Kicking off the 2nd quarter of 2021 - Are you on track? EP #171 - Shorty

G', day, guys. Dan here with this shorty, episode 171 of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. So finally properly moved in here in the new house and office. The last two weeks have been pretty full on. Moving about 40 minutes down the road to our new home, which is exciting, but I've got to tell you, I've had enough of lifting boxes, carrying stuff upstairs, and that was with the help of a removal company who did two loads. So that's. I'm not moving house for at least 10 years again.

So it's great to be in a new space. Our first home that we've owned here in Australia and got us reflecting on, you know, what a journey that's been. We moved home five times in the last six years, so it's really nice to be settling in. And Sam, I know my wife is very pleased to be in one place with a place that we can call home. One of the nice things is being able to screw things into walls, which is, you know, having rented for five years has been something we're not able to do. So, yeah, we're living now down by the beach, which is unbelievable. Although it just did rain for like four days solid. So it was like a being back in a British. A British summer. Little reminder there. But today I got back into work properly and we kick things off with a quarterly planning session for our members of the VBA and, you know, strategic planning, something we do monthly, but every quarter we deep dive into it. So I wanted to share three things with you on today's shortie. I call the three pillars of strategic planning. You know, we're now one quarter of the way through 2021, which means we are, you know, are you. Are you. A question you've got to ask yourself is, are you a quarter of the way towards your goals for the year? You know, if we don't set plans in action, then it's just a responsive kind of approach to business. And a lot of video companies do just respond to inquiries that come in. But if you want to build a sustainable business that can be predictable, then you've got to start setting yourself up with these three steps. One is getting the right priorities in place. The second thing is managing and measuring data to track how you're actually going with those priorities. And the third thing is rhythm. Are you actively implementing and checking in on yourself on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis? So the example I used today on the call was imagine you hired a CEO to take your role and you paid them $150,000 a year. What would you expect that CEO to do day to day in your business? To drive results, to drive profits, to drive the kind of goals you set out to achieve for yourself? And then ask yourself, you're in that position now, why are you doing half the things that you're doing? And that is a really good indicator of.

Understanding parts of the business you probably shouldn't be getting involved in. So let's start with priorities. Do you have a clear set of priorities for your business this year.

That focus on revenue, profit, the type of work you want to do, the type of clients you want to work with? And do you have a clear 1 priority for the next month and 3 clear priorities for the next quarter? Because when you try to just have this kind of mishmash of ideas about what you want to achieve in your business, there's no structure. So what you want to be doing is prioritizing for the year. Set yourself a revenue goal, a profit goal, and then break down those tasks into 12 months and then track them. And one of the big advantages of the VBA is that we have these bookends each week where people post their goals on a Monday and they post their wins on a Friday. And so we execute in a very methodological way. I can't even say the word, a very methodic way to achieve goals. So do you have your personal goals aligned? You have your own priorities aligned? Do you have your business goals and priorities aligned? Because you will make faster progress by focusing your energy and the energy of your team. If you have one on, on one area at a time, then we need to look at data. Do you have in your company sufficient feedback on a daily and weekly basis that provides insights on how you're running and how you're tracking and, and, and are you responding to what your market demands are? I think a lot of video companies simply just are in reactive mode. Hey, you need a video? Yes, we'll make you a video. And that's, that's of course part of, of being a service business. But you can choose the kind of clients you want to work with and choose to work in a sector and become known for being the go to company in that sector. And as a result, you will have much more clarity. You'll become known as an authority and an expert in that market. And so when you're in that position, you want to make sure you're tracking the data in your business to ensure that you are running efficiently. And this will help you to predict the near future with more Accuracy rather than just, you know, fingers crossed, the phone will ring. And then thirdly, rhythms. Does your company do you have an effective pattern of well organized daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual priorities and meetings within your team so that you can maintain alignment and drive a culture of accountability? Accountability to yourself, accountability to your team is what's going to separate you from, you know, from just running a kind of business that's reactive, to running a business that becomes predictable. And so what we do is in the vba, in the mastermind, is we have these planning sessions every month, the first Tuesday of every month, first Monday in the month. If you're in the U.S. we have a meeting for 90 minutes where we look at maintaining routine and rhythm. We review and audit the last 30 days of your business, and then we set the course for the next 30 days. And that helps to really drive a process of clarity around growing your business. And then we want to look to measure. So we measure every single week. You know, if you're spending money on ads, what does that ad spend? If you're reaching out on LinkedIn, what many LinkedIn requests are you getting, how many conversations you're having, what's your web traffic, you know, are you, have you got a get a quote page on your landing page, and so on and so forth with measuring clicks and data to figure out what is working and what is not.

And then for the next, you know, 30 to 60 to 90 days, we work in a quarterly kind of objective, but we work in one month at a time. So the overall goal is for 90 days, but we want to make sure for the next 30 you've got clear goals and that's four weeks roughly of activity. Always want to be focusing on generating revenue and the strategy around the right target clients and executing a plan to target those people and have really an offer that's focused on talking to that target market in a way that they understand and they want to respond to, and then making sure you're communicating with your clients meaningfully and with, with intent and with clarity so they know what it is you're offering and how it is that you're responding. And some of the guys in the call today were just saying, you know, in the last month, they've just had huge success connecting with existing clients and having a conversation with them with a script that we use to ensure that they're getting not only lots of opportunity, but also by using the scripts that we provide, they're not just saying yes to everything. Yes, we can do. The clients are saying, well, look you know, we know you're busy, so when can you fit us in? And that's something that's really, really important as well. So, you know, this whole notion of strategic planning is to create an annual plan at the beginning of the year, every month, check in on the plan, and every quarter, review the quarterly goals. And then you just execute weekly goals with daily execution, but always bringing it back to why always bringing it back to why are you doing what you're doing? And if you don't have a vision for what you want your business to look like, then you're simply going to be just chasing your tail the whole time. And it's so that you have a strategic plan. And one of the core focus areas in the video business accelerator is we review these plans on a monthly basis. And this means that every month for 90 minutes, you're working on your business, not in your business. And we've got exercises for how we derive that. But that means that you can then track, through our strategic planning matrix, you can plan and track every aspect of your business in one set of spreadsheets so you can see where your revenue goals are, where you're tracking, where you need to focus your attention. And so this method allows you to have real clarity on where to spend your time and effort. So we actually take away the anxiety of what you should be working on because it becomes very clear. Anyway, guys, I'll keep it short for this week. I will look forward to seeing you later in the week. In the main episode for the week, you've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner who's hit the ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes, and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share if you feel you've gotten very value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.