Transcription
I got a request from a friend of mine, Steve, from California. He was our Michael Jordan in high school and now runs a very, very successful transportation company.
By the way, on a side note, Steve Talon, we are thrilled to hear the great news about Utah! Very, very exciting! Can't wait for our dinner with you guys to celebrate when you come out here.
Anyways, let me get right into it. Steve, sir, I want to talk about how to start a project and how to finish a project. You know, a lot of us as entrepreneurs have ideas like, "What about we do this?" or "What if we do that?" We come up with projects, and then we spend money halfway or put in 200 hours or 40 hours, and nothing gets done. Then we're frustrated.
So, what do we do to systematize getting projects done? I'm going to try to explain it in a way that helps you get better at project management.
First of all, keep a couple of things in mind when you think about projects. Rule number one is to remember that 90% of the projects we come up with are worthless. You need to be able to, how do I describe this, detach yourself from the project or the idea and not take it personally. Not all great ideas and projects are worth putting a lot of time into. It's just something you have to keep in mind.
Now, there's nothing wrong with constantly coming up with ideas. You want the machine to be working. We also have to understand that not everything is going to be the next big thing that you come up with, and you don't need all of them.
You have to realize that typically, you know, when people say, "Well, you know, it just didn't work. I tried this, I tried that," you can fail a thousand times. It takes one big victory as an entrepreneur to be considered a very, very keen and established entrepreneur. You don't need to have all victories; one big victory can overshadow thousands of failures. So don't worry about that. You're not looking to have all projects be big.
The second thing to think about is looking at everything in terms of bites. Look at it like this: start, middle, finish. Everything in your mind that you want to do is normally going to have a one-two-three. I either like three steps or I like five steps. There's something magical about three steps or five steps.
So, why don't we do this? We do this in three: start, middle, finish. Okay, start, middle, finish. Think about steps when you're thinking about ideas. We'll cover five steps here on exactly how we go about projects and different ideas that we have.
The next point is, as you're writing out your ideas or projects, be able to prioritize. Know that this is a great idea, but this is not a short-term idea. This is five years from now, this is ten years from now, this is three years from now, this is a year from now, this is six months. Let's revisit this three months from now and just set it aside.
You can have a phone with a lot of ideas in it, or you can have an idea folder with all the ideas that you have, which everybody ought to have, or a folder where you write all your ideas that's private to you. Then you can revisit them when the time is right.
So, let me get right into it. There are five steps.
**Step number one**: When it comes down to ideas, it's the actual ideation phase.
Okay, that leads to a project. So let's explain. You get together with a mastermind. A mastermind, to me, is a group of three to five people. The purpose of the mastermind getting together is simply to think out loud and process issues together.
Step number one is ideation: masterminding and processing with three to five people. What do you want to get together with? Ideas, questions. For instance, what's the next idea that we can come up with that can take the business to the next level? Hypothetically, what's the next thing I need to do to improve my brand? What's the next thing we need to do? What can we come up with? It's constant ideas that you're coming up with, right?
As you're sitting there, the next question becomes: out of all these five ideas, which of them has the highest ROI for the time we're going to put into it? Rate of return or a return on investment on the time we're going to put into it.
So, we got these 20 ideas we came up with. No, definitely no, no, no. Okay, this one's going to be big. This one's going to be big. Which one's going to be big? I think this one. Let's look at this one. Boom! You spend time with that one.
During the ideation phase, you have to ask the questions about the return. Also, do we have the resources for this idea?
Somebody made a comment one time when we were in year one of starting PHP Financial. I rented this house in Lake Tahoe. It was the most expensive property rental in Lake Tahoe. It was a nineteen thousand square foot house with cemented floors that were heated. Ridiculous! We had a great time.
I said, "Ideas!" and one guy said, "I think we need to do a halftime Super Bowl commercial." It was a great idea! I loved it! Everybody was like, "It's a great idea!"
How much does it cost? Three and a half million? Guys, we don't have three and a half million to do a Super Bowl commercial.
So, one is the ideas and the projects, then it's the resources. Do we have the resources for the ideas? Sometimes you have ideation, and somebody could tell you the craziest thing and say, "We need to go buy Amazon. It'll be great." Okay, we can't afford 70, you know, two hundred billion dollars to buy Amazon. So, you need to know the resources that we have as well.
Then, the people who give me ideas and feedback. Sometimes, if I'm doing an ideation meeting and somebody is always coming up with ideas and their credibility for ideas is not that high, I don't give that much value to their ideas. Sometimes, a person that may not say a lot but says one thing, every time they do, it's powerful.
It's also knowing who to take ideas from. That's a very important thing to keep in mind as you're doing that.
Another thing I do is I like to recruit devil's advocates when I'm doing ideation. You know, you always have somebody that's very annoying that always shuts down all ideas. If you read the book "Inside the Tornado," you will know what I mean.
You have the directive pragmatic and then you have the complete opposite. The pragmatic is the visionary type, the idea guy, but the pragmatic is always saying, "I don't know. What about this, this, this, this?"
As much as the idea person doesn't want that person, you need that person. Steve could tell you, you know, many of my friends come to me and say, "Hey Pat, what do you think about this?" I'll say, "Have you thought about this? Have you done this? Have you looked at this? Have you researched this? Have you talked about this company, this company, or what other companies are doing?"
I got a call from somebody who said, "I want to start a mobile detailing business, etc., etc." Now, who's done it? Who is that? Let's come in contact with the CEO. We met with the CEO, a former Italian guy. We sat down with him, found out what they're doing, how I should do it, how many... It's just finding that part out.
You're like, "Well, do we want to put three million dollars into this? Do we want to compete with this? Is this something you want to do? Are you fully committed to this?"
Then you're getting into that part. You need a devil's advocate. This is not the power of positive thinking. You need somebody who is not afraid to say, "I don't think this is a good idea because of..."
I don't like to shut down ideas, but he's right. We move on. Now, if you firmly believe in that idea, I like a good argument. I like that. Man, he's got a point. Nope, you're right. Let's get this idea right.
So, you have to be able to understand that part.
**Step two**: Initiation.
So, let's just say now you have an idea that you like and you say, "We have the resources. This could be big. We like the ROI. It could really help the company. It could really help the brand. Let's move with this."
Then it's initiation. So, what's initiation? The first thing I think about is who are the people that can be involved in this project that can help us out?
Okay, this person is going to do this, that person's going to do that. We make a list of names of people. This person knows that person, this person worked over here, this person did this. You put names down.
Then, do we do it ourselves or do we outsource? Do I go buy a standalone of this and leverage this software, or do we go and design the software ourselves and spend two and a half, three years?
If you have read the book "Inside the Tornado," they say if you have to build or buy, 99% of the time it's buy. I know entrepreneurs want to own everything. "No, no, we have to own it. We have to own it. We have to own every single thing."
Look, sometimes great partnerships work. If you look at Facebook when they first got started, they were shopping Google and Microsoft. They were even a five million dollar company at that time. They went and signed a big contract with Google. Their revenues doubled. Microsoft was annoyed that Facebook didn't. Then Facebook went and signed the same exact contract with Microsoft.
Now they have two partners. They didn't use the resources to design what these guys already had. They're making a ton of money because of the partnership, but their vision is bigger. They leverage both companies, Google and Microsoft. Now they're competing with them. They're valued at a 300 billion dollar company.
So, sometimes it's knowing: do I have to go out and do this myself, or has somebody already done this that I can go out and use that software? Then, two, three, five, ten years from now, if I need to buy the code, I can ask them to buy the code. It increases the value of the company. You may do that, and if not, you don't need to do it because it was not worth what you thought it was going to be.
When should I have known that in the earlier part?
So, I know I'm thinking fast and I'm speaking fast, but I hope you're tracking with what I'm saying here.
Who can I leverage? Has someone done this before? Maybe it didn't work for them, but it did work. Let's initiate contact with them and have a meeting or a call with them.
Great!
Another question is: if we do this, how long will it take to get done? I'll go a little bit more into the deadlines later on.
How can we break it down into a handful of different processes? If we do this, okay, if we're doing a project that we want to go out and come up with software, what's number one? Number one, we got to do this. Number two, we got to do this. Three, four, five.
Okay, let's go one, two, three, four, five. Let's start one, then two, then three. Who's taking care of one? Who's taking care of two? Who's three? Who's four? They need to delegate responsibilities to them on what they need to be doing, right?
Everyone has certain deadlines on the responsibilities that are given to them.
Then, how do we apply the project when it's finalized? You're thinking, "Okay, when the project's finalized, what are we going to do with it? What kind of a place can we use this? Who are we going to launch it to? Are we going to do this?"
You'll think about those in this purely initiation phase.
**The next phase is instruction.**
The instruction phase starts the process by instructing who does what. You've already decided you're doing this after the initiation phase.
Like, "We're doing this!" So we have ideation, excitement, initiation. Guys, I think this is a series we're thinking about doing. "What if we do this? Who can do that?"
Then you say, "Guys, we're doing this. We made a decision. A week? We slowed down. It took a week. We thought about it. We cracked every single thing. This is going to work or it's not going to work. We're doing it."
Instruction: here's breaking it into different bites. That's going to go this, then it's going to go this. Then you're processing the whole thing to break it into different bites.
Then you figured out, "Here's what we're doing. We're moving forward." Okay, responsibilities are all given.
**Step five is inspection.**
So now you have a product that's being built. Let's just say it's being broken out into five different phases of developing software. One part is done. Like, let's test it out. It's working.
Okay, great! We're looking at this. We're inspecting it. Oh, there's a glitch. What's this all about? Why did that come up? Okay, message. Why did this come up? Message. Why did this come up?
When I did this, it didn't send the email that it was supposed to. There was an issue here, right?
So, it's constantly tracking and advancing where you're at when you're inspecting everything. There's constant accountability, constant emails. "We're here. We're here. This is what happened. This is what went right here."
If you have different setups, you can use them to know exactly who's working on what. Different projects, you can do that as well.
That's implementation. In the implementation phase, you're doing final testing and execution. But in the implementation phase, you may do a soft launch with somebody small to use it. Beta testing, some call it soft launch, whatever you want to call it.
Someone's going to test it. "Hey, we were having problems in this area." Okay, great! We were having problems with this circuit. What we didn't know that? Okay, what have problems in this area?
Then we fix it, right?
After the testing is done, when you're implementing, then you launch it. Then you have a real meeting on how to launch it.
So, if it's a product you're selling, what are we going to be our price point? What's the sixty-forty? Are we going to do a sixty-forty split on sales? All this other stuff.
While you're talking about launching, are we going to launch this product in the market? Are we going to use a vendor to sell it? That's a whole different episode I'll do, but your strategy is more on the launching part of this product that you have.
Now, knowing that I went through a lot of stuff fairly quickly, let's break one down together. Fair enough?
Let's just say you're sleeping, you wake up on Sunday, and you say, "I want to write a book."
Okay, I want to write a book. You want to write a book. I want to write a book.
**Step number one is ideation.**
So, what's the first thing you do? You sit there and grab a sheet of paper and start writing. The title would be this. "What about five?" Write about this. "No, I can write about this." What am I an expert in? I can write about this.
You have ideation with your wife, maybe your husband, maybe your boyfriend/girlfriend, maybe your best friend, dad, or somebody that works with you. "What do you think I should write about? Have you thought about writing it on this? Have you thought about writing it on that?"
You always think, "What do I talk about the most?" You always talk about this. "What do people come to me for advice on?"
You always talk about the timing. That's great! So now you have twenty different ideas on books.
Then you go and say, "What's timely? What should I write now? What is a good time for my book right now? What is a book I shouldn't write right now? What is a book I haven't earned the right to talk about yet?"
I know a lot about it, but I haven't earned the right to talk about it. Maybe you want to write a book on dating, or you want to write a book on how to become successful, but you're not successful. You don't want to write that book. It doesn't make any sense for you to write that book, right?
I know a lot of people do it. We have a lot of books and people that write books on how to be successful, and the most success they've ever had is they've just been a consultant. They made a hundred grand a year. "How to become a millionaire?" It just doesn't make any sense. The moment people find out...
So, you're processing that part on the ideation side. Great!
Then you ask, "Do I write this book now or do I write this book later?"
So, out of the twenty book titles, you may say, "I love these five book titles. Okay, this one I'm going to write five years from now. This one I'm going to write ten years from now. This one I'm going to write twenty years from now. This one I'm going to write a year from now. This one I'm going to write right now."
Great!
**Okay, number one was ideation. Number two is initiation.**
Let's just say I want to write this book. What do I need?
Okay, I need a literary agent that's going to help me with a publisher. So, let me first see if the idea is even good. If I want to publish it, am I going to self-publish? Am I going to publish? Am I just going to do Kindle? How much is my price point? Who am I going to sell it through? Is it going to be an Amazon book? Is it going to be a Penguin book? What am I going to do?
Let me talk to somebody who's been there before who can help me with the publishing side. So, let me hire a consultant. I get on the internet, I find someone, and I talk about writing a book. "What do you think I should do? Self-publish? This?"
They'll ask you, "How many Facebook fans do you have? How many Twitter followers do you have? How much is your following? What's your platform? If you were to come out with a book right now, how many people do you know are automatically going to buy your book?"
Every question they'll ask you is purely business. Then you say, "I'm not going to write a book." Then it's telling you, "Not yet."
**Now, implement a construction phase.**
Your editor, your digital marketing agency, your researcher. This is like you're putting the initiation. If I were to write the book, I'm going to do this instruction.
At this point, you're doing it. You have decided you're going to do this thing.
So, you're going to break down the book on how to write a book.
Okay, let me write the book. How do I write a book? One, I already have my title of the book.
Okay, now within the title, for instance, let's just take the title "How to Become a Great Real Estate Agent."
So then you have to break down the chapters: prospecting, why are you doing real estate, marketing, branding yourself, which size houses to sell: 250 to 500 thousand, or half a million and up, or a million and up?
Okay, do I partner with somebody? Who do I put my real estate license with? How much money do I spend on advertising?
So then you have your chapters. You make a list of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 chapters. When you do 50 chapters, then you go from 50 chapters to 15 chapters because "How to Do It" has 50 chapters. 35 belong within the 10 or 15 chapters.
Okay, then you have that part.
Then the next part you talk about is stories. What stories do you have? Okay, what stories can you use? Stories from other real estate agents you put in there, right?
Then you have quotes you're going to use, and you have research that you're going to use to validate how the real estate economy is going to do realistically in the next 10 years and how it's a great time to be a real estate agent.
Then articles to validate what you're saying. So that's instruction. You're already committed. You're going to do this.
**Number four is inspection.**
You write a chapter, you send it to the editor, you reread it. Looks good! Next chapter, editor reread. Looks good! Next chapter, editor reread. Looks good!
Then it's implementation. The book's done. You have a product. You ask a handful of people that you respect to read the book for you, and they say, "I like it. I would change this. I don't like this part. There were mistakes. What about this?"
Then you have another editing that you do. Then you have another final editing that you do, and then you have a book.
So, publish! Publish or you go out there and do your marketing. How do you launch it? Do you do a soft launch? Who are your customers you're going to target? Are you going to market?
That's how you probably start the project.
So, if you take those five processes: ideation, initiation, instruction, inspection, then implementation, you will generally have a system you can use for any project you're working on.
Whether it's software, a book, a new product, a new system, or whatever you want to talk about that you're doing, you can use this exact system in any aspect of your business to put together and come out with a project that you're starting.
And knowing which ones are not even worth your time and how to actually finish a project.
Remember that one of the biggest things with projects are deadlines. When I say deadlines, I like everyone to have deadlines. Everybody has deadlines, and not one deadline, but many, many different deadlines.
Everyone has many different deadlines, including yourself. What do you guys need from you by when?
So, a big part of finishing projects is deadlines and being able to hold everybody accountable, including yourself, to make sure that project gets done.
So, Steve, you asked for it, and a few other people did as well. But today, we put it into a video.
At this point, more you want to throw me my favorite pillow here.
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