Ep 47 | Achieving Your Business Related Goals

Annie: Hey there, Leah.

Leah: Hey, Annie. How are you doing today? I'm

Annie: great. And today we're going to be talking about achieving your business goals. So I am excited to. Really get practical. In our last two episodes, we talked about setting business goals. And now that it's the new year, it's time to think about achieving business goals because, hey, don't you want to be ahead of the curve? Everybody else is just setting their goals, but you're already achieving them. Look at you.

Leah: talking about a boss over here, taking care of business, right? That's right. So we kind of left off on our last goal podcast was talking about how we really need to get specific and start breaking down these bigger goals into your actionable steps. And I think this is where a lot of people get tripped up because it can be. It's hard to think through that like, okay, I really, really want this, but then like thinking into the tangible nitty gritty day to day, what steps are going to have to happen to make this long term goal achieve, you know, something that you can actually achieve is where the actual Making it happen happens, you know, it's not just like you put out into the universe that you want to grow your business by 20 percent in the next six months, you know, that's great, but the universe won't respond unless action happens. So the first step is really getting down to the nitty gritty and taking these steps. That make that actually happen. So we're thinking about, you know, actionable things, things that we can do to achieve these bigger goals. Annie, when you're looking at, okay, I got this big goal. Where do you go in your brain to like, start to hone in and kind of get that needle pointed in the right direction to those actionable steps? What's your thought process? What are you thinking?

Annie: Well, I always come back to. A great book called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. And so one of my, my many jobs I've had in my life is I was a, a screenwriting professor and a creative writing professor, uh, adjunct in a couple of colleges. And I used to teach this book to my students. And in there she gives, and it's a, you know, it's a memoir about being a writer and it's got a lot of, you know, really great, great things in there talking about, you know, just how, how you even write anything. And she gives an example of her child who had to write a report about birds and, and the child was completely overwhelmed. I can't do it. I can't, I don't know even how I'm even going to do this. Like, I just, there's just so many birds and she just said. Well, you just got to take it bird by bird. So really thinking about when things are feeling too big. Okay. It's just like every big goal is just one thing. Plus one thing, plus one thing. So what are all those, all those one things. And so. You know, I, I do tend to be more systematic in my thinking than I have learned other people are. I'm a little rigid. I'm a little tidy. So I think about it often mathematically when I have a big, a big task, it's like, okay, it's a pyramid. So the big task was at the top. So there's definitely like a couple of less big things in there, but each less big thing can be a couple of. smaller, even less big things till all of a sudden you're getting down into like, okay, I have to sharpen my pencil. Okay, done. I did it. I did my one thing that led to the big thing. So that's sort of how, where my mind goes when I'm breaking things down. What about you, Leah?

Leah: Yeah. Very similar. I like to really start asking myself like, okay, this is my big goal. You know, let's just take, you know, I want to. grow my business 20 percent in the next six months. Okay, well, you know, I'm looking a little bit closer. Okay, well, what does that actually mean? What would that look like? You know, in a little bit bigger, not the big, big picture, but a little bit smaller and then narrowing it down so I can really get all the way down to, like you said, like that pencil sharpening, like I'm going to get dressed for my consult and walk out of the house, you know, like that's how. We want to narrow down these steps because you can't take action unless you know the first step. You know, we can't follow, follow a path unless you take the first step. So we really have to break down into these smaller and smaller. And sometimes you can ask some questions to yourself like, okay, I want, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit on the last episode about goals. It's like, okay, I want to have, you know, 15 consults a month. Okay. What does that break down a little? How am I even going to achieve that? Where are those people coming from? Okay, now I can break it down a little bit further. I know this is where my base of clients actually come from. Okay, well, how do I generate more people from that base? Okay, now I have my tasks there. Breaking that down even further. What do I need to nurture, take care of in you? Those different categories to make that happen. And then you can really get some very actionable steps out of that. But all action needs a plan. So we can't just say like, Okay, great. I know I need to sharpen a pencil. Great. When are you sharpening your pencil? At what time, for how long, on which day are you going to sharpen your pencil, right? Because if you just leave it out there, again, we're not going to take action. So, I have found it super helpful to really make a plan for that. To know, I know that, you know, This day at this time is when I'm taking action for that big goal, even though it's a tiny step, like today at Monday at 8 a.m. I'm sharpening pencils so that I can write, so that I can do the next thing, so that I can do the next thing, so that I can do the next thing. And I think that's been super helpful for me. It's like, Getting it all broken down and then making a plan for it. And I know you're a really great planner, Annie, and definitely have this kind of tweaks about scheduling time for specific actions. But how has that helped you? And, you know, what are some of the tips or tricks that have you found to be really helpful around kind of making that plan scheduling that time?

Annie: One thing that I always like to do when I have a new project. So some gold, something I'm trying to do is I really like to assign due dates. I like to really think about what, like, what is each step of the process? What is what has to happen? And then if I want it, If I want the end goal to arrive on this day. So I'm thinking not so much like a fuzzy goal. Like I want this many consults, but like something like I want to have a podcast with Leah Jolly, that was the goal that I had. And so looking and saying, okay. When we started, when Leah and I started talking, we're like, okay, when do we want our first episode to come out? So I like to work backwards from there and say, okay, if the first episode is going to come out on this day, then we need to have this, you know, each time and actually putting dates on it. That really helps me feel like work against my tendency to try to do things that are too far down the road. Just to get them done, but really remembering that there's an order for a reason. And that I really do only have to do this one thing today. I don't have to do it all today.

Leah: Sometimes you get like super motivated and you're like, okay, I'm gonna do it all day, everything. And then you can run into burnout, lack of boundaries. And then all that motivation that you generated for having this goal gets washed out with. The burnout you feel because you overdid it trying to do all the things on day one, you know, it's, it's like trying to run the whole marathon on day one when you didn't even figure out that you needed shoes put on and you needed to train for this and you needed to have a plan of how you do a marathon, you know,

Annie: and so I thought in our Deeper dive into productivity, which you can find in our vault at learn. anniefrisbee. com slash deeper dive, Amber McHugh, our productivity expert, she said, I love this. Cause I hadn't really thought about it, but it's so wise that don't plan anything. For the first half of Monday or the last half of Friday. And so leave those times open so that you can start your week by thinking about the week ahead and looking at like, okay, what are my goals? What are my to do lists? What are those dates on the calendar that I assigned to myself? And then actually saying, okay, like, is this actually, what's going to happen this week? Where does it all need to fit in? Because, you know, you can say, yeah. All right. Every Tuesday I'm going to do this thing, but then Tuesday comes around and you're like, This is totally the wrong day that I picked for this, or maybe it's just the wrong day this week. It has to be a different day. You have a dentist appointment. Yeah. And then she says to like, end your, end your week, like your, your task week halfway through Friday so that you have time to just like shut down your week and have some time to reflect on what you accomplished, what happened, what didn't happen. So you're not working right up until the last minute and you're not. Like launching yourself right out of the gate on Monday morning, and I really that really spoke to me when she said that, especially, um, you know,

Leah: with such a good deeper dive. Oh my gosh, I left that deeper dive totally feeling like so much clarity on how I need to be. Structuring my week, you know, she, she had such good insights on that. And I think it really plays into this, that we're talking about here is having that scheduled time, but really focusing your attention each start of the week can be really helpful and. You know, a lot of us don't just have our business on our plates. We have all kinds of other things on our plates. And so, you know, sometimes we need to shift things around, but that doesn't mean you lose the task completely because you might note at the end of the week, okay, this wasn't completed. Now I know I need to schedule time for that next week. I think that is so, so helpful. And what You know, words of wisdom from really productive people that we need to keep listening to. Right? But this really is a time for you to also, you know, when you have this kind of reflection time, maybe on a Friday afternoon and you've scheduled time, maybe you set a goal that you're going to schedule, you know, 30 minutes that you're reaching out to contacts. I'm just going back to this one because it's easy to talk about, but you know, you're like reaching referral sources. You're going to spend 30 minutes, maybe. shooting out some emails, writing them about connecting. And maybe that didn't happen this week. And so you need to have a way to kind of track your progress and know what things are working, what things aren't working, and that you're actually making steps. Because I feel like the tracking is one of the things that gives me the best motivation for the next thing, you know? So when I'm like, I can check it off and be like. I did the thing, then I can't wait to get to the next week to like, check it off again because I did the thing. And I know that that is getting me to my bigger goal, you know, so even those tiny little things that seem inconsequential, like, you know, I wasn't really like that big of a deal to sharpen my pencil, but because you sharpened your pencil, now you can write, you know, whatever you're doing, you know, it's like, it's just so. Great to have a tracking process. I know I go really simple with my tracking process. I have just some Excel spreadsheets. I have to do is on there. I have a kind of broken out. These are the things that are going to get me to this big goal. You know, the bigger goal and I break it all down and then I love just being able to go in and I just feel so good to like, click the little button, goodbye, you did it. And then you know, like, even though it's a tiny step, it's getting you to that further goal. And I know you have a lot of great systems too, Annie, and you've used some online help as well. And I've tried a bunch of them, but what do you feel like helps you kind of track these more mundane, smaller tasks that are getting you to that bigger goal that you have?

Annie: I am obsessed with researching. Anything having to do with software, if anyone who knows me, like if there's some new tech solution out there, like I need to know everything about it. So I have looked at a lot of different project management solutions. I've done trials of Monday of Asana. I try and Leah and I use Trello for a while. I was using Trello. I'm. Currently have been using and I'm going to continue using ClickUp, which is what I've landed on. I really, I love the interface. I can get, it's really good for me working with my virtual assistant, my administrator, um, to just to assign tasks to her. And also Leah and I use it to get organized for the podcast because I can put to do lists and I can get kind of a global view of all of my items or I can look at them on a per project basis. And so that really helps me because I need to have, I need to have everything in one place and I also need to have everything in its own place. So I need both. And so that's, that's really important for me because otherwise I can get lost in the weeds or I can, I can really start focusing on one project. And then it has happened where I've forgotten that I'm supposed to be working on this other project. So I need to have that checks. And the other thing that I do is I look at my stats all the time. So I'm, you know, every day I'm in intake queue and I'm running my appointments list and I'm like, what am I out for the month? What's my number? Whereas every day I look at my number and every day I look at my, my business checking account. Every single day. Yeah. And somebody, you know, I was thinking about that. I was like, is that weird that I do that? And I'm like, it's not because like, I'm like, obsessed with money because I'm not really, but I was talking about it with a friend of mine and she was like, right, because what you focus on grows. And I'm like, that makes a lot of sense because it's it. And it does sound a little like I'm, you know, me, I'm not like the most mystical woo person, but it also just, it's a way of setting my priority, which is my business. And I'm not. I'm not creating all these goals. I have like many reasons why I set goals. One of them is because I want a business that is successful and that feeds my family. So by paying attention to my bank account and saying, okay, like If my bank account is not doing so well and I'm working night and day, do I really have the right goals? And there's definitely been times where I've, I've had, I've looked at the bottom line and said, I'm putting my, my energy in the wrong place. I may have come up with a great system to execute this goal and it's the wrong goal.

Leah: Yeah. And I think it is so good when you're doing the tracking, it helps you have some reflection. Go through a month of doing these tasks that these steps that you broke down and you look back over the month, you can track everything and you might realize like, okay, I thought this was the thing that was going to really generate, you know, maybe those referrals. I really thought that this was it. What I was doing this contact this direct contact and then you realize you've tracked everything you've noted, you know, your appointment numbers and everything. And then you can say, you know, I haven't really seen the results that I expected and and you can shift gears and it helps just re center. To that goal, that long term goal. Am I getting there? Am I taking steps forward? Is this actually generating the outcome that I'm long term wanting to have? And then you can make adjustments through the time because it would be crazy to go six months doing a task that actually isn't helping you get anywhere. So I think it's so helpful to have a way to track. And also, I love how you made the point about. You know, shipping your focus. And I don't even think of it as like a mystical way. I think it's, it is truly one of those things. It's like what you focus on, what you bring your attention back to helps you continue on doing the tasks that really achieve what your long term goal is. And if you just kind of blind yourself to the outcome, you know, your bottom line, the numbers of appointments that you have, what are you even doing? Like you don't even know what you're doing is doing anything, you know, whether you're just basically in hamster wheels. your wheels for who knows what, you know, so I think it's super smart and, you know, you inspire me. I'm like, I need to break those down. I usually look at it over a couple of months, so I'm like, Annie, I got to do this. I'm going to start looking at these numbers more often. It's so important. Not my bank account a couple of months, but I don't, I mean, my, my appointment numbers, that would be terrible if I didn't look at my bank account for a couple of months. But yeah, I definitely agree with you. And I think it's such a good reminder for us as we're working to achieving these goals. We want to make sure what we're doing is working, you know? And I think, you know, I love this conversation. I love talking about productivity and goals. And I just have a sense, Annie, like we've had so much fun making these two podcasts about the, about the goals. And how it's different for entrepreneurs and these business related goals that I really feel like we're going to have to do some more of these for sure. And you guys can let us know if you want to hear about this, you know, leave us some comments on Facebook. Let us know what you guys are wanting to hear more about. Cause it really helps us just hone in and I'm really enjoying this conversation. So I hope you guys are too. It's been so great talking to you today, Annie, and I hope. That we both achieve all of our goals this year and that it's a really awesome year. And yeah, I got some big ones.

Annie: Me too. It was great talking to you and we'll check recording episode 47 off our to do list.

Leah: Yes. Yes. Hitting those big goals. Bye

Annie: Leah. Bye.