Welcome to the Get your act together podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Reynolds, op strategist and agency coach at the Reynolds OBM agency. This podcast is all about building well-run and profitable businesses, so that we can create the lives we dream of. 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 67. So today, I would like to share a little bit of a nerdy story. I sat the other day, all day waiting for the staples truck to arrive at my house with a very, very large calendar for 2022. I was more excited about this delivery than I think I have been for most deliveries lately. And the reason is, that I love to lay things out, on big pieces of paper, and plan everything out. I love to be able to look all like across all of it. I've got these big desk calendars that I don't have on my desk, because I would totally spill things, all over them. But I hang the calendar pages on the wall behind me. And if you are in our Facebook group, I go live. And you can see those in the Get Your Agency Together Facebook group, I go live in there at least once a week, as you can see the pages on the right behind me. They're enormous. I do that because I like to see at a glance what my week is going to look like next week is going to look where do we have to go. What do we have to do? I can kind of have a handle on what's going on. And yeah, I have a Google Calendar. And that is like the be-all-end-all, right? That's accurate, where I have to be. But it's hard for me to look at a Google calendar with all that stuff on there and plan out. It's also hard to see months at a time on a screen. So I really love to have these big desk calendars, and I can rip off a month at a time and hang them up, or I can rip the months off and spread them out across the floor, which is like the nerdiest thing ever. But I love it. And I map it out. And it makes me feel like I have some control over the chaos of life. Right now, I'm really excited to map out not just the rest of the year, because the holidays are a lot and there's like year-end stuff you've got to get done. And I'm putting this group coaching program together that I've mentioned a little bit here and there. And it's the first time I've ever built out like such a thing. Not only am I building this out as a program, but like the sales page and the things like that all of that's getting mapped out. Because I don't want to get to a point where all of a sudden, I have to like work all night and day to get something done. Because I didn't get it done in time. You don't even like I don't want to have to cram in college terms. I want to be able to work through this and not kill myself to get something done. I really want to love doing this instead of being like what have I done to myself, right? So I want a map of 2022 out as well. Because this program is going to be a five-month program. And I want to be able to map out when the calls are happening, right? We're gonna have group coaching calls and things like that. And I want to make sure all of that works. Not just as a program, but also for my life. Because businesses are great, but they're not our lives. So the first thing that I look at on the calendar when I'm mapping everything out is my family life. I want to see when do we have birthdays. When do we have school closed? Right? Like, I feel like they have like a week off of school every five minutes. Is that going to impact anything that I'm doing? Do I have to have coverage for things? Or does someone have to pick up somebody or whatever the thing is, so family goes first on that map. And then I'm starting to look at like when the calls are going to happen for the group program, when I'm going to have to, you know, have videos made or whatever the thing is for all of that. And then I want to be really intentional with how I'm building everything in that structure. I don't want to get to march and hate my life because I have put so much stuff in there and I never have a break. So I'm trying to build in whitespace as well. One of the best things I've done in my business seriously, I highly recommend it to all of you. I don't take calls on Mondays and Fridays. Now, if there's like a one off call that I really want to take because it's someone I never like I really want to talk to fantastic, but my calendar is not open on Mondays and Fridays. I need time to one get my own stuff done, two, record podcasts late like I'm doing right now.

Three, just have bandwidth. Like I just need to not have to be somewhere all the time. And after a long weekend and you have like let's say you had family or Halloween. And it was a crazy weekend and all of a sudden you wake up on Monday and you're expected to like go and you got to be on calls. That's too much. So I've been intentionally building out these pockets of time that I'm not available to anyone that I can get my own stuff done that I can just breathe Sometimes you just need to catch up. And life is not really built for that. So I'm trying to build my life like that. So family, this intentional whitespace, these intentional spots where I get to work on the things I want to work on. And then I can be more creative. It's very hard to be creative when you have people talking to you all the time, or notifications going off Ding, ding, ding, ding, like it's very hard to create in that scenario. So I'm trying to be intentional there, build out this program so it's awesome, and I love being a part of it. And then, like, see what happens from there, like put the important things on first. And then map out whatever else is going on. As I'm completely and utterly nerding out, like, there are colored pens and everything, I have the erasable ones, which are killer, so you can even change your mind, there's so much nerding going on here. But beyond that. I've also been thinking that, okay, we have two months left, what are the other things that I would need to look at, and make decisions on. So one of the biggest things is getting your numbers in shape, that idea of getting all your expenses in all your revenue, seeing where you actually are for the year. So many people have no idea how much money they really made this year, not even in revenue, which to me is crazy. But even if you only know revenue, you have no idea on profit, because you have no idea how much money you spent. This is a great time to check in on whether the things you're offering are profitable. If you're paying out all the money to your team, or your agency that you're bringing in, you are not making any money and you can't pay yourself. So little things like that are not really that little. Checking in to get your numbers up through October together and kind of have an idea of where you are and what's going on. And if you're like just a little further away than the goals that you wanted, then you can like, okay, how can I close that gap in the next two months? Two months gives you a good chunk of time to like check-in, and hurry up and get it done. There's also the idea that you may have a lot more revenue and need some expenses to offset that for taxes. This is a great time to look at that. If there is a course or a group coaching program that you want to invest in before the end of the year, this is a great time to do that. If you need to have more expenses. If you have too much revenue versus expenses you might need, I am not a tax professional. Please ask your accountant at this. But if you need those, this is the time to think about them because all of that spending needs to be done before December 31. So if you wanted to buy a program, or a course, or a laptop, or whatever, this may be the time for that. And knowing your numbers will give you that option. It'll give you that time to figure it all out. Plus, I'm sure there are a lot of great sales going on right by the holidays, you know. There are also other things, retirement savings and 529 plans for kids and IRAs and all that kind of stuff. Depending on the laws of where it is, I'm not even getting into that right now. But some of those things need to be done by the end of the year. Some don't need to be done till April. But this is the time to check and say, Okay, I wanted to put money into savings even it's just like a regular savings account. Like I wanted to do these things by the end of the year. Or I want to pay some bills down. Maybe it's getting rid of the debt before the end of the year, so you can start fresh. Things like that. This is the time to take a look at all of that. So you have time, and you're not freaking out the last couple of days of the year. When I was on Wall Street, I was the operations on a big brokerage team, the last couple days of like the year, December 31, or April 15, when it was all taxes. Those last couple of days, everyone was like I need all this information. I need to move money I need eh. Everyone would wait till the last couple of days. They'd run around like lunatics. I would run around like a lunatic trying to get it all done. Don't be those people. Think about it now in November because once you get to the holidays, it's all a blur. And all of a sudden, it's the end of the year. And I don't want you to miss out on things that you wanted to do.

I really would love in this idea of intentional action. If you start looking at 2022 now, and you're like Kelly It is November. It is the beginning of November. I am not ready to do that. But hear me out. 2022, If you have not even thought of those goals of where you're going, it's going to be here in a blink. Once Thanksgiving comes around, and then all a sudden it's the holidays in December and you have to shop and there are places to go and there's this and that. And then it's January 1, and you haven't planned a thing. And now you're going to feel behind the times, behind 8 ball, behind whatever idiom I am messing up right now. Thinking about what you want to do next year, do it now and start planning that and start sitting with it even if it's I want to have these revenue goals or I want to have these time off goals like I want to take every Friday off, I only want to work three days a week. Whatever the thing is, start thinking about it now, and how you can get there. Because some of these things are going to need you to prepare things. Sometimes you may need to sign up for a course, or certification, if you wanted to go from VA work to stepping into strategy work, and you want to go do the DOO certification, whatever the thing is, that is something you need to think about. Because what if the thing only opens three times a year or whatever it is. That planning will be so helpful, because you don't want to get to January 1, start making goals, then find out you need three things to get to that goal. And all those things are already booked up. I know that there are courses that I just heard about. And they're already almost booked out. My own coach, shout out to Melissa, she's already saying that she's got two spots left for the next year to work with her. These things get booked up. So thinking ahead as to where you want to be, I don't want you to miss out, because you weren't thinking about it early enough. It's like those guys who shop it on December 23. For all their family and they the things that they wanted are not there, right? They're already sold out. That happens here, too. My plan right now is to have the group coaching program start in January. So if you want to be in that, we need to be talking about December. But if you only think about it in February, you've already missed the boat. So intentional action, trying to think ahead, what do we need, so that you're not cramming at the last second or trying to figure out what's going on, and rush through everything. Because the holidays are hard enough. With family and craziness. You don't want to throw on top of that this whole cramming of business schools and oh my God, I've got to make more money, but then that last week of the year, or whatever the thing is, so if you want to nerd out with me, go get yourself a two-foot by two-foot calendar and map out some things. Or if you don't want to go, high-level nerd, like I have with color-coded charts, get a piece of paper and just start writing down some things that you'd like to have done by the end of the year. And what would be really awesome for next year? Reverse engineering a little bit. Backtrack and see where you need to be and what you need to be doing so that you can grow. I want you to be ready, so that you can get the things you want out of your business, out of your life, all those things you dreamed of. Alright guys, go nerd out a little bit. Look at the plan, whether it's just on a piece of paper or full nerd-out calendars. And I'll see you next week.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you have an agency or want to create one, come join my Facebook community, Get Your Agency Together, where we talk all the things growing and scaling your agency. For show notes more info and all the things head over to Reynolds obm.com Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Reynolds OBM. And finally, if you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to give us a review on iTunes.