Do you have a clear set of priorities for your business this year? Because if you have set your goal and focus your energy on one area at a time you’ll have faster progress!
Episode Transcription
Den Lennie (2s):
G’day guys! Den here with this shorty episode 171 of the How of Scale of video business podcast. So finally properly moved in here in the new house in office at the last two weeks have been pretty full on a moving about 40 minutes down the road to our new home, Which is exciting. But I’ve Got to tell you that I’ve had enough of lifting boxes, carrying stuff upstairs, and that was with the help of a removal company. He did the true Lord. So that’s what I’m not living host for at least 10 years again.
Den Lennie (47s):
So, Oh, it’s great to be in a new space. Our first home that we’ve owned here in Australia and got us reflecting on, you know, what a journey that’s been and moved to home and five times in the last six years. So it’s really nice to be settling and Sam, my wife is a very pleased to be in one place with a place that we can call home at one of the nice things is being able to screw things into walls, which has, you know, having rented for five years has been something we might be able to do that. So yeah, we’re living now down by the beach, which has unbelievable, although it just degrading for like four days solid. So it was like being back in a, a British share, a British summer and a little reminder there.
Den Lennie (1m 29s):
But today I got back into work properly and we kick things off with a quarterly planning session for our members of the VDA. And, you know, as a strategic planning, something we do monthly, but every quarter we deep dive into it. So I want to just share three things with you on today’s Shorty, I call the three pillars of strategic planning and you know, we are now one quarter of the way through at 2021, which means we are, you know, are you, are you a question you got to ask? Is it, what are you a quarter of the way towards your goals for the year? You know, if we don’t set plans and action, then it’s just a responsive kind of approach to business and are a lot of Video companies do just respond to inquiries that come in.
Den Lennie (2m 18s):
But if you want to build a sustainable business, that can be predictable than you’ve got to start setting yourself up with these three steps. One is getting the right priorities in place. The second thing is managing and measuring data to track how you’re actually going with those priorities. And the third thing is rhythm. Are you actively implementing and checking in on yourself on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis? So the example I used today on the call was an imagine you hired a CEO or to take your roll and you paid them $150,000 a year.
Den Lennie (3m 3s):
What would you expect? That’s all to do day to day in your business to drive results, to drive profits, to drive the kind of goals you set out to achieve for yourself and ask yourself, you are in that position now, why are you doing half the things that you were doing? And that is a really good indicator of understanding parts of the business. You probably shouldn’t be getting involved in it. So let’s start with the priorities. Do you have a clear set of priorities for your business this year? I know that that, that focus on revenue or profit, the types of work you want to do, the types of clients you want to work with.
Den Lennie (3m 49s):
And do you have a clear one priority for the next month and three clear priorities for the next quarter? Cause when you try too, like, you know, just have this kind of a mishmash of ideas about what you want to achieve in your business. There’s no structure. So you want to be doing as prioritizing for the year. So get yourself a revenue goal or a prophet goal, and then, and then break down those tasks into 12 months and then track them. And, and one of the big advantages of, of the VBA is that we have these bootcamps each week where people post their goals are on a Monday and they post their wins on a Friday and, and sweet.
Den Lennie (4m 28s):
We execute in a very method methodology methodological way. I can even say the word of mouth, very methodic way to achieve goals. And so do you have your personal goals are aligned. You have your own priorities align. Do you have your business goals and priorities aligned because you will make faster progress by focusing your energy and the energy of your team. If you have one on, on one area at a time, then you need to look at data due. Do you have in your company sufficient feedback on a daily and weekly basis that provides insights on how your running and how your tracking and, and are you responding to what your market demands are?
Den Lennie (5m 15s):
I think a lot of Video companies simply Just are in reactive mode. Hey, you need to Video yet will make you a video. And, and that’s that of course, part of being in the service business, but you can’t choose the kind of clients you want to work with and choose to work in a sector and, and become known for being the go-to company in that sector. And as a result, you will have much more clarity or you will become known as an authority as an expert in that market. And so when you’re in that position, you want to make sure your tracking the data on your business to insure that you are running efficiently, and this will help you to predict the near with more accuracy rather than just, you know, fingers crossed the formal ring.
Den Lennie (6m 4s):
And then thirdly rhythms does your company, do you have an effective pattern of well organized daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual priorities and, and meetings within your team so that you can maintain alignment and drive our culture of accountability. Accountability to yourself, accountability to your team is what’s going on to separate you from, you know, from just running a business that was reactive too, running a business that become a predictable. And so what we do is in, in the VBA, eh, in the mastermind, his, we have these planning sessions every month, the first Tuesday of every month, the first Monday in a month.
Den Lennie (6m 47s):
And if you have in the us, we have a meeting for 90 minutes where we look at maintaining routine and a rhythm we review and audit last 30 days of your business. And when we set the courses for the next 30 days, and that helps to really drive a, a, a process of, of clarity around growing your business. And then we want to look to measure. So we, we, we measure every single week, you know, and if you’re spending money on nots, what does that add spend if your reaching out on LinkedIn, many of our LinkedIn requests, are you getting, how many conversations you having? What’s your webs traffic, you know, AR you have, you’ve got to get a quarter page on your landing page and so on and so forth. We are measuring clicks and, and, and data to figure out what has working and what is not.
Den Lennie (7m 34s):
And an ad for the next, you know, a 30 to 60 to 90 days. We work at the end in a quarterly kind of objective, but we work in one month at a time. So all with the overall goals for 90 days, but we want to make sure for the next 30, you’ve got clear goals and that’s for four weeks, roughly of, of, of activity always got to be focusing on generating revenue and this strategy around the rate, target clients and, and executing a plan too, to target those people and, and have her have really an offer of this focused on, on talking to that target market in a way that they understand it and they want to respond to, and then making sure you’re communicating with your clients meaningfully and with, with intent and with clarity.
Den Lennie (8m 20s):
So they know what it is you’re offering and how it is that your responding and, and some of the goals Nicole today was just seeing, you know, the last month they had just had huge success connected with existing clients and having a conversation with them at ease, with a script that we use to ensure that the, you know, they are getting not only lots of opportunity, but also by using the strips that we provide there, they are not just saying yes to everything we asked. We can do that, but the clients are saying, well, look, you know, we know you’re busy, so Wayne can you first, and, and that’s something that was really, really important as well. So, you know, this whole notion of strategic planning is to, to, to create an annual plan at the beginning of the year, every month, check in on the plan and every quarter review the quarterly goals.
Den Lennie (9m 4s):
And then you just execute weekly goals with daily execution, but always bring it back to why always bring it back to why you are doing what you’re doing. And if you don’t have a vision for what you want your business to look like, then you’re simply going to be just chasing your tail the whole time. And its so important that, that you had a strategic plan. And I, and one of the, the core focus areas in the Video business accelerator is we review these plans on a monthly basis. And this means that every month for 90 minutes you are working on your business, not in your business. And we’ve got exercises four, how we derive That. But that means that you can then track through our strategic planning metrics.
Den Lennie (9m 48s):
You can see, you can plan and track every aspect of your business in one set of spreadsheets. So you can see where your revenue goals are, where you are tracking, where you need to focus your attention. And so this method allows you to have a real clarity on where to spend your time and efforts. So we actually take away the, the, the, the anxiety of what it should be working on it because it becomes very clear and you guys I’ll keep it short for this week. I will look forward to seeing you later in the week and the main absolute for the week, You’ve been listening to the How to Scale of Video business podcast with me, your host Den Lennie. If you’re a Video business owner, it’s hit the ceiling and we benefit from mentorship support and coaching and check out how you can work with me over at denlennie.com.
Den Lennie (10m 33s):
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the shore over on iTunes. I mean, I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode that you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, and please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you may not be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.
