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And we're back, folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts. His next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time? He's going for it. Is that his phone? He's snapping a pic. He's texting Ramp. Jim is fast, but this is unheard of. That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable.

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On ramp, expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.com. hey O. Welcome to the $100 RMBA show, the business podcast that always got your back with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a free ride to the $100 MBA program over at 1. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. We announced this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. In today's episode, you will learn how to prepare for a successful 2024. It's almost hard to believe, but 2024 is just around the corner. Are you ready to take on the year with a plan of action so you could be as successful as possible? Well, after this episode, you will, because I'm going to an action plan. I'm going to show you how to come up with the exact things to work on for 2024 to hit your goals. I'm going to show you how to focus and harness as much energy to make sure your business is successful so that you actually see forward momentum, seeing progress. But it's just not going to happen by accident. You got to make sure you have a strategy, and that's what this episode's all about. Another year just flew by. Let's make sure another one doesn't fly by without some massive growth in our business. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When it comes to the success of our business for the next year, here's the truth. You are your biggest challenge. You are the person that you have to worry about the most. Why? Because distractions are the number one reason why you're not going to achieve your goals. And the reason why we get distracted is because we don't have a guiding light. We don't have something to refer to, to say, is this what I'm supposed to be doing right now, and this is what this episode's all about, is to give you a plan of action so that you can refer to it anytime you're wondering, what should I be doing? What should I be focused on? Is this important? Should I do this thing that is in front of me, this opportunity that's being offered to me, should I say yes to this thing? Well, it's not going to be ambiguous, it's not going to be a mystery anymore. Because in today's episode, I'm going to share with you a five part strategy that I love to use to set up my next year to be successful. After this episode, you're gonna feel inspired, you're gonna feel motivated, but most of all, you're gonna feel prepared. You're gonna be ready to take on 2024 and make it a success. Let's start with step one, and that is deciding on one big goal. This is what's gonna shape your whole year. What is the one goal you wanna achieve by the end of the year? If you accomplish this one thing, you're a happy camper by the end of the year. This doesn't have to be very specific, but it. What does this mean? Let me give you some examples. One goal might be, I want to increase my profitability. I want to be more profitable. Maybe one goal is I want to double my revenue, or maybe I want to double my customers. Or maybe one goal is I want to launch this new product idea I have. Here's the key. You're only going to choose one, so make sure it counts. Why? Because there's a lot of things you're going to have to do. We're going to talk about that later to accomplish this goal. So for example, if you want to double your customers in 2024, well, that's going to take a lot of different projects. Marketing, sales, maybe product development. A lot of things you're going to have to do to contribute to that one goal. So think of what is the one thing you want to accomplish in 2024. Remember, business is a long term game. If you do this every year for 10 years, you're going to crush it in 10 different ways in your business. Pretty cool. Now part one has a counter question as well. This is actually very important. So once you decide on your goal, you need to ask yourself, why is this a bad idea? You have to question it. Why? Because by questioning it, you're going to see if it's worth pursuing. You have to be your biggest supporter, but at the same time you have to be real, you have to actually poke some holes in this idea. Maybe that's not what we really want. Maybe there's something else. Maybe actually what you want is profitability, not just revenue. Write a laundry list of why this big goal might be a bad idea. Why will this be sort of a failure in your eyes? The reason why we do this is so that we can know what's ahead of us. Know what are some of the counter arguments of this goal, and you might want to adjust it as we go through that questioning. All right, so step one is that big goal. Step two, what are the three big projects that I need to do very well to get me to that goal? What are the three things I will have to do in my business? See these things as projects that you would maybe spend three to four months on. So say, for example, your goal is to get more customers. Well, you're going to need more leads. So maybe you need to do some more content marketing. So you might say, I'm going to start a podcast that's going to get me more brand awareness, that's going to get me some more marketing. That's one project. Well, then once I get the leads, I'm going to need to sell them. So maybe I got to do more sales webinars. Or maybe it's email marketing. Maybe it's running ad campaigns. The point here is that you need to decide on three projects you will work on in 2024 so that your big goal gets accomplished. Remember, it's better for you to focus and really do well on each project. Give it the time it needs to make it a success, than to spread yourself thin on 10 projects and kind of drop the ball. A lot of people do this one month they work on something like they work on their social media campaigns, and then after that, they drop the ball, they stop doing that, they don't look at it again, and they work on something new. Like they start writing blog posts, and then a month later, they forget about blog posting, they don't publish again, and then they go on and start a YouTube channel. No, we want to work on projects that are sustainable so that we can reach our goals, so that we can actually support the mission of the year. So decide on three projects, three things you will need to work on this year to make the goal a reality. Now, this is where most people stop. This is usually where people say, okay, great, I have a goal. I know what I have to do to accomplish that goal. I have some projects that are going to, you know, contribute to that Goal. And they're like, okay, planning done. No, I actually have three more steps in addition to these two to make sure it actually happens. And step three is probably the most critical one. We got to hold ourselves accountable as entrepreneurs, as leaders. We can't just say things and not follow through. We also have to have a plan of action when things go wrong. Why? Because they inevitably will go wrong. This is something I've learned over 20 years of entrepreneurship. You will have challenges. Things will not go as planned. You need to be ready. Just like some military general or something that's going to war. They need to have a plan for every scenario you're going after this goal of yours, you gotta anticipate the fact that there will be some landmines. So step three is you need to answer this question. What will stop me from pulling off these three projects again? What will stop me from pulling off from accomplishing. From completing the three projects I need to pull off to accomplish the goal? And you need to make a laundry list. You need to be as honest as possible. You need to write things like, I'm going to get distracted. I'm going to see something new and change my mind. I might get overwhelmed. I might not have the money to pull off the things I want to pull off for these projects. Just write it all down. It's important for you to, to just actually document what are the things that could happen that will stop you from accomplishing those three projects. Once you've written all that down, you need to then write the counter, how will I prevent those things from happening? How will I prevent those things from happening? So I am not stopped in my tracks. So I do accomplish those three projects. So, for example, you might say, I might get overwhelmed because I'll start saying yes to other things that are not these three projects. So what are you going to do, prevent that from happening? Well, you might put a post it note on your monitor asking the question, does this help accomplish the three projects? So anytime you get an email, a phone call, a DM on Twitter or X that says, hey, do you want to do this, that or the other, if that thing doesn't help you accomplish three projects, it's a no. This is really hard for a lot of people because they're not used to saying no to opportunities. I was one of those people and I'm still. Somebody has to remind myself, you have to say no so you can say yes to the important things. So how you prevent those roadblocks from happening, those things from happening that are going to stop you from accomplishing those three projects. Got a 7am meeting on a Monday expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text. Yay. Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp up. All right, we talked about the big goal. We talked about the three projects that will accomplish that goal. And number three, we wrote down all the things that are going to stop me from accomplishing those three projects and how I prevent it from stopping me. Number four, what needs to get done and who will do it. This is such an important part of the equation because we need to know how to get granular. We need to actually dissect what needs to be done, what is a to do list for each project and then we want to write down who's going to do what. Now mind you, this was really important to me because it reminded me that I'm a business owner. I need to delegate things and make sure things get pulled off instead of me doing everything myself, even if it means me hiring a freelancer or somebody to help me temporarily to get the project done. So for example, let's say you want to start running paid ads, maybe Facebook ads. Most business owners are like, okay, I can't afford hiring an agency, maybe so I'll have to learn how to do Facebook ads myself and then do the ads myself. Wrong. You can't afford to do everything yourself. You will not get the other three projects done. You will not be able to run your business. You're not going to be able to pull off all the decisions you need to make on a day to day basis. There's probably someone in your team that can learn how to do this instead of you. Or you can hire somebody low cost that has good admin skills, that is a good learner, that you can buy them a course on running Facebook ads. There's like courses on Udemy on this topic for less than $100. And you can just get them to study this and give them access to your Facebook ads account, make them a user or you know, a project manager and you can work with a small budget to get them to apply what they learn. And remember this is why we only have three projects so that you have enough time to do this right and get somebody else to do it and to experiment and to grow, giving yourself three, four months to make it happen. And once it's set up, they're going to continue to do it throughout the year. So Again, what needs to get done? Learn how to do Facebook ads. Do a test Facebook ad. Somebody going to learn how to put the creative together, like, you know, create some ad images on Canva, write some copy. So this could be the same person that you're, you know, giving this task to. Or it might be somebody else. Might be a freelancer on Fiverr, it might be somebody who else is doing it. But the point here is that have a plan of action. Know exactly what needs to get done and who is going to do it. Okay, we've arrived to step five. The final step, last step is when will it get done? When will each project get done? And what I like to do is have some milestones in each project. You might have three or four milestones for each project. I don't like to have more than four. And each milestone might be a level of completion. So, for example, with the Facebook ads goal or project, you could say milestone one is to learn how to do Facebook ads, whoever that is on your team, and to run their first ad. Milestone two is to have multiple ads with an ad spend of $1,000. Maybe milestone three is to optimize these ads, lower the CPM or CPA cost per acquisition with a budget of $5,000. You get the point. Have some milestones and then take these milestones and plug them into your team calendar so everybody knows what they're expected to do. So you have a plan of action and when it's going to get done. All the tasks, like take the Facebook course. If the course is going to take three or four days to accomplish or to learn or to go through, put those days in the calendar. Everything you need to do to accomplish the three projects that are going to align and help you accomplish your big goal needs to get plugged into the calendar. I'm always a big believer that if it's not on the calendar, it will not happen. This includes anything you need to do as well. Well, there you have it, guys. Those are my five steps to make sure you're successful in 2024. It's very practical. It's very down to earth. And yes, it's work. Actually, planning for 2024 is work. You have to do it so you're prepared so that you don't leave anything to the last minute to chance to how you feel in January. No, let's get it done right now. Let's recap. Step one, choose one big goal. Step two, choose three projects. Outline those projects that are going to help you accomplish that one. Big goal number three. List everything that could possibly stop you from accomplishing these three projects. And how will you make sure that doesn't happen? What will you do to prevent those things from happening? Number four, what needs to get done for each project? Who's going to do it? Number five, when will this get done? Plug it into the calendar, each step of the way, each project. There you have it, guys. Take this plan and run with it. My advice, do this right now. It's going to take you 45 minutes to an hour, but it's going to be well worth it. Get this done and have it in your rear view ready for you for 2024 so you can enjoy the holidays. And when you come back from New Year's, you just implement. You just take action. Might be a good thing to meet with your team and discuss and show them your plan of action for 2024. That wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free ride. And the winner is the Heel Truth. That's the Handle on Apple Podcast. The Heal Truth says, excellent podcast, perfect listening. Absolutely brilliant. I've learned so much from this podcast. The only podcast I listen to. Thanks. Thank you. The Heal Truth. Your mission is to email me over at omar100mba.net so you can claim your free ride to the $100 MBA over at 100mba.net if you want to win a free ride, too, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday just like right now to see if you won't. It's that easy. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You know that old saying, measure twice, cut once? Planning is a big part of success. Planning gives you that leg up, gives you that foresight, gives you that chance for you to think things through and understand not only what you're going to do, but why you're going to do it. This plan empowers you, motivates you, keeps you going throughout the year so you stay on track. Remember, when things come across your table, when things come across your inbox and you're trying to evaluate should you do it or not? Look at this plan. Does it align with the three projects? If not, it's a no. If it's yes, it's a yes. What a relief. What an easy way to deal with that dilemma we all have as entrepreneurs. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.