In the timeless business classic book, Think & Grow Rich, the chapter on Organized Planning is BY FAR the longest section, and arguably, the most important.
This chapter details the procedure for crystallizing your desire into action by utilizing the workshop of the imagination where you begin (and persistently continue) to create plans for the transformation of thought impulses into physical reality.
One section in this chapter involves a series of 28 questions to ask and analyze yourself, in tremendous detail.
This questionnaire is to be completed at least once per year.
Below, I shall go through each of the 28 questions and give a detailed analysis for the planning and preparation to achieve my major definite purpose of creating a $100 million dollar cannabis marketing agency.
1. Have I attained the goal which I established as my objective for this year?
(You should work with a definite yearly objective to be attained as a part of your major life objective).
My definite major objective is to create a $100M cannabis marketing agency.
To do this, I’ll need 1,000 clients each spending $10,000 per month, with 100 contractors.
I am to complete this objective within five years from now.
Currently, I have eight clients, earning $8,300 per month, with a total of four people working for the company (including myself and my spouse).
By this time next year, I’ll need 100 clients (each paying at least $10,000 per month), and 10 contractors doing the work (not including myself or my spouse).
2. Have I delivered service of the best possible QUALITY of which I was capable, or could I have improved any part of this service?
Short answer, no.
I have not delivered the best possible quality that I’m capable of.
There are so many areas of marketing that I can add to and improve, while also setting up tracking & measuring systems to reliably report on the increase in revenue I’m generating for clients from my efforts.
However, the work that I am delivering to clients, is in fact, the best possible quality that I’m capable of delivering.
All of my clients are over-the-top happy and consistently praise the work that we deliver.
Not only do we ALWAYS aim to meet and exceed their expectations, but I also DEMAND over-delivery in every single area of my work.
Contractors are always thrilled with our fast turnaround times.
Our motto is SPEED IS KING! You can take as much time as you want, so long as it’s fast!
Clients love speed!
Not only speed but also, it has to be QUALITY speed.
It can’t be sloppy speed.
3. Have I delivered service in the greatest possible QUANTITY of which I was capable?
Even though I technically have more time throughout the day that I could allocate to doing more work, I’m not currently doing the greatest possible quantity that I’m capable of.
I could wake up earlier and stay up later.
Get to the office sooner and stay working later.
I can continue to keep working on building systems where I can delegate work to continue increasing the quantity of output.
4. Has the spirit of my conduct been harmonious, and cooperative at all times?
100% yes!
Anything the client wants and needs, I deliver.
I meet and exceed ALL deadlines, by far!
During conference calls, I’m always bright-eyed, enthusiastic, and enjoyable to be around.
Even if there are bumps in the road, I don’t get tripped up. I remain focused on delivering quality work that needs to be done.
Even if the client doesn’t fully understand or if there are conflicting ideas on how to best proceed, I always aim to communicate in a way that’s pleasant, but I stand firm — without yielding — to what ACTUALLY needs to be done, correctly.
5. Have I permitted the habit of PROCRASTINATION to decrease my efficiency, and if so, to what extent?
Yes, I have, to a degree.
As much as I enjoy my work and what I do, sometimes and some days, I’m not feeling 100% and occasionally I can get bored with the repetition of the same task — day in and day out.
Since I work from my home office, it can be easy to get distracted.
I enjoy taking breaks, whenever I feel like it.
When I’m not feeling good, I can easily just go lie down for a few minutes or take a nap (rarely though).
If I have deadlines, I WILL and always do, push through and meet every single deadline.
I have never, not once, asked a client to extend a deadline.
I have one guilty pleasure of playing the online game called Overwatch 2, every day, for at least an hour, during work hours.
I take my lunch in the office though, so this is how I justify taking a break with a recreational online video game.
Somedays, I have a hard time getting motivated and I find myself scrolling through YouTube.
I could always be using this recreational time to do a wee-bit more work.
However, I find myself justifying these recreational activities because I do have quite a bit of free time between all of my client work.
I could be using this time to work on building systems to scale the company.
I could be working on my website’s SEO, publishing contractor roles for hire, working on SOPs, doing cold outreach, finding opportunities to get featured in industry magazine publications, outreach to get hosted on podcasts, planning to travel to industry events to network, join and/or build mastermind groups, etc.
6. Have I improved my PERSONALITY, and if so, in what ways?
Over the last year or so, I’ve identified a major source in my deficiency of being able to be and stay pleasing and enthusiastic for long periods of time.
It’s easy to be a joy to be around when you’re feeling good.
However, on the days when I’m not feeling or experiencing a PEAK STATE, I can be a little rough around the edges without using significant conscious effort and energy to keep myself pleasant.
Even if I’m not feeling 100% good on the days I have conference calls, I still have a fantastic ability to show up and at least pretend I’m feeling TOP-NOTCH, at least during the call.
However, when doing this, I find myself completely drained from spending so much conscious effort in maintaining PEAK STATE, that I find myself procrastinating and overall, decreasing the quantity of work that I’m able to produce.
With this general awareness, over the last few years, I’m finding that the more time I spend working out, with the intention of increasing the strength of my physical body, I’m able to slowly increase the duration of maintaining my peak state, without feeling burned out.
The biggest source of my improving my personality is being found in improving my physical health, through consistent exercise.
7. Have I been PERSISTENT in following my plans through to completion?
Generally no, but, in some areas, yes.
When it comes to client work, I always say what I’m going to do and then I do exactly what I say I’m going to do.
However, when it comes to trying to scale, following through with plans becomes tricky.
Life can happen and derail your plans.
Clients come and go, and then plans for scaling fall through.
8. Have I reached DECISIONS PROMPTLY AND DEFINITELY on all occasions?
This question is a bit more challenging to answer with much certainty, in ALL situations.
In all areas of working WITH clients, I reach decisions promptly and definitely on all occasions.
I do, however, currently have two clients that want to scale MASSIVELY.
This demand is stretching my capabilities and pushing me HARD to quickly make these challenging decisions to scale operations.
On October 19, 2024, I wrote down my intention of building a $100M cannabis agency, created initial plans for all the contractors that I might need to scale to this level, and now I’m finding that plans are needing to change to adjust to what I actually have to do to reliably create and follow through with SOPs for these large project scopes.
My initial plans for scaling to $100M involved starting with hiring the following ten contractor roles.
- Keyword
- On-Page
- Off-Site
- Technical
- Content
- Designer
- Account Manager: Client/contractor onboarding
- Analytics & data reporting
- Editor
- Quality assurance final check
Then, once I got serious about scaling for actual implementation, my first contractor hire was not on my list of initial plans.
This process of clients demanding massive scaling forced me to promptly make a series of definite decisions to keep up with their growing needs.
From the list of potential contractors above, I’m realizing these are very general roles and my immediate needs require contractors that can help organize large amounts of data from the efforts involved in keywords and on-page optimizations.
Right now, I’m essentially putting out fires as they appear by filling immediate roles that require action right now.
9. Have I permitted any one or more of the six basic fears to decrease my efficiency?
The six basic fears, listed in Think & Grow Rich include.
- Fear of poverty
- Fear of criticism
- Fear of ill health
- Fear of loss of love of someone
- Fear of old age
- Fear of death
One potential fear is the fear of poverty that decreases my efficiency in recognizing that I should hire contractors, test, and vet them, LONG before the inevitable large project requests from new and existing clients.
Another is the fear of ill health. This fear, I believe, was mostly taken care of in the Tony Robbins seminar I attended in March 2024.
Possibly a smidge of fear of criticism with a potential symptom of lack of ambition.
Symptoms of fear of criticism that I may have included.
- Mental and physical laziness
- Lack of self-assertion
- Slowness in reaching decisions
- Lack of initiative
- Failure to embrace opportunities for self-advancement
- Fear of expressing opinions
These symptoms of fear of criticism don’t necessarily come up when I’m working with clients in one-on-one sessions or in group conference calls.
However, I do notice these fears tend to grow rapidly when the idea of playing much bigger, such as speaking at conference events, attending conferences, and putting video/audio/text of myself out there for the public or my social media audience.
I notice some clients are regularly speaking on stage at nearly every single industry event, going on podcasts, and also publishing webinars — nearly several times per week.
While some other clients know they need to publish videos, speak at events, and do podcasts, I also notice that they too tend to procrastinate — like myself — doing so.
10. Have I been either “over-cautious,” or “under-cautious?”
Definitely over-cautious.
I recently heard a sports reporter say that if you don’t get nervous then you don’t care.
I don’t really have many logical reasons for being too over-cautious when it comes to putting out massive amounts of helpful information to the industry and my audiences.
I think it could be potential laziness, fear of not helping, or making the massive impact that I expect from the information I put out there.
However, I do notice that when I’m discussing technical issues with a mastermind group or when I’m asking for advice on how to deal with a problem client, I tend to trigger quite a bit of positive engagement that reaffirms that I have not only masterfully dealt with the problem client, but I also have an in-depth competence in performing complex technical tasks.
I also tend to be over-cautious when attempting to build relationships with peers in my industry.
It initially appears as if my sharp pointed logic and reliance on expressing the truth about situations, can seem like it triggers sensitive abreactions toward certain people on certain topics.
Perhaps this is a fear of criticism and fear of poverty has a strong hold on my willingness to put myself out there, regardless of the reactions triggered from various individuals.
I fear that I can be abrasive, at times, when I’m not intending to and the conversation derails towards certain insecurities that my expresses can bring about in certain individuals.
Perhaps, in my attempts to build relationships with peers within my industry, I need to keep at the forefront of my mind the attitude of understanding, while speaking more generally, without coming off as judgemental when I’m expressing my thoughts/actions towards a situation.
Perhaps, I also need to not get triggered by them being triggered. Be quick to correct their misunderstandings. Don’t say things that are too technical when the conversations are casual. Ask more questions. Listen more, without offering my opinions, without being asked. Take a firm stance on important issues, even if the herd is going in a different direction. Remain true to myself. Don’t be so quick to volunteer too much information. Say less than is necessary to create curiosity. Don’t overload them with too much info. Talk about the pleasant things we have common ground on. And if they happen to want my sharp pointed truth or advice, I need to guard this much more strongly without just giving away the things I believe and hold dear to me that could cause sharp disagreement.
Go with the flow. Keep your eye on the prize. Keep a pleasant interaction while remembering that I want a financial relationship with them first, not a personal relationship.
11. Has my relationship with my associates in work been pleasant, or unpleasant? If it has been unpleasant, has the fault been partly, or wholly mine?
My relationships with my associates at work have been overwhelmingly pleasant.
The clients I have and the contractors I work with are incredible.
Very rarely, will a client come to me with concern or unreasonable dissatisfaction.
When clients come to me with dissatisfaction, ultimately, the bottom line always boils down to the actual contractual agreement we have.
However, I work VERY HARD at playing lawyer ball with clients, unless they become super unreasonable in their demands.
Before it ever gets to the point of pulling contracts, I take the Tony Robbins approach of OVERDELIVERY to meet and exceed their expectations beyond any and all reasonable doubt.
If they continue to make unreasonable demands AFTER I have more than over-delivered, then the only logical solution is to cut professional ties — which I have had to do on a handful of occasions.
Before cutting ties, I typically bring these problems to my mastermind group for their opinion on how to deal with a fussy client.
And 100% of the time, I get praised for my masterful handling of the problem client with comments generally saying, to the effect, that I should have cut ties with them LONG before giving them as much gold as I did.
12. Have I dissipated any of my energy through lack of CONCENTRATION of effort?
Being the owner and CEO of a company currently requires me to wear many hats.
Short answer, yes, having to scatter my focus around in so many directions — all the time — feels like a drain on my energy and concentration of effort.
However, when I am focused on one task, I feel SUPER energized, while doing the one task.
I feel like I get paralyzed when I’m staring at a large list of tasks that I have to do while trying to figure out what’s the priority, that I end up waiting on these tasks until a certain task becomes an emergency.
That’s when I HAVE to give my full focused attention to this task.
I believe this issue can be solved by task delegation and building systems of SOPs for each task.
Aim to not do any task twice.
Do a task once, build a system (SOP), and then delegate this task to a competent contractor — while focusing on profit.
13. Have I been open-minded and tolerant in connection with all subjects?
Yes. I am very teachable.
I’m always ready to learn and adjust my behavior to the better way of thinking and doing.
14. In what way have I improved my ability to render service?
Delegating tasks I a big step for me.
The challenge isn’t necessarily doing competent work and delivering outstanding results.
The hard part is in marketing my marketing services, selling services at the high end of industry standards, and hardest of all — getting a high enough volume of leads to not have to worry about saying no to leads that can’t afford to pay industry standards.
Working with smaller businesses and smaller websites is easy.
Working with larger clients with larger websites PLUS clients who have extremely large ambitions of opening multiple companies in states/countries that are getting ready to legalize cannabis demands building marketing systems FAST — is the next hard challenge.
15. Have I been intemperate in any of my habits?
No, I don’t believe so.
Even though I serve cannabis companies, I do not consume cannabis at all. Not even hemp, not CBD, not hemp oil, not hemp seeds.
I consume beer, every day, but not even enough to get a buzz.
Sometimes I like to get more sleep than I probably need, which occasionally results in poor overall quality of sleep where I’m waking up in the middle of the night for several hours before being able to fall back asleep.
I continue to adjust my diet to add the nutrients I’m deficient in. Specifically, I recently added Brazilian nuts to my daily diet to get more selenium.
I often forget to consume the appropriate amount of fruit on a daily basis.
Keeping a regular exercise routine is also challenging.
I’ve also noticed that quite often, I can find myself automatically dwelling on negative thoughts. Arguing with thoughts of the past. How I’m working on fixing this is to imagine myself LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY at any negative thought that pops up with the intention of training my brain to automatically think good-feeling thoughts.
16. Have I expressed, either openly or secretly, any form of EGOTISM?
No. I have a healthy view of who I accurately am.
I know what I can and can not do.
17. Has my conduct toward my associates been such that it has induced them to RESPECT me?
Yes. I constantly get praise for my fast quality work by clients.
I’m fair and patient with new contractors.
18. Have my opinions and DECISIONS been based upon guesswork or accuracy of analysis and THOUGHT?
Marketing, specifically Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is a volatile operation where Google is constantly updating algorithms and new competitors are entering the market to compete for top spots on search engines.
While I do not operate using guesswork, I use the best information available to me at the time to make the most accurate decisions possible.
I also have systems in place, for clients able to pay for the service, to regularly update their websites — based on algorithm updates, competitor analysis, and keeping content fresh based on emerging information.
In this field, there’s always room to improve the website to make it more helpful and useful for humans.
Some projects, if not most, are a trial and error requiring back and forth feedback to fine tune the output, based on the best theory and information available at the time.
19. Have I followed the habit of budgeting my time, my expenses, and my income, and have I been conservative in these budgets?
Not as well as I could and should.
However, I am in the office doing work pretty much seven days a week.
I always get everything I “need” to get done to survive — but — I could keep fine-tuning my habits to continue increasing my efficiency with budgeting my time, expenses, and income.
This week, I made the effort to maximize as much income as I could with all current clients.
Their feedback was that they were SUPER happy with all the work I’m doing.
Not only will I keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll keep building systems to allow myself to keep increasing the amount of work I can deliver by hiring competent contractors that can do one simple task and keep stacking single task contractors with the intention of maximizing my ability to deliver quality work — faster, while keeping expenses low and income/profits growing.
20. How much time have I devoted to UNPROFITABLE efforts which I might have used to better advantage?
I’m becoming aware that I’m spending most of my time dealing with day to day operations.
Communicating with clients on day to day tasks, creating order from the chaos of information that’s thrown at me to decipher by creating a structured plan of action, conference calls that I don’t need to be a part of, clients not being too sure of a certain direction then going back and forth many times to fine tune what they think they want
21. How may I RE-BUDGET my time, and change my habits so I will be more efficient during the coming year?
My time could be better spent building teams of systems where departments can take care of all the work, while I could more profitably spend my time growing and scaling the business in all areas.
Even though I’m really good at sales, I imagine this area could also be contracted out to competent sales teams.
I can only do so much sales work, in a given day, however, hiring sales teams and implementing strategies detailed in Alex Hormozi’s book $100M Leads.
22. Have I been guilty of any conduct which was not approved by my conscience?
Even if a client gives me a certain maximum budget, I can feel a wee-bit hesitant to charge the maximum amount.
However, this past week, I decided to charge the max amount for all clients, and all of them were still MORE than thrilled with my conduct.
By charging the maximum amount, I feel like I pushed through that perceived limitation, which in turn forced me to push a bit harder in delivering higher quality work, and faster.
23. In what ways have I rendered MORE SERVICE AND BETTER SERVICE than I was paid to render?
Part of my marketing is to position myself well below market value pricing, in the front end — but then I make up for it in the backend by rendering more and better service.
My attitude is always prompt communication and over-delivery.
With clients demanding a higher volume of services, than I’m able to render, it’s forcing me to expand my ability to render more service by hiring contractors to help me deliver more than I can with my own effort.
By hiring contractors, I’m able to not only speed up work, but I’m also able to get super specific in one task that more than exceeds the current quality of service that I’m rendering with my own efforts.
24. Have I been unfair to anyone, and if so, in what ways?
Not at all.
My attitude is to over-deliver in every single possible way, that’s beyond reasonable where the client always gets the better end of the deal.
25. If I had been the purchaser of my own services for the year, would I be satisfied with my purchase?
Absolutely!
We deliver top-notch quality work, with every project.
We have amazing deals with extremely fair contracts, at very reasonable prices.
The results we consistently produce for clients, even for lower paying clients, it doubling their results, year over year.
Not only do I offer my services to clients, but I also perform the same services on our own company websites.
26. Am I in the right vocation, and if not, why not?
Yes. I am 100% in the correct vocation that is perfect for my talents and desires.
I can work anywhere in the world, so long as there’s an internet connection.
I can do all my work from my mobile device if I want to.
I can when at any time that I want to.
I create the exact contracts that I want to.
I enjoy marketing and I love making my clients a TON of money.
I love and completely believe in the industry that I’m serving.
I can not think of a better position of work that I could be doing.
If I could imagine something better, then I would be aiming for it.
However, this vocation is completely the absolute best for me, by far.
27. Has the purchaser of my services been satisfied with the service I have rendered, and if not, why not?
Yes, the vast majority of clients are beyond thrilled with the work we deliver to them on a regular basis, year over year.
Every once in a while, an unhappy client will come along.
When this happens, I do everything in my power to make the client happy by excessive over-delivery.
The last unhappy client came to me after our contract was completed, over a year ago and they had an incorrect idea of why their website wasn’t performing as they had hoped.
However, my role in this particular contract was to write content based on another marketing expert’s strategy.
I did exactly what we contracted to do.
They gave me a five-star review, praised and approved every single deliverable, and offered zero feedback throughout the duration of the contract.
Then, another alleged expert came along a year later and instilled incorrect thinking in the client’s mind.
I not only offered the client 30 hours of free work to diagnose potential issues with their websites’ ranking, but I also offered to update a handful of articles to go EXCESSIVELY beyond over-delivery.
Unfortunately, the client refused to listen to Google’s content quality policies and guidelines, and instead, opted to trust third-party sources and also they were indifferent to any hard data and evidence that I produced.
Despite our gracious contract where they had the opportunity to request free edits up to seven days after I submitted a draft, they never asked for a rewrite.
They then wanted me to completely re-write eight months’ worth of content, for free, because a third party software said the content wasn’t measuring to the software’s standards.
Even though their entire team approved and praised my articles, and even though they edited some content (even though I have a strict policy that removes me from liability if the client decides to edit the content I submit), they decided that over one year later that I needed to re-write all eight months worth of content to pass a random software’s test.
When it comes to clients like this, my entire mastermind group praised my over-delivery attempts and also advised me to cut all ties with clients like this in the future, without wasting any time on them.
There was absolutely nothing I could have said or done to satisfy this particular type of client.
They essentially wanted me to work for free for the next eight months, even though I do offer a content re-fresher service.
They did not intend to give me another dime.
I ended the professional relationship, and then I had to send them and their team a legal notice to prevent them from doing anything that could have put them at liability for their unreasonable behavior in my attempts to satisfy them — while I cut ties.
The lesson.
Have solid contracts protecting yourself if it ever has to come down to that bottom line.
Say what you’re going to do and then do what you say.
And always ALWAYS over-deliver with the intention of satisfying them beyond any and all doubt, also having word of mouth spread to get referrals from them, stack five-star reviews, and finally, have a clear conscience so you can sleep very very comfortable knowing you did your absolute best job possible.
28. What is my present rating on the fundamental principles of success? (Make this rating fairly, and frankly, and have it checked by someone who is courageous enough to do it accurately).
I’ve been doing full time marketing work for clients for almost eight years now.
I’d say my present rating on the fundamental principles of success is at least average.
Creating a business and surviving is what I’ve done.
However, just surviving, without THRIVING, is why I give myself an average rating.
I will rate myself at the highest level of OUTSTANDING, as in standing out beyond anyone else in my industry, as soon as I’m earning more than the top earners in the world.
I feel like I will have earned this rating of outstanding in the fundamental principles of success when I have fully utilized all of these principles to their absolute maximum.
Even after eight years of surviving in business, I do not honestly feel as though I’ve even begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible, based on what I know is possible to create in business.
I think of the business empire that people like Henry Ford built.
Once I reach comparable levels of Mr. Ford, then I can comfortably say I have reached that level of OUTSTANDING on the fundamental principles of success.
