Episode 166: How To Make An Annual Plan That Works w/ Frenchie Ferenczi
Thinking about planning your year and analyzing your business so you can set yourself up for success for the next year? A to-do list is not a plan, so today my guest will show you exactly how to start and make an annual plan that actually sticks and works!
Easy Tips for Crafting an Annual Plan That Boosts Your Business Success
Prioritize PR, SEO, email marketing, and social media to support your sales funnel.
Begin with measurable goals like revenue growth or audience expansion.
Use data to assess successes, failures, and guide future efforts.
Limit your focus to 1-3 impactful strategies aligned with your goals.
Align initiatives with lead generation, nurturing, conversion, delivery, or retention.
Focus on scaling core offerings to build a strong, sustainable foundation.
Planning ahead doesn’t have to be overwhelming—just keep it simple and focused. Whether you’re aiming for more revenue, better leads, or streamlined products, clear goals and sticking to what works can drive big growth. Simplicity scales, so focus on what truly matters and treat your business like a system that thrives with the right care and tools!
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Resources Mentioned:
Join the PR Secrets Masterclass
Join the Small Biz PR Pros Facebook Group
DM the word “PITCH” to us on Instagram to get a pitching freebie https://www.instagram.com/gloriachoupr
Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriaychou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/428633254951941
Follow Frenchie Ferenczi on Website: https://www.frenchieferenczi.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frenchie.ferenczi/
Stay Close to the Money guide: https://join.frenchieferenczi.com/money/
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Transcript
00:00:00 Gloria: Hey, small business heroes, welcome back to Small Business PR where we make PR marketing super accessible for the everyday small business owner. So I have my personal friend here who also is in New York with me. Her name is Frenchie Ferenczi and she's a brilliant business revenue strategist and she... I just love the way she thinks. The reason why we recorded this is because at the time of recording or towards the end of the year and this whole concept of planning the next year, how do I set myself up for success? How do I take a 20,000 foot view of my business? That is really going to determine whether or not you will make wins in this year. So I'm so happy to have her on to talk all about annual planning. So welcome to the show.
00:00:38 Frenchie: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. We are diving into one of my favorite topics to really dig into because it makes such a difference in how we enter years when we plan ahead as we start the year. So super excited to dig into this and be here with you.
00:00:52 Gloria: So I have to be honest, I'm not the biggest planner. I always call myself a type Z personality, like my spewing all over the place. I'm like last call boarding. And so that's why I'm so happy that you're here to also direct me. But before we get into it, can you just tell people a little bit about your wealth of experience? Because I'm really impressed by all the things that you've done.
00:01:13 Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. So I come from a background in startups. I spent about 10, almost just over 10 years growing and scaling startups, mostly in New York City. Most recently, I was the head of community at The Wing, which is a women's co-working space. I grew The Wing from 3,000 members to 12,000 members from four locations to 11 locations internationally. And I just have this really deep knowledge of high growth businesses and organizations.
00:01:39 Frenchie: And when I left The Wing and started consulting and supporting small business owners, what I really wanted to bring was all of this experience and all of the work that needs to happen and that we should do in order to grow and scale our businesses and actually streamline it and simplify it and make it super accessible and digestible for small business owners who don't really have the time, the resources, and sometimes the know-how to veer off course and mess it up. And so I'm always looking to make sure that I'm helping people do the right work at the right time so that they can see massive results in their business.
00:02:13 Gloria: I love what you said about making that accessible because you're able to see businesses doing millions and millions of dollars who have a lot of employees. And these are business fundamentals that you're saying also works for small businesses, right?
00:02:25 Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. I actually think that a lot of times small businesses need them even more because a lot of small businesses have less runway, less capital to work with, fewer resources. And so as small business owners, we need to be even more laser focused on the important work. Otherwise, we don't really see the results that we want. And obviously, that can come at a huge cost.
00:02:50 Gloria: I love that so much. Okay. So now you're getting me all excited, even though I'm not a planner. You got me excited to plan. When we think about the word annual plan, I think, oh, it's gonna be a big one. Like I'm gonna have to clear my schedule. And like, how do we even get started? Like how can someone that's listening to this podcast, who maybe has never done an annual plan, how should they think about it so that they're on the right track?
00:03:11 Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to answer that question. I just want to say one thing is that when I was working in startups, I remember distinctly being in this conference room one day and hearing ambulances go by and like everyone in the room was like, what's the strategy Frenchie? What's the strategy? And I was like, kept communicating the strategy. And then I was like, why is nobody hearing me? And I went home that night. It was like 3am. I Googled what is a business strategy because I couldn't sleep because I was so stressed about this meeting. And I was like, okay, this is exactly what I was communicating to people.
00:03:40 Frenchie: So I just want to start by saying demystifying strategy is really important to me because I think sometimes it can feel like this big overwhelming thing. It's like capital S strategy and it's like some big secret. But I actually think we all really have the tools and information that we need in order to develop our strategies. So if you feel overwhelmed by it, I just want to normalize that even people who consider themselves experts in it, like myself, have been in that place where we're like, oh my gosh, what does this even mean?
00:04:08 Frenchie: But in terms of where to start, so I always start at the end. Where do you want to end the year? What is the goal, right? And this is, I'm gonna talk about this from the 30,000 foot view, because I want it to feel as simple as possible. So what I typically see people doing when they're thinking about building their strategy is they start thinking about all the work that they need to do. I like to start with why we're gonna do all of that work. Right, it's gonna get to a specific goal. Whether that goal is the most often it's a revenue goal.
00:04:39 Frenchie: Sometimes it will be a product split goal. So I know people who have, let's say, brick and mortar stores and e-commerce, and maybe they want to go from being 80% brick and mortar sales, and 20% e-commerce sales to being 50-50. So that might be how they look at their goals. But we have to start with what do we want to end the year with from either a revenue perspective, an audience count perspective, a revenue split perspective, or otherwise. That's really what we…because then that number or that result starts to inform everything else. So if you're leading with the work, you're going to get tripped up somewhere. So start with that endpoint as the initial piece.
00:05:23 Gloria: I love that. Okay. So let's have an example. I want to increase the revenue for my products by, let's say, I don't know, 12%. And then what? I have that number.
00:05:35 Frenchie: Okay. So you have the 12%.Now, we go into what I like to think about as like my impact framework, right? So impact, right? We're looking at the impact and we're thinking about what are the needs. And so that's really where we have to dig into analyzing and analyzing is looking at what has driven your sales so far this year. So you teach PR. I know that your clients have seen massive results from getting PR mentions, from getting different form, different ways of getting their brand through, whether it's like podcasts, I imagine TV, print, et cetera. Right?
00:06:07 Frenchie: If you as a business owner are trying to increase your sales by 12 percent and you saw a huge boost from one PR hit this year, that is a data point that you want to use. And so you really start to look at in my business in the past year, how… what have been the key drivers of sales for me and then really start to identify what those are, right? This is before you plan anything, but you want to see what has worked and also what hasn't worked, right?
00:06:33 Frenchie: But looking back at the ecosystem of your business, where did you spend your time? What drove results? What didn't drive results? And what did your audience love or not love, right? So let's just say you have multiple products and one sold really well and one didn't. Very interesting data to look at, right? So we wanna identify those needs. From there, we really wanna think about, okay, I see what worked, I see what didn't work. Now, how do I actually start to map out my strategy? And the first step in mapping out the strategy is to actually think about on a quarterly basis or an annual basis, depending, right, and I don't want to get too lost in the weeds here. What are the one to three priorities that me and my team, if I have a team, are rallying around?
00:07:20 Frenchie: So let's just say PR has been a huge driver of sales for you, that would be one of your priorities. And you are putting that on your plan. I'm going to make sure that I'm prioritizing pitching and PR on a regular basis. If email marketing has been really effective, effective for you, you're going to put that on your plan and make sure that that is what you're consistent with. If you have noticed that there's a certain time of year where things are really slow, for example, you might decide that one of your strategic priorities is to do something differently during that slower time of year, right? So you can fill in the gaps.
00:08:00 Frenchie: So just to kind of give an example there. Maybe rather than doing a big new product launch in Q4 when you're busiest, maybe you're going to think about doing a product launch in Q1 when it's typically slower to drive that boost in revenue and so that your revenue is more consistent across the year. So you really start to think about what the key priorities could be. But the thing that I want to be really specific about here is that this shouldn't be 17 things. Right? And I think that's where people get tripped up is like, it all feels important and all feels on that. Our strategic priorities, which are the areas of work that we're defining and we believe would be most impactful on hitting, let's just say that 12% growth number or whatever that end goal is, need to be limited and focused. And then we have our business as usual work, right? There's always the business as usual work and that's ongoing. But our strategic priorities are typically new efforts or efforts that we're expanding in order to drive our results.
00:09:10 Gloria: So just to clarify, I always say to people, if you have more than three main strategic goals, you just have a to-do list. Would you say three is a good number? Or do you have a range? Anything more than five is too many? Give us some more specifics on how you like to frame it.
00:09:25 Frenchie: I really say one to three. And I think that over the course of a year, I think three is good. I think quarterly, sometimes it's just one. If you have a launch-based business, for example, your strategic priority for a quarter will typically be that launch. And there's nothing that is actually more important than that. In general, I would say one to three because we're all running businesses that take up a lot of time.
00:09:51 Gloria: So aside from the fact that we need to drive impact from those strategic priorities, we also don't always have the time to do more than three extra or new or strategic priorities well. And so you also have to think about on top of the business that I'm already running, how much time and bandwidth do I have to work on new initiatives or new efforts that might drive those results? Because not all of us can always just take on 17 more things anyways, even if they all sound like nice to do, which is why we have to go back, look at that, analyze the data and the insights that we have about our audience and our sales and think about what efforts are worth repeating and which efforts are not. And typically, I don't even see people getting to more than three of them.
00:10:38 Gloria: I'm going to stop you right there because when you said one, I know anyone that's listening is like, but I'm doing 17 things all the time, all day, every day.
00:10:45 Frenchie: Yeah. We all are. I think that the difference is knowing, one, what's business as usual, what’s actually a strategic priority. And from there being like one strategic priority at a time is actually like a shift. It's typically a collective effort across your team. And just because a lot of the work that you do is strategic or a strategic part of running your business doesn't always mean that it's this like strategic priority that is that you are believing or investing in in order to drive this growth in your business in revenue.
00:11:24 Gloria: So an example is like one of the strategic initiatives can be SEO and in SEO you have PR, you have maybe, you know, hiring an assistant to like get the SEO and meta tags on your YouTube better. So would that be a big strategic initiative and underneath it there's all different categories that it touches?
00:11:41 Frenchie: Exactly. So you start with the strategic initiatives and then as you're looking at your plan, right, once you settle on what you believe are going to be the highest impact strategic initiatives, then you start to go into the planning and thinking about, okay, what are all the things that feed into these larger strategic initiatives? And that's why I say, oftentimes one is enough or two are enough, because like you just uncovered, you say SEO, and it seems like a one and done like checkbox thing. But then when you peel back the layers, suddenly you're looking at PR, you're looking at website copy, you're looking at all sorts of different areas of your online ecosystem and the impact that it has. And so, the more you can actually go deep on a couple things, the more likely you are to see the results you want from those things.
00:12:32 Gloria: So, so good. I hope whoever's listening and multitasking comes back because Frenchie has worked with startups who have scaled to millions of dollars. And if she's saying it's true, it's definitely true. It's better to do a few things well than do 20 things, but just make very little incremental things. So you've worked with companies who have many strategic initiatives. Can you just list out like the top ones that you can think of because for people who are listening to this and still think that they don't need to go home and pick their strategic initiatives, we are giving them no excuse. So can you list out some of them? And I'm sure one of these will resonate with some of our audiences.
00:13:04 Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a couple ways to look at it. The first way that I want you to think about it is actually through the lens of the impact that those initiatives have. So typically, when we're thinking about growth initiatives, we're looking at five areas of impact. We’re either looking at lead generation, nurturing our audience, conversion, delivery, or upsell and retention, increasing the lifetime value of people. So when I think about strategic initiatives, first, I want to make sure that they're tied into one of those five areas. So for example, maybe PR plays a lot of purposes. And so I just want to be mindful of that. But let's just say you're thinking about PR as a lead generation tool, right?
00:13:48 Frenchie: Then what you're measuring that against is actually lead generation. But some people might realize that they're actually not increasing the lifetime value of their customers. And so maybe their strategic initiative is really thinking about whether they might launch a subscription model so that there's recurring revenue happening from each customer, or whether they create an engagement sequence that drives more renewing purchases or more purchases from individual customers rather than just focusing on the individual customer acquisition.
00:14:20 Frenchie: So when we break it down into these five core areas, then we can get specific in terms of, to answer your question, what are some strategic priorities that people tend to focus on that I've seen work really well? So one is the moment that you are either making big changes in your product suite, that is a strategic initiative in and of itself, right? And that's typically gonna land around this conversion point in your business. And what you're trying to shift is how many people actually who are in your world end up buying your thing, right? So that's kind of like how I would fit it into those five core functions of marketing.
00:14:55 Frenchie: I think some people have really solid businesses that nurture people really well. And like people who find out about their products instantly buy but not enough people are buying. So that's where I would look at other initiatives like really doubling down on PR. Like I said, I think other growth initiatives like collaborations, influencer partnerships, that sort of thing would be really, really good growth on the lead generation side.
00:15:18 Frenchie: In general, I think those are everything like, I mean, this is just how my brain works, but I'm always like, go back to the impact that you want it to have, right? So our strategy is around results. Our strategic initiative is around KPIs. And so even if you say SEO is like one kind of target of yours or one strategic priority of yours, you still wanna know what you're measuring when you implement it to see, for example, okay, I invested in SEO so that when you go back and analyze it makes sense. So I invested in SEO this year. I saw a 12% as a result, I saw 12% growth in revenue, or I invested in SEO this year, I saw an 8% growth in revenue.
00:16:00 Frenchie: But what I also saw was a huge increase in leads that I didn't, that was unexpected. So we want to make sure that we're also not just setting those top level strategic priorities, but also understanding what we're measuring when we do them so that then when we go to plan again, we're actually, we get more and more insights to leverage and use for our own growth.
00:16:23 Gloria: I love it so much. What about, so, you know, one thing people always say is like social media content, and it kind of gets all jumbled in this big marketing bucket. Can you help us just like tease that a little bit because I think people are so confused about how to measure their marketing, whether it's working, or even how to think about marketing properly.
00:16:40 Frenchie: Oh my gosh. I mean, yes. So okay, let’s go back to the five core functions in general. If you take anything away from today, just make sure you remember those five core functions, I would say. Because when I think about money first marketing, it's actually to your exact point, not jumbling marketing into one big bucket, but actually being like, if I'm on social media, am I creating content for organic reach? Or am I creating content that engages and nurtures my audience? Or am I creating content that's just designed to sell? And there's no necessarily right answer depending on the business. We kind of see what the best answer is for them.
00:17:13 Frenchie: But I think that in the overall jumble, what happens is that people don't know or haven't paid attention to the role that different channels play in their business. So I'll use myself as an example on this one. I've always created a lot of content on Instagram. In the past year and a half, I realized that Instagram was nurturing my audience but was not necessarily growing organic reach for me. And so what that meant...there were a couple takeaways that I had from that.
00:17:42 Frenchie: It wasn't great on the lead generation side, but it was really good on the nurturing side, which was like driving conversions for me. And so when I realized that, I realized, okay, this means that I can create a little bit less content because I'm not looking to have the organic reach. I'm looking to use this platform to build relationships with my ideal customers and sell to them. And that doesn't require so much content as it requires connection and conversation.
00:18:08 Frenchie: So that was a big shift in the role that Instagram played in my own business. Other people see a lot of organic reach and Instagram becomes like a top of funnel lead generation tool for them. And then that drives people into their freebies or their websites or their products. So seeing, looking at what you're already doing, look at the marketing efforts that you're already doing, whether it's email marketing, SEO, press and PR, social media, and actually try to go back and follow your customers' journeys through these channels.
00:18:37 Frenchie: What happened? Did they just find you organically on Instagram? Did they start following you on Instagram and like your stuff? And then did they convert through email or otherwise? Did they find you organically on a Google search? So look at a few of your dream customers if you have that, or a few people who have like the dream journey and try to figure out what steps they took to come into your world, what actually motivated them. And you can also do customer interviews to start to get this information.
00:19:04 Frenchie: Where did they find out about you? When did they or what moment in time did they realize they wanted to buy it from you? When did they actually buy it from you? How was their experience buying from you? What else did they end up buying from you? And really the more you can understand that journey, then you can start to tease apart which parts of your marketing are serving which core function on that journey overall.
00:19:24 Gloria: Oh, it's so good. I actually like to ask that as the first question. Anytime I get on a call is how did you find me? And you can obviously automate this. If you're an e-commerce, you know, like you can just put it like a form embedded on a website or on your newsletter. So I love that so much because that's going to tell you if the podcast that you're on are what's converting or if it's Instagram or if it's through an ad. So it's so key what you said.
00:19:46 Frenchie: Yeah. And then again, what do you do more of, right? I'm a big believer in like, keep doing the work that works, but we have to be able to uncover what work is working.
00:19:55 Gloria: Okay. So you've given us a lot to think about in terms of how to think about, you know, annual plan with the end in mind and then not confusing your to-do list with strategic, you recommended no more than 3, probably 1. Big strategic initiative per quarter. That's usually what the big companies focus on. Is there anything else that you think small businesses get tripped up when they think about planning their year and setting themselves up for success?
00:20:18 Frenchie: Yeah. So this is where things usually go off the rails. Once we've been able to trim the to-dos and make sure that it's strategic initiatives and not just a long to-do list, then it's actually being aware of...do I have the resources to execute on this or not? That is where the big mistakes tend to happen, is over committing in your strategic plan and or not including acquiring resources as part of your strategic initiatives. Hiring someone to do some of the work for you can be a strategic initiative because it unlocks so much potential for you and for your business. And so the thing to think about is you make a plan based on your current state potentially.
00:21:03 Frenchie: And then you think about one, can I execute this myself or with the team that I already have? If not, what resources do I need to integrate into this plan in order to make this achievable? That can be full-time hires, that can be consultants, that can be all sorts of different things, that can be tools and softwares that would unlock some automations for you. But we need to plan for the resources required to execute before we can even start the execution piece, which is also where things fall off the rails. But first is like...could I actually achieve all of this? Like, could I do all of these things that I am setting out to do or not? Because if you can't, that's totally fine. But then we need to scale back and make sure that what your strategic plan is fits into your capacity and the capacity of the team that you already have.
00:21:52 Gloria: I love that so much. Let's talk about capacity because I think we as small business owners, we feel like, maybe we don't feel like it, but we act like we have 50 different limbs and brains and we're just doing everything. And I was actually on a call yesterday with one of our members and she has a multi-seven figure business and she grew very rapidly. And she has like 70 different colors and types and shapes of the products that she sells. And she says the reason that she's not letting go of it is because she's afraid of letting those people down who wants those shapes and colors even though the bundles make her so much money. So what do you have to say to that kind of, that kind of attitude and behavior of like, I know this is selling more, but I don't want to disappoint the people who want this shape and color.
00:26:36 Frenchie: Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. A couple of things. This is where I love data, right? And this kind of like need to look at facts is something that I'm obsessed with because as entrepreneurs, our feelings get involved all the time. That's normal. There's no shame in that. But I've sometimes find that the best antidote to feelings, or the best way to talk ourselves off the ledge is with the facts. So for someone in that position, I would really wanna understand, like to your point, it seems like you dug into this, but what is actually selling, right? Is this you being worried about disappointing a couple of people? And if so, that's fair, and you can proactively think about what you would do to mitigate that disappointment.
00:23:17 Frenchie: But for your business overall, look at the numbers and actually look at what is selling, what is driving the most revenue for you and let that inform your decision. And then I think how you handle the journey for the people who you worry might be disappointed is part of our job as leaders. It's part of the kind of delivery piece of the overall customer journey that we're thinking about. But I think in terms of just overall these decisions, we should never be making decisions just based on our fears, based on our feelings. We always want to make sure that there's enough data that we can pull and look at to just be like, this is a no-brainer choice. Trying to think of a good comparison to this. But it's kind of like going to the supermarket without a shopping list. You end up with all the random things, but then you forget the milk.
00:24:18 Frenchie: And I think there's a similar thing when we're making decisions about our product suites or just different parts of our business and how we show up for our customers is that we kind of go into it from this feeling of like, I'm just going to walk through the shelves and figure out what I need to do, rather than ahead of time being like, what is the data telling me that I need? And then how do I actually shift and adapt to that? And then I think being customer centric is such a critical quality in leaders. But then it's not about not disappointing people. I think it's about knowing how to be really mindful about the fact that and show people that you care about them, even if you're just continuing the products that they might love most.
00:24:58 Gloria: Yeah. And I told her, I'm like, you're not a McDonald's. And if you can make a lot more money bundling, then why have them pick and choose? Because in that process of picking, they might leave the website. And so at every time, there's drop off. So I think one of the things that I've learned building my business, even though it's not a physical product, is like, the less offerings you have, the more simple it is, and the more simple it is, it can scale, right? Like simple scales, fancy fails. So it's the same thing no matter what type of business you're in. And I'm sure you've seen it too in the startups, that the ones that scale really fast, they're only serving a niche, a very small sector, but they're doing it really, really well.
00:25:36 Frenchie: I mean, Glossier is such an excellent example of this, right? Where they... I mean, now they have a much bigger product suite. But when they started, they just had a few things. And they built their entire brand and business on just a few items. And then they added. But they created so much momentum around each new product because they had created such strong brand loyalty, such strong engagement with what they were developing, they showed the thought and care that went into the development of each product that then when they added new products, those products were instantly purchased by their super fans. And so I think sometimes for product-based businesses, it's easy to assume, okay, more things, more choices are better.
00:26:17 Frenchie: But actually, when I look at a lot of the brands that have just thrived, the physical product brands that have thrived. What you see a lot of is actually…I mean, Spanx is another example of this, starting with one product. A lot of them start with really limited product suites and build the brand affinity and the brand trust and the brand relationship, and then potentially expand their products down the line.
00:26:39 Gloria: Well, I feel that so much. And we also always in our entrepreneurship circles talk about the shiny object syndrome and how that's really just a deterrent. And if you really want to scale, it’s going to get boring or you're probably going to be doing a lot of the same things. You're not going to be involved in a lot of different product launches of new things, but you're just kind of making what you already have working, but just making it work so much better. So it's really about having that discipline. And then also knowing that your needs are not what the business needs. And the sooner that we can separate that, the more a business can... You can make decisions from a very objective place instead of like, well, I don't feel like doing this today. It's like, well, the business doesn't care what you feel like doing or not.
00:27:18 Frenchie: Well, and I think...all of this is kind of coming back to something really important to me, which is like, when you think about your strategic priorities, especially if you are a product based business, your strategic priorities don't need to be new products. I have a client who is an architect, she sells, you know, digital plans. So it's not quite a physical product, but she's sometimes we get into these conversations and she's like, should I make a new plan? Because she's an artist, she's excited to make new house plans. And I'm like, no, we need to streamline the selling machine and the marketing machine on your existing plans. And then we can start to add new ones, but you don't need to have, she has, I think, three plan options for different size houses that are beautiful, that are selling really well, like we need to actually focus on different marketing strategies that she's deploying to drive sales to that.
00:28:07 Frenchie: And so I had to ban her quote unquote, obviously she's a the boss and she can decide. But I really was like, you don't need more plans. What you really want to figure out right now for this past year for 2024 is what is working and what is driving revenue in my business. And then how do I do more of that and replicate that over and over again?
00:28:31 Gloria: So good. Again, not as fun, but it's definitely what we need. I think about the kid who wants to learn how to skateboard even before they were able to ride the bicycle without the training wheels on. It's like, we're always going to want that thing. But it's like, do you want your business to scale or do you want it to be a fun, creative hobby for you? And so this conversation was a very good, I wouldn't even say it's tough love. I just think it's objective fact of what we need to do as business owners. A lot of times, we get so wrapped up with the emotion of our business is our baby and it's like, it's really not our baby and the needs are very objective and we need to look at it through that lens. So I could talk to you for hours. I'm sure you've seen quite a lot of things in your time, scaling startups. Is there anything else you wanna leave us with that you are noticing in the market that you just wanna leave our audiences with?
00:29:15 Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest thing is the more you can really be intentional about the work that you do. And I always say, Stay Close to the Money, right? So make sure that the work that you're doing is driving an impact, a measurable impact on your top line and your bottom line. One, you'll benefit, you'll see the business results. And as you build and grow your team, or if you have a team, you need to have that laser focus and clarity so that they can drive the results that you want. I think what we sometimes forget is that strategic planning isn't just about the founder, it's actually about the whole ecosystem of people who need to know what's going on in order to do their best work to support you.
00:29:58 Frenchie: And so this plan, this kind of focus and clarity around how you want to tackle the year ahead is something that serves you but will actually pay back in so many other ways. And that's why I'm always like, it's worth the time that it takes to sit down and do it, even when it feels so boring or you're type Z and you don't want to.
00:30:21 Gloria: Oh, I love it so much. Okay, so to get started, and I love how actionable it is, because I love it when you're not just telling us but you're showing us. So like anyone after listening to this can take out a piece of paper and maybe for the next year ahead is just write down like the three main, like we said, strategic goals and where they want to be. And then that's the end of the year and then kind of work backwards but have no more than three. Would you say that's a good way to start?
00:30:46 Frenchie: Yeah. Set your goal. Set your up to three strategic priorities, make sure that you just think about your bandwidth and capacity to achieve those or what resources you need to achieve them. That's really where I would start. And then from there, I think if you have more questions, obviously, we can always chat about it through DM or whatever because I think that this is such a key part of people's work. But just start there and see what comes up.
00:31:12 Gloria: Oh, that's so good. Where can people find you? Where can people listen to you and get more of those gems, Frenchie gems?
00:31:21 Frenchie: You can find me, I'm on Instagram a lot. I also have a freebie that I want to share, which is Stay Close to the Money, which is just 37 super easy ways to grow your revenue, which can start to give you some insights and ideas around different strategic priorities that you can focus on in order to grow your reach and expand your reach. And those are the main places. Otherwise, just send me a DM, say hi, let me know you found me here. And I'm excited to meet more of you.
00:31:49 Gloria: So can you spell us out your Instagram handle? And how can we get those 37 revenue drivers?
00:31:55 Frenchie: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Instagram handles @frenchie.ferenzci. That's F-R-E-N-C-H-I-E.ferenzci – F-E-R-E-N-Z-C-I. It's a mouthful. And then I think the link will be in the show notes to the Stay Close to the Money guide.
00:32:12 Gloria: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here with us.
00:32:15 Frenchie: Of course. Thank you.
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