Episode 420: My Plan For 2025 and the Power of Quarterly Planning

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As the new year unfolds, Adam reflects on his recent trip to Tenerife, where he took time to unwind and ponder new strategies for 2025. By grounding himself with impactful literature during his travels, Adam highlights the importance of reading and how it aligns with ongoing business objectives.

In this episode, Adam delves into the mechanics of goal setting and organization through the use of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), a system made famous by Google. Adam further discusses the impactful book “Multipliers” by Liz Wiseman, which challenged his preconceptions about leadership.

Show Highlights:

• Adam emphasizes the importance of reading as it relates to business strategy and self-improvement.
• Utilizing OKRs is crucial for aligning the team and maximizing business performance across the board.
• Leadership styles significantly impact team productivity; being a “multiplier” can quadruple team output versus a “diminisher.”
• Understanding and applying the principles from “Multipliers” can help leaders foster a more collaborative and effective team environment.
• The episode underlines the necessity to begin the year with clear objectives and remain adaptive to new strategies and leadership techniques.

Links Mentioned:

Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172

Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod

Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod

Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod

Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod

Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod

Transcript:

Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.

[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of Business Growth Secrets. And what a start it’s been to the new year. So I have been away, um, in a beautiful hotel in Tenerife, which is the Hotel Botanico, and a really nice start to the year. I had the opportunity to go and relax and think and look at different things.

[00:00:31] I’m going to tell you a little bit about some of the lessons that I learned and one of the habits that actually has helped me a lot over the years to get things done and create a lot of success is that when I go away I read a lot and I really do take a little bit of time to consider what do I want to read and I make sure whatever I’m reading is something that is going on within the business, something that I want to.

[00:00:55] Work on, um, in any moment of time. So I’m going to tell you a bit about that in a minute, but there’s so much going on actually within the business. There’s been a proper fast start back to 2025. Like it, it’s been a crazy fast start. We’ve had so much going on, um, and so much stuff to do. So I’m away, um, Tenerife, got back, uh, got back on the eighth, um, read some really cool books, got some really cool things in play, and then we’ve got loads.

[00:01:24] We’re straight into it. So we’ve got a free event currently going on and we do, uh, different types of free events and we’ve got free events on LinkedIn, so showing business owners how to use LinkedIn to get clients and then we’ve got free events on social media monetization, which is showing clients how to monetize their social media and like literally in the first week we’ve had them in Leeds, in Sheffield.

[00:01:48] In Nottingham, in Farnborough, in St. Auburn’s, in Hemel Hempstead. We’ve had so many events. Uh, Lee McQueen has been out there running the LinkedIn ones. Ross Temple has been out there running the social media monetization ones. You know, some of our team, uh, we’ve got some American, uh, team that are over as well, Damien and Jim, and they’re running our business circle experience.

[00:02:08] Just got all this stuff going on. So it’s been a proper quick start to the year. And one of the things that we’ve been doing, we’ve been rushing to get Our HQ ready because we just refurbed all our toilets. We’ve refurbed all this stuff. And so currently we’re like, if you can imagine it, we sat, we’ve got dust everywhere.

[00:02:24] We’ve got things everywhere. We got stuff all over the place. We’ve got toilets being refurbed. We’ve got teams in all different areas of the country. And it’s just like, Organized chaos. Um, if you could call that organized, but it has been pretty well organized actually, what we’ve pulled off, you know, in the first week we’ve done about eight events, we’ve refurb our offices, uh, we were launching a new online campaign, which is really cool.

[00:02:48] That’s going out. I’ve been working with the team on that. Uh, we’ve launched a new product to the previews. You just got so much happening. It’s all been a really cool star. So I wanted to do a podcast and you like, what’s it like at the start of the year? Um, and then I want to give you some kind of like more juicy, uh, tips and different things.

[00:03:06] So one of the things that I do, which you can do to help you and your business and be really focused and super focused is I make sure that. Whenever I’m going into a new year, I’ve already done like the 2025 business plan. And what I look at is I look at breaking this down into three to five majors. So I was like, what are the three to five major things?

[00:03:36] That the business has got to accomplish now from a more granular level. We have a finance director that runs the finances of the business and they write what is called a budget for the business. So everyone in the team knows what the budget is going to be. What I then break that into is what’s called Okay, ours.

[00:03:55] And there’s a really good book actually on this called measure what matters by John Dora. And he talks about in this book how I okay ours changed Google and they turned Google into one of the biggest businesses in the world. So we applied this process of having a okay. So what an okays are stands for is it stands for an objective?

[00:04:15] What’s your top line objective? And what are the key results that you want? To accomplish along the way to achieving the objective. So the way that breaks down is you would say, you know, like you, whatever your business is going to do in revenue. So if we say, you know, business is going to do 15 million pounds in revenue, that’s the objective.

[00:04:34] Now, the key result of being able to hear that objective. Comes down to three to five major things, you know, in our business, for example, you would have, you know, the amount of events. By the way, I’m just making it. These are not my actual objectives that we’re writing, but these are just the examples of what you can look at.

[00:04:53] So if you look at an event business, you say, right, we’re going to run. 277 events with a net promoter score of 98%. So we’re going to run all these events. We have super happy clients, and that would be a key result of the objective. Now, another key result of the objective is, you know, we’ve got to add 10 different people into different areas of the team, you know, two in finance, two, you know, one in marketing, one in so and so, whatever it might be.

[00:05:18] And you break it down to really what the key results are within the business. So we set all those out and that’s a really important thing that you can do for your business to understand what are your objectives, what are the key results that you are going to be working towards over the course of the year.

[00:05:37] And then you measure these objectives quarterly. So you have your objectives in quarter one, you have your objectives in quarter two, quarter three, quarter four. And if you’ve got a bigger business, you get all your team to set their OKR as well, which is what’s their objective and what are their key results along the way.

[00:05:55] And this is how you build things out, which is, which is pretty cool. So that’s one thing that we’ve always got done moving into Um, the new year. But while I was away, which is on the same topic, but slightly different topic. And by the way, why do you want to know this stuff? You know, if you’re a business owner, sometimes you can be focused on your objectives.

[00:06:16] You can be focused on your key results, but your team are not. And if your team are not focused and you are focused, what you’ve got is them pulling one direction, you put in the other direction. So what you want to get is you want to get everyone on your team setting objectives, setting key results, Because then what happens is rather than you being the only person in the business that’s got loads of energy driving the business, all of a sudden you get everybody else in your business driving the business with you.

[00:06:40] So it’s a really good thing to do, even if you’re a small business or a big business. You know, if there’s five of you. If you’ve got the other four people in your business, usually you’d be the genius with 10 hands. So you would do all the thinking and they’d do all the moving of their hands. Well, instead of getting them to be the hands, get them to be the brains.

[00:06:58] So what you want to do is you want to get them setting their objectives and understanding what their key results are going to be. You can all agree those and now you’ve got everyone moving in the right direction. So that’s why you want to look at that, which is called, uh, OKR, which is a management process.

[00:07:11] It’s been really useful to me and something that you, you can do. So I always try to read. Some, some books on leadership, some books on working smarter. This one, that I’ve just come back, made a really big impact on me, actually. And the funny thing about this book, I don’t know if you’ve ever read a book, that when you start reading it, you’re like, I hate this.

[00:07:32] You know, like, oh, oh God, I’ve picked the wrong book. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that. Well, when I picked this book, that’s exactly what I thought. I was like, oh my God, didn’t like it at all. And I said to my other half, Sasha, I was like, Oh my God, I don’t like this book. She’s like, Oh, you’re going to persevere with it.

[00:07:47] And I’m like, Oh, maybe I’ll persevere with it. I’ll give it a go. So I sort of persevered with it. And then I really started to realize why I didn’t like it. And the reason I didn’t like it is because it was challenging me so much. Like everything that I thought, This book thought differently. And I was like, and then I started to, usually I burn through books like nothing you’ve ever known.

[00:08:12] I read them so fast, it’s a joke. Um, often, you know, Sasha’s with me and she’s read, she reads, I don’t know, a book, or maybe two books, I don’t know, I read seven. Well, I’m still stuck with this one book and I’m just like laboring through it. And she was motoring past me, which is really weird. And I realized that I was just finding it really challenging to read.

[00:08:34] And the book itself is called multiplies and it says how the best leaders make everyone smarter. So it’s by a woman called Liz Wiseman. And basically the principle was what it did is, is it really looked at leadership in a, in a deep dive way. And it broke down all these different aspects of, of leadership.

[00:08:55] And at the back, what’s really cool is it gives you all these different games you can play with your teams to really change the leadership within the business. So some of those I’m going to try, which I thought was quite interesting. Um, so I’ll give you a, uh, just a quick insight into it, but what it did is it challenged me as I was reading it, it made me think differently and it made me think, you know what, I’m going to change a few different things.

[00:09:17] But one of the big principles was. So if you look at two different parts, you’re either a multiplier or a diminisher. So if you’ve already read this book, you’ll be familiar with this concept. If you haven’t read this book, well, you probably won’t need to read it after listening to this. Now, to be fair, there’s a lot in it, so you should pick it up, right?

[00:09:32] And also get my book while you’re at it, right? Which is Millionaire Success Secrets by, uh, Adam Stoltz, right? So, um, I’m sure you’ve already read it. And if you have already got my book, then, um, pick this book up and give us a review on the podcast. That’d be helpful. Right. So, uh, these are, this, this is the purpose, right?

[00:09:53] So we’ve got two types. We’ve got a diminisher and a multiplier. So a multiplier. And this is what I’ve, there were so many aha moments. I was like, oh my God. Oh my God. So basically you’ve got your diminishers have assumptions and your multipliers have assumptions, but there’s like a key assumption. This is the way you think about people, which is really interesting.

[00:10:17] So the diminisher, the way the diminisher. Things about people because they assume that people won’t figure it out without me so that’s it. That’s not what I was explaining. Was it is the core problem of the leader that diminishes is the belief system of the leader. So if the belief system of the leader is that people won’t figure it out without me.

[00:10:39] Then frankly, they won’t figure it out without you. So it’s an issue, a big issue. Now the assumption of a multiplier, someone that is a really good leader, um, of people and that really understands how to lead people effectively, is their assumption is people are smart and they will figure it out. That’s like a belief system that somebody carries about the people who have around them.

[00:11:03] And I thought that was really interesting because I had to have a look internally myself and say, well, which one am I? Which one do I think? Do I think people won’t figure it out? Or do I think people will figure it out? And then I realized that there’s Black and there’s white and then there’s gray and then the gray is in the middle of, well, I think some people will figure it out and I think others won’t figure it out.

[00:11:24] And then you have to look at, well, where, where are you? Are you black? You’re white, you’re gray. And then how do you move to white or black, depending on which area you want to be right now? One of the things that was interesting is the upside. So when we looked at this particular book is, you know, whenever you read anything, one thing that’s quite ambiguous, i.

[00:11:45] e. Um, when I say ambiguous, it’s difficult for people to decipher is like, what’s in it for me? Why do you want to be a multiplier? Why do you want to be a leader? Like leadership is quite ambiguous. I, it’s quite hard to say, well, if you do this, you get that. Whereas if we talked about top of funnel, you’re learning marketing, you go, well, if I generate a hundred leads and I sell 10, you know, and I make a hundred grand, so you can measure it.

[00:12:09] where leadership you can’t actually measure. So it’s a really weird skill and often, this is why a lot of people don’t think they need it, is because it’s uh, difficult to measure. So when one of the things that they talked about in the book was they talked about the the impact of uh, multiplier behavior versus diminisher behavior.

[00:12:29] So the, the impact they said is that diminishers Get minus 50 percent of the team’s capability, so they actually only get the half off the team’s capability that they can actually get out of them. So it means they’re leaving 50 percent on the table where a multiplier gets 200 percent from the people.

[00:12:50] So they actually get over four times the difference of output. So in theory, if you look to this, which is what caught my attention, I’m like, all right, okay, so what you’re telling me is I’d need four times less people to get a result. If I were multiplying them rather than actually diminishing them, which made me think, Oh, that’s interesting, which I really is an interesting concept, right?

[00:13:10] And then it talks about the disciplines and this is where the real journey. So what I’ve done is, is just shown you the assumptions, showing you what you get, but then the actual journey is there’s certain disciplines. So they say that there’s five disciplines. One, there’s a discipline of being a talent magnet.

[00:13:28] So it’s being able to literally attract talent to your business and use them at their highest point of contribution, which is very interesting. Actually, I won’t go too deep into that. That was an interesting concept. The second one was that you are a liberator. So you allow people to do their best work within your environment by liberating them.

[00:13:47] The next one is you are a challenger. So you challenge them to stretch and you push them past their, their abilities and you set them stretch targets. The next one. Is that you debate aspects with them, so you allow them to debate, make decisions, and the final one is that you invest in them. So they’re the five positive traits.

[00:14:07] The five negative traits were an empire builder, someone that hoards resources, a tyrant, somebody that creates and suppresses people’s thinking, uh, a know it all. Gives too many directives, an abrupt decision maker and a micromanager. And I was like, well, I’m not quite sure how many of them that I, I have, but it made me giggle once or twice between, between the book.

[00:14:30] But hey, you know what? It’s not about where you were. It’s about where you’re going, isn’t it? Right. So, uh, you know, I thought it was just a very, very interesting book. And if you are a business owner, that’s a leader and you lead people, that’s definitely go and pick it up. And if you’re not, then what should you take from this podcast?

[00:14:48] I think what you should take from this podcast is get organized, make sure you move into the year with good discipline about what you’re going to do about what you’re going to create. Assume that people around you will figure it out and also understand that leadership does actually provide a big return on investment as you grow and develop people.

[00:15:08] Well, hopefully you found that useful, um, giving you a little bit of a. A book review there, which, uh, you may have found, uh, super interesting. And if you have and you enjoy these types of podcasts, please do let us know. Maybe you drop me a message on Instagram, tell me you’re enjoying it, or perhaps you just share this with somebody.

[00:15:27] Now, because that’s the way this podcast grows, is by sharing. Sharing is caring. That’s what spreads the message. And, uh, I hope you enjoyed it today and I look forward to catching up with you in person very soon.