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One Year Goals

Let's move on, which of those tasks is a good nine-month goal? So going back to our original list and thinking about working out towards where you want to be and year from now, which of the things that you need to execute in your business model is a good nine-month goal? So at this point we're looking toward almost, or we're looking toward the holiday season. Where do you want to be in the holiday season of this year? Oh gosh, Tiffany just got, wide eyes! The holidays? No! I know exactly what I want by the holidays this year though. What do you want by the holidays? An employee. Absolutely, bam. Bad. You want an employee by the holidays. Girl you need an employee by the holidays. Yeah. So what do you need to do to get you an employee by the holidays? I need to speak with a lawyer. Absolutely. I need to research insurance and liabilities, and things of that nature. I need to figure out how I can structure an employee that'll best work in my situation. And then, yea...

h, I need to figure out how, what, where, who. Yup, yup, you gotta put a job description together. You need to do the job search, you need to interview candidates, you need to decide on a wage, you need to decide on benefits, you need to raise your price, so all the other stuff that goes along with this too, you need to raise your prices, you need to get in more stores, you need to get that press that you mentioned that you were looking at as well so that you can ensure that this employee of yours has work to do. (laughing) Yeah. So all of those things go along with it as well, and so those are incremental goals that you need to have over the next nine months so you can reach that big nine-month goal, right? Yeah. What could go wrong? Well it could be difficult for me to hire an employee, just in the general aspect of, the laws here are pretty stiff. Okay. And then I could hire-- So tell me about that. It's not just that the laws are pretty stiff, the laws mean that you need to pay them a good wage, right? Yeah, California, has some things, I need to go back and research the whole thing, but yeah, they're pretty steep, workers comp and tax and all of that stuff. Yup, so you need to pay them a good wage and pay the taxes and the fees that go along with that. Yeah. So you need to be able to set that money aside in your business. Another goal you might want to include then, as part of your pre-mortem, is that you save up maybe three months of salary for this person-- Yeah. Ahead of time, which, that could be a scary goal but I think it's a good one-- No, but at least I know I can pay them. Yeah, exactly, and I think that would make you feel really good. And practicing every month, yeah. (chuckles) Exactly, exactly. So, you might save three months of their salary ahead of time. Back to the laws, you need to have a safe work environment, right? So are there changes you need to make in your own studio? Is there equipment that you need to buy? Well yeah, and there's, see that's the other thing. I'm gonna have to figure out how to structure equipment. What's their equipment? Do I need to buy separate equipment versus them using all my equipment? Yup. Do they have equipment? Yeah, and then how do I insure against hazardous materials? With fire and flames and chemicals and all that good stuff. What if someone gets hurt, I guess it's workers comp, 'cause they're an employee of mine. Yeah, another thing that you need to put on your list is talking to other metal smiths who have hired regular employees, W2 employees. Yeah. Alright? Can you help me? Yeah, there you go! Talk to Robin, and then Susan's gonna talk to you both! (laughing) Yeah. And just so you know, Anya in the chatroom said that, Tiffany, you can go ahead and raise your prices 'cause she just bought her birthday present, so it's good to go. (laughing) That's awesome, thank you. No prob, don't thank me, I'm just relaying the message. Brianna, what's your nine-month goal? To have my first paying small group program completed. Oh fantastic! So what do you have to do to get there? So going back to the six months, is designing the trial program, getting the trial clients in the program, doing that, getting the testimonials, creating the story and the messaging to sell it, and then getting people to pay and sign up and do it. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome, what could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? Everything. (laughs) Not enough people sign up, or... The timing doesn't work out. Okay. Because nine months from now, maybe that doesn't work out for some of the girls, depending on school, or other things that they're doing. But hopefully, planning this far ahead, you can start telling the girls that you wanna have in the program, 'cause this is gonna be like invitation only, right? Right. Right, so you start thinking about who those girls are now, and then you can tell them, "Alright, we're starting this program in September." Okay. 'Cause it's gonna be done nine months from now, 'cause Tara's gonna be upset if it's not. (laughing) Right? Yeah. Okay, so that's good, that's why planning ahead, I'm terrible with timing. I inevitably end shopping carts on major holidays, or when the Super Bowl is on. Right. You know, stuff like that, so planning ahead let's you, hopefully, see those things before it's like, "Oh, crap!" Too late. "Man!" (laughs) So, that's really good. What else? What else could go wrong? What could go wrong? Maybe the ones in the trial didn't like the program, or it wasn't what they were expecting. So, then I would have to change the design of the program. Okay, great, so that's not even necessarily a bad thing. That's fine, but one thing you wanna plan into this program is evaluation. Evaluation, feedback, all that good stuff. Make sure you're getting it both from the students, and from the parents, and if you're involved in school organizations, get them involved as well, so that you have as much information to work with as humanly possible, so that then, when you go and relaunch it in February for a fee, you know you've got this, right? So, let's move ahead to that year goal, let's say your year goal is launching it for a fee next February, which would be a year from now. (laughing) Do you feel like you need to... Be reaching a wider audience by then? Or do you feel pretty comfortable with the number that you have right now? I feel like starting with the 100 that I'm currently already working with and trying to do the deep with them, because they already trust me, they already know me, so it'd be pretty easy to say, "Why don't you join this program?" And then after that, maybe later, trying to go wider. Gotcha, so putting the focus on getting things right now, making sure you're doing the deepest work, the biggest impact you possibly can with these people, and then putting more of an emphasis in marketing. Right. Sounds good, awesome. Anyone else have a share here? No, good? Yes, Susan? So, in nine months, I would like to have built up enough stores so that I can then delegate that to having a rep. Great, ooh, that's fantastic! Hiring a sales rep in nine months. Right, because Robin told me I have to rep myself in the building. (squeals) Yes. (laughing) Which I am not looking forward to, but I'm gonna embrace it. So, I just figured having 75 accounts. Okay. Before I can make that happen. Great, I would think that you would probably be pretty attractive to a rep at that point too, which would be a big part of it, yeah. So, what could go wrong in the process of, or let's ask the question, what could prevent you from hiring a rep in nine months? Well, that I don't wanna give up that extra percentage, that I'm keeping-- Okay, so your prices might need to get adjusted. Well, I think I'm gonna build that in the beginning anyway, the commission. But having to give away that 15, 20% to a rep. But that's just a choice. I could not find somebody that I click with, I might not find a rep that wants to rep me. Okay, so you might wanna start, actually, the process of looking sooner than later, right? Give yourself as much time as you can, cool. What could go wrong? I hire a rep, and they don't do enough business for me. Okay. Or something like that. Yeah, so, you could create those contingency plans to make sure that stuff doesn't happen, right? Brainstorm what could go wrong so you can brainstorm the contingency plans so that you are the one in control of your business. You're the one that's in control of your success. So, I did wanna mention that I also have a free guide to revenue planning. It's something that we kind of hit tangentially but not something we hit directly. So you can find that at taragentile.com/plan, it's free to download, just enter your email address and you'll get a link to download it, and that'll walk you through creating a whole plan that's 12 months long, that gets you from cycle to cycle to cycle and tells you, "Alright, this is my goal, is to earn this much this month, "this much this month," because in any business, there's gonna be ups and downs, and those ups and downs can be really stressful going from sales cycle to sales cycle to sales cycle, even if it's working really, really well, you can feel like, "Oh, gosh! "I'm not gonna be able to pay my bills this month." Or you blow your whole wad on one thing because you think you're gonna earn the same thing the next month because you don't have a plan. So, I highly encourage, it's almost like the opposite of creating a budget. You wanna create a plan for earning so you can feel really confident about where you're at financially, both in your business and in your personal life, alright? So there's that. Alright, I wanna know from everyone, what goal are you committing to today? What's that maybe that first goal that you're gonna hit maybe next week? What's that thing you're gonna work on that you're gonna hit out of the park next week? Use the hashtag, #taralive, hit me up @taragentile, and tell me what goal are you committing to today, Robin? Gosh, um-- Putting you on the spot. Working smarter, not harder, if you wanna-- That's not a goal! (laughing) It is a goal! I have so many I wanna do. Okay. That's really tough. Give me one, one that you literally wanna start next week. Reaching out to press. Reaching out to press, what press are you going to reach out to next week? I'm going to reach out to Daily Candy. Okay. Next week, and I'm going-- Give me three, Daily Candy. Pop, um... Uh, what is it? I wanna say Pop Sugar, that's not it though. Refinery29, Daily Candy-- Okay. And Bricka. Well, Bricka's more of a site. That's okay, site is media. Okay. Awesome, alright. You better email me-- I will email you. When you get that stuff done, Shauna? I'm going to finish my little mini course. Okay. I'm part of a kind of a global summit, in March, so I wanna get that out, tested, with some people so that it's ready to go and have a sales page. I was gonna say, do you have a landing page for that? Not yet, no. Okay, can you get that done this week? And I have other tweakings of my website that I need to do as well for that, yeah. Okay, can you get that landing page done this week? Yes. Good. Email me when it's done, Sasha, go. I decided that I need to get more private coaching clients just in case it takes me longer to write this book than I thought, just is in this now. Okay, that's a good pre-mortem realization. So, yeah, exactly. So, I decided I would pull people for topics for a monthly Quirkyalone phone call that would be free. Okay. And then that would be the lead generation for more coaching clients. Perfect, so you're gonna put together a survey? Or are you just send a-- Yeah, or just like on Twitter or Facebook-- Okay. Like, "What would you like to learn about, talk about?" Fantastic, so you're gonna have that 12-month plan done by the end of the week? Of the topics for the month? Yeah. Okay, yeah. (laughing) Yes, oh, beautiful. Yeah, there you go. What a surprise! Yeah, that's a good idea. I have a lot that I have to do in the next week or so. Okay. 'Cause I need to launch. You're busy. Yeah, well, I need to launch this thing, so. I have to figure out my pricing. Write all of my copy for each piece. Okay. All the stories about each piece. I have to write my own bio, I have the company bio. But writing my bio is like so daunting to me. I have to do my line sheets, I have to have a model shoot, I have to write a press release. (softly exhales) That's a lot. That's all I had written down-- That's all so great, okay. But I'm sure there's more. Email me when you're done! (laughing) Bridgette, what are you committing to this week? I think the most important thing is just for me to create like a 12-month plan and action steps required for each month. And then just start executing those. Okay, great, creating of that comprehensive plan, that's a great goal, awesome. Especially for where you're at in your business. Right. Very good. Tiffany? Raise my prices. Okay. (laughing) We already knew mine. Alright, email me when it's done. Okay. Brianna? Create the new program outline. Fantastic, great, email me when it's done. What do we have online, what are people committing to? Well, we've got some fairly generic stuff, people saying, "Yes, I realize I have to do this." But some of the very specific ones, Love Cherie says, "I've gotta plan my shows "and conventions for the rest of the year." That's her commitment for the next seven days. Mm, love that! Ray Gray says, "I've got lots of research to do " "in the next few days, brainstorming, writing, "and filling out Tara's workbook." Okay, excellent. And then committing to that as well, and Paniere, I think it is, is saying, "Figuring out my story "and the story of my clients." That's very important. Absolutely, great. That's good, Chelsea says, "Sitting down with a pen and notebook "and just brainstorming what I want for my business, "how much I wanna make, and what I need to do to get there." And Neil Ren said, "I agree." Great, awesome. Final questions. Don't look at me like that. (laughs) Well, actually, while we do this, let's give them a chance to think about it 'cause we do have some sort of wrapping questions from our studio audience. Oh, yeah, I would love to rap a question. So, this one comes from Love Life, Love Learning. They're saying, "Tara's providing fabulous insight to us. "Who are the business strategists and coaches "that you consult with to help you "with the topics you are teaching us?" Oh, yeah, great question. So, let me give you four people that I both admire, who I have worked with, who I collaborate with, who I co-create with, and who I just love talking to. One would be Danielle LaPorte, who works in very much, kind of the spiritual side of business, and just how you fit into the world. Another would be Nilofer Merchant, who, I mentioned earlier, wrote my favorite business book of 2012, which turned into my favorite business book of 2013, we will see if it gets topped this year, I don't know. So, Nilofer Merchant, you can find her NiloferMerchant.com. The book is 11 Rules For Creating Value in the Social Era. Another one that has been a friend, and a mentor, and a coach, has been Alexis Neely, you can find her at EyesWideOpenLife.com. She's got a program called, The Money Map to Freedom that is amazing in terms of figuring out how much it costs to live the life you want to live, and how you're going to get there. And then the last one would be my friend, and my mentor, Amanda Steinberg, who is the CEO and founder of DailyWorth.com she is a whip-smart business woman, she's also super passionate about helping women be financially successful. So, those would be my big four, and if I forgot anybody, I'm really sorry. What about our students, any questions here? Final questions. Sasha? Okay, it's kind of, what if you just threw something out there to sell it without the sales cycle and the story? But there isn't that much time for this whole, long, drawn out, six-email thing. I mean, what then? What then? You can always go back and do it. So, even if you said, "Oh, guys! "I put together this thing 'cause I'm just so excited," and nobody bites, which is not, which would be not unusual, right? That doesn't mean that just because you've gone and made the offer because you were so excited doesn't mean that you can't go back and start engaging more of a sales cycle. I have totally done that before. In fact, I did that in the Art of Earning. So, three years ago when I launched that book, I launched it, well, one, I didn't know a whole lot about launching or sales cycles at the time. But I knew there was just this real need for it and I had a real need for getting my learning out onto the page, and so I took two weeks and wrote that baby, put it together, designed it, and then just put it out there, and it was the end of June, which is a terrible time to not only launch something with a launch, but let alone launch it without a launch, right? So then later, it actually did very well right off the bat 'cause it was something that people needed so much. But still, later I've gone back and have engaged sales cycles around it to goose the sales at different times. Like, what's easier to sell than something you already know is selling? But even if it's something that's not selling, because maybe you thought you made an offer, but no one else knew you made an offer, or something like that, you can re-engage that sales process later. Good? Robin? When are too many programs and too many evergreens, and too many E-books too many? I kinda have been researching and I went on someone's site and I was like, "Holy Cow!" It just seemed like she was all over the place. And I certainly don't ever wanna come across being all over the place, but we're constantly getting ideas of other things we could be doing to help our community. Yeah, so, one, I think the key to that is having a strong focus and a very strong brand. So, if you're going to be creating a lot, people need to know why you're creating a lot. And you guys do have a strong brand, every resource is very practical, "I'm going to solve this problem for you," "this is where you're at, this is who you are, "and I'm going to help you get this outcome." If you can do that, I don't think there's necessarily any kind of number that you can say enough is too much here, okay? What happens is when there isn't a strong brand, there is no sense of why, why are we creating these things? And the individual programs are messaged kind of wishy-washy. And not because they're bad programs or bad products, but they don't help the customer make a buying decision. If you get questions from customers that are saying, "I see you've got all sorts of things, "I think that you help people for me, "I really like what you're putting out, "but I don't know which thing to buy." That's a really good indication that there's probably at least 50 other people that are thinking exactly the same thing. That's a good indication that you've either got too much stuff or that all of that stuff needs to be re-messaged, and re-focused, re-positioned, so that it makes sense to people. If your products aren't actually part of helping people make a good decision for themselves, the way they're positioned, the way they're messaged, what they're called, who they're for, then that's when you start to get into trouble with just too many product offerings. Really good, okay, thank you. Okay? Yeah. Yeah.