Episode 238: The 5 Ps of Creating An Aligned Business with Annemie Tonken
In order to stay out of overwhelm, burnout, and constant stress, we need to make our business is in alignment. What does that mean exactly?
Today’s guest has created a 5 P framework for making sure your business is in alignment. If it’s out of alignment, it’s a one-way ticket to burning out and going bust. The good news is, this 5 P framework makes it really simple to make sure your business is aligned and meets both your needs and your wants.
In this episode we’ll cover:
- The 5 Ps of an aligned business
- What it means to have an aligned business
- How to use the 5 Ps to create any business you want
- Why your messaging needs to be specific to your ideal client
- The importance of CEO time
- 3 business model types that work
- How the first 2 Ps set up the latter 3 Ps
- How to use your current numbers to create profitable pricing
Get The FREE 6 Pillars To Creating A 6+ Figure Wedding Business That Doesn't Burn You Out Private Podcast Training!
The 5 Ps of Creating An Aligned Business with Annemie Tonken
We all go into business for ourselves because we think it’ll give us some amount of freedom in our lives but often we paint ourselves into a corner. We end up working too hard for what we’re making and having a paycheck every 2 weeks starts to look a lot more appealing than it used to.
Annemie has experienced the 5Ps for herself but until she sat down to create this framework, she didn’t see exactly what is needed for an aligned business to work.
People talk a lot about aligning your business with your values but the idea of “alignment” can feel a bit vague. The 5 Ps exist to give you the exact things you need to address to create an aligned business.
The 5 Ps are:
- Preferences
- Parameters
- Products
- Pricing
- Policies
Your preferences and your parameters are the foundation of your business.
Preferences
A good example of this is what % of your time you want to spend on your business. How much client interaction do you like to have? What are the things about your job that you love and don’t love?
Do you want to have lots of clients with a little bit of interaction or a few clients with a lot of interaction?
Everybody has a different answer to these questions and there’s no right or wrong answer. They’re simply your preferences.
Many of us think about these things when we start our business but they can quickly get away from us when we start taking work we don’t really want to be taking. It’s very easy to create a business that you don’t actually enjoy when you go against your preferences.
We can sometimes feel like we should be grateful to get what we get and that we should take anything and everything that comes our way. It’s so easy to forget that you’re supposed to enjoy doing this work and that you don’t have to take on things you hate just because they’re available.
How would you run your business if you got to choose everything? If you could work with any ideal client in any way you wanted. That’s important to take stock of because it will likely change over time as your preferences change.
It’s easy to get downtrodden and just think “well this is the way this business is” but that’s only true if you choose to run your business that way. You may think that no one wants what you want to provide but it’s more likely that you just need to find the right ideal client that aligns with your preferences.
There are countless ways to make money in any business and the fact that you have the control to pull any lever you want is exciting. Annemie teaches photographers about different ways to run a sustainable business and one of the things she teaches is offering a membership for portrait or branding photography. That’s a fantastic innovative way to make your business more sustainable while allowing you to do the work you want with the people you want to do it with.
Parameters
If your preferences are what you want in your business, your parameters speak to your needs. These are things like how much money you need to make and how much time you have.
Do you have young kids you need to work around? You also want to consider your personality traits and strengths that contribute to what you offer.
Your parameters can and do change with your stage of life but you have to be aware of them so you can adjust accordingly. In order for your business to be sustainable it has to meet your wants and needs. Otherwise, you’ll fail financially or burn out.
It’s so easy as a business owner to just put your head down and work but if you don’t step into your CEO role and take the pulse on your business you can wind up with a business you hate.
Your Business Model
There are 3 main categories of business models that can work for you.
- High volume & relatively low cost
- Mid-range volume & mid-range cost
- Low volume & high cost
You can picture this like a seesaw, when the volume goes up, the cost goes down. A lot of photographers that Annemie works with try to set up a business that is low volume, very high touch, and low cost. That’s not sustainable.
That business is out of alignment because the owner’s preferences don’t align with their pricing.
Products
If you’re a luxury florist and you have a very high-touch business model, you’re not going to provide them with cheap florals. If you’re a jeweler that’s trying to provide customers with a deal, you have to have the volume to support that. The experience is going to align with that as well because it has to support the price.
You can’t do low volume and low price if you want to make any money in your business.
Many business owners shy away from being high or low price because the middle seems more comfortable. The danger with doing that though is there is a lot of competition and it’s more difficult to differentiate yourself.
It’s crucial to use to parameters to differentiate your business from the competition, especially if you’re in the middle. This is something we work on inside The Wedding Business Collective when we look at making you the go-to person for your ideal client.
Pricing
You have to know how much you need to make and how much you need to spend to run your business in order to create profitable pricing. Annemie recommends calculating your minimum sales average of what you need to charge per client to make the money you need. You can play around with volume vs price to find an aligned model that works for you.
I can’t tell you how many wedding pros I see burn themselves out working for less than minimum wage because they haven’t put any thought into their pricing. You can’t just pull prices out of the air.
Policies
Your policies will follow where you sit on the business model spectrum. If you have a low volume, high cost, high touch business then in general your policies need to favor your clients’ preferences and wishes.
For example, if you’re a high-end photographer your client probably has your phone number and may call you for help deciding on what to wear. In this high-touch model, you’d give them that help. That’s not the case if you’re running a headshot studio with high volume and low cost.
If you have high volume and low cost, you need to protect yourself as a business owner with politics that ensure those clients don’t take up a ton of your time.
When you make sure all of your 5Ps are in alignment, you’ll have a business that you enjoy and that caters to your needs and wants. This is why we can’t just copy what the competition is doing. We have no idea what their preferences or parameters are and they probably aren’t the exact same as your own.
Get more from Annemie
Website: www.thiscantbethathard.com
Podcast: www.thiscantbethathard.com/pod
Instagram: @thiscantbethathard_
Links & Resources:
Get The FREE 6 Pillars To Creating A 6+ Figure Wedding Business That Doesn’t Burn You Out Private Podcast Training!
Join us inside The Wedding Business Collective!
Episode 152: Pricing For Profit In Your Wedding Business with Fiorella Neira
Episode 233: Why It’s Time To Stop Trying To Be Fully Booked & Create Your Own Version Of Success! with Laura Canham
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