Learn How to Stop Procrastinating and Achieve Your 91-Day Goals
Learn How to Stop Procrastinating and move forward daily to achieve your 91-Day Goals
Most people procrastinate from time to time. Some people excel at procrastinating and could win an Olympic medal for their abilities. If you fall into the category of “an excellent procrastinator,” then it is time to reverse it. Unless you learn not to put off tasks, you may even read tons of material on 91-day goal setting and then keep saying to yourself, “absolutely, when I get up tomorrow, I am going to spend the whole day goal planning.” And then do it the next day and the day after that.
When you look at a health care professional’s idea of why we procrastinate, the first thing that they mention is, people put off unpleasant tasks because they are uncomfortable about something. While that is true, it is a simplification. People also put off things that are not difficult. It is part of the mindset that has developed over the last 50 years. The world is so hectic, that the little voice in the background whispers to the person, “Hey, you’re tired, there are 150 television channels you could be surfing right now.” The beehive activity that we face on a daily basis, leads us to look for any reason to put off not only difficult tasks but items that may even bring us a bit of pleasure…just not enough pleasure to get us to move.
There are more extreme reasons for procrastinating. People who suffer from anxiety or a lack of self-confidence will procrastinate in order to avoid painful experiences like believing they will not understand how to complete a task or that they will fail, so why even bother trying. This avoidance needs to fix pronto, in order to move forward in life with a positive attitude and knowing that they deserve to succeed.
Overcoming procrastination will be a habit that needs to build. Hourly, daily and weekly, you will have to put an alert into your brain, to give you a signal when procrastination starts to occur. We will look at ways to overcome this issue and let’s start with the easiest one. It is so simple, it may even sound silly but give it a try. When you mentally tell yourself, “I need to start planning and writing my 91-day goals,” and you immediately think that going for ice cream might help get you in the mood…try a simple suggestion. Tell yourself that you are going to procrastinate right now…on procrastinating. That’s right, you are going to put off procrastinating and maybe you will procrastinate tomorrow. Give it a try and in the meantime, here is a list of other methods:
- The best thing you can do for yourself, is to train your brain to do the complete opposite. You procrastinate, and you do it well. Try this instead. As soon as you wake up, think of the hardest, most unpleasant task you need to do and do it right away. You will get a tremendous blast of energy and training your brain to react in this way will set you on the path to success.
- If the method above is just too shocking for you to even try, then go for this method. Wake up, pick a task and do it for 3-5 minutes. Need to make calls? Then pick up the phone and blast them out. Reward yourself with a hot cup of coffee and do another round of 3-5 minutes. Have long hot massaging shower and yes, do another 3-5 minutes. The next day go for 5-10 minutes, doing your calls or whatever you picked. Perhaps it was writing, and you just keep putting it off. In some Kindle writing groups, they call this method, “sprinting.” They blast out words for 20 minutes straight, then have a reward and blast away again and they tell each other in the group that they are in the sprint…going as fast as they can.
- Your mind can take anything and make it seem bigger than it is. Have you heard a noise in your house and then you start thinking about it? You wonder if it’s the wind, or something about to break down. Suddenly you jump to the idea that it might be a robber or worse, attempting to get into house. You take a simple noise and blow it up it to full blown disaster. Procrastination can be similar in that you think about a task and suddenly it becomes a monster. It will eat you alive, so it is better to turn on Netflix and tomorrow, well tomorrow it will seem easier because you are going to relax all day and you will be so rested tomorrow. Tomorrow you will slay that dragon. Stop blowing tasks up into mythical proportions. One step at a time and get it done.
The Power of Quarterly Planning
Focusing on 91 Days At a Time will Change Your LIFE and 4X Your Results!!!
For maximum productivity or to achieve anything in life, you must start with an optimal plan. The best way to accomplish this type of success is through quarterly planning. Quarterly planning requires understanding your key performance indicators, objective and critical results for each 91-day or three-month period.
It takes the entire year and divides it into four critical periods to outline and streamline your focus for increased productivity. Instead of focusing on one big overwhelming goal, you can now break it down into more realistic, measurable, specific, and relevant action steps.
The following are the top reasons why you should add quarterly planning to your business routine and why It’s so powerful:
Provides A Sense of Urgency and Clear Deadline
Studies show that when you permit yourself to use a certain amount of time for something, you will likely use it all no matter if you really need all that time or not. Similarly, the concept of lifestyle creep fits here as your discretionary income increases your attitude for your wants and needs change.
Making you want more and more money and never feel like you have enough. In business school, you learn that you will always spend 80% of it as you change your needs and wants no matter how much you earn to fit your income.
Therefore, if you know you can complete a specific task within fifteen minutes, don’t give yourself a full hour to complete it. Only plan an additional fifteen minutes to ensure you use those other thirty minutes wisely instead of taking your time when you know you can do the work more efficiently.
You Win and Achieve More
With quarterly planning, you have the chance to celebrate your success more as you have more goals to accomplish now, vs. the one annual goal mindset.
For example, instead of saying, “In 2021, I wish to increase my revenue by 25%,” your mindset is now “For the next 90 days, this is what I plan to do to increase my revenue by 25%,” Giving you the focus, determination, and other resources you need to accomplish your goal four times faster. While it’s a worthy goal for the year, a simple change in mindset can easily quadruple your results instead.
Allows You To Better Control The Unexpected
In life, there is only one certain thing, and that thing is change. Something will change in your life, whether it be right this minute, which it did, or ten years from now. Each day you are learning and growing and becoming a different and better version of yourself. The presence of change will certainly show you just how much control constant change holds over your life.
However, quarterly planning is the reins that allow you to keep the course and the direction you want no matter what change throws at you. It is easier to adjust a 91-day outlook than it is to change a 365-day plan. Imagine if you took the time to plan a new project for the whole year only for it to be derailed by one missed goal — creating a spiraling effect that leads to low self-confidence and burnout.
Important for Relevancy and Business Competition
When you plan every three months, you provide your business with a better opportunity to stay relevant. It allows you the time you need to review your business objectives and to be sure that nothing in your genre has changed.
If you think your business will never change, expect to get behind just like Blockbuster did regarding the invention of streaming television shows and movies. If only they took the extra time to get on the new trend before everyone else, they may still be the powerhouse of movies they once were.
Improves Overall Performance and Confidence
Quarterly planning requires you to outline metrics that keep you more accountable and on track. This ensures sustainable and measurable growth that supports your vision, making it clear and more attainable. With measures like this, your confidence and performance will improve as you accomplish more than you have ever done before.
Stop overplanning and wasting your time with annual plans that don’t make sense and are overwhelming. Quarterly planning is precisely the strategy you need to stay consistent, relevant, and ahead of your competition to gain the success you need and want while saving you time and energy. It’s the balance you need to ensure your output is always greater than your input.
Stop Wasting Your Resources!
Today you’re going to learn how to find a target market of potential customers so you aren’t wasting precious resources on blitz marketing. So, the two questions you have to ask yourself are:
- What do people really want to buy from me?
- What related products are they already buying?
Once you figure this out you will know who is more predisposed to purchase your products/services. Then, you find other businesses with the same customer base who you can customer share with. Come up with an incentive and great arrangement to encourage both of your customer bases to shop at both of your stores.
The basic concept is this:
You want to find existing businesses who have the customer profile that you are looking for to market your products/services to.
Then strike up a relationship with those business owners to work out an incentive for customers to purchase from both businesses.
As a result, you have an audience to market to and they generate an added value from their current base.
So, how do you figure this out? There is a great formula from Jay Abraham you can follow with great success.
LV = (P x F) x N – MC
Here’s what it all means:
- LV is the life time value of a customer
- P is the average profit margin from each sale
- F is the number of times a customer buys each year
- N is the number of years customers stay with you
- MC is the marketing cost per customer (total costs/number of customers)
Once you know how much you need to spend to attract a new customer, you will know how much of an incentive you can offer to a business to help attract new customers.
So, here’s your step-by-step process:
- Find companies who already have the customer base you are looking for.
- Negotiate an incentive for them to share that customer base with you.
- Focus your marketing resources to this group of predisposed customers.
If you need help working through this process, check out our FREE test drive for the most comprehensive system of marketing tools and resources.
Kick Start Your Marketing
Today I’d like to teach you about the three most important start up marketing tools you need to get and keep new customers.
- In person: It’s essential you meet with customers/clients in person whenever possible. This shows you respect them and take the time to work with your clients to give personal attention to each of them.
- Follow up letter: Always take a moment to send a follow up letter about what you talked about, new agreements or partnerships made and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Likewise, you should always send thank you letters or small gifts to partners you find success with.
- Phone call: Use a telephone call to follow up with them to talk again about the matters you talked about in your meeting and offer any assistance you can to help their business run smoothly and more successfully.
None of these will work if you don’t have a quality product/service to back you up!
Here are the key steps for putting together your start-up marketing tools:
- Research potential customers, buyers, competitors and their preferred methods of distribution.
- Talk to potential customers. Take a hard look at your product from a customer’s perspective and see what it needs to be successful.
- Follow up with your 3-step process from above.
- Develop systems for contact follow through, quality control standards and customer service.
- Develop post-sale follow up system to keep lines of communication open is customers and build on your current relationship which increases future purchases.
“Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs” Peter Drucker, management consultant
Here’s another one I love from an icon:
“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company
This lesson has offered you the tools to put together a start-up marketing plan that can be used over and over again to help your customer base and business grow in a manageable way. The tools offered in our FREE test drive offer these very same things.
Educate Your Customers
Educate them about what, you may be thinking. Well, consider this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former customers. These are people you already know to be a good sales potential…they’ve already bought from you!
Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality and branding position.
Here are a couple of key elements to use to retain your current customers:
- Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, in person-by pigeon if you have too!
- Post-Purchase Assurance: This means you need to follow up with customers. Your customers need to feel like they are being supported for their purchase and with the item they purchased. How many times have you purchased a product, then felt completely abandoned? Something as simple as a Thank You note with your contact or customer service information can go along way in retaining a great customer.
- Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current customers the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business or even come up with a club specifically to reward loyal customers. You can also do this with a preferred pricing option.
- Integrity: Using good business practices and simply upholding integrity, dignity and honesty go along way with customers. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of swindling and crap out there and the safer and more confident you make your customers feel, the more they will trust you and that makes for an amazingly supportive and loyal customer.
There are three cornerstone ideas to a successful business:
- Quality product/service
- Offering useful products/services that solve a problem for or enhance the life of a customer
- Offer subjects your customers find interesting
Use this approach of educating your customers and offering them real information and insight and you will be rewarded with loyalty and success.
Stop wasting all your time on new prospects while your current customers fall by the wayside!
As Jay Abraham says, “Your best prospects are your existing customers. If you’ve been putting all your marketing efforts into acquiring new customers, stop and diverts some of your resources into reselling, upselling, cross-selling to those same customers. In every ways possible – through package inserts, regular mailings, special offers – stay in touch with those customers and get them used to buying from you.”
So, there it is! Remember, our FREE test drive can help you put together the resources and tools to do exactly that. We can help you educate your customers and you can watch the benefits pay offer many-fold.