037: Incredibly Effective Planning for the Modern CEO!

Hey, have you heard? There's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family, and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen t your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life.

Hey. Hey. I'm your host, Amber McKew, and I want to welcome you back today. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you as we transition from the how to Clone Yourself series that we've been going through on this podcast together. And now we're going to move into a conversation about how we finish the year strong and how we set ourselves up for success in the year ahead. Now, fun fact, at the time that I'm recording this, it's not actually New Year's. We are still several months away from the new year. But I just left a new year celebration here in Addis Ababa, where I am currently living. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, celebrates the new year on September 11th. So their new year is on September 11th. And then we have another holiday called Mescal, which is at the end of September, September 26, every year. And on September 26, they're celebrating the finding of the true cross. And it's the saying goes that Constance went to look for the cross, and when asked what she was going to do with the cross, they said, she said that she was going to give pieces of the cross to churches around the world so everybody could have a piece of this celebration and of this sacred thing. So that is what we experienced today. And on this day called mescal, they light a big fire with the cross in the middle. And the way that the cross falls is apparently the way to the true cross. So little bit of history there. And it's interesting because as I think about planning for the new year, my planning does not start in December. My planning does not start in September when Ethiopia has their new year, it actually starts back in July. Now, even as I say this, it feels like, whoa, what? Why are you doing your planning in July? MCHUGH well, I do my planning in July because two reasons, two reasons. July and December are those times I use to reflect and review any plans that we're making in our businesses in detail. So I go over financials in detail. Even though I'm looking at them every month, I break it down a little bit more at those time frames. December and July go a little bit deeper. I look at the data, I look at strategies, what's working, what's not. So more in depth reviews of all of our strategies and everything that we have in motion in the businesses. And frankly, it's a nice time to do those things because it's a little bit quieter. People are a little bit quieter in December because they're enjoying family and taking a breather and resetting and welcoming the new year. And the same thing happens in July. It's quieter because of summer. Right. Depending on the hemisphere, the part of the world that you're in, these may be flipped for you. I was just talking to a client in Australia and she's like, it's just getting warm again because she just went through winter. Just like we're wrapping up winter soon here in Ethiopia as well. But I use that quiet time in July to go deep. But the other thing I use that time in July for is to get ready to plan with you in the Plan A Thon we host every fall. The Plan A Thon is the annual planning event for entrepreneurs, and we start preparing for it well ahead of the actual event. And the other piece of this planning phase is that I rework the Fresh Start Workbook, which you can check out@freshstartworkbook.com but essentially what that is is it's a workbook and digital planning guide for your business and your life. It's not a daily planner, but it is a workbook where we sit down, essentially, I write it so that we can sit down and plan together. It's formal, it's informal, but it's also formal in the sense that we look at all areas of your business in that Fresh Start workbook. So if you want something that will take you end to end in thinking about all facets of your business, what do you enjoy? What do you not enjoy, what product lines do you want to continue, what do you want to phase out? What do you want to think about in terms of marketing and team, and it goes on and on. We truly cover all aspects of your business in the Fresh Start Workbook. And then in the last section of the workbook, we're looking at how you will get in action around those plans. What is your implementation plan? So it's an end to end planning guide for your business. And I, like I said, look at this every summer in July and rework it a bit. What does it make sense anymore? Where's the landscape change? Where have I learned something new about my planning process that I want to incorporate into this Fresh Start workbook for you to have? So as I'm going through the revamp on that Fresh Start workbook, I also get into the planning mode myself. As I'm looking at reflective questions and we're revising things and I'm updating things, I'm doing that planning real time. So that gives me an opportunity to start my planning early in a structured, strategic way as well. And that is exactly, exactly what happened this time come July as well. And that's what I want to share with you today on this podcast episode. I want to go behind the scenes in our photography business and share what came up for me this year as I went through the Fresh Start Workbook. And this primarily happened in the reflection activities. It didn't happen in the revenue planning. It didn't have. Sometimes it does. Sometimes I've got to sit down and work the numbers, sometimes I've got to sit down and look at product lines. But this year, the most impactful part of the Fresh Start Workbook and that process for me was actually the reflection because we're reflecting on a celebration, a celebration of a milestone in our photography business this year. And that's hitting a million in revenue. And you know, it's not year end, so anything can happen. But at this point, even if we don't hit exactly a million, it's a done deal in our bodies, it's a done deal in our thinking, it's a done deal in the way that we show up and manage the business. So we are there, right? We are there in our heads and we're starting to look to what's next. And it was interesting because I didn't really know, didn't have a what's next, except I do know that we want to have more impact and we want to be able to serve our team members in our photography business in a way that's true, aligned with our core value. And one of the things that emerged as a core value this year is this idea that empowered women, empower women, and we rise together. In fact, our photography business in the last year was looking for alternative outlets to connect with people and serve women who aren't yet ready for a boudoir photography shoot. Because we know our photo shoots are not photo shoots. They are full on empowerment experiences. But not everyone's ready for a photo shoot like that yet, right? We're a boudoir photography company. So there are unique instances in your life when you're going to do a boudoir photo shoot. Oftentimes, our clients in our photography business, three boudoir come to us for big events like weddings, to get a gift for their groom or their fiance. For times when you're separated for a significant amount of time, like deployments or travel, extensive travel for work. Our clients also come to us to celebrate significant milestones, like going through their cancer treatment or a mastectomy or celebrating their C section scars. As you hear those things, you may already be getting a sense that, oh, this isn't just a photo shoot. People come to work with us because there is something incredible happening in their lives or because they want to create an incredible experience to lift themselves up. Sometimes we even work with women who recently went through a bad breakup or who are going through a divorce and they want to feel incredible about themselves again. So we decided in our photography business that we don't just want to limit what we do to women who are ready to come come in to do the photo shoot. We want women everywhere to feel that empowered women, empower women and we rise together feeling. So we started something new called empowerandrise.com which is all about that idea. We rise together, empower and rise. And with that, we are now sending daily love notes to women around the world. It is a simple love note design to empower women and remind us how incredible we are. To remind you how incredible you are so that women everywhere can start to have a taste of that feeling of being inspired and empowered and feeling like you are incredible and you can do anything because we know that you can. And we see what happens when women go through that photo shoot with us. So for women who aren't ready, for women who don't have a boudoir company near them. If we're not in your city yet, this is for you. The daily love notes are designed for you, but they're also designed for you if you have done a photo shoot to keep that feeling of empowerment and love and that feeling that we are on the rise together, going every single day so I'm sharing this side Empower and Rise brand that we are creating as a photography company with you. Because as I was going through our planning, I realized we want that Empower and Rise feeling for women everywhere, including the women who work in our photography business. And this is a core value that we are embracing inside and out in our photography business. And I started to look at, as I looked at our team really rallying around this Empower and Rise concept, right? We're rallying around this. We are loving it. It is bringing newfound motivation and energy to our photo shoots and our photo experiences as well. And the way that we talk, right, the way that we talk about those experiences, the way that we share and encourage each other and women we are working with in those photo shoots as well as right on social media and how we're engaging and showing up in all of these different ways. And that's the power of knowing what your core value is. In addition, we want to embrace that core value in the way that we run our company. So when I think of what we want to empower and rise, I want every single woman in our photography business company 3 Boudoir, to feel that Empower and Rise feeling, right, to feel like they are working for a company that believes and lives in Power and Rise. Okay? So now that we've defined this core value and that we've defined this belief that we want everyone to hold and embrace in the company, inside and outside the company, Remember, now we've got to take the next step and identify what does that actually look like, though, when you are working for a company that has a core value of Empower and Rise, what does it mean? How do you show up? How do you talk to each other? How do you respond to clients? How do you address conflict? How do you design your pricing? How do you look at compensation and promotions and org structure and org design, right? So we're looking at things a little bit differently across the board based on what this cost core value is Empower and Rise. So I know that the team is all aligned to this value. But as I'm sitting there by myself thinking and reflecting and planning for the year and years ahead, I'm looking at this goal, this big, incredible milestone that we are about to reach in our business. And I'm thinking, what's next, right? What's next for us and our company? And it didn't start with, okay, let's just, you know, let's make some money. No, it started with this core value of Empower and Rise. So what does it mean if we look about, look at the future of our business with this value of empower and rise in mind, and I realized that it meant to have more impact. And at first I thought, okay, let's 5x our revenue, right? Let's 5x that. That's our goal. And then I thought, you know, it's not even about the revenue, right? It's not even about the money, the financials. It's really about 5xing our impact. And I'm not gonna lie, I have not totally defined what that 5 xenar impact looks like. I want to work with the team on that, right? I want to work with the team on what it actually looks like and how it actually looks. But I know that we're already embracing this core value of empower and rise, right? That's a done deal. Just like our milestone is a done deal in our minds. What's next is 5xing our impact. And that might mean, you know, 5xing the revenue, but it might mean reaching 5 times more people, opening 5 times more cities. Ooh, that feels a little scary. That's the first time I think I've said that. I might have mentioned that to the team, our team call last week, but it hit me differently just now. It feels like, woo, woo. That's a lot, right? But whatever that is, I want to define it with the team and I want to share with the team some of the other things that I believe and that I want for our company. But that doesn't mean that it's locked in. It doesn't mean it's a done deal. It doesn't mean it's set in stone. Because I'm creating this vision, right? I'm holding this vision, and my business partner is holding this vision with me. And because as soon as I thought of it, I immediately messaged her, I'm like, how does this feel? What do you think about this? How does this relate to you? And then she comes back and we bounce some ideas off of each other, right? And sometimes it works the other way. Sometimes she comes to me and says, what if? Can we do this? How would this work? You know, can you look at the numbers for this? I've got some ideas. I'm feeling something, right? And how does that play out in the data? So it goes both ways. But in these instances, I was going to Joanna saying, what do you think of this? How do you. How does five vaccine or impact feel, right? How does it feel if we operate in this way going forward? And she tosses back some ideas and we work out a framework and then we introduce it to a couple more people on our team, and then we introduce it to a couple more people and then we roll it out to the whole team and ask the whole team what they think about this and to really solidify what this means and how our company runs different, how we think different, behave different and show up different. With this idea of empower and rise in mind and this idea of 5Xing our impact in mind. What we did is that I looked at what are people saying about us if we are really living and breathing a core value of empower and rise. And we have lots of supporting values, about nine other supporting values that underscore what it means to empower and rise and that underscore who we are as a company. But this one recently, just recently bubbled up to the surface as something that we really want to live and breathe day in and day out in all of our values and all of our operations. Right. Core value really encompasses our other values as well. So it's a good overarching place to be and to think about and to run our company from. But to really look at how does this empower and rise value and how does this 5xing our income impact everything? What I wanted to do is look at what will people say about us when we reach this goal, and what will people say about a company that embraces empower and rise as a core value? And that led me to what specifically is Fast Company saying about us now? If you don't know Fast Company, they're a magazine, they're a sister company to Inc. Magazine, and they write about incredible companies, innovating companies, companies that are doing something different, leaders in companies that are operating in a unique way and changing the game. Right. Fast Company. And they're kind of fun and spunky if you look at their cover. It's vibrant and it's engaging. And I think of Fast Company instead of Harvard Business Review or Right. Fortune or Forbes because they're a little bit more spunky and they're more cutting edge. And that is what our company is we want to be at the forefront of. And this is where I'm going to roll into what Fast Company might say about us as we 5x our impact. They might say that 3Boudoir built a company empowering women, but they did something unique with their culture to ensure that it wasn't just lip service. Empowerment started from within the team. Their team spread that empowerment to each and every client, spreading massive waves because Empowered women empower women and we rise together even further. Empowered people empower people and we rise together. They built the empowerment and love into all facets of their business, including team meetings, customer service, compensation. Yes, all of the things. Sometimes it's totally hard, but we commit to supporting each other in these ways and call each other on it when we waver. This is where I'm going to get a little bit more tactical. This is a vision that I have. This isn't necessarily reality right now. Actually, it might be. I got to check a couple things it might be, but I'm going to move into some other tactics here fast. Company says no one on the Three Boudoir team works more than 40 hours a week. Even their full time employees. Three Boudoir believes in freedom and fulfilling your personal dreams, not only for their clients, but also for their team. Most of their team members are not full time as they pursue multiple passions. Even their leadership team works just 30 hours a week, max. How is that even possible in a world where 50 to 60 hours a week is the norm? Commitment to what matters. Constant focus on the $100 bills based on individual skill set and role, and endless support for each other. Willingness to step in anywhere. And vacation. Yeah, let's start tracking how many weeks a year we take vacation. Make sure we max it out. Okay, So I could keep going here, but this is the start of the vision that I have and that my business partner has for the future of our company. Right. And to enable a vision like this, we've got to align our values with this vision and with our actions. So we're going to percolate on this. We're going to blow this out more with our team. Again, this isn't locked in stone. This is just something I hold. Some of these things are already happening. Some of these things are already in motion because the team heard this and they're like, yep, we're on it, we're in this, we believe this and we're going to live it and breathe it every day. And there are other things we want to add to and that are going to evolve and change. And that's one thing that we are pretty cool, steady and confident in in our photography business as well, is that change is going to happen. Change is absolutely going to happen and we are going to flow with it. My business partner, Joanna is especially incredible at this. She is incredible looking at a situation and thinking, you know what, we're going to be flexible. And she's probably most flexible with me. So I love and adore her for that. And this works because we have core values that we are aligned on personally and professionally. Okay. So now that we've got this core value and this vision that's taking shape in the, in the idea of what are people saying about us? Right. Years from now, after we 5x star impact and as a company that is embracing empower and rise, now we're going to talk about those actions because none of this happens unless we put it in action. Right. So it's not urgent that these changes happen immediately. But some things that we threw out there for the team to consider are our two managing members from our leadership team cannot be stuck in the weeds on email and following up on things for days on end. Yep. Here and there they can step in. Right. To make sure they have the pulse of the company and to make sure they know what's going on or to back someone else up on the team. Because we all step in, we all step in at all levels and at all facets of the organization. Right. We're a small business. That's what you do. You step in and you rally to support each other. You will do anything, right? Anything to make sure this works for your clients. But they can't be in the weeds every day, forever and ever anymore. Okay. Now the other thing that I am brewing and working on is that I need to reach out to investors. I don't even know that we want an actual investment yet. Right. But I want to build relationships and I want to learn and I want to explore this avenue. Right. When we think about 5x, that's big, that's significant. There are lots of ways that we can do that. We don't know what the ways are going to be yet. So I'm going to explore some of those things and have conversation around it. Next action that we want to consider is that we need to strategically grow our top line revenue. So how are we going to do that? How are we going to grow revenue? And yes, when you're growing a company, you also want to think about profit. But we are at a place in our business where we want to think about growing revenue right now. Of course, anything that we consider as a revenue growth line item, we're also going to factor in profit. But our eye right now and our hundred dollar bill and our focus, this is on the top line. Options open, more cities, partnerships expand, who we serve, different product lines, different way of marketing. In fact, speaking of marketing, one of the actions that we want to take is for our team members to share more, show their Faces more because their energy and their enthusiasm is off the charts. I love our team so much, and I want people to experience our team through our marketing before they even start working with us. Right before, during, and after the work experience. Not just when they get to the shoot, but even before that as well as after, because it is contagious. Because our team is empowering and, you know, the value. Empowered women. Empower women and we rise together. Empower people. Empower people, and we rise together. Continuing on with a team conversation, we need everyone on our team to be an ambassador for our company. Okay? That's something we want. That's a vision we hold. That's an action we have. However or. And we can ask for that. Yes, we can just ask. We want you all to be ambassadors. Okay? And here's what ambassadorship looks like to us. And we can spell it out for people and we can request it, or we can air quotes. Air quotes come in here. We can demand it, but ultimately, I don't want to ask for it. I don't want to demand it. I don't want to push that on people. What we want instead is for us to love our team so hard and to support our team so much that their minds are blown and they can't help but share and talk about this company that embraces and believes and empower and rise so much that they feel it. They feel it every day. They feel the love, and they want to spread and share that love. We need to engage our full team in empowerment and love. We need to not isolate ourselves as leaders from the team. Right. Our team is working with clients and working with our customers every single day. And we want our leadership to be very closely connected to that because we feed off each other. The energy is contagious, and the positive energy is contagious as much as the negative energy is contagious. Right? So if we're feeling positive one day, but the team's not, we want that to spill over. And if the team's feeling positive one day, but we're not, we want that to spill over. Right? It all flows around. It is energy, and it has the power to change the lives and the days of everyone we come in contact with. We want our clients to be feeling the positive energy, and we want it to feel so incredible working with this company that that spreads organically. Now, of course, we might ask and remind sometimes, like, ooh, can you guys share this? This is really good. Like, look what the team did over here. Look what happened over here. If you could share this, that'd be incredible, right? But we want it to also organically happen. And just because we want it to organically happen, people get busy, people have lives. We know that we'll support them in this, but we want them to not feel like they have to, but to feel like they want to, because this is cool. We also, an action step that we want to take is to shuffle responsibilities around regularly, right? So everybody kind of experiences things differently from time to time. For example, this summer I stepped in and I was our shoot team contact. So every day when we have a shoot, there's also someone behind the scenes on point. Just in case systems go down or something's acting funky, we can fix it or pull the right people in to fix it as that point of contact for the day. Well, this summer, I was shoot team contact, and actually in October coming up, I'm going to be shoot team contact again. And this gives us an opportunity to experience different aspects of the business and to confirm and document like, oh, our system's working because I'm not in this every day. So I need our systems. I need the documentation to be able to be an effective point of contact for our team. So I get an opportunity to test that when I jump in in this role. Sharing experience. And we want everyone to be able to shuffle, right? And we want every person on our team to be thriving in their roles. So we'll shuffle and we'll move things around and we'll test things out. Oh, so and so is really great over here. Oh, I really like that role. Can I do more of that, please? So we're going to shuffle things around periodically so everybody can experience different things and we can identify how will you thrive in business, how will you thrive in this company, and how will you thrive in life? Because, you know, those things spill over. Also, if you're having a bad day at work, rolls right over to life. Something funky is happening in life, comes right back into business, right? Comes right back into those experiences we create for our clients. So we can make that a little bit better by making sure everyone is operating and engaging in a place in the company that they love. We also need another action step as we bring that vision to life. Reporting metrics. Some fresh new reporting metrics that help us ensure business. Excellent. Update these regularly, and these metrics can help us catch things like one of our team members did when they were noticing something was off in a certain department. Right. Oh, okay. Leads, for example. Leads look a little bit off here. Like, did we change something in our marketing Maybe we need to change it back or, oh, leads are looking good here. We need to keep doing that. We need to reinvent that experience because it worked. Right. So keeping an eye on key metrics that help us ensure business excellence, including a measurement of this idea of empower and rise. Do people feel and understand and embrace empower and rise and where they don't? Right. We want to step in and adjust that as well because we know if we're embracing that as a team, it's going to spill right over into the experiences our clients have. And we want to create that massive love, empower and rise ripple effect. So I'm going to pause there. I could keep going and going again on this list of action items. Right. But I'm going to pause because I want to just share this behind the scenes and our thought process and our way of thinking of how we sat down and did some reflection in the Fresh Start Workbook as we're preparing for planning season with you, where we come together and plan together in the Plan A Thon, which you can check out@theplanathon.com and how that started. For me, the experience that we create in the fall in our Plan A Thon is the exact same experience that I went through personally this summer using the Fresh Start Workbook. And then I brought in other people on the team. I confirmed I wasn't crazy with my business partner, and we blew it out even more. We created this summary of what are people saying about us? What are people saying in fast company when we get this right. Right. And this isn't going to happen immediately, it's going to happen right on time. It's going to unfold and emerge and take shape right on time. I'm not pushing it. We're going to flow with it. And to even have a smidge of this come to life, we set that vision and we have to put certain things in action. So break down. We're going to break down when we plan together those action steps as well. Right. Because if you don't start to put things in action, if we don't step forward to our goals and our dreams, even if we don't know exactly how or what is going to unfold, take baby steps towards the vision and make things tangible. Right. We're not going to work more than 30 hours a week, even our leadership team, we're going to rotate responsibilities. We're going to have things documented. We're going to look at these other revenue streams. These are very specific things we can do. And while we are not attached to the goal of 5xing our impact. That's a result that we're working towards. But I know one thing 100% for sure. If we don't define the goal and we don't take action towards the goal, we will have no chance of reaching the goal. Because results come to life when you get in action. So I want to remind you of that as I broke down this behind the scenes that I just went through. And I want to invite you to join us to plan and create your vision for the future of your company and your life. This. This company and this vision is as much aligned with my business as it is my life. They're so closely intertwined and they're so closely aligned that it feels more right than anything. And that's what I want for you, too. So with that, I want to invite you to join us in the 2020 Plan A Thon. You can get signed up@theplanathon.com we do this event every single fall. This will be our seventh year, in fact, I can't even believe. Seven years. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. It's so much fun. The engagement in the Plan A Thon is so incredible. And the momentum and that feeling of empowerment is infectious in the plan a thon. So if you want to finish 2019 strong and get your plan on for 2020 like I am, please join us@theplanathon.com and I hope I can say I will see you there. And I'm gonna be there to welcome you and chat with you as soon as you get there. It is a live, interactive experience. I show up, I show up hard for the Plan A Thon. And I love every minute of planning with you. So I cannot wait to finish 2019 strong and plan 2020 with you. It's going to be your best year ever. And with that, I'm going to say adios, farewell. I will see you soon. And we'll be back next week with another episode of the podcast where I, Your host, Amber McHugh, will be talking about what it looks like and what it might mean for you to 10x your freedom. Until. Until next time. Love you. Remember, you're right on time.