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The Secret to Entrepreneurial Success Focus on Activity, Not Just Sales Goals · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So this is something that's very important for people that's
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  Speaker 1: in business because it all comes down to sales. I
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  Speaker 1: know you're going to talk about sales. Right, No matter
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  Speaker 1: what you're doing as an entrepreneur, you're selling something. Either
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  Speaker 1: if you're in a restaurant, you're selling food. If you
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  Speaker 1: are in clothing, you're selling clothes items.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: If you are a hair stytust, you're selling your services,
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  Speaker 1: which is you're doing people's hair. Right, everything is sales.
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  Speaker 1: Everything is sales in business. That's a key component. Now
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  Speaker 1: I do think this is this is something that I
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  Speaker 1: learned because I come from a sales background when I
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  Speaker 1: was in when I was in insurance and financial services,
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  Speaker 1: I was commission based. So I made a living by
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  Speaker 1: selling products and I got a commission from that product.
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  Speaker 1: And so if you're if you're in sales, you know
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  Speaker 1: that there's there's that's that's a difficult thing to do
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  Speaker 1: because your income fluctuates. Right, you have a good month,
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  Speaker 1: you have a terrible month. But if you don't sell something,
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  Speaker 1: you're not going to get paid. But it's it's important
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  Speaker 1: because it teaches you things that entrepreneurs need to learn.
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  Speaker 1: So I used to say my goal was to make
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  Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars in a year, right. And I
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  Speaker 1: used to get frustrated because I wasn't hitting that goal
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  Speaker 1: twenty four, twenty five years old. I wasn't I was
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  Speaker 1: not hitting that goal.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And there's a book called The Twelve Week Year, which.
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  Speaker 1: I recommend everybody read, right, And when I really started
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  Speaker 1: to think about it differently, I changed the way I
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  Speaker 1: looked at the perspective. And you spoke about this before,
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  Speaker 1: where people, I think go about it the wrong way
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  Speaker 1: by saying that how much money they want to make? Right,
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  Speaker 1: So they have a goal of making one hundred thousand
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  Speaker 1: dollars a year, right, and then you just broke it down,
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  Speaker 1: that's like eight thousand dollars among eighty nine hundred dollars
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  Speaker 1: a month something like that.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And then so let's say that's like two twenty two
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  Speaker 1: hundred dollars a week, right, something like that. So the
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  Speaker 1: goal is like, Okay, I want to make twenty two
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  Speaker 1: hundred dollars a week. The first the first mistake that
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  Speaker 1: they make it is that they're saying that their goal
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  Speaker 1: is too big. Now you just explain why you should
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  Speaker 1: break that goal down because it's more attainable. Twenty two
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  Speaker 1: hundred dollars a week is more attainable than one hundred
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. But I think that that's still
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  Speaker 1: where people go wrong because they're chasing a number. What
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  Speaker 1: I realize is that you can't chase the number. You
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  Speaker 1: could chase. You could chase activity. Activity leads to the number.
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  Speaker 1: So in my case, right when I was selling life insurance, right,
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  Speaker 1: you get a commission from the life insurance that you sell,
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  Speaker 1: So I can't control how much money I make just
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  Speaker 1: going off of numbers, because I might get a big
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  Speaker 1: policy and I make a lot of money, or I
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  Speaker 1: might get a small policy and I make a little
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  Speaker 1: bit of money. Right, But what I realized is that
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  Speaker 1: I did the average of what my average case size was.
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  Speaker 1: So let's say my average case size was one thousand
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  Speaker 1: dollars commission. Right then I realized what am I doing
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  Speaker 1: to actually get a client.
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  Speaker 2: So there's a few ways how you can get clients.
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  Speaker 1: You can cold call, you can canvas, canvases like go
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  Speaker 1: to different businesses and just pop up here's my business
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  Speaker 1: card talk. I wasn't good at co Cola, and I
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  Speaker 1: wasn't good at canvas and but I was good at
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  Speaker 1: getting referrals. That was my pipeline to get business. I
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  Speaker 1: was good at getting referrals. Then I realized that in
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  Speaker 1: my system, for every three people that I contacted, one
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  Speaker 1: person I would close.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So I realized.
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  Speaker 1: That the numbers worked in my favor based on activity,
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  Speaker 1: not just a number. So what I'm saying is that
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  Speaker 1: I realized that in order for me to hit the
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  Speaker 1: financial goal, it was based on activity. I needed to
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  Speaker 1: get let's say ten referrals every week. Every week, I
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  Speaker 1: needed to get let's say fifteen referrals. I needed to
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  Speaker 1: get fifteen referrals every single week, because I knew if
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  Speaker 1: I got fifteen referrals, then I would close five people.
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  Speaker 1: If I closed five people, that's five thousand dollars. But
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  Speaker 1: that's still not good enough because it's like, well, how
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  Speaker 1: are you going to get fifteen referrals? So then I
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  Speaker 1: have to have a system in place. How am I
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  Speaker 1: actually even meeting people. I had a few ways to
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  Speaker 1: meet people. I would go to like events, and I
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  Speaker 1: would and I would try to meet people from there.
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  Speaker 1: I would call existing clients, right, I would have my
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  Speaker 1: circle of influence. So you put together a project one
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  Speaker 1: hundred the people that you know, you take them out
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  Speaker 1: to lunch. So now I'm breaking it down. I'm saying, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I need to get My goal in this situation is
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  Speaker 1: to get fifteen referrals. But in order for me to
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  Speaker 1: get fifteen referrals, I have to reach out to one
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  Speaker 1: hundred people.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So now the.
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  Speaker 1: One hundred people I have to I have to get
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  Speaker 1: in contact with one hundred people every single week for
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  Speaker 1: me to hit my goal.
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  Speaker 2: Now break that down. Working.
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  Speaker 1: Let's say I'm working five days Monday through Friday. I
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  Speaker 1: have to I have to get in front of twenty people.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I don't physically have to get in front of twenty people,
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  Speaker 1: but I got to talk to twenty people. So now
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  Speaker 1: I have Tuesday through Wednesday. I'm just calling. That's my
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  Speaker 1: call days. So in that day, I'm I'm gonna talk
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  Speaker 1: to forty people on the calls. You could talk to
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  Speaker 1: forty people in three days. That's very realistic. Right, Thursday
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  Speaker 1: is carved out for in person. I'm gonna go to
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  Speaker 1: as many I'm go to like two different networking events
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  Speaker 1: if I can. In New York, I'm gonna go anywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Chamber of Commerce because i gotta meet people on that
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  Speaker 1: and then Friday was my coffee day, where I'm getting
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  Speaker 1: in front of old clients, new clients, people that I
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  Speaker 1: just went to college with. So what I'm saying is
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  Speaker 1: that that idea of just making the money wasn't working
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  Speaker 1: out for me. But when I when I realized that
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  Speaker 1: the money was a byproduct of the action and the activity. See,
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  Speaker 1: I can control the activity, I can't control the outcome,
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  Speaker 1: right I can't control if I'm gonna sell you what
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  Speaker 1: you're gonna buy. But I know if I do enough activity,
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  Speaker 1: the odds are in my favor to reach that goal.
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  Speaker 1: Now it's like how much money do I want to make?
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  Speaker 1: Because now if I if I double my activity, I'm
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  Speaker 1: gonna double my income.
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  Speaker 2: It's just a mathematical game at that point.
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  Speaker 1: Right now we're doubling the activity comes with me working
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  Speaker 1: twice as many hours. So now you have to say, okay,
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  Speaker 1: well is it worth me? Or you can say how
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  Speaker 1: can I do this more efficiently? Can I bring it?
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  Speaker 1: Can I work with another partner right where he can
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  Speaker 1: canvas and then we split fifty to fifty. But your
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  Speaker 1: volume of activity dictates your volume of income. That's something
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  Speaker 1: that I think is vitally important. You have to track
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  Speaker 1: this too. So the twelve week year. The reason why
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  Speaker 1: the book is called twelve week Year is because they
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  Speaker 1: break the year down into twelve weeks, right, So it's
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  Speaker 1: much easier to look at it from that standpoint as
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  Speaker 1: opposed to just canvassing the whole thing. And then we
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  Speaker 1: had systems in place. So every Sunday I track my activity.
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  Speaker 1: So you can't just leave it up to hope you can.
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  Speaker 2: You can't. You have to take hope and guess the
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  Speaker 2: word as right.
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  Speaker 1: So it's an activity that I'm tracking, So I'm tracking
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  Speaker 1: by hand. At that time, I got one referral, I'll
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  Speaker 1: close one app. I did this, so I gotta I
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  Speaker 1: got a whole list, and every Sunday I'm looking at it.
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  Speaker 1: If I fell short on one of these three things,
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  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, this week, I got to make up.
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  Speaker 2: For it, or why did I fall short this week?
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  Speaker 2: You can't let.
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  Speaker 1: More than a week go by with you having bad
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  Speaker 1: habits and not being disciplined to actually meeting that quota.
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  Speaker 1: You got to meet that quota and you have to
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  Speaker 1: You have to be diligent and answer to yourself if
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  Speaker 1: you don't have an accountability partner, which is good. But
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  Speaker 1: if you don't have an accounted accountability partner, you gotta
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  Speaker 1: be your own accountability partner. So that book is a
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  Speaker 1: very good read because it teaches you how to be
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  Speaker 1: extremely disciplined. And like I said, I'm using the example
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  Speaker 1: of the life insurance, but you can use that example
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  Speaker 1: for anything right, any any form of business. It sales,
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  Speaker 1: but never worry about the money. Worry about the activity,
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  Speaker 1: and the activity will be get you to the actual money.