Heather Crabtree (00:00:00) - Welcome to Your Savvy Business, a podcast for experience online coaches and service pros who wanna unlock your next level in business without compromising your goals, priorities, and values, or sacrificing your boundaries. I'm your host, Heather Crabtree, your savvy business coach and growth strategist. I know you're not new to this business thing, friend. You're more than five years in and you feel like you should have everything figured out by now. We've learned that every time you've rode a new heights, new opportunities open up and new challenges arise. Each chapter brings a new level of, what the heck am I doing? And you wish you had someone to support you. When things start to feel hard or a business pro to help you see your business in another light and decide what next steps to take, I am here to help. Well, me and some amazing friends who happen to be really good at their craft as well, you can think of me as your business coach and growth strategist in your back pocket, who can connect you to the most brilliant people and share the good, the bad, and that I wanna quit my business
Heather Crabtree (00:01:04) - Moments that we all have
Heather Crabtree (00:01:05) - In our business, but usually never talk about. There will be laughs and tears and meaningful lessons revealed along the way. I hope you will hit subscribe and join us as we navigate business and life together. And you can hop over to heather crabtree.com to learn more. Now, let's jump into today's episode.
Heather Crabtree (00:01:28) - On today's episode, we're talking about a business upgrade, creating a plan for your business growth. No more winging it, no more flying by the seat of your pants. We're actually gonna create a growth plan for you as an experience online coach or service pro who has been in business for five or more years. We need to create a plan for you. So I'm gonna walk you through today how to do that. Now, before I do that, I would love for you to hop on over to Instagram and message me and let me know. And I'm at Heather Business Coach, let me know what kind of growth are you looking for in the next three months. I would love to hear from you. So if you wanna hop on over to Instagram at Heather Business Coach, and let me know what kind of growth are you looking for in your business in the next three months, six months, you know, the next year.
Heather Crabtree (00:02:23) - I would love to hear from you. Okay, so let me walk you through how I go about doing this with my clients. I have a thing called your Business Growth Blueprint. And in that blueprint, what we do is we assess your business where you're at now. We identify and document your growth opportunities. We set business growth goals, develop a growth action plan, and then track your progress. So I'm gonna walk you through that today, a little workshop here. So if you wanna get out a pin or pencil in a piece of paper, or if you wanna type this in notes or if you just wanna listen to it on your walk, and I will be sharing something with you that you can, uh, download in order to, this will all begin there. So the first part of your business growth BR blueprint, which by the way is a part, is the first part in my, the first tool that I use in my framework.
Heather Crabtree (00:03:29) - My framework is the Your Savvy Business Growth Wheel. And Growth actually is spelled out, um, by each step of the framework. So G is gather your business goals and desires. R is refine your offers, O is optimized, your workflows and systems. W is welcome a growth mindset. T is tailor your marketing and sales, and H is higher, great team members. So at the beginning, when we're gathering your business goals and desires, we need to use this tool, your Business Growth blueprint, to take you through the steps to understanding where you're at right now in your business, where you wanna go, what opportunities are there, set the goals, create the plan, track the progress, right? So number one, I'm gonna walk you through this is assess your business. So many times we are not stopping and pausing to see where our business is now. And what I find with a lot of my clients, a lot of people that I talk to, especially when they're in business for a while, is that their business might no long, might not l any longer align with where they are in their life.
Heather Crabtree (00:04:54) - Um, their offers might not be aligned, their workflows might not be aligned. Their marketing and sales might be all over the place. Um, their mindset, is it a different place, right? Um, team members might be there or not. And so we really have to assess where you're at in your business. So we're gonna examine the business to determine what is working and what is not. So in the assessment part, when we're determining and examining, you know, what is working, what is not, there are five key components that I like to look at. One, your offers. So you're gonna rate your offers, and then give me a reason for rating, like, is it one star or five stars? And why do you give it that rating? If you have multiple offers, then you would, you could either do it for all of them, or you could say, you know, I give it three stars, um, for all my offers.
Heather Crabtree (00:05:53) - Or you could rate each one, right? Number two, so you're gonna assess your business. One, you're gonna assess your offers. Two, you're gonna assess your workflows and systems. Three, you're gonna assess your marketing for your sales, and five, your team. These are the main things I want you to assess in your business to determine what is working and what is not. So you're gonna rate them each business item with one to five stars, okay? So that is step one in, uh, your business growth blueprint, which is the tool that I use in gathering the, gathering your business goals and desires. Um, part of my framework in the growth wheel, that's the G, right? So number two, we are gonna identify the opportunities that are there. So we wanna identify and document your opportunities for growth in your business. So what does that look like? Okay?
Heather Crabtree (00:07:00) - So we wanna look at things like, are there new revenue streams or new products or services you wanna add? Are there new partnerships or collaborations you could do? Are there new marketing strategies? Are there ways for to retain customers or get customer loyalty? These are the opportunities that we're gonna identify and figure out what, where are we at with those? And you know, where can we come up? Like, you're gonna come up with what it looks like in terms of what are these new ideas that you have? Because I know if you're anything like me and everybody that I work with, you got lots of ideas. And so this gives you a place to kind of dump them. These are, you're identifying the opportunities are there. So this is step two in your business growth blueprint, okay? Step one is assess your business. Step two is identify the opportunities.
Heather Crabtree (00:08:03) - Step three, we're gonna set your goals. So you're gonna set your business growth goals with intention. That last part is very, very important because we're not just setting any old goals. We're not just setting business goals, we're actually setting business growth goals. So how are you gonna actually grow your business? And how are you doing it intentionally to align with the overall business, right? And your life that is important. So when we're looking at the goals, we want to identify what are the f you know, I would say four, what are your four goals for your business?
Heather Crabtree (00:08:47) - And you're gonna work towards these goals over the next 90 days. I like to work in 90 day increments. You can do whatever you want, of course, but that's what I would suggest. So when we're working through these goals, right? This is where we're coming up. Gather your business goals and desires. We can't get there to the goals until we know w you know, assessing our business, number one. And number two, identifying the opportunities. Then we can go, okay, this is where I am, this is where I wanna go. Here are the opportunities that I can have. Which, which of these things do we wanna do to really reach our g our growth goals, right? So that is number three,
Heather Crabtree (00:09:35) - Want to be part of a community of experienced coaches and service pros who want to grow their business with intention. Head over to heather k crabtree.com, not only for the show notes to this episode, but also to get your copy of my Digital magazine Business Minded, A business magazine for experienced online coaches and service pros where business education, collaboration, and community meet to help you unlock your next level in business and make sure you're subscribe to the podcast. And if you're loving it, I would love for you to leave a review. It means so much to me and is helpful to know you are listening and what you're loving. Okay? Now let's get back to the show.
Heather Crabtree (00:10:16) - We're gonna head to step number four, which is create the plan. You're gonna create your growth action plan to reach your goals. Now, how are you gonna do that? Well, there's a couple ways that you can do that, but you're going to take the goals, right? And we're going to actually create like action plan. We're gonna create, take the growth g goals that we come up with. We're gonna break them down into pieces, um, into details, right? Into tasks, into, um, smaller components of that goal so that you can actually create a plan of how you're gonna execute on it. This is where a lot of visionaries, I'm one of them business owners, pause, , or Stall. Because if they're really great at thinking about the ideas, sometimes the execution of them is not as easy. So this is where it comes in, okay? When we're creating the plan, who's in charge of the tasks?
Heather Crabtree (00:11:33) - So in, in order to hit this goal, what are we gonna have to do? And then what are the tasks that have to happen under that plan, in that plan? And who's doing them? Now, if you're by yourself, unfortunately it's, you're doing all of them. Hopefully, if you've been in your business for five or more years, you're not the only one. If you are, you need to connect with me cuz we need to, we need to remedy that. But what we're gonna do as, as we assign dates, right? We're gonna assigned, assign people to the plan. And then the last part, step number five of your business growth blueprint is you are going to track the progress. So you're gonna track your, you're gonna come up with your success metrics and for these goals and for these actions, you're gonna have to do, and then we're gonna work toward these, right?
Heather Crabtree (00:12:36) - Over the next 90 days. But we wanna track what, what is reaching, what is, what is successful in terms of reaching this goal? What does success look like to reach this growth goal? We wanna come up with some way to some metrics to be able to assess what success looks like for this goal, right? We wanna be really intentional about our goals, but we wanna make sure that we're tracking them. This is a, a key piece that a lot of entrepreneurs don't do. They set goals, they set intentions, but if you don't set a way to track them and, and see, okay, am I meeting them if I'm not, why? And if you don't have the data of why you are or not, and if you're not tracking anything, right, then you don't have that data to know did it work or did it not?
Heather Crabtree (00:13:27) - And then what happens? Emotions come in and we base things off of emotions instead of data, right? Emotions are great, emotions are fine, but we wanna make sure that we're making decisions based off of data, not off of just how we're feeling that day. And we can't do that if we don't walk through these steps. So your business growth blueprint is the tool that I use and it is really gonna be helpful. But in order to, and then, and then again, this helps you in that first part of, of the Growth wheel, my framework, your Savvy business growth wheel, it helps you to gather the g gather your desires and goals, your business growth, desires and goals. I'm a growth strategist, I'm a business coach and growth strategist. So we're talking about growth because you're at a point in your business, you might not be ready to where people would say scale yet because it's very different than growing.
Heather Crabtree (00:14:33) - Um, you might be, you might be in that place, but what we wanna do is grow your business and then if we can get it, if everything is working, it should be, you know, you're having success now, we gotta get it really working and, you know, make tweaks and, you know, figure out what's working, what's not, and then we can scale it. Scaling it means you can repeat it and it can be repeatable, it can be sustainable, it can still be profitable, right? But we have to work, a lot of the people that I work with are going through this growth stage and their business. And that can be that, you know, after they've been in business for a while, that they're having to refine their offers or it just, you know, with the, the way the industry that you're in is going, um, if you're an online coach of service pro, things have changed a lot over the last year.
Heather Crabtree (00:15:25) - So refining your offers, something you need to do, you know, look at, you might not have to refine them, but you need to look to see, do I need to refine these offers quite often, at least every quarter, right? So if you're doing that, then you, you know, you're gonna be able to look at are you, do we need to look at your offers? Do we need to refine them? Do we need to look at the workflows and systems? Do we need to really focus on marketing? Do we need to focus on sales more? Do we need to focus on internal mindset, right? Really working on, um, well, we'll, we'll go on to a whole episode on each one of these pieces, but, um, working on growing your team, all these part, all these things are part of the Growth wheel and your Savvy Business Growth wheel, but the, your Business Growth blueprint is the tool again, that I use. And that first part where we're gathering, gathering your business growth goals and desires. What do you want? Where are you now? Where do you want to go? We gotta connect. We gotta make the bridge from where you are now to where you want to go. So let's do a little recap here. Um, I just wanted this to be short, quick, but actionable so that you can go through and do these steps yourself.
Heather Crabtree (00:16:52) - Um, and you can look at your business right now and then create a plan, right? So with your business growth blueprint, again, we're number one gonna assess your business. So we're gonna examine your business to determine what is working and what is not. Number two, we're gonna identify the opportunities, identify and document your opportunities for growth in your business. Number three, we're gonna set goals. So set your business growth goals with intention Number four, we're gonna create a plan. You're gonna create your growth action plan to reach your goals. And number five, we're gonna track your progress. So we're gonna track your success metrics and review your progress. If you do this, I would do this every third or every 90 days. So every quarter, or it doesn't have to be in the quarter, it can be, you know, just whenever you start in 90 days past that, we're going to do this so that we can continue to grow your business, but in a way that is one fun, another one sustainable, obviously profitable, but we can, and we can do it in a way that really aligns with the life you have and the season that you're in in your business.
Heather Crabtree (00:18:13) - This is why I say that you have to go and do this every 90 days because things can happen. I could tell you lots of stories about all the things have happened over the past six years for me, which we've talked a little bit about in episode two, which you should go back if you haven't listened to yet. Um, and episode one, confetti moments two, we talked about why I took a break in my business, but in that, you know, I really talked about some of the things that have happened, and I think if you don't go and do an assessment of your business every 90 days, then when life changes, sometimes you can't stay on the same path, right? You can't do the same offers. Let's say for example, you have an offer that you're doing, let's say you're doing one-on-one coaching or one-on-one services.
Heather Crabtree (00:19:06) - What if something happened to you or a family member that you wouldn't, you couldn't do that, you didn't have the energy or the capacity to do that. So this is why assessing and hopefully doesn't happen, but this is why assessing every quarter is really helpful. And if you use your business Growth Blueprint, it's hard for me to say, um, your Business Growth Blueprint to do this. It takes you from assessing to tracking your growth progress, and I think it's gonna be really helpful for you. So I would love for you, if you haven't yet, I ask you at the beginning. But if you haven't yet, head over to Instagram at Heather Business Coach connect with me there. Let me know what growth goals you have over the next 90 days. I would love to chat with you. I have chats quite often in the dms over on Instagram. It's where I love to be, and I will see you in the next episode, which is gonna be amazing. We're gonna talk all about creating why it's important to create your signature framework. All right, I'll see you next time.
Heather Crabtree (00:20:16) - That wraps up another episode
Heather Crabtree (00:20:18) - Of Your
Heather Crabtree (00:20:18) - Savvy Business. Thank you for spending your time with me today. Until next time my friend.
