Our Goal Setting Takeaways

Rolling with it is cool until it’s not.

Rolling with the punches is how many of us get our business off the ground. We have an idea or see an opportunity, we set things in motion and things get rolling. We run our business by responding to what’s happening instead of leady by creating what we want to create. This can totally work for some folks  - and for many others you will eventually hit a wall where you find some piece of what you have created is not fitting - it's hurting instead of helping. That wall can hit you pretty hard if you are rolling fast. Hitting the breaks every so often is not a bad thing. Ask yourself if you are rolling in the direction you want to go or if you need to change course and you just might get where you want to go.

How do you know when it’s not working? Pay attention to the friction.
Where are you finding friction instead of flow? Are you feeling a tightness in your body, are you feeling sick all the time, are you constantly bumping into frustration and annoyance. Friction is a clue to let you know that something is not fitting or working. Follow the friction to find what’s not working and lean into your truest desires to get real about what will.

Setting Good Goals Means Being Really Honest with Yourself - and it might hurt.
When you are looking back and what is working and what is not it can be easy to fall into the trap of false motivation. By that I mean it can be easy to feel or see reward that is driven by what you THINK success should be. Other people’s idea of what success should look like. It can feel comfortable to be making a certain amount of money, or to be seen a certain way by you community. But if those things are not leaving you happy and feeling rewarded. If your health is suffering then are they good metrics for success for you? Questioning these things goes deep - into our values and motivations and our mindset. Your ego may get a little bruised in the process - but true reward and fulfillment are on the other side of hard questions.

Your fit and needs will evolve over time.
Goals and metrics that fit one day may not fit the next. Be open to your values and vision shifting. Allow those goals and ideas of success that no longer fit to float away and welcome in those that now feel like they do.

It takes courage to slow down and make space for reflection. It takes courage to ask yourself the hard questions and be honest. It takes courage to change your day to day activities towards a new goal. It all takes vulnerability and courage. The deeper we lean into that the more success - whatever that means to us - we can find.

Let your strategy be your guide. Do the research, trust it, and always refer back to it

One of the best ways to sort out your ideas is to create a strategy that is your benchmark for yes and no.  Strategy research gives you a solid sense of…

• Your customers and what they want and need
• Your business vision and values,  what you want to achieve, and what feels good - what feels like success
• Your business numbers, how much you want to make and your plan for doing it
• The kind of social impact you want your business to have

Using these as your benchmark you can evaluate your ideas based on whether they will actually serve your audience, whether they will make you feel great and align with your values, and whether they will make you money or take your business in the direction you want to go.

This can help you clear the clutter, guide your creative mind, and stay focused.

Allow yourself to play, experiment, and fail.

No idea needs to be life or death. When we treat it that way we get locked into overwhelm and we don’t do anything. Take an experimental mindset. Try out the smallest version of the idea, observe what works and what doesn’t. If it fails, change it, scrap it, or  learn and make it better. You might just be surprised at what comes. We learn by doing, not by sitting in our office coming up with ideas.

Let go of everyone else’s expectations

It’s so easy to get distracted by the bombardment of well meaning ideas from friends, loved ones, and all the business experts trying to convince you what to do. Well meaning ideas that start with “you should do…” or “your competition is doing xyz you should try it”.

All of these ideas can be wonderful and they MAY be useful to your business. They also may not. We can get stuck in marketing strategy FOMO or overwhelmed with the million ideas we SHOULD be doing. So much so that we get stuck and do nothing. When this happens a great place to start is to come back to ourselves. When we get clear on what is most important to us, the ideas We have for our business and what matters to us, we can use this as a rudder to guide our choices.

It’s not always easy but giving ourselves permission to shed the shoulds and do what feels right for us is a critical business muscle to flex.

Start with one Idea at a time

You have a million ideas for your business, from better marketing tools, to money-making ventures, to how you want to make change in the world. Where to start? With one idea at a time. Develop an idea parking lot  - a place you can write down all your brilliant ideas.

Pick one - maybe the one that you are most excited about, the one that is easiest to implement, the one that will make you the most money or the one that is best related to your strategy.

Do it. You may get started and decide it doesn’t work. Then you get to move on to your other ideas, maybe it’s brilliant it goes amazingly and those other ideas that were bugging you fade into the background, or anything in between.

 

Have faith that each idea has its time, no idea will ever go stale or disappear if it’s important and you will learn and build on your ideas as you implement them.