Getting focused on what you want to achieve and creating an action plan for making it happen are critical skills for you to master.
As bestselling author Napolean Hill once said, "Every well-built house started with a definite plan in the form of blueprints." In other words, having a focused plan of action is the best way to ensure that you will reach your goals.
In last week's newsletter, you were asked to answer some basic questions as part of the action exercise. Hopefully, you completed this part and wrote down which 90-day goal is most exciting to you. The rest of this article assumes that you have already set this goal. So if you haven't done that yet, please re-read the previous article called "Why Clarity Is Essential To Building Massive Momentum In Your Business" and do it right now.
Now that we got that clear, let's jump right into it!
Once you've determined the big goal that you want to accomplish in the next 90 days, one of the secrets to making it happen is breaking up that big goal into small, bite-size pieces. Successful entrepreneurs all across the world use this technique to bring more profits into their businesses year after year after year.
In a minute, we'll cover a simple approach to create these bite-size pieces for your own goals. But let's first think about why this is so important to goal achievement.
Have you ever wondered why many entrepreneurs don't achieve their goals, even though they are passionate about their business and spend long hours working every week?
One reason this happens is that these business owners set a big goal they want to achieve in the next year, but they don't create a detailed action plan containing bite-size pieces. And without knowing what "bite" you can take next to move you closer to your goal, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the big goal and feel like you will never get there.
As the famous Chinese proverb says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
And if you haven't laid out a map for your thousand mile journey, you won't be confident in which step you should take next, right?
So what is the easiest way to create your map and determine which steps you should take today, tomorrow, and the next day? Here's a simple step-by-step procedure that you can follow right now to create a list of bite-size steps for reaching your big goals:
1) Write down your big 90-day goal in a notebook. This is the same big, exciting s-t-r-e-t-c-h goal that you set for yourself in last week's newsletter.
2) Break up this 90-day goal into three specific monthly goals. Ask yourself "What is the most important task or goal that I need to complete in Month One to be on track for achieving my 90-day goal?" Then ask the same question for Month Two and then again for Month Three.
3) Break up each monthly goal into four specific weekly goals. Begin by looking at Month One and breaking that up into specific weekly goals, starting with this week. Ask yourself this question: "What is the most important task or goal that I need to complete this week to be on track to achieving my goal for Week One?" And then ask yourself the same question for Week Two, for Week Three, and finally for Week Four.
4) Look at the goal you set for Week One and break it up into a number of smaller tasks or sub-goals that you need to do in order to reach that weekly goal. The resulting list of tasks becomes your most important objectives for this week. And when you have completed this for Week One, repeat this step again for Week Two, for Week Three, and then for Week Four.
And those are the simple steps for creating a focused plan made up of small, bite-size, achievable goals.
Here's an example of how this can work.
Remember our friend Cindy from last week's newsletter about Clarity? Cindy is the proud owner of Cindy's Teddy Bear Company and she set a goal to gain 100 new customers in the next 90 days. She has never accomplished this much before, so this is really an exciting, stretch goal for her.
Let's go through the four steps listed above with Cindy to see how she breaks up this big, inspiring 90-day goal into bite-size pieces.
1) Gain 100 new customers in the next 90 days.
2) Month One: Gain 20 new customers Month Two: Gain 40 new customers Month Three: Gain 40 new customers Cindy chose a smaller goal for Month One because she knows that she will be planting a lot of "new customer seeds" in Month One which can be harvested later during Month Two and Month Three.
3) Week One: Identify two local area communities and two non-local communities to target. Create a draft of a marketing campaign which targets these community areas. Week Two: Finalize the marketing campaign and launch it in the first local community. Week Three: Follow-up on every lead and get ten new customers. Week Four: Finish following up on leads from this first campaign and launch another campaign in one of the non-local areas. This should result in another ten new customers.
(I'm sure you get the idea at this point with Cindy's example, so let's move on to Part Four of the action step formula.)
4) Week One Task List (to achieve Week One goal):
a) Order research report with income levels for local communities. Remember that Cindy's ideal customer is a child of an upper class family, so income demographics are important for her to know.
b) Order research report with income levels across the nation.
c) Choose two local and two non-local upper-income towns based on the research reports.
d) Create a marketing campaign that will apply to all four of the chosen towns.
And that's all there is to it! You can harness the power of focus in your business right away by creating an action plan that acts as a laser-focused step-by-step blueprint for achieving your 90-day goals.
Yes, this exercise will certainly take you some time to complete, but it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run. In addition, it will increase your confidence and belief in your ability to achieve your big 90-day goals. And you will achieve them!
This will become a simple, straightforward exercise once you have done it several times and you make it a consistent habit.
Once you get this focused action plan written down, you will be on your way to achieving massive momentum in your business! When your plan is in place, you're ready to dive into the topic of next week's newsletter -- which is Action!
Set aside some time this week to go through the action planning exercise shown above. It's very important that you break up your big goals into small, bite-size pieces. As you make this into one of your consistent habits, you will begin to realize all the big profits and time freedom that comes from creating massive momentum in your business!
Matt Zembruski (aka "Mr. Momentum") is the author of this article and publisher of the Massive Momentum Now newsletter. Subscribe today to get your free audio special report called "The #1 Reason Why Businesses Fail and How You Can Avoid It!". You will also discover a proven step-by-step system that gets you results...guaranteed. Free subscription if you visit our site today. ($197 value) http://www.mrmomentum.com