Boost Your Business in 2024 and Staying Committed to Business Goals 🚀

Katie Bell: 1:15

Welcome to this week’s episode of the treat your business podcast. I am Katie, for those of you who are new to listening, this week, a huge welcome. I am a physio by trade, I am a clinic owner. And this podcast is really for clinic and business owners in the health and wellness industry who feel like they’re overwhelmed. They’re on a hamster wheel, they’re trying to spin loads of different plates, they’re not really sure what their marketing strategy needs to be what their business plan is. And hopefully, with these short episodes, you get loads and loads of value and good tips and advice and things that you can action in your business. Now, I am recording this thinking that you are going to be listening to it as the New Year dawns upon us. And many, many of us at this time of year find ourselves thinking about our resolutions jotting down our new business goals that we hope will shape the coming months in our business. So it might be that we’re all deciding, we’re gonna go to the gym more often, or we’re going to learn this new skill or we’re gonna go tackle that ever growing to do list. And resolutions are a universal tradition, the new year new me concept, but as a business owner, I understand the struggle of setting ambitious goals and the challenges that then come to sticking with them. And hopefully, you will have listened listened to our previous episodes, because we talked quite a lot about this and setting your strategy and setting your plan for the year ahead. But what I want to talk about on this episode is how we actually stick to the plan. So in this, in this episode, I’m going to share some insights on why resolutions often fail and fall by the wayside. And what you can do to stay on course, in the pursuit of your business goals. So why is it that we so often fall short when it comes to setting on New Year’s resolutions? I think there’s a few things that goes on here, I think one is that business owners on they lack the self belief and the confidence to give themselves a stretch goal. So often the goals that they set are, can be very vague. And they can be they can lack specificity. But they also, in my opinion, are often small. Because it might be that from experience, we’ve set these big goals and we’ve not stuck to it. And we fail to therefore to not feel like a failure, we’re going to keep our keep our goals relatively small, relatively achievable. And they’re going to be relatively vague, because then it really means we can we can go anywhere. So for example, lots of people say to me, Well, I want to I want to grow my business, I want to increase my revenue, or I want to make more profit. What does that mean? What does that actually mean? Because the lack of clarity means you won’t effectively plan and execute on that specific, measurable goals provide you the roadmap to success. Now, when we set goals, we don’t often know the how, because if we knew the how we would have already got there, right? So a lot of the time we might be thinking about where am I now and where do I want to be. But I don’t really know the how but and that often stops us in the tracks. So I’m here to reassure you that if you’re setting a goal and you don’t know how to get there, that’s completely normal. And it’s probably sign that the goal is a stretch, and it’s big enough. Sometimes we can have, we can be really overwhelmed with our goals. So when we set these overly ambitious goals that we might have done before we can it can often lead to burnout and frustration, because for many of us, we are a certain personality type listening to this podcast, I can say that with confidence, because I know what we are all like as clinic and business owners, but we we often Chase and we lose sight of why we’re actually doing something. What’s the most important thing I hear all the time like, people say to me, I want to be a million pound clinic and I go great why there is they can’t answer that. And I’m saying Well, I’m happy for you to be a million pound clinic. But what’s your profit on that? Because if you can make 10k profit, there’s no point in doing it. Your business is there to serve you. It is not there to starve you. So breaking down these larger objectives into small, achievable milestones helps maintain your motivation. And that’s one of the things that we encourage is that you, you set out your 12 month map, your 12 month plan, and it’s that big picture that big overview, and then we break it down quarterly and then we go over and further and we, we create a 30 day implementation plan. Because without that clarity, and that specificity, we start doing all kinds of the kinds of things we get, we get this massive to do list again, we start spending loads of time doing something and think, Oh, hang on a minute, how is that going to get me to my goal in the quickest, easiest possible way. One of the other reasons that we fall short is because we have an absolute massive absence of accountability. As a business owner, the buck stops with you. But you can also hide really easily, you can also not do things really easily because hey, nobody else is asking you about it, nobody else is questioning you about it, nobody else is holding you accountable. The only person that suffers is you. But sharing your plans, sharing your goals, maybe with a friend, as long as that friend is not going to dampened down your spirit, or with your mentor or with a coach can create a sense of accountability, because without it, the resolution that you’ve set, the goal that you’ve set will just become this kind of fleeting thoughts. And one of the things that I find most powerful, powerful about how we work is the way that the programmes are structured, gives you high level of accountability. So you get your 12 month kind of overview of what you want to achieve, we get that broken down into quarterly objectives. And then we break that down into 30 Day implementation plans. And then we are going to hold you accountable to making those happen with with a big hug and cuddle and kindness, of course, but we’re going to gently encourage you to make things happen. And if you don’t, we’re looking at why is it because the goal has changed something has something is different. Is it because you need more support? Or you have you lacked the knowledge or the capability or the skill and we need to work on that. So thinking about as you’re listening to this podcast, who holds you accountable to your actions? If I know, I go to a gym, I go to a boxing gym, and it’s like a boxing and strength and conditioning gym. And I pay I think it’s 100 quid a month, right? And do you know what the biggest driver for me is, is that if I only go once a week, I’m like, wow, my cost per session is like 25 hours for a bloody gym session. If I go twice a week, it’s 1253 times a week. I’m not like, Okay, this is more reasonable. Why why ever that drives me Who knows, okay, whatever it is that, yes, I want to keep fit, and I want to stay well. And I want to feel good, and look good. But I’m also driven by the luck, if if I was paying 50 quid for that gym, I would probably let myself off the hook a lot more by not going every week because life is busy things get in the way, I might go for a run a bit more, I might do other things. And I might drift. But even when I’m like, God, it’s gonna be really hard to get myself there at six o’clock in the morning, especially as I’m recording this we are in storm picking Gertrude or whatever the latest one is. And I was literally blown there and nearly run over a bin on my way this morning. And I was thinking every part of me does not want to go outside in this at 6am in the pitch black to go boxing. But I did it. And because I’ve got accountability, if I don’t turn up the guys at the gym ring me. We have accountability built into our physio practice. So if people don’t come, we’re going to ask where they are, we’re going to check in on them, we’re going to make sure that they’re okay. Because people need accountability to achieve their goals. And then we have this failure to adapt so life is dynamic circumstances change we can set a plan in January and shit happens and things cross our path that we can’t control. We can only control the controllables so we if we have a failure to adapt to resolutions or adapt our resolutions to evolving situations, then we feel disappointment. We feel demotivated. COVID is a massive example of that. When I set out our intentions at the beginning of I can’t remember where it was 2020 2021 when I set my intentions for the year ahead, it did not feature a pandemic. So I had to adapt really quickly in the February like this. We had a new forecast. We had a new financial projections. We had new ways of working in the business we had to streamline I had to be adaptive, adaptable, and that then didn’t lead to me feeling disappointed and demotivated. I actually felt really motivated because I was following a new strategy. So busy for us as business owners, our resolutions, they extend beyond our personal goals, okay, we might have personal goals of going to the gym more, eating better, you know, drinking more water in the day, two litres of water a day, whatever it is, but the success of a business is often tied to the commitment and the vision of you as the leader. So a few ways that you can overcome. The common things that business owners face in the realm of resolutions is setting specific, measurable goals. Okay, I hate the word SMART goals. I don’t know why I hate it. But I do. Maybe it’s from school. But we need them to be specific, we need to be able to measure them, they need to be achievable, but they need to be a stretch, they have to be relevant. If they are not aligned with your bigger strategy, your bigger plan, then they need to not be on the list. And they need to be there needs to be time related there needs to be this is what I’m going to do it and this is why I’ve got to do it by them. So a vague resolution to increase profits. And to walk to how much how much you’re going to increase by what does that mean that you need to do in your business. If we set a goal to increase monthly sales by 15%, within the first quarter, now know what I’m doing. We’ve got to prioritise and focus this is one of the biggest challenges I know that you all struggle with is doing less better. It’s easy to be pulled in multiple directions. But we’ve got to identify the key areas that will have the most significant impact on your business, and focus your energy onto those priorities. I’ve said it before, I’m gonna say I’m gonna say it again, you’ve got to build a support system, if you are trying to run your business, and it’s only your brain on it. Good luck with that your business growth is going to be slow, it’s going to feel tiring, it’s going to feel exhausting is going to feel lonely, and you’re going to quickly get to burnout. Establishing a support system around you not only adds that extra layer of accountability, but it gives you valuable insights. It gives you valuable encouragement, when I listen to and read some of the WhatsApp messages that go between all of our clients within our elevate programme and our activate programme. That stuff that they’re helping each other with is that everybody is benefiting from somebody else that has walked that path or had some experience. So they’re not having to figure it out all by themselves, because that takes forever. And then you’ve got to regularly evaluate and adjust, you’ve got to look at this business landscape and know that it’s constantly changing and that things may happen that we can’t control, but a lot of the time we can control them. So that initial plan, it’s okay, if it needs some adjustments, the route to success is not linear, it is not a straight line, we need to regularly evaluate your progress. So how are we doing that in our monthly rhythm of meetings? If you set a plan in December 2023 for 2024 and you don’t reevaluate that until next January 2025. I can promise you the chances are you won’t have done what you said you were going to do. You need to regularly evaluate your progress, celebrate small wins and adapt your strategies where you need to. And the final thing is about investing in yourself investing in professional development. We obsess as an industry about CPD when yes, we need to be doing it. Yes, we need to be at the top of our game. Yes, we need to be making sure that we are offering the clients that the very best of what we can. But being a great physio and an osteopath in a Cairo practice or sports therapist is I’m going to say this, I’m going to say 30% of it is what you actually do. And 70% is how you do it. So you’ve got to have the skills, you’ve got to have the knowledge of great, you’ve got to be professional, you’ve got all of that. But actually, you have got to work on your non clinical skills, your professional development. If you’re a business owner, you’ve got to learn the skills it takes to lead and run a business. You can’t just hide behind the fact that you’re a physio and you don’t know this stuff. I didn’t know this stuff. 12 years ago, I went and learnt it. I read every book you can possibly imagine. I went to every seminar, I invested a lot of money and a lot of time to know it. And now I get to teach you all I get to give you the shortcuts. So you need to invest in you. It benefits your personal growth, but it’s going to positively impact your business. So to keep these new year’s resolutions beyond January, the 31st, we’ve got to combine strategic planning, we’ve got to be adaptable, we’ve got to commit to continuous improvement. And you are going to increase therefore the likelihood of achieving these business goals and these personal goals in the year ahead. And that means that this year can be the year for you it can be the year that is prosperous, and the year that is resolution filled but that you actually achieve and that you actually take action on. Thank you for joining me on this week’s episode. I have loved welcoming the new year in with this episode. We have loads of amazing stuff coming for you on this podcast in 2024. I’m super excited. And over the next few weeks, we’ve got some guest experts and we’re gonna be talking a lot about marketing, which I know you’re gonna love. So make sure you loop back in next week for the next episode.