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Omar Zenhom (1:07)

Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And in today's lesson you will learn why August is such an important month in business. Typically, most of the world takes August off. It's like the holiday month in Europe. Many people in North America take their vacations in August. But for you and I, striving entrepreneurs, August is a critical month in business. I'm going to explain why in today's lesson. It's actually two big reasons. What you decide and what you do in August can dramatically affect the success of your business now and in the future. This is not the month to be chilling. I'll explain why in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. August for me has been such an important month in my entrepreneurial career. And I'll explain in today's episode why it is for you too. Let me start with the first main reason why August is critical. At the start of August, you got five months left for the year. That means most of the year is done and dusted. And most of us, we set out at the start of the year and say, you know, 2024, these are the things I want to accomplish. These are the milestones I want to this is how much revenue I want to make. This is how many customers I want to have. These are the hires I want to make. To be able to grow my business and be more productive. We all do this. And August, for me, is the month where you get real. And you ask yourself, how on track are you with those goals? Are you at least halfway there? Meaning if your revenue goal was to increase, let's say, your sales by a million dollars this year and you've increased it by 300,000, you're behind. If you had four hires in mind and you've only made one, you're behind. If you said, I want to increase my email list by another 10,000 emails and you only got 4,000, you're behind. Now, this is not the episode where I get you depressed. No, this is where we get real and we start to really buckle down and see what we gotta do so that we hit these goals and maybe even surpass them. What I've done in the past is I. I take a look at all the things I said I wanted to do, and usually they're documented, because, like I'll mention in this episode, planning is important. And outlining where you want to head and what you want to accomplish is so important because it gives you direction. I look back at these things and I say, okay, how far am I along with these goals? And I don't like to set out more than three big goals for the year because it allows me to stay focused. Any more than three, it's very hard, it's very overwhelming, and it's not really realistic. So for me, three goals might be increasing revenue, it might be increasing listenership here on the podcast, more downloads. It could be pieces of content I produce. The point here is, is that I have already set out to say, hey, these are things I wanna accomplish. I take a look. I say, all right, I'm ahead here, I'm behind here. I'm on track here. I then see how. How much time I have left, which is five months till the end of the year. What do I need to do this month, next month, the month after, and so forth to hit my goal. So say, for example, your goal is to increase your revenue by a million dollars this year. And let's say you're at 400,000, so you have $600,000 to go in this increase or jump in revenue. You have five months to do that. That means you have $120,000 thousand dollars in extra revenue that you need to earn to hit your goal. Now, what I like to do is I like to add 10%. This is just my thing. You could take it, you could leave it. But I like to add 10% because it gives me a little wiggle room just in case things will go perfect. And as planned, I still hit my goal. So I'll add 10% to that. So in this example, 10% to 120,000. So it's 132,000 instead. It's better for me to exceed the goal than for me to come up short. So I then say, what do I need to do to hit that number? What are the actions I need to take? What are the initiatives I need to make? Who can take out these actions? Who can do this in my team? Who can I hire to get this done? Is it an agency? Is it a firm? Is it one hire? I get really practical because we can all look forward four weeks out, right? A month out and say, okay, I know what I need to do. And these micro goals allow us to really focus in on what I got to do. So, okay, I gotta hit this revenue goal. Maybe I need to hire a couple more salespeople. Maybe I need to run a few more ads. How much revenue will these ads get me? And you just break it down. It's all numbers. So August is a great month for you to say, hey, am I on track? Am I not on track? If I'm not, what do I got to do to hit it month over month until the end of the year? Don't give up. Don't fall in the trap where people change the original goal to allow them to feel successful when they came up short. I rather not change a goal and come up a bit short than change the goal and shortchange myself and kind of fake congratulate myself if you totally overshot it. No worries. Try your best to hit that goal. And then next year, which we'll talk about, you'll adjust your planning, you'll adjust your goal setting so it's more aligned with your reality. So first big reason, August gives you a chance to have a reality check, understand where you sit, and understand how far you got to go and what you got to do to hit your annual goals. To me, this is super exciting. This gets me pumped because I'm like, yes, I know what I have to do. I can do this. While everybody's laying on the beach, I am making it happen. All right, next. The second big reason why August is such an important month in your business is because this is where the next year gets made. Yep. For me, August is a month where I get strategic, where. Where I start to plan out with my partner, Nicole. What do we wanna accomplish the next year? So this August we're planning 20, 25. What are our goals? How many days off do we wanna have? What do we wanna accomplish? How do we wanna spend our first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, you name it. And we use something called the preloaded year. We learned this from our friend of ours, Dale Beaumont, who runs Business Blueprint, one of the biggest business coaches in the world. And basically he loads up the year in advance. So the first thing he does in the preloaded year is he looks at the calendar for the next year and he decides, how many days off do I want, how many holidays, how many vacations, how many long weekends? And he fills that out in the calendar first. So say, for example, you say I want to take six weeks off next year. Okay, where are you going to spend those six weeks throughout the year? Are you going to do two weeks in January and a couple weeks during Easter, and then you want to do maybe two weeks in September and then another two weeks in December? No, that's eight weeks, guys. No, the point here is you need to first allocate the time off, make sure that you're getting the rest. And this is where you gotta start thinking about when do you normally get burnt out? How long does it take? And you want to kick it back a few weeks and make sure that you get your rest before the burnout happens. So if you know that you can really go hard for eight weeks, but after that you need a break, then take three or four days off, take a week off before that happens. So the first thing you fill out in the preloaded year is the time off. And then any big events, any big travel events for work, business trips, conferences, speaking engagements, put those out, even if you haven't bought a ticket yet. Where do you want to go next year? What conferences do you want to attend? And then you fill out your preloaded year with the big projects you want to accomplish. When are you going to get the things done that you need to get done to accomplish the goals you've set out for the next year? Plug it into the calendar. If it's not in the calendar, it's not happening. And this gets done during the month of August. Why? Because you're going to have some discussions with your team, especially your management team. What direction do you want to take your business in? Where do you want to see yourself at the end of next year? What are the wins you want to celebrate? And then you work backwards on making a strategic plan for, for your business, on how you're gonna do that. And this is usually gonna include A few projects. So say, for example, you wanna launch a new product in your business. Well, how is this product gonna get developed? How is it gonna get launched, marketed, sold? These are all kind of mini projects. For this one project that you're going to initiate in your business. These need to get plugged in the calendar so they get done. Why are we doing this in August, Omar? Well, this is very important because what's gonna happen is that it's gonna take some time for you to plan out the strategy and then you're going to figure out, wow, I need more resources to pull this thing off. So you might need a few months to make some hires. You may need a few months to vet out an agency to help you out, or some sort of company that's going to be able to assist you in the marketing. For example, you might need time to train your team on what you're about to do. Let's say you're launching a YouTube channel and you need to train your team on how to upload videos to YouTube and create descriptions and tag and all that kind of stuff. And this is what the rest of the year is for. Why? Because you don't want to have to do this work at the start of the year. Because what happens is you're going to be in the same place you are right now. What happens is you say, we want to do all these great things and you start working on it, you start planning it, and you start preparing for it in January instead of August of the previous year. And what happens is you're about four or five months behind before you even get anything done or put anything out in the world. So you want to make sure that by January 1st, after you enjoy the new year, you are hitting the ground running. You are producing already, you're not preparing, you're not planning, you're not hiring somebody for this or going through that process. You are already prepared, all set to go. You are now implementing. You want to get all the planning done, all the preparation done, so that you're in what I call worker be mode. I learned this from Chase Reeves, where you want to be beforehand CEO mode, where you're planning, making strategic decisions, hiring, doing all that kind of stuff. And then worker be mode, where things just get done. And you want to be worker B mode from January 1st. You don't want to do all this planning and preparation after the new year. You want to do it before. This gives you an incredible advantage and a leg up and a better chance to hit those goals and accomplish those projects. In a timely manner. If you want to start a business, that's great, that's amazing. It's ambitious and of course a huge step. But you also want to keep your personal information secure. That's where Northwest comes in. They're the partner you need to have the privacy you deserve. In just 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you'll form your business, create a custom website and set up your local presence wherever you need it in an all in one easy to use account. You can even protect your identity and keep your home address private by using Northwest's address on your formation documents. And I love this about Northwest. They have this premium mail forwarding service. 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He's generally considered one of the greatest visual artists of all time. If you haven't seen Rembrandt in real life, I highly recommend you find a museum in your area that has a Rembrandt. It's incredible to see in person. But the reason why it's called the Rembrandt Month for me is because Rembrandt was a savvy business person. He actually built a considerable amount of wealth as an artist, which was rare back then. And it's because he spent a lot of time in convalescence, in planning, in strategic thinking, in being creative with the way he wants to approach his art and his business of art. And many people think that his work, the actual painting, is incredible. But he's been known to say that his work is great not because of when he's painting, but when he is actually thinking and planning and being strategic about what next piece to create. So, as entrepreneurs, we're often doers. We want to get things done, we want to put things out there in the world and we want to go, go, go. And that makes total sense. And I agree, most of the time, I am a doer. But August, I'm a thinker, I'm a planner. I'm gonna measure twice and cut once because the time and effort I am going to put into this is gonna really impact the success of the next year, the rest of this year. So I gotta control myself and not be like, oh, let's just get it done. No, we have to be strategic about it. Take the time to plan, to document, to write things down, to figure out exactly every step of the way, how we going to do this? It's got to be clear as day. It's got to be like a manual to success. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Hope today's episode was helpful. If it was, why don't you share it with a friend? Send it over. Send them a link from Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you like. Let them know that you're thinking of them. And hey, why not check out this episode before I go, I want to leave you with this. I mentioned, you know, while people are, you know, enjoying the beach, you're working hard. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the beach. But one of my favorite things about being an entrepreneur is that you make your own schedule. I'm not going to go to the beach and go on holiday and go to these tourist destinations in the high season in August where the whole world is visiting this city or town, whatever in the world. I have time, flexibility. I'm going to go in the shoulder season. I'm going to go in September. I'm going to go in May. I'm going to go when things are far less expensive and far less crowded and much more enjoyable. Take advantage of being an entrepreneur to its full extent. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.