Coming to the end of the year. And that's always, either exciting time or frightening time, depending upon kind of where you're at, what your goals are, what you achieved for this year 2021. I always look at the year in reflection about the last two weeks of every year, so we're right at that time. So what I want to do with the next five episodes is talk about what my process is for preparing for the next year. Like building a plan for next year. You've heard the old adage, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, and that's exactly right. Now, the key to any plan is being able to adjust, being able to make changes, being able to pivot those types of things. Because look, I had a plan for 2020 that I put together in 2019, and in fact, publish a plan with my team, like we were focused on a few variables, this little thing called COVID happened, and that tore the plan to shreds. Now, to be clear, we got really close to hitting our number. I didn't really accomplish many other objectives that I wanted to accomplish for that year, but we did get close to hitting our number. And so it's very important, number one, to prepare a plan. Number two, very important to understand how to pivot and move. So let's talk about how to prepare your yearly plan as we're going into 2022, finishing out 2021. The first thing that you have to do is find your numbers, know your numbers, know your numbers on a daily basis, monthly basis, yearly basis. Know your numbers down to the metric, know your numbers. So what numbers should, you know, number one, you should know your average ticket, and I would do this across a couple of solutions, one average ticket per service, and one average ticket per customer, so that, you know, every customer brings you in this amount of money. Every service brings you in this amount of money and you should know that average ticket to a penny. I talked to business owners, a daily basis. I ask them this question almost the first one that comes out of my mouth, what's your average ticket? And 70% of people do not know their average ticket and probably 90% don't know their average ticket to the penny. You need to know your average ticket. How do I find out my average ticket? Well, the easiest way to find out your average ticket per customer is go find out how many customers had, how much revenue you had divided. The one into the other boom bada bang, but the best way is to have a software, a CRM that helps you track that. And if your CRM does not help you track average ticket per service per customer, find one that does. The next number you should know is your close percentage. What percentage of your leads become customers very important? And you should know your close percentage per lead source. So Google should have a close percentage, social media should have a close percentage, referrals, repeat. The list goes on and on close percentage macro, close percentage micro, same thing with lead sources. Where do you get your leads from? How many leads did you get from those sources? And what percentage of those lead sources represent your overall leads? What's your profit percentage per service? Per service, what's your profit percentage? This will help you. This will be eye-opening and helping you determine if a service that you provide is really something you should be providing, or if you're not charging enough for it. What is the cost per lead per source? So you have different sources, how much do those sources cost you per lead? And there's always a cost. What is the cost? And be honest. Well, I don't have any costs related to repeat business. Are you marketing to them? Are you sending them emails? Is someone taking the time to send the email, make the call, send the tax? You do have costs. What are the costs? What is your customer value for 2021? What amount of money per customer did you make in 2021? This isn't lifetime customer value, this is annual customer value. And then finally, what is your daily break-even? How much do you have to make at a minimum on a daily basis to keep the lights on, to be able to continue to the next day? What is that daily break-even? Get these numbers, put them in a spreadsheet. You're going to have multiple spreadsheets. I can tell you that, you're going to have a lead source spreadsheet. You're gonna have a customer spreadsheet. You're gonna have an average ticket spreadsheet. Like you're gonna have a ton of spreadsheets, but you need this information in one place, so you can look at it, so we can hit the next part of what we're going to do for our plan, but go find your numbers. Know the numbers daily, monthly, yearly. Get these numbers, put them on a spreadsheet, lets DMN8 the day.