MBA1954 How to Plan & Execute Your Q1 Goals

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more.

PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do.

More faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Because your business needs you at your best. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and in today's lesson you will learn how to plan and execute your Q1 goals. Quarter one the first three months of the year is incredibly important to the success of your business in 2022, you need to make sure that you build upon some strong momentum for able to accomplish a big goal. Get some real work done that helps your business growth and profitability. This will snowball throughout the year. It's much easier to start the year winning than trying to make up for lost time. So I'm going to give you a laser focused strategy so you can plan and execute your goals for this first quarter. This is the exact strategy I have been using for my own business and I'm sharing it with you because it works. It breaks down your big idea, your big goals into smaller digestible chunks that you can digest and you can plan for and work towards every single day. At the end of today's lesson you're going to feel empowered and Less overwhelmed, and you'll have a clear plan of action to make it happen. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.

One of the problems a lot of people have is that they overestimate what they can get done in a quarter. They say, I can get done a million things. Three months, that's a ton of time. But in actuality, it's only 12 weeks. Plus, you got weekends, you got holidays, you got time off, you got all that kind of stuff. So we're gonna do things a little differently this year. What we're gonna do is that we're gonna plan a powerful quarter that accomplishes one singular goal. Now, this is gonna be a big goal, but we're gonna break down that goal into different projects. Let me give you an example. Let's say, for example, you want to bring in more customers. More customers. Okay, let's get a little bit more specific with this goal. How many more customers do you want? You might say, I want to bring in a hundred new customers in quarter our clients. This is just an example so that we can be able to plan out our quarter. So the first thing we're going to establish is our big goal. And in this case, 100 new customers at the end of the first three months of the year. This needs to be written out. This needs to be communicated with your whole team, if you have a team. This needs to be front and center on your desk. You need to look at this every single day. This is the prize. So when we say keep your eye on the prize, this is what we're keeping our eye on. This is a goal. This is what we want to achieve. This is what we have to achieve within three months. Now, this is where the brainstorming happens. How are we going to achieve this goal? How are we going to get a hundred new clients, a hundred new customers in the first three months? And this is where the projects come in. You're going to brainstorm. What are the different things you can do in your business to get these hundred clients? It might be running Facebook ads. Another project might be doing webinars. Another project might be doing Email marketing campaigns or automations. So these are all different things you can do to achieve this goal. You're then going to take all the projects you came up with and you're going to list them in impact order. This means how much impact do you think each of these projects will have on you achieving the goal? This doesn't have to be an exact science. This could just be based on your experiences or what you know, or what your other entrepreneurial friends have shared with you. Put them in that order. Okay, now the next thing is that we need to break down these projects into actual tasks. What do I gotta do to pull off this project? So, for example, if I want to run some Facebook campaigns to get my new clients, the tasks I would need to do is I need to create copy, I need to create images, I might need to create some videos, I need then to create the actual ads inside of Facebook, I might need to create a couple landing pages that are catered for those ads, that are specific for those ads. You get the point. You're going to take each of these projects and you're going to just quickly write a list of tasks that are required to pull off this project. You're just writing basically a to do list for each project and you're going to do this for every single one you have, regardless of the impact level. Just go down the line. Now you have your big goal, you have your projects. Your projects are ordered in impact order. You also now have a list of to dos or or tasks for each project. The last thing you're going to do is you're going to look at all the tasks for each project and you're going to ask yourself, how much time is it going to take for me to accomplish all these tasks? And you're going to write in weeks. How many weeks am I going to need? If it's going to take less than a week, just put one week. So, for example, in the Facebook ads project, I might have a list of 7 tasks I need to do to make sure my campaigns are converting. I look at those seven tasks, I kind of guesstimate it's going to take me about three weeks to accomplish these tasks. In my experience, you want to be a little generous here with this timeline. A lot of us think, oh, we can get this done in one day. No, you need to be realistic. And if you're that type of person, you know yourself, double your timelines. If you think something's going to take one week, say it's going to take two weeks. You know yourself Best. I've kind of got better at that. So my guessing is pretty good. But that took some time. So you're gonna put a number of weeks against each project. So this project's gonna take me four weeks. This project's gonna take me two weeks. This project's gonna take me maybe a week. Cause it's very small. And I'm gonna do this for all the projects on my list. Now guess what? The quarter has 12 weeks. And basically I'm gonna open up my calendar and I'm gonna plug in my tasks. So say, for example, project one's gonna take three weeks to accomplish all the tasks I' all those tasks in the calendar in the order I need to complete them in. Now, I know that some tasks in there might take less than a week, may take a couple days. You can break it up if you want to. Say, these three tasks will take a week. Pop it in there. Say these three tasks in your calendar. You're going to do that. And you're going to start with the first task that has the highest priority, the highest impact, I should say. And then from there, you're going to again move on to the remaining weeks. Let's say the first project took three weeks. I have nine more weeks in the quarter. Let's go. What's the next project I'm working on in priority order or in impact order? This project's going to take five weeks. I fill in all the tasks that I'm going to work on and which weeks I'm going to work on them. Now you might say, hey, Omar, I can work on more than one project during a time. I'm here to tell you that, okay, you may want to do that, but save that for Q2. Right now, we need momentum. Okay, if you are confident that you can do it, just save that for Q2 right now. Just trust me on this one. What you want to do is you want to have some momentum. If you think you have all this time in the world, then get the first task done in less time. And what we want to experience and what we want to share with our team is consistent wins. So after a couple weeks, my first task on the list, Facebook ads, for example, done. It's rolling. It's getting me new customers. I then start some webinars. I build out my webinars. I have a webinar campaign. A few weeks later, I'm running webinars. I'm making sales more momentum. What happens is here is that as I complete each task, it gets my whole team going. It gets me motivated, it gets me to become more confident in my abilities to move my business forward. This is incredibly powerful. Don't bog yourself down trying to do more than one thing at a time, more than one project at a time, and do one at a time and build upon each one. And basically you're going to go through all your projects that are in priority order until you fill up the 12 weeks for the first quarter. This means you're going to have to kill off some of these projects or delay them to the next quarter. This is why it's so important for us to put them in the right impact order. We then going to sit back, look at our 12 week plan and say, okay, is it feasible, is it possible, is it attainable for me to be able to hit my goal? In my case in this example, a hundred new customers in the first quarter. If I do all these projects in quarter one, if I pull them off, if they're all completed, if the answer is anything but, heck yes, you need to go back to the beginning of this whole process and think of more impactful projects that are going to move the needle or revisit your goal, realign it with your expectations, or what's possible within 12 weeks.

The Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA. Gain skills you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Get ready to go from make it happen to made it happen and keep striving. Visit Strayer. Edu Jack Welchmba to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate Virginia by Chevin as many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia.

To wrap up today's lesson, one of the most powerful things you can do for your team, for your business, for your career as an entrepreneur is set goals and meet them. This gives you an incredible feeling. This gives you the power to basically do what you want. Basically you want something, you go after it, you get it. But these things don't happen by accident. We have to plan and we have to follow through on that plan. The execution is more important than the plan. You can have a great plan, but if you don't do anything about it, if you don't execute, if you don't implement, it's really useless. So what are you going to do to execute on the plan that you just planned out? Number one, hold yourself accountable. How do you like to be held accountable? Do you need to share these goals with other people on your team or even a loved one or somebody in your mastermind group, anybody that will hold you accountable. The person you're sitting next to in a co working space. The point here is, is that if you make it public, we as social creatures will do anything so we don't get embarrassed, right? So that we look like we are as good as we think we are. You gotta do anything you can, every trick in the book to give yourself the best chance to follow through. Use some software. A very easy to use project management software is Basecamp. They have a great feature called Projects and they have to DOS inside the project and you could basically give yourself a deadline and reminders of each task that you have laid out inside your project. And my last piece of advice is celebrate. You have to celebrate when you hit your goals. Not only the Q1 goal, but when you finish a project within that Q1 within that quarter so that you know you're getting closer to the goal. Hey, I did what I needed to do to get closer to the goal. I hit my deadlines. And this could be something small. This could be going out to dinner with your significant other to celebrate. This could be buying yourself a new pair of shoes. This could be going out for ice cream. It doesn't matter. The point is that you have to stamp the occasion with some sort of celebration. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Tomorrow's Q and A Wednesday, where we answer a question from one of our listeners. We answer the question, I'm terrified of public speaking. How can I get better? Roxy, one of our listeners asked this very important question because as entrepreneurs, we're constantly speaking in public. We're speaking to our team, we're making sales calls, we're making presentations, we're on webinars, we're on stage. This is something many of us have to get better at. I felt exactly like Roxy in the past. I was horrible at public speaking, and I'm still working on it. But it was something I had to overcome and I want to share with you what I did to do so in tomorrow's episode. So make sure you hit subscribe or follow whatever it says on your podcast app right now so that you don't miss an episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Some people hate planning. They hate, hate doing any kind of admin or writing in documents or plugging things into a calendar. I totally get it. I used to be that way, actually, and I started to learn to love it. Because I took a leap of faith and I suspended disbelief for a moment, and I just grinned and buried it. And I did what I was supposed to do. I did the planning. I did everything I needed to do, and I saw the results. Once you see the results of something, you become. Become addicted to it. You start to realize, you know what? This works. As much as I kind of don't think it's fun, it actually helps me reach my goals, and it becomes kind of your safety blanket. You're like, okay, this is how I get it done. So you're going to need to suspend disbelief and just grin and bear it just for one quarter. Pull it off. And by the way, the planning I just went through today doesn't take long. It could take an hour, max. 2. And it's a crazy, crazy investment of time. For the next 12 weeks, you have a clear vision of what you're supposed to be working on every week, every hour, every minute. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.