Business Visioning Like the Grown-Ups

Hey team. So if you saw last week's blog, you'll see i was talking about ways to stay connected to our creativity and not get caught up in some of the stuff that can pull us back out of the flow of it. This week, i wanted to speak to the importance of channeling our creative energies into the business visioning and planning process.

As i was reminded, talking to some clients in pre-start up last week and, of all things, watching an episode of the Mentor on the weekend that dealt with a wellness/lifestyle product business, there are so many people in start up Wellness and Service Based Business, doing many, many of the right things to get off the ground. But there's a few extra tips and tweaks that need to be made/fine tuned to ensure that you're taking that idea and fully flushing out the vision ALL the way into a fully workable business plan of action that's optimised for success, as well as fulfilling your life purpose of helping people and putting all that healing, that experience, that creative energy to good use.

After 8 years of working in multiple capacities with startup Practitioners all the way up to multiple 7 figure ups in this industry, i've noticed that, when you ask them about their goals and targets, many start up Practitioners haven't yet given much thought to (or, dare i say it, are avoiding for dear life) deciding and committing to a set of numbers and targets. They've often looked at who else is doing what they do or something similar in their area, priced themselves comparitively and then jumped on to the question of how and where do i find clients and or create a program. But, when you ask them about their research, expenses, income and projections and what data they've based their pricing on.....hesitation and confused faces. This is the bit though where we talk about balancing the feminine and masculine approaches in business, where your vision, the fundamental laws of pragmatic successful business and the law of attraction must be combined:

By you setting some realistic numbers about what you need in your business and lifestyle over the long term to make it a sustainable path not just to live off now, but also to cover you and yours in retirement and beyond, so that you can say with absolute clarity and certainty, "yes life, please bring me everything i need to create THAT (and or anything even better that i imagined that pops up along the way." Otherwise, trying to manifest clients and a business that's working is a bit like trying to get dinner delivered by Uber Eats, without actually doing an order. No Uber driver can bring dinner to your door, until you fill out the online app fields correctly stating exactly what you want, click all the right buttons to agree and pay and activate the process of a restaurant preparing the food and a kind Uber girl or guy going to pick it up and then bringing it to your door. Every time we umm and aaah over wether this is really right or we really want that or the prices are right etc, it's like the restaurant or the Uber driver, depending how far along you are, gets a notification telling them to hold off, the order may be cancelled. If you don't order, you leave it to the kitchen cupboard, or if you're lucky, maybe some kind friend might offer you some dinner somewhere along the way. Is that what we want for your business though to leave it all in the hands of chance? Or could there maybe be a little MORE sustainable success to be had in taking a lot more deliberate creative control?  

What do we need to do instead? Puts on Dad Voice....do the planning properly. Start with some left brain visioning.

-Have a think about first, what your lifestyle for you, partner, family, costs you now and then add on additional expenses for what it would cost for you to do the extra lifestyle activities (like holidays, or new hobbies, get those things the kids need to improve their education or quality of life etc) that you really want to do.
Do some research until you have numbers for all of this and can say i need this much money to cover my/our lifestyle.

Now Business. Make lists of every service, every resource and registration you're going to need to get or draw upon for:

• working in your business delivering a service/es or products
• for working on your business designing products, programs and systems to ensure the smooth running capability of your business
• marketing and growing your business and

Find out, if you don't already know, what every single one of these is going to cost so that you know what expenses you need to cover and how much it's initially going to cost to run your business, FOR REAL. 

Then, look at or ask questions of others to find out where and when you're going to come to points, as your Practice or Business grows and expands, where you'll hit the glass ceiling in terms of your ability to personally keep being the one doing every single task throughout the whole process of service delivery, maintenance and the growth journey of your business.  With products, there'll come a point where, if you get enough suppliers and product orders coming in to fill, you wont be able to fulfil and deliver them all yourself without help. For Practitioners, there's only so many hours in a week you can book yourself one on one before you literally can't see any more people yourself and you'll need to, first, hand reception, admin and billing to someone else, and later, make a call as to wether you bring on other Practitioners capable of doing what you do to see all the clients on your growing waiting list. These are some of the potential points where you will first have to enlist help. And or potentially raise your price points for services.

What help will you need? From where? How much will it cost? What will be the conditions of you providing it (employee or contracting for example) and what will it require and cost to look after them properly, to the standard you would love and is legally required? What additional taxes and registrations will you require at this point? And changes to your bookkeeping might you have to make to be legally compliant at this point? Do you want to be able to give a certain percentage of what you earn or regular donations to charity? If so, when and how much? What self care will you need when you're that busy? What other support or services might you require that you can't think of yet, but people ahead of you in the game might be able to have a look at your plan and tell you where the potential gaps are? Add these too to your budget and long term projections.

So that you can work out with as much clarity as possible what your expenses are likely to be at what point and can set your pricing to at minimum cover costs and at best cover your ideal lifestyle and expansion. Not to mention determine what capital you'll still need to manifest to cover any gaps at any point. Sure, you'll want to do this is collaboration with a bookkeeper/financial guru. But in the grown up game of business, if that's truly what you want to play and you're serious about having that 6 figure business, this is the kind of stuff you need to get your hear around too. Not just the fun part of making pretty products and programs and  proper market research.

By the way, while you're doing all that research on pricing of support you might need, don't forget to add it to start creating a resource list of services you can potentially hire WHEN it happens. Plus set up a procedures manual and a filing system (online and face to face) while you're at it. (Says the 14 year former Practice and Office Management Admin Guru turned Practitioner turned Start Up Mentor)

NOW your vision is starting to look a little more solid in it's design, rather than like a Jenga tower with lots of holes and an ominous lean and sway about it, easily toppled by a little push or a slight puff of breath in it's general direction. Plus now you'll know with a little more certainty what you REALLY need.

​Remember too, you can always change this over time as you need or desire and as your knowledge of what will be required  expands over time. Life may just bring you some even better solutions than you'd first thought of, good to be open to adjustment when it does. BUT the fact remains, if you want your vision to manifest, you need to get the material basics in stone as best you can, for a new business or project, as early as you can and then stick to, commit to the growth journey over the long term.

Then you can get back to focussing on that important business of finding ways to make your talent and experience match up with the needs of the people you feel you'd like to help, to help solve their problems and help them achieve their aspirations. Where i know you REALLY want to be, right?

Until next time, have fun, take care

Nat xxoo