It’s the beginning of the year! And people are dropping coins on pretty planners and hip goal setting tools.
Before you buy a planner or spend an afternoon thinking about your goals, I encourage you to listen to my latest audio. I dive into the mistakes that entrepreneurs often make when they are setting goals for their businesses. Mistakes that you can avoid.
It’s easy when you work for a company to get input from the team. But when you are solo or on a small team, you might not see all of the blindspots. It’s also super hard to stay motivated throughout the year when you are the only person you report to!
Use the three tools I share and CRUSH your goals this year.
Don’t touch your annual goal setting without doing this – Transcript
Hi, this is Malla Haridat. I’m an award winning business coach. And I want to help you uncover what you don’t know that you don’t know about running a successful business. So if you have been attending the events, you’re going to the workshops, you’re buying the programs, and you’re still not seeing the growth that you know your business should have then take a listen to today’s episode.
Today’s topic – So I wanted to start out the New Year with a topic that is near and dear to my heart. But you know, we got to throw a little spin it on what it’s about and let me share with you where this came from.
This is the time of year when a lot of businesses really need to take a moment and think about what is going to happen this year for our businesses. Let’s be intentional about a word we’re going to focus on. Or the goals that we want to go after. And today’s topic is really going to dive in and kind of twist the needle a little bit on those annual goal setting or actually vision board events.
Now, mind you, I am a firm, firm, firm believer in the need to do these types of activities. But I think you have to add a very specific factor in setting your goals that a lot of times nobody likes to talk about. So today’s topic is, don’t you dare set up your annual goals without doing this.
[01:24] My Story Let me share with you a story of where this comes from. A couple of years ago, I hired a business coach. He was asking me to make a phone call to do some research about a potential client that I wanted to work with. And we were talking through the conversation. And in the middle of the conversation, he said, well, look, let’s just get them on the phone now. And I’ll walk you through how to be able to do it.
I freaked out because, I had never had anybody on the spot “force” me to take action right then and there. I was expecting like most coaching calls that I would sit down and we would go over my goals and things that I’m working on.
But at the moment when we took the call, he announced both of us and took lead. You know, it was such a powerful conversation that I can remember it now, several years later, for a very, very key reason. What he did was he helped me figure out that one of my gaps in my own business was how I go about taking action. And in a nutshell, he’s somebody who has a massively successful business. If I want to have that success in my business, I have to learn how to take action in very similar ways to how he does. So we had flushed out the idea and it was planned. I normally would have probably spent more time doing some more research before I would have picked up the phone. I wasn’t scared of the call itself but I would have spent more time in planning mode and he was kind of like, nah, you’ve done enough planning. Let’s take action and let’s see what happens.
When I had worked with coaches – no one sat down with me with those goals and walked me through the action steps that I needed to take.
I hope this can be a game-changer for you. Because for a lot of people, I don’t think you’re setting bad goals. That may not be the case. And so you’re looking at your list year after year and you’re like why doesn’t this happen? Why doesn’t that happen? It’s not that you’re setting bad goals, is that we all need, myself included, someone who’s been there and done that, to sit down and work with you and help you figure out where are the gaps you have around those goals.
So this year, I want you to commit to this. If you’re going to take your time to actually set your goals for this year, I want you to really challenge yourself, have somebody review that list and critique what you have there. No more setting goals in isolation, no more stepping back and thinking well, as long as I have this goal written, it’s going to happen. No. You need to get on the spot feedback about what’s working and what’s not working.
Don’t set goals in isolation. Get feedback
So, there are three steps that I’m going to encourage you to take once. For some of you, I recommend finding a way to pay for working with a coach, find someone that is really going to help you and support you and hold you accountable, and be able to help you kind of fine-tune the strategy that you have right now.
For others, if your budget doesn’t allow it, that’s cool. Find somebody in your network that is interested in working with you as a mentor, as an advisor. But just make sure that whatever you do you find a way to support them in whatever their projects are. It’s going to make a difference if they’re going to be working with you for free.
[05:29] Three Steps to Goal Setting – So here are the three things that I want you to keep in mind. First and foremost, the simple one is you need to have a space and a thought of where you’re going. Take a moment and step back, 5 years, 10 years 20 years from now, yeah 20. Where do you want everything to actually go in your life? In your life, in your relationships, in your health, in your spirituality and looking at a couple of key areas, where do you really want to go? And then think about your business? What do you see your business achieving 5,10, 15, 20 years? So for those of you that like to do annual vision board or you like to do annual goal setting, I think you’d be pretty comfortable and familiar with this idea. But I just toss it out as an easy starting point to really get going with it, okay.
Where is your business going 5, 10 or 20 years from now?
[06:24] The second thing I want you to think about is when you have thought about where you want to go, step back and take an honest assessment. Why haven’t I gotten there thus far? Like, what’s kind of holding me back from making those moves happen? And be honest with yourself, like, don’t tell stories about it in a way where you could just make it sound really good, but that ain’t the real reason. So let me out myself on this example. You know, for a while now, I’ve been saying I want to really start eating healthier and get back in shape again, and so on and so forth. And I’m using all types of excuses for why I can’t do it. When I step back a few months ago and got really, really clear that I’m eating a lot of sweets, which is my love affair, I’ll own it because I’m stressed. Like there’s a level of stress where the more stress that I’m getting, the more I’m indulging in things, and hence, why things look the way that they do.
What is holding me back? Honestly
When I got really, really honest about it, it’s not because of the crazy schedule. No, it’s not because of all the activities. I got really, really honest. It’s about stress. And when I step back and look at that, that’s where I can start making the actual changes, and start committing to both a physical exercise program and committing to eating better when I’m just really, really honest about why is it happening in the first place. It’s not to judge it. It’s not to say it’s good or bad, but it’s owning, what do you think is the reason for why you haven’t been able to do it thus far?
[07:56] And then the third step and this is really where the power of having someone in your corner come in, is once you know where you’re going, and you start digging in and honestly, look at why you haven’t gotten there. I challenge you to have somebody in your corner, who’s going to help you to stay accountable towards making those things happen. Now, accountability, that’s probably a whole other topic all within itself, because a lot of times we aren’t trained on how to have accountability partners. And I don’t want you to have this good cop, bad cop type of thing. Not at all, okay. But I do want you to look at it like this. There are a couple of people that I quote unquote, report to in my world.
Who am I accountable to?
I’ll share with them some of the goals that I’m working on and then we’ll say, hey, we’ll touch base in about a month or in a couple of weeks, or I have a couple of people that we touch base, I would say almost on a daily or bi weekly basis, actually, in terms of the things that we’re working on. And what tends to happen when you do that is that you start for yourself, stepping back and saying what are the things that I really need to focus on because I only want to post the wins. I only want to talk about the successes that I’ve made because in order to keep this momentum going, I have to have more wins out of it. And so having that accountability person, that person that you know is going to check in on you, send you nothing but love and encouragement. But also to be frank, kind of keep you focused on things, you know, make sure you’re going after the big frogs early in the day.
So the big frog really quick is that there’s a saying that if you have to eat a frog, how do you do it, you take one bite at a time. But the other part to it is that if you have to eat a frog, just start eating the frog. Don’t start your day trying to eat the—you know, the gravy on the side or the chips or some of the other stuff. Just go in, tackle the frog, eat a couple of bites, and then come back to it again the next day. Alright, so I hope that this conversation here is going to inspire you and more importantly, going to really help you take a step back in your business this year. And really, really, really start to see the growth and the revenue come in, in terms of your next steps.
