Dan Martell - March 13, 2017


How To Prioritize a Task List Using Focus Filters™


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

210.71687

Word Count

1,552

Sentence Count

85


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 It's like, if you have multiple businesses it tells me you don't
00:00:02.500 trust your ability to execute in one so you have a backup plan.
00:00:06.040 Backup plans don't work in business.
00:00:15.120 How to prioritize your projects.
00:00:17.160 Here's the deal.
00:00:18.280 If you feel like you've got a list of 100,000 things to do and
00:00:21.320 you don't know where to start or you feel like you've got some
00:00:23.960 big projects to kick off but you don't know which ones you should
00:00:26.720 do in what order or if you're just trying to get your team
00:00:30.160 on the same page because you're frustrated with the fact
00:00:32.460 that they're always working on the wrong things,
00:00:34.360 that's what I want to cover in this video.
00:00:36.000 You know, I really think that if you build the framework
00:00:39.460 that I'm gonna teach you, your team can actually
00:00:42.160 self-prioritize, that is the nirvana.
00:00:44.740 Having people that they can make their own list
00:00:47.600 and not only that, they can then reprioritize it
00:00:49.540 based on the strategy that you give them
00:00:51.640 so that you know they're working on the right things.
00:00:54.040 That is the opportunity.
00:00:56.340 You know, I really learned this lesson
00:00:58.440 working with one of my earlier kind of,
00:01:01.240 I mean, to call him a mentor is kind of,
00:01:03.620 it wouldn't be doing him justice.
00:01:05.140 The guy's name was Stu, and I was building my company,
00:01:07.660 Spheric, and two years into it,
00:01:09.120 after kind of going through a near-death experience,
00:01:12.520 I asked myself, like, has what I built
00:01:16.120 actually been, like, awesome,
00:01:18.060 or is it just a normal business?
00:01:19.940 Like, do I have something incredible,
00:01:22.260 because I thought it was incredible,
00:01:23.640 like, is this a sacred cow or is it just a frigging cow?
00:01:26.480 So I brought this guy, Stewie, and I remember he was,
00:01:29.220 I called him my gray hair even though he had no hair.
00:01:32.240 He used to run a very big telco company.
00:01:35.160 I mean, I got introduced through friends of a friend's
00:01:37.420 and the guy was retired and I convinced him
00:01:39.720 to come work with me in my business to really just see
00:01:42.960 if there was opportunity there.
00:01:44.360 And I've never met somebody with so much frigging energy.
00:01:47.360 I mean, it was like, it was, you couldn't,
00:01:51.040 He would literally work 24-7 if there was a need to.
00:01:55.220 Like it was a big deal to like stop working at 10 p.m.
00:01:58.480 if he was on a roll.
00:02:00.140 And one of the first exercises that he did with me
00:02:02.220 was ask me to make a list.
00:02:03.920 He said, Dan, I want you to make a list of all the things
00:02:05.880 that you know you should be working on,
00:02:07.120 or ideas or strategies, whatever, just make the list.
00:02:09.220 And I was like, all right, and I sat there for like 20 minutes
00:02:11.320 and made the list, and then he came back and he goes,
00:02:13.120 all right, what's the top priority?
00:02:15.700 What should you work on?
00:02:17.300 And I'm looking at my list and I'm like, well, I don't know.
00:02:20.800 this one's probably really important because if I do this
00:02:23.140 and it does this.
00:02:24.260 And he goes, that's cool.
00:02:25.580 And he goes, here's what you need to understand
00:02:27.500 is you have a list of strategies and projects and action items.
00:02:31.340 He said, you could have three different entrepreneurs
00:02:33.380 have this exact same list of good ideas
00:02:36.320 because this is what entrepreneurs do every day.
00:02:37.780 That's what you're doing.
00:02:38.880 And you can have two entrepreneurs execute the list
00:02:42.260 in a different order and their business fails in three years.
00:02:46.200 Or you have the other one and he executes it in the right order
00:02:49.400 and his business thrives.
00:02:51.640 Same list, same good ideas.
00:02:54.100 One of them's done in the right order,
00:02:55.800 the other one's done in a different order.
00:02:57.240 Stu taught me the concept of right action at the right time.
00:03:00.480 A lot of entrepreneurs have strategies.
00:03:01.920 They're like, Dan, should I do this?
00:03:03.340 It's like, I don't know.
00:03:04.780 I need the context.
00:03:05.920 I need to understand what resources you have.
00:03:07.720 What's the management bandwidth?
00:03:08.720 There's a lot of questions to be asked
00:03:10.320 and that's why I do more private client coaching.
00:03:13.060 But Stu taught me that if you wanted to figure out
00:03:15.760 the right way to do it, there is a strategy.
00:03:17.960 and this is what he shared with me
00:03:18.960 and I wanna share with you guys.
00:03:20.620 The first one was, he said, okay,
00:03:22.500 go through and mark anything that makes you money.
00:03:26.540 Like directly if you do this, it's gonna make you money.
00:03:29.540 So I put, you know, make money.
00:03:31.440 So it's like, boom, you have like different symbols.
00:03:33.440 Whatever you wanna do, I'll teach you a more advanced
00:03:35.540 strategy at the end to just get through this quicker.
00:03:37.520 But number one, does it make you money?
00:03:40.340 If you take advantage of that strategy, that action item,
00:03:43.320 is it gonna generate dollars in the door, okay?
00:03:46.280 Most businesses fail because they run out of money,
00:03:48.980 cash flow, whatever it is.
00:03:50.760 So step one, prioritize based on things that make you money.
00:03:53.960 So just, he said, make a little note.
00:03:55.420 What things would make you money?
00:03:56.700 Number two, he said, what are the things
00:03:59.400 that would make a customer happy, okay?
00:04:01.920 So it could be improving your process,
00:04:03.500 improving your onboarding experience,
00:04:04.800 your customer service.
00:04:06.200 I mean, a little, even like if you have a retail store,
00:04:08.560 the smell in the bathroom sounds crazy,
00:04:10.940 but it's been proven that it will increase your revenue.
00:04:14.700 I mean, anything that you know would make,
00:04:16.800 maybe it's adding a new feature to the product,
00:04:19.140 maybe it's adding a new incentive or whatever it is,
00:04:24.040 but it makes the customer happy.
00:04:26.520 That's number two, that's your fill.
00:04:27.720 This is like go through the list and write those down.
00:04:29.820 So I'm like writing them down.
00:04:31.760 So I'm going through, and then he goes,
00:04:33.780 now look through the rest of the item,
00:04:36.080 or all the items again, so it's like makes money,
00:04:38.660 makes customer happy, so just like note those.
00:04:41.000 Then he said, anything that is a repeatable system,
00:04:44.840 meaning that you're gonna do this over and over
00:04:47.700 as the business grows, and it's worthwhile
00:04:51.420 to create a system around, or an operating procedure,
00:04:54.720 how to do that thing.
00:04:56.420 So if one of my action items was
00:04:58.280 build Facebook marketing strategy,
00:05:00.480 then if that's something that I know I'll be always doing,
00:05:03.320 then start that, or put a little note next to it
00:05:06.360 that says create a system, okay?
00:05:09.060 And then, this was the cool part.
00:05:11.360 He said, now that you have all of these items,
00:05:14.400 these projects, actions, to-dos,
00:05:16.460 and you have them marked which ones make money,
00:05:19.940 number two, make the customer happy,
00:05:21.540 or three, allows you to create systems,
00:05:24.380 he said, then rank order them.
00:05:26.080 Like, go through and rank order which ones have all three.
00:05:29.680 And my nerdy math brain's like, all right,
00:05:32.080 well, here's what I'm gonna do.
00:05:33.380 I'm gonna create a scoring system.
00:05:34.960 So I'm like, if it's make money, it's a three.
00:05:37.920 If it makes a customer happy, it's a two.
00:05:40.260 And if it's a system that I could create ongoing,
00:05:43.760 it's a one, right?
00:05:44.800 And then if you put them in a spreadsheet,
00:05:46.100 essentially you calculate the totals.
00:05:48.000 Now some things aren't any of those.
00:05:49.900 They're a zero, right?
00:05:51.560 But if you prioritize and sort in that order,
00:05:53.960 all of a sudden, you and what I had is a list of priorities
00:05:58.840 based on if I took this action,
00:06:01.080 it would improve my business and move it forward.
00:06:03.520 And to me, that is what you do every day.
00:06:06.940 It's what you expect your team to do every day.
00:06:08.940 It's what you would love for them to come up with yourself,
00:06:11.440 but you've never taught them how to do that.
00:06:14.540 So that is my strategy for you.
00:06:16.140 And my challenge to you is actually to sit down
00:06:18.140 and teach your team this process of makes money,
00:06:21.240 makes customer happy, and is a repeatable system.
00:06:23.740 Because when Stu taught me that,
00:06:26.140 it literally took like 100 items on my to-do list
00:06:29.340 and really narrowed it down to the top 20.
00:06:31.340 These are the 20 things that really matter.
00:06:33.340 You know what, the rest of it,
00:06:34.640 Maybe someday, I get there later.
00:06:36.380 But it was right time and right action.
00:06:39.180 So that is my challenge for you in this video is to make that
00:06:42.180 list of all projects, actions, to-dos and prioritize them
00:06:45.680 based on this strategy.
00:06:47.260 I call the framework the focus filters.
00:06:49.680 There's only three.
00:06:50.880 You score them two, three, two and one, right?
00:06:54.100 Makes money, customer happy, end system.
00:06:56.620 And then you can rank order.
00:06:57.600 If you want to go all pro, you can do it in a spreadsheet and
00:07:00.300 that'll save you a lot of time.
00:07:01.840 So I hope this video finds you incredibly well.
00:07:04.640 And as for usual, I challenge you to live a bigger life
00:07:06.920 and a bigger business and we'll see you next Monday.
00:07:08.720 Cheers.
00:07:09.540 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel.
00:07:12.120 I'd also invite you to join my newsletter
00:07:14.360 where I share exclusive invites to events
00:07:16.720 and other free training material.
00:07:18.120 And if you're ready to get going,
00:07:19.120 I got a couple videos queued up.
00:07:20.660 I'll see you next week.