, right now in the beginning, when you first written it down, you might wanna review your whole thing once a week or even every day, just spend five minutes to review your aspirations, milestones, systems and values, right? But then after you reviewed it and you kinda almost memorized it, then you can review it just once a month. But it's so important, even just once a month. I do this, I actually review mine once a week at this point, still I review it once a week. But just even once a week, taking 15 minutes to review these things and to visualize these things again is so important to keep you going towards your North Star, going towards creating the business that's truly authentic for you. So part of this fifth section is not only reminders but also revisions. You are encouraged to revise any aspiration, milestone system or value as you learn more about yourself, as you evolve and as the world changes and as you adjust yourself to match more of what the world wants from your business. So that is the authentic planning system. Let me know if you like that name or if you can imagine an even better name. And I encourage you to use it. Any part of it that makes sense for you or all of it. And then if you want to comment below this video to share with me and others who are watching this, what your ideas are, that would be wonderful. I would love to comment on it and to cheer you on. And as you comment with your ideas, you'll give encouragement and thoughts to other people to shape their ideas as well. So if you have any questions, also comment below and I wish you a truly enjoyable journey to building your authentic business. Look forward to hearing from you and be well.