Close The Chapter on Q1

Quick video to kind of check in with you, remind you, man, 2024 has come. We're already pretty much done with the first quarter. As I shoot this video, it's Friday, March 29th. When we come back on Monday, it's going to be April 1st. Q1 is basically over, right? And I know we all get excited at the beginning of the year, January, December. We're like, okay, it's a new year. Let's set new goals. Let's set new targets. Let's kind of plot this out. Let's build a plan. Let's take massive action. And sometimes we hit the ground running and keep the momentum going. Statistically though, the average person loses momentum, loses track after the first 21 days, like within the first couple of weeks. And so I know if you're in this group, you're watching this video, you're the kind of person that sets goals, sets targets, and keeps the momentum going. And so I wanted to shoot this video because I think it's important that You think of the year in quarters. Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. You set new goals, new targets and you keep yourself in a constant state of momentum so that you can hit the big goals and the big targets that you've set for yourself. So, if you happen to be watching live, I see a couple of you guys on here live. Say, "Live on here." Love to kind of interact with you as we're going. A couple things I want to suggest you do at the end of every quarter. And so, this video is all about how to close Q1 and really set yourself up for big success going into Q2. Couple things I want to make sure you do. Number 1, take a minute to review, right? We set a goal for the year. We broke that down to the target. Ideally for Q1, we set a goal— how many clients we'll have, how much recurring revenue we'll have, how many clients do we expect to churn. If you don't take a minute to check in and review— did I hit those targets? Did I meet those benchmarks from retention perspective? Did we do the activities we were expecting to? You know, you're going to lose all the momentum. You're going to lose any, um, any of the power that comes from setting the goals and targets, right? Accountability is a big piece of this puzzle. So if you filled out a sales retention tracking sheet, and I highly suggest you do, and if you don't have one, you go to 7figureagency.com/tracking. You can get the entire worksheet there. But if you did, I want you to pull it up between now and Monday just to review What was the goal? Are we on track or are we off track? Super important. Doesn't have to take you 45 minutes, just a couple of minutes to review that. Secondarily, you need to celebrate, right? As a quarter comes to a close, usually you've worked really hard during the first quarter of the year. You, your sales team, your ops team, if you have those, those key players, you've worked really hard and you've accomplished things. Sometimes you didn't accomplish everything you set out to, like maybe the goal was to get to $50,000 or $100,000 a month of recurring revenue. And you're only at 40. And if you look at it from that lens, it's like, man, this was a terrible quarter. Like, we didn't get everything done. But I assure you, if you worked hard this quarter, you got things done. Maybe you launched your book, maybe you did a couple of webinars, maybe you built your, your database and develop better positioning. Um, maybe you hired a new operations manager, you put a new marketing initiative in place. There's always things that you did get done that did move you forward in your business. And if you don't take a minute to acknowledge that and do something to celebrate it, you're gonna lose momentum. You're gonna lose the power of that particular outcome. So be sure that as you review, you take some time to celebrate. And if you're at the place in your business where you've got a team, it's really important to bring them in on this process where you can say, hey, the goal was this, this is where we wound up. If we hit the goal, high fives all around. Let them know that that happened. If you missed the goal, let them know, hey, you know what, the goal was this, we didn't get there, but these are some things that we did get done and throw some golden bricks. Send that Slack message, send that quick voice memo to the team saying, "Hey, just wanted to let you know, man, amazing job. You know, $40,000 in new MRR this last quarter has been phenomenal," right? Let the team know so they feel your appreciation and they feel engaged in this process. So we want to spend a little bit of time looking back on the quarter, but we also want to spend the time looking forward, right? So this is your opportunity to reset and say, okay, What's the new goal, right? Yes, I know where I wanna be by the end of the year, but this quarter, this next 90 days, what do we wanna get done? What's the new goal? What's the new target? Look at it on the sales retention tracking sheet. Make sure that it makes sense for you. Make sure that it's achievable for you. And most importantly, make sure that it's present, right? There's a great book by Brian Tracy where he says, "Success is goals, all else is commentary." And there's a lot going on in digital marketing right now with AI, with changes in the algorithm, with the, you know, the Facebook access and interface changing constantly. You can get really busy in commentary, but the reality is if you run an agency, your true outcome is I want to grow our monthly recurring revenue. I want to grow our business. And so what I want to make sure that you have front and center is How many clients are we going to land this quarter? How many clients do we expect to churn? Where do we want to expect our revenue, our monthly recurring revenue, to be by the end of this quarter? Have it on the sales retention tracking sheet, but then also make it present. Put it up on a whiteboard, put it up on a, on a digital monitor if you have it. Make it so you have to see it every day and so that you manage against it. And really make sure kind of as you go into this weekend, as you go into Monday and Tuesday, You're completely refocused and the whole team knows here's the goal for the quarter. And build an action plan to bring that into reality. I don't know if you can relate to this. It's probably hard to see on my monitor here. But you know, the day in the life of an agency owner is this: I'm excited. Ah! This is hard. It's working. I messed up. Give up the good for the great. I think I'm going to go bankrupt. Give me a yes in the comments if you can relate. But this is the experience for all of us, right? Whether we're just in the startup phase in our agency, we're trying to get our first handful of clients, or we're at multiple 7 figures, every day brings new obstacles, brings new challenges, and you have to be in a constant state of renewal and refocus and plugged into the energy of other people that are making things happen to keep yourself in momentum, to continue to work through those struggle points and to, to really shift your focus. Um, there's one thing I know to be true. It's that your inner world creates your outer world. What you're focusing on, what you're feeding yourself, how you're programming your mind will impact the actions that you take, the plans that you build, the way that you inspire your team. And so I just want to remind you at the beginning of this quarter you know, as you're going through these ups and downs, through these struggles, that you need to consciously feed your mind what it is that you want more of, right? And what we want more of is we want more clients, we want more confidence in what we're doing, we need to take massive action. And you do that by understanding, like, your roots creates your fruits, and more importantly, what you focus on expands. Right? I think it's really important at the beginning of every single quarter. Ideally at the end— at the beginning of every single month and the beginning of every day. Remember and remind yourself that there's always challenges in our agency, right? There's always challenges. Maybe a couple of big clients cancel and it feels like, "Man, the sky is falling." Maybe a key person in the company, our operations manager, one of our best account managers turns in their their 2 weeks notice, right? And if you focus on that, your energy can spiral up or it can spiral down. You start to focus, "Man, nothing's going right. You know, our delivery is not where it needs to be. We're not getting enough clients." That energy is going to lead to a very negative outcome for the week, for the month, for the quarter and probably for the year versus consciously deciding, "Yes, I know there's challenges. Yes, I know there's things that are going wrong in the business right now. I'm gonna focus on what I want. I'm gonna focus on our goals and targets. I'm gonna focus on what I can control and what I can change. And if you consciously make that decision going into this new quarter, I promise you're gonna have a better outcome, right? As you consciously decide at the beginning of each day that you can focus above the line or below the line will have a big impact in what you accomplish. So I just wanted to, I wanted to kind of use this quarterly check-in to bring that back to the fore, make sure that we're all focusing on what it is that we want to accomplish. And as you do your monthly review, a couple things, if I were to checklist this out for you that I really want to make sure you do. Number 1 is update your sales and retention tracking sheet for the quarter, right? And if you don't have this, go to 7figureagency.com/tracking and set yourself up for the quarter. Like how many clients are we going to land? How many clients are we going to lose? Where are we going to be by the end of the quarter? If you do have it, which I think a lot of you watching this do, Go back and check yourself, right? You put a number of clients in, you put an expected churn in, you need to check in and see like, am I on track or am I off track? The next thing I want you to do is also share some feedback with the team. Like we talked about earlier, bring them on this journey with you. Let them know, hey, here was the goal, here's what we accomplished, here's what we didn't accomplish. And then reverse engineer, right? It's one thing to say I want 7 new clients this month. And I wanna grow our revenue by $14,000 in monthly recurring revenue, right? We put that on a sales retention tracking sheet, but the activity that leads to that is the number of strategy sessions, right? And we need to be shooting for at least 15 to 20+ strategy sessions per month in order to expect that level of outcome. And so I want you to look back and see like, did you have enough strategy sessions? And are you tracking that effectively? What you measure gets done and always improves. And so how many strategy sessions did you actually conduct this quarter? How many meetings did you or your sales team have? And what was the close ratio? And did that number match what the goal was? Typically, if you didn't hit your sales target, it's because you didn't have enough strategy sessions, right? Which meant you didn't do enough marketing to fill the funnel to get that particular outcome. Number 4 is kind of as we look into the new quarter. And ideally, we're going to update for April, May, and June. What's the new goal? How many clients? How much recurring revenue? We want to build our plan, right? We want to work the growth system. The things we're doing daily, the things we're doing monthly, the things that we're doing quarterly to get the number of strategy sessions we need to hit the new sales target that we establish for ourselves. And so, I Big things on the growth system, monthly webinar method. Have you chosen the topic for your webinars for this quarter? If not, I'm going to really encourage you, pick the topics, pick the dates, right? Block that into the schedule and make sure you get at least 3 webinars done that you can promote to your list, that you can promote on social media, that forces you to create some new content that you can then load up to YouTube, load onto your podcast, put onto your blog, syndicate across. And make yourself prolific in the industry. I really believe one monthly webinar on a new topic will help to make you prolific in your industry. Other thing from the Growth System is your monthly podcast interview. Who can you interview this month? Who have you chosen that you're gonna interview 30 to 45 minutes, ask some questions about their business, ask how they've grown, ask how they market themselves, create great content that will resonate with your niche, Make sure you've got at least one, right? You could do a lot more than this, but at least one webinar and at least one podcast interview per month will make you prolific, will create new relationships within the industry. For the quarter, do we have at least one industry event or conference on the horizon, right? What's coming up? Yes, we want to be doing emails. Yes, we want to be running Facebook. Yes, we want to be creating content with our webinars and our podcasts, but something powerful happens when we get live and in person with our, with our industry, with our prospects. And so find one of those industry events or conferences, make sure you've got at least one blocked on the schedule. Ideally, you're gonna be there at least sponsoring. If there's an opportunity to speak as well and further position yourself, and you can do both, even better. But there should be at least one industry conference on the horizon. The other thing I want you to review kind of as you review the quarter, Q1 specifically, make sure that you take some time to take out your profit and loss sheet, right? As the owner in your business, yes, you want to grow the revenue, but your responsibility is to manage the financials and ensure that there is profitability, the money that actually matters at the end of the day. And you do that by pulling up QuickBooks or pulling up Xero, whatever accounting system that you have. Ideally, there's a bookkeeper that is coding your books for you, but you as the owner have to look and see where was the revenue, how much were the expenses, where's the profitability, and make sure that you make adjustments and tweaks on a quarterly basis based on that. So those are the things I want you to do to kind of recap this quarter. Make sure that you've set those new goals. Let's make sure we set those new quarters, new targets, and let's make it an amazing quarter. Let's like hit the ground running on Q2. Let's not let the momentum from the new year stop. Let's set the new goal, set the new target, make it present. Get really clear on the plan and the massive action that we're going to take. Consciously decide where we're going to focus our attention on the things we want, the things we can control. And just make it an amazing Q2. Let me know in the comments what stuck out to you, what inspired you. If you have any questions, you can post them as well. And I can't wait to hear about your wins. For the first quarter and celebrate you as you continue to crush it going into the second quarter. Alright everybody,