Concepts · Planning

The Plan

The Plan is the top of the planner: one record that says what the business is going long on, how each brand gets there, and how it’s scored. Its owner edits it in place; Esy reads it before it plans a day, flags what’s behind, or drafts. It turns everyday work into work toward something.

In design

In design The Plan is designed and prototyped in os.esy.com, but not live, and its API isn’t published yet. Goals, commitments and tasks, which it’s built from, are live today. This page describes how it will work so you can set up the pieces now.

The ladder

Read top to bottom. Each rung answers one question.

Rung	Answers	Made of
Why	What are we going long on, and until when?	The bet, its why, and its window (day 43 of 178)
Score	What does it add up to?	Goals with a measure and a pace, in priority order. The first is the one that matters most
How	Where does it come from?	One engine per brand: channels → newsletter → offers
This week	Are we on course?	The score, the rhythm kept, and how much finished work fed a goal
Next	What moves it?	Open tasks under each goal, and what Esy suggests from the numbers

The idea underneath is lead and lag measures. Subscribers and clients are the result (lag): you can’t move them directly. Posts kept on rhythm are the activity you control (lead). The Plan shows both, side by side, so you can tell at a glance whether the work is moving the score.

Engines: channels → newsletter → offers

An engine is one brand’s path to income.

Part	What it holds
Audience	Who it’s for, in a sentence. Esy writes drafts for them.
Channels	Where people find the brand: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, the brand’s own site. Each has a rhythm, “two a week” or “one a day”, on set days.
Newsletter	The audience the brand owns, and what it promises its readers. Its subscriber count is usually the first goal’s measure.
Offers	What the newsletter sells: a product, a service, a sponsor, a community. Each has a stage: selling, building, or idea.

A rhythm can go on the checklist. Then it’s also a commitment: each day is judged, a miss shows on Home, and the run counts. Changing the rhythm changes the commitment from tomorrow, never a day already judged. A rhythm off the checklist is still shown and counted, just not firm. A channel named with no rhythm is an open decision: it’s listed under “Still to decide” until it gets one or leaves the plan.

Sources: which channel brought each subscriber

Every post’s link to the newsletter carries its channel in a ?src= tag, such as /letter?src=linkedin. The signup records it once, and the first source wins. A signup through a link with no tag is counted as No tag, never guessed. From those counts Esy works out each channel’s yield: subscribers brought per post kept. It shows a channel’s yield only after three weeks of tagged links, because before that it’s noise.

Reach: how many times people saw the posts

The funnel starts before the signup. Reach is how many times a brand’s posts were seen over the last four weeks, read from each network. Today Esy reads Instagram and Facebook through Meta. Each social channel then shows its views, the accounts it reached, its views on each of the last seven days, and its recent posts ranked by views. With the subscribers it brought, that gives the share of views that join.

A network Esy can’t read yet (YouTube, LinkedIn, X, TikTok) says so by name. It never counts as 0, so a total that covers only some networks says it’s partial.

This week: staying the course

Tile	Counts
The score	The first goal against its line: how far ahead or behind, and what a week needs from here.
The rhythm	Posts kept of those due so far this week, and which were missed.
On the plan	Finished tasks this week that fed one of the plan’s goals, out of all finished. The rest is drift, listed by name, without judgment.

Once a week, a short check-in asks three questions with the numbers in front of you: did the rhythm hold, what moved the score, and is the bet still right? Changes to the bet, the window or the goals’ order are kept as revisions, so a change of course is a decision, never a drift.

What Esy reads

The Plan is rendered as plain lines and read into every planning and drafting call: Today’s suggestions, the journal, the check-in, Ask Esy, Compose. It reads like this:

the plan, as Esy reads ittext

The bet: Grow the agency from an audience we own. Posts bring people to the
newsletter; the newsletter books the calls. From Jan 5 to Jun 30.

Northwind Studio: For owners of local service businesses. Socials bring them
to The Local Letter (northwind.studio/letter), sent one a week.
Rhythm: LinkedIn two a week; YouTube one a week; Instagram one a day.
Named, no rhythm yet: TikTok.
Offers: Managed SEO (selling), Website audits (building).
Goal (the one that matters most): 500 subscribers by Jun 30.

This week: 212 of 500, 18 behind the line. Rhythm 9 of 10 kept.
LinkedIn brings the most per post (4.2).

Agents treat it as intent, not instruction. It says what the owner is going for; it never authorizes sending, posting or spending. Esy suggests with the numbers and changes nothing on its own.

The rules, in short

	Rule
One plan	One active plan per organization, with a window.
Esy counts	Pace, yields, the course and drift are computed by api.esy.com and shown by the dashboard.
Goals stay goals	The plan points at goals; their numbers and pace are the goals’ own.
Order is priority	The first goal is the one that matters most, everywhere.
Counted, never guessed	Sources come from tags; untagged is “No tag”. A network that isn’t read is named, never 0.
No silent changes	Changes to the bet, window and goals are revisions.

In short

The Plan holds the bet, each brand’s engine and the score, in one record.
Rhythms are the lead measures; goals are the lag measures; both on one page.
Tag every newsletter link with ?src= so the Plan can tell which channel works.
Esy reads the Plan as long-term intent and suggests; the owner decides.

Set it up: Set up your Plan. Where it sits: The planner.