the GPP cycle, goal, plan, playbook

Summary

the cycle for continual scale is GPP. goal, plan, playbook. simple to remember, hard to actually run for years without slipping.

1. goal. set a stretch goal that makes you uncomfortable but is not delusional. easy example: you’re doing 50 leads a month, set 75. not 500. not 75 leads makes you confront real problems. 500 makes you fantasize.

2. plan. the plan is what you build when reality misses the goal. week one you fall short. you do not pivot the goal. you build a plan to close the gap by week two. then you execute, measure, and adjust. weekly cadence, not quarterly. the smaller the loop, the faster the learning.

3. playbook. document what worked. not what you read in a book. what worked for you in your business with your customers. that’s your playbook. it is not transferable. it does not need to be. it is the operating manual for the company only you can run.

rinse and repeat. set the next stretch goal, build the next plan, add the next page to the playbook. do this every quarter for five years and you have a business that grows on rails.

Transcript

introduction to stretch goals and their importance

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. No doubt you have goals in your business right now. And I’m not talking about the big goals of I want to retire or I want to make a certain amount of money. And, you know, I’m not talking about the big picture, but let’s go down a little bit to more short term goals.

Maybe you do have a certain amount of revenue you want to hit this month, number of new customers this month, this quarter, this year, even. Or maybe it’s number of new leads, something like that. Or it’s a bigger project you want to work on. You have goals. And sometimes things are just aligning and we’re hitting our goals, we’re making progress.

breaking down monthly goals into weekly targets

But sometimes you’re making progress not through your actions. It might be through luck. It might just be happening. You’re setting goals that can kind of get achieved on their own. So one, I would challenge you to set better goals that are slightly hard to achieve that you’re going to find problems with.

And then after you do that, I have a very, very good solution for you to continue to grow. This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. So let’s reframe that for a minute. Say I want 50 new leads in a month. And I kind of talked about reverse engineering this on a different podcast. Let’s now go down into this specific example of goal setting and what you should do and shouldn’t do and how to approach these different things.

So if I wanted 50 new leads this month and I was like, okay, I’m going to focus on getting 50 new leads. But what if I just kind of, I didn’t really do anything. I didn’t put any plans in place. Again, just because I run a good business, I have referrals and web traffic and everything else. I wanted 50 new leads this month.

Just because I run a good business, I got 45 leads. And the other five, I didn’t really have to put much work into, or maybe I didn’t get them, or maybe I call it good because I got 45 and I’m like, hey, we’re good to go. I’m hitting my goals. But you’re setting a very achievable goal. And I want to challenge you on that because some people were like, well, set that big, hairy, audacious goal of, yeah, well, let’s get 500 leads this month.

But I don’t love those goals either. I like them as thought experiments of like, what would it take to get there? But I don’t like to set it as actual goals because if a goal is not achievable, it makes you abandon the whole goal setting process. So you want something that’s just slightly outside of your comfort zone.

They call it a stretch goal. So say 50 is very achievable, but you’re like, you know what, 75 is more real. That will take effort. Okay. That will take effort. So you’re looking for new things to get to 75 leads this month. That’s right where you want to be. Now when we get into the weeds of like, okay, we have this goal of 75 and you’re trying to get a certain number of leads every single week and you’re looking at this data once a week.

And that’s what I’d encourage you to do. So you have this goal, 75 leads per month. I got to hit a certain amount of leads every single week. And so you’re looking at the data, you’re seeing what’s happening. And then what you should realize at some point, if you’re setting the correct goals and you’re continuing to push yourself at some point, you will be off track.

Okay. You will not be achieving your goal. That’s where you want to get to because that means we’re in the speed wobble. We are in discomfort. We do not know what we’re doing. We are trying to figure things out. We’re doing something we’ve never done before. And now when you get to this point, that’s where you start to actually learn.

adjusting strategies to meet weekly targets

You don’t learn in the comfort zone. You learn in discomfort. So say you’re like, man, I can’t get the amount of leads that I want. I keep setting this goal of 75. That means I need about 19 new leads per week. I keep getting 11 or 12. Like what am I going to do? How am I going to fix it? That’s right where you want to be.

You kind of want to be in that failure spot, but it’s achievable. Okay. So we have the goal. We’re chasing it. That’s the first thing, the goal. The goal is the most important thing to set and making sure it’s right in that sweet spot. And once we’re starting to fail, we’re not really achieving it.

The second thing you do is on a weekly basis, you’re going to ask yourself, what is the plan to correct this issue every single week? And you don’t necessarily need a new plan every single week, but you’re going to look and you’re going to see what you can adjust because this has happened even in my companies, you know, we’re relatively large.

We have big teams, but sometimes we’ll go over the metrics and the metrics aren’t within KPI, but everyone will kind of be so busy that we’re like, yeah, okay. I mean, it’s not good, but like business as usual, you can’t do that. Like that’s, that’s comfort. It happens to all of us. We can’t do that.

So immediately start writing like, okay, I’m only getting 11, 12 leads per week. I need eight or nine more. So what’s the plan to get those eight or nine more? What are the inputs I need to do to get the output I desire? So output is nine more leads. Input is what? What activities do I need to go do?

So now you have a plan to correct that issue every single week, and it might take more than one week to execute that plan, but you’re at least looking at it. You’re like, oh, hey, I’m, you know, week two of the month, I’m still behind on leads, but I’m still working this plan to correct that issue.

And eventually you will fix the issue. You will, you will get there. If you’re actually treating this like a scientific experiment and you’re like wondering what inputs will get you to the desired output and you keep playing with it and you keep asking yourself that every week, eventually 19 new leads per week, which is about what you would need for 75 leads a month, is going to become the new standard, your new baseline.

It’s going to be easy. You will get there. And now here’s the last thing I want you to do before you go through this cycle again. Create a playbook. Create a playbook of what you did to make that new baseline easy. Write it down. It can be a Google doc. It can just, you can call it company name playbook.

the importance of documenting strategies and outcomes

And it’s like, okay, well, when we were short on leads, we needed nine more per, per week or whatever it is. This is what we did and this is how it worked. Here’s what I learned in that process. And you’re making a playbook because this is something I wish I would have started doing so long ago because this is a cycle.

What I’m telling you is a cycle. It’s GPP, goal, plan, playbook. So it’s what’s the goal? What’s the plan to correct us not hitting the goal? And then what is the, where can I put it in the playbook? GPP. You go through this cycle over and over again, and now 19 leads is the baseline. It’s easy. And now you’re going for 25.

It’s going to take new things. Again, 25 is the new goal. And now you’re going to, you’re going to fall short of that goal. And then you’re going to start being like, okay, what’s the plan to correct it? Might take a month, might take three months, might take a year. You’ll eventually figure out how to make 25 the new baseline.

And then you write it down. The playbook. The playbook is the most important part of this, because what will happen over time, if you actually do this long enough, you will have a full on playbook of how to grow and scale a company, specifically your company. And what you’ll also find out is you might stop doing some things, or you may have solved problems already, and you can go back to your playbook and say, okay, how did we solve that lead problem?

How do we solve the system problem? How did we solve this customer success problem three and a half years ago? And you go back and you look and you’re like, oh yeah, there’s some good ideas there. I think we can implement that here. And it will save you so much time because it’s not, it’s not Googling, right?

It’s not Googling. It’s not asking AI. It’s not getting into a coaching program. It’s not asking someone for advice. It’s your, the most concrete specific data to your business, because you’ve been creating this playbook and it’s so wildly helpful. So that is the three step process. And again, it’s a cycle.

You don’t do it once. You continue to do this over and over and over again, goal. What’s the plan to correct playbook? You put it in there and now you’re really starting to document what growth takes for your specific company and you’re going to learn how to scale faster. Now if you can get in this process and this habit and start doing this on a weekly and monthly basis, you’re going to start making some really fast progress.

Not even just because of the playbook side. Most people don’t sit around and ask what the plan to correct your KPI error is every single week and how are we working on it. Most people don’t do that in business, believe it or not. Most people don’t do that. So if you’re doing those things and you’re staying on top of it, that will be enough to start moving your company forward in all the ways that you want.

Again, this isn’t just about new leads. This can be about any problem you’re facing in business. Any goal you’re chasing in the quarter. Go through this process and you will make so much progress. But I know it’s effort. It’s something new. And guess what? You’re just going to have to try harder.