2025 Growth Plan Solo Episode with Paul Zelizer

Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before I get into today's topic, I just wanna thank you. Today is episode 350 of the Awarepreneurs podcast. I can't quite believe I'm saying that out loud, but I am just thankful to be here with you and to have been doing this now for seven and a half years. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for telling your friends, and just I appreciate you. Today is our monthly solo episode with me, Paul Zellizer, the founder of Awarepreneurs and the host of this podcast. Our topic today is creating a 2025 growth plan for your impact business. Before I get into it, I do want to acknowledge, in addition to the celebration of this podcast, just acknowledge the recent election here in the US. There's been a lot of, you know, ups and downs. It was a very intense election. There's a lot of reflection and concern about where we might be headed with the new administration coming in. And if you're somebody who's, you know, feeling that, I've certainly got a bunch of messages.

So just acknowledging it. It's beyond the scope of this podcast, although it does factor into today's episode. We're gonna talk about the change in administration, what it might mean for your growth plan for 2025. But I do want to acknowledge it's been an intense time for many. So to set the context, we're in a time of, yeah, economic uncertainty, a big shift in the political landscape, certainly true in the US, but also around the world. The, you know, current administrations and elections around the world are being disrupted, and we have new forces coming into play. Certainly true here in the US. We have high prices and real concerns about how we got there with high inflation, and bit less focus or less willingness to engage in dialogue about things like diversity, equity, and inclusion, and women's rights, and LGBTQ rights, and much more of a sense of just I just want to cover the basics.

I wanna get back to a world where economics, look, you know, rosy, and, there's just a lot of uncertainty. So given that, I think it's really important for us as entrepreneurs and particularly impact business founders to think about this era that we're going into in 2025 and to find ways to create resilient and values driven growth that really continue the impact focus of who we are as social entrepreneurs, but really take into consideration the context as best we might be able to tell going, you know, looking into 2025 from this vantage point of the middle of November in 2024. In this episode, I'm gonna share 4 strategies with you, and they are, number 1, to reaffirm your mission and your values proposition, number 2, to increase your financial resilience, number 3, to strengthen your local partnerships and networks, And number 4, to prioritize customer retention strategies, maybe over acquiring new customers that can be expensive. Doesn't mean we don't wanna do it, but how do we be smart about providing all the value and retaining as many existing customers as we can? So those are gonna be our strategies that I recommend as you think about your growth plan in 2025. Let's dive in. Strategy number 1 is in this time of a lot of uncertainty and a lot of change and a lot of consumer just, you know, people being nervous and seeing things like some big companies in the tech space, some automotive companies around the world really seeing disruptions. Nissan just announced 9,000 layoffs. It's not clear whether Volkswagen is gonna survive.

I drive a Volkswagen. You know? It's there's certainly another example. There are some American carmakers that might not be here too much longer. There's a lot going on in this moment as we transition from 2024 and going into 2025. I really encourage you to come back to your mission and to be able to communicate, number 1, as it relates to your mission and your value proposition. Number 1 is to take a moment to connect with your mission, see if there's any changes that wanna happen there, and to reconnect and, you know, to communicate again the mission driven benefits of your business or your organization. So that can look like reminding your clients, your stakeholders, why your impact mission makes your business uniquely valuable. So what is it about what you do on a purely business entrepreneur level and how that has impact in the world in a positive way? That can be leveraging your online assets, your newsletter, your social media.

It can also be in person, just reminding people that you're not just a business that's chasing money, but that you're chasing impact. Also, think about how you might communicate long term impact, not just next week or next month, but how what you do makes a difference to your clients or customers and also to the larger world in the context of an unpredictable economy. And number 3 is, maybe this should have been the first one in this strategy, is reinforce your mission internally. So your team, your stakeholders, the people you contract with, right, the people in your innermost circle, help them remember what you're all about. Again, that goes above and beyond your day to day, whatever your product or services are. That's great. But reconnect internally in that most inner circle about how what you do makes a difference, and that can really boost morale and help just reengage and help people kind of find resiliency in a time looking into 2025. Best information we have from this vantage point is that there's likely to be more uncertainty, more polarization, or at least as much polarization, and people, you know, having to make careful decisions about each dollar they spend.

So if you could help them remember what you do and also how what you do makes the world a better place, your internal team can embody that more and can communicate that in a day to day, whether or not on a phone with somebody who's calling in or they're meeting with a prospective client in person or they're managing your social media, this can help get more from the people that you already have on your inner circle. So, again, that's strategy number 1. Come back to your mission and how that relates to the value proposition of your business. Spend a little bit of time there as you're thinking about your growth goals in 2025. This will help you be more effective. Number 2, increase your financial resilience and flexibility. It makes sense to me in a time of uncertainty, in a time when there's a lot of disruption of businesses that haven't really thought about resiliency, and we're just kinda doing the same thing over and over again until, wait a second, it's not working. The the classic example in business is Kodak, the camera company.

When digital photography came along, it just totally caught them off guard, and it wiped them out. Right? They they weren't flexible, and they didn't have a resiliency mindset. They just kinda rinsed and repeat and rinsed and repeat until they drove off a cliff. So three strategies here is, number 1, to strengthen your cash flow. Look at your cash flow and think about how you might engage some strategies for making things more robust. You might consider strengthening payment cycles. You might I'm sorry. Shortening payment cycles.

You know, getting paid more quickly from clients. I've certainly found this in my own business where I used to do 30 days net. Now I do 15 days net, and I haven't gotten a lot of pushback. Number 2, think about leaner spending practices. Do you really need that big, you know, tech investment right now? Do you need to buy new computers for everybody? I'm not saying don't. I'm just saying be mindful in this time of uncertainty. And it might be time to reexamine your pricing. I know that isn't always easy for impact entrepreneurs, but, you know, we need to survive to have the positive impact that we wanna have.

So it might be time to just take another look as you're going into a new year. How are your products and pricing, your products and your services priced? And are they in alignment with what's true in the marketplace and when you look at your books right here right now as we're going into 2025? Number 2, emergency funds. Given the uncertainty and given there's lots of flux and change and unknowns, that having an emergency fund that would allow you to cover 6 to 12 months of your base operations can be just a real source of being able to sleep at night. So you might think about extending any emergency funds that you have. Or if you don't already have 1, think about, is there a way you can start to build 1 so that if you hit a surprise, it's not a crisis. It's just a, oh, wow. I'm glad we planned for something like this. And that can allow you to free up bandwidth to actually focus on growth because you're not so nervous if you have a surprise in any given month or any given quarter.

The last suggestion here is think about cost saving innovations. How can you create a culture that without getting in the way of your core operation, your core product and services, can you find ways to inspire a culture of looking for innovation around reducing costs? And that could be everything from remote work to restructuring a contract with a vendor. Maybe there's a way to lower overhead cost. I'm thinking of 2 awesome battery companies here in New Mexico. They are Flow Aluminum and GridFlow. In some ways, you could say that they're competitors, although they don't act that way. And they, not too long ago, went in on a they both need a clean room to make these batteries. Very precise tolerances.

You can't have lots of dust or dirt, so it's called a clean room. But they went in and they collaborated on one together instead of each having their own, and it greatly reduced their expenses and more of that. Please, in this current environment, I think that can really help you grow and, like I said, navigate any surprises because you've reduced your expensive through innovative strategies. Number 3, something I'm doing a lot in my business, strengthen local partnerships and networks. In a time of uncertainty, just natural human tendency to kinda look around to my right and to my left rather than a continent away or even a state away, who's here in my local community that I see regularly? Tomorrow here in New Mexico, we have it's called the New Mexico Impact Investing Collaborative, and a whole bunch of us are gonna spend a day together. In this case, it's about impact investing. But by definition, impact investors tend to invest in social entrepreneurs and climate companies. Right? So a full day with people in my local environment, beautiful farm here in the northern part of Albuquerque, And that sense of, like, who's here, who's going through changes or hard times together, I think, as just a natural human wiring.

And if you're looking for opportunities to collaborate locally, to establish partnerships with local organizations, government programs, we have a lot going on here in New Mexico. I'm really excited about it. There's more coming soon about some of the things that are happening here in New Mexico as it relates to social entrepreneurship and climate tech. Some of these folks will be at this gathering tomorrow. But just, like, looking around for organizations, other impact focused businesses, governments who are trying to move the needle on initiatives that or goals that are similar to what you're working on. How can you collaborate locally? So that's number 1. And number 2, to either join or form coalitions that are looking for resilience. Again, an Impact Investing Collaborative is on my mind because of tomorrow.

But either, you know, doing an assessment of who's in your local ecosystem, or maybe if you live in an area, maybe you live rurally and there's not anybody right down the road, I'll probably drive 12 miles to go to this event tomorrow, maybe within a 12 mile radius, but maybe it's a 50 mile radius or a 100 mile radius. Maybe it's more regionally, a 250 mile radius, but you get a sense of what I'm talking about. Try to assess that are there folks that you already know about that you haven't leaned into or that you haven't just spent the time because you've been so busy with daily operations, this would be a good time to do an assessment, have some conversations. Who might there be around? Who might be available? Who might it be a good idea to circle back around that maybe you haven't spoken to in a number of years and see about your local partnerships and networks? Honestly, this is one of the fastest growing aspects of my business. In the past 2 years, I've gone from a very small percentage of my private clients being in New Mexico to not quite 50%. I think it's about 45 it was 45% the last I looked. I just got a new client today. I signed the contract, so maybe that tips me over 50%.

I don't know. But you get the idea. From 5% to, let's call it, 50% in 2 years. Right? And a lot of that has been through this strategy of strengthening local partnerships. So this is a really good time to assess and to think about, can you spend a little bit more time and leverage the human desire to connect locally when things are challenging? Lastly, I wanna encourage you to prioritize customer retention strategies. And it's a little bit like number 3 when things are, like, exciting and new and people are like, wow. It's a great time. The desire for new things and new ideas like, our nervous systems are wired to be open to new ideas and to get excited about things we haven't heard before, maybe something that feels kind of exotic because it, you know, was on the opposite side of the country or in another location in the world.

But when things get hard, humans are wired to be a little more or maybe a lot more focused on what's happening right here with these people that I already know. So customer retention is who have you already worked with or are you working right now? And three ideas here are, number 1, see how you can maximize a lifetime customer value. So I'll give you two examples from my business. Number 1 is I'm focusing on more and selling a lot more 6 month coaching packages. In the past, I've done more proportionately what I call a a strategy session, a one time session. I was doing more volume of those. And the 6 month coaching programs, like, that obviously I don't need as many 6 month you know, they're 10 x pricier because it's not a one time thing. It's I meet with people for 6 months and we do some longer work together.

Together. And even then, I just had a client and his leadership team, they just reenrolled. So we did 6 months of work. They were super happy, and they signed up for another 6 months. Today, the contract that I'm just about I just have to sign it. They signed it. I need to sign it and get it back to them, but if they'd signed it, I'm counting it as good. You know, it was again for a 6 month coaching contract.

So I'm I'm focusing on larger organizations who have the budgets. The organization that's signed today is a 32 person company, I think. Right? Anyway, so I've really done some homework to position myself. This is a local company that signed the contract today, actually, as well as the organization that extended another 6 months. They have the budget. I've really positioned myself that, and I've really worked to find a way to help them see if we do this 6 months or a year long journey that we can really move the needle on their goals. These aren't things that are easy to do with a one session, a one off session. Right? So that's what we would call lifetime customer value.

A one time session is one price. A 6 month coaching program with a whole leadership team is 10 x that, but I'm, you know, really trying to help them see there's a lot of value in that longer work together. Not sell something to somebody that they don't want, but really making sure that I'm not shortchanging if what they want is a bigger change that I'm comfortable with articulating why that longer work together. Right? Or maybe it's a product that just is much more robust, and you have another product that is, you know, less costly and can do a little bit of what somebody's hoping. But going in for the more expensive or something that they're purchasing through time, that's the idea of maximizing lifetime customer value. Speaking of value, to really lean into this is not the time for rhetoric. This is a time in my assessment where we really wanna come back to what's the value of the product or the service that you have. And being able to adjust messaging to really highlight the solutions that you offer to their most pressing needs.

One of the things that I'm seeing is, in my business, the pressing challenges or their needs is around leadership and attracting and keeping great talent, that people are showing up, that they're engaged, that they're recruiting the next generation of real high performers in companies. If you have, you know, 3 dozen employees or 200, somebody I spoke today as 220 employees. Right? So as people either churn through and they leave or more commonly in the businesses I work, they move up levels of leadership and they open up spots. Keeping those spots full and keeping the company going as they grow, this is a key challenge that a lot of my clients right now are hiring me for. So as I focus on that challenge of helping to attract and retain great people and create leadership and to allow the founder or the leadership team to see the next level of high performers coming in, they're super excited to work with me through time because we're building that, and I'm actually getting to help be a part of training and creating culture in the organization. That's an example in my business about what one of their pressing challenges is. And as I've gotten better about being more effective in that space but also being able to talk about it better, More of my clients are doing longer contracts with me, and that just makes it a lot easier to see how my business is gonna sustain itself and grow even in a complex time with a lot of uncertainty. Lastly, I wanna encourage consistent communication, both internally with your employees, your board if you have 1, your suppliers, and then externally with clients in the market to be able to talk about the evolving needs in your industry.

Almost nothing is staying static in this moment as we're closing out 2024. I don't think 2025 is gonna be I don't think static is gonna be the word of the year. Let's just say that. So how can you keep communicating, keep your fingers on the pulse of what are the trends in your space, and be on the leading edge rather than reacting to it, but really embracing? You know? There's probably gonna be a whole wave of 2025. You know? Think about these kinds of content coming, but I haven't seen much of it yet. I wanted to be on the leading edge of that. So this podcast is, you know, one of my examples of trying to be on the leading edge. Try not to get caught in having to respond to something that you weren't ready for or weren't anticipating, but where can you keep communicating with what's happening, what's evolving in your space? So, hopefully, this gives you some idea of how you can be focused on growth even in a time of uncertainty and likely a lot of change in 2025.

Again, I wanna just go through the strategies. Number 1 is to reaffirm your mission and your value proposition. Number 2, to increase your financial resiliency and flexibility. Number 3, strengthen your local partnerships and your networks. And number 4, to prioritize your customer retention strategies. I want to invite you to say, what do you think in terms of growth strategies in this time of uncertainty and change? Do any of these make sense to you, or do you have other strategies that you think are really gonna help you create a great growth plan for 2025? Please, I'd love to hear your ideas. Bring them to social media. I do a lot of work on LinkedIn, or please feel free to email me through the AwarePreneurs website.

And lastly, if you have questions or you'd like some support about your growth plan for 2025, please take a look at my strategy session. It's a wonderful time where you don't have to sign up for a long coaching program. There'll be a link in the show notes. Finally, I wanna say we love your suggestions for topics and guests. If you have one, please go to the AwarePreneur's website and send in your ideas, and I wanna thank you for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.