Pam Ivey (00:00):

You’re listening to the flourish and grow to CEO podcast. This is episode 39

Speaker 2 (00:26):

[inaudible]

Pam Ivey (00:27):

Are you a lady boss making 50, do a hundred thousand in your business, and you’re ready to break through that six figure barrier.

Jane Garee (00:34):

Have you done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig master, but know your inner CEO is calling you to greater Heights. You’re in the right place. If you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business without sacrificing fun.

Pam Ivey (00:49):

I’m Pam Ivey, I’m certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of training and certifying real estate assistance, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in online business, marketing growth and profit acceleration. And I take men and women business owners aged 40 plus to bucket-list destinations around the world for a month at a time to work, explore, and live in community.

Jane Garee (01:15):

And I’m Jane Garee known as the sales strategist for the non sales person. And I work with business owners who want to increase their conversion rate, shorten their sales cycle and have more impact and influence with the work they do all while having more fun with selling.

Pam Ivey (01:30):

Hi everyone. And welcome back to the flourish and grow to CEO podcast. I’m your host, Pam Ivy with cohost

Jane Garee (01:38):

Jane, Gary. Woo.

Pam Ivey (01:41):

And you know, we’re recording this at the beginning of November, we’re recording this episode. So we thought it would be a really good time to talk about planning for 2022. And, you know, um, the first thing we do when we talk about planning is actually looking back on what happened last year, so that we can kind of determine what worked, what didn’t work, and then we can move forward to planning for this year. You on board,

Jane Garee (02:07):

Absolutely planning and strategy are two of my very, very favorite things. So I’ve got my calendars ready and my color coordinated highlighters because you know, that’s the way it works for me over here. Yeah.

Pam Ivey (02:19):

Absolutely color coordinated. Highlighters are so important. I have my, um, huge whiteboard in front of me. So that’s where I’m going to be making all my notes. But that’s what we want to do is kind of take a look backwards and see what worked, what didn’t work. Look at things like obvious, right? How was your revenue? What were your largest earning months? Maybe you can start seeing a trend if you’ve been in business.

And you know, most of the people who listened to our podcast have been in business for quite some time, you can start really seeing a trend so you can see the seasonality of your business. And when did you, you should be putting the big push on maybe some cool sales to encourage even more sales or, you know, some sort of discount offer or something like that. So where did your paying clients come from?

Pam Ivey (03:07):

Is another really good question to ask yourself, because what we want to do in 2022 is do more of that make sense, right? So where did they come from? So they could be, did they come from your emails that you sent out? Could they have come from your social media efforts? Could they have come from perhaps podcasts or the like that you were interviewed on?

So that’s what we want to be doing more of in 2022. So another thing to take a look at is did your mailing list, I mean, the act of people on your mailing list, did that grow in 2021? And if it didn’t, how come and what can you do to continue to grow that? Because we know that our email list is actually an asset in your business. So if you go to sell your business, they’re actually going to put a price on that email list.

Pam Ivey (04:02):

They’re not going to do that for your social media list also. I mean, it’s been harped all over the internet, social media, your followers and stuff. You don’t own those. So if that social media platform happens to crash, we’ve all heard of a what’s what’s one that was here and gone Periscope, for instance, God, or my space or, oh my space. Yes. Um, you don’t get to take those people, your followers with you.

So you really put a great emphasis. I can’t stress it enough on your email list. Did you spend a lot of time on things that weren’t so fruitful? That’s another thing to take a good look at things that really didn’t produce for you and your business. Eliminate those for 2022. We’re keeping it really simple here. So I’ll look ahead to 2022, you know, Jane and I are always talking vision strategy tactics.

Pam Ivey (05:01):

That’s exactly what we’re going to do when we start planning for the, the new year. So think about what you’d like to accomplish in 2022, how many clients and customers do you want to work with? How many new people do you want to add to your list? And I mean, again, active people are actually going to receive your emails. How many interviews would you like to do?

Because we know that that’s a great way for people to get to know us who are new to our world and how many say launches or new product or program introductions would you like to do in the next year? And I really advise that you add those launches or the new product program introductions to your calendar now so that you really, um, spacing them out. Well, you don’t want back-to-back launches because they’ll usually flop just too many emails going out to everybody.

Pam Ivey (05:58):

But all those things, you know, how many clients or customers you want, what revenue you want to have, how large do you want to grow your list in the next year? That’s all your vision. So we talk vision strategy and tactics. There’s your vision. So next we want to work on our strategy. So we want to plot out that plan or that strategy.

So determine what tools you want to use, how often you want to use them, who’s going to use them and then add some due dates or deadlines to that. And then, I mean, you’ve already determined your tools. So then you can put together your tactical plan. So that’s implementation what you got to add to that, Jane.

Jane Garee (06:41):

Well, I think the thing is, is just make sure that you’re really clear with everything. So for example, a vision, a vision wouldn’t be have a business that makes a lot of money, a vision wouldn’t even be, have a business that makes $250,000. That that’s good. That’s a, that’s a much better start, but have a vision that makes I’m sorry, have a business that makes 250,000.

Is that net or is that gross? Are you able to, do you have a sense enough of your business to know when the likelihood that you would earn most of that money is? So for instance, if you have a very seasonal business and it’s just big up in summer, then you need to, you need to take that into account, know that the bulk of your business is going to be done in the summer, and then you’re going to need to plan your business and then your personal life around it accordingly. So the more specific you can be in your vision, the better off it’s going to be.

And then it’s going to be the same for everything else that the strategies specific, the tactics specific. So specificity becomes really important when you start, if you want to put, if you want to put feet to your, your dreams feed to your vision, you know, if you want to make the reality, if you want to make your vision a reality, then specificity becomes really pretty important. So don’t overlook that. Don’t overthink it, but don’t overlook it.

Pam Ivey (08:00):

That is such a good point because we need clarity around all of this stuff so that we’re able to really easily put that into play and make this stuff happen in our business. So I think that’s right.

Jane Garee (08:12):

So one another quick example, just to make sure everybody really gets, this is Pam you and I of course have a travel lifestyle business. And we like to travel. So being really specific around the travel schedule becomes important. Not just, I want a business that allows me to travel. What does that mean? Six months out of the year, eight months out of the year, long weekends, as opposed to two weeks in a row, are you in the country? Are you out of the country?

Again, it becomes a little, it can be a little bit challenging because if you overthink it and you put too many details onto the vision, then you can actually start to derail yourself. So you need to keep it big vision enough to where it gives you the space in the room to not worry how the, how of the, how of the, how happens.

Jane Garee (08:57):

Again, you’re going to get bogged down in the details, but you do want to be as specific as, as possible. I was working on my travel schedule yesterday and I thought it would take me maybe half an hour, because what’s hard about it.

I’m going to this place this month and this place and this month, but the more I got into it, the more I realized this is a lot of coordination because the vision is I want the business will allow me to travel. However, what I had to take into account for scheduling purposes was if I’m going to be say Italy, mid April to mid may, I need to take an account, travel on both sides, going to Italy, returning from Italy. And then therefore, a few days in there, probably not a great day to do anything.

I need to actually schedule those off. So I didn’t yesterday. I was working on that because I had to get that to, uh, to a client because now we’re trying to schedule some things around my travel schedule. So you don’t have to go to that level of detail, but where I could have gone, gone wrong, or just created a problem for myself is, oh, I’m going to be traveling next year. Okay. Wu travel, really putting down the bones of what was actually going to happen or what I wanted to happen.

Pam Ivey (10:09):

Yes. And we know it’s all unpredictable these days with the pandemic. Oh my gosh. Hopefully we’re coming through, but heavens knows. Right? So definitely me and the travel business, I’m hoping they all come true. We’ve already had to cancel our first tra trip for 2022. So I’m hoping that we can still push through so that Jane can join us in Italy and all that planning that she’s just done around. That works

Jane Garee (10:42):

For her.

Pam Ivey (10:46):

I really feel confident about that, but I think it’s really important to have a really clear vision about what you want to obtain, because if you’re like most people, you don’t have that clear vision and you’re just kind of going day to day there’s I don’t know. It’s just, you just keep going and for what reason? Well, I want to create money in my business, but there’s gotta be more than that, right?

Jane Garee (11:13):

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s one of the things that really is, it was important last year, but it’s going to continue to be more and more important is why really are you, why are you doing this work? And that’s got some specificity around it because most people, most people say, what’s your, why, what’s your why? And it’s, you know, that’s okay. And it’s also very cliche and we’ve been hearing it.

So I like to fine tune that even a little bit more and say, why are you choosing to do the work that you’re doing out of all of the things that you could be doing? Why are you choosing this work? So it takes it down to a more detailed level because your why can be whatever it is. And they’re going to be big vision, but why this works. So if your, why is your family?

Jane Garee (11:57):

So your family can have a nice life and, and you can have beautiful experiences. That’s wonderful, but you could, you could create that life for them selling insurance. You could create that life for them owning a bakery.

And those are two very different things with very different requirements of the business owner. So why are you choosing to do the work that you’re doing? Just brings it again, a more specificity, which I think is important because when you’re attached to that and you understand why you have a passion for doing the work that you’re doing, that will make some things a little different too.

Pam Ivey (12:33):

Hey lady boss, do you think like a CEO when your business starts taking off, you’re ready to scale up at this point, you’ve got to stop thinking of yourself as a solo preneur and start thinking of yourself as the CEO of your company. If you remain in the mindset of a one person operation, then you won’t be able to grow. You’ll never have the time, energy or expertise to do everything by yourself and your business.

Won’t be the success that it has the potential to be. So are you thinking like a CEO take our free assessment to find out you can find it@flourish.biz forward slash think that’s F L O U R I S H dot B I Z Ford slash T H I N K. Once again. That’s flourished.biz for slash think. All right, lady boss. Let’s get back to the show. Yeah. And we had a past episode and I’m sorry, I don’t know what episode number that was, but you can take a look on our website@flourish.biz.

Pam Ivey (13:41):

And we talked about values and there’s actually, we have a huge list of common values or possible values. So if you want to download that list, that can help you really pinpoint your why for Jane and I, we have exactly the same top value and that’s travel and freedom. So that’s why I’ve built. The business that I have really is so that I can travel.

So wherever there’s an internet connection I can go, which is pretty freaking amazing. My other big thing is when I, or soon, I don’t know exactly when, but I will be selling my house and traveling full time. That’s been a plan for a long time. So I’m working toward that, especially with my travel business, because I’m traveling to so many amazing places, five to six times a year. I’m really getting, getting to see where I would like to have my home base.

Pam Ivey (14:36):

So that’s another big why for me. So that answer that question. I think that’s so important. And the more detailed you can get with your plan without being crazy and, you know, scheduling yourself down to the minute, the more likely it’s going to happen. So the more you can plot into a calendar into your project management tool, like a sauna.

I know a lot of people use, we use teamwork. Um, the more likely it is to happen for you cause you you’re going to know what needs to happen next. So your action steps this week are just what we talked about.

Review last year, what happened, where the clients came from? All that we talked about, think about your vision, really come up with your clear goals for next year, your vision, start writing out your strategy and then, uh, start thinking about how you’re going to implement those tactics that you identified in your strategy.

Pam Ivey (15:36):

All right. So I hope that was really helpful to get you started on planning for an amazing 2020 do and until next week, have a good one. Bye everybody. Well, that’s a wrap everyone. Thanks for joining us this week on the flourish and grow to CEO podcast. Be sure to visit our website@flourish.biz. That’s F L O U R I S h.biz, where you can subscribe to the shows in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS.

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