#103: Producing Future Revenue
As an entrepreneur, you might find a tendency to experience a lot of resistance around planning.
I myself am kind of a planner deep down. But I think for a lot of us who are visionaries, we actually dislike the process.
We completely hate this idea of making decisions in advance because circumstances can change or we feel called to something else.
Or we come up with a great idea or get a new piece of information that changes our opinion.
Which is why so many of us resist it. But there’s a golden thread in planning and with this knowledge, you can move forward armed with the ways in which you can thrive with a plan, even as a visionary who craves creativity and new ideas.
If this is something that you've been struggling with, but you’re just not sure how to balance planning and the brilliance that makes you a visionary, stay tuned. Because I'm excited to share how you can make planning work for you starting today.
Check out my free training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:01):
A lot of us entrepreneurs really do not enjoy planning. I'm kind of a planner deep down. Like I like making plans for my kids sports. Maybe, you do too. I, I like knowing whether they're going to be in soccer or baseball and planning feels really good. Like it's like, all right, this is the plan. This is what we're going to do. But I think for a lot of us who are visionaries, we actually dislike the process. Like we completely hate this idea of making decision that's in advance, because like, let's say we make the decision and then circumstances change, or we feel called to something else. Or we come up with a great idea or get a new piece of information that changes our opinion. What do we do? Next planning is really frustrating in that way. And this is why so many of us resist it. And so many times a client that I'm working with will often resist the planning process, but then come back to me and wanting to know what the plan is and it, I want to help them. And if this is something that you're struggling with, I'm super excited to help you with it today.
(01:07):
So many entrepreneurs, dream of living a life of massive impact by creating a mega successful company, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. And when they do it is so often lacking the very joy and freedom that got them into entrepreneurship in the first place. So on this podcast, we speak authentically on what it actually takes to scale your business in a way that creates freedom and joy that works for you, your team, and the incredible impact that you are meant to make in the world as a visionary entrepreneur. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur wife, mom, to three. And I love talking all things business, especially digging into what it actually takes to scale joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond let's get started.
(02:00):
The reason why planning feels awful for a lot of us is because many of us don't actually plan on becoming successful in the first place. So when we're thinking about the future of our business, we're actually relying on all of these habits based on intuition and reactivity, because in a lot of ways, this keeps us as the leader of the organization justified cause here we are, we're carrying all of the weight we're making of the decisions. We're letting everybody know what to do and we're creating all of the results and we are earning our keep. And then at a certain point, our business really just gets too big to be able to do that anymore. So we start creating plans and then we change the plan or we have a plan and then we pop into our mastermind and someone gives us some quick advice and we're thinking like, oh that's it.
(02:45):
That must have been what I'm missing. Let's just throw a grenade on what we're doing and completely start over. Or we think I can't implement this plan because I don't have the right team or I don't the strategy. Or I found out the plan didn't actually work for somebody else. The plan that I was planning on and we start making some decisions based on what maybe what made someone else successful or really what made us successful in the past, which is being really reactive, but not necessarily what's going to
make us successful in the future. So when we think about this plan and really being able to with it for some leaders, sometimes we feel criticized from our teams, right? Like things are changing. They change all the time. I can't do any, I can't do my job when everything's changing. And that is really important feedback for us to take into consideration and then constantly changing things in the people around us.
(03:35):
It starts eroding the trust they have in us as a leader. And what needs to happen is that we get to this point where the pain and the stress of the constant zigzagging becomes greater than the pain of actually setting a plan for the future, a growth plan and sticking to it. And a lot of times what we think is this answer exists outside of us. Like somehow somebody has this secret, one of our masterminds or one of the people that we talk to, or even a consultant has this secret advice about what we don't have about how we should be growing our business. And the truth is we probably are never going to find it because every single strategy that every single guru teaches for the most part, they all work like webinars, work, challenges, work, creating friction on the front end, works, creating friction on the backend, works, building a list and emailing the list tends to work, right?
(04:32):
So just choosing one and implementing it well will always create a better result than any type of strategy. That's better than the one that you're currently implementing. And when we believe there's a strategy, that's better than the one that we're implementing outside of what we've already chosen, that's when we've set that intention from a place of past thinking versus future thinking. And when we set the intention from future thinking, we've weighed and tested all the options, we've made a decision. And then if we back on it, this is actually when we're working with the least sophisticated part of our brain, we are making these really unsophisticated decisions in our business instead of fully implementing something well that we've thought through. And the truth is I've seen mediocre strategies implemented well and create incredible results. And then I've great strategies poorly implemented, and they've never, ever yielded an exceptional result.
(05:28):
So what, why do our brains do this to us? Because for so many of us, we're still making these decisions based on our past instead of our future. Also many of us are trying to predict what it that our customers want or what they'll respond to. Instead of doing a lot of upfront testing on what it is that they might like to see from us, or looking at the data of what they've bought from us in the past, we're trying to follow something internal within our intuition, which again got us started. So that's really natural, but then we need to make a new relationship with our future revenue based on what people actually want. And a lot of that testing is often skipped on the front end. Like we create a lead magnet or we create an SLO or we create a mini workshop. We, create all these things without spending a little bit of money advertising the testing hooks and angles, which is really going to give us the confidence to create a new relationship with the future revenue.
(06:28):
And then once we do the testing and we're like, that's it? That seems to be what people want. We need to go with it as the strategy that this is the strategy, this is the growth strategy. And if we see it through all the way, then we can determine whether or not it's good enough to take forward. But until we see it, it through, we actually have no way of truly knowing. And for so many of you who are listening, you want something very different in your future than, and you currently have in your present or you had in your past, this is why we grow business. This is why we do this to ourselves. It's why we listen to podcasts, creating that future relationship with your future revenue includes a forward thinking process. That's way different than what is taking you to this point.
(07:15):
So when we can make that planning fun, we don't see it as a constraint, but we really see it as our future business coming to life like letting go of a lot of the minutia. That's hold us back to this point. This is where we can stay fully committed and fully present otherwise. So many of us will resist and fight it and we'll show up with, to meetings or we'll be like, ah, that's not what I want to do today. When we see our to-do list or we'll say things like, this is what I have to do versus this is what I get to do. We'll see assignments from our team and look at it. We'll be like, eh, nah, that's not what I want to do today. And we'll push it off and not do it. And we'll wait until the last minute to get something and we'll set up our teams and our businesses for failure, cuz deep down we're questioning whether or not we've got the right strategy or if something else is going to come along and give us that magic answer.
(08:09):
And this is the relationship that we get to have with future revenue. And for many of us, it's like this balance between rinse and repeating things that have worked in the past, making adjustments based on data, on maybe what might make something sell better or what may be a great add on to a currently successful product. And just making those decisions about where we're going to innovate versus where we are actually holding ourselves back by still operating as if we did when we were maybe half the revenue that we are today. So this has been such a great learning experience for my own self of that balance between making sure that we have a plan and we stick to the plan and we see it through and we don't start a webinar and then make it a challenge and then decide that actually we're just not even sure if it's the right topic to begin with and doing a bunch of testing and experimenting and having fun with it on the front end, of going all the way through with a project and holding it loosely enough to kind of say like, it's okay if this doesn't work exactly the way that I want it to, but doing it will work better than not doing it.
(09:19):
Doing it fully will work better than changing gears halfway through. And then after it's done, I get to make some new decisions. Maybe you sold something really high ticket that required a sales team. And you're like actually I'd rather not have a sales team or maybe, maybe you had a great offer, but just on the front end, nobody was super
interested in it because the messaging was off. That's the part you get to fix. And then you just keep innovating as you continue to roll it out. And what I find is it's usually one extreme or the other people are rinse are impeding something that maybe isn't working anymore because the marketplace just is changed or that particular strategy has become saturated or people are over it or whatever, right. Or, you know, maybe it worked when it was an innovative strategy, but the messaging was never really that strong. And as that strategy became tired, then the messaging weakness became evident.
(10:17):
They are you know, constantly zigzagging from different strategies that different crews are teaching and never fully realize the benefits of it. And in this world that we live in where our feet is constantly filled with new ideas, it can be really, really difficult, but just determining where it is that we want to put our effort kind of putting the blinders onto everything else will always give us that incredible result that we're looking for ultimately, which is to see our businesses grow and to help as many people as possible.
(10:49):
Hey there: before you head out, I want to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand new website called yournextmillion.me. It's yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses, to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. And I have to tell you, it is not what you think. So check it out at yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone, you know? I’d really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.