Episode 203: How To Create Your 2021 Online Business and Lifestyle Plan – April Beach

You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business, mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. You guys. It’s so great to talk to you again. This is Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. So number 203, and I’m April beach, your host here at the show and at the recording of this,

we are turning over into the month of December. I’m so excited. I know you’re with me. Let’s have jazz hands here. We’re ready to put this year behind us. And in the process of doing that, it’s time to plan for 2021. So this episode is a really cool episode. It’s actually a great show. I have recorded this show and released it in December for the last three years in a row.

And today we’re talking all about the steps to plan this next upcoming year for profit and lifestyle freedom. And so this is a great show for those of you guys that are wondering how to plan out your business plan for the upcoming year. But also you share the same values as me, where as you want to make sure you’re setting aside time to be with your family,

to travel to your kid’s soccer, things that they’re going to do to go visit your family reunion at the Lake, whatever it is that you want to do, that you have a vision that you want to do, that you can do for the upcoming year. And the truth of the matter is, is if we don’t plan your business for this in advance,

it’s never going to happen, never, ever, ever going to happen. And regardless of any global pandemic or anything else that comes around or where we are as a world, as the new year rolls around, you have to have a plan or it’s never going to happen. So that’s what we’re talking about on today’s show. And you know, people ask me all the time,

how I’m able to run two companies, have a busy podcast and still be able to travel with my kids. So in 2019, I was away from the house for almost six months for the whole year, traveling and living in different places. And this is how I did it. So even though this year, didn’t roll out the way all of us wanted.

I’m still going to teach you how to plan for it for the years to come. And in this show, this is what you can expect. At the end of this episode, you’re going to know how to lay out your whole entire year for lifestyle freedom. And I’m going to give you the steps, almost the order of operations in which I go through this every single year.

You’re also going to be able to assess what changes you need to make to your current offers. That’s actually going to make that happen. This shows can help you open up your eyes in a very sobering way. I’ll be honest regarding what you’re selling and whether or not what you have in your menu of offers and services and programs is honestly ever going to get you to the lifestyle that you want.

And we’re going to do that by making sure you have the most important math equation. I hate math too. I’ll be honest, but there are some pretty important math equations that most business coaches don’t tell you that I need to make sure that you’re aware of. Because if you don’t know these numbers, if you don’t hit these numbers, you’re never going to have lifestyle freedom.

And so we’re going to dive into all of those things on today’s show. Again, this is Sweetlife podcast episode number 203. So you can cruise over to Sweetlife code.com or find us on all of the podcasts listening apps in all of the show notes will be@sweetlifecode.com. Number two Oh three. And we do have a couple of bonuses for those of you guys that are really interested in making sure you’re nailing your 2021 business and profit plan.

The first thing is join us over in our Sweetlife community. We have just launched our premier members community. It’s $7 a month. Yes, I’m charging $7 a month for it. We really only want to make sure serious business builders are in there. And so we need to charge people something. Otherwise we just have dead weight. I don’t like dead weight in my communities.

So cruise over to Sweetlife community.com and in December, I am going to be teaching a class, a workshop taking you step-by-step through the process of laying everything out that I’m talking about high level on the podcast. So join me on December. The, let me look up the date for you 17th, as long as you joined Sweetlife community.com, cruise over there and pay your little puny $7,

I will be teaching you a live masterclass and taking your questions on top of that as you’re going through this training. And as we’re talking about what you need to do, step-by-step to lay out your year, if you’re struggling whatsoever with your offers, if you can’t hit your offer numbers that you need to hit, then go to signature offer.com. There’s nothing I can give you right now,

but you can join our wait list for our new signature offer masterclass. It’s opening up again in February of 2021. So those are some resources. They’re all there in our show notes. And let’s go ahead and dive into today’s business training.<inaudible> The steps to plan your business year for profit and lifestyle freedom. So starting with the most important thing you have to have is a primary offer that you know,

will generate the revenue that you want. So how do you know that you have to take time to craft an outline, a high value, high impact program service, signature offer, or package. So if you haven’t done that yet, that’s your very, very first step. Again, if you need help with that cruise over to signature offer.com and we’ll connect in my in February.

But the very, very first thing is making sure that you have a primary offer that is high value, high impact that people meet, where they want so much, that they are seeking you out. It’s something that is incredibly needed in your space. And they’re going to pay you to solve this for them because they either don’t want to, or they can’t do it on their own.

They can’t do it without you. So you need to make sure that you have this primary offer and that it’s nailed down. Emitted is awesome. So we can’t plan your year. We can’t plan profit unless we know you have something incredible that you’re selling. And I’m talking about the primary offer that you were selling. So after you know what your primary income source will be,

then I want you to look at the year. I want you to look at a calendar and this is how I do this. This is how I teach it. And I’m telling you what you guys have been doing this now for about seven years, every single year, it’s exponentially better. So step number one is to look at your whole entire calendar.

If you’ve ever seen behind the scenes, I literally have a 12 foot calendar going across my wall. I’m a calendar dork. It’s a dry erase calendar I got from Amazon. And I can look on my wall and whatever calendar you like to use. I want you to block off all the times in this upcoming year that you plan to travel or take off work in the whole entire year.

So if you don’t have a specific plans yet, but you know, you want to travel, make sure you block off those times now. So for example, I have no idea where exactly I am going to travel next summer, but I can tell you what I know I’m going to be on the East coast, at least a dozen times at lacrosse tournaments over the months of June and July.

And I know I’m going to be on the West coast with my other son dancing in the spring. So I’m still blocking off those times in my calendar, even if they’re just general times. And I don’t know exactly when I’m going yet, but generally I know that I’m not going to be in the same work capacity. So after you’ve gone through your calendar and you’ve thought about the times that you want to travel,

even if you don’t have specific plans yet, even if we don’t know what the world is going to look like, I want you to block them off now or you know what you’re never ever going for sure. And step number two is to block off any professional development time after you block off your personal time. So this could be time for working on any projects that you’ve set aside,

like writing that book, or maybe doing a big project, like rebuilding your website that you really can’t dive into because you haven’t blocked off all the busy-ness of work in life. So I want you to go and I want you to think, when do I want to be working on these projects? When does this make sense to me to reach this specific goal?

And I want you to note it on your calendar and if needed, you might need to take off or reduce your client or business service time to develop your new professional skills or write that book or whatever it is. So step one is blocking off travel time, family time, when you just really don’t want to be in the office setting. Number two is setting aside your professional development time and what this does,

is this a side note here? It’s super cool because as you see these conferences coming up, whether they’re online or in person or a mastermind that you want to join being offered in 2021, you know that you will have already made those things important. And so now you can look for those things that actually fit into your calendar. Look for the opportunities,

the mentors you want to work with and the trips that you want to go on professionally or the work that you want to do. So that is why blocking off your professional time. Come second, because again, those are things that they come last, usually for us as business owners and they shouldn’t. And then after you’ve blocked off and secured your personal growth time and your lifestyle time,

now let’s get into how you’re going to pay for it. Right? So looking at your primary offer, I want you to ask yourself, can you still deliver this primary offer during any of your blocked off times as the answer is yes, then there’s really nothing much you need to do. But if the answer is no, then you’ve keenly become aware that you need to sell more of your offer in less time.

So you better be strategic to pull it off, right? So therefore I want you to block off your primary selling period and product or service delivery times for this primary product or offer. I’ll give you a personal example. I always like to try to show you guys behind the scenes. So I know that I’m traveling a lot in June or July. So when I open up my,

your signature offer masterclass, for example, it is never going to be in June or July because I will never ever do it. I’m not going to be here to do that, right? So I know that the times I’ve blocked off on my calendar to invite people, to join me in my signature offer masterclass, I need to make sure that I am hitting our financial end goal benchmarks during those times.

And you need to do the very same thing. So go on block off your primary selling periods. And when you are offering that particular primary offer in order that it’s going to work with the rest of your calendar side note to those of you guys that are in somewhat of a seasonal business, there are certain seasons that align with when people buy. So,

you know, if you’re a realtor, there’s a house buying. If you will kind of season, you know, you’re not going to not plan to sell during when your primary season, it would be like a bathing suit shop closing in the summer. So although we are designing your life because we’re creating a profit plan that gives you lifestyle freedom. We always have to be obviously realistic.

When do people want to buy what you’re offering? And so take that into consideration when you’re going through and planning this. So first we’ve laid out your personal time off second, we lay out your professional time off third. We note on your calendar, your primary selling periods. Again, in order to pull off the lifestyle side of it, we need to sell more in less time.

So now we need to look at those numbers. And this is when the sobering part of the podcast training comes next. You need to crunch the numbers. This is seriously not rocket science. I am terrible at math. How many of your offer do you need to sell in order to hit your financial benchmarks for that particular product in those groups of times,

for the year. And in order to answer that you need to know some basic things about your primary offer. First, first of all, what is it cost? And secondly, what is your capacity? Your capacity is how many people you can serve at once. So what is the cost of your offer and how many people can you actually have based on your business capacity,

serving during those times of the year that you need to sell your primary offer. And then once you’ve gone through it for your primary offer, then you’re going to rinse and repeat the same step for any other offers. You have secondary offers, digital products, quick grab things that might not require so much of your time. So first I want you to do it for your primary sales objective,

your primary signature program service, whatever it is, you do know how much it costs and ask yourself how many people can I serve at a time. And these numbers become really sobering for some businesses. You may realize that with your offer, the way that it is, you can never reach your financial benchmarks. And I’ll talk to you about what to do here in a second.

Give that to you then. And again, I want you to rinse and repeat this for any other offers that you have. And so you’re going to end up with some basic but powerful math and these answers to these math questions or really sobering. So you will learn that you possibly need to alter and change some of your products, business model to serve more people,

to reach your financial benchmarks. And this is what we call scaling. This is what my company does. This is our Ninja skill. We help companies take your assets and scale them with other online business models and offers, and is a side note. If you’re ready to scale, then you know where to come. But if you’re looking at your offers and saying,

wow, I have this really amazing. Let’s say, for example, you are a career coach have this really amazing career coaching, but it’s one-on-one. So we need to, to create other opportunities for you to bring in more streams of income, using your expertise, your intellectual property, your content, and your assets, so that you can still keep your one-on-one clients.

But then we’re adding more revenue through scaling by other offers. So this math is really going to let you, you know, Hey, does my current business model actually support the lifestyle I really, really want? And then here is the next part. This is the part that most business coaches, well not tell you. So we have this number, right?

We have this dollar amount that you need to hit in order to be able to take the other time off, to head to that mastermind, to pay for that mastermind for him and sakes. So the other sobering reality, every single entrepreneur should know and opens up the world of sales. Statistics is the average sales conversion rate is 3%. Now, every industry is totally different.

This is just generally speaking, but this is the baseline number to start with. I’ve done a ton of podcast, by the way, you guys, on how to increase your conversion rates. And as an example, most of our clients close it over 80% with their sales calls. But the reality is is if you’re selling like a digital product or a low touch sales funnel,

let’s just call it 3%. I would rather underestimate and have you underestimate than overestimate. So if we have our dollar amount, right, that you have to hit, right for your primary offers and your secondary offers taking the percentage that 3% are going to convert. This is your next question. You need to ask yourself how many people do you need to reach in order to convert the numbers of products you need to sell to reach your financial benchmarks at 3%.

So if you need to sell $300,000 to sustain the life that you want, that your company, and this is all growth, but $300,000, and let’s say your product or your service is worth 10,000, then you need to sell 30 of them, right? Basic math. But now here’s the reality check. Now ask yourself, 30 sales is 3% of what number in.

This is a number of people you need to reach in your marketing in order to hit that financial benchmark. And the answer to that is a thousand. So if you you’re wrapping up your really plan and you want to mindfully create your marketing strategy around the number of people you need to reach, not the number of people you want to sell. I need to know that you know that number.

So if you need to sell 30 of your primary offer or your combination of offers in order to hit the sales conversion yeah. And that you want, how many people do you need to reach? And as you’re going back to your map, your map, I call it map. Everything’s a map in my head. As you’re going back to your calendar could a map,

right? As you’re going back to your calendar, make sure that you are blocking off your marketing time out on your calendar, that you are enabling for ample warm up time with your audience, ample relationship, building time, grassroots marketing on top of the regular digital marketing strategies so that we can increase your conversion rates to exceed your baseline sales needs and expectations.

So this is all about planning and calendar planning, but it’s important that you know, the difference between how many you want to sell and based on basic sales conversions, how many people you need to reach, because we have to plan your marketing and your strategy, the time in your calendar to make sure that you are nailing it. Well, I hope that makes sense.

Again, if you want me to roll up my sleeves with you in there and talk about these numbers we can do. So, and the workshop that I am teaching in Sweetlife community.com in December, you can join me over there and I’ll give you some extra help with this and really work through, take your personal questions. I’d love to see you in there.

So in summary, wrapping it all up here for you to plan your year for freedom. First, you start with blocking out what you personally professionally need. That’s a very first thing to block out in your calendar. If you don’t do it, you guys it’s never, ever going to happen. Then you reverse engineer the numbers, hand in hand with your calendar to make sure that you have planned the marketing programs and the service delivery systems in conjunction with the sales to reach those numbers.

In most cases, you’ll realize it’s time to scale that you’re going to have to change some of your offers, maybe add some additional revenue streams of income so that you can work less utilizing the assets you already have in order to hit the numbers and reach the lifestyle for you and that you want. So whether you’re heading on a family reunion or are going with your girlfriends to hike the John Muir trail lifestyle freedoms,

the reason why you became an entrepreneur, right? So let’s make sure that you’re planning your year in advance and you’re crunching the numbers. You’re creating the programs and the offers that are actually going to get you there. So I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope this wasn’t the first time that you were aware of the percentage of, of sales conversions and how to plan that into your marketing time and strategy.

But if it is, I’m so glad that you were here, it’s a really sobering non-sexy number that really opens up how important marketing your business is. And so today we talked about knowing how to lay out your whole entire year for lifestyle freedom, making sure you’re laying out your things you need first. Otherwise it never happened. We talked about being able to assess what changes you might need to scale your current offers or change a business model in order to reach your lifestyle goals and to do so.

We need to reach your financial benchmarks. And we talked about knowing this basic math and making sure that you’re looking at your numbers and they’re going to tell you, do I need to change my offer? Do I need to make it more of a higher value? What do I need to do to my offer my program, my service in order to be able to charge that or do I need to scale other things that I already have?

So I hope you guys found this helpful. I love chatting with you. Welcome to December. I’m so glad we’re here. I hope that your holiday season is kicking off and that you’re just having a great time, that you’re super healthy, where you are and spending time with those people. You love again, cruise over to Sweetlife community.com. If you want to join me in there and connect with us further,

and thank you for tuning into this show, please share it with your friends. All the show notes can be found at Sweetlife co Right? I’ll talk to you soon.