272: Ending the Year Well for Your Design Business 

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele and you're listening to Profit is a Choice.

Have you ever wondered how to really end the year well? You'll hear us talk about this in multiple places all around, how do we end our year well. In this podcast we're going to talk about how to define what ending the year well for you and your company looks like, how to plan in advance, how to be intentional, and how to create some time to rest and reset. It is so interesting that the fourth quarter of our year is spent not only making sure that we can wrap up the needs of the current year but doing a lot of planning and heavy lifting so that we can start the next year off well. The way to start in a power position in the new year is to end this year in a power position. Listen into the podcast today and determine what that might look like for you and for your company.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

In my monthly newsletters, all the way back in September, I started sharing with my readers how to end the year well. And while at that time we had an entire quarter and a month of the year left to do it, the steps are still very helpful. What I want to do in the podcast today is share with you what it means to finish well, have you create your own definition for that, share with you some of the tasks and the thought processes that I've been leading my readers through for the last four months and encourage you to add some of these into your practice for the last few days of this month and into the new year. So, what does it mean to finish well? Again, we probably all have our own definition, but I'm going to share mine with you.

Finishing well means to complete the items that were critical, which also leads me to define what's actually critical in my business. What does that mean to me? Finishing well means to complete the critical items in the best way my team and I know how. Never sloppy, never half done, fully done, and fully done in a way that makes us proud. Finishing well means to be proud of the effort that was put into these critical items knowing that they set us up for a better future.

Ending well for you, if you've come through a challenging year or project could be to just be done with it, like a pure survival. That's okay. For someone else, it might mean the highest revenue ever. For someone listening, it might mean that you got a steady paycheck last year. Ending your year well is not a competition. It's defining what you have accomplished and making note of the perseverance that it took you to get to the end. So, give yourself a round of applause or standing ovation if you need it. You're here. We're almost done with 2024, and let's define well by our attitude regarding the year we just went through. In October, I suggested doing the following, some of this you'll be able to accomplish now with even more clarity and some of it you may need to schedule to be done at the beginning of 2024, six things.

Number one, take stock of where the company is right now and where you anticipate it being at the end of the year with regard to your financials, this means look at all of these items: total revenue, cost of goods associated with that revenue, gross profit amounts and margins, expenses, what you plan to end the year with, and net profits.

Number two, meet with your accountant to ensure that you're on top of taxes, paying yourself correctly, and keep in mind the balance of salary and distributions if you're an S Corp, contributing to your 401k, and that everything looks correct.

Number three, look at your team. What skill sets are you excelling at and where are you lacking?

Number four, consider your clients. Who is still a great fit, and who do you want to continue working with in the new year? Who's no longer a fit? Update that avatar if you need to.

Number five, how are you managing to the goals you set at the beginning of the year? What's left to be done? Can you accomplish it? And what will it take?

Number six, do you need to update your strategic three to five year plan? If so, make sure you do it. I asked you to take a look at your marketing and we asked this big question. Is our marketing on point and were any quick changes needed to fill the pipeline for the rest of 2024 going into 2025? Even though we're all the way through that now, it's still something that's important. and it's never too late to review your marketing.

The first question is this. Do you have any metrics around your marketing? Meaning are you measuring what's working? Do you measure what it costs you to post on Instagram or Facebook or Pinterest? I'm not just talking like paid ads or anything like that, just the cost of a person to go in and schedule that post. How much time and how many resources are needed to fulfill the marketing strategy that you've created. Give it a number. Look at the leads coming from these sources, the places where you are being visible. Ask yourself, are you spending your time, the efforts and the energy in the best place to get the clients that you love working with? Are there any areas where you might want to spend more or less? It's always a great time to dial in marketing, thinking about your messaging, your branding, and your channel. Are you saying what the ideal clients need to hear and are you saying it in a way they understand and that resonates with them? Are you saying it where they're reading it? If you're dialed in, keep going. If nothing, plan for 2025 to change it up a bit. I then started November with even more detail on ending well, and here are some of the items that were on that list.

Number one, detail out the work that is left to be done.

Number two, identify who's going to do it.

Number three, share any bad news early. Don't wait.

Number four, be honest about what can be done and by when.

Number five, create boundaries around your time.

Number six, communicate more than you think you need to stay steady. Sometimes that's the hardest part, staying steady.

Then as we've moved into December, my goal was to create some space to rest and reset. And, you know, we started all this hard work of looking at our company back in September if you were following along with me. I know, just like you do, that December is a time that we're trying to wrap up the year and finalize things, but it's also a time of heavy family, friends, celebrations and holidays. I want to share with you some of my hard fought lessons that will help you hopefully rest and reset.

Number one, don't plan to get a lot done the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. We all do it. We think that it's a free week to work without interruption. Many of you aren't going into the office and you've given your team some time off. But what I find, and I bet you do too, is that you're so exhausted from the rest of the year that you just completely veg out and want to do nothing but be with friends and family. And you kind of want to move at a snail's pace. I want you to give yourself permission to do some of this. Everybody else is doing it. We are exactly here right now. So even with everything that I've shared in this podcast, this list of things I want you to pace yourself. Don't overdo it and go into the new year exhausted.

Number two, be clear on what you absolutely have to have done by the year end, only what is absolutely necessary. We've got a short time left and you might have some family obligations during this time.

Number three, know what is most important to you and preserve it.

Number four, keep notes for anything you want to do next year. You can come back to it in the first week in January.

Number five, read the book you've been putting off.

Number six, take the nap.

Number seven, play the games with your kids or your friends.

Number eight, enjoy your time. Work will wait.

As you can see, ending well also takes advanced thought and planning. It requires intentionality. In my coaching, I just don't give you a blueprint and say, here, go execute this. That's just not my style. I prefer to show you how to attack a challenge before you, how to strategically think through it, and how to create a pathway that feels right for you, and then to equip you with the critical thinking skills to work it out as it shifts and morphs. My emails and newsletters are meant to equip you in bite size and pieces of, information to help you move forward.

Thank you all so much for listening to the podcast today. I am excited to share with you that we are going to have an offering in January that is going to be an eight week coaching course they're going to be. We're going to have educational content to help you understand how to craft and create a strategic plan, along with how to set the OKRs, the objectives and key results, and the KPI's, the key performance indicators so that you can actually have the strategic plan. It's been interesting in my CFO2GO program that I've done for over a year now, I've had a lot of people come through this program and I will tell you that a large percentage, probably 75% to 80% of them, did not have a strategic plan when they came and might have even been higher than that, did not have a strategic plan. And so, what that means is they're trying to create a financial plan without the strategic plan to base it on. I want to offer to you, if you don't have a strategic plan, you don't know how to create one, you're not sure if yours is thorough as it needs to be, consider joining us for this course in January. It'll start January 16, and you can go to scarletthreadconsulting.com and you can get on the waitlist to get information about that. We would love to have you come in there and learn how to create a strategic plan for your business so that then all the other plans will fit inside of that: the marketing plan, an operational plan, a financial plan. So, start with the strategy and let us help you do that. You can find out more@scarletthreadconsulting.com. Choose every day to be profitable because profit doesn't happen by accident.

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