Does it feel like 4th quarter planning always sneaks up on you, leaving you scrambling to hit those end-of-year goals? Or perhaps you’re wondering how to balance business growth while still finding time to rest and recharge before the holidays?
The last few months of the year can be overwhelming, but with the right strategy, you can turn this season into your most productive one yet.
In this week’s episode, I’m diving headfirst into how to finish the year strong—without losing your sanity. We’re talking about 4th-quarter planning, the importance of understanding the seasons of hustle versus rest, and how to create a roadmap for success that works for YOU and your business.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- Why breaking the last quarter into manageable chunks is the key to hitting your goals.
- The power of recognizing the season you’re in—whether it’s time to sprint or slow down.
- The importance of delegation and automation to keep your business running smoothly, even when you’re resting.
Imagine wrapping up 2024 not in a state of burnout, but feeling balanced and ready for what’s next.
Whether you’re looking to onboard new clients, boost revenue, or reclaim your personal time, this episode is here to help you navigate the final stretch of the year with clarity and intention.
So, grab a coffee, sit back, and let’s map out a game plan for your best 4th quarter yet!
Timestamps:
[01:30] Discussing different seasons in life
[03:30] Importance of not comparing yourself to others
[05:00] Practical tips for planning the fourth quarter
[07:00] Importance of delegation and automation
[10:00] Work-life balance
[14:00] Importance of energy management
Notable Quotes:
“Not every business will look the same, and that’s okay, because everyone’s journey and experiences are unique, and relating yours to someone else’s is always a bad idea, always the only person, and you’ve heard me say this before, you should ever be comparing yourself to is yourself of yesterday, last week, last month, last year.”
“Rest does not mean failure. It’s about understanding that there’s times to sprint and times to slow down, and both are very necessary for growth.”
“Dream. I want to give you that power to dream, and I can’t stress this enough, but a big portion of this is going to be delegation.”
“Balance is possible, but it looks different for everyone. And so I think a lot of people actually fail or feel like they’re failing this, because they don’t actually sit and stop and think about, what does that look like for me?”
Resources:
Did you love this episode?
Make sure you never miss an episode! Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to subscribe to Bella In Your Business.
Transcript:
Welcome everybody to another episode of Bella in your business. I am excited for today’s episode because I I feel like, okay, we are on the verge of the end of third quarter, right? And some of you may or may not talk or think about your business or your life in quarters, but I’m telling you, once you start doing that while things change. The reason why we do 90 day goals in the mastermind is because our brains can actually understand or think about what we’re going to be doing in 90 days in three months, approximately. Think about it. You probably know where you’re going to be during Christmas this year. You know where you’re going to be living, what you’re going to be driving, approximately how your business is going to be doing. But if I were to ask you what it would be doing in five years from now, you’re like,
I have no idea.
I would have no idea that I would be in the living, the life I’m living. If you asked me this in 2019, okay, it is. It is just uncanny to me how things change and how, hopefully we change and grow all of the time. So today, I want to kind of dive into that, and I want to make you finish strong, rest easy, a balanced fourth quarter for all of you. Because right now, at the time of this this airing, it is Thursday, September 26 Okay, which means in four days, five days, third quarter is gonna be coming to an end, and fourth quarter is gonna be starting October 1. October 1 to December 31 this is your sprint. This is where we can do anything we want. Now that could be a sprint for clients and revenue. That could be a sprint for rest and to just kick it down into a gear. As a business owner, you all get to decide that, and so I really want this whole entire episode is going to be dedicated to empowering you to thinking about, how do you want to do your planning of the fourth quarter while still carving out time for family and personal life. Okay, so I want you to really think about there’s different seasons in life.
There’s a season for hustle, there’s a season for rest, and there’s a season for growing. There’s so many different seasons that we can kind of go through and until you started going through them or actually acknowledging and realizing, you don’t really, actually give it any gratitude. Sometimes you’re just your body is tired and you just all you can do is is manage to work on your phone from laying on the couch, right? You can’t even, like, be up and out and creative and all this stuff. And maybe the tapes in your head are, like, so lazy, and it’s like, no, your body really just wants you to just chill out, right? And so knowing what season you’re in is key to avoiding burnout. Not every business will look the same, and that’s okay, because everyone’s journey and experiences are unique, and relating yours to someone else’s is always a bad idea, always the only person, and you’ve heard me say this before, you should ever be comparing yourself to is yourself of yesterday, last week, last month, last year. Okay. Now growth feelings could also feel very exciting, but they can also demand a lot from you. And so how to recognize when it’s time to push and when it’s time to step back is going to be really, really interesting. So I just want to stress here that like every season serves a purpose, and just because you’re not in go mode 24/7, it doesn’t mean that your business is failing. Maybe it’s like the rest season, and it’s exactly where you need to be. So let me give you example.
I worked with a business owner for her to for two years, she was in complete hustle mode. She was onboarding clients, hiring staff, running the show, and she was doing it well. But eventually, the weight of trying to do everything herself to DIY, it caught up to her, and she entered what I call the rest season. Instead of pushing harder, she made a decision to scale back and focus only on the essentials and recharge. Now, did her business fall apart? Absolutely not. Because in that hustle mode, she did all of the important things with SOPs and getting a really good foundation, okay, and in that fact, the rest period gave her the clarity that she needed to reorganize her team, and then she came back even stronger. So remember, rest does not mean failure. It’s about understanding that there’s times to sprint and times to slow down, and both are very necessary for growth. I know comparison, like I was saying, is a big issue for people and and again, you might think that people have it all figured out. I see it online all the time.
I see it in these Facebook groups. I see some people, you know, really looking up to, some people that I’ve actually had conversations with, and I know that they’re running around with the chicken with their head cut off, or their profit margin is terrible. In fact, it makes me cringe seeing some people give advice where they have no no place to. It. So I really want to encourage you do not compare yourself to other people because you have no idea what their bank account, their relationships, their marriage, their stress levels, all of that is going on inside of them or in their own life. All right, be careful who you compare yourself to. Now, I definitely want you to also have a create, creating a fourth quarter without losing your sanity, guys, we I’m reminding you that you have this beautiful time. We have 25% of 2024, left. How do you want to spend it? I want you to think about that. Think about that. Really. Think about it.
And we could. I want to switch gears and talk about something practical. How can you make sure that the fourth quarter is amazing without feeling like you’re sacrificing your personal life, your personal relationships or your mental health? So I have a plan, and this isn’t just like a vague to do list. I mean breaking fourth quarter into manageable chunks. Let’s say your goal is to onboard five new clients before the end of the year. Instead of saying, I’ll get it done by September 31 break it down into smaller steps. Maybe in October you’ll only focus on marketing. Maybe November is about consultations and December is about finalizing agreements. It helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed by the bigger picture. Now, that might sound really slow to you, like, Bella, we do this in 24 hours. Yeah. So that is an extreme. And whenever I’m considering planning things, I always love to go to the extremes of extremely big or extremely slow, or extreme of like, what’s the worst could happen and the best that could happen, right?
So you also might want to change that around, too, and say, You know what I instead of, you know, and that would be a really small and slow kind of process. Another one could be, I want to increase by, I don’t know, $30,000 by the end of the year, right? So that’s an additional $10,000 a month. So what are we going to do for that? And we’re going to break it down into each month. Or maybe it’s just going to be a simple, I’m going to be I’m going to have more work life balance, and that means I’m not working weekends, or that means maybe you are working weekends, but you’re not working Thursday Fridays, or you’re shutting off by, I don’t know, five o’clock, or you’re not starting until the kids are actually at school. You’re not going to be trying to run your business in the morning and also try to get the kids ready for school, therefore robbing their time. Like I said, this is going to be really creative, and it’s going to look different for everyone in their life. Maybe it’s just a simple I’m going to walk my own dog every single day, right? So dream. I want to give you that power to dream, and I can’t stress this enough, but a big portion of this is going to be delegation. If you’ve already got employees, use them. If it’s just you stop doing everything yourself, stop trying to do your bookkeeping. Or, I’m sure you’re not even doing bookkeeping on a regular basis, because nobody likes to do that. Okay, you’re doing it right before someone asks for it. And you’re like, Oh, no.
I’ve had so many business owners come to me lately that want to sell their companies, and they know to come to me because I have a lot of buyers too. I have a lot of people. They’re looking for really good investments, and they use me to help, like, shake it out, tell them if it’s a good investment or not. Oh, that’s a whole nother podcast. But anyways, you can’t be working the business all the time, because that’s going to lead to your burnout. You have to delegate. Canva this week just did a what they call a glow up, which basically means that one everything’s moved around on the lower level, on the second level, they have a lot more really cool things that you can use, but who has the time to really sit there and figure out how to do it, what app to go to, how to use it, how to design it, how to make it look good? And who has a design background?
Most of you guys don’t, but you still are spending an hour in Canva trying to do a graphic. That’s where better marketing, Bella comes in. That’s why we created it. Every program I have creates the top problems that pet sitters have. But my point is, is that you need to delegate. So first you have to have a plan of what you’re going to do by fourth quarter. Then you need to delegate. And so I know that trusting someone with your business can feel scary, but your time is valuable, and you have to really start taking inventory of where you’re spending it, and then take automation. For example, I know a business owner, a lot of business owners who use apps to schedule their social medias every month. I mean, we teach that in the in the better marketing with Bella program, which, by the way, guys, our doors are going to be opening for first semester, which is the first six months of 2025 it’s going to be happening in a couple of weeks.
So please stay close to me, because we only open it and allow people in certain times a year, because it’s a ton of content to do for you guys, we have like 4050, companies every month that we’re replicating and creating and doing. All this stuff for and we have to have our system in order to always deliver on time, which, by the way, we’ve never missed a delivery date. Yay, us. So automation, you know, like, even if you are doing stuff, you really have to figure out how you can automate stuff, how you can maybe your your monthly or BI monthly emails that are going out to your clients to stay in touch with them, the emails, the training emails that are going out to your employees, the like I said, social media posts, the ability to track your books and your bookkeeping so you know how much you know you have to spend and save. And so when we’re talking automation, also celebrating, look at what you have been doing and what can you celebrate often, I think we forget to think about this.
So when you hit a goal, whether it’s booking a new client, successfully delegating a task or just surviving a billy busy week, celebrate it and don’t wait until you’ve hit the big milestones, like we’ve been in business for five years, 10 years, little wins add up, and recognizing them will keep you motivated. So like, what was the last thing that you celebrated? And so if we don’t have these goals, and we’re not looking at what are we going to achieve in fourth quarter, then we don’t know when to celebrate. I mean, sure, you can celebrate as you go, but it’s even more amazing when you celebrate after you’ve achieved something, and it’s definitely something I really encourage a lot of my clients. One of my clients got an actual tattoo. I mean, talk about celebrating, all right, the work life balance isn’t a myth. So let’s talk about that big, elusive concept that we all seem to be chasing a work life balance. And you you’ve heard it before, and it’s worth repeating, but balance is possible, but it looks different for everyone.
And so I think a lot of people actually fail or feel like they’re failing this, because they don’t actually sit and stop and think about, what does that look like for me? And then they also don’t understand that once they’ve set up what that looks for them, that it can be adjusted, all right. And it could be adjusted with intent, not with overwhelm. What I mean by that is it’s okay to, like, adjust your goals, especially when you’re first starting to do goals, you have to adjust them because you’re not really, you don’t actually understand what is capable in, let’s say, 90 days. So the first couple times you goal set, you’re gonna probably fail miserably. But the cool thing is, is that you fail fast, you fail forward. You start realizing what is possible, what is a good goal for you, what’s a bad goal for you, and that failure is actually success. And so when you figure out what is work, life balance mean for me, it’s going to be uncomfortable. I’ve heard of people having like, like, a digital detox, right? You think your phone is buzzing, or you think your phone is ringing, and you’re like, Nope, that’s all in my head. And it can be simple things like putting your phone on Do Not Disturb, or silencing certain apps at certain times of the day.
You know, it does not have to be all or nothing, and that’s where you’re going to have to start figuring out what works for you. For example, one of my clients, who’s a mother of two, implemented a new rule that after 5pm her phone goes to DND, do not disturb her clients know that, and unless it’s an emergency, they’ll just hear from her the next day. And guess what, her business is still thriving, and now she gets quality time with her family every evening. I had another client who she has been gangbusters, hiring her staff like she was like, All right, we’re ready to hire this year, she went from none to, I think she has like five or six employees now, and she’s working on making one of them a manager, so that when she’s at fairs with her sons, she can actually turn off and not have to be worrying about, did someone appear at the right time at a visit or, you know, is everyone safe for the day? And so it’s it’s so wild and exciting to watch her do this, because she’s at these things where she’s like, Yay, I have employees. I can go to the fair. And she’s like, Bella, I spent the whole time on my phone because we had this, this and this, and so now I’m really motivated in figuring out who I can get to step up as that middleman for me, so that I’m not being interrupted while I’m at the fair, right?
Because that’s the other thing too, that I feel like a lot of people do, is they get the work life balance, but then when they’re like, living life, they’re actually spending their time working, which actually breeds resentment from friends and family that you’re with. So don’t be that person. And let’s also talk about energy management, because it’s not just time management. It’s not just about having enough hours in the day. It’s about understanding what tasks drain you and what tasks energize you. Maybe client emails in the morning completely zap your energy, but scheduling social media feels exciting and creative. If that’s the case, then try to structure your day so you tackle the more draining tasks first, and use energy. Energizing tasks as a ways to boots boost yourself later, I’ll describe to you something about me is that I wake up. Like I barely want to even eat breakfast or put makeup on. I want to get straight to my desk, because I am so on fire to work when I wake up. I am so creative. I am I feel like I can do everything at once. And what I do, typically do is I burn myself out by one or two. No, no, honestly, by 12 or one by one, I need to be like I’m brain dead on the sofa.
And what I’ve been trying to do is change that, to get myself out now that it’s not 110 degrees every single day, and take a walk in the middle of the day, just do a couple of laps around the block, because then that really helps me decompress. And then I Voxer, and I’ve told you guys this before, which is a good verbal processing for me to one of my friends, my CEOs, as I’ve called them, or I’ll just do my own voice note to myself, and I’ll usually delete it because I don’t really listen back to it. But just by like, getting it out just helps me. And so you have to manage your energy. You have to know when it’s time to rest, when it’s time to move when it’s time to to hustle. You know, there’s all those different things. And I honestly hate the word hustle, because it’s it comes from a, like, a very masculine high, like kill it, like power.
And personally, I have been making a conscious effort for two years, and it is a journey. Let me tell you, to come from a place of what feels best to me, and so that’s my own personal thing, right? Instead of hustle and jump on top of it and kill it, and you know, all this like fighting energy, I want to be in more of a feminine like receiving and living in my creative space. Okay, so I hope that doesn’t confuse you. And so encouragement for the future, like so before we wrap up, like, I want to leave you with a little bit of encouragement. Growth definitely does not happen overnight, and it’s okay, but I want you to be consciously aware. I want you to be consciously intentful of what you do with this fourth quarter. I want you to picture these next three months as an absolute gift.
There are so many holidays coming up, so many interesting times for you to get together with your family, friends, the community, your team, there’s so many opportunities to build on relationships that you’ve already started, and I want to encourage you to take charge of that. I want you to encourage you to figure out, what is it that you want, that you don’t always have to be killing it, you don’t always have to be dominating over things, but that I want you to consciously think about. What do you want your fourth quarter to look like?
Do you want times out on that pumpkin patch? Do you want times for Thanksgiving? Maybe Thanksgiving just simply is not thanksgiving for you. Maybe it’s a week before or a week later. Fun fact, everything goes on sale the next day. So you probably could have a cheaper Thanksgiving if you host your own Thanksgiving couple days later. Who says you have to do Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, right? Maybe instead of Thursday, you make it on that Sunday. Who knows? I want to empower you to take control of what do you want your life to look like for the fourth quarter? What does that mean? So think about that, and feel free to message me too, because I love getting your feedback every single episode. Last episode, I had this really long voice note from someone, and it really touched my heart. And so I love hearing the things that you guys want to hear about. Don’t be bashful. Let me know. And yeah, I’ll be back again next week. Can’t wait. Have a wonderful end of the month, and let me know what is your big fourth quarter plan. And if you want accountability, DM me and let me get you into the mastermind.
The mastermind is only 177 a month. You get our HR consultant, which would be way more just to meet with her. Okay? And you don’t just get an HR consultant for an hour to ask anything you want and everything she’s ever at answered since January of 2018 but you also get the hot seat, you get the Roundup, you get accountability partner if you want it, and you get me Monday through Friday. So if that’s not a deal, I don’t know what is you can just go to jump consulting.net, forward, slash mastermind, and hope to see you in there. And I hope you have a wonderful fourth quarter. Please. You run it. Don’t let it run. You have a great day. And always keep jumping. Bye. Now bye.