5 Steps You Need to Take To Boost Productivity And Achievements

In this episode, I am sharing with you the biggest mistake that I discovered people make when it comes to setting goals with their business.

Hi-  I am Daphne- a fellow mama, business boss, coach, and your new best friend.

Long ago I realized that the biggest mistake people make when it comes to setting goals with their business was that their goals were not in line with the realistic amount of time that they have in the day to achieve them.

I've been there before and I'm pulling back the curtain on creating time-smart goals that respect your busy life, using the same 5 steps that helped me. These 5 steps are critical for sustainable success, especially for a Mompreneur. And in this episode, I’m going to emphasize how aligning goals with your actual reality and lifestyle can significantly boost productivity and achievement. We will explore some common traps that people fall into, and how you no longer have to  squeeze business aspirations into the small nooks and crannies of your schedule.

Learn the magic of reverse engineering as we dissect an example of a lofty sales goal into bite-sized, daily tasks that fit seamlessly into your calendar. Whether you're juggling diapers or deals, you'll walk away with a toolkit of strategies, including a five-step recap to keep you on course. And for those craving a more visual journey, my vision book workshop is just the ticket to breathe life into your aspirations. Join me and start sculpting your success story, one realistic goal at a time.

Vision Board Workshop

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello all you fabulous people. Welcome to a new week and a new episode of Mompreneur. Like a Rockstar, I'm Daphne, a fellow mom, business boss, coach, friend and probably to a few foe. Let's be real when you decide to go against the norm of what average people do, you unfortunately gain a few enemies. But that isn't what we're talking about today. Today I am sharing with you the biggest mistake that I discovered people make when it comes to setting goals with their business, and here it is the goals that they have are not in line with the realistic amount of time that they have in the day to achieve them. Creating realistic and attainable goals it's a cornerstone to sustainable success for any entrepreneur, and in my podcast episode today, I'm going to emphasize how aligning goals with your actual reality and lifestyle can significantly boost productivity and achievement. And maybe you don't have a business just yet. That's okay. Actually, it's more than okay, because you're going to hear some gold nuggets today that will put you ahead of the curve, so that when you decide to start a business, you are going to be set with setting those big goals. So let's jump right in, shall we?

Speaker 1: 1:31

Most of you know that I've been involved in network marketing in one capacity or another for almost 28 years, and about 13 years ago, when I partnered up with Beachbody, I started to learn the ins and outs of how to build a team and how to earn money, how to rank, advance. So, of course, I set my eyes on the big, big prize. I set a goal to reach a pretty significant rank, or level as you might call it with my business call it with my business and for no particular reason other than I felt that if I had reached this rank, that I would be deemed successful in the eyes of my team and those around me. I wanted to be looked at like a leader and hopefully that higher rank meant massive amounts of money too. I mean, I was young, I was new and I was naive to how this all worked, but I did what we all do and I added this big, big goal to my vision board. I told people on my team call what my goal was. I even visualized what my life was going to look like when I quote, made it big. However, I learned quickly to not just pull an idea of a goal out of your booty hole just because you think it would give you a fancy title and a pay raise Because I quickly realized that I had a life, a busy life.

Speaker 1: 3:00

I was a mom of two little girls, like almost one years old and almost five years old, small, and my husband. He worked away in an office, so he was either gone all day, almost into the evening times, or he'd be traveling to whatever state that the next deal led him to. I would be juggling my time between half day kindergarten schedules for my oldest daughter, juggling my time between half-day kindergarten schedules for my oldest daughter, going to mommy and me meetups with my youngest daughter, having the typical stay-at-home mom, sometimes acting the single mom role and wife duties. I barely managed to stay awake after bath and bedtime stories myself. So the thought of the amount of commitment that was involved once I finally sat down and mapped out this big goal, it was too much. We were a one income household, so hiring help was out of the question and, if we're being really honest here, when my hubby was home he was tired himself. He didn't even know what time zone he was in most days, so he wasn't one to necessarily come in and just jump right in and take over with things. So my pockets of time were limited and they definitely did not support the size of goal that I had set.

Speaker 1: 4:16

First I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed to the people that I had told my goals to, and then I started to question myself like was I even good enough to be doing this sort of thing? I caught myself making excuses to not work the business, even when I did have pockets of time, I guess so that I could better justify my reason for failure. I honestly don't know. I was being stubborn. I had not gone through all the years of personal development yet that I have now to recognize that these were just limiting beliefs that I was allowing myself to get stuck in. There were a lot of things that filled up my plate quickly back then, as I'm sure you can relate. And then try insert building a business into an already packed lifestyle and you could get pretty. But I'm here today to say that it's totally possible to do. You just can't be so hard on yourself if you don't have all the time available in the day to get you to where you really wanna go.

Speaker 1: 5:20

Just yet, these five steps that I'm gonna share with you are the steps that I personally took when I realized that I needed to change things up if I wanted to boost my productivity and gain the achievements that I desired. You ready? The first step I had to get really honest with myself, and I had to assess my current situation. This included everything from my financial resources, the small amounts of time that I did have during the day, what type of support systems did I have and, ultimately, what were my personal strengths that I was willing to give and what limitations did I have to be cognitive of. By knowing these and acknowledging these factors, it helped me with not just setting goals that were ambitious, but they also became achievable. So then, once I was clear on where I was starting from, it helped me to better see where I was capable of going.

Speaker 1: 6:21

But then I had to do this next step, which is step two, and I had to set new goals clear goals, specific goals, realistic goals. Clear goals, specific goals, realistic goals. When you have a goal that's too vague, it's harder and less likely to achieve. There have been so many times that I've asked people over the years what are your goals, and they'll reply back to make a lot of money. That doesn't say anything. We all wanna make a lot of money. You need to have those smart goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For example, rather than aiming to make a lot of money, a more specific goal would be to increase sales by 20% within the next six months through online marketing and expanding service offerings. That is a clear and measurable goal. So then, after doing step two and knowing what those specific goals are, you need to create what's called a balanced approach, and what this means is avoid setting goals that demand unsustainable sacrifices in other important areas of your life, such as your family time or your personal health or wellbeing.

Speaker 1: 7:44

Consider your personal commitments and lifestyle when setting your business goals. A lot of people don't do this. They just cram their whole entire schedule and calendar with everything business activity and business related, and they leave out the critical things like their own personal care. Could I have found extra hours in the week and pushed towards the big goal that I had originally set? Sure, but that would have meant time away from my kids and remember they were so small and my husband already wasn't home that much. And if I was tasting success, would I have wanted to slow down? Could I have slowed down if my business and my team and my customer base was so large? Would I have been able to stop and scale back. I guess that would have been a good problem to have if I would have taken that path, but I was not willing to make that sacrifice. My job, first and foremost, is mom. A well-rounded, balanced approach not only promotes overall well-being, but it also prevents burnout and promotes long-term consistency and you always hear the term consistency is key.

Speaker 1: 8:55

The fourth step you need to take is to develop a step-by-step plan. Once your goals are set, the next thing is to create a detailed plan of action, and what that means is you're going to break down each of your goals into smaller, manageable steps that can be tackled on a daily or weekly basis. This approach is going to help you maintain your motivation and it's going to make those goals easier to track. Can you write a book? Absolutely, can you write a book by next week? Probably not, but can you write 10 pages by next week? You betcha. However, each step should align with your lifestyle and your available resources, ensuring that each action is realistic and executable.

Speaker 1: 9:50

All right, so we're moving on right to the fifth and the final step, which I really shouldn't say is final, because this is something that you should do regularly. I mean, you should always be doing this with your goals, and it is to review and adjust. This is where being honest with yourself comes back into play. I encourage you to have a mindset that is flexible and willing to continuously pivot and shift if the situation is warranted. And I'll tell you this is something that I had to practice over and over in order to learn it, because when things wouldn't go according to my plan, I would fight it, I would try to force it. But now I take it as a sign that it's time to turn another direction on the road that we're on, because, remember, this really is all just a journey. There's rest stops, sightseeing stops, potty breaks, smooth spots in the road, rough spots in the road and lots of twists and turns. So regularly review your goals and your progress. I recommend doing this at least every month, if not at minimum every quarter.

Speaker 1: 11:03

This review allows you to adjust your strategies based on what's working, what isn't working, and it also helps you realign your goals with any changes in your personal or your professional circumstances. You could set a goal in January, something just hit the fan in February and you need to readjust. You know lifestyle's different now. Your available resources might be less than, or maybe they're more than, now, so you could put the pedal to the metal on those goals. That's why it's important to review and adjust based on your current circumstances.

Speaker 1: 11:38

This adaptability is key in responding effectively to those unpredictable natures of business and life, because I find this is usually when people feel anxious or overwhelmed. It's when something comes up unexpectedly and they don't give themselves permission to either break down the goal into smaller chunks or find something else that they're willing to sacrifice in order to keep on track with their current progress. Too often people set big goals and don't get me wrong, I am all about big, scary, wild, crazy dreams and goals. That's why I created the Vision Book Workshop and I talk about goals all the time. But what happens is people set out to accomplish a big goal but they don't commit themselves to the time it takes to achieve it. And you've heard the saying if you want something that other people don't have, you have to be willing to do the things that other people don't do, and sometimes that means giving up one thing so that you can have more time to work on something bigger. If you only had a couple hours extra available during the week and you really wanted to crank up your business. Are you going to say yes when your neighbor asks you to join the recreation department softball team that meets three nights a week plus has games? Probably not, I would hope not. This isn't saying that you have to give up everything fun and that you love forever. Just maybe for a small bit of time, until you get sustainable traction going that will warrant a few hours a week on the softball field.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Okay, so I have two more things that I wanted to include in this episode, and I guess you can kind of consider it a bonus. The first one is it's actually a term. I think I made it up. I don't know, this has been so long ago that I wrote a lot of this content. I don't know this has been so long ago that I wrote a lot of this content. I don't know if you know this, but a lot of my podcast content I actually repurposed from things I've written years ago, trainings that I've done. I mean, of course, I bring it up to the times and all that. But long story short.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Back in the day I came up with a term called time goals, and how this works. Is you set a goal for yourself? So, for example, you want to make a hundred connections with new people this week. Okay, so you have a weekly goal to connect with a hundred new people. Then you set that goal that if you reach the hundred connection goal, you're going to allow yourself some extra time to do something else. So in this case, if you make a hundred connections this week, then you will volunteer one day in your son's classroom next month. Maybe because when you got serious about your business, you cut back on your volunteer time. I absolutely did that.

Speaker 1: 14:28

When I got serious about my goals, I had to limit my volunteer time in my daughter's classroom. People just assumed that because I was a stay at home mom that I had to limit my volunteer time in my daughter's classroom. People just assumed that because I was a stay-at-home mom that I had all this extra time. And at first I did, I volunteered for everything. But then I realized that I had to create boundaries for myself in order to reach those goals. But I realized that when I set myself a time goal when I'd reach my goals, I'd allow myself more free time to do things that maybe I wouldn't regularly do.

Speaker 1: 14:58

Another example of a time goal might be maybe you set yourself a goal that, when you make your first $250 in a week from your business, that you will hire someone to start scheduling your social media posts for you, giving yourself back an extra hour every single week. You now have 52 more hours a year and you're making money while someone else is helping you run your business. That's pretty cool, right, but maybe you enjoy doing your own marketing. So instead you hire a housekeeper to free up the time that you spend doing that on a weekly basis. Whatever it is, give yourself a goal to reach that will allow you a time goal, whether it's to volunteer, be a sub on the ball field, hire some help around the house, whatever that free time looks like to you. And lastly, I wanted to leave you with an exercise that I used to do with people when they wanted me to paint a picture of what setting goals to reality might look like.

Speaker 1: 16:01

I know I'm a visual person, so when someone says something to me, I'm like break it down, draw it on a whiteboard, like I have to see it. So I'm going to use the example of a yearly sales goal, but really this formula can be applied to any goal that you have, because it's basically a process that I love to do, and it's called reverse engineering, and what this means is you take the big goal that you have and you break it down into the smallest steps backwards, so that you know exactly where you're starting from, what the smallest goal is that you need to reach in order to hit the larger goal. And, like I said, I'm going to use sales as the example, because without it, we really don't have a business. So say, you have a yearly goal to sell 300 units of your product. Well, you're going to divide that by 12 months and that breaks down into 25 sales per month. Now, there's an average of 4.345 weeks in the month, but let's just round that to five weeks in the month. That means, if you need to have 25 sales per month, you have to average five sales per week, and if we don't count the weekends, that's an average of one new sale per day. So, in order to reach our goal of 300 new sales for the year, you need one new sale a day.

Speaker 1: 17:28

Are you following me so far? So then let's say that one in 10 people that you have a conversation with buys your product. That means that you need to have a conversation with at least 10 people a day to average that one new sale. Do you see where this is going? Where can you fit in those 10 conversations in a day? Do you have a pocket of time blocked off on your schedule specifically for reaching out to 10 new people a day in order to reach your sales goal? When you break this down, you can clearly see what is going to be manageable activity or not based on your current obligations and your commitments. And that's okay.

Speaker 1: 18:09

If you just followed along and said to yourself there is no way I can talk to 10 new people every single day, well, don't give up on the entire goal. Just scale it back to what you realistically can do now. If that means you have five conversations a day or end up with 100 sales in the year, that's still more than what you would have done if you had allowed yourself to feel defeated that you couldn't reach out to 10 people a day. Don't allow your pride to be too big. To take it slower. Slow and steady is still faster than stopped.

Speaker 1: 18:45

When you have a visual of your reality, it's easier to put together goals and the actions needed to get there. You just saw that. I just broke it down for you. Otherwise, you're just going to be spouting out goals with no purpose or plan behind them, just like I used to do. So let's recap on the five steps. Step one be honest with yourself and assess your current situation. Step two set clear, specific and realistic goals. Step three create a balanced approach. Step four develop a step-by-step plan. And step five regularly review and adjust. And that is a wrap for today's chat, but one last quick reminder it's never too late in the year or never a wrong time to set a goal. If you haven't had a chance to check out my vision book workshop, I've dropped the link to my site below, wwwdaphnewaltercom. It's a great place to start and a great time to get started is now. Have a great day and we'll talk again soon.