John Campbell 0:04
Welcome to the inspired and active podcast. This is the podcast where we share ideas and the best digital thinking to help you grow and inspire you in your business, enabling you to make a bigger impact in helping more people. I’m John Campbell, the founder of global digital adventure. I’m a digital change coach, and outdoor activity leader with a passion to get more people active in the outdoors. Let’s get into today’s discussion.

Hello, welcome back to the inspired inactive podcast. It’s John Campbell here, it’s been a while since I’ve shared my thoughts with you. And it’s it’s really great to get back into the podcast rhythm. A lot has happened over the last year. And we’ve got a start of a new year. So what I wanted to share with you is, is what we’re looking to do and how we we go about our planning for 2022. Because it’s really a great time for everybody to start reflecting and to start looking at what’s ahead of them. I’m not a great goal setter. I think if you make too many goals, then then the challenge for you is to keep to them and then not be adapting as I suggest you always are. But there is there is a basic process that I would advise and reflecting over my many years of running companies that you have to set down and January compared to January you need and we’d suggest you have these in place. So you’re going into the first quarter of the year with with the focus that you need to have, I’m going to discuss with you six steps that I would advise and knowing from my experience are worth doing when you start a new year.

And the first one of these is you have to take a moment to reflect on the year past, many people just dive straight into what they want to do next year. But it’s really important that you just step back and look at what has actually worked for you what hasn’t worked. And just jot down lessons learned because it’s really important that we actually look and learn from what we did, if it worked, let’s do more of it. If it didn’t work, let’s reflect and make changes. We looking back at my year we we had plans, we were planning out a global event, which are getting people moving across the countries and my reflection on this is we made connection with people across the globe. But we just didn’t follow through at the pace I didn’t actually manage to to connect as I wanted. So it just slowed down. And if you lose momentum in an activity, there’s there’s a very good chance it will stop and then and then COVID was around and it was very hard to deliver. So I dropped it. But by reflection, I could have continued it, I could have kept going. So one of my learnings from that is is about responding. And it’s about consistency. And you can go back through your year. And I would write three or four things that you would like to improve this year, and three or four elements that actually worked well. And you can progress on during the next year.

The second step is really about looking at your strategy in any business. So you need to have a clear and concise view of where you’re heading. A lot of people say well, I don’t have a strategy. And without a strategy, you do not know if you’ve been successful you will not be planning your year. So what I would suggest that is just reflect on your your strategy. Look at it in a simple, clear and concise manner. And in any strategy I do, there are four very simple steps that does not have to be many, many pages. It could be a visual strategy, it could be just a notes on a page. But it has to have three, four things. One is what will you do? What are you planning? And what is your target? What is your aim for this year? For example, it could be this year, I want to create an outdoor learning environment for my customers to use. And the next step would be who’s it for who is this straegy for? Who’s your what you will do for and that could be nature enthusiasts, in this case, in this example, it could be Ramblers, it could be young people. So you’re connecting what you will do. Who’s it for? So it’s the what who next is the why why are you doing it? Why are you creating whatever you’re creating, what is your strategic direction? Who’s it for and why are you doing it?

So for example, in this case, when we’re talking about creating an outdoor learning environment, you could be developing this for people who love the outdoors and who want to be connected, and what they’re going to get from it as you’re developing people’s love for the outdoors and increasing safety in the outdoors. But you’ve also got internal and external reasons why that would be the external reason. The internal reason would be to bring regular income to your business, all businesses have to be sustainable. If you’re not bringing in the income, you’re not going to be helping the people you’re aiming to help. And it’s not going to give you the freedom to actually expand and grow your business. The final part of your strategy, you had your what, you had the who had the why. The next is the how, and then you want to just lay down, how are you what what’s your strategy for delivering the aim you had at the beginning. So if it was creating an outdoor learning environment, your home could be to train a team to run events, and then go out to train through the education system. And you have a how and you could build that up. But it’s really important that you have the what, the who, the why, and the how laid out just to allow you then to plan your objectives for 2022. Because you need these objectives linked to your strategy to really progress on and lay out what is a successful year. So that was step two, which is laying out your strategy and your objectives.

But I want to spend a minute just talking about how you create that and and it’s all about making a game of it, your business, in my view has to be treated as, as a game, there’s, you’ve got personal objectives, you’ve got business objectives, you’ve really got to treat this and it’s the act of choosing to play the game that really defines and already makes you a winner because not many people run their own business and and what you’re doing here is creating something that helps people, you have an impact in the world. And that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make your your passion, specifically in outdoor activity, business, helping other people really sustainable for you. And you’ve got to make it fun, don’t get me wrong, business has got key drivers are not all everyday and your business is, is fun, but you’ve got to try and make a game of it. And I would be really, really keen to make sure that everybody who is building a strategy objectives writes down the values and what they want to get from, from the business. Now, the values in your organisation, the culture in your organisation, is really this third step, this is where you’ve really got to make sure that it’s it’s clear. So are your family are your values for your business, being family friendly, trustworthy, energetic, which are a typical values, but it’s important for you to look at those values and always be respecting them in everything you do. So at this point in January, linked to your objectives and your strategy, it’s really looking to set down these values, just reevaluate them in your own mind. And make sure for this year coming that they are top of mind for you. So we have our our kind of reflections, we have our strategy objective, and our values. And it’s important as as, as I was seeing to make this fun, and I would suggest you think of it as a game and, and put some personal characteristics down. And personally, I look at three things for the year, I want to be positive, energetic, and creative. Now you could set your own characteristics, but I always would step back and saying, Am I being positive? Then I might be feeling a bit down and I said, Have I got the right energy? Am I energetic? Am I applying my energies to this correctly equally, if I’m seeing things flattening, I would see. And I challenge myself to say, I’m really holding myself to the creative characteristic that I know I want to have and deliver. So you’ve got your values, but you’ve also got your characteristics that you want to use to play the game. And that I believe is so important to keep your energies at the level they need to be. Everybody needs these. And, and success is inevitable. You believe success is inevitable. If you don’t, then then that that will be a struggle because if you don’t believe in yourself, don’t believe in your business. How will other people so it’s how you reflect outwards. That’s important here. So make sure you set these characteristics as you go forward.

The fourth step in setting your 2022 ideas is really laying down your model, your revenue model business is all about bringing in the relevant income to support what you’re doing and and too many people I see when I coach and help businesses, they don’t have a plan in front of them. And again, I’m not meaning, this is exactly what we’re going to bring in every month on month, that’s down to cash flow, we’re not talking about all that kind of detail, what we are talking about, is really setting a revenue model. What I advise is look at your seasons, looking at 90 day deliverables, and try and have a revenue statement for each 90 days, so So I would create a grid with quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, or season 1234, or whatever you want to call them. But for each of those quarters, or seasons, estimate a revenue model, just it doesn’t have to be exact, this can be aspirational, it could be something that is really challenging to you. But you need to set down the revenue goals to allow you then to create your operational delivery plan to achieve those goals. And we’ll have many podcasts to talk about how we can get sustainability into your business. But the key is, put them down. Maybe start with what you want to make in the year, and then work back and see, well, if we’re going to make that much money in the years. For example, if you wanted to make 1 million pound in a year or $500,000, or whatever the figure was working backwards each quarter, what would you have to make to actually achieve that? Because then what we can do is look at right? If you want to achieve 100,000 or 200,000, this quarter, how do we achieve that? How many people? What do we have to do, relating back to our strategy and objectives and deliverables to make that happen? So again, it’s a high level. But if you don’t put this down, you will not know where you’re going. So it is really important. You plan that out and add that to your planning for 2022.

This takes me to the fifth and and of the six steps that I’d like to bring to you in this podcast. One is, is how would you make sure that this is successful? How would you know what is success? And how would you then track that? Because it’s essential that you track how you’re working and how your revenue model is coming through? And are you meeting your objectives? So how would you treat what is done, what a successful what have you achieved, so you need to set down some parameters. And there’s lots of ways you can do this. And we’ll advise different ways in different podcasts. And if you reach out to us, we’re very happy to support you in this. You can create smart objectives, now smart objects that objectives have been around for a long time. They mean Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and time bound objectives. There’s no point in treating an objective that you can’t measure. If you set a goal and that you can’t measure, it’s not really a goal, it’s more of a desire, because you need to be able to measure anything that that you’re setting out to do. So you know if you’ve made it, and there’s no point in creating an objective, that is unrealistic, and you can’t achieve so smart objectives is a good way to to look at it. And I’m also a great believer in terms OKRs in terms of objective and key results. So if you have an objective, what are you trying to achieve from that objective. So if you were back to my earlier example, of creating an outdoor learning environment, your objective could be to set up the digital space to allow people to be trained on your outdoor activity. And your key results could be to have 50 people in the first month on the training course. So it’s really measurable. It’s really time bound, because it’s a month. And it’s it’s specific. So you’ve got to look at this. Because if you don’t know what success is, if you haven’t set your parameters, you can’t then react to how it’s going. Because you won’t really know where you are. So it’s really important to lay this out and put these in place. They do not they do not have to be long winded. They do not have to be complicated. The simpler, the better. If you’ve got to draw breath when you’re talking about an objective, then it’s too long and objective. It’s got to be short, snappy and understandable.

The final step in our looking forward for 2022 is really how you personally act and how you become very self aware. What you need to do is look at how would you think you would feel if you got to the end of 2022 and you fit your revenue targets you’ve achieved your objectives your vision is right spot on and and you’re getting great feedback from from your customers. How do you think you would act If you had a successful year, see you actually were even more successful than you expected in terms of revenue or value, or impact, how would you feel and that self awareness is so important because really what you need to do is start acting that way from today. The biggest advice I could give anybody is, be confident, believe that you can do it. And the best way to do it is always put yourself into the shoes of of you, after achieving a successful year, your energy would be different, your whole out Luke on everything, you won’t be so worried. And it’s that energy is that confident confidence. And it’s that ability to really see how we can do things that will make the difference people will see that from you people will understand and you will then develop the year that you want to develop, the last thing we we want to do is be worried about what’s ahead of us, we need to be acting in the way we want with a successful year behind us. So that is so important to us to be self aware. You’ve got to stop blaming, blaming other things. And one of the biggest things I see is people blame time time, is something that doesn’t exist, really, there’s always the now so you’ve got to act for the now. And people say I don’t have time to do this or didn’t have time to do that, we’ve got to put that beside or behind us and really look at what is the now have our future planned out and believe that we are going to achieve that and act as if we have already achieved it.

So to have agreed 2022 These were the these are the reflections of the steps that I’m putting into my business. And I would always coach and help other businesses to do the same. So the first one was reflect on the year back, there’s no point in just doing the same old, same old, look at what worked, what didn’t work. The second step was really to look at your strategy. Simple is best year, don’t overcomplicate it, simplify it, if anything, set out your your strategy, your your objectives against that. The third step was looking, looking at it in a different way, look at it as a game, look at it as something that you enjoy the act of being in the game is the key thing. So don’t over kind of complicated and make it worrying. Just try and mix personal and business and make it fun set down challenges that the next one was to set out your revenue targets. Now, this is this is key. Because if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, because it brings us into the first step of is understanding success is your business cannot operate. So you need that reflection need that strategy, you need those objectives, you need that fun, the target and the success. And the final one is believing in yourself. The business will not run without the confidence and the the understanding and the belief that your success is inevitable. And you can strive and you can have a really fantastic 2022. So I hope that was helpful just sharing the approach that that we advise to take that I will take that I’ve written down and I will follow in my own business. As I said, we coach and you can reach out to me and if there’s any of this that resonates, please please just get in touch. And we look forward to a really successful 2022. And we’ll come back and discuss many of these factors with you over the year. So thanks for listening.

I hope you’ve had a great January, and we look forward to connecting with you in the future. Thanks for listening to the podcast. And please subscribe to the podcast to follow us and each week we’ll bring you more strategies, hints and tips to be successful in your business. Follow us on Instagram and connect with me directly on Twitter. My handle is jarthurcampbell. I hope you find some time outdoors and we’ll speak to you next time.