Ep. 173 - Q1 Is Done! Three Systems That Will Allow You To Review, Analyze & Plan With Certainty

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Sample Week in Review Sheet

Ep. 110 - Time Blocking

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Show Notes:

Quarter one flies by, and then suddenly you’re asking the big questions: Are we actually consistent on enrollment? Are we spending wisely? Are we burning out our team and ourselves without noticing? That’s why we’ve implemented repeatable, reliable systems that tell the truth about what’s happening in our business and our life.

In this episode, we walk through three tools we use to run a healthier gym and make better decisions with less stress. First is a weekly review that captures what’s getting done week to week: attendance, output, wins, struggles, and priorities for the next week. Then we get into business vitals tracking, focusing on enrollment, payroll, and reading your profit and loss statement through percentages so you can spot patterns, compare seasonality, and lead with strategy instead of intuition. Finally, we share a monthly calendar audit built on time blocking, so you can see where your time went, and use this information to block next month’s time.

If you want practical business systems, better operations, and a data-driven way to plan your time, this episode will help you build momentum for the next three quarters. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Learning to Thrive. I'm Courtney. And I'm Michaela. And today we are talking about wrapping up quarter one. Can you believe it? No, it's flown by. Yeah, it's gone really fast. But here we are. We are at the end of March, and we are looking to make sure that we are consistent throughout the year in knowing and doing the systems that keep our business financially healthy and also healthy in energy output and also healthy in enrollment. Consistency, I would say, maximization. We want to make sure that we are utilizing our facilities, our staff, our energy to the maximum capability and not allowing something to continue on that maybe either should be changed, should be cut, should be, you know, altered in some way so that we can be operating at the most efficiency. And what we have found over the years is that setting up systems to be able to record data and to just really keep track of some of the more mundane things, some of the more mundane statistics that if you can do that on a regular basis over the course of a year, two years, five years, then you build yourself a data set that is unique to your business and you're able to use that to make decisions, make predictions, and essentially run a thriving business. And so today we'd like to go through what three systems we feel like are needed throughout the year and especially check like Q whatever ending should be a check-in, like, did I do it? Right, because months can go by really fast. So maybe you're getting to the end of March and you're like, I haven't tracked my enrollment at all. Well, it's not too late to start, and it's also not too late to maybe go back and grab some data. So we want to make sure that we are doing that. Your reminder to be true doing the mundane.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah.

Week in Review

SPEAKER_01 2:08

And coming up with a system to make the mundane at least feel a little bit more automatic, right? Like if you get into a routine with a system, then you just kind of do it almost on autopilot, right? In in some situations, right? So yeah, so we've got three particular systems to run by you guys um to help you analyze and plan and continue on through the other three quarters of the year successfully. So the first is a week in review. This is something that we started this past year, this past school year. So we're said in September. We're what, seven to nine months? Seven months into it. Yeah. Okay. And um, it's been it's been good. So it's basically a time that you put into your week, either beginning of the week or end of the week, to pause usually takes maybe 20 to 30 minutes to reflect back, look at your calendar, look at what you've done, and kind of pool several different pieces of data together for yourself. So it could be like on hours, we have everything from keeping a closer eye on our personal attendance and like timeliness coming into work and things like that, or class attendances, things like that, just the the again, the mundane, the things that we need to do. Like, okay, yeah, I know I came to work five days today or five days this week, but how many times did I clock in versus having to go back in later and be like, oh yeah, I forgot to clock in this morning. I've been here for eight hours, but I never clocked in. Yes. So a little bit of closer eye on that kind of like the monotonous stuff, but then also the key components of each of our positions. So as the social media person, I'm taking a look at how many posts did I get done this week, how many videos did I do, how many videos outside of social did I do? So we do our newsletter videos as well, any additional like projects that I helped people with or exciting posts. If I have a post that does really well, then I'll put that info kind of on there as well. And then also as a leader, I, you know, it's a quick check-in of who did I actually meet with this week. Are there any big issues or big things going on with those people just to kind of have all your week in review in one place and then it gets shared with Courtney as well. So she also has kind of tabs on what's going on in the gym.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah. And I think for me, receiving those weeks in review is really has been a game changer for me because it allows me to know where everybody is, both both work-wise. Like it's nice, it's nice to have, okay, you know, who did you meet with last week? You know, like the attendance stuff, the timeliness stuff. Like, it's good for me to have that data, of course. But really, what it tells me, like one of the questions is what's the best thing you did this week? Where did you struggle the most? Right. Those two questions give me a pretty good temperature of how that person is doing energetically, how that person is feeling about the work that they're doing, or what's going on in in life. So that could be the place I struggled the most is I was sick last week, or I was sick over the weekend. So that gives me data and intelligence. Like I can be asking, oh, are you feeling better? Right. Like those human things, or you know, the best thing I did that last week was, you know, my team won the competition. Then then I can send a text and be like, you know, great job. And on so our team does this. Some people like to do it on paper, like fill out the worksheet. We have a worksheet. We'll link it in the show notes for you, and and you guys can see what we're working with. But some people like to do the worksheet and then take a picture of that and send it to me, which is fine. And then others have adapted it to be a digital document.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Which is what I do.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

And I like.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yes. And I think the digital document, honestly, I will we will probably try to migrate everyone towards that um for next school year because the digital document really can be accessed anywhere and I'm able to write comments on that one. Which I love. Yeah. So I go through and everybody gets at least one comment, usually two or three, because then they know that I have read it, digested the information and I know, like, so that it doesn't feel like you're sending this into a void. If you are gonna do this task and you are not going to review it and do something with that information, then do not bother doing it. Like it will be a waste of your time. But if you're gonna go ahead and comment back or text back or, you know, whatever, hey, congratulations on you know passing that test this week, then it is a useful tool. And it provides our leaders and our staff does it too, with time to reflect because the amount of things that you that everyone gets done in a week around here is really impressive. And so a lot of times we don't stop to say, oh gosh, I answered 20 emails from parents last week. That's a lot of energy output, a lot of communication, a lot of making people feel like they matter. You need to give yourself a pat on the back for that, right? Or I didn't get anything done last week, and here's why. And one of the questions on there is what are your goals for next week and what could get in the way? So it allows us to look towards next week and say, what do I need? What can only I do? What do I, what are my priorities and then what's going to get in the way and what will I do about it? So, like it also, while it gives you the kudos for what you did last week or the reminder that you need to do better, it could go either way. It also sets you up to plan the week coming up so that you can execute that with efficiency and with purpose. So an effective, effective tool, if you can pair that with your calendar, which we'll get into a little bit later, then you you have a golden, a golden recipe right there. Yeah. Yeah.

Business Vitals

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Yeah. So our next system is what we call business vitals. And this is what do you do this monthly, Courtney, or quarterly? You do this monthly. Okay. So this is looking at, so we just talked about kind of tracking your own personal data, your highs, your lows, that kind of thing. This is more getting into the numbers of your business. So it's your, it's your enrollment. It's your maybe you're tracking your wait list conversions, maybe you're tracking your like how many drops you have. Like so that all that falls under enrollment, right? If if we're going up, if we're staying consistent, if we're dropping.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

If you're not tracking anything right now, tracking your enrollment. Yeah.

unknown 8:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Right? Like what is the enrollment from month to month? Do you have historical data on that? And if you don't, let's start making it.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

And you can build it out to include whatever data points you want. So you can then, you know, if you've got enrollment going and you're tracking that and that's going well, then maybe we add in, okay. Well, what are my payroll expenses month to month?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah, that's the second vital. Yeah. What's the payroll? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

And we can continue to add things so that way you have month to month a snapshot of the overall health of your company. And then if we do that every single month and you collect this data, then after a year, two years, three years of doing this, you start to be able to recognize patterns. So that way, you know, when you dip in the summer, you don't hear me because you're like, we dip every summer, and it's okay because, you know, we bounce back out in the winter, you know, what have you. Or help you start to identify problem areas faster. On the flip side, help you identify things that are going really well. Like if you have, if you're tracking your enrollment, you're keeping a really close eye on that, and you see that like the Wednesday nights are just absolutely crushing it, maybe that gives you a cue to like look a little bit deeper and like, oh my gosh, wow, our our class instructors on Wednesday are just going so far above and beyond. I should acknowledge that I should, you know, and replicate it. Replicate it, acknowledge it, replicate it, you know, and keep it going. Um, so yeah, it's more the we talked the personal side, there's more the business side.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, and and knowing your business vitals is if you're if you're not paying attention to that and you are a department lead or an owner of a of a sports program, then you don't you're you're not making decisions with all of the information. You're leading out of intuition instead of leading out of strategy. And so I think knowing your enrollment, knowing what your payroll, your major expense numbers are, and also taking your PL and exporting that and knowing percentage of expense over revenue brought in, right? So there are ranges to keep where, like, you know, if my if let's say my rent goes up, right? Which it does every year, let's face it. But it is, you know, but so does my income. My rent might be 16% of my revenue, my overall gross revenue. And as long as it's and as long as the business is doing well and 16% works for year number one and two, then year three, if it goes, if the rent goes up again and it stays at 16%, then you know that yes, the dollar amount might be painful to pay. But for the health of the business, it's not throwing off any numbers. If it jumps to 20%, then you might have an issue and that's something that you can address, right? Or if your office supplies normally cost you 2% of your gross revenue and they've jumped to four, you need to go into your Amazon account or your Office Depot account or whatever and just see what are we spending that on, right? It gives you the red flags or it gives you the green flags. What are we cut expenses in this department? Why? Right? Make sure you're not missing paying some bills. Make sure, you know, that people haven't decided that they're gonna stop, you know, putting props out for lesson plans, and that's why you're saving money. Like it gives you the overview and the ability to look for again the patterns, look for the flow of things, and look for the outliers. Everything, everything was okay until this month when we had this big change. What happened? Plus or minus, right? Um, but you can't do that if you don't know what last month was or the month before. And I started this, especially for the payroll one. I don't know about anybody else, but when we have our summer, we have summer camp. When we have summer camp, we're we're programming 12 hours a day. And in summer camp, eight of those hours have about eight instructors. So our payroll goes from medium to very large. And the and I can't compare June, you know, July's payroll to April's payroll and know if I'm way off. I have to compare July's payroll to last July's payroll to know if I'm way off, right? Because if last July, you know, was let's say$50,000 and this July is$100,000, then I need to have a really good reason for that, right? Or maybe I need to look at how I'm staffing. But if I'm at 50 last year and I'm at 55 this year, and we have a few more campers, or just you know, cost of living and stuff like that, then okay. I know that that while that number feels huge and you're like, oh my gosh, are we really supposed to be paying this every two weeks? You know, no, this is about right, right? And this is what, you know, or and if you know your camp revenue and how much of that payroll is camp payroll, then you can give yourself a percentage. How much of my camp revenue is going to payroll versus my class revenue going to payroll? Like, it gets fun, in my opinion. You love a good spreadsheet. I love a good spreadsheet and I love data. Like I love data because data just is, right? Like it's just telling you a story. And once you have data, you can then make pull different levers to make changes. But unless you know where you stand, you're either operating out of intuition or you're putting your head in the sand because you don't want to know. And what I find out, find often is my imagination is way worse than the actual reality, usually. So if I'm worried things are costing too much, and then I actually do the numbers, it usually turns out that actually it's all right where it's supposed to be. But my imagination can go wild and and like we can crash the business, you know, in an hour of whirling in my mind. You know what I mean? Like, so if any of you are like me out there and you feel you feel like you want to make sure that you're not running your company into the ground, you know, and you want to be making good decisions, then knowing these business vitals is absolutely key. Yep. So yeah. And we have some resources for that.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

We do. We do. So run us through your your top three is the enrollment, enrollment, payroll, payroll, and then your PL.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

And then and then making sure that the the percentage of what you're spending, what is that to gross revenue? Right. Yeah. And then your net look at your net revenue. I mean, for month and month, net revenue is hard because we're in an industry where a lot of times people pay for things before they actually like camp gets paid for before it actually gets used. So like not every month is looking at the net, but like looking over the quarter. Like if you just even even if you exported your PL for the quarter and looked at what's the what's the gross revenue, you know, what is the percentage of expense over gross revenue, then you can also look at the profit line and be like, okay, what is my profit coming out to? And is that normal for this time of year? Because I've multiple years data. And if you haven't started yet, you'll get multiple years data. So you look back at last last year and go, okay, it was 15% last year and it's 15% this year, we're right on track. Although the number might be drastically different, you're looking at that over gross revenue. And gross revenue being the amount of money that just comes in the door before any expenses are paid, and net revenue being that's what is left over once you pay your expenses. So those are my that's that's where I, you know, I do love the close out of a month. And then I reconcile all the bank statements and you it's just a good time. It's a good, it's a good, it's a good time. You love a finance party.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

You love a monthly reset.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I do, I do, because it's exciting. It's like, did did what we set out to do get done? And sometimes it's yes and sometimes it's no. But then that plans the next month.

Monthly Calendar Audit

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yep. Which kind of takes us into our third and final system, which is a monthly calendar audit. Um, and this you can do both on the personal side and on the business side. So similarly to our first two systems. So basically, super simple. At the end of the month, pause, look back over the entire calendar and where where did you spend your time?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yes, this would assume that you're keeping a calendar. Yeah, that's step one.

unknown 17:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

But so if you are not tracking your time by keep by time blocking, go back to our episode on time blocking and be sure that you have your daily planner that lists by the day what time like and it has to have times on the columns, right? So one column needs to be what time a day is it? It's not the ones that have just the notes section. Give me the times. And then be blocking out what your week looks like. What when do you teach? When do you meet with this person? When when do you go home and get your kids? Like, when is family time? Like that should all be mapped out in your daily, in your weekly planner. Um, or else a calendar audit's not even going to be possible.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah. And if you're not planning your time, that means your time is probably not being used efficiently. Yeah. So step one, if you're not, if if you if you get to the end of the quarter and you can't do your monthly calendar audit because you forgot to use your planner, then the next quarter's goal is fill out that planner.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah. And a super simple like pro tip with this, with the time blocking, and even if you went back on, you know, like in your planners, they have the the whole month at a at a glance, right? Yeah. Even if in there on the days you put in, like you didn't put in like work Monday through Friday, because you know, you do that or Monday through Saturday. You do that all the time. But you put in all your extra stuff, like your friend time, your uh appointments that you have, like anything kind of like extra, right? And then you color code, you do a little color. I don't show work in. What? No, I put work in on my week to week. Oh, okay. But not on my summer, sorry. Yeah, gotcha. The whole month, right? Then when it's if it's color coded, when you're flipping through the week to week and you're looking at the month at a glance, in if you have, if I like, for example, I put all my work stuff in green, my private lessons that I do in purple, time I go to the gym and get my workouts in in blue, appointments are in red, and then like fun stuff like family time or friend time is usually like yellow, I think. When I'm just quickly flipping back through, if I flip back through and I'm like, oh, there was no yellow this month, there's no friends or family time. Sad. Yeah, sad, sad. Or oh my gosh, you know, I had my whole calendar feels like it was red. It was all appointments, and there's no blue. I never went to the gym once. I never got my workout in. Also sad. Also sad. But it's it's like a quick way to do that review to just see, okay, or thing, you know, perfect balance in life is a myth, but it gives you counterbalance. We're going for counterbalance. Counterbalance, yeah. It gives you a quick sense of like, okay, no, I I see a variety of color here. That's how I do it, at least, because I'm such a visual person. I see a variety of color, I know I I hit at least a little bit of everything. And that to me feels good.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, it does feel good.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Versus I spend no time with my friends and family, and now I'm sad.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah, or I can I also think that sometimes if you don't color code it and you don't plan it out like that or record it, you can also feel like you don't spend enough time with your friends and family because we forget so easily. And then you're like, oh, I haven't had any, I haven't had any time with my friends, like I haven't had anything fun. But then you look at your calendar and you're like, oh wait, that's right. Last week was mostly yellow, and this week has been mostly work, but like that's that counterbalance of like, oh yeah, okay, my brain is just tired. Yeah, right? The story we tell ourselves isn't always at based on fact. It's a lot more times based on feeling. So you can actually go back to your calendar and be like, is this, is this true? Like, have I really messed up the way I'm spending my time? Or do I just feel like it because this is the end of a work week, like a work more, like more heavy work week and I'm tired.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

I'm in one of those weeks this week where like a lots of stuff going on. So, but last week was not like that. You know what I mean? So, like, but it's good to know that and remind yourself, like, no, no, it's just this week and the next week you have two days of whatever, you know, like so that can help um quite a quite a bit. And and then you also I I think to add to that, if you want to, if you wanna up level that just one bit, what did you do this month that you wish you hadn't? Right? Like, what do you need to stop doing? Did you attend a meeting that you didn't really find valuable? You did it just because you should.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Right? Did you did you give a whole day to the school and really that left you drained and impacted like the the rest of your weekend? Like what activities are you doing that maybe you're saying yes to and then you're finding out are not the best use of your time? And can you let those go?

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yeah, when you're planning out the next month. Yeah. What where can you yeah, where can you maybe not sign yourself up for something?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, it's a good and it and I think once you start doing that, it's it's such a good if you know you're gonna be held accountable for your time and that's gonna be something you do monthly, then you do take your time more seriously because you're gonna hold your like it's just you holding yourself accountable. But when you're in that meeting and you're like, I knew this was gonna be a waste of time. I should have never put this on my calendar. That helps you for the next time to be like, let me check my calendar first. And then you can look back and be like, oh, I really was, it really was awful. Or you could write notes next to it. Cause like when you do your weekly review, ideally you'd be going back through your weekly planner and write yourself notes. Did not like this meeting. Or next time, this meeting needs to be, you know, two hours instead of one. We ran over. Writing, like, the more you can record actual fact. We forget so much of what really happened. The more you can record actual fact and the more you can pause to reflect and then plan, reflect and then plan and make that a cadence and have actual data, the more you're gonna go through the year moving the things forward that you want to move forward, spending your life the way you want to spend your life. Like this is your life. We're giving business business tips and we're giving, you know, work tips or you know, planning tips. But really, what we're saying is do you how do you maximize your your life? How do you make this a life that you really wanna be living? And in order to do that, you have to be willing to pause and reflect and plan it, but you also have to know what is actually happening. And that's where that data collection comes into play, both business-wise and personally, to say, I actually know what actually really happened, and I now can make a decision going forward. And I can say, I don't want my April to be spent in meetings on Friday nights.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Right? Let me figure out how to make that possible. Can I move those meetings to Thursday morning? Can I move? I have four weekends where you know, there are I have commitments that are gonna take my energy. Do I have a rest day on Monday? Can I schedule it for this month when it's gonna be crazy? Can I cancel one of the things I have to do? Like, you're planning your life. It happens to include business and it happens to include, you know, goals and stuff like that. But it's really your life. How are you spending your time? And are your people getting enough time? And sometimes our people can complain they don't get enough time, and you can look at your calendar and be like, actually. And sometimes they're right, and you're like, you know what? I do need to schedule that date. I need to schedule that lunch. I haven't seen so-and-so in six months. How did it go by so fast?

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

She's like, one of my favorite people. Like, let's get that cal that on the calendar. So I could talk about this topic for literally ever because it's so key. Um, but I think what what our community needs is a recap of okay, what are we talking about here? What we're saying is at the end of Q1 minimum, but if you could do it at the end of every month, that would be great because then you'd be stacking your data and it wouldn't feel like such a heavy lift at the end of Q1. We're doing weeks in the review. So a pause once a week to reflect on the week prior and look ahead to the week. We're gonna include that free download for you if you want to use the template that we're using. Two tracking your business vitals, enrollment, payroll, percentage of expenses to gross revenue. How is that going? And for the personal side, you can do that on your personal life too. Watch your food budget. It's sad. It's sad. And then monthly calendar audit. How are you spending your time? Let's review it and then let's plan it for April or for the for the next month. And I think that in doing those things, you can build a life that you want and also build a business intentionally that you want, or a career intentionally that you want, and structure your time so that you are in control. You're not reacting, you're creating. All right. We hope you found that helpful. Keep on thriving. Yeah. Catch you in the next episode.