January 15, 2025 • 27 mins
This podcast episode focuses on creating an integral annual strategic business plan that aligns all departments and improves growth. We discuss the importance of a detailed review from the past year, setting collaborative goals, conducting SWOT analysis, and implementing effective risk management strategies.
• Reviewing the previous year's performance and metrics
• Defining your mission, vision, values, and principles
• Conducting a SWOT analysis for internal and external insights
• Planning for risks and developing contingency strategies
• Differentiating between strategy and planning
• Setting measurable goals and tracking KPIs
• Budgeting based on strategic priorities
• Involving the leadership team for buy-in
• Regularly reviewing and adapting the plan
• Emphasizing the cyclical nature of strategic planning
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strategic planning, business growth, SWOT analysis, KPIs, annual planning, mission vision values, budgeting, team management, leadership, business strategy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we're gonna jump into how to create an
annual strategic business plan.
I developed 10 steps in orderto do that, so please tune in.
What's up, guys?
Matt Walton here with AvodaTalk, and I am very excited
about this episode today.
So, first off, it's the newyear, so happy new year to
everybody out there.
My prayer is that you guys arealready killing it, building off
(00:21):
of the disciplines that youworked on last year and just
building up that compoundinterest for the goals and the
life that you were pursuing.
I want to talk about an annualstrategic plan, so these are
things that are extremelyimportant to do at the end of
the year, going into the verybeginning of the year, and I
want to talk about why it'simportant, and I want to give
you an outline for exactly how Ido my annual strategic plan and
(00:43):
talk about the progression ofit and also talk about the
growth that I've seen since I'vestarted doing this.
So let's get right into it.
I've got a question that I wantto ask everybody, and that is
how do you view your business?
Is it simply a transactionalbusiness, where you're
transacting, maybe for somegoods or for a service and
(01:04):
you're getting some money for itand then you're using that
money to go live the life thatyou've always dreamed of living.
For example, you get to travel,take vacations, do all of these
things which, again, there'snothing wrong with these things
but you use your business as aplatform to change the world and
you exercise the laygratification, understanding
(01:24):
that, yeah, I'm going to be ableto live the life in regards to
vacations and different thingslike that that I want to live,
but I've got delayedgratification That'll come later
.
Right now, my main focus isusing this business platform to
transform this world and tochange the way business is done.
If that is you, then this isthe right podcast for you,
because I'm going to get into abunch of strategy and a bunch of
(01:46):
different business tactics thatI've used, and I'll talk about
the pros and cons of them andwhat has worked and what hasn't
worked.
First, I want to tell you thatwhen I started doing this was
last year.
Last year was actually my firstyear, and I've been in business
for longer than that but I'venever done a strategic business
plan and last year, I didsomething called a VTO.
(02:06):
This is something that's takenfrom the book Traction and it's
a vision tracker organizer.
No, I've never read the bookTraction, but I have pulled some
things from that book and theVTO was one of them.
It was kind of my way intodoing.
Like this strategic plan, it'ssomething that is not very
detailed.
You have to go through yourrocks and all of your different
goals and your vision and all ofthat, but what I'm about to go
(02:30):
over is going to go over muchmore detail and you're going to
be able to get into all thedifferent departments of your
business and develop a strategyto be able to accomplish your
goals.
So let's get right into it.
I'm thinking about theimportance of doing an annual
strategic business plan.
There's a few things, so what Ido is these are things that I
start working on in December.
I work on them and I work onthem through January as well.
So my rollout date for thisannual strategic business plan
(02:53):
is January 13th.
I do Monday morning meetingswith my leadership team and
right now I'm doing once-a-monthleadership meetings because I
meet with department heads everysingle week on Monday.
So that's just something thathas worked better for me and
something that I'm trying goinginto 2025.
This right here will geteverybody together.
(03:14):
So your goal with this is toget everybody running at the
same pace.
You're also going to presentthe vision and go over any
developments within the visionand get everybody again running
at the same pace.
Your goal is to get everybodyfired up, go over new roles, new
responsibilities, make sureeverybody's on the same page,
bring people in, make it aninclusive conversation to talk
(03:35):
about each individual bulletpoint that we're about to go
over.
This is one of the most valuablethings that I've added into my
business, because it allows foryou to take a step back, look at
every department individually,develop game plans for them,
look at how they're performing,figure out what worked, what
didn't work, develop these SWOTanalysis and then you're able to
develop your game plan and howyou're going to attack 2025.
(03:56):
One of the things that itstarts with is and now I want to
get into the actual outline ofit, which is what we see over
here and I want to talk aboutthe.
There's things that I do andreally there's things that I
would add to it but 10 thingsthat I really focus on when I'm
developing my annual strategicbusiness plan.
And the first thing is we haveto review how previous year
(04:17):
happened, so that for me, thisis 2025.
So how did 2024 happen for youguys?
I'm doing that.
I'm reviewing all thefinancials.
I'm reviewing every littlebitty detail, all the KPIs that
I'm tracking all the financialmetrics when it comes to
accounting, all of the goalsthat were the previous year
goals.
Again, going back to myprevious year, the VTO, the
(04:38):
Vision Tracker Organizer how didwe do in comparison to that?
And then you're going todevelop a summary outside of
that Just a brief summary anddescribe what worked and
describe what didn't work within2024, within the previous year.
This is something that when youstart looking at sales data,
looking at customer feedback,you just start looking at your
(04:59):
business as a whole.
Developing this summary is agreat foundation, a good
launching point to where we'reabout to go next.
So the next thing on the list isis your MVVP?
So different businesses will dowill title this differently,
but mine is mission, vision,value and principles.
So it's what this businessstands on.
What is the vision?
Again, this is what.
When I'm going over this withmy leadership team, I'm
(05:21):
presenting the vision in orderto get us all running together,
running at the same pace,running on the same race, and my
mission, vision, value andprinciples is what we can
analyze everything.
So, did this decision over here?
Or if you had to let somebodygo, or you brought somebody on,
or you maybe enter a counselingsession or a discipline session
with somebody, are you aligningeverything within your business
(05:44):
with your mission, vision, valueand principles?
So that's something that'sextremely important.
If you don't have that, like ifa new business that is getting
going, you don't have to havethat on day one.
Don't get caught up on.
Okay, I have to have this donebefore I can go out and start my
business, before I can getrocking and rolling.
I started mine, or I did mine,within the first year of my
business, but it has changedsince then.
(06:07):
There's been a few changes toit since then, so just be aware
of that.
You're going to develop this.
It's not something that I wouldrecommend setting and
forgetting, but rather review itevery single year and make sure
that it still aligns with whereyou're headed within your
business.
The next thing and this isprobably one of the most
important things to do isdevelop your SWOT analysis.
So, for those of you that don'tknow, swot analysis is strength
(06:29):
, weaknesses, opportunities andthreats.
So one of the things tounderstand is you're looking
internally and you're lookingexternally when you're doing a
SWOT analysis.
So your review is going to beyour strengths and weaknesses
and then your external review isgoing to be opportunities or
threats.
So, as an example, when lookingat O and T opportunities and
(06:51):
threats, I'm looking at like forme, I manufacture pools as one
of my products out of shippingcontainers and one of the
opportunities is Las Vegas justreleased these new water
restriction laws, so your poolscan't be over a certain square
footage and mine just so happensto fit within that, so that is
a great opportunity to exploitthat within the market.
Threats would be like theglobal economy, you know, or
maybe some political stuff orother things as well can also go
(07:13):
into some threats.
So these are important toanalyze these things because
whenever you start to developyour plan, you're going to
develop these contingency plansfor worst case scenarios If this
happened.
Here's our way out.
So SWOT analysis is one of themost important things that you
will do when you're doing yourannual strategic business plan.
The next thing is we want toplan for risks and contingencies
(07:34):
.
So again, this is somethingwhere a lot of times I'll go in
and I will combine these two.
I'm doing this for twobusinesses right now and both of
them, these two things aregoing to be combined.
So I'm going to take myopportunities and threats and
I'm going to review those, aswell as my strengths and
weaknesses, and I'm going to seewhat the risks are and I'm
going to develop contingencyplans for those.
So, again going back, these twothings right here go hand in
(07:56):
hand.
But it's critical because wealways, if you're entering into
a partnership with somebody, ormaybe you're bringing on
somebody different to do likemedia, you always want to have
an out, you always want to havea game plan of how you're going
to get out, because if you don't, you're going to get trapped
every single time.
That was some advice that I wasgiven years ago and that has
been very valuable to me.
(08:16):
Next thing is and sorry if y'allsee me looking down, I'm
looking at my computer, but thenext thing I want to get into,
the next, these things, thesethe reason I have these dots
here and this separating it kindof, because these go hand in
hand.
So what I wrote here was thesenext three are an important loop
for productivity and it'simportant to define the
differences.
The strategy and plans aredifferent.
(08:37):
So a lot of people may viewtheir strategy as being their
plan, but those two things aredramatically different.
So when you're going through,you want to make sure that you
accurately define the vision,the strategy, the goals, which
can also go with the strategyand sometimes can go before the
strategy.
And then you want to developyour plan outside of that and
I'll break that down more as weprogress on this.
(08:59):
But you also want to track allyour KPIs, which we're about to
get into.
So first have your vision.
If you don't have a vision foryour business, I'm going to kind
of go off of this for a littlewhile.
But if you don't have a vision,then I encourage you to get one
.
And I mean Habakkuk 2-3 talksabout those without vision will
perish.
So write the vision down andmake it plain so that those who
(09:22):
read it will run.
And actually Habakkuk 2 through3 does not talk about those
that will perish, but it is talkabout those that write your
vision down so that those thatwill read it will be able to run
.
So it's the same thing.
We want to write our visiondown for our businesses so that
when we're presenting things orwhenever we're meeting with our
department heads or with ourleadership committee, we want to
be able to present that vision.
(09:42):
Every single meeting, likeliterally every time, I'm
presenting my vision.
Just about, I would say, everyleader meeting, I'm presenting
my vision.
All the different departmenthead meetings, I would say it's
probably 50-50.
There's times where I do andthere's times where I don't, but
there's a purpose behind all ofit.
Every single thing isintentional.
So I'll give you an example.
When we're developing astrategy, like for one of my
businesses, it would be I wantto be the number one pool
(10:04):
manufacturer in the country.
Or maybe I want to be thenumber one customer service
rating for anybody within myindustry, and then here's how
I'm going to accomplish thesethings.
So, as an example, we'll go offof the number one I want to be
the number one shippingcontainer manufacturer in the
country, and here's how I'mgoing to accomplish this.
(10:24):
And then I detail the plan ofhow I'm going to accomplish this
, and then that sets us upperfectly to set our goals, kpis
, objectives and then get intoour plan of how we're going to
achieve that.
So now, as we move from ourstrategy and we've thought about
okay, I want to do this, thisis how I want to be and here's
how I'm going to accomplish this.
We have to move to our goalsKPIs, objectives.
So objectives and goals reallyare the same thing.
(10:46):
It's a different word for thesame exact thing.
So KPIs are things that go handin hand with all of your goals.
So, in order to achieve theabove meaning, in order to
achieve the strategy and howyou're going to accomplish that
strategy, you have to defineyour goals and then we'll get
into your plan and how you'regoing to accomplish those goals.
But the KPIs are ways thatyou're going to be able to track
(11:08):
your goals to see how yourprogress is going.
So like, as an example, if yousend out emails, maybe what
you're tracking is your subjectheadings and maybe you're
sending out two different emailblasts to a hundred people each,
and the first one goes out withall caps and maybe an emoji and
some exclamation points.
The second one goes out with nocaps, no emoji, no exclamation
(11:29):
point and only three wordsrather than five words, and you
just see where who's openingmore and then able to analyze
that data.
You can even change the subjector the body inside the email to
see who's opening more, who'sstaying on the page more who's
reading more.
That way, you can developbetter email campaigns off of
that data.
So it's important to set yourKPIs and then start managing
(11:53):
tracking your KPIs, nail downthe system that you're going to
track those on.
So for me, it's like I track myKPIs on my CRM.
All the social media ones arealso tracked, and I track all my
financial metrics throughQuickBooks.
So those are three ways that Itrack all of my KPIs and I'm
able to review them monthly,whether that's through reports
or just looking at them, and seehow things are performing.
(12:14):
So same thing with, like Google.
If you're doing ads, you lookat your Google dashboard and
it'll tell you things like ROAS,like my return on ad spend and
a number of other things.
These things are so criticalbecause when you're looking at
your KPIs, you'll be able todevelop your game plan and how
you're going to go to the nextlevel by your KPIs.
But if you have no KPIs, ifyou're just sending out email
after email, I promise youyou're a waste of money.
(12:36):
It's not like you're spendingmoney to try something of money.
It's not like you're spendingmoney to try something, learning
that it doesn't work and thenpivoting and trying something
new, because I don't view thatas a waste of money.
I fully expect to spendhundreds of thousands, if not
millions upon millions ofdollars over the course of my
business tenure over things thatI have learned, things that I
try didn't work.
Then I'm gonna do somethingelse or try maybe we tweak this
(12:58):
and double down on what works.
So just plan, plan to fail,plan to learn from those
failures.
The next thing is and let megive you I want to go back to
this real quick, but like justsome examples of KPIs, just in
case you've never heard of KPIswould be like open rates, like
what we just talked about withemails booking rate, just talked
(13:23):
about with emails booking rate.
So I have a call center that Iam starting to track how many
calls.
I've been tracking how manycalls come in, but how many of
those book into appointments,and so that gives you your
booking rate, your gross profitmargin, your total revenue for
the year, your profit margin,profit, gross profit are
different things, so make surethat you understand the
difference between those things.
Your RPE RPE is importantreturn per employee and the
reason why it's important is itwill tell you when to scale.
(13:45):
It's a great guide, for when doI need to bring on new people,
get into a new location?
When do I need to start scalingin those regards?
And you're going to take topline revenue and you're going to
divide it by the amount of W-2employees that you have and
that'll give you a dollar amountand the goal within my business
is to be about $250,000 peremployee.
(14:08):
So $250,000 per employee If I'maround $200,000, I'm pretty
happy, but if I'm $150,000, ifI'm $110,000, then there's a lot
of work to do.
Doesn't mean I'm not happy, butthere's a lot of work to do.
So hopefully I'm not losing youguys, this is one of those
things that really gets meexcited, because we take expert
ownership over every area of ourbusiness and we watch God just
(14:30):
do miraculous things within ourbusinesses.
The next thing is, now thatwe've set our goals and our
objectives and we've defined ourKPIs and started tracking our
KPIs, then we move on to ouraction plan and how we're gonna
achieve the specific targetsthat we set above.
So I wrote in my notes likeobjectives, goals.
These are specific targets.
So when you see the specifictarget verbiage, that's what I'm
(14:52):
referring to.
But develop your action plan.
So my strategy was to be numberone.
Here's how I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna do that throughbuilding my brand through social
media, also developing, doingGoogle ads and getting leads
that come in.
And then I'm going to track allof those.
I'm going to track my bookingrate, conversion rate, a number
of different KPIs, and then, outof all of that, I will take all
(15:14):
that into account and then Iwill set my plan on how I'm
going to attack each one ofthose things.
So, as an example, if I'mtrying to get my booking rate up
to 35% and it's at 15%, thenhow am I going to do?
That is my plan.
So I would go in and change myscripting, make sure that I get
(15:34):
off the phone a little bitquicker.
Basically, I would go in andreview whatever the problem was
or whatever the goal or whateverthe department was.
I would review everything andthen reverse engineer it.
So I would determine, afterlistening to some calls, that
okay, we need to implement this,take these questions out of our
script, and then we would trythat again and we would see okay
(15:54):
, is our grade increasing?
And then maybe it has nothingto do with the script, maybe it
has everything to do with ourFAQ or the form that people are
filling out in order to get oneof my sales reps to call them.
So there's all kinds of thingsthat we need to look at when
we're developing our plan, butthe best way to do that is by
following this strategy up hereand then we can develop our plan
.
Outside of that, and same thingup here.
(16:16):
I'm going to go back up to thestrength, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats,because this right here will go
in hand with this right here.
Obviously, it goes hand in handwith this up here, because
you're going to review that andmaybe your strengths are.
Excuse me, let me go toweaknesses.
Maybe your weaknesses have alot of warranty calls.
This is something that canplague businesses that are in
(16:36):
the service industry or that arebuilding a product that has a
warranty on it.
I need to develop a plan.
I need to identify the weaknessand then develop a plan of how
I'm going to alleviate that.
So let's keep it moving.
Now that we've done all of that,I want to go to budget planning
.
This is whenever you allocateall of your financial resources
or you develop a strategy toallocate all of your financial
(16:57):
resources towards a specifictarget.
So ensure you have a realisticbudget.
So I'll give you an example.
If you're just now gettinggoing, maybe you've been around
for three, four, five, six yearsand you're unable to develop a
budget, maybe for a new buildingor a new piece of machinery.
I want you to get away fromthat mentality, because start
developing your budgets today,even if you don't have enough
(17:20):
money to put towards those.
I would start developing thosedisciplines and putting them
like $10, $15, 1%, 2%, 3%, andthat's how you can start
developing your budget.
There's a strategy I can'tremember the exact name for it,
but it's the budgeting or,excuse me, the bucketing
strategy.
Develop these little bucketsright.
So it's like, if I have a 30%profit margin or gross profit
(17:45):
margin, I'm going to put 15 ofthat towards this, five towards
this, five of that towardssaving.
That'll leave me over 10% leftover that can go towards net
income.
So there's different things thatwe can do when we're developing
our budget to ensure that wehave the resources to be able to
accomplish the goals that we'veset forth.
So I'll give you a practicalexample.
(18:06):
Two of my biggest goals for2025, actually, excuse me, three
of my biggest goals is to hiresomebody, get the right person,
right seat, and so I have thatbuilt into my budget.
To be in a new location I havethat in my budget as well, that
I'm working towards and then geta new piece of machinery, so
for me that's a new forklift,and so I have all three of those
things built into my budget andI developed a game plan of how
(18:27):
I'm going to accomplish that.
And again, that goes back tomaybe I save some money here,
put a certain percentage in, andit goes towards this pot right
over here, and then I putdeadline on that.
Here's the goal I want to bythis time.
I want to have this much savedthis time.
I want to have this much saved.
I can keep going on that, butlet me know if you all have any
questions on that.
I'll be happy to point you in adirection of some that are very
valuable on that.
(18:48):
The next thing is you're goingto meet with your team and
you're going to share and you'regoing to get buy-in from
everybody.
So you're going to go over thiswhole entire strategic business
plan and you're going topresent the vision to everybody.
You're going to get feedbackfrom everybody and that's the
buy-in right there when youstart getting feedback.
People that put their own spinon certain things maybe remind
you of things that you didn'tconsider.
(19:08):
That's the goal with that.
The next thing is we want toreview and adapt.
These are important.
We want to review thisregularly.
So, for me again, I meet withmy leadership team once a month,
but I meet with my whole teamonce a quarter and this is when
I will review these things.
I'll review the KPIs that wereset in place, all the goals, the
plans, and we'll track it.
We'll see how we're going incomparison to our goals that we
(19:30):
set forth.
I hope that makes sense.
This is one of the best thingsthat I would recommend going
into a new year that you can doNow.
You may be like me.
I am waiting until January 1stto get my full 2024 statements
from my accountant, but you cango ahead and strategize without
that.
So I have my bookkeeper printeverything off that's up to date
, currently through the end ofthe year, knowing that there
(19:52):
could still be a few things thatneed to be tweaked.
But that's easy for me to go inand as long as I am planning
appropriately and I keep adetailed plan of all of my notes
, then I can go in and justeasily plug and play with the
new numbers to where I don'thave to redo everything and
start from scratch on all that.
So don't let you from doingthis because, again, this is one
of the most valuable thingsthat you will do with your team
(20:13):
going into a new year.
Two other things that I have toadd to this, because these could
technically be number 11 and 12, but they aren't a part of this
.
For me, they're not somethingthat I present to my team during
this annual strategic businessplan.
It's the SOP, so it's standardoperating procedures for each
department, and one of my gameplans this year is to sit down
with each department and developan SOP for each department.
(20:34):
That is something that I havestarted to do.
It's specifically for myoperations and I will go to the
next level on that this yeardevelop those SOPs with that for
different departments.
I will include to the nextlevel on that this year develop
those SOPs with that Fordifferent departments.
I will include how-tos or showthe system from point A to Z,
and that will be what I hand new.
They come on board to make surethat they have all the
necessary resources to be ableto thrive and succeed.
(20:55):
Next thing is you gotta haveyour systems.
So if you don't outline yoursystems for me, I put that all
on Google.
I would love to get away fromGoogle that's coming down the
road but I want to outline allof my systems and let me back up
.
The reason why I want to moveaway from Google is because
there's like 3,000 documentsthat I have on Google and it's
all going to be kept in oneplace.
I'm going to develop a softwarethat will keep everything in
one place, to where I can do allof that.
(21:16):
It'll be where I do my CRM.
It'll be where I track all ofmy goals, all of my people's
goals.
Whenever I roll out a dreamcenter this year, that will be a
hub for everything.
It'll have a chat portal in it.
So that's coming, but for now,there's nothing wrong with using
Google and that's what I use.
So, detail all of your systems.
I go onto Google Sheets and Idetail each department and I
list out every single systemthat's affiliated with those
(21:38):
departments.
I give that to each department.
I have them write all of theirsystems down, because what you
will find when you're doing thisis that everybody has their own
systems within the systems, andyou have to get away from that.
That is not sustainable forgrowth, and so the goal is to
sit down with them, see whatsystems that they do as a part
of the company system needs tobe added to the company system,
(22:00):
because what they're doing maybe missing from your system.
And just listen to your people.
They know you're not the onedoing what they're doing, so
listen to your people and adjustit accordingly.
That's basically it and thesethings are.
This is like most exciting forme, developing these plans,
because it gives me a not only a50,000 foot overview of where
(22:20):
my business is at, but aface-to-face overview of exactly
where I'm at, what I need toimprove upon and the plan of how
I'm going to improve upon that.
It does somethingpsychologically to where you
just get rocking and rolling.
I promise you, whenever you getinto all this, if you're like
me, you'll have a hard timepeeling away from it because
it's just so fascinating youstart to look it's like.
(22:40):
I'll give you some otherinformation about my businesses.
Over the course of the lastyear, by the grace of God, I
have seen over 100% increase intotal revenue and I have seen an
increase in just abouteverything.
Some things have fallen off inwhich I've developed my strategy
and my plan in order to getthose up, and things are already
being worked on to get those up.
But for the most part,literally time to get those up.
(23:01):
But for the most part,literally everything is trending
up and it's extremely excitingto see that.
And the only way that you willsee that is whenever you're
analyzing everything.
If you are one of those thatrelies on somebody else to do
this for you, that's a problem.
If you are relying on youraccountant to do this for you,
that's a problem.
If you're relying on your COOto do these, that's a problem.
If you're relying on somebodyelse to do these things, that is
(23:23):
a problem, not always right.
You'll get to a point to whereyou can hand this off and you
can delegate this out and teachsomebody how to do these things,
and they're reporting directlyto you.
I'm not there.
I'm working to get there, butI'm far away from that.
And I love it, man, becausebusiness to me is my calling and
I believe that it is yourcalling as well.
And how awesome is that man.
God has called us to partnerwith him in business and to
(23:46):
advance his kingdom.
We have a unique opportunity tochange the culture, to change
the way business is done and tochange the whole atmosphere
within the United States andabroad.
If we would just start takingownership over everything within
our business so that we cancontinue to bring people on and
we can continue to pour Christinto them.
You know, for me it's like Iknow a lot of people that are
running away from havingemployees and for me I'm like
(24:09):
running to that, like as many asI can have, makes the most
sense financially and within mybusiness.
I want, because that's impactright there.
That's how we make an impact,that's how we change the culture
.
So we change cities, states,states, countries is by bringing
the church to the marketplace,by not shying away from the
things that are required inorder to lead our people, and
(24:30):
that includes accountability,that includes discipline from
time to time.
But what you will notice is ifyou find yourself constantly
having to discipline people orhold somebody accountable,
there's a good chance thatthat's your problem and you need
to cause.
It was my problem.
I have no problem talking aboutlike for the first, I don't
know.
I would say year and a half orso.
I would point the fingerdirectly at me because I hadn't
(24:51):
learned some of this stuff yetand now that I am like I am a
student of business, I can't getmy hands on enough literature,
can't get my hands on enoughwebsites, can't get my hand on
enough scripture.
That provides the foundation forthe next level of where we're
going Because, again, god'scalled us.
God's called us to do this.
He's called you to excellenceand just like Colossians 3, 23
(25:13):
through 24 talks about, we doeverything as if we're doing it
unto the Lord.
So that is the purpose of thesewe do these things as if we're
doing it to the Lord.
You are called to partner withGod on everything that you do,
whether that's business or yourfamily or buying a car or going
on a vacation.
Bring God in on everything.
Quick story I asked the Lordover.
(25:33):
I shut my shop down over theChristmas break for eight days
and I asked the Lord about goingon vacation and he was very
adamant or very clear on no, andso I didn't listen and I went
ahead and scheduled a vacation.
But what did God do?
Thwarted that from happening?
The people.
It was through Airbnb.
The people did not reach backout.
And then I recognized rightthat I had went against what God
(25:56):
had said, and so I pulled backmy offer and I quickly learned
why I got there and I actuallywas able to spend roughly about
30 hours over those eight dayswith the Lord in quiet time in
the morning studying scripture,and I got a revelation of who
God is and who really is withinscripture.
I'm still far away from trulyunderstanding exactly what that
(26:18):
means or having a full pictureof what that means.
I don't know that I ever willuntil I get to heaven, but it
was one of the most beautifulthings because I was able just
to focus on God and really pourinto God and the result man, he
poured into me and it was just.
It was beautiful.
So don't wait for breaks to dothose things.
Do those things daily.
I have worked into my scheduleto have four to five hours or,
(26:38):
excuse me, four to four and ahalf hours every single day for
time with Lord or reading,whatever you name it, and it
starts with time blocking, soI'm kind of trailing a little
bit.
I'll get into those thingslater, but I really hope that
this helps you.
If it does, I would love tohear some feedback on it.
I would love to hear how it'shelped you grow.
(26:59):
And last thing well, actually Ialready shared the data Again.
Going from last year to thisyear, I was able to see over
100% growth and was able to lookat everything tangibly and see
what needs to happen goingforward.
Hopefully this helps you guys.
God bless you and we'll talk toyou soon.
Today we're gonna jump into how to create an
annual strategic business plan.
I developed 10 steps in orderto do that, so please tune in.
What's up, guys?
Matt Walton here with AvodaTalk, and I am very excited
about this episode today.
So, first off, it's the newyear, so happy new year to
everybody out there.
My prayer is that you guys arealready killing it, building off
(00:21):
of the disciplines that youworked on last year and just
building up that compoundinterest for the goals and the
life that you were pursuing.
I want to talk about an annualstrategic plan, so these are
things that are extremelyimportant to do at the end of
the year, going into the verybeginning of the year, and I
want to talk about why it'simportant, and I want to give
you an outline for exactly how Ido my annual strategic plan and
(00:43):
talk about the progression ofit and also talk about the
growth that I've seen since I'vestarted doing this.
So let's get right into it.
I've got a question that I wantto ask everybody, and that is
how do you view your business?
Is it simply a transactionalbusiness, where you're
transacting, maybe for somegoods or for a service and
(01:04):
you're getting some money for itand then you're using that
money to go live the life thatyou've always dreamed of living.
For example, you get to travel,take vacations, do all of these
things which, again, there'snothing wrong with these things
but you use your business as aplatform to change the world and
you exercise the laygratification, understanding
(01:24):
that, yeah, I'm going to be ableto live the life in regards to
vacations and different thingslike that that I want to live,
but I've got delayedgratification That'll come later
.
Right now, my main focus isusing this business platform to
transform this world and tochange the way business is done.
If that is you, then this isthe right podcast for you,
because I'm going to get into abunch of strategy and a bunch of
(01:46):
different business tactics thatI've used, and I'll talk about
the pros and cons of them andwhat has worked and what hasn't
worked.
First, I want to tell you thatwhen I started doing this was
last year.
Last year was actually my firstyear, and I've been in business
for longer than that but I'venever done a strategic business
plan and last year, I didsomething called a VTO.
(02:06):
This is something that's takenfrom the book Traction and it's
a vision tracker organizer.
No, I've never read the bookTraction, but I have pulled some
things from that book and theVTO was one of them.
It was kind of my way intodoing.
Like this strategic plan, it'ssomething that is not very
detailed.
You have to go through yourrocks and all of your different
goals and your vision and all ofthat, but what I'm about to go
(02:30):
over is going to go over muchmore detail and you're going to
be able to get into all thedifferent departments of your
business and develop a strategyto be able to accomplish your
goals.
So let's get right into it.
I'm thinking about theimportance of doing an annual
strategic business plan.
There's a few things, so what Ido is these are things that I
start working on in December.
I work on them and I work onthem through January as well.
So my rollout date for thisannual strategic business plan
(02:53):
is January 13th.
I do Monday morning meetingswith my leadership team and
right now I'm doing once-a-monthleadership meetings because I
meet with department heads everysingle week on Monday.
So that's just something thathas worked better for me and
something that I'm trying goinginto 2025.
This right here will geteverybody together.
(03:14):
So your goal with this is toget everybody running at the
same pace.
You're also going to presentthe vision and go over any
developments within the visionand get everybody again running
at the same pace.
Your goal is to get everybodyfired up, go over new roles, new
responsibilities, make sureeverybody's on the same page,
bring people in, make it aninclusive conversation to talk
(03:35):
about each individual bulletpoint that we're about to go
over.
This is one of the most valuablethings that I've added into my
business, because it allows foryou to take a step back, look at
every department individually,develop game plans for them,
look at how they're performing,figure out what worked, what
didn't work, develop these SWOTanalysis and then you're able to
develop your game plan and howyou're going to attack 2025.
(03:56):
One of the things that itstarts with is and now I want to
get into the actual outline ofit, which is what we see over
here and I want to talk aboutthe.
There's things that I do andreally there's things that I
would add to it but 10 thingsthat I really focus on when I'm
developing my annual strategicbusiness plan.
And the first thing is we haveto review how previous year
(04:17):
happened, so that for me, thisis 2025.
So how did 2024 happen for youguys?
I'm doing that.
I'm reviewing all thefinancials.
I'm reviewing every littlebitty detail, all the KPIs that
I'm tracking all the financialmetrics when it comes to
accounting, all of the goalsthat were the previous year
goals.
Again, going back to myprevious year, the VTO, the
(04:38):
Vision Tracker Organizer how didwe do in comparison to that?
And then you're going todevelop a summary outside of
that Just a brief summary anddescribe what worked and
describe what didn't work within2024, within the previous year.
This is something that when youstart looking at sales data,
looking at customer feedback,you just start looking at your
(04:59):
business as a whole.
Developing this summary is agreat foundation, a good
launching point to where we'reabout to go next.
So the next thing on the list isis your MVVP?
So different businesses will dowill title this differently,
but mine is mission, vision,value and principles.
So it's what this businessstands on.
What is the vision?
Again, this is what.
When I'm going over this withmy leadership team, I'm
(05:21):
presenting the vision in orderto get us all running together,
running at the same pace,running on the same race, and my
mission, vision, value andprinciples is what we can
analyze everything.
So, did this decision over here?
Or if you had to let somebodygo, or you brought somebody on,
or you maybe enter a counselingsession or a discipline session
with somebody, are you aligningeverything within your business
(05:44):
with your mission, vision, valueand principles?
So that's something that'sextremely important.
If you don't have that, like ifa new business that is getting
going, you don't have to havethat on day one.
Don't get caught up on.
Okay, I have to have this donebefore I can go out and start my
business, before I can getrocking and rolling.
I started mine, or I did mine,within the first year of my
business, but it has changedsince then.
(06:07):
There's been a few changes toit since then, so just be aware
of that.
You're going to develop this.
It's not something that I wouldrecommend setting and
forgetting, but rather review itevery single year and make sure
that it still aligns with whereyou're headed within your
business.
The next thing and this isprobably one of the most
important things to do isdevelop your SWOT analysis.
So, for those of you that don'tknow, swot analysis is strength
(06:29):
, weaknesses, opportunities andthreats.
So one of the things tounderstand is you're looking
internally and you're lookingexternally when you're doing a
SWOT analysis.
So your review is going to beyour strengths and weaknesses
and then your external review isgoing to be opportunities or
threats.
So, as an example, when lookingat O and T opportunities and
(06:51):
threats, I'm looking at like forme, I manufacture pools as one
of my products out of shippingcontainers and one of the
opportunities is Las Vegas justreleased these new water
restriction laws, so your poolscan't be over a certain square
footage and mine just so happensto fit within that, so that is
a great opportunity to exploitthat within the market.
Threats would be like theglobal economy, you know, or
maybe some political stuff orother things as well can also go
(07:13):
into some threats.
So these are important toanalyze these things because
whenever you start to developyour plan, you're going to
develop these contingency plansfor worst case scenarios If this
happened.
Here's our way out.
So SWOT analysis is one of themost important things that you
will do when you're doing yourannual strategic business plan.
The next thing is we want toplan for risks and contingencies
(07:34):
.
So again, this is somethingwhere a lot of times I'll go in
and I will combine these two.
I'm doing this for twobusinesses right now and both of
them, these two things aregoing to be combined.
So I'm going to take myopportunities and threats and
I'm going to review those, aswell as my strengths and
weaknesses, and I'm going to seewhat the risks are and I'm
going to develop contingencyplans for those.
So, again going back, these twothings right here go hand in
(07:56):
hand.
But it's critical because wealways, if you're entering into
a partnership with somebody, ormaybe you're bringing on
somebody different to do likemedia, you always want to have
an out, you always want to havea game plan of how you're going
to get out, because if you don't, you're going to get trapped
every single time.
That was some advice that I wasgiven years ago and that has
been very valuable to me.
(08:16):
Next thing is and sorry if y'allsee me looking down, I'm
looking at my computer, but thenext thing I want to get into,
the next, these things, thesethe reason I have these dots
here and this separating it kindof, because these go hand in
hand.
So what I wrote here was thesenext three are an important loop
for productivity and it'simportant to define the
differences.
The strategy and plans aredifferent.
(08:37):
So a lot of people may viewtheir strategy as being their
plan, but those two things aredramatically different.
So when you're going through,you want to make sure that you
accurately define the vision,the strategy, the goals, which
can also go with the strategyand sometimes can go before the
strategy.
And then you want to developyour plan outside of that and
I'll break that down more as weprogress on this.
(08:59):
But you also want to track allyour KPIs, which we're about to
get into.
So first have your vision.
If you don't have a vision foryour business, I'm going to kind
of go off of this for a littlewhile.
But if you don't have a vision,then I encourage you to get one
.
And I mean Habakkuk 2-3 talksabout those without vision will
perish.
So write the vision down andmake it plain so that those who
(09:22):
read it will run.
And actually Habakkuk 2 through3 does not talk about those
that will perish, but it is talkabout those that write your
vision down so that those thatwill read it will be able to run
.
So it's the same thing.
We want to write our visiondown for our businesses so that
when we're presenting things orwhenever we're meeting with our
department heads or with ourleadership committee, we want to
be able to present that vision.
(09:42):
Every single meeting, likeliterally every time, I'm
presenting my vision.
Just about, I would say, everyleader meeting, I'm presenting
my vision.
All the different departmenthead meetings, I would say it's
probably 50-50.
There's times where I do andthere's times where I don't, but
there's a purpose behind all ofit.
Every single thing isintentional.
So I'll give you an example.
When we're developing astrategy, like for one of my
businesses, it would be I wantto be the number one pool
(10:04):
manufacturer in the country.
Or maybe I want to be thenumber one customer service
rating for anybody within myindustry, and then here's how
I'm going to accomplish thesethings.
So, as an example, we'll go offof the number one I want to be
the number one shippingcontainer manufacturer in the
country, and here's how I'mgoing to accomplish this.
(10:24):
And then I detail the plan ofhow I'm going to accomplish this
, and then that sets us upperfectly to set our goals, kpis
, objectives and then get intoour plan of how we're going to
achieve that.
So now, as we move from ourstrategy and we've thought about
okay, I want to do this, thisis how I want to be and here's
how I'm going to accomplish this.
We have to move to our goalsKPIs, objectives.
So objectives and goals reallyare the same thing.
(10:46):
It's a different word for thesame exact thing.
So KPIs are things that go handin hand with all of your goals.
So, in order to achieve theabove meaning, in order to
achieve the strategy and howyou're going to accomplish that
strategy, you have to defineyour goals and then we'll get
into your plan and how you'regoing to accomplish those goals.
But the KPIs are ways thatyou're going to be able to track
(11:08):
your goals to see how yourprogress is going.
So like, as an example, if yousend out emails, maybe what
you're tracking is your subjectheadings and maybe you're
sending out two different emailblasts to a hundred people each,
and the first one goes out withall caps and maybe an emoji and
some exclamation points.
The second one goes out with nocaps, no emoji, no exclamation
(11:29):
point and only three wordsrather than five words, and you
just see where who's openingmore and then able to analyze
that data.
You can even change the subjector the body inside the email to
see who's opening more, who'sstaying on the page more who's
reading more.
That way, you can developbetter email campaigns off of
that data.
So it's important to set yourKPIs and then start managing
(11:53):
tracking your KPIs, nail downthe system that you're going to
track those on.
So for me, it's like I track myKPIs on my CRM.
All the social media ones arealso tracked, and I track all my
financial metrics throughQuickBooks.
So those are three ways that Itrack all of my KPIs and I'm
able to review them monthly,whether that's through reports
or just looking at them, and seehow things are performing.
(12:14):
So same thing with, like Google.
If you're doing ads, you lookat your Google dashboard and
it'll tell you things like ROAS,like my return on ad spend and
a number of other things.
These things are so criticalbecause when you're looking at
your KPIs, you'll be able todevelop your game plan and how
you're going to go to the nextlevel by your KPIs.
But if you have no KPIs, ifyou're just sending out email
after email, I promise youyou're a waste of money.
(12:36):
It's not like you're spendingmoney to try something of money.
It's not like you're spendingmoney to try something, learning
that it doesn't work and thenpivoting and trying something
new, because I don't view thatas a waste of money.
I fully expect to spendhundreds of thousands, if not
millions upon millions ofdollars over the course of my
business tenure over things thatI have learned, things that I
try didn't work.
Then I'm gonna do somethingelse or try maybe we tweak this
(12:58):
and double down on what works.
So just plan, plan to fail,plan to learn from those
failures.
The next thing is and let megive you I want to go back to
this real quick, but like justsome examples of KPIs, just in
case you've never heard of KPIswould be like open rates, like
what we just talked about withemails booking rate, just talked
(13:23):
about with emails booking rate.
So I have a call center that Iam starting to track how many
calls.
I've been tracking how manycalls come in, but how many of
those book into appointments,and so that gives you your
booking rate, your gross profitmargin, your total revenue for
the year, your profit margin,profit, gross profit are
different things, so make surethat you understand the
difference between those things.
Your RPE RPE is importantreturn per employee and the
reason why it's important is itwill tell you when to scale.
(13:45):
It's a great guide, for when doI need to bring on new people,
get into a new location?
When do I need to start scalingin those regards?
And you're going to take topline revenue and you're going to
divide it by the amount of W-2employees that you have and
that'll give you a dollar amountand the goal within my business
is to be about $250,000 peremployee.
(14:08):
So $250,000 per employee If I'maround $200,000, I'm pretty
happy, but if I'm $150,000, ifI'm $110,000, then there's a lot
of work to do.
Doesn't mean I'm not happy, butthere's a lot of work to do.
So hopefully I'm not losing youguys, this is one of those
things that really gets meexcited, because we take expert
ownership over every area of ourbusiness and we watch God just
(14:30):
do miraculous things within ourbusinesses.
The next thing is, now thatwe've set our goals and our
objectives and we've defined ourKPIs and started tracking our
KPIs, then we move on to ouraction plan and how we're gonna
achieve the specific targetsthat we set above.
So I wrote in my notes likeobjectives, goals.
These are specific targets.
So when you see the specifictarget verbiage, that's what I'm
(14:52):
referring to.
But develop your action plan.
So my strategy was to be numberone.
Here's how I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna do that throughbuilding my brand through social
media, also developing, doingGoogle ads and getting leads
that come in.
And then I'm going to track allof those.
I'm going to track my bookingrate, conversion rate, a number
of different KPIs, and then, outof all of that, I will take all
(15:14):
that into account and then Iwill set my plan on how I'm
going to attack each one ofthose things.
So, as an example, if I'mtrying to get my booking rate up
to 35% and it's at 15%, thenhow am I going to do?
That is my plan.
So I would go in and change myscripting, make sure that I get
(15:34):
off the phone a little bitquicker.
Basically, I would go in andreview whatever the problem was
or whatever the goal or whateverthe department was.
I would review everything andthen reverse engineer it.
So I would determine, afterlistening to some calls, that
okay, we need to implement this,take these questions out of our
script, and then we would trythat again and we would see okay
(15:54):
, is our grade increasing?
And then maybe it has nothingto do with the script, maybe it
has everything to do with ourFAQ or the form that people are
filling out in order to get oneof my sales reps to call them.
So there's all kinds of thingsthat we need to look at when
we're developing our plan, butthe best way to do that is by
following this strategy up hereand then we can develop our plan
.
Outside of that, and same thingup here.
(16:16):
I'm going to go back up to thestrength, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats,because this right here will go
in hand with this right here.
Obviously, it goes hand in handwith this up here, because
you're going to review that andmaybe your strengths are.
Excuse me, let me go toweaknesses.
Maybe your weaknesses have alot of warranty calls.
This is something that canplague businesses that are in
(16:36):
the service industry or that arebuilding a product that has a
warranty on it.
I need to develop a plan.
I need to identify the weaknessand then develop a plan of how
I'm going to alleviate that.
So let's keep it moving.
Now that we've done all of that,I want to go to budget planning
.
This is whenever you allocateall of your financial resources
or you develop a strategy toallocate all of your financial
(16:57):
resources towards a specifictarget.
So ensure you have a realisticbudget.
So I'll give you an example.
If you're just now gettinggoing, maybe you've been around
for three, four, five, six yearsand you're unable to develop a
budget, maybe for a new buildingor a new piece of machinery.
I want you to get away fromthat mentality, because start
developing your budgets today,even if you don't have enough
(17:20):
money to put towards those.
I would start developing thosedisciplines and putting them
like $10, $15, 1%, 2%, 3%, andthat's how you can start
developing your budget.
There's a strategy I can'tremember the exact name for it,
but it's the budgeting or,excuse me, the bucketing
strategy.
Develop these little bucketsright.
So it's like, if I have a 30%profit margin or gross profit
(17:45):
margin, I'm going to put 15 ofthat towards this, five towards
this, five of that towardssaving.
That'll leave me over 10% leftover that can go towards net
income.
So there's different things thatwe can do when we're developing
our budget to ensure that wehave the resources to be able to
accomplish the goals that we'veset forth.
So I'll give you a practicalexample.
(18:06):
Two of my biggest goals for2025, actually, excuse me, three
of my biggest goals is to hiresomebody, get the right person,
right seat, and so I have thatbuilt into my budget.
To be in a new location I havethat in my budget as well, that
I'm working towards and then geta new piece of machinery, so
for me that's a new forklift,and so I have all three of those
things built into my budget andI developed a game plan of how
(18:27):
I'm going to accomplish that.
And again, that goes back tomaybe I save some money here,
put a certain percentage in, andit goes towards this pot right
over here, and then I putdeadline on that.
Here's the goal I want to bythis time.
I want to have this much savedthis time.
I want to have this much saved.
I can keep going on that, butlet me know if you all have any
questions on that.
I'll be happy to point you in adirection of some that are very
valuable on that.
(18:48):
The next thing is you're goingto meet with your team and
you're going to share and you'regoing to get buy-in from
everybody.
So you're going to go over thiswhole entire strategic business
plan and you're going topresent the vision to everybody.
You're going to get feedbackfrom everybody and that's the
buy-in right there when youstart getting feedback.
People that put their own spinon certain things maybe remind
you of things that you didn'tconsider.
(19:08):
That's the goal with that.
The next thing is we want toreview and adapt.
These are important.
We want to review thisregularly.
So, for me again, I meet withmy leadership team once a month,
but I meet with my whole teamonce a quarter and this is when
I will review these things.
I'll review the KPIs that wereset in place, all the goals, the
plans, and we'll track it.
We'll see how we're going incomparison to our goals that we
(19:30):
set forth.
I hope that makes sense.
This is one of the best thingsthat I would recommend going
into a new year that you can doNow.
You may be like me.
I am waiting until January 1stto get my full 2024 statements
from my accountant, but you cango ahead and strategize without
that.
So I have my bookkeeper printeverything off that's up to date
, currently through the end ofthe year, knowing that there
(19:52):
could still be a few things thatneed to be tweaked.
But that's easy for me to go inand as long as I am planning
appropriately and I keep adetailed plan of all of my notes
, then I can go in and justeasily plug and play with the
new numbers to where I don'thave to redo everything and
start from scratch on all that.
So don't let you from doingthis because, again, this is one
of the most valuable thingsthat you will do with your team
(20:13):
going into a new year.
Two other things that I have toadd to this, because these could
technically be number 11 and 12, but they aren't a part of this
.
For me, they're not somethingthat I present to my team during
this annual strategic businessplan.
It's the SOP, so it's standardoperating procedures for each
department, and one of my gameplans this year is to sit down
with each department and developan SOP for each department.
(20:34):
That is something that I havestarted to do.
It's specifically for myoperations and I will go to the
next level on that this yeardevelop those SOPs with that for
different departments.
I will include to the nextlevel on that this year develop
those SOPs with that Fordifferent departments.
I will include how-tos or showthe system from point A to Z,
and that will be what I hand new.
They come on board to make surethat they have all the
necessary resources to be ableto thrive and succeed.
(20:55):
Next thing is you gotta haveyour systems.
So if you don't outline yoursystems for me, I put that all
on Google.
I would love to get away fromGoogle that's coming down the
road but I want to outline allof my systems and let me back up
.
The reason why I want to moveaway from Google is because
there's like 3,000 documentsthat I have on Google and it's
all going to be kept in oneplace.
I'm going to develop a softwarethat will keep everything in
one place, to where I can do allof that.
(21:16):
It'll be where I do my CRM.
It'll be where I track all ofmy goals, all of my people's
goals.
Whenever I roll out a dreamcenter this year, that will be a
hub for everything.
It'll have a chat portal in it.
So that's coming, but for now,there's nothing wrong with using
Google and that's what I use.
So, detail all of your systems.
I go onto Google Sheets and Idetail each department and I
list out every single systemthat's affiliated with those
(21:38):
departments.
I give that to each department.
I have them write all of theirsystems down, because what you
will find when you're doing thisis that everybody has their own
systems within the systems, andyou have to get away from that.
That is not sustainable forgrowth, and so the goal is to
sit down with them, see whatsystems that they do as a part
of the company system needs tobe added to the company system,
(22:00):
because what they're doing maybe missing from your system.
And just listen to your people.
They know you're not the onedoing what they're doing, so
listen to your people and adjustit accordingly.
That's basically it and thesethings are.
This is like most exciting forme, developing these plans,
because it gives me a not only a50,000 foot overview of where
(22:20):
my business is at, but aface-to-face overview of exactly
where I'm at, what I need toimprove upon and the plan of how
I'm going to improve upon that.
It does somethingpsychologically to where you
just get rocking and rolling.
I promise you, whenever you getinto all this, if you're like
me, you'll have a hard timepeeling away from it because
it's just so fascinating youstart to look it's like.
(22:40):
I'll give you some otherinformation about my businesses.
Over the course of the lastyear, by the grace of God, I
have seen over 100% increase intotal revenue and I have seen an
increase in just abouteverything.
Some things have fallen off inwhich I've developed my strategy
and my plan in order to getthose up, and things are already
being worked on to get those up.
But for the most part,literally time to get those up.
(23:01):
But for the most part,literally everything is trending
up and it's extremely excitingto see that.
And the only way that you willsee that is whenever you're
analyzing everything.
If you are one of those thatrelies on somebody else to do
this for you, that's a problem.
If you are relying on youraccountant to do this for you,
that's a problem.
If you're relying on your COOto do these, that's a problem.
If you're relying on somebodyelse to do these things, that is
(23:23):
a problem, not always right.
You'll get to a point to whereyou can hand this off and you
can delegate this out and teachsomebody how to do these things,
and they're reporting directlyto you.
I'm not there.
I'm working to get there, butI'm far away from that.
And I love it, man, becausebusiness to me is my calling and
I believe that it is yourcalling as well.
And how awesome is that man.
God has called us to partnerwith him in business and to
(23:46):
advance his kingdom.
We have a unique opportunity tochange the culture, to change
the way business is done and tochange the whole atmosphere
within the United States andabroad.
If we would just start takingownership over everything within
our business so that we cancontinue to bring people on and
we can continue to pour Christinto them.
You know, for me it's like Iknow a lot of people that are
running away from havingemployees and for me I'm like
(24:09):
running to that, like as many asI can have, makes the most
sense financially and within mybusiness.
I want, because that's impactright there.
That's how we make an impact,that's how we change the culture
.
So we change cities, states,states, countries is by bringing
the church to the marketplace,by not shying away from the
things that are required inorder to lead our people, and
(24:30):
that includes accountability,that includes discipline from
time to time.
But what you will notice is ifyou find yourself constantly
having to discipline people orhold somebody accountable,
there's a good chance thatthat's your problem and you need
to cause.
It was my problem.
I have no problem talking aboutlike for the first, I don't
know.
I would say year and a half orso.
I would point the fingerdirectly at me because I hadn't
(24:51):
learned some of this stuff yetand now that I am like I am a
student of business, I can't getmy hands on enough literature,
can't get my hands on enoughwebsites, can't get my hand on
enough scripture.
That provides the foundation forthe next level of where we're
going Because, again, god'scalled us.
God's called us to do this.
He's called you to excellenceand just like Colossians 3, 23
(25:13):
through 24 talks about, we doeverything as if we're doing it
unto the Lord.
So that is the purpose of thesewe do these things as if we're
doing it to the Lord.
You are called to partner withGod on everything that you do,
whether that's business or yourfamily or buying a car or going
on a vacation.
Bring God in on everything.
Quick story I asked the Lordover.
(25:33):
I shut my shop down over theChristmas break for eight days
and I asked the Lord about goingon vacation and he was very
adamant or very clear on no, andso I didn't listen and I went
ahead and scheduled a vacation.
But what did God do?
Thwarted that from happening?
The people.
It was through Airbnb.
The people did not reach backout.
And then I recognized rightthat I had went against what God
(25:56):
had said, and so I pulled backmy offer and I quickly learned
why I got there and I actuallywas able to spend roughly about
30 hours over those eight dayswith the Lord in quiet time in
the morning studying scripture,and I got a revelation of who
God is and who really is withinscripture.
I'm still far away from trulyunderstanding exactly what that
(26:18):
means or having a full pictureof what that means.
I don't know that I ever willuntil I get to heaven, but it
was one of the most beautifulthings because I was able just
to focus on God and really pourinto God and the result man, he
poured into me and it was just.
It was beautiful.
So don't wait for breaks to dothose things.
Do those things daily.
I have worked into my scheduleto have four to five hours or,
(26:38):
excuse me, four to four and ahalf hours every single day for
time with Lord or reading,whatever you name it, and it
starts with time blocking, soI'm kind of trailing a little
bit.
I'll get into those thingslater, but I really hope that
this helps you.
If it does, I would love tohear some feedback on it.
I would love to hear how it'shelped you grow.
(26:59):
And last thing well, actually Ialready shared the data Again.
Going from last year to thisyear, I was able to see over
100% growth and was able to lookat everything tangibly and see
what needs to happen goingforward.
Hopefully this helps you guys.
God bless you and we'll talk toyou soon.
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