Episode 37: Why You Need Quarterly Planning for Your Business Plus a Bonus

Mastering Quarterly Planning: Setting Goals and Developing Actionable Steps for Business Success

At the end of each quarter, many business owners wonder what went right and wrong and where they should focus their efforts the next quarter.

This episode will help you with a simple process to plan your next three months, including setting goals and developing actionable steps.

Want to dive deeper? Check out our quarterly planning blog post.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva.

See you next time!

Podcast transcript:

Kiva Slade: [00:00:01]

Hello, and welcome to Collab With Kiva. I'm your host Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing-themed office chair, I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a legislative director for a member of Congress, policy director for a nonprofit, stay at home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service-based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line or full of zigs and zags, join me and my guest as we share insights, hope, and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat? Let's dive in.

[00:00:54]

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to July. Welcome to this episode of Collab with Kiva. I am your host Kiva Slade. And I am pumped. It is the beginning of Q3. It is the beginning of the last six months of the year. It is summer. The weather here is amazing. It's birthday month in our house. My husband's birthday is this month. My daughter's birthday is this month. Four days separate the two. And it's actually birthday month I feel like in my family. My sister-in-law had her birthday on July 4th. I have another sister-in-law whose birthday is coming up on the 10th. So, it's just like a lot of birthdays are happening in July. And of course, July is the preceding month to someone else's birthday, and that would be mine.

[00:01:57]

So, I might get excited when July rolls around just because it gets closer to my birthday month. So with all that being said, I hope everyone enjoyed June's series on All Things Just Business and Measurement. And I had a lot of fun doing it. There are also some additional videos that I did on LinkedIn, so you can definitely check those out as well. But because we're talking all things Q3 and getting started with Q3, because hey, technically, we're still at the beginning of it, I want to talk about quarterly reviews and planning. Because once again, if we didn't have a direction of where we were going, we don't know when we got in there. So, as you sit now and you listen and you look back at Q2, I want you to ask yourself some questions.

[00:03:02]

What is one Q2 accomplishment that you're proud of? Just one. Don't make this complicated. So, if you haven't already grabbed a pen and paper, make sure to do so. So, that's the first question I want you to ask yourself. What is one Q2 accomplishment that you are proud of? Next question. Use three adjectives to describe how you felt in Q2. Three adjectives to describe how you felt in Q2. And these are the same questions I go through with my clients, so I'm not just pulling something out of the sky. I literally take my clients through this as well, and everyone always finds it super helpful. So next question. What were your biggest Q2 challenges? What were those challenges?

[00:04:06]

And really be honest with yourself. I think sometimes that we downplay some things that we actually were challenged by and we downplay it because we figured it out. And that's great to figure it out, but let's also think about what those challenges were. In addition to that, what improvements and takeaways do you have as you move into Q3? What improvements and takeaways do you have moving into Q3? What lessons did you learn in Q2? Life is always teaching us lessons. So, what were the lessons that you learned in Q2? And now, what was your Q2 revenue goal? What was your actual Q2 revenue? Because the goal was one thing, but what did you actually bring in?

[00:05:03]

Did you hit your goal? Did you slightly miss your goal? Were you anywhere close to your goal? Did you exceed your goal? All of those questions factor into when you're looking ahead to Q3. What can you do differently? If you were nowhere near your goal, what happened that took you off the rails? If you exceeded your goal, what did you do that you can continue to replicate so that you continue to exceed? But sometimes when people exceed their goal, I have to ask them, was your goal set too low? Historically looking back, did you kind of purposely choose a low number? No shade, no judgment, just asking. So, another question I want you to ask yourself and I'm going to start adding this to mine is what are you doing that is no longer serving you?

[00:06:03]

What are you doing that is no longer serving you? I feel like that's a question that would be really helpful to evaluate as we do our quarterly planning, because there could be something that we're doing that isn't serving us any longer, and as we look to shift away from it, that impacts our plans moving forward. So, now let's talk about your Q3 planning. Just like we used some adjectives to describe how you felt in Q2, I want you to write down three adjectives to describe how you want to feel in Q3. How do you want to feel? A lot of times its positive psychology and other things. We can really set ourselves up for the success that we are looking for by telling ourselves ... And I'm not saying, like, speak things into existence or things of that sort, but reframing our mindset is super important to anything that we do and approach.

[00:07:12]

So what are those three adjectives that describe how you want to feel in Q3? What are your 2 to 3 main goals for Q3? Why are these goals important to you? Your why needs to be anchored. If your why isn't anchored, if you don't hit your goals, or if you do hit your goals, it's not really going to matter to you if there is no anchor to your why these goals are important to you. Only you can answer that question. Do these goals fully support the annual goals you set for this year? Once again, no shade, no judgment if you don't have annual goals set, there's no better time now than the present to actually do that.

[00:08:03]

So, do your goals fully support the annual goals that you've set for this year? What are the action steps needed to accomplish these goals? Because it's one thing to set the goal, we need a path to goal achievement and that's only going to come from having action steps set out and nailed out for how we're going to go forward with accomplishing the goals. And then I love this question. What habits do you need to start, stop or continue in order to fully realize your Q3 goals? What habits do you need to start, stop or continue in order to fully realize your Q3 goals? I've spoken on here before about how I took the Building a Second Brain course, which off the top you're like, What? And it may not feel like it's totally related to our businesses, but it really is because it helped me change my approach to information.

[00:09:12]

I am an information hoarder. I love taking in all kinds of information. I am an avid reader. I am always consuming. And sometimes, though, I take in some really amazing things that were never able to be applied in any way, shape, fashion, or form. However, the Building a Second Brain course has really helped me organize my information in such a much better way than I'm literally able to pull out the things that I need to share them with people, my clients, my family, and whomever. And it's been amazing. And that's a habit I've had to start doing. And it's like I need to continue that habit.

[00:09:59]

Another one is back in December after reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, I took off social media from my phone. I know some of you are screaming in horror right now, but I did. And guess what? I didn't die. I'm still here and everything is wonderful. So, literally, I think the only social media I have on my phone is LinkedIn. There's no Facebook, there's no Instagram, or anything else like that. Also, I have no notifications except for my family. And I have an iPhone, so everything is in the scheduled summary, including Boxer. So, literally, if I don't pick up my phone sometimes I don't know that someone has notified me. And the reality is, once again, outside of my family, there's nothing that is that urgent.

[00:11:04]

So, I don't have notifications. All of my apps on my phone are literally all on the first page. There are no different pages. I use folders, and I got that from Julie Stoian from Funnel Gorgeous. She shared that. So, all of my apps are on one screen and it's been a game changer. So, that minimizing how I interact digitally and also how I interact with information and how I spend my time also. Because I was Alice y'all. I could see something and I would go down that rabbit hole and next thing you know, I've read five articles on something and a whole hour or two have gone by. But now, I save the articles that I want to read to Instapaper, I save Twitter threads to Instapaper, and then I set aside time to just take my iPad and go read those things about once a week.

[00:12:10]

And it keeps me from going down paths that I don't need to go down for information that's not needed at that moment for anything that I'm doing, and it keeps me focused. So, those are just some habits that I will continue doing as I move forward into Q3, just to continue to fully realize my own goals. And I encourage you to look at what are the habits that you need to start, stop or continue in order to fully realize your Q3 goals. And then the last question, what is your Q3 revenue goal? Because once again, we have to have a goal, where are we trying to go? And that way we can better ascertain, did we get there? Did we not get there? What tweaks could we have done to get there if we didn't? And again, if we totally blew it out of the water, was that a freak occurrence because something amazing and major happened, or were we setting our goal too low in the beginning?

[00:13:06]

So, as you are in this first full week of Q3 and of July, I really want you to take some time to do some quarterly review and planning. It is super important, and I just cannot ever stress it enough that we have to have some baseline, some benchmarks as to what we're doing, where we're going, how we're trying to get there. So, if you have any questions at all, feel free to reach me on my website, send me an email at [email protected], DM me on LinkedIn. I love to talk all things strategy and quarterly planning because it's where ... What's that saying? The rubber meets the road. So, we are not building these businesses to have these pie in the sky kind of ideas and just hopes and dreams and letting ourselves just drift, as I shared in the last episode,

[00:14:05]

We're not drifting. We are not trying to drift to where we want to go. We want to get there, and we're going to need a plan in order to make that happen. So, this episode is super short because it's full of action. You got your questions, take your notes, make your notes, and then review your notes. Don't just quarterly plan and stick it away. Put it up on the wall or your screen or wherever you need to put it so that you see it and you know where you're trying to go. And trust me, it's kind of like when kids were little and the little bumper guards would come up at the bowling alley. When you're keeping track of what your goals were, and where you're going to, keeps you in alignment, so when other stuff comes your way, you're like, Nope, don't need to do that, it does not help me fully realize my goal for Q3. Nope, it's on the back burner.

[00:15:05]

And trust me when you get that empowered no, because you know that it's not the thing that you need to focus on, all kinds of things open up for you at that point. So, I am wishing everyone a productive and profitable ... Yeah, we're going to go with a productive and profitable Q3. And I look forward to hearing at the end of Q3 what happened, what works, what didn't work, what goals did you totally smash? All right, so I will talk to you guys next time. Bye.

[00:15:48]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab With Kiva. Each of us has a different path and I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. If you're a small business owner ready to start making data-driven decisions in your business and you know that without the data, you're really just guessing, make sure to visit my website, the516 collaborative.com, and let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.