That’s a brave claim. But that’s the kind of how I roll. So what are the 4 steps Jon? Okay, since so you asked, I will tell you.
#1 Learn
So what I mean by that is you are never going to get far in business if you are not prepared to learn to keep up to date and to change.
You can only change if you’ve learned how to change or what to change or what you need to change, so you should be learning constantly.
The most successful people will be found at conferences listening to others. So when they speak on stage, they then sit in the audience and listen to the rest.
They will read books continuously. People write new books. Things change, this is a fast changing world. Yes that’s frustrating, but it’s also a bonus.
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If you’re going to try and pick out the beauty, the diamonds in the rough, there are new books, there are podcasts like this, yeah.
There are things so you’ve probably made a good start today. You are listening so perhaps you’re going to learn something new.
Are you then going to do something with it, because it’s not just about learning. But you’ve got to constantly learn and one of the reasons you need to learn is so that you know what to get done and how it should be done.
Now let me get this straight with you. So for example, Richard Branson may come across a new idea on something to implement.
He doesn’t then go and do it. He then delegates that to the person who should be doing it, but the fact that he knows what it is and why it should be done was the starting point. Okay, so he will go ahead and he will set some goals for it. So your next step.
#2 Set Goals
It’s been said over and over not by me but I say the same, you can’t get from A to B by guessing. You need a map.
If you’ve never been to B before, how are you going to get their without some, without a map, and without directions. Don’t give me the, you’ll use your iPhone answer. Because you are using a virtual map. You are still following directions.
So if you set goals, if you wish to, I wouldn’t suggest that you set a goal to double your sales this year unless you are some super doper start up, but perhaps you want to add 10% to your sales.
So know what they are now, and then know what they are going to be in a year. For and consider all the details, so for instance, if your sales are 100,000 pounds a year, right now. It’s no good saying I want them next in a year to be 110,000.
You want to work out the monthly rate. So for instance last month, I don’t know last month you may have, you may have done 8, 9000, the month, this month you may have done 12,000 to get yourself so your sales are already increasing, alright.
But they are averaged out, if you take that whole last year, the first month in that sequence may have been 1000 pounds a month so you want to take the current monthly.
So therefore if you are currently doing 12,000 pounds a month and you want your sales to grow 10% a year. You want your sales to be 12,000 pounds plus 10% for the month 12 from now. Does that make sense?
So next month is, let’s see if you can reverse engineer that, I mean if you, in fact if you, yeah so reverse engineer that, you can figure out that sales next month are 12%, 12,000 plus.
A little bit plus a little bit each month okay, to get there in a smooth line up, but that is goal setting, once you’ve set your goal, you know where you’re trying to get to.
Now you know where you need to be in month 9. From now you need to be somewhere in month 6, and in month 3 so look at just those 3 months, concentrate on that, and say okay month 3, say that works out, say it’s 3% or call that, say that adds another 3000 to your, what am I talking about?
Say that would add a 1000 to it, you’re going from 3000 a month I mean, I’m sorry so in 3 months, you are going to be from 12,000 up to 15. Alright. So, that’s not right, is it?
What am I talking about, I’m getting it all wrong. So you want to be 10% at the end of the year, so you want to be from 12,000 to 13,000 odd.
Make it 12% and you can just divide by 12. So it’s doing all the proper maths and then you can work it out 3 months’ worth 90 days, sorry I am getting all confused there, try to double your sales again.
But then you know what you need to get. Now you can work that back to 1 month and you can work out that there are say 20 or 21 working days if you just sell on weekdays.
And you can say how much we sell on average on a day. We need to sell a bit more, you can work out how many, what your average customers is and you can work out, okay we get 10 customers a day. We want 11 or we get the average order is 200 pounds.
We want it to be 210 pounds. And then you can work out ways to do that. That’s how you use goals, now you see the power. Okay. So it’s not just I want to be a millionaire and I want to own a Ferrari.
#3 Delegate
You cannot do this all by yourself, you cannot, that’s why you’re working all those hours. Yeah I know you can’t afford to hire anyone.
Well let me tell you this, you can’t afford not to, if you, if you believe you are going to hit that goal, then you can spend the money you will be making when you have hit that goal to get there.
If you don’t think, you are going to hit that goal, then shut up the business and go and do something else, go and work for someone else.
Because if you are not confident that your business is good enough to grow, then you should be doing something else, and stop worrying about all the stress around it.
But let me give you an idea, let me give you a thought, you grew from something to here, didn’t you? Did you try it? Did you have goals or did it just happen? It just happened, didn’t it?
Imagine how it could’ve happen in a better way, if you actually had goals and a plan, and you’re doing this intentionally, exactly.
So delegate, you need to involve other people, and delegating means, you need to tell them what your plans are. What your goals are, you need to explain why that is so. And then ask them if they will help you.
Do not just get people to do stuff for you, don’t just say, ‘Oh I can’t do this, Joe. Come here, do that for me.’ No they’ve got work to do.
Delegate, make it part of their job, get them involved, get them to buy in, get them to want to do it. If you don’t have the staff in house, outsource it.
Part time workers, outsourcing sites. Freelancer.com, fiverr.com, odesk.com, peopleperhour.com. There are others but those are enough. That’s all you need.
Go to the local university, put an ad on the student notice board, student union notice board. They are desperate for money, they are all broke, they are all coming out with loans.
They are quite clever you know. They can do part time work, just think about it. Honestly it is easier.
#4 Do Two Important Things a Day
And the final one is do, so once you got your goals and you have got things to do today, do two important things that get you going forward before you answer any emails every day.
Never ever answer emails first thing in the morning or first thing at work. At the most lunch times, say 12’o clock.
Do important stuff before emails send you off on another track, distract you and get you doing other stuff that would not have been necessary if emails did not exist as they didn’t exist a few years ago.
Yes, I’m old but in those days when people couldn’t phone you on your mobile or text you or email you. You did what you were going to do.
They’d contact you the normal channels. And you get, when you get back at the end of the day, you’d find a message on your answer phone, or voicemail, then you’d sort it.
Never upset anyone. Okay. So that’s it. 4 steps. That’s going to double your business. No charge. Take it. It’s on me.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
Today’s Tuesday Toolbox Tip is for a productivity tool that will help you with all this. It’s called 30/30. It’s a productivity management tool. It was app of the year. It’s been editor’s choice on gismodo. It’s iTunes’s app of the year 2014, and everyone else. Just get it please. It’s free. Okay, tomorrow, Wednesday is our Expert Interview Series. We have Mike Rhodes. Mike Rhodes is an Australian, is in Australia now. He is a lovely guy. If you’ve ever heard of Perry Marshall and AdWords, and you think, wow he’s good. Perry wrote The Ultimate Guide to AdWords. Click here to instantly download our FREE Book “The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
Well Mike Rhodes writes it with him. Yeah, he’s that good and he has got some tips for you in how to save some, a fortune on your AdWords. Be there or be square. As he used to say probably 20 years ago.