Sometimes, I stock my fridge full of fresh fruit and veg. because in my mind, after work each day, I will magically turn into Ina Garten and make gourmet vegetarian meals that are delicious while keeping me slim.
Most of the time, I get ghosted by pretend Ina. Those meals never make their way to my dinner plate.
By the time I finish work for the day, I am powered down like solar panels after the sun goes down. 😉
I feel too tired to decide which meal to make, look up how much of what item I need, and do all the washing, chopping, cutting, measuring, etc.
Most days, I’ve spent the whole time making decisions and advising on decisions. When it’s time to cook dinner, I spoon out some beans over lettuce, tomatoes and onions and put some sliced avocado on top. That’s my go-to healthy meal for zombie business owners who are tired of thinking.
By the end of the week, I realize Ina never came. My fridge is still full of semi-wilted greens I now have to pick through.
So, why didn’t I follow through with my meal ideas? The ones for which I bought all the ingredients?
Because I didn’t help myself out by doing the extra pre-work to remove barriers to the process.
Most people follow the path of least resistance on a daily basis. (Aka – we’re pre-programmed to be as lazy as possible while surviving.)
Speaking of least resistance, find out what objections I had to Profit First and why I didn’t think it would work for my business.
I remember on a webinar a few years ago, Mike Michalowicz said every night he puts his tennis shoes on the toilet. And that’s so it’s as easy as possible for him to get ready to work out in the mornings. He’s removing all points of resistance in getting himself from the bed to the gym.
That’s behavior science working on your behalf right there. If you want to be sure you do something, remove all possible barriers to getting it done. And then you’re more likely to follow through.
Same thing for my meals. If I would take the extra step to pre-prep the washing and measuring for each meal…or, as it turns out, if I just group the ingredients together in one bag with meal instructions in there, I’m waaaaaayyyyy more likely to enjoy a fresh cooked meal over my 5-minute pretend taco salad.
That’s because I’ve removed the extra thinking step from the process. I don’t have to think about what I want. I just grab a bag from the fridge, and I start cooking while I listen to the latest Murdaugh Murders podcast episode or The Behavior Panel on YouTube.
Keep it as simple and mindless as possible. No thinking or decision making required.
How to Keep it Simple with Profit First
The same is true with making Profit First allocations for my marketing business. When I first started calculating how much to transfer to each account, it would take forever.
And that’s because I didn’t have my financial reports set up to quickly give me my “real revenue” number. I didn’t have a quick cheat sheet to remind me how much I was contributing to each account. Then I also needed to do the calculations. And then I needed to remember which of my bank accounts held which allocations.
That was a lot of work. And I had to think a lot.
I didn’t like it, and that meant I mostly didn’t do it.
Until I attended Stapf Financial’s Profit First workshop and their clean up your books workshop.
That’s where I got the tools I needed to take just 15 minutes a week to make my Profit First allocations. Plus, the Stapf Financial team helped me set up automated reports to calculate my real revenue for me.
In this week’s video, I talk about the one allocation tool that saved me a ton of time. I just pop my real revenue number into the spreadsheet, and it does the rest of the work for me.
Tools that have worked for me
Stapf Financial is offering that tool to you for free, and the link is in this week’s video description.
They are also holding the next Profit First workshop November 15th, if you want to join.
The easiest way for me to stick with Profit First (or pretty much any habit) is to keep it simple. And the Stapf Financial team has given me all the tools so I don’t have to think to make a profit.
Whether it’s implementing Profit First, or there’s another business habit you want to consistently accomplish, keep it simple. Look at the process and see if there’s any way to make it more of a no-brainer. The fewer steps, the less thinking time you need, the more convenient you make it, the more likely you are to consistently practice your habit.
Here’s to putting more profits in your pockets without working harder so you can do more life!
p.s. – quick website pro-tip: Reducing the number of steps in your purchase process has the same effect. Conversions increase as the process is easier. Think about ways you can make it easier, reduce number of steps, to do business with you. It’s the easiest way to increase your conversion rate without working harder.
