5 questions to ask yourself when planning epic growth in the new year

Transcript

If you have plans to create epic growth in your business next year, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to make more money. The first step in creating incredible growth is to plan for it. So today, I’m going to share a framework that you can use for planning your next year in business.

Hello, and welcome to the Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers, and build the business of your dreams so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving, and global impact.

Defining what you want

The first question to ask yourself is what do you want? So often in the planning process, business owners set a sales target and leave it there. For example, “I want to make $50,000 next year.” Or, “I want to make a million dollars next year,” depending on where you’re at. “That’s all I want, I just want the dollars.” Well, firstly, when you set that big sexy sales goal for the year, whether it be $50,000 or a million dollars, also make sure that you set a profit goal and a net profit after tax goal. Because your sales number, while it gives you good grossing credit, it doesn’t actually mean a whole lot. The profit is the money that you get to keep after your bills are paid. So this is the real number you want to be shooting for in 2021.

So how do you work out a profit target for the year? First of all, set your sales target and then work out the costs of running your business, then the incremental costs you will need to invest this year to up-level. You’ll notice that I’ve added in here to adding incremental costs that you need to scale. Now, I’m not saying that you have to spend more money to scale, but it is pretty unlikely that if you keep doing the same thing you’ll always done, then you’ll keep getting the same thing you’ve always got. Makes sense? Last year in business, my sales doubled, but the reason I was able to achieve such rapid growth is due to the investments that I made to support that growth. Most of the money I invested last year was in the space of mindset. I invested in a mastermind, working with a coach, and I bought another money mindset course.

If my belief system hadn’t been aligned to that level of growth, for me, it wouldn’t have been possible. When you are planning the growth you want to achieve, make sure you think about how you need to shift your soul and your business to get there. After you’ve worked out your sales target, then you’ll use your business expenses, then the incremental investments that you need to make to achieve that sales target, then your profit is your sales, less your expenses. And don’t forget to take out tax.

Getting clear on the why, rather than the dollar figure

The next question to ask yourself after you’ve asked, what do you want? I want you to ask, what do you really want? When you were getting clear about what you really want, make sure that it’s also about more than the money. Because trust me, even if you had the money and it was costing you many other things in your life, you probably wouldn’t be happy.

Many of my private coaching clients come to me because, yes, they want to scale, but a lot of the time they have already achieved financial success, but they’re feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and unfulfilled. I also learned this firsthand this year, because as my business scaled to a multi six-figure business, I thought my life would be perfect. But spoiler alert, even though I had this incredible business and had clients aligning up to coach with me and I was serving so many of my dream clients to have incredible transformations every week, I reached burnout point several times this year. Make sure that you set yourself some goals other than financial goals. For me, the next level of growth looks like more freedom of my time.

More moments to spend with my family undistracted. Less pressure on me in terms of contact hours with clients. So what do other business objectives look like for you? Maybe it means more profile. Perhaps it looks like upgrading your branding, look and feel, or maybe you want to attract more amazing, easy to work with clients and less problem clients.

How to actually hit your goals

Map out what those nonfinancial goals look like for you in the new year. A great way to do this is to do a visualization exercise around what your dream business and your dream life looks like, and then work out what the gaps are from where you’re currently at. Once you’re super clear on what you want and what you really want, the next question to ask yourself in the goal setting process is, how are you going to hit those damn goals?

Here is a big fat hint, if you keep doing the same thing that you’ve done before, chances are you aren’t going to get a different outcome. I know I said that before, but trust me, this is an important point. So what are you going to do differently this year to achieve a different outcome than what you got last year?

How to show up in a bigger way in your business

This leads me to question number four, to ask yourself in the planning process, how can you show up in a bigger way in your business next year? Take some time and reflect, how are you currently serving your clients and your potential dream clients? How can you serve your clients to a greater level? How can you help them achieve better results? What about those dream clients you aren’t quite working with yet? How can you show up differently to them? What value, entertainment, content, trainings etc, can you share with them to demonstrate the value that you could deliver in a paid capacity?

When you really reflect on how you can show up better to your audience, it gives you the opportunity to really think about doing things differently in the new year.

Investing in your business and self to achieve breakthroughs

The fifth and final question to ask yourself is, how can you invest in the business and yourself on a personal level to achieve the breakthroughs that you were desiring in the new year? I know I’ve said this many, many times on the podcast before, but I truly believe that huge shifts in your business results happen when huge shifts take place within. We think we can avoid doing the work on ourselves. We think if we just invested in the thing, the Facebook Ads, a social media manager, maybe if we get a heap more followers on Instagram or hire a new team member, everything will turn around.

And maybe that will be the turning point for you, but you can’t pin success on any one thing. Growth always has to start from within. So how can you do that work on you? How do you reprogram those beliefs? It might be some spiritual work you need to do, some mindset work, or maybe it’s doing some work on shifting lifelong beliefs that you have. It could be work that you need to do yourself, or perhaps you hire an expert to support this growth, a psychologist, a mindset expert, or even a spiritual coach. So spend some time thinking about the growth that needs to happen within you first and then the next step is to work at the other practical investments that you might need to make. For example, hiring a team member, renting an office space etc.

And remember that once you’ve figured out what those investments, both the internal ones and the external ones look like, go back to question one, which is what is it that you want, and make sure you update the profit numbers in your financial targets with these new numbers. I know it sounds simplistic, but you’d be amazed how many people just don’t do this goal setting process. I really encourage you to invest the time to step back and strategically think about what it is that you want to create coming into a new year. And then once you’re super clear on what that is, then work out a plan of how to get there. Planning is a foundation on which you build your success.

To sum up today, five questions to ask yourself, number one, what do you want? Number two, what do you really want and why? Number three, how are you going to hit those goals? Number four, how do you need to show up differently in your business to achieve a different outcome? And number five, what investments do you need to make firstly into yourself as a business leader and then also the practical investments that you need to make these changes in your business? Coming into a new year, I want to share with you that anything, truly anything is possible. You get to create your reality. You get to create the business and life of your dreams. Stop playing victim to your failures, stop playing victim to your successes. You are in the driver’s seat. So figure out what you want and then go out and create it.

Sending you so much love, abundance, and success into the new year. And I’ll chat to you again next week. Thanks so much for listening. If you love this episode, please share it with your audience. And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram at @Clare_Wood_Coach. And also make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week, and I look forward to talking to you again next week.