Welcome to 2016! I hope the new year has been treating you well thus far.
In the last few weeks of 2015, you were likely busy putting together your vision for this new year. You probably made a list of things you want to accomplish and set a revenue goal for the year. You may have even followed the planning steps I provided in my Strategic Planning That Gets Results call by creating a Painted Picture and setting three goals for the first quarter of 2016.
If you have taken the time to write down your goals for your business in 2016, you have done more than 97% of Americans.
Kudos to you for getting that part done! Unfortunately (and despite what 97% of Americans might say) that was the easy part. The bigger challenge is taking action that gets you significantly closer to achieving your goals every working day.
How many times have you spent the end of the year writing down a list of goals only to find yourself disappointed when you look back and see that you accomplished very few of them because you got derailed at some point during the year and failed to get the results you were looking for? My guess: many times.
The problem is not that it’s so damn hard to achieve your goals.
The problem is not that you are just too ambitious.
The problem is not that you aren’t capable.
The problem is that you don’t have the right framework and strategy in place to keep you simply and, dare I say, elegantly, on track to achieve your goals.
Frameworks and strategies are what high-performing entrepreneurs use to achieve big results and beaucoup profits. I’m going to share with you the system that I recently learned from performance coach, Todd Herman, and am using to achieve my aggressive 2016 goals, which are to:
1. Double our 2015 revenue.
2. Triple the size of our community.
3. Re-work my business model so that 25% of our revenue comes from delivering services to an exclusive set of clients and 75% comes from the sales of our legal and business kits.
So here is how you can accurately predict how much money you’ll make this year AND stay focused and execute on the activities that will get you the results you’re looking for:
Step 1: Determine how many working days you will have in 2016. Most of us will have about 225 working days this year (deducting 104 days for weekends, 10 days for holidays and approximately 20 days for vacations and sick days) but feel free to alter that calculation if you’ll have less working days (do not calculate more — working every weekend and holiday will not get you big results so don’t bother).
Step 2: Determine how much money you want to make in 2016. Want to make a million dollars? Sweet! Since the 7-figure mark is the first big milestone most entrepreneurs want to meet, let’s go with that for our example: $1,000,000. Of course, choose whatever your annual revenue goal is for this year.
Step 3: Set a daily financial goal. Calculate your daily financial goal based on the revenue you want to make this year divided by the number of working days you have. For our example, it would look like this: $1,000,000 ÷ 225 days = $4,444/day. That means you need to make approximately $4,500 per day to make a million dollars this year. How can you guarantee that you will make a million dollars this year? Stick with me, I’ll get there soon.
Step 4: Track your time. I know, I know! Tracking time sucks. Know what doesn’t suck? Making $1,000,000+. Tracking your time is an essential step to keep you on track to reach your goals. Listen to The Druck: “what gets measured, gets managed.” If you want to lose weight, you have to track what you eat. Likewise, if you want to make a million dollars, you have to track what you do with your time. Set a timer to go off every two hours during your work day and log what you have accomplished in those 2 hours.
Step 5: Assign a value to each task you did. This is where it all comes together in a juicy goal-smashing package! In this step you are going to assign a value to each of the tasks you completed that day. Is the task you completed a $15 task? A $100 task? A $1,000 task? Or a $10,000 task? How do you know what the task you completed is worth? Judge by what you would need to pay someone else to complete that task for you.
If you spent an hour making website changes, that is something you could definitely pay someone $15 to do for you. Likewise for answering customer service emails, answering the phone, bookkeeping, posting to social media, etc.
An example of a $100 task would be doing your own design, video editing, InfusionSoft or web development, talking to a qualified lead, following up with potential clients, etc. These tasks require a certain level of skill and in most cases you could pay someone $100 or less to do them for you.
A $1,000 task might be mapping out your sales funnel, writing sales copy, negotiating to close a deal with a potential client, reviewing and evaluating data (like your revenue numbers, conversion rates, etc.).
The Big Kahuna tasks with a $10,000 price tag would be things like developing a new product or service offering, negotiating a lucrative joint venture deal, speaking at an event, hiring a new employee, etc.
You want to fill your day with mostly $10,000 and $1,000 tasks so you can be achieving or exceeding your daily financial goal every day. Now, of course, you will have some off days where things just don’t go as planned but that should be the exception and not the norm. Having an entire week where you don’t reach your daily financial goal is likely to lead to not achieving your annual revenue goal as well.
Did your head just explode? Good. That is the appropriate response. This is really powerful stuff and if you take action and follow these steps, you will see truly powerful results. The key is to stop hiding behind the busy administrative work that probably needs to get done but should not be done by you, the CEO. Outsource $15 tasks and spend your time on the kinds of tasks that will get you big results! If you have a team, make sure your team knows and is focused on helping you reach the daily financial target as well.
So go on, figure out how many days you’ll be working in 2016, write down that big ‘ol number you want to make this year, calculate your daily financial goal and get to work doing those high value tasks. Track your time and assign a value to what you spend your time doing. And don’t forget to roll around in the sea of cash that comes pouring in, while naked, wearing pearls, with a glass of champagne. 😉
What is your daily financial goal for 2016 and what kinds of tasks are you going to do each day to make it happen? Just saying it out loud to someone else can make it feel real, doable and keep you motivated. I’m happy to be that someone for you!
