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JAN 2019
BUI LDING BLOCKS
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It’s that time of year — just about everyone is thinking about their goals, myself included. Personally, I don’t set out to make goals for the entire year. I don’t sit down and map out January through December.
Once specified, I can measure how many of those clients I begin working with that quarter. When I hit a goal, I know it. It’s not based on a feeling or assumption. I’ve tracked my progress every step of the way, and there is documentation that tells me what I’ve accomplished. I set numbers that require me to stretch to meet them. If it is easy, it wasn’t a good goal. A good goal forces you to act in different ways than before. From the moment you set a goal until the moment you complete it, that goal should be in the forefront of your mind. Put it on a sticky note on your monitor. Write it in your planner. Have it repeat as an appointment in Outlook. With goals in place, you need accountability . Writing your goals down helps, but telling your goals to another person is even better. For me, it’s my spouse and Seamus — more on Seamus inside this newsletter. My spouse helps me focus on my goals and encourages me to accomplish them. She’s the best! Finally, don’t forget to celebrate the victories. When you reach a goal, enjoy the moment. It doesn’t have to be extravagant. It can be a celebratory venti soy quadruple shot latte with no foam — as I once heard a person order to my profound wonderment — or something else that makes you happy. Remember, when you achieve a goal, you’ve accomplished something most people won’t. A lot of people will set goals this month, but only a select few are going to follow through to the end . That alone is worthy of celebration.
Instead, I have a theme . Consider it the tag line for the movie of my upcoming year. But instead of, “In space, no one can hear you scream” — which I most sincerely hope will never be my year’s tag line, because an alien erupting out of my chest is absolutely no good for anyone — my theme for 2019 is,“Putting it together.” Aside from the nod to Sondheim, my theme means I am bringing all my efforts of the last three years in business and synergizing them. But that isn’t the point of this article. I have a theme for the year, but then I focus on making quarterly goals . I find that when you set goals for the year, it’s too easy to put those goals off until November. Then you spend the last weeks of the year playing catch-up instead of seeing your accomplishments come to fruition. Instead, my theme informs my goals, and my goals inform my actions every day throughout the year.
As we begin a new year, we’d love to hear what your goals are and if there is anything we can do to help you reach victory.
This is why I set my goals according to certain rules. Every goal must be specific, measurable, and aspirational .
If my goal is to increase my client base, I get very specific. What type of clients? What do they look like? What are their legal needs? How often do they need to work with me? What value do I bring to them?
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3 Strategies for Success HOW TO DRAW THE BEST NEW HIRES IN A RECORD- BREAKING LABOR MARKET Finding good employees has always been hard, but in the economic environment of 2019, it can feel downright impossible. At the end of 2018, U.S. unemployment was the lowest it had been since 1969. For months, unfilled jobs outweighed the number of people seeking employment. In a market where job seekers have the pick of the litter, employers face stiff competition when courting prospects. Here are three strategies to draw in top performers and keep them. 1. Pay more. Excellent benefits, fancy perks, and flexible hours are important items on any job seeker’s checklist, but virtually every prospect’s top priority is adequate pay. Workers today have unprecedented bargaining power, and yet, according to ADP, small businesses with fewer than 50 employees boosted wages only a little over 3 percent last year, an amount quickly swallowed up by inflation and increasingly steep living costs. There’s just no way around it. To attract top-tier talent, competitive compensation is paramount, especially in 2019. 2. Give new hires the chance to grow. The best employees constantly hunger for new growth and development opportunities.
Show prospective hires the potential heights they can reach at your organization. First, your business has to have a growth mindset that promotes loyal employees and empowers them to step into exciting new roles. Then you need to present prospective employees with challenging, rewarding projects and responsibilities and show examples of how those who’ve come before them have succeeded. Annual reviews and raises are a start, but you should also explain how a job at your business will improve your prospect’s skills, career, and life. 3. Get them in the door. If you already offer a legitimately competitive salary, an expansive benefits package, and a good work environment with opportunities for growth, the only challenge left is to get on your ideal candidate’s radar. One of the best ways to do this is to implement an employee referral program. Ask your team if they know anyone who’d fit the empty role. If you end up hiring their prospect and they stay on the team for, say, six months, then reward the referrer. Cash, PTO, and other benefits will encourage your loyal employees to bring in their skilled friends.
SATISFIED WITH LAST YEAR’S PERFORMANCE? ARE YOU SURE YOU SHOULD BE? CALCULATE CUSTOMER CHURN — AND LEARN HOW TO REDUCE IT IN 2019
You’re looking over last year’s numbers, feeling pretty satisfied about the results for 2018. Production increased and you have a lot to feel proud of overall. But what about those customers or subscribers who said goodbye to you in 2018? If you haven’t yet calculated your end-of-year churn, you should feel a little less comfortable. Looking at that churn rate is key to your business’s success. Most business owners say that if they could change one thing about their business, it would be their customer churn rate. Retention is key to success because it almost always costs less to retain a client than it does to attract a new one. Increasing client retention and reducing churn in the coming year can only happen if you know what your churn rate was last year.
as a percentage of recurring value lost. Choose the measurement that makes the most sense for your business.
Why is this number so important? Think about it this way: Beyond representing how many customers flew the coop in 2018, churn represents an exponential loss of profit. Each year those lost clients don’t do business with you, you lose a year’s worth of potential revenue. By tracking customer churn throughout the year — ideally quarterly — in addition to end-of-year churn, you’ll begin to notice trends that you can address. Does the highest churn always happen in the third quarter? Did you sell more subscriptions in 2018 but lose more longtime customers in the course of chasing those leads? Noticing how these threads lead back to your losses is the first step in decreasing your churn rate. Of course, it’s impossible to calculate your customer churn if you haven’t been tracking and measuring it throughout the year. If you haven’t, you now have the opportunity to do so for the coming year. Add monitoring these numbers to your resolutions for 2019.
Calculating Churn
It’s not rocket science! One of the most straightforward ways to express yearly churn is to calculate it as a percentage of customers lost: Divide the number of customers you started with in 2018 by the number of customers you lost in 2018. Churn can also be measured by the value of recurring business lost or
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Hello! I’m Seamus, the new bulldog- in-residence. I understand that I have a big collar to fill, as I’ve heard a lot about Satchmo from my favorite humans. Although I am currently in my internship phase, learning the ropes, I was asked to share a few thoughts on what I’ve learned so far. Don’t be intimidated. That’s a bulldog quality. In my home, Satchmo is a legend. It is easy to feel like I can’t live up to him, but I need to forge my own path. I am my own bulldog. I can’t pretend to be anything else. Snore like no one is listening. Basically, do what you’re good at no matter who your critics are or what they say. Someday, my humans are going to make a lot of money off of a viral video of me snoring loudly into my food bowl after falling asleep while eating … and who will get the last laugh then? Love while you can. Okay, this is something Satchmo taught me. We aren’t guaranteed any amount of time, so while I’m here, I intend to love these humans like crazy. I will show it with big, wet, stinky, slobbery kisses. It’s my signature.
Off to nap. Paws and kisses.
–Seamus
T H E SMA L L B U S I NE S S T I P O F T H E MON T H
Make All Decisions Measurable
When you’re focused on growth, bringing in new customers, establishing new company benefits, or upgrading equipment, do you have a system in place to measure the progress and success?
Having trackable metrics in place for most, if not all, of your systems and initiatives gives you crucial data for the decision-making process.
When you track progress, you can make adjustments or corrections along the way, allowing you to arrive at the best possible outcome.
Consider tools such as Google Analytics, Geckoboard (www.Geckoboard. com), Grow (www.Grow.com), or HubSpot (www.HubSpot.com), just to name a few. Even Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets can be effective tracking tools with the right data and organization. ATTORNEY ADVERTISING. The purpose of this newsletter is to provide information about Love Law Firm, PLLC’s qualifications and experience. The information provided in this newsletter does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. Any prior results described in this newsletter do not guarantee a similar outcome. Love Law Firm, PLLC’s distribution of this newsletter is not intended to create, and will not create, an attorney- client relationship with you.
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Isn’t it time you learned to love your lawyer?
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It’s Time to Get Serious About Your 2019 Goals INSIDE THIS ISSUE 1
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3 Essential Strategies to Court New Hires in 2019
Why Acknowledging Customer Churn Is Key to Success in 2019
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Famous Seamus
Small Business Tip of the Month
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To Inventing Our Future
INVENTION, OPPORTUNITY AND ENDLESS POSSIBILITY
I love beginnings. I love the excitement, the anticipation, the dreams of what will be.
to follow a real passion. The lies told helped us recognize the actual truth. We learned that we no longer were held back by our past, because we could invent our future. That’s something Mare and I try to teach our children. If life is invented, why not invent something wonderful? Why not invent a place of opportunity? Of creation? Of happiness? Of inclusion?
Clearly, I love thinking about the New Year. It’s a great time to shake off whatever happened the year before and move forward.
A few years ago, it had been a particularly bad year. I had a number of personal disappointments. And it seemed like a lot of my closest friends had been through the same thing. We were done with January through December. We decided a cleanse was in order, so we gathered a bunch of calendars from that year. We then got together on New Year’s Eve and lit a bonfire. Standing around the fire, each of us would find a particular date, rip out that entry, and declare why it was terrible. We would then crumple it up and throw it into the fire, releasing that bad day to the universe. We danced around the fire and celebrated.
Happy New Year from the Love-O’Keefe Family - Francine, Maryann, Keagan & Caleb
I’ve heard it said that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react. I believe that.
This year, my wish for everyone is that we each embrace the possibility that is around us. That we look not for how things are not, but for how we want them to be. That we view our setbacks as teaching points, our opposition as wise counsel, and our failures as an opportunity to try again with better experience. The worst thing in life is to live with regret — the unspoken word; the ungiven gift; the unspent time with a loved one.
It was amazing and cathartic. We learned something that night – it’s all invented. What do I mean?
Nothing had actually changed. The bad events that had happened on those days had still happened on those days. The events were unchanged, but our perception of them was profoundly different. The terrible breakup was no longer a devastation; it was a release. The job loss was not a setback, but an opportunity
Let this be the year we are fearless.
From our family to yours, here’s to an amazing 2019!
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