Goal Setting...are you considering EVERYTHING?

Hey there, friend, how is everybody doing today? Its Tracy Beavers popping in. I've got Instagram right here. I'm making sure that all of our technology is working. Give me one second. Yep, I think it is. Happy Friday Eve Day to everybody. As I said, I've got Facebook, personal page, business page, Facebook group, YouTube, LinkedIn, all here. And then I've got Instagram up here on the camera. So I'm looking at all the spots so y'all can just help me figure out the tech and make sure everybody's working.

So if you're new to me on popping in on my personal page, this is something I've been doing every Thursday for a few months and I've decided to bring it to all of my personal friends, too, in case you needed great small business tips, just like my Facebook group. So today we're going to go a little deeper into goal setting. And my thought process and my approach is going to be a little bit different than the ones you've heard about in the past. So I want you to stay tuned because you have not thought about goal setting this way before. I guarantee it.

But first, I'll tell you who I am in case you're new to me and I'm new to you. I'm Tracy Beavers. I am your business and sales coach. And my passion is helping you. The small business owner, solopreneur, salesperson, untangle the parts of your business that are no longer working so that you can gain confidence every single day, that the activities that you're doing are going to grow your income.

So through Facebook lives like this and my six week online course, we dove into all aspects of sales and networking, growing your income and get you the knowledge that you need to make your business exceptional this year. Because I mean, otherwise, why are we in business? We've got to grow that income. Right.

All right. So if you're here live, I want you to drop a one in the chat. And I'm so excited to have you join me live. If you're catching the replay, just type replay. Replay is a great team to be on. You can save this video and come back to it at your convenience and listen to it on the go.

So, this week, I'll also a little something new so you can get to know me a bit better. Anybody want to give a guess as to my first experience in sales? It was on a recent guest spot I did on a podcast. I sold my brother and sisters band candy, ok, my sister, six years older, my brother is four years older. They didn't want to sell their band candy for the fundraiser. So, I loaded up my wagon and I took it all over the neighborhood. That was my first foray into sales and I haven't looked back ever since. So let's have some fun. I would love to know your first memory of sales or marketing or networking. Was it Girl Scout cookies? Was a Boy Scout popcorn, was it band candy? Was it a car wash? Throw it in the chat. I would love to see it. It'll just give us all a hoot or your first job if you want to do that.

All right, guys. So today we're talking about goals. Let's dove. In the last few weeks, we've been talking about your goals, your business vision, and if those are authentic to you and what you want and nobody else. Right. And last week we talked about how to make time in your schedule to do the reflection work, to know you have the right vision and know that you have the right goals and figure out how to execute on those because it's already third quarter.

Third quarter started last week. In case you missed it, it started a week ago. My approach to goal setting is a little bit different than everybody else's. So I want you to hang in with me here. We're going to go over something that you have likely heard a million times if you've been in the business space for any length of time at all. But then I'm going to go deeper with it and I'm going to challenge you a little bit because I've put my own spin on it. So, I want you to hang in there with me.

You've likely heard when it comes to goal setting that you need to set smart goals, right? This is not new. It's been around forever. Let's review it really fast. And then I'm going to like I say, I'm going to challenge your thinking a little bit. And that's where your light bulbs are going to go off. So Smart stands for we're going to review it specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound.

This is an excellent framework to start with specific. You want more income that specific. But what does that look like in terms of new clients sales reach outs? That's where the true specificity that's a big word specificity comes in. Right.

So specific. So, yeah, you want more income, but let's be specific about how you're going to get that income measurable. Are you tracking your numbers? New clients with numbers of reach outs, number of phone calls, numbers of estimates written if you're in that kind of an industry, what we track will grow and improve.

Attainable, are you setting goals that you can attain? Now, we ought to be careful here because I don't want you going so low on your goals that you can attain it without even getting out of bed in the morning. That doesn't count. But I also don't want you setting goals so high that you're going to end up frustrated and mad and give up before you've even had a chance to gain traction. And a great example of this that always comes to mind for me is January. When you want to lose a few pounds, you're like, I'm going to lose 50 pounds in two weeks. That's not that is not going to happen. That is, that is setting yourself up for failure. So that's what I mean. You get the idea, though, relevant. This means to me personally, Tracy, this is what this means to me. It's the same as being authentic. It's what we've been talking about with our goals, being realistic, being relevant to you with your resources, not somebody else's.

And the T is time bound. This is where your planner and your schedule come in and you want to set your timeline, like we talked about last week, to plan it all out. If it's not on my planner and it's not going to get done because I have to write things down in order to remember him. And you guys, I am so guilty of over scheduling myself. I have done that for the last two weeks just because I want to make room for everybody. And I get so excited about my business and I look at my schedule and I'm like, hold on, wait a minute. This is this is not going to work. So don't over schedule yourself. Look at your week, decide your open blocks of time and insert an appointment with yourself.

This is a bonus tip for you today. Insert an appointment for yourself on your planner to work on your goal, and so the reason why is when someone calls you or texted you or something and asks you if you're free on that day and time, you can honestly say without lying, I'm so sorry, I have an appointment at that time. Let's look at a different day. You're not lying. You have an appointment. Is it anyone's business who or what the appointment is for? Not in the least. So this is how you can have about some boundaries around your time to achieve the goals that will move the needle on your income. So now that we've looked at that basic tried and true structure of the smart system, a system that's been around forever, let's take the goal setting and do one step deeper, shall we?

This is where I'm going to come in and give you my spin on it, things that I want you to think about as well as your business and sales coach. It is my job to keep you on track with accountability and also challenge you to think deeper to get those maximum results. So here goes, here come my questions. These are questions I ask myself and my clients as I work through our coaching sessions together. And if you coach with me, I can hear you right now rolling your eyes and being like, Oh yeah, she's asked me this before, so just get ready.

All right. Number one, are you ready to commit to being uncomfortable and actively schedule and work on your goals? You might end up physically or mentally uncomfortable, are you OK with that? What do I mean by this? Are you ready to perhaps employ a new schedule, new ways of thinking, new ways of execution? This is where, like, if you're working with a personal trainer in a gym, this is where the personal trainer would say to you, well, how bad do you want it. Truth Bomb.

Yeah, I know. But here's an example. So I have clients that are not following up with their prospects because it makes them uncomfortable. They're afraid they're all up in their head telling themselves stories about how these people don't want to hear from them. They don't want to appear sales or spammy. If the person was interested, they would call them back. Those things are not going to happen. They're not going to call you back. You have to follow up. You have to reach out.

So what we do in the coaching sessions is we talk through the ways to make it more comfortable. So they know they know what to say, when to follow up and and how to feel more comfortable with the whole process and the words they're going to say and the timing of it. But then it's up to them to execute the plan. It's up to them, the client, my client, to decide how uncomfortable, uncomfortable they're willing to be, what new processes they need to get comfortable using and commit the time to execute it.

And guess what? When people do this, they try new things. They get uncomfortable. When you do this, when you try new things and you get uncomfortable, you're not going to die. Nobody ever died from making a sales follow up, I promise. OK, I know that's kind of silly, but it's the truth. You know, it's, it's all going to be OK. Nobody's going to die.

So remember two question where are you right now. Where do you want to go? And are you being honest with yourself? Yeah, we're going there. I told you I was going to challenge you. That's my job as your coach. Are you being honest about what you are truly capable of or are you making excuses? And have those excuses actually become your reasons for not moving forward, because so many times we are telling ourself a story which leads to an excuse and then we start to believe it so much that it leads to a reason.

And it and it just sounds so legitimate in our head. So last week we talked about how there's a lot of business owners out there coming up with excuses that have turned into reasons for slowing down in the summer. And guess who's not doing that? Your competition, your competition is not slowing down in the summer. Your competition is not saying, oh, we'll just wait till school starts.

One of the biggest excuses, reasons that my clients tell me with regard to why they can't execute some of their ideas and strategies is that they don't have time.They don't have time. Well, we can take an honest look at their schedule and generally we can find the time and we can get them unstuck and moving forward.

All right. Here's my last question. You're ready for it. It's a good one. Are you willing to commit the time? Speaking of time, can you put the blinders on, put these action steps for your goals into your schedule, not allow any interruptions? Now, obviously, if somebody is broken, bleeding or on fire, that's a legitimate interruption. But we have to say no to the things that are going to interfere with our goals. It's not easy to say no. I'm the girl who told you just a minute ago that I was having trouble saying no to people and I was over scheduling myself. So I have to be careful of it, too, because I want everybody to be happy. And I get so excited about my business that I want to do all the things that I have to have an honest conversation with myself and figure out.

I think I just lost Instagram. Oh, well, they'll come back up. There they are.

So I have to be honest with myself and look at my schedule and actually take the time to make to get the execution done. So here's a great example of what I mean. So one of my clients wanted to lose some of her baby weight after having her twins. Now, this doesn't have anything to do with her business or her sales goals. But here's the thing. Personal, professional, it doesn't matter. It's all wrapped up together because it has to do with her mindset and how she felt about herself, which went into how she was showing up in her business for her sales role. Right. So we spent a little time on that subject because that mental game can impact not only your personal life, but your business. So she worked in an office where the entire team was ordering Chick fil A every morning for breakfast, almost every morning, five days a week. And OK, OK. Truth bomb. Confession. I love Chick fil A any time of the day. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, right. It's delicious. So I could totally see where she was coming, coming from. But we talked through if there were items that she could order that might be healthier or if she could dial it back and treat herself to the Chick fil A maybe one morning a week instead of five, just making that one small change would make a difference when she's put putting her pants back on is the fact that the way she wants them to.

So it's really hard to do that, though, because everybody in the office was chowing down on hash browns and chicken minis and those are delicious. But she realized she had to ask yourself how bad she wanted to make the change. And it wasn't a forever change. It was just a short term change and how uncomfortable she was willing to be, especially when there was peer pressure and people eating delicious food around her. So I hope all that makes sense.

Here's a here's just a review of what we talked about. I want you to use the smart system. It's been around forever to set your goals, then ask yourself, are you willing to be uncomfortable and try new things uncomfortable, mentally and possibly uncomfortable physically? Are you willing to be honest about what you're truly capable of? No more excuses that turn into reasons. And are you willing to commit the time, make an honest assessment of what time you have, and be super careful about what you say yes to because when you say yes to something, you automatically say no to something else. And I'll be the, again, no judgment. I've been doing it for two weeks and I finally realized what I was doing and I had a good, hard laugh about it because I'm like, Tracy, you're a coach. What's wrong with you? I don't know what happened, but, you know, we all have times like that.

I want you to remember what I said to you every week don't go it alone. Being an entrepreneur is hard. Some days everybody wants to buy what you're selling. Other days nobody wants to know your name. And if you think you're alone, you are not. I am here for you. And if you want to discuss coaching and what that looks like and what we can accomplish together, then shoot me a DM or contact me through my website. You can set a 25 minute call with me to figure out what coaching would look like together for only $17 and we can make a plan for you and I'll put the link in the chat so you can automatically go ahead and set that up if you want to. A six week online course that I talked about is called Be a Confident Entrepreneur, it's always available. It's a self-paced course. You can do the course in your jammies from your couch. It's six weeks of getting comfortable in sales, learning how to effectively network, getting referrals from your existing clients, talking about a schedule that serves you.

And it's all there for around $65 a week. And that's a bargain when you're talking about coaching. And I'll put a link to the course and the chat so you can check that out. Also, if you're catching this on my business page on LinkedIn or on YouTube, come over to Instagram, come over and join us on Facebook in Be a Confident Entrepreneur Facebook group. I want you to jump in and be a member. Make yourself at home.

Introduce us to what you do and what your who your best client is so that we can be of service, going to work, trying to help you build your business. Some of the members in the group are getting great tips from each other, best practices, and they're sharing what's working for them. And others of them are doing business together and growing their income. So it's been really, really exciting. I want you guys to have a great balance of the week and a great weekend, unfortunately, this weekend in the United States, because I know we have people tuning in from other countries this weekend in the US is not another holiday weekend. It's a regular weekend. But we will we're going to enjoy it anyway. I want you to keep cheering each other on. Thank you guys so much for joining me.

I'm going to check I'm going to go over here and check stream yard and I'm going to see what everybody said about their first sales gig. Hey, Connie, Kamisha, she said Girl Scout cookies. I love it. Robin's here, Jill’s in the house. Josh Lyons grow your income listen to Tracey. Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed our chat yesterday. That was awesome. Girl Scout cookies. Yes. Josh, that candy bar is raising money for camp. Yes, I. Oh, those candy bars that you sell for a dollar. What is that. What were those called. And those were delicious. Yep. All right, guys. Oh, and Courtney said band fruit boxes. Oh, that would be, fruit boxes would be good.

All right, guys, I want you to have a great rest of the week and a weekend, and I'm going to say bye to Instagram really quick, if I can turn off that live. And I'm going to say bye to you guys. I'll talk to you soon.