Get the 90 Day Habit

Image © Gualtiero Boffi

Everybody who runs a business understands the need to plan ahead. Everybody who joins a network marketing company gets told that you can't succeed without a 90 day plan. So why are there so few coherent, full explanations of what a 90 day plan is, what it entails and what it's like to follow one?

Google for '90 day plan' and there's loads of generics, a lot of waffle and a lot of incomprehensible text that should have caveat emptor watermarked through it. Finding the gold in the dross is difficult, although there are some good articles, such as Michael Hyatt's, which do encourage us to step up and be accountable.

So, as I firmly believe in personal responsibility and accountability, I will be dual-blogging for the next 94 days on both the mechanics of 90-day plans and my personal experiences of implementing them.

Why 94 days rather than 90? Because I want to show the prior preparation and planning that goes into the creation of a 90-day plan.

This is likely to be an interesting project. I'm hoping the extra exposure will force me to up my game enough to quit the day job in a year's time. Here we go!

Fibs, Lies and Statistics

A news article caught my eye today, reminding me of just how a biased viewpoint can distort reality.

The UK government's Office of National Statistics (ONS) released a "nugget" purporting to be a "brief analysis" of commuting data for October - December 2009. Those who know me will realise just how irritated I am about these statistics by my use of quotation marks.

The associated data download comprises of four tiny tables designed to feed the online charts, rather than a body of raw data that can be independently analysed. The ONS could have plucked these figures out of thin air, for all I can tell.

The UK gets split into "London" and "Rest of UK". Speaking as somebody who used to commute to London, "Rest of UK" is a bl***y big area.

What really got me mad, though, is the following data:

Now, ignoring the fact that the totals don't add up to 100, let alone match, look at the figures for bus, train and underground use. Tyne & Wear, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham - they all have comprehensive public transport networks, yet we're led to believe that the whole of the UK put together uses fewer buses and trains for work journeys than Londoners do. I wish I'd realised that when I was stuck in 2 hour each way public transport commutes to Birmingham. The volume of humanity seemed pretty close to that of London in the rush hour.

To make it worse, the Independent's own graphic breaks a few data visualisation rules in its own right:

Take a look at the commuting chart - surely the "Rest of the UK" circle should be larger for the 46 - 60 minute commute?

Without the underlying facts, all the pretty pictures mean nothing. Which leads me to today's questions.

What pretty pictures are you painting about your network marketing business? What fibs are you telling about your performance and your activity? What does the raw data underlying your business tell you? What do you mean, you don't keep statistics?

*"Fibs, Lies and Statistics" is believed to be the original version of the quote that Mark Twain attributed to Disraeli. There's a nice Wikipedia article on Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke too. Don't say this blog's not entertaining (not to mention able to head off on a tangent and never return...)

Network Marketing for Beginners - The 3 Rs

You may have heard about the 3 Rs of Education - Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic.

There are 3 Rs in network marketing too, and this time, you don't need to mis-spell to make the mnemonic fit.

The 3 Rs are Reflect, Revise and Refocus.

Reflect

This should be done at the beginning of every action plan, whether you plan out 7, 28 or 90 days of activity at a time. It should also be done if your tracking shows that you're in danger of missing your targets.

Is what I'm doing effective? - Am I getting in touch with enough prospects? Is my retail turnover sufficient to support my goals? Is my customer service excellent? How many hours am I spending to achieve my results? Are my family threatening to change the locks if I don't spend more time with them? Whose advice should I follow?

Could I be doing it better, or differently? - What can I do to improve the situation? Would more customers help? How can I generate more leads? Where are my constraints - money, time, or both? What can I set aside in my life to help with building my business?

What are my options? - List the options available for the situation you wish to reflect on. This is the time to brainstorm, regardless of whether you choose any of the options or not. Options can include time management techniques, asking for referrals from customers or prospects, rearranging your personal or business budget, etc.

Revise

Go over your existing plans, tracker sheets and targets. If you haven't got any, create them! Ask yourself the following questions to identify the changes you need to implement:

What do I need to change to improve my results?
How will I implement the changes?
Over what timescale?

Produce new plans, tracking and targets to enable you to take action.

Refocus

Now that you've taken time out of your busy schedule to improve how you operate your business, ask yourself the following:

Why am I doing this?
What are my goals?
What are my targets?

Write the answers down and keep them somewhere where you can refer to them regularly. Better still, commit the answers to memory.

Once you've done this exercise, put it into practice straight away and track your new results. Never rest on your laurels - you should aim to improve with every iteration of your plan.

When Life Gets In The Way - Live It!

You've read your favourite self-development books, listened to the CDs/MP3s/podcasts, watched the DVDs, subscribed to the best blogs. All of them say something similar:

Consistent effort breeds long-term success.

I have two book/CD sets on the go at the moment - Jeff Olson's Slight Edge and Darren Hardy's Compound Effect. Both excellent and, if you live in the UK and haven't got them, you should be ordering them from Knowledge is King. I tend to go for book and audio packages where possible as I find I learn more that way.

But what happens when Life happens? You know what I mean - the cat's sick, your child starts a new life elsewhere, you get divorced, a parent's health deteriorates dramatically, you move to another area. The issues that turn day-to-day life into Life!, the soap opera you didn't want to star in.

Simple. You revisit your plans and your tracking and you look at your life realistically. Then you revise those plans to take Life into account. If you can only manage to spend 30 minutes per day on your business, instead of 8 hours, then plan accordingly. Communicate your new plans with whoever needs to know and then stick to them. As always, always underestimate your committment and then do more than you've promised. Set a timescale to review your plans by a given date, depending on what Life has thrown at you, and give yourself permission to deal with the immediate necessities.

Don't forget, there are different ways of approaching bad news, as the following story proves:

A business woman was working away from home when her son phoned her.

"Mum, the cat's dead!"

After a brief moment of shock, the mum mode took over. "Darling, next time you have bad news like that, especially if you feel it might upset others the way you are upset right now, try to soften the blow by gently leading up to it. For instance, you could have started by saying something like - You know how the cat loves climbing the roof, well it's fallen off and it's badly hurt. We don't think it's going to survive. Then you could have called back a little later and told me that the cat was dead. OK?"

Her son agreed to try that the next time he had bad news to tell.

Two days later he phoned again, just as she was packing to come home.

"Mum, you know how Granny loves climbing the roof?"