Turning Dreams into Goals: Designing a Business Plan That Works for You

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. The mission of this podcast is simple: to help you navigate the financial and tax aspects of starting, running, and scaling a professional painting business. From the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance sheets, we've got you covered. But before we dive in, a quick word of caution. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information, nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business. We're here to share general knowledge and experiences, not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant. We strongly recommend you seeking individualized advice before making any significant financial decision.

This is Daniel, the founder of Bookkeeping for Painters, and this is Richard.

I am the tax director with Bookkeeping for Painters. How's it going today, Daniel?

It's going well.

That's, that's good. That's good. I think I mentioned it in one of our other podcasts, but my wife and I just got back from vacation. We took a cruise, which we hadn't done in a really long time. It was nice. We got to, you know, go down through the Caribbean and see the islands. But I met a gentleman on the cruise ship. He's a really nice guy. And he was a software engineer who could work from anywhere from his laptop. And he told me that he's spent over 300 days on a cruise ship in, in his lifetime. And that the cruise that we were on was just the first of like 3 weeks that he was going to be living on a cruise boat straight. And I thought that was just like a really interesting dream of his, you know, he's single guy, he likes the vibe, he likes the party. And, you know, he was able to do that because it doesn't happen by accident, right? You have to plan to be able to do something like that. And I thought it might be cool to talk about, like, what your 10-year business plan is. And I say business plan, but it's a business plan that supports your personal plan. You know, if you're— if your dream is to be living on a cruise ship 10 years from now, How do— what do we have to do in your business to get you to that dream? And maybe your dream is not a cruise ship. I get it. Like, they're not for everybody, but there is a dream that you have. There is a place that you would like to be in your life 10 years from now. How do we go from making that a dream to reality?

So this is an excellent topic, and it's a recurring thing that I keep seeing in the biographies that I've been reading this year. I've done like 25 at this point. And it's just something I'm seeing over and over again. The founders that have like a really clear vision of what they want to accomplish, they're able to accomplish it. And that's just a thing that pretty much all of them have is they always have like a very clear idea of what they want to accomplish, and then they're just working to accomplish that thing. And so I think That is something that I've kind of learned is one, having that clear vision, but two, maybe making it bigger than, than what I would initially inclined to have. Because these folks are also having big, big dreams, big visions of what they want to accomplish. So I think this is an excellent topic to dive into.

Awesome. Yeah. You know, being able to kind of put, you know, pen to paper and write down what your goal is, that, that takes it from a dream. Well, it starts to take it from a dream to a goal. And I think that might be the hardest part is just to kind of get started. So as a suggestion, you need to be in the right mental space and the right physical space in order to really understand what you want. So my suggestion and other suggestions too, is find a— find your happy place. Like, that's going to be different for, for all of us. Maybe it's your favorite park, maybe it's out in the woods, maybe it's that spot in your house that you go to relax in and it puts you in the right mindset to think about the future. And once you're in that right mindset, just kind of let your imagination go. You know, don't put limits on yourself. Don't say, Well, I can't have this, or, you know, that's not likely. But think about— just let yourself dream and think about, like, what you would like to see in your life under the ideal scenario. And think about specifics. So, like, how much money is in your bank account in your ideal scenario? Put a number on it. How many bank accounts do you have? How big is your business? What kind of revenue, what kind of profit is that business bringing in each year in your ideal scenario? What is your role in that business? Are you still in the day-to-day daily grind, or have you transitioned out of the business into more of like an advising role? And how many hours a week does that look like? You know, what kind of time off are you able to take? Are you still so valuable that, that you can't take a week off without bad things happening? Or are you taking multiple vacations each year? You know, 5 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, whatever it is that makes you happy. And then think too about like your assets. What kind of investment accounts do you have? What are the balances in those accounts? Do you own rental properties? How many rental properties? Where are they located? How are they doing? This is— this is your chance to just blue sky, dream big. And if you can put pen to paper, write it down, make it very, very clear what your ideal scenario would be 10 years from now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is important. Actually getting super specific and clear, because then you know where exactly you're going. Um, I always find, like, uh, in the previous podcast we talked about this, but like, uh, just did a workshop with, uh, Alex Ramosi's team and kind of identifying specifically, okay, this— these are the 3 things that I need to work on, and I'm going to start with number 1. And work on that constraint in the business. And that just really, uh, once you know the things that you want to accomplish and it's on paper and you can just go out and make it happen.

Yeah. And, and being specific also helps you keep it realistic. Like dream big for sure, but also be, you know, a little bit realistic and don't, don't overdo it too much because we want these things to be attainable. It kind of reminds me of that acronym for setting goals, SMART, or SMART goals. You know, the S stands for specific. So having those numbers, knowing, you know, how many rental properties you're going to have, is your home paid off? You know, do you have an RV? Do you have a fishing boat? Keeping it very specific like that. And then the M in SMART stands for measurable. So we're going to put dollar amounts on these bank accounts. Yeah, we don't want to say I want a big account. No, I want an account with X amount of dollars in it. Attainable. Definitely be aggressive, right? Because we don't want to put limitations on ourselves. But if our goals are not within the realm of reality, you know, they might be a discouragement. So You know, having $1 million in the bank account, that feels attainable. Having, you know, $10 billion and living on a private island, that could take more than 10 years to achieve. And then the R in SMART stands for relevant. So we're thinking business, but how do these goals relate to our personal and family goals? If we have a personal goal of taking more time off, spending more time with our family, are these business goals going to help us achieve that? Or might they end up actually impeding some of our other, you know, personal goals? And then the T in SMART stands for time. So we've set— we've already set a timeline, 10 years, and then we're going to think about like once we get the 10-year plan, we're going to start to work backwards. So to hit this in 10 years, where do I need to be in 5 years? Where do I need to be in 3 years or 1 year? That gives our goals, you know, a certain reality to them because we haven't just set them as dreams, but we've given them a specific amount of time that we want to accomplish them in. So once we, once we have our goals, we need to prepare for this journey, right? You don't, you don't leave on a journey without taking some time to pack your bags. And it is a journey, right? This isn't going to happen overnight. We're going to face roadblocks. We're going to face challenges. We're going to have to be flexible. And sometimes we might need to take a step, one step back to move two steps forward. So, for example, let's say our goal is to own 5 rental real estate properties at the end of 10 years. So we think, okay, I got to buy one property every 2 years so I can hit 5 by the end of 10. But there's a problem. We're buried in debt, high-interest, unproductive debt. We might need to spend the first 2 years getting ourselves out of debt so that we have the cash flow to buy these rental properties. And that's okay, right? We might not get that first rental property in 2— in the first 2 years, but we might be buying 2 or 3 rental properties in years 5 through 10 because we've taken the time to prepare ourselves. We've taken that one step back so we can go two steps forward. Uh, one of my, one of my favorite sayings is from, uh, President Abraham Lincoln. He said, if you give me 6 hours to chop down a tree, I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe. So preparation now so that we can go full throttle in the future is definitely something that we can do. So we've got our plan where we're kind of thinking about what we need to do in the first 5 years, 3 years. What about the first year? This is where we come up with our strategic plan. What needs to be done in the first 12 months? Do we need to get out of debt? Do we need to increase our business revenue? Do we need to increase our savings rate? Let's put down some actionable items for the first 12 months that get us closer to that 10-year goal. Keep that with you, right? Like, like, review it often, make adjustments if necessary. Um, but, but keeping the action items or the steps that we're going to take towards that goal, keeping them right in front of our face and, and being very conscious of them every day is going to help us make progress towards that goal. And then the other thing we might want to talk about is sharing our plan with others. And I probably lost some people right here, like, hey, my goals are private. Like, I don't, I don't want to talk about my goals with other people. You don't have to broadcast it publicly on Facebook or something like that. But what about your board of advisors or board of directors? If you've gotten an LLC and you've got a painting business, You should have a board of advisors or a board of directors who you discuss business with. Share it with them. Let them know what you're planning, what you want to achieve, because this helps with accountability. They help keep you on track. Putting your goals out there in the world requires you to work towards attaining them because you don't want to be embarrassed, right? You don't want to tell people, hey, I've got this great goal to make $1 million, and then they ask you, how's that going? You're like, yeah, I haven't worked towards it at all. But we need that as humans, right? That helps us take our dreams and make them into actionable goals. So the final thing I'll say is, you know, it is a journey. Not everything's going to go the way you plan. You're going to have roadblock— roadblocks. Like, you might not be able to pronounce the word roadblock. You're gonna need to make corrections along the way. Uh, but constant and deliberate action towards a goal is going to get you so much further than trying to wait for the perfect circumstances or, um, you know, keeping your dreams locked up in your head. So it's all about action. It's all about taking those baby steps. And even if you don't quite hit your goal, getting close is going to improve your situation so much more than not taking any action at all. On your journey, you're going to have that roadmap and you're going to have a clear destination in mind, and that is going to really help you, you know, start to live the life that you want to live. You know, we work very hard in our businesses and sometimes we forget Like, what are we doing this for? Why, you know, why are we getting up at 6:00 AM and working 12-hour days? Well, these are the goals that we want to hit. And so, you know, keep them in mind, work towards them, and, you know, good luck to everyone in achieving their version of the American dream.

Well said. And with that, love to hear your thoughts. What Love to hear what you're planning on doing. If you'd like to share, uh, go to Grow Your Painting Business. What 10-year plan do you have in place? What specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals do you have? Love to hear your thoughts. And with that, we'll see you next week.

Thanks for listening, everyone.