What are the benefits of goal setting? Why do businesses need goals? How do I determine goals and achieve them? Dana and Russ discuss why having clear, measurable goals is essential for the overall success and growth of a business. Additionally, goals can help to align the efforts of all employees towards a common objective, leading to a more cohesive and productive organization.
Follow the podcast at @itsjustbusinesspodcast on all the major podcasting platforms.
Connect with us:
To get in touch with us, email the podcast at itsjustbusinesspodcast@gmail.com.
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www.itsjustbusinesspodcast.com
You can find Dana @adashofboss, @dana.dowdell and @hrfanatic
Dana Dowdell – Boss Consulting – HR Consulting
Google - https://tinyurl.com/y4wxnavx
You can find Russ @reliable.remediation
Russ Harlow – Reliable Remediation – Disaster Restoration
Google: https://g.page/r/CXogeisZHEjMEBA
What are the benefits of goal setting? Why do businesses need goals? How do I determine goals and achieve them? Dana and Russ discuss why having clear, measurable goals is essential for the overall success and growth of a business. Additionally, goals can help to align the efforts of all employees towards a common objective, leading to a more cohesive and productive organization.
Follow the podcast at @itsjustbusinesspodcast on all the major podcasting platforms.
Connect with us:
To get in touch with us, email the podcast at itsjustbusinesspodcast@gmail.com.
Join us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn - we appreciate your support!
www.itsjustbusinesspodcast.com
You can find Dana @adashofboss, @dana.dowdell and @hrfanatic
Dana Dowdell – Boss Consulting – HR Consulting
Google - https://tinyurl.com/y4wxnavx
You can find Russ @reliable.remediation
Russ Harlow – Reliable Remediation – Disaster Restoration
Google: https://g.page/r/CXogeisZHEjMEBA
Dana Dowdell 00:04
Hi, Russ.
Russ Harlow 00:05
Dana, what's happening?
Dana Dowdell 00:06
Happy New Year.
Russ Harlow 00:07
Happy New Year and Happy birthday to you.
Dana Dowdell 00:10
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Did you set goals for 2023?
Russ Harlow 00:15
I am so deep in the hole. Yes, I'm working on it. I can tell you about the process to
Dana Dowdell 00:24
talk about it. Yeah.
Russ Harlow 00:25
Holy cow. How about you?
Dana Dowdell 00:27
I did I set. I set some goals. Yeah. And it's obviously we'll get into the my thought process. But it's not something that I had ever sat and intentionally mapped out. And so it feels good to kind of have that as our guiding star. So, I'm excited to talk about it. So let's start what's going on with you and your goal setting and where's your head at.
Russ Harlow 00:57
So we're coming up on a year, about nine months on the brand on our own leaving after leaving the franchise, a lot of things have improved revenue and workflow has remained about the same. So I've just come to realize that I'm doing it wrong. I mean, I'm the common denominator, like doing business wrong. Yeah, whatever it is, I'm just I'm doing it wrong. So one of the things that I did last fall, is I contacted one of the franchisees from the old brand, that was running a business was very similar that, you know, I'm trying to emulate it basically, revenue mix, etc, you know, same kind of territory, size, et cetera, and just got some information from him. And, you know, he's like, here, Russ, here's a great plan that I worked with, as a coach with and, you know, take a look through this as you start to build your business plan for the first time in five years. And I was like, because, yeah, I tried to slip that by everybody. I haven't been doing.
Dana Dowdell 01:58
that. You've never said, hey, hey, Newsbreak. Me either.
Russ Harlow 02:03
So, I, I understand the importance of it. I've always had goals, but I'm doing a lot of things. When I sat down with his plan, I realized, I mean, it was a page full of stuff. And it's like, okay, do this and then build on that and data tonight. And I was like, I there's like 95% of these things I'm not doing. And I was like, maybe that led to me not wanting to do anything. I came to the realization of how many things I wasn't doing.
Dana Dowdell 02:31
Was it a moment of like analysis paralysis,
Russ Harlow 02:35
maybe a little bit. I mean, it gives you an order and what to do and how to do it. It was just like, wow, I've been working really hard at this. And I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. But I know I haven't like with my coaching with Christine. I know I've you know, made a lot of strides moving forward. With the new website and the brand rebranding, I think things have come. A great distance. For example, if you search our business name, Reliable Remediation, no matter where in the country, you are 95% of the time with those specific search terms. We're on the top listing of Google first hashtag. So I mean, we're doing good things right and doing the right things that never happened with the old brand. In our because the website wasn't great. So that's something we're still continuing to work on, improve, I just met with my marketing person, things are going smoothly. We're just, you know, adjusting to changes,
Dana Dowdell 03:32
which I feel like is a big deal for you. Because I know since I've known you, you've never, I don't think you've ever felt like the person that was doing your marketing really, like understood what you were focused on like metrics, and you want to know the numbers, you want the tangible data to support, that what you're doing is headed in the right direction.
Russ Harlow 03:53
So yeah, and she's handling website. And, you know, some of our Google advertising, I'm handling social media and some of our paid social stuff. I'm still handling a bit of it, but it's going well. But I'm still not getting the revenue that I want. So with all the things that I know, that I've realized to do, and I've got a couple pages of things of things, I want things I want to implement in my business. So, I have been working on it. But I think the biggest change for me will be I asked a friend of mine who's also in business, but not a super close friend, to be an accountability partner with me. And he looked at me and he goes, Yes. He didn't have to think about he's like, I need this in my business too. And I think it'd be great. We sat together we had breakfast, we looked at I did some research on you know, working with an accountability partner and things you might want to do and I got some free stuff online and put it on a Google Drive so we could you know, talk about our personal and professional goals and push each other and you know, not take any crap, Hey, you said you were going to do this this week? How come you haven't done it? You know, and talk about how we want to be held accountable as well. You know, I'll give you a good example. When I was in college, my freshman year, I played baseball and my college, my roommate was on the team as well, he was a pitcher. And you know, a lot of times when you're at a baseball game, it's like, Hey, buddy, come on, you know, frustrating? I'll do you know, here we go. You got it. And Matt was not like that. Matt was like, I want you to just yell at me throw strikes, come on, get over the plate. Because that's, he knew. That's how he wanted to be held accountable. So that conversations are really important when you develop a relationship with the new accountability partners, how do you want to be communicated with and how do you want to be held accountable? And so it's important, like, we're both veterans. And so, you know, there's kind of an esprit de corps there. And we understand, you know, we've been communicated with in a very certain way for many years, so we're okay with, you know, being tough and having tough love, and not maybe to David Goggins level, but if it's required, we do it.
Dana Dowdell 06:12
Are you gonna sleep over his house and wake them up at two o'clock in the morning and take them on a 17 mile run?
Russ Harlow 06:17
Oh, God, I could take him like on a 17-minute walk maybe. So yeah, that's, I think that's the biggest thing, and we just started meeting, we had our first call this week. And we have good ideas for each other as well, we're talking about business. He was talking about some of the things he was doing for contact with a CRM that he's got with the new business, he's joined. And you know, a couple calls a day, you know, a couple of postcards a week, you know, reaching out hand handwritten stuff. And that was confirmed when I met with, hey, one of our former guests, Jeremy Doyle, oh, for lunch yesterday. And he was like, oh, Russ, you got to do this. You got to, you know, handwritten thank you notes and little things reaching out to people and customers. And I'm like, Oh, my God, another thing I have to do. And he's like, yeah, but it makes so much difference. And so I'm like, alright, I got the newsletter, the email newsletter finally put together so that's going to go out with my email marketing and, and trying to get that scheduled. Also, from a former guests that I was inspired with by Kyle, I've been watching his stuff on YouTube. Nice. So, I mean, there's changes being made, but I'm still just so tired.
Dana Dowdell 07:38
I feel like I have to tell you how proud I am of you.
Russ Harlow 07:43
Okay. I don't need to hear that. But okay, I'll take it.
Dana Dowdell 07:46
No, I just, you know, I feel like, you know, you were the first to cry on this podcast, I will die on that hill. And, you know, I know the gooey stuff. And like, the human connection is not ever something that like you are really into. But I think it's I'm very proud of you for reaching out to someone to find, like to build out your own support system.
Russ Harlow 08:13
What's interesting is when you're got a small business like mine, where it's family owned and operated, it's just my wife and kids. And my wife doesn't have a huge role in the business. So it's not like she can be like, hey, what are you doing? She's just like, hey, the bills are paid, I'm really happy. Let's just keep moving forward. Which is fine. It's just when you're the only one and you're not having success, keeping yourself accountable, you've got to do something. And I've already really come to the realization that I'm obviously the problem here. Whether it be the bottleneck or the shortcoming or, you know, I don't know something, whatever it is, I'm not doing I'm not doing it, I gotta figure it out. And somebody has to stand there going, it could be a paid coach, it could be an accountability partner, there would be a lot of things you can do. Maybe even, you know, joining a mastermind, you know, people with a similar mindset, but it's coming. It's owning that failure. And learning from it, I think, and you know, because nobody cares why you didn't win. It's that simple. Like your excuses.
Dana Dowdell 09:20
Is it a failure, or is it just a pivot point?
Russ Harlow 09:27
Yeah, no, I think I can embrace it as a failure. I don't have a problem with that. I mean, honestly, for four straight years, our revenue has been the same. Top line revenue. Now our revenue mix has changed. You know, we have done our, you know, our, our average ticket price has gone up. We have done fewer jobs, and we're done more jobs with our ideal clients. So it's not just a look at it, and oh, it's across the board. It sucked because there's not been growth. It's been change, but that growth has And then there because we're not at, you know, we're not building on the good things that are continuing to happen. So, yeah, I'll take it as a failure.
Dana Dowdell 10:06
Fair enough. Fair enough. I think this might be a common feeling for people. Because you're, what, five years in four years in? Yeah, we just finished our fifth year. So, I'm in about the same point. And I am also feeling many of those things. That idea of this past year was the first time I have ever wished that I had a business partner to kind of share the burden of running a business. But also very much craving that community, sense of community in a way, but that is very specific to where I am in business. So I'm sharing very many of the same feelings as you.
Russ Harlow 10:59
Yeah. And I know, we're not alone. I mean, and I think, by being transparent and sharing our experience, I think that others out there can be empowered to say, hey, that's not a bad idea. You know, how hard is it to just find another business owner who's, like, the guy I'm working with is not in the same industry. So that's great. You know, although I'm looking at maybe doing a group of people in the same industry, so we can learn and support each other. But it's good to have input from outside your industry as well. And maybe a really close friend or family member isn't a great idea for an accountability partner, because they might tend to let you slide on stuff. And that's not what you're looking for, as you know, in that relationship, you're looking to be held accountable. And you want to make it manageable, right, whatever goals you set, and I think, to hear what your goals are for 2023, whatever goals you set, they should be attainable. You could dream a little, but there shouldn't be like 50 of them. Right? There should be a couple you know, and there should be some personal goals mixed in as well. Like, you know, I want to go to Tahiti, this year, whatever
Dana Dowdell 12:08
it is pay off this debt, or yeah,
Russ Harlow 12:11
yeah, I mean, I just made the final payment on our truck. And now it's yay. But now I got to start saving for another one. Because I've already I'm used to making that payment. So now if I can start banking that money into another truck account, I can I don't have to lease to own or have a payment on a truck later. So, this is about discipline as well.
Dana Dowdell 12:35
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Russ Harlow 12:38
What are your goals for 2023.
Dana Dowdell 12:40
So, it's funny, I was just talking to my mom about this, you know, when I, I've never, when I have set goals for the business, I've never written them down, they just kind of exist in my head. And I had never mapped out a way to reach those goals. And most of them were around revenue. I think last year, I came up with a revenue number, and I communicated it to my staff, but we never mapped out you know, a process. And so this was the first year that I set a revenue goal. And I actually, with my employee, mapped out what we were going to do to get there. And so I looked at our revenue for this year, and I basically looked at I think I said like a 34 or 40% increase, you know, historically, my business has pretty much doubled in revenue year over year, which is like, wild to me, because I don't feel like I put it just has happened very organically. So, you know, I put a top line revenue goal. And then Ali, who's my consultant on my team, we met for lunch one day, we did her review, we talked about, like, what her personal goals were. And then we sat with that top level revenue number and we mapped out, you know, what are the services that we actually like doing? What kind of revenue did they bring into the business? And what are our goals for 2023? So, like, I'll give you an example. You know, we write handbooks. I don't particularly like them, it's not something I enjoy, but it's something that Ali really enjoys. And so she was like, I want to do six this year. Let's do six handbooks because she enjoys it. She understands what the revenue could be that they could bring into the business. And so that was like, that's like her mini goal is like she wants to get six handbooks this year. And so now we have this, these numbers, these metrics that we are trying to focus in on and I've broken them down to be so specific. You know, one of the things we offer is training, so we do sexual harassment prevention training. And so we developed a revenue number for how much money we wanted to bring in to the business from that training? And then what does that translate in terms of number of people? And then what does that translate in terms of number of people per session. And so now each time we have a session, our goal is to get 33 people, because then we know that that will help us meet our revenue goal. So it feels good, it feels good to have those it feels good to share it with your team member. I do a strategy meeting each month with my subcontractors. So my social media person, my virtual assistant and my copywriter. And so they all know what our goals are, it didn't necessarily share the revenue numbers, but I shared, you know, here's how many people we want needs training, here's how many audits that we want to do. And then I just onboarding a new team member. And that was within her first week, her and I met to kind of talk about what the plan was. And it's interesting, and I would love your insight in this. I think, sometimes people feel like they have to keep the numbers close to the chest. You know, it's funny, I met with Jess who's my copywriter because she was in town and we got dinner, and I was showing her the actual numbers. And I think during the course of the conversation, I said, I feel so exposed. Because as business owners, we don't often talk about, you know, somebody will say, Oh, I have a seven figure business, but like, you know, is it $1,000,000.99 You know, what I mean? Is like that your seven figure business, and so, to put it out there and have somebody else see, you know, here's what our revenue was, here's what I want our revenue to be, it can feel very, make you feel very vulnerable. And I think sometimes people don't want to share that with their team members. But I have found, particularly with Ally, she is very money motivated. And she gets commission on business that she brings in. And so she said to me, like how much she appreciate seeing what the business goals are, because then that will help her understand where to focus her energy.
Russ Harlow 17:05
You know, I think it's, I personally don't have a problem with sharing those numbers in the financials, I think it's important for people to understand, you know, like in my business, or we do a lot of high ticket items. And so, you know, a job could be $6,000 -$10,000, you know, guys are, you know, maybe making $18 $20 An hour and thinking, Man, that's all profit, after he pays me, it's all done. But when you shoot when you share expenditures, and you look at how much I spend in insurance, and unemployment and workers compensation and all these other things they look at and go, oh, yeah, that's not as much profit as I thought it was. But then, I mean, there are those, I think, Steve Busquets one of those who shares his numbers with his team. And, you know, a lot of companies do bonuses based on profitability, because I don't care if you're a seven figure business, if you're in the red at the bottom of the page, well, then you're not doing your job. So you can also start to share, hey, you know, this job was very similar to that job, they were about the same price, it took us but this one took us three hours longer, what happened, and we can start breaking those things down and see, either nothing really happened, we just it took us longer. And now that's a profitability issue. Because now people can start working on those things. And if there are bonuses attached to profitability of a particular job, or a quarter or, you know, whatever, people are cognizant of it, and if they're getting a piece of the pie, this was a big one that I learned at one of my, my most recent, you know, w two jobs that I had, and it was the business shared a piece of the profit with us. You know, I was on a delivery route. And they wanted me to continue to look for new businesses that were opening and sell, or at least pass it to my supervisor. And then we would share a commission on that based on, you know, the first 12 weeks of paid invoices. But it just was adding to my burden, it was making my day longer note, guys, it just it's counterproductive. They don't want to sell; they don't want to be out long. They just want to get their job done and go home. But by giving us a piece of that pie, they gave us enough of an incentive and then your annual bonus was based on a piece of those commissions that you get on each of those things that you sell. So you do a little bit here and there a couple of months and all of a sudden your end the year bonus. If you hadn't taken any PTO, they buy the days back and then add on the commission and everything else. I mean, it was a pretty big check. And it was like what oh, you know, I kind of maybe want to sell a little bit so that those things make a difference for people. And if you're hiding it all and saying, oh, no, no, no, you can't have any of this. We don't I don't want you to see it, you know, looking behind the curtain, I think you're missing out.
Dana Dowdell 20:15
I agree. I mean, this is, we could have a 30 day long podcast interview about this topic of motivation. And I think it helps the right people, right. So I think that's part of it too. Hiring your A players and the people that are really invested in what you're doing, but it helps the right people be connected to the purpose of what they're doing. So I have found great value in sharing it with my team. And I'm excited to see like how we do with our goals. It's funny now that I have these goals, I think we have to, like, have goal check in so I can communicate, you know where we are. But it's kind of like the it's the frame of the business house. You know, it's the frame that is guiding us through 2023, in terms of what we sell what we focus our energy on, you know, what type of clients we want to find?
Russ Harlow 21:15
Yeah, I think it's important to kind of take a look, if somebody's thinking, Well, how do I even start looking at goals or making goals? It can be a revenue number, and you can break it down and say, you know, do I just need to sell more widgets, or each day or whatever. But you know, take a look at, you know, five areas within your business, you know, marketing, sales, deliverables, finances, and people, and then look at each function with your team, you know, and figure out what has the largest impact on your business? And have an action plan, just like you said, How are we going to? How are we going to make this happen, and then revisit it, you know, no, more than a quarter, I mean, no less than quarterly, to go back and take a look at and go, you know, what do we need to keep doing? What do we need to stop doing? And you know, what are we doing, right? You know, and take a look at those things, and ask those questions. And I think that'll go a long way. It doesn't have to be a big, huge, complicated process.
Dana Dowdell 22:13
Now, it can be simple. It can be simple. I would love to hear what some of our listeners goals are for 2023. I think that would be really cool. If they share that on our social or on Instagram or something. That'd be cool.
Russ Harlow 22:28
Yeah, I mean, if they shoot us a line, either way, well, we'll record them. And maybe we'll do a follow up podcast and talk about it. That'd be interesting. Yeah, I liked that idea.
Dana Dowdell 22:40
Yeah. Anything else on goals?
Russ Harlow 22:45
I mean, dream a little too, you know, make things attainable look at it the year and quarterly and weekly, monthly look at those things. But you know, take a look out 510 years from now, where do you want to be? And, you know, what is it that you're? Do you want to sell your business? Do you want to, you know, pass it on to somebody do you just want to, you know, build it up to a certain size and let it coast. I mean, whatever it is, what's going to get you there. So dream a little bit, I think. And, you know, make it manageable, don't do 50 things. And you know, plan on doing it because I forget who said it and I'm not gonna say it as eloquently either, you know, write down the top 10 Things you want to do. And then like, cross off, but the bottom line might have been Warren Buffett, I remember growing and then just work on that one top thing. You know, if that's the most important thing, do that in your business, and that's gonna make the most difference.
Dana Dowdell 23:40
Yeah. Well, thanks for listening to the episode with Russ and I on goals. As always, if you want to give us a follow on social, we're at. It's Just Business Podcast on Facebook, and Instagram and LinkedIn, and share with us your goals. We want to hear what you're reaching for in 2023. And we'll come back maybe middle of the year and kind of share what some of your goals were that you communicated. As always, thank you for listening. And just remember, it's not personal. It's just business.