Five Questions to Guide Your Strategic Plan for 2024

Caleb Agee 0:00
What we’re looking at now is, where’s this train going? We’re looking at 510, 15, come on, 20, maybe years down the road. Where do you imagine this thing going? And it does not have to be a perfectly articulated picture. It can be a little bit abstract, it can be a little bit unclear, but you need to know where it’s going.

Brandon Welch 0:28
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, I’m here with the impeccable, irreplaceable. Caleb Agee, and we have an awesome episode for you about strategic planning, strategic this. This is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste and advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream. And what are the big dreamers up to? What should they be up to? Yeah, about right now.

Caleb Agee 0:58
Well, it’s Monday after Thanksgiving, right? It’s over. Christmas is up in the Agee house. When do you set up for Christmas?

Brandon Welch 1:06
We’re done. By this point,

Caleb Agee 1:07
you’ve got it up. It’s a done deal. Okay? We do Black Friday morning. It’s like family tradition. White Christmas turns on good music. Oh yeah, yeah.

Brandon Welch 1:16
I’m gonna pretend like I have anything valid to add to that equation in my house, it gets done. Yeah, Valerie’s the winner on that one. She said she’ll ask for my help when she needs it, and I’m waiting. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it’s after Thanksgiving. It’s

Caleb Agee 1:30
after Thanksgiving. New Year’s is just right around the corner 2024,

Brandon Welch 1:35
new year. Hopefully it’s New Year’s. New Year’s plan on not sitting and making Yeah,

Caleb Agee 1:40
we we had this guy, Joel, who used to work here, and he would always make a joke about, you know, third or fourth quarter. And he’d be like, 2024, starts today. So shout out to you, Joel, starts today. Starts today. So that’s what we’re thinking about. And this episode, we’re going to do a full episode just about strategic planning for next year. Really good. We have five questions that we want to ask you to help you guide, if you wanted to guide your own strategic planning conversation, get a couple people in the room, get your leadership, get your marketing team in the room, and if you follow these steps, I think it’ll help guide a really strong conversation. So

Brandon Welch 2:13
on the Maven Monday after Thanksgiving, is it fair to say we’re going to give them pumpkin to talk about?

Caleb Agee 2:22
That’s fair. I think. Hey,

Brandon Welch 2:23
what? What was your what’s your favorite thing on the table, Thanksgiving table.

Caleb Agee 2:28
I really like the ham and good mashed potatoes. Haman taters. Yeah, with gravy. Nate, the camera guy,

Brandon Welch 2:36
all about that based, all about that base, you make me proud, son. The camera guy is all about that based, I am a turkey man, and I don’t care who knows it, yeah. So let’s jump right in. If you were a small business and you are not in the mode of strategic planning right now you should be. If you are a big business, you I don’t think you could have survived by not doing some sort of annual strategic planning. Yeah, if you are a human being and you wish to have any kind of a year that you can control, you should be thinking about strategic planning. And in our organization, we are blessed to be a part of a lot of strategic plans. We actually sort of demand that our clients do that with us to a level, but inside your organization, getting everybody on the same sheet of music, as our good friend Randy Mays would say today, yeah, if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. And this is the time to aim, yeah. And this is where everybody, even if you don’t have a fiscal year that ends in December, this is where the world and everybody just goes to this winter and reset mindset. And we take inventory of what should be and what should be better and what we should remove, yeah. And it is not as easy to do that when you have multiple personalities and multiple you know, different talent inside your business, yeah. And so over the years, we have learned a process that works really well for us, and we always leave this process feeling better equipped and powered, and it just launches, you know, through that sluggish first quarter, and before we know it, we’re on fire again after the holidays. And, yeah, yeah. And, I

Caleb Agee 4:13
think, yeah, it’s just, it’s like you said, if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. This is, this is painting a target, right? Yes, we’re painting the target. We’re hanging it up on the wall, making sure everybody on the team can see it. And it really is a rally cry, because first quarter, usually it does feel tired, slow, the days are short, the you know, all the things, yes, and we want to speed it up. We want to make sure everybody’s on fire about the mission. And so we’ve got five questions. So Caleb.

Brandon Welch 4:38
Caleb is the hero of this episode. He always the hero of this episode. Oh gosh, and he’s he’s broken down our process and give us number one. There’s five tips you want to

Caleb Agee 4:50
take away. Question number one that you would ask yourself is, how did we win? So we’re looking back at this year, 2023, We need to start with. We do this every week. We start every Monday with this question. But you should definitely start your strategic starting.

Brandon Welch 5:07
We start every quarterly meeting, every weekly meeting, and definitely every annual meeting. If in if

Caleb Agee 5:13
you don’t celebrate you’re you’re missing a big opportunity to acknowledge your growth, to acknowledge where you’ve come from. It’s such a powerful thing that’s

Brandon Welch 5:20
a culture of winning. Yeah. But if you want to produce a culture of winning where people want to do something more, help them acknowledge what they’ve already done, yes? And I see too many companies just go straight into the books and say, cool, you know, they might throw a Christmas party or something, and everybody says, Oh, it’s a good year. And then January’s in and the pressure is on, or self induced pressure is on, and we just go straight to the numbers and all the tactics and all the things we think we’re supposed to be doing, and we just miss a big opportunity. Yeah, big time. And it’s not, this is not a rah rah thing. I can hear some of my very good friends of a previous generation going, Oh, that’s a bunch of millennial stuff, but that’s, you know, it’s a bunch of young people stuff. No, it’s not that is a cultural energy you want to bring to life. And it’s not celebrating things that aren’t celebration worthy. No, your celebration could very well be that you survived a tough year, yeah, acknowledging the forces against you. It could be you could

Caleb Agee 6:20
have had a down year, could have been an awful year, but you can still find something to win. And when you have that gratitude, hey, we just came out of thanksgiving. When you have that gratitude, you can’t completely be pessimistic. It brings hope. If you’re like, Oh yeah, we’ve done some things. We’ve made some progress. We’ve

Brandon Welch 6:35
asked this question in a number of different forms. We’ve sent out surveys, and by the way, with all these, we’re going to highly recommend you send these to your team beforehand, so your introverts can bring good stuff. Yes, your extroverts don’t dominate that meeting. That’s a super big pro tip. Yes, but we’ve asked, What are you most proud of? It is December 31 2023 What are you most proud of in the last 365 days? We asked. I’ve asked it in the past, what did you go home and talk to your family about as it relates to work and the work that you do? Yeah, hopefully they have good things to say, yeah.

Caleb Agee 7:11
So really

Brandon Welch 7:12
take some time to intentionally bring that energy to life and go guys, how do we win? How did you know? How did we not get lost in the weeds, and how did we, you know, become victorious in this past 355, days? Yeah, by the way, we skipped over this, but that is a super big thing in our weekly culture here. And I don’t think you can do that

Caleb Agee 7:34
enough. No, I don’t think you can. We, we take it. There’s, you know, there’s big wins, the yearly wins. We help do that. We help this many companies. We’ve helped grow this way. We’ve maybe earned these revenues. We’ve there. Those are the big wins. But on a weekly basis, it’s Hey, we help this client in this way. Side note, we did this very practical thing.

Brandon Welch 7:55
And I know some people who’ve been part of a company that grew to over $150 million in sales, and sold for between three and $400 million recently, wow, they wrote a book called What Mr. Jenkins told me, okay, and they credit one of the biggest things to their success is they built a culture of winning, and he’s really well known for, celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So side thing outside of your strategic planning, but you should be doing it all the time. Well,

Caleb Agee 8:28
if you look at even, even team sports, you watch a team that is losing, it’s really hard to get out of that rut or lose, or if you’re in a bad in a bad way, if you don’t come out of half time, yes, with a different mindset, focused on we got this, we’re going to do a little bit better. So wins

Brandon Welch 8:44
could be, by the way, just throw this one last thing, wins could be. This team member was able to buy a house. Well, yeah, we these are regular things we celebrate, or new this team member got a new car, got a new dog, had a kid, had a kid. Um, something we count up every year is how many we actually add up all these things. How many? How many new cars are on the Frank and Maven fleet? Not ones we purchased, but yeah, our team, yeah. How many people moved? How many people Nate the camera guy, got a new car? Nate the cameras here he will be in our win. You were annual running report. Celebrate it. That’s mean blue, don’t just go to like the numbers, yeah, because if you if you want to create a culture where people value you for more than a paycheck, then give them more than a paycheck and help them realize more than a paycheck to basket. That’s good. That’s not a tactic you can manipulate people with. But hopefully that’s in your heart, and you just need a little nudge or reminder to articulate and

Caleb Agee 9:41
if you are the first one to lead in that direction, I promise you your team will follow very quickly and go that go to that place. So if you make it bigger than the work, yes, we have a shared purpose, but you make it deeper than that, yes, they will follow suit. You just have to do it leader first. So that’s how did we win? Number question. Number two. So what challenged us so we are not in toxic positivity mode. You know some of you, some of you turned turned us down a little bit, or went to 1.5 speed. You need to slow it down. We’re we’re right here. What challenged us last year, and you’ll notice that we’re spending an equal amount of time looking backwards as we do forward 2023 is just as important to tell us what 2024 is going to look like. What trend

Brandon Welch 10:27
are we on? Yes, what trajectory, what pace, what frequency are we on? Yep, and this is, this is time for accountability. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 10:33
we have to say. What did challenge us? Did we? Did we overcome those challenges? Are we still working through some of those things, hiring, and all of that has been, recruitment has been a big thing for a lot of companies. And so you think about we’ve been talking to some business owners and some leaders in the community, that’s the number one thing they bring up as a challenge, can I keep people in my office? Can I hire new people? Can I find the right people? Are they good people? Yes. What can we see anything next year, like a challenge, a trend, a pattern? Yes, that’s going to show up. Or is there an economic thing, an election thing that’s going to show up next year? Yeah, that will change and challenge us? Yep, absolutely.

Brandon Welch 11:17
Yeah. The thing I would add to that

Caleb Agee 11:19
is,

Brandon Welch 11:23
do this do this part justice. Try to encourage the room to talk about the challenges as it related to your objectives that you set out to do, because I’ve seen this go off the rails, where everybody just wants to air their dirty laundry. And that can, that can happen, and that that that’s not something that should be silenced, but that is not something that is productive in a group setting. Sure, that is something that’s like, Hey, we should talk about that later. And especially if you get two or three people on the same thing, they’re, you know, disgruntled or whatever, sure, and they’re, they’re with an idea that’s, you know, maybe not congruent with the big idea, then you need to have that conversation early and often. But yeah, this is not a airing of grievances. This is a what is hard about what we’re trying to make happen? Yes, yeah, we’re, yeah, we’re

Caleb Agee 12:15
on a path. We’re on a mission. And that’s, I think that’s exactly it, I would encourage you in strategic planning from the highest level to to shrink down the the amount of bodies in the room a little bit. There’s there’s a our friend Randy Mays would talk about bringing everybody to the table. But there is also a level that he would say, as well. You need to have leadership, needs to lead, needs to set a trajectory, needs to set a plan, set a place, and then the how, how we’re going to get there, how we’re all going to come together and do that. That’s when you bring your team in, and if you can paint that target, and you say, Hey guys, I see this. Do you see it? And then they’ll come in and say yes, and I see exactly what we need to do. And usually they’re better at it than you, business leader. They see it on their feet right in front of

Brandon Welch 13:09
them. I’ve made that mistake in the past as thinking strategic planning meant strategic asking everybody what we what we should do next. That has to come from a very small force and a very convicted force. Yeah? So collaboration is not always. Is not appropriate at every level. Yeah? Collaboration on how we get it done. You that’s the only way you should do it. Absolutely, yes, yeah, and, but, but don’t, don’t, honestly, don’t be cruel enough to let your team think they have control or authority on something that you’re not willing to

Caleb Agee 13:45
give up? Yeah, and, and I think it comes back to, especially for most of our people, are more small business entrepreneurs, and especially when you get back to that level, there’s that, that burning ember that’s in the in the heart of it, and that’s actually kind of what the next question is. But do we want to make sure we recall and never lose?

Brandon Welch 14:05
Yes, never lose. So practically, I think that looks like you bring mission oriented things. You bring what we would call in vision values vows in our process. Yeah, the world you’re trying to create, what you stand for, what you stand against, and your vows and your promises to the world, Vision values vows. I don’t, I don’t think those deserve or need collaboration if you are truly leading with vision. Yeah, and if you’re not leading with vision, you might want to find somebody who’s capable of doing that. They say, maybe time for a sabbatical or something, so you can go find yourself

Caleb Agee 14:35
vision leaks. So yeah, um, that was question number two. What challenged us? We kind of just went back to the top, hit the ground rules. Bring a small leadership team together for this kind of strategic planning. That’s that’s the summation. So how do we win? What challenged us? And

Brandon Welch 14:50
what is question number three? Number

Caleb Agee 14:51
three is, what’s the big dream? You’ve probably heard that before,

Brandon Welch 14:55
time or two, a time or two, time or two,

Caleb Agee 14:58
and what we’re looking.

Brandon Welch 20:00
Do 10 things at once, fill one glass at a time. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 20:02
yeah. That’s, that’s so good. I think James clear talks about the 1% rule that he has, which is, a lot of people go, try to go, you know, this month I’m gonna go from zero to 100 and he said, but what if you just did 1% a day, and you’d be, you know, 30 times, if you talk about this year 365 days, you’d be 30 times 365% beyond where you want it to be. And so it’s just 1% doesn’t sound like much. It sounds easy. It sounds you don’t want to oversimplify it, but I think, honestly, when you have that compounding 1% you see the fruit of that is exponential. Actually, it’s not even, yeah, singular digits. You know, he’s

Brandon Welch 20:42
such a great voice and a brilliant man on this topic. Yeah? Atomic

Caleb Agee 20:47
habits, if you want to grab the book, yeah, it’s a good you don’t

Brandon Welch 20:51
rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Yep.

Caleb Agee 20:54
Yeah, that’s that foundation, yeah. How? How’s James clear, by the way, yeah. James clear, how strong is that foundation, that platform, you can stand and slap at some goals, but you have to build up the footing that everybody’s standing on, otherwise you’re really

Brandon Welch 21:10
not getting traction. You’re exerting energy. Yeah, that you are a you are spinning wheel in the mud, right? You might, you might slap

Caleb Agee 21:17
a goal every once in a while, if you hop high enough, but it’d be luck. Not Yes, not on purpose, absolutely. We usually break these goals. This, this one year goals. This is where you’re this is probably what everybody thinks about strategic planning. This is the part everybody thinks about we took three questions to lead ourselves here. Question four is basically, what are my goals next year? Yep, we ask it in a better way, but we usually break this into two lists. One is measurable goals, the other is immeasurable goals. And I think it’s fun to have both. Measurable goals are probably where everybody leads, right? It’s, it’s a little bit more sales numbers. Do we sell these many units? Employee counts? Yeah, yeah. Revenue, close, ratio, percentages, all that, all that stuff, but the immeasurable goals are a lot of fun, actually, and they help, I think, bring clarity for people on the team, especially between leadership, like, Man, I’d really love to see people coming into work on fire about the mission. Yes. Like, can’t measure that

Brandon Welch 22:19
everybody. You can’t measure it on a spreadsheet. No, you can measure it with your eyes. Yes, you can measure it by walking in that room, because I can tell you within four seconds if that room’s on fire, right? Yeah. Other things, like, we want our families to feel more involved and like they matter in our organization, yeah, you could technically measure this one, but it’s also an immeasurable force. We want more referrals. We want people to our customers to feel so on fire about us that they tell the world about us, right? Yes, you’re not gonna see every instance. You could like write down a bullet point on that, but you’re not

Caleb Agee 22:58
putting this on your dashboard, probably. But if you do keep it in front of your eyes, you can acknowledge, man, I feel like our team members work life balance is stronger. They are going home. I see, you know, I see so and so hitting the T ball games and, yes, getting to have date night with their you know? I think that’s,

Brandon Welch 23:17
that’s the way, if you’re celebrating wins weekly, you’ll see those things is measurable. They’ll come back up. Yep, that’s a sign of a healthy person who’s not so distracted by work that they can’t be in their most important spot. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 23:30
but let’s take it back to the measurable goals. I think it’s important to have, what do you think? Three to five? Typically, you don’t really want to go much beyond five, because you’re making just a target a little too confusing.

Brandon Welch 23:44
And I’d say, I’d say two or three. Tom Douglas did this brilliant one. He had the most succinct way of saying it, 123, by 23 years, 23 or something like that. It was. And he had just a specific one was this, two is this? Yep, two and three. Yeah, one, two and three. And everybody could repeat it like, I don’t know how many hundreds of people are there, yeah, but I would say clients and employees. And he was not afraid to say it to everybody. This is what we’re doing exactly, yeah, keep it tight, make it clear, and then visit it often. Yeah. Last thing, tie it to the mission? Yeah, because if it’s just sales and it’s that’s, that’s not something that people can see their individual purpose. And usually, maybe a sales person could, because they can see how they can maybe take, you know, more for their family at those numbers, but tied to the outcome. Yeah, we are trying more and more and more, I would say, ever since we’ve, you know, started to say, is this on mission for us? Is this letting us do our best work, which is what our calling is, which is to help entrepreneurs confidently grow their business? Yeah. And believe it or not, everything in marketing is not contributing to growth in a business. A lot of it is distraction, and a lot of it is, yeah,

Caleb Agee 24:58
yeah. So. Yeah, that Yeah, is it tight to your mission? Yep. And if you don’t have that clear, make sure you visit that as well. All right, that was question four. And the last question is, am I willing to be committed, consistent and coachable? I love this one, and this is something Brandon, I think you brought it to our team a couple years ago at a team building day, one of

Brandon Welch 25:26
my favorite coaches I’ve ever had taught me this framework, the 3c to mindset change. Yeah, I think this is overlooked by a lot of people. I think we take this for granted, for clarity, committed looks like, okay, there’s this whole, I think we’re all aware of it. There’s this whole new year’s resolution, like toxic goal language that we just throw out and nobody believes it, probably not even the people saying it believe it. Sure. But saying I want to do something, or I this is my goal, is totally different than saying it will happen. I’ve already decided this will happen. Yeah. And you look at somebody, look at people who have dramatic physical changes in a positive direction, yeah, they do not wake up asking themselves, do I feel like working out today? Because the answer is especially early on, yeah, hell no. I don’t feel like working out today, right?

Caleb Agee 26:24
I’m not going to bed though, yes, without working out. That is how they think.

Brandon Welch 26:28
Okay, so that’s that’s one, that’s one way to do it. Or I’ve decided that I will wake up at 5am because that’s what healthy people do. And I have decided I’m going to be a healthy person, yeah, or I have decided that I’m going to have a date night one night a week with my wife, because I want a strong marriage, and that’s what people strong marriages do, yeah? I have decided I will set aside 15 minutes for daily prayer and meditation, because I want to be a person of peace and impact. And that’s what people of peace and impact do, yeah? And you say, I have decided that is what’s going to happen, and just changes the psychological thing of that, and that is called being committed. Um committed literally that you have let it take you captive. You’ve let that future reality take you captive. That’s good and like, it’s not kind of like being committed to an insane asylum. You are committed to your new world, right? Yep, and daily choice is not part of that equation, or sorry. Daily emotion, sorry, it’s the word I was looking for. Is not part of that equation, but daily choice, pre decided choice, pre decided destiny. Is there? So are you committed? Do you really want this? And actually, while we’re on that topic, I think there are people listening right now that don’t really want the things that they’ve said out loud they don’t know how to reconcile with what that even means for them. I think it happens a lot with our culture that is trying to climb a ladder and is trying to be able to say things that impress their friends and trying to be able to say things that other people and peers have said. And yeah, that sounds good. Well, I want that too, and I’m not saying that they can’t go get it, yeah, but I’m saying, Do you really want it? You want it? Well, you said worth committing your life. Will you

Caleb Agee 28:04
enjoy it? Will you enjoy the fruit of of that? Yes, pursuit, yeah. And I think a lot of times, people sign themselves up, they write a check. They didn’t really want

Brandon Welch 28:13
to catch That’s exactly right, yeah, they didn’t. They, they, what they did is they swiped a credit card and they didn’t want to pay that debt. Yeah, later, and it’s going to come for you. Yeah. And we’re getting real philosophical real quick, so that’s okay. I’m going to bring it back a little bit and say, be committed. I think what it takes you see people, I’ll just use the physical metaphor again. You see people that get to a point and they there is not an ounce of them left in them that doesn’t want the thing, and they’re so sold out to that new reality that that’s when you see him lose 100 pounds and become like, you know. Arnold Schwarzenegger, yeah, that obviously has not happened to

Caleb Agee 28:58
me, but it is the

Brandon Welch 28:59
thing, because I think if the thing is not worth giving your life for, that is your biggest struggle. Is it worth it? Is maybe the biggest question before that, yeah, do I really want that? And I think in our industry, and just being a CEO with peers that are CEOs, I have, I have actually learned over the years to separate myself from people who have goals that I’ve realized that I don’t really have. And there’s a ton of it marketing. There’s a ton of people saying, grow, grow, grow scale, and get

Caleb Agee 29:27
every client and contract you could ever touch. And it’s like, while

Brandon Welch 29:30
they were eating, oh yeah, yeah. And it’s like, yeah, do you really want it? And that’s that could be a cop out if you’re, if you’re, if you’re just not being honest with yourself, but, and by the way, my Lamborghini is a helicopter, so I do, I do intend to have one, acquire one of those machines, and you know, when it’s appropriate, but, and try not to make it material. That was just a, just a funny example. But do you want to something we’ve just. Be honest. Talked about here. Do we want a 50 member team? Do we want that? Yeah, or can we have bigger impact with 20

Caleb Agee 30:12
and so

Brandon Welch 30:15
back to committed. That’s the first step. It’s not a daily choice. You’ve decided what you want to do. Decide it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of just a matter of time. And inputs, which leads to the second thing your inputs, which is consistency. Are you committed and are you consistent? True story, this beast of a book, I tried my way to to write it, and this, all this, credit goes to Ashley Mansour, who is the best book coach and probably the best mindset coach I’ve ever encountered, definitely the best book coach in this country. By the way, drop me if you’ve ever wanted to write a book and you’re stuck, I need to get you with her. So whoever you are, I don’t know if care if you know me, or you don’t know me, or whatever, I’ll get you with her. Yeah, but consistency, it’s easy to write your first 10,000 words of a book. Just ask me. I did it about eight times, and it’s easy to get passionate for two weeks and just plow through because it’s on your mind, it’s bottled up, and you’re pissed off that you don’t have this thing done. And then you go, Oh, well, I got all that out. And then, you know, some kid gets sick, or some client wants to move their meeting to 7am and so you gotta, you know, just that, or what everything happens in your world, yep. Or some employee quits, or whatever, holidays, or holidays, or just whatever, whatever happens. And you all of a sudden stop showing up. And then you lose the passion, and you go, Oh, well, maybe I didn’t want to write that anyway. And then you start writing again, and then you write your next 10,000 words in about seven months, when you realize you’re pissed off again you didn’t write the book. And it’s just this passion thing. And passion when you have those moments, don’t get me wrong, they can move mountains, yeah. But people that get skinny, we’ll go back there again. Do not run a marathon one week and just decide they’re going to do that. It is a daily showing up. So am I showing up in the same place, in the same time, in the same way? Yeah, regardless, yeah. So I’ve already decided I’m going to have it. It’s just a matter of showing up and putting the inputs in, taking a little whack out of that tree where I can knock it down. That’s that 1% every day that James clear is talking about exactly same thing. You will find that all these they all line up, Master gurus are anchored to the same wisdom. And I happen to believe that that is biblical, but we won’t go into that. Okay, so don’t wait to feel good, feel inspired, show up and use the book as an analogy. I learned that if I did not show up for one hour every day at the same table in the same coffee shop to do something my my requirement was that I had to write 1000 words before I could get up. And I spoke that out loud to everybody who knew me. I said I spoke it into existence, yeah. And so they kind of knew, Oh, boy, he’s serious about that. Actually, they didn’t think I was serious at first, and then maybe after like, four weeks, like, okay, man, he might be serious. He might be doing this, but you speak that and you say, I’m going, I’m gonna anchor time for this. Yeah. I think if you’re a business owner, forget about the book for a second. I think that looks like check ins with team. Yeah. Caleb is so brilliant at that here. He toes that line, I think that is setting aside time to work on your business, whatever that means, either financially, you’re not going to miss your meetings with your accountants, and you’re not going to have things crammed up against them, or your marketing people, or your marketing people you know who you are. Shame on you get consistent. Would you up total. Side note, we’ve used this principle to filter in and out clients. It’s like, if you’re serious about your business, you’re going to be committed. We’ve already said it’s going to happen. Talk as if it’s going to happen and you’re going to be consistent. That’s why, when you become a frank and Maven client, you get Tuesday at 330 is your time. And yeah, Dad gum, we’re going to show up. We’re going to be here. Yeah. And our world, for your world, operates on that pace, and we hope that that it actually has done remarkable things over the years. Yeah. Instead of saying, Oh, well, this month of men on a Tuesday, what would you like to do next month? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 34:11
no, we pre like, if the first Tuesday of every month, you can ask

Brandon Welch 34:16
clients that are we have calendar invites for kind of infinity, really? Yeah, and it doesn’t mean we can’t pivot or when certain things come up, but you’re showing up in the same way, in the same place, ideally, at the same time, to make progress. Guys, that is so, so powerful. And I’m that is the opposite of my nature. My nature is, when I’m passionate about something, get out of the way, because I’m gonna knock it down, and I’m gonna exert all my horse on it, and then when I do that, I’m empty and tired for like a week after that. You gotta bottle that. You gotta throttle it and try to spread that butter a little thinner, yeah? Like it’s like three analogies, right? Three, bottle, throttle, just butter, just. Stack them. Okay, you’re committed. You decided it’s going to happen. You’re consistent. You show up every day in the same time in the same way to make progress. Three, possibly the most important of all, you’re coachable. Entrepreneurs who have this leading vision out of them tend to not want to stop and have to bring the world up to their pace or their conviction, and you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t bend on a conviction. I’m not saying that. However, you ain’t that smart, and there is somebody that has done this before you either in your same industry, or, maybe even better, an industry that has tackled a problem that is not common in your industry but is facing you. Yeah? And they can see things you can’t because you have your blinders on and you are a bullet headed for the wrong target. And they’ll be like, tweak it this way, just a touch, yeah, and if you I’ve learned over the years, there are people that show up and they’re never going to be they’re likely not going to be aggressive and say, you need me, and I’m going to drag you out of bed and make you come to coffee with me. But they are dying to help you. And if you take that initiative, and I’ve elected three very, very key people in my life, different season, but it tend to be the same three. And if you’re not making some sort of regular effort, go back to that consistency thing, to get a coach to look at you and help you through. And just bounce your ideas off of man, I think you are losing half your efficiency. Yeah, you’re probably headed in the wrong direction. Yeah, and elect him for different areas your life. We have mentors in our life, for marriage. Interviewed one last week, Dr Steve rice. He’s a mentor on so many things, spiritual mentors, business mentors, financial mentors, and it’s probably not always going to be the same person in every area. And don’t give them authority where

Caleb Agee 37:10
they don’t deserve authority, sure.

Brandon Welch 37:13
Um, eighth camera guy is my camera mentor, for sure.

Caleb Agee 37:16
Um, makes us look good. Um,

Brandon Welch 37:19
but have one, and I will suggest at a certain level, even if you have really good peers, and even if you’re a really good networker, you’re going to encounter a obstacle in a season where that free help is not going to do the whole job, and you’re going to have to make some room to pay somebody to show up for you in a in a more powerful and focused way, yeah, because there’s support. Actually, I have a frankly, Friday coming up that’s called mentors versus coaches. And every person has a different job, right? But sometimes you need literally, a coach or somebody who can like, go, No, this is our goal. I’ve done this 800 times. I don’t have all the time in the world. I’m not your friend. I don’t go to church with you. So you can pay me $20,000 a year, and I’ll help you solve this problem, and you’ll make your next million, but you gotta let go of that 20 grand. Yeah, I’m saying so. I’m proud to say we are that for people, and our entire organization is that in certain categories. And I’m also very, very proud to say that is something I learned, even before I started this company, that you have to let go of some money, and you have to put some sort of time and probably money effort in the ground

Speaker 1 38:37
for yourself to get that push, yeah? So committed. You’ve already decided it’s happening consistent. You’re gonna show up every day and take a chunk out of that coachable. You know, you don’t know, and you’re gonna find somebody who knows, yeah, so then get you your next thing, yeah, drop your ego. That’s great. I think that’s the

Caleb Agee 38:59
the danger if you don’t have those 3c intact is that you painted that target and you hung it up on the wall, and you leader. You’re the one developing these, these goals, this future, this big dream that we’re all running toward. If you didn’t decide pre decide that all three of these things were true, you will come in to work without the fire. Everybody else is hopefully running with it. But like we said, Vision leaks and that that, like you could pump it full up at a team building day and it that balloon is is hot, but you got to keep pumping it up, or else it’s going to keep leaking out. You know, I’m

Brandon Welch 39:39
saying this podcast is a perfect example of that we show the same time, same place every week. Yeah, generally.

Caleb Agee 39:46
Hey, guess what? I think this is episode 25 of the Maven marketer. Can you believe it?

Brandon Welch 39:51
It is. Yeah, I was about to say this episode 2025 but we were committed. We decided was going to happen. Yep. We gave ourselves room to make sure we could make. Happen. We show up every day, and then we got a coach. Thank you, Alex. Yeah, Alex is the reason we have a lot of the structure and the look and feel this podcast, and she ain’t cheap if you need somebody to help you, like, hone in your worth it, though. Like, she’s kind of a marketing person. We’re marketing people. We still hired a coach, right? Yes. She’s a brand and marketing person, Alex shower by the way, showerbranding.com or shower brand CO or something like that. Look up Alex shower. S, yeah, C, H, A, U, E, R, I think so she’ll come up. You’ll find her. She’s brilliant. Thank you, Alex. And yeah, yeah, anything that is going to have any sort of greatness that’s going to those components are going to have to be up there, if you wish. There if you wish to

Caleb Agee 40:43
sustain all right? So here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get your leadership team together. You’re going to gather a few voices. You’re gonna pre send these questions to everybody so they can either write down notes or turn in notes. So you can you could do either way. You could do survey style and gather them. I don’t really care, just as long as long as introverts have a time to take you know their own before an extrovert speaks and shifts the whole room. You want to make sure an introvert has a has a time to pre decide, and then you’re going to ask these five questions, how did we win? What challenged us? What’s the big dream? It’s one year from now, our life and our business are exactly where we hope they’d be. What happened to make that true? And then last Are we committed, consistent and coachable?

Brandon Welch 41:31
One last side thing, if you need a facilitator, and I would actually recommend everybody gets a facilitator, we do at least once a year. Yeah, we would be happy to do that for you. Yeah, that is a service we can provide,

Caleb Agee 41:45
and we do. You can email us through our website, Frank and maven.com or a direct email would be Maven Monday at Frank and maven.com yes,

Brandon Welch 41:52
if you’re lucky, you’ll get Caleb. If he’s busy, you’ll get me. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, please hit the subscribe button so you can see all of our newest episodes. Subscribe to our email. There’s so much extra good stuff and links to other things that are, frankly, filling us up. So if you want to know where we get the gas tank filled, we’re given those quote, unquote secrets and those email lists. And we would love some more five stars. The five stars died down a little bit that would help us hit the New Year with vigor and share it with your friends, because we believe we’re making an impact. We know we are, but yes, we’re hearing Yes, and this is our mission, to make business owners better, to make you more confident, to make you take the guesswork out of growth. And that’s just something. We’re on fire here. So I hope you’ll agree that that we’re fulfilling that mission, and it would be a blessing to us if you would share that with other people. Yeah. So send all your questions to Maven Monday at frankon maven.com We’ll be here every Monday answering your marketing and advertising questions because marketers who can’t teach you

Caleb Agee 42:51
why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.