656: How To Prepare Your Business For A New Year... Start NOW!

January 1 is too late to begin the annual preparation for your business. Studying the habits of elite military and sports organizations you will see a theme of early and relentless preparation; a willingness to bypass the chaos of the moment and all of the random fire-stopping that comes with it, and instead electing to focus time and energy preparing for what is coming. In business, we have a poor habit of future preparation and instead give ourselves to chaotic duct-taping and a strategy of “crossing that bridge when we come to it”.  You can do it differently and reap the benefit of early preparation with the satisfaction of long-term predictability.   What you plant today will be harvested 3, 6, 9, and 12 months from today.  If you plant chaos today, chaos is the rotten fruit that will be gathered on the ground.  If you plant repetition, predictability, and meaning today, the robust and fulfilling fruit of preparation will be harvested and replanted over and over. Every year beginning in November, we walk our heroic clients through a thoughtful series of exercises to get them equipped for the coming year in an event called ANNUAL PREP WEEK. The name is a bit misleading in that we now spread the work out over a series of three weeks (we used to do it all in the same week). Our solitary focus is to liberate owners from chaos to make time for what matters most. The purpose of the BOP ANNUAL PREP WEEK is to provide one place each year for each owner to master plan the next year. We have structured PREP WEEK over a series of three days (one per week for across three weeks), and ask for a distraction-less two hours each day. The first 20 minutes of the two-hour block is spent on a Zoom meeting in a mastermind including every client that BOP serves across the country.  We use that time to inspire, instruct, and provide the action items that will be required of each owner for that day. Each owner will then break from the Zoom meeting and spend the next 100 minutes on their own, with no distractions working through the various elements based on the theme of that day. Day One of ANNUAL PREP WEEK is a day spent on preparing and tweaking each owner's Vision. During their 100 minutes of day one each owner will work first on reviewing,  tweaking, and updating their vision story. They will then begin writing an annual letter to their team reflecting on the year that has gone by and casting vision for what is coming in the next year. They will then open their culture calendar and update any cultural ingredients they want to ensure get embedded into their business culture for the coming year. Finally, on day one, each owner will send out the Healthy Employee Engagement Survey.  This is a twice annual survey of their team to determine the backend health of their business based on the perspective of their team. A week later, we follow the same outline; 20 minutes on a group meeting via Zoom and then 100 minutes of undistracted, focused time and use that time for a powerful time of Financial preparation. Most business owners go into each year hoping for the best with their fingers crossed instead of a budget set. During Financial Prep day each owner will first go back and evaluate their subdivided bank accounts and tweak the percentages placed in each account and in some cases add an additional account based on the goals set out in their vision story. Once updated, each owner will then open up their Level Two Dashboard.  This is a simple dashboard that tracks the flow of cash within each bank account week by week.  It is a real-life gauge of the finances of their business in REAL CASH.  They will use this time to update their tracking dashboard with new accounts or percentages. Finally, each owner will go through a simple process of allocating dollars towards a basic budget for next year giving a snapshot of where all revenue dollars might be allocated based on the vision they have written. Down the final homestretch, we lead each owner into Day Three of Prep Week with a focus on the future legacy of both the owner and the business. After a powerful and final 20-minute Zoom meeting with all owners, each one heads off into a healthy time of solitude for 100 minutes to first review their own weekly schedule.  How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.  It is a sobering exercise to ask, “How am I spending my day?” Next on Legacy Prep day, we have each owner walk through a sequence where they reach out to supportive 3rd party professional advisors (legal, insurance, financial, etc.) to ensure they are adequately diversified, protected, and equipped to deploy their assets in such a way that will ensure the vision they wrote is obtained. Finally, in what has become the most invasive and freeing moment of PREP WEEK is when each owner sits down to have a necessary financial discussion with whoever they share their household with reviewing their personal budget to ensure it aligns with their personal vision.  We call it the Financial Barn discussion. Many couples are not in the habit of having this important conversation, so BOP helps to coordinate what could otherwise be an awkward time. Life and business necessarily intersect, and PREP WEEK is a repetitive, predictable, and meaningful way to liberate owners from chaos by allowing each to thoughtfully prepare and enter into a new year. When do you begin?  Now.