Revolutionize Your Project Management Approach Ep. 015

What if you could transform your project management approach and achieve your business goals faster and more efficiently? On this episode of Brightside Business as I explain the ABZ method, a powerful framework that took my family's professional services business to seven figures in under two years. This episode promises to equip you with the tools to streamline your projects by focusing on where you are (A), where you want to be (Z), and the crucial next step (B) to get you there.

We’ll explore practical examples like launching a new ad campaign to boost sales, assessing your current resources, setting clear end goals, and identifying actionable steps. You’ll learn the importance of staying focused and avoiding unnecessary details that can bog you down. Whether you're an experienced entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode will guide you on how to execute your projects with minimal resources and maximum efficiency. Tune in and discover how to keep your business on track and achieve your objectives seamlessly!

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Transcript

Joey Young: 0:00

Welcome to Bright Side Business, where we talk to online entrepreneurs like yourself about how to grow to seven figures and beyond. My name is Joey Young. I helped grow my family's professional services business to seven figures in under two years and I learned a lot of lessons along the way. One of them is the ABZ method. It's a project management framework to help execute projects quickly and with the least amount of resources possible. So I'm going to explain the framework briefly and then help you to implement it with whatever project you're working on, to make sure they get done, they get done quickly and they get done without unnecessary spend of resources and time and energy. So the first step of the A, b, z project management method is to understand what A, b and Z are for you. So A is where you are now with your business. So where are you at? Let's say, you're trying to launch a new ad campaign and you want to grow sales. So A is understanding. Okay, what are our current sales? What are our numbers right now? What assets do I have to launch a new sales campaign? What skills do I have in the team? What experience, what people, what resources financially do I have to run a new sales campaign. So it's just collecting all that data about. Where are we right now? That's A, then you move to Z. Z is where we're going to get when we actually finish this project.

Joey Young: 1:22

Z is clarifying what is the end goal. So for this particular project, for example, again you're launching a new ad campaign to grow some sales in your business. It could be I want to get to X revenue number per month. Or it could be I want to acquire X amount of customers. Or it could be I want to maintain X efficiency of ad spend. You see there's many different targets you can actually go for within launching a new ad campaign to grow sales. If you just want to grow sales and revenue number, that's fine. But that's a different goal than, let's say, controlling for the efficiency of the ad spend or acquiring an X amount of customers for feedback on your product. You know what I'm saying. So A where we're at. Z exactly what it is we're going for, and you're having that really clear. B is understanding what is the next step. And you see why B is like the last step of the method, the A, b, z method Because once you know where you are and where you're going, b is just understanding what the next step is. So what do I need to do first to accomplish this goal? It's like what's the first step to figuring out how to launch this ad campaign? Well, if you've launched ad campaigns in the past, then maybe you just need to go ahead and mock up some ads and get going with launching them. Maybe the next step is just to create the new creatives. But if you've never run an ad campaign before, maybe the next step for you is to research the best structure for an ad campaign.

Joey Young: 2:52

Whenever you're doing a next step in your business and you're trying to figure out what to do for a project, there's really only three things. You can do something, you can ask for help or research something, or you can decide something. You can ask for help or research something, or you can decide something. So whenever you're thinking, okay, like I got this project, I know where I'm at, I know where I'm going. What's the next step? Are you going to do something? Are you going to research or ask for help, or are you going to decide? And a lot of times a lot of people think, oh, I just got to do more, do more, do more. But they're forgetting well, what if I just take a beat to ask for help or do some research on something to figure out more information. That's a viable next step. Or maybe number three, the deciding. Maybe before we move forward with even researching or making an action step, the next step maybe we have to make a decision about where we're going as a business, or our overall strategy or roles in the company, or something like that. So those three things are totally viable next steps that's the B of the A, b, z method.

Joey Young: 3:54

Now, as you're implementing this, remember a few things. Don't focus on C through Y, okay, that's the whole point of this method. It keeps things simple. If you're thinking about okay, a, I know where I, where I am. Z, I know where I'm going, and then I gotta map out like b, c, d, e, like you're just gonna get lost in the minutiae and you're gonna fail to actually execute. So make sure that you don't really take the time to map out the entire plan. Just know what the next step is, and and that will help you to spend more time executing, more time doing or researching or deciding, as opposed to trying to figure out the entire plan from the beginning.

Joey Young: 4:34

You got to stay flexible in your approach too, so fixated on your B that it blocks out the opportunity for other Bs to take its place. Let's say you say my next step is to define the creatives for the ad campaign. That's your B right. But you're like, oh man, I'm so frustrated. I keep trying these different formats and these different colors and these different fonts and I just hate it. Nothing's really working out. But you're so fixated on this next step that you don't see the bigger picture. You don't see the fact that you know what. You really just need to outsource this or ask for some feedback from someone else that could be.

Joey Young: 5:12

Your next step is I'm not going to power through this and continue to be frustrated and hold up the entire process because I'm so fixated on B. Frustrated and hold up the entire process because I'm so fixated on B. I'm going to switch it up from I'm going to do, which is create the ad creatives, to I'm going to ask for help, which is a totally viable next step, and then you send that email and you ask for help from somebody. So make sure you can change your approach and you don't get so married to the B that you forget the Z. The Z is where we're going. The B is flexible and that's the last pro tip I have for you. With Z, you gotta make sure that you're not switching that up or changing the goalposts, because Z is the North Star. This is where we're all headed for. This is where we've agreed. This is the future we wanna create. This is what we want to be true. That is the gold standard and that's where we stay focused during this entire process. So, as you're flexible with your B, make sure you don't change up what you're doing with Z, because that's ultimately where you need to go in your business, and I hope this has been helpful for you. The A-B-Z method is really an awesome tactical process for executing any sort of project you have going on.

Joey Young: 6:21

If you have any other questions about productivity or growing your business, I would love to hear them so I can actually address them on the show. Just shoot me an email, joey at joeyhyoungcom, or shoot me a DM on Instagram at joeyhyoung on Instagram, and I'd love to hear your question and I'll be able to address it on the show. That'd be a ton of fun and if you listened for this long, you probably have liked what you've heard. So give this show a thumbs up, hit the five-star review. If you're on a podcast platform, you know, hit the share button. All that's really helpful to spread the show to the algorithm and stuff. And hey, until next time, my friends, happy scaling.