Six fresh new ways to grow profit
If you are carrying a pandemic hangover, business feels stagnant, or you want to shake things up this year and approach business from a new angle, then this episode is for you.
Firstly can I say welcome to 2022? I am back after a purely delightful four and a half- week break. I realised that it isn't a break from business that I needed, because I don't work that many hours, honestly. Instead, I needed a break from thinking and decision making. I am sure most of you have come to this realisation long before me, but it's a discovery in my world.
I will dedicate an entire podcast episode to how I have structured my business so I can fall off the radar entirely for over a month without letting anyone down or running out of money.
I had quite a few people ask questions about managing client expectations or customers needs during a time off. A great question came in from Letitia Deanne, a marketing support specialist, about how to communicate this with clients.
I will answer all of the questions and more very soon.
I also had lots of people ask me how the photo scanning was going. If you missed it, I sent an email in mid-January sharing a link to the podcast episode I did with my lovely friend, Suz Chadwick, on her Brand Builders Podcast. And a link to my client, Coach Pamela's, brand-spankin' new Audible called Mastering the Skill of Reinvention.
In that email, I shared that I was dedicating a week to doing all the crap I never get to, cleaning the window screens, parting with boxes of inherited stuff from my mum and nana and scanning somewhere in the vicinity of 3,000 photos. I am about 1,200 in, so still, some work to do. It does feel amazing to see all the space where boxes of crap used to live. .
The challenge now will be to keep those spots empty, not refill them with more crap.
I also started my 2022 health journey, which has nothing to do with losing weight and everything to do with feeling good. I am a long term insomnia sufferer, so I am attacking that with force! I will tell you more about that later when the results come in. I also am getting back into the old Ballet moves.
Check out Baby Melanie-Ballerina.
Into today's episode because as much as I know you love me talking about myself, you're not here for that.
So instead, let's talk about six new approaches to business you can try out. They include; setting your unique or personal success indicators, creating a vision of the most successful version of yourself, drawing out your business bones, elevating to the CEO role in your business, planning specifically for-profit and finally scaling up.
Listen to the episode here on Apple
Personal Success Indicators
Let's start with setting your unique or personal success indicators. As you know, I freaking hate the emphasis just on sales metrics. Especially as they keep growing, ten years ago hitting six figures was the goal, then eight years ago, the experts needed to jazzy up their marketing, so they started with the "multiple six figures" lure, and over the past few years, it's become a million dollars or bust kind of marketing.
My distaste of a million dollars in sales is that you can easily make a million in revenue without ever making a cent in profit; you can even spend money to make a million. So, while people could technically call yourself themselves a "million-dollar" coach, business or course creator, that doesn't mean they made any money.
A client sent me a link to a blog written by a prominent online content creator-come-coach who blew their cash on a fancy car and multi-million dollar property, then found out they had a massive tax bill coming.
Urghh… I can't with this madness…
They also referenced how they expected their accountant to pre-prepare them for the enormous tax bill they got. That is an entirely different episode but let me say; do not leave your financial success or failure in the hands of others. Assume nothing.
So, back to my point about success indicators, you get to choose what's important to you. There are success indicators that may have nothing to do with sales goals, yet they're going to make your business extraordinary. For example, a success indicator for me is having a minimum of 4 weeks off at Christmas, and next year, I aim for all of January, so a little over five weeks.
How is that possible? Profit.
Yes, I need the sales to make a profit, but the profit is what pays for me to take an extended break.
I have a whole episode on success indicators and metrics that have nothing to do with sales, so listen to that next if you haven't already.
The MOST Successful Version of Yourself
Next up is creating an image, story or persona of the most successful version of yourself—weird thing to do, especially for the manifesty-hesitant, like myself. But, I tell you, this works!
The idea is simple, look around at people you admire in business and just in general, think about what makes them admirable to you. How do they show up, what habits do they have that you want to embrace, what do they spend their time doing and then contrast that with how you show up, your habits etc.…
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; what you assume to be true isn't necessarily their reality. People think I am organised, no idea why… I spend my life creating tools to get organised. You can still use what you perceive to be their strengths to form your image of the most successful version of yourself. This is one of the most raved about Members Club inclusions; everyone loves it when we do the Successful Me workshop.
Now that we know what you want to achieve and who you need show up as to achieve those goals, we can move on to your business.
Drawing Your Business Bones
I have a drawing of the bones of my business, I honestly need a better way to explain this, but it's a flow chart of my business. It starts with profit (not sales!) and expands into the big pillars (or branches) required for profit to exist. That includes visibility, lead generation, sales, delivery .. stuff like that. Each pillar (or branch) is further broken down; for example, visibility is broken into podcast, social media, SEO, etc. Finally, the podcast is broken down into the steps to create the podcast.
Why is this a useful approach?
Three BIG reasons; first, my business is built with profit at the top of the tree or main pillar. Everything must flow into generating profit. It also is an incredible tool for elevating yourself to CEO level in your business as you automate and delegate the sticks so you can focus on the branches; then, as you elevate again, you can focus on the trunk. The third reason is to see how much time you spend on the sticks, branches and trunk. If you spend all your time working on the sticks, you're not going to grow your business.
Lordy, that was a rough analogy. I am currently working on getting this logically out of my head because it's becoming a Members Club addition. So stay tuned for a less clumsy explanation. If you get me.. if you're picking up what I am putting down, this will change everything about the way you invest time in your business.
Elevating to Your CEO Role
I have just touched on the next of our six strategies, elevating to a CEO position in your business, working on the trunk, not on the branches or sticks. Moving into that role won't just happen by chance; it's a conscious decision supported by many micro decisions.
The approach is usually "I will work in my business until it makes enough money to outsource, hire or automate and then when that happens I will be able to get off the tools, so to speak, and start working on the business". However, it doesn't happen that way; you need to work on the business and identify the CEO role to develop your sales goals, marketing strategies, pricing strategy so you can promote yourself to that role.
Plan Your Actions for Profit
Number five on the list is planning specifically for profit growth. When you're creating your social media content, writing your about page or designing that new offer or product, I hazard a guess that you're not focused on doing it with profit at the forefront.
Can you imagine chucking a heap of random ingredients into a bowl and hoping it creates a cake? Give that challenge to a four-year-old and see what they come up with; at best, it will be unappetising; at worse, you will choke to death. Your random approach to business isn't going to grow a palatable and enjoyable venture if you're not thinking about the outcome.
Can You Scale UP?
And, finally, as you work through your task list each day, ask yourself this very important question "is what I am doing right now scalable?". True business freedom comes from the ability to scale, that doesn't mean you need to create a behemoth of a business. It means how do you move out the day to day running of your business, simplify your offerings and minimise the time you need to invest to meet your profit goals.
If you're spending hours and hours checking your social media managers posts, that isn't scalable. Likewise, if you're manually updating a spreadsheet with your stock levels every day or creating custom quotes for every single enquiry, you're not going to be able to scale.
Recognising where these non-scalable actives or offers exist is your first step to changing course for a better and more profitable future. Word of warning: don't attempt to change everything at once; you will blow a gasket. This is conscious and considered change, not random and rapid chaos.
Let's wrap up those six new approaches;
1 - Decide on your personal success indicators
2 - create a profile of the most successful version of yourself to guide you
3 - draw out your business bones or business tree… I will get the right language around that!
4 - Consider what the CEO role in your business is and how you can elevate to that position.
5 - as you're working through your day, think about how aligned your activities are to the end goal of profit,
6 - at the same time, consider if what you're doing is scalable; if not, what's the scalable approach.
Over the next few weeks, I will dive a little deeper into these key areas, so if you're getting a little turned on by what I flashed you with so far, you're going to want to subscribe and stay tuned.
Happy Profit Loving!