Aaron Hoos

It’s the time of year when we are knee-deep in planning what we want to do for the rest of the year. Stop smoking, lose weight, start eating more cookies, whatever.

Planning is good but by the end of January, there’s a good chance that most of those plans fall apart under the pressure of reality (which is why a lot of year-round gym membership-holders avoid the gym in January to let all the enthusiastic people join and then leave).

Plans don’t always work because their main ingredients are hope and luck. If you want to eliminate hope and luck, try developing a kick-ass plan.

HOW TO CREATE A KICK-ASS PLAN

1. A kick-ass plan starts with a goal and the steps to achieve that goal but if you stop there, you’ve only done what a lot of people do. You’ll do okay (better than if you just create a goal and no steps) but I’m about to show you a way to take your goal-setting up a notch!
2. Next, you need to plus your goal. (Add something to your goal to make it really special — to increase its value and importance). Adjust your steps as necessary.
3. For each step in your plan, identify your capabilities and requirements. Then determine what strengths you have to succeed and what weaknesses you have that could hold you back. Mitigate those weaknesses through investments in automation… or see if there is someone in your network who can help you. (Try tweeting out to your network that you need help in some specific thing and watch what happens. What a great way to see just how much value your network places in you.)
4. Determine how to start strong. For some of you (especially this time of year), this won’t be a problem. But for some, there might be issues of procrastination or feelings of overwhelmedness that need to be conquered first. Figure out if anything is going to hold you back from starting and then figure out how to jam down on the accelerator very early in the project.
5. Starting is good but what you really want to is attain critical mass quickly. This gives your project some life of its own because you see success. Figure out how you define critical mass for your particular project and how you can get there as soon as possible.
6. Next, look for opportunities to maintain momentum. Project inertia ensures that you keep plugging away regardless of the peaks and valleys that you might experience along the way. (Confession: This is another area I’m working on. It’s easy for me to slow down or even stop when the middle-of-the-project doldrums hit). I need to build little motivations into my projects to keep me going. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a break or rewarding myself with a trip to Starbucks if I get complete a certain number of steps.
7. Determine your finishing alternatives. We all want to achieve a project well but often that “winning finish” isn’t well defined. We need to define it clearly.
8. A winning finish is idea… but it doesn’t always happen. We also need to consider some potential contingencies. You don’t need to go overboard here (or else you’ll end up over-planning and you’ll never get to your project) but you can do a simple A-B-C-D contingency planning: (A) is the ideal finish. (B) is a moderate finish in which some of the winning finish characteristics are present and some are not. (C) is a finish but not something you would define as a win. (D) is if the project doesn’t finish. You’re not grading the project, you’re anticipating what could happen to cause these four potential scenarios and deciding what you can do to make sure an idea finish is the most likely outcome. (For more thoughts on contingency planning, read about a time when I accidentally stabbed myself).
9. If you’re already busy, you’ll need to also do this: Figure out what you’re willing to give up to make it happen. (Note: this is a HUGE area of struggle for me and something I’ve been trying to work on in my own business. I love to do a lot but I’ve started to realize in the past year or two that if I adopt something new, I need to give up something else).
10. Figure out what habits need to change in order to succeed. Do you need to be more diligent so you can blog every day? Do you need to stop procrastinating? Do you need to screw up your courage to make more sales calls? Maybe you need to get desperate!
11. Lastly, become an action figure and blaze forward by doing what needs to be done!. (More on that in this blog post: The entrepreneur’s silver bullet).

If you’ve got this far in my blog, you’re probably thinking to yourself: “Isn’t this insanely time consuming? Is Aaron crazy?”

The answer is yes… to both questions (although there’s nothing I can do about the second question so I’ll just address the first question).

This IS time consuming. But it works. It turns your luck-and-hope plans into real, actionable, achievable kick-ass plans.

Besides, you’ll spend far more time working part-way through your plan and fizzling out than you will if you put in some time in advance to go through these steps. An investment of time at the beginning to develop a kick-ass plan will help your project be more successful, and will help you to achieve it faster and with fewer challenges.

Happy New Year!

I’m a huge goal-setter — I love to list goals, break ‘em down into smaller objectives, and rock them out each day and week and month and year. To help me aim for the right things and make better goals, I’ve listed 5 success principles that I want to apply to my life this year. (Some are new for me, some have been in place for a while now). I hope they inspire you, too:

1. Do the hardest thing first: This is something I really tried to adopt in the last half of 2011 and it made such a HUGE difference to my productivity and how much I enjoyed what I do. I want to make this an even more intentional habit this year.
2. Persevere without quitting: I always have a million projects on the go — many for clients, many for myself, and many for family and friends. I love being busy but there’s a drawback: It’s easy to get distracted when a project starts to slog. I need to learn to push through in these times. (Confession: This is a HUGE failure of mine… it’s not that I don’t finish things; it’s just that I stop for a while when they going gets really tough and that makes it hard to pick it up again later).
3. Find a balance: I love to work and I work hard. But sometimes I work too much. There was a while when 7 days a week for months at a time was the norm… and then I’d burn out. I can’t do that. My productivity and my profitability plummet. I find I’m at my best when I take one day off each week. (Obviously I can take more if I want but I need to make sure I take at least one day! That’s a practice I’ve started to become strict about in the past couple of months and that day to recharge really helps my ability to produce good, consistent work.
4. Add value to every relationship: This is a new one for me. I have clients who I sometimes wonder if they’re just clients because it would be too much trouble to find someone else to write for them. Obviously I don’t want that! I want someone to be my client because they find my contribution to their business to be so invaluable that they would fight tooth and nail to keep me. (I said “every relationship” instead of “every client relationship” because I think this is probably a good thing to do with my friends and family as well).
5. Go further. There are two components to this fifth success principle. The first “Go further” component is related to accomplishment — I like to think that I work hard but then I hear about people who somehow manage to accomplish so much more than seems humanly possible. They somehow find the time to start several businesses all at once PLUS become champion shot putters… in between the time that they earn a degree and run 2 non-profits. I want that (but I want to do it while achieving the balance of #3). The second component of “Go further” is related to effort — I want to look back on everything I do and see that I went to the limit on my work and then pushed beyond. Did I go further and add something extra to each client project? Did I go further and add something extra to my blog post? Did I go further and add somethign extra to each chapter in my book? I want to be able to answer “yes” every time!

In the comments below, please tell me the success principles that are inspiring you for 2012!

[Image credit: Gareth du Plessis]

When I was a kid, I watched “Family Ties”. Yeah, I’m that old… or young. Whatever.

One of the occasionally recurring characters on “Family Ties” was deadbeat Uncle Ned — a guy who struggled with alcoholism and periodically ran afoul of the law. The actor who portrayed him was character actor who had only started his on-screen acting career about 3 years earlier.

Recognize him? He appears about 3 seconds into this clip:

Yeah, it’s Tom Hanks. By the time this aired (in 1983 or 1984), Hanks had made appearances in episodes of “Happy Days”, “Taxi”, and “The Love Boat”, and he had a regular role in a show called “Bosom Buddies”.

And before all that, his very first on-screen appearance (according to IMDb.com) was in a 1980 horror movie called “He Knows You’re Alone”. Check out his appearance here:

For his role in “He Knows You’re Alone”, Hanks was paid a whopping $800.

Today, Hanks earns a little more than $800 when he makes movies.

Eight years after his on-screen debut, Hanks brought home $1.7 million from his role in “Big”. And it just went up from there. With the exception of his work in “Toy Story” and its sequels, he consistently makes $15 million to $20 million (or more from gross profits and participation) in his movies.

I find Tom Hanks’ success story inspiring and instructional. Here’s why:

• Hanks is just a regular guy who is good at what he does. He’s not famous because he has an outrageous personality or rugged good looks or muscles that stick out everywhere. He’s an average guy but he’s a great actor. (Interesting note: In a Vanity Fair interview, Hanks himself admitted that his acting wasn’t good in the beginning but he improved over time). I think I’m a regular guy. That tells me that talent lasts, and it inspires me to constantly get better.
• Hanks is now known for (and made a ton of money from) his dramatic roles (and sometimes has a romantic comedy roles). But he wasn’t always known for that. Throughout the 80′s, he was a goofy guy who usually got the comedic roles. He did okay there but he has successfully reinvented himself as a respected dramatic actor. We all go through different phases in our work. The successful ones are willing to reinvent themselves until they find something that works.
• Hanks slogged for more than a decade before he achieved what most of us would call “success” — he worked tirelessly in live theater and then on television shows and movies. Hard work and thankless sweat are a prerequisite to success. If you want success but aren’t willing to work for it, success will elude you.

Success doesn’t land on your doorstep. You need to work for it. You need to get up every day and go do whatever it is that you do and you need to get better at it.

If you’re a real estate professional or a financial advisor (or any other type of entrepreneur for that matter), Hanks’ story can inspire you. There are calls to make and relationships to build and paperwork to do. I can sometimes feel like like a thankless, slogging grind.

But grind it out everyday! Get better everyday! Stop wondering how to be successful and instead start thinking about how to do more of the hard work you need to do. That’s the key to real success!

Every sales funnel looks different: One company might sell services through a lengthy relationship-building effort; another company might sell a product as an impulse item at the cash register of a grocery store. However, all sales funnels share a few things in common.

Below, I’ve listed five of the most important elements you’ll see in every successful sales funnel. And if your sales funnel is struggling, check to make sure that you’ve mastered these elements first.

1. Value: Your potential buyers have problems they want solved or needs they want fulfilled and the sales funnel relationship is your way of telling them that you have the solution or fulfillment they’re looking for. But Prospects are only motivated to buy from you when they perceive value. That is, your ability to solve their problem or fulfill their need must actually make it worth their time, effort, energy, and money to listen to your sales pitch and hand over their hard-earned money. I call this the pickaxe factor.
2. Target market: No business can be all things to all people so every business must have a well-defined target market. It can be a big target market, and it can even include several different markets, but the target market(s) need to be well-defined. When you know who is most likely to buy from you, you can shape your marketing and sales content to speak to that group in a way that will compel a buying response. (Find out why ‘everyone’ is not your target market).
3. Clear next steps: A poor sales funnel haphazardly dumps marketing content in a variety of channels (Facebook, Twitter, a blog, an article directory, etc.) and the business hopes that the sales funnel contact will click around to gather enough information to move forward in the sale funnel. But that’s not how it works. A sales funnel contact has a mindset and that mindset slowly evolves over time. The business’ job in marketing and selling is to speak directly to the contact’s mindset and slowly nudge that mindset to evolve toward full acceptance of what is being offered. (Read a previous blog posts about how mindsets work in a sales funnel and how you use steps to move contacts forward in your sales funnel).
4. Opportunity to buy: I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Marketing is sexy and fun and difficult to measure. Selling, on the other hand, is challenging and sometimes a grind, and there can be a lot of rejection. Therefore, businesses tend to do too much marketing and too little selling… and then business owners scratch their head and wonder why no one is buying. A good sales funnel includes moments (in the Prospect stage) where the seller asks the Prospect if they would like to buy. (Read a previous blog post about this very topic — how a lack of selling is causing sales funnel failure).
5. Profitable sales: Successful sales funnels have a track record of profitable sales. Okay, some of you are reading this and thinking “duh! Isn’t that obvious?” but it may surprise you to learn that it’s not. Businesses use a variety of measurements to define success. Things like: “Do we have a great logo?” or “Is our blog being visited by more than 100 people per day?” etc. Even businesses that do strive for profitable sales don’t always measure profitable sales as much as they measure other things. (I confess, I’ve been guilty of that in the past, and here’s an example of a client whose sales funnel was not focused on profitable sales). But the only thing that should determine whether or not a business is successful is: Does the business have profitable sales? If your business does not have as many profitable sales as you’d like, take a closer look at your sales funnel to determine how you can make more profit from your sales.

Does your sales funnel have all 5 of these elements? If your business is struggling, you might want to think about destroying your sales funnel and starting over again from the ground up to make sure that these 5 elements are there. (Here’s a 3-step process to help you or read about how to retrofit the sales funnel in an existing business).

There are other reasons that a sales funnel might be very successful or not successful at all, but these 5 elements are going to be the 5 biggest factors that you can influence to create watershed change in your sales funnel… and ultimately in your business.

If I could get into my DeLorean and travel back in time to when I first started my business, here is what I would have told myself:

Lesson 1: Narrow your target market

Don’t try to do everything for everyone. You’ll end up doing a bunch of stuff you don’t enjoy doing and you’ll get stuck on a treadmill of having to learn new stuff for every client. Focus on a core of similar clients and you won’t have to start from scratch each time.

Lesson 2: Invest early

A free blog and email address work fine at the very beginning. Those services are a great way to get started easily. But free stuff has its limits and you’ll spend a ton of time back-filling to correct problems when those services break.

Lesson 3: Invest in the right things

You don’t need all those business cards if you’re going to focus on non-local/online clients. You invested in some really valuable information and systems but it happened later than it should have. Build your knowledge-base first.

Lesson 4: Take time off

Starting and growing a business takes time and effort. But too much time and effort will burn you out. Striking a balance between work and non-work will be toughest challenge you will face. Schedule both and stick to it.

Lesson 5: Trust your instincts

You know ahead of time when a customer is about to screw you or when you should pull the trigger on an idea. Those instincts may be hard to quantify but they are correct 99% of the time. Trust them. Follow them.

Lesson 6: Prepare for success

You’ll be more successful faster than you realize. But that success will hurt: You’ll be overwhelmed with work and your end-of-year tax bill will be higher than expected. Success is great but it comes at a price if you’re not ready for it.

Lesson 7: Differentiate early

Think very carefully about your point of difference and highlight it in everything you do. Take a week off and think about your point of difference full-time. The revenue you miss from that week will be more than made up for in the months and years to come as you outpace your competition.

Lesson 8: Persist

You’ll drop some projects or ideas or services or customers because there wasn’t a lot of movement there. However, a little persistence can make a big difference. It’s hard to know which ones to stick with and which ones to drop, but try sticking a little more than dropping.

Lesson 9: Create a simple sales funnel and work it like a rented mule

Keep it simple at first. Employ one or two easy-to-do marketing and sales tactics for each stage of your sales funnel and hammer home those things every day. Every single day. You can scale up later, you can get more complicated later, but a simple, consistent sales funnel at the beginning will win.