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What you’ll learn in this episode:
Having a clear growth strategy is essential to maximize profits and decrease stress and overwhelm.
As important as this is, many small businesses don’t have a plan in place to generate growth, and instead are operating on autopilot with these dramatic ups and downs in workflow that leave their teams wondering what their doing and feeling like they’re not operating at their full potential.
In today’s episode I lay out how to create a 90-day plan that fast tracks your business for growth, and results in more money, more clients, and more fun.
By the end of this episode, you will have what it takes to audit your business, pull together your plan, and start executing immediately so you can jump start your growth and start making more money fast.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
- Identifying your goals so you know what they are and can hit them.
- Creating a powerful plan to hit those goals (and not buying one more asset or training to do it).
- Determining exactly what you need, and the resources necessary, to make it happen.
- Implementing a system so you can track your progress to goal, and identify any gaps that may be standing in the way to victory.
Mentioned in this episode:
Work/Connect with me:
Consults That Convert FREE Training
[0:01] Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the It’s Your Offer podcast. I’m Jess Miller and I’m excited to talk to you today about the topic of fast tracking your business. Over the last couple of episodes, we’ve been on a little kick of talking about growth, partially because we’re in a new quarter in a new year, and with the ongoing discussion of recessions, and just businesses shifting, and the way we’re doing business growth has been on the top of everybody’s mind small businesses solopreneurs. If you’re in business, you’re thinking about how do you grow and stay ahead of the curve as it relates to your business as we move into sort of this new time period, a new frontier? And so we’ve talked a lot about growth related to how do you do this? Well, how do you find those gaps? What are some of the ways to ensure that your business can continue to grow, and not just grow well, but grow really well thrive? And do it quickly?
[0:59] So today, I want to talk about what I’ve been seeing as I’ve been talking to people about growth, and what are some of the things that I’ve seen that have held people back, and one of the biggest things that I have found, even for people who are making money, not just people who are struggling to make money, but even people that are making money is that when they start to fall short, when growth starts to become this elusive thing. Very often it is because they don’t have a plan. If you’re going to create a thriving business, if you’re going to do that in a way that doesn’t burn you out, isn’t this up and down clunky sort of like go, go, go, flare mentality sort of flare up, and there’s all this energy and then crash and burn. You need to have a plan. Spontaneity is amazing. And I personally really love the concept of being spontaneous. But if you in business, do not have a plan that you are tracking with, it will quickly become a situation where people don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know what’s going on. And you’re burning yourself and your team out at a very quick pace.
[2:08] When you have a plan and you have certain objectives and a certain vantage point, that you’re really focused on what it is that you want, guess what happens? You open up this portal for so much freedom, and so much of the ability to become a spontaneous within a very controlled and very focused environment. We think that freedom and spontaneity come from having no framework from having no guardrails. But I’m here to tell you is actually the opposite. If you want more freedom, and more consistent flow in your business, you actually need a plan, you need a framework. And so today, I want to talk to you about what does that look like? How do you fast track your business and create a plan for growth. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you have heard me talk about this concept of working in quarters in these 12-week years, these 90-day years, as a way to really create momentum and consistent, you know, movement in your business consistent growth in your business. And so I want to talk to you today about what do you need to create in your plan that will really lock in these 90 days to really work for you and create money and clients and movement in your business in a way that allows you not just to make money and burn out or not just make money in an OK way but to make money in a way that feels really good. And depending on the environment.
[3:35] And as I mentioned, many people are talking about the possibility of recession and what does that look like? And what does it look like to do business during a recession. This allows you to continue to maintain and grow within an environment like that in a way that feels good. Versus the landscape shifting, you’re not having a concrete plan, you’re not knowing how to pull those levers and leverage different things in your business. And therefore, you start really needing to work twice as hard and burning the candle at both ends, just to maintain where you are while sacrificing your quality of life and your Saturday to do it. And on this podcast on my watch, we’re not going to do that. It just takes a little bit of a framework in order to make sure that you’re moving forward intentionally you know exactly what you want. You can reverse engineer that. And you can make sure you have what it takes and what you need in order to make it happen.
[4:30] So I want to break down, you know, a 90-day plan, getting a plan together for your next 90 days into really four main pieces. This is the world via Jeff Miller and both as I’ve created this in my business, but also what I teach my clients to do. It’s really about simplifying, it’s about simplifying, it’s about getting clear, and it’s about understanding those key pieces that get you what you want. In this arena. It’s not about doing all the things. It’s about doing the right things. It’s about doing the things that light you up, right, your health, yes, energy. And then it’s about taking those things and logistically, putting them together in a way that gets you what you want, while also feeling amazing.
[5:15] Okay, so the first thing I want you to think about when you think about creating a plan that fast tracks your business, is I want you to think about what are your goals? Number one, what are your goals? And if you’re listening to this, I want you to grab a piece of paper, and I want you to pause this podcast, and I want you to write down, what are your goals for the next 90 days. First of all, don’t even have goals, because I’m going to go out on a limb and say for many people that might be listening to this making money or not. Many of you don’t have a plan with goals. Okay, so first thing, you need to just determine what are your goals? What are your priorities for your business over the next 90 days? Okay? So that’s the first thing I want you to do is write down what are your goals. Connected to that, I want you to make sure that at least one of those goals is an economical, which means that it focuses on something that you’re going to create in order to derive revenue, it’s going to focus on a revenue number, it’s going to be tied to money in your business.
[6:25] Now, why is this so important? Because especially in times like a potential recession, or when things get tight, you need to know exactly where your money is coming from cash flow is the lifeblood of your business. And anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong; you cannot survive as a business if you do not have cashflow. So one of the goals that you need to have in your business is a clear goal to determine how you’re going to generate that cash flow, okay? So I want you to write down your goals. And I want you to make sure they are the priority. And I want you to make sure at least one of them is economical. So in my business for this year, we are thinking about launching new offers. We’ve reverse engineered what that revenue stream is going to look like, if we sell a certain number of offers, that includes what those offers would need to be priced. That includes how many people would need to buy them. And it definitely includes how much money we’re going to generate within each work stream of offer that we have out there. Okay, so you need to be clear in your goals. Number one, what they are, that they are a priority.
[7:39] Number two, and number three, is that you have an economic goal in their businesses without economic goals are aiming for nothing, they are making money almost in spite of themselves. And you don’t want to be one of those people. Because the best way to hit your goals, especially revenue goals, is to know what it is and to plan against it. Which brings me to the second piece of fast tracking your business and creating a plan.
[8:01] Number two, is you want to create a plan to get there you need to figure out how exactly you’re going to reach these goals that you just declared in your on this piece of paper. So when I say plan, I what I mean is what are the top three things that you need to do in order to get you to those goals? So what are your action items? So underneath every single piece, every single goal, you need to have these action items you need to essentially flesh out this plan. So if we take a revenue goal, I’m going to make this out up, let’s pretend that you know I’m selling a $10,000 product in 2023, I have a revenue goal of $200,000. That’s their revenue goal that I wrote down for the first piece of this. Now underneath this action piece, it would be okay, I need to sell 20 $10,000 products in order to hit $200,000 as an example. So the first one would be, you know, convert 20 clients to XYZ offer the $10,000 offer would be underneath that $200,000 revenue goal as an example.
[9:10] So you want to break down these goals into actionable items. What is it going to take to hit those goals and I’m a big fan of the rule of three. So come up with three action items underneath each one of your goals. Okay, and in a 90-day plan, I also like to have three main goals, three goals that are a priority. And what do I need to do three things, three action items underneath each one of those goals in order to hit that goal and make it clear. Okay, make it clear, actionable specific.
[9:43] The third piece is then once you have your goals nailed down, you have a sense of what you need to do the tactics and actions that you need to take underneath those. The third piece is what do you need to make it happen? What are the resources that you need in order to make those tactics you know be successful and thus make your goals successful. So what resources do you need? Do you need? You know, systems and software? Do you need to hire people? Do you need to have your calendar set up in a certain way so that you can time blocking, make sure that you have the time to create those to hit those tactics and hit those goals? What do you need in order to be successful with those tactics and hitting those goals? The beauty of the of resourcing this way is it starts to become crystal clear what you need in order to hit those resources and those tactics once you’re clear on them. And this is why it’s so important to have a plan because when you have a plan, and it’s clear, and you know what it takes to execute on that plan, you then know exactly what resources you need in order to hit them, and not the resources that you need for the next 10 years. The resources you need to hit these goals in this way in the next 90 days.
[11:01] Do you see as we’re talking about this, how much easier it becomes to figure out what you’re going to do in the next three months than it does in the next five years? Right? It’s so much more clear and so much easier. And when you get clarity around it even one step further, when you start really breaking it down, then everything is sort of come together that much more easily. And then the last but not least piece of the plan is you need a system to track your progress. I know that tracking is like a dirty word, okay? Whether it’s numbers, or tracking or systems, people like hate those words, it’s like a dirty word. But I’m here to tell you that data is freedom, it is freedom.
[11:44] A friend of mine that I used to work with in corporate America, he used to say to me, he was a researcher. And he said to me, ‘Jess, the data is the data, and you cannot argue with the data.’ And I just love that because you know what it is true. As human beings, we are emotional creatures. And tons of things come into our world into our emotional space, that kind of scramble the signal. But when you’re looking at the data related to what it is that you’re doing, and you are tracking yourself, the progress, and the milestones to the goals, you cannot argue with that.
[12:21] So as an example, just to go back to my example of if you have a revenue goal of 200,000, and you have a product that’s $10,000, and you need 20 people. And let’s pretend that as part of that you are going to reverse engineer, okay, if I need to convert 20 people. And I, you’ve heard me talk about this on the podcast before I use a conversion factor of 10%. Okay, so I need to have calls, if you have an application or call funnel like that, maybe you have to talk to 200 people in order to get 20 people to convert, if you are tracking your metrics, if you’re tracking these milestones. And you look down at that data, and you see that you’ve only talked to 10 people about your offer in the last month. Guess what? If you need to have 200 to convert 20 You know exactly why you haven’t converted 20 people, there is no arguing with it, right? You’re putting in assumptions, and you’re creating constraints in a way that gives you momentum and moves you forward. Without the tracking, you will not know where you are to go. And you quite frankly, could be spending time doing a lot of things that are getting you absolutely nowhere.
[13:30] One of the first conversations I had about this as a young adult, was when I decided I was going to drink more water. I was I was a runner. I was training and I wanted to make sure I was drinking more water. Well, let me tell you, I wasn’t. I wasn’t actually measuring that. I wasn’t tracking it. Well, when I started tracking it. It was like a slap in the face. I couldn’t believe how much water I wasn’t drinking. And I used to tell people when they would tell me that, oh, I drink enough water because I was like, oh yeah. Are you drinking enough water? Like I drink enough water? I’m like, are you tracking it? And we’re like, no, I’m like, let me tell you something. If you don’t feel like you are floating out of this room, and like running to the bathroom 10 times a day you are not drinking enough water, let me tell you. Because once you start to track it, you start to really understand how much water you need to consume. In order to actually be hitting your daily water intake.
[14:20] It is the same as your business. It is the same when you make offers to people it is the same when you reverse engineer the math to figure out how much money in offers you need to sell in order to hit a revenue goal. It is the same if you’re collecting Instagram followers or you want to make more friends on Facebook, or whatever it is. If you’re not tracking it, you don’t know where you are. And if you don’t know where you’re starting or where you are in relation to where you’re growing, you will never get there. Okay, even the GPS in your car will not work unless you know where you are, and you can see the path and track your progress. So tracking is super, super important. Doesn’t need to be complicated. You can put together a very simple spreadsheet, you can literally write it down on a piece of paper, whatever it is, you need to track it.
[15:05] So let’s recap for this fast track your business 90-day plan here is how you create the plan the 90-day plan number one, you figure out what are your goals? And what are your priorities, you need to make sure you’re clear in what it is you want to accomplish, and what those priorities are. And you need to make sure you include at least one of those goals, one of those priorities needs to be economic, especially in the times of economic unrest, like going into a recession or something like that. You want to make sure you have an economic goal. So what are your priorities and goals?
[15:41] I personally like the rule of three, if you can keep it to three, I think that is actually, you know, a pro tip. The second piece is create the plan to get there. What are the tactics that you need underneath those goals in order to hit those goals. Again, I am a fan of like three tactics underneath each goal. If you can get clear, get measurable, know what it’s going to take so that you can get to those goals and not just get to them, but really hit them and exceed them. Third is once you have your goals set up, and you know what the tactics are underneath them, you know exactly how to resource against them. So what resources do you need to make it happen? What do you need to put into place? Right? What do you need systems, you need to set up software, you know, personnel. And equally as important. I didn’t mention this before when we talked about the resources. But I would say under this bucket equally as important is how do you need to show up? And who do you need to be to be the person that is going to hit those tactics and hit those goals? Like what kind of things do you need to put in place, essentially, to resource yourself so that you can be successful in your business so that you can hit your plan you could do with clarity and ease, you are the most important resource in your business. So what do you need to make that happen?
[16:56] That’s another really important piece of it. And often it’s something that we overlook. And then last but not least, how are you going to track it? What are those tools that you’re going to put in place that allow you to be clear on what you need to do to get there. As far as tracking it the milestones where you are at a goal all of those pieces that let you know immediately when you look at them? How close or far away are you from where you want to go? If you’re not tracking, it is not happening, I promise you, right, you have to track it every single time that I have worked with someone who is not tracking either they are grossly overestimating where they are or grossly underestimating it. And you don’t want to be throwing spaghetti at a wall, you want clarity, and you want to be able to track it. And really the details are in the data. There’s so much goodness there. So you definitely want to make sure you’re doing that. Okay, so what are the next steps for here?
[17:51] Well, if you’ve been listening to this podcast and writing this down, your next steps are, I want you to go through each one of these pieces. And I want you to really tighten it up and finalize it. I also want to say this as a caveat. You don’t need to listen to any other podcasts, you don’t need any other training. You don’t need to know anything else. You just need to create a plan. Like just do it. It’s not that hard. It’s really these four things. Don’t overcomplicate it, pick three things, get clear on where you want to go and what it’s gonna take and create the plan.
[18:20] Okay, so if you started doing that, when you’re listening to this podcast, great, I want you to go sit down, take five minutes, and really flush this out. Ask yourself, what do you want? What’s a hell yes? What are those things that are going to make the biggest difference in your business? And go and write them down and create this fast-track business plan? Okay, that’s number one.
[18:40] Number two, I want you to get to work. Okay, it’s not just enough to have an awesome plan. Okay, I know a lot of people who have awesome plans, and you know what they do they collect dust on their shelf, you need to execute. So what are you going to do next to execute on this, put it in your calendar, put it in your planner, whatever it takes, but what is the next step that you’re going to take to take that plan that you have and make it a reality. Okay, that’s the second piece.
[19:04] And then the third piece is I want you to really put these, this, this plan these goals somewhere where you can see them. This is something you need to touch every day you want to be celebrating your progress, you want to be looking at it. You want to be laser focused on where it is you want to go and where you are. So make sure that this is someplace visible, that you are going to refer back to it every single day. If you’re in the car right now, like many people are or you’re running, jogging, whatever it is, I want you to make a note to go back and listen to this podcast again. And I want you to go through these four things. If you want to create consistent money if you want to take the spontaneity also known as a business, the chaos out of your business. You need to have a 90-day plan for growth. You need to make sure you’re laser focused. Okay. This is the way you fast track your business. It is shocking how amazing clarity and intention, and then all the momentum behind that comes into the fold for you and your business. It is so awesome. This is the stuff when you look at it too, that gives you purpose, and it makes you get out of your bed and get excited to come to your desk every morning or to talk to your clients or to create the things in the world. Don’t flounder around without a plan, make it happen.
[20:22] And while you’re at it, we want to hear your wins. So as you are out there crushing it as you’re putting these plans together as you are creating a life that you get to wake up every day and be so excited and like Florida. This gets to be you every day.
[20:35] We want to hear from you. So come and follow us either on Instagram at Jessica Dioguardi Miller, Jessica Miller Coaching on Instagram, or write to support at Jessica Miller Coaching.com and let us know how you are fast tracking your business to success with this 90-day growth plan. We’re cheering you on and it will be the best decision you have made in your business in a really long time. We cannot wait to watch you kill it and hit all your goals out there and go off you know dancing into the sunset. Alright, you got this. Have a great week every
