# 191 - How to reverse engineer your 2024 goals

Hey. Hey, lovelies. It is Kate here from hellofunnels, and welcome back to the Doing it online podcast. And welcome back to our planning month. So this month, we are dedicating so much awesome, valuable content to helping you plan out your best year yet. I never say ever, because then that's kind of like, okay, this is the high. Then it's down from here. No, no, best year yet, because next one can be better again. So today I want to share another one of our processes that we go through internally of our clients. And this is where I think some real gold and magic lies for helping you to not just set a goal, but to set a goal that works and to then make the plan that you need to figure out how to achieve that goal. Because I don't know if you've ever sat down to plan out your year and just thought, like, how do I even do this? You know, like, you hear people talking about, like, start at the end and work your way backwards, but it always feels like there's so many guesses and so many assumptions, and how can that then therefore be something that's necessarily going to work? Like, you don't want to just be making it up. You want to be putting a plan in place that you can go, oh, I can see how this can happen. I feel like this is possible. And when that happens, then it's so much easier and so much more likely that you're going to hit your goals as well. So I'm going to take you through sort of like the high level of our reverse engineering process. Like I said, we go into this, like, super deep with our clients. But I'm going to give you the, you know, the CliffsNotes version so you can have a crack at doing it yourself. First of all, you're gonna need, I would recommend a spreadsheet for this or just pen, paper, and a calculator is fine. So I'm gonna set you, like, four little pieces of homework, I guess, actually, sorry, there's five. And what I want you to do is for each one, sit down, figure it out, maybe hit pause, then come back and do the second one. We're gonna do these in order. So the first thing that you're gonna do is I want you to calculate how much do you need to earn this year? So how much do you need to be earning, like, for the year and also per month to be covering, you know, all your costs, all your expenses, paying yourself, and be paying yourself enough that it's covering your costs and your expenses? You know, this is like your break even point, right? Like this is the minimum that we want. And the reason I think that this is really important to sit down and calculate at the start of each year is one, is because it changes. And two, we actually call this the financial freedom Checkpoint. And it's one of our first goals for our clients is that they'll have be able to hit this amount every month using their funnels and automations and systems. So it's just like every month this is done and then obviously we want to scale it from there. But this is like goal number one. But I think it's so important to know what this number is because again, when you are setting goals, when you are picking those numbers out of the sky, they often don't connect how they need to connect to be real motivators. When you have a number and you choosing a number and it is based in reality and you're like, I know I need to earn this much every month for me to be able to afford to have this business, right? To be able to afford to have my current life, then knowing that that's your minimum, that just becomes a really a much firmer feeling goal, right? Like, let me know if you agree. Like, chuck it in the comments. So that's the first thing you're going to calculate. How much do you actually need, need to make this year? So click pause, go work that out. All right, you've done that. Amazing. Number two I want you to figure out is how much do you want to make this year? So pick a number again, that is obviously higher than the first one, but that feels good and that, you know, again, like with our clients, we kind of get them to go a little bit deeper this and to be really looking at like that sort of next level dream Life. Like in 12 months time, like what improvements would you have liked to have been made? Like, maybe it is. I want to be able to send my kids to a certain school or I want to be out. We want to be able to get a bigger house. Okay, how much will your mortgage or rental payments change each month for that bigger house? Is it an extra $2,000? Okay, you just need to be earning an extra $2,000. Like what actually is that real number? So that dream, that life that you want, I mean if you're having fun with this, you can do like your dream dream life. But I like to calculate what's that next level life? Those things that are like those niggly things, like we need to get a new car, the house is too small, we Want to be able to have a good holiday. This, take the whole family or something like, add that, figure out how much that is and that becomes the goal. Well, that with you know, a 20 to 30% on top buffer. So yeah, step number two is how much do you want to make? So go get that number and we want that for the year. And then what that breaks down to each month. Done that. Excellent. All right, step number three is then to take that number and go, well, what does that mean in my business, how many sales do I need to make? Now if you're one of those people who only has one product, then it's easy divide that by the cost of your product. If you have multiple products, then normally you. What we get people do is go and have a look at roughly the ratio. So if you go and look at your numbers from last year, if one product made up 50% of the sales, another one 10%, another 20%, you know, go and sort of apply that ratio again. We have spreadsheets for this inside our program, but you guys are gonna have to use good old fashioned maths. So if you're like, oh, I know 50% of my sales come from product A, what's 50% of that goal? And then divide it by the cost of product A. So you guys, I'm sure you guys can figure this out. I believe in you. So now go and basically figure this out. Like what? How many sales do I need to make of each product? And this is a kind of a moment as well when you get that first number, like based off your previous ratios and you get that number to kind of go sense, check it, gut check it as well. Like if it's showing you that you need to make a thousand sales of one program, you're like, well, I've only ever made like 30 of that program. And that might be a bit difficult. That might feel out of the realm of possibility. This is when you can start to play with those ratios and go, well, what if I promoted this program more as there's a different price point? What does that look like? So it kind of gives you a real chance to play. And you basically want to come out of this with a breakdown that feels doable. So you can go, okay, I know to hit this goal, I need to make this number of sales of this program, this number of sales of this program. And that feels good. I feel like I can do that. Like, it feels like, yeah, it's a stretch and I gotta figure out how, but it feels possible. And also it feels, doable delivery wise. So if you're looking at it going, oh, I'm gonna have to have like serve like 500 one on one clients. Is that possible? Does that feel good? Sense? Check it. Gut check it. And then you should at the end have that breakdown. This number of sales of product A, this number of sales of product B. Done that. Excellent. Okay, now we're going to go that next step. This is where we start to reverse engineer it, guys. Like, this whole process has been reverse engineering. It really is. Now I want you to think about, okay, in your typical year, like, first of all, do you have a funnel? If you have a funnel, I mean, it's good to do the, the proper maths about like how many leads you're getting into your funnel and how much you get now and how much you're planning on getting and what does that look like? But again, if you have a funnel and you don't have a spreadsheet, then you can just do like, look at like on average, this is how many sales I'm making through the funnel. And I intend to increase that by 20% or whatever. You can do your best guess here. So what number of, of those sales is covered by your final. First of all, if you have one, as I said for our clients, it's our goal is it's going to cover that full financial freedom checkpoint that full, like how much I need to make number. And then launches and promotions should be on top. But if that's not how your structure is, that's fine too. So then you go, how many promotions do I normally do a year? Do you do one every two months or every three months? Okay, well, you know, you need to make this number of these sales of, you know, so product A, you need to have 50 sales. You do two promotions a year. So your goal for each of those is 25 sales on each of those promotions. Okay. So it starts to kind of to get clearer now. Exactly like, okay, I know how many sales I need to make of each. I know how many promotions I need to do and how those promotions need to go. Now the final piece, and this is where the magic really comes in, is if you know the numbers and the conversion rates and all, you know the cost to getting new leads or how you know how well your list engages with certain things. And this is, it's a bit more of an advanced strategy. But like, my gosh, if you can do this, it gives you such a clear picture. But now that you know how many sales you need to be getting, you know, either every month in your funnel or every launch for your different offers to then be able to reverse engineer what needs to happen, how many people need to be like on your list or need to be engaging with your offers or engaging with your promotions to hit each of those goals, then that is such a clear blueprint for exactly what you need to do to get to where you want to go that it makes it really hard not to get there or at least get really close. So that's how you reverse engineer your goals. Guys, like I said, we do this with our clients in our two retreats that we have online every six months and we have like this spreadsheet and it all, you know, it's beautiful and all populates, but I think they'd be super mad if I just gave that out to everybody. But you can, you know, you can go and figure this out yourself with a calculator, with a spreadsheet, you can kind of make that happen as well. But I just think it is so important at the start of the year to set goals. Goals that feel good, goals that feel real and that have, that are, you know, really anchored in reality and that you go, I know that when I hit that goal, it's not just a nice to have. It's not like woohoo, I got six figures or I got seven figures or whatever. It's a, when I hit that goal, I know what that means for my life, for my business, for my family. So that goal, all of a sudden it doesn't become just about like a number, it becomes about an outcome which is much more powerful. And then to be able to have broken it down and go, now I know how I get there. This feels doable and possible and I know what I need to do to do it. Then the game completely changes. So if this has been useful, guys, and I really, really hope that it has, I love to geek out over this stuff. Please drop a comment below this video or tag us over at hellofunnels. We'd love, love, love to hear your big aha's after watching this. And if you're going to go and do this process or even if you have a process of your own, you know, I always love to hear, I love it when you share. Speaking of sharing, if you have found this valuable, it would mean so much if you could pass it along to, to a fellow business bestie who might get just a little aha of their own out of it. It really helps us when you share the words. So that's it for me for this week, guys. Hope you loved it. We're back next week with more planning goodies. Until then, have an amazing week, and I'll see you all next episode. Bye.