How do I create a forecast that matters? One that shows a path to getting what I care about most? Most entrepreneurs don't have a clear and compelling roadmap for the future.
Welcome to Forecast On Purpose, where we talk about how to define your purpose, build a growth plan and track progress along the way to make sure you stay on target.
The result is confidence and peace of mind that you were on the right track. My name is Ben Cooper and I'm the founder of Amplify. We help entrepreneurs better understand how today's decisions either positively or negatively affect your future. Today, we're going to be talking about how to forecast on purpose.
We'll cover the three P's: purpose, plan and progress. Let's get started.
I remember the day (we'll call her Alicia) walked into my office. I was working with a group of investors at the time doing due diligence, looking at business opportunities, investment opportunities. And Alicia was in a position where she had started a business was really passionate about, you know, hiring
incredible workers and serving amazing customers and creating incredible products. And things were growing. Things were going well. But. Alicia didn't really feel super comfortable around numbers. She was more of a creative person and she was a lot more comfortable making and designing the product than she was analyzing margins and looking at projections and forecasts.
And what I found was that she really didn't have a plan. She didn't know what to do next, but it was almost like she had seen too many episodes of Shark Tank and she saw, you know, well, I don't know the answers, but I hear investors do. And so here we were sitting across from each other, talking about her business.
And as we started to dig into the numbers, it became clear that really deep down, she did not necessarily want to sell part of her business. She didn't necessarily want to invite other people's vision into her company. She just needed support. She needed somebody to help guide her through some of these really important decisions.
And so I realized in that moment, a few different things. One, as an entrepreneur, you are not alone. There are plenty of business owners everywhere who are feeling similar things to you and asking the same kinds of questions. Even if you may not be physically surrounded by people, you can have these conversations with, in some ways, my hope is that you feel less alone, even here as you're listening.
Number two, you don't have to guess about the future. You may feel like you're on repeat. You're kind of stuck on the hamster wheel and afraid to do anything different than you did last month or last year. It may feel better to play it safe than take some risks where you don't know how things might shake out.
But the good news is, there are some incredible tools that are available to you to help untangle the complexities and build a simple and clear picture. Of how this future could play out for you and your business. Number three, you are fighting a good fight. Starting and growing a business is not for the faint of heart.
But it can be extremely fulfilling and gratifying to see progress along the way as you hit some of these incredible benchmarks and you say "Wow, isn't it amazing." We kind of look up, it's like, we're climbing a mountain. You can kind of turn around and take in the view and you say, "Wow, look how far I've come."
I believe business as a vehicle can be one of the greatest forces for good in the world. And my hope is that for you as a business owner, that you get to benefit and enjoy some of these positive impacts that can come from starting and growing a business. And then four, the best growth plan
connects today's decisions to your unique definition of success. So if you're looking ahead and you're saying, okay, here's in the big scheme of things what's going to make all the hard work, all these hard decisions, all the late nights and energy, money, all these investments. if you're looking ahead in the future,
the path between where you're currently at and where you're hoping to get has to connect back to the heartbeat of your business. So we'll dig into that here in just a moment, but what's important in my opinion, is that your path doesn't necessarily just copy what you see other people doing.
And what I mean by that is your end destination may be different than the business owner next to you. You may be facing similar challenges, but the way they make a decision may be different than how you make a decision and both are good for your unique businesses.
My hope is to give you permission to really imagine what's possible. And then the practical tools to. Answer some of those new, what if questions? You know, as you're thinking about, well, I can go this direction, but then I can also maybe hold off on making that decision or should I accelerate that decision? Should we spend more over here. Should we cut back over here? And my goal is to equip you, as you're thinking about some of these important questions
with the practical tools and resources that can help you answer those questions. At the end of the day as business owners, there's, there's a quote that I really love by Victor Frankl. And he said, as humans, our main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain, but rather to see meaning in life.
And I believe as an entrepreneur, you are willing to go all in and sacrifice a ton for something. And it's not always necessarily to, create some big unicorn business that can make you stupid rich at the end of the day, but sometimes as a business owner, you're waking up to what can be a really challenging, but fulfilling opportunity in front of you to step into the work that you have today.
And my goal is that you can connect the hard work you're doing today to the end goals that you might have in the long run. So every episode, we're going to be digging into a few things. You can expect a short case study story of somebody like Alicia who is facing an important growth decision. And then a business concept that can apply to that entrepreneur situation and can help alleviate some of the pain or frustration.
And then finally, a key question or action step for you to apply to your business. Also it's possible in the future, we may be talking about you and your business. You may be on the other microphone here and we might be talking about challenges that you're specifically facing. So today, my goal is to just give a high level view of what it means to think about the future, but build your forecast and do your
forward-thinking on purpose. And so you may hear the two kind of meanings forecast on purpose. It means we build a forecast on the foundation of purpose. And then we also forecast actively as a verb. We forecast intentionally. So we'll dig deeper in future episodes into each of these three P's.
And if you'd like, you can go to forecastonpurpose.com and download a free guide that also drills into a deeper level of detail, but it kind of parallels the things that we'll be talking about here and in future episodes. So let's jump into the three P's. So first, purpose. So, this is kind of the why behind, if you've ever listened to Simon Sinek you can hear him talk about the importance of defining and understanding the why behind what you're doing. It's kind of the heartbeat.
You know, it's kind of fast forwarding to the end and you're thinking about what's the ultimate purpose.
How does that sequence back and translate back into the way you're thinking about today. So it's your custom definition of success? You know, what makes this all worth it in the end, at the end, you know, as you're, as you're fast forwarding into the future. So why does this matter?
Others will quickly give you a definition of success. And whether that's directly somebody saying, Hey, for your business, you know, you need to follow this formula if you want to scale. Or just kind of indirectly, almost like the Shark Tank exposure that Alicia had, you might just see how other people are doing and just assume, well, I guess I'm just supposed to grow at all costs.
And we might think that following somebody else's formula or the same pattern that we see other people doing might lead to fulfillment. But unfortunately, you might find out too late that, you know, I thought this was going to pay off in the end and then unfortunately it might not. The second P is plan.
So, this is where we actually begin to sequence back from, okay, this is the ultimate goal that we have in the long run. And we can build our forecast. Our projections are, you know, month by month picture of how revenue and variable costs and overhead expenses and different cash decisions we might be making all play together.
You know, if we're extrapolating kind of the current patterns in the business and starting to see those play out over the future and then begin to layer new decisions over that foundation of, okay, here's the trajectory we're on. And now what if we hire this person or what if we invest in this new machine? It's important to be able to tie the current things that are kind of keeping you awake at night and keeping you, you know, causing you to lose sleep maybe, and saying, I'm just not sure if I should go left or if I should go right. You know, this is having a clear plan that connects to that
end goal is incredibly important because if you don't, you might be working really hard and then if you're not seeing progress, then you could begin to grow discouraged along the way. If you're not seeing that you're actually getting closer to the meaning and impact that you're hoping to have through your business.
And then the third P is progress. So this is where we can set metrics and say, how do we know that we're on track? So how, how are we going to in a measurable way, be tracking progress, you know, to make sure that we're staying on target and that we're keeping our eyes on the important things. And then, well, what can we do to improve or accelerate results? So what are the profitability levers for instance, that we can reach out toward and
you know, begin to make those small improvements that begin to stack up over time. And the importance of this and importance of tracking is so that you can course correct sooner than later. So you can be more proactive instead of just being reactive. Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite authors, talks about running a business
is like being lost in a forest of a million trees. And so if you've ever run a business, and you felt that way, raise your hand. You might have felt like you've been lost in the forest. So at the end of the day, remember a couple of things: direction comes from within. Only you are able to define what success is going to mean for you and your business.
And then you can't build a plan backwards from that, unless you have that clear definition of purpose and success. And the next episode, we're going to dive into defining a success statement and actually putting words in potentially numbers into getting a clear picture of what's possible in the future.
So the key question I want to leave you with today is: what is it that you truly want and hope for from your business? Until you answer this, until you spend a little bit of time kind of unpacking and reflecting on what it is you deeply want, then you may just continue to reach forks in the road and feel like you're guessing, and you might feel unsure of what to do next and you might feel stuck.
And you might not know where to turn. So my challenge to you is to take time and reflect on what it is you hope for what it is that, that deepest desire for, you know, the thing is going to make it all worth it in the end to, for all this hard work that you're pouring into your business day in, day out.
If you or someone, you know, is an entrepreneur and you'd like some help planning for the future, don't hesitate to reach out. Go to forecastandpurpose.com to learn more and remember: you're not alone and you don't have to just keep blindly guessing about the future. Keep fighting the good fight and forecast on purpose.