Episode 207: Plan Your 2021 Business Strategy In These 5 Key Areas – with 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 guys on welcome to episode number 207 here on the sweet life entrepreneur podcast. I’m April beach, founder of the suite life company and host here at the Sweetlife podcast. So many exciting things are happening,

but first of all, happy new year to you. Thanks for tuning in and hanging out with me here. I appreciate you so much, you know, four years of podcasting and delivering business trainings and strategies that you guys can take to the bank. And we just appreciate so much you sharing the show, continuing to hit subscribe on your downloads on your app,

and just really being a part of what has shaped the growth of this show. And we’ll continue to do that as we move into 2021 and beyond if you are new and we haven’t hung out before, again, I’m April. It’s super great to meet you. My DMS are always open. I love connecting with new listeners. You can connect with me directly and join one of our new chat rooms over on clubhouse.

Very excited to be there. A lot of really awesome things we have planned for you in 2021 that are going to be happening on clubhouse. If you have the new clubhouse social media app, follow me at April beach, otherwise connect with me over on Instagram at April beach life. And of course at Sweetlife podcast and just shoot me a DM. Let me know if your first time tuning into the show and definitely start a conversation,

chat with you and hear more about your business. So on today’s episode, like I said, this is number 207. We’re talking about how to plan and focus your 2021 business strategy. And this show goes hand in hand with our fifth annual entrepreneur commitment week commitment week is coming January 11th. It’s five days of taking action, doing some live streams together real quick in the morning.

It only takes about 12 minutes a day, but we’re going to be diving in together in live streams on how to take action on the topics, even in more depth than we can cover on today’s show. So if you want to join commitment week, if you want to download the planner, it is so much fun. It is like a reset challenge,

almost like a detox power up challenge for your business. And again, it’s only five days. You can join us free and download the action planner by visiting Sweetlife co.com click on the podcast. And this is episode number 207. All of the show notes are found in there. And of course I’ll be going live in our chat rooms, both on clubhouse and LinkedIn live to talk about commitment week as well.

I would love to have you pipe in and share your expertise with the community and really just how you’re resetting your business and focusing it for the year. So certainly a lot of opportunities for you to reset your own business and pour into others and help them do the same when you join our live stream. So thanks so much for tuning in and hanging out with me.

I can’t wait to talk to you on today’s show. This is what you can expect. At the end of this episode, you are going to start getting hyper-focused and the five key areas that you need to have a plan of action and reverse engineer it for your business for 2021. You’re also going to have a clearer picture of what areas definitely might need more work.

So we’re going to go through them. And if you weren’t aware already, it’s really going to help you figure out what stands out like a sore thumb. That’s going to be a bottleneck that if you don’t have this area fixed, then it’s going to affect everything else. And I’m going to give you with the downloadable action planner. That is the free bonus with this episode,

the ability to reverse engineer your goals, and actually ask you strategic questions. If you have, maybe you’re too close to some of the core areas and you can’t really step away and create your own action plan. Well, that’s what I’m here for. So you are going to have a proven plan to reverse engineer your goals. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode.<inaudible> Anyways.

So it’s a new year, so let’s get focused on the key areas for 2021 that will make or break your business. And big goals are super awesome, but action happens when we chunk goals into bite pieces. And then by doing this, it allows you to get implementation in place clarity and take focused action and where really, really counts. And so today we are talking about the five core areas to make a plan for in 2021,

we’re talking high level year, but I am going to give you some tips and strategies in order to actually implement this and really see clearer. And so every year when we do this commitment, we usually pick the five core areas that are going to be trending, or the biggest problem for businesses that we have seen over the past year. This year, it’s really important to pay attention to the order of the areas we’re focusing on because each one affects the other.

So the five core areas that we are focusing on are number one, your overall business strategy and plan. Number two, your offer strategy in plan, number three, your business model, number four, your marketing and number five, your money. So let’s go ahead and dive into each one. And I’m just going to jam on each one for a minute here,

have your wheels spinning and then help you get a plan to reverse engineer each. So the very first step to do with any type of plan in each one of these areas is to actually reverse engineer the goals that you would like to see. So let’s just first talk about the steps to reverse engender goals. The first one is to actually, this is really piece of paper and a pen.

It’s all in this action planner I have here for you, but I want to talk you through it as well. If you’re in the car, cooking dinner, making holiday cookies or whatever it is. So the first thing is to actually write today’s date on the top line on a piece of paper. And then at the very bottom, that piece of paper,

you want to write down the date in which you want to accomplish a specific focus. Again, we’re talking about five different focus areas on today’s show. So at the top, you write down today’s date on the bottom line on this paper, you say, okay, I want this goal or this plan in action or place by this date. And then what you do is you literally reverse engineer it starting from the bottom.

You say, okay, in order to accomplish this, this what needs to happen first. And then that becomes a line above the bottom line. And then in order for that, to what happened, what has to happen next? And that becomes a line. And so you’re actually moving along the paper from the bottom to the, once you identify the steps that need to be happen in sequential order,

and you might need to move some around. You’re not going to nail it the first time as your brain is processing through. But once you identify the steps and you can go ahead and tag dates to those steps and there you have your implementation plan for each one of the core areas we’re talking about. So the very first one let’s go and dive into together.

The first core area that you need to set a strategic plan for in 2021 is your overall business plan. So answer these questions for yourself. What is your biggest business goal this year? What do you want that to look like? What is this overall business model going to look like? And your business model is again, your suite of offers, how you work with people,

how you serve people, how you make money. So want you to actually lay out exactly what do I want to be launching selling? What is the collage? If you will of offers that my company is going to be delivering in 2021, and we’re going to step into each one of those specifically here. When we talk about step number two, but this is just step number one,

without creating the full entire plan. You’re not going to have clarity on how you need to reverse engineer to get there. So for example, if you plan to monetize your speaking career by fall of 2021, and you also want to perhaps work with clients one-on-one, and maybe you want to launch an online course, that is your sweet spot offers. So the first area that you should be setting a plan for and focusing in 2021 is that big overall business model,

that big overall business picture, without it, nothing else matters. Even if you’re sitting here thinking to yourself, Oh my gosh, this is like, not really sure. You know, so pie in the sky guy, you’re never going to get there. Even if you are only a fraction of the way, unless you map out where there is. So step number one,

focus area, number one, which also happens be day. Number one of our live streams commitment week, starting in January 11th. I want you to really think about what is my overall business model. What is my overall business plan? What are my suite of offers? What do I want that to look like? And just from one business owner to another,

and frankly, one mother to another parent, if you guys have kids, if you’re listening, how you serve clients and your business model will affect your life. So, as you’re thinking about this also strategically, think about what you want your lifestyle to look like in 2021, what you want your week to week to look like in 2021, how much time you want to just spending with clients and really what that overall picture looks like.

All right, core focus area. And number two, you should be focusing on is your signature offer or program I geek out on signature offers. It’s one of my zone of genius areas is teaching you guys how to extract all of your ideas and expertise and assets out of your beautiful, fabulous mind and business and turning it into a signature offer. So we talk about signature offers a lot here on this show.

Your signature offer can be a course. It can be a high level coaching package. It can be a hybrid business model, which most signature offers we are working with businesses to develop. Now our custom hybrid business models. It could be a mastermind. It could be a membership community. There are so many different types of signature offers and what I want you to know,

and I’m not going to go out a whole signature for a tangent on this show. We are going to jam about it on the live streams and commitment week though. But I want you to know that a signature offer doesn’t necessarily mean you just slap a ribbon on it and say, well, this is our signature offer. A signature offer is actually a way that you highlight your expertise,

your methodology, and it’s one that you can count on to get people amazing, insane, predictable transformational results. Your signature offers basically what you want to be known for. And so your company might have, like we talked about in step number one, a suite of offers, meaning a variety of different ways that you serve clients, different services or digital products and even in-person services.

But what is the one thing that you want to be known for in what does that look like as far as creating that offer? So step number two is really figuring out what your primary 2021 signature offer will be. And what are you committing to launch or build or sell in the first 90 to 120, 120 days of 2021. And the next thing that you want to make sure of is will this signature offer hit your profit goal that you have for the year?

And we’re going to talk about money here in just a minute, but right now in step number two, I want you to focus in on really, what is that signature offer? What do you want to be known for? And how does that align with your overall suite of offers? All right. Okay. Let’s keep going again. Shoot me a DM anytime or join our live rooms on clubhouse or on LinkedIn.

If you have any questions about this, please make sure you join me in commitment week. Because again, it’s so much fun and I’m in there live answering your questions about these, helping you make this plan. So step number three is your actual business model. So your business model is now we’re taking that signature offer and we’re, we’re honing it in even more.

If it is a high-end coaching package, how often are you going to be in a meeting with people? How frequently do you actually deliver those meetings? What does it look like? Are you doing them a zoom? Are they in person? Do you have a local business? Which hopefully things will really start opening up here in 2021 or is it all online?

So how does that really look like when you work with clients and when you deliver them your services? So step number three is making these strategic plan to nail your business model for your signature offer in 2021. And then here’s some challenge questions I have for you. First of all, does your business model give you the life you want in 2021 will be that also be the life you want possibly beyond 2021.

And then when do you plan to actually watch this type of business model? Again, it’s examples of business models are courses, membership, communities, one-on-one coaching, one-on-one service done for you services done with you services, you know, really high end consulting, strategies, groups, masterminds, business model, his business model, his business model. It basically means you pick what works for you and what is an of course,

going to give your clients really incredible results. So for the third step, you need to create a strategic plan to nail your business model. It could be just sitting down in one day and figuring out what you want that to look great. If that’s how fast it is, get it done. All right, step number four is actually going through now and creating your influencer marketing plan.

And this is really important. This is not implementing the marketing. This is focusing in on creating what this plan will look like for you. Now, the difference between just a regular marketing plan and what we’re focusing on this year and influencer marketing plan, first of all, it doesn’t mean you need to have hundreds of thousands of followers. The coolest people I know on Instagram have like 800 followers.

So don’t let that fool you. That is such a lie. And most people actually buy their followers. So influencer does not mean a massive amount of people. It means there are groups of people that trust you for your advice, for your expertise and your opinion, your leadership influences them. And the reason why it’s important to create an influencer marketing plan is because those are the people that you really want.

You don’t want the masses following your business. You want people that know like, and trust you. And that value what you have to say, and that are willing to take the time to connect with you, learn about your business and share your company with others. And so in order to do that, creating an influencer marketing plan really starts with building relationships.

So the first thing in this step, number four, or what will be day, number four in our live commitment we challenge we’re doing is to decide what level of influence you want and need to have in your particular niche to achieve your business vision. So how much influence do you need to have? How frequently do you need to connect with people? You know,

what does that really look like to develop those authentic relationships that you want people to have an associate with your brand and creating the influencer marketing strategy around making that happen? So day four, step number four is building your influencer marketing strategy. And then of course, the last day we are talking about money. We always want to talk about money. Entrepreneurs tend to,

we tend to be creatives and we love creating things and not actually being the manager type person and crunching the numbers. And it’s really important that you pay yourself. It’s really important that you’re on top of your money when you’re bringing in money, that you’re rewarding yourself for your hard work and your expertise in your investing, reinvesting in the right places of your company,

whether it’s teams or personal development, whatever that may look like for you, it’s time to get your money ducks in a row in 2021, if they haven’t been before. So things that you should be honing in on when you’re focusing on day five or step five of this focus and reset plan is how much money do you want your business to make in 2021?

How much do you want to make? And then how much do you want to pay yourself in 2021? And the next step is by reverse engineering. This, when do you want to reach this financial goal by, and technically speaking, you need to answer the money question in hand. That’s why we do it all together in this resetting and refocusing plan,

because you need to answer this question in hand with looking at your signature offers, which was the second step that we did. And looking at your overall plan. If you want to pay yourself $200,000, or let’s just say $100,000, if you’re a new business starting out, which is really the bottom line, that’s the first benchmark we really want to get you to in your new business,

ask yourself these questions. Do my offers, dictate that I am going to deliver those great of results that are going to be able to pay myself for this. So do my offers equal the value that I want to charge for them does my business model enable me to serve enough people to scale my company, to reach these financial benchmarks does my overall business plan.

So my suite of offers come together cumulatively to reach these financial benchmarks. If you get to the money day and you realize that what you’re offering, the combination of offers and the suite of offers, can’t get you to that goal. You need to go back and fix your offers. You need to go back and change your business plan. I will say,

just as a caution, many people get into a business model because you think you can scale and sell it to a lot of people. First, we need to also focus on building that audience for you. So there’s quite a few strategic things that I would love to dive into more and jam on and support you on again in our live streams and commitment week.

This is what we do together. You are welcome to join us for free. Just cruise over to the show notes. For this episode, you can go to sweet life podcast.com forward slash two zero seven in order to get the show notes and joint commitment week for free, or just really simply follow me on clubhouse at April beach, or follow me on LinkedIn.

If we aren’t already connected yet, and we’ll be posting the downloads and doing live streams on all of these. All right. So here is a quick recap today. We talked about resetting and refocusing your business for 2021. We talked about the five core areas that you should have a strategic plan for. Number one is your overall business plan. Number two is your offer or your signature offering.

Three is your business model four is your influencer marketing, and five is your money. And you can find all of the resources for this to implement it by again, visiting Sweetlife podcasts.com forward slash two zero seven. All of the resources we have for you also can be found@sweetlifeco.com. And thank you so much for tuning in with me. We nailed it. Now let’s go ahead and get you off to 2021.

I can’t wait to work with you. I can’t wait to continue to support you. We have some amazing guests coming on the show tomorrow. Next week, we have Eric partaker coming on the show and talk about resetting and refocusing and becoming like insanely productive. This guy is going to blow your socks off the things that he talks about on this show. I frankly have never heard another expert say before.

So definitely some revolutionary stuff that will rock your world. Make sure you’re tuning into episode two Oh eight with us next week. And again, shoot me a DM. Anytime if you have any questions at April beach life on Instagram or at April beach on clubhouse, and I will look forward to Happy new year. Bye bye guys.