How business planning with SMYD helped Christine Rogers to start making her big business dreams a reality.
Daring Digital is a small but mighty team of creatively-brilliant brains, led by founder Christine Rogers.
Christine and her team deliver powerful social media marketing strategies and implementation services for clients across a range of industries, including FMCG, beauty, media, and large retail stores.
Starting out in 2018, Christine spent the first couple of years managing her own tax obligations.
“I did it but with sweaty palms and freaking out the whole time wondering if I was doing it right. I absolutely hated it,” says Christine.
After being told how awesome we are, Christine hopped on a call with Jason and signed up for monthly accounting support. In short order she was feeling calm and collected, knowing her accounts were being taken care of the right way. ← And that feeling’s priceless.
“It couldn’t have been easier. They’re just really wonderful to work with,” says Christine.
Business planning: The missing key
As Daring Digital grew, Christine began to think about bringing a team on board to support her client work.
“When I was taking on my creative assistant, I spoke to Jason about whether they should be a contractor or an employee,” says Christine.
“He asked me what my plan was for the business. Where I wanted to take it. And I said, ‘let’s see how far we can go!’”
Jason sent Christine a proposal for business planning and when she saw it she felt as though it was the missing key for what she needed in her business.
“When you go out and do your own thing, nobody tells you that running a business is incredibly lonely. You don’t have somebody there, that confirms you’re going down the right path or making the right decisions.
“It’s been invaluable to plan with someone like Jason that’s more advanced than I am and in terms of scaling my business and adding a team.”
Intentional business planning
Christine says they started by focusing on her five year dream plan. Then created goals for year one, and split that into a 90 day sprint list.
“We had an initial face-to-face planning session. It went so quickly because we were just buzzing in the room. All these ideas, so much validation to know that I wasn’t crazy – that my dreams aren’t too big at all.
“It was really sales focused, but also just putting some things in place to run better as a business.
“In the space of the first five months working with Jason, I brought on two new staff members.
“The 90 days we’re in currently, we realised I need to position myself as more team focused, now that I am growing a team. So that’s really been a turn around where I’m getting the processes in place to look after them and really serve them, which Jason’s a firm believer in. And I’m a firm believer that if you look after your people your business will do well.
“So the next 90 days I’m putting together an Operations Manual, and I also had a team planning day that Jason recommended I do, to get the whole team on board with the plan. And that was amazing.”
Christine says the business has scaled so much quicker than she ever thought it would.
She believes the business planning has been an elevation for her to personally increase her confidence and gusto in working towards bigger goals.
“We also work smarter, not harder, now. And I’m more in that leadership management role.
“Last year, I had a 60% growth on the previous two years. In the first six months of this financial year, I’ve already made what I made last year.
“It’s just been so cool to be on this journey and for Jason to identify from my tax and accounting work that I had the potential opportunity to create a bigger business if I wanted it.
“Business planning has just been incredibly valuable to me.”
Keen to find out if business planning with SMYD is right for you? Let’s hop on a call and we can explain exactly how we’ll help you to turn your biz goals into reality.