Michael Rasmussen here with some year end
advice about how to make next year a
phenomenal success for your business.
By the way...you can breathe easy, because
I'm not going to ask you to take out your
wallet for any reason at all. All you need
is your brain.
Last time I told you that most people who
are trying to make a living online never
give themselves the gift of brutal honesty.
They simply don't think about their
business much beyond the idea that they'd
like to make more cash.
Sure, everybody wants that, but if you
REALLY want to achieve your income goals,
you need to be more honest than that. You
need to think about your business, assess
your business and make wise choices for
your business.
What I'm going to talk about this time
fits right in with that. This is a meaty
email, so reserve a few minutes to read it
through.
I'm going to tell you how to plan your
next business year.
That might not sound like a "sexy" topic,
but I can guarantee you that it's the
single best way to increase your success.
When I first started in my business, I
didn't plan at all, literally. There was
so much to learn, and I was so confused,
that I didn't know what to do.
All I knew for sure was that I wanted to
create a business that allowed me to live
the life I wanted to live.
So I kind of muddled through, trying this
and that, trying to figure out what worked
and what didn't.
Pretty soon, I realized that I was going
nowhere.
It had been a year or two and I felt like
I'd made no progress at all. It was very
frustrating, but I wasn't sure what was
wrong.
Then I asked some friends what they
thought the problem might be. This was
back in the days when there weren't more
Internet marketing gurus than you could
count. I just asked some friends who were
having similar struggles.
It was obvious to just about everyone that
the real problem was having no plan. We
were all after anything that would work
consistently, and that meant we chased
just about everything!
Let me save you some years of frustration
by telling you that you MUST have a plan.
It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't
have to be brilliant. It just has to exist.
You might be surprised at how easy this is
to do. There are only five steps, and they
build on what I told you last time.
There are entire books written about this
topic, but I'm going to give you a short
plan for getting it done. Maybe that will
save you some reading.
STEP 1: Assess Last Year
Yep, this is what I said you should do
last time, but let me go into a little
more detail.
If you had a plan for last year, see how
things turned out:
* Did you achieve your goals?
* If you didn't achieve a particular goal,
why do you think you fell short?
Most people didn't have a plan last year,
so the assessment isn't a matter of
comparing your results to your goals. But
that doesn't mean you get to skip this
step. You just have to do something
different.
What you'll do is analyze what you want to
achieve overall (success as you define
it), and what you did last year to try to
make progress toward that.
Sure, you didn't make it yet, but ask
yourself if you really tried, and HOW you
tried.
You need to be very specific here.
Ask yourself what you did specifically to
achieve your long-term goals. Be brutally
honest with yourself (again) and figure
out if you wasted time, or lost focus, or
whatever it is.
This is the exercise I described last time,
but I want you to dig VERY deep. Talk to
friends and mentors. Talk to your family,
if you feel comfortable doing that.
Figure out where you've been for the past
12 months, so you can set yourself up to
figure out where you'll go next.
STEP 2: Choose 1-3 "Big" Goals for Next Year
In some ways, a year is just an arbitrary
target. You can have lifetime goals if you
want, or goals for the next decade.
But focusing on next year can help you
start achieving goals on a regular basis,
which is what success is all about.
So choose one, two or three "big" goals to
accomplish next year.
You can have a single goal. That's fine,
and it might actually make you more
focused. But if you have two or three,
that's good as well.
Don't pick four or more goals. That will
hurt you in the long run.
Having too many goals is like having too
many television channels to choose from.
You end up hopping around looking for
something good, and you end up not really
watching anything.
Too many goals are a distraction. Between
one and three well-defined goals lets you
focus like a laser beam. Here's what a
well-defined goal looks like...
First, it's concrete. That means it's
clearly something you want, and it's
specific enough to mean something in the
real world.
It's fine to say you want to "be
wealthy"...but what does that mean? Put a
number on it. Flesh it out. Make it as
concrete as you can make it.
Second, it's actionable for you, meaning
YOU can make progress toward the goal.
It's fine to say you want to cure cancer,
but are you really equipped to do it? Most
people aren't, and it's probably not a
good goal for your online business anyway.
Third, it's achievable...with a stretch.
It's important to make your goals
something that stretch you a bit, sort of
like athletic training. If you don't push
yourself, you'll never achieve more.
But don't push yourself to the breaking
point. Push yourself hard, but not enough
to get hurt. This is a judgment call, for
sure, but it's also something you can
feel.
For example, if you've never made any
profit online before, saying your goal is
to make five thousand dollars a day next
year is probably too big. If you get
there, great! But maybe consistently
making $100 a day is a nice stretch goal.
Fourth, it's exciting. I can't emphasize
this one enough.
If your goals don't motivate you to get
out of bed in the morning, get other
goals. Really, that's what goals are all
about. Make sure yours engage your mind
and get you fired up.
Once you're armed with your well-defined
goals, it's time to plan how to achieve
them.
STEP 3: Determine Each Goal's Success Factor
You have to figure out what you need to do
to achieve each specific goal.
Obviously, the goal itself contains some of
this. If your goal is to make $100 a day,
you need to make $100 a day to achieve it.
But I'm talking about going beyond that.
For example, the success factor for that
goal might be for you to
* Sell your own product for $27
* Sell eight copies per day to net $100
after you pay 50% commissions
Notice that it's very specific. It talks
about what your business model is (selling
your own product) and what kind of results
you need to get.
You're not to the place of defining how
you'll get there yet (that's next), but
you're clearly saying what you need to
achieve to accomplish your goal.
There are no right or wrong answers here.
Your business model might be affiliate
marketing, or selling your product, a
mixture of the two, or something else.
Oh, and the goal you're trying to achieve
influences the success factor you come up
with for that goal.
The example I just gave you was a specific
revenue goal. But your goal could be
something like building your list to
10,000 subscribers. In that case, your
success factor could be:
* Give away a free report on the front end
* Attract 100,000 visitors so a relatively
low 10% conversion rate will be good
enough
Different type of goal, different success
factor.
Now that you know what your success factor
is for each goal, it's time to determine
exactly how to get there.
STEP 4: Break Your Goal Into Parts
There are two flavors of this.
The first thing to do is break your goal
into smaller chunks you can work on
throughout the year. The second thing to
do is to break those smaller chunks into
specific tasks so you know what to work on
today.
Maybe you've heard this old joke: How do
you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!
It's the same thing with goals. Achieving
the entire goal all at once might be too
much. Breaking it down into parts makes it
easier to digest.
Start with time. Break each of your big
goals for the year into quarters, as in
calendar quarters.
If your goal is to make $100 a day, maybe
you should be making $25 per day after the
first three months, then $50 per day after
six months, and so on.
Then break each quarter into monthly
goals. So maybe you should be making
roughly $8 per day after the first month,
or something similar.
There are several ways you can break your
goals down into quarters and months, based
on the type of goal you're dealing with.
The two most common are:
* You can "ramp" the numbers you want to
achieve, such as ramping up your
subscriber count each month
* You can set milestones, such as how much
free time you have per day at the end of
each month
Now, once you've broken your goal into
smaller chunks, it's time to come up with
the daily and/or weekly tasks necessary to
achieve each smaller goal.
For example, to get to your $8 per day
after the first month, you might say
you'll get, on average, one new sale of
your $27 product per day (that will do
better than $8 per day, but you get the
point).
If you assume a one percent conversion
rate, which is pretty conservative but
also pretty common, you'll need 100 people
to see your offer every day...and you need
to specify how you'll make that happen.
Maybe you'll write a new article to
publish, or make some more forum postings,
or whatever it is. This is where you get
to use your head, and ANY other resources
you can draw on, to figure this out.
And until you have some real numbers to
base your estimates on, you'll have to
guess. That's fine. Go ahead and guess and
learn.
Sometimes it's easier to think of things
on a weekly basis. In this example, you
might say you'll shoot for about 55 sales
per week...and do the daily tasks
necessary to make that happen.
This is where the rubber meets the road,
so to speak. It's where you do the
relatively simple daily things to help you
achieve your big goals. You'll be eating
the elephant one bit at a time.
STEP 5: Build In Accountability
This is the step most people miss, and
it's a killer if you overlook it.
You need to be accountable for doing the
daily or weekly stuff necessary to achieve
your goals. I'm not saying you need a baby
sitter, but you DO need to recognize that
you'll have a tendency to neglect your
tasks. We all do.
In the end, there's no substitute for
being accountable to yourself. You just
have to commit to doing what you need to
do, and stick with it.
But sometimes a little external
encouragement can give you a big boost. So
find a mentor or a friend to help you stay
on track. Here's how I suggest you do it:
* Tell this person that you want to get
some friendly nudging from time to time so
you don't neglect what you need to do to
succeed
* Schedule a periodic meeting or phone
call with this person to report your
progress
* Be honest with this person about what
you really did or didn't do since your
last conversation
* Tell this person to give you a slap on
the hand if you don't get the job done
Really, if you don't care about
accomplishing your goals, having this kind
of accountability partner won't help you.
If you DO care, knowing that you're going
to have to admit to somebody that you fell
short could give you the motivation you
need to stay focused.
Every little bit helps. And you can use
your regularly scheduled accountability
conversations to assess your plan, too. If
it needs changing, change it. It's a plan,
not a law.
That's what this entire planning process
is really about...making progress,
assessing progress and achieving things so
it gets to be a habit.
Like I said, I never used to do this, and
my results flat-out stunk. Once I started
planning like this, I realized that
success isn't hard at all. It's a matter
of breaking things down and accomplishing
smaller goals.
Over time, the "small" goals add up to
"big" goals. Then you can move on to even
bigger goals that you can't even imagine
right now.
Give planning like this a try. It has
helped me in my business tremendously, and
I hope it helps you every bit as much.
I wish you business success in the next
year, and I hope you'll share your success
stories with me as you start achieving
your goals.
All the best,
Michael Rasmussen
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