With 2022 just a few days away, you’ve probably started to think about business planning for next year.
Business planning can be a subjective and frustrating topic for many.
Where do you start? How do you know when you’re done planning? What if you forget something?
To add to the confusion, there’s no shortage of information to sort through.
So this week, we asked Thomas Plummer to give us an overview of annual planning for the training gym owner.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why not having a plan is detrimental to the future of your business.
- How to plan for your business’s short and long-term needs and ambitions.
- Why you should have multiple plans if you truly want to set your business up for success.
Plus, so much more!
If you want to make sure you didn’t miss anything with your annual planning (or need some tips for getting started), this is the episode for you!
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Watch The Full Episode
Just one thing where training gym owners get actionable insights to grow their dream business and with the legendary Tom Plummer.
And we’re going to unpack one thing today. So Tom, welcome back.
Thomas Plummer: Good to be back, man. What are we going on down? What’s what, what’s your question?
Sumit: So the question that I’m grappling with is now that we’re in the holiday season, right? Everyone’s beginning to think about 2022, I’m beginning to get emails from other businesses like, Hey, have you thought about 2022?
What are you doing? Let’s do this promotion. Let’s do that. So I’m thinking, what should gym owners be thinking about as they start planning for 2022 to make it the best of your ever. And maybe we can. But for this episode, let’s, let’s just talk about the concept of planning and we can have multiple episodes, uh, and make it a series about what to think about and how to go about executing on those plans.
But big picture share about planning. What should we be thinking? What should we not be thinking? How do we, yeah, big picture stuff.
So the, the weird thing is if in a perfect world, big picture is November to me is the most crucial month of the year for. So in the month of November, excuse me, I should be laying out my plan for next year.
So I should have a working 12 month plan detailed. I need to know again, I’m targeting my revenue, you know, maybe in a future episode, we could even put up the formulas and some of the stuff we’re projecting and all those types of things, but I need to know, month to month, what did we do for revenue? What I’m going to spend for sale?
What’s my target for trials. What’s my conversion rates. I need to have a working plan already geared up, including I need to know mostly, probably 90% of all my marketing anticipated should be on that wall as well. So I should be able to walk in, look at your wall and then look at your support document and be able to understand exactly what your plan is to make money for the entire next year.
So 2022, show me your. I would guess there’s not 1% of the gym owners in this country that could show you the plan. Then to me, that’s an operational plan. Then the next big level is a development. And the development plan means in next three years, show me this plan, show me what you’re going to spend on and reinvestment your turf needs to be replaced.
I need to expand, I might need to add new equipment. So the development of plan. Bigger picture. I go higher up, you know, bigger viewpoint to look at the overall, what’s this going to need? Do I need to renegotiate my lease? Do I need to renegotiate, um, get out of this space? Do I, what I, I have to start to see a little more immediate picture on how I’m going to.
They, you know, what issues that’s really what problems I have to solve. Lease negotiation, equipment, re-investment new flooring. I that’s, I’m looking at the bigger picture things and usually not reflected in a one year operational plan. And then the five-year plan is concept. You know, it’s this, do I need to build a building?
Do I need to definitely move within five years? Uh, how much money am I putting away from my personal savings and retirement plan? Um, all this type of stuff is reflected in the bigger that bigger conceptual. And then the final one is 10 years. Show me your exit strategy. Show me how you’re going to get out of this within 10 years.
And how much money are you going to save? How much money do you need to save? Show me a plan to pay off your house in 10 years, everybody should have a plan to pay off that house at 10 years. Show me how you’re never going to have another car payment within 12 months. Start to show me how your life looks financially.
So show me the exit strategy because you know, you’re 28 years old, you’re a specimen. You’re, you know, the best, you know, you’re just rocking it, female, male. You’re just absolutely on fire as a coach and 10 years from now, you’ve got three kids. Your back’s all busted up and you’re sore. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, you know, but kids life, age changes.
At some point you need the ability to walk away from this. So a one year I really have to, what am I going to run? How am I going to run this on a day-to-day basis? How am I going to make money? What do I knew? What’s my plan to make money. That’s the one, your operational, the developmental plan is sobbing.
Re-investment problems. You know, do I, how am I going to refinance my loans with my bank? I need $30,000 with the turf. I need all this. That’s more of a three-year what’s it need to keep this business. That I get the conceptual plan, you know, do I need to move? Do I need more units? Am I, you know what I need to do at that level?
And then the escape plan.
Big picture. If you don’t have a plan, how do you make decisions? Yep. So the, the concept of maybe we can finish, well, we’ve got a few minutes on this one. The concept may have some minutes.
Being reactionary versus proaction in this case, reactionary means if I don’t have a plan every day, all I do is react to the situation in France. And I just, I it’s, it becomes the term is, uh, who’s that go back to, I forget which guru management guru of the seventies, but it’s situational management and where I just get everything is based on the problem in front of me and how I feel.
If I have a plan, then everything I decision I make proactive means. Does it move me toward the plan or away from. So I make much better decisions when I know, yes, I need to do this because it’s going to help this number come true.
I’m trying to get from 40,000 to 60,000, or this is going to distract me. I’m not going to do it. So proactive management means I always anticipate the expected outcome, but how I, each day I have to make decisions that move me toward the. Situational management. We means you come in today. It’s like, let’s go, you know, you have no idea what the hell is going to happen.
You have no plan. You have no, you’re not even thinking about next month, let alone all next year. So your marketing is always, you spend too much money for marketing because you don’t mark it for months. And then you throw a whole bunch of money in it because now you don’t have any members. You have no retention plan because I didn’t think about retention as part of my whole business plan.
If I had to give you a number, I’d say 90% of the owners are totally reactionary. They are total situational management, which makes it really hard to run a business. The guys that breakthrough, the guys that actually plan those are the guys. If I could put, I could name a couple of hundred guys, I, if we had a 3,500 foot gym in a typical suburban market, decent market.
Good. The good. I could put one owner in there that he would do $25,000 a month and go, yeah, I’m kicking ass. I bet I could put the same, a different owner in this same exact space. And he could turn that within 12 months into 80 grand, a month, 1260 grand, 80, 80 grand within 18 months to two years because they apply planning.
They have progressions of business development. They have longterm commitment to marketing. They just do everything opposite. This guidance, same space. We always play more space or blame something. This guy’s a good coach. He trades good members. He’s got 150 clients. This guy comes in and he ends up with $300.
And he does a different vein. Why? Cause he just planned, you just said a better developmental plan or a better overall plan. He knew where he was going with his business. And once he set that in motion, he did everything he could to keep himself on planet, run the plan, not the man run the plan, not the man.
Yeah.
Sumit: So true. So on that note, thank you.
Once again, Tom, for sharing, this has been great. So I appreciate it. And on that note, we’ll end this episode of just one thing.
Thomas Plummer: Thanks, Matt.