Unlock Your Business Potential with Accountability and Planning in 2024

Hello and welcome back to this episode of the Sugar Show. I am really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really excited to talk 24. First of all, it's my favorite number. Second of all, I want to talk about 2024. Right now. Let's make it happen and let's make sure that we are prepared. 2020, sucker punched us hard. 2021, we thought would be the better year. That was a sucker punch to the other cheek. 2022, kind of starting a rebound. Business is doing better. 23 is doing better, but the prices are high. Yes, it's expensive, food is expensive, People are taking things out of the budget and we're just all kind of in this little state of what do we do? Well, this podcast is for you if you are ready to rock it in 2024. Welcome to the Sugar Show. I'm Shannon O'Brien, body-sugaring expert and licensed esthetician, who's taken my own skincare business from zero to multiple six figures and has helped over 3,000 students learn how to do the same. Now let me tell you it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the time, budget and knowledge needed to grow my small business as a body-sugaring pro. If we were to press Rewind, you'd see the many failed attempts and lessons learned that have helped me build the profitable business that I have today, one that runs on its own and gives me the lifestyle and freedom that I only used to dream of. I created the Sugar Show to hand you my secrets and give you the simple, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. So if you're a cosmetologist or esthetician or wax professional who's looking to fill your books, make more money in your business and enjoy greater balance between your work and home life, you are in the right place. Let's dive in. I work with a lot of students and alumni who need one-on-one coaching because they're just a little bit nervous in the community that we have to ask about what to do with their business. There's a lot of people that are Facebook happy or Instagram happy and Instagram busy, but their actual business numbers are not looking so good. So when I work with these folks with one-on-one coaching, the very first thing I ask them is how are your numbers? Do you know what your numbers were last month? Or I might say how are your numbers in Q3? And they give me the blank stare. And then I'll say okay, well, what's your marketing plan for next month? Blank stare. Or maybe show me your budget. How's your budget looking for next month? Blank stare, how's your budget looking? How did you do against your budget last month if you had one Blank stare? So if you want to take your business to the next level and that means not just you're really good at your sugar skills or you're doing pretty good, you're seeing a lot of clients, but you really want to hone in and be held accountable for the next year, the next month, the next week, hell, the next day you need to have a tribe and you need to work with someone or a group of someone's that are going to get you to the next level. Because we all make New Year's resolutions right Like oh, for me, I think this next year is my pivot year, because big, big changes are coming for Love to Sugar in a great way. The pivot year for me also means that I need to get my organizational stuff tight, I need to get my shiz dialed right, and so I need an accountability partner. You need an accountability partner because if you don't plan, if you just say, oh yes, my resolution is I'm going to make $100,000 in 2024. Great, nice. Do you have a plan? Have you broken it down to month to week? How about even just a quarter, every three, four months. Do you have an idea of what your business is going to look like? Because, if you do not, you absolutely need to listen to this podcast. You need to get involved in our planner class that we have and get involved in our business coaching. This is not a pitch or sales pitch. This is legit Me sharing with you how this is going to work. Okay, if you want to take your business to the next level, you need a roadmap. You need if you want to get from A to B, if you want to get from here to Kentucky I'm not going to Kentucky, but if you want to get from here to Kentucky, you have to have a roadmap. You have to have a GPS. These days roadmap I'm kind of dating myself, but you need to have a GPS. You need to understand how do I get from point A to point B, the pit stops along the way, the stops for gas, for drink, for maintenance, being able to say you know what? What if I blow out a tire? Do I have a plan for that? Do I have a plan for that? Emergency plan, music plan? What is your plan to get from here to Kentucky? What is your plan to get from where you are today to killing it in 2024? And if you're already doing well in 2023, well, how are you going to take that to the next level? How are you going to improve on that? Okay, so it's not just about the New Year's resolution or nodding your head at me and saying, yeah, you know, I'm really excited about the year changing, I'm really ready for a new year. Well, are you really? Are you really ready for a new year if you don't even have a planner, if you don't even have an accountability partner, if you don't have a place to kind of coordinate all your socials, all your everything that's in your head? How do you put it down and strategically organize yourself so that your next year again, your next month, your next week, your next day is tight and organized and there's step by step by step plan to create those building blocks to get yourself to the next goal, to the end result, to Kentucky, to building the house, to however you want to compare it to. You absolutely need to have a plan to move forward. So what do you do, you, as it relates to estheticians? You know there's so many planning classes out there. There's so many people that are willing to help you in your personal life to drink more water or to exercise more. You know, get your New Year's resolutions right, budget your personal accounts. But what I really want to do is walk you through how to take this skincare business, this sugar business, this combo business, whatever you have created for yourself. How do you take that to the next level? Right, like, what exactly do you need to do? Well, you need to start with the year. You need to start with the year and drill it down. So each year is broken into four quarters. Each quarter is broken into three months. Each month is broken into four or five weeks. What does your work week look like? What do your work hours look like? What is your goal financially? When are you doing inventory? When are you ordering that inventory? Do you have it in the budget to order that inventory? What are the baby steps that you can do today that will get you to a more profitable January? That will get you to a more profitable February, and I've listened to so many intelligent humans podcasts. I've sat on in conferences listening to people talk about just. If you don't have a plan A, you don't know when you've gotten there, if you don't even know where you're going and B. If you don't have a plan, there is no way to just stay on track, especially with how busy the world is getting these days. You have to have a way to, every single day, do something five minutes even where you are putting together your marketing plan. You are not wasting your time by just throwing up some socials, but you really have a solid plan to move that forward. A few things that you need to have in your plan you need to have your marketing planned out. What holidays are coming up next month? What holidays are coming up in three months? You should have had your Christmas gifts planned out in October. You should have had your list of your top 25 clients. You should have that at all times. You should know exactly what clients are coming through the door, exactly what they've been going through in their life and how you can sell them that next retail product, how you can book that facial for them in addition to their next sugar treatment. But if you don't really know who's walking in the door every half hour, you aren't prepared for those opportunities that you can, in that same half hour, take that one client who's just in to get a brow sugar and take that half hour. It upgrade their services, add on their other services, sell them retail, get them to bring a friend. That 30 minutes is critical to your day. If you don't plan the night before for who's coming in tomorrow, it just always takes you by surprise and then you're really not ready to go. But if I go into an appointment because the night before I have really said, okay, here's the next 20 clients that I have tomorrow and I can really hone in on what we talked about last time, follow up with what those folks used last time. What do they need to get? How are their in-grounds looking? Do I need to be fixing something in what I'm doing? Because maybe they have more sensitive skin because of a medical treatment? Whatever the issue is, if you are not prepared, you will not get it. So if some of you are listening to this, you're like I should probably get a planner and get on this. Kudos to you, because that means you're paying attention. If you're someone who's like I got this. I did great last year. What if you could double that greatness in the same amount of time by just being a little bit organized? Some of you are just what is the last podcast that I recorded the GALS podcast was a messy success. Some of you are a messy success and if you haven't listened to Liz Henson, she is pretty incredible. We're talking about legal stuff but she has a podcast called the Messy Success and I love that term. And if you are a messy success in your business, can you imagine if you were an organized messy success? Can you imagine if you just had accountability for all the things that you were doing in your business? So you're going to take that day. You're going to create four or five days business days of working. You're going to create a couple of weeks at a time of plan. Then you're going to take a look at the quarter and the half year and the year and you're going to really step it out, really map it out. If you are flying by the seat of your pants ordering from your professional sugar supplier, you're going to run out of product. You're not going to get the great deals and, to be honest, the sugar companies love to send all the product at once and they love working with you. But if you're not organized and you don't know what you need, you're going to overorder or under order and that's actually costing you a lot of money. I love when students and alums work with me in this way and really are honest with themselves, because I think a lot of us, like I said, are Instagram successful or Facebook successful, but when we turn off the video for the phone or that reel or that story, these folks are a messy success and they seem like they have it together, but they're really, really working over time to catch up for the organization they couldn't have done in the beginning. If you put everything in one place and have actionable steps to take one day at a time, every single day, you will get there, and really that's what this business side is about is. We always talk about trademarks and keeping yourself legally tight. We talk about marketing and making sure that your socials are tight and well-fought out. We talk about client relations and whether that is well-fought out, but what if it was all in one place where you constantly were working on it? So we have a planner program. We have an actual planner. I'm so excited that I've been working on for a really long time. I put this together to work with all of you and the idea is that we will hold you accountable every single month. To kill it in your business. We're gonna take the year and we're going to slim it down to even your opening and closing routine for the day. We are going to talk about next month's social activities. I'm gonna give you ideas for next month's socials, but we're going to physically write them down in one place. We are going to do inventory. We are going to and if you are not doing inventory, you better start, because you are missing out on amazing opportunities by not bulk ordering, being prepared, being ready, not overordering, things like that. We're gonna talk about your orders. We're going to talk about what your perfect month looks like. If you wanna make $10,000 a month, how many clients do you need to take a day and a week in order to get there? We're gonna work on that. We are going to work on managing your day so that you can have just this carved out, scheduled amount of time that you can actually work on your business the next day. Shut the books, go home, be with your family, but you have to schedule it, okay. So I think about all of you that are really, really struggling, and my advice to you is to show up. Show up for training classes, not every training class under the sun. If you're a sugaring professional, you do not have to go to a specific I don't know. Pick a class, seek help as an ingredient in skincare webinar. It's an hour of your time you could be spent working on your organization. Ask yourself, what am I going to? The right classes that are gonna take my business to the next level? I ask you this all the time are you working on your skill set, your sugaring skill set? Great, how's your business look? On a side note, if you are a spa or a shop owner and you have a staff and you are really struggling with just getting them motivated, or if you're a staff member and you're really struggling to be motivated, I have a staff edition of this book. It's the Sugar Tribe Sweet Success Planner. I have one for staff members and then you can be working on your business inside of your boss's business. You can be working on that as well, so that you can get so clear on how you're gonna get to the place where you're giving yourself a raise, even if it's in someone else's business. We have to be held accountable. We have to get honest with ourselves. We have to slow down and take a breath and say, okay, let's just start with tomorrow. If I spend five minutes today starting on what I got going in tomorrow and I'm ready for the day when I get in, I have my room ready for the day when I get in, tomorrow's gonna be a great day. And if I do this each day, the week is gonna be a great week. And I do this every week, the month is gonna be a great month. But the only way that you do it is by doing it. You can have the fancy planners watching the YouTubes and all that good stuff. Can I really sound it old there, huh, watching YouTube? But if you don't have someone that's holding your feet to the flame and really holding you accountable, and not your spouse or partner, because that can cause some rifts but if you have just a neutral person that can ask you questions that you're not money, we're so. Oh, it's so tender of a topic for us, it's so mm. It just kind of sometimes cuts to the core, right. But if we just know our numbers, don't be scared of your numbers. The power is in knowing what you have available and I promise you it will change your life. Okay, so we are starting a Planner class December 11th and, if you are already, if it's past December 11th and you're just now listening to this, no worries, you can still listen to this and get motivated. You can still buy the planner the links are gonna be in the show notes and if you have your own planner, great. This one is specific for Sugar Pros and we're gonna go through it every single month. So in December, you'll take the big class or we're gonna do big vision, big dreams, hairy, scary goals, not intended. We're gonna go through the big, meaty stuff and you're gonna have your favorite pen and your book and you are gonna get involved in it. And every single day, I'm going to challenge you to get in your book, see who you have for your clients tomorrow and make things happen. Okay, then in January, every single month, we have live monthly coaching with me, with the rest of the team, and we are gonna walk you through what your goals are. You're gonna write them in yourself. We're not gonna just have this nebulous, you know. Oh, let's talk about organization. We're actually gonna do it and we're gonna get together and wanna say all right, what do you have for this day? What do you have for this day? How is it looking? Raise your hand. If you hit your numbers this month. Raise your hand if you know why you didn't make your numbers this month. What is your day looking like? What is happening in your month that's holding you back from making that money? And when we all do this together, you will be shocked. At number one, you'll realize how good you're doing and you might not even realize it. Number two, you'll realize that other people are struggling. Well, that's okay, but if we do it together, we can get up out of that gutter together and start to really turn it into something magical. So the business coaching, that is its own amazing space for all of you to work with. But we're putting this planner book into the program so that every single month you'll be held accountable. Every single month, I'm gonna ask you after the business planning meeting to sit and think about how you actually did last month and really get serious about your numbers. And it may cause you to cry and it may cause you to cheer. There's just so much power in just being free of the shame and the guilt of not doing that well in your business. So we're gonna do that together. Ladies and gentlemen, really honestly, if anyone is to ask you how your business is doing and you don't know off the tip of your tongue the percentage of sales that you've done, the gross sales that you've done, the net profit that you've made. If you do not have an idea of what that is, this class is for you. If you don't have any idea what a profit and loss statement is, if you do not have an accounting software, if you do not really know what clients you have coming in tomorrow, this class is for you. So again, we start December 11th. You can just do it on your own with the planner after you work with us on that first class, or you can continue with the Accountability Partner every month. But the moral of the story is my business didn't start really truly killing it until I got real. Until I got real with my numbers and wrote it down and had someone ask me how I was doing. So don't be shy, we've got you. You don't have to give us your nitty gritty, dirty stories when they see you in the live class. But you do need to get real with yourself. And so you'll order the book. We'll give you all the instructions on that. But, honestly, planning is the besides amazing sugar skills. Planning is the number, number, number, number two thing right up next to amazing sugar skills that are gonna help you kill at this business. So that was a quick little episode of me on my soapbox and we just we're gonna do this together. 24 is my lucky number, it is gonna be our lucky number together. We're gonna pivot together and we are gonna hit this next year running and we are going to make the moves to make. I want all of you to be on the sweet success series for the Sugar Show podcast. I do. I want all of you to be able to apply for it and say you know what? I killed it and we got this. So I look forward to seeing you in the next episode, because we have got some massive announcements that are gonna change the face of the sugar industry and I'm really excited to share them with you. So stay tuned and I will see you in a couple of weeks. Happy Thanksgiving and have a wonderfully sweet holiday.