Seven years ago I sat down with a consulting client who told me he wanted to 10x his revenue in the next 12 months. He had just finished his first year breaking seven figures, and felt like it was now possible to push for significant growth.
It was early in my consulting career and I should have spoken up sooner, but in that moment I knew what he wanted to do wasn’t possible. It’s not that 10x growth isn’t possible in one year (although it’s very unlikely), it’s that all he had was ambition and a stated goal.
It takes a lot more than that to accomplish a feat as large as 10x revenue growth.
Needless to say, that client never hit his goal. And seven years later still hasn’t achieved his 10x goal.
What I’ve learned since my work with this client is that any ambitious goal must be met with a plan. And it can’t just be any plan, it has to be believable.
Earlier this week I met with a consulting client. During that call I was presented with their audacious goal. (It wasn’t 10x growth in one year, but it was aggressive and ambitious.) And the first thing I worked on with them in the pursuit of their believable plan was to have a high level understanding of the vision of the company.
What are they trying to accomplish? (And maybe even more important: why are they trying to accomplish it?)
Second, what are the smaller denominators that will get them there?
In their case, the way they were measuring success was twofold: a customer success metric and a revenue metric. The revenue metrics would tie to the number of people going through their programs, and the customer success metric was tied to the percentage of customer transformations of those who took their programs.
These are the basic units at the beginning of their believable plan.
The building of your believable plan can really start that simple.
Where are you trying to go? Be as specific as possible. And what are the units it will take to get there?
At this point you will be able to tell a story of how you can accomplish your audacious goal.
When I first talk to people about this step, it doesn’t seem that important, but I cannot stress how important it actually is.
A lot of people want to skip right to taking action toward their audacious goals. And they end up creating a lot of activity that may or may not get them where they ultimately want to go.
Then there are people who will focus so deeply on the goal itself, and try to “manifest” it into existence, as if there is some magic formula that they unlock by just deeply wanting something enough.
I think it’s much simpler than that.
I believe that if you believe the story you are telling yourself about how you will accomplish your believable plan toward your audacious goal, you are more likely to subconsciously accomplish your work toward that goal than if you do not believe it.
The conscious mind processes information at a much slower rate, handling about 40 to 50 bits of information per second.
The subconscious mind can process vast amounts of information simultaneously. It handles about 11 million bits of information per second.
Think about the vast difference here.
This means, even if we try to consciously believe something that we do not actually believe, we won’t be able to trick our subconscious mind no matter what.
The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, also called Frequency Illusion, occurs when something you recently learned about suddenly appears “everywhere.” This happens because your brain starts paying more attention to that specific thing. Your subconscious mind moving at 11 million bits per second starts putting the dots together without effort.
So, if you can create the clarity of a believable plan, your mind will automatically start working toward finding ways that you can achieve this plan. It will work to prove itself right.
Almost like magic.
So here are the quick and easy steps to building a believable plan.
First, you must be clear on what you are trying to accomplish. This is the audacious goal.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume you are trying to grow a business to $500k annually because you want to provide a living for your family and work a job you love.
Now you have your mark: $500k annually.
Now what are the denominators to get there? Let’s say you have a course that sells for $500 and a coaching package that you can upsell for $5,000.
How many units will you need to sell to achieve your goal?
The answer is 1,000 courses OR 100 coaching packages. Or a more likely scenario is some combination of them both.
Again, for the sake of this argument let’s assume you only have the capacity to do 10 coaching packages per quarter. That would mean you could do 40 a year.
This would result in a total of $200,000. Leaving $300,000 in remaining revenue needed to hit your goal.
That means you would need to sell 600 courses per year.
Now, assuming most of the coaching packages come from people who purchase the course, then there would be a 6.7% conversion rate of people who bought the course to upgrade to a coaching package.
Is that believable? Do you have data to support or deny this hypothesis? If not, can you talk to someone who has a similar program and see what they see?
(For the record, I think that’s a believable conversion rate.)
Now, let’s talk about the 600 course sales you would need per year. How big is your email list? What about your social media following? How many promotions will you need to run? Will the product be available all of the time or just part of the time?
This will take some time to plan it out, but the more you plan the more believable your plan will become.
My friend Matt Gartland taught me a planning and strategy framework called OGSM.
O – Objectives G – Goals S – Strategies M – Metrics
According to Matt here is what each of these mean:
Objectives:
A vision based direction that aims to achieve something big. Can be quantitative in nature, further quantified by its goals. Must empower the company’s vision, mission and values.
Goals:
Quantifiable results that prove the objective was achieved. Must have at least one goal; can have multiple goals. Goals are delegated to others consistent with their roles and responsibilities.
Strategies:
Prioritized work to serve in the pursuit of achieving the goals. Can be a combination of projects (one time) or programs (ongoing). Should not include tactics or tasks.
Metrics:
Data points to collect, analyze and review along the way. Over time, should produce trends that suggest progress. Must be concentrated on the critical work (e.g. KPIs or OKRs).
Basically, each layer serves the layer above it.
Metrics prove if the strategies are working or not.
Strategies are the ideas that accomplish the goals.
Goals are the progress markers on the way to achieving the objectives.
And the objectives prove we are on the right path to our ultimate destination.
The more you use these concepts in the development of your plan, the more you will believe your plan, and you know how that will serve your ultimate destination.
Here is my challenge for you today:
Where do you have a desired outcome without a believable plan? Where do you have a plan, but you don’t actually believe it?
Let’s remedy that.
