Business Planning - Allegiant WebWise

Gill [00:00:04]:
Good afternoon or good evening or good morning wherever you are in the world, and welcome back to the Allegiant WebWise Podcast. And we're here today to talk about goal setting and planning for the year. Now I know some of you might already have done this because we're a little bit further into January, But actually for those of you who are a bit like us in the room here and are a bit slow off the mark with your yearly planning, This one will be a good episode for you. Because we've just actually right before we did this podcast, we sat down and we did it for Allegiant. So it's fresh in our minds. And we're gonna start talking about what we did and what we were thinking and how it might help you. So to kickoff. Let's start thinking of what are we doing for the year? What is the big picture? And what What would you suggest, Martin, what would you suggest you would start with when you're you're setting out for doing these kind of things?

Martin [00:01:05]:
So for me, it's it's about looking at a a year in advance. So this is 2024 as we're recording. So this stage in 2025, where Where would I like the business to be? And then breaking that down into into smaller chunks and taking into consideration, you know, my own, Personal things I want to achieve and, obviously, what's what's the business environment that we're working in. So that's high level, my approach to this.

Gill [00:01:33]:
NICE. Mike, do you have a minute on the top spot?

Mike [00:01:36]:
No. A pretty much similar sort of situation, Gill. And I think I tend to look at, my Goals, actually, before a year start. So I the the back end of December, I start to think about what's gonna happen in 2024. What do I want 2024 to look like? And then I start to set out some some, short term Goals and then where do I want it to be next December? And, actually, I also do that by reviewing where I've come from as well. So it's kind of like, we don't always pat ourselves on the back and say, you know, how well you've done because you need to review what you set the year before. And, you know, have you achieved what you what you were looking to achieve? And, actually, there might be some reasons why you haven't achieved, this, you know, these goals that you you set out, but you might have achieved other things because sometimes, We all get seduced by something that's bright and glowing during the course of the year that might be a new, app or a new piece of software or let's just say, ChatGPT is released for the 1st time and you haven't seen that before, and that could be something that would work really well for me. So some of those goals that you've set out at the beginning of the year, you need to be able to, Allow yourself, a little bit of breathing room within those goals, and you might have something else that you've added in there in the meantime.

Gill [00:03:11]:
Yep. That's really good. That's a good question. So a a good point, sorry, that actually, like, you start off with these ideas and you have these aspirations that you wanna do in the beginning, but then life happens or something new technologically comes out. So is it really worth it Making these goals.

Martin [00:03:32]:
It's a really, really good point, isn't it? I suppose, the the analogy is, you know, you set off on a journey. If you haven't decided where you're gonna go to, Then, a, you'll never know whether you get there, and, b, you don't even know if you're on the right route. So, you know, you're up in Scotland. I set off. I haven't even bothered looking at the map. I could find myself down in Kent. So I think, yeah, it it does make at least have that plan of where you're gonna go and and roughly how you think you're gonna get there. Like you said, I mean, you may find that on the way, you're like, okay.

Martin [00:04:00]:
Well, actually, you know, something's happened. I know they need to take a detour. But if you don't know where you're going, you'll never know when you get there.

Mike [00:04:06]:
It's structure, isn't it? It's structure around your business. And first and foremost, your business is is built on, the need to be able to service your existing clientele and take on new clientele. So one of your specific, planning objectives. Your business objectives might be to, get more SEO clients, get more web design clients. So then you need to have some structure and some planning about how you're going to to go about that.

Gill [00:04:40]:
Yeah. And so in in terms of what we did with Allegiant, and and we're thinking about what what it is. Do we wanna share with people, like, what What we were thinking, what were our thoughts about where we wanna be in a year's time?

Martin [00:04:56]:
Yes. We do. We do wanna share that because Wise this podcast would be kinda dull, wouldn't it? I mean, for for us so, as I think, you know, People who've listened to us before know, we've all got our own businesses, but we've got Allegiant as well. And for Allegiant, we want to be able to, to work more Closely together to to be able to see, how we can actually build pipelines for the business, how How we can help each other and and and other people out with the business. And therefore, what we've been talking about is, how do we make sure that we're, we we've got a synergy between the 3 of us. We've got systems between between us across not just us, but us as directors and and the rest of the business that we have. And so we've been talking about that, and we've been talking about what are the key areas that we wanna focus on.

Mike [00:05:46]:
Yeah. So, for those of you that have, first time visitors to our podcast, you can, catch us, on Allegiant Web. That is our website. And so if you ever wanna make contact with us, then you can do that. And I think that's important to understand that, you know, you have your own portfolio of work, but Wilson that you're looking To make sure that you're all aligned, you know, that Web we Martin used the word synergy, but being aligned with each other, having regular that when do you regularly speak to each other? Are you just doing you know, are you doing things that are more knee jerk, or you're doing things that are more planning related. So any work that we get that comes into our business, You know, we always have our own planning meetings, so you need to be able to set your week out to to be able to do some of these things. So, absolutely Gill of the things that you just said about, this, ability to be able to share tools, Sharing tools and making sure that you're, keeping your costs down because that could be one of the objectives that comes out of these. Don't forget, we're trying to be smart about these sorts of things as well.

Mike [00:07:00]:
So it's not just about, saying what in Web year's time we want to be in this Position, we're trying to get there in a smart way so you're not going out and going well. We now if we're gonna be doing a SEO, we need to go out and buy all of the most expensive tools that are available on the Martin, and away we go. That's that's gonna solve the problem. No. What the Robson, What's your initial problem? It could be that you haven't got enough, customers coming through the door, or you haven't got your standard operating procedures set up. Any of those things that will help you achieve those Martin goals that you're going to have within your business objectives.

Gill [00:07:41]:
And and the other part that we've been really talking a lot about recently is about capacity building for each of us, because we do have our own businesses as well as Allegiant. And we Gill, capacity building is is a really important point when you're trying to grow, isn't it? You get to You get to that point where if you wanna take things to the next level, you've got to somehow build that Cassie. And either you're throwing money at it or you're finding other, outlets to support you as you grow. And and so we've been planning a lot around that and how can we do that? How can we support ourselves? How can we support, other businesses? How can we help you guys out there, to as you're, looking to if you're looking to increase your capacity, what does that look like for you and, and for us as well. So Yeah. Then

Mike [00:08:35]:
We discussed that, Jill, didn't we, in episode 2 of the podcast. So, today is episode 5. So if you wanna go back and look at episode 2 and Web we talked about, growing a web business And the dilemma of growing big or staying freelance, those are some of the things that are gonna come into your thinking.

Gill [00:08:53]:
Yep. Absolutely. So So we've got our big picture. We've got our big goal. We know where we wanna be in the next year. What are we gonna do next?

Mike [00:09:04]:
We're gonna go quiet.

Gill [00:09:07]:
We're gonna have our right good thing. That's all we're gonna. Good thing.

Martin [00:09:12]:
Yeah. No. I think that the the point Wise, like like you say, you've we've done that bit and you've done that bit, where you thought to yourself, okay. Well, This is where I want my business to be in a year's time. And and you've thought about the things Mike you know, we've talked about planning, pipelines, client acquisitions, those sorts of stuff, along with, you know, how how do you think the business environment's Gonna go in in the area that you're in, you know, whether you'd be in, in the UK as as we are or or in other countries. Then you start looking at, Okay. So if my goals for for the year are x, y, and zed, How am I actually gonna get there? And then to start to break that down in in a Mike wise thing. You know, if if you've got a goal for a year, Then perhaps it makes sense to start breaking it down into quarterly goals to see, again, much like we were talking about, you know, with the journey towards Scotland, Am I actually on the right track or not?

Mike [00:10:11]:
Yeah. So let's talk about something that, could be fairly close to somebody's Martin, like, having a desire to create more recurring revenue in your business. So one of the things that you can do with that It's first that you start off with the baseline, don't you? And you say, currently, I have this amount of clients that I've got, that I am regularly serving, a particular service to. Let's say that, that could be that you're providing hosting for, for a set of clients. And you could say in 12 months' time, I would like that to have grown by either a 100%, 50%, 250%. Whatever your goal, is for that. And then you start off with Wilson, you've your actual knowing what You're bringing in. So you you if you look at the tool that you're that you might be using, the platform that you might be using, so with hosting platforms, there's plenty of forms that you can go on there Web you can create your own, business on that platform, and you can create, websites on that platform, and then you can sell on, packages via that that idea.

Mike [00:11:21]:
So then you'd have a spreadsheet of your customers And the people that are on it and the date that they arrived on it, and that gives you your, spreadsheet that you can review, And you can review it using what Martin was talking about at the beginning Web you might review that every month, 3 months, Or year. I mean, you're not gonna come back to it in a year. You're gonna be looking at it regularly because you you need to set that as part of your time frame to be able to look at your recurring revenue and say, how am I actually faring with this? How am I getting on whilst I'm working on all of these other things in my business too? So It's it's making sure that you are holding yourself to account for these this year's goal, if you like, by looking at these other goals that you've got Wilson a shorter time frames.

Gill [00:12:14]:
Yeah. I think that's really good. Mike you it's that it's that chopping up the elephant. How do you eat an elephant? You know? You have to chop it up into little bits.

Mike [00:12:22]:
Swapping out no elephants, Jill. Let's not do that.

Gill [00:12:25]:
Watch out the elephant free to I'm a vegan, so I don't eat elephants. Not like you guys. But, you know, that whole thing, if you need 250 new clients in a year, that sounds like quite a lot to get. If you say, right, okay, that's a 125 in 6 months, that's I can't do the math, but it's a smaller number and a smaller number. So that this month, I need to get, say, 8 clients. Yes. Yeah. Then that's, you know, this week.

Gill [00:12:50]:
What's that mean? I need to go out and I need to talk to, you know, 20 people this month so that I've got a chance of pulling in this amount. And if you if you can't Mike down that amount, then your big goals will be completely unrealistic, won't they? Because there's no point in saying I want 3,000,000 new customers by next year. If when you break that down, that means I have to get 200,000 by the end of the week. And you know you've just got out of bed or whatever. That's not gonna work, is it? Not not our our sort of smaller size. I mean, maybe some of the big Boys and girls can do that, but we can't. And so you've got to be realistic. So those those I mean, that's when we start talking about those goals being Martin.

Gill [00:13:37]:
A lot of you all have heard that. Martin, what's Smarter stand for?

Martin [00:13:42]:
Specific, measurable, Achievable. Some people would say agreed. It depends who's involved in your Gill. Realistic and time bound.

Gill [00:13:52]:
Yep. And, so that's Martin. And then there's ER, which is a car.

Martin [00:13:59]:
That's Charles, the king, isn't it?

Gill [00:14:00]:
That is the king.

Mike [00:14:01]:
Or emergency room if you're in America.

Gill [00:14:08]:
Tick 1 is is what I'm trying to talk about right now because that's actually really important that it is realistic that you can do it within the time that you're saying, which if if you're saying it for a year, that is a year. And there is this saying that we always overestimate What we can do in 5 years and underestimate what we can do in a year, which is interesting. Did I say that the right Web? Yes. I did, didn't I? Mortipolis.

Mike [00:14:33]:
Wise along with underpromise and overdeliver, which is kind of like Yeah. You know, saying you can do certain things and then delivering more than what you said you could. So, that's where you're talking about deal with realism, isn't it? And it's just saying, look. You know, if you're if you're growing your agency and you're growing your agency to, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, there's a different level of expectation there. If you're solo, and you're running, you know, running your own business and you may be doing some outsourcing, then there's a little bit of different expectation there as well. So it's just setting realistic objectives around, these these goals that you've that you've set yourself. And, and then you're not gonna end up Web you get to your end of year having this massive disappointment that you've failed to, to deliver on it because you've actually been reasonable about what you're what you're looking to expect. But equally, there might be a pressure, that are supplied to this.

Mike [00:15:40]:
And pressure's always good with people. If you don't put yourself under pressure, then, you know, nobody's going to, are they? You've got to you've gotta push yourself to achieve these things and then ask yourself why you didn't do that. Was it because you procrastinated over something else and that, as we mentioned earlier, that big shiny thing came along, And you completely took your eye off the ball, and you didn't look at your recurring revenue for 2 months of the year. Hence, the fact that you your goal of having 8 new clients a month turned into 0 for those 2 months because you got sidetracked with something else. So it's just having that understanding, and then saying, well, actually, I might not have achieved that for 2 months of the year, but actually, I bought I I onboarded 42 clients last year, to my to my hosting plan. And whilst that wasn't the, objective that I wanted at the beginning of the year, that's 42 that I had at the beginning of 2024.

Martin [00:16:37]:
I'm glad you picked up on that at the end there, Mike, because because you mentioned about looking at results and thinking, oh, I'm I'm disappointed or I failed because I haven't hit my targets. Yeah. But I think it's important when you you know, if you haven't made a target to do exact exactly why analyze why is that. And it may not be because it's something that you failed at. You know? I mean, there could be other factors, but it's a useful learning Opportunity, isn't it, to go, okay. Well, either my actual target setting isn't very good in the 1st place or do you know what? By looking at that, I've suddenly realized that, you know, we need to do this or, you know, we need to move in a different direction. The whole point Wise, and and, you know, I think Americans are really good at this. It's learning from failure to go again, and not treat it as as a bad thing.

Martin [00:17:27]:
You know, treat it as a as a potential positive outcome.

Mike [00:17:31]:
And if you don't do, you're never gonna know, are you?

Martin [00:17:33]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike [00:17:34]:
You gotta dip your toes in the water and, to use another American, you gotta be a yes man, Jim Carrey, in his film. You know? He just kept saying yes to everything, and look where it led him. Alright. It might have not always been, great. But, it was it it's kind of just sort of saying, look. You know, unless I'm prepared to try, I I'm I'm not gonna know. And There is an element of, sticking your finger into the wind and saying, well, I I don't know which way I'm gonna go, but I'm gonna put I'm gonna Dip my toes in the sand. I'm gonna say, this is my this is where I wanna be, at the end of of of this year.

Martin [00:18:10]:
Jill, quickly, Can you rescue Mike? He's got his toes in the water. He's got his fingers in the sand. I don't know where his face is. Help him.

Mike [00:18:15]:
I'm I'm everywhere.

Gill [00:18:16]:
But you want me to shove his face in the water too? I think it's

Mike [00:18:19]:
because I wanna be on the beach. It's it's it's it's cold, isn't it? You know? It's the time of year.

Gill [00:18:25]:
It's the year. To the enthusiastic about our Gill.

Mike [00:18:30]:
Tiles, sunshine.

Gill [00:18:33]:
Oh, stop your stop it. Stop it. You're making me wanna go. Yeah. I lost the thread there. Yeah. I was gonna say, just briefly, at the end of this, All these things are great, and we we want to have somebody that's gonna keep us accountable, that's gonna keep us on that path as we go. And we're really lucky because in Allegiant we've got each other and we're all pretty motivated.

Gill [00:18:59]:
If one of us is feeling a bit, then the others Gill come along and go, Here's a pickup with Jacksy for this. You know? And we we can do that. But we I know not everybody has that. And and If you don't, then actually, it's really important that you find somebody, either an accountability partner, a coach, or Somebody, you know, just to to chat with every so often. And, you know, if you don't have anybody and you can't think of anybody, then drop us a Mike, And we'll work something out for you because we wanna we wanna help you. We wanna help you achieve your goals at the end of the day. So, we're just gonna we're gonna Wrap up now because we've talked to you long enough. But let's just have some some final thoughts about goal setting and, what's gonna happen in 2024? Martin, what do you think?

Martin [00:19:50]:
Yeah. I'm really, really excited by by this coming year. Mike mentioned ChatGPT. I am absolutely fascinated by AI and All the different tools, not just Chat GPT that are allowing us and will allow us to do much more than we could have done with the same resources. You know, we talked about growing and and more resources, but I actually think it's gonna be a year of of working smarter, of being able to achieve a lot more with exactly the same resources because this the pace of change is gonna be incredible in this year. I'm really looking forward to it.

Mike [00:20:28]:
It seems like everything now is driven around AI. It's literally you can't look at anything without any provider saying, And here's the, AI, helper. You can just click this, and it will sort it all out for you. You can write this, Rewrite this piece of text. You can do this. You can change this, and, it is exciting. And I've always thought with this that you cannot replace, you know, the human element of it, and that's why it's really Martin. And then and it's not some sort of just press 1 button, next next finish as as Web, As as some people make it out to be, and there's always room in there for skill.

Mike [00:21:12]:
But, certainly, when it comes to sort of thinking about those plans that you might set you might overachieve because of it. And I like what Martin just said because if you're more efficient, then you actually might achieve more because of Some of these tools that are out there that allow you to do it. Just be careful with with that because, it could also lead you up A situation where, you might have some, some settings in there that a very obvious to search engines and things like that that don't give you the results that you need. So you have to be very, very careful with the use of AI. But I certainly think, along with what Martin said, that it it can make us more efficient, especially for those that are running, much smaller businesses.

Gill [00:22:04]:
Brilliant. So there we have it. Be careful you don't overachieve this year because you might have unintended consequences.

Mike [00:22:12]:
Loads of money.

Gill [00:22:14]:
I think that's you know what? I think if you're overachieving and it it brings up other issues that you have to deal with, I think that's the business Mike, isn't it? And actually it's better to overachieve than underachieve or even achieve a different goal than you set out for the the beginning of the year. So thanks for tuning in this week. We we've just loved being here with you guys. And Remember to hit subscribe and join us again next time. Alright.

Martin [00:22:46]:
See you guys.