The Double Your Profits In The Next 90 Days Challenge

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SUMMARY

• Today’s blog post is all about a little 90-day challenge that will help you double your profits, not just revenue, in the next few months.
• This challenge has helped Mike Shreeve build his own seven-figure business—every time he does it, his profits increase at least twofold. Now, he is able to work significantly less than most people as he continues to follow this exact framework.
• The reason this 90-day challenge works is because it emphasizes efficiency above all things. And the more efficient you are as a service provider, the more profit you are able to generate. Fortunately, how efficient you are at working is something that you have control over.
• The first step to doubling your profits is to take out a piece of paper and list everything that you are doing for your business. You can take a general approach, but in order to really get the most out of this challenge, it is highly recommended that you be as specific as possible, i.e., track every single thing you do in a day for the next three to seven days.
• Once you’ve listed all the things that you do, it’s time to source and connect the dots. Determine which things actually bring you money, which ones don’t contribute to the growth of your business, which ones don’t lead to getting client work done, etc.
• It’s important to analyze what you do in your day because we often confuse efficiency for productivity, or even worse, productivity for being busy.
• After you’ve figured out the things that are actually leading to profits in your business, eliminate everything else you’re doing that isn’t bringing in money.
• Repeat all the steps over the course of the challenge. Continue to list, source, and eliminate everything that isn’t contributing to your profits, and soon you will find that your business is growing.
• Don’t be like most people who just let life happen to them. Sit down and think things through. Ask yourself, “What do I spend a bunch of time on in my business right now that I probably shouldn’t be?”
• When you eliminate something, there’s no need to replace it with anything else. Just allow the elimination process to improve your efficiency in your business and other areas of your life. 

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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

FULL TRANSCRIPT: The Double Your Profits In The Next 90 Days Challenge

Hey everybody, Mike Shreeve here. Just starting up the Facebook lives again, we’re going to be doing that a lot more in 2019. And today’s a little bit of piece of content I want to share with you all is a challenge. It’s a challenge that if you decide to do it, if you decide to take part in it, it doesn’t cost nothing. And frankly it’s way easier than probably most people are ready to accept.

But if you do follow this challenge, if you do exactly as I lay out in this video, I can practically guarantee, obviously your mileage may vary, but every single time I do this, my profit, not just revenue in my business, my profit at least doubles. 

So I want to share with you a very, very quick strategy for… it’s something that you can do every 90 days and every 90 days it’s going to increase the results of whatever it is that you’re trying to do.

And we’re talking about, again, we’re talking about profit not revenue. 

Now why this process works is because so often when we’re trying to start a business, what we see before us, and especially if we’re growing in skill, so if we are growing in skill, what often happens is that we learn of new opportunities, we learn new skills, we learn new things, and because of that, I can be very difficult to remain efficient.

And the more efficient you are as a service provider, the more profit you are able to generate. 

So for example, if you take five hours to write a blog post in which you get paid $100 you’re only really making $20 an hour. 

However, if you increase efficiency, nothing else changes, just efficiency, meaning it no longer takes you five hours, but it now takes you two hours to write that same quality, same, etc. etc., and you still are only making $100, which is a little bit low in my opinion.

Let’s say you’re still only getting paid $100 for blog posts, you increase the efficiency, you’re now making $50 an hour instead of $20 an hour. The only thing that changed is something that fortunately you can control, which is how efficient are you at working. 

So the reason this little 90-day challenge works is because it has an emphasis on efficiency above all other things.

So here it is, if you can do these like three simple things over the next 90 days, I can promise you if not doubling profits, a wild increase. 

So the first thing that you want to do, take out a piece of paper, I like the legal pads, yellow legal pads, sit down and list everything that you are doing for your business.

How To Double Your Profits in Just 90 Days

There’s a couple of ways that you can do this. 

1. List

First, you can literally just sit and list it out, like you sort of take like a general approach. 

So generally, my day starts out this way and I do this and I spend time on this and I spend time on that. That is a way you can do it, or if you want to be ultra-efficient and really get the most out of this challenge, take three to seven days and literally write down from 9:00 to 9:15 I watched YouTube videos, from 9:15 to 10:45 I stared out the window and was wondering how the heck I’m going to get this done from like actually write it down.

Then what you want to do is after you’ve taken stock of everything that you’ve done, and I know this sound simple and the crazy thing is that because it’s so simple, a lot of people don’t do it even though it’s literally… If you just do it, you’ll actually get the benefit of doing it. 

Once you have that list of everything that you do, 

2. Source

The next thing that you want to do is you want a source of the things that you’ve done and what I mean source, I mean connect the dots of, “Oh, when I do this, this is what actually brings the money. When I do this, this doesn’t really contribute at all to the growth of my business, it doesn’t contribute to closing clients, it doesn’t contribute to getting client work done. It doesn’t contribute to anything important that leads to more profit in my business.”

We can have a whole 90-minute training on that single sentence, but it’s important for you to then analyze what you do in your day because often what happens is we confuse efficiency for productivity, or even worse productivity for being busy. 

So we do all these things, we do all these things, and we do all these things and all this stuff’s going on and we think, “Yeah, I’m growing my business.”

When really we’re just kind of circling the drain instead of making that sort of beeline to whatever goal it is that we want. 

3. Eliminate

Once you figure out what actually is leading to your profit in your business, whatever that is, it’s then time to eliminate everything else that you’re doing that you maybe thought was bringing in the money but it actually isn’t. 

And again, I realized that this is probably so elementary to many of you and yet so few of you have actually sat down to do it, to actually put in the work, to sit down and say, “Okay, what did I do today? Well, I took this activity, I checked this Facebook group, I went over here and did that thing. I read this blog post.”

And then to actually sit down and say, “Did any of that actually lead me to getting a client?” 

So for example, in our Fast Client Getting Workshop class, we see students who do the best are the students who say, “Who realize all I need to do is collect some email addresses, send some emails or collect some LinkedIn connections, send some LinkedIn messages. And that’s it.” 

Everything other than those very basic things is not a contribution to me getting a client.

So this is the 90-day challenge that you continually list, source, and eliminate everything that isn’t contributing to your profit as a freelancer. And if you do that, a couple of things will happen. One of the big questions I always get is there’s a lot of doubt and skepticism about my schedule in terms of how I’m able to balance three income streams. 

You guys saw the income report or whatever that we did earlier this year, and a lot of people have said, there’s no way he’s doing that without working a hundred hours a week.

Well, actually I am. I work significantly less than most people because I continue to list, source and eliminate. There’s going to be a lot of things that are going to be eliminated in 2019 from the No Pants Project. 

And you know, if you are not experienced in business and you’ve never run your own business, you could look at that and be like, “Oh man, I think they must be having a hard time.” Or, “Oh gosh, you know, maybe they’re not doing what they say they’re doing,” or it’s the elimination that allows growth, it’s like a plant who needs sun that’s all tangled up in other plants.

Well, if you want that plant to grow, what do you do? You untangle it, you cut away all of the stuff that’s keeping it down. 

Many of you would benefit from listing, sourcing and going on a massive elimination spree. 

Closing down shiny objects, turning ideas off, maybe this thing over here is making you a little bit of money, but when you list it and you see, “Gosh, it’s taking up a lot more of my time than this other thing, which makes me a lot more money or brings me a lot more satisfaction, or allows me a lot more of the freedom or the choice or the projects that I want.”

Whatever your motivating factor for doing this process is. If you don’t actually sit down and think this thing through, you’re going to be like most people and most people just kind of wake up and then let life happen to them, and then they just kind of react and then by the end of the day after they’re done kind of dodging and weaving and reacting and over here, by the end of the day, it’s 9:00 o’clock, 10:00 o’clock, 11:00 o’clock at night, 4:00 o’clock in the morning, whatever time you go to bed and you’re like, “Where did the day go? I can’t get anything done.”

It’s about listing, sourcing and eliminating, and I promise that if you do that over the next 90 days, your profits will more than double. 

It doesn’t really matter what it is you do during the day as long as you can account for why you are doing it. If you want to change whatever station you’re in now, nine out of 10 people that I meet, well that’s not even true. It’s like 10 out of 10 people that I meet. 

Most people are in a situation right now where it was the absence of having a good reason for exactly what it is that they’re doing that is keeping them where they’re at.

So that’s my recommendation for you. Hopefully, this is helpful. 

We’re going to do a lot more content like this short form, very tactical, nothing for sale on this. Hopefully it helps you do it, I promise you, I promise if you do it, you will see tremendous, tremendous results. 

I’m going through it right now, which is why I’m sharing that with you. Let’s see if I can pull mine up here. Take a look at what I’m doing.

So for example, one of the first questions I asked myself is, “What do I spend a bunch of time on in my business right now that I probably shouldn’t be?” And I have this whole list, there’s things within the No Pants Project. There’s things within my freelancing business. 

There are things within my fiction business that I’m doing because I mistakenly thought I was supposed to do them but then when I list them out and really have to defend to my own self to defend why I’m spending time doing those things, I realized, “Oh my gosh, it’d just be easier if I got rid of it.”

And you don’t have to, when you eliminate something, you then don’t have to come back and do like replace it with stuff. Just simple elimination will improve your efficiency and that goes all the way from the creative process to your business and to your life in a lot of ways. 

All right, my dear friends, so hopefully that is helpful to you. 

I highly recommend it. 

This is the process that we are using, as I promised 2019 we’re going to be talking a lot about efficiency and systems and processes and scaling things to high seven, eight figures, it’s this basic process that’s going to allow us to serve more, serve better, and ultimately grow our businesses, which is what we’re all here for.

So hopefully it’s helpful and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.