If I asked you right now, “Is your revenue goal high enough to pay yourself…
Want more freedom next summer? Dream of being able to take a whole month off, to go on multiple holidays or to be able to make the most of heatwave days? Most business owners want more freedom in general, but for some, in summer the desire for more freedom is even stronger. Yet not all business owners are able to fulfill that desire, because they don’t have a business that allows it to happen. If you want more freedom next summer, you need to build the business that makes it possible, and you need to start building that business now. Keep on reading to find out how to build a business that makes freedom in summer a reality.
This page includes affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.
WANT MORE FREEDOM NEXT SUMMER? BUILD THE BUSINESS THAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE NOW
Why Freedom Doesn’t Happen By Accident
Before delving into building a business that will give you freedom in summer (or whenever you’d like) I need you to understand this – freedom doesn’t happen by accident. If you want to have freedom and/or flexibility in your business, then you need to intentionally design your business to enable that to happen.
If you see other business owners raving about taking the whole of August off, going on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday, or being able to actually enjoy the summer holidays with their children, I need to realise this – that has happened because they designed their business to allow that to happen. And if they did it, so can you.
For you to experience more freedom next summer, you have to build the business that makes it possible. That means you have to stop and look at your business from different perspectives (finances, offer suite, sales and marketing, operations, team etc) and ensure that everything is designed in a way that means your freedom is possible.
Defining your version of summer freedom
My version of summer freedom will most likely going to be different to yours, and yours may be different to your business besties. There is nothing wrong with that, but in order to build a business that means you have the freedom you crave next summer, you need to actually define that.
Be honest and think about what you really want. Here are some popular versions of summer freedom to get the ball rolling.
Summer freedom could be:
- Taking a month off
- Taking the whole of the school holidays off
- Going on holiday abroad for a week or two weeks
- Being able to do a shorter week (3 or 4 days)
- Being able to work a shorter day (for example 9am – 1pm)
- Not having to work on heatwave days
Hopefully, this has given you some ideas. I can’t emphasise enough that being honest about what you really want now is important. Write down what you want, and that is what you can refer to when reviewing your current business design and working out what needs to change.
Building a business that makes freedom in summer possible
1. Offer suite – flexibility / freedom
The first thing you need to look at is your offer suite. Your offer suite is going to impact two things – the potential money your business can make and your work schedule (both how much you need to work and when you need to work). When looking at your offer suite, you need to look back at your version of summer freedom and ask yourself if what you have right now makes that possible.
For example, if you want to have an extended period of time off (3 weeks or more), but at the moment you have offerings where you have delivery commitments (meetings, calls etc) on a weekly or fortnightly basis) then your offering isn’t supporting that desire.
For each offer, you should be able to decide whether that is supporting your version of summer freedom or working against it? For those that are working against it, you have choices. You can decide to remove them entirely or you can decide to only offer them at certain times of the year.
Once you’ve reviewed what you’ve currently got in your offer suite you can also think about whether you want to be adding something into your offer suite that will make it even easier for yourto have more freedom next summer. For example, if you don’t have a passive income product in your offer suite at the moment you might decide to create one so that you have a way to earn more without trading more time. Whether you want to work less hours, take extended time off, or just have flexibility over when you work a passive income product will help you achieve that.
2. Offer suite – flexibility / finances
Once you are happy with your offer suite from a delivery perspective, it’s time to look at the finances. I’m going to state something very obvious, but if you want to take an extended period of time off, that should be in your financial forecasting. A very common reason for business owners not taking as much time off as they’d like is because of the financial implications. They are worried about taking time off and not making the money they need to make. That’s why from the beginning of your financial forecasting you should be taking into consideration you are going to NOT be working 52 weeks of the year.
When doing your financial forecasting, think about the dream situation. If you want to take a whole month off that already means you are down to 48 or 47 weeks. And hopefully you are taking more time off across the year. At this point it is better to dream big and get your offer suite to a point where financially you can hit your goals of 44 weeks or even 40 weeks. This is super important if you have any offerings where you are active in the delivery.
3. Marketing and Sales
Another area that you need to review is your marketing and sales. Whilst the top reasons business owners don’t experience freedom in the summer is down to having delivery commitments and the financial implications of not working, the reality is many also worry that if they aren’t marketing their business after a break business will be slow. To avoid this the key is to step away from relying on marketing that you are actively delivering.
For example, some types of marketing have short lifespans, and therefore you have to keep creating and publishing for that to be valuable. This is the case with most social media marketing and email newsletters. However, there are other types of marketing such as search engine optimisation (SEO) and automated email sequences that can continue to work months or even years after being created.
Look at your marketing and sales at the moment and consider how much time are you putting in each week or month and then consider how long would it take for sales to slow down if you stopped actively marketing your business. Then depending on what your version of summer freedom is you’ll want to look at investing in building your marketing and sales system that reduces your involvement and/or allows you to completely not be involved.
| PUT TOGETHER A MARKETING AND SALES STRATEGY THAT YOU HAVE CONFIDENCE IN
Returning from holiday to notifications of sales and enquiries is a great feel, but for that to happen you need a robust marketing and sales strategy – which I can help you with! During a Strategy Day we’ll decide what your marketing and sales strategy is for the year, and put together a top line annual timeline so your marketing will continue regardless of whether you are on holiday or not. |
4. Support – Tech and Team
Another area you need to look at is support and I like to break this down to tech and team. As just discussed with marketing and sales investments in tech can help you to be able to reduce your active involvement in marketing and sales. Technology can also be important in helping you to be able to make some of the changes you want in your offer suite. For example, when I made the decision to stop only selling one-to-one services, I invested in Kartra, which is a one-stop solution for online business owners. I knew Kartra would enable me to run my mastermind (Luminary), my group programme (Shine Online) and have the functionality to sell passive income products when I choose to do so in the future.
Sometimes investing in some technology can allow a process to happen without you, but sometimes you do need a person and that’s where considering your team is essential. Nowadays there are so many ways you can hire someone to support you – employed or self-employed, full time or part time, continually or for a short period of time. In order to work out what is best, you’ll need to have a bigger picture of what the business needs. This is where thinking not just about your summer, but your whole year becomes super important.
5. Annual Planning
If you want more freedom next summer, you’ve got to build the business to make that possible. By now, you’ve looked at different parts of your business – offer suite, finances, sales and marketing, and operations. But there is one thing that is going to make the difference from technically being able to have a great summer and actually having a great summer – and that’s by creating an annual plan.
When you create an annual plan, you step back out of a specific month or season and look at the year as a whole. You stop treating each month as exactly the same and that is powerful, especially if what you are trying to experience in summer is different for the other months. For example, in my own business I have a different work schedule in “summer” and “winter”. In the winter, I work more days and longer hours. This has a direct impact on the services I offer, how many clients I can work with and my financial potential.
Annual planning will help you on so many levels.
Offer suite – Map out when your offers will be available, how many clients / customers you are happy to take on, and what that means from a delivery perspective
Finances – Do month-by-month forecasting both income and expenditure based
Marketing and Sales – Plan what you’ll focus on so you are hitting sales targets, plot launches if you are having them, decide when you’ll build funnels, make new lead magnets etc
Team – Seeing what the business is doing over a whole year will help you to decide what support is needed. Combining different areas will help you to quickly realise if you’ve got points in the year that are too busy based on current team. And then rather than trying to hire someone for the summer you might realise you should take someone on all year, but have the ability to increase hours at certain points in the year
Your Life – Seeing the annual plan of your business, especially with all areas combined helps to give a real picture of what’s coming up. You can look at this in relation to your life and see if your business really is going to support you living your best life (giving you the finances and freedom you need) or if it’s working against you living your best life.
| TAKE YOUR ANNUAL BUSINESS PLANNING TO THE NEXT LEVEL BY WORKING WITH ME – BOOK A STRATEGY DAY
I’ve been running annual planning strategy days with small business owners since 2019. Doing your annual business planning with someone external from your business and with tons of business and marketing experience and expertise makes a massive difference. I’ll support you to face the facts about your current position, dream big about the future and get really strategic about what you need to do in order to achieve those big business goals. So if you are planning on preparing for the next 12 months and you want to get your annual planning done in the most effective and efficient way, book a Strategy Day. |
That’s it. You now know that if you want freedom next summer that you need to build the business that makes it possible now.
As you can see there are multiple areas of your business that need to built intentionally in order to have a freedom-filled summer, but I have no doubt if you are intentional and you start taking action now you can have the summer of your dreams next summer.
Having a summer where you can step away from your business, switch off and enjoy the sunshine is possible. It’s possible without losing money, without annoying clients and customers, and without having to hire a massive team.
But if you really want that to happen. you need to stop dreaming about it, and start doing something. You need to start building it now. And I would love to help you do just that.
My annual planning strategy days are perfect if you want more freedom next summer. You come with clear goals for what you want over the next 12 months and then I’ll make the strategy, and then create a plan so you can make that a reality.
Related Posts
