It’s mid-October 2017. My colleague and friend Xaulanda tells me she prepared an ‘Ops Plan’ for URBANDER after working with us for 4 months and that she wanted to discuss it with me. My knee jerk response was, “Wait, what?!”. Seriously…she had carefully observed how we did business, studied our areas of expertise, researched areas of opportunity, evaluated our strengths and weaknesses, proposed growth strategies and solutions to our challenges, and wanted to share with me the PowerPoint deck she put together that hosted a formal operational plan with all of this valuable information. But here’s the kicker; she then asked me to give her five goals we wanted to reach before the end of that final quarter of 2017. I told her she was out of her mind. You see, in my mind the year was just about over. Halloween was right around the corner, then came Thanksgiving, the Holidays, and it had been my experience that no meaningful new business happens in the 4th quarter of any year. She challenged me by stating, “As far as I’m concerned the year officially ends December 31st.” DANG! So, I complied. I gave her five ‘audacious goals’ she would accept as reasonable and we got to work straight through the Holiday-packed quarter.
Ten weeks later, at the start of 2018, Xaulanda pulled out her PowerPoint deck with an updated Ops Plan and we both marveled at the fact that we had accomplished four out of the five audacious goals. But the hidden accomplishment was that we were able to get our act together – getting more organized and creating processes – in preparation for what was to come, and what resulted in the most transformational year for me personally and professionally.
In 2018, we celebrated ten years in business and experienced tremendous wins duplicating our gross earnings. That Ops Plan allowed us to onboard more talent, take on more projects and expand our bandwidth. In 2018, we also experienced tremendous personal loss when my father passed away in April after a short battle with cancer. That Ops Plan allowed us to navigate through my grief and despair in a way that would hardly affect our productivity, because I was able to delegate and, consequently, pause. It was such a gift to be able to pause. Everything came into focus and it came down to this: Family and friends come first. Do what you love to do. Work with people who share your core values. Invest your time building relationships rooted in trust. Edify others every chance you get. And be real.
Today, as we get back to business, I look at the calendar and I look forward to getting together with the rest of the team later this week. We have to update our Ops Plan for 2019 and set new goals for the next quarter based on some unexpected big opportunities to have a positive impact on people with the work we do that came up in the last week. Xaulanda was right…every year officially ends December 31st, but any day is as good as the next to fulfill your purpose and to love on family and friends.
