Episode – 018 - Behind the Scenes: How the 12 Week Year has Helped Me Crush my Sales Goals
Have you ever heard of the 12 Week Year? I was a bit skeptical at the beginning, but when I tried it...I crushed my money goal in barely six weeks and I went above and beyond the goal I had set initially.
Magic? No, just structure, accountability and strategy following the 12 Week Year method.
Listen to this behind the scenes episode to hear all about it!
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Full transcription
Hello and welcome to Episode 18 of the Online Business Tech Hub. This is Alessia, your host, tech expert for coaches and consultants on a mission to rescue my clients from tech disasters. And today, I want to share with you another book that has really helped me be more focused on my work and organize my work differently, which had the result of helping me crush, literally crush my sales goals. This book is the 12 Weeks Year it got really popular in the past couple of years and with good reason I would say.
So I bought this book last summer after thinking about it for a long time, but also because it regularly popped up again and again on social media, on videos that were recommended for me on YouTube. I would just see this book everywhere. In the end I thought, OK, this is a sign I really need to go and get this book and I'm so happy I did it. Now, the 12 Week Year, is a book written by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington.
The concept around it, it's actually really easy. It's to plan and focus your work and your goals on 12 weeks or 90 days with a really laser-focused set of actions that will help you reach your ambitious goals. I really like this concept because for me, the yearly planning for the whole year has always been a problem because I change my mind because things don't go as planned. And I mean as these couple of years with Covid has taught us, really, you can't really plan long term because you never know what will be around the corner.
So I absolutely love this concept of planning for the next quarter, the next 12 weeks. The whole point of this book is having a crystal clear goal and breaking it down in a few actionable steps that you repeat every single week. Now, this is the core point. You break down the goal in a few actionable steps that you repeat every week or every day. Not a whole lot of actions you have to do all the time, but you need to be able to identify their core actions 3 or 5 that will lead you to crushing that goal, to getting there. OK, this is really important because you want your actions to be focused. You want to be in a flow when you work on your goal.
So the important thing is to identify those 3 to 5 actions that you repeat every single day or every single week, because the next step is to track your actions. So every week you should take some time to review how you did the past week. Did you complete all of the actions that you had identified? So if you identified 5 actions that you need to do every week, did you do them all the previous week? Did you skip something? And then you can evaluate what you need to do, like if there is something you need to do more to make up for what you didn't do the previous week or if you were right on top of things. But this is the other core element. You've got to track your actions to see how you are getting closer to your goal and if you have to fine-tune something really important.
There is also another important element which is the power of accountability. So I personally did it on my own. I didn't have an accountability group or accountability buddy, but there are so many groups online that you can join. And I think the power of accountability makes a big difference, especially if you work from home and you work online and you don't have a team that you hang out with or that you socialize or keep in touch regularly with every single day.
So accountability can make a really big difference. And I would say next time I will do a sprint with this 12 Week Year. I will definitely join an accountability group because it makes a big difference and it's even better if you find an accountability group that is specifically focused on the 12 Week Year. So all the members are on the same page and they are following exactly the same type of work. OK, another important thing is having a vision, a long term vision of something you aspire to and gets you going every single day. So what I did was take a big sheet of paper and write down all the things I want to achieve in the next five years, not necessarily business related, but also personal. So I wrote down that I want to buy my dream house. I wrote down that I want to go on an International retreat. I wrote down that, for example, I want to go and join an international volunteering camp. So many different things can be part of your vision.
But the important thing here is to be able to identify what it is that you can write down and look at every single day and get inspired by what you wrote. Something that helps you move forward and that helps you keep going because you are achieving that goal in order to also achieve that vision you have for your life and business. Personally, the 12 Week Year helped me achieve my sales goals in less than six weeks, so less than halfway through I was able to achieve my goal. It's literally down to consistent action. I was able to identify the 3 core actions to do every single week, including networking, steady, regular networking, following up with people and following up on previous clients I had already worked with. So I was able to really nail down the few tiny actions I had to do every day, every week in order to achieve my goal. I did it, I possibly did it well, and I achieved my goal in six weeks instead of 12.
OK, so by the end of the 12 weeks I was already a lot beyond my goal, the goal that I had set initially. This is the perfect method. Whether you are a person that needs external motivation and accountability, but is, for example, I did it, as I said, without accountability and for me it worked as well. But I think what made a massive difference for me was that tracking the progress I was making and it did happen that some weeks I didn't really do that well because maybe I was tired or maybe I wasn't motivated or inspired.
It happens. Absolutely it happens. But when you have a moment every week or you review the past week and you look at what you can improve, what you did well, then you have the time to adjust and to make some changes so that the following weeks can go a lot better than the previous one. What I liked about this book is that it's not like other business books. When they give you a lot of fluff. Here in this book, there is an initial part, which is more about theory that might sound a bit repetitive, but I personally find it really inspiring and motivating because as you go along, you understand the concept and the authors reiterate the benefits and the motivation that keeps you going. So, I found it motivating as well.
The second part is the practical part, where they break down each and every step of this method. And it's very tangible, it's concrete. You can obviously customize it and personalize it for yourself and your business. So what they say, is absolutely not carved in stone. There are some things that might be appropriate for you and possible, and some others that maybe they're not doable for you as a person. But this is particularly whatI appreciated. It's concrete. It's tangible. It's a method that has a structure. And I'm a very structured person. I need guidelines. I need structure that then I can adapt to myself and my business. And this is exactly what this book does. No fluff whatsoever. This is why I absolutely recommend it to everyone who needs a bit of support in achieving their business goals. So I absolutely recommend it.
You will find the link in the show notes, but I'm also curious to hear about your experiences. So if you did read the 12 Week Year, if you have implemented, why don't you give me an email and tell me how you found it, if it was useful for you? It's always interesting to exchange experiences on these types of methods and see what works for you and what maybe worked for me and we can just exchange some thoughts about it. That would be really interesting. So do send me an email at alessia@alessiapandolfi.com. Yeah, and actually I have an announcement to make now.
This is the last episode of this 1st season, so I'll be taking a break during the month of July and August, but I will be back the very first week of September. So enjoy the summer. Slow down, take your time, enjoy the sun, go to the seaside even if you can't travel, even if we can't travel, do all you can to enjoy the time off and take time for yourself. We will all be back again in September with a lot of energy and a lot of motivation ready to crush our business goals. All right. It's a bit sad that this is the last episode of the season. I feel a bit, I don't know, a bit weird about it but I hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, please do leave me a review or even a Facebook review on my Facebook page, which again, you will find in the show notes as this will help me achieve more.
Right. It will be very nice to hear your thoughts and your positive thoughts about the show. Hopefully you have enjoyed it, but it will also help me reach out to more people who might benefit from the topics I talk about. All right. That's it for today. I will see you again the first week of September.
Bye bye.