How to Prioritize What Moves the Needle in the Next 90 Days

Are you trapped in the cycle of busy work that feels productive but doesn't actually grow your business? You're not alone. A shocking 80% of entrepreneurs focus their energy on tasks that never move the needle on revenue.

This episode cuts through the noise to help you identify which activities truly matter in your business. The key question every business owner needs to ask: "Does this task directly impact revenue?" If you can't draw a clear line between your daily work and actual sales, you might be spinning your wheels. Social media posts, networking events, and even content creation need to be evaluated through the lens of real results, not just visibility or vanity metrics.

Success leaves clues, so we explore how to analyze what's already working in your business and double down on those proven strategies. Rather than constantly chasing new trends or tactics, learn how to "tighten the cork" on existing revenue streams. This might mean improving your sales page copy, focusing on email list growth that converts, or transforming successful launches into evergreen offers.

The path to sustainable growth isn't about working harder—it's about working smarter. Discover how to create an effective 90-day plan with just 1-2 focused goals, delegate tasks that don't require your unique expertise, and build systems that free you from busy work. By concentrating your energy on the 20% of activities that generate 80% of your results, you'll finally escape the overwhelm that plagues most entrepreneurs.

Ready to transform how you prioritize your time and efforts? Grab our 90-day planning framework and start focusing on what truly matters—growing your business and hitting your income goals without the burnout.

Chapters

• 0:13 The 80/20 Rule of Business
• 1:25 Tasks That Directly Impact Revenue
• 3:45 Build on What Already Works
• 5:09 Eliminate or Delegate Busy Work
• 7:16 Creating an Effective 90-Day Plan

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

This is the Influencer Entrepreneur's Podcast with Jenny Melrose, where I strategize with business owners on how to grow and scale their businesses to hit their income goals. 80% of entrepreneurs put their focus on tasks that feel productive but don't actually move the needle. Are you one of them? Let's be honest. Not all tasks in business are created equally. They just are not. That's why you often will hear the theory that 20% of the work that you do will actually end up in 80% of the revenue. It's because you need to be relying on focused tasks, knowing where to prioritize your time and effort, instead of running willy-nilly and putting your time and energy into things that are going to actually end up resulting in burnout. When we are doing tasks that are not consistent, they end up burning us out. We feel overwhelmed. We don't. We have trouble actually staying focused on what we were supposed to be accomplished. This can be anything from feeling like you have to put out a fire in your email constantly, to posting reels consistently, to answering clients that are coming in with random questions that may not make sense for unless you actually have systems in place for them. Now, when we're looking at this, we don't want to, of course, result in burnout. So we need to make sure that we are choosing productive tasks that are actually going to move the needle.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Now, for a lot of you, that's probably difficult. Right? You're probably thinking to yourself that's great, I know I need to be doing this, but how do I choose what to do in order to actually move the needle? The very first question that you need to ask yourself is does this task directly impact revenue? You're a business. You're not out there doing a public service, and if you are and you're not looking to make money, then you're really not a business owner. I know for a lot of people, that's hard to hear, because we started doing this kind of just as a passion project and maybe it resulted in some income, and now you're wanting to take it a bit more seriously. That's great, but in order to continue to be a business, to continue to put the amount of time and effort that goes into being an entrepreneur, you have to start thinking about how am I going to improve revenue? So we need to look at specific tasks that are going to be directly related to that.

Speaker 1: 3:05

You want to be able to see a direct connection If you are going to be posting to social media Facebook, instagram, tiktok, any social media. Can you see a direct correlation in sales? Are you actually seeing income come in from that? If you can see that, then that's a task you should be doing. But if there is no direct correlation and you're just telling me that you're increasing visibility, that is going to be a problem. You have to be able to connect it to sales in some fashion. So in my opinion, you should be looking at your email list, growing that. That is where you will see a direct connection to your actual sales. The more people that open, the more people that click, are more likely to have more people that purchase. Creating a sales page that has better copy, that is actually written, with the messaging that is clear and concise for your audience, will result more likely in more sales, and you should be able to see that. You should see the conversions in your bank account.

Speaker 1: 4:07

These are the types of tasks that we want to be prioritizing. We don't want to be starting a new trend that is being talked about out there, whether it is social media or going and networking. Unless that networking directly is going to relate in clients, then that isn't going to be worth your time and effort. So when we are looking to prioritize, you have to make a direct connection to revenue. You also need to make sure that when you are prioritizing things, you are prioritizing them based on your energy and your focus. When are you most energetic, when are you best focused and how is it going to directly again come back to impacting your revenue, so that you make sure that you are putting these tasks into the right time of your day and able to see a direct connection with where you are trying to take your business In order to determine what has worked or what will work. I want you to actually look at what has worked in the past. Look and see where have you seen more sales on your product or service? Have you noticed it in a certain month? Was there something specific that you did? Ideally, what we are looking to do is actually turn and tighten that cork within your business even tighter. We want for whatever you are doing that is working to improve, so that you can continue to prioritize that task, but even make it better than it was before. So if you've done a launch in the past and you've done $5,000 in sales, how can you continue to improve that launch? How can you potentially even look at making that an evergreen product, so that it's something that clients can come into at any time in order to learn the information that you're trying to teach them. This is how you're going to continue to increase your revenue. This is how you're going to see direct connection to revenue.

Speaker 1: 6:07

I'm not necessarily going to prioritize a new book, since I've already done one, because I know that a book for me was not about making sales. It wasn't about I shouldn't say it wasn't about making sales. It wasn't about making money. A book for me was about having a level of expertise while having the sales of. To prove that. The purpose here, though, is really thinking about what's going to overall, move the revenue, what is going to be the growth in your business that you need. So you can look at things as I need another level of expertise, but in doing so, you have to make sure that that expertise will result in more sales and revenue down the road, so that expertise will result in more sales and revenue down the road. So the first thing to do, of course, is to really look at prioritizing it connected to revenue, and then looking back to see what has worked in the past so you can continue to improve upon that in the future.

Speaker 1: 7:04

You also want to make sure that you eliminate or delegate busy work. This is where, if you are able to systematize anything that you are doing, that you can then be able to delegate it to someone that's on your team or someone that you could potentially hire in order to complete that task for you. So look at the tasks that you are completing that really anybody could do. It doesn't need to be you. The only thing that normally needs to be you is where it's your voice or your video right. So in order for that to be delegated, maybe you're looking at the transcript, turning it into a blog post. What can you hand off within the system that you have created for producing your content or emailing your clients? Look at how you can pan some of that off so that it becomes less of a stress on you.

Speaker 1: 7:54

The simplest way to prioritize is to create a 90-day plan for yourself. By creating a 90-day plan, you choose one to two goals that you are going to make sure that you are focused on. Within those one to two goals, you are looking at doing two to three projects for each of those and then, within those projects, there's gonna be specific tasks that have to be completed. Now, when, again, you are looking at those tasks, if you already have a system in place for it, then you can hand that off so that someone else can complete it, and it's not something that you need to have your hands in. Anything that would be considered busy work, anything that we could actually use AI for to speed up the process. That is what we want to be looking at.

Speaker 1: 8:38

So, if you haven't listened to the previous podcast episode, I want you to go back and listen in on why a 90 day plan is going to be helpful for you, because that podcast episode is really going to make it clear on how a 90-day plan is going to be helpful for you. Because that podcast episode is really going to make it clear on how a 90-day plan can work for you so that it actually moves the needle on your business. Now, if you're ready to put a 90-day plan in actual process for your business, I want you to grab our 90-day plan program. The 90-day plan program is going to provide you with the framework that you need, as well as walk you through how to take a goal, break it down into its projects and then break those projects into their tasks. You can find that actually linked in the show notes as well as in the description, so that you can make sure that you join in there today.