In this episode, Dan Portnoy dives into strategic planning for the year, drawing from personal experience and tools like the Ink + Volt planner. Learn how to reflect on the past 12-18 months, conduct a business audit, and create a roadmap for success. Dan also introduces the Portnoy Media 1-Day Intensive and Video Pitch Deck as key resources for organizations looking to take action and tell impactful stories.
Welcome to the Nonprofit Narrative Podcast, where we discuss marketing, storytelling, and systems to help your business or nonprofit thrive. In this episode, we cover:
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Dan Portnoy
Hello and welcome to the nonprofit narrative podcast. My name is Dan. Thanks for being here. This is a podcast about marketing. We talk about what's wrong with your biz or your nonprofit, and how do we fix it? And we do that with creative storytelling and systems. So we'll get into the whole shebang today. Today, we've got a I've got a whole bunch of updates for you. So the first is, you know, it's the second week of January, and I'm going to talk about strategic planning for the year. So that has a little to do with the fire down the road, which, you know, after a year decade living in Pasadena, when I got married, we moved down the road a little bit, and it has hit my community like a ton of bricks. I was at church this past weekend, and about half of the people are either impacted through evacuation or from losing their home, which is just a wild, wild time, half of the half of the family's there. So it's just we met in Altadena. So it is, it is it is something else and and it's just wild. If you pay attention to my Instagram, I'm putting up different stories and different things that are happening in and around the people. Some GoFundMe is you guys have been great about donating to them. Several of the GoFundMe have been funded in their entirety, which is pretty fantastic. So thank you for that. So let's so I also want to tell you that this last fall, I have been working with Lone Hill Middle School, specifically their Digi media team and their teaching filmmaking there to junior high kids, which has been really fun. I've been working with Steve Giles there, and they, he's been great, and his invitation in to work with the kids. And then prop 28 has been bringing that, which is a thing that we voted for here in California, that brings additional money to arts and arts experts to be to come into the class. So it's been super fun. We did a lot of work. They do a thing called the main which is like a news program that they update. And we've been working on like how kids choose camera angles, and how do they get great sound, and how do you develop a script, and how do you break everything down? And last year or last month, we decided to film three short films for their end of year assembly. And was it turned out pretty fun. I think I wrote them and I directed them, but the kids produced, and they got costumes and they cast and they acted, and they just they were cruising. So we did three things. One, we did a parody of The Great British Bake Off. It was the great elven wrap up, and that was on green screen. We did that. And then we did a parody of the office called the workshop, which is all about elves and Santa. And then the last one we did was snow hard, which was parody of Die Hard, of course. And that was especially fun. So we, man, we did so much so fast. We filmed the whole thing, all three shorts, in six days, which was pretty crazy, and then we put them up, and you can check them out if you want. It's on my YouTube channel. And, yeah, that's kind of it. So I want to tell you about a couple other things. One is that we've just launched our video pitch deck for the year with pricing and everything that we're doing for for this year. And then the and I'll get into that in just second. The next thing, the other thing, is our Portnoy media one day intensive. And the one day intensive is a, if you've got a problem, you're stuck in your business, and you're, it's you're just like, kind of smashing against the wall. The idea is, in six hours, we're going to put together a plan to solve that one problem. So that is the deal. There's some forms that we fill out, and then we spend some time in some sessions over six hours, and then at the end, you get a road map on how to fix the whole thing. So that is, is it so? So let's talk about the Yeah, so let's talk about our planning. And you can check out. Oh, and one other thing, you can check out both of those things, well actually all of those things, the shorts, the pitch deck, the one day intensive, it's all on the Portnoy Media website. You can check it all out. You can download things. You can you can just check it out. You can book right on the website. It's crazy. So let's get into our planning for the year. All right, here we go. Okay, strategic planning is a really important thing, actually, for me, I think the biggest thing is getting into a mindset of not rushing. We do a lot of rushing around, a lot of rushing around. I know that, like the tyranny of the urgent goes so hard at my house between kids running around. I've got two that have gone off to college now, and so it slowed down a little bit. But Robbie is just he is he did? What did he. Do. He did track and band, marching band this fall, or cross country, and it was just like, I felt like we were all over the place. And then there's, you know, just stuff that's swirling all the time, work and this and that, and moving all around. So it's very important for me, when I think about strategic planning for the year, I like to take my time. So I tend to start thinking about in the beginning of December, and I know that with my time off that I'm going to get, with the Christmas break and stuff like that, I start putting things together so that after Christmas I'm just thinking about where we are moving forward. So the the part I do ahead of time is the part we're going to do today, which is the reflection on what on where we are. So one of the things that I use, that I absolutely love, is these ink and volt This is not an ad or a sponsorship thing. In vault, they have these great planners. I talked with Kate on the podcast like a long time ago. She has these downloadable PDFs that help you go through things. And honestly, my wife and I have been doing it for seven, eight years, and it has been fantastic, mostly because I think sometimes, you know, like, the the, not just the tyranny, the urgent, but just like, what's going on for the day, you're just trying to catch up on like, what did you do? What did you do instead of like? So what are you thinking for this next year? Where do you want to go? Do you want to change things? And this is how we figure it out, because we've got to look back. So, so let's take a look back. Let's let's ask some questions. So one of these things, and I'm going to include links to this all in the show notes, so if you're listening to this, you can just go back and grab the show notes, and you'll be able to download some of these PDFs. I'm going to point to what they've got over at inconveal. That's pretty great. So one of the things that is a great idea when, when we start thinking about it, is start with the positive. So what's the best thing that happened this past year? And for me, actually, there wasn't a single work thing that there were a lot of great things. But probably the thing I love the most is I wrote a pilot last year, and that was a really, it was an it was kind of a quick turnaround. It went from an idea to a reality in I think it was two weeks, and then I smoothed it out for a couple of months. And that was that. But there was that was a big time. I felt really creative doing it. It was futuristic. It was more of a, kind of like a, I think it's called lit RPG is the is the thing. So it's kind of like, Ready Player One, or the matrix, or something like that. It's a, it's a deal where we have an online and offline component in there, and it's, I had a great time doing it. So honestly, even nothing ever happens. That was one of the best things that that happened this past year. Also, we launched a kid into college, which was great, and that that worked out pretty well. So that was a that was a big game changer, big win. What else happened? Well, we didn't, we didn't take any major vacations, but that was a big thing, that it was just great to actually kind of hang out. We had a kind of a low key summer at some points, which was really good. We did get some rest. That was a massive thing. But these are the questions that I would ask you. Okay, so what's, what's the biggest thing that happened? And you've got to think back of like, okay, so if you have a planner, or you have a calendar, it's always a good thing to get that out and start looking at like, Okay, if you've got your journal, start looking back. What, what happened? What are the things that that jumped out at you that were the most fun, it could have been the most when you felt the most creative, or maybe you felt like the most valuable, right then? Well, okay, let's get that out. So then the other part is like, again, I set a whole bunch of goals for the year. What goals did you achieve? Again, the fun part about this for me, when I do this exercise with my wife, we talk about different goals. And so I'll have business goals, sure, sure, sure. But I'll also have like, family goals, of like, things that are important to me and like, I want to make sure I'm spending an effort being intentional about spending time with each of my kids, and that we're not just talking about, like, I gotta take them in a car over here, and then we're gonna, you know, like, just be more than a wallet in a taxi. But actually, like, what are they thinking about things? What am I thinking about things? Let's have that conversation, you know, and and go from there. So it's really been great that way. So what kind of goals did you achieve for the year? Did you hit the the business money that that you want to do? I think that Don Miller actually does a great job with this part, very specifically in his small business book, which is, yeah, had a very small business,
he's got a great thing that you're going to set a goal, and you're going to include all these major things of, like, what is the thing that you're going to do? And you're going to get really smart about it, like, SMART goals. You're going to really define what it is, make sure it's measurable, make sure that it's a piece that you can achieve, and you can know I did or I didn't. It isn't vague. I had a good time. That's not really measurable. So what did you do, and what was, what were the things that you accomplished? Of the accomplishments, what are you most proud of? So you may have hit like, three or four things, I know I. Feel like one year. A couple years back, I had like 15 goals, and I hit like four, and I was still super proud of the four that I hit now, I was just like, well, we'll kick it out to next year. And the other part was, you can't have I'm classic for having way too many goals, and that's never gonna help get everything done. But that is the way it goes. Sometimes, with the ADHD, sometimes, you know, the other things are, are reflecting back, were there things that you should have done that you didn't like a lot of times? Is when we come into the our fourth quarter, if you're a nonprofit, we come into this idea that, what were we supposed to do? And we should have shifted gears, and we didn't shift gears. Or our launch, our September chum in the water, where we're going to do our our big campaign in September to acquire a whole bunch of people. It didn't launch for it went more into October. That really set us up for failure for this. These are the these important conversations, because you get to start saying, Well, what did we plan for last year? If we plan that we're going to do this acquisition piece in September, and it didn't, it didn't launch. Well, did do we have to back it up to June and make sure that we're done planning it in June or July, so that it launches, giving enough time for things like whether you're going to do mail or you're going to do ads, whatever it is going to be that you are ready to go. So that's super important, too. And then the other question, honestly, is like, when did you have the most fun? When did you have the most fun in your business? I think, I think it's really important to ask that question, because, you know, we work so much, and I say it's just America, right? We work so much, and it's super important that we're having fun. I love working really hard on video projects and doing video things, because I have a great time with it, and I love it when it connects with people. At the end, I have to tell you, working with kids this past fall, it's a little intoxicating when they get it, when you see their eyes come alive and they're like, Oh, this is how this story works. This is how I pick these shots, and they go together. And it makes this thing kind of intoxicating to watch them get it. There's a lot working with kids is also, you know, exasperating and all those other things. And that's fine, but this was a very neat thing. I introduced some just a gimbal that kids hadn't messed with yet, which is just a fancy thing for a floating head for a camera, so that you could run around with it and it wasn't shaking the whole time, and this three axis gimbal was a big game changer for one of these kids. And I literally watched him kind of his brain explode. Excuse me, his brain kind of just exploded. He had literally so many ideas. He was frozen. He was and it was great. I watched him do a really bunch of fun stuff this fall, because he just, he couldn't, he couldn't get enough. So when we think about So, let's come back to our looking back. What are the things that went well? What's working? What? What really happened? What are we going to double down on that that did really well? What are the atta boys? This is as a team. When you get together like this. This is a great time. If you're the boss to talk about this. Stuff went really well. You deserve a lot of credit. Start giving everybody the high fives to to make things a lot better for this, this next year. And you know, honestly, it shouldn't be a huge list. It could be a huge list, but, like, really dial it in. And the thing that I would push you for is, like, give me like three or four. When we get to, like, over nine, over nine things we your brain just can't handle it. It just can't handle it. And then, what are the things that can be improved? What are the things that we can do better and make things, you know, again, better? Where we've looked back your first sheet, you've asked a whole bunch of these questions. These may feel redundant, but now we're just going to flesh it out a little more. What are, you know, give me six things that could have been improved on. And was it in January we didn't do a great job with the reset after we raised a whole bunch of money? Is it that I did? Just didn't move as much product as I thought I would? It could be a lot of different things. And then the bigger question is, what is the biggest lessons? All right, so the biggest lesson lessons usually, you know, I we learn more in the valley than we do on the mountaintop. So if, if things were rough last year, and if, and let me tell you, California and production has has been really brutal between the hits keep coming lately. It just seems like COVID was brutal for production, and as it limped along, then the strikes happened, which were a good thing, but it just meant also that a whole bunch of people weren't working. And that was like two years, and then, literally, all last year. The idea was, survive to 25 and if you can. Survived to 2025 then you'll probably have a career and you can keep working, and the production's coming back, and it's a whole big thing, but the production hasn't come back. Why, Bill, we had a fire real fast. And it's crazy that, you know, with La just burning the way, it has been absolute overwhelm to so many. And it's been really wild. If you've seen any of this footage, these firefighters are so impressive, so impressive that they there wasn't massive, massive loss of life. They've just been so impressive. It's wild to see and really wild to see just a lot of people just stepping up, which has been great. But On the work side, it's been terrible. It's just actually been terrible. So what can we do? And I think the funny part is, for a lot of writers, I know a lot of actors, they've been doing another side hustle to make sure that they're doing okay, that they can survive, that they can just keep going. So when the production comes back, they're ready to go too, one of the things that so again, I tend to do this analog, because I just it. It just seems to help. Honestly, it seems to help as I'm getting the things out. It might be, you know, bouncing around in my brain and might text something into my phone. But once I'm actually like writing things, it helps so much for me to think both professionally and personally. And so honestly, like this is a great time to also think personally. You know, what are you doing? What did you do at work that was great, and what did your workplace do that was great. But after that, what did you guys do personally that worked out, that helped out, and you know, what are you know, what are you going to do for this year? One thought when it comes to looking back, it's kind of like an audit. When you I'm talking with a business, one of the things I like to do is I like to go look back as where we've been. So I tend to look at what's the last 12 to 18 months. What can we learn from all of that marketing from and I like to, again, come through key performance indicators, or KPIs. Pull the KPIs, literally for 18 months and look at what's going on as a nonprofit. If I've got now two Decembers to look through. That can be very telling. I can graph that. What did we do? Did it work? Did it not work? And it's very helpful. So I can put some metrics to things and think about where we're gonna go and where my goals, you know, in the in the right ballpark, they could have been too lofty when maybe you said, like, we want to have a 50% open rate, and you have a 22% open rate, well maybe, maybe get to 30, you know, that's and which is still really strong, that's still really strong, but 50% open rates pretty crazy. You'd probably have to adjust your list and start casting people out to get that so your super fans are the ones opening. The other big thing is, is figuring out it'll it'll show you really quickly, who, where, the the projects that delivered and what they didn't. Ideally, you're doing several campaigns for the year. How are those campaigns working? These KPIs are going to help you do that. So that's the best way to do an audit. Just a quick one. Again, we don't have to do this thing where we spend like $50,000 and do forensic accounting on the whole thing. No, just grab some KPIs, look at your calendar and then have a conversation with the team. Okay, that's the best audit. So the next episode, we're going to talk about moving forward. I just thought this would be great to kind of look back, and I'll get you next time on that. I promise again. Just want to remind you, if you're interested in working together, this year, I'm doing an intensive these Intensive Days, where we just get together, we talk about what's going on, and then we solve it and and just super fast, super fast solved, and keep moving. So it's not in. And the other fun part is there isn't this huge barrier in terms of working together. If you've ever thought about working together, this is probably the thing to do. It's, it's just a real low buy in. And it's also, it's a lot of one on one time, which is which is really good. And then there's also the pitch deck, if you want to see what we're doing for video this year, and that's that. So thanks for tuning in. Remember your story matters, and I'm happy to help you tell it. So this has been Dan Portnoy for the nonprofit narrative podcast. Thanks a bunch, and we'll see you next time you