Ep 30 - CEO Secrets to Building a 12-Month Profit Plan

Are you ready to transform your business and break free from the feast and famine cycle? In this episode, I guide you through the essential steps to create a 12 month profit plan, ensuring consistent profits and sustainable growth. From mapping out your marketing system to planning your time off strategically, I've got you covered. A goal without a plan is just a wish. Don't just wish for success. Plan for it. Let's do this. Are you that driven entrepreneur tirelessly working 24/7, believing that working harder holds the key to your dreams? Are you drowning in the day to day task, wishing you had more time to strategize I cast the vision for your business growth. Hi, and welcome to the CEO Amplify podcast.

I'm Donna Dube, your guide on this entrepreneurial journey. As a fellow entrepreneur, I've walked in your worn out shoes, burning the midnight oil, convinced that sheer hard work was a secret to success. Just 1 more email, one more task, one more push until I found myself on a one way track to burnout. But here's the twist in the tale. I discovered that success isn't just about working leader. It's about working smarter. The elusive key lies in being intentional and purposeful with your time, it's about steering our ship with focus because no team, no system, and no automation can outperform a lack of direction. In this podcast, I'm sharing with you all the strategies for business growth that it took me years to learn so that you don't have to. If you're ready to step out of the daily overwhelm so you can amplify your profits, then I'm ready to teach you.

I believe the only limit to your business growth is the one you set for yourself. So if you're ready, go grab a notebook, warm up that cup of tea, and let's do this. I've got some exciting news for those ready to take their business to the next level without the unnecessary hustle and grind, because we don't need any of that. Picture this: crafting your personalized 12 month profit plan in just 3 days. No more endless weeks of planning. No more guesswork. Welcome to the sustainable business blueprint, a straightforward path to your business success. This is a get it done experience, not a listen to me talk experience. You won't have anything to consume or watch ahead of time.

Just come to the calls each day, and we'll finish the step I introduce together right on the call. No homework, no need to review the videos after the fact. Time is so so operations, and I know you value it. So let's not waste any. Join me from March 6 to 8 for 3 days that will transform your business game. Head to ceoamplify.ca/sustainable now to snag your spot. Let's simplify your success.

I'll see you at the workshop. ceoamplify.ca/sustainable. Welcome back CEOs. This is the 5th and final episode in the series of how to plan a successful year as a CEO. And if you haven't gone back to review the 4 previous episodes, I highly encourage you to take a pause and go back and check those is out because they certainly set the foundational steps needed to fully understand this episode and how we set up our 12 month profit plan. Alrighty. Let's move on assuming that you have done those 4 previous episodes and you're ready to dive in. So I'm gonna start this episode with asking you some tough operations, and I want you to know upfront that I'm not asking you these to make you feel guilty or to put you on the spot.

I'm asking you these to see if you've been in this situation before, because I highly suspect most of us are gonna have a yes to most of these questions. Alright, here we go. Have you ever been so busy with client work that you forget to consistently market and prioritize making sales in your business? What about letting your schedule get so out of control that when you look back, you realize you didn't give yourself any time to take time off from practically months on end? Or do you fall in the trap of chasing every next shiny object or squirrel that runs by your way instead of focusing on what really works in your business? Do you have trouble at keeping predictable profits in your business? Now, I'm pretty sure all of us have had yes to one of those questions, and I get it. This is the reality of entrepreneurship. This is the reality of running our own business.

We can't escape from that. It's the new year. We're excited. We're inspired. We wanna go achieving our goals. But the day to day of business, and life, quite frankly, take over, and somehow, we're just not able to take as consistent action as we would like. We need a plan to make sure that the goals we have can be achieved. Because as it was wisely said, a goal without a plan is just a wish.

So day, I want to dive in a little bit deeper on how to set up a 12 month profit plan. Now let me be clear, this is not a week to week plan or even a day to day plan. We're staying much more high level than this. We're not getting in the details. We're staying high level and looking at the 12 months of the next year. What is going to be our plan for profit for each of those months? We need a system to ensure we are consistently marketing end selling, so that we can see predictable profit in our business. Because when we see when things ebb and flow, it usually can be tied back to this feast or famine cycle. We get busy marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, we're getting new clients, we get excited, we start working with the new clients. Now more and more of our time is spent on delivery and then less and less of our time is spent on marketing, and we kind of drop that marketing ball. We are busy working with clients, and then when we start to finish up with those clients, now we're in famine mode again, and we're busy looking for the next client. But when we can be consistent and we can do our marketing and sales each month of the year,

we see much more predictable profit. And that's where I want you to go in 2024. Alright so before we dive in, I just want to do a quick review of my 5 part framework of a marketing and sales system, I named them all Cs, easy acronym for me to remember. Captivate, connect, cultivate, convert, celebrate. We have to commit to having 1 strategy in each of these areas. Unfortunately, none of them are operations. Because when we actually go and think about it, this is the natural progression that a customer makes. This is the customer journey.

Right, our potential clients are going through this captivate, connect, cultivate, convert, celebrate. And so we need to ensure that we have a strategy at each of those stages. One strategy for each stage needs to be running smoothly, we need to know what we need to do, our team needs to know what we need to do, and we need to know it's effective. After we've achieved that, then we can go and layer on a second strategy, but not before. Alright. Let's talk briefly about is 5 areas. So first is captivate. This is how we're doing outreach.

This is how we're attracting new people to get in front of our brand, to get in front of our world, so how are you bringing new people in front of you? What's your strategy for captivating a new audience? Step 2, connect. Exchanging contact information and beginning to form a relationship with these people that we have just found us. So for many of us, this may be email, this may be a phone number, day be a contact form, whatever that looks like. We want to make sure that we have a system in place for connecting with people who land on our websites or just hear about us. 3rd step, cultivate. This is where we're nurturing. This is the one that most people think about when we think about marketing. How do we nurture the people who are in our world? They said, yes, I want to find out more about you.

Now let's start building that relationship, the know, like, and trust factor. Building trust so that when it's time to tell them we have an offer, they've already got a sense of whether we're the right person for them. So what's your strategy for cultivating and nurturing? Number 4, convert. This is when we're actually inviting people to take the next step and to purchase from us. Do we have a clear process set in place, a clear strategy on how we're going to invite our audience to work with us? And the last one, celebrate. Now that they are a client, they've purchased something, we get to deliver our service and celebrate our client's progress. We get to commit to following up on what we profit, helping them get the results, getting repeat business and sending referrals. What is your strategy for celebrating, for delivering, for onboarding, for offboarding with your clients.

So I want you to go through and ensure you have a game plan in place for each part of this 5 step framework. If you're confused or if you want more details about this, head back over to the previous episode on the podcast, episode 29, where I go through a little more detail on what an achievable goal could be for each of these areas. Again, I want you to stay high level. Stay away from the details. We are leaving the specifics for another time. We are just looking at the big picture. What are we committing to in each of these 5 areas? One strategy for each area. And then we're going to make a calendar. So whether you use a blank calendar or you take a piece of paper and draw it so you have 12 boxes, we want to go month by month so we're clear on what we are focusing on each and every month. If we don't have these 5 processes in our business in place already, then these are the goals we are going to focus for our 12 month profit plan.

Alright. So how do we actually map out this 12 month profit plan? Start with our blank calendar. The first thing we're gonna do is plan our time off. Yep. You heard me say that right. Plan your time off, because friends, I don't believe in business before life. Life is just as important, if not more important than your business. Your business needs to support your life, not the other way around.

So to ensure you don't get burnt out, to ensure you get rest and recovery time, time for your family, time for vacation, whatever that looks like for you. I want you to ensure you plan your time off. So so you've got your blank calendar, January, February, March, April, May, June all the way to December. Think about the times when you are going to be taking time off in bulk. Maybe you are going to take a week off in March and go to Mexico. Maybe you are going to take 3 weeks off in December at Christmas time. Maybe you want to take extra time off when it's your kid's birthday or your wedding anniversary, or maybe you want to take a few 4 day weekends and just do little short trips. Whatever that looks like for you, make sure you plug these times into your profit plan. Why are we doing this upfront? Because if it's not planned, it's probably not gonna happen.

And this allows us to plan ahead so we don't need to rush to get things done before the vacation, and we don't need to be stressed out when we come back having things in shambles because we didn't take the time to get the systems in place. So for example, if you already know you are going to be gone for a week in March, you want to set some buffer time before and some buffer time when you get back. And so what you plan to do in March in terms of your sales in your marketing, it's going to look different from January February because you're going to be away. You're going to be taking time off. See where I'm going here? Okay. So once we've mapped that time out for the whole year, next thing we're gonna do is plan what we are selling and when. We need to make sure we have a clear plan of what we are offering, when we are gonna sell it different times of the year, and then we can backtrack and plan out our marketing to be able to sell that offer. So first thing I want you to do is start with your signature offer.

This is your your bread and butter offer, the one that generates the most revenue for you, and it usually follows this 80/20 rule. So I want you to plan at least 2 to 4 active promotions per year, where you're telling everyone on your email list, in your socials, on your podcast, in your newsletter, wherever you are going and speaking, you're telling everyone during this active promotion that you have this thing available. Because if you are not actively promoting, you are probably missing out on revenue and clients. Hate to say it, but that's the truth. So you want to ensure you are enrolling new clients on a regular basis. This helps with the consistent profit and prevents the feast and famine cycle. So signature offer mapped out 2 to 4 times during the year. Then from there, you want to explore if you have other offers.

If this is the only offer in your business, your signature program, that's fine. If you have other offers, we're gonna get to those in a minute. So after we've planned out our signature offer, next step is our upgrade to existing clients. I think the stat is that it's 7 times easier to sell to a current client than to sell to a brand new one. So you wanna think about when your clients finish your signature offer, whatever that is. What's the natural next step? What's the next level that you could take them to, that they could exist and still work with you as alumni. So maybe that's a VIP day. Maybe that's a retreat or a next level coaching program.

What's the natural next step? You wanna be thinking about that and ensure that you've built in time during your 12 months to sell that to existing clients, because it's much easier than selling to a brand new audience. And then the 3rd piece of this is you're gonna map out your smaller offers. So if you you have smaller introductory offers that are easier for you to deliver, they're easier for you to sell, and it's kind of a good first step for people to work with you. Maybe a workshop or an online course or a short retreat. So you want to map out those smaller offers when you're going to promote those so that they're not conflicting with your signature offers. They're not conflicting with your time off because that's important. And so now if you look at that 12 month plan, you should be able to see I've got my time off in there, I'm going to sell my signature offer, got when I'm going to sell my upgrade to my existing clients, and I've got some times when I'm doing a smaller offer. Underneath all of this, we are continuing to do our marketing.

We are continuing to captivate, connect, convert, we're continuing to build our audience, to exchange information with them, and for them to build a relationship with us to know, like, and trust us further. We don't want to let audience building fall by the wayside because we are busy selling, and we don't want to let audience building take over and not sell. So we need to be doing both things at the same time if that makes sense. And sometimes you need to bigger push. Right? Sometimes you may want to do more interviews or get in front of more audiences or go do more guest teaching or speaking. Other times, you're going to back away again, looking at when you're doing your big live launches, if you're doing live launches, when you need your time off. You you're gonna factor those things in so that your year is spaced out accordingly. So really important, what are you selling, and how are you marketing it? And as you go through this, it'll become more rinse and repeat.

So for your signature offer, if you've already sold it a couple of you have some of the assets in place already. You have an email sequence possibly already in place. Maybe you have some videos that you like to post for social. Maybe you have some pitches that you like to do or speaking that you like to do ahead of when you sell your signature offer. So these assets you wanna build and then you wanna rinse and repeat. So each time you go and sell your signature offer, you don't have to start over again. It's about tweaking what you already have. And underneath all of that, how am I captivating, connecting and cultivating with new audiences all the time, so that when it comes time to sell, they're ready.

They know, like, and trust you and they're ready to hear more about what you have to say. So each month, we're going to write down what activity we're doing, what we're selling, and what we're marketing. Once that is laid out, now you can go and review other 12 month goals that you day have. Perhaps you've got some of these foundational pieces in place in your business already, growth. Now you can go look at what can I do outside of this that doesn't fit within this 5 step profit? But again, I strongly strongly advise you life you don't have a rinse and repeat system in place for each of those 5 areas, that's where you start with your goals. Day. And then from there, you're gonna think about each quarter. What do you want to be focused on? What milestones do you need to hit? You can write that out in your 12 month profit plan.

Okay. Just a few points about this profit plan. Remember, this is the 1st time you're doing it. It's not gonna be perfect. You're gonna plan this out, and then you're going to adjust. Because if this is the 1st time you're doing it, perhaps you didn't give yourself enough time or you gave yourself too much time, and you have to move things around. Plans aren't meant to be perfect. They're guidelines for us to get started and to take action.

Right? And so you want to set up these profit plans, and then each month you know what my focus is. Now you can start to implement and be accountable because you know what the goal is for the month. So take the profit plan you just created and break it down into 90 day plans, and then break it down into monthly and weekly plans. And if you need help with this, please reach out. I've got a bookings link on my website where you can reach out for a clarity call, and let's talk about where you are and where you're stuck, and how I might be able to help you with support and accountability to get you through, to get you focused, and to get you following through. It's really just a more streamlined and sustainable business so that you can scale without sacrificing your family, your relationships, your health, those things that really matter most. Alright. I hope you're ready to take it to the next level.

I'd love love love to hear how you built out your 12 month profit plan, and really building out a business by design, not by default. I hope you enjoyed this series as much as I have. And if this series was helpful to you, please hop over to the Facebook group, CEO amplify, and leave a comment there. I would love to hear your results and how this has helped you build a sustainable business. Alright. Until next week, enjoy the week. Thank you for joining us on this episode of CEO Amplify. I appreciate you being part of our thriving community of ambitious business owners. If you enjoy today's episode, kindly ask you to share this podcast with a friend and take a hot minute to rate and leave a review. It would mean the world to me.

Your feedback helps me reach more people and continue providing valuable content. Thanks so much for your support, keep shining, and we'll catch you on the next episode.