quarterly planning, Bob Ross vs. Michelangelo

Summary

two quarterly planning methods. pick the one that matches your skill level, not your ambition level.

1. the Bob Ross method (for beginners). one big quarterly goal. three strategies underneath it. five tactics under each strategy. that gives you a clean tree of 15 things to either execute or delegate. the structure does the thinking for you, which is exactly what you need when you’re new to planning.

2. the Michelangelo method (for advanced operators). one goal. no rigid tree. you chisel at it daily, weekly, and monthly. you adapt in real time as the picture emerges. this requires real reps. you’ve planned enough quarters to know what to drop and what to push, and you can hold the whole thing in your head without a template.

most entrepreneurs jump to Michelangelo too early because it sounds cooler. don’t. if you haven’t run Bob Ross quarters cleanly for a year, the freedom of Michelangelo will eat you. earn the right to chisel.

Transcript

introduction and overview of quarterly planning strategies

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. All right, today I’m going to share two methods I have used to create quarterly plans that have helped me sell over $25 million in cash in online business in the last couple of years. So let’s dive into it.

This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon, and I have helped hundreds, if not thousands of entrepreneurs at this point build businesses and doing that largely through having a really good plan, a process, a system, good operations in all honesty. And I’ve also done this for myself for years, over a decade before I ever started teaching anyone to do it or before I ever started making any content on it.

explanation of the Bob Ross method

And today I’ll kind of tell you big picture what these two strategies are. So they are in two categories. The first one I will call the Bob Ross method, and the second one will be called Michelangelo. So let’s get down into the actual planning process. First we got to talk about Bob Ross. So Bob Ross, if you’re not familiar, might date myself a little bit.

I don’t know how long he was even on TV. I know he’s passed now, but ultimately Bob Ross would, it was kind of like monkey see monkey do art, right? He would come on the TV, he would whip out his paintbrush and a palette and he would just like make these most phenomenal landscapes, I mean amazing paintings.

And you’re supposed to just sit there in your living room, follow along and make this amazing painting. And what he would come out with as a masterpiece, what you would come out with is something. It looked kind of similar, right? You’re getting there, you’re moving that direction. So that’s the first type of quarterly plan I like to work with on any kind of business owner who hasn’t been planning, they don’t have a significantly size, they’re not in a seven figure plus range.

detailed steps for implementing the Bob Ross method

I’m not going to recommend the Michelangelo method that I’ll get into in a minute. I’m going to recommend the Bob Ross method. And the Bob Ross method is where you’re really breaking things down at the beginning of the quarter and then after you break those things down, you just execute. Either you are executing them one at a time or you’re giving it to your team.

So here’s how you actually do it. You’re going to set one singular goal for the quarter and this can be whatever you want. It can be revenue, it can be profit. Typically I like to tell entrepreneurs have a revenue goal with a profit stipulation. That way we’re kind of balancing new business but also maintaining that profitability.

introduction to the Michelangelo method for advanced planners

And then after that, jot down three strategies that you have just to ultimately think that can get you towards that goal. It’s like, all right, I need more leads, I need more sales, I need to do whatever. All of these kind of things. You’re going to write down the three big picture strategies. I’m going to create more content and then I’m going to do more workshops, webinars, whatever it is.

All these different strategies. Ultimately you can brainstorm them but you’re going to pick three. Then under each strategy is going to have five tactics. So you’re going to end up with 15 things here. So five tactics under each strategy and this is all in alignment with that one singular goal that you have.

And then you can start delegating this. You can give it to teammates, team members. You can just do it all yourself if you’re a solopreneur and just focus on the most leveraged task and knock them off one by one. The Bob Ross method is what I have done for years and I think it’s incredibly effective, helps team members gain a lot of clarity around what you’re doing, and can move you along really fast.

steps to execute the Michelangelo method

The only problem is, like Bob Ross, is you’re going to have this perfect plan and like Bob Ross, when he finishes he has this perfect painting but that’s not what you’re going to create and that should be the expectation. It’s like, I tried to follow this to the best of my ability. I have something that looks like a river and some trees but it looks nothing like what I ultimately wanted, right?

And that’s going to be okay. That’s what you have to know about quarterly planning is that it’s never going to be perfect. It’s never going to come out exactly how Bob Ross made it look but ultimately you’re going to be checking these things off one by one and you’re going to make progress, okay? Now that is the first method.

That is, I would say, beginner, intermediate, even slightly advanced. A much more advanced strategy is what I call Michelangelo strategy and that’s where you only have one goal, like one singular goal. It starts the same as Bob Ross so it could be I’m going to sell a certain amount of widgets. It can be I’m going to make this much money with this much profit, whatever, the one goal.

key differences between the Bob Ross and Michelangelo methods

But the reason it’s the advanced strategy is you might be an advanced business owner who’s already put through a lot of time, effort, energy, strategic thinking. You’ve done everything. You don’t struggle necessarily with productivity. You don’t struggle with getting things done. You really just want to achieve the objective and you have a lot of road behind you, right?

You’re a veteran in this space. You know what you’re doing. So if you have that one goal and you’ve marked all these other things off, like you have the experience and all that stuff, you can do the Michelangelo strategy. And the reason I go to Michelangelo, also one of the greatest artists of all time, he was known for a lot of different pieces of art, but he also sculpted a lot of things.

And one of his famous quotes he said was, I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Meaning he had this big block of marble and he knew that there was an angel in there. And he just sat there and chiseled away until he got ultimately what he wanted, what he knew was in there. And that’s how the Michelangelo strategy works for an advanced business owner.

how to choose the right strategy based on your business stage

You set that one target and you’re just going to sit there and chisel from every single angle. There’s no like, oh, here’s the marketing strategy, because you might try a marketing strategy and you’re like, this isn’t working. So you pivot, you pivot really fast because you already know the direction this is going.

This isn’t working. So this whole like 15 point plan that I wrote down that I know is not going to work now is irrelevant. I don’t need to do that anymore. So you pivot quickly and now you’re moving on to something else and you just keep chiseling, but you never lose sight of the one thing. Okay. Just, just because you’re an advanced business owner, it doesn’t mean that you can jump from thing to thing.

That’s not what this means. It’s not like, oh, I’m going to write a book. Oh, I’m going to start posting Instagram content. Oh, I’m going to do this new strategy I saw on, on Instagram. I’m going to do this over here. Email marketing, like you’re just jumping all over the place. That doesn’t make sense unless it’s all targeted around.

conclusion and encouragement to apply these strategies

The chisel is freeing what the sculpture is supposed to be. And so how you do this is every single day you wake up and you ask yourself, what’s the one thing I can do today? What’s the one thing I can do this week? What’s the one thing I can do this month? Ultimately, what’s the one thing I can do this quarter?

So you have that quarterly goal and you’re always asking yourself down that line of questioning. It’s like, okay, I want to make a million dollars this quarter. Okay. What do I have to do this month? And then it might be a certain amount of money you need to make this month, certain amount of leads, certain amount of calls, certain amount of appointments, something.

Then you back for back that down. Okay. What do I need to do this week to be on target for that monthly goal? And it’s like, okay, that’s what I need to do this week. If that’s the weekly goal, what am I doing today? So this is very flexible environment, right? It’s like we’re chasing this one thing, but we’re always making sure that our quarterly goals are in line with our monthly goal.

Our monthly goal is in line with our weekly goal. And our weekly goal is in line with what exactly we’re doing today. Now this one takes a little bit more, like I said, skill. It’s a little bit more advanced because the risk, if you do this too early, is that you do end up just jumping around and losing sight of the goal and just doing too many different things, not really knowing what’s going to work.

But if you have the experience and you have the skillset, this is my favorite strategy because it’s more flexible, it’s less pressure, and you’re able to just focus on what you’re doing today and just knocking down those dominoes one at a time until you get closer and closer to achieving your objective.

So those are the two different strategies you can use. You can either do it Bob Ross style or be Michelangelo. That is up to you. Ultimately, if you want to achieve your goals in business, it’s all the same. You’re going to have to try harder.