The Importance of Planning NOW

Good morning. Happy Monday. I first wanna check in with you today because it's officially the middle of December and I wanna check in with you. So start by letting me know in the chat, like, how are you feeling right now? Good, bad, indifferent. What— tell me how you're feeling. I wanna do a quick check-in. And then today we're gonna talk about planning and I know it feels hard to talk about planning in the midst of this season. But I want to talk about some of the things that I think you should be looking at now before it's too late. And I'll give you some stories of me waiting too long because I'm in the midst of chaos and it ends up biting me bad. I've had a lot of, you know, a lot of mistakes made in my business because I didn't get planned out because I was in the weeds this time of year. So So I want you to not make the same mistakes that I have made in the past. That's what I'm here— I'm, I'm here to, um, hopefully help you on this journey. And I know that right now it's, it's really difficult. Like, we're in the midst of things. We're trying to make our sales goals for the end of the year. We're trying to get through our inventory that we bought specifically for holidays. And some of us are doing really, really well. Some of us are doing really poorly, and some of us are kind of in the middle of it. So wherever you're at right now, just let me know because it's okay to vocalize that, and this is a safe space for you to vocalize that— good, bad, indifferent. Um, I, I'm having a good year. I'm having a good year. Um, it's not the best year that I've had, so I've had to wrap my head around that. Um, and I think that I, I took some time this morning to just kind of pull numbers and really take stock of where I'm at for the year. And there's something about an entrepreneur that we have this drive that we have to go above and beyond over and over and over again. And if we're not going above and beyond, if we're not pushing through all of our numbers from the last year and the last year and the last year, we feel sometimes like a failure. And I don't— I want you to have a perspective about things. So when you look at your goals for the year, I put a lot of different goals. When I plan for next year, I put a lot of different goals, not in a financial way, but, and I'm trying to find why, like, why do I want this to happen? So I look back at my goals as I started 2023, and I actually went back and I looked at my goals from 2022, and I, I had some very specific goals from 2022, and they took me a little longer than 2023 to accomplish because because I had some major life events happen in 2022. But I went back and looked at those goals because not everything is financial. Now, today I hit a huge financial goal, uh, and I'm so proud of it. I'm so proud of it. Um, I don't think it's necessary that I have to say that, but I'm so proud of it. But when I look back at some of my goals for 2022 One of them was to write my book that came out last year. It ended up being a bestseller. And I look back at that and, and I think this was such a hard project for me that that was a huge goal and I accomplished it. And I'm a bestselling author. And that is something that nobody can ever take away from me. And that's something better than the royalties that I get from this book, which are this big, by the way. I don't know how authors make money on their books other than the book deal itself. This was a big deal for me. And so that was one of my goals in 2022. The other goal in 2022 that I was just sitting there really proud of was I wanted to pay off my house. And I didn't get there in 2022, but I did at the beginning of 2023. I paid off my house. Another goal for me in 2022 was to gain 500 subscribers, which I did. And I had a goal this year to gain 1,000 subscribers, which I did. And so the other thing that I wrote down was to take more vacations with my family. And that is something that I accomplished in 2022 and 2023. And that took planning to do. And so that's what I want to chat with you a little bit about this morning. Is that sometimes goals aren't financial. And I want you to really think about that as we go into the new year. Now, I am leaving in 12 days to go to the Bahamas for Christmas, and this is something that I've had on my bucket list for about 3 or 4 years now. And my whole family's going. We're spending Christmas in the Bahamas together. And when I look at this trip coming up, I go, I'm like, oh my gosh, we're leaving in 12 days. I have so much to do for the businesses, for the family, for everything that has to be done. But had I not planned that when I did, there's no way that that would have happened right now. Even if I would have planned it 4 months ago, I would have said, no, I can't go. But I planned it a year ago. I planned it in July of 2023. And because of that, it's going to happen right now. And I think as entrepreneurs, that's one thing that we don't plan We don't put on our big calendar our vacations early enough, and then we get into the weeds and then we don't take them. We think, no, I can't go, I can't afford to go, I, I don't have time to go. This doesn't make sense for me to go. But because I planned that so early, it was paid for early. It's on my schedule. Like, there's no backing out from it now. Like, I'm not too busy now. I have to go. I've already paid for it, right? So here's what I want you to think about. Let me know in the chat of who is guilty of not planning. If you've not planned anything for 2025, just say guilty in the chat. Let me know. Or if you're planned out, just say I'm a planner. So you've got it planned out. But when you don't plan, this is what happens. And I've been through a lot of therapy over the last couple of years to know that I feel most stressed and I feel most overwhelmed and panic when I don't have things planned out. I feel overwhelmed, I feel anxiety, I feel stress. Everything in my life becomes stressful because I don't know what's happening coming up. And I think as I get older, that anxiety heightens. Like I feel more stressed. Like when I was younger, I'm like, yeah, I'm a fly by the seat of my pants kind of gal. I'm— I'll do this when I feel like it. As I get older, that is causing anxiety and stress that I didn't know I was actually causing myself. Okay, so when you can have— be planned out, and I'm not saying you got to go plan the whole 2025 right now, okay? I'm saying let's think about the next 90 days. When you can have that planned out, it gives you peace of mind. It helps you sleep at night. It helps you know what's going on. It creates an action plan for you so you're not just spinning your wheels every day. And it keeps you focused on the goals. Because I know one more thing that we're guilty at as entrepreneurs is that shiny object. Oh, I can do that. Oh, I can do that. Oh, I can do that. I should be doing that. I could be doing that. I want to do that. But no, it doesn't fit in my next 90 days, so I can't do that. We have been overcommitting ourselves. We have been overworking, and we are going to continue to do that if we don't have a plan, create an action from it, and stick to our goals and stay focused on those goals. Because you know what? We can do a lot of things. We can do a lot of things, and our brain wants us to do a lot of things. Oh, that looks fun. I can do that. Oh, I should do that. Oh, I should do that. No, I shouldn't, because it is not going to get me to that goal that I need to be at the first 90 days of next year. We have to stop overcommitting ourselves and overworking ourselves because we're going to get to the burnout stage. Now, back in October, my team had a half-day meeting where we planned out 2025, and I decided to go ahead and get it on the calendar. I'm going to show you my calendar. I started to get it on the calendar at the end of last week so that I could see it, and I could see if it was aligning with my goals. And then what are those goals for 2025 for me? And so I do this in a way, um, I call it strategic planning. And I have a workshop, it's about a 30-minute workshop, if you'd like to go through the workshop and see how I plan this. Um, and also my calendars are part of my daily deals today, they're half off if you want to grab, um a set of calendars. They are not dry erase. Someone asked me that on the chat, but I just use a Sharpie to fill in the dates. They're not dated, and I use Post-it notes so that I can shift things around and I can color code it. But here's what I want to talk about. Yellow vacation. Do you have your big rocks for the first 90 days? This is the first 90 days right here. Do you have your downtime already thought out for your first 90 days? If you don't, I need you to get it on the calendar now or it won't happen. It won't happen. Launches planned out. This little pink one is my launch. I'm going to do my launch. I'm going to go on vacation. Travel planned out. My mastermind, we're going to California. I'm going— where am I going here? That's Stu's Mastermind. Blue, blue is travel. And then I'm going to Funnel Hacking Live. So my travel's on my calendar and you can see they're all a week apart from each other. So that makes me know that I've got to have my crap together by the time I get to the middle of January because I'm gone, back, gone, back, gone. And so I've got to have my stuff figured out. Okay, then you can see this, this pink, pink is launches. So I got a, I got a webinar launch right here. I got a monogram box launch right here. I've got something going on up there. I've got teacher launch right here. I've got coaching week right here. I got something else going on, but we planned out all the launches for the year. So when you do that, I put my vacation on there first because nothing— we're going to get the vacation on there first. It's before anything. I probably need 2 vacations because that's one of my goals. When I sat back and looked at 2022 and 2023 goals, spending more quality time with my family, which AKA vacation time, was important to me. And I only have one for the year, which means I need to build one in. Later on in the year. I just haven't figured out when that will be yet. Okay, so travel, number one, get that on there. Vacation and time off, put it in your calendar, put that space in your calendar. Number two, any business travel, any business travel that you're going to have, whether you go to markets, whether you go, you have a mastermind, whether you attend a Conference, put it on your calendar now. Those are important. Okay, then I do launches. Where are my launches going to line up? And it's important that I get all my travel in there first because I don't want to align launches with travel. So then where are my launches going to line up? And do I have too many in any, any 90-day period? Like, I'm looking at this one right here, and I know they're, I know they're different for, they're for different businesses. This is Teas for Teachers and this What is that? No, that's a box launch. I was like, wait a minute, I'm not doing subscription box. We can— subscription box week is the orange, um, teacher launch, subscription box launch. Coaching week is in October next year. And you know why I did that? I did that because I didn't want to spend my summer launching again. That was a lesson learned that I've learned the last 2 years. I've spent June launching and it takes my whole month and like half my summer is gone with my kids, um, because I spend that month launching. I blocked that white space out in my calendar, which you can see up here. June is this purple one on the end. I do have something going on there, but I don't have the dates in there yet. But I don't want to spend my half my summer launching again, and that's a lesson learned as a business owner. Okay, so travel launches. Then we've got to block in box fulfillment. When are you busy fulfilling? That needs to go on this calendar because that's very important to your business. So we need to put that in there, um, to make sure that we have that covered. So as we work through this, I can turn around and I can see my year at a glance. And that's really important to me. Yes, I use Google Calendars for every day, but when I lay it out like this and I color code it like this, this gives me an opportunity to shift stuff around. And it also gives me an opportunity to say, okay, my first 90 days, January, February, March, what do I need to have planned at this point in my business? And so that knowing I'm going to be gone almost 3 weeks In the first 45 days, I've got to have stuff locked and loaded going into January. So after Christmas, I've got to get focused and get all my content built, all my training built, make sure I've curated all the final, final things for each of those boxes because it's going to come fast and it's going to come quick. And when I look at curation for the rest, like, okay, where am I at? I'm not as planned out as I normally am. So I've got to get this planned out. April, May, June have got to get planned out right now so that I can get manufacturing started before Chinese New Year. So those are the things that you want to think about. Let's talk about mistakes Sarah made. Sarah, let's say 2018 Sarah. Sarah's growing really fast in her business and she is literally monogramming every day. Physically, I'm monogramming every day. I'm packing, I'm dealing with customer service. This. I am probably at the stage where a lot of you are at in 2018. I am so in the weeds just trying to get through every day that I don't take the time to plan out the new year. I put it off and I put it off because November and December in the weeds every single day that I don't really have the bandwidth to think about that. Here comes January, I don't have my stuff ordered, I don't— I never ordered early enough to get samples of things and I make a $10,000 manufacturing mistake because I didn't require a sample because I didn't have time. I don't want you to have to pay for air shipping. I don't want you to have to pay extra because you didn't plan for something. I don't want you to have a $10,000 mistake because you were so in the weeds right now that you weren't thinking about the new year. Like there's not a buffer between Christmas and January. There's not. It comes really fast. So if you think, I'll wait till this is over and then I'll deal with January, you're doing it too late. If you're not planning for January, February, or March right now, you're, you're setting yourself up to have mistakes, to, to have costly mistakes in shipping and pricing. All of those things. So what I want for you right now in the midst of this chaos— and it doesn't have to be today, like Mondays are crazy. We got all the orders from the weekend that we've got to fulfill. But I want you to take some time, go block it into your Google Calendar this week that you're going to sit down and give yourself a couple hours to map out the first quarter of 2025. And let's make ourselves calm. Let's get ourselves focused and let's create those action plans that have to be done in the new year and stop overcommitting yourself to projects and product launches and all these other things. We've been overcommitting ourselves. We don't have time. And if you plan out your first quarter and then someone says, hey, can you do this for my group? Or, hey, can you do this for me? You can say, you know what, I'm booked through March. I don't have any other space in my schedule to do this. And I'm so sorry if you want to do something in the summer, I'm available, but I'm not available in the first part of the year. And so what I want you to think about is getting yourself planned 90 days at a time. I'm not asking you to go plan 2025 right now, But I need you to have the first quarter locked and loaded before we end this month. Okay? We have— we have to stop overcommitting. We have to stop overcommitting because if we don't have it on the schedule, if we don't— if we have it in our mind, we keep saying yes to things and then we burn out. And I get so mad at myself. Like, God, why did you do this? You know you don't have time for this. I'm a people pleaser. I say yes to a lot of things, and then I get mad at myself after. All right, so, and then I want you to think about in that strategic planning session that I teach, um, I really focus on goal setting and in different areas. Goal setting is not all financial, okay? If the only thing I looked at was financial, um, I wouldn't have anything to be excited about. But you know what? I got my book wrote. That's a big deal. You know what? I paid off my house last year. It's a big deal. I went on several vacations last year with my family. That's a big deal. And so I want you to think about those non-financial goals, um, when you're planning out your year. And how can you get things on your calendar that align with your goals and stop just doing stuff to do it? All right, let's go have a great week. Um, we're getting close, like we're getting close to shipping cutoff. Mine is one week from today, so we have one week left. And right now we're kind of in the weeds with orders and gift subscriptions and regular subscriptions. And I told my ladies this morning, I said our number one priority is one-off orders because those could possibly be Christmas gifts. So every morning I want you to come in and fulfill the one-off orders and then do subscriptions. We got holiday gift boxes out last week, so subscriptions come second. Normally they don't because we need those gifts out. Subscription— our December subscriptions are not Christmas focused, and that's why we do that, because I've already seen mail slowing down quite a bit. Mail coming to me, like stuff coming to me, is slowing down. Our stuff is slowing down. So you've got to get your stuff out as quickly as possible right now. Focus on your one-time orders. Get your subscriptions out secondary, um, because those are our normal everyday subscribers and they're not looking at your box as their— as a Christmas gift for someone else. So, um, prioritize the importance of your orders that you've got going on Make sure you're spending an hour a day taking care of customer service. If you don't have someone that's doing that, that's important too. And then we need to remind our customers and we need to remind our subscribers on socials this week that once we hand it to the shipping carrier, we don't have a backend way to look at tracking. The same tracking that you're looking at is the same tracking that I'm looking at, and we're doing our best to get orders out as quickly as possible so they can get on the road. But this is the time of year that people are very stressed. They're overwhelmed. And so just remember that in your responses because you're stressed and overwhelmed too. But they are too about that gift that they ordered for somebody to be the perfect gift. So remind them this week that we're human. Remind them some shots working and packing that we're doing. We're, we're as fast as we can. Also remind them that shipping has slowed down by our carriers. I'm seeing stuff slowing down by 2 to 3 days at this point. So get your orders in quickly and don't make your shipping cutoff too late. It's going to put you in a bad customer service position. Um, make sure that we're communicating and we're transparent with our audiences and remind them that we're human. All right. Okay, let's go have a great week. Let's go finish strong, and I'll see you guys in Launch Your Box tomorrow. We're going to talk about um, mystery boxes and liquidating inventory by the year end. So we're going to talk about that tomorrow in Launch Your Box. So I'll see you guys in the group. Have a great day.