From Planning to Celebration: The Path to Entrepreneurial Excellence

Boring is good. Now, when I explained boring, I said this is going to be boring and I'll walk you through it. But boring doesn't mean no growth. But our goal is over the next 24 months to get our business up to that 20% so that we can use that 20% to reinvest in the future. Let's build something that's exciting for us. Otherwise the absolute grind of resiliency. We need to get through the day to day or the month to month or the year to year with all the changes down economies. It's not going to work for us, for us because of all of the challenges unless we're inspired. Good day everybody. Bob Gover here, your host. You are watching or listening to the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. This is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. This episode is called Strategy Building a Boring Year which will achieve great success. This is a six step process to achieving great success in your business. Now I want to introduce this idea. We've been working for the last year within our business looking at increased accountability, increased structure, increased systems so that operational ease takes place. Now, we've also been at a stage in our business where we've consistently had positive momentum with revenue growth, with adding new business to our, to our operations. And we've already got this path of achieving success on its way. So it's not like we have to reinvent the wheel, but it's channeling everything so that we can achieve this great success. Now I had the opportunity to pull my team together at the end of 2023 and I would highly recommend that everybody do this as a process. Now we took two days, two days to do strategic planning. The objective of our strategic planning session is so that we can bring everybody in, we can talk about our high level corporate objectives and then we can build out what that looks like, what each team member needs to do on a day to day basis to help contribute to that level of success within the organization. And then at the end of the day, all we have to do is do exactly what we said we would do. But I want to walk you through exactly how that looked. And when I started my essentially opening presentation, which was looking at the outlook, which was the current year's outlook inside our business, I said, I am going to label this the boring year. And everybody looked at me and I was like, who's on board for a boring year? Now, to give a little bit of context, the last couple years have been Interesting for us, we went from a team of 50 now up to a team of about 90. We made an acquisition of about 30 people. We've had some changes in some of those people as we build out the organization, new core values, new direction, and then we've scaled it up by adding new team members. So there's been a lot that's happened in the last 12 months within the organization because all of those things happened in a 12 month span. So when I opened this up to my team and I said, who's ready for a boring year? Those who've been with me for more than a year, very clearly we're like, we don't believe you. Boring sounds nice though. Boring is good. Now when I explained boring, I said this is going to be boring and I'll walk you through it. But boring doesn't mean no growth. It doesn't mean no exciting new value adds for our clients which are always working on new technology introductions, which we're always doing new insightful services and product development. That that doesn't go away. But here's what we're identifying as a boring year. We've outlined all the major objectives that should take place. Only in rare occasions should those be modified. Right? The majority of the reason, they should be very stable so that the team knows exactly what we're striving for. And if they do change, it's likely not a high level strategy. It's a tactic within that strategy that might get adjusted to help achieve those goals. But for the most part, the high level strategy is should stay in place within reason, right? If you get a huge opportunity or another acquisition comes up or something like that, it's not planned. But if something just lands in your lap and it's a great opportunity, we're not saying don't do that. We're just saying let's build out what the success looks like of just doing exactly what we've been doing. And I've outlined this as really a six stage process. And I know our team is on the way to achieving all of these goals that we've set in 2024 already. But for you, this really sets a six stage process. So the very first process, so step one is to plan it. So this looks at building out your high level goals and financial targets in our business. So when we looked at building out our financial targets, I'll walk you through exactly how I did it. So for us, we have a lot of reoccurring revenue inside our model. If you don't, that's okay. I do. Half of my business is a reoccurring model. We have reoccurring monthly bookkeeping clients that we serve on a regular basis. We have some reoccurring coaching clients that are monthly. I have annual accounting and tax filing work that continues to come in, but then there's one off. Projects like our legal team will help somebody buy a house this year and they may not come back for five years or 10 years. And we don't really know is it likely to be reoccurring. Sure, but at a non predictable level. And we have other services such as our, some of our tax restructure related work. When we go through and do a sophisticated tax restructure project which essentially identifies the existing structure, optimizes it, makes it the most efficient for tax savings now and in the future. Specifically, if we're doing anything related to succession planning or acquisition of a business, or we're looking at tax minimization strategies, or we're looking at splitting out structures, protecting preserving assets, anything like that, it's typically a one off sort of invoice or one off project. So those don't reoccur. So I have a mix of these models. But what I went back to is I went back to the last three or four months and I looked at our recurring revenue model. All of our reoccurring revenue consistently was growing at, you know, 2, 3, 5% per month, which over a span of a year is a substantial amount. But that is what our consistent growth had looked like over the last six months. So for each individual reoccurring revenue model, I looked at that and said, okay, here's what our goal should be based on, where we're at right now and the path that we're on. Here's the high level goal. And the idea would be when you plan it out, one, you hit a high level revenue target. This is what we want to achieve here inside our business. We want to hit, and for us, it's around $14 million in revenue this year. And then we start looking at what goes into all of those 14, how each department builds into that. But we also wanted to hit certain thresholds. For those of you who listened to me before, at the end of the day, as an investor in a business, you should be looking at a bottom line, net income of 20%. Now in our business, that threshold has not ever been that high because we've constantly been reinvesting. But our goal is over the next 24 months to get our business up to that 20% so that we can use that 20% to reinvest in the future. So our intention is to get closer to that 20% this year. In actual fact, the goal was to say, yeah, let's get to 20% and let's figure out how we build that there. Then you look at other high level elements of your business as well. Are you looking at maybe making an acquisition? Do you want to create a second location? Do you want to move your business online? What are the other high level strategy objectives? Because we have to plan it and we have to see it and we have to start believing that this is what we really want to accomplish. We want to impact the lives of 100 million people, right? That's what we're on our mission to do. So when we're building that out, we have to plan it and we have to see it. Now, part of what my job is as a CEO, and for many of you, you are the entrepreneur, you are the CEO of your company as well, is to plan this out and create an exciting sort of atmosphere of what this does as an outcome. Right? Making us as a business owner, more money isn't overly exciting for anybody else aside from us. But what does growing our business, what does having a boring year of consistent implementation and accountability, what does that look like for you in your business? Because what you want to do is create it so that it's exciting for everybody else. And with us, our ability to grow 40% in 2024, that means we are as a team impacting 40% more people. It means that our charitable contributions can go up 40%. So there's lots of elements that are exciting for our team. Some of our team culture of building a stronger community and empowering entrepreneurs to change the world who also touch the lives of so many people in a positive way. Looking at that as a team, that, that's exciting. So we want to plan it and we want to plan around the idea of what that could mean from an impactful level, how it impacts the lives of those we serve and how it impacts the lives of the individuals who are on our team and ours as well, right? Let's build this by design. Let's build something that's exciting for us. Otherwise, the absolute grind of resiliency. We need to get through the day to day or the month to month or the year to year with all the changes down economies, it's not going to work for us because of all of the challenges unless we're inspired. And this is where Simon Sinek says, people don't do work with you because of what you do. They work with you because of why you do it. And people will jump on board if it's inspiring. Your team will jump on board if it's inspiring to them to be part of something greater than themselves. Okay, so the planet is, let's get those big ideas, let's get those lofty goals that should be achievable. Let's not build something that's not achievable. Let's be realistic and let's be able to essentially say if we build out this path, we would be able to accomplish that. And they should be reasonable targets. Because as you build a team, it needs to be reasonable because we want to hold them accountable. And I'm going to get to that. So step one, plan it. Step two is build it. So break down each segment of your business, understanding the resources that are available, their capacity, and determine if those resources can achieve desired targets. I'll give you an example. So when we look at building it out, we break it down into each department. So in our business, we've got our accounting team that does financial reporting, we've got our bookkeeping team that does the monthly bookkeeping, we've got our tax team that does the restructure work and does high level filing and training. We've got our coaching business that's there that works with people on a monthly basis, giving them the tools and resources. I'll make sure there's a link in here as well to our million dollar year program to help you understand what you need to do to get to that level. So we have all of these individual departments. We also have client service, we have operations, we have human resources. Right. And we have marketing and sales. So we've got a bunch of different departments. Now the idea is to say, okay, if we want to achieve our plan that we established in one, in, in step one, number two, building it out, do we have the available resources internally right now in order to achieve those? Now for us to look at our 40% growth that we don't have the resources in house right now to be able to achieve that. But if we can build out a plan for our human resource team, we can start with where we ended at the end of the year and we gradually have that 5% sort of growth throughout some of the departments that have recurring revenue. We can just tie in our human resource side to it to say, okay, we need to be looking at hiring one person per team. So that. Or one person per month on the bookkeeping team, for example, so that they have the resources they need to continue to deliver for those clients that we're adding on. So now we've been able to build it out. What resources do we have right now? Well, I have around 40 bookkeepers. I know how much they should be able to deliver as an output. We break that down to say, okay, what's 90% of your 40 hour per week on average contribution? Those 90 hour or that 90% of those hours essentially should be client facing. And at a recoverable rate of this, based on their level of expertise, this should be able to generate revenue of X number. We combine the whole pool and we say based on this, do we have the resources to hit our revenue targets? The answer is yes, which currently is the case. We have lots of available capacity in there and we talk about our team being underutilized. Right. Getting to that utilization rate is super important. But we have room to continue to enhance our utilization so that our team gets to the point, point where they we need to add more people. So right now we've got available room for extra utilization. So right now if we continue where we were, we have all the resources we need to get to where we want to get to. By the end we're going to have to add resources of X amount per month, which we've broken that down for our team. We're going to be adding one net new bookkeeper every single month. So if we have someone leave, we add in another one so that it's, it's two, but we're always going to be going net one. All those resources will allow us to hit our end of year target. So build it means break down the individual revenue levels for each department or accountability group and then look at whether or not you have the resources available. And if you don't can where you're starting and where you're ending. You need to build out a plan to make sure that you get there. Okay. So that is building it out. And once you've built it, once you know that you have the available resources one, it will give the team confidence that you've done this sort of analysis. You can explain and show to them why they should be able to achieve those objectives with the resources they have and that it's reasonable because they've already done it in the past. Right. We look back at the success of previous years and we say this is what we've done. If we pull this in here, we add more resources, we should be able to continue to hit this same sort of revenue trajectory or deliverables as we have in the past. So that is build it, right? So plan it. Number one, build it knowing that we have available resources and if we don't, we need to go out and find those resources before we can make the team accountable for delivering those outcomes. Number three is what I'm going to call set it. Now, this is where each individual accountability department. So again, I'll use my tax team here. My tax team is one of the accountability departments. So what I want to do is I want to say, okay, my tax team has a goal of $2 million in revenue based on all the resources they have in house and all their expertise and their ability to take on projects. They have the resources they need internally right now to be able to deliver upon that. Now a few things have to happen. This is non reoccurring revenue. We have to find projects. So one of the three to five characteristics for our tax team is that our accounting team, in working with clients need to identify opportunities where we can help people. They then bring our tax team in. That's one project to help them hit their $2 million every month. We're requiring our accounting team to find one project. We also have a business development team. Their goal is to find multiple tax projects, in fact, two and one more for a referral every month. We're going to be able to drive these as four characteristics or four outcomes to help drive that revenue number. And then obviously the deliverables of one tax project per month or one project per week on average, all of those areas will help that group hit their goal. So this is setting it. We're setting expectations. We're creating the three to five criteria of smart goals. Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. So that we can quantify whether or not our tax team is on track to their goals on a monthly basis. In fact, and I'm going to talk about this in a minute, we want to actually break this down even further and say this is sort of our weekly goal and weekly objective. But we're going to focus on one month on a monthly basis to say each week we have to hit this target to achieve this month's goals. So we set it right. So three to five critical drivers for each outcome you want to achieve. Break it down as far as you can, right? So, and I'll, I'll give you an example of our marketing sales sort of driven objectives. Our sales team or business development team has an objective to bring on 10 new bookkeeping clients a month. Now we know based on statistics that essentially every lead that comes in, we close about 20% of those leads that come in the door. So if I have 10 required leads, amounts or new clients that our sales team has to add for bookkeeping to hit their target, I know that it's about five times that or 20% return. That's about 50 leads that I need at sales calls booked with every single month. So I can break that down even further to say how many new leads do we have? What's our percentage of getting sales calls booked? I need 50 so that I can get 10 bookkeeping clients signed every single month. So we then break that all the way back down to our marketing team to say marketing team, your objective is to get a hundred leads a month, 50 of them get on a call, 10 of them end up working with us by the end of the month. That helps achieve all of our objectives. So bookkeeping side, we need to onboard 10 new clients successfully. That's one of their objectives. Right. So we break this down. So this is part of again setting it. Every single person on the team now knows their accountability metrics related to hitting our monthly targets. Right planet. Let's get those ideas out, let's get the high level ideas, let's build it, make sure that we have the resources, let's set it and build out the criteria related to achieving that and then we send it. So sending it means before the month starts, we're going to send out these objectives to the team. Now we worked with our team on our two day training, two day strategic session to identify what critical drivers would make sense to help achieve these goals. That's important too. The more you can get your internal team to help deliver and design what those five critical drivers are inside your business to hit those. The more buy in they have, the more they believe in it and the more excited they get because they came up with these metrics to make sure that they're achieved. So that's super important as well. So now on a monthly basis, now that we've got those criteria built out, we just sent out that we send out the monthly objectives and we also give them an update on how everything is performing on a monthly basis. So that is part of send it, send it out. So everyone has transparency. You know, you don't have to send out your bottom line income, but really you should be focusing on your revenue and your cost of deliverables to make sure that those are being included so that everyone can track that and see how the company is progressing. They want to know that what they're contributing is helping the organization succeed. So plan it, build it. Set it, send it. Now number five is check it. So check it means every week on Monday, every single department meets Monday morning and goes over whether or not they've hit their objectives. Right? The leader of each accountability group, so accounting, tax, bookkeeping for me, law coaching, sales, marketing, everybody meets on Monday morning to go over whether or not their team hit their objectives. Why or why not? What available resources are they short? Were there complications? How do we get you back on track as soon as possible? And then the leader of that team comes as a group and we have a group accountability. All the leadership in the organization for the person who is responsible for a specific outcome. We go through and we highlight whether or not each individual department is, has hit their goals or not. If we have not, there's some explanation as to why it hasn't happened and how or what their plan is to get back on track in the following week. Because what we do know is that if you're not on track, the best time to solve that problem to get them back on track is right now. If we let that wait for months and months and months, we're never going to be able to recover. We need to change our actions and our outputs right now to get back on track. So that's the check it. And then we do this every single week. And then at the end of the month we're going to make sure that we have an outcome report. This is how the organization did by department. These are all the objectives that we set. Here's all the objectives that were met. These were the ones that were not. Here are the goals for the next month and we're back onto the next month. The last one is number six, which I think is very important and it's going to be the celebrated. So when we get to the end of the month and we're achieving these goals because everyone knows exactly what they need and it's boring because it's predictable and it's designed so that everyone knows what their responsibilities are within the organization. When we go to that and we celebrate these wins or we acknowledge these wins, we need to celebrate it. We need to recognize big contributions from team members from departments. We need to celebrate client wins. If, if one of the areas that we got people to buy into was the celebration of designing and building better lives for those that we serve, we need to celebrate those people who are receiving those better lives and we need to celebrate the wins for individuals on the team. That is the strategy for building a boring year that will be successful. Right? High level planet. We're going to plan out what our objectives are. We build it, make sure we have the resources. We, we set it, we determine what the critical drivers are necessary to hit that and the accountability that's necessary for each individual member on the team. We then send it out and then we check it weekly and then we celebrate it. Guys, this has been an incredible advancement in our organization for building a boring year that's continuing to grow at 40%. And believe me, not everything's going to be boring. We're going to add in some, some spice here and there, but it's always going to be tied into achieving our larger goals and objectives. And yes, some of those may change from time to time, but we shouldn't be changing it within the quarter. We should be maybe changing our plan now and sharing that vision out so that we can replan for it. Make sure we have the resources in order to achieve those goals and continue to build a boring year of accountability and success within your organization. I'm going to make sure that our million dollar year program link is included in this because I, I believe strongly that should you be looking to create this kind of accountability and boring success in your organization, our MDY program has that system set up for you. If you're a member, you get access to this and you get to continue to succeed there. Guys, this has been a huge thrill. I hope and wish for you at the start of a new year that you're able to plan this out, build it, set it up, send it, check it and celebrate your success. And hopefully we get to celebrate that success with you as well. If you like this episode, if this is something that will transform your business, which I know it will be, make sure you give it a like, share it out. Share with your team. Obviously we're on YouTube. We're on any of the podcast hosts like Spotify, Omni that you would listen to. Make sure that you're subscribing to this. Next week we're going to have another episode. It's going to be thrilling. We're going to add some value to you and your business because again, I'm on a mission to empower all business owners to change their lives and the lives of those they serve. We're on a huge mission to change the world together. So let's create some great success. If you have questions, drop them in the comments below. Otherwise, guys, I can't wait to see you next time. Again, Bob Gobro. This has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. Can't wait to see you next time.