It’s the start of a new year. A time when we turn a new page and start fresh. We know it’s a time that people also love to set new resolutions and goals. But unfortunately, we also know that most people will quit on their resolutions within a month. By the end of the first week – 23% of people have already given up on their goals.
So how do you make sure you buck that trend and actually turn your resolutions into results? Here’s my 3 Step Process to turning your vision into a reality.
Straight away, we need to convert the resolutions into specific goals – using the SMART Acronym.
Goals need to be Specific; Measurable; Attainable; Relevant to you and they need to be Time bound.
Why is this so important? Well in order to get a result, we have to know what that result actually is.
Too often, people might say “I want to be happy. My resolution for 2021 is to be happier.” But how do you measure happiness? It’s not very specific.
It’s achievable, sure. It’s relevant to you, that’s great. What about time bound – at what point in 2021 do you want to be happy? Do you want to be happy the whole of 2021? Do you want to just be happy by December 31?
We could make this a better goal by being more specific and measurable with it. For example, for me a White Christmas ski holiday with my family makes me happy. “My goal for 2021 is that we have a 3 week White Christmas in Canada.” That would make me happy.
That is Specific. It’s Measurable – did I get on the plane or not? It’s Achievable. It’s Relevant to us because our kids love to ski as well – and it’s Time bound – I want to be there for Christmas 2021.
We need to spend 5 minutes to dig deeper and ask “Actually, what do I really want?” And the more specific, detailed and measurable it is – the higher the chance that we will achieve it.
If you’re setting business goals – don’t simply say “I want to grow my business.” Dig deep, crunch the numbers, be super specific.
How many people do you want to bring in? What rank do you want to be? Do you want to be able to go ‘full-time’ in your business?
If you want to be going full time in your business and you’re making $50,000 in your job, you need to be making (at bare minimum on a bad week) $1,000 in your business. Rather than say “I want to go full-time in my business”, you need to say “By December 2021, I want to be earning, at minimum, $1,000 a week from my business”.
That’s a more specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based goal around your resolution.
Now that that is done, what are we going to do from here?
Well quickly, before we go through my 3 Step Process – I know this can seem like work. “Boring. I’ve got to actually sit down and write out goals and stuff? What a waste of time?”
I know it can seem a pain initially. You’re excited, you just want to dive in – now we have to do boring things. But don’t you also think it would be a waste of time to go a whole year and get to the end of the year and you haven’t changed? You finish 2021 in the same place that you started?
Step 1 – Game Plan
First step of the process is that we need a ‘Game Plan’ to go along with the goals. Say it’s a business goal to reach ‘General’ in your company. General in your company means you have 10 distributors and right now you have zero distributors.
So, what is the actual game plan to get that rank? How are you going to find these 10 distributors? You’re going to have to talk to people – find people who want to join as a customer or a distributor; where are you going to find these people? Through social media or face to face? Events or house parties? Lead with business or products?
Think about it like you’re going somewhere on a journey and you put the destination into your GPS. The very first thing it does is it zooms right out and it shows you the whole journey. I’m at our house and I want to drive to my friend’s house. The GPS is going to show me that whole journey. That whole picture start to finish is my goal.
Then it zooms right in and provides me a game plan – “This is how you’re actually going to achieve it.” Before going any further, you have to craft a game plan to achieve your goals. Then we take the next step.
Step 2 – Action Steps
Your goal is a result – which is great to have. But you often don’t have control over a result. You can’t control when someone is ready to say yes, but you can control your actions every day.
This is where a lot of people get themselves frustrated and get let down – because they focus too much on the result, something they don’t have control of.
I cannot control whether that person says yes or no. But I can control how many blogs I write. I can control how many people I add to my social media everyday. I can control how many messages I send; how many offers I make, many people I follow up with each day.
The only thing we can truly control is the quality and quantity of the messages that we send out.
What is an action step that you are in control of?
If you’re sitting and waiting for someone to say yes, you can’t control that. If it’s a financial goal, if it’s a business goal, if it’s a rank goal, if it’s a freedom goal based on other things in your life, whatever it is, it all comes back to what are the things that you can control to put yourself in the position to achieve this goal.
Say you want to bring in 50 customers this year. Now, if we know that nine out of 10 people say no, and you know that you want to grow your team by 50 customers over the year, that’s around one new customer a week. That’s 10 conversations, that’s one and half conversations a day.
That’s the action step. One week you might get zero. Other week you might get seven. You might get zero, zero, zero for a little while. We don’t know the result; we can’t control that. But we can control a game plan with action steps that will turn into habit.
Step 3 – Guide Posts
The final step along the way is that we need ‘Guide Posts’.
Along the road there needs to be smaller goal post that let us know if we’re on track. If I want the rank of General, I’ve got to bring in 10 new distributors this year. If I get to April and I have zero distributors, then I need to come back to ‘Game Plan’ and ‘Action’ and say, “Okay, am I taking enough action? Am I taking the right action?
What else can I add to the game plan? Am I reaching out to enough people? Do I need to sell the distributor better? Do I need to leverage training?”
You don’t change the goal! But you do need to constantly refine the process. If you’re not checking in weekly, monthly or quarterly, you’re going to get to December and go, “Oh, man. I still have no distributors. I’m going to quit.”
The fact was that you didn’t check in in March and adjust your plan.
Eric Worre, the king of Network Marketing training really rose to prominence with his ‘90 Day Game Plans’. It was successful because it was a quarterly game plan. It was a way to create an overall goal, then break it up into quarterly increments.
In the end;
If you can create habits that are action based along the path to reaching your specific goal, and you’re checking in regularly and making sure you’re on the right path, then you will achieve everything you want and so much more. And next year, you are going to set even more amazing goals. You just go through this process again.
Now, again, that might take five, 10, 20 minutes. It probably should actually take about an hour to really sit down and write out a real proper game plan that you guys are focused on. Wouldn’t you rather invest an hour in yourself than waste a whole year and end up in the exact same spot that you are now? Upset and frustrated with yourself?
If you have any questions about this process, then please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Andrew Logan is a Network Marketing Author, Coach and Mentor.
You can access more free training on his YouTube channel here and his Podcast here.
For your Free 7 Step Guide to Financial Freedom Through Network Marketing, click here.