Someone said to me recently that I’m not really a black belt until I’ve done black belt revenue for a year. This raises an interesting question – when can you claim your belt? As I’ve written in earlier blogs, one $40k month does not a blue belt make. And the person was correct – on our revenue ladder we list the annual and the monthly revenue.
I think a better question is when to celebrate. Remember the whole point of the white belt to black belt game (yes, it is just a game people) is to motivate and empower us in our practice. And celebrating milestones is empowering and motivating … generally we spend way too much energy on our failures, and move past our successes much too quickly.
The first milestone to celebrate is the first month you hit a belt level. If you do $20k in a month for the first time, celebrate your first yellow belt month! Do it with style! Even if you drop back to white belt the following month.
I think the next milestone is when you average a belt for a quarter. So if for three months you average $30k a month, that’s a green belt quarter. I love quarters – 3 months, 13 weeks, 90 days. Enough time to really make something happen (especially in a practice) but not so long that we lose urgency. I mentor people in 90 day programs, and always set a goal at the start of what belt we want to average for the quarter.
And finally a year. If you turnover $720k in your practice in a year, you really own your black belt. That’s worth celebrating too. And any year that you hit a new level on the revenue ladder is definitely worth celebrating.
December has been a pretty good month for me due to a really successful Queensland roadshow.This means I’ve had my first black belt quarter. And for the first time for me it’s feeling like it’s here to stay.
I think because it happened so fast I didn’t really believe it. And even though rationally I could see what was in the pipeline and what was already booked in, I still had the feeling it was going to get snatched away from me. I’m starting to recalibrate myself to this new level.
Having said that last weekend was a case of definitely not thinking like a black belt. I flew home Saturday night after the Queensland roadshow and a planning workshop in Sydney. We’d just got a letter from the council saying that all the grass on our block of land had to be under 10cm before summer hits. We’ve got an acre of bush, so that’s not that easy, especially after the rain we’ve had.
So on the Sunday … my one day off in weeks… I borrowed my brother’s Whipper Snipper and went to work. About three hours in, when it hit midday and I was still a good couple of hours away from getting home for lunch it started to get really hot. I started to think about how much it would have cost to get someone else to do this job better and quicker than me with the right equipment, and it struck me that this was a monumentally stupid thing to do with my one day off.
So, to celebrate having a black belt quarter, next time the grass needs cutting I’m going to spoil myself and pay someone else to do it!
Love to hear your thoughts, you can leave them below.
