At the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 a major carrier of mine announced they were no longer going to be offering health insurance due to the changes in health care. This came as a huge blow to me, as I was constantly being assured throughout the previous months not to worry as they were bulking up, and planned on making no changes. The reason this really effected me was because personal insurance production was still responsible for 50% of my income. At the time I had one foot in the consulting, coaching, and speaking area, and one foot in the insurance still. Needless to say I was nervous.
So what I did was I began to devise a plan of what I needed to do each day to make up for this loss of production. As a matter of fact I referenced it in the podcast, 3 Rules in Business that Need to be Broken. So I immediately started to brainstorm on what to do. As I could best calculate, these new changes were going to represent a loss of $800 per day to my business. So the natural thought was, how can I make $800 per day. So I began to plan. I pulled out a journal my wife had just purchased me for Christmas and began to write.
So I began to think to myself what could I do? Some of my immediate thoughts were.
- What exactly do I need to sell to make what I need?
- What do I have that is viable, and reasonably bring that about?
- Who is the market I need to call on that would find value in what I have?
- How do I reach these individuals?
- What do I use to reach them?
- What do I reach them with?
All of these questions, and answers I developed not only worked, but worked way more than what I initially hoped for. I actually created a 40 min training webinar entitled, “How to earn $800 a day” from engaging this plan. You can click here to see it. One thing I discovered quickly was I aimed way too low. I did not really consider that scale in which I could reach through the automated tools I had.
As the good book says, “Man makes plans, but God orders his steps”. In knowing this it is my encouragement to new entrepreneurs to yes set reasonable goals. However don’t allow your goals to be self limitations. Your goals should be the floor to what you are willing to accept, not a ceiling you can’t go beyond.
The one thing I’ve learned in the past 20 years of working for myself is while markets may change, and economies may waiver, you can still achieve and succeed if you are willing to continue to be willing to learn, and expand. While a certain industry may collapse tomorrow, the same tools, training, and temperament you possess that helped you achieve, will help you again.
