I’ve been familiar with the idea of planning, but was never successful about doing it properly.
The most common scenario? I would just not do my plan. I was so caught up with my daily stuff that I would just miss my 90-day planning time. When I will remember about it, it would feel like “its too late” and I would just skip it.
Sometimes I would begin doing my 90-day plan, then get distracted and never come back to it.
Several times I was over enthusiastic and managed to overdo my 90-day plan. As a result I was afraid to even open my 90-day plan because I was so overwhelmed by it.
So, why should planning work now? What is different?
Recently I sat down to create a new 90-day plan.
My main focus was to review my financial situation. That’s where the big shocker came.
I’ve discovered that my regular monthly earnings will not be enough to cover all our spending for the next 3 months. I needed to increase my monthly income by 50%, and it had to be done immediately.
We don’t have room left in our credit line, and we don’t believe in carrying balances on our credit cards.
I had no choice this time – I had to create the plan and execute it.
My main financial goal became to earn $10,000 a month, for the next 3 months.
Breaking it down – I had to earn around $400-$500 per day to meet this goal.
My 90-day challenge officially began on April 1st.
But how to do it?
After reviewing current client projects, I found out that I can only earn around $5000-$6000 a month if I don’t make a major change in my strategies.
My main question became:
How do I create double the value for my customers, so that I can earn twice as much in the same amount of time?
I’ve discovered a bit earlier that I’m a great starter and not such a great finisher of things. I get excited about new ideas and new projects.
So, naturally, my brain got fired up and I began to think about creating a new website and a new brand. Big ideas started flowing in as I was writing in my notepad.
How can I create a better systemized workflow? How to create an unbeatable, irresistible offer? How to partner and get affiliated with others to build my list of customers? How to attract and manage many new customers?
After 2 hours of brainstorming, something suddenly stopped me.
I felt a sense of familiarity, like I’ve been here before. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’ve gone through this process before. And not once, many times. I asked myself…
Why should I do this again if it didn’t work before?
Even though I’ve done my brainstorms before, nothing really changed in my freelance business for the past 5 years. At least not in a major way. My income remained the same. I still work by myself.
I often start working on new personal projects. But I always get distracted and come back to my own habitual work.
So, if I do this ‘relaunch’ again, historically it means that I will not see any changes. Then why do it?
And then another idea came.
What if I focus on my current customers instead of chasing new business?
Can I solve more of their problems so that they pay me more?
After all I’ve already invested the time to build a relationship with each of my clients. Many of them trust me as an expert in my industry and they are happy with my work.
If I can help them better, then they can share the word with their colleagues and refer more business to me.
And so it was.