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Episode 114: Business Planning for the New Year
206 Plays4 years ago
Shay Cochrane, the founder and CEO of Social Squares, joins me on the podcast for a timely discussion about planning an end of year retreat to reflect on the previous year and plan for the upcoming year. Shay always brings a lot of practical advice and insight to the podcast and this episode was no different.
If you want to learn a little bit more about Shay, the origins of Social Squares, and productizing a service, I encourage you to check out episode 41. Today we discuss how she organizes her end of year retreat where she goes away for a weekend to reflect on the previous year, evaluate how things have gone, and put together a plan for the upcoming year.
For the show notes, visit https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-shay-cochrane-episode-114/
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Transcript
Accountability through Review Dates
00:00:05
Speaker
That sounds like a small thing to just put those review dates on the calendar. I think putting it on the calendar is huge. It sounds like a small step, but I think that is some of the accountability that's needed to make sure that you're actually doing what you said you're gonna do. Because again, as an entrepreneur, time flies, right? So all of a sudden three months have passed. And so it really is important that you have those key mile markers and touch points on your calendars for yourself and for your team to kind of stop and assess. Otherwise time will just pass and you'll just keep working and you might be doing great work.
00:00:34
Speaker
but, you know, wasn't the work that you set out to do.
Introduction to Brands at Book Show
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Planning End-of-Year Retreats
00:00:52
Speaker
Shay Cochran, the founder and CEO of Social Squares joins me on the podcast for a timely discussion about planning an end-of-year retreat to reflect on the previous year and plan for the upcoming year. Shay always brings a lot of practical advice and insight to the podcast, and this episode was no different. If you want to learn a little bit more about Shay, the origins of Social Squares, and productizing a service, I encourage you to check out episode 41.
00:01:18
Speaker
Today, we discuss how Shay organizes her end of year retreat, where she goes away for a weekend to reflect on the previous year, evaluate how things have gone and put together a plan for the upcoming year.
00:01:32
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DavyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands That Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DavyandChrista. Now, on to the episode. All right, we should be live. So, excited to chat with you, Shay.
The Evolution of Social Squares
00:02:00
Speaker
I'm so excited to have this conversation. It's such a timely, relevant conversation, so just excited to be here. I just feel like, again, and this is just, I mean, your area on my screen, it's like well lit. It's just beautifully styled. And here I am, I'm like sitting in the corner of my office. It's this drab day outside. My webinar light doesn't work. So here we are.
00:02:22
Speaker
But anyway, it's been a while since we chatted. For those of you who don't know, Shay's been on the podcast before. Back on, I think it was episode 41, I looked it up, Productizing a Service. And you talked a little bit about social squares and some of your experience with SE Stock Shop. And it's been one of our most popular episodes. So excited to have you back on the podcast. I would love to hear before we get started, just what have you been up to since May 2019? I can't even remember 2019. There's been earlier in my mind outside of 2020 here.
00:02:52
Speaker
But what have you been up to? What's been going on with social squares? Man, May 2019 feels like an actual lifetime ago. And it's funny, I was thinking back to the end of that interview, you asked me, I think you asked me like, you know, what's ahead? And I said, well, 2019 was a scramble because I was doing a lot of hiring in 2019. So 2019 felt really hard and like a lot of building. And I was looking forward to 2020 kind of settling in a little bit, I think is what I said.
00:03:21
Speaker
I don't know that settling in is necessarily the term I would use to describe this year. I would say it was another year of a lot of building, so we built the team. I got to add more amazing talented women to my team, so we're at about seven that are in our core team. Now, we really overhauled the membership, so right before the pandemic,
00:03:45
Speaker
not knowing what was ahead. Actually, at the beginning of the year, we were already thinking about what we wanted to add to the membership just to increase the value of the membership beyond just images and just seeing the need for entrepreneurs to understand how to utilize image content in their online marketing strategies, whether that's an Instagram marketing strategy or Pinterest marketing strategy, their content strategy. We really want to see small business owners and specifically female
00:04:12
Speaker
Entrepreneurs succeed with images so we know that images is like part of the conversation but not all the conversation so we overhauled the social squares membership in
00:04:23
Speaker
Leading up to we launched all the additional content in April I write as the pandemic was hitting which was really ended up being really well timed because it was just an opportunity for us to add value When people really needed help like they really needed to know they really needed a game plan things were kind of falling apart all around us that really was a big shift for us and then you know this year has been just about learning to be a CEO in my own company, which is
From Managing a Team to Business Longevity
00:04:50
Speaker
a
00:04:50
Speaker
Just a total shift from working in the business and I still do a bit of working in the business I'm still a photographer and stylist, but that has been The biggest shift this year is learning how to manage a team and what it looks like to really build a world-class Business that has the opportunity to outlast me, you know So that's been a huge learning curve lots of building this year. And so I'm hoping you know
00:05:17
Speaker
that this next year is a little more filling in, dialing things in less new and more just kind of refining what we're already doing. So that's kind of a snapshot of what 2020 has held for us.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of exciting things happen with the launch of the new website and the refinements of the membership. And we've been Social Square members, I think, since, you know, well before the dawn of time. Yeah, make use of social squares on a daily basis even. So if you haven't checked that out, and you don't know much about it, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to Episode 41 with Shay and hearing about a little bit of the origin story of that.
Building a House: Fun and Overwhelming
00:05:53
Speaker
And for those of you who are doing a service-based business and want to offer a product, great episode to listen to as well. Something else that you're doing, building a house, right?
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, and you guys just went through that process, right? So you're a pro. I never wanted to build a house. Ironically, I mean, I know a lot of people are like, that's their dream. I just hadn't thought about it. Because to me, that sounded like a string of a lot of decisions that felt overwhelming.
00:06:19
Speaker
But we found ourselves in a situation where that really made the most sense. And you know what? We're like six months into the process maybe, and it's been so awesome. It's been a lot of fun. And I'll be so happy when I'm done making decisions, but it has been really fun. Yeah. So have you all broken around yet? We have. Yeah. So we're looking at the slab being poured in the next few weeks.
00:06:40
Speaker
that's awesome. So really enjoyed the design process. The build feels it just felt so long. I mean, it wasn't the grand scheme of things. We're glad to be in the house. But yeah, I mean, right now, I probably hear a little bit of it. We have a walkways going in behind our house. We've been moved in for a few months now. But there's just all these little things, you know, that come together afterwards. But anyways, I mean, already have ideas for our next episode. I want to hear
The Power of Reflection and Planning
00:07:04
Speaker
stepping into that CEO role and managing a team. It's something that we've gone through and I've gone through for both Dave and Krista until the past two years. So I just have all these thoughts about it. And there's all these surprises. There's some definitely hard parts and challenges to it. And there's a lot of really good that's come out of it. That could be a whole episode in and of itself.
00:07:23
Speaker
But we're talking about end of year planning, which is I think just as exciting as a topic, something that you really think have zeroed in and figured out. And I've talked to a few people even this morning, one of my neighbors, Buddy Powers, I think you know Buddy and Jill.
00:07:37
Speaker
Yeah. Farm. Yeah. So it was on a run with Luddy right and early this morning or dark and early this morning. And both of them got back and talking to Jill and they're like, oh, we need to listen to this. Everybody I talked to is like, oh, I need to hear about how we do this because- Especially this year. Yeah, especially this year.
00:07:54
Speaker
But I mean, just a few challenges, you know, just kind of like set some context here, I think for end year planning, reviewing the past year, and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but like, doing it in a way that where it's you make the best use of your time where you have time to really feel like you've
00:08:10
Speaker
you know, you're prioritizing what's important and reflecting on the things that you need to reflect on. How do you put together a plan that you're actually going to execute on the following year? I mean, these are, I think, all questions that people have. Tell us a little bit about your end of year retreat and just what's the purpose of it and why do you choose to go away?
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah. So as you know, Graham and I, my husband and I are both business owners. So I was asking him last night, when did we start doing this? How long ago was it? And he remembers it as far back as 2016. And I think it was born out of just
00:08:43
Speaker
not knowing what we're doing as business owners. Neither of us. I mean, we're all just learning as we go, right? That's kind of the entrepreneurial journey is you're figuring it out. And so, you guys have to figure it out really quickly, you know? I don't know. We've been at this for a long time, though. And we have both owned a business more or less for 10 years. So we have really been all along just trying to figure it out as we go. But I think
00:09:08
Speaker
Is the story for most entrepreneurs you spend so much of your time in the business especially in the early days you're building it you're doing the work you're doing the customer service you're answering the calls you know you're making the sales you're shipping the product and there's very little time built in to think about the business and to work on the business and you know we talk about that a lot.
00:09:28
Speaker
So we wanted to set aside time at the, originally it's always been at the beginning of the next year because January just made a little bit more sense within our schedule to look back at what happened this year and to kind of think intentionally about where we want to go in the next year. And we do this both in business and we do this in life as a family. So the origin of getting away, I think it was just, you know, needing to be out of your environment, especially if you're working from home, it really is,
00:09:56
Speaker
Not the same if you go get a hotel somewhere if we're in Florida. Being able to sit and look out at the water is different than being in your little closet, corner, desk where we were originally. As an entrepreneur, we're sharing a guest bedroom. I think that there is something about
00:10:15
Speaker
getting out of that space whether it's just for a day or overnight getting out of that face you're always working in that kind of helps you to step back and think differently and think creatively about the business in a way that's less you know tactical and sort of in the weeds the way that we tend to be from day to day as business owners so.
00:10:33
Speaker
For us, that looks like at least once a year. Now we try to do it twice a year. Both of us go away individually. We get a hotel for two nights. We business expense that. Business expense all the meals. Business expense all the snacks. But we just set aside some time to get away. And we both do different things. We both have different elements of that planning time away. But we really do prioritize that. And now we try to do it mid-year as well.
00:11:01
Speaker
Important that it's regular built in my planning dates for 2021 are already on the calendar. Like I know when I'm in a book a hotel and we definitely try to get out of the office so that we're kind of in a different environment in an environment that's kind of going to spark creativity and help us to think outside the box with things. Yeah.
00:11:21
Speaker
What does that look like? So do you all go go away on the same weekend? I mean, just out of curiosity for the we take turns who are both Okay, so it's weekends where you're going away different weekend. Yeah, so I took one weekend and he took like the very next weekend and we both at this point we get away for two nights so that you have one whole day at the hotel. This is like obviously we've been doing this for a while and we figured out like what works and what doesn't work. One night isn't quite enough because you get
00:11:46
Speaker
Yeah, there's not enough time that you have that room. So anyway, two nights, so you have one full day. So it's usually an evening, a full day, and then the morning to kind of wrap up and then check out the hotel and come home. You're going away alone. So you know, even though you have a team, you're not bringing your team along with you. It is just you in the hotel. Yeah, getting at some work. Yeah, and it is tricky. This was the first year
00:12:11
Speaker
I mean I did have a portion of the team in place at the end of 2019 but team leadership and functioning as a team was still very new to me back then so this is the first year where it was really challenging to plan for myself without the team but I was planning ahead of our team planning day so I knew that we were going to have like sort of a team planning retreat
00:12:31
Speaker
that was gonna follow so i need to have. My head on straight about a number of things going into that planning meeting like where do i want to take us next year so what am i even communicating to the team but you know i'm learning that i don't know the answer there about who else needs to be involved there were definitely elements where i mean i really need to ask my marketing director about this like this is really a decision for me.
00:12:55
Speaker
So I'm learning that. I don't really have all the answers there, but I do know that as the CEO, even as just the visionary, I needed to have my head on my shoulders about where we were going, what really matters to us, what we're going to zero in on so that we could work out the details together as a team. But I have kind of those foundational elements in place going into it.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So what is it? What is your time actually look like? How do you structure it while you're away? Like what kind of plan? What's that balance look like between maybe reflecting on the past year, and then looking forward to what's to come?
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, so this is the nitty gritty and this has changed a lot for me because I've been doing this whole like planning day away is what we call it. So I've been doing this for, you know, maybe eight years now. So it's changed a little bit based on the needs of the business. But there's certain core elements that have always been a part of it that I think are really helpful for anyone. I always, always, always start with reflecting on the year.
00:13:48
Speaker
What that usually looks like is I open up a document I write down The winds things that are just on the top of my head that worked really well I'll go back in a sauna and look at tasks that we completed like look at the open loops that we closed look at the major initiatives that we had going on because you forget I mean you're just kind of especially as entrepreneur it's like you're just always on to the next thing and
00:14:12
Speaker
And so looking back i think oh that's right we want to blog i remember that we want to hold website i forgot forgotten all about that it's crazy how much you forget you're just on the next day so i'll look at a sauna i'll write down big wins also review the numbers so i'll compare
00:14:33
Speaker
The year prior to you know so for me that was like comparing twenty nineteen to twenty twenties numbers all look at whatever kind of metrics i have and so in the early years where i didn't really have a firm grasp on my like most important key metrics i was spent a lot of time digging.
00:14:51
Speaker
A lot of time, like digging through MailChimp to look at open rates, like digging through Stripe to look at how much we made each quarter. So early on, when I didn't have as many systems in place for that kind of thing, that element of it was more involved. I maybe spent a good few hours rounding up numbers. But even this year,
00:15:12
Speaker
It's so incredibly helpful or was so incredibly helpful to look back because as was the case for many of us we started off twenty twenty. With a bang and i had goals that were set for twenty twenty and then quarter one of twenty twenty when really really well so we actually tweaked a lot of our goals early on and then.
00:15:35
Speaker
The pandemic hit yeah cute and then march april absolutely so what happened is that then we kind of flat lined for you know five months and so my feeling going into the end of the year planning was this year suck.
00:15:51
Speaker
We didn't grow the way that I wanted to grow. We didn't hit our numbers that I had set out for us. I mean, it was just month after month of like not being where we wanted to be. And we were really in a good spot as a business, but still just that, again, that growth mindset just gets you as an entrepreneur. It was always like what we could have been or should have been. But when I went back, I was like, you know what? We actually increased our revenue by 93% over 2019.
00:16:19
Speaker
And I had not looked at that. For whatever reason, I had just been so forward focused and like, man, we didn't do what I really hoped that we were going to do and what we should have been able to do or could have been able to do. I missed that we grew revenue by 90%. So that's why it's just so incredibly helpful to start there with what you did, what worked, what the numbers were, how you grew, look at percentages. Especially if you're a new business owner,
00:16:48
Speaker
You might be like, well, we only grew by 500 newsletter subscribers. Yeah, but that could have been 200% growth over the year prior. So don't get too hung up on the exact numbers so much as the percentages, especially in those early days of growth. It just can be really encouraging to see what's actually happening.
00:17:07
Speaker
That's part one. I always start, I usually do that the first evening. I just spend the whole evening looking at what worked, what we did, what I accomplished, what my team accomplished, I should say, in the year prior. Number two is I'll spend a lot of time reviewing our mission and vision and core values and critical mindset.
Refining Mission and Vision
00:17:29
Speaker
So we have kind of all of these things within the business that I spend time refining. So making sure that I take a look back at that, like why are we doing this?
00:17:37
Speaker
What are we doing? Because you get off track over the course of the year and there's all these fun things you could be a part of. So you really have to recenter yourself on what your mission and vision is before you can start planning ahead for the next year. So I spend a good amount of time updating our mission, vision, which shouldn't be changing. I'm just tweaking it. I'm assessing as I'm reading it. Did we do that? Our core values, are these really still our core values?
00:18:04
Speaker
Did you find that team grew that it was even more important to revisit those things mean? Oh, yeah, found is just I guess maybe lack of experience onboarding people always forgetting or for me, like, oh, you know, they don't know or they don't necessarily know our core values. They don't necessarily know even how those are set up and structured and how we talk about things. And we've been trying to be more intentional about building those things in.
00:18:25
Speaker
You really do. And you have to build it in and then you have to revisit it and then you have to revisit it and you have to revisit it. And what has blown me away, and this gets into our next podcast about team leadership, but it blows me away how that really is the driving motivator for your team. Like a really solid
00:18:44
Speaker
Mission that they can get behind is the difference maker and there were so many years where you hear like you need to have a why and you never know when it's just you in the business is very hard to be like how is that relevant use of my time but this year more than ever i have become a believer that that is so.
00:19:04
Speaker
critical so mission vision i'm so extra when it comes to team leadership so we have like are you makes everything is that we have critical actions and i said we have core values and we have we have all these different elements like how do how does everyone on the team need to show up like what is an a player like.
00:19:21
Speaker
My poor teen. They're so gracious with me. Again, not to get us off track because, and just to review too, Friday night or that first evening is really focusing on the reflection portion. Is this Saturday morning now where we're revisiting or the next morning rather?
00:19:36
Speaker
Okay, just out of curiosity, for people who are listening to this and be like, oh, man, I really wish they would talk about that. Do you have any resources that you'd recommend for kind of where you draw some of this stuff from? I know back is a previous conversation, we talked about traction a little bit, right? What are some of the areas that you're drawing some of this team leadership stuff out of? Yeah, so traction was where I started. And that was very helpful as sort of a first run at mission vision.
00:20:01
Speaker
So yes, traction. Absolutely. Start with traction. I was also really helped by Donald Miller's course. He has a membership called business made simple university. And within that he has a few modules or mini courses that are on building out your mission and vision and your one liner and your, he has a better name for it, but like your story concept and things like that. So I spent a lot of time.
00:20:27
Speaker
2019, at my day away, I watched that course and I really refined what was there and built out what was there. I don't know where I got this. I think the critical actions and mindsets were from Donald Miller. I would say start with those two. Start with traction and start with what Donald Miller has about building a mission and vision and his story brand concept as it relates to creating the storyline of what your business is doing. Those are two great resources.
00:20:56
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. I recently read, I guess it was at the beginning of this year, a book called The Advantage, recommended by a mutual friend, Todd Watson, to show it. That's been another good one for people looking at organizational leadership resources as well. But anyways, to get us back to what that morning looks like, so you revisit all of that, and you've moved on from reflection to that standpoint, to a certain extent. So what does the rest of your day look like? Yeah. So the next
00:21:22
Speaker
part, next section is reviewing surveys. You can see that all of this is building on itself. You really don't want to go about any planning for next year without feedback. Without direction, without mission and vision, obviously. Feedback is a really critical part of that. Feedback is going to come through your numbers and it's going to come through surveys. What do the numbers say? We already covered that when we're looking at reviewing the numbers for the previous year.
00:21:51
Speaker
but then i also have always customer feedback has always been a huge driving factor of any and all changes that we've made as a business that was just something that i started to bake in really early on so now and especially this year we got a little more sophisticated in how we are
00:22:08
Speaker
Getting feedback from our audience and how it's baked in so we've got you know onboarding surveys. We've got exit surveys We've got mid-year surveys. We've got member surveys. We've got newsletter surveys We've got you know, probably six different surveys at this point that are built in and baked in that are kind of always automatically collecting feedback and that's been really awesome because now we have the information we need to really make
Using Customer Feedback for Decisions
00:22:31
Speaker
a
00:22:31
Speaker
Decisions that are gonna be in favor of our customers going into next year so i spend a good amount of time reading through survey so we had over six hundred of our members completed the survey which was really fantastic percentage for us this year so i spent a few solid hours i print all of them out.
00:22:49
Speaker
I get a high like multiple highlighters and multiple colors and i'll go to and i will read every single survey response. I know highlight things that i see i'll take notes about you know common things i'm hearing over and over again i spend you know that can be an hour that can be two hours of time just reviewing survey feedback.
00:23:10
Speaker
And so we need all that before we can even get on to the planning. It's like that's a big chunk of it. And then I kind of feel like I have everything I need to begin planning. So from there.
Intense Retreat Work Style
00:23:22
Speaker
Nap in between. Like I feel like my bride. Oh my gosh, I'm so intense. I know. I would need a nap. I would need to step away from it at this point for sure.
00:23:33
Speaker
It is a marathon and I am such a mean boss. I'm not good at taking a break, but I will say this. Everyone's different. You have to do what works for you. So Graham does a lot of his planning like out walking on the beach. So he will book a hotel right on the water and he will go walk like 10 miles and just think as he walks. And then, you know, he'll come back and over the course of that walk, he will have
00:23:59
Speaker
Assessed and planned and written, you know, he'll have come up with all of next year. I cannot do that I'm not I can't think and walk And I need paper and I need documents and I need to type it up I can't do that surveys
00:24:16
Speaker
I need all the data and I have to write everything down. So it really depends on what works for you, but I will try to switch up my environment. I'll go like if I'm out, if there's a pool and if it's nice out. So I mean in Florida, obviously we can get away with going and sitting by the pool is always nice out.
00:24:32
Speaker
It's always nice out to all this by the pool i'll go for a walk i'll change my location i'll go sit somewhere else in the hotel i really do try to kind of do what i can but i'm not great about taking a break i just. Power through it i do try to stay up and stretch and things like that but everyone's different there and i think the smart thing would be do a section of it you know give yourself like two hours of deep work or ninety minutes of deep work and go for a run.
00:24:58
Speaker
or do 90 minutes of it and then do something fun. Do 90 minutes of it, take a nap. I really do think the wiser thing to do would be to build in that kind of mental break. I'm just real extra because I'm not very gracious with myself. So I do stop and eat.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, for the till agency for our paid advertising agent, we've done a few leadership retreats where it's me, Ryan, Jesse, my two partners for that business. And we place others like tan in between major segments, you know, which helps us break up the day and gives us a little motivation to really like dive in and get whatever is done at hand, you know, and then move on to the next thing.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah. And especially with team, I mean, don't even get me started. Team retreats and team planning is like a whole nother ballgame.
Setting Goals with OKRs
00:25:42
Speaker
You definitely don't want to just be super intense and go for eight hours. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. But so you move into kind of thinking about the future by the afternoon.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yes. And so what that looks like is OKR planning. So we use like an OKR framework for goal setting. And that was new to 2019. So objectives and key results, right? Objectives and key results. And there's lots of different ways that you can goal set. That's just kind of a very simple framework that I like.
00:26:12
Speaker
2019 we were giving it a try so we didn't do a great job of it we did a okay job of it i'm glad that we had it but i needed to refine it i needed to rethink how are you gonna do it for twenty twenty and i need to set our new objectives and key results so we have like three.
00:26:28
Speaker
Big picture objectives and then we have corresponding key results and those key results are all measurable results that we want to see that are tied to a particular person on our team so i set those now i don't get this is in process learning so i don't know what the answer is here but what that look like for this year is that i really focused on setting the three big picture objectives.
00:26:51
Speaker
For the company-wide objective so for example like be the best styled stock membership available And then it's like okay as measured by what how are we gonna know if we accomplished that what is that gonna look like? That's a very pie in the sky objective, which is what those objectives are kind of supposed to be so I kind of come up with our big
00:27:13
Speaker
Objectives and then some of our big key results and measurable and then now my department heads will come up with their own Key results for the quarter and that kind of thing. So again, that's where there's a little bit of a difference if it's just you and your business Then you can outline all of your objectives and key results. How are you gonna measure success? So I looked at that and you know, I'm taking the data from last year. How did we grow in 2020? So how do I think we can grow in? 2021
00:27:41
Speaker
I'm planning out all of my OKRs based on what we did, and then those will be the OKRs that I communicate to the team. For me, those were the biggest elements of planning this year, but I think another great way to spend your time if you are a business owner, especially if you're a solopreneur, would be to do content planning. I would always suggest finishing up there.
00:28:04
Speaker
And that could look like content for your membership content the free content that you put out on your blog or on youtube or podcast content it could look like instagram content you know what are you gonna be talking about on instagram so i really do recommend most companies spending a solid chunk of time thinking through the content that you're gonna be sharing because it's just helpful to bulk.
00:28:25
Speaker
think through that stuff like what are we gonna be doing how is it gonna all work together what do i want to talk about that you're not having to come up with content as you go and you know what this looks like it really is helpful to think the content all at one time so last year i spent more time thinking through the content of our membership and that kind of thing what we're gonna be putting out the bonus content of the new marketing education elements that we're gonna be adding but
00:28:49
Speaker
Now, there are other people on my team that really are a part of planning content. So that was not as big of a part this year. But I would recommend for most businesses, that's probably a really relevant way to spend a good chunk of that time. It's just doing content planning. And that's pretty much it. I mean, that's the whole time for me.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, but a lot for sure. You know, what's interesting too about content is that, I mean, especially for a business like yours, you can't like for you, you can't be playing a new year's content right now, you know, because you not only have to say, okay, we're gonna do this, but then you have to actually go create that collateral. So
00:29:23
Speaker
I assume you're at least a quarter ahead in doing that. I guess just a quick side question, what does that look like? How do you organize that? And I think one of the biggest challenges for people planning content for the whole year is, okay, so you sat down in December to plan the content for the whole year. How do you ensure that the stuff you plan for Q3 actually happens or that you're actually on track to do that in Q3 when you're sitting in a hotel room in December actually coming up with these great ideas?
00:29:51
Speaker
That is the billion dollar question because you will release seasonal content by the time it's arrived, right? Yeah. So there's a lot of questions baked into that question. So one of the things, let me back up a little bit. Like one of the things that I'm planning is all of our
00:30:06
Speaker
team meetings. I plan them for the whole entire year. So I don't know if you can see, but on my back wall, that is all of our calendar of meetings for next year.
Importance of Team Meetings and Content Planning
00:30:18
Speaker
I'm always so amazed. It looks so neat. You should see my whiteboard right now. It's like scribbles.
00:30:25
Speaker
Oh man. But I'm just learning what works for my brain because I only work 16 hours a week. So I have to be really intentional about how I spend my time. I have to space things out so that I'm in control of my time. I can't have meetings sneaking up on me. If I'm supposed to be shooting, I can't go then spend a day in an emergency quarantine meeting. So
00:30:48
Speaker
We have got every meeting that we do as a team already scheduled after the entire year my marketing meetings are content review meetings are weekly touch bases i got my shoot day schedule out those kind of flex a little bit but i do plan what days am i gonna be shooting.
00:31:03
Speaker
What days am I gonna be learning like I try to schedule in a like learning or development day so that I'm that's the day that I'm taking those courses that I purchased and that kind of thing so there's that planning. Then there's content for the membership for us so that's gonna fall under major buckets and I kind of help determine the big picture buckets like.
00:31:22
Speaker
Instagram marketing interest marketing email marketing but then maritza on my team and then now in on my marketing team they'll kinda actually drill down what we're gonna roll out when what are the blog post what are the course spending instagram post etc etc and then we have image launches and i have a curator who does that so i'm we're launching for image collections a month and she does that based on.
00:31:47
Speaker
Feedback surveys what's being downloaded what are people requesting so we kind of have a good idea of what we're gonna be launching over the course of the year and not a whole lot will change.
00:31:58
Speaker
It's interesting for us, we can plan and we just need to leave a little bit of margin for creativity. You don't want to get really rigid as a small business, you really do want to be able to be agile. It's not so much about planning and then perfectly executing the plan. I think it's about planning so that you have an intentional target, and then there might be multiple ways that you get to
Agile Planning Methods
00:32:20
Speaker
that target. The way that you get to that target might actually shift. The way that we're going to try to hit our MRR within the membership,
00:32:28
Speaker
May shift from what i think we're gonna do and it probably should shift based on what is working but the important things that you have a target. So now the second part of your question was like accountability how do you actually go about how do you go about making sure that it actually happens i think that.
00:32:45
Speaker
Comes from being very reasonable with what you think you can achieve being very realistic and that's just gonna take trial and error and then that's where okay ours are helpful so we do have monthly touch points where we're reviewing how everyone's doing on their ok our progress and then we have quarterly. Touch points where we're looking at did we accomplish what we said we were gonna do if this is what we said we wanted to do over the course of the year okay we can't do it all at once so we have to space it out so that means yeah.
00:33:12
Speaker
Q1 will focus on launching that Facebook group for our members. And then Q2 will focus on that next initiative in Q3, et cetera. So we try to space out the initiatives that are going to be involved reasonably. And then there's a lot of accountability built into that.
00:33:28
Speaker
I think one thing that's really helpful, something that we found to be helpful as well, you know, having meetings planned out. So all our meetings, most of our meetings are standing meetings. So we have at least one weekly check in with our teams. And then we evaluate whether we need more meetings or less meetings. As the year goes on, we certainly gotten rid of meetings as well. I think that's one of the hardest things just as a side about growing a team is like, like we just created a handbook for till and I like all of us hate it. You know, we're like, why are we creating a handbook? Like it sounds so bureaucratic. Nobody wants to read this.
00:33:57
Speaker
I don't know it's important because it's you know now you have like everybody knows exactly what's happening you know like everybody knows exactly the expectations for everything and the policies for everything so I think all that's important something that Kristen I did this year you know it's maybe embarrassing that it took us years to do this which is like actually put on the calendar like quarterly.
00:34:15
Speaker
not just oh yeah we're gonna meet sometime each quarter to make sure that we're on track but like this is the day we're going to meet you know and this is the morning that we're gonna tackle these things and so yeah just having that on your calendar a whole different ballgame because it's nothing nothing's there and you're like oh well this isn't really a good week it's that's what's there and that's what the priority is so that's been
00:34:35
Speaker
Absolutely. That's really huge. I mean, that sounds like a small thing to just put those review dates on the calendar. I think putting it on the calendar is huge. It sounds like a small step, but I think that is some of the accountability that's needed to make sure that you're actually doing what you said you're going to do. Because again, as an entrepreneur, time flies, right? So all of a sudden, three months have passed. And so it really is important that you have those key mile markers and touch points on your calendars for yourself and for your team to kind of stop and assess otherwise.
00:35:03
Speaker
Time will just pass and you'll just keep working and you might be doing great work.
00:35:06
Speaker
But you know, was it the work that you set out to do? Are you getting off track from what your vision and mission is? So yeah, and I like so many for learning like even for the content consuming yourself because one thing that I found and this is something that I implement from this conversation, which is actually putting learning time on there because something that I've realized this year is I'm actually consuming a lot less content than I have in the past. In some ways, that's a really good thing. You know, I think there's some there's some blessings there in some ways maybe realize like what maybe I was
00:35:35
Speaker
I think it's possible to consume too much and like, you know, not really intentional. It is totally. Yeah, like, Hey, I'm gonna learn this. And this is the reason why I'm gonna learn this at the same time, aside for yourself and saying, Okay, this is an area I need to grow. Because I think, again, in growing a team, it's like, the focus sort of becomes like, okay, what am I, you know, how am I serving them in that, in that respect? So haven't made time, I think, as much personally for that throughout 2020.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, and on that note, I would say one thing that I started to do last year that I'm definitely going to do again this year is picking only one or two or three max people that you're going to be learning from because we're just kind of like pulling in content from so many different places. And sometimes that content conflicts with each other.
00:36:21
Speaker
Also if you're just consuming a lot of content you're not leaving a lot of time to actually implement the content so what we did this year and we can do this as a team like i did this with my marketing garage like who do you want to learn. Let's pick one or two people that we want to learn from where you can do that just for the quarter like.
00:36:38
Speaker
I already have it planned out for quarter one. Who am I going to learn from? I'm going to learn from this one person, which means I'm going to only listen to their podcast. I'm going to only read their blog posts. I'm going to only open their newsletters, and I'm going to take some additional training from this particular person. Then once I've implemented that, I'll move on. I think the same is true with books. I'm really a fan of not
00:37:01
Speaker
moving on to a different book until i read and reread some books so for example this year i read and reread good to great which is a phenomenal book and i took notes it was that good and i really needed to make sure that i was implementing it and i knew i read it once and wasn't still implementing it so i went back and instead of starting a new book just read that book again and make sure that you're implementing the things before you move on so that's just an encouragement for small business owners out there to just pick one or two people that you're gonna learn from.
Focused Learning for Content Creators
00:37:30
Speaker
and then just be all in and actually implement what you learn. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of value in going away to just kind of getting out what we did till team retreat. Our latest one was with our families as well. Yeah, that's great. Well, it's great. There's definitely some really great things to it. There's definitely some areas where it's like, it's nice to actually be away, you know, because I mean, with kids and all, it's just you're like, well, we're working right now. We're not, you know, it's not play time.
00:38:00
Speaker
And as much as we love to all hang out with our families and all, but I think one of our takeaways is it is nice just to get away and be completely alone to a certain extent, just to be able to tackle work and some of the stuff that's in front of us.
00:38:14
Speaker
I think you always need to separate those so that it's like, yes, get together as families if that's a part of your values, but don't plan to do any work or planning. I think that's been a learning thing for me this year too and a lot of the advice that I've gotten is with our big team retreat, don't make it a lot of work because I'm the one that just wants to make it a lot of work and whiteboard things out.
00:38:35
Speaker
everyone I talked to was like, don't, that's gonna be a miss, like it really needs to be just fun and team building. And I'm like, but fun isn't productive, you know, something you plan for 2021. Yeah, so likewise, we were trying to plan something for 2020. It just didn't happen with our greater team, you know, what we'd love. So that's another episode. That's going to be our fourth episode together. We recap about
00:39:01
Speaker
hosting team retreats and what that should look like and organizing that for sure. Are there anything that just surprised you about or continually surprised you about just getting away and making this space to think about your business?
Reviewing Achievements for Motivation
00:39:14
Speaker
Every year has been so different because of where my business is at. So the content of every planning session really looks really different. I mean, those are kind of some of the core elements that have been refined over the years. I think it surprises me how encouraging it is to look back. Like, you know, kind of feel like this is kind of pointless for me to take the time to like, relist out what we did this year. Like that's just going to be a big waste of time. Especially if you feel like you're, you're kind of crunched for time.
00:39:42
Speaker
But that always really is incredibly encouraging. It's just so many of us don't celebrate wins and we're just, because of the way we are wired, we're just moving on to the next thing and it's, you know,
00:39:55
Speaker
Maybe it's things aren't ever hitting the standards we'd like to see. So I think for entrepreneurs, especially it just is really valuable to do that. And then I think, you know, kind of what we talked about, I've been surprised how important having a solid mission for everyone to rally behind how important that is to them. And I always feel kind of.
00:40:17
Speaker
dumb when i'm like okay guys and this is a part of the team retreat where i review the mission of vision and you know i'm gonna talk at you for the next hour and i'm sorry and i and i share my personal vision so i have like i have a vision as a company but then i have a personal vision as a
00:40:33
Speaker
person you know so and that's a very personal and i share that with them and it always feels really wonky and i feel like they're gonna hate it but the feedback i always get is.
Importance of Mission and Vision
00:40:44
Speaker
Thank you for that like this matters to us and this is what gets us through those rough weeks or those really hard seasons of business where you know everyone's just kind of.
00:40:53
Speaker
putting in 150 exhausting percent. It is the mission and vision that keeps them bought in. Everyone wants to do meaningful work, and your team members want to do meaningful work as well. They're hopefully not just there to collect a paycheck. I just don't think you can overestimate the power of a solid mission that everyone is really rallied behind. That would be something that's surprising for me each year.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. For all those listening and all those who will listen to the recorded version, I hope you found this helpful. We already have a request for you to share that calendar, so a more up close understanding. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly how that calendar works. I'm interested in it too. Was that sticky notes back there on poster board?
00:41:41
Speaker
It's sticky notes because I got to be able to like move it around and plan it out and space it all out. So the calendar is an upload. It's like a printable. Anyway, I should share that on my Instagram feed. So there's a girl Ashley Prophet at ASHLEE, Prophet, P-R-O-F-F-I-T-T. So you can find her on Instagram and she has a calendar shop where she, I'll get you the link so that you can just put it in the show notes. I don't have like a quick link.
00:42:08
Speaker
Okay, and then that reminds me so this year I pulled together I've kind of always had my own business assessment
Downloadable Business Assessment Guide
00:42:15
Speaker
and planning guide I work off of it's like a set of questions that I asked myself and I've kind of updated it and refined it over the last 10 years and This year we kind of consolidated it and put it in PDF form for other people so you can actually go get this and
00:42:30
Speaker
It's like if you do nothing else like if you're like, I just don't know or I don't have a business like I don't know where to I mean I don't have a team I don't know where to start with this kind of planning day away Print out this guide and it's you know, 32 some odd questions. It covers four different areas time management creativity profitability and brand development and it's just gonna walk you through a series of like self-assessment questions and
00:42:53
Speaker
That's gonna get all the right wheels turning for you on your planning day away and even if you have a few hours You could kind of take this and execute it so you can go get that at social squares.com slash planning and it's just it's fantastic it will give you everything you need to kind of really think through the things that you need to be thinking through in order to create a plan for yourself and in order to kind of assess what worked and what didn't work for this year so social squares comm slash planning you download that guide and
00:43:22
Speaker
That will absolutely be in the show notes for sure. I think that's going to be super helpful. And I think one of those things that, you know, again, if you don't, maybe you don't have time to get away, maybe you can convince your spouse to take the kids out of the house, you know, just to leave for the day, go do a fun spouse kid activity and give you a couple hours to really get stuff done at home.
00:43:39
Speaker
But I think everybody could probably find just a couple hours to get away, maybe change up their environment a
Finding Time for Planning and Creativity
00:43:44
Speaker
little bit. And this sounds great. So I'll definitely link to that in the show notes. Somebody else mentioned that they have Ashley's calendars and they have a blueprint paper at Staples and they are great. So we'll definitely get a link for that as well to share those. I really like that as well. I've had this debate, I think with Vanessa Kynes on the podcast where, you know, digital versus writing something down, like I have paper notebooks for everything.
00:44:03
Speaker
The downside, of course, is that I can never find any of my notes from like a week ago, but finding them from like three months ago is always a nightmare. I have legal pads. Legal pads are my downfall. I have like 10 different legal pads floating around, all with different notes in them. Because again, I think on paper, so if I ever needed to find it, it's gone. But I have to write it.
00:44:25
Speaker
But it's really nice, I think, having this calendar, you know, that just stays up, you know, and you can move things around with the sticky nose. So I think that's a great idea as well. Where else can people find you and follow along, even follow along with the house build? I know that. Krista's been following along with that. That's been exciting to watch. So tell us where we can find you.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah. So you can find me personally on Instagram at, at Shay Cochran, S-H-A-Y. And you can find social squares, which is probably more fun and interesting. If you're a small business owner, you can find social squares on Instagram as at social squares. And you'll kind of see all that we're doing there to kind of empower female entrepreneurs to actually build successful brands online. So those are probably the two funnest places to find us.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Social Square is something that we've used for a long time now, make use of almost every week in our business. Definitely check that out. Link will be in the show notes. Shae, don't sell yourself short. One of the reasons that I reached out to you about this episode was because I think on your personal Instagram, you were actually sharing while you were away what that retreat looked like. I was like, I have to reach out and you're always sharing really interesting stuff. Thanks. I'm glad we have at least two more. Pencil me in for at least two more episodes in 2020.
00:45:41
Speaker
We have lots more to talk about. And if you have a question, feel free to send those along and I can send them along to Shay. I'm sure you send you a DM or a message on Instagram or whatever and do that as well. But to everybody joining us now, thanks for listening. And if you want to catch a live episode in the future, head on over to our Facebook group. And this is something I think we're going to start doing pretty regularly because it's nice getting some questions and comments as we chat. But Shay, thank you for your time.
00:46:07
Speaker
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to do this. This is just super fun for me. So thanks for thinking of me. I was really honored. Yeah, of course. Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.
00:46:37
Speaker
you