How to plan a successful 2023

 As we head into a new year its time to staet planning. In this interview we discuss some approaches to planning and why so mnay business owners don't get around to it at the start of the year.

Be prepared with some coloured pencils.

Tony skinner 

Hi, and welcome to the podcast channel for podcastmybusiness.com.au And we love having guests back. And today we've got Joanne from https://www.navig8biz.com/ n a v i g 8 biz.com. How are you, Joanne

Joanne 

Thank you, Tony. It's lovely to be back. It's always good to be talking business with people who just enjoy the conversation.

Tony skinner 

It doesn't happen often enough that there's these so called Business podcasts and business channels and businesses and business that and what's the one thing that I'd like to talk about is business?

Joanne 

Interesting, isn't it?

Tony skinner 

We're heading up to that time of the year, where people start thinking, Oh, crap, it's time to act.

Joanne 

Yes. It's interesting how they I guess the procrastinators, it's the people who get caught up in the busyness of being busy. And you and I know you and I've been talking about this for the last week I talk about often, but it's very topical for this time. And you because I know there's an audience of people who do leave this stuff to the last minute.

Joanne 

And in fact, they might not even touch it until early next year, when they've had their rest and all those sorts of things. And then they go, as you say, Oh, crap, what's happening this year? And because I haven't been working on it throughout the year, right?

Tony skinner 

Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's just curious. I'm not to call it the gym syndrome.

Joanne 

Oh, yes. I like that one. I know where you're going, keep going.

Tony skinner 

Every year, and I've been going to the gym or go, I've always gone to the gym pretty much my entire life. You'd never know by looking at me. But I guess if I didn't go, I'd be worse. Or worserere And every December, January, February, people join the gym. It's summer, the gym gets busy. And then by March and the rest of the year, they've gone.

Joanne 

They have interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, they they is Is it because they feel I've hit that goal? Or I believe it's more this, I can't be bothered. It's too hard.

Tony skinner 

Yes. So let's look at it from that perspective about how fit a business is, is by not getting ready and not planning and not actually going out there and wanting to get help to make a difference and do things to make a difference. So how do you help with business to make a difference?

Joanne 

Well, we're speaking up constantly throughout the year, it's about giving him the tools and the resources. I've often, I've often used the analogy, if you're going to build a business, you need good foundations. And if you if you think about if you're going to build a house, you know, the builders gonna put some foundations into the soil, and they'll go to a certain depth depending on how high that the building is, whether it's one, two stories, or we go to multi storey multi level, high rise apartments, you know, with confidence and build is going to go right down.

Joanne 

So I often ask business owners, why don't you do that too? Why don't you build foundations down to the ground, and I like to use the visual of that. Here's me, you're boring all the way through. We're in Australia here, boring all the way through to China, and a bulb pops out the other end, and you slam a nut on that and you tighten that damn thing up. And you just create really good foundations for your business.

Joanne 

Because how on earth can you start same concept if you don't have the right foundations? How on earth are you expecting to grow and scale your business? So it's out of the risk area of being small, and being at risk of failure of business failure, and I just struggle to understand why business owners don't do that. So there's something that we talk about constantly. I know, you know, that's where you're coming from as well.

Joanne 

And for me, you know, we, we often hear about people I've written my goals down, I've got the vision board there, it's all looking great and pretty well, I know the statistics suggest that unless you write it down, you're a you're, you're at risk of 42% of you will fail. But if you write it down, and then don't do anything, you've just wasted your time. So you need to take action and actually implement what you're going to be doing.

Joanne 

And in fact, you know, I'm a huge advocate that this is something you should do it monthly, if not weekly, if not daily, but we have an audience of people out there who do leave it to the last minute they leave it to

Joanne 

All right, well, I'm going to take some time over Christmas. I'm going to start thinking about it let me get ready to do this planning. And they spend potentially a period of time after the Christmas and boxing day break and before they jump back into business and they go right now I want to write down some stuff. What am I going to do?

Joanne 

As I said I would love to We're doing it every year, every month, every week, so that you've got this ritual and rhythm of looking at your business and understanding where you need to take it. And so that's something that's really deep in my heart for business owners.

Tony skinner 

And I'm curious if after the Christmas in the break, and all of that, whether or not they actually even bother. I know getting to do it.

Joanne 

Exactly. And so as I said, they've probably got the lovely vision board done on the wall, that looks terrific. They've got a plan, they can go, Hey, I've got a plan. It looks great. And then they sit back and wait, and then they go, why am I not seeing anything different? Because I didn't take action?

Tony skinner 

Yeah, well, you do have to take action. And I mean, I know that people think at this time of the year, and you and I, we know, you should be doing an all year round and doing this all the time. But we've both been putting out content pointing out to people, now is the time to step up. Yeah, now's the time to get out there and take action and do it. So what sort of action do you think business owners should be taking now?

Joanne 

Well, well, first, they should be thinking, you know, looking at risk retrospectively what happened in the year before. Now, there's going to be stuff that you got off that went to custody that didn't really quite work out as I plan, there's going to be other areas that you go, wow, that was great. This is awesome.

Joanne 

We've had, you know, had some great impact. And so you know, you should always look at what you've done in the past. A, what didn't work well. So how do we do it differently? What did work? Well, could could we escalate that? Could we improve it? Could we we have that when applied to that product or that event? Or that? You know, whatever you're doing within your business? How can you replicate that across the entire business?

Joanne 

So that's, that's super important. I think there's there's one element of business ownership that a lot of business owners don't do well and thoroughly is that they don't actually look at the profitability of each and every product or service that they often I've, I've created tools that navigate community, and I've used them for years over various businesses, in that every single product has a profitability tool, measure being done on it.

Joanne 

And you know, so there's going to be, and when I talk about profitability, there might be a small widget that your service that you offer, that has a high margin of profit, great, because you're going to sell loads of them. There might be another product that you have, okay, well, I'm happy with a slightly less margin, it's a high price product, I'm going to sell less of them. But the impact of selling a profitable, high priced product at say 10 15% profit profit, product profitability as against like 55% on a small and selling loads of them. You're creating nice diversity in your business.

Joanne 

And you can then look for me if you don't know the profitability of your product or service or offer, how can you quote? How can you lodge tenders? How can you do any of these things that you're trying to get your business out there? Like the worst scenario is you answer a tender, and at the end of it, you go, oh, where's the profit, but I sold 1000 of them, you haven't done the foundation piece to look at it.

Joanne 

So you know, people haven't done that previously, or they haven't done it recently. Because there's we know, logistics cost of product, so much has gone up, you know, fuel all those things. If you're going to do anything that's going to have an impact on your business going forward. It is let's revisit the pricing of your product. There, there's going to be some people going I've got to put my price up maybe well, there's lots of things you can do to improve the profitability.

Joanne 

But you know what, if your customers are comfortable and happy with the value and the service and the journey, and the experience that you offer, I think you're quite in a good position to put the price up, everybody's aware of it, you can do it in a respectful way to announce it to put make some sort of announcement through the audience. But if anything, let's go back to the basics, just check that your product is profitable. Because you do not want to enter 2023 and a price point that's going to set you up for failure.

Tony skinner 

Yeah, so when it comes to training, either yourself or your staff, what what areas do you think companies should be focusing on at this time of the year and starting into the new year?

Joanne 

Look, I think there's a lot of a lot of people out there a lot of businesses out there that they're tired physically, emotionally stressed, all that sort of stuff. If you can, if you can deliver your service and product and offering with enthusiasm with big and the way I do that, but we all have days. We go, oh, crikey, that was just a bit of it didn't quite work out for me.

Joanne 

And we spoke about having things on the wall, you know, I have I have a gratitude journal, I do all those things, I need to tap into why I do what I'm why I'm doing what I'm doing. And that is for the owner, and that is for the staff. Why are we doing what we're doing, we've got, you know what, let's look at these these organizations that are in the hospitality and retail sector at the moment, they are stupid busy, which is a great problem to have.

Joanne 

And they're going to be feeling pretty tired and exhausted by the end of it. So you know, the employer of those of those businesses need to help to keep that staff those staff enthusiasm on a high point, because you people remember how they feel when they enter your business, whether that's virtually or whether that's, you know, in a store, or a retail, we are very quick to share the things that didn't go well. But we will always remember the things that will make us feel great and important. And so you know, what are the things that you can do like I ordered some planners the other day from from a competitor, because I wanted to see what they were like, the box came in a beautiful package was well presented, and I went,

Joanne 

Wow, this is an experience. And it made me feel good. So employers, they should be thinking now, how can I help my staff and my team feel good. So when they feel good, the experience is going to be great for their customers? Because when your customers feel great, they're going to come back, regardless of price.

Tony skinner 

Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, talking about raising prices just offer more. So add a new service, it costs you 10% more to offer. And you charge 20%. So the 10% differences in for you.

Joanne 

Yeah, look like I've I've used the analogy before, like there's a there's a coffee shop not far from here that I pop into when I've got a whip up to Brisbane for a meeting. And there's an app and I can order the coffee. And the experience is I drive in I woke up here's my app, there's your coffee, Joanne and it's precisely what I needed. zimmel week latte brilliant. Hello, Joanne, that experience is awesome. I noticed after looking after at it for a while the price had gone up about 50 cents each time. I had no, no clue. I was because you know, they remembered who I was service was spot on. And they knew because I'd ordered on the app, I'm probably going to whip on it. And I want to get out of that and get on the road. So the service that they gave me an experience that I enjoyed, made me keep coming back, I was not concerned about a 5050 cent increase on the cost of a cup of coffee because I know everything's gone up. You know?

Tony skinner 

So you were talking before about writing things down? So what should businesses be writing down now? In order to prepare?

Joanne 

Yeah, do you know, I think that the easiest and simplest thing they can do right this minute is literally go grab a blank piece of paper. And they should be thinking about what's important to them as a business owner, for their business, for their family, for their customers, and for their staff. What's the things? What's the importance? What's, what's the goals these people might have that you can help and serve?

Joanne 

Because too many business owners spend time on? Oh, I want to get this many sales, I want to hit this much turnover? What if you looked at it differently and looked at, I want to help my customers feel this way. Because I've done this and I want to be able to have my family experience, holiday or lifestyle or whatever. When you when you visualize it to that level, and then you work backwards. And then you can start working out well what are the things I need to do each and every day to help me to achieve those things.

Joanne 

So the easiest way to start is with a blank piece of paper for me, I'm going to also suggest you go get a whole bunch of colored pencils, because that's fun, that gets the mind going. Because when you're stuck, just go pick up another color, and another color and another color and write it down. But don't forget to think about all the community in your business and that's you, your business, your partner, your kids, your parents, your customers, your suppliers, everybody, what are the goals? What are the things? What are the achievements, what are the feelings you want these people to feel?

Joanne 

And then that will help you when you really get into goal setting mode and strategic planning, which is what we do and provide people with the resources to do you can then know when you open the doors again in January 23 whatever date that is, you know that the three things I need to do today that speak to all those goals if I do those every day You're gonna chip away at those big goals, and you're gonna feel a great sense of achievement.

Tony skinner 

Yeah, that's completely true. Yeah, I'm not really thinking about doing some more training, I got different businesses. And you're right, make sure that they're profitable. And I've got my own long term established business. And I've been in it for seven years, I think I'm going to do a course. Start from the beginning. Yeah. And about search engine optimization, because it's going to be things that have changed many things that I've forgotten. Yes. So I thought, I'm gonna pay for that. And redo all of that. Yes. And okay, got time over the break. And whatever thought that's a good time to just get the brain cells thinking, so don't be afraid, or thinking I know it all. Because guess what you may not.

Joanne 

And I've done courses throughout the year as well about customer journey about branding. And I felt that I was pretty, pretty on top of that stuff. But there was some great learnings in there that I completely, really shifted my mindset about how to approach those things. So I've been in business for 30 odd years, and learned a lot, but I still don't know everything, because this stuff just keeps changing. Right?

Tony skinner 

It does. And, um, another thing is, again, for the audience's that, don't be afraid to reach out and get help. I mean, I, we both provide done for you type services to help you that claim you get I do the content side of things you do a lot of training side of and training and planning side of things. Yeah. But you have staff and people helping you If staff and people helping me. Don't be afraid.

Joanne 

Put your hand up. Yeah.

Tony skinner 

Yeah. All right. Cool. All right. Anything else you wanted to add?

Joanne 

Well, the only other thing I wanted to add is for those people who do want to really get stuck into the business planning aspect of their business.

Joanne 

For the month of December, I've got my business planning program, which is fully self paced. It's $197. And just quietly, because of the settings I've got on it, when you've got access to it, you've got lifetime access to that baby. So you can do it every month, every quarter every year.

Joanne 

But what I'm going to offer for those people who sign up is no gift for these babies, which are 100 Page planners, they're worth 130 bucks. And so they'll get four sent to them, they're just going to pay for the post. And I'll post them too. And that way when you're done your plan, you can then use the planner, which is your daily planner to implement throughout the next year. Perfect. That'll cost you all up to $117 because I've just worked 20 bucks postage on it. Just to cover like getting that that out. Everything else is online for the videos and all the tools you need. So no excuse now, right?

Tony skinner 

Absolutely no excuse at all. Right. Okay. And what was the website again?

Joanne 

https://www.navig8biz.com/

Tony skinner 

There we go. Nice and simple. Thanks. Thanks, Joeanne.

#businessplan