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Ravens Guide To Taking Action - Stop Action Faking For a Lifetime
8 Years ago I started my software company and have relentlessly executed on my goals since its inception. I’ve grown the company to 25 employees, millions in revenue, got my dream car, and found the love of my life. I’m financially free to the extent that I can eat anywhere I want without thinking, buy any gadget I want, and take as much time off as I want. I was able to achieve all of this because I don’t just profess my desires to be an entrepreneur, I practice consistent action as an entrepreneur. This thread is for those of you who are having trouble moving the needle or want a new methodology for your existing business. You’re aimless and come to the forum because you’re lost and want to be around people actually making it happen in life. In my 12 years here on the forum I have seen thousands of people profess their desires to be an entrepreneur, yet only a few stick around long enough for us to see them become one. Unfortunately the majority of the people who read this thread will eventually sink back down into mediocrity and the cushy shitty job due to the plethora of excuses we’ve all heard time and time again. If you want the best possible shot at winning in life, winning in your business, and winning for yourself and your family, this is my guide to taking serious action to achieve your dreams.
This is the step by step process that I have used to absolutely crush it in life and business and generate millions of dollars in value.
Step 1: Set Goals
Similar to what TMF mentions, you have to know where you’re going and you need have a plan. I think the first step in any journey is to write a plan out for where you want to be in a few years. I personally do not set 10 year goals because they are too far out for me to plan for. I think 1, 2, and 5 year goals are optimal. 5 year goals change so much, that by the time year 5 rolls around, your life should be wildly different in a good way from your original plans. Try to keep your goals at the top of mind as you go on your journey and read them every few weeks (or more). Revise your goals every 6-12 months to make any changes as you hit obstacles along the way. It’s okay if your desires change, that’s growth. What you wanted a year ago, may be irrelevant today. You will come to find that as you tackle your goals, they are accomplished much faster than you anticipated. If you do not have a business idea, follow this process until you hone in on one: Tune your problem finding radar as MJ mentions in the book. For the next steps to work you need to actually have a business idea. Pick ANY idea, it doesn't have to be the best. Execution and process is what matters. You want to start executing on one TODAY. Write down a list of all ideas you've come up with and strike through ones that aren't as good them until you have one left. The one that is left is the one you must start executing on. If you have a business already, these next steps are going to level up your execution game.
Step 2: Get a 1 page 12 month calendar (or print one)
Required reading: https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy
In the early days of my software company, I printed out 18 pages, each containing an individual calendar month, and taped them to my office wall in order. My goal was simple, every day that I take meaningful action on my business, I can put an X on the calendar to create my chain of X’s. If I miss a day, I cannot put an X and thus break the chain. The idea here is building the habit of relentless execution and I worked 7 days per week on my business. If you’re busy on weekends with the family, wake up earlier and get that X done for the day. At the beginning of your journey, there is no time for rest as time is of the essence. You are trying to break free from the shackles of wage enslavement, work like your life depends on it! As you gain more consecutive X’s on your calendar, you will see immense progress towards your goals. Be sure to read the linked article above for more context. If you do not read the article, you are already failing at achieving your goals. Do not break the chain!
“The Seinfeld Strategy works because it helps to take the focus off of each individual performance and puts the emphasis on the process instead. It’s not about how you feel, how inspired you are, or how brilliant your work is that day. Instead, it’s just about “not breaking the chain.” - James Clear
Step 2b: Advanced Goal Chains (Optional)
I would not recommend doing this until you have consistently chained together at least 12 months of X’s, as this complicates and removes time from your most important goal, financial freedom. I’ve taken the Seinfeld Strategy to a new level to track my progress and have morphed it into Ravens Strategy over the past few years. My X for each day looks something like this:
B: Business - Have I done meaningful work on my business today?
F: Fitness - Have I worked out today?
S/R: Sex/Relationship - Have I had sex today/Have I put in meaningful work into my relationship today? The letters are interchangable.
H: Hobbies - Have I spent time on my hobbies today?
In this updated calendar chain, to get an X I have to do at least one of the lettered items to consider it a day that I can mark down with an X and a letter. The letters are always in the same quadrant and their location does NOT change. The most ideal day is hitting all 4 quadrants, and the least ideal day is only hitting one, though hitting one means I still progressed in at least one area today. The idea here is to strike a balance and be able to look back at your chain and see how often you: Work on your business, work on your fitness, nurture your relationship, and put time away for yourself and your hobbies. To me, this is my personal fulfillment barometer. You can use any letters you want for anything that is meaningful to you. Pick the 4 most meaningful categories in your life that would constitute the perfect day and track those. For things like fitness it's okay to have rest days where you don’t get that letter.
Other letter ideas:
Re: Reading
E: Eating Healthy
Sa: Made a sale
Fi: Positive financial gains
G: Played video games
Fr: Hung out with friends
At one point I was in a bad relationship and would put an “A” at the top left, outside of my X as a negative indicator for having a day we had a bad Argument. After enough A’s on my calendar, I removed her from my life for being destructive to my well being. I’ve tried everything from adding circles, squares, triangles and so on to expand on the Seinfeld strategy, and the letter method is the most readable and effective method I’ve come up with.
Step 3: So you’ve set your goals, and now you’re getting your X chain going: It’s time to Brain Dump™
Brain Dumping™ is a technique i’ve come up with because I do not want to handle the mental overhead of tasks being in my head. This is a physical manifestation of ALL things in my brain on a quarterly basis for my business. Here’s why this is useful - for example you’re now 12 months into your business and its making some money. You start having to manage product development, the business, how to make profit, and your attention. You’re getting overwhelmed and keep forgetting to do things and you’re getting behind on all that needs to be done. You also keep forgetting great ideas that you had and wanted to implement. Brain Dumping allows you to write down every single idea, thought, action, and potential pursuit you can think of. You are going to brain dump 4 times per year - Once per quarter. On rare occasions I will erase the entire board and brain dump again, but this is only if I am in need of a completely clean mental slate before the quarter is over. I have only had to do this once or twice.
My Braindump Board is a 6x4 foot post-it whiteboard that sticks to the wall behind me in my office: https://amzn.to/3T9xcGU
I do not believe you can get by on a board that is smaller than this. It needs to be large enough to create sprawling flowmaps of your brains ideas.
You also need 5 or 6 colored markers for this to work. No exceptions.
(Example of my board)
Step 3a: How to Brain Dump - Raven Style
First, you need to set aside time for complete focus and silence. No music, just you pacing around your office like a maniac. I want you to get those idea juices flowing and think about your entire business, in every single category that matters. Talk to yourself, jump up and down, and start trying to envision your entire business in your head. For me, pacing harder and faster while whacking my head with a marker tends to really increase my focus. When I say act like a maniac, I mean it, DO NOT FILTER YOUR THOUGHTS. Verbalize anything that you feel you need to say during this process. Act out any bodily movement you feel you need to. THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS. No one should be in the room while you are doing this anyway.
To effectively braindump you need to add a few columns to your whiteboard to organize your thoughts and what I mention below is the most optimal board I have come up with in the 3 years I have been doing this. Every single quarter I have made small adjustments to it to make it work better for me as this is a tool that must stay sharp. Your board may look different and may have different priorities after your first few brain dumps. This is a brain dump board of your mind, and that may not be congruent with what the structure of my mind. For your first brain dump, follow the structure I have laid out.
Column 1: Anything Personal that you need to keep track of
For me in the example above, I have affirmations and personal tasks that I need to do that aren’t related to business at all. These days, the bottom left is called “Sara’s Asks”, where my wife writes down things she would like me to do around the house so that she doesn’t have to bug me about it. If I see it on there, I do it for her without having to be asked. This quarter the affirmations are being removed and will probably be replaced with workout routines, or healthy meal planning. As you may notice, the board is an evolution of what my brain is focused on.
Column 2: Quarterly Biz Dev
This column contains all things legal, marketing partnerships, contractual obligations, employee management, payroll, taxes, and so on. It’s everything you need to keep oiling to keep the business machine running. This column is first in business because it’s the most important tasks and ideas you need to manage and keep top of mind.
Column 3: $ Money Makers
This is where I list down all ideas that will immediately make me more money if I do them. This ranges from paid training for our software, brochures, social media posts, better pricing for our products, sales team calls and additions, live streams, and and large contracts that need to be nurtured. If it is going to make money, put it here.
Column 4: Products (or services)
On my board I have 3 products that we offer and I generally write the top 7 or 8 priorities for each product. Most product development and programming is done by the team and tasks for that are held elsewhere. I’m just looking for the high level pieces that I need to ensure are done and that I want to keep track of. Remember, this is a braindump, so you should write anything that was important enough for it to be a thought in the first place.
Column 5: Revenue and Today's Tasks
This is the only column I look at every day and intently make edits. Every day I will post todays revenue and an arrow denoting whether revenue was higher or lower than yesterday. Red for down, Green for up. Then for today's tasks, I will glance at my board and see if there’s anything I need to take action on immediately to chip away at my tasks, or if there are things that have come up that I need to handle. These are generally small items like buying flights, talking to accountants, important legal filings, or a small subtask of a larger item that’s doable by the end of today.
It’s time to Brain Dump:
So as you’re getting into the zone, you need to have all color coded markers close by as soon as an idea strikes. You can go column by column and think about what fills each one individually, or fill out all columns at once as ideas come into your head. You are going to want to write down anything that seems remotely important, no matter if the task is absolutely gigantic or small. If it’s a large task, write that down as a main bullet point and then create sub bullets for the pieces that break down that large task. If you have small tasks, those can be their own main bullet point. Be sure to keep everything color coded - Bullets are one color, the words are another. Each column has its own colors.
The idea here is you are transferring your mental thoughts and putting them into physical form that you can see. As you progress in setting up your board over the next 30 to 45 minutes, you will begin to have a large mental map of your plans for your business. It is COMPLETELY OKAY and encouraged to write down an idea for your business that may take years. For a few years I had one of our unreleased products as a todo item every single quarter and we finally got it done. The entire point of a brain dump is to get every single possible idea out of your head and on the board so that you no longer have the mental burden of carrying it around. Dump every single thing out of your mind and put it on this board, no exceptions. Categorize it and make it neat. As a tip, if you do not want to categorize the board yet, just write down every single idea you have. When you are finished, take a picture, then erase the board and look at the picture of what you wrote to start categorizing it neatly. I generally use the far right column to write down uncategorized ideas until I can figure out where to put them instead of the picture method. The more you brain dump, the more efficient you will become at categorization and color coding on the fly. The idea here is you do not want to have to carry ideas around in your head anymore. Become unburdened!
When you are finished brain dumping, take a picture of the board for your records. Looking back at all of your previous brain dumps and the evolution of your board is of extreme importance.
There are a few notation devices that I use to make my tasks and ideas become a reality:
- All tasks and bullet points are color coded, no exceptions. It looks nice, and is easy to segment tasks when looking at a glance.
- I use bullets * and sub bullets - as much as I can to create subtasks for a main one.
- The board isn’t just comprised of tasks to do, it’s comprised of ideas that I want to try or explore, even if they turn out to be dumb.
- When I delegate a task, at the end of it, i put an arrow → and then the persons name it is delegated to.
- If the task needs to be done in a certain time frame I will use an arrow → and then set the end date
- For moneymakers I put a dollar sign $ by each one as a parent item and then use bullets * for the subtasks
- In extreme cases where I need to ensure a task is linked, you can see between the money maker and product column, I have a RED flow line linking the tasks. I do this as much as is necessary to keep those integral pieces in mind with respect to each other.
Now that you have gotten all ideas on the board and you are referencing it daily, you’re going to need to maintain the board. As you finish tasks and ideas you have one of two options. You can strike through the task with the color you wrote it with or erase it completely. I opt for erasing the item completely so that it’s not drawing any additional energy of my finite attention span. It feels great to erase an item after it’s been on the board for a while.
You may also find that as you progress on other tasks, some items may become infeasible or irrelevant. Feel free to erase those tasks and forget about them. Do not be afraid to do this as you have a record of the original board state with the photo you took after brain dumping. If you come up with new ideas during the quarter, write them down and categorize them on the board! Do not let ideas slip through and be forgotten. Take more photos if necessary.
Step 3c: Your next Brain Dump
After having used your board for 3 months, it’s now the next quarter and it’s time for a new brain dump. Erase your board completely (For columns 2 - 5). Do the same maniacal things I mentioned you do to get into your brain dump state again. Do not look at photos of previous boards at this time. You want to write down everything that comes to mind, not repeat something just because it was on the board last time. If you had something on the board previously and it doesn’t make it into your thought process during this next brain dump, its probably not important enough to remember and therefore is something you no longer have to do or worry about. When you finish brain dumping and have nothing else to add. You can now look at photos of your previous board to see if missing items need to be added. If you truly feel like they need to be done, add them to the board, but do this with extreme intention. Do not add something because you feel obligated to, add it because it is important to the success of your business. Erasing the board completely and starting a clean slate each quarter is one of the most freeing things I have ever done to help myself and my mental health.
Step 4: Take action every single day.
You have your calendar to track your daily progress. You have your brain dump to guide your quarter. You are mentally unloaded and ready to make significant progress towards your goals. Commit to these habits and I promise you that you will succeed. There may be months at a time where you feel like you aren’t making progress, but getting the X on your calendar and erasing items from your brain dump board will eventually bear significant fruits.
Step 5: After doing this for a year, come back to this thread and tell me this changed your life.
I’ve just written out the exact process that I have honed in and created for myself to achieve difficult goals over the past 8 years. This is the exact format I use to absolutely crush it in business and by using it you have no excuses as to why you aren’t getting the results you want in your life. I have taught my brain dump method in person to one of my friends who did not have a business. They went through the process multiple times and honed in on a great business idea. They have relentlessly executed over the past 12 months and are now doing $20k per month in profit on what was once just an idea before this structure was added to their life. I have proven that this doesn’t just work for me, it works for others too.
I have given you knowledge that if used as directed, will make you millions upon millions of dollars. This is the result of relentless execution and optimization of my life and I'm sharing it with you for FREE. I WISH I had this when I started. Are you going to use it?
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