John Cow dot Com » planning

Get Your Crap Together So You Know What You Are Doing

Jason Katzenback — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:57:04 +0000

A couple weeks ago I sent my readers an email about a webinar that was being held called “the Outsider Code“. Well due to some unforeseen circumstances the webinar was canceled and is to be rescheduled.

What the webinar was going to be about is this brand new service for making passive income called the Outsiders Code and it was falling on the last day of a conference that was being held in Vancouver… a conference I was at.

Now the conference was… well I will not lie and say it was great… BUT… the service looks incredible.

So the title of this post looks as though I may be slamming this conference for the way the conference was handled… but that is actually not the case. Yes it was not exactly what I had envisioned but however it did make one major claim “Life Changing” and that is actually something that I think it potentially is going to be with me.

The service was initially only opened to a small group of people and they are not ready to open to more (rumor is in a couple weeks) but they really want me to look at it, so I was able to get my own access (not a demo account either).

What I am absolutely impressed with thus far is the process they start the newbie out with and this is what is going to lead into my title of this post.

I can not really reveal as of yet what this system does but it is totally designed to help anyone who can invest a little bit (at least $1000) to be able to generate a very healthy passive income… and it is not by doing the standard things… it actually only takes about 30 minutes a week. Well that is actually not true, it takes about 5 hours to get set up and go through all the training and action steps but once you are set up all you will have to do is once a week follow the advice of the system, tweak a few things and that is it.

Yes I know, the first thing you are probably thinking is… WHATEVER!!!

Well I can tell you this. I am personally going through the system and when it is ready to launch I will 100% be ready to tell you exactly my opinion and whether it does what it says… but if you are interested in learning more about it, they are having a webinar soon that you will want to sign up for… I do highly recommend you check that out at least for now… and do not worry there is nothing to buy and you will learn something . You can CLICK HERE to learn more.

So with that being said now let me talk about getting your crap together.

With this membership, the first step of the process is to make sure you have your crap together and they really make it so you have to ponder on a few things before you move forward. One of the steps is very similar to what Frank Kern taught about writing out what you want in life… but this system makes you fill in the blanks and actually is really easy and I can tell you now it has made me rethink a lot and all I can say is… WOW.

The WOW part is mainly that I did not have a freaking clue as to what I really wanted… and now that I do, I see how it is changing my view point on things BIG TIME.

I am not really going to be able to do this system justice but there is one thing I want you to do right now… and I promise it will actually be fun and help you… answer the following questions (no these are not directly from the outsider code)

How much money would you realistically love to have in extra passive income. exactly one year from now? I am not talking about winning the lottery but I mean realistically… would it be $2000/month, $4000 or more? Figure that out and indicate a number that would make you feel happy right now to be earning in one year.
How would you spend that money? Calculate how much money your monthly goal would equal in one year (for example $2000 is $24 000 for a year) and then divide up out of that what you would do with that money… save for a house, car, retirement, bills, vacation, charity… list all the things that you would spend it on? Remember this is not money for living day to day… this is passive income above your current living.
Create a word doc that has pictures of those goals and post it near your work station.
Now calculate what that equals in earnings per day. So take the yearly and divide it by 365, so $24000 would equal only $65 a day.
That’s now your new goal… you need to start earning $65 a day to reach your goal and so now create the tasks to get you there. So for example, if you build affiliate sites and are currently earning $25 a day, what can you do to get that to $65.

OK, this is not really a detailed plan but I promise if you have never done anything like that before… just those simple steps are a huge stepping stone.

I would love you comments on this… so tell me… did you try the exercise?

Step 1 of 4 Week Plan to Answering What Is This All For!

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:55:13 +0000

Yesterday I was traveling back from Colorado Springs (I am going for another week next week if any of you live there, drop me an email and we can maybe have a lunch thing) and I realized that there is no way I can put this plan all in one post… so I am going to have to divide it up.

In the previous post “4 Weeks to Answering What This is All For” I mentioned the four part…

Time: I needed to give myself as much time as I could to focus on the right things, needed to eliminate activities that were time suckers or may even seem important but distracted me from achieving this goal.
Health: I needed to eat better, sleep better and exercise more so I could feel better and be more focused… but I needed time to do that.
Clutter: I needed to organize myself better and delegate better (ties into “Time” but for me I made this a separate category).
Family & Friends: I needed to make room for the people that I love first and foremost.

Today I am going to walk you through the “Time” steps I took. My notes initially were a lot smaller but that is because I knew in my mind what it was they meant and I realized writing this post that I need to go into a little more detail.

NOTE –> This is NOT going to be a four week post series… but it is going to take 2 or 3 more posts (a couple more then I originally anticipated).

Make Some Time

The first part of this entire process for me was making time for things. If my thought was “I have no time because I am too busy” then I was never going to be able to achieve my goal. This also made me look at what the word “too” means and one of the definitions is…

excessively: to a degree exceeding normal or proper limits; “too big”

That means that I have an excess of things that are keeping me busy and therefore I needed to trim the excess. If this was really important to me, then I can NOT use the excuse “too busy”. So the very first thing I needed to do in order to make this work was clean my time table and commit to holding to it. Since this is a 4 week plan, the clean slate time frame was focused on that period of time… meaning i did not have to quit and cancel everything… but i had to at least postpone as much as possible to clear the 4 week period.

Clean Slate Check List

1. Planner: Set up a 4 week daily calendar for this specific goal and put in big letters on the goal date so you can see it. I recommend you use a day planner type calendar that will allow you to pencil in time for each day (you should be using a planning system of some sort anyway but that is just my opinion).

2. List Commitments: On a separate piece of paper, list all time commitments that you would normally be committed to for the next 4 weeks. This includes appointments, activities, meetings and so on.

3. Prioritize Commitments: Now create two columns… one with the header “Critical” and the other “Not Critical” and enter in the appropriate column each commitment. This is harder to do then you may realize at first (was for me anyway) because it is human nature to often think everything is much more important then it is. The thing to remember here is that you are not categorizing for life, this is simply for the next 4 weeks, so if there is an appointment or volunteer activity that can go on without you or be rescheduled then put it in not critical. For those that have a full time job working for someone else, make sure to put the hours of work and travel time (if there is a bit of a commute) in the critical.

4. Reschedule Commitments: For all the “not critical” tasks you now need to reschedule, postpone or cancel. I actually quit one volunteer activity I was involved in because there was enough help and it was too big a time commitment for me. A word of warning… they will try to convince you otherwise but just say no. Do not waffle on this! Tell them that after 4 weeks you will reconsider but for the next 4 weeks the answer is no. Now in your calendar / planner enter in all the critical commitments and mark the times.

Note –> This is going to change a bit in the next 4 weeks as new things come up but I found it a lot easier to say no to new things because I was too busy for them… and the cool thing was the things I said no to were not important and it felt good to say i was too busy for them.

5. Schedule Rest: Our bodies should get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. I realize each person is different but one thing I find is when I talk to people about sleep, it is the people that stay up late that feel they need more then that. It is believed that every hour of sleep you get before midnight is worth 2 hours of sleep if you go to bed after midnight and personally I can vouche for this because I find if I go to bed after midnight, I feel that I wake up with almost a hangover type feeling… which never happens when I go to bed earlier and sleep the same amount of hours… unless i have one too many beer

What I did here was make a commitment to be in bed by 9:30pm and this way I could hopefully be a sleep by 10pm. I also made sure to set my alarm for 6am to ensure I got my 7 to 8 hours but did not waste any time sleeping in. Yes, this includes weekends… and remember this is just for the next 4 weeks, but i hoped i could get my body in a better pattern.

This was very important for me because I know personally that giving my body the rest it needs is critical to having the right mindset and having a healthy body.

6. Daily Time Suckers: Next I looked at all the time wasters I participated in that were small daily things but wasted a huge amount of time. An example of this is flopping in front of the TV and wasting 60 minutes watching TV. So I made sure that I committed to clearing up ALL not critical time. I erased everything… no matter what it was because I wanted a fresh slate.

Now for those of you saying you need to have time in there for family and exercise… I 100% agree, but those are not time suckers… I am talking about doing things like going to forums online or just aimlessly browsing the internet, chatting on the phone, playing video games and stuff like that.

Now I struggled here at first with just saying I am committed to this because I know for myself I need constant reminders. So I updated my start page and put a reminder on the wall beside my desk about focusing time on my goal. I recommend you do that as well to keep that reminder front and center.

Result: The end result here is a clean as possible plate that I can start working with, which you will see why i did it in the next couple posts. My mindset behind this is, when I start listing important tasks and activities in the next step, I want to be able give them as much time as possible and I wanted to be able to schedule the rest of my life around them. I am not posting the next step tomorrow (Sunday, I have a few paid reviews I have to get caught up on, so this will be on Monday).

Any questions?

Posts in this series…

4 Weeks to Answering What This is All For!

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:51 +0000

(This post is a continuation of yesterdays post Do You Already Assume How the Conversation Went?)

Can you really answer the question of “What This is All For” in your current situation/state of mind?

If you are not able to be honest with others (including yourself), if you have no time, if you are unhealthy, stressed out or any number of other things…. can you really answer that question?

For the past 6 months I have had what appears to be an enemy attacking me. I do not care if you are a Christian (I am and darn proud of it), believer in some other higher power or an atheist… there are times when you feel like everything seems to be going wrong and it appears like someone is out to get you. It seemed that everything that I had my hands in was being ripped apart and attacked.

I remember sitting in my office with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands just feeling overwhelmed. Every aspect of my life was under attack… and I was looking for someone to blame. It was not until 3 weeks after when I was talking about it with two very close friends that I suddenly realized what happened.

I WAS THE BLAME!

You see I have always been a big believer in the fact that in order to be successful you had to be accountable for your actions… but I was not practicing what I was preaching. I have always set goals, I have always planned accordingly but when the rubber finally hit the road I realized that I was a complete hypocrite. Now do not get me wrong, 80% of what i was doing was good… I was setting goals, I was achieving targets and I was progressing… but then comes that ole 80/20 rule again.

The 20% that I was not doing right… that was the most important part that I needed to be focusing on first!

So what did I do?

I sat down and tried to write out exactly what I was doing this all for… but I could NOT answer it. My first attempt was so fake it made me sick and that was when I realized that I was at fault. The problem was because of all of my current emotions, paradigms, internal and external stresses I was not able to actually even write that out. I was driven by emotion… I was frustrated with employees, with family members and with people I volunteered with… and all of this frustration was causing me a lot of anger and contempt.

SLAP!!!

I realized that I suddenly was slapped in the face and had to give my head a shake and stop everything. If I continued down that path I was traveling, I was going to fail!

Once again I picked up my pen and this time instead of writing out what it was I was doing this for, I started writing down all the things that were causing me frustration and stress. I wrote everything down… I did not care how immature it sounded, if it caused me any stress I wrote it down.

I then went through the list and categorized them into controllable and uncontrollable. What that means is the things that I have the power to control and the things that I do not have the power to control. To my complete surprise I had almost every single item in my list under the controllable category.

SLAP!!!

Talk about another slap in the face. I had been telling myself lies for so long and these lies were all about how I could not control certain things and I would just deal with them by suppressing them. I would constantly have conversations in my head and assume how the outcome would be and therefore act according to my assumptions… this HAD TO STOP!

My 4 Week Plan…

That was when I decided on a new goal… a goal that was set for 4 weeks and I created a plan on how to achieve that goal. I like working in weeks because it allows me to organize my schedule to get into a pattern (habit) in order to achieve goals. To do this I also knew I had to eliminate as much of my list of stress and frustration as possible… I needed to have a clear head…

I COULD NOT ACT ON IMPULSE OR EMOTION

So I started a mind map… just with a pad and paper to get one started right away and I tried to organize and prioritize how I could do this… and what I came up for myself was….

Time: I needed to give myself as much time as I could to focus on the right things, needed to eliminate activities that were time suckers or may even seem important but distracted me from achieving this goal.
Health: I needed to eat better, sleep better and exercise more so I could feel better and be more focused… but I needed time to do that.
Clutter: I needed to organize myself better and delegate better (ties into “Time” but for me I made this a separate category).
Family & Friends: I needed to make room for the people that I love first and foremost.

Tomorrow I am going to share with you the actual plan that I created and the details of it. This plan is my plan… but I HIGHLY recommend you heed my advice here and figure this out and make a plan for yourself before life starts slapping you in the face.

So.. any comments?

Posts in this series…

Why Do We Sometimes Need a Slap in the Face?

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:12:32 +0000

Often times in movies you will see someone going crazy, repeating the same phrase or just talking nonsense and suddenly someone slaps them in the face. This immediately shakes the person up and seems to calm them down and you will often hear the character then say “thanks I needed that”.

Why is this?

I do not mean getting a slap in the face literally of course but I mean in general. Why is it that we often need something major to wake us up and get us back on focus?

If you listen to any of the successful people out there, it seems that there are often moments in thier lives where something major happened. It often is some financial disaster but not always. It is these “slaps in the face” arise that suddenly the person stops, sits back and takes a look at the big picture of everything they are doing.

Here is another question for you to think about…

Is major failure (a slap in the face) necessary for achieving success?

Yesterday I talked about asking the questions “what is this all for?” and I mentioned I would explain my thinking behind it but I am going to actually hold off on that for a bit and the reason is I want to discuss the above questions first.

So whats you opinion on the question…

Is major failure (a slap in the face) necessary for achieving success?

Please do not just give a yes or no but give a reason too

Tomorrow (for real this time) I am going to talk about this and also about answering the quesiton “what is this all for?”

Posts in this series…

What is This All For?

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:14:16 +0000

Have you ever asked yourself that question?

I am serious about this and I think it is a vital question to ask.

I often talk about planning and setting goals but really none of that makes any sense unless you can truly answer the question of “what is this all for?”

Looking back at when I first started my business online back in 1997, I remember that the initial reason was because I hated my current job and I felt like I was trapped. I saw an infomercial on TV about starting a business and actually bought it.

The course was a joke and the person that sold it has since gone belly up and actually has had some legal issues as well. The course was not in anyway expensive and in all honesty I did not feel that I got ripped off or anything. In fact I have to give a lot of credit to that initial course because that is what gave me the kick in the pants to get started.

What was wrong however was that back then I started to put hours upon hours of work into something that I had an unclear understanding of. I knew I wanted a better life and that I wanted to make more money but that was it. I really had no clue as to really what I was doing it for.

The challenge this put upon me was that I had mixed up priorities and things that should have been focused on were not and things that should not have been focused on were. I was guided by emotion rather then by logic… I was destined to fail.

Over the past 5 years, as my business has exploded I have found that it was my understanding of why I was doing this that helped me to put things in focus. The problem with this however was that I was not honest about this with others and this caused conflicts. You see I was truly doing this for a selfish reason but when others asked I would say that it was to build a better life for my family and I.

BULLCRAP

I was doing this because I wanted to and it was not about doing anything other then having more money then I did before.

The positive thing was that I had a focus and was able to set my goals on it but the negative was I was never able to be completely open and honest about this with others.

Over the past 3 months I have been going through a major turn around in my focus. I have changed staff, changed focus and I am now finally being open and honest with myself as to why I am doing this. I have loads of things planned and loads of things coming down the pipe (I already talked to my biz partners about this).

In my next post I am going to talk about how I came upon this realization and how it helped me to be able to understand exactly why I am doing this and…

What this is all for?

Trust me when I say this is not something to take lightly.

Posts in this series…