Vita's Tip In 10: Q4 planning for a successful year-end

Hello, hello friend, and welcome to Vita’s Tip in 10!

It’s finally here - the unofficial start of the fall season! Obviously, we know that fall doesn’t start for a few weeks, but for me, once my kids are back in school, summer is over, and fall is upon us. This school year was especially exciting for us as my son started high school this year.

I look at September as the beginning of fall, the end of summer, and the beginning of Q4. Technically, as some of you know, Q4 begins in October and ends in December.

At Vitalia Inc, December is a little bit of a throw away month. We are incredibly busy with appointments, fabrication, and installations. The revenue from these activities - we try to postpone till January as much as we can. By contrast, we try to pull up as many expenses into this fiscal year as possible. We are physically in the office and workroom only three days a week, b/c everyone gets paid holiday week off. So you see for all intensive purposes, I don’t use December for revenue budgeting and forecast. And so for planning purposes, I look at the Fall season as our Q4.

So, here we are, in September, the start of Q4, and as I look out into the last quarter of the year, I begin examining the year to date as well as looking at ways to finish out the year strong. It’s time to take stock of where we are so far and major mile-stone check-in.

First, I typically look at the major financial metrics: revenue, expenses, and net income. At this point, I can give a great guess as to where we are going to end the year. I’ve recently reviewed our numbers, and, thank god, I can say that we are going to finish the year strong. Even though as you know, I was nervous at the beginning of the year, knowing we are heading into some real economic uncertainty. Thankfully, none of that came to fruition.

Having that peace of mind, I start looking at major expenses that the business can recognize this year. For example, last year, as you know, we finished the renovation of the building, and of course, as everything goes, it was over budget. We weren’t able to accomplish some things even though I would have loved to, because we just ran out of money. You get into the spending fatigue and just want to be done.

One of those things is a generator. When the power on that road goes out, it causes many problems. Machines do not work. The internet is goes down, and the computers won't turn on; therefore, we are shut down until it is back on.

Even though I really wanted to get a generator last year, I told myself we must stop spending money. So now that I’m sitting face to face with this year's expenses, I’m deciding whether to get one.

There's a part of me that is like, “Oh, maybe I shouldn't, maybe it'll be fine. Maybe we'll be okay. We'll see.” Now that you have three-quarters of the year behind you, it's time to either turn up your expenditures and make big purchases that will improve your business next year or tighten up the belt if your margins are looking a bit thin.

After analyzing the P&L, I look at marketing next. I would give myself maybe a B - maybe even a B Minus this year. Ideally, I wanted to host a couple more Lunch and Learns and would have loved to make personal connections with a few more designers. Marketing is still very much on my mind for the fall season, although I realize that Fall season is just naturally so busy that it’s that much more difficult to turn on a lot of marketing effort. So knowing that, I’m taking this learning to start making preliminary framework plans for next year. This portion of the year to date review and end of the year planning is about knowing what I need to do better next year.

The next part of my evaluation is my team. We have done some hiring this year, which I am super excited and happy about. Our team has also shifted a bit as one of our team members has decided to scale back on time due to personal reasons like new precious grandbabies. So, all these shifts in the team structure require major commitment to training. And as we learned in a previous episode, I need to make sure that I am watching our team when it comes to processes and training. In Q4, as part of the quarterly process, I will touch base with every single member of my team, where we’ll talk about their personal KPIs, how they feel they are contributing to the team, and where they feel they need more training and support. It is super important to me that my team feels heard, supported, and appreciated. My personal KPI is that our financial health is so strong that every team member receives bonuses.

And last but certainly not least, the one other thing I think about in September is the holidays. I don't know about you; there have been years when Thanksgiving creeps up on me, and suddenly, it's the weekend before, and I have not done anything personal that includes shopping and other holiday preparations. Equally, on the business side, I am shocked and surprised that I haven't done any kind of holiday planning for my team or the clients. After a couple of years of being bamboozled by the holidays, I put holiday planning into my September business review, and now I am entirely aware that there are 11 weeks until Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is when I like sending out holiday cards, so that they are not swept up on usual craziness of the holidays. I will be thinking about a gift, if any, that I want to send out with that card. I’ll be thinking about when we will be having our holiday team party,what should we do for it, which days should be blocked off from installs, which days we will be taking off and when we’ll be coming back.

Of course, it almost goes without saying and let me make sure I’m clear, this IS the time when we map out all of our installations and fabrication schedule for the rest of the year. We usually keep a running calendar of three months. Now that August is off the board, it's time to focus on September, October, November, and in this case December. We map out our capacity and have a sense on the deadlines to give the clients.

So there you have it, my friend. This is what my reflection and examination looks like to prepare for Q4 and the successful end of the year. It's important to note that you don’t have to follow what I do precisely; if you have other important metrics, review those as well. The main point that would love to make here is September is a really great month take stock of where you’ve been, have a very tight plan for the rest of the year and even preliminarily look into next year, and give yourself and your team the time necessary to celebrate all your accomplishments. Celebrate by planning – not by the seat of your pants.

If you need help with any of this, I am here for you through the VIP experience, which is open to select, bright, ambitious window treatment specialists who are ready and want to scale their businesses. And so as I am planning my Q4, I can tell you that there are only a couple of openings left in 2023, and then we will start opening up our calendar for 2024. I also want to give you the heads up that the price next year will go up. So if you’ve been on the fence, if you know deep inside that you need this and haven’t taken action, this is the time to do it.

Reach out and we’ll schedule a conversation.

Until then, my friend, I look forward to working on my next episode of Vitas Tip in 10!