Hello and welcome to a
new episode of the Tizzit TV show where I help
you start,
grow and profit from your
handmade shop.
Today I want to talk about planning
for a new year because we're getting
into this time of the year when it's
all everyone talking is talking about
and generally that's where we all feel
like it's time for a bit of planning
and strategizing.
And it's just a great time of the year to,
you know, organize ourselves to
get the best results possible
for 2018.
Step one is forget
about yearly goals
and go quarterly instead.
So if you're thinking of planning for 2018
I don't want you to think
much more further than the end of March
2018.
And the reason for that is because the
gold standard for getting
stuff done in the business
world is
quarterly goals. So goals that you set every three months
and then after that you reassess
and you set new ones for the next
90 days or the next three months.
And there's a good reason for that
and that's because it's impossible
to know where you
are going to be in a year personally
and in your business even more.
Most projects can be planned
and implemented in a timeframe of three
months as well which means that
you're much more likely to actually make
progress and take action.
Use a system like the
quarterly system review
rather than trying to set yearly goals
because you can't know
for sure where you're going to be in a year
from now.
And it's not efficient it's not
productive to try to set yearly goals.
So if you have that on your to-do list,
cross it off.
We're forgetting about yearly goals
and instead I want you to use
what I call the three times
four form of that which means that
every three months
or four times a year we
set new goals
and reassess our businesses.
The next natural step is to actually
put a reminder in your phone.
Do it right now as you're watching this video
to remind yourself to do this
so that it becomes a habit
so that every three months you go on the phone
ringing or maybe right down
in your calendar
and you know that this is a time of the year
where you need to do this business assessment
again and look at the important elements
of successful handmade business.
And I'm not going to let you in the dark here.
I will give you a few guidelines for
that. So the first thing we're going to look
at is what I call business
basics.
So these are elements of your revenue
your expenses
and your profit over the last 90 days.
How is everything going.
Next, you want to look at your
product collections.
Do you need a new collection?
Is one of your product
a best seller
and one of them maybe not working at all?
Do you need to create new product?
S really just reassessing
your product strategy.
Next is asking yourself is
my pricing strategy still
working for me
or do I need to reassess that one
as well.
And then, finally,
I have my online store
and my web site before me.
Next we're looking at your what I
call the sell system so that's your
traffic.
Overall are you getting enough traffic
or is that something that you need to work on?
Which ones are your best traffic sources
and are you able to
transform that traffic into a subscriber
with a lead capture system.
We also want to look at your conversion
rates - are you turning this
traffic into actual sales?
Is that getting better?
Are you making progress on that on that
level?
Same with your e-mail marketing.
How is that email marketing strategy
working for you?
Are you making sells
with e-mail? Is there room for improvement?
Same for repeat customers.
That's a really important part of
the successful shop guys because it's
easier to sell to someone that's
only bought from you than to convince
someone that doesn't know about you
to buy from you for the first time.
So having a system in place
that gets your customer to buy again
is really important.
So do you have that in place
or is that something that you need to prove
or work on?
How is your promotional calendar
working for you?
Do you have lunches coming soon
or in the next three months that you need to focus
on? How did the lunches
or promotion that you ran over
the last three months - did not
work for you
or not?
So all of these are elements that
once you ask yourself those questions
you're going to have pages of notes
of things that you should really
consider focussing on for the next three
months. The next thing is
what I call the marketing mix.
It's really taking some time
to ask yourself
which marketing channels
are working for you,
which one you should maybe let go of
because you can't do everything at once.
Guys, I always say focus on one
or two marketing channels
at a time
and then add more once you
master those channels.
So how is your PR strategy,
your SEO,
your paid ads strategy,
life events if you sell at
craft markets,
influences outreach,
your social media strategy reach?
How is your marketing mix altogether
- are you doing too much
or not enough?
If you're trying to do
all of it, so PR,
SEO, you're trying to learn to use
paid ads and reaching out to influencers
all at the same time
and you're not getting much results from it
and it's because you're doing too much.
So is it time to maybe scale back
and really just focus on a couple of those
instead?
That's up to you.
But these are questions that you need to ask yourself
every three months to see where you've made progress,
if you;re still on track
and where you want to focus your attention
for the next three months.
Next is your back
end and what I call back end is
really what you know helps run
your business.
And so yeah that's the back end of your business.
So how is your production process?
Is there things that you can improve
to help you make your products
in a more efficient manner?
Same with your business systems - are
there things that you keep
on doing every week
taking you a lot of time
and that you think can be improved?
You know it could be customer
management - customer service is
the word I was looking for.
It could be just you know systems
with your bookkeeping,
your counting,
anything that could help you run your business
in a more efficient way.
Suppliers - it's always a good
thing every few months to review
suppliers make sure that you are getting the
best deal, that you're really getting those
wholesale prices;
are they reliable?
Are you happy with them?
Yes or no? Should you start to
maybe move into finding
new ones?
Your team as well - if you are more
than a one person shop
or if you're one person shop is it time
to maybe hire a virtual assistant
or an assistant
or a production assistant?
So these are all
- I'm going over this quite quickly guys
but this is to give you a framework
of what you need to ask yourself every
three months to really,
you know, act as a business owner
and really trying to understand
what is my business made of
and which are the areas that I
need to be focussing on next.
So it gives you you know something to
compare from
each quarter to the next,
your progress
and yeah,
and really areas that you need to work on.
My last piece of advice
is do less to get
more and what I mean by that
is - don't trying to do
all the things at the same time.
I always say if you're doing
or using more than two
marketing channels all the time
and two social
media at a time you are already doing
too much. The only reason you should
be doing more than one
or two at a time is if you've been in business
for long enough that it's
doable for you to do that because
you've mastered a couple of
social media platforms.
Let's say you've mastered Instagram
and that's really running smoothly
and you're getting sells from it then now
you have time and energy to focus
on how to grow your Pinterest account
or your Facebook page
or whatever else.
But I really want to
emphasize how important it is
to really take a step back
and really in a way
remember that you really don't have to
do all of the things
and doing less is
usually what gets you
the best results because
you can actually focus
and implement in-depth strategies
for each of the marketing tactics
and channels that you're going to decide
to focus on rather than
spreading yourself thin
and just being exhausted
and getting little results because
you're working on too many things at the same
time. So to sum up guys
forget about yearly goals
and try to focus instead on
a 90 days period of time
or 3 months chunks.
Reassess your business four
times a year because you're doing those
three months chunks.
Use the framework that I've just
given you to ask yourself
the good questions every three months
when you're assessing your business
and your shop.
And finally do less
to get more.
Thanks for watching this video.
I really hope that this help.
And if you need
a done for you system
I actually have a planner called
the maker's roadmap.
That's all of what I just explained
plus more
and that can really help you
know exactly what you
should be focussing on next
as a handmade shop owner to make
progress in your business
and fight the overwhelm,
fight the information overload
and really get clarity on
what you should be working on
and what you should let go of
in your business to really,
really get those results
that you so deserve.
So go to www.tizzit.co/roadmap
to learn more.
It's a full productivity system
made just for mmakers,
Etsy sellers and handmade shop owners
and it's not just a beautiful
printed planner.
It's also full member
area with coaching videos.
So I'm really in there
with you helping you
do those activities
and those planning sessions so
that you can really get the results you deserve.
I hope this helps
and I'll talk to you soon.