THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

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Quarterly Planning

This edition at a glance:

• Wellness Tip: Bedtime consistency

• Quote

• Post: Great parenting = great leadership

• Article: Quarterly Planning

Wellness Tip

Sleep consistency is one of the most important factors in overall sleep quality.

That means the more consistent our bedtime and waketimes are, the better our body will allow us to sleep. The biggest challenge to nailing this factor is weekends - if you’re a 10pm-6am sleeper during the week, and on weekends sleep from 1-9am, you’re creating a 3 hour deviance from your normal sleep rhythm.

This will cause your sleep quality to lower during the weekends, and the adjustment back to your weekly timing more difficult.

Optimal is no deviation of course, but we all have to live our lives so here’s a few ways to mitigate this issue:

1. Set bedtime alarms to remind you when it’s time to start your sleep routine. This will reduce the amount of time wasted that often occurs on weekends when we know we don’t have wake up.

2. Manage drugs and alcohol - Follow the 1-2-3 alcohol rule (1 hard stop per year, 2 max drinks per day, stop drinking 3 hours before bed and 3 or less days drinking per week).

3. Eat clean - Staying up late messes with your sleep quality. Don’t compound the effect with other factors that also mess things up, like eating poorly. Eat clean on the weekend so the sleep yo do get is of the highest quality.

4. Utilize naps on the weekend - If you normally go to bed at 10pm and wake up a 6, if you go to bed at midnight - instead of waking up at 8, wake up at 7 and take a 20 minute nap. That makes your wake-up deviation less extreme and still gives you a decent amount of rest.

5. Get enough sleep during the week - Catching up on sleep on weekends is great if you have the time to do that. But most of us are just as busy or more so on weekends, so going into the weekend sleep deprived and then staying up late compounds the effect. Work hard to have consistent and adequate sleep during the week.

Quote

Success is not about the destination; it’s about the journey, and celebrating each step along the way.

Post

Great parenting = great leadership, read here.

Personal Planning

I did a solo planning day last week with the intention of doing a couple of things:

1. Take a clarity break and think about my life and business undistracted for a few hours

2. Think critically about the best use of my time for my business development activities

3. Review the previous quarter and learn from it

4. Plan my next quarter (my quarter is one month later than typical)

This week I want to simply lay out my quarterly plan, and make one note about how my weekly scorecard feeds my quarterly plan.

Process - Building a personal plan can be as simple as writing goals down for 15 minutes and going with it. Mine was a bit more involved, here’s what I did:

1. Get undistracted for the day - turn off all administrative work, shut phone down, close out distractions (15 mins)

2. Get into the space - did a walking meditation for 15 minutes to start focusing (20 mins)

3. Complete wheel of life - Score 11 areas 1-10 on my current satisfaction with them - Career, Where you live, Money, Physical fitness, Mental Health, Organization & Planning, Friends & Family, Relationship, Personal Growth, Fun & Recreation, Spirituality

4. Review previous quarter - Reviewed my numbers from the previous quarter, including the quarterly rollup of my weekly scorecard, data regarding all prospects I did a presentation (90 minute meeting) with, and all client data including session scores and learnings from them (1 hour)

5. Set new quarter - Set revenues, profit, measurables. Set rocks. (1 Hour)

6. Updated scorecard - Based on seeing my quarterly totals, along with my new goals, I updated a few weekly scorecard items to better align me to my plan (30 minutes)

All in this took about 3 hours with review, goal setting, and aligning metrics to the plan. The rest of the day was thinking, walking, and eating.

Wheel of Life - 6.7 (average score)

Q2 2024 (5/1/24-7/31/24)

Revenues - $50,000 Profit - $35,000 Measurables - 4 Focus Days (first session with new clients)

Rocks - Note the owner is either me or my assistant Hassan 1. 210 proactive calls (calls to clients, connectors, and prospects “when nothing is wrong”) - Mike

1. 4 Wellness events - Mike

2. 1 LinkedIn event - Mike

3. CRM established & Using weekly - Hassan

4. Establish video content process with at least 4 piece of video content posted

5. Monthly finance process established and followed

Personal

1. Complete strength program round 2

2. Start marathon training and run 2x a week starting 5/15

I’m really happy with my plan - it’s simple, focused, and my rocks are all activity based and not outcome based. Meaning they’re all 100% within my control to complete or not, as opposed to having a client total as a goal. There’s nothing wrong with an outcome based rock, but after a quarter in my new role as an EOS Implementer I’m starting to know better what activities drive the right outcomes.

For the rest of the quarter I’ll review this plan daily in a few ways:

1. When I do my morning journaling I’ll review my rocks before determining my 3 most important things to complete

2. My weekly scorecard activity will tell me if i’m on track or off track on key measurables

3. My weekly L10 with my assistant we do rock review

4. My daily check-in with assistant we’re following up on projects related to the rocks

My last quarter was successful - I hit my initial client and revenue targets. But I missed 4 of 7 rocks, which is a dismal percentage. I’ve set this month so that I can complete 100% of my rocks if I simply put in the work, and plan on doing that.

I also know that if I accomplish 100% of my rocks, I’ll very likely be on track for my annual and 3 year plans.

This simple planning process really helps focus my efforts. It also reenergizes things just when they’re starting to get stale.

I hope your quarter is going well so far. If you don’t do any personal planning yet, give this process a try - first time around I’d recommend spending less than an hour on it.

Talk to you next week,

Mike

Thanks for reading The Lifestyle Entrepreneur

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• Vision - getting teams 100% on the same page with where the company is going and how to get there

• Traction - Applying discipline and accountability to achieve that vision

• Healthy - Creating healthy, functional, cohesive leadership teams

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