We all have goals. Easy goals, difficult goals, and ones we’ve completely buried because they feel impossible or out of reach.
I’m pretty good with goals in some areas of my life. Spring cleaning is a breeze. Decluttering, throwing out the old to make way for the new….piece of cake. I’m really good at planning activities for me and my children. I can budget and penny pinch to make savings for these family excursions.
I set a goal to read a book and it’s done a week later. Working on some short and long-term fitness goals right now. Making progress.
One goal that I’ve had for the absolute longest seems to keep evading me. Every time I think I am so close, something happens to throw me off course and set me back. I was thinking about alignment. So I started asking myself if there was any reason the Universe would be putting this off for so much longer than I had hoped. Like as in I’m five full years behind my original plan.
I couldn’t think of any good reason other than my inspired actions weren’t properly prioritized for this particular goal. Yes, I had some setbacks that were entirely out of my hands, like identity theft that took me nearly seven years to recover from. But I also had set some other goals that distracted me from the bigger picture.
Of course, we should always have big and small goals in different areas of our lives. But sometimes my smaller goals in that specific area weren’t supporting the larger picture. Sometimes multi-tasking can sabotage your real progress.
So I was sitting down earlier today reading my college thesis. I wrote about priorities. That whole work/life balance thing. How most people, in an effort to make more money, end up losing in the overall grand scheme of things in their lives.
I aced that final assignment.
I was thinking maybe I should take my own advice and rearrange some of my priorities to help me meet this goal once and for all.
Today I’d like to highlight just a few things any person can apply to their priorities if they are trying to build a business, side-hustle, or create an extra income of any kind.
Identify and Align with your goals.
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- For me, this meant redefining what exactly I wanted the goal to look like and journalling the shit out of why I wanted this particular goal.
- When I say align, I mean write down exactly how you hope to FEEL upon pursuing and achieving this goal.
- Notice I said while pursuing. The way you feel during the pursuit of your goal will largely determine how fast you will get it. Case in point, I felt overwhelmed by mine because I hadn’t broken down the big picture into smaller steps that could measure progress.
- If your goal doesn’t make you feel excited, positive, etc, then it likely isn’t aligned for you and you won’t reach it for one of two reasons.
- You don’t actually want what you think you do.
- Or, you need to conquer your self-limiting beliefs. Sign up for my free self-limiting beliefs worksheet to get a kickstart.
- If you enjoy working with others, you’d want a business model that allows for group coaching, videos, webinars, or maybe live speaking events and retreats.
- For those who prefer to work fewer hours and look to build a more intimate connection, 1:1 coaching or services are more likely aligned with what you “feel” for. This is the faster way to make higher scale income online but it can be done both ways, so long as you are aligned with it. Smaller retreats are also a great way to build long-lasting relations in business.
Build a genuine community.
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- Not gonna lie, this one takes a ton of work to do with authenticity. Any wanker can buy 10k followers on Instagram or Twitter. You can follow 10k people on Pinterest and get a good portion of them to follow you back. EPIC FAIL.
- Building real community requires patience and persistence. It’s easy online to forget that there are real people behind those too perfect profiles. People that crave community and appreciation just like you. They want people to read, like, comment, and SHARE their work just like you do. People seem to be in a “like and run” mode these days. Rarely commenting and even less rarely sharing. SMH.
- Another thing to remember is to always be you. This will draw in the most authentic and engaging audience, even if it takes a little longer. If you are a blogger you can read my 5 ways to grow your audience post here.
- [bctt tweet=”People seem to be in a like and run mode these days. Rarely commenting and even less rarely sharing” username=””]
Get Inside Your Audience’s Head
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- This means you need to be specific about the type of results you plan to deliver. Not to the point of driving yourself out of business because your so specific you only relate to 5 people a year. But you can’t be so vague that people wonder what the heck they are actually signing up for.
- If you plan on making money, you need a process that allows you to take people from point A to B.
- The easiest way to get people to purchase from you is
- Build Trust by giving them tons of great free advice and strategy
- Pay attention to their pain points (what they want different in their lives)
- Create goods and services based on those needs within your area of knowledge
- Make a sales page that reads their mind regarding those pain points and the RESULTS they would get if they worked with you
- So for me, this would look something like this: ” I can teach you how to identify and conquer what is holding you back so you can smash those blocks and get results. I’ll teach you the social and leadership skills you need to click with people so they want to work with and buy from you. And we’ll do it with privacy. No facebook groups, awkward sharing of private information with strangers. Just you and me teaming up like Yogi and BooBoo about to conquer every picnic basket in the park.” (Normally I’d use a much more badass team here but I’ve spent all day with my youngest girls so cut me some slack.
Turn off Your Screen from Time to Time
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- Pro Tip: The online world is ever changing. Soon gone are the days where a person can make a fortune just sitting behind the screen, never being seen.
- People are creating in-person retreats (a personal fav), live video, and coffee chats.
- The disconnection that was caused by the explosion of myspace and facebook is slowly on the mend. People are craving in-person, live, interaction again. It helps build trust and people feel like the relationship is more “real”. You can’t have that through writing and posting alone. Even video creates a barrier.
- Learn to interact and speak about your business in random environments, and meet with other business owners or clients in real life when you can!
Sell Your Results, Not your Process
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- Deep down, no one cares how many modules, videos, or calls they get with you. They care about the results. I’ve seen way too many programs jam-packed with content, bonuses, and extras (trying to add extra value), only to learn next to nothing by the programs end. So many of these are recycled information that doesn’t even add the author’s own spin on it. Quality, not Quantity.
- Practice closing the sale. If your copy/sales page is written REALLY well, this should get very easy after a while because your sales page will weed out those who just don’t click with you.
- Typically you won’t have to “convince” your ideal clients to work with you. They’ll be eager. However, practice what you would say in a call to close a sale.
- You shouldn’t question your methods or prices because if you do, so will the client. And if you do, chances are you lack belief in your product, or self-worth when it comes to your $. (If you are the latter, come see me)
So there you have it. Five things you’ll need to prioritize in order to reach your business goals. If you hit a point in your business where things really pushed you over the top of your goals, please share what you prioritized to get ‘r done.
xoxo–Deanna