Hi there! I am Paula from Beyond the Maze, and we are a virtual assistant business based here in Brisbane, Australia with both Australian and offshore team members to help you grow and develop your business.
Today my topic is about setting plans for the New Year.
At the time of recording this video, it is coming up to the end of the year and a lot of businesses are putting plans in place for the next year or they’re not yet, maybe they won’t do it till January. But for someone like me who is a planner, I have been planning out my business for the last couple of weeks and I’m starting to get into the nitty-gritty of the planning as well.
Why do I want to talk to you about this?
What has this got to do with having a VA to help you with your business?
The whole idea of planning your business is knowing where you’re planning your business out, where it’s going to be going and where you need support to come in and help you with that.
I, myself on the coaching side of my business, run 90-day planning sessions. If you want to know about that, comment below and I can send you the link about those and we can get together and do some 90-day planning sessions with groups of people that do it together.
The reason why I think these are so important is because you’re going to plan out what you are doing. For me right now, I’m planning for the next 12 months of my business, for the next six months of my business and for the next quarter of my business as well. I am also planning for the next five years as well. But right now, I’m doing 12, and I’ll do six months simply because it’s the end of the financial year and I’m doing the quarter as well.
I’ve planned out my cash flow and my plans and everything including when I’m going to put on my next team member and the one after that and the one after that. My next three team members are already planned out, possibly four as well, but it’s for a completely different role. That one will take time to find the right people and talk to the right people. Hopefully, somebody will just come up for that one.
That really important thing to do here is plan, plan, plan, plan and then you’re going ok, well, if your business is going to grow or you want to bring on, let’s say, a couple more people to do the specialized stuff in your business, then who’s going to support them with their admin?
Is it time to put somebody into your office to help with the admin? Or is it time to get a VA to help you initially until you get big enough to give somebody regular hours or full-time hours?
That planning can help you know when you want to get that done and talking to someone, say a business like us, we can help go through things with you. Once you’ve got your plans in place, then unless you come to my 90-day planning session, of course, because then I can help you put those plans in place. But once you’ve got those plans in place, you can call our team and you can go, “Ok, well, this is what I’ve got planned. Do you think I’m ready for a VA yet? Or what do you think a VA could do for me now?”
It might be that a VA is only going to do five hours a month for you. But those five hours a month for you is what you’re not doing, and you can go and spend five more hours with clients.
If you do client sessions, for example, you could do five more sessions in those five hours a month of admin that a VA is going to give you. How much more income and how much more growth could you get in your business with five more sessions or five more visits or whatever you do in your business to help your business grow?
Then you can keep stepping that up. So, you know, you can keep stepping that up to maybe 10 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours until you get to the point where you could maybe put someone in your office for 20 hours a week.
We know ourselves that when we get to that when we get clients like that, we’re like, “Right, our job here is done.” We’ve done what we need to do to support you to get your business to the point where you can hire someone full-time or part-time or you may not want to leave us at all because you love us so much, which also happens as well, of course.
That is the crux of planning. Then you know, when you go out there and network and talk to people, you know where your business is going, you know what direction your business is going, and you get very clear on your goals.
It also helps limit that bright shiny object syndrome that I’m sure most of us suffer from. Then you can just keep asking yourself “Is that bright shining object thing over there, is that helping me stay on track for the goals that I’ve set myself?”
In our 90-day planning session, we have a great way of dealing with that. So come along to our 90-day planning session, as I said, reply and then put a comment down below and I’ll send you the details of that session if you’re interested in it.
Otherwise, Happy planning. I hope you enjoy planning as much as I do. I’m a bit of a nerd, so maybe not, but I know there will be other people out there. I’m not alone and we will talk to you soon.
Paula from Beyond the Maze. Bye for now!
