Posted on Wednesday,

Business Owner Mistakes: Not Understanding Their Revenue Model and Current Sales Plan

You don’t have to be a CPA or CFO to develop a useful revenue plan. Sure, it can get complex, depending on the type of business you have, but at the end of the day it’s revenue and profit that drives your business.

Business owners need to forecast sales and revenue as the starting point to any business’s success as specifically as possible. With a solid forecast in place, you can see if you are hitting your basic numbers, but when you add in rolling forecasts, you can tweak to see even more improvement. Here are some steps to getting there:

Break down your historical sales by customer segment, service, market, and product line.
Get your sales team involved for their feedback.
Understand your customer segments and their buying attributes.
Forecast any new product sales this year.
Project how many new customers you gain a year, and determine how many customers do you lose each year.
Find out the average level of sales per customer.
Record your average invoice value.
Discover how many units per month are purchased per customer.
Think through the average selling price per unit by segment.
Understand the direct costs to forecast gross profit and gross margin (gross profit = sales – cost of sales; gross margin is gross profit / sales)
Understand sales (and collection) timing – Is there seasonality to your business?
Communicate the sales plans and results to the team continually.

Using this data, document your sales assumptions, your sales force growth, market growth, new product timing, new customer revenue, and existing customer revenue. Develop a specific and realistic forecast (one page on Excel) by segment by month. Measure actual results against it constantly.

The sales forecast needs to be a stretch to cause excitement with your team, but also realistic and reachable to ensure the team is motivated for success.

I’ve made the mistake both ways. I’ve been much too optimistic with goals that are way too lofty and not perceived as achievable. Actual results can be quite de-motivating to the entire organization. On the other hand, I’ve set sandbag goals that are easy to hit. This fosters complacency and can really slow your business’s growth potential. The best way to find balanced goals is to work together with the sales team with the intention developing an aggressive forecast to accomplish together as a company.

Revenue models generally don’t change much. Don’t make the mistake of doubting the businesses’ revenue model and over-complicating things with continually changing sales plans. This inevitably leads to confusion like a squirrel crossing the road. Understand your customer needs and company’s value exchange then run with it.

Then, make sure to have timely feedback loops and adjust plans based on actual data. “What gets measured, gets managed.”

Don’t stick your head in the sand if you are not hitting your sales numbers plan. Take the necessary action to get back on track.

____

Now that you have some early sales results for the year, this is great time to evaluate this year’s sales plan.

How are you doing vs. your expectation so far? How is the sales team doing? Are you hitting your new customer goals, measured against the assumptions you made developing your plan? Make the adjustments now to set yourself up for a successful year. I currently have a client that was already significantly off on their sales plan. They were proactive and just completed a full review and now have a much better plan for the rest of the year. I can help you do the same. Contact me for details.

Posted on Wednesday,

Business Owner Mistakes: Not Analyzing Customer Sales and Margin

Customer sales and margin is a sensitive area in business analytics.

When we look at customer sales, we sometimes find we don’t know our customers very well. This is the prime function of your business–to serve your customers. Remember that!

But to improve profitability and cash flow we need to look at margin (sell price less cost of sales). We know our customers don’t want to pay more so increasing pricing many times is not an option.

I remember working with a computer business some time ago. Margins were shrinking to single digits. The owner would say “It’s not what you sell it for, it’s what you buy it for.”

He certainly was right, but there are still many ways to increase overall margins and profit. For higher volume businesses such as retail, medical practices, distribution companies, etc. we need to analyze customer sales and customer gross margin on a macro level, then dive into it in a granular way.

I like to use the profitability/volume matrix above to help me identify some parameters.

I’ve used the profitability/volume matrix above with companies of all shapes and sizes to identify some parameters and thoroughly analyze their sales and margins.

At a small truck parts distributor, we defined customer segments and allocated all related costs so that we had sales, gross margin dollars, gross margin percentages, allocated costs, and net margin broken down by customer. We moved the definition for ‘volume’ and ‘margin’ so 80% of their customers fell into the low volume and low margin quadrant. (The old 80/20 Rule…..by the way. Read The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch and see the resource page for a useful 80/20 tool.) We looked at the attributes of the customers in the low volume/low margin, and the attributes of the high volume/high margin quadrants.

We worked with the sales team, sharing the data and developing specific markers and targets, again on an 80/20 basis. We worked to increase the size of smaller orders (which made sense for many of their customers as well), we analyzed lower margin product lines and specific pain points, and addressed a customer set-up process with improved margins from the get-go. We involved the sales reps in order to make these modifications successful. They became part of the process. They were the ones who identified the issues and were responsible for implementing the changes.

The company increased gross margin 4.2% over a three-month period and generated $150K of additional annualized profit in that period. Not bad for a few hours of work. We continue to use this analysis a couple times per year this group’s sales team, and overall margins are tracking upward in an industry that has seen margin decline.

And don’t kid yourself about your true costs. I worked with another company a few years ago doing the same analysis. We determine that half their product line was being sold at barely a break even point. It’s impossible to have profit if you’re taping $5 to every box you ship. Be careful of thinking that you will make it up with volume–the more you sell, the more you lose. For this company, we ended up going back to the P&L to eliminate as many costs as we could with a value stream map on that particular customer group. We went to the customers for a long overdue price increases. Those discussions went better than we expected. End result: after 12 mos: $500K swing in profits and back to profitability!

I hope you are convinced by now of the value of analyzing customer sales and margin. I can help!

Posted on Wednesday,

Business Owner Mistakes: Not Reviewing and Analyzing Sales Data Regularly

We’re not in business to make mistakes. But we do. We all have stories about how we slipped up. Hopefully, we didn’t make a HUGE mistake, but if we can learn from it, and avoid making even the smaller ones in the future, we’ll position ourselves for a healthier company overall.

When it comes to the financial side of business, it’s easy to make some mistakes even by omission. So over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing a series on mistake I have seen business owners make. I hope this will help you avoid the same obstacles.

Mistake 1: Not reviewing and analyzing sales data regularly.

I work with many business owners who really don’t track sales at all. They look at the P&L every month and certainly know the top line, but they don’t understand their customer buying patterns or how their products and strategy are performing.

For example: A retail store manager sees her monthly P&L and rejoices that she had $7000 in sales this month, and kept expenses down. But she doesn’t drill down and see that nothing ever sells from the brands offered at the back of the store. Or remember that her assistant manager had to overnight an additional supply of scarves that were selling like hotcakes. If the manager doesn’t think about specific items that are selling or not selling, and instead just smiles when she sees that “sales were good,” she misses an opportunity to focus in on what her customers really want and what may make them come back even more often.

Take time to format your sales data in a way to easily track historical information on an ongoing basis. Track your overall sales by day, month, quarter and year. When I do this for clients, if I’m not using dashboard software and the business system is ‘less sophisticated’, I generally use a simple Excel spreadsheet listing all invoices with customer name, product type sold, customer group, and a geographic location. I use the ‘sumif’ formula to easily track and review overall sales and gross profit by day/month/quarter/year by:

Product or product type
Customer or customer group
Geographical area or distribution channel

If you are an Excel user and don’t use the sumif formula – check out my 4 minute sumif video here.

Using this type of spreadsheet also allows you to analyze the number of purchases by customer and average invoice value. This can be essential to help understand your customer’s buying habits and purchasing cycles. Remember, the only three ways to grow your top line is to increase the number of customers, increase the number of purchases per year, or increase the average invoice value. I like to track all three: number of customers, number of purchases and average invoice value.

The sales tracking also brings visibility and accountability to your team to get everyone engaged in sales and profit. I had a client who simply started tracking daily sales (overall) and posted the results on a whiteboard in the lunch room. No elaborate dashboard. Just a simple line graph updated daily with dry erase marker. This got the entire company engaged and focused on growing their sales. The company did ~ $125mm last year in revenue. (The manager still needs to do the deeper analysis.)

It’s also a good idea to allocate all costs to product/segment/geographic area, etc. All costs including selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense, depreciation, and interest costs. It’s not easy to do, but this now allows sorting the product/segment/geographic area by profitability and perform some 80/20 thinking. You can see where 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your product/segment/geographic area – and 80% of your costs come from 20% of your product/segment/geographic area.

One of my most gifted books this year is The 80/20 Principle, by Richard Koch. We did this at a $10mm machine shop and determined, among other things, that based on allocating all costs, a gearset they had been producing for years was an unprofitable product. This caused a bill of material revision and pricing discussions with the customer. The client’s bottom line noticeably increased immediately.

Many business owners miss reviewing sales consistently throughout the year. For most small companies, reviewing sales at least weekly is necessary. It will help you be more engaged with your customer, make you better at forecasting, and allow you to develop a better strategy to increase profitability.

Posted on Tuesday,

The Key is Profit

Profit is a fun word. What business owner doesn’t like to profit? But what is it, really?

As defined by Investopedia, Profit is a financial benefit that is realized when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity. Any profit that is gained goes to the business’s owners, who may or may not decide to spend it on the business.

Profit is a reward for risk taken in the business. Business is the wealth creating institution of society.

But many companies and CEOs I work with make the mistake of not focusing on profit.

My friend Bob Thies sent me the book Profits aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing by George Cloutier when I first started my consulting practice over 10 years ago. This book changed my thinking, and it is one of my most gifted books.

At first, the author comes off like a hard-ass, with chapters titled, Love your business more than your family or It’s not economy stupid, it’s you, but his points are valid. I later met George on Nantucket. He really isn’t a bad guy, but he believes these things. We discussed his process to address troubled-company turnarounds which helped me create the turnaround framework I use today.

I have worked with hundreds of companies over the last 10+ years in my consulting firm. Some companies I work with do very well and just need financial expertise on their team, but many of the companies that hire me are losing money and are having huge cash flow problems. These companies didn’t focus on profit and let things get out of control. These situations need immediate action. Once you dig yourself into a hole with big losses and eroding retained earnings on your balance sheet, it’s hard to dig out.

The key is profit.

To be more profitable business owners must think profit in every decision they make with respect to customers (or patients in the medical world), product pricing, employees, vendors, etc. Owners need to understand the business complete cost structure; they need to think activity based costing (i.e. all costs – cost of sales expenses and all selling, general and administrative expenses relate back to product costing/segment costing/practice area costing). CEO’s need to evaluate their customer profitability, vendor profitability, and employee profitability. They may have to make huge personal sacrifices like missing the kids game or not taking vacation, and make difficult decisions that affect employees lives. I’m not saying this should be a lifestyle, but there may be times it is necessary.

If your business is unprofitable, unless you’ve saved cash reserves when things were good, the problem need to be addressed ASAP. The answers are generally apparent, although the solutions may not be. We sometimes think, “Just sell more.” It doesn’t always work that way. Don’t bury your head. I have done that, and it never works out. Develop an overall operating plan, look at your cost structure and customer profitability and focus on hitting the numbers; live and die by the plan. If you miss the numbers, re-adjust until you hit your targets–the most important of which should be PROFIT.

I can help you increase profits. Contact me. And be sure to subscribe to get these posts directly in your in-box!

Posted on Tuesday,

Stay informed. Improve Your Bottom Line

In another post, I provided a basic explanation of the three essential financial statements. Let’s go a little deeper to see another reason why they are so helpful.

It is interesting to me to observe the causal nature of certain business drivers and how small changes can over time can significantly affect cash and net income. Many business drivers are interconnected through the financial statements. For example, a strategy to improve inventory turnover can have a dramatic positive effect on cash (the balance sheet) and may have a positive or negative effect on profitability (the income statement), and a positive or negative effect on customer service through fill rates and on-time deliveries.

Understanding the basic financial statements is not only helpful for business owners for the obvious reasons, but can also aid in more in-depth scenarios like these, to name a few:

investors looking at a P&L
doctors running a medical practice
sales reps considering customer profitability and gross margin
accounting staff discussing the de-leveraging the company or evaluating credit worthiness of customers.

Simply put, understanding financial statements can help you ask meaningful questions and make well-informed decisions.

For example, I analyze P&L performance compared to the established business plan and to prior year results. What were the sales and profit drivers vs. expected and compared to historical sales and profit drivers? What were the expense fluctuations vs. expected, and what can be changed to improve results?

Similar for the balance sheet and cash flow statement, I look at the cash flow and liquidity metrics results to compared to expectation. What improvements can be made for improvements for asset velocity and cash flow? How can we maximize effective leverage? See my resources for some basic ratio ideas.

This information leads to small improvements over time which can yield incredible results. For one client, I finished a small project with the goal to improve cash flow and reduce credit risk. We put in a basic credit application process and worked to improve accounts receivable turnover. Over the first four months, a one-person accounts receivable department improved their days sales outstanding average by five days. Over the next year, she reduced accounts receivable turnover another five days. Based on their growing top line with 100% open credit terms, they company had a $150,000+ positive impact to cash as a result of that small project.

Stay informed. Improve your bottom line.

How can I help? Contact me!

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Posted on Tuesday,

The Dashboard May Be the Most Important Part of Your Company Vehicle

Five Keys to Make it a Great Part of Your Business

I believe Seth Godin said that all organizations are slow to change, but organizations that don’t measure the results are even slower to change. He is one smart guy, and I 100% believe that – with organizations and people too. We need to measure progress continually to make headway with everything we do.

I am a big believer in measurements and tracking key performance indicators. I have logged my workouts every day (what I did, how long, in what intensity, how I felt, etc.) by day, every day for the last 20+ years. I guarantee that if I hadn’t logged, I wouldn’t have been as consistent as I have been and I wouldn’t be in the physical shape I now enjoy.

With measures for your business or medical practice, I believe it’s the same thing. Logging performance consistently over time improves results. And small improvement steps over time have huge effects.

I track and review my client’s dashboards every week. Some of my companies are always making dashboard tweaks and are quite advanced using automated dashboards with Tableau and Cognos, and others are quite simple using a whiteboard or Excel graphs manually prepared. I think of business measures like a car’s dashboard. Tracking a few meaningful key measurements is important. The car’s dashboard doesn’t measure the 100’s of things going on with your vehicle, but it does track important things like speed and the amount of fuel left. Experts agree that business dashboards should illustrate financial health, operational efficiency, and quality (quality product in business or quality patient care in a health care environment, for example.)

I think of business measures like a car’s dashboard. Tracking a few meaningful key measurements is important. The car’s dashboard doesn’t measure the 100’s of things going on with your vehicle, but it does track important things like speed and the amount of fuel left. Experts agree that business dashboards should illustrate financial health, operational efficiency, and quality (quality product in business or quality patient care in a health care environment, for example.)

Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years by implementing key performance indicators and dashboards:

Key 1: Keep it simple. Keep the measures limited. I like one-page dashboards. Ensure all measures focus on your vital few objectives (ref post from early 2016). Data needs to be easy to obtain and completely objective. Ideas: sales growth, customer/patient acquisition/retention/loyalty, operational productivity measures, gross profit, debt ratios, asset velocity metrics, etc.

Key 2: Measure the right things. Just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean you should measure it. Again, think of your car’s dashboard. The higher up the food chain the dashboard user is, the less information is needed. The board of directors, for example, generally aren’t interested in the number of mistakes made by the fabrication shop—only in the big picture. Always align measures with your company’s or practice’s goals, vision, and direction. It’s not a very good idea to regularly change specific measurements, but don’t be afraid to make changes to ensure your measuring the most meaningful metrics to track over time.

Key 3: Be consistent. Dashboards need to be produced and reviewed consistently to get buy-in and provide useful results. The measures you track generally have positive results and trends go in the right direction over time. I like dashboards to be produced and reviewed on Monday for the previous week.

Key 4: Keep results visible. This is so important. I’ve made this mistake several times. I developed great tracking graphs, but inconsistently (or never) brought them out for review or discussion. Visibility helps everyone understand results and where the company is headed.

Key 5: Set realistic targets. Dashboards are easy to get started, but take diligence and discipline to maintain their accuracy and value. I use reminders, tasks, and calendar appointments to keep consistent, but it helps a lot when a company is results-oriented.

Which of the above do you need the most help with? Contact me!

Posted on Tuesday,

The Importance of a Regular Review

The first quarter of 2016 is ending next week. Spring is here. March Madness is underway (Go SU!). How was your performance for the first quarter?

I don’t care how big or small your business is , it is so important to spend some time to review results and tweak your game plan to get or stay on track. This review time is important to ensure the important things are getting done. Also, given the current business environment, our growth strategies can change at hyper-speed, so quarterly strategy review sessions make sense. For me, the quarterly reviews are a time to help me see the forest through the trees. We all get caught-up in daily activities, including some activities that need to be done, but aren’t really moving the ball down the field. The quarterly reviews are an opportunity to get above the tree top level and to look at things from 1,000 ft.

It’s time to ask:

Have your priorities changed?
How is the business performing?
How is your team performing?
What do you need to do to get back on track?

So, schedule this review on your calendar now.

If I were leading your review, we’d start off with a few minutes of basic gratitude discussion or thinking, taking into consideration where we are now and what good things have we recently done. We’d stay completely positive. (This can be difficult as we can be so critical of our businesses, but stay positive initially. This gets the meeting off on the right foot.)

Then, we’d put a few lows of the previous quarter on the table. What didn’t go right? Were there customer issues, product difficulties, personnel challenges, missed revenue numbers, etc.? This can help identify and prioritize areas of improvement.

We’d review your financial statements, looking at your quarterly income statement compared to last year and compared to target; your balance sheet and significant balance sheet accounts, and your 5-8 key performance indicators (actual vs. plan, etc.) We’d also review and discuss the softer attributes of your business such as your shareholders, employees, customers, and vendors.

We’d take time to reconnect with your mission and longer term vision. It’s easy to get caught up in the strategies and operational details, so we’d ask, “What will my business look like in five years?”

Finally, after considering everything and looking at your long-term business vision, we’d make a short list of specific 90-day objectives, listing the 5-7 most important things to do next quarter. We’d reiterate a process to review these during the upcoming quarter. Achieving goals depends on giving them attention. Be sure to review the 5-7 things and give them the attention they need. I see many companies develop strategic plans and goals and put them on the shelf, never to be looked at again.

As a business owner, you need to work on high impact projects to continually develop your business.

Again, it’s easy to get caught up in the operational part of your business, but make sure you’re moving the ball down the field by getting the 5-7 most critical items done each quarter.

If you need any help looking at your numbers or want advice or strategies to improve your business processes to build a more profitable and valuable business, contact me. I love helping business owners improve their businesses.

Posted on Monday,

Strategies to Increase Profit

As I’ve talked about before, we are either growing or dying. I just re-read a post I did last year about this time.

I encourage everyone to understand the basic profit model for most businesses. It works with GE, Bill’s Pizza, Boeing, Joe’s Garage, Worldwide Truck Parts, etc. Not all businesses, but many.

The Basic Business Model:

Leads x Conversion rate = Customers
Customers x Number of Transactions x Average Transaction Amount = Sales
Sales x Profit Percentage = Profit

Some variables have more moving parts than other. Number of customers is easy. The Profit Percentage, on the other hand, is comprised of many elements: product cost, overhead structure, freight, employee costs, etc.

The basic model is pretty simple. I created a little model to see how powerful small changes can be. Check it out here.

First, start with actual numbers. Don’t make assumptions here. Again, most of the numbers are very easy to get.

Now peel the onion back a little and see what happens when you leverage small improvements a couple of these variables.

For small and medium size companies, I like to focus on average transaction, number of transactions per year amount, and gross profit. For the model, I increase .25 leads per day, increase average transaction size from $189 to $225 and increase gross margin 1/10th of a percent. The impact to this company is a 32% increase in profitability.

Strategies to increase average transaction size include:

Change product/service mix.
Offer add-on products and cross selling of similar products.
Reduce number of low dollar customers: increase minimum orders, train sales staff.
Look at your freight policy. Increase your free freight threshold.
Bundle/kit products together based on customer needs.
Raise pricing. This is never popular with the sales guys, but this can make a huge difference.

Download the simple model, develop a couple strategies to improve a couple of the variables and start tracking your basic business variables. Let’s see your profits grow!

Posted on Tuesday,

Meet the Bankers

Now is a great time to be talking with your bank and prepping them for a Q1 meeting. Most business bankers are wrapping up their year ends. Some are getting ready for their holiday parties, and most, seems to me, are generally in goods mood this time of the year.

You need to ensure your relationship with your lenders is extremely strong–they can really help out in times of feast and famine. It’s time to get the meeting on the calendar and start the conversation, discussing briefly your sales growth and operating results.

Here are a few steps to help you prepare for the meeting:

Ensure your banker knows your basics. They need to understand your business’s focus, your products and services, who your customers are and what the common threads among them are, how the company is organized, what product cycles affect the company, the company’s vision and goals, and some of your main obstacles.
Bring your financial statements. Always make sure that your business banker has your most recent financial statement. This will show you are on top of your day-to-day management of the business and allows you to optimize your discussion. Bring your year-end financials and know your numbers. Know your revenue and expense and the rationale for significant fluctuations from the previous year and business plan.
Show what you’ve done to control costs. Have a list of examples where you have made proactive decisions to control expenses.
Talk strategy. Indicate the strategy changes you’ve made to increase revenue and how that fits with your capital needs for the next year or two.
Give a clean forecast. Project revenue and expenses two years out with a forecasted balance sheet and income statement. This shows your ability to look forward and demonstrates critical thinking.
Challenge your business banker. Ask for clear recommendations on how you could save money in your banking relationship. Ask for advice on how you will be able to make your business run smoother and more efficiently.
Assemble your advisory team. Make a list of your trusted advisors such as your CPA, lawyer, and financial advisor, among others. Give that list to your banker and make sure they are all connected. It is good for the “team” to be be acquainted.

A strong relationship with your banker is important. Take the steps to solidify it. It’s good for your business!

Posted on Monday,

The Three R’s for Budget Season

It’s almost November–budget season. It’s time to get your budget process started. It’s time to formalize your plan for 2016.

It’s also good time reflect, review and re-focus before you actually start crunching numbers.

So to start, I do a quick exercise with my business owner clients.

Reflect: We take a look back to where they were five years ago (2010).
Review: We look at the transformation (or not) from 2010 to now and review where things stand right NOW.
Refocus: We look at where they want to be five years from now, and tighten our focus on those goals.

The look back is important to appreciate where we are. The lessons are, yes, painful at times, but are good for us developing as individuals and successful business owners. The look forward primes us to seize what is ahead and make it count.

This exercise helps us develop goals to move toward the five year vision. We look at sales and marketing, operations, profitability, working capital, EBITDA, and lifestyle. This helps clarify the vision. It’s a simple, but very effective exercise. This helps us activate our brain’s reticulate activating system to do the right things to move toward that five year vision.

Now, comes the nuts-and-bolts part–doing the budget.

As you start forming your 2016 budget, use the following as a guide with the idea of having the budget finalized by the end of November.

Sales Budget: The overall company budget starts with the Sales budget. Look at customers sales and gross profit history. Work with your sales team in a synergistic way to develop what is possible for your business. Look at your current customers. Set targets for new customers. Look at your current segments–are there any new segments for 2016? Put your customer data into a size/profitability matrix. If possible consider fully absorbed gross margin (i.e. some customers use more operating expenses than others). Consider allocating variable operating expenses to your cost of goods sold by customers. Understand your average transaction size, and number of transactions per customer. Fact: Super-successful companies focus on sales growth more so than expense reduction. Make that your focus too. What are your planned sales by segment by month for 2016? What are your gross margins by month?

Production Budget: This depends on what type of business you’re running. The production plan must be able to support the sales plan. For example: do you need to adjust shipping schedules? Is production driving revenue or is revenue driving production? Focus on lean, smooth, and efficient processes.

Personnel Plan: Plan your your organization chart with salary dollars. Here’s a Personnel Plan you can use.

Operating Expenses: Look at your trailing 12 months-by-month to see any seasonality or sales relationships. Forecast each line item by month and document the assumptions in a summary of significant assumptions document.

Interest Expense: Calculate planned debt usage. Ensure all debt on your balance sheet ties out to an amortization schedule. Plan to meet with your bankers to improve your borrowing capacity.

Depreciation: Plan your capital expenditure budget. What fixed assets are you buying, when, and how (lease/buy, cash/finance). Use your fixed asset register to forecast your current depreciation for 2016 and use 20% of planned fixed asset additions.

Cash Flow: Can you make improvements in your DSO or Inventory Turnover to improve cash flow? Your forecasted balance sheet will be driven from your cash flow drivers.

Calendar Your Quarterly Accountability: I use a Year-at-a-Glance Calendar and schedule everything: holidays, important dates, vacations, quarterly meetings, etc. It’s a good idea to get this drafted now.

A step-by-step budgeting process preceded by a “Reflect, Review, Refocus” exercise can help you tackle this sometimes intimidating but very necessary project in preparation for the new year. If you need help, contact me!