Mini Challenge Day 4: FutureProof Your Coaching Business
How To Work Backwards To Set Your Coaching Business Goals
Even if you are in Code Red it has to be part of the rescue and survive plan to look backwards and then forwards and then bring that all into Now. You need the data and a developed plan from what you learn before committing to the survival strategy that will be best for you.
The same applies for Code Orange and even our Greens. If you are Code Orange you have to be making decisions that will help you win long term and medium term. Unlike Code Reds who may have to completely reinvent and move into a new area you are regrouping what you have, assessing assets and working hard on what is working so far and what has worked really well in the past. That way you can begin to work out where you are, where you want to be and how to re-engineer backwards to what you need to be doing now.
Code Greens are in a strong position to be working out a long term strategy because you have enough coming in now to take care of your needs plus extra for investment. However, you still need to be back at the drawing board now to evaluate where you want to be in the next five years if they play out like the last five years have done. Looking forward and then working back to now really helps!
Today I want to share my thinking process for setting smart business goals with you.
I like to work backwards from a financial goal to daily to-do lists. Here’s how that works. It always starts with a money goal. It helps if that goal has a meaning beyond the money figure. For example, let’s say that I want to buy a new car, which I do! This is a great time to buy — but not a good time to sell. So now what?
The payment is around 800pm. To account for things like taxes and just to be safe, I’ll bump the goal up to 900. In other words, I need to add an extra 900pm (or more… more is always better) to my monthly bottom line. Once that’s done and I am seeing that level of income on a regular basis (I use 4 months) I’m ready to order my new car. In the current situation — even if I am Code Green I need to give myself a bit longer to be sure this will be sustainable. If it isn’t the answer is that I can’t have the car in the near future even if they are at amazing prices right now — because it is more of a priority to put away a lump sum to cover 6 months of expenses in case there is a second wave.
Once I know how much money I have to make, I can start to think about different ways to do just that. I could find more customers for one or several of my existing products. For example, if I have a 10 eBook, I would have to make an extra 90 sales per month. From there I can work backwards.
*If I know that on average one out of 10 email subscribers buy the book within the first month of signing up, I need to add 900 new subscribers to my list, which in turn takes adding 8,000 new visitors to my site or landing pages or opt-in boxes.
*If that’s my plan, I know that my daily to-do list needs to include plenty of action steps to ramp up my traffic by an extra 8,000 people per month.That is a lot of work but do-able if I source other traffic and I use my Old Gold and Solid Gold clients by offering them amazing flash sales and new programmes that really address their problems right now.
Of course that’s not my only option.
*I could also create another information product or eBook each month and sell it to both my existing and new subscribers.
*I could create a higher priced item so I need to make a lot fewer monthly sales to reach my 900 goal. For example, if I create a very relevant, really helpful 100 product, it would only take 9 sales per month to pay for the car.
Since the car payment will be an ongoing thing, it also makes sense to look into allocating recurring payments to paying it off. This could be my own membership groups, or I could look into affiliate offers with recurring commissions.
Depending on your market, there’s a lot out there that you can promote. For me, one option could be to create some content around methods to make recurring income for my clients. I could offer it as a recurring fee membership and use PLR content to produce the useful content.
If I aim it to be a value filled 20pm and let’s say I get 30 members sign up I would make 600 each month which would be a large contribution towards my car payment — or towards my 6 month saving net for emergencies and crises! Once I reach that number, I only need to add the occasional new member to balance out cancellations and bring the number of members up to 45 and completely cover my car or savings plan . Getting one or two more new members in each month going forward should more than cover that.
Now I have a concrete goal to work towards which is convincing 30 people to sign up for the membership. My daily tasks will include things like creating content that includes an offer to the membership, a short report about using recurring income as part of the long term FutureProofing Plan and targeting sub lists of people interested in extra income sources in general. Then I start driving traffic to the content and the opt-in offer and start mailing regularly about the membership. I may even craft a short autoresponder sequence to create an evergreen funnel.
By thinking outside the box and putting in some time and effort initially, it won’t take me long to get those 30 signups that pay for my new car payment. Because I really want that new car or feel super scared about the unknown future and my business, I’m going to be motivated to get it done and grow my business by those extra 900’s per month. In fact, chances are great that I’ll overshoot the goal by several hundred — and it’s something I can continue to grow month after month.
Just imagine if the next 5 years is like the last 5 years? How are you keeping your self financially secure, happy and living your life of purpose helping coaching your clients to succeed?
Elizabeth specializes in helping you Get Your Coaching Business Back On Track. Sign up for her highly-acclaimed free challenges and webinars to find out how to FutureProof your Coaching business now.
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