Dan Martell - How To Plan Your Year

00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell here,

00:00:01.220 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.960 And in this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:05.620 how to plan your year and get it all in,

00:00:08.920 the business, the professional,

00:00:10.460 and put it on one single page.

00:00:12.880 It's a huge promise, but trust me,

00:00:14.620 if you're a driven entrepreneur

00:00:15.680 and you feel like you're always forgetting key moments,

00:00:18.020 you're not gonna want to miss this.

00:00:21.480 And at the end, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:22.940 how to get access to the template

00:00:24.260 that I use to put it all in one spot.

00:00:27.820 Let's get into it.

00:00:30.000 First off, I wanna talk about the V-neck. 1.00

00:00:43.700 I know you've probably never seen me wear a V.

00:00:47.020 I do from time to time.

00:00:48.920 I'm just gonna put a plug in here.

00:00:50.480 If you haven't checked out, it's on Vimeo, SNL V-neck.

00:00:53.980 Search that, you're welcome.

00:00:55.820 It's hilarious, and anytime I wear a V-neck,

00:00:57.860 this is what I think about.

00:00:58.580 So now that I've distracted you,

00:01:01.140 I wanna talk about, for me,

00:01:03.240 the challenges around planning my year.

00:01:06.180 It was about five years ago after we had kids,

00:01:08.900 I was building my company, Clarity.

00:01:11.040 My wife had an agency 0.99

00:01:12.200 and we were just really trying to get the most out of it.

00:01:14.660 But you gotta understand,

00:01:15.500 we're two entrepreneurs in the family.

00:01:17.880 I've been building companies now for 20 years.

00:01:19.920 I've had a lot of success.

00:01:21.260 I feel super grateful to financially become extremely wealthy

00:01:26.260 building and scaling software companies.

00:01:27.960 and now coaching some of the best entrepreneurs in the world.

00:01:30.520 But through that, there's a lot of demand on my time,

00:01:33.040 my wife's time, and we wanna be present family.

00:01:35.440 So I actually learned this strategy

00:01:37.740 that I'm gonna teach with you today

00:01:39.100 from my friend Taki Moore.

00:01:40.980 So Taki's one of the top coaches

00:01:43.700 in helping coaches coach, very meta, I know.

00:01:47.340 But anyways, what's funny is Taki taught it to me

00:01:49.620 and I wanted to share it with my coaching clients.

00:01:51.520 And then I found out that actually

00:01:53.360 one of my current coaching clients, Dale Beaumont,

00:01:56.020 who's huge in Australia,

00:01:58.780 is actually the guy that taught Taki a decade prior.

00:02:02.020 Sounds crazy, but I just wanna give attribution,

00:02:05.000 give credit where credit is due.

00:02:07.000 And Dale was actually at one of my live events as an attendee

00:02:11.760 and I was like, hey man, I'm gonna teach this framework

00:02:13.740 because I think it's world-class.

00:02:14.860 Would you mind sharing your process?

00:02:18.020 And he got up and he shared 10 years worth

00:02:21.740 of this planning process and strategy

00:02:24.560 that's allowed him to, I mean, if you follow Dale

00:02:27.020 on Facebook, social media, et cetera,

00:02:28.840 he lives in a highly integrated, high quality of life

00:02:31.960 and he's an incredibly high performer.

00:02:34.500 And that to me is the benefit of being able to assess

00:02:38.760 in a 12 month period, all the key elements

00:02:41.500 that you wanna get in there to make sure

00:02:42.720 that you're really squeezing the most out of life

00:02:45.500 on both a personal and professional level

00:02:47.680 and ensuring that you're doing that in a way

00:02:51.660 that you're not wasting time having to replan.

00:02:53.540 So these are the five key strategies that you need

00:02:56.500 to build a solid one-year plan for your life.

00:03:01.120 Number one, big rocks first.

00:03:03.100 Now, if you've never heard the analogy of the big rocks,

00:03:05.740 essentially glass jar, you've got sand, pebbles, and rocks.

00:03:09.440 If you put the sand in first,

00:03:12.040 then the pebbles and the rocks,

00:03:13.100 you can't fit everything in the jar.

00:03:14.320 You put the big rocks in first,

00:03:15.720 then the pebbles, then the sand.

00:03:16.980 Then the cool part is you can pour in water on top of that.

00:03:20.040 That is the spice of life.

00:03:22.340 you can make it all work.

00:03:23.600 So the key is you gotta put the big stuff in.

00:03:25.440 So when I think of my year, okay, number one,

00:03:28.380 critical business commitments, speaking engagements,

00:03:32.240 my live events, et cetera,

00:03:33.660 all the things that are critical to the business goes in

00:03:36.980 because the family stuff,

00:03:38.100 we're gonna make sure we get the quality time,

00:03:40.580 but when those things happen,

00:03:42.140 other than we have two week vacations, separate weeks,

00:03:46.640 one with my family, one with my wife's family,

00:03:49.000 those are kind of locked and loaded.

00:03:50.700 Everything else fits around that.

00:03:52.480 The key is just to make sure

00:03:53.960 that you put the birthdays in there.

00:03:55.560 You put the, you know,

00:03:57.040 if you have any friends that are doing,

00:03:59.000 you know, weddings, et cetera,

00:04:00.240 just make sure that you source all of that

00:04:02.920 before you go into your planning strategy

00:04:04.420 so you've got the big rocks.

00:04:06.520 Because the last thing you wanna do,

00:04:07.920 and I've experienced this,

00:04:09.000 is, you know, double book,

00:04:10.640 find out after the fact,

00:04:12.060 not ask, forgot to write a date down,

00:04:14.620 realize that you've overcommitted,

00:04:16.740 that you're in a different part of the world

00:04:18.560 and you wanna be at something that's important,

00:04:20.340 and et cetera, or have to cancel on somebody

00:04:23.640 if you made a commitment

00:04:24.840 and then now you gotta go back on it

00:04:26.080 because you had a personal thing

00:04:27.800 that you wanted to take precedence,

00:04:29.120 but all you had to do is just be aware.

00:04:31.120 The key is to source and get all that information

00:04:33.700 so you put the big rocks in first.

00:04:36.320 Number two, revenue milestones.

00:04:38.720 Regardless of what business you're in,

00:04:40.520 the way I think about it is there are certain projects,

00:04:43.540 key outcomes, key moments throughout your year

00:04:47.000 that if you think about the next 12 months,

00:04:48.700 especially if you're the founder and CEO

00:04:50.660 that you need to understand and lock in

00:04:53.120 in regards to the cadence in the rhythm

00:04:56.060 of your year to be successful.

00:04:57.900 So understanding if that's a marketing launch,

00:05:02.280 a product release, a live event, workshops,

00:05:08.140 key hiring, fundraising,

00:05:09.980 put those big revenue growth oriented milestones

00:05:14.340 in your calendar and maybe block out the week or week prior

00:05:18.140 because that'll give you confidence to know like,

00:05:20.020 hey, those two weeks, I can't go on vacation here

00:05:23.060 because I've got this primary outcome that needs to happen

00:05:25.960 and it needs to be locked and loaded.

00:05:27.520 So for me, the way I think about it is

00:05:29.800 there's only a handful of things in an annual basis,

00:05:32.680 maybe three to five,

00:05:34.000 that are critical to drive my goals and dreams forward

00:05:37.540 and those go in the planning

00:05:40.580 so that I don't accidentally overcommit myself

00:05:43.900 prior to one of those big outcomes and get in a bad spot.

00:05:47.540 Number three, think once.

00:05:49.040 One of the benefits of planning this way

00:05:51.780 is that you think once.

00:05:53.020 So much of time, energy is wasted

00:05:55.740 on having to rethink situations.

00:05:58.480 I have one of my best friends.

00:06:00.060 I love him, but here's a scenario.

00:06:01.800 And he's gotten crazy better, like four times better.

00:06:04.700 But there was a point where the way he lived his life

00:06:08.740 was very ad hoc.

00:06:10.320 And what that meant was he wouldn't plan,

00:06:12.660 he'd show up here and he'd forget this.

00:06:14.220 Or he would commit to this and forget that.

00:06:16.980 And like literally his life was chaotic

00:06:19.400 because it was always a rush to fix

00:06:22.200 these other commitments to people,

00:06:24.300 waking up early, going to the office, coming back,

00:06:27.120 meeting with this person on a Sunday,

00:06:28.660 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:06:30.160 The way I think about it is I save all of that mental overload

00:06:33.380 or overhead because I think once.

00:06:36.360 I look at my year, I'm like, okay, I look at, I think once.

00:06:40.360 And then I don't have to think about it again.

00:06:42.860 This is the plan.

00:06:44.140 So the benefit of doing that,

00:06:45.980 I mean, I don't know if you've ever gone back and forth

00:06:48.260 on something.

00:06:49.400 Most founders, especially I'm talking to the CEO I was there,

00:06:52.280 the ones that I coach, this is the critical,

00:06:54.800 is our ability to make decisions fast

00:06:56.920 is what allows us to unlock growth.

00:06:59.380 Anytime I see a company struggling to grow,

00:07:01.860 it's because they haven't made a decision.

00:07:03.380 It's literally just making a decision.

00:07:06.140 And using this strategy to think once

00:07:09.940 will allow you to build it

00:07:12.060 and then not have to think about it again.

00:07:13.740 And it'll give you clarity to communicate

00:07:15.240 to other people in your life

00:07:16.280 that might be demanding your time

00:07:17.720 if you can or can't do it quickly

00:07:20.180 versus maybe let me get back to you, et cetera.

00:07:23.200 So it just allows your team, you yourself

00:07:27.100 to just think once, get it done

00:07:28.580 and make it easier on your life.

00:07:30.480 Number four, stress test.

00:07:32.200 Once you've designed this,

00:07:33.380 and I'm gonna give you the template in a second.

00:07:34.900 Once you've designed this one page preloaded year,

00:07:38.860 you'll be able to stress test it.

00:07:40.260 You'll be able to look at it.

00:07:41.680 You know, the way I think about it is I'm adding,

00:07:43.260 you know typically I work on the professional stuff first obviously the personal birthday is

00:07:47.980 all that's there it's present it's almost now part of our template and then we add the

00:07:51.960 professional and then I synchronize on the personal so essentially my wife does her professional stuff 0.99

00:07:56.820 I do mine we merge the calendars together then we do our personal stuff what kind of vacations

00:08:01.900 do we want to do what kind of hobby trips we want to take on what kind of who do we want to spend

00:08:06.760 time with within the year and we look at it we try to get our year kind of 75 percent committed

00:08:12.380 like at the beginning of the year

00:08:14.440 so that we know what we're doing.

00:08:15.780 We're asking ourselves, if we execute,

00:08:17.700 will we end up at the end of the year going,

00:08:19.600 man, that was an incredible 12 months, right?

00:08:23.380 So it looks a little daunting, feel overwhelming.

00:08:25.760 You're like, wow, that's a lot of stuff.

00:08:27.100 But honestly, when you get into the motion

00:08:28.540 and you do this a few years in a row,

00:08:30.160 you know, we've been doing this now

00:08:31.140 for about four years, I think.

00:08:32.920 It's just a really great cadence to get into.

00:08:35.720 And for me, it's all about sequencing.

00:08:37.540 So I learned a long time ago in scaling companies

00:08:40.060 that sequencing equals success.

00:08:42.620 It's not about the list of things you do,

00:08:44.660 just like, you know, if you're baking a cake,

00:08:46.480 it's not about the ingredients,

00:08:47.900 it's about the order that you put those ingredients in

00:08:51.060 to get the outcome, in that case, a cake in your life,

00:08:54.980 growth in your business, growth in your marriage,

00:08:57.140 presence with your family, et cetera,

00:08:59.340 world-class relationships, all that fun stuff.

00:09:01.760 So make sure that you stress test it

00:09:03.460 by looking at the completed plan

00:09:05.260 to know that it's gonna deliver on the outcomes

00:09:06.860 you're trying to achieve for your life.

00:09:08.160 And number five, work the plan.

00:09:10.540 So there's no point in doing all this prep work

00:09:14.160 and designing it and prepping, et cetera,

00:09:16.600 if you're not going to focus

00:09:18.240 and commit to what you've committed to.

00:09:19.500 So my whole thing is blinders on.

00:09:22.240 Will 10% of what we plan change?

00:09:25.700 Yeah, it's about 10%.

00:09:27.440 But for the most part, it's there.

00:09:29.760 And the way we do it is we have

00:09:31.700 an F yeah decision-making process, okay?

00:09:34.220 Change the F for a more explicit word.

00:09:36.320 But we have a process where my wife and I

00:09:38.120 ask ourselves, is that an F yeah thing? So if something new comes in throughout the year and

00:09:44.140 it's like conflicting with something we've already committed to, we'll just ask ourselves,

00:09:47.860 is that an F yeah for you? And if both of us, both of her and I are in agreement, then boom,

00:09:53.040 we change it, we swap it out. But for the most part, we want to work the plan. We don't want

00:09:57.640 to have to go back on decisions. We don't want to add that cognitive overhead. We literally just

00:10:01.900 want to say this if we execute it's going to be amazing let's make it happen let's get it to come

00:10:08.200 to life let's get everybody on board so they understand how to communicate and work with us

00:10:13.620 and that to me is how we do a fully preloaded year that's going to get your business growing

00:10:19.360 your relationship in check your health on point you know present with your family and really try

00:10:25.340 to squeeze as much as you can out of your year so quick recap how to plan your year to fit

00:10:31.000 everything in on one page, what I call the preloaded year. Number one, big rocks first. Number

00:10:35.500 two, revenue milestones for growth. Number three, think once. Reduce that mental overhead. Four,

00:10:42.180 stress test. Sequencing equals success. And work the plan. Put the blinders on. So as I mentioned

00:10:49.240 at the beginning of the episode, I want to share with you the preloaded year template. This was

00:10:52.660 created from my buddy Taki. I've revised it a little bit for my clients. It was taught to him

00:10:57.260 by Dale Beaumont.

00:10:58.540 You can click the link below to get your copy.

00:11:00.300 The way to use it, the way I instruct my clients

00:11:02.860 is create a coloured legend at the bottom.

00:11:06.220 So you might do personal, family stuff,

00:11:09.500 work, hobbies, non-profit, whatever you want,

00:11:12.340 maybe five or six categories in different colours.

00:11:14.580 And then when you're adding stuff to the calendar,

00:11:17.800 because it's a one-pager and you're adding

00:11:19.220 like your colour coding, like vacation, that's family,

00:11:21.400 so that might be green, you know, work stuff is blue,

00:11:25.020 you know, non-profit stuff is yellow,

00:11:26.520 and you just kind of like fill in the colour code

00:11:28.860 because here's what I've discovered as a little tip

00:11:31.120 is life is about energy flows.

00:11:34.900 So for example, one thing I look for is I make sure

00:11:37.860 that after a heads down compressed time of business focus,

00:11:41.920 those revenue milestones for me, live events,

00:11:44.380 right after I'm trying to do something with my family

00:11:47.180 because I know the week prior,

00:11:48.800 I'm probably not gonna be as present as I'd like to be

00:11:51.340 as I prep, as I focus, as I get ready.

00:11:53.920 So the week after is a great opportunity

00:11:55.740 for me to decompress and just be 100% present

00:11:58.060 because my clients, I've filled up their tanks,

00:12:01.240 they're jiving, they're pumped,

00:12:03.260 and then I can be a lot present.

00:12:04.700 So for me, when I look at it,

00:12:06.040 I use the colours to provide energy flows,

00:12:09.280 to assess the year, to make sure that it's not,

00:12:11.720 you know, start, stop, start, stop with different things.

00:12:13.820 And I'm always looking for just even travel stuff.

00:12:17.020 If there's like this trips here and this trips there,

00:12:18.880 if I change this, I can do it in the same location,

00:12:21.680 saves me travel days, et cetera.

00:12:23.920 So Colored Legend, do one for your business

00:12:28.100 and then do one for the personal and integrate those.

00:12:30.680 You can click the link to download your copy

00:12:32.780 of the pre-loaded year to work on for yourself.

00:12:36.160 If you like this video, be sure to smash that like button,

00:12:38.780 subscribe to my channel.

00:12:40.060 And if there's somebody that you feel like my best friend

00:12:42.540 was a little chaotic and out of control,

00:12:44.380 you wanna suggest this video to it,

00:12:45.720 feel free to send it to them.

00:12:47.400 If you're that friend, hello, great to have you here.

00:12:50.720 And as per usual, I wanna challenge you

00:12:52.420 live a bigger life and a bigger business,

00:12:54.700 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:12:56.060 You've never seen this?

00:12:56.960 Oh dude, I can't even do this video until you watch this.

Dan Martell - June 15, 2020

How To Plan Your Year

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