🎯 Work Smart Wednesday - January 15, 2025
Your dream 100, Make goals fun, and a quote on childishness
Work Smart Wednesday
👋 Hey there!
Here is your fortnightly dose of Work Smart Wednesday.
In these emails I will share with you 3 things to help you work smarter.
1. 🏆 Your dream 100
“The story starts in California. 1981.
Charlie Munger hires Chet Holmes to sell magazine ads. He's given a list of 2,200 potential advertisers and a bunch of flyers.
Chet doesn’t send one flyer.
Instead he backorders hundreds of issues of competitor magazines. And realises 167 companies are responsible for 95% of all ad sales.
So Chet ditches the list and goes all-in on the 167. Free gifts, lunches, dog-eared determination.
A few months later Xerox order 104 full-color spreads. “The biggest deal in the history of the industry”.
In three years Chet takes the magazine from 16th in the market to double their closest competitor. At this point Munger calls him into his office.
“Now Chet. In all my years, I’ve never seen anybody double sales three years in a row. Are you sure we’re not lying, cheating, and stealing?”
He wasn't. The Dream 100 was born.
“Write down your dream 100 clients. Do anything you can to win them.””
This excerpt is lifted directly from Harry Dry’s newsletter: https://marketingexamples.com/sales/dream-100. He took it from Chet Holmes’ book “The ultimate sales machine”. Harry summarised it better than I could. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken, and don’t duplicate work unnecessarily.
How can I add to Harry’s succinct summary?
Just by saying that I have implemented this concept with some of my clients and it works. If you cannot name 100 potential individual dream customers or dream partner companies then it is very likely because you are not clear enough on your target audience.
Ghayth, who I have featured a few times in this newsletter recently (I.e. here and here), applied this principle and yesterday signed one of his dream clients within 4 minutes of meeting him for the first time.
The concept works.
A dream client list helps direct strategy, and it helps you capitalise on opportunities when they arise.
Take a few minutes right now, try to write out 100 dream clients or companies to work with (as a client of yours or a referrer or a partner of some kind!). Use the list to guide your actions. You will find it useful.
Ghayth signed a dream client with millions of followers within 4 minutes of meeting him yesterday (14th January 2025). 1 minute 29 seconds video:
👋 Want to work together?
When you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help you:
🔍 Clarity Call - We will discuss your situation and create a step-by-step action plan together so you know exactly what you need to do next for maximum impact
🧩 Are we a good fit together? - See whether you and I are a good fit together by answering this short quiz. You will immediately see whether or not we are a good fit, and receive a personalised answer for what the next best step will be for you based on your answers.
2. 🤸 Make goals fun
Remember: Goals don't have to suck.
Goals don’t have to be boring, serious, stale. You can add fun things in there. In fact, I strongly encourage it.
Here are some of my favourite fun goals:
🍝 Pasta quest: Eat as many different pasta shapes as possible within the space of one year.
🌍 Global Grub Hunt: Try a random country's cuisine every month. Use a random country generator, then Google or ChatGPT to find a dish that the country is famous for that you will make. Great for date nights. I am doing this this year. In January we got Kenya, you can see a picture from our meal later in this email.
📖 Book Bingo: Create a bingo card with different genres or authors or demographics of writers (e.g. female authors only, or people from different countries, etc) and challenge yourself to complete it by the end of the year.
💌Client Appreciation Surprise: Surprise one client each month with a thoughtful gift, handwritten note, or unexpected bonus to strengthen relationships and create memorable moments. This is one of the most underrated and most powerful ways to build relationships with clients, generate referrals, and retain happy people.
🤿 Archive Dive: Spend time each month learning a quirky piece of history, trivia, or folklore about your city and document it in a fun way (blog post, Instagram story, etc.).
💃🎵 Movement abroad: Learn a different type of dance or movement style from different countries each month, like salsa, ballet, tai chi, or Bollywood, either through a local class or online tutorials like YouTube.
You can do the same global discovery thing by listening to different music from around the world.
😋 Try 40 new foods: It really pushes you out of your comfort zone and you will discover so many new things. I managed to try 60 different things last year alone!
🎟️ Networking Bingo: Set a goal to find certain criteria when networking with new contacts each month through events, LinkedIn, or mutual connections.
📷 Photo Scavenger Hunt: Create a list of 12 themes (like “reflections,” “shadows,” or “circles”) and capture a photo for each throughout the year.
🕵️♂️ Find fifty things: Find and catalogue fifty different interesting or different things throughout the year. It could be a different kind of plant or mushroom while on a walk, or a geocache hidden in your city, a piece of street art you’ve never noticed before, an unusual book in a secondhand store, a cool rock or fossil at the beach, an antique at a flea market, or even a quirky menu item at a local restaurant.
Pasta quest: fun resolutions
Let me leave you with this comic on the topic…
3. 💡 Quote I'm pondering
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up” - C.S. Lewis
Sometimes, the most adult thing you can do is to fully embrace being a child.
Do the things you enjoy without worrying what other people think or judge you for.
Be you. With the rise of AI originality is in dwindling supply. Be you. The world will reward you for it.
🆕 My “Past Year Review”.
A “Past Year Review” has been the most effective exercise I have discovered for moving my life forward and making me happier.
I originally discovered it thanks to a share from Tim Ferriss, and now both my partner and I complete our own past year reviews annually.
The exercise is simple to do and doesn’t take long, but it does require some radical honesty that can feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the insights you gather are extremely powerful.
You can get the template I use every year, including detailed instructions and examples to help you, on an entirely Pay As You Feel basis here:
https://buy.stripe.com/bIYdTZ1M68Rq3EQbIU
Bonus tip when goalsetting: Write down what you are willing to give up to achieve your goal. We all only have 24 hours in a day. You have used your full 24 hours every single day you’ve been alive, whether intentionally or not. If you are to change something or achieve a new goal you will have to give up something to make time for the new thing. Identify what it is you will give up. Make sure it is worth it. Ease the transition.
That's it! I can't wait to hear what you think. What did you find most useful? What do you want more or less of? Reply to this email now and let me know
Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I want to know about it😊
Have a great week,
John
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