Tactics to Finish 2018 Strong

Brendon Burchard shares productivity tactics for finishing 2018 strong, including the core three priorities, significant growth rule, and 45-day quit rule. Designed for entrepreneurs and high performers looking to accelerate their year-end achievements.
Hey guys, it's Brendan and I've got a special video for you, my YouTube subscribers this week. Recently I did like a huge long training on what we call mid year acceleration strategies. This is how do you get more stuff done by the end of this year? It's like my favorite productivity strategies. And we took that two hour big long ass training and we broke it down into just 20 minutes of the best stuff for you. And I know you're gonna really like it because I know, listen, this, this year is almost already over. You have a very limited amount of actual work days to make your projects and your dreams come true. So enjoy this video, take notes and go make it happen. Let's use this as a mid year sort of checkup, but also more about how do we accelerate to the end of the year so you get so much more done. I love this time of year because a lot of people completely take foot off the gas, which I love. I'm all for going for vacations. And you guys seen from the blogs, we've been in, you know, Indonesia, we've been Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, we've been all around, been really fun. And I'm really focused on making sure that I crush it these next couple months because look, this year's gone fast, right? So I want to congratulate you for being here because ultimately today's going to be a real gut check to how much you can accomplish in, in the remaining months of this year. And I love to do that right now. So I'm getting really serious right now and we're going to do a real strategic session with you and we're going to jump right in because I have a ton to give you today. First idea, Remember, these are five things to help you accelerate your achievement by the end of the year. Write them down in your journal and let's get in your head thinking about the rest of the year. Okay? Number one, big huge thing. One hour more per day. My core three, okay? I begin this every year. I go, okay, first move. I know I need to identify what are the core three things right now that have been bringing me results this year? The core three things. So as an example, because I'm an entrepreneur, like many of you guys are in my business, I go, okay, what are the three primary revenue drivers we have right now? Because just like you, if you're in marketing, you, you probably tested a lot of things throughout the, you know, the early part of the year, the spring, even early part of summer. So my question is, what's been working And I mean, absolutely working. What are the three absolute best things that are working for you in your business or your career or your personal life if you're not employed or not self employed? Like, what's absolute? The three things that are so working for you want you to know what those three things are. And overall, I want you to give an hour every day more to a focus of 1, 2, or 3. All three of those things. So let me give you an example. Right now, in my business, right, one of my core three is our book funnel. Like, so for me, as you guys know, as an author and a trainer, when I sell books, that's good for the business. We sell books. Then people want online courses, then they want to come to our seminars. Then someday they might join our program like we're doing here at our live events or our masterminds, or they might hire us for coach, or they might hire me for speaking. But the book is a big core three for the business, right? And so right now, I go, okay, I need every single day the rest of this year to give more time to that thing every day. Not on a Wednesday, not on a Saturday. Like every day. I need to check in the numbers, create a new ad, flip out a page. I need to lead my team better on it, Something every day for that one thing make sense. So if you got three things, what I want, I want an hour more. That means might be in 20 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, and, you know, 20 minutes. So you give them 20 minutes more each day, or maybe you just choose one and you're gonna give that an hour more a day. But it's basically this one more work hour of the day focused on one of the core three. Got it? Write it down. And this for you. I want you to start this today, today. If that means you're watching this in Munich, Germany, and we finish this, this tonight, and you stay up one more hour, I'm like, cheers, man. Do that. But it's like today, for those of you who are here in the US in this time zone, I'm like, today, one more hour on focusing. I often call it the core three or the needle movers. The primary three things that are working. I need an hour more from you a day for the rest of the year, and you will thank me for the next decade. You're like, oh, my God, Brandon. Because what happens is, and you know this, you're getting caught up in distraction. And so right now, people are lackadaisical and they're not focused on the right things. So I want you to think, where are you distracted? I want you to clear out the distractions. I want you to say, the core three things in my business are. And I need you to give an hour or more a day on those. That's it. If you'll start that now and you'll punch in that hour more every day until Thanksgiving, I promise your Christmas will be unbelievable. People are always surprised at how myself, my team, we SWAT team the fall. You know, we do like four or five events. We're out on the road. I'm like, totally booked. Like, I'm slammed in September, but I always know that the summer because right now I start thinking, what are the main things? And while I get slammed in the fall, just like you for the holidays and for the business or the traveling or the conferences, the other thing I do, though, I'm able to do all that because right now, this time of year, I identify what's been working and I kind of double down on those. Give them more. One hour more. Because think about, you know, maybe you're like a coach or, you know, certified high performance coach or business coach or a life coach, and you're like, I've been doing this one thing. It's been giving me most of my clients. I'm like, well, that would be one of the core 3. Do that more an hour a day and then thank me two months from now. I need one more hour, guys. One more hour a day on the core three. So it's two parts here, right? You need to identify your core three. What are the core three things that are working the best for you? And then how are you going to get that hour? And how are you going to divvy that up? Is that hour more each day? You're going to do 20 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes for an hour a day? Or are you going to focus on, okay, this week, one hour a day more on this core number one. Next week, one more hour a day on core number two or three. I don't know what it is for you, but I need that hour, one more hour a day on the core three. Either all of them together or. Or one at a time. I promise you, if that's all you get for the next hour and a half from me, you will thank me. I will get the best Christmas cards from you. I mean, they will just be. They'll be filled up with the money and it'll be like, I'll be so excited to get your Christmas cookies because you'll be like, brendon, thank you so much that one hour core three thing, I achieved more in the second half of this year than I've ever achieved in the second half of a year my entire life. One hour, guys. One hour second big idea. And I love this one significant growth rule. And here's what the significant growth rule means. I look at everything I'm doing right now, everything for my business right now, and I go, okay, of all these things I'm doing, which ones will lead to significant growth this year? Which ones will lead to significant growth this year? Everything else. Everything else I start pushing out on the calendar. Whether I push it out 2, 3, 4 months from now or I push it till next year. But I do a real close look at all of my activities. I look at my partnerships, my relationships. I look at everything I'm doing in terms of marketing funnels or brand building or what I'm doing in the marketplace or what I'm doing in my career, and I go, which one of these things are leading to significant growth? And if it's not leading to significant growth, I need to minimize that time. Now, I know you might say, well, what's the difference between, like, a core three and a significant growth rule? Well, the significant growth rule is for the rest of the year, right? The Core 3 you already know. The Core 3 are the three things you're already doing to getting results. The significant growth rule is all these new ideas people are going to give you and put on your plate in August and September and October, November, everyone's going to give you some more things to do, right? There's going to be new opportunities, and every new opportunity or every new idea your thing has to be at this time of year, will that lead to significant growth this year? If it is, maybe you can add that on to your workload. Because remember, I'm just asking for an hour here, maybe you can add that on. But if a project comes your way and it doesn't lead to significant growth at this stage of the year, and it won't lead to significant growth the rest of this year, I'm out. I'm out. So I turned down two or three projects just last night from people. Good ideas, great ideas, but I know those won't lead to significant growth until next year. So I'm like, not till next year. Because I know that instead if I focus on these Things, the Core 3 or other projects that I do know lead to significant growth. In other words, significant growth is a way for you to prioritize and say, no, I don't want you Taking on any new projects at this stage of the year if you don't believe they'll lead to real growth by the end of the year. Because you could just focus on these more. Right? Right. It's that old story of acres of the diamonds. You know, people travel all around the world looking for the treasure and working so hard looking for the new, new thing. And then they come home and one day they put the spade in the backyard and they dig up some diamonds. Right. Often your next big breakthrough, you already, it's already in your yard. You know what I tell people all the time? You've probably already met the person who's going to help you generate your next hundred thousand dollars, your next million dollars. Like you already met, they're already in your network, but you're spending all this time to go do all these other things. You already met the person who's going to make you your next million dollars or give you access to an audience or give you access to an opportunity. You've already met the person, but you're out there searching for new and you're accepting all these new ideas. And as you accept new ideas as a high performer, what does that do? That crowds out other things. And so from this day forward, until the end of the year, I want you to have the significant growth rule. Will this project lead to significant growth by the end of the year? If not, table it. People say, but Brandon, I don't know. If I pass up that opportunity, it might not ever come around again. I'm like, what are you, 20 years old? Only 20 year olds believe that. By the time you're 30 and 40, you kind of recognize things come and your life in waves and in circles and in rhythms and you don't worry that one day you're going to run out of opportunities. That FOMO stuff, leave that to the 20 and 30 year olds. You're ready. You got it. The world is never going to dry up of opportunities on you one day. The only way that would ever happen is if your mindset closed out everything because of fear. But the world, man, have we ever lived in a time of more opportunity. So don't worry about saying no to something that isn't significant growth for you. Focus on your core three or everything else you're doing, your brand, your business that is working or could lead to significant growth. Third big idea, which I love is my 45 day quit rule. Now this is one of those things. I think I mentioned the email announcing this. You guys aren't going to want to do there's two things on here I know you're not going to want to do. This one I forced myself to do. Here's what the 45 day quit rule is. And it's hard for me. I hate this one. I look at all my big project ideas, you know, I don't know about you, but I have a journal with all my big ideas in it, you know, or I have my vision board, or I have an Excel spreadsheet of all these different ideas and projects I want to do. And I've got like, you know, right. As an example right now. I know my next six books I'm going to write. I know. I know my next three campaigns I'm going to launch. I know them. But here's what I have to force myself to do. And I don't like it. I say, okay, if this is a major project that I want to do, even if it could lead to significant growth, if I'm not going to start it, listen to this. If I'm not going to start it in the next 45 days, it's off my plate until next year and I push it to 2019. I literally just take it from my journal in my little bucket of things I want to do this year and I put it out into 2019. And I feel so mentally relieved. A lot of people have a lot of anxiety about the number of projects they have on their plate that they really want to do. And so what ends up happening is that anxiety leads to a lot of procrastination. That anxiety leads to a lot of poor prioritization because there's so much to do. They're like, oh my God, there's so much to do here. So I won't do any of it. Ever had that? Have you ever found yourself in front of Netflix going, oh my God, I have so much to do. But I just watched the fourth video in the third season. Has that ever happened? You have so much to do. And that's the problem. You have so much to do that you haven't prioritized what you are going to do. So you don't do anything. So what I do is this time of year, I look at all those things around my plate and I get honest. Which ones am I going to start in the next 45 days? And if I'm not going to start the next 45 day, pop, put it in 2019. Now it's not even on my mental concern. It's not even on my dashboard. No anxiety there. No. Oh my God, I still got to get that one in. Nope, it's gone. That's the 45 day quit rule. I encourage you to challenge yourself to try it. Okay, fourth big idea, the Deliver excellence rule. This is another prioritization move for me. It's like, okay, someone throws a big opportunity to me, it could lead to significant growth. I could get it going. But it compromises the deliver excellence rule, which is, wait, if I take on these anything here, would that prevent me from delivering what I already promised the best that I could? Like for me, I'm very stretched in my schedule. I mean, very stretched. I got to get a lot done during the day. Big team, big brand, big business, big clients. I gotta be man, I gotta be good. But lots of great opportunities come my way. That could be significant growth this year. But then the second level of that evaluative tool is to say, huh, if I do that though, will that steal away from something I already promised to somebody I care about or who's important to our business? Will that make me fail to deliver what I wanted to deliver? And so I got to be honest and I got to prioritize. And I am like, if you saw how much work to prioritize things doesn't mean I don't leave things. I mean, I'm sure my team could tell you a hundred things I haven't done that I'm supposed to or whatever. So it doesn't mean I'm perfect. It just means I work really hard at it. I'm very diligent and focused on it because I got people counting on me. I got you. And I know you got people counting on you too. So if something comes up and it's like this great idea, but you're honestly, it doesn't leave a significant growth or you're not going to start it, park it. But also if it is something that you could get going and it would lead to significant growth, but it's going to screw up what you already promised. Don't break your integrity. Put that thing back in that parking lot. I'll start it in January. It will give you so much mental freedom, your tendency, high performer to over commit yourself, actually stealing from your ability to make good choices, to feel the day, to win the day. And so you've got to kind of reevaluate where you're at and what you're doing. So you got to be willing to tell people, I'm sorry, with your fancy new idea that seems like an emergency or so important. Not this year. This is the phrase I want you to write down. In your journal. Not this year. Write this down. Not this year. And I'm telling you, doesn't it feel like just. I know you're sitting at home and maybe this is a little weird, but just. Just say it with me. Not this year. I know we covered a lot of big ideas today and tons of training. This is one of my favorite sessions we've ever done. So look forward to hearing your awesome success stories. I can't wait to get your envelopes for full of cookies and money because you go. Oh, my God, Brennan, I achieved more this fall than I've ever done in my life. Go perform at your best because the world needs you at your best. We'll see you.










