1. Choose an outcome within your influence
An outcome describes a change in the business, not a collection of tasks. “Launch a website” is a deliverable. “Test whether local customers will place and collect orders through a simple storefront” connects the work to a business question.
Write a starting point, a target and a date. If the starting point is unknown, measuring it becomes an early task. For a new service business, a planning example might be completing five paid trial appointments and learning how long delivery takes. The target is your hypothesis, not a promised result.
2. Choose up to three priorities
Select the few workstreams most likely to produce that outcome. For the appointment example, these might be clarifying the offer, reaching suitable prospects and delivering a reliable trial. Put other ideas in a later list.
Estimate the time you can actually commit each week, including delivery and administration. A plan that assumes ten spare hours when you have three will create noise rather than direction. Reduce scope before adding more commitments.
3. Turn priorities into weekly commitments
Give each action an owner, an expected result and a time budget. “Improve marketing” is difficult to finish. “Ask five suitable prospects to review a clearly priced trial offer by Friday” can be completed and assessed.
Use roughly thirteen weekly planning periods, with a shorter final period if needed to fit your actual 90-day dates. Do not plan every task in detail on day one. Make the next week concrete and leave later weeks flexible enough to respond to evidence.
4. Track actions and results separately
Actions tell you what you did; results tell you what changed. Track both. Ten invitations sent, three replies and one booked trial describe a sequence you can learn from. Ten invitations alone cannot tell you whether the offer worked.
Write down where each number came from and the period it covers. If you use several tools, choose one record as the source for each measure. Manual entry is fine. Do not add an imported total to a manually entered total when both describe the same orders.
5. Review at useful checkpoints
Set a starting review and checkpoints around days 30, 60 and 90, with a brief weekly check-in between them. Ask what you expected, what happened, what caused the difference and what you will change next.
If activity is high but results are weak, examine the audience and offer before increasing volume. If results are promising but delivery is overwhelming, adjust capacity or scope. If a measure is no longer useful, explain the change rather than quietly rewriting the original target.
Example: a fictional local storefront pilot
Outcome: learn whether a pickup offer can produce repeatable orders. Priority one: publish a small, clear catalogue. Priority two: invite suitable local shoppers to try it. Priority three: make collection reliable. Weekly measures: enquiries, completed orders, missed pickups and time spent fulfilling them.
At the first review, customers may be interested but unable to collect during the offered hours. The next action is to test another collection window, not automatically add more products. This fictional example shows how the plan should guide a decision.
Keep the plan alive after day 90
Compare the end result with the original baseline and record the lessons you want to carry forward. Decide what to repeat, stop or change. Build the next cycle from that evidence.
Business Catalyst includes Your Next 90 Days after graduation. Owners can plan weekly work, record results and review progress. Where supported app connections are available, owners choose whether to preview and import data; manual recording remains an option.
Your worksheet
Copy these prompts into your own notes, or download the editable text version. No sign-up required.
- Start date and end date:
- Main outcome:
- Starting point and target:
- Priority 1:
- Priority 2:
- Priority 3:
- Weekly time available:
- This week: action | owner | time | expected result
- Measures: name | source | period | actual result
- Review: what happened | what we learned | what changes next
- Day-90 decision: repeat, stop or change:
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