137 – 5 Steps to Make Success Inevitable

Karen Yankovich 0:00
You’re listening to the good girls get rich podcast episode 137.

Intro 0:06
Welcome to the good girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

Karen Yankovich 0:24
Hello, I’m Karen Yankovich, the host of the good girls get rich podcast and this is episode 137. And this is a topic that I cannot wait to dive into with you because it is one that is near and dear to my heart. And that is how do we make success inevitable. So before we get there, I just want to remind you that this podcast is brought to you by uplevel Media, where we teach simple relationship heart based LinkedIn marketing to women that gets you on the phone consistently with people that can change your business, your life, and your bank account for ever. We teach digital marketing with the human touch human to human marketing, using this amazing tool of LinkedIn, to help facilitate it. But at the end of the day, it’s the relationship building that we teach that is really what is at the heart of everything that we do. So you know that if you’ve listened before, or if you love what you hear today, we love when you share this podcast with your audience, take a quick screenshot of it, share it on social media, tag me, I’m @karenyankovich, use the hashtag #GoodGirlsGetRich, and then we’ll be sure to share your post with our audience. And that’s how we all get more visibility. Right. Put us on your story today. And tell us what you love about what you’re listening to. in the show notes, there’s a link for speakpipe where you can leave us an audio review, I would love that, I would love you to tell me exactly what you heard on this episode, that is going to change something for you. So that helps me know how to do more of what you love to do. Right. So just go to karenyankovich.com/137. To see the blog for this page, and for the show, you’ll see the link to speak pipe and all the links for everything we talked about today. And check that out. You can also leave us a message about pretty much anything, if there’s a guest you think we should have or a topic you’d like us to talk about, let us know on speakpipe. So today what I’m going to do, we’re talking today about some simple steps to make success inevitable. And this is a concept that I need to credit Hal Elrod with. Hal Elrod rod wrote a few books, he wrote The Miracle Morning, which is a great book. But the book that I love and the book that I give, if we’ve done any private work together, you probably have a copy of this book, because this is a book that I give to everyone that I booked a VIP day with or a fast track package or any kind of in person work with. And it’s called Miracle Equation. And the what I love about The Miracle Equation is that its eye on the prize, right? Focus on the goal, and then kind of reverse engineer what you need to do to achieve that goal. And what house equation is, is unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort equals miracles. And if you are, you know, if you what we teach in our she’s linked up program, the very first thing that we do with people, the very first call I have with people that are a part of our she’s linked up accelerator program, is have a meeting with them have a virtual meeting, call a one to one call, where we identify what one thing do you want to achieve on LinkedIn, because I know that if you are focused on one thing, and then we reverse engineer everything we need to do in the program to help you achieve that win. Like maybe it’s a $20,000 client, maybe you want to get featured in Forbes, whatever that might look like for you. Right, then we can reverse engineer everything we do in the program for that to happen for you. So what I want to do in this episode is the same concept but a little bit different, right, where we are still going to reverse engineer, because that’s the project manager and me that you know that I that’s the work I did for many, many years. I know that if you want to have a win on LinkedIn, and you identify what that win is, and then you do and you put everything in place for you to achieve that win. And success is inevitable. What we’re talking about here is taking a little bit broader, right, we’re taking it a little bit broader. And I will tell you that I had a meeting yesterday with Simone, my CFO, and you know, we have some numbers that we want to hit before the end of the year. And I’m looking at those numbers going alright, what do I need to do to make hitting that number inevitable. And tomorrow, I The day after I record this, I’m going to actually be meeting with Joel, my online business manager to talk about that and to say okay, here’s the number and let’s reverse engineer what we have to do to make hitting that number inevitable. And then I thought well, this is a great topic to share with you on the podcast, because Doesn’t that sound amazing? Right? inevitable success. So your CFO throws a number out To you, and and you’re just like, Alright, well, what has to happen to make that inevitable? What few simple things have to happen every day, week or month? First, so that the success is inevitable because I can say, I want a six figure month. But if I just do what I’ve always done right, then it’s not going to happen, right? And trust me, I’ve been guilty many, many times of saying things like, we’re gonna have a 50 k month, or we’re gonna have a 75 k month, and then don’t bother to create a plan to make that happen, right. I’ve done that many times over the years. But what I know now, is that I need to do the do the work to see what’s going to go into what are the sales that are going to have to happen for us to have a 50 k a month, or 75 k a month, or 100 k a month? And then what has to what do I need to do to make sure that those sales happen, and this is how we make success inevitable. But again, if you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten, and you don’t get to hit those new goals for you. Right? So you’ve heard me refer to LinkedIn as my money tree. So of course, we’re going to take the concept, that concept of making success inevitable, we’re going to flip it a little bit, flip the whole money tree analogy, and dive a little bit deeper into what are the what exactly are the actions we need to take? And how many of those actions do we need to take in order to make success inevitable in order for our money tree to bloom, right, you get the picture. So the first thing we need to do is define what a successful month looks like for you. It’s critical that you know your numbers, it’s critical that you know your numbers. If you’re an entrepreneur, maybe it’s a top line sales number, let’s say 25 K, right? If you have a roll with a quota, right, you need to know what your quota is. And if it’s a yearly quota, or a yearly goal, I want this to be a $250,000 year, then we want to divide that by 12. Because we want to be doing is working off the monthly number here. There’s all different ways to do this. But I’m just going to take you through a simple five step process based on a monthly number. Okay, so the first thing is, you need to know what that monthly number is. Okay? So dream big, dream big. So now you got to deconstruct that number a little bit, right? What products or services go into reaching that goal? What’s the value of each and we’re not getting into here, you definitely want to get into with your accountant or your whoever helps you with your finances, you want to get into what’s the profitability of each thing, right? Like, if you sell something for $5, and it costs you $4. To sell that, that’s $1. That’s the profit, we’re not talking profit. Here. We’re talking top line numbers. Okay, top line numbers. So what products or services go into reaching that goal? I’m not saying that you don’t want to focus on your bottom line numbers, you do. But that’s not the topic of this conversation, right? For this conversation, we want to say I want to top line, let’s just say 25 a month. Okay? Now you have to deconstruct that number. Let’s say you have thousand dollar products and $5,000 products and $20 products, or services, what how many of each of those Do you need to sell in a month to reach that goal, and this is the same whether you’re an employee, if you have a quota, or a goal, or if you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re selling products, or services or yoga classes or, or coaching programs, or, you know, whatever it is you’re doing, right? You’ve got to deconstruct that number and kind of have some sense of how many of everything needs to be sold to get to that number. Okay, so that’s step two, step one, define what that month is, what’s the number step two is deconstruct the number a little bit, right, if you sell things that are $5,000, maybe you’re going to sell three of those, that’s 15 of your 25. Now you have 10,000, you have to cover, maybe gonna, you know, maybe you’re gonna maybe you have another thousand dollar product. So you’re gonna try and sell five of them. Now you have 5000, you want to cover right? See what I’m saying here. So you want to deconstruct that number. The third step is to do some historical research. Okay, look at your past great months, and dive into your calendar for that month. So have you ever had a month where you made 25 K or 50 K or 100? k? If not, don’t worry about it, go to a great month. Okay. And dive into the numbers. Let’s say you had a 25 k month, okay. And let’s say it was, you know, February of 2020, or let’s go with may of 2020. So we’re not looking at, you know, we went on to say, this can’t happen in the middle of this pandemic is it absolutely can write. So let’s say whatever. Let’s say it’s may of 2020. You had a 25 k month and we’ll just use that number 25 k as we go through the rest of this episode, so that we are consistent. You had a 25 k month, that’s the number you really want to have every month moving forward. Now you need to look at your calendar for that month. How many calls Did you have that month to reach that great number? Where did they come from? Can you Deacon Where can you deconstruct it, I know this is tedious stuff. I’m a spreadsheet geek. So it to me, it’s worth it to take the time to create a spreadsheet of how many calls I do, where did they come from and keep it updated. Okay, eyes wide open, eyes wide open here, if your eyes are closed, you’re just stabbing in the dark. And I, that is not how you make success inevitable. Success becomes inevitable when you know the numbers and you know what actions you need to take, right? So eyes wide open, what was your best month? How many sales calls Did you do that month to get to that number. Now, if your best month was 12, five, and you want to $25,000 month, and you did 10 sales calls in the 12 five, then you know what you need to do? Right? You know, you need to double that and do 20 sales calls, so that you can get to the $25,000 month. And this is just basic stuff. Okay? We’re not I know that there’s all kinds of, you know, things that can change and contingencies. And If This Then That we’re not worried about any of that. top line numbers here, top line information. Okay, so now you’ve looked at your best month, you know, how many sales calls you did that month, eyes wide open. And now you know how many sales calls you need a month to duplicate the success you have that month. And if you want to double the success you had in that month, you now need to double that number. But now you know, the number, right, you know, the number you’re shooting for? Right, you’ve deconstructed the number you’re shooting for, and you know the number of sales calls that you need to make to have that success. Alright, step four, we’re gonna dive into LinkedIn. Right? We’re gonna do a little bit more research. How many people on LinkedIn Did you connect with last month? Okay, so a little more historical research, and you can just do last month, you can do the last three months if you want. Again, this is the more time you spend on this, by the way, the more inevitable you’re successful be spend a little time on this, okay? doesn’t take too long. How many people did you connect with last month? And how many of those connections accepted? And of those connections that were accepted? How many were you able to get on the phone? Right? We’re looking for sales calls here, because I don’t care what anybody says. That’s where the money comes from. Okay, especially from LinkedIn, how many did you get on the phone with? So that’s step four, diving into LinkedIn, do a little research, how many people did you connect with last month? How many of those people accepted your connection requests? And how many of those were you able to get on the phone? So again, now, you know, let’s say we know we need to do, obviously, if you want, if you want, we’ll just use the number 20 sales calls, right? If you know, you want to do 20 sales calls, you got to look from LinkedIn to see how many people do you need to connect with, if you connect with 10 people, and eight of them accepted your connection request, and four of them you are ultimately able to get on the phone with, then you know that if you want 10 sales calls, you need to do at least you know, 25, right? Or 35? I don’t know you guys do the math there. I have the math in the next one. But you got to do the math, right? How many connections? How many of them accepted? How many were able to get on the phone? Step five, now you have the information you need to make success inevitable right? Now, you know that you did 25 sales calls in that great month that you identified? Right? You know that to have another month like that, you need to have at least 25 sales calls per month. And you can tweak and adjust your LinkedIn connections strategy to get to that number. I say at least because if you’re anything like me, I’m gonna be like, well, what if I shot for 30? Or 35? Right, then maybe my $25,000 month becomes a $35,000 month, right? So you because you know your numbers, you are able to predict this. Right? So now you’re looking at this and you’re like, Okay, so if i and this is simple, I know that there are things that that can change this, but very simply, you also know that if you’re not having 25 sales calls per month, you are not, you’re unlikely going to have that same level of success. Right? So this is what we’re looking to do here. It’s a simple five step system. One that most of the work is up front, right? spend a half a day on this, make it like a, you might even want to do this every quarter, right? Like have a like, you know, have a little CEO, retreat with yourself and know your numbers. Because Because if you’re setting up spreadsheets, once you set up these spreadsheets, if it was me, I keep them updated. because things change, right things change. pandemics happen, right? there are seasons in your business. Some of the seasons are more profitable than others. But as you have this information, if you know that the third quarter every year tends to be a lower season, and maybe you got to dial up those numbers. If you want that success to be inevitable for that quarter, right? Maybe you need to do 35 sales calls a month in order to make that $25,000 right in the third quarter. Because now as you start to keep track of this stuff, you have historical data, and as the CEO of your world, right even if you’re an employee, you’re still a CEO of your world. It’s up to you to track this stuff. And I know that this is the geeky left brain stuff. But I talked to so many people who have big goals, and no plan to reach the goal. I mean, I could get cheesy here and say, You guys have heard the, quote, If you fail to plan you plan to fail, right? Can’t do a little planning. If you want to have success, you got to do a little planning. And you might look at this and say, Karen, there’s, there’s no way I want to do 25 sales calls in a month, or 100 sales calls or whatever you have to do to get that. And that’s okay, too. Because now you know your numbers, maybe what that means is you have to look at your pricing, right? Maybe if you’re like, wow, I really want to hit that $25,000 number. But in order to do that, I have to do 25 calls. Now you go back to step two, where you deconstructed it, and you’re like, what if this $1,000 product became a $2,000 product? Right now, I don’t have to have as many sales calls to get there. Right? You see what I’m saying? So but you know, you know, and you can adjust accordingly. And this is how you make success inevitable. So let me recap these steps. The first step is, first, you need to define what a successful month looks like for you. Okay, what’s the number, pick the number, whatever that looks like for you pick a number and please dream big. Please dream big. Okay, step two is deconstruct the number. What do you have? What are your products, your services? What’s the value? And deconstruct the number? How many of each of these things do you need to close in a month to reach the goal that you identified in step one, step three is do some historical research, look at a past great months, look at your past 12 months, 24 months, pick the top three months, and then look at your calendars for those months. Okay, and look to see how many calls you had to in that month to reach that great number. Okay, I know, I know, without a doubt that when my calls drop, if I don’t focus on calls, my income drops, I know it, it happens. And there are times I have to look at my calendar and go, alright, how do I get more calls? What calendar for next month, because I really want to hit this number. And I know that it has to happen with new with calls, right? So so do some historical research, look for a couple of great months dive into your calendar, see how many calls you did those months, eyes wide open, right? And then you’ll know how many sales calls you need in a month to duplicate the success you had in those great months. Step four, is to take that same process over to LinkedIn, do some more research, how many people did you connect with last month? How many connect people did you connect with the month before? How many of those people accepted your connection requests? And of the people that accepted your connection requests? How many were you able to get on the phone, this might be a little harder to do, because you might not have the perfect records for this. But you’ll get close and actually moving forward. Now that I’m saying this, you may want to track this stuff. Because again, inevitable how cool does it sound to have inevitable success, right? And then step five, is now you have this information you need to make success inevitable, you know that you have to have a month like that you have to have at least however many sales calls, right? And then you have to tweak the front end your LinkedIn connection strategy, if you’re connecting with five people a week. And that’s just not enough. Maybe you have to connect with 10 people a week. I don’t want you to connect with 20 people a week at that point, you might need to adjust your pricing, right. But you know, because it just gets you can’t have that many calls, right? It’s just, it’s, I don’t want you to be exhausted from this, right. But now you know what you need to adjust and you need to adjust things. It’s a it is a little bit of work upfront, but it is a simple five step system. And remember to this is your baseline. This is your baseline. If you’re consistent with your effort, you’re going to get business from other places, right, let that be gravy, let that other business be gravy and put a simple LinkedIn strategy in place to make success inevitable. You know, I’m here to help you with this right you know, I always want to help you with this. We have got a free on demand masterclass that you can check out at karenyankovich.com/masterclass. And we help you get started with how to do this on LinkedIn. If you’re not sure how to do the connecting piece. Definitely go to karenyankovich.com/masterclass. I’d love to help you with that. And I am available like in so many ways. We’ve also got a free Facebook group that you can come to I’d love to hear in the Facebook group, when you’re listening to this, what you think about this and what happened when you started doing some of this research. Okay, and let’s, let’s work together. Let me help you create your strategy to make success inevitable. And listen, I would love for you to help me as well because what helps me is when you share this podcast, so please share this podcast. Let’s lift each other up. Right help me help you. Again, you could take a quick screenshot of this episode on your phone, share it on social media, I will then share your post with my audience gets us both more visibility. And let’s kick, some fourth quarter 2020 booty to gather. Because the bottom line is this can be simple for you. And I want to help you change your business, your life and your bank account with some simple strategies. I’ll see you back here again next week for another episode of the good girls get rich podcast.