How to Grow Your Business Next Year on a Single Sheet of Paper - with Laura Posey

Hey, folks, it's Kimberly Hobscheid with Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel. I have one of my favorite enthusiastic people here today. It's Laura Posey. She has an amazing plan on how to organize our lives. It's basically how to plan your entire year on a single sheet of paper. Welcome, Laura.

Thanks for having me today. I'm all getting caffeinated. Even though it's the afternoon, I'm ready to go.

I like it. I've got my tea here. We're ready to go. Um, so tell me a little bit about, like, how you came up with this and how you became the expert on having your entire year planned out on one sheet of paper.

Yeah, so I, you know, like a lot of things. I created it because I needed it. I jumped off the corporate bandwagon and started a sales training company. I'm like, I know how to sell. Of course I'm going to be successful. Right, yeah, that. Exactly. So a couple years in, I had gone through all my savings, was racking up the credit cards, had a business partner I wanted to murder every single day, and there done that.

Yeah.

And I just hit the wall. And so I ran away from home. I went to Sedona, Arizona, and I was hiking one day and almost died and realized that, yeah, I almost fell off the side of the mountain. And I realized the reason that I did that was because I decided to just go for a hike with, like, you know, no map, no water, no nothing. And I realized, like, that's how I was running my business. I was just getting up every day and doing stuff, and I had no plan for where I was going or how I was going to get there. I didn't have a map. And so I went back to my hotel and I just had this light bulb moment. I just sat down and was like, okay, here's what I'm going to do and here's all the changes I'm going to make. And I put it all on a single sheet of paper and I went home and made all the changes and turned everything around, Bought out the business partner, took care of all the junk in my life, got rid of a bad relationship, all of it.

And everything turned around. The business has been just humming along. I just looked at some stats and yeah, we're at about a million and a half. And like, I just didn't even dream that back when I was slogging away with a big, you know, we had overhead and all kinds of stuff. And so I was still doing the sales training and I had some clients that Said, you know, what are you doing? Like, everything's going great. And I said, well, let me show you this thing that I'm doing, right? I don't know. Let me just show you how this works.

And.

And it started working for them. And I thought, well, this is so much more fun than doing the sales training. So I've just never looked back. This is all I do now. Like, this is the only lane I swim in.

Well, I love this. And especially at the end of the year, because we're just about to start 2021, and 2020 was good for some people, not good for others. You know, it was what it was. We're going to put that one in the drawer, pretend it never existed for some people, and then forward at 2021, we're going to be like, okay, well, what do I need to do? Like, is it rest and recovery? Is it, like, re. Energize? Is it engage with a sales team? What. Like, what's going to happen? And I love the idea that we can go back and look at what we've done in the past and then schedule what we're planning to do in 2021 and not have to get into, like, Inglourious baster detail, but actually go in and have a map and so that we can go back and refer to it as 2021 unfolds and make sure we're checking all the right boxes. Is that right?

That's exactly right. And, you know, 2020 was such a great proving ground year. You know, I was doing the planning when we had the financial meltdown in 2008, and it worked through that. And then it was really cool this last year watching our clients, because we have a. We have a. Some mantra around here that says, change your tactics, not your goals. And so when March hit and everything blew up for people.

They dived in and they said, oh, okay, wait a minute. Well, my goals are staying right? There's an obstacle in the road. I still want to get where I'm going, but there's a. I got to take a detour. So what does that look like? And the plan has flexibility built into it so that they were able to move some stuff around and do some things in a different order and still hit their goals. I mean, it's just so exciting to hear people going, man, I had a great 2020. Right? Other people in my industry are out of business, and I had a great year.

And that's partially because they mapped it all out ahead of time. They knew what they needed to check they knew what the path was. Like you described in the very beginning. I love that analogy. Like, I had no map, I had no water. I had no plan. And you have a map and water and a. Then it's going to go more smoothly than if you don't. And so you've had a lot of success with this, with a lot of different clients. Do you want to share maybe a couple of successes?

Yeah, you know, like, I think I want to share some 20, 20 successes. Okay, great. You know, we've got. I've got, you know, I've got people growing 100% and 400% and, you know, all that. Cool. You know, that's exciting. Right? But I think, like, what happened this past year. So I was thinking about one of my clients, Virginia, who's just this fantastic woman. She's an Italian woman living in the UK, and 100% of her business was in Italy. So she was getting on planes and flying to Italy. That was her business. Okay. And in March, that stopped. No more flying to Italy. And so she was like, well, wait a minute, I'm in sustainability, and I have to be on site and talking to people about their buildings and, like, what am I going to do? As it's, you know, change your tactics, not your goals. Okay. What are the options? And so she reworked her plan and figured out different ways of working with her clients. Actually, what she ended up doing was creating some mastermind groups, and the clients love it. They are having so much more fun.

Oh, my gosh.

Her income has gone way up. She's a single mom of two kids, so failure is not an option. Right, right, right. So her income is way more than it was when she was doing the consulting. And she's like, I'm not getting on airplanes anymore. I don't want to miss my children. Right. Because they're young. They're like five and seven. She's like, when I'm allowed to travel again. Nope, we're still doing the masterminds. I love it. So she's just completely pivoted everything. But it was because she knew where she wanted to go. Right. It's like having that destination locked into your gps. You know, it's like you're in. You're in Google Maps and you tell it where you want to go, and it doesn't matter what kind of hell breaks loose on your normal route. It'll get you there. Yeah.

And if you have to get off dinner or whatever, you're going to be able to get right back on and go from there. To your destination anyway. Wow.

Exactly. Yeah.

So what are some examples of the things that people have as destinations? Is it a dollar amount? Is it a number of clients? Is it like what kinds of things are people choosing?

Yeah, so it's really good question because one of the things that we do is we start with where do you want to be personally? Like what kind of life do you want to live? Because your business is the vehicle that's going to get you to your dream life. Right. Like the destination is, you know, how do you want your life to be? How much money do you want to have? How much do you really want to be working? What are all the things that you want to do that are going to cost money? Right. Because let's face it, all the fun stuff does he.

It does, doesn't it?

Right. And so it's just. Yeah, right. And so knowing what that is, that helps you figure out what your business destination has to be. Right. You know, how big does your business have to be? How does it have to be structured? You know, so like for me personally, one of the things that was a challenge for me when I started my business was I wanted location freedom. I wanted to be able to travel a lot.

Yeah.

And I wanted people to, I wanted clients to pay me for that. Well, dummy me built a on site sales training business locally. Right. With a training center where people had to come to me. I was like, how stupid can you get?

No, just put in a suit every day and go to an office. I'm like, that's why I left corporate and I just recreated it. Right. But we do what we know.

I've done that. And they're done that myself.

Yep. Yeah. And so we have clients choosing all sorts of things. Right. Some people, it's about recovering financially. Right. So some of their destinations are paying off all of their debt, filling up their retirement accounts, putting money aside for their kids education. For some people it's more about time freedom. Right. And it's more about, oh, I want, I don't want to work as hard. I want to be able to go places and do stuff and play golf on Wednesday when I feel like it and have that time freedom and not be trading time for money and dollars for hours. And then for some people it's the location freedom. Right. They want to be able to work from anywhere. They want to be a digital nomad. And some people are like, I want all three of those. Well, great.

Once we know what it is, we got to have an exact address. Right. Like you can go into Google Maps and put in Los Angeles and it will take you to the city, but you might not end up in the neighborhood you want to be in.

That's the analogy. I like it.

You got to have the exact address. You got to have the street number and is it north, south, east or west and what's the street name? And is it a street or a drive or a circle or a crescent or whatever? Right. Like you got to dial it in. And so that's what we do with folks.

I love it. And for me, this particular year I decided that I was going to go full time virtual. And now I travel and I work from virtually everywhere and it's absolutely been astoundingly better than I thought it was going to be. That's awesome. However, this particular 2020, I was one of the people who. My business flourished in 2020, which was good, but it also meant that now I'm working like a zillion hours a week.

Right.

And I'm over it.

I'm over it. Over it.

2021, I actually put on my, like, on my to do like I'm going to work less hours, I'm going to work these particular hours and I'm not going to be immediately available to everyone and I'm going to be able to have some. I have a great team, so. But I'm going to offload more stuff to my team. But that's, that's my goal for 2021. But I don't have a roadmap to get there. So like I know that that's what I want, but I don't have it. I don't have it all on one sheet of paper and I don't have a roadmap at all. So you actually are giving a webinar that's a free webinar on how to.

Do this, doing it, doing a free training on it. Yeah, we're going to talk about that. Yeah, we're going to talk about the seven mistakes that people make.

Okay.

When they're trying to grow their business and that sort of missing pieces. And then I'm going to give them a really simple three step process for building that roadmap.

Awesome. And this is on a couple of times. December 10th is the first one. Is that right?

Yeah, I'm actually doing six live sessions because we've had so many people who are like desperate to get this information. So we're doing six live sessions. We just put a registration page together with all the dates and times on it. So people can just go like that one Works for me. And then it'll drop it right in your calendar. Awesome. And the people. And I gotta tell you, I can tell you one little secret. The people that show up live.

And this is a complete and total bribe. But the people that show up live, I have snuck in fifteen hundred dollars worth of extras.

Okay.

All right.

So you're not going to get it if you watch the replay. There's six options to watch the live. Definitely go in. I mean, Laura is the bomb dot com. She is all that in a bag. You guys have to check her out. I've known her for about two and a half years. She's amazing. And what she does and what the lives that she's changed have been absolutely fantastic. She's worked with my mentor and a bunch of other that I know very well. And she really is. She over delivers. I won't even say under promises because what you're promising is a lot like. And she always over delivers. She's absolutely fantastic. So I highly recommend that you take her up on this. So choose one of the six different options. The first one I think is on December 10th and then it goes through. But they're all before the end of the year so that you'll be able to go onto this webinar, figure out how to build this out so. So that you're going to have an Amazing new 2021 and you're going to be set up for success. So for those of you who are procrastinators, don't procrastinate. Get on right now. And when's the last.

I'm going to fix the procrastination too.

Oh, are you?

She's really good at that.

I'm not going to lie.

So check that out. And when's the last one? When's the absolute last one that they could.

Absolute last one is on December. December 22nd.

Oh, my gosh. All right, so if you want to get your shit together before we are.

Going right up to the holidays, all.

Right, you gotta be able to pull this off. All right, so go ahead and click the link that is in this chat below and you can, you can sign up for one of the six different webinars that she's got. They're also on our events page, they're also on our meetups, so definitely check them out. We would love to have you join us. I'm going to be, I think, on the first one on December 10th, and I'm very excited about it. We're all going to work on this together. And it's going to be part of entrepreneurs rocket field going forward because we're going to refer back to it a bunch of times in the coming year. All right, Laura, I'm really stoked about this. I'm super excited you came on live. Before we let you go, any final words for our crew? Anything that you would give as advice?

Yeah, just even when you think planning is a waste of time because the world is in so much chaos and you can't predict what's going to happen and what's going to open up and not open up in 2021, that's actually the time you need to have a plan. You just need to have a plan that has flexibility built into it so that it can adapt. So it is like that gps. You put the destination in and it's going to get you there and doesn't matter what obstacle comes up, just going to reroute but you're going to get where you're going.

I like it. I like it a lot. A lot. It's a really good analogy. I can definitely visualize that. And as I take a detour, as there are obstacles or as one road is closed to like Covid closed a couple of roads for people last year, as those roads close, Laura's plan is able to get you rerouted and going to the right direction to be able to get to your final destination regardless of the road closures along the way. Very exciting stuff.

I'm excited. I can't wait to do it.

Me too.

I can't wait. I'm like, is it December 10th? Yeah.

Awesome.

So if you're going to join us, I want you to stick a note in the link below that you signed up. I'm super excited for it and I will join you there. If you. If you're coming on the 10th, I may sign up for another one because it's always good to hear this stuff a second time. And Laura's a lot of fun. She's just a lot of fun to work with.

She's a lot going to be goofy and it's super laid back and corporate around here.

If I join on the 10th and you guys haven't joined until the 22nd, I'm not telling you what the bonuses are. I'm not going to. You guys have to sign up and find them yourself. And you can only do it if you do it live. So it's fifteen hundred dollars where the bonuses.

Oh, well, actually, no, no, no, no. Hang on a sec. Okay. There's $2,100 bonuses, but I Snuck a little.

Let's just call it a coupon code.

Wow. All right.

But here's the thing. It's only for the people that show up live because the coupon code has a timer on it.

Okay? All right.

It blows up after the live session, and it changes for every single session.

Okay?

So if you.

If you.

We're getting fancy around here. Exactly.

So if you blow up, then make sure that you didn't sign up for the very last one. Make sure you sign up for the first one, and then sign up under a different email address for the second one. That'd be.

Maybe she's got it tied to the IP address. I don't know. I don't know. She's pretty slick. She's pretty intelligent.

The code. The code just dies to a timer.

Okay.

And there's a timer for each session, and it. Boom.

All right. Perfect. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I can't bring you any more value than that. That was absolutely fantastic. We're going to teach you exactly what you need in order to get your business to the destination that you want it by the end of 2021. What more could you ask for for Christmas or the holidays? Whatever holiday you celebrate. That is a really good end of the year gift. To be able to know where you're going in 2021 and have a roadmap to get there that is flexible and changeable along the way. Laura, thanks so much for being here. I really, really appreciate your time.

Thanks for having me, Kimberly. I love doing this stuff. I never think to do them for myself, but I'll go on anybody's Facebook Live. It's so much fun.

Absolutely. All right, my friends, we'll talk to you soon.

Cheers. Cheers.