Stop Winging It: How a 90-Day Plan Creates Predictable Growth

Ever feel like your creative business has you constantly putting out fires instead of making meaningful progress? You're not alone. The freedom we crave as content creators often leads to business chaos when we "wing it" without structure.

In this episode, I unpack why scattered approaches fail entrepreneurs and how implementing a strategic 90-day plan transforms both your business results and your quality of life. The problem isn't your creativity or work ethic—it's the lack of focused direction. When you jump from tactic to tactic without measuring impact, you burn valuable energy without gaining traction.

A 90-day plan works because it provides the perfect balance between focus and flexibility. This timeline naturally aligns with business quarters while allowing you to adapt to your audience's seasonal needs. You'll experience quick wins that build momentum instead of chasing every shiny object or trend that comes along. The structure helps you prioritize what truly matters by focusing on just 1-3 core goals, creating measurable checkpoints that keep you accountable, and giving you the ability to adjust strategies without abandoning your vision.

Through practical examples like growing your email list through podcast appearances and summit participation, I demonstrate how to break big goals into manageable projects and specific tasks. The result? Predictable revenue, sustainable content creation, and a positive mindset where you run your business instead of letting it run you.

Ready to transform your business approach? Join my 90-Day Plan Program to get the exact system we implement at our annual Insiders Retreat. Stop the overwhelm and start seeing the progress your hard work deserves. Your future self will thank you for the clarity and momentum you're about to create.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Winging It Doesn't Work
• 2:21 Benefits of a 90-Day Plan
• 6:14 Creating Your 90-Day Plan
• 8:41 Example: Growing Your Email List
• 10:20 Program Invitation and Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

This is the Influencer Entrepreneur's Podcast with Jenny Melner, where I strategize with business owners on how to grow and scale their businesses to hit their income goals. As a content creator and often a creative we want the flexibility to do and put out the content that inspires us, but that often leads to chaos. Find out why and how to fix it. Winging it often does not work and there are specific reasons why it doesn't work, and that's going to start with the lack of focus. When you're winging it, you're not really focused on anything in particular, so making actual strides in what you are doing in order to complete things is very difficult to accomplish. You will often find yourself pivoting from one thing to the next, not really sure what is going to make an impact on your business. One week you try one thing, the next week you try the next, and when you're trying multiple things, it's very difficult to track with actual numbers to see the progress that you're making. Now, as a business owner, I have watched many of my clients start with winging it and then get into an actual strategy that works with a 90-day plan. Now, when we're looking at winging it, it, like I said, can go from anything from trying a reel one day, to then thinking that you're going to do reels straight for every single day in order to impact the algorithm and what we quickly find is that you either lose focus on your other tasks within your business that were moving the needle, or you're going to quickly burn out from trying a new task that takes a ton of energy and isn't necessarily going to move the needle on your business. So we want to start to think about how can we make it so that there is focus and progress in our business. The progress that's going to happen in your business is going to take place when you put a 90-day plan into place. 90 days is the perfect amount of time because it gives you enough time to be able to focus while still looking at results and giving you the opportunity to pivot. It's also going to align with your natural business cycles. So if we look at quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four all 90 days they were also within those quarters. You're also going to be dealing with seasonality, so there's going to be different seasons that you know that your audience is going to go through, and you need to keep this in mind when you are able to put together that 90-day plan. A 90-day plan is also going to keep your motivation high because you're going to end up with lots of quick wins. So when you're able to have this, it's taking that one baby step that's going to continue to move the line on your business as well as the revenue that you are looking to see within it. With that, you're going to be building that momentum, the momentum that is going to push you forward and not leave you from thinking about one little thing over here to then another little thing over there that totally ends up turning into a squirrel chasing that latest shiny object.

Speaker 1: 3:46

You want to stay focused and a 90-day plan is going to help you do that. A 90-day plan provides you with a vision. It's going to be able to give you, in a certain amount of time, that you can actually put into place what it is that you're trying to do, the different milestones that you want to hit within your business within that time period. So, by having a vision for what you are trying to accomplish, it allows you the opportunity to actually see your revenue increasing and the momentum within your business. A 90-day plan is also going to allow you to prioritize what is essential in your business. Now. We don't want you doing five different goals in a 90-day period. Instead, we want you to focus on one to two to potentially, at the most, three goals, so you're able to prioritize what you should be focusing on, rather than getting distracted by new trends, different things that you're hearing from different podcasts, or just your random content creator wanting to be creative. It gives you that opportunity to make sure that you prioritize what should come first and not have you all over the place. Within that 90 days, you're also going to give yourself measurable checkpoints. You can look at weekly, monthly where are you trying to go, and making sure that you are accomplishing that through measurable numbers. By having those numbers and be able to look at that 90 day, you're also able to keep yourself accountable, because now you know what tasks need to go into hitting those 90 day goals that you have set, and you can prioritize those and make sure that you are actually hitting them when you're looking to see if the measurement is actually in the play of what you were trying to get within your business.

Speaker 1: 5:38

My favorite part about a 90 day plan, though, is that it gives you flexibility. Part about a 90-day plan, though, is that it gives you flexibility. You don't have to scrap the entire plan. You can instead tweak some of the strategies and tasks that you put into place in order to hit those goals. So, by having it be a 90 days, you can look at it as doing specific projects and then, if you're finding that those projects within those tasks are not moving the needle now, you can take a step back and turn and pivot into a different project that will then, of course, have different tasks and still allow you to hit the goal that you originally set.

Speaker 1: 6:16

A 90-day plan is going to make everything much more predictable in your life. You're going to be able to have revenue, content as well as mindset. You're not going to be concerned about worrying the fatigue that will come in from trying to make a decision about what project or task you should be doing, because instead, the 90-day plan has allowed you to have that predictability. You want to know what it is that you're doing next, so that you stop feeling like your hair is on fire or you have too many planes spinning and you're gonna drop another one at any moment. We want you to feel like you are running your business, not that your business is running you. So, when you can have predictable revenue, predictable content and predictable mindset. It changes the game in how you look at your business and the energy that you have in order to take it on.

Speaker 1: 7:14

When you're creating your 90-day plan, I want you to take a look at your top two goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Now, remember, when we set a goal, we want to make sure that it's measurable. This is why we talk so much about smart goals and if you're not familiar with smart goals, where you're going to want to make sure that you listen to the podcast where we talk about them and we're going to link to that, of course, in the video as well, in the comments, so that you can make sure that you listen in on making sure you're setting smart goals. But when we are doing that one to two goals, then you need to determine what the projects are going to be for each of those goals and then, within those projects, you wanna determine the tasks. So let's use an example of wanting to grow your email list by 500 subscribers. And remember, with smart goals, it has to be realistic. So, if your list consists of 300 people trying to get 590 days, it's a little unrealistic, but that's of course, if you've never done anything in the past. So when we're looking at this, if we are trying to grow our email list by 500 subscribers and it is a realistic goal for you then we want to look at some of the projects that could actually move the needle.

Speaker 1: 8:22

For example, you might find that pitching podcasts and getting on other podcasts might be a great way to be able to put your opt-in in front of a new audience. So one of the projects that you're going to do is to get on 10 different podcasts in the next 90 days. Now, in order to complete that project, there are tasks that you have to do. First, you're going to have to find the right podcast that you need to be on. Then you're going to need to find email addresses to reach out. You're going to actually need to send a email that is asking to be on those podcasts pitching yourself. There's going to be a follow-up process that goes along with that as well, because most podcasters are not going to answer the first email. So, with that in mind, these are lists of the tasks that you have to do Now.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Once those tasks are complete, you're also going to want to make sure that you're familiar with what opt-in you're going to be talking about. What is your topic? What is your level of expertise? Now, when you have all of this aligned, it's going to make it much simpler to be able to complete that project, as well as, potentially, maybe, another project that you have in mind for growing your list. Maybe that is to get involved with two summits over the next 90 days? Well, again, you're going to have tasks that go in line with those. You're going to have to find summits, you're going to have to pitch yourself, you're going to have to know exactly what topics and, again, the opt-in. You can see some of this is connected, though, which is why it's important that, when you're looking at a goal, you look at projects that are going to be somewhat similar, so that you're not constantly switching to the task that you're trying to complete.

Speaker 1: 9:59

The copy that you use for pitching a podcast could be very similar to the copy that you use to pitching to speak at a summit. So you want to make sure that you are really clear, though, on your messaging, which is why we talked about your vision before. What is the vision for your business, what is the vision for what you are trying to accomplish with your goals so that you can make sure you are getting that done Now. If you're listening in and you're wanting more specific steps on how to create a 90-day plan, then you're going to want to make sure that you sign up for my 90-day plan program. This is the exact program that we put into place at the Insiders Retreat which we do annually in the month of November. So if you haven't already been an insider at the retreat and it is something that you're interested in you definitely wanna get on that wait list as well as grab the 90-day plan programs now so that you can actually implement it and start working on your 90 days. I appreciate y'all for listening in.