Boring title, I know. I'm only writing this as a follow-up to my other thread here https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/h...-only-thing-that-works.1448868/#post-15777082
In it I talked about how a 1 year plan is not enough, because we underestimate what we can do in 3-5 years, and over estimate what we can do in 1.
It's important to set goals you can reach. It's important to meet your weekly, monthly and quarterly goals.
I used to be a fan of the "think big" mentality..
You should still think big. But, the problem is people think big over the short term, then massively underestimate what's required. They then fall WAY short of the goal and get massively disappointed.
If you want to apply the "think big", then make a TEN year plan.
How do I know which to choose? 3 years, 5 years, 10 years?
It depends on your level of experience.
You need to pick a business that can scale to the level you want to achieve. If you want to reach 8 figures, then you need an 8 figure idea. Even Alex Becker with his massive info business said he couldn't reach 8 figures per year with it. High 7 when he did a max 10/10 effort.
If you're early in your business career you won't know what that is, so making a 10 year plan is a waste of time since you'll end up changing businesses once you max it out, or you'll struggle with growth before realizing you need to change.
If this is your first business, just do a 6 month to 1 year plan. Keep it small, with easy goals. Aim for $1k to $5k/mo max.
If you're already making a few thousand a month ($1k to $7k/mo) and have a good feel for your skills and what you could do, then go for a 3 year plan and aim for low to mid 6 figures. If you're making $7k/mo, then go for $500k-$800k/year for example. If you're making $1k/mo, then go for $100k/year in your 3 year plan.
If you're making 6 figures and feel the business has 7 figure potential, go for a 5 year plan. If you're making $400k-$500k/year, then just aim for about $2mil/year in your 5 year plan. Take it SLOW. People are always rushing. If you started from nothing and did $0 to $2k/mo in a year, then $2k/mo to $200k/mo in 3 years, and then $200k/mo to $1.2 mil/year in 5 years. That's a total of 8 years to go from 0 to $1.2mi/year. If I said to you right now, if you give me 8 years of patience, I guarantee in 8 years you'll be making $1.2mil/year, would you accept?
If you're already then doing $1mil-$2mil/year, which you're probably not, as people at that level aren't reading my posts. (They are me, and are reading the posts from the guys doing $25mil-$100mil/year), then you set a 10 year plan and aim for $25-$100 mil/year. At this level you can start to aim bigger for a couple of reasons.
1) You have multiple years of success behind you, so you are gaining tremendous momentum and leverage.
2) You can do a lot with $1mil/year. It's much easier to go from $1mil/year to $25mil/year than it is from $0 to $1mil/year.
My personal one is a 10 year plan to reach $100mil/year with my AI company.
Can you give me an example of a 3 year plan?
You start with your 3 year plan.
This should be very general and contain your "end goals".
Keep it broad. I'm not going to give an example of a specific business, but I'll give you some ideas of potential things you might write.
$500k per year revenue.
All my figures are revenue. Revenue is the "size of your operation". Obviously more profit is good, but generally you aren't going to run something silly with $500k turnover and $50k profit
You'd expect at least $250k profit from that $500k. In the digital world it should be $300k to $400k after operating expenses.
2 full time staff members and 3-5 part time freelancers.
Spending $100k per year on YouTube advertising.
Full tracking solution setup so I can attribute my conversions.
Refined sales script that has been learned inside out for closing over the phone.
100 articles written to build authority within my niche.
100 videos created within my niche.
A free SaaS tool for lead generation built and ranking on google on my main website.
2 books written.
20,000 followers on Twitter.
50,000 subscribers on YouTube
5 brandable niche websites each selling 3-5 products.
It entirely depends on your business, but in general it's all the things you are aiming to achieve within 3 years.
It is the IMPORTANT things to focus on. The things, that if you focus exclusively on, you will reach your revenue goal. Notice that everything there are things that, for various types of businesses are going to result in higher revenue.
For example, 20k followers on Twitter if you're selling any sort of service/product to businesses. This is direct authority building and making yourself known. A refined sales script for closing your leads over the phone. This will result in more sales.
It must be things that will serve as your compass over the next 3 years.
Now, from this..
I like to just go straight to a quarterly. Even for a 10 year plan, I don't bother with a yearly. The problem with yearly is it's harder to guestimate what you can do.
What you SHOULD do is make a quarterly plan with reasonable goals. Every quarter you try to get even more done, or create more leverage. You use your QUARTERS to move you closer to your end goal, and try to get better and better each quarter, so that hopefully you reach your goals before the end of the 3, 5 or 10 year period.
What does a quarterly plan look like?
The quarterly plan will be much more practical with specific things you want to achieve this quarter. The 3, 5 and 10 year plan are just "goals", where-as the quarterly contains breakdowns of the things you'll do to achieve those plans.
You might put down "Gain my first 1000 followers on Twitter".
But that alone isn't enough..
How will you get them? You need to plan that part out in the quarterly plan.
Plan out all the things you'll need to do to get the first 1k followers. And remember Grant Cardone's saying.. People always underestimate the work required by about 10x. Bare that in mind.
So in summary the quarterly is about writing out the part of the goal you want, and then detailing out underneath all the steps to reach it this quarter.
Next, you create your weekly plan
Now it's getting simpler. Just take a few of the planned out tasks from the quarterly and set them into your week.
Aim for 6 hours a day of these tasks that will move you forward. If you can do that, 6 days a week, you'll be successful. That's all it takes.
That doesn't mean you work for 6 hours, it means you are directly doing 6 hours on the quarterly tasks. Reading emailing, reading web pages, replying to clients or customers, answering support tickets or anything along those lines is NOT moving you forward. That is operational stuff. Either do it outside your 6 hours, or get staff to take over those duties later. You will probably need to work 9 to 12 hours a day as your business grows depending on the operational needs. This is really important. The 6 hours is deterministic work to grow the business. The rest is reactionary work to operate/maintain the business. Many people end up doing 100% reactionary work and never grow.
Finally, the daily plan.
Even simpler. Just take 3-5 tasks from your weekly and do your 6 hours of focused, deterministic work to grow your business.
You can use the rest of the day to study if you like. I don't recommend doing more than 6 hours of the focused work per day. You want it to be quality, and you *will* be tired after 6 hours of focused work. That 6 hours doesn't include a break. It could be 3 hours on, 30 mins off, 3 hours on.
If you've got an active business, then try to get your operational work down to 2-3 hours. That's about 10 hours of a workday if you include breaks.
That gives you 1-2 hours for those with an operational business for study. Or 3-4 hours of study for those without. Again, don't do too much study. Don't work too hard. 3-4 hours is plenty. If you do more you won't learn as well. People who work "14 hours a day", aren't working 14 hours a day. They're just "clocking in and off" over that period. 6 solid focused hours, with 2 hours of operational and 2 hours of study is a fucking fantastic day. Or 6 hours of focused work with 3 hours of study if you have no operational, is also a fucking fantastic day.
Remember, business is an ultra marathon, not a sprint. Aim to do this 6 days a week. Take a day off to relax and do other things. Take 2 days off if you want. Hard work is way way over rated. How can people become billionaires with the same hours as everyone else, when there are guys working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day only making a million a year, and feeling totally exhausted?
You won't do it with a 4 hour work week, but you don't need to burn yourself to the ground to succeed.
In fact, if you apply the method above, you could do as little as 3 hours a day of focused work, 2 hours operational and 1 hour study, 5 days a week, and still have a nice 6 or 7 figure business. Maybe even an 8 if you can create enough leverage.
The biggest problem is, people do 0 hours of the focused work. They are just doing either mindless study, mindless reading or operational work. Almost no one is doing deterministic work from their plans that move the business a little step forward every single day. THIS is the fucking key, people. It's that simple.
In it I talked about how a 1 year plan is not enough, because we underestimate what we can do in 3-5 years, and over estimate what we can do in 1.
It's important to set goals you can reach. It's important to meet your weekly, monthly and quarterly goals.
I used to be a fan of the "think big" mentality..
You should still think big. But, the problem is people think big over the short term, then massively underestimate what's required. They then fall WAY short of the goal and get massively disappointed.
If you want to apply the "think big", then make a TEN year plan.
How do I know which to choose? 3 years, 5 years, 10 years?
It depends on your level of experience.
You need to pick a business that can scale to the level you want to achieve. If you want to reach 8 figures, then you need an 8 figure idea. Even Alex Becker with his massive info business said he couldn't reach 8 figures per year with it. High 7 when he did a max 10/10 effort.
If you're early in your business career you won't know what that is, so making a 10 year plan is a waste of time since you'll end up changing businesses once you max it out, or you'll struggle with growth before realizing you need to change.
If this is your first business, just do a 6 month to 1 year plan. Keep it small, with easy goals. Aim for $1k to $5k/mo max.
If you're already making a few thousand a month ($1k to $7k/mo) and have a good feel for your skills and what you could do, then go for a 3 year plan and aim for low to mid 6 figures. If you're making $7k/mo, then go for $500k-$800k/year for example. If you're making $1k/mo, then go for $100k/year in your 3 year plan.
If you're making 6 figures and feel the business has 7 figure potential, go for a 5 year plan. If you're making $400k-$500k/year, then just aim for about $2mil/year in your 5 year plan. Take it SLOW. People are always rushing. If you started from nothing and did $0 to $2k/mo in a year, then $2k/mo to $200k/mo in 3 years, and then $200k/mo to $1.2 mil/year in 5 years. That's a total of 8 years to go from 0 to $1.2mi/year. If I said to you right now, if you give me 8 years of patience, I guarantee in 8 years you'll be making $1.2mil/year, would you accept?
If you're already then doing $1mil-$2mil/year, which you're probably not, as people at that level aren't reading my posts. (They are me, and are reading the posts from the guys doing $25mil-$100mil/year), then you set a 10 year plan and aim for $25-$100 mil/year. At this level you can start to aim bigger for a couple of reasons.
1) You have multiple years of success behind you, so you are gaining tremendous momentum and leverage.
2) You can do a lot with $1mil/year. It's much easier to go from $1mil/year to $25mil/year than it is from $0 to $1mil/year.
My personal one is a 10 year plan to reach $100mil/year with my AI company.
Can you give me an example of a 3 year plan?
You start with your 3 year plan.
This should be very general and contain your "end goals".
Keep it broad. I'm not going to give an example of a specific business, but I'll give you some ideas of potential things you might write.
$500k per year revenue.
All my figures are revenue. Revenue is the "size of your operation". Obviously more profit is good, but generally you aren't going to run something silly with $500k turnover and $50k profit
You'd expect at least $250k profit from that $500k. In the digital world it should be $300k to $400k after operating expenses. 2 full time staff members and 3-5 part time freelancers.
Spending $100k per year on YouTube advertising.
Full tracking solution setup so I can attribute my conversions.
Refined sales script that has been learned inside out for closing over the phone.
100 articles written to build authority within my niche.
100 videos created within my niche.
A free SaaS tool for lead generation built and ranking on google on my main website.
2 books written.
20,000 followers on Twitter.
50,000 subscribers on YouTube
5 brandable niche websites each selling 3-5 products.
It entirely depends on your business, but in general it's all the things you are aiming to achieve within 3 years.
It is the IMPORTANT things to focus on. The things, that if you focus exclusively on, you will reach your revenue goal. Notice that everything there are things that, for various types of businesses are going to result in higher revenue.
For example, 20k followers on Twitter if you're selling any sort of service/product to businesses. This is direct authority building and making yourself known. A refined sales script for closing your leads over the phone. This will result in more sales.
It must be things that will serve as your compass over the next 3 years.
Now, from this..
I like to just go straight to a quarterly. Even for a 10 year plan, I don't bother with a yearly. The problem with yearly is it's harder to guestimate what you can do.
What you SHOULD do is make a quarterly plan with reasonable goals. Every quarter you try to get even more done, or create more leverage. You use your QUARTERS to move you closer to your end goal, and try to get better and better each quarter, so that hopefully you reach your goals before the end of the 3, 5 or 10 year period.
What does a quarterly plan look like?
The quarterly plan will be much more practical with specific things you want to achieve this quarter. The 3, 5 and 10 year plan are just "goals", where-as the quarterly contains breakdowns of the things you'll do to achieve those plans.
You might put down "Gain my first 1000 followers on Twitter".
But that alone isn't enough..
How will you get them? You need to plan that part out in the quarterly plan.
Plan out all the things you'll need to do to get the first 1k followers. And remember Grant Cardone's saying.. People always underestimate the work required by about 10x. Bare that in mind.
So in summary the quarterly is about writing out the part of the goal you want, and then detailing out underneath all the steps to reach it this quarter.
Next, you create your weekly plan
Now it's getting simpler. Just take a few of the planned out tasks from the quarterly and set them into your week.
Aim for 6 hours a day of these tasks that will move you forward. If you can do that, 6 days a week, you'll be successful. That's all it takes.
That doesn't mean you work for 6 hours, it means you are directly doing 6 hours on the quarterly tasks. Reading emailing, reading web pages, replying to clients or customers, answering support tickets or anything along those lines is NOT moving you forward. That is operational stuff. Either do it outside your 6 hours, or get staff to take over those duties later. You will probably need to work 9 to 12 hours a day as your business grows depending on the operational needs. This is really important. The 6 hours is deterministic work to grow the business. The rest is reactionary work to operate/maintain the business. Many people end up doing 100% reactionary work and never grow.
Finally, the daily plan.
Even simpler. Just take 3-5 tasks from your weekly and do your 6 hours of focused, deterministic work to grow your business.
You can use the rest of the day to study if you like. I don't recommend doing more than 6 hours of the focused work per day. You want it to be quality, and you *will* be tired after 6 hours of focused work. That 6 hours doesn't include a break. It could be 3 hours on, 30 mins off, 3 hours on.
If you've got an active business, then try to get your operational work down to 2-3 hours. That's about 10 hours of a workday if you include breaks.
That gives you 1-2 hours for those with an operational business for study. Or 3-4 hours of study for those without. Again, don't do too much study. Don't work too hard. 3-4 hours is plenty. If you do more you won't learn as well. People who work "14 hours a day", aren't working 14 hours a day. They're just "clocking in and off" over that period. 6 solid focused hours, with 2 hours of operational and 2 hours of study is a fucking fantastic day. Or 6 hours of focused work with 3 hours of study if you have no operational, is also a fucking fantastic day.
Remember, business is an ultra marathon, not a sprint. Aim to do this 6 days a week. Take a day off to relax and do other things. Take 2 days off if you want. Hard work is way way over rated.
How can people become billionaires with the same hours as everyone else, when there are guys working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day only making a million a year, and feeling totally exhausted? You won't do it with a 4 hour work week, but you don't need to burn yourself to the ground to succeed.
In fact, if you apply the method above, you could do as little as 3 hours a day of focused work, 2 hours operational and 1 hour study, 5 days a week, and still have a nice 6 or 7 figure business. Maybe even an 8 if you can create enough leverage.
The biggest problem is, people do 0 hours of the focused work. They are just doing either mindless study, mindless reading or operational work. Almost no one is doing deterministic work from their plans that move the business a little step forward every single day. THIS is the fucking key, people. It's that simple.
