You’ve heard me say structure, process, and routine. But a lot of times, entrepreneurs and owners start our businesses for freedom or flexibility. So you may naturally push against anything that looks like structure or process and routine. Although it sounds similar to discipline, which I discussed in last week’s Friday episode, but I look at it a little bit differently.

Why Sunday Night Planning?
An example of structure, process, and routine would be communication rhythms with your team. Those rhythms could include one-to-ones and your weekly team meetings. But I want to share a meeting that is specifically with yourself, and this is roughly a sixty-minute meeting depending on the complexity of your business.
Before we get into what you should be doing during this meeting, let’s talk about when might have it. Over at BlueprintOS, we have it on Sunday nights, so we call it Sunday Night Planning. But a lot of business owners prefer doing this type of planing on Fridays or Mondays. So why do I recommend Sunday nights?
Traditionally, there are three different times people have ran this meeting with themselves. It can be Friday afternoons, Sunday evenings, or Monday mornings. Monday mornings can often be hectic, unless you wake up extremely early.
For most people, Monday is a little too for planning. Some people try to do this on a Friday afternoon, but there are often other things are coming up on a Friday afternoon that they enjoy, so they end up not having the weekly meeting with themselves. You may be thinking, what about Saturdays? Why not Saturdays? Here at BlueprintOS, we like to architect Saturdays to be a free day. We stand by the belief that you need one day per week that you get completely away.
If you get Saturday completely away, and then use Sunday morning to be with family, then you are taking about a day to a day and a half off. By Sunday night, if you’re following that schedule, you’re likely ready to get back to work in some way. I also think that there’s strategic value in planning out the week on Sunday night, and then wake up the next morning knowing that the week is already set into place.
The Most Important Things To Plan
In my opinion, I believe that this 60 minutes can set the pace for your entire week. While this blog won’t show step by step in this episode what you shouldn’t do in a Sunday night planning session, there are a few key things that are important to consider.
We always say that the most important thing you can do for yourself is to protect your confidence. One of the ways that we do that is by building a routine and a process in place to plan out your week. When you plan out your week, you should first look back and grab the wins. I’ve done this for years, but I still struggle to see what all was actually accomplished each week. Every single time, I’ll remember a win.
There have been some tough, tough weeks, just like any other entrepreneur may experience, and it can be hard to find the wins. But just doing that exercise, you’ll be able to find either the win or at least the progress that we made. In some of the most difficult weeks, I can still try to find the lesson that I learned.
Then, you need to review what your team is planning to execute on each month. When I do Sunday Night Planning, I’ll look at what we said we wanted to try to get done this quarter, what we were trying to get done this month, and what we wanted to try to do this year. I may even look at my 3 year vision so that I can plan from the lease of what is most important in the business.
This has been a critical practice in my business, and one that I continue to do each week. If you’d like to try out Sunday Night Planning in your own business, you can access it at www.blueprintos.com/assets. I hope it will equip you to continue to lead well.
Grow Your Leadership
Bradley has many resources to grow your leadership in the area of vision and priorities. Check out a few of them:
Whether you’re a football fan or not, there are 5 principles Saban did really well within the organization that apply to your business… Keep reading…
If you’re a business owner, you know that there’s a conventional 40 hour week. There’s approximately 2,080 working hours in a year. But how you spend your 8,760 hours each year can change your business and your life.. Watch to learn more.
It’s difficult to get to your destination if you aren’t sure where you currently are! After all, the path from Minnesota to Canada is very different than the path from Mexico to Canada. If you aren’t certain where you’re at today in business, you need to take the Rainmaker to Architect assessment. It will gauge your strengths and weaknesses as a leader and in your business. Then, you’ll get detailed, specific suggestions for improvement. Take the assessment here.
MEET YOUR COACH
BRADLEY HAMNER

Bradley is a Business Growth Coach and Value Builder consultant, empowering entrepreneurs to become architects of their own success. He shares his revolutionary BlueprintOS methodology, unlocking businesses’ true potential and driving remarkable achievements.