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Aligning Your Top 3

Podcast transcription

All right guys, how are you, hope you're all doing really well. 

On today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can use your top 3 priorities each day to achieve your larger goals and aspirations. Let's get into it. 

The big question we all face every morning is this: How can we focus more time on the projects, activities, and relationships that are most important and meaningful to us and less time on the stuff that doesn't matter so we can actually move closer to our goals and dreams? 

That is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name is Matt East and welcome to the Goal Achievement podcast. I'm so glad you're here, now let's dig in. 

All right guys, so we talk all the time about how so much of high performance and productivity is driven by very simple concepts, and I think sometimes people overthink it, and what we talk about today is going to be in line with that. We're going to talk through how you can use your top 3 priorities each day to really move the needle on a specific project or, or goal that you are working on. 

So I just want to challenge you to really make an effort this week to align your top 3 daily priorities with your broader goals and your broader aspirations. 

You want your priorities to be congruent with what you are trying to achieve with your week, then by executing on those priorities each day, you're connecting, you know, to your week's purpose and you're hopefully connecting to your to your larger, your broader purpose. 

Here's an example of how that works, and that sounds a little confusing, I didn't do a great job of describing that. Here's… here's how this works, so a client asked me. Matt: 

How how do you use your top 3 priorities to accomplish your business goals? 

So I'm coaching a gal that she wants to be a, build up a coaching business, so she asked me that. So how do I use my top 3 priorities? How do I think about my top 3 priorities for the day in relationship to my, the goals I have for my, my business? 

So one way I do that is I try to always use my top 3 to dedicated for priorities that are going to drive my business forward. So, for example, let me give an example of this: 

A week ago, I wanted to focus on building out a new coaching product, so coaching product that's branded differently than my website than my traditional coaching, and it's a tailored to a little different market, it's just a little bit different, the coaching experience is slightly different and, so anyway, so I've been wanting to build this. 

So to give an example of how I use my top 3 to drive the activities that I want, so I had this broader goal, I want to, I want to build out this new product, this new coaching product, and in order to do that, I got to build a website, I got to build a product, got to get it all online, all that good stuff. 

So this is what my priorities look like to achieve that larger goal: 

So Monday, this was a couple of weeks ago. Monday, pick out and buy a domain name, so I blocked off 30 minutes for that. Second, choose a template for the new website, so I build my websites currently in Squarespace super easy, so 30 minutes to choose a template, I have a lot of experience with that so that just doesn't take long. Third thing is I had to connect the domain that I had bought from like GoDaddy to my website, so that takes 15 minutes. So you see, those are very practical things that I have to do to move the needle forward on my new website and on to build my new to start selling my new coaching project or product. 

So on Tuesday, my top 3 were: write website copy for landing page, write website copy for sales page, and create a logo. 

On Wednesday it was create a new product in Gumroad that's how I sell stuff, I sell stuff through Gumroad typically. So Gumroad is just essentially it's an online checkout system that works very well it's, you don't have to click around too much so you don't lose buyers online when you're selling stuff. I also created Google ads so that I could get traffic to my new site and I had to configure the product that I'm selling, and I did that within a coaching app that I use. 

On Thursday I asked for feedback, I asked my VA to provide feedback and to proof the site to make sure there weren't any, like, noticeable errors or spelling errors or whatever. And the second thing was I wanted to implement feedback and edits from the VA and I had to configure a 7-day free trial, so I wanted to offer this coaching product for free for seven days before people had to pay for it, and that takes a little bit of configuring. 

On Friday, I published the site, I published the ads, and I started to sell my MVP, so MVP stands for minimal viable product so what I was building wasn't like the perfect thing. It was kind of just, hey, this is what I'm going to sell initially, I'm selling this at a very low cost, so I don't feel guilty that it's not like the greatest technology of all time. I think it's very good, but it's yeah, so I shipped my minimal viable product. Second thing was be ready to support and answer questions and respond to customers as people start signing up and then 3, make necessary tweaks to the website and product. 

So that's an example of all 3 of my priorities each day, I've built around trying to get this website up and get it built. So, I mean, I essentially built a new website and built a new product and I'm getting customers, I've been getting about a customer a day on this new product, it's awesome, it's, if you want to see it, it's productivitymonsters.com, productivitymonsters.com, so it's awesome, and people have been loving it, but yeah. 

So that's how I do it, I almost always build my top 3 around my business because I use my morning for exercise, reading, little meditation, drinking coffee, planning my day, and if you've read my book, that's my habit layer, and I use my evenings to cook and relax and try to tidy up around the house and most importantly, try to connect and hang out with Rachel, my wife, and that's my evening habit layer. 

So I've got my exercise taking care of kind of my mind stuff with reading a meditation, that's my morning. I've got my relationship stuff covered in the evening, you know, that's hanging out with Rachel when it's not covid that's when I would you know, she and I would go out with family and friends and hang out and connect with people. 

So I've got my morning exercise, I've got my relationships kind of handled in the evening, and so during the, the chunk of the day I try to pick out my top 3 is really focused around trying to drive my business forward, and so that's how I do it, that's how I build my top 3 around trying to move my... my business forward. 

So, you know, really the bulk of my day, I'm able to use on things, on trying to achieve priorities that are going to move the needle forward on my business goals and objectives. You know, obviously, like people are like Matt isn't your top priority each day, like client interaction, and no, it's not. It's a priority, but it's it's rarely a top 3 priority, I try to prioritize what is going to move my business forward, that client interaction is really more of a activity that sustains my business, it's very important, but 99 percent of the time, I wouldn't include client interaction as a top 3 priority just because it's not moving the business forward. Whereas like doing something like launching a new product or writing a book? Something like that is going to move, it's going to create new revenue for the business, so that's how I think about that. 

I hope that helps, you know, really think through it. 

Trying to figure out what you want to accomplish this week, like, what's that big thing you want to accomplish and then determine, you know, back into what needs to get done in order to make that happen? 

You know, and don't overthink it, I think it's simple, it's not, don't overthink, underthink it you know, usually it's not that complicated. If you're trying to write a book, block time to write and make sure you write for a few hours each day. If you're trying to build a business, figure out exactly what that means, you don't have to go read, you know, seven business books, figure out, you know, what that looks like for you and start taking action on… on those really those needle-moving things that are going to... If you're trying to create a business, it's because you're trying to generate some income, probably. 

So try to figure out what's going to move the needle on getting some cash in the door, because if you get that cash, so much else come... becomes so much easier. So... also, you can see, you know, from how I used my top 3 to build a website and launch a new product and to start making sales. 

It's a good reminder of how you can really move things forward quickly using only your top 3. 

I didn't do anything outside of those for that website, for that launch, I mean that was it, I mean, it pretty simple. So, I mean, a lot of times you can only execute on your top 3 Monday through Friday, and that's... you would accomplish, 15 things, 15 is a lot of things to accomplish if it's the right thing. 

So you can make a lot of progress very quickly if you align your daily priorities with that broader goal you want to achieve for the week or for just the broader goals in your life, whatever you're aspiring towards, and, you know, that's just it's very important to recognize you can make a lot of progress in a short amount of time. 

You know, I always tell people if you set your, if all you do are your top 3 priorities each day and you do seven days a week, that's 21 things you get done. Most people don't intentionally get done 21 like... move, needle-moving things a week. So think through that, what's really important here is identifying the right priorities, you know. 

So I could have instead of, you know, on Monday where I picked out a domain, chose a template, connected a domain to my website. I mean, I could have done I could have said, well, since I'm signing a book, I'm going to read a book on, I don't know some business book like it's so much better to just take the right action and get started on what you're actually trying to do, as opposed to, you know, getting lost in a maze or like doing research for days on end about the business, like just get it going, get it going, start, you're going to iterate, that's why it's, it's beautiful to kind of think through that minimal viable product when you're launching something, whatever you create, it's not going to be perfect on day one, and it's going to be fine, it's going to be fine. 

I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast yet. This is hilarious and super embarrassing, but I like quick. I did the redesign of the Goal Achievement podcast, you know, like the cover. And I don't know if I mention this on this podcast yet, this is hilarious. But, so I did the redesign and I originally spelled, I left out an "E" like in the middle of achievement, which is so embarrassing on, so like I launched that, like I put it in iTunes, so the goal achievement of that movement was spelled wrong, and, you know, I mean, that is super embarrassing, right? 

That's super embarrassing, it doesn't fucking matter, nobody cares like nobody stopped listening to this podcast because of it, I've looked at the numbers, like, you just fix it and move on. So, like, as you're thinking through your stuff that you want to do, it does not have to be perfect, you know? I mean, for God's sake, I launched a podcast and I mean, I spelled achievement wrong and it's the Goal Achievement podcast. You know how embarrassing that is? Nobody cares, I mean, I don't know for sure if anybody noticed. My wonderful niece pointed it out to me very kindly, thank you, so I was just one of my nieces, so thank you to Jonna for that. 

But so, you know, people worry about stuff so much that they're going to screw something up, and it's just like whatever you do, it's so much better to execute and take action and screw it up and you can come back and fix it later. 

So, so many people are, they want their little thing to be perfect when they launch and just launch, you can have typos on your website, you can have, you're going to have problems. It's fine, nobody really cares, and there's, you're going to refine it and make it better and make it better and make it better, so I would definitely lean towards if you're struggling and you're wanting, like, perfection before you launch your business or launch or whatever it is, don't let perfection hold you back, I mean,I did, I did get my podcast cover looking good and all spelled correctly, but man, if any of you guys noticed that, let me know, that's hilarious. 

If if you noticed that and you didn't point it out to me, I'm kind of mad at you, though, so maybe you shouldn't tell me why you are allowed to point stuff out like that to me, I'm close enough with so many listeners, I think if you guys would have saw that, you'd been like Matt dude, you spelled achievement wrong. 

So whatever, lesson learned, and yeah, let's hope you guys are well, that was kind of a rant there. 

But the big deal with this week:

Get clear on your top priorities each day, get clear on your top 3 priorities each morning if you need help with that, try my coaching, you can try coaching for free for 7 days on the new website productivitymonsters.com it's the bomb and it's, that's only 19.99, so and it is awesome. 

People are loving it, give it a shot, that's it. Make it a great week, align your top priorities with the thing that you're trying to get done or achieve. OK, that's it. Make it a great week bye-bye. 

Hey everyone, it's Matt again and I have two special offers for you:

First, did you know you can actually download my best-selling book, The Purposeful Planning Method: How to Plan Your Day, Beat Procrastination and Regain Control of your time for free from my website right now? That's at Matt-East.com, you just Google Matt East Productivity and it will pull right up, and you can download the digital book or the audiobook, either one for free right now. 

I can't promise this offer will last forever, so snag a copy if you want it. This is the exact same book that costs I don't know what it is like 18 bucks on Amazon and Audible so go get it while you can, don't come whining to me if you miss this deal and you didn't download it. 

So I'm telling you, if you want it for free, go get it. 

Don't wait and take action, knock it out. It's again, it's Matt-East.com, is my website. So, or just Google Matt East, google productivity coach, I think I come right up first. 

So second thing, I want to invite you to work with me, I'm offering my digital productivity coaching right now for 29 dollars and 99 cents a month. That's 70 percent off the regular price, so it's usually 25 bucks a week or 100 bucks a month, so you jump on this opportunity. 

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It's 29.99 a month, and it's it's perfect if you're looking to transform your productivity and if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably trying to do that. So this coaching works, it's awesome, and man, for 29 bucks like the ROI on this is incredible, or if you're a solopreneur like a lot of my clients, if you're an entrepreneur or if you're just a professional looking for an edge, I mean the ROI on this is incredible because you're not investing much. 

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So there is no downside to giving it a shot, so try it, I bet you'll love it, and if you don't just cancel no big deal, it's no ... there's like literally no downside to this, so give it a shot, you deserve it. 

You owe it to yourself to have some accountability, have somebody that cares. 

That's why I use a writing coach, I like having somebody that I pay to care about when I'm working on, so it's great, I highly recommend it and I think you guys would love it, and that's it. 

I hope you guys loved this episode and we'll chat again soon bye-bye.