115: Achieving your money goals doesn’t have to be hard: Try this simple tip

Transcript

Achieving your money goals doesn't have to be hard, try this simple tip

00:21

Hello, glorious human, and welcome to another episode of the Money Mindful podcast. I am your host Meaghan Jean Smith. I'm a money mindset and life coach for women. I help entrepreneurial women reach their money and life goals. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So awesome to be in your ears today, wherever you are listening in the world, hello, I hope you're having an amazing day. Before we get into it today, I just wanted to bring to your attention that I have an email list. And every week I email my list little helpful tips, I tell you about what's coming out on the podcast, I also let you know when I'm running workshops or doing events. So I'd love to invite you to get on that list. You can get on my email list by signing up for my free three day video training. You get a free training from me about how to create your money goals and you will also get added to my email list and then you get to hear from me, pretty much weekly. I send an email out weekly. And then every now and again I send you out other emails when there's stuff happening.

 

01:51

But if you're not into email, because not everyone is, come and hang out with me on Instagram, come and follow me at my account meaghanjsmith on Instagram, I love chatting with people over there. That's where I mainly hang out. I do have a Facebook page, a Money Mindful Facebook page, but to be honest, I'm not really over there very often. But I do hang on Instagram and I do chat with you if you reach out to me and I would love to connect. So go and hang out with me there.

 

02:22

Alright. Today I want to talk to you about one simple thing that you can do so you can actually achieve your money goals. Okay, money goals and life goals do not have to be hard. But let me paint this little picture because this could be you. Did you have beautiful, glorious ideas at the start of this year about what you wanted to do, things that you wanted to achieve this year, and now it's mid-Feb, and you've already lost track of them because there's so many things you want to do, so many amazing projects you want to get involved in, you jump from one project to the next and get sidetracked with your goals. If this is you, I've got you today because I want to share with you a simple tip to keep you on track with your goals for ever. You can use this forever, and it will keep you on track.

 

03:28

I want to share with you a process, so simple, if you follow it, it's impossible not to reach your goals. Unless your goal is something like, I don't know, flying, with wings. It's the exact process I use to stay on track with my goals. And really it's just one big tip but I'm going to share the process that I do in combination with this. So one of the things that trips a lot of us up when we're going for our goals is we just lose track of it, right, we lose sight. We have good intentions. I know that you do want to achieve these goals, they're important to you. But somehow it's like before you know it you're just busy with life, doing other stuff, and six months has gone past and no progress has happened on your goals. So one of the important things to staying on track with your goals is just to first be really connected with your 'Why' but that's not what I'm going to focus on today.

 

04:47

The  main thing, and seriously it's this simple, to stay on track with your goals is make it obvious. Make your goal in your face obvious. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean, write that shit up and have it in your face. Have it on your fridge, have it on your desk. Because if you're anything like some of my clients, or what I used to do, is I would write my goals in a book. So nothing wrong with this, right? But I would write them in my journal, and then I would close my journal, and then I would forget about them. Now often, I would still eventually get around to doing them. But I wasn't moving forward towards my goals all the time. And the problem was, that it was out of sight, out of mind. So when we make our goals obvious, it is so much easier to stay on track.

 

06:03

Because if you're anything like me, and I know that you probably are, because that's why you're listening to this podcast, and we're connected, right, because we get along, and you can relate, is that you get distracted easily. Oh my gosh, I get so distracted with things, there are so many things that I want to do. Oh, wow, life, I mean, come on, there are so many things that you can get involved in, there are so many goals that you can go after. I mean, I'm not even talking about my personal life, just in my business alone, there are so many things that I'm passionate about that I want to do, that I want to bring into my business. And it is so easy for me to get distracted and start, you know, wanting to get started with a new project before I've finished actually something that I've already even worked on.

 

06:55

And I mean, I'll share an example of this, for instance. So every year, I create a revenue goal in my business. And I do that because it lights a fire under my arse to just evolve and progress in my business. But also I do it because I've got money that I want to make, goals that I want to achieve with my business and so I set goals to do that, right? But in the process of setting those goals, there are things that are more important than other things, you know, things that I prioritise, for example, in the first year of my business, I really prioritised becoming an amazing coach, like really up-levelling my skills. And my focus was totally on my programme, what I was delivering, who I wanted to work with, how I wanted to be as a coach, what I wanted to coach on, like really homing in on those skills, but also getting really clear about who I wanted to work with. In the beginning, I coached everyone on everything.

 

08:11

But now, you know, I'm more specialised, I'm coaching women on creating their money and life goals. That was my focus for the first year. But my goal this year, for example, is all about sales and marketing, like this year, I'm just becoming a sales and marketing ninja. And I'm so passionate about that, because, you know, I have clients who have done incredible things, I mean, just off the top of my head, like some recent clients, they've doubled their income since they've worked with me, they've reached amazing goals in their business, things that they've wanted to achieve. And, you know, in the first year, I didn't concentrate on sales and marketing. That wasn't something that was a priority.

 

09:01

But when you're in business, if people don't know who you are, and how you can help them, it's much harder to create business, right? And, you know, I think of the results that some of my clients have got, and I just think, oh my gosh, imagine if they hadn't found me. You know, they could still be working on that stuff now, like, I know that they would have still achieved it, but not in the timelines that we've done it, right? And so now it's so important to me, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I have to get really clear about my message. I want to really be clear about who I want to work with and attract those people and help those people to find me, so they can find me, because all the people who work with me are a perfect fit, right? Like they find me and then we're like, 'Yes, this is so awesome. It's so good to work together.' They're happy, I'm happy, and it's a beautiful thing. And I'm like, right, I need to improve this skill so I can find more of those people who I'm the total right person for them, right, to work with to achieve their goals in a beautiful love bubble way.

 

10:15

Anyway, I digress. The point that I'm trying to make is that I have a focus, right, that I'm working on each year, something that's really important to me with my goal. But then I make it really obvious, so I don't get sidetracked. And how I do it is this. I'm going to share the process that I do. And by all means, use the process that I use. This process is an accumulation of techniques that I've learned from - techniques, is that the right word? Whatever, processes that I've learned from coaches that I've worked with, that I've put it all together, and tweaked it and made it my own, in ways that work for me, right? So this is also what I teach my clients, and it works. But that doesn't mean that you know, your method doesn't work, or that you can't do it a different way, you totally can. But this is what I do to stay on track and make it obvious.

 

11:24

So every year, I have one big mega goal that I'm going for. And it's usually a revenue goal in my business, because that's what pushes me - that's not the right word. I mean, that's what sort of evolves me the most, you know, like, elevates me to the next level of where I want to be in my life, so to speak, because to earn more money in my business is challenging. And it really makes things in my life that I want to improve in my face. I don't want to earn more money and overwork. So perhaps setting revenue goals is like such a beautiful thing for me personally. It might be a different type of goal for you.

 

12:12

But then what I do is I break that revenue goal down into quarterly projects, so to speak. So every 90 days, every quarter, I do a big brainstorm of all the actions that I can take, all the things that I can do to create that goal. And I don't know what things will work and what won't, right? I just brainstorm. I just write down a whole heap of ideas. And then I pick 25 of those ideas. Sometimes I have to work just to get to 25 ideas, right? And then those 25 ideas are like little goals, little things that I'm going to go for, to help me achieve my goal. So one of those things that I've had on my list for ages, but it just wasn't a priority in the beginning, was creating an online portal for my clients, I really wanted to create an online portal for my clients. And so there were lots of steps involved with creating that. And that was something on the way to creating my revenue goal as well, you know, because I wanted to create, like ridiculous amounts of value for my clients. And one of the ideas I had was I want to have an online portal for my clients, right?

 

13:44

So I write these projects down, these 25 things I'm going to do that I want to work on over three months. And they could be smaller steps too, but anyway, that's not the point. Basically, every three months, I'm writing 25 things down that I'm going to give a red hot go, that will move me forward to achieving my goal. Then I will create a monthly focus for myself. So every month I create a mini goal. So last year, my monthly goals were, towards the end of last year, all about creating the client portal. So I had a focus for the month that might have been you know, getting the plan of the client portal set up and getting the structure organised, or whatever, right? I can't think of them off the top of my head now because they're from last year. And so I would have a focus over that month that by the end of this month, this is what I'm going to get done. And then I would break it down even further into - and I learnt this tweak off my coach Jamie Berman - into a weekly focus.

 

15:00

So every week, I would create a little worksheet for myself where at the top, I've got my monthly goal, I write it down. And then there's some other sort of mindset stuff I do and which I won't get into here. But then I put three wins, like three actions that I'm going to commit to taking every week. And why I call them wins is because once they're done, by the end of the week, that's a win, right? They're like three things I've done each week, that move me closer to my goal. So if I use the example of the client portal, in a week, three things that I might do is record a video for the client portal and have it complete and uploaded. Right, that might be one thing. Or I might break down that task into three things, like write outline for video, record video, upload the video, right? Now, they can be as big or as small tasks as possible. But every single week, I'm doing three things towards my big revenue goal for the end of the year.

 

16:18

And the way that I make it obvious is the tasks that I do quarterly, the things that I write down that I want to experiment with and try over the quarter, I've got them on one wall in my office. Then my monthly intention or goal, I write that up every month, and I've got that on the other wall right next to me. And then my weekly focus, I do that every single week, and I write up three things. Now, you might be thinking, surely you do more than three things in a week. And yes, I do. We're multi dimensional people. There's a bazillion things I do in a week. Hey, I've got two kids. There's like school runs, you know, all sorts of stuff that happens. But there's three things that I commit to every week towards achieving my big yearly goal. And the reason why that's so important is whether I achieve the goal or not, it doesn't matter. That's not the main point. I will achieve it. But will I achieve it by the end of the year? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I will. But if I don't, it doesn't matter, because every week I'm doing three things towards my big goal, and it's going to happen. If I just keep doing those things, every week I'm three steps closer. And every quarter, I'm 25 steps closer, because there's like 25 things that I've listed. So by the end of the year, there's 100 actions or results that I will have taken towards creating my goal. So can you see that if you keep doing that, there's no way that you're not going to reach your goal.

 

17:56

Anyway, I'm giving you a lot of information here about how I do my goals. But the main point is that I make it obvious. I have it pinned up in my office, I see it every single day, because I kid you not, like I have no idea actually what you think of me. But I know that a lot of people tell me that I seem really organised and driven and whatever. But I have ideas that float into my head all the time of stuff that I want to do. And I come across new programmes that I find or educational things that I want to do, and I'm just like, 'Oh, that looks amazing. I want to do that,' or 'Oh, I'd love to do this for my clients, that would be so amazing.' And then it's like, 'Hang on a minute. What is the task that I have planned ahead, that I have set for myself, that is my goal this year, that I've committed to, that I really want to do? Oh, here it is right on my wall beside me, I can see it. That's what I've decided that I'm going to work towards. That's what I'm going to do.'

 

19:09

Now the other ideas and projects that I get, I write that stuff down. But I just put that aside for later. Right? Because remember, I told you this year I'm focusing on sales and marketing. So I'm really homing in on that towards my goal and I'm doing lots of things to do with that, like I'm working on my sales page for my website. So when you guys come to my website and look at it, you can actually clearly see, 'Oh, this is what she does. Oh, this is who she works with. Oh, this is someone who would be a good fit. This is somebody who wouldn't be a good fit.' You know, all these things I'm working on. And the other stuff that I want to do, I still acknowledge that and, you know, write it down like yes, this is something that I want to create.

 

19:58

But I keep my eye on the prize, because I have it obvious, I have it next to me, it's on my wall, I know what I'm working towards all the time. And that way, I stay on task, I get my goals done. Because as you know, if you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, I've created a profitable business. I've done that by following this process when I'm talking to you, writing my goals out, keeping it really obvious, making it front of, what's the saying, front of mind, all the time, but like, literally, visually in front of me, it's on my wall, I see it every single day. And every week, I decide, okay, what are the three things I'm going to do this week, just to move me forward towards my goal. And I commit to doing those three things. Now, all the other stuff in my life, you know, painting my nails, taking my daughter to Kmart to get some new socks, or whatever it is, all that stuff happens. And some things don't happen in a week. And then there's some things that I'd love to get done towards my goal, that might not get done. But the three things that I write down every week, I commit to them, and I do them.

 

21:18

And so every week, I'm three steps closer to my goal, and it's in front of my face, so I do it, it's obvious. And you can do it too. And this is how you can stay on task. And look, whatever goal method that you do, like whether you write it in a book, whether you set daily tasks for yourself, whether you plan out your week in advance on your calendar, and you time block, whatever it is you do, if it works for you, keep doing it. But please. Make it obvious. Put a post-it note on your computer. Write a big sign on your fridge. Put something up in your bathroom. Make your goals obvious and in your face so you see it every day. And this works, one, to keep you on track. But also, when you start thinking, 'Oh, there's no way I'm ever going to reach this goal. I don't even know what to do, like, what could I do next?' Which I totally do, by the way. I just look at my list of 25 things on my wall that I've brainstormed earlier on, you know, in this quarter, and I'm like, 'Oh, that's right. I had an idea that I could, you know, create a blahdi blah.' Like, you know, I'm just looking at my wall now of ideas that I've got. And then I'm just like, 'Oh, yeah, that's right. I could work on that this month'. So make it obvious, make it obvious, make it obvious.

 

22:59

Alright, if you are finding what's on this podcast really valuable, and you want help to achieve your goals, you want to have someone in your corner so reaching your goals is just absolutely delicious and fun and divine because you've got someone to work with and keep you accountable, keep you on track - reach out, I would love to work with you. You can book a consult by going to my website. This is where we get to meet each other, we get to know each other, I learn about you and find out whether I'm confident that you're a good fit for my programme. You get to meet me, find out all the nitty gritty details about working together. And if we're two peas in a pod, I will make an offer to you to work with me. And it's a beautiful thing. And if you're not, I let you know. And it's really safe to say no and to find out 'Oh my gosh, this isn't what I expected.' And then we just get to meet anyway, and connect and wish each other well on our merry way. Okay, until you hear from me in your ears again next week, have an amazing week. Bye bye.