The eagle-eyed members of the community will have noticed that I have been pretty quiet on the training zone blogging front over the last month. In fact, it has been a whole month since I put a blog up here. (Mental note to self: must do better in the new year)

The irony is I regularly blog about the requirement to keep on marketing even when you are stupidly busy. Well, I've been stupidly busy over the last 30 days... Guess what started to drop, the marketing. 

Let's put a bit of context around the month of november:

* It is always my biggest month of client delivery and has been for the last three years

* I have converted £20k of new business

* In the next 8 weeks, I will hear about whether I have won an additional £120k of business

No wonder I am feeling exhausted now! 

On friday, I sat down with Lisa my chief organiser to plan my capacity over the next six months. This was great for multiple reasons:

* we both now have visibility on what actual and likely work I will be doing in the next six months and how much spare capacity I have (or don't have...)

* we factored into my time, time for networking, business development and blogging

* we made sure we had time to promote my latest book - The Go-To Expert which is published on the 28th Jan 2014 , although I am expecting this will slip to the original proposed publish date of the 1st March.

Of course, the best laid plans and all that. However, just taking the time to think and plan will hopefully avoid another feast and famine situation.

Therefore, how are you planning in time to think in your business? It could make the difference between a stable and successful year or another roller coaster of feast and famine.

Author Credit

Heather Townsend helps professionals become the Go-To-Expert. She is the author of the  award winning and best-selling book on business networking, the ‘FT Guide To Business Networking’ and the co-author of ‘How to make partner and still have a life’. Over the last decade she has worked with over 300 partners; coached, trained and mentored over 1000 professionals at every level of the UK's most ambitious professional practices.

Her new book, The Go-To Expert: How to grow your reputation, differentiate yourself from the competition and win business publishes in early 2014.

Heather blogs regularly at Partnership Potential, How to make partner and Joined Up Networking