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Lesson Info

Quarterly Pruning

So I want to show you the premise of how every business is made and where you can focus in on pruning. So your business is here. There's really three elements for every business. One is clients who have been focusing in and talking about a lot and clients. We want to increase the income that's parentheses around it. We won't increase the income from clients right, and we do it interestingly, not necessarily by focusing on this game or clients more clients, more clients. We focus on getting the right clients that generate more income. So it's not about initially more clients. That can be good. It's about more profitable clients. But there's a second component, which is people. Every business is made up of people a little bit. Could be one person. For many businesses could be employees when I use the word employees. By the way, that also means contractors, part timers, freelancers, even free help. When Mohammed Dad come, they used my parents was coming clean my office. They were my clean...

ing crew. So that counts is people and people. You want more people you want. I'm sorry. The right people, uh, doing the right things right. You want to do it properly, and what I like to do is put two arrows here. The ultimate goal is toe have fewer people doing things more efficiently. So you're trying to keep the number of people down, and you're trying to get them to get more work done more efficiently. You know, it's very difficult to grow businesses by bringing more and more people on board, and they don't know what they're doing and going all over the place. Very inefficient, big overhead. The third component, then, is expenses. And this is what the other words costs. You know, expenses are necessary to support clients as expenses. We yield the support lines and support our people. We want to keep expenses down. So when we talk about pruning for the rest of this module, these are the three areas I want to focus on. How do we get more clients? More good clients? How do we get the right people doing the right things right? Meaning more efficiently. And how do we cut expenses? Um, I want to talk about the quarterly plan first. The tendency for many businesses is you look at this and say I've got just so much stuff I got. Start firing clients and focus on clients. I better start shifting people around. It becomes overwhelming, Donna told us yesterday about the prosperity plan and the Prosperity plane. Just to refresh your memory is the kind of the X on the map of where you want your business to go to. Many businesses write business plans and, you know the old business plan. It's like, you know, what kind of revenue projections do you have for the next five years? Who's the dream team of people? They're going to be joining you and helping out you come along? Well, first of all, tell you things that are wrong about business plan. If you can project the revenues for company that you're running for the next five years, you probably could project like the stock market for tomorrow. And if you could do that, you could be a billionaire. It's not Project Herbal. There's too many variables going on. The second thing is that the Dream Team they say you know who the people will be working alongside you in the capacity Who's gonna be your mentors? The Dream Team for any business is you the owner, that is the Dream team. There's no one else that's going to be devoted or committed to your business as you sow business planned on an iron OPIC fans off. It's a lot of made up numbers, but a prosperity plan is a clear vision of where you intend to go. The impact you plan to have on the world by doing what you're doing, the way years preserving memories forever. This is the X on the map now with the prosperity plan. We like to have the 10 year vision. Where do you want to be 10 years from today? The reason we picked 10 years out is I In 10 years, you can be the world leading rock stacker you'll be world renowned for, and we don't have the right to argue against That's 10 years from now. Additionally, it's near enough in time that it's reasonable within your lifetime. I'm easily within your lifetime. Result within our lifetimes to 10 year window is a great window because it can't be argued against and it can be argued for it has been proved you. Price saw the movie pursuit of Happiness where ah, homeless person who's been homeless within 10 years, became a multi millionaire by changing their life around. And we're privileged enough on a global economy that the resource is we're out there through the Internet through education that you could be doing something you hate today. And if you dream to be a rocket scientist within 10 years, you could be the world leading rocket scientist. That's what Donna taught us yesterday, said the X on the map, the prosperity plan of where you envision yourself being questions. How do you get there via pruning and you use the thing called a quarterly plant? Here's what I want you to dio Every quarter are quarter ends on September 30th. So we're recording this on the 25th today. So five or six days from now, the quarter end that's the end of the third quarter of this year. The next quarter is from October 1st, December 31st I wanted you to German. What are you going to do in that quarter to get toward the prosperity plan? Now why Quarterly's and not Mawr planning? Why not plan for the next year? Well, there there was, um, a sailing industry. There's a method called tacking. Has anyone ever heard attacking? Feeling okay? Good. And sailors online? I want to hear. Tell me how accurate this is. What a sailor does is recognized. You have to capture the wind to move your boat through the ocean through the body of water. What you do is you pick a spot out on the horizon. You put the X out on the horizon where you're going to go. Perhaps you see a little island out there in the distance and you put the little map out there, said. That's We're like my boat to head and I want to end up. But a sailboat doesn't just go straight there. There's a few things going on first, with wind is blowing in different directions. It may not be blowing directly that way, so may not take you directly on courts, and there may be obstacles in the way. There could be boats there could be pirates. There could be whatever in your way. You, you sandbars. You have to avoid navigate around. So what a captain of a boat does. She picks that X of where she wants the head, and then she says, How I capture the current winds. How to avoid the obstacles. What's the best, most direct route? I can go in that general direction but not actually get there, and she starts pushing forward after about, say, 3 400 yards. Captain, the boat stops, looks where the axe in the map and realigns the boat, capturing the current environment, the winds and stuff that's going on and moves the boat and redirects it and push forward for another 3 400 yards. Then the captain stops, looks at the vision, realigns with that island, pushes forward, stops, realigns. It makes a zigzag pattern. And every time someone sailing a boat using the tacking method this exact method, they get exactly where they want to go to get right to the island. That's when you do their business. Too many entrepreneurs think it's gonna be a straight beeline. There. You guys know it, and you guys know it. You don't go straight, you get thrown around with all the winds. Thing is, we need to capture the winds and start zigzagging our way there. So what are you going to do in the next quarter? I suggest always three things. There's some magic power to 33 Things always seem that we can accomplish three things. We can get it done. It doesn't seem overwhelming, but it doesn't seem like we're doing a little. We're doing something significant when you do that. The quarterly plan. You're attacking strategy on October 1st, Here's the three things I want you to be asking about your business. How doe I increase client activity. Now here's a beautiful thing. If you're ready in business, there's a couple questions you can ask yourself over the prior quarter. What happened? What have I been doing that's been working? And what have I been doing that's not working? So you will hear clients and say what I've been doing that's been attracting clients. What's been working the top clients. Then you look and see what I am doing. This kind of not walking socks. Stop doing those things. So make a decision. What working was not working with clients and in doom or of which working. Give yourself maybe as one of your go if you want. The goal could be also to experiment some with something new, but always do one thing, so our quarterly plans would have three objectives. Just pick one objective for the client. So maybe the new thing is I have a client. The baby who likes patterns. What my goal is for his next quarter is simply to do one thing. I'm going to introduce a new pattern that they are crazy about. That's it. We know it's already working. In the past, they've already requested special patterns. Were to do this one thing. We have a strong suspicion that's gonna increase profit. Then, after 90 days way, we look at our boat and say OK, for 90 days, I tried a new pattern. Hey, they doubled their orders. It's working. Maybe I'm gonna continue this goal or even build on it for the next quarter. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs say I'm gonna try having a pattern. Uh, well, try this. I'm gonna try that when we start going all over the place and we try to throw everything up on the wall to see what sticks. But we don't even get enough time to see what sticks and we're looking somewhere else. You've got to give yourself the time. It seems like 90 days for many decisions is the perfect amount of time Sometimes you get a false positive. We're talking about that yesterday, where you have immediate response where people go, I love it, is working. I love the new pattern, and then you say that. So I'm gonna commit my business to this. But to two weeks with weeks later. They don't like the patterns they just initially liked it and under, like, no, no one's buying. This we don't want 90 days is a good time to do so for your quarterly plan. First of all, where you do the clients. The second thing is with your people. And by the way, you're one of the people. You're right, the most important person doom or of what's working what's not working. But really, I found it a strategy for figuring out what's working, what's not working. And there's three simple symbols I want you to start using. One's a dollar sign. One's a smiling face. And remember that one and one is an infinity sign. Do we all have task? Lis? Wiehl used task this. Okay, Good. I used task list, too. I use them religiously. You know, the most common task list and this is for your task list management. These symbols. You know, the most common task list is based upon due dates and do times what I have do tonight. Would I commit to That's due tomorrow and we prioritize based applying time. Not a good way to prioritize what I found. And by the way, one of the downloads when people buy this course The Wall Street Journal article, the water journal. I wrote an article about this. This was the favor. Article of how to prioritize tasks. Thes articles included. But here's the basic premise of it. I wanted to go through all your tasks, right. We're focusing on people now. This is for yourself in a few of contractors employees. You given this exact same system, go through all the task. So why don't we pick on you, Debbie, for a second? What air? The tasks that just come to head right now that you have to take care of that. You just have to do for your business. Just anything. Um, I have to outline the upcoming hangouts on every client hangouts. What else do you call people back? Yeah. Um okay. Follow up on leads we'd fall of. Okay. What else do you have clean your website? Yeah. Constant struggle is getting my website to function properly. OK, Do they pay bills? Probably. Oh, yeah. Um, do some people left voicemails or something to call back? Okay, so call back. You know, person a person B. Okay. Now, usually when we have and you are tasked lists, I suspect if you're tactless like mine, it's like pages long, right? Well, we have these as we have built this task list tipped with what we do is we go sequential order or more often? Like I was saying before you say, Well, I haven't closed person back in three days. This is now priority. It's as a due date. Do time. Here's the one simple change I wanted to make at every time you have a task. Write it down as it comes to mind. Always write it down. Then before the task, put a dollar sign. If it's going to make you money in the next 90 days, the next quarter. If you have a high degree of confidence, it will generate revenue for your business. In the next 90 days, it gets dollars. So, Debbie, for, um, your outline hangouts will that generate revenue in the next 90 days. If you do that, um, yes. OK, that's dollars. Call people back. Um, us pretty. It's too, general, but we have called person a back. Is there a person? What's one persons left you a voicemail? Well, I I'm people don't generally, but I do have a new hang out. Um, new product client. Yeah. OK, so you prospect. So we'll say Here's a prospect. So that would generate you money? Absolutely. We also said in your list you have to clean up your site. Would that generate you money the next 90 days? Exactly. Bills paying bills probably will not generate you waiting. Okay, now, next thing is a smiley face, a smiling faces. If this is related to a top client, so we go through the exact same sequence outline for hangouts. Are these for your top clients? Yes. Okay, so it gets a smiley face next, clean up your websites that for a top client Well, it's for me, For you, but for top client, my website iss for all of my clients. Okay. Is it marketing to prospects, or is it serving your top clients in some way it's more marketing to prospect. That's that would be a prospect thing. But it doesn't serve our top clients. That's a great thing you distinguished. By the way. If it does service your top clients, maybe this is an interface they use. Then it would be a client related. Yeah, I tried to block each of our sessions. So with blogging your top clients sessions and getting that on the priority list, be serving your top clients because they feel important. Yes. So that's part of your deliverable, right? So you take pictures and then you blogged about the experience that absolutely and this is this is really cool because you start distinguishing the tasks so within task or sub task you could blogged about, you know, just general photography to track prospects. Or you could blogged about something for your clients. Those air, clearly distinct, different tasks. Yet if we don't have this conversation of Israel, ate the money is really to a top client. We just say I was just blogging, So yeah, sorry. My website is, um that I mean, the challenge with it is that if I don't have it, then people won't hire me for price not working that people won't hire me and and it will cost me money. Still to get it fixed. Work properly. So it's a great prospecting tool. I could bring you money, but not in 90 days necessarily. But long term, it may be anytime. Anytime. You don't know what you don't know when. But let me ask you this because what this tool does it doesn't say this is wrong. It prioritizes the outline for a hang out with a current client we know is gonna make you money. 90 days. That takes priority. The last thing is infinity sign and the sign Is it a system? Is it something that will yield a benefit on an ongoing basis? That the website, from what you're saying clearly, is an infinity sign meaning it's a tool that's gonna continually prospect for you automatically paying bills, call people back. So at cross that was on their paying bills doesn't seem to generate you money. It doesn't seem that it's any, um, it's not your top clients is not gonna deal things for infinity. Now, I'm not saying that means crossed off the list. You gotta pay your bills. You pay your bills. I'm just saying your priority is said now to do in this sequences follows which item has the most symbols. They'll generate money for you and make clients happy. It's very clear from this list. This is the first thing that needs to be done. And what you do with your task list now, say I'm not gonna do anything else but do this. Then you look always in this order Money client face out and dollar signs. Now I look for the next dollar sign. There is none by sea. So, uh, there is a dollar sign. We do this one next, this would be number two. There's no smiling face, and I find it stunning sign. This is number three and then this task is number four, and now you have your prioritization order. If you were doing it based upon your outline of sequential, you probably won't get ever to calling your prospects. You may be stuck in doing bills and saying I got pay bills. I gotta pay bills or my bills are due today and you're neglecting your best client, and that's going to pay you dearly where you could just deflect this for one day, right? Here's a new way to prioritize. Sometimes dates stuff are relevant. You make commitments, but you'll find when you start doing this process that you're going makes less commitments that are not appropriate. You'll find that you'll start using that method where you talked about yesterday under promise Over Deliver. You're gonna afford yourself more time because you learn your sequence. Okay, this is how you address the people aspect of your business, and the first person's address is your own time management. That's how you do it. Recognize more people are out in the world, are trying to find more time. There is no more time. There's only 24 hours of the day. We all know that isn't saying. There is no more time. We have the ability to prioritize. That's what we have to explain. Quickly review what the Infinity sign represents in more detail. Okay, great. So this is system ization system ization. Is there anything that can run on automatic without your involvement? Is a system we as owners, the business are required to develop systems. And what Debbie was telling me here is with her website. If she cleans up the website. The website will be a permanent system, something that present Automatic serves clients without her involvement. But she needs to do it, so she has to clean the site upto have that system in place. Okay, sometimes, and these are my favorites, you'll get a triple symbol. You'll get a smiley face, a dollar sign and, um, affinity. Sign what this means is this activity is pleasing a top client that's important. It's generating you income, and you have the ability to run it on automatic, meaning you the ability to develop it so someone else can do the work. Next time. When you hit this first, I'll do a little jig because that's exciting. I mean, that's a colossal business potential and then put all your energy into that.