Ronan (2:25)

I was just. I was just about to. You beat me to it, John. It's funny you should say that because I was just thinking that, that, you know, when you think about our members and the work we're doing and the fact that, you know, they're talking to us about when do I start my Facebook campaign? At Christmas, so that, you know, I'm fully booked for the end of January and February. What? They're already booking people in early December for the first two weeks of January. So they're busy all year round. So I think, Janine, you know, we've, we've, much of the industry has, believes that there's no work in the first quarter of the year, the first month of the year, first two months of the year, because of the reasons you just said, you know, and it comes down to just when does your year start? And that's why we love the 12 week year, right, because every three months is a year and we take that as a start.

Jonathan (3:23)

Yes, talk to me about that. What do you mean every three months of the year?

Ronan (3:29)

Well, the psychology behind it, and I'd love to say we invented estrogen, but we didn't, Right, Jonathan? But the 12 week year is a principle of shorter fast sprints, right? And it's based on the human, the natural human reaction that often we're procrastinators by design, right? Often we're procrastinators by design. And what that means is we might have a plan to do within a year's framework and we know what's on our list. And sure, it's February, I have plenty of time to get that done, you know, and then you get to May and you go, oh, haven't started that yet, but I still have plenty of time to get it done, right? And then you go, oh, it's September, I'll have plenty of time to get that done. And before you know it, you're in the busy, busy, busy, crazy season and it never gets done, right? So the 12 week year is you, you, you attach your mindset that the year is a three month period. So it's a three month sprint. So rather than a 12 month journey for a year, it's a three month. And you take the same approach as you do currently to your yearly processes and you do it every three months. That's a quick summary, Jono. But all our inner circle members know how to do this and implement it in their business with all the tools we've given them and all the planning tools we've given them and all the support we give them to implement it. And with our accountability edge call every single week to make sure that we all do what we should be doing. And if we get stuck, we're there without to help us solve it.

Janine McLeod (5:08)

Well, the other thing I like about the 12 week year too for the two of you is that when you're trying to, to stay on track for a year, like you set your overall and Ronan does a great job of walking all the members through, setting your overall goal for the whole year, right. For the calendar for 2026. But when you break it down into the 12 week year at the end of January, if you're off target, you can course correct at the end of February, if you're on or off target, you can course correct the end of February. Right. And so when you're, when you're in there every week and every month checking because the quarter is a year, you're not halfway through June. Oh man, I am so far behind in 2026. What am I going to do? You know, much harder to course correct, much harder to make changes, much harder to figure out how you can catch up with when you, when, when you haphazardly just decide to check your accounts or check your, your, your business. So when, when it becomes a habit that everything is condensed into a shorter timeframe and you're weekly and monthly checking the status of every, all your actions, your to do list and your financials, then you become in a better habit to be able to stay on track and course correct as needed. And all businesses need to course correct. Just a way of, especially as things are changing so quickly in the world and with technology and with business, which we're going to be talking about in some future podcasts. But the faster things change, the faster you have to stay on top of it.

Ronan (6:39)

Yes. So Jonathan, we have this overall process because we have these four 12 week years within a calendar 12 months. Right. But we also then for the last 12 week year, which we're in now, right when we're starting to look at a new year, we're also doing extra things that we don't do at each other. 12 week year within a 12 month period. Yeah. So one of the things that we did with our members in October was as part of our 2026 planning, we started to review our five year vision. And many of our members said, so, okay, this is my first time to do this, but why five years and not just two years? And why do we have to revisit our five year vision every year? And there were two really interesting questions and of course the answer is that two years is two of a short period of time to actually have a Vision that stretches your mind, right, because it's so close, we're not able to get into that bhag mode, that big hairy, audacious goal mode, right, of setting a vision for what we want our life to be in five years. But it's important as we get through the first year of a five year plan, that we review the five year plan again and make it out another year, right? Just because things can change, right? Like I've seen people where, you know, they want to create a massive business and then something happens in life during that year where they reevaluate and say, do you know what? That's not what I want now, you know? And so you have to adjust your five year vision to go with, in case there's been a life change of some kind or you've changed your perspective on something or you've won the lottery and you no longer want to build that massive business or whatever it might be, right? Something might happen that caused you to change that. So that's why you need to review that. And the idea of big hairy, audacious goals is that there's no limitations, right? So we encourage you in that when you're looking at your five year vision, that you don't take anything that you've experienced to date and put any limitations on your thinking.

Jonathan (9:03)

So is that the first step in planning for 2026 or is that just something you just do yearly in the final year of the year? Gets confusing with all these years.

Ronan (9:15)

Yes, yes. So we only do the five year visioning once a year, which is in the fourth year, 12 week year of a calendar year, which happens around now, right, October, we do it in October.

Janine McLeod (9:30)

Q4.

Ronan (9:31)

Q4, we do it in October, during October. So once we've done that, we also, a lot of people, our new members each year may not have yet discovered their why, their purpose. And for me, that's a foundational thing that you have to do because if you don't, you don't know who you want to serve and how you want to serve them and you lose motivation. Because often, Janine, we see this all the time, right? We have members who've come in and they're doing not to pick on newborn photography, but just let's say they're newborn photographers, right? And they're newborn photographers because they were at a training session years ago and someone told you this is a great way to make loads of money and that was their motivation. And as Simon Sinek, who is the leader in this area, teaches us, money is the Result, Right? It's the end result. But the. It's the end result of having a true why and purpose as to what difference you want to make to somebody on this planet.

Janine McLeod (10:42)

And you're, you're, you're, you're. You hit the nail on the head there, Ronan, because we see it. I've seen it over the years with so many photographers I know and with myself before, I really honed in on my why. When you're not sure and convicted of your why. When you don't understand your why, you. You flow like the wind. You hear a good idea. Ooh, let me try that. You see a way that people do their pricing. Oh, I better do that. You hear how a product that you should offer, oh, let me add that in. It'll make all the difference. I mean, you know, the list is endless. And until you have your why to check it against, you'll never be certain in what you do. So not only does it allow you to properly run your business, to know who you are, allows you to run your business with conviction and to only introduce into it things that coincide with your why. Don't agitate it or go against it. And then it allows you to. To. Like we do a lot of podcasts and a lot of teachings in the inner circle about marketing. It allows you to be able to talk to, in your marketing to your ideal client avatar when you understand your why. So there's so many reasons. So it is. It is a building block for being able to plan your year if you haven't done it yet. And even if you have, you know, it is a matter of we as a team, for difference makers. Every year we reevaluate. And while we all still have our same whys, really, we kind of adjust, though, what our. Our goal for the year is, what our word for the year is, what our mantra for the year is, you know, and so that allows you to refocus and reset your mind, but you can't do it without knowing your why.

Ronan (12:21)

And here's how you know if somebody knows their why. So when you meet somebody. So if you meet a fellow photographer and you say, so what do you do? If they say, I'm a photographer, I'm a wedding photographer, I'm a newborn photographer, I'm a commercial photographer, I'm a headshot photographer, I'm a branding photographer, I'm a whatever photographer, then they don't know their why. Because the question that we would ask you is, okay, that's great, you're a wedding photographer, so why Are you a wedding photographer? You've told me what you do. I'm a wedding photographer. I'm sure if I ask you, so how can you do it? You'll tell me how you do it. Oh, yeah, yeah. My clients book in and I meet them for a consultation beforehand and I figure out then what's important to them. And then I make sure then that I get a list of those that are important to them. I make sure I take a photograph of them and all those, all those people that are important with them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. So you're able to tell me what you do. You're a wedding photographer, how you do it. Right. But if ask you, so why are you a wedding photographer and why have you chosen to serve that particular bride and groom? That's a different question, isn't it? And most people haven't quite figured that out. And you know what? That's okay. That's not just unique to our industry is as Simon Sinek tells us, it's small percentage of the population who actually know why they do it. But he also gives us great examples through history of companies and people who. When you know your why and all of your marketing leads with your why, then everything changes because you're connecting with people who believe what you believe. And as we know, in doing client avatars, and we talk to our members Janine and Jonathan, often when you look at their clients, their clients are actually people like them. Right? So if you think about the fact that when you lead with your why, you attract people who believe what you believe. Right. And you know that and your marketing speaks to them, well, then they're gonna, that's going to be part of your client avatar makeup. And as we know, we teach photographers to understand what your client secretly wants because that's what they truly value. Right. Well, I believe you can't do that unless you know what your why is. Because how can you discover someone else's why if you can't discover your own? It's not possible.

Janine McLeod (14:56)

That's a really good point too, Ronan. I don't think a lot of people view it that way.

Ronan (15:03)

They're connected because it's one big circle. All these things are one big circle. They live on their own, but they're all connected. And it's like a wheel, you know, your bicycle wheel and there's spokes in it. If a spoke breaks, often the wheel collapses and it won't turn. Right. And that's why all these may be individual spokes. Knowing your why Knowing your idea, client, avatar, known all that, but they're all connected. The wheel will only turn if you've got all that figured out. And that's why we build it into the planning process, Jonathan, is just because we get many new members every year, right. And they haven't yet gone through their why or discovered our why and we help them with that. Right? But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really important just to review it. And then often, sometimes people forget about their why. You know, we're busy, right? We're running businesses, it can be pressurized sometimes and then we just forget our why. Why are we truly here? And that's why I encourage people every day to recite their why to themselves and remind themselves of it. Like there's mine, it's there behind my desk. So when I come in every morning I see it, I'm reminded of my why. So that's the why part of the 2026 planning. So what's your vision? Checking on your why, that you have your why. And if not, put a plan in place, that's one things you're going to do. And they're the first two things we do in 2026 planning.

Jonathan (16:42)

All right, so sounds like a lot. So what then do you do? Do you like look at the first quarter? Do you look at the overall year? What's the next step in making sure that I'm ready to rock in 2026?

Ronan (16:57)

Well, I think you have to look at the years of totality first. So you have to look at your years of totality and see that one, that what does the year look like? And I actually start in reverse with this. So I believe that your business is a separate entity from you and your business's purpose is to provide you with the life that you want to have. And if you think about it that way, if you know the life you want to have and we do this in divisioning, so what life do you want to have in five years time? And how much does your business have to pay you to make sure you have that life? And then if we take it to a year. So on your journey to your five year vision, what do you want your business to pay you this year? And if you can put a figure on that, we're able to with profit first percentages, right. We're able to link that owner's pay, which is what your business pays you back to what you need to have as a total revenue. And then it becomes easy because once we have that Target. Right. Once you have that target, we can figure out then. So how much of that revenue are we going to get in each of the four 12 week years or each quarter for those who aren't yet tuned into the 12 week year? So from January to March, what percentage of that revenue is going to come in in that month as my target or percentage going to come in from 1 April to the end of June, 1 July to the end of September, and then from the final quarter the first of October through to December. So now I have a plan for my first 12 week year, the 1st of January to the 31st of December, I have a number. And all I have to know then, Jonathan, is what's my expected average order value that a client will invest with me? Because once I've got that number, if I divide the amount of revenue I want to do in January by that number, I know how many clients I need to serve. How cool is that?

Jonathan (19:16)

That's probably a word I would not choose, but yeah, it's super cool.

Janine McLeod (19:22)

Now, I was going to say. And what's even cooler, if you want to use that word, we could put on our sunglasses and be all cool, is when you know your average order value and you know how many clients you need. There you go. Let me find mine too. Hold on, hold on. I have.

Jonathan (19:36)

At least you have a need for yours in Florida. Like, I mean, it's, it's raining outside here. Like it's around even as is.

Janine McLeod (19:44)

Wow, I can't put them on top of my glasses. Here we go. We're being cool. What's even cooler and even more cool than knowing your average order value and how many clients you need? When you know what your conversion ratio is from lead to booking, then you know how many leads you need to gain in that month in order to achieve the number of bookings to get your average order to hit your revenue goal for the month. So extra cool.

Ronan (20:10)

And if you're not listening to us, if you watch us on YouTube, you can see us all now wearing our cool sunglasses. And if you see us, you'll say, I'm not believing a word out of those crackpots, mates. All right, so, yeah, but you're writing, you know, once, once you have that, once you have that revenue target, you know your average order value, you know the number of clients you need to serve, and you know how many leads you need to get from your marketing to deliver on that. Now you've taken a total plan for the year, brought it into a 12 week year, a quarter brought it down to a month. And now you know exactly what you have to achieve for that month to actually deliver on January, which will leave you to owner's pay for January. Yeah. And you repeat that 12 months in a row and you've paid yourself what you wanted to pay yourself. How cool is that?

Janine McLeod (21:02)

So, Jona, what Ronan is saying is it's so much cooler than just wishing and hoping that the plan you put into place will come to fruition.

Ronan (21:10)

Hope is not a strategy.

Janine McLeod (21:12)

Not a strategy, it's not a plan. It's not even a tactic.

Jonathan (21:17)

So Janine, what do you have planned for your first year next year? Anything exciting? Any big growth plans or.

Janine McLeod (21:27)

So what's interesting is, you know, a while ago is when I had done this plan. Oh my God, it's like 16 years now when. Oh no, it's even more. Next year is our 20 year anniversary for the studio. So pretty cool. So I. Congratulations.

Ronan (21:43)

Thank you.

Janine McLeod (21:43)

Thank you. So I do have some plans in place for our 20 year anniversary, but it's 18 years ago now. Oh my God. That's what I was just like. Oh, when you think about the years and they did this fly. It was 18 years ago when I had looked at our, our years. Our, our four years in a year, right? So our quarters. And I was like, man, Q4 by far always has been our, our most revenue generating quarter. And I was tired of being in this, the first quarter sucked mode. Right. And I was only after two years in business, I'm like, this blows, man. I can't live in a business where the first quarter has nothing. So I need to find a way to replicate in my first quarter something similar to the fourth quarter without having Christmas. Right. To generate things. Well, guess what? Easter also turns out to be a pretty big driver. And spring, Right. And I know in Florida people laugh. We really don't have spring. We just have hot, hot and hotter as our seasons. But we do have spring as far as holidays go and Easter and things like that. So I looked for a way to generate a need and a desire for people to do something celebration wise with their children in the spring. And so that's when we started our baby doc portraits. And so every year since then, that's what we're, we're already working on what we're going to be doing for our baby ducks. It's always the first two weekends in March and everything drives towards that. And March becomes. March is just as big for us as November. Between the school photography we do for spring portraits and then as well as our baby ducks in the studio. So we already have the things in work for that. And that realization, like I said, we came upon 18 years ago. And the good thing is once you start creating plans like that, you just execute on it. And every year we just execute on the plan. Every year we make it a little bit better, we tweak it, we try to get more profitable, we try to be more smart with our marketing. We always try and get a little smarter and a little wiser and increase our goals each time. But the plan is there in place to execute, and that's what makes it systemized and brilliant. I love it.

Jonathan (23:46)

With that plan, do you ever, like. So you have your plan, do you ever struggle to actually execute it? Because I feel like a lot of people can have a plan and they might have a rough plan, but they're afraid. And they don't pull the trigger on executing the plan because they're afraid of failing. So how do you deal with that?

Janine McLeod (24:09)

So I, I never have had a fear of failure. That's. I don't mind a failure, right? So to me, a failure is only a failure if you don't try something afterwards. It's just a stepping stone. So you got to get rid of that fear. That's business. That's life. Anybody who plays a sport, you're gonna feel. I heard a great quote by somebody, by the way, this past week, and they were. It was someone who the season came to, and I wish I could remember who it was and I need to look it up. But he was interviewed and they said, so are you looking at the season like a failure? He's like, why would I do that? He's like, michael Jordan was in the NBA for how many years and he only had X amount of championships. Does that mean every other year was a failure? Right? I mean, that would be crazy to call Michael Jordan a failure, right? Just because some you don't win at all every time. So anyways, you got to strike that out of. Out of your mind that if you don't. If something doesn't execute the way you thought, it's a failure. It's just a stepping stone and you learn from it and you execute better next time. But for me, I am a action taker to doer, so I really like to break my projects down into doable tasks. And I am a task maker. So I have my projects for the year broken down into projects for the quarter, broken down into tasks and projects for each month. And. And that's how I Come up with my weekly tasks because as you know, Ronan, how do you eat an elephant?

Ronan (25:30)

One small piece at a time, Janine.

Janine McLeod (25:31)

One piece at a time. So.

Ronan (25:33)

But Janine, there's a really important thing that you've just said that maybe some haven't heard. And I think we need to just wind back the clock a little bit. Right. A really important thing that you said. So for me, I've had a business that failed. I've had successful businesses. Right. And the one learning for me has been that a business that has continuity is much easier than the business that needs a new client every day. Right. And many photography businesses I see, they're built on, we need to find new clients all the time. Right. You found a way to not only bring your a large proportion of your client back year after year after year after year. Right. But you found a way where even attracting new clients, when they come in, they want to come back year after year after year. And not just year after year, but you often get many of your clients to come back multiple times a year. Right. So when you talk about one of your strategies of baby ducks, right. And it repeats every year, for me, that's like continuity, not just from having clients come back over and over again. Right. But source of continuity from you're not trying to reinvent everything all the time. You know, you, you mentioned that. Yes, we look at it to try and improve it, but we just executed it again with improvements. Right. And, and you know, I know you've clients who have been coming to you for 16 years for baby ducks. And the kid was one or two and they' now 16 and they still want to come back because it's part of their year, right?

Janine McLeod (27:22)

Are you kidding? We've joked about taking the baby ducks on the road to the college dorms. So the kids who have had pictures of the baby ducks that are now in college, we can bring them and we make a joke. I actually might do it this year because Aaron's in college and I think it would be wildly amusing. But. But yes. So you're right, Ronan and the. It's interesting because as we've talked with our members this year about Christmas and so many of them hadn't even thought about Christmas before. And so to Jonathan's point, I think I've become. I do it so regularly, it just is. It's habit now. And so to see people struggle with how to put together a plan for Christmas, it's made me realize how much help people need, that not everybody is good at putting together a project and a plan and task to execute on that plan. And I love helping people do that. We, that's one of the things that we do and difference maker with our inner circle members is we help them create their plans, create their weekly tasks and execute on them and hold them and hold everybody accountable. And so it's part is the wonderful thing about being in a community of task oriented folk is that and mentors, right? Because we help execute.

Ronan (28:33)

That's important, Janine. Because, you know, I think it's actually built into us because if you think of most of the people in our industry, right, we're creatives first, right? And creatives get bored easy and they think they need to reinvent everything every single time, you know, and if you even think about our approach to photography, often it's built around that, right? But business is different. Business is about getting clients back over and over and over again. So you're not constantly trying to find new clients. It's, it's about taking something that works and doing it again. Don't try and do something new. Just do what worked again and tweet it.

Janine McLeod (29:13)

Do what works. Just do what works. It might be boring. And Jonathan says it all the time, right? It might be boring. Getting, executing, finding a marketing strategy that works and executing on it every day. But that's what builds your business. You don't have to be fancy, you just have to do it and get it done right and be consistent.

Jonathan (29:34)

So I think on that note, we should say that to make your plan and to get help making your plan for 2026, you need to be inside the inner circle. So all you need to do is click the link below. Join the inner circle. We can't wait till see you on the inside.

Ronan (29:52)

We'll see you there. And we wear our sunglasses too.

Janine McLeod (29:55)

Yeah, we'll bring sunglasses. We're cool like that.