BB Ep 63: Wrap Up the Year and Finish Strong with John Felkins

It’s exciting to plan for the future, set fun goals, and dream big for your business, but you also need to figure out how you’ll reach those goals. If you don’t know where you are, it’s hard to know how to get to where you want to be. Today, I want to talk about how you can assess and evaluate where your business is right now so you can see the path to where you want to be in 2019. Make sense? Great! Let’s get started. End of the Year Business Review Organizing and evaluating the major projects you did in 2018 is a great first step toward planning for 2019. Start by creating four columns and sorting projects into these four categories: right, wrong, missing and confused. RIGHTWhat worked well? What was a huge success or helped you gain momentum? These are things that you want to maximize, amplify, and do more of next year. WRONGWhat didn’t work? Did you have a setback or a challenge? Did some of your results disappoint you? If so, it’s okay! Making mistakes shows you are taking risks and pushing the limits. The important thing is that you learn from your experiences and stop spending time on these things. MISSINGWhat opportunities were overlooked? Was there something you should have done, but didn’t? Maybe it was something you didn’t know you should do at the time, but you know now. These are things you are going to add. CONFUSEDWhat needs a little more explanation or better processes? Was there something you had to help customers or your team understand multiple times? These are the things you should clarify. This is a great exercise for your business as a whole, but I’d also recommend you do this for the main areas of your business: sales, marketing, operations, money, team and time management. Evaluating your business’s strengths and weaknesses will help you finish the year strong and start the new year even better that last year. Related: Ep 61: Learning From Failure: How to Dust Yourself Off and Move Forward How to Wrap Up the Year and Finish Strong with John Felkins John Felkins is one of our very own Entreleadership Executive Coaches here at Ramsey Solutions. John is on a mission to help business leaders reach their maximum potential. He guides leaders and small-business owners to cut through white noise and helps them make real progress on their journey to becoming the best, most accomplished version of themselves. John Felkins started his professional life as a project management engineer and realized his passion was actually coaching and consulting. After creating a consulting firm, he went to an Entreleadership event, fell in love with the principles, then quickly joined the Entreleadership team to help launch the highly successful Entreleadership coaching program. In this episode, John Felkins and I discuss how to work in your sweet spot and how to wrap up the year and finish strong. We talk about: Why it’s important to use your gifts with your work and not force yourself to do a job that doesn’t come naturally The main things you need to identify and assess in your business before the year ends Practical questions to ask yourself to end the year strong The metrics to know now in order to improve your business next year Knowing your business vitals and why that’s important for your profit and loss Identifying the actual cost of doing business, so you can make adjustments to improve in the future Why putting your phone down will help you avoid distractions and serve your customers better Related: How to Stay Focused and Eliminate Distractions in Your Business Get a Running Start on Your Year We all know the holidays are a crazy busy time of year. Before you know it, it’s January, and you aren’t sure how to start tackling all those New Year’s goals you set for your business. You still have a few days to get your plans in place, so figure out where you want to be and break down what you need to do to reach that goal. Don’t wait—get started now! #AskChristyWright One of my favorite parts of this podcast is hearing directly from you. Give me a call on my toll-free line at 844.944.1074. You might hear your question on a future episode! Staying Focused on Your Business When Life Happens and Guilt Creeps In Life happens. There’s no avoiding it. Medical bills come unexpectedly, your schedule fills up, and tasks become overwhelming. We’ve all felt the pain of balancing our passion for our business with our daily responsibilities. Even though we know it’s crazy, sometimes guilt creeps in. What is the pain point here? Is it that you have some debt to pay off and you feel guilty about quitting your full-time job to start your business? If you can make enough money to take care of your family, be available for them, and do work that allows you to use your gifts, that’s winning. Guilt be gone. Related: The Truth About Work-Life Balance Making Plans for Customer Relationship Management When leads come to us, we need to follow up with them in a timely manner, but doing this manually is exhausting. Finding a platform you trust to automate and manage your leads is crucial for you to grow and scale your business. Whether it’s email leads signing up for a free resource or a form where people are wanting to give you their information because they need your service, every lead deserves attention and managing those leads is critical. I can’t say it enough. We recommend Infusionsoft because we know them, we use them, and we trust them. No matter what customer relationship management platform you choose, make sure it is easy to understand and easy to use. You don’t need more headaches; you need help. Make customer relationship management a part of your 2019 planning. 1:23 End of Year Business Review 19:17 How to Wrap Up the Year and Finish Strong with John Felkins 52:51 #AskChristyWright 66:12 Challenge to Choose Your Focus Daily During the Holiday Season Resources Get Christy's Year-End Review Worksheet by filling out the form here! Order the new 2019 Business Boutique Goal Planner with the code BBPLANNER at BusinessBoutique.com/Planner and receive Christy’s Setting Goals video that you can watch right now! Sponsors Our friends at Infusionsoft help you manage your customers and your business all in one place. If you’re ready to organize your contacts, automate your emails, generate leads and turn those leads into sales, Infusionsoft can help you! Get started now with a free trial by visiting InfusionsoftNow.com/ChristyFree. Check out our friends at Volusion. You can set up your online store and start selling your products within minutes. It’s that easy. Sign up for your FREE 14 day trial at Volusion.com/BB. If you have a success story you would like to share with the Business Boutique community, email me at [email protected]. New podcast episodes are available every other week.