Episode 81: How to Prioritize Long-Term Goals Over Short-Term Gains

Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Jesse P. Gilmore:
You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse P. Gilmore, founder of Niche in Control and creator of Leverage for Growth. Welcome to the daily leverage edition. Today’s topic is this, how to prioritize long-term goals over short-term gains. Sit back, relax, and welcome to today’s daily leverage. So this morning I was doing my morning routine of stacking and understanding the topic of prioritizing long-term goals over short-term gains. And this is ultimately where we as entrepreneurs need to have an understanding of where we are today and where we’re going in the future. And being able to kind of do this balancing process of figuring out exactly what short term gains you need to make, but not sacrificing your long term goals. And when to focus on long term goals as opposed to what might seem like a really good idea in the short term. And a lot of times it’s really based around understanding sustainability within the growth of your agency. And being able to look at your agency from a lens of sustainability, growth, consistency, predictability. And this is ultimately one of the dangers of short-term thinking is where you certainly are focused on what might bring in, you know, cash tomorrow or cash today. But in actuality, it harms you from… hitting your long-term goals. An example of this is where a lot of times agency owners will, at certain stages within their growth, focus only on getting clients, regardless of what type of client it is. And ultimately, what this does is the short-term gain might be that additional client. You might be taking on jobs that you’re not actually making a lot of money off of, but really focused around just getting clients. This is an example of a short term gain where you get the client, but then that client ends up becoming maybe one that doesn’t pay you enough. You’re not profitable with it. And ultimately, maybe they suck up a lot of your time because you’re you’re stuck dealing with a client that’s not actually a really good fit. But your goal was to actually acquire the client. And this leads towards sacrificing things like quality and damaging client relationships and your reputation. And ultimately neglecting your long-term strategy. And in order for you to embrace a long-term strategy, you really have to have long-term goals. You have to understand exactly where your agency is going five, 10 years from now, being able to have what some would consider a b-hag, a big, hairy, audacious goal, something that you’re working towards that’s beyond the comprehension at this moment. And what this does is allows you to focus on things like revenue targets, marketing position, client base, to reduce agency churn and focusing on these kind of long term goals. And by doing this, you are able to start to prioritize and align your short term actions with these objectives. And this all leads towards effective time management. When you understand where you are today and where you’re going today and what kind of disciplines or actions you’re making right now in order for you to achieve your goal, you have to go through an effective time management process where you start by eliminating things that are taking you away from your long-term goals and starting to automate things that are kind of what Steven Covey would say, Quad 3 or Quad 4, where it’s really not important, but just something that might be necessary or not even necessary at all, and being able to automate that. And then looking at the work that’s left, and starting to focus on delegation. What can you give to somebody else? And whatever is left after that, then you need a time box. And this is ultimately how you start to prioritize tasks and projects that are all contributing to long-term goals rather than just the short-term gains. And as you’re moving forward and going towards their long-term growth, you’re ultimately going to have to adapt and change and be able to pivot. And one of the things that we do in the Alliance Mastermind is focus on these weekly review sessions where you’re looking at what happened in the last week, what were some of the accomplishments, what worked, what didn’t work, what should continue, what should be removed. And you’re starting to get to a point where you understand that on a weekly cadence, you’re having to make these little minute pivots and in order for you to stay on the flight path towards your destination. And ultimately, this is ultimately what I suggest for anybody that’s listening right now, is to really prioritize your long-term goals, understand where you’re going, and focus on sustainable growth. Ultimately, when you focus on sustainable growth and your long-term goals, you’re able to put the daily practices in place in order for you to eliminate the things that are taking you away from your goals and be able to focus on long-term success. So why is this important? Ultimately, as entrepreneurs, we are constantly in this juggling balancing act between what we want in the long term and what we need in the short term. And being able to understand both sides of the coin is a good way of being able to prioritize long-term goals over short-term gains. So now it’s time for the daily leverage. So where in your world, whether in your life or business, have you been focused on the short-term gains rather than the long-term goals? Is it in your life with your health and body? Is it in your life with your spirituality or self-direction? Is it in your relationships with your spouse, partner, or kids? Is it in your business, finances, or team? And once you’ve located where you’ve been focused on short-term gains, and you really need to focus on long-term goals, and you know what you need to change, my question to you is this. What are you willing and able to do about it today? That is the end of the Daily Leverage. This is Jesse P. Gilmore. You’ve been listening to the Leverage for Growth podcast. If you are enjoying these daily leverage and agency leverage episodes, make sure to subscribe on Apple or Spotify now.