Is having strategy really important for my video business? EP #258 - Shorty

G', day guys. It's Dan here and can you believe we are already one quarter of the way through 2022? We've just wrapped up Q1, which means it's time to reflect on the last 90 days and ask yourself the question, did you hit your revenue goal? Did you hit your strategic goals? Are you on track to hit your financial goals for the next 12 months? And do you even know? That's the topic for discussion Today on episode 258 of the how to Scale a Video Podcast.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So I think for a lot of businesses who are perhaps not used to tracking effectively, the idea of Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 might seem like a bit of an alien concept. But it's really important to understand, you know, how your business is doing. And the most effective way to do that is to.

Put, you know, three months at a time into a quarter because not every month is going to be up. And if you track things in quarters, that's how all business tracks things, then you're going to get a good picture of how you performed this quarter against the same quarter last year if you're tracking it. So we think about reviewing your 90 day plan for the year ahead. Maybe you don't have one, maybe you should have one. In fact, you definitely should have one. But what you want to be looking at is did you maintain consistency across January, February, March, and did you track data effectively? Did you achieve your strategic goals and did you achieve, more importantly your revenue goals? Because if you're not tracking this information, which is your profit and loss for January, February and March, and then I want you to go back to January, February and March of last year, 2021, and look at those numbers and see how you've changed. Have you adapted? Have you moved on from those numbers in any way? Are they up or are they down? Because without this kind of level of tracking, you've no way of knowing if you're on target for your revenue generation goals. And you need to identify where your constraints are in your business and where your bottlenecks are. And you need to ask the question, is your marketing actually working? Because if you don't track this kind of thing, it's a bit like driving a car without a dashboard. If you don't have a sat nav, you don't know where you're going. If you don't have a fuel gauge, you don't know how much fuel you've got left in the tank. If you don't have a speedometer, you don't know how fast you're going. And if you're not got a temperature gauge, you don't know how hot the engine's getting. So you need to understand by looking at a dashboard what's going on in your business. And I want to just kind of remind you of this fact that, you know, you can make excuses for why things aren't going well in your business or you can make money, but you cannot do both. You cannot make money and make excuses. So what's really important at this juncture is to assess how you're actually doing in your business. It's something we do regularly inside of the vba. In fact, we do it quarterly on a call. We also have quarterly events in person and we have quarterly check ins with each member in the VBA elite program. So we've got lots of mechanisms to act as a board of directors for our members and hold them accountable at very regular intervals. And so today we were looking at quarterly goals and assessing, you know, what's going on, and we call it analysis and response. So if your numbers were down for the quarter, it's likely to do with an issue in marketing and sales. But on the converse of that, if you're working too much, maybe you have a capacity issue or a systems issue or both. So you need to be clear on which one it is. And if cash flow has been an issue, then there's a good chance you've been burying your head in the sand and not tracking it closely enough. Data is definitely your friend. And we've got some amazing tools inside the vba. We've got a personal budget tracker, we've got a cash flow predictor. These are tools that help our business owners to stay on track and really get clear on what's happening. And as my friend Dave Jennings says, if capacity has been an issue, then really it's likely that the biggest bottleneck within your business is you, the business owner. And so if you've got constraints, they're probably constrained around you. So if you can optimize yourself and get yourself out of the way of the business, then everything else will become optimized. And being able to identify your constraints as a video business owner is very, very critical. It could be an operational issue, it could be a delivery issue, it could be a sales issue, a marketing issue, it could be issues with how you're moving prospects through the funnel, or it just could be not spending enough time with your clients, ensure they're getting what they need and you're following up. And so it's really important that when you create priorities for the next quarter that you have one to three clear strategic priorities that you want to achieve. And if, if you can get those priorities very clear with the team, then everyone will be focusing their energy on one area and then you'll be consistently achieving strategic outcomes and hopefully not getting sucked into operations. The other thing that's really important is tracking data, key data on a weekly basis. You know, how many sales conversations you had, how many sales conversions were had, how many inquiries were made, how many people connected with you on LinkedIn, how many people do you reach out to on LinkedIn? What is the market demanding? You know, and it will help you to predict near future blind spots in your business. And finally, rhythm. And rhythm really is a mindset. Do you have an effective pattern of well organized daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual habits to maintain alignment and keep you accountable? So what's really important is you want to be building a habit around tracking data consistently.

And then optimize your business around marketing, prospecting, sales, clients, delivery and operations. And when you track that data every month and every quarter, you'll start to see where your attention needs to go in the business. And it's just a question of, you know, really building those rhythms. And we have some really interesting tools inside the VBA elite program, which is our mastermind group, where the members actually post their weekly goals on a Monday and then on a Friday, we have a weekly wins thread. So we bookmark the week with intention. And the intention is here are my intentions for the week to achieve strategic outcomes. And at the end of the week, here are the things that we're celebrating at the end of the week. And remember, the strategic plan is the linking, you know, aspect between the current reality, which is where's your business at currently? And the future goal, which is your vision board. And if you'd like to see more about vision boards and head over to my YouTube channel, just Google Dan Lenny on YouTube or f stop Academy and you'll find some great content around creating a vision board.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes. And and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.