Episode 80: Quarterly Cadence: the Fastest Way to Build Momentum in Business

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Path to Profit Podcast, with your hosts. Dr. Minette Riordan and Brad Dobson.

Minette Riordan: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Path to Profit Academy. I am the CEO, Dr. Minette Riordan along with my amazing husband, and you’re the chief everything else officer, right?

Brad Dobson: That’s right, chief cook and bottle washer.

Minette Riordan: And at the Path to Profit Academy, we love supporting creative entrepreneurs to build profitable businesses, and this week is episode 80. Wow.

Brad Dobson: Yeah.

Minette Riordan: It’s kind of crazy.

Brad Dobson: And then you said, “Path to Profit Academy”, which is everything we do, and this is the Path to Profit Podcast-

Minette Riordan: This is the Path to Profit Podcast, yes. Lots of paths to profit, and we’re here to help you find your path to profit, and in last week’s episode, we talked about the importance of having a promotional calendar and promotional planner for your business, and this week we’re gonna even take that process a little bit deeper, because January, this whole month, we’re talking about business planning and why business planning matters. So, this week, we wanna talk about the fastest way to build momentum in your business, and what is the fast way to build momentum in your business?

Brad Dobson: It’s working on a 90 day cadence, a quarterly cadence.

Minette Riordan: A quarterly cadence, and I realize we didn’t do the quote of the day, which ties [crosstalk 00:01:27] right into the quarterly cadence.

Brad Dobson: I was searching for cadence quotes and there aren’t very many, so we went back to business planning-

Minette Riordan: And we liked cadences, because we have drummers [crosstalk 00:01:37], [inaudible 00:01:37] drummers.

Brad Dobson: And strangely, this planning quote comes from one of my childhood, or teenage year-

Minette Riordan: Heroes?

Brad Dobson: … sci-fi writers, Alan Dean Foster, who says, “Spontaneity is one of the joys of existence, especially if you prepare for it in advance.” So, this is about preparing, in advance, for how things are gonna look for your next quarter, and the idea here is that, and of course last week we talked about having a full year view of your promotional plan, but we wanna encourage you for the … And that’s important to have that full year view, but on an ongoing basis, we’ve had it advised to us, from multiple different places, that that 90 view is much more effective for planning your business efforts, whether that’s new projects that you’re gonna do, whether it’s how you’re gonna work with you team; everything outside of 90 days is a long way to look out and focus, and it’s kind of crystal ball type of stuff.
Whereas within a 90 day period, for the most part, you have a really good feeling for what’s gonna happen. If you don’t, maybe you need to look at some other issues, but-

Minette Riordan: Yeah, so some of the reasons why you should be thinking in quarters is because it creates consistent momentum in your business, it helps you break down those big picture goals into manageable chunks, it also helps you understand how to go from annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily actions. It can be so easy, a lot of creatives that I know are brilliant at seeing the big picture, but they get really overwhelmed because they cannot understand how to get from where they are to that big picture of what it is that they want the most, and this is the way to do it, is to begin to go from annual, to quarterly, to monthly, to weekly, to daily.
And when you’re looking at a quarterly project, you can see, what support do I need this quarter? Right? Do I need to bring a graphic designer for this quarter? Do I need someone to help me with my social media marketing this quarter? Do I need someone to clean my house so I have more time to work on my creative projects? Where do you need support? What kind of support do you need? Do you need financial support? Do you need time support? Do you need your husband to take the kids out of the house, so you can get more work done, or your wife to take the kids out of the house, so you can get more work done? So, really looking at the next quarter, saying, “What is it that I want to accomplish? How much money do I wanna make from this particular quarter? What are the specific actions that need to happen? And what kind of support do I need?”, are kind of the four big questions to ask when we look at project planning.

Brad Dobson: Yeah, and I wanna go back to something you said about narrowing the focus, or kind of, it felt like you said; I know that, personally, I struggle with trying to hold all of the ideas and all of the projects in my mind at once, and so, when I look at a year view, oh, these are all the things we need to get done, yeah. And it just becomes-

Minette Riordan: Creates a lot of overwhelm.

Brad Dobson: … horribly overwhelming and I get stuck, and I just stop, and … throughout my life, and especially now as an entrepreneur, I’ve failed to get things done because of that overwhelm, whereas if I had just picked one thing, and looked at a quarter, and narrowed that focus, and had more laser-like focus, I would have at least gotten four things done a year, instead of maybe one.
So, I think this type of cadence is really helpful for that type of thing-

Minette Riordan: Excuse me.

Brad Dobson: So, you can remove that overwhelm and just decide on the one or two things that you wanna get done, and really put off the other things. And I know that’s hard. It’s hard for people with the bright shiny idea syndrome; those ideas are so sexy and you wanna get after them right now, and I guess, trust me … that will bring your business to its knees, because your productivity will just go down the drain. You can’t do it.

Minette Riordan: And the other thing I think I wanna add to that is, I can get tunnel vision where we’ve set out a lot of different projects, and I get so focused on one project, it may not be the most urgent or important project at the moment, it’s just the one that’s caught my attention.

Brad Dobson: The shiniest one for the magpie.

Minette Riordan: The shiniest one for the magpie, yeah, so it’s also making sure that you’re zeroing in on the most important projects, and one of the conversations I had this week with a friend of mine, was about whether or not she wanted to let go of big event she was hosting, and I was a good person for her to have a conversation with, because we actually decided to let go of hosting a live event, for now. We have not decided we’re never gonna host a live event again, but for the moment, when we started looking at our promotional calendar, and our goals, we started asking ourselves some different questions about our projects, and one of the questions that’s been really impactful for me personally was, “What do I want more of in 2018 and how do I want to feel?” Right?
We’ve been talking a lot, in the last few episodes, about time management, and productivity, and planning, but underneath all of that is this very specific sense of us wanting more grace and ease in our business this year, and less anxiety, and when you look at your year, you’ve done this big promotional plan, ideally now, if you haven’t, make sure you go back and listen to episode number 79 of the podcast, and download our template for creating your 12 month promotional plan, but also, asking yourself when you look at that 12 month plan, does this help me get more of what I want in my life, whether that’s health and wellness, whether that’s money, whether that’s just grace and ease, whether that’s more relaxation, travel, play, time with your family …
I realize, not last year, but the year before, I traveled a lot, and I really wore myself out, and felt like I didn’t get enough time with my family, so last year, I swung way the other direction and I didn’t travel enough in order to meet some of our financial goals that often come from me, going to speaking events, and traveling to attend events; I didn’t do the networking and the outreach that I normally do in a year, in large part, because our son was leaving for university, and we made an intentional decision for me stay home, so that I could spend that time with him and do the projects that needed to happen that were family related.
So, our decisions are sometimes about family, sometimes about business, but it’s all related. So, looking at these quarterly projects as what’s the most important thing, that I need to make happen, in the next 90 days? How am I gonna make that happen? And how do I wanna feel about it?

Brad Dobson: Yeah, and I think the other thing that we find, is that the quarters kind of start to naturally line up with things you’re doing already. So, given that you start your first quarter in January, pretty much by the end of the first quarter, you better have your taxes done, right? Because March 31st, all of a sudden it’s April, and it’s tax … so, you needed to be working with your bookkeeper, or whoever it is-

Minette Riordan: Your accountant.

Brad Dobson: … to get that done in the first quarter. And so on and so forth, that fourth quarter, a lot of times you’ve got Thanksgiving and Christmas type of things happening, so there’s dancing around that happens related that. So, there’s already, if you look at it, there’s already things in your life where you have that type of rhythm within a year, but maybe you don’t think about it, and maybe every year, for 50 years, you get caught off guard by, oh, dang it, it’s … the kids are out of school now-

Minette Riordan: It’s the first of April.

Brad Dobson: Right. And in four, you could say, “Oh, okay, I’m gonna start to have this type of flow and rhythm in my life, where I’m looking … and my business, where I’m looking at these things ahead of time, and I’m giving them my attention.” And then you can start gain some confidence from that, that you don’t need to think about fourth quarter things right now, you can about first quarter things right now, with the knowledge that you’re gonna have a plan related to how that’s gonna flow.

Minette Riordan: I wanna give a practical example of that, as well, so Brad is from Nova Scotia, on the East Coast of Canada, and there’s only really about a month that is the best time to go Nova Scotia to visit for holidays with the kiddos-

Brad Dobson: Between fly season and snow season.

Minette Riordan: Yes. So, and August tends to be the month that that is the best month, the warmest month, when the water’s actually warm enough, sometimes, not all the time, for the kids to swim, and everybody to play in the water, so over the last 18 years that we’ve been raising our family, we’ve tried to go Nova Scotia every August, or every other August, as often as possible, ’cause it’s a really important place to our family … Brad’s family has cottages that have been in their family for, probably, 80 years now-

Brad Dobson: Yep.

Minette Riordan: … and it’s an important part of how we want to spend our time, how we want to raise our kids, it’s one of those amazing, magical places where you kick the kids out the door, there’s no television, say, “Go play, we’ll ring the bell at meal time, see ya later.” Right? So, a lot of freedom that happens and a lot of joy, for all of us, and so we know that we’re not gonna work in August. We’re not gonna have any big promotions and we’re not gonna host live events. There have been some Augusts where Brad has been doing Ironman training, and so we didn’t go to Nova Scotia that year, but we still didn’t have promotions, or projects, or planning, ’cause it was Ironman year.
So, we’re very clear that August is not a work month for us. So, where are you already wanting to care out time? Put that into your planners ahead of time, because if we’re not gonna work in August, then we gotta do a whole bunch of stuff before August to make sure that we’re … our marketing is consistent, our income is consistent, and we can happily go spend a month in Nova Scotia and not look back.

Brad Dobson: Yeah, and this flows out of our discussion, in episode 79, about your promotional calendar, identifying gaps, whether you want those gaps or not, and then you can rely on a quarterly cadence to actually sync up with … So, for instance, if you’ve got second quarter promotions that need to happen, maybe you’re going to have a tax day promotion in April, well, all that works gotta happen in the first quarter; it’s not gonna happen in the second quarter. So, you had to work with your VA, and yourself, and whoever else is on your team to put together all of the necessary parts of that promotion ahead of time. So, that’s part of your planning for the first quarter.

Minette Riordan: Yeah, so I wanted to share some ideas for types of quarterly projects that you might be thinking about. So, it could be that your focus for first quarter, or second quarter of the year, is list building. We all know that in today’s marketplace, that email is gold, right? The more people that you can have on your email list, then the more opportunity you have to build your community, to serve your community, and to monetize that community, as well, in ways that feel really good, and graceful, and not icky, and just about promotion, right?
So, it takes time to build the list, to build that relationship, and to serve them in a way that feels great to everybody, so that project could be list building, so it’s not necessarily a project that’s specifically about money; it could be a project that’s about building your business. Another example of a project might be, you’re brand new in business, and you need to spend the first quarter getting QuickBooks set up, getting all your licenses in place, getting your tax ID number, getting your website built; all the foundational pieces of building your business could be a 90 day project, maybe even a two quarter project.

Brad Dobson: Right.

Minette Riordan: Right? So, it could be that you’re committed to starting a blog, so you’re going to do everything you need to do to build, plan, and create content for a blog, over the next 90 days, right? So, some of these projects can be foundational to your business. Launching an online course is at least a 90 day project. It’s not an overnight project, like Minette thinks it is.

Brad Dobson: Yeah, right.

Minette Riordan: So, launching a quarterly project, hosting a live event, creating a membership program, like we just did, we talked about it on our last show. We’re launching a brand new, we’re so excited, membership group, called The Creative Business Accelerator. It is a program that is ongoing, to support creatives with all the things they need to know to build their profitable business, and we’ve been working on it for the last quarter, right? It took us a full quarter just to get all the pieces in place, even more than a quarter I would say.

Brad Dobson: Sure, sure.

Minette Riordan: I shared, in the last one, I spent eight hours, last week, just writing video scripts and email copy for the promotional part of it. So, part of the quarterly project planning is so that you’re crystal clear about how much time it actually takes to do a really good job of launching something.

Brad Dobson: Yeah. I would add to that, two more would be … One more would be a live event-

Minette Riordan: I thought I said that.

Brad Dobson: Did you say … No.

Minette Riordan: Anyway, it doesn’t matter. A live event, actually, would take six months-

Brad Dobson: Right.

Minette Riordan: … to a year, six months to a year, depending on the cost of the event, the location of the event [crosstalk 00:16:04].

Brad Dobson: Well, it could be a small thing, but … So, launching a meetup group-

Minette Riordan: Yep.

Brad Dobson: … getting another signature talk underway-

Minette Riordan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brad Dobson: Those would all be things that you might plan for a quarter, where you know that for a signature talk, you’ve got … Maybe there are slides, maybe it’s a 10 minute talk, maybe it’s a 30 minute talk. You’ve gotta write it, practice it, give it to people, or practice it on your family and your friends, and-

Minette Riordan: And your mirror.

Brad Dobson: That’s right. So, you can plan all of those things, and then by the end of the quarter, it’s time to give it for real at a networking event or whatever it is. Yeah, live events are monsters, in terms of promotions and stuff, so there are different projects associated with a given live event. Meetups are mini live events. So, maybe there are smaller things.

Minette Riordan: So, let’s talk for a minute about once you’ve actually decided what your quarterly project is, what do you do next? Do we wanna pick an example and sort of take that apart, or … because it’s … We spent the last 15 minutes talking about what a quarterly project is, why we think it’s important, types of quarterly projects, but once you’ve decided on the project, what’s next?

Brad Dobson: I think it’s putting to paper, in some sort of formal way, and as a creative, maybe it’s a giant piece of paper with a bunch of colored markers. If you’ve got a team, it needs to be something that’s shared with the team, so that they can see it. You need to have what your favorite outcome is from this, you need to-

Minette Riordan: Your favorite outcome, what’s your expected outcome-

Brad Dobson: That’s right. You need to have written down what the tasks are associated with it, when you expect them to be done, whether it’s from yourself or from members of your team, in what order, and what priority … Let’s see, what else can we go with?

Minette Riordan: So, first step is that you need a written description of what the project is, you need a timeline for the project, that has a priority of the tasks, so that people know on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis, what the markers are to know that you’re making consistent progress towards the end goal. You need to know who your support people are, we said that at the beginning. So, for example, we have a team of people that we have helping us to complete various projects, and so, when you have a project, everybody needs to know what their role is in moving that project forward. So, clear, clear, clear expectations, and timelines, and goals for each member of your team. If it’s just you, then maybe the support you need is for someone to take some of your personal things off your plate, so that you have more time to work on the project.
But I would say a calendar would be really important, that visually outlines what all the different steps are, and a description of what the project is and, like Brad said, a clear description of the outcome; what do you want to happen at the end? And also, I would include in your calendar, regularly weekly meetings with yourself, or your team, and/or your team, to measure progress, right? Because it can be easy to get six weeks in and realize it’s gonna take more time than you thought, or that you need to pivot a little bit, that it’s not going in the right direction. So, weekly meetings would be a really important piece of staying on track with our plan, whether that meeting is with yourself, or with your team, and that meeting should be scheduled into your calendar. Don’t just say, “Hey, we’re gonna talk about it”, but make sure you have a planned meeting for the week.
We had the intention of having meetings on Monday mornings, and Monday mornings ended up not being the best time, because we were recording podcasts, I had some European clients I was coaching, that Monday was the best day early in the morning, so we have to make sure that we write that time into our calendar, otherwise, it doesn’t happen. So, weekly planning sessions and updates would be really important.

Brad Dobson: I think adding any costs, predictive costs-

Minette Riordan: Yes. Yeah, being clear about the cost and budget would be, probably, really important.

Brad Dobson: And maybe this project is something you can completely do on your own, and that’s great-

Minette Riordan: And it doesn’t cost you anything.

Brad Dobson: … but maybe it involves your BA-

Minette Riordan: Or a graphic designer-

Brad Dobson: That’s right.

Minette Riordan: Right? Or a copywriter, or a web developer.

Brad Dobson: Even if it’s, hey, I’m gonna work with somebody on Fiverr to get a design for some slides-

Minette Riordan: Or our new favorite, can we talk about Logojoy for a minute?

Brad Dobson: Yeah, Logojoy was pretty … What else did we –

Minette Riordan: [crosstalk 00:21:10] SMASHINGLOGO-

Brad Dobson: SMASHINGLOGO.com and Logojoy.com–

Minette Riordan: Were two really fun ways we got some new logos. So, anyway, I digress, but do you need a logo? So, I would have a clear outline of a description of the projects. What assets do you need to make the project come to fruition, so if we use the retreat example, and you’re gonna host a retreat in October in Bali, which we actually have quite a few friends and colleagues that do retreats, all over the world, so there’s promotional materials, there’s sales materials, there’s the actual content for the retreat. Maybe your goal is, for the first quarter, to create all of the assets for the promotion, which will start in April. So, it’s having clear timelines of the direction in which everything is going, is so important to get that momentum. So, this is the way you build momentum in your business, is through consistency, through planning, and through quarterly projects.

Brad Dobson: Absolutely. And it works. They don’t have to be 90 day projects, they can be shorter than that, but try to make them under 90 days. We don’t want you planning this giant thing that’s gonna take all year. That doesn’t help you.

Minette Riordan: No, it doesn’t. And to make this simple and effective for you, you guys know I love printables and planners, and I’m trying to create more of those to share with you this year. It’s one of my personal fun goals, creative goals in 2018. So, if you go to pathtoprofitacademy.com, click on the podcast button, find episode 80, there’ll be a downloadable quarterly project planner template that you can use over and over again, that includes all these specifics that we talk about of the pieces that you need to have in place, to have a successful quarterly project, that goes fast, that goes well, and that reaches your highest expectations for the project.

Brad Dobson: Good stuff. This is Dr. Minette Riordan, I’m Brad Dobson, we’re the Path to Profit Podcast. I hope you guys have a happy month business planning-

Minette Riordan: Yep.

Brad Dobson: Love you all.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.