My name is Tamara Hamai, and I am President of Hamai Consulting, an evaluation firm focused on improving child well-being from cradle through career. I’ve been consulting since 2007, and have learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Ever since adopting the Book Yourself Solid system (created by Michael Port), I’ve benefited from 90 Day Planning to stabilize my cash flow and work load.
Hot Tips:
Every 90 days, set aside a few hours to map out your revenue goal and how you will achieve it.
Step 1: Budget your known and projected expenses for the next 90 days. Make sure to include your salary! Set a gross revenue goal that will cover all of your expenses, plus some profit as an emergency fund for the future. What services do you need to sell at what prices to bring in this revenue? Identify the best (i.e., one big contract) and worst case (i.e., lots of little gigs) scenarios.
Step 2: What marketing do you need to generate the leads that will produce the sales needed to achieve your revenue goal? For example, looking back at your past networking activities, what and how much did you have to do to land a new project? What and how much would you need to do of those same activities over the next 90 days to hit your target revenue? Identify at least 2 marketing strategies (e.g., networking and proposals) that would each get you to your target, just in case one fails.
Step 3: Tackle at least one system improvement each 90 days that will help you get things done more efficiently and effectively. For example, you might realize you don’t have the data you need to know what types or how much of networking you need to engage in before you win a contract. You could plan to build a networking tracking system (which could be as simple as a spreadsheet) to start collecting this information.
Step 4: Create a daily action plan. What projects need to be done to achieve your 90 day goals? Map out each task that must be completed to implement your marketing and system improvement plans, then set deadlines. Identify tasks for each day for all 90 days.
Lessons Learned:
Be realistic with your goals. Set small revenue goals at first, and get bigger as you get more successful.
Add extra profit in your revenue goals early on to build up an emergency fund that will eventually eliminate the feast-famine roller coaster.
Rad Resource:
Book Yourself Solid, by Michael Port: http://bit.ly/2e6CrTz
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