What if you could achieve your biggest dreams by focusing on the small, everyday actions within your control?
Prioritizing inputs over goals, especially when the economic outlook isn't so rosy. We'll explore relatable scenarios like losing weight, earning $10,000 a month, and running a marathon, showing how simple daily habits—like tracking what you eat, reaching out to potential clients, or dedicating time to run—can lead you to success in a more predictable and less stressful way.
In today's episode, I’ll break down how to turn the intimidating task of making $100,000 a year into a straightforward daily mission. Imagine targeting just one client per day—doesn’t that sound less daunting? Through actionable advice on cold outreach, running ads, and leveraging referrals, discover how you can hit those big numbers by focusing on what you can control.
Tune in, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
What if you could achieve your biggest dreams by focusing on the small, everyday actions within your control?
Prioritizing inputs over goals, especially when the economic outlook isn't so rosy. We'll explore relatable scenarios like losing weight, earning $10,000 a month, and running a marathon, showing how simple daily habits—like tracking what you eat, reaching out to potential clients, or dedicating time to run—can lead you to success in a more predictable and less stressful way.
In today's episode, I’ll break down how to turn the intimidating task of making $100,000 a year into a straightforward daily mission. Imagine targeting just one client per day—doesn’t that sound less daunting? Through actionable advice on cold outreach, running ads, and leveraging referrals, discover how you can hit those big numbers by focusing on what you can control.
Tune in, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Podcast Sponsor: If you are interested in a spot shoot us an email at info@thehartrimony.com
Speaker 1:
Yo, yo, what's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the more than a side hustle podcast, where we help nine to five us create more impact, income and influence outside their jobs. And my name is Anthony. I am a founder of cleaning business university, a seven figure education business, but also I run a seven figure little cleaning business as well. And this week I heard the same message.
Speaker 1:
Now I don't know if multiple entrepreneurs are going through the same exact season in their business, but the conversation was you are creating the wrong goals. You need to be focused on the inputs. And now you may be thinking like what, how the hell do you know folks in the wrong goals? How do you even know me? And I'm going to tell you exactly why, because I'm in the same boat, the same season that multiple people are in and the economy is a little bit harder this year. Honestly, you know, with the quote-unquote, we've been having this recession for the past. I don't know. Two years now since the pandemic, we went from pandemic to a recession and now we're in a cycle of I. Now we're in a cycle of I don't want to say fear, but we're going through an election cycle and that's always a rocky time. But the message I heard multiple times is like I'm talking about from podcasts, I'm talking about from eBooks, I'm talking about from social media, and it all resonated with me and they said you're focusing on the wrong goals, you need to be focusing on the inputs.
Speaker 1:
Now let me, let's write down what are some examples of understanding goals and understanding inputs. So a quick definition of goals. Like, let's say I'm going to use a broad example. Let's say you want to lose 10 pounds. That is a goal, right. So you're like all right, I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year. So, let's say, december 2025, right. You say I want to make $10,000 a month in my business by the end of the year. So let's say, december 2025, right. You say I want to make $10,000 a month in my business by the end of, you know, next quarter. Or I want to be able to run a half marathon, like I was right. Those are some examples of us setting goals. Right, you know what the long-term outcome is, you know what the end result is. So it was like us looking down a, a hallway and at the end of that hallway, that's the goal we want to get to right now. I think that's the wrong mindset to have right now, especially in this season, because at the end of the day, you can't control those goals. We're gonna talk about that in a little bit.
Speaker 1:
But what are some inputs? So an example of an input when we're talking about we want to lose 10 pounds, we can't even define how much weight we want to lose. So we can't say by the end of the year I want to lose 10 pounds. Oh, by every single month I want to lose a pound and a half. Right, we can't even control that. The input is I want to be able to eat less than 2000 calories per day. You can control that, I guarantee you can control that. You can't control your weight going up and down, but if you say I'm going to eat less than 2000 calories a day, then that goal is going to be more attainable right Now.
Speaker 1:
Let's say the goal was $10,000 a month. You cannot control that either. So you may say oh, if I do this, I can make $10,000 a month. But the inputs would be I am going to call 10 clients a day with the close rate of, let's say, 20%, so I may be able to close at least two clients per day, or maybe one client a day, but in order for me to close one client a day I have to at least call 10 or reach out to 10. So those are the inputs that you can control in your business, right? And let's say, for the marathon example, the marathon example would be by the end of the year I want to run a marathon, but in order for me to get to that marathon, I have to say I'm going to at least run this many minutes per day, this many miles a week, this many miles by the end of the month. And those are the inputs that you know you can control. So those are sustainable habits, right? You know an input helps you create a sustainable habit, meaning I can sustain eating 2000 calories a day. That's easy for me to do. I can't say I'm going to lose one pound a day, one pound a week, one pound a month, but I know every single day I can at least track my calories enough to know that if I stay under 2000 calories I am on the right track. I know if I run, you know, five minutes a day, that is a sustainable habit, right? These are things that are helping you create long lasting habits and it helps you create those, helps you eventually get to those goals.
Speaker 1:
But the more important thing is the inputs of those goals. Now let's talk about why the inputs matter more than the goals. I think one of the biggest things is the controllability and the predictability. Like we can control the steps we are taking by the inputs. So instead of us saying we're going to hit that $10,000 a month milestone, we're going to say I might do outreach to about 10 clients a day. We know we can control that. That is the most predictable thing. Let's say you try to hit that $10,000 a month or at least $100,000 a year. Or let's say the goal is to lose 10 pounds. What happens when you have a bad weekend? What happens if you get hurt? What happens if you get injured? Things that you cannot control. What happens if the weather's so bad outside you can't go running? You cannot control that right. So now, if we say our inputs are controllable steps, we know exactly that we could say, all right if we can't run outside to get this marathon goal, but we know for a fact we can stay under 2,000 calories. We can actually predict our progress through those inputs. So that's something that we could track every single day, every single week, every single month, and I highly recommend you track those inputs sales calls.
Speaker 1:
When we were doing another product, I would track how many calls per day I had to have on my calendar in order to close how many leads per day. So I said in order for us to hit this revenue goal, I have to have at least 10 calls on my calendar. Out of those 10, four are not going to show up. Out of that four, I'm going to close one. So at the end of every day I had to make sure the next day I had 10 calls on my calendar. Okay, rain, sleep, snow, shine, whatever. I had to have 10 calls on my calendar because half were not going to show and then I was going to be able to close one out of the half that didn't show, right. So that was the controllable input. I couldn't say I want to close 10 clients. I had to say I have to have 10 calls on my calendar right Now. That allowed me to have predictable process through my input, because their input was me saying 10 calendar, 10 closes on 10 scheduled calls at least will allow me to close one on the calendar, right. So that was an example.
Speaker 1:
But then also, what it allowed me to do is reduce my anxiety when I tell you, like, when you're talking about business, we talk about these goals and you got these big, you got, we got. We all have huge goals, right. But when you think about those goals it creates so much anxiety. And I'm telling you because I am there. If you are watching me on YouTube right now, I'm rubbing my forehead because, like the hard sauce got some big ass goals. But the problem is those goals create so much anxiety on us as a, as a business, right, or me maybe it's not Janoka, maybe it's just me I have these big goals and it's like I want to make a million dollars in a year and it's like that's the goal. That's the goal, but let's focus on what we can control, which is the inputs of that.
Speaker 1:
So the less I started focusing on the big goals and more started focusing on the inputs and lowering my anxiety, cause I can. I can control my inputs, but it's also boosting my motivation to get shit done. So I'm like yo, every day, 10 calls on the calendar. Four is not going to. That means four or five people are going to waste my time, not show up. Out of those four or five people, I'm going to get at least one Like that creates motivation because I know I can control those inputs.
Speaker 1:
Now, out of those four that showed up, I could maybe close one right. When the cleaning business is right, I'm like I'm going to reach out. We're going to reach out to about 10, 15 clients via email and text. We're going to be able to close one. We know what our goal is, but we also know the inputs that we need to put in right and then this allows you to get some quick wins. So the quick win may not be you getting, you know, running a 5k before your half marathon in about you know a couple of weeks, or it may not be losing 20, you know, let's say, two pounds out of your 10 quick win Maybe. All right, I'm looking slimmer in the mirror now because I'm tracking my calories, or my face is slimming out, like we're able to track these goals every I could look at myself in the mirror and see that I'm losing weight. Or I look at a picture from a week ago and if you guys don't do this especially if you a health nut like me you'd be taking pictures of yourself, not in a creepy way, but just to make sure you are progressing towards where you want to go right, and this allows you to create those scenarios where you can see your progress day in and day out. I can't see my end of the year goal making a million dollars, but I can see that. Okay, out of these 10 clients, I closed one that gets me a lot closer to my goal. So that allows you to do that and then also just creates those again, creating those long lasting habits.
Speaker 1:
Now let's talk about how to shift your focus from goals to inputs. Right, I'm gonna spend a couple couple minutes on this, like you know, a couple minutes. So I want to pinpoint some effective inputs that you could do. So. For us, this is an entrepreneurship, this is a business podcast, and most of the time we talk about making money. So I wish you guys could see my iPad. I'll put my iPad on the screen. I've been huge on my iPad these last couple weeks. But let's say you know what, maybe I can put this on the screen somehow. Maybe I won't. If you're listening to this on the computer I mean on a podcast you won't be able to see my screen, but maybe I'll try to put this on our YouTube page.
Speaker 1:
So let's say the goal is, let's say, $10,000 a month is a goal. We know that's a goal $10,000 per month. $10,000 per month divided by let's say you know what? Let's take it one step up. Let's say $100,000 a year. That's the goal right. $100,000 a year, that's the goal right. $100,000 per year. And if we break that down, that is about $8,333 per month. Now, that's per month. Let's say it's 30 days in a month. That gives you $277 per day.
Speaker 1:
Now, if you're like us or you're in a cleaning business or you know, we teach you how to do that as well. We know, on average, our client base. One client pays us about $250. So essentially, one client per day at $250 essentially gets us to that $100,000 a year goal. So the question is, instead of us saying we want to make $100,000 a year goal, so the question is, instead of us saying we want to make $100,000 in a year per year, let's say that goal is one client a day.
Speaker 1:
Now, that allows us to see things in a lot more clearer vision. One client a day, now, how do we get that one client a day? So we're doing code outreach, we're doing ads, we're doing referrals. There are a few things that you could do to focus on getting one client a day, but if you really break that now look at that goal. We went from $100,000 a year, which seems like, especially for a new entrepreneur. It seems like it's out of this world to focus on getting $8,333 per month, which still seems like a lot. But then we said if we could get $277 per day and we know our average ticket price is about $250, with a few upsells here and there, we went from trying to make $100,000 to just getting one client a day.
Speaker 1:
Now I don't know about you guys, but that relieves so much anxiety for me, knowing that I don't have to focus on this big goal. If I could just focus on getting that one client, which means that I might just do one Facebook post, I might just do one Instagram post, but I'm also might just reach out to some previous clients right? If I got a referral engine, I might reach out to some people and say, hey, would you mind referring me to somebody else? I might say, all right, for my ad spend. My goal is just to get 10 leads a day. So now I can say I want to get one client per day right. So that makes my inputs a lot more attainable, but it also allows me to track it. So instead of me trying to track $10,000, I could track one client a day. So I'll do a quick recap, just kind of talk about what we said today. But I definitely want my entrepreneurs and business owners and even people just on any sort of journey breaking down that goal, let's not focus on focusing on the goal and let's focus on the inputs of that goal. Now I think that is a lot more crucial and a lot more easier to get to. You're like, you know what I'm going to focus on the things I can control versus the things I can't control.
Speaker 1:
I wanted to read this quick message I saw Because this kind of sparked part of the podcast as well. You know me, I'm always listening to something. Hold on, I'm pulling it up on my phone and this was a post inside of a community that I'm in and it's led by. It's led by an entrepreneur, and he was the one that kind of said you know what? I'm going to go make this podcast episode about this, because this is like the third time I saw this message this week, and let just read it to you guys right quick. Where is it? Where is it? It said focus on input, not goals.
Speaker 1:
I don't set goals, I set inputs. Goals are something you get. So, for example, get 10 new clients hit $10,000 a month. Those are goals. The downside is that you really can't control them.
Speaker 1:
Things happen. Some clients churn because they have family emergencies or they had death, and you really can't control why that happens. That's why it's not useful to think about them. They will give you a high, high, but if you don't hit them, they will give you a low, low. And I know that and I'm sure you guys can relate to that. You got these goals. When you get them, you are ecstatic, but when you don't, you are probably in bed crying right.
Speaker 1:
So I like to flatten and if you think about inputs instead, do these five things every single day, and that will be a much more helpful input because they are under your control. Plus, if you do these things over a long enough period of time, the goals take care of themselves. I'm going to repeat that one more time If you do these things over a long enough period of time, the goals just take care of themselves. Goals are illusions. Inputs are real. Focus on the now and let tomorrow take care of itself.
Speaker 1:
This is from JK Molina. He's a great writer, great copywriter, great business owner, and I've just been following some of his stuff recently and that was just one of the things he had mentioned. So, guys, focus on the inputs and not the goals and I promise you your goals will be a lot closer than they appear and you'll also be a lot happier, probably a lot less anxiety and a lot more calm in your business. So hopefully it's helped you guys. If it did, please leave us a five-star review on your favorite Apple player and then also make sure you're subscribing to our YouTube channel. At the Hardship Morning, where we drop these gems, we drop this content, but then also it helps someone create a better life for themselves. My name is Anthony Hartzog and I'll see you guys next week. Peace.
