Team Retreat

Today is one of my favorite days of the year! My team and I are off to Lake Gaston, NC for our Annual Goal Setting & Business Planning Retreat. This is our 4th year doing this retreat together, and it is time that we all enjoy immensely. There is lots of laughing, a fair bit of crying, and lots of letting it all go and getting revved up and excited for our businesses in the new year.

Part of our “homework” for the retreat is gathering data and reviewing numbers from the current year, then several exercises to get us ready for the new year. While Vicky Noufal and I were prepping our numbers we started looking at when our transactions took place during the year. Of my 50 personal transactions in 2018, well over 50% of those closed in 2nd and 3rd quarter (with the majority in 2nd quarter).

Now that news isn’t necessarily earth shattering … if you’ve been around this business for anytime at all you understand that there is a seasonality to it. What was reaffirming about this information is just how CRITICAL 1st quarter is to our business.

Those transactions that I was closing in 2nd and 3rd quarter were for work done 30, 60, 90+ days before. That means that the bulk of that work was generated in 1st quarter (and certainly a bit in 4th quarter last year).

What this means is … don’t try to ease into the year in the first quarter! This time is vital to your business. 1st quarter is not the time to be organizing and setting up systems and getting your office tidied up and ready for the new year. You need to be doing those things NOW, so that when January 1st rolls around (or January 2nd for me, whenever the kids go back to school 😉 ) you are ready to hit the ground running to get your business off to a strong start. It WILL set your tone for the year.

Have you started analyzing your business yet in preparation for the new year? What sort of things will you be looking at?