Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the solopreneur Sisterhood Podcast. A podcast designed to help heart centered service providers like you build a purposeful, profitable and sustainable business that supports what matters most to you. I'm your host, Becky McCleary, and I am so grateful that you are here.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hello and welcome back to the solopreneur Sisterhood Podcast, episode five. And so today we are actually going to dive into to a topic that came up in a conversation with some clients earlier this week. I am currently running a beta test of a mastermind community and the topic of goal setting and priorities and how to know what to focus on when came up. And I thought that would be a great conversation for us today. So before we dive into that, I just want to mention that as you listen to this episode, if you're thinking that you would like more support with this, I am offering a free quarterly planning virtual retreat on Thursday, December 5th and you are welcome to join us for that. If you are part of the free community, the solopreneur Sisterhood community, you will find that information in the events space in that community. If you're not yet a part of the community, you'll find a link to that in the show notes for this episode or we will also include a separate link to just sign up for the virtual retreat itself. But in that retreat we're going to take a couple of hours and we're going to work through this whole process that I'm going to be talking about today. Today together, I'll also be sharing some templates that I have and offering some extra ideas and advice in helping you to create a plan that works for you. So before we really get into this, I want to share a little bit about my story because in this conversation with clients, they were asking, how much do we have to have set up? How do we decide what to focus on next? And what I said was that when I first started my business many, many years ago, I thought that I had to have everything kind of lined up and in place and kind of official looking before I could put anything out there. And so I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I took forever to come up with a business name. I registered that name, I created an LLC right away, and I got the branding, the logo, the fonts, all of that. I had a website built, I had a copywriter, all of that. Only to not actually have a business and not have clients, not have money coming in, it was just a big expense. And so what I learned from that is having all of those pieces in place doesn't actually mean that you're going to succeed in business. What ended up happening for me several years after that is from that experience, I realized, okay, there's so much that I don't know here. I have a lot to learn. And so I sought more information from people who were further ahead, people who were succeeding in online business, trying to learn what worked for them and what did I need to learn so that I could succeed as well. And through that, I made some great connections. And I ended up connecting with a woman who asked if I would work with her as a virtual assistant. And it was not something I had planned to do again. When I first started out in online business, I thought I wanted to be a coach, and I did the whole life coach certification.
But I thought, okay, I like this woman. I think we'll work well together, and I could learn something from this. So I decided to give it a try. And what happened is I learned a lot of skills through that. I could also apply things that I had been trying to learn from my own business. And from there, I realized I could offer this service for other people. And so it became more of a case of online connections, answering questions for people, letting them know, you know what, here's what I do as a va. And then people were asking more about how I could support them. And so that kind of came together more organically. It wasn't me building. I mean, at the time, I didn't have a website, it wasn't building a website. It wasn't putting together packages. It was more talking with people, answering questions, and then when they were interested, putting together some options for how I could support them. And it grew from there.
So my recommendation to the clients I was speaking with at the time earlier this week was that you don't need to have everything planned out or built in advance. And really looking back, I wish that I had knew the process that I'm going to be talking about today. I wish I had known that years ago. So that way I had a more intentional way of building my business rather than just focusing on what I thought I needed. So my process that I use in my own business and that I work with, with clients has a few different components and goals actually don't come into the planning process until a little further down the road. So we start off with vision and value. So whether you are just starting out in business or you've been in business for a while, I do recommend on a regular basis, taking a little bit of time to come back to what you Love about what you're doing, what you want to be changing about what you're doing and where you want to be going next. Because what I have found in my own journey is that, you know, we. We normally start off with a big reason why. Why we're starting our business, why we want to do the work we want to do, and then we get into it for a while. And sometimes we can kind of either drift off course or we can. Our reason why can change our life. Circumstances change, and so suddenly we're not feeling as connected to our work or we're not feeling as intentional with our work. So what I have found for myself is that if I go through this process, I normally recommend once a quarter, it helps me to either confirm that I'm on the right track, or it helps me to recognize where I might be a little bit off course and kind of shift my direction. So that way I can feel more intentional and more aligned moving forward. So when it comes to your vision and values, this does not have to take a long time. You could take 20 minutes, 30 minutes. I do recommend actually writing down your ideas. For me, it just helps to actually get it out of my head and have something to look at. I think it's really helpful as well just to be able to come back to this. So if you're getting to a time later on down the road where you're feeling like nothing is working, you can come back to what you've written and remind yourself why this work matters. And so when it comes to vision and values, I recommend asking yourself, you know what, what do I love about what I'm doing right now? What. What would I like to change?
If you want to, you could even say, you know, where do I want to see my business? Or what do I want my life to look like? Six months from now, you could do a year from now. You can choose, choose the time period that you want to look at. I know some people look at five years, 10 years. I know for me, if I get too far down the road, that becomes a little more challenging to try to imagine what I even want. So for me personally, I recommend six months to a year. But you can. You can adjust the time period to work for you, but just thinking about where you want to be going, what you want that to be looking like, and most importantly, why does this matter to you? Because that reason why is what's going to help you make decisions moving forward. If you have a clear vision for what you want to be creating and why this is important. To you, it's going to become so much easier to make decisions moving forward, because every decision either aligns and supports what you want to be creating or it doesn't. And so once you have that clear vision, it becomes so much easier to make those decisions.
So once you are clear on what you love about your business, what you would like to change, where you want to be going, the last question I really love is, you know, if I was already, if that version of my business already existed, if this was my daily experience, what are three things I would be doing on a regular basis?
So normally that's going to help us to see things that we might not be doing right now, but things that will be supporting what we want to create.
And that gives us a really good starting point for what we need to focus on. So, for example, if you are thinking about, I want to have 10 clients, and right now you have a couple of clients, one of the things you might be doing on a regular basis would be regularly building connections, meeting new people, having new people learn about what you do. And maybe that is not something that you are currently doing. Maybe right now it's more sporadic when you have time for it. So maybe that's one of the things you would be doing on a weekly basis that you could add into your plan, or it could be a case that, you know, you would love to see yourself with a membership or a course or a group program. And that means that you need to be connecting with more people. So maybe one of the things that version of you would be doing would be getting in front of more people, getting in front of other people's audiences. So that could look like being a podcast guest or writing guest articles. And maybe that's something that you haven't started doing yet. So that could be something that you add to your list. So where I recommend starting is getting really clear on where you want to be going. So that will kind of guide everything else that we plan out.
The next part of this intentional planning process has to do with your schedule. So I know that I'm one where I will have a lot of ideas, and I kind of have a track record for creating massive to do lists and then getting frustrated when I can't actually complete everything on my list because it's just not humanly possible.
So what has helped me is creating an intentional schedule. So again, I walk through this process in the quarterly planning retreat because there are a few steps to it. But basically what you want to do is a couple of things you want to look at Your schedule. If you're planning for the next quarter and you want to start off by blocking out times when you know you're not available to be working on your business. So if you have a vacation coming up, if there are maybe holidays where you're taking time off, if you have kids at home and they have like time off school that you want to be off as, well, block those off on your calendar because that way you know you're not planning anything during that time.
The next thing I recommend is looking at your schedule and figuring out what do you want your ideal schedule to look like. So this could include things like taking off on Fridays if you want a four day work week, or maybe only working four hours a day. I'm just throwing up possibilities here that I've had clients do. So thinking about what you want your work to look like in an ideal schedule, this is not saying that you have to go and then implement this next week. This is just saying if I could work exactly how I want to work, here's what this would look like. The other thing you might think about is if you want to have your schedule be limited to certain types of work on certain days or at certain times. So for example, I tend to limit certain types of calls to certain days of the week, so that way I can be really focused in what I'm doing. So I might only meet with clients a couple of days a week. I might only have discovery calls one day a week. That way I can be really intentional with my schedule and I don't have calls coming in at all times. You might also take a day or two where you're not doing any meetings at all. It's just intentional time to work, either on your work or client work. I know that for me, I like to end the week knowing that I've wrapped up everything that has to be done and I don't have to carry work into the weekend. So for me, I tend to block most Fridays off from calls. So that way I just have Friday completely to get work done and I don't have to worry about my schedule getting thrown off because of meetings. So again, this is just creating an ideal schedule. And the idea with doing this is that it's going to give you a container for the work you want to do. So when we plan out your goals and what needs to be done to meet those goals, you can see the space that you have to work with and recognize if you actually have enough room to do that, or if maybe some of your ideas and your plans need to be shifted because you simply don't actually have the capacity to do all of that right now. I know that sometimes when we don't include our actual schedule in our planning, then we can overwhelm ourselves with everything we want to do and then get frustrated because we just don't have the time to get it done. So I like to start off with that container, with that intentional schedule. So you have that to kind of hold in place everything that you want to do. So that way you're not going to go into this with overwhelm. So we've gone through clarifying your vision and values and planning out an intentional schedule. The third part, which I won't go into too much here, because I do have a whole process that I work through. Again, sharing that for free in the virtual retreat, is getting clear on your financial goals. And so I know a lot of business owners have a lot of feelings around this, but what I like to think of is that getting clear on the financial goals just gives me a clear idea of what I'm working towards. So if you can try to go into this part of the process without judgment, but just viewing this as gathering information that is going to support you moving forward, that's what I recommend. So as far as financial goals, I like to track business expenses so you get a clear eye on what are you investing in in your business. How much does it actually cost to run your business? I do recommend doing this at least quarterly because we will frequently invest in a new piece of technology, a new program, maybe you hire a contractor for a project, and we kind of forget what we're actually spending in our business and our numbers can change. So if you are going off of numbers from a year ago and you have invested in some different technology, your business expenses are likely different. And so it's just important to work with an accurate number. So I like to track business expenses. I like to also track how much do I want to be making personally in my business.
So again, I have a whole process for this. And your business, depending on your circumstances, does not necessarily need to cover all of your personal expenses. If you have, you know, I've worked with some clients where they are building their business on the side and they have a full time job, so they have another source of income. If you have a spouse or a partner or other people who help to provide some income to cover your personal expenses, your business doesn't necessarily have to cover all of those. But if you have a clear idea of how much you want to pay yourself, that can also help you with setting financial goals. And then the third piece that we sometimes work into this, depending on where a client is, would be your kind of your stretch goals. So maybe there are things that you beyond covering your business expenses, beyond being able to pay yourself, maybe there are some things that you would love to have in your life. So for me personally, you know, I have three kids who are heading off to college in the next five years. So saving more for college, that's important to me. Family vacations, that's important to me. But those are things that are kind of extra goals for us. It's not we need the money right now. It's more these are things I'd like to be able to buy in the future. So for you, maybe it is a vacation, or maybe you want to be able to buy a new car, or maybe you want to move and buy a different house or a new house. Whatever your goals are, those are kind of stretch goals that we can work into the financial plan as well. So I like to have a clear sense of vision and values where you want to go and why. Intentional schedule, so you know how much time you actually have to work on your goals and then financial goals so you know what it takes to be able to cover all of your business expenses. Pay yourself what you want to be able to make in your business, and then possibly depending on where you are in your business, be able to save towards some of those other goals that you have.
Once you have those three components in place, then we get to setting quarterly goals. So I do like to break it down into quarterly quarterly goals just because it gives us a more clear focus. So for example, if you are wanting to bring in more clients, like maybe your goal for the quarter is you want to be fully booked, and that looks like having 10 clients, then we would be able to map out what are things that you need to do to ideally sign those 10 clients. So what I like to say to clients is just a gentle reminder. We can't actually control anything outside of ourselves. We can't actually control whether people sign with us or not. However, there are things that we can do to make it more likely that we will connect with ideal clients. And so that's what I like to focus on when it comes to goal setting rather than, I mean, we might actually have that goal in our heads. I would love to have, you know, 10 clients by the end of this quarter. However, I can't guarantee that I'm going to have those 10 clients. So I like to focus goals when it comes to quarterly goal setting on those actionable items. So you might decide, you know what, I'm going to focus on regularly connecting with new people. Maybe it's a case that you don't have a clear offer together. So maybe one of your goals for the quarter is actually mapping out your offer.
Maybe it's a case where you have some offers, but you think you need to increase your prices, so you're going to put together a new package with that pricing, so you want to give yourself some clear things to work on. Maybe you want to be doing podcast interviews, maybe you want to launch your own podcast. There are all kinds of possibilities. But if you think about where you want to be moving in your business and where you'd like to be at the end of the quarter, if you can map out three to five different goals that you want to work on. And again, I recommend that these are actionable items. So this could be I'm going to have this many coffee chats each month, or I'm going to have. I'm going to set the goal of trying to have this number of discovery calls each month, or I'm going to attend a certain number of networking sessions each month. Things that you can definitely work towards. I'm going to post on LinkedIn this many times each week. I'm going to engage with other people's content for 10 minutes a day, this many days a week, those sorts of things. So set those goals. And the idea is that these goals are going to support your vision and values and your financial goals at the same time working within that intentional schedule. So again, when you're planning things, looking at it as far as, do I actually have capacity to do this right now? If you have one big goal that you're working towards, that's going to take up a lot of time, I would recommend having fewer goals.
Some of you might have smaller goals that you're working towards. So 5 feels manageable. So just as you're doing this planning part with your goals, think through not only what do you want to be creating, but also what do you actually have capacity for right now. So then the last part of this process, which again I do walk through in more detail in the free planning retreat, is for us to break down each of those goals into tasks. So, for example, if you want to launch a podcast in the quarter, you're going to write out a list of all of the different steps that are required in order to launch that podcast. And then what you'll do is you'll take those tasks and you're going to put them into your schedule week by week. And so I do recommend taking each goal, writing out the list of tasks, and then adding those tasks into your schedule. So that way you can kind of see how they fit together. And you might need to do some shuffling around. One tip is that when I first learned this process, it was recommended that we use Post it notes for it because that way you could easily move the Post it notes around. So you could have. The idea is that you have one task on each Post it note, so that way you can move them around. I also, when I do it, I like to have one color of Post it note for each goal. So it's easy for me to kind of see which one I'm working on at the time, but then with that, you're going to map it out. So, you know, week by week, what are your top priorities? And if you're actually completing those tasks, then by the end of the quarter you should be reaching those goals because you will have been working consistently towards it each week. So you might not work towards all of the goals every single week. It might, depending on the timing of what you're doing. So, for example, so some goals might not be especially time sensitive. So you might say, you know what, I want to be posting on LinkedIn three times a week. And so for that you might be working on that consistently each week. But it's not like you have big deadlines to meet. Whereas if you want to do something like launch a podcast or host a summit, those will likely be time sensitive. So you will have a date when your podcast is launching or a date of the summit. And then I would recommend working backwards from that date as far as when other tasks need to be done so that the launch goes smoothly. So with that, you might find that there are certain weeks where you are prioritizing that time sensitive event and the tasks related to that just because they have to get done in order for everything to come together on time. So allow yourself to have a little bit of flexibility with that. The last piece I would recommend right now is to make sure that you are not overloading your schedule.
What I have found, both for myself and also for clients is that when we start this process, we tend to put a lot at the very beginning. We. I don't know if it's a case of just being ambitious or thinking that we can do it all, or just wanting to build momentum faster, but if you look at your plan and you see like there are a lot of tasks, the first couple of weeks and then by the end of your quarter it's very light. I would. I would pace yourself a little bit more with that. Again, you are this is just an overview today, but you are welcome to join me for a free quarterly planning retreat on December 5th. Again, we'll include the link to that in the show notes for this and then if you are a member of the solopreneur Sisterhood Community, it's our free community. It's a great way for you to connect with other heart centered service providers and to be able to receive support on a regular basis. We also have a number of free events including this workshop, so if you're already a member of that, you'll find the information where you can sign up for the retreat inside the Sisterhood Community in the Events tab. If you are not a member, you are welcome to join us in the free community or to simply sign up for the retreat on the 5th. So that is all for our introduction today to setting goals for your business and being intentional with your planning. Thank you so much for joining here today and I look forward to connecting with you again next week.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining us and listening to the Solopreneur Sisterhood podcast. I hope this episode has offered you some encouragement, some insight and some new ideas to support you in building a.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Business that works for you.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Remember that our world needs you, your gifts, your vision and your work.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: And I'm cheering you on as you.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Bring your vision to life and build a purposeful, profitable and sustainable business that supports what matters most to.
