If You Could Fix One Thing in the Next 90 Days
If you could fix one thing in the next 90 days, which would it be?
Pick the one that sounds most like your business, then tap it to see root causes.
A. People — motivation, accountability, follow-through
You picked people. Below the surface: nobody will do it like you, and keeping people on the same page is hard.
Accountability isn't a personality trait, it's a standard plus a rhythm. When the exercise below comes back with coaching and training in the single digits, that's your answer — the expectation got set once, in a meeting, and never revisited. Start with one role and one page: what this person owns, what finished looks like, and when the two of you will look at it together.
B. Profit — expenses climbing, margin shrinking
You picked profit. Below the surface: the costs are visible and the leaks are not.
Most businesses can produce a list of every subscription they pay for, and not say which of them generated revenue last quarter or confirm they get leveraged consistently to perform. In the exercise below, look at your percentage next to technology. If it's near zero, you're paying for tools that are not being put to work. Put what you spend monthly next to what each one produced. Half the list won't survive the question, but they are not ‘bad’ tools, just not implemented yet.
C. Not enough new business coming in
You picked new business. Below the surface: marketing is the first thing that disappears when the week gets busy.
How you rate marketing strategy will be a tell. If it's five, you don't have a lead problem — you have a strategy and consistency problem, and that's a calendar fix before it's a spending one. The second place to look is what happens to the business already coming to you: how fast someone responds, and who owns an enquiry that arrives after six.
D. Everything runs through me
You picked everything running through you. Below the surface: you are the answer key, and nobody wrote anything down.
For most owners it's the biggest time spend and the one nobody planned for. That isn't a time management problem, it's an ownership problem — the answer lives in your head and nowhere else. Write down the five questions you answer most often. That's your first process document, and it's usually one page long.
You know what you would fix. You feel the concern every day — it's the thing you think about on Sunday night.
Here's the catch. What you name is usually the symptom. The cause is usually somewhere else in the business, and it tends to show up in one place: how your week is actually spent.
So let's check.
Where does your week actually go?
You will like this. Something worth doing. And worth further exploration when you see the breakdown.
Give each business driver below a percentage based on where the time in your week actually goes, totaling 100. These are seven areas every business runs on. Honest answers.
Answering questions about issues
Working on your own production
Using the RIGHT technology — tech that generates business, not just processes it
Coaching and training beyond the transaction and the paperwork
Recruiting actions and results
Marketing strategy: For the company, consumer facing and recruiting focused. Not individual listings.
Profitability goals and results
Here's the twist: hand the same blank list to your colleague/partner/leaders/agents, and ask them to fill it out about them, and you. It is interesting to see how others view where your time goes, and it's a great coaching tool for your team.
Now, ask yourself: If your business goals were going to be achieved in the next 2 years, what would need to change so that it did not require double your time and effort? To help you get to the answer, try putting your results in CHAT or CLAUDE and ask/use this prompt - 'This is how I spend my time each week. If I want to increase my success in my business, what is the best distribution of my time in these seven areas of my business, and what are some activities in each category that can help me optimize?'
The gaps tend to be the most useful thing out of this exercise. Acting on them gets to the solution.
Before you close this
Write down two things: the letter you picked, and the one number in the exercise that surprised you. Those two together are your next 90 days.
And if the gap you found is one you'd rather not work through alone, book a free Q&A call and we'll look at it together.
Here's to fixing the right thing!
– Dana
