How to Create Your Business Plan and Strategy for 2022 Step-by-Step | Part 1

do you want to learn how to plan for business growth step by step do you want to create an amazing business plan well let me ask you something first are you an are you good because i have zero tolerance for and i get the question all the time cp how do i plan for my business how do i put together a business plan and then i attempt to help the person over and over again and they don't listen and ultimately they fail i've got great news for you as long as you're not an because in the next three episodes of cptv i am launching a growth plan series that will walk you through step by step not only how to create the perfect growth plan for your business but also my secret sauce that has actually helped me grow my businesses double digit year after year all the time are you ready let's get to work [Music] [Music] hey love it's cp here welcome back to cptv and if you are new please make sure you subscribe because here you are going to get the blueprints to grow your business and your life now it's that time of year isn't it it's time to take a look back over the past few months and to begin to kind of make the plans and devise what you're going to do to grow over the next 12 months and that is exactly what i am going to teach you today when i say teach i mean teach because today begins our three-part series on how to create the perfect growth plan for your business now i'm not going to just talk to you we are actually going to dive in and i'm going to do this workshop style because my focus is to make sure that you understand how important this is for your business and that's why we kind of have to do it in a three-part series but before we get started because i'm ready to get to teaching i need you to press pause go down below this video and download the growth planning workbook that is going to be where you're going to want to take notes because i'm not trying to play and i don't want you to waste my time at the end of this series i need you to be able to walk away and put that growth plan in place that's going to take your business to the next level oh and don't forget to subscribe push that like button and also make sure that you share this information because growth planning ain't no small feat but it's something i got a lot of experience in and i'm ready to give you all my secret sauce let's dive in all right so let's get started really with talking about what is growth planning and it's important to understand what the process is and what it's going to ultimately result in because if i don't stress this enough you really won't think it's a critical peace sugar in your business and i can tell you single-handedly taking the time to actually spend each year planning what our growth strategy is going to be for the following year has been one of the single most significant contributions to the growth of my businesses over the years so growth planning is really a strategic activity and process so it's very strategic it's not just sitting around and coming up with ideas it's actually coming up with a plan on what the idea should be evaluating and assessing everything that you had in place before coming up with really what you should focus on and then really determining what action steps you need to take in order to get there so it's very strategic in nature it results in the creation of a very important document and a lot of people argue with me about whether or not they need to have the document and i say yes the vip part is critical you have to write it down if you don't write it down you're not going to remember if you're anything like me you ultimately need to make sure that you've got in writing you've got a reference piece and that you ultimately can continue to show that reference piece to members of your team so creating the document is very very important it's ultimately going to outline your business goals it's one of the things that it does it's going to look at your strengths and your weaknesses it's going to ultimately come up with action plans and inside of this document which is everything it's also going to talk about your vision your mission all kinds of things that you really need to have an idea for and it really includes the action plan that you need in order to foster and facilitate growth in your organization so that document is really important it's also simple it's not a full-blown business plan right it's very simple and it's smart and i write this in all capital letters because we're going to get into this in just a second but when i say it's simple i mean it's simple if you haven't seen my video on i'm gonna put it up here in the cards right up here make sure that you've seen why you don't need a business plan why i recommend a growth plan over a business plan in certain situations as you continue to grow your business because it really is a more simple idea and it allows you to really be able to put some things out on paper and another thing is this entire piece this entire purpose is it really makes sure that it's the result of you finally taking the time that you need to work on your business and not just in your business that's one of the number one struggles that all entrepreneurs have you're so involved in the day-to-day you're so involved in the daily living of your business you're talking to customers you're making sales you're updating things you're doing digital marketing all that stuff is a part of the day being in your business well this process this planning process it requires that you set aside the time that you need every single year sometimes twice a year sometimes four times a year to work on your business and that's one of the things that really will create that feeling of overwhelming anxiety that most of us feel as entrepreneurs because you've got all these things on your head that you have to keep putting off and thinking about and writing down and you never get a chance to really dive into them well that this process is what enables you to take all of that anxiety and get rid of it because you take the time and you dedicate yourself to actually working on your business so let's dive into what the actual first four critical pieces of things that you're going to be including in this overall plan are so to summarize what the entire growth planning process is it's a strategic business business activity and process it results in the creation of a very important document it's simple yet smart and it's the result of you finally taking the time to work on your business and not just in your business okay so let's dive in to what are the major pieces of your plan and i want to make sure that we talk about kind of your overall headings so that you know what we're going to be working with and we're going to actually do this in two parts so this part of our series is gonna focus on the first four pieces in part two i'm gonna break down the second four pieces of what actually goes into your planning process and then in part three we're gonna dive into how you're going to get all of this thinking and writing and strategizing done all right so first four major pieces piece number one you're going to ultimately talk about an environmental analysis and that is very important okay your environmental analysis includes various things in your environmental analysis you are going to talk about your market readiness so you're going to do kind of market research that's really important for you to understand whether or not the market is ready for your idea and that depending upon where you are in your business so if you're just starting a business and you have a fresh idea and you're trying to figure out if the market is going to be ready for your idea this is a part of that process or let's say you've been in business for a year or two or three and you've experienced some changes in your services and products and things are still kind of up in the air this is the piece where you really do take the time to do the research about the market and i'm gonna tell you no matter how many years you've been in business this piece is important to do every single year because the market changes the environment changes the economy changes the government changes things trust me i know i actually had to change my entire business model from one piece of legislation right so every single year it's really important for you to take a look at the market so you want to do a market analysis now this is going to be my first secret don't judge me i know i write cricket when i'm writing on white boards don't judge me all right let's just bear with me also not a very good speller so it's okay so just ignore it if you see me spell something wrong but ultimately my very first secret i'm going to give it to you right now the best way to do market research when you are an entrepreneur and you're on a budget now i have gotten the professional market analysis done before that cost thousands and thousands of dollars brought in consultants had them provide me with these very detailed reports in order for me to determine which pricing products and which this and what my customer is and i can tell you now with the internet and all of the opportunity that you have it does not require all of that my very first secret is actually going to be think google think with google it is one of my favorite resources and it is great think with google allows you to actually plug in um into a very special way uh your business idea your service your why what you're planning on doing and you'll be able to get lots and lots of information about your market in general and what it ultimately looks like and it's going to give you detailed demographic information so take a look at think google the next piece of your environmental analysis is going to be a competitive analysis and that sounds exactly like what it is you've got to figure out who your competitors are um what they're doing what they're pricing things at what their niche is what they're targeting what they're saying how they're marketing all of those things you want to know your competitors in and out and the reason is if there is someone out there who's doing a really good job at what you're doing or what you ultimately want to do where can you fit into that and what can you mimic what opportunities can you gain from their experiences so competition is not bad and oftentimes i say this when i'm working with entrepreneurs or even myself i've got to get my mind wrapped around the fact that competition is not bad if there are competitors out there that means that your idea is profitable that means you're on the right track that means that there's a pain point out there that people around you have already identified need to be filled and so having competition is important but knowing your competition is even more important and how do i do a competitive analysis and i call a competitive analysis on the budget google going back to google not think google just regular google and the reason is if you type into their google search bar your business what you're doing hr consulting or business coaching the seo of who shows up first on that first page identify who those folks are go to their website and learn anything and everything that you can if they have a most of them will ultimately have kind of a marketing option where you'll enter your email if they're a technology company and you want to get a demo know exactly what they're doing and the best place for you to do that is to spend a lot of time doing your research on google and ultimately finding out who your customer i mean who your competition really is um dive into them deep especially on that first page of results right the other piece of your environmental analysis that i'm going to tell you you're going to want to include in this entire section in your plan is your customer avatar right your customer avatar ooh i wrote very quickly qriket there sorry guys your customer avatar and i know that i've said this before in numerous videos um but how do you figure out who your customer avatar is and i tell you if you're new and this is you're starting out your business you're going to want to figure out who the customer is if you have been in business for a year two three four five you're going to want to do a customer review and update in this piece and the re the reason is because your market may change a little bit you may have been doing what you've wanted to do for about a year you've identified you know this was originally my target market but i realized that this target market can't really afford the pricing that i need to be at or this target market doesn't really have the pain point that i originally thought or that i originally got from data and so reevaluating who your customer is is important when i first transitioned from a benefits agency to an hr firm i thought that our customer was going to be the exact same as the average company that was looking for benefits which gave me this really broad employer market and what i realized was first of all for us from an hr consulting perspective my passion and my focus was more in line with helping entrepreneurs grow their capacity and so originally we thought we were going to be working with with companies from 50 to 300 employees and after offering services and doing consulting work for about a year to 18 months in my you know growth planning process i recognize we need to bring that down we need to decrease that number to where we ultimately ended up and found our sweet spot and that you can only do when you're actually doing a customer avatar review and update and i've got two secrets in this area that i want to make sure i talk to you guys about the first secret is up close and persona i want you to check out that website it is amazing it's a free customer avatar service and it's kind of what i use every single year and it will actually give you a printout of exactly what your customer is by you going through kind of a questionnaire and survey process so check out up close and persona and then also secret number three how i kind of do my customer avatar research and review and update is really looking at my social media demographics and my social media audiences now if you're a brand new business and you have yet to establish your social media presence you won't necessarily have access to your insights on facebook or youtube or etc right but all of those social media platforms do give you really in-depth analysis of who your audience is and it's going to help you hone down and that's really if you're delivering content and you're putting things out there to the public the people who are clicking on your links or visiting your website or liking your pages or subscribing to your channel all those demographics matter because those are the people who are going to come to you and that information is going to be critical for you to figure out who your customer avatar is so those are my two secrets in customer avatar research up close and persona as well as your social media insights okay the next piece that you're going to look at um of your plan besides the environmental analysis which is kind of part number two um that i want to get into with you right now is your situational analysis and so the first piece that we just talked about market analysis that's all your outside stuff right that's you diving into those three things that i just talked to you about being critical of the outside environment you've got to know what's going on outside of your business in order to make decisions inside of your business well the situational analysis this is all the stuff that's going on inside of your business you've got to gather all of that same data and research so when you're in your growth planning process the first piece is getting all your research and information together about what's going on outside this is the second piece getting all of your information together about what's going on inside you've got to know what your current situation is right and your current situation could mean you know this is what our pricing looks like this is what our financials look like this is how much we really spent this is how much it's really costing us to deliver this product and service per customer um all of those different things is kind of a current situation review you also are going to want in this section to determine your swot and if you are new to kind of running a business and have never i'm really indulged in what this is i want to break it down for you swat equals your strengths your weaknesses your opportunities and your threats right and in this it really does focus on lots of different aspects because there's internal and external things that you're going to be reviewing when you're ultimately doing your swot um and that is something that you want to know it's a part of your situational analysis but your strengths and your weaknesses these are all internal for people and your opportunities and your threats these are all external and you want to have a good idea of what that is so this piece of your plan is all the stuff that's going on inside your business you have to understand what's working and what's not working and this is really the piece that a lot of entrepreneurs have the hardest time with because you've got to be humble in this process you have to realize this is the stuff that i'm not good at this is the stuff that i'm not doing this is the stuff that's not working and all of this is going to help drive what those real overarching goals are going to be for your next year so that you can grow right you don't grow unless you fix what's not working and you capitalize on what is working so this is a big piece so let's talk about what the third major piece of this plan for you is going to be and that is you got to figure out the vision and the mission of your organization now if you are brand new in business this might be the initial conversation right you might be figuring out your very first vision and your very first mission if you've been in business and you're just trying to step up your business or level up your business this is the time that you want to review these things you want to make sure that your mission is still in line with what the market needs what your current situation is what your vision is still in line with those things and if you're brand new you want to create a vision and a mission that is in line with all of the stuff that you just thought about and that you just researched as far as what's going on outside and what's going on inside right so just to really quickly talk to you about what your vision and your mission is and kind of describe what these are because a lot of people do get these things confused so the best way to look at it is like this your mission is your why right your vision is your what and i break it down like that very simply because your mission is you know it defines your business values it defines your overall beliefs what you want to ultimately decommunicate so it's the mission of your organization right my mission at cheryl c perez enterprises and at big hr is to help facilitate and empower small business owners and entrepreneurs to grow and scale and level up their business by giving them the blueprints and building their capacity infrastructure that's the mission right the vision is ultimately who we want to be and the desired what right the future of the company what do i want to do i want to be seen as the number one expert in organizational capacity building both in hr and general operations and management right that's my vision number one in our market um i want to um be at 440 million dollars um a year in revenue your vision is where you see your organization in the following year and i tell people sometimes i see organizations that have these huge visions that are really like 10 years out or 20 years out no this is an annual process so really the only vision that you're coming up with is where do you want to see yourself by the end of next year right what's the growth that you want to see yourself at but by the end of next year and you're going to take it in small chunks because if you start looking at your vision 20 years from now and you don't achieve it in the next 12 months you're going to be down on the dumps you're going to feel like a failure you're not going to be able to recognize what you've actually already accomplished so i say an annual vision is really where you want to be trust me i've done the three or five year vision before and it's just so far out there that each year i'm not taking the time to recognize my my opportunities and the things that i've accomplished so having a shorter term vision is important these are going to be things that you're going to work on in this particular section as well and then talking about the fourth piece and this is really important right the fourth major piece of this overall plan and planning process that you're going to take the time to figure out is your organizational strategic goals now all of the stuff that i just told you about and and i as you guys know if you are a subscriber you know me you know cptv and how it works you know that i'm going to give you the blueprints because i am all about doing things in order step by step so we just talked about the first three components and the reason why we talked about them first and that's the order that i need you to go in in this planning process the reason why we talked about them first is because they all play a role in the one before them so with that being said in order for you to figure out your overall strategic goals for your organization for the upcoming 12-month period you've got to take into consideration what's going on outside your environmental analysis what's going on inside your situational analysis and what your updated vision is and what your overall organizational mission is in order to figure out all of that stuff you've got to say all right this is what we need to tackle in order to get all three of those things in place right so this is your overall broad goals for your organization these are broad broad goals and ultimately your strategic goals i want you to narrow it down um from a year to year perspective to to two to four overall goals don't do any more than that because when we're doing strategic goals in part two of this series we are going to really break down what goes inside of these because there's additional components that go inside and this is where you're going to get more specific and it'll be really overwhelming and it removes the whole idea of this being a simple process so when i say strategic goals i'm talking about two to four overall goals and i would like to give you an example because you want to also make sure that you always include in your strategic goals in that two to four some type of sales and service goal or revenue and retention goal something financial initially when you're first starting your business you're going to look at a dollar amount so you want to say you know next year we want to drive a hundred thousand dollars in revenue right that's going to be your overall goal but as you continue to grow your business depending upon what phase you're in it's going to shift from being a specific dollar amount to a percentage of growth and so really truthfully if you've done your market analysis you'll have a really good idea of what your particular service and in your industry what the average growth targets are what is what equals success um and i have organizations and in my past i used to always say i want to grow by 50 i go to my team i want to grow by 65 and they're looking at me like okay and then i didn't i realized that in my field as a benefits agency in my previous business 13 growth was like unheard of and amazing so any double-digit growth we were actually moving in the right direction no not cheryl i'm at 35 we only hit 25 percent and i'm walking around with my face all messed up morale is down in the office and everybody's like we didn't hit our goals without even realizing we blew out every other person in our industry um so it's important for you to have those financial pieces in the strategic goals but giving you an example of what an actual goal will look like so let's just say you come up with what a strategic goal is and this is actually a real one that i've actually used in the past especially when i'm in the first two to three years in my business to improve the existing framework within all departments admin sales and service training marketing and technology and implement the necessary adjustments to achieve the organizational sales and service targets and that was really for me when i was looking at changing and building my infrastructure as an organization i had to focus on building my infrastructure in all of those areas in order for me to make sure that i was hitting my revenue targets and hitting our service and customer retention targets and that might be where you are if you're a brand new business for instance your infrastructure might be you know to get my business set up completely on paper and legally so that i can move forward with actually getting customers and clients right that might be your overall strategic goal in 2020 i just want to get my business set up and get my first 10 clients right um if you are an existing business it might be all right i've got some money coming in but i know if i improve my capacity and i improve my systems and my processes and my infrastructure i'm ultimately going to be able to grow my business to that next level so one of my goals is to improve my existing infrastructure and framework just like the example says right so i mean looking at this the major pieces of the plan we've tackled the first four i want to make sure that you take a look at that and hopefully you were taking notes in your workbook because i think that we have smashed the first four pieces of this plan and now hopefully you have a better understanding of exactly what you're going to be thinking about and thinking through okay before we move on to the next four components of the growth plan and my secret sauce on how you're actually going to do all of this i want to make sure that you give me some love if you are into this make sure you subscribe you can actually hit that button that's down in the left hand corner you see it it says subscribe go ahead and click it you don't even have to leave the video to make sure that you're aware and you can get the next two parts of the series and like this and comment give me some feedback and also share this with your friends okay sorry guys give me a second this is my 14 year old you know what actually hold on hon this may take a little bit longer than i'd like so you guys start working through the first part of your workbook and all the secrets that we just went over are actually in there and we're going to get together again next tuesday and kind of continue we'll pick up where we left off all right bye see you next time [Music]

2021-11-19 07:56

Other news