EP 11- Podcast Audio
===
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Speaker 3: Welcome to the regional collective podcast. We're all about sharing stories of success, challenges, and the amazing community spirit in small and micro businesses. Here, we redefine small business with big hearts and determined hustle. Get ready to be inspired by regional entrepreneurs making a big impact.
[00:00:28] Speaker 3: Whether you're just starting out or already on your business journey, you'll find motivation and practical tips to help you thrive. We believe in the power of community. So let's share, support and celebrate regional businesses together. Tune in and get inspired to thrive.
[00:00:45] Speaker 4: I'm thrilled to introduce our guest today, Laura Munch. Laura is a seasoned business owner and an expert in goal setting and strategic planning. [00:01:00] In this episode, she'll share her insights on creating achievable goals and effective plans to ensure your business thrives. So stay tuned for practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you set the stage for success.
[00:01:13] Shelley: so Laura, thank you for joining us once again. today we're keen to talk about how people can, look ahead in their business and set goals. and I guess, first of all, can you share why goal setting is crucial for, especially for smaller micro businesses, even if they feel they're not, you big enough to have a big, business plan, but why even just that, you know, having clear defined goals, can help them in their business.
[00:01:42] Laura: I think, goals, I mean, goals are really important for several reasons. They help you figure out when you are actually changing and making progress in your business, but it's also the best way to, I guess, move your business towards what you're actually [00:02:00] hoping to achieve from it. So whether it's, you know, making some, you know, X amount of money to replace, you know, some employee, Employment time and hours or whether it's, you know, making enough money to buy a car or to take the family on holidays, all of those sorts of things,good reasons to set some goals.
[00:02:20] Shelley: and without them, I guess, you know, without those goals, what, I guess, what do we see happen in small, small business without clearly set goals?
[00:02:31] Laura: Yeah, I think it's, It is easy to see businesses that don't have any goals in place because they tend to not make much progress forwards, often can even go backwards.
[00:02:41] Laura: Because I guess if you're not actually sort of working towards something, you tend to kind of keep doing the same thing. And, we know that doing the same thing over and over tends to lead to the same result. Like you're not actually going to make some change or,
[00:02:56] Shelley: progress. And also sometimes, this comes back to sort of [00:03:00] almost that without clear goals, and then also that vision or that mission, you know, statement, they can flip flop all over the place.
[00:03:07] Shelley: You go, are they this? Are they that? What are they trying to achieve? It can be just from the outside looking in. Can't imagine what it feels like on the inside looking out, but sometimes you can see businesses, you're not sure what their end game is. That's not for us to see from the outside, but if you're in a business.
[00:03:24] Shelley: You want to be clear on what your end game is or what your goals are to then operate, you know, sustainably. as you sort of work through the next, you know, we're looking at the end of financial year, start of the new financial year is a good chance to, start setting some goals. So how would you go about goal setting in
[00:03:44] Shelley: your business?
[00:03:45] Laura: I
[00:03:45] Laura: think, as you said, I mean, end of financial year is a really good time to do it. Or it may, often people will use calendar years as well, but I think from a business point of view, because we tend to roll with the tax, year, July, or goals starting from [00:04:00] July can be a really good strategy. So particularly if you're looking at revenue focused goals, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean earning X amount of dollars.
[00:04:10] Laura: it can be things like, I guess if you're in retail, it can be, making a certain number of sales of a particular product group, or if you're in, service based businesses, things like selling X number of, courses or, you know, passive, more sort of, I guess, passive income, components. to actually replace, you know, direct face to face hours.
[00:04:34] Laura: So I think
[00:04:34] Shelley: Or it could be retaining, you know,
[00:04:36] Shelley: having a retention rate of 90 percent or something like that.
[00:04:39] Laura: Absolutely.
[00:04:40] Shelley: You know, if you've got clients or customers or repeat, business. So there could be lots of different goals that you can, you can set for yourself. And how would, how many would you suggest?
[00:04:50] Shelley: Because it could be, there's lots of things we could probably, if we had to look and review our business, there's, you know, the list could be quite long.
[00:04:57] Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, [00:05:00] my personal preference is to have probably between three and five, and to have a combination of short term and longer term goals.
[00:05:07] Laura: I wouldn't usually have more than like one or two sort of long term goals, which would be looking at, you know, a 12 month plus sort of period. and in those, I would then break them down into. small, small chunks as well, of, you know, per quarter or per month. because sometimes it can be so overwhelming to think, you know, this year I want to make, You know, so like revenue of, I don't know, $100, 000, that's a lot, and if you break it down into, you know, looking at that per month, then you're looking at, you know, more like $8, 000 a month.
[00:05:42] Shelley: So then you could go, well, per week, what does that mean? And so you can actually sort of start to break it down.
[00:05:47] Laura: Absolutely.
[00:05:48] Shelley: Yeah, once you set that
[00:05:48] Shelley: big goal,
[00:05:49] Laura: yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's certainly, you know, 100, 000 over, you know. 52 weeks, which is, you know, more or less two, it's not quite 2, 000 a week, but that certainly [00:06:00] feels a lot more achievable than going, Oh, gee, I've got to make $100, 000 because or even if we bring it down to $50, 000, like $1, 000 a week, feels a lot more achievable.
[00:06:09] Laura: Particularly when it means that you have to, if you're working five days a week, that's $200 a day. Um, and what can you do to make $200 a day? Does that mean that you need to sell, you know, if you've got an e commerce shop, are you selling, four orders that are $50 each? Or are you, you know, if you're a service business?
[00:06:30] Laura: that might be that you do, depending on your hourly rate and things, that might be maybe two or three clients for the week to make that money.
[00:06:38] Shelley: So you can start to break it down even more.
[00:06:41] Laura: Absolutely. Making it, bring it down to individual units if you can, how many hours or how many, orders or sales of individual products.
[00:06:50] Shelley: And, and when setting those goals, you know, we remember hearing about it, even at uni sort of level, but smart goals. So, goals that are [00:07:00] specific. So make sure they have, a name to it. you know, not just be like, Oh, I'm going to increase my sales. It's increased sales by 15%. and, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.
[00:07:15] Shelley: So, I guess when setting those, how can you, you know, avoid some of those mistakes of being vague. Setting, like you said, you know, being, too long. You know, so, okay, well in three years I'm gonna achieve that. That's really hard to keep going day to day on a three year goal. So,
[00:07:31] Laura: yeah, because you're not gonna see, if you're not meeting goals fairly quickly, human, the way humans work is to actually, you know, use three weeks for change and Yeah.
[00:07:42] Laura: To actually, you know, you need a little bit of reward Yes. To actually encourage you to keep going. So I think.
[00:07:49] Shelley: You need a
[00:07:49] Shelley: bit of character dangle, don't you?
[00:07:50] Laura: Absolutely.
[00:07:51] Shelley: See some, see some benefits of your artwork.
[00:07:55] Laura: The short term, goals are really important in that. And I [00:08:00] think, yeah, I mean certainly, Being specific and measurable are really important because if you're not being really kind of clear on exactly what it is you want to look at, you've got nothing to measure against.
[00:08:09] Laura: So if social media is you're looking at goals around social media, you might want to increase your engagement by 25 percent or something like that. you know, that's a, it's a clearly measurable goal. Yeah. Let's say 25 percent over the next three months. Yeah. I guess, you know, what does then that look like?
[00:08:28] Laura: Does that look like you are going to, you know, change from posting just static images to posting videos or adding a video in? are you going to change up what you are posting, the times you're posting? Like there's lots of different strategies to get to that point and there, I guess it depends what your resources are, hence the achievableness.
[00:08:48] Laura: Yeah. You know, you may want to pay. to get better reach and to, you know, put some money behind. Do you have 10
[00:08:54] Laura: hours a day to put towards creating content? That's right. Do you pay somebody
[00:08:59] Laura: to do it or do [00:09:00] you look at doing some paid content as well? I guess there's lots of different ways of doing it, but you've got to work within the resources you've got.
[00:09:06] Shelley: Yes.
[00:09:07] Shelley: Yep. And also there's a other part of it is relevance. So, you know, going back to that goal of increasing engagement, well, just Does that compare, does that connect you to customers who are actually going to buy your products or your services or is it just a vanity thing?
[00:09:28] Laura: Absolutely
[00:09:29] Laura: and I think it's really important to remember that because there is legitimate reasons you want to grow your engagement and particularly if you're working at top of funnel marketing strategies you want to increase your brand awareness and for getting people to actually see you and notice you and start, buying your products.
[00:09:46] Laura: recognizing you as a business. So there is definitely, it's not always vanity to vanity metrics, but you need to be really clear on why you're actually doing it. and because I guess the thing is you need to then make sure that what you're [00:10:00] actually doing in those social media posts is meeting the objectives of that top of funnel activity and making your brand more recognizable and people getting to know you a bit more.
[00:10:12] Shelley: That's it.
[00:10:12] Shelley: And not getting to know you for the wrong reasons because then that shifts away from what your ultimate goal is, isn't it?
[00:10:20] Laura: Absolutely. We're not posting about our, you know, brunch on Sunday in our business post if we, you know, trying to sell some sort of professional service that's completely unaligned.
[00:10:32] Laura: Yep. yeah.
[00:10:33] Shelley: And that's it, making sure that those goals align with broader business objectives. Absolutely. and then the other thing, the other next one is time. So time bound. So why is that important, to create, I guess, the, some deadlines and,
[00:10:48] Shelley: yes, as you know, from a chief,
[00:10:50] Laura: like, I've got a degree in procrastination, so time, like, timeframes for me, like, the most important component, if I don't have timeframes or deadlines for things, I will [00:11:00] just continue to put them off or push them out, so I think there's probably quite a lot of people like me out there, you need to have, some end point that you're tracking against.
[00:11:08] Laura: because otherwise, well, you just can't sort of measure any outcome if you, you know, indefinitely kind of working towards things.
[00:11:17] Shelley: And
[00:11:17] Shelley: especially if you want to make that, make a significant change forward in your business as well. So even like with the end of financial year checklist, I'm pushing to get it all done by like the first week of July.
[00:11:29] Shelley: So I'm like, I've got two weeks, it'll fit me in there, but I'm actually going to. Try really hard because I know that then I don't have to worry about it. And that brain space is freed up for the rest of the business parts that I need to do. But it, and it will put me in good stead for the business year going forward.
[00:11:47] Shelley: And it's, yeah, just, I'm trying to be harsh on myself in that
[00:11:51] Shelley: deadline.
[00:11:54] Laura: You need to do it. I think if you don't actually kind of give yourself timeframes, you will keep working on the same thing over and over. [00:12:00] And you're not making that momentum forward. Yeah. yeah, you need to give yourself the, the end point to then, you know, be able to move into the next thing that you need
[00:12:09] Laura: to move on to.
[00:12:10] Shelley: And what are some ways or best practices for, you know, tracking goals in business?
[00:12:17] Laura: I think it depends on how you work. it's okay to write numbers down in a planner or a diary or, you know, in a notebook if that's how you prefer to work. People that are more digitally inclined might want to use, you know, tracking software or, you know, even a simple spreadsheet.
[00:12:35] Laura: because you can, you know, see some nice graphs and things attached to some of those and sometimes that really helps motivate people.
[00:12:41] Laura: Okay.
[00:12:42] Shelley: Because there's lots of analytics in, like with social media or if you've got, you know, Google Analytics with your website and traffic and pages and things like that.
[00:12:50] Shelley: So one thing that I have set up in the last couple of weeks, which is a long time coming, but is a way to track that data. So looking at all [00:13:00] my pages on my website and month to month, have I seen progressively more unique users? Well, that's sort of what I was wanting to track is. You know, that's, it's quite simple to set up.
[00:13:11] Shelley: there's a little bit of formulas to put in there. but that way you can see there's gradual, you know, it's not momentous, but it's, there's consistently the numbers are going up. That's great. There's more people every month looking. That's good. So that means that brand awareness is growing. So, yeah, absolutely, you know, even as simple as yet.
[00:13:31] Shelley: Yeah, pen and paper, spreadsheet, to be able to track those
[00:13:36] Shelley: measurable goals.
[00:13:38] Laura: Yeah,
[00:13:38] Laura: absolutely. I think because all of the more data you can collect, the better you can, I mean, you can either do yourself or get some assistance and, you know, create strategy around where to move next. Yeah. I mean, the numbers are really useful.
[00:13:55] Laura: From a business to business support point of view, if people are tracking numbers, it [00:14:00] does make it a lot easier to create quite targeted strategies and processes to actually move, like, in relation to your webpages and how much activity they're getting. Like, that can be really useful for then figuring out where you're going to spend time doing some SEO optimisation or something like that.
[00:14:20] Shelley: Yeah, which pages
[00:14:21] Shelley: may need the, that sort of sales copy or, a tweak. Yep. If lots of people are going, but then they're also bouncing, then that's a sign that you go look, that page isn't doing its job. So we need to, yeah, have, have an expert in there to actually have a look at it.
[00:14:36] Laura: Yeah. And having their numbers actually give you something.
[00:14:42] Laura: I guess useful to actually then also measure the outcomes you get it from the help you're getting, which is really useful when you're outsourcing. Yeah. Is to be able to see, I guess, the return on investment.
[00:14:52] Shelley: Yeah.and I guess, as we just talked before, about like spreadsheets, but there's also, things like, so I've been [00:15:00] using Asana for the last probably 12 months, I think.
[00:15:03] Shelley: And with the, the next level up, you can do more goal setting and things like that. So there's ways that if you've got yourself and maybe a small team to align and share that vision, I suppose, of where you want the business to go, that's a really good way as well, because you can break it down and go, here's our big vision.
[00:15:21] Shelley: Can break it down into sort of smaller bits. So there's other, if you're at that stage and you need to look into other, you know, software, there's things like Asana or Trello. I think probably Monday would do the same sort of, thing, ClickUp as well. and I guess is that sort of how, how do you see businesses to keep motivated and on track
[00:15:46] Shelley: with their goals?
[00:15:47] Laura: Yeah, I guess, I mean, it's using the resources you've got available. So if you're up on social media, the business manager will give you some analytics. and you know, I guess figuring out some targets and things on there. Again, considering sort of, I guess, [00:16:00] what you wanna achieve, whether you're trying to build your audience or whether you're trying to actually make sales, those analytics will vary.
[00:16:06] Laura: Yeah.zero and QuickBooks and all of those, you know, account software systems all help with analy like analytics, and progress balance
[00:16:18] Shelley: because you could call sheets and things,
[00:16:20] Shelley: look at your goals and go, oh, okay. We've increased our social media by. 2000 that's great. Oh, our PNL is the same or it's gone down.
[00:16:28] Shelley: Like you can actually see, you can sort of do a bit of cross referencing with, how they sort of track. I think there's some integrations as well, even with like, is it Shopify or Deputy? I think I used Deputy, with Shopify or something like that. There was a way to say, well, with, you know, other customer count or sales count and staffing and whatnot, there was some quite good integrations that you can find and say, well, can look more into the other parts of your business.
[00:16:52] Shelley: But, you know, certainly there's some tools there that you can, once you've identified what your goals are, ways to
[00:16:59] Shelley: measure and to track [00:17:00] those.
[00:17:00] Laura: Absolutely. If you're making sales online, Google analytics is a, it's a really good place to, I mean, the current Google analytics for, which is sort of the version that we're working on now.
[00:17:14] Laura: There's all sorts of things that you can track and measure in there. You probably will need some help. Yeah, it's not super easy. It's not super straightforward. But the TAG system that's in GA4 now enables all sorts of tracking that is really valuable data. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're at that level where you're really trying to kind of, focus and, you know, growth and get really clear on strategy, Google Analytics is a good place to go.
[00:17:44] Laura: But having said that, there's a fair bit you can do with it all by yourself, and particularly using the life cycle, it's not a template, but whatever the kind of, display is, like there's a fair bit you can track from the life cycle sort of tab. in Google Analytics [00:18:00] 4.so yeah, I think that's always a good place to start if you are online.
[00:18:04] Laura: It's, if you're not making sales online, it's a little more difficult to track, you know, your sort of online activity versus your, income, because they're not quite so directly related.
[00:18:16] Shelley: That's right.
[00:18:17] Shelley: But you could go, you could also, and that's where you maybe go back to your spreadsheet and go, well, how many bookings have we had?
[00:18:22] Shelley: Or if you've got a booking software, if you have that, you've got a couple of kinks. You pull, have places to pull the numbers and perhaps you keep
[00:18:28] Shelley: it in one spot.
[00:18:29] Laura: Because you can still measure things like conversion rate, even if your website is really asking people to get in contact with you to then, buy your services or even products, you can still measure the number of visits versus the number of, inquiries versus the number of sales.
[00:18:45] Shelley: so Google My Business as well can get some information so that, you know, ways people can either call a number from. When they search for you as well, like there's some business performance metrics there as well. So yeah, looking at Google My [00:19:00] Business page. Yeah,
[00:19:01] Laura: and this is because Google, I mean, really Google has got their, their sort of suite of tools, can provide you with an awful lot.
[00:19:09] Laura: you can get information.
[00:19:10] Shelley: That's all free.
[00:19:11] Laura: And it is, that's right. I think, and you can integrate it with other platforms. so the information pulls across. I mean, I, I certainly use. Google Analytics a fair bit in, like SEO with clients, because it all sort of talks to one another. And it's, it's really useful information, particularly, I mean, it's helping you figure out who your audience is and then who your ideal clients are.
[00:19:37] Laura: And, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a
[00:19:40] Laura: lot of who that,
[00:19:41] Shelley: who that who's resonating with it, because if you. And that's why it's important to review it because if you say, Oh, my target audience is 15 to 20 year olds. And you know what? Most of the people that are on your website or finding you, 40 to 55, you're talking to the wrong people or the wrong people
[00:19:56] Shelley: are finding
[00:19:57] Shelley: you.
[00:19:58] Shelley: It's a
[00:19:58] Shelley: big mismatch there, [00:20:00] isn't there?
[00:20:00] Laura: Absolutely. And that's going to have a major, you know, a major impact on your sales and conversions ultimately. So I think, yeah, exploring these analytics and getting some help from people. right. Good old YouTube. It's, there's always, you can, there are some really good YouTubers out there that do a really great job of actually explaining these things.
[00:20:18] Shelley: Tutorials, types,
[00:20:20] Laura: yes. So I think, you know, if you are a bit stuck and you can't afford to go and get some one on one help, you know, YouTube can often be a good starting point to get, I guess, an understanding of the, you know, the foundations of these.
[00:20:34] Shelley: Yep, well, there's user
[00:20:35] Shelley: science and analytics as well, because again, they can help you to.
[00:20:41] Shelley: inform you about making decisions, setting goals within your business. So I think they're, you know, as challenging as they are sometimes, it's a really good reminder that you can track how you're going and we should be doing that as a way to sort of see how we're moving forward. Cause sometimes in small business, you [00:21:00] can feel like you're just the, right, churning around, not making any progress, which is why I started the spreadsheet the other week.
[00:21:06] Shelley: I was like, right, I'm just actually going to put data in. It's like, oh, well, it's grown by this much. That's good. You know, I can actually can help you, you know, validate that you're on the right track, that you're aligned with your goals. And, you know, we want sort of just, consistent, slow growth and that's happening.
[00:21:23] Shelley: It's not going backwards. That's good. So, can certainly help you to feel, feel better in your business.
[00:21:28] Laura: It can. I
[00:21:29] Laura: mean, when you're starting out, things can be really slow. I guess the, and the thing to the tracking can actually help you realize is that, you know, you do actually get to a point where there's an exponential kind of uptick.
[00:21:39] Laura: particularly in social media, I find the way that kind of algorithms and the platforms work. you kind of, you get to a certain point and then there must be something that happens in the analytics and you get put in front of more people. Yeah. Because you do tend to get more of an uptick. Yeah. so yeah, I think tracking really does help you kind of realize that you are steadily sort of [00:22:00] stepping towards, you know, you know, where you're wanting to be, even though it can seem really slow and it's only, you know, you might increase by one or two followers a week.
[00:22:10] Laura: But if you're looking at that over months and years, like you do end up, you know, it's hundreds of new followers. So, yeah, and it's all heading in the right direction. The more eyes that you have on your content and your media, the closer you are to getting them in interested in your wares, essentially, you know, converting them.
[00:22:29] Shelley: Yeah. And that's it. And increasing that brand awareness, as well. So, so yeah, so I guess, so we'll set a challenge to listeners to make sure that they have a really good look at their smart goals for their business for the next financial year. And. Are there any other tips or last tips that you would provide when setting those goals?
[00:22:53] Laura: I guess my suggestion would be to create at least one longer term, [00:23:00] goal. So look at something that you want to achieve over the next 12 months.and then break that down into, either quarterly or monthly sort of stepping stone goals. and then Create, a couple of other goals that are, create one that's a quick win, because I think the quick win will really help you kind of stay motivated, and it could be something as simple as, you know, getting on top of your email inbox, because there's always that one job that we just, Don't, you know, and then I guess my other suggestion is to, with one of your goals, create a stretch goal as well.
[00:23:35] Laura: So, you know, put your, what I'd absolutely love to happen frame on it. and whilst it might not happen, making some progress towards it. still is progress. Yeah. So yeah, I think, I'm a big fan of having a stretch goal. So if we, you know, if you're aiming for a thousand dollars of sales in, you know, July, then maybe make your stretch goal 1500 [00:24:00] or something like that and see if you can actually kind of get there.
[00:24:04] Shelley: And then that can push
[00:24:05] Shelley: you towards, you know, they can almost Thinking a bit bigger next time. Change the needle or like move the needle a little bit further for your, for your business and to, to make that goal. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you very much. And obviously, you know, using your network around you.
[00:24:21] Shelley: So we've got, you know, the regional collective, we've got the guides on there, sharing your goals, you know, with your business buddies as well can help with that accountability and motivation and relevance as well. So they can absolutely use your, use your network around you to, help give you some realistic, ambitious goals.
[00:24:40] Laura: Yes, absolutely. We, no doubt you and I will be sharing our accountability buddy goals in the next couple of weeks for what we're aiming for for next year.
[00:24:48] Shelley: And I know that
[00:24:49] Shelley: if they're too high, you'll be like, Cheryl, there's no way. Maybe just really, just really a reassessment one. So Thank you very much for your time.
[00:24:58] Laura: Thank you, Shelley.
[00:24:59] Shelley: [00:25:00] Well, thanks for tuning in to the Regional Collective Podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us. And you can join our community each year to get exclusive resources, expert advice and connect with other regional business owners as a member of the Regional Collective.
[00:25:18] Shelley: Check out our website to learn more. There you can also find free tools like Strategies to Grow Locally and the Ultimate Business Startup Checklist. Stay connected with us on social media for more tips and updates. Let's thrive together and make your business shine. Keep pushing forward. You're not alone on this journey.
[00:25:40]
