Expand Your Fempire Podcast #142 Transcript

Regularly Shine The Spotlight on Your Business Strategy & Soar

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00] Caterina Rando: This is Caterina Rando, welcoming you back for another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. I am blissing to be with you today because we are doing something and discussing something that I am hoping you will make standard operating procedure for you in your business. We are going to look at quarterly planning. This podcast is taking super tips and discussions from my quarterly planning that I do with my VIP clients in my VIP client community.

[00:01:10] One of the things I know I noticed a couple of years ago was that we could all be better at the strategy side of business. Some of that is blocking time on your calendar for sales. Guess what? Using your calendar is part of strategy. Looking at when you pick a date to do something on your calendar, you have enough time to get all the, to do’s done that lead up to that.

[00:01:42] Having regular time to meet with your team -that’s strategy. Guess what? Something I put on my calendar recently, why have I not been doing it the last twenty-five years? I don’t know -is I put time on my calendar after my meetings, with my team to do all the, to-do’s that my team needs me to do. Now, sometimes I only take a few minutes for that, but sometimes I need a whole hour very important that you are being strategic in your business.

[00:02:12] That’s what we’re going to cover in this podcast. These are segments from my Q2 strategic planning session that I did with my VIP clients that I am blissing to be sharing with you.

[00:02:30] And I am inviting you to embrace these ideas to support you to be more strategic in your business. Because that will have you be more productive, more effective, we’ll get you more revenue, and most importantly, you will be more proactive versus reactive in your business. And that will have you bliss bing, bing.

[00:02:57] Caterina Rando: The reason why Q2 planning has been initiated this year is because what I’ve seen in my many years of working with amazing women like you, is that we are often so much in action that we don’t stop to plan or we don’t stop to plan enough. And remember that, of your five pillars, –speaking, selling, serving, strategy and self-care– if you were to look at those five pillars, would you say that your planning can use more attention? Your strategy?

[00:03:35] Just like I want you to move towards mastery with your speaking, move towards mastery with your selling. Of course, you’re getting more masterful. You’re serving every day. And of course, you know I want you to get masterful at self-care and I want you to get masterful at strategy too.

[00:03:53] And so we’re talking today about the next quarter, I want you, though, to get more masterful at your planning on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

[00:04:03] Successful people have an AM routine and a PM routine. Now, when we use the word routine, what that means is that they have a series of habits that work for them, that they are hopefully, and you are hopefully doing on a daily basis.

[00:04:27] Now, I’m asking you to think about two things. With your AM routine, there’s your AM self-care routine, but there’s also your AM arriving in the office routine. And when I’m really on the ball, I turn on the lights, I turn on the hot water. Before I even open my computer, I go lay on my Beamer for 10 minutes, I stretch for 10 minutes.

[00:04:58] Now, I said when I’m really on the ball, okay. That means that I’ve arrived in the office, or in this case my dining room these days, early enough to lay down and reflect for 10 minutes on my Beamer –my Beamer is my microcirculation device, some of you know about– and then to stretch for 10 minutes. That sets me up for success.

[00:05:21] Now, that’s my AM routine before I even open my computer. But once I open my computer, rather than check Facebook, rather than check email, I’m immediately going to my circle backs or my five reach outs.

[00:05:36] And this is all based on a book I read, or listened to called Atomic Habits, which I encourage you to put on your reading list. Because what he says is if you’re not getting your goals, it’s not that you’re lacking, it’s that you don’t have the right habits.

[00:05:50] The reason why I am blissing about this is because when we rinse and repeat the same things at the same time every day, do you know what happens? We get more and more productive at it, we become more unconsciously competent at it, and that’s going to get us better results.

[00:06:09] I want to ask you, what’s your AM routine and your PM routine like? And what’s your routine right when you get in the office? And is there room to improve what you may be even doing unconsciously? And let’s get conscious about some things that support you.

[00:06:29] The other thing I do when I’m really on the ball is I review my goals first thing in the morning. What I’m looking for from all of you though, and myself too, is five reach-outs right away, or five circle backs. And by the way, those five reach-outs and those five circle backs were determined the afternoon before, before I left the office, I said “who do I want to circle back with tomorrow? Who do I want to reach out tomorrow?”

[00:06:55] So when I’m half awake, getting to my office, trying to get the party started, I don’t have to think about who am I reaching out to, it’s right there. And by the way, it’s not on my to-do list. Where is it? On my calendar! At the exact time that I want to be doing it. So what I’m looking for from all of you is for you to move more towards mastery with your planning. And part of that is upgrading your daily habits.

[00:07:24] Now, one of the things I told you, in the afternoon before, I’m determining when I’m going to be doing the reach-outs and who I’m going to be reaching out to. Well, guess what that is? At the end of the day, you take five to 15 minutes for thinking and planning for the next day. Are you doing that consistently? And if not, this is your end-of-the-day habit stacking that we want to get you to embrace.

[00:07:52] Because by the way, when you say to yourself, “Oh, I see I have a speech tomorrow.” Guess what? My subconscious already starts to work on that speech. Or “My article is due tomorrow.” Or, “Hey, I’m talking to Sheila tomorrow.” your subconscious already gets busy on it for you because you gave it advanced notice. This is significant. So then when you get to that speech, when you sit down to write that article, it happens with more ease because your subconscious already been working on it. Okay? This is very exciting.

[00:08:25] So I want you to ask yourself right now. What can you do? What’s one thing you could do to improve your am routine, your self-care routine, or your once you get in the office routine? What’s one thing you can do to support your PM self-care routine or your PM end-of-the-day routine that you know is going to have you bliss more in your business and be more productive?

[00:08:48] We can make these changes consistently like if we could just get little bit like 1% better every day, that’s like 362% better by the end of the year. And if we can just get a little bit more productive, we can thrive more and bliss more in our business.

[00:09:05] Before we dive into your actual planning, I want to give you a few potential blind spots that might be interfering with your massive revenue and success.

[00:09:20] Not knowing your numbers, not knowing your numbers constantly. That means don’t be at the end of Q1 looking to see what you earned in Q1. I would be very depresso if any of you told me that, because why? We cannot earn more money last month, would you agree?

[00:09:42] So I’m hoping that you are looking at your numbers every single day. Did I say every single day? Yes. I said every single day. And that, you know two numbers every day. You know what has been sold this month to date and you know what has come in the door this month to date, and that you have a process for keeping on track of any money that was supposed to come in, that didn’t come in. Your assistant is giving you a weekly report on that, or you’re looking yourself on a weekly basis. So now you’re not looking at it at the end of the quarter, because then that’s a little bit late.

[00:10:24] Now what I do every day is I look at my actual bank account. Yes, I track my numbers in my office, but I look at my actual bank account so I can see if any activity is happening that is not kosher. If there’s any ill activity with your money, you want to know it immediately. And so that’s why you look at it every day. And you track revenue in the door and revenue sold every day so that you are on top of your numbers.

[00:10:53] Also, do you know the cost of goods sold? Do you know what your nut is every month? What’s a nut, covering your fixed expenses. Do you know what it costs you to produce whatever you’re doing? Your groups, do you know what it costs you? If you’re having a brick and mortar, do you know what it costs you for that? Do you know all that? If not, figure out your cost of goods sold, because you might be underpricing yourself. Okay? And that’s gonna make me very depresso.

[00:11:24] Okay, here’s the other thing that is making me depresso- when I see that one of you fabulous ladies is not making revenue-producing activities a priority. Now, you know why often it’s not a priority? Because you’re not having enough support, because you’re doing everything. So you’re making that stupid flyer and so you’re not making sales calls. Did I just ring anybody’s bell?

[00:11:52] Okay, because you know what? Your job is speaking, selling, serving, strategy, and self-care. Marketing is not your job. Nobody cares who updated your website, okay? Nobody cares who put together that gorgeous graphic for your social media. Get support with your marketing. This is where I say in Italian, “Quante volte que ti devo dire?” How many times do I have to tell you? Get support. Why? Because your job is speaking, selling, serving, strategy, and self-care. And if you’re doing everything, you’re not focused on the part that you have to focus on: Revenue-producing activities.

[00:12:34] Next one. Not spending enough time on selling. Okay you know it would be really awesome if clients fell from the sky. Well, maybe not literally because they would hurt themselves. But it would be really nice if every morning when you woke up, there was five Facebook messages and five emails and five letters that came in the mail: “hey, I would love to work with you.” Wouldn’t that be lovely?

[00:13:01] Okay has anybody ever had that happen? Have you even, even just had one of those? We like it when that happens, but that’s not how it usually goes. It’s our job to invite people to have a conversation with us. And by the way, we’ve been talking a lot the last couple of weeks about the circle back. People you reached out to before that did not respond. You can circle back my friends all the way to the beginning of time, meaning the beginning of time for your business.

[00:13:31] Now, the other thing to note is that you have social capital.  If you’re new in your business, all the social capital you built in every incarnation you’ve had before carries over to this carnation. If they liked you before, if you had influenced them before, you still got influence. Now you got to prove that you have massive value to bring in your new thing, but they’re going to be open to connecting with you because of the massive influence you built in the past. So your circle back is a strategy that will support you in massive monetization, new building influence, new sales.

[00:14:11] I’m going to go through the rest of these fast. Not having an amazing team. My friends, your team is the most important thing in your business. Get an awesome team. If you don’t have one, get one. Start with a VA, get a bookkeeper, expand, et cetera.

[00:14:30] Not having something all the time that you’re working on. We’re always doing something. We can’t do it cento per cento. Sometimes I have to say to the ladies, get out of the workshop and get to work. Okay? “Get out of the workshops and get to work.” Now, you know I’m a big advocate for education, are you doing education all the time and you’re not doing revenue-producing activities? This comes up when you don’t feel that you have enough massive value to bring. And let’s be very clear, my friends, you have so much massive value. You could do your thing with one eye closed and one hand tied behind your back and it would still be amazing. Be certain that you have massive value to bring.

[00:15:11] Now this is one I’ve seen too much. Letting your disappointment derail you. Okay, they said they were going to get started now they’re not going to get started. Oh, they, went in another direction. Have you ever heard that? “Oh, we’ve decided to go in another direction”. Put that in your universal translator, that translates into “Sorry for you.” But guess what? That’s okay. Don’t get disappointed. There’s a lifetime supply of people to serve.

[00:15:35] And this is why I love community, because one of the things community does is support us with managing our disappointment. You know what the thing to do is when you get disappointed? Don’t get depresso, don’t pull out the Ben and Jerry’s, go sell something, do some reach-outs. Whenever I lose a sale, like something happens and you know, they, they were going to be a yes, and now they’re a no, I get even more focused on selling.

[00:15:57] Because by the end of the day, I want to have made up whatever it was I lost. Now it doesn’t matter, I mean, I could do it the next day, but that’s one of the things I do to help me manage my disappointment. And let’s be clear. I get disappointed too. And I’m always standing in my certainty that I have massive value. And that’s what I want you to remind yourself.

[00:16:19] All right. Next one. Do you have a multi-pronged marketing approach? If not, you need one and you need somebody else to be implementing.

[00:16:27] Next thing, we talked about your AM and PM routine. Next one. Self-care. Is it a priority in your life? Remember you only got five jobs, speaking, selling, serving, strategy, and self-care. Okay. That’s 20% of your job. How you doing?

[00:16:46] My desire is that in Q2, your revenue, your bliss, and your business is better than Q1. And then the same thing in Q3 and the same thing in Q4. That’s what we’re going for here. And it’s both an inside job, meaning within ourselves as well as in our business.

[00:17:08] All right. Next one. Do you have fountain clarity?

[00:17:12] I want you to think about your business, like your business model, like a flowing fountain, not a funnel okay? Where does this crazy idea of a funnel come from? That’s all that’s tired. Why would we want to funnel? It comes in. It goes out. No, that’s no good. We want to fountain. It’s more feminine. And also somebody comes in and what do they do? They go round and round and round for life. They never leave. That’s what I want for you. We’re not looking for clients. We’re looking for long-term and lifelong clients.

[00:18:00] Caterina Rando: What is fountain clarity? You know what’s the next thing you want to invite them to. Now you will also notice on the fountain that the bottom is the biggest bowl. Then the bowls get smaller. But just because someone’s in the top bowl doesn’t mean they can’t come back and do another bowl because the goal is what? To have the peeps going round and round and round into infinity. That’s what I want for you.

[00:18:28] Now let’s talk about your bottom bowl. That’s the easiest way for peeps to get in with you. Do you have clarity on your bottom bowl? Then, what’s the next thing you’re going to invite them to? What’s the next thing? And what’s the next thing? Now let’s also say that the higher on the fountain you go, that’s usually a bigger investment. You don’t have somebody do your $2,500 thing and then invite them to do your thousand dollar thing. No, it’s called an upsell. During that thousand dollar thing, you build a lot of influence, then you could invite them to make a bigger investment. You following me? And they’re going to be an easy yes if you did a great job for them.

[00:19:10] Now, what does that mean, great job? Massive value, but also excellent client care. Hopefully some client appreciation. They were engaged, client engagement, all of this supports getting clients to keep coming back.

[00:19:29] Do you have fountain clarity? And here’s the thing. If you don’t have fountain clarity, you’re not going to have sales, because you can’t sell what you don’t have clarity on, right? And clarity means you know the price, and you know when it’s happening. And by the way, you’ve already done your calendar for the whole year. Right, everybody? We should’ve done that last quarter, so hopefully, that’s done.

[00:19:50] Okay. So now we’re going to get into the meat of the situation. Here it is. This is your checklist, okay? Now you may have some other things, but here’s some things I want you to do.

[00:20:01] Set your goals. Now you probably, because you’re on the ball, you probably set your goals already for Q2, but I’m asking you to revisit them because you got to revisit them because did you get your Q1 goals? Now I know we’re not finished with Q1 yet, but you can guesstimate how you’re going to finish out the month and you can add it to what you did in January and February. And you can then reset your goals. And I’m talking your revenue in the door and your revenue sold for Q2. And now’s a good time to do this while we’re blah, blah, blahing about it, okay?

[00:20:43] Now you’re going to be at a disadvantage if you haven’t been on top of your numbers. Because right now I could open my calendar and I can see how much has come in for March. I can look at my calendar on the end of February. I could look at my calendar on the end of January and I can easily get to my number of revenue in Q1.

[00:21:03] Now, of course, I’ve got the Excel spreadsheet and I’ve got the QuickBooks and all that. But what I want is I want it at my fingertips. Okay. I don’t want to have to go five places. So this is why your electronic calendar is your best friend because you’re putting on there everything. Your to-do’s don’t go on a to-do list, they go on your calendar. All of your appointments go on there. Your reach outs go on there. Your top prospects go on there. Your goals go on there. I don’t got to find a goal sheet to review my goals every day. They’re on my calendar.

[00:21:39] So, at the end of the day, any new sales go under revenue sold. Like if somebody signs up for the retreat. That’s $5,500 or $4,500 if they’re already a client. So that goes as revenue sold, but then maybe they just made one payment. Maybe it was $350. So that goes under revenue in the door. Now this is a separate task I do in addition to checking my bank account every day, just to make sure that it’s all good.

[00:22:10] Now why do we track sold? Because we’re looking for great cash flow for the rest of the year. Okay. And so great, you might’ve had a great month. Like somebody just signed up yesterday for Thrive at Sales that starts on Monday. That was $1,800 for a full pay. Great. And if I had 10 of those, that would be great, but maybe I don’t got nothing happening next month. This is why we track both, because you’ve heard me say, we want to make your revenue ceiling, your revenue floor, right?

[00:22:42] But what is your best month? We want to take that, we want to make it your floor. We want to set a new level of best months, and this is why we track revenue sold and in the door. So some months I’m not so much concerned about what’s coming in the door as I’m concerned, or I’m paying more attention, to what’s sold because that’s going to boost my revenue for the whole year. So this is why I want you to track both. Have you set goals for both?

[00:23:09] And by the way, you want to stretch a little bit. I set my revenue goal for this month, $8,000 more than what we did last month. That feels like a stretch to me. Well, guess what, you know what happens when you set a stretch goal? You operate every day for what else I got to do to get my stretch goal. If you have a relaxo goal, then you’re not putting so much attention on growth, you’re not going to get so much growth. You know, it’s better that you stretch and you don’t get it, then you have a relaxo goal and you don’t get your relaxo goal, right? That wouldn’t be any fun.

[00:23:47] Okay. So now we got to do some math and we gotta figure, okay, if I want this goal, let’s say it’s $10,000, how many X does that equal? When I say I meant for one month. Okay, so if I want $10,000, how many packages do I have to sell? How many programs? How many signups for my group? How do I get to that number? Now, there might be 10 different ways you can get to that number, but you want to know what they are.

[00:24:14] So for example, okay. My goal for this month is $40K in the door. Now I could get there, but that’s in the door not sold, okay? I could get there by selling eight retreats, if they paid in full, that would get me that. Or I could sell 10 Thrive at Sales, but if they don’t do full pay, that’s not going to get me there. I got to sell some retreats too.

[00:24:40] Are you following me? Okay. so I have to calculate, “okay, well, if I had 10 people sign up for Thrive at Sales and they’re going to pay, maybe let’s say $500 a month, then that’s going to equal $5,000”. Now, but guess what else counts? Everything that’s already coming in. So if I already, and I probably already did have, I don’t remember the exact number, but I already had like $23,000 coming in. So it’s not so much of a stretch, do you see?

[00:25:07] This is why you want to really know your numbers. Because if I already have $23k coming in and maybe I already sold a couple of retreats, well that means I’m probably going to get there with ease. So maybe I want to improve my number even more, raise the roof even more. So you really want to get in there and know the numbers and then figure this part out.

[00:25:28] So I’m asking you right now, do you know your accrual? Your accrual means what’s already planning to come in that’s already in the pipeline, meaning stuff you sold before. Okay. Do you know you’re accrual every month?  

[00:25:42] Every month at the beginning of the month, I get a report with the next six months, what is projected to already come in, what’s in the pipeline of sales to come in already. Because my goal is to improve that so I’m not having any financial stress. Because financial stress does not go along with blissing in business.

[00:26:06] This is why I also want you to have a line of credit. Your line of credit is your safety net. By the way, we haven’t really talked about PPP recently. You know, the government’s given away a ton of money my friends. Have you all applied for some PPP?

[00:26:20] I know that there’s a ton of stuff here. I don’t want you to try to implement a ton of stuff. I want you to pick a few upgrades based on our time together, okay? This is for everybody, my friends. I’m not trying to overwhelm you. I want you to pick a few upgrades.

[00:26:34] Cause here’s the thing. You, you gotta fall in love with your numbers. You got to fall in love with your SOPs. You got to fall in love with your processes because you know what? When you have a checklist and it’s working well, that is bliss. When you are having things rinse and repeat, and your team is doing them and all you’re doing is the speaking, the selling, the serving, the strategy and the self-care, you’re going to be blissing in your business. And that’s what I want for all of you. Okay. Now we’re getting ready for Q2. I’m sure when we get ready for Q3 and we get ready for Q4, you’re going to be blissing more.

[00:27:11] I’m making the assumption that you already have all your stuff on the calendar for Q2, your free workshop, any fee workshop, any groups starting, that’s already on your calendar. If it’s not, you’re going to put it on your calendar, but I’m assuming it is. And so what you’re going to do is you’re simply going to review it. Hey, does this all work? So like, for example I’m going to do a Get Booked Challenge. I’m going to do a four-week Get Booked Challenge. So I’m going to be looking, okay, my Get Booked Challenge is starting in June. Do I have enough speaking in May to help me fill that? Or what else am I going to do in May to help me fill that? Okay.

[00:27:52] So first thing, get your stuff on the calendar. Second thing is to look at what are you going to do to make that effective. Okay. Is it going to be speaking? Is it going to be an email campaign? Is it going to be both? Because it should be multi-pronged.

[00:28:10] Next thing I want you to set goals for speaking. A lot of you are not speaking because you simply haven’t set the goal. Now, when it was a non-gold rush time, I was encouraging you to speak four times a month. Right now, my friends, we’re living in a pandemic. I’m speaking about an average of eight times a week. Why? Because I don’t have to leave my house. No travel involved. Now I’m not saying you have to do that much, but I’m saying it’s a gold rush. And the gold rush is coming to an end. So what’s the, please enough with the getting ready to get ready to begin to think about getting going, go get some speaking.

[00:28:47] Now I will say a lot of groups are planning to be virtual for the rest of the year. Now there’s a lot of groups that are already meeting live and in-person in some states, but don’t worry about those places. Go get booked. Now, if you don’t have your speaker sheet done, if you don’t have a speaker page on your website, let’s get your attention on that. So please set a goal for speaking, do it right now. Set a goal. Now there’s a goal for speaking and there’s a goal for getting booked.

[00:29:15] So for example, let’s say I want to speak eight times this month. Well, yeah, but what I want to do is I want to book 10 speeches for the rest of the year. Do you see what I’m saying? So there’s how many you do. Like, I got booked yesterday for a speech. Okay, that’s one booking, but it’s not for this month –I’m not speaking this month– it’s counting for the future month, but I can count it as I got one booking this month. Okay so you’ve got your delivery of speaking, but you also have your goal for bookings.

[00:29:47] All right, so my friends, we have discussed many things in this podcast episode on your strategic planning for your business. I encourage you to listen to this episode two or three more times, because it is packed. And I want you to be thinking about your business when you listen to it again.

[00:30:12] And what actions are you going to take to support you to be more effective, more efficient, more productive. Have your team be more effective and efficient. So that you can do a greater job of delivering your service, serve your clients better so your blissing more, your clients are blissing more and you’re uplifting more lives through your amazing business.

[00:30:39] Before you go quick reminder, you have massive value to bring. There is a lifetime supply of people to serve. I invite you to be more strategic, to take more time for thinking and planning. Because my friend, when you do that, you will be happier. Your business will be moving along more effectively. Your life will be richer, as will the lives of those you serve.

[00:31:09] If you haven’t joined me for a Clubhouse room, please do. We have them twice a week. If you have not joined our Facebook group, please do.

[00:31:17] If you have not come, my friend, to my free info-packed workshop that I do once or twice a month, please go to CaterinaRando.com/events. Get yourself registered for our next workshop. Because I am here to support you to do your thing, be yourself, serve your people, and massively monetize your mastery. Love to you. Talk to you next time.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.