Embracing your Big Brand Vision for 2024
One of the best parts about owning your own business is that there's flexibility.
Unlike my traditionally employed friends, If I want to get my nails done in the middle of the day, I don't need to ask for permission. If I want to take a spontaneous trip last minute, I don't need to put in a request to my manager. If my son is sick, I can drop everything to care for him. Which I did many times in the last year (thanks, preschool).
But in the last three years of building my business, I've also felt like it's always on. Buzzing around my brain. Telling me to cross that last thing off the list for the day, to respond to that email, to post that Reel.
The dark side of being extremely ambitious is that I have a really hard time chilling TF out.
Do you feel like this?
The Always-On Mindset of Building a Business
In the last 3 years I have only taken off a couple of days here & there. And I use the term “off” pretty loosely. I still check my emails, my DMs, post to stories, etc.
When I did my visioning for 2023, I felt called to start stepping into a new phase a business.
One that is less reactive. One that takes a lil more time. One that doesn't rely on my energetic capacity in the same way.
I wanted to take my first real vacation. To give myself some time and space outside of the algorithm, gmail, Notion, Slack, and Voxer.
But at the time it wasn't possible.
In December 2022, I was running a busy studio. I needed to hit a certain bottom line to keep my business running. I didn't have the runway built up to step away for a long period. And I had demanding clients that needed my attention.
Tomorrow I leave for a 3-week vacation around Scandinavia.
In September I am working a few hours a week from Greece.
In October, November, and December I'll be in London working remotely.
This was my big brand vision for the year. And it took a lot of work.
Embracing your Big Brand Vision for 2024
So how did I go from a busy, reactive, never unplugged business to being able to take a 3-month vacation + the rest of the year traveling?
Let's break it down ↓
1. Big Brand Visioning
At the start of the year, I really felt into what I wanted for the year to be not only financially, but also lifestyle-wise. I wrote down that I wanted to have more impact. I am going deeper on this in my upcoming podcast, but I really felt like the studio I was running wasn't making the impact I desired working with people 1:1.
I saw my family in Europe, walking around + enjoying the day while I still had money coming in from my programs + courses. I had tested these programs + courses in 2022, but 2023 was going to be the year I perfected them and created a whole world around them, so that they could eventually become my core offers + serve my audience at scale.
It was going to take time to do this! So with the vision, it was time to…
PS this is a great time to do your BBV for 2024! Some questions to get you started
1. What is happening in your business in January 2024?
2. How much are you making?
3. How are you spending your time?
4. Who is supporting you?
5. Where are you physically + mentally?
2. Reverse Engineer
I knew I wanted to travel in August, because that's when my best friend is getting married in Copenhagen. I knew I wanted to make at least $40K/month to support my family while traveling + save for a house that we want to buy when we settle down after our travels. I knew I wanted to drop all of my 1:1 done-for-you services by August.
So with that, I reverse engineered what my offers + marketing would need to look like to support $40K+ months, including months where I am taking several weeks off.
With traveling in August, I knew I would need to have an assistant on board who knew my business intimately enough to take care of things while I am gone (so grateful to my assistant, Kat!).
I knew I would need to fully pivot my business from done-for-you to the scalable + passive offers.
I knew I had 7-ish months to make it all happen.
So I created KPIs (I do this with all of my Rosebuds Mentorship clients, too).
What would my social need to grow to support the MRR I needed?
What would my newsletter list need to be?
What would my income need to be?
What would my conversion rates need to be?
Etc etc.
Then I broke it down into monthly plans to make it easy. The plan created a few main focuses for my business…
1. Grow my social media + newsletter following by A LOT (so showing up became a massive priority)
2. Streamline and finalize my core programs
3. Ramp up my marketing via Launch campaigns
It was going to be hard work! But I had the Big Brand Vision, so I had a fire under my butt! And an imaginary martini in my hand at a cute cafe in Copenhagen 🍸
I had the vision, now let's have some fun.
3. Focus & Execute
Once you have a plan, all you have to do is focus + execute.
This can he hard for a squiggly brain like me 🧠 It means I need to let go of a lot of the things I was doing that weren't in line with this vision. That was so hard. I talked about this in last week's newsletter.
The biggest thing that helped was coming up with a Launch calendar. I planned my launches (marketing campaigns) for my offers allll year. So I always knew what my focus was as far as marketing & fulfillment.
Launching helped me create Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).
MRR is the predictable revenue generated by your business. I could take August + September off completely and still have $20k+ months because of Launches. They are the jetfuel your business needs to bring you the freedom you're after.
It's because of launching that I'm able to take this time away.
I'm sure there's more to the story that I'll probably share in a future podcast episode (that's launching soon I promise).
But until then, my future self is cheers-ing me at a cute cafe in Copenhagen for working my lil toosh off for the whole year. But tbh, I freaking love my business and have had such a fun year pivoting, learning, and welcoming so many new people into this digital garden.
As you can see, it takes A LOT of planning to take off + take your business on the road. It required me to get out of reactivity mode, which was SO much bigger than the rest + something I'm still working on.
I'd love to hear how you're plotting for your future business vision. Send me a DM and we can chat!
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