#015 - Stop building your business from today

In episode 15 of The OvercomeHer Podcast, host Samantha Noelle shares why you may feel stuck—not because you don’t know what to do, but because you’re building from where you are instead of where you want to be. 

Using Wayne Gretzky’s “go where the puck is going” idea, she explains how chasing goals like six figures or a million is exhausting, while reverse engineering from a clear end goal creates direction, momentum, and smarter decisions. She breaks down how to map revenue targets into tangible numbers, identify the gap between today and your goal, and ruthlessly cut what doesn’t move the needle, with examples from Apple, IKEA, and Starbucks. 

She also guides a three-year visualization exercise to help you become the woman capable of creating repeatable results.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if the reason that you're stuck isn't because you don't know what to do, but because you are starting from where you are instead of where you want to be? Wayne Gretzky was asked why he was so good, and he said that it was because he goes to where the puck is going, not where it is. So many business owners chase the end goal instead of build from it. They chase six figures, they chase their first million, but if you have ever tried to chase anything in your life, you will know how incredibly exhausting chasing is. Building is where it's at. Hey everyone, I'm Samantha Noel, and I'm your host of the Overcome Her podcast, and you're listening to episode number 15. Stop chasing and build from the end instead. In today's episode, I'm going to discuss why success is best built from reverse engineering from the end goal, why business owners choose to chase instead of build, and how to reverse engineer from your goal. Imagine getting into your car and driving aimlessly, hoping to reach your final destination. You have an idea of the final destination, but you didn't take the time to figure out what roads get you there the fastest with little to no interruption. Do you remember as a kid, the back of cereal boxes, they had map puzzles for you to do while crunching on a bowl of your fruit loops? The easiest way to figure out exactly what path to go without causing the most frustration was always to start at the end and work backwards. This approach also works for business growth because when you work backwards, you aren't chasing, hoping that things will work out. You build a plan based on what you have been able to map out. Most entrepreneurs build their business forward. And what I'm suggesting is build it from the end. Most entrepreneurs look at where their current finances are, who their existing customers and clients are, what they currently believe is possible based on present conditions, and they look at past and present circumstances that decide how they will get to where they want to go. And then they try to grow from there. The problem with this is that you want to hit a goal that you've never hit before. So everything that you have done until now only got you the results that you're experiencing right now. Sure, you can take some of the skills and lessons that you have acquired over the years. Those will definitely help you. But stop asking the current version of you what you should do to achieve the goals in your life and your business that you're aiming to achieve in the future. Ask the future version of yourself. What would the woman running a highly successful business with her ideal clients tell you? What would she say? If you want a different outcome, you have to start thinking from the outcome and then work back. Here's how most people set goals. They think, I want to earn my first six figures. And then they start thinking of the ways that they can get there from where they are today. And in order to do that, they start looking at how many followers they have, how many current clients and customers that they have. They start looking at their current experience and they currently look at how much time they have. They look at everything that's in the now moment. But the goal that you want to achieve in your business is not right now. And oftentimes what ends up happening is the goal often becomes smaller because the current reality ends up feeling bigger. It is bigger, it's the future. And then what ends up happening is they talk themselves out of their own goals and dreams based on who they are today instead of who they'll become in the process of achieving what they want to set out to achieve. And you will have to become somebody new. So if that idea scares you, then you need to start learning to feel safe with the idea of becoming a new version of yourself. People don't fail because their goals are too big. They fail because they build plans around their fears and what looks to be possible now. To achieve the things that you want to achieve in your business, the wildly crazy and successful ideas that you have, you're going to have to become a different person. You have to think like the person that would be where you want to be. However, most people aren't planning from what's possible, they're planning from what they know today. So let's dive into today's episode. Let's talk about why women often end up chasing instead of building from their goals and why it is that often people resist this approach. The first thing is that if you're going to reverse engineer from your final destination or your specific goal, you have to commit to that goal and think about it. Think about it. Because if you create a goal that says, I want to hit my first million dollars in my business, that's some pie in the sky idea and goal. It almost becomes this thing that you're shooting for, but you're okay if you miss it. Whereas if you reverse engineer from it, you actually are committing to this specific destination. And oftentimes vague goals will just feel safer to you because you can't really miss them. And here's the other thing: oftentimes people create a plan towards achieving their goal without reverse engineering it. So everything is their best guess about how they'll actually get to that goal. But when you reverse engineer it, there's more certainty that you're actually going to arrive at that final outcome and final goal that you're aiming for because you've thought about everything from the end to where you are now. And sometimes when all we do is chase a goal, like we want to hit our first six figures. We want to hit our first million in our business. When all we do is chase a goal, the busyness can actually trick us into thinking that we're being successful and that we're actually accomplishing something. And in truth, busyness and chaos are just that busyness and chaos. And rarely are they getting us any closer to our desired goal. The reason that you're chasing goals still is because some part of you hasn't fully decided where you're going. And that's the decision that you really need to make. Where am I going? Chasing creates exhaustion because you're constantly having to react. Whereas build them creates momentum because now you're following a blueprint. Often goals that aren't reverse engineered sound something like I want to make more money, I want to hit my first million, I want to hit my first six figures, I want to feel more free. None of these are engineered. They're emotionally driven. And the problem that I see with a lot of female business owners is that they believe that more effort, more doing, more stressing is the equivalent to more results, more authority. She believes naively that that's what makes her a true business owner is by being really busy and lacking true clarity and lacking true direction. Because if things were easier, then she wouldn't be a true business owner. And that's actually false. While business owners do work harder and more than other people, they often will work smarter. And the very successful business owners always work smarter. And the other thing is if your goal is really vague, it's really hard for you to reverse engineer. So maybe you're not very clear on your goal because maybe the goal is coming from a place of lack as opposed to a place of feeling called and feeling propelled. Because when we feel called and propelled towards a destination, the vision and the idea for that destination becomes clear in our mind. And when something is really clear in our mind, it's easier to reverse engineer. So if you haven't got to the point of reverse engineering from your goals, it might be that your goals and your vision for the outcome isn't fully clear yet. Maybe you don't even know where it is that you want to take your business. Maybe you're just showing up every day stuck in the chaos and the busyness and just the doing of everything that you think that you should be doing, as opposed to that this is my end goal, and I know why I'm doing every single thing that I'm doing. And what ends up happening when we start chasing and we start doing things because we think it's going to lead to the outcome and the result that we want is we start putting money, time, and resources into things that don't actually move the needle towards us actually hitting our goal. We chase followers, we chase clients, we chase revenue, we chase opportunities that we think that we need, we chase more outcome and more motivation. But if those aren't moving the needle to get you to where you want to go, that's like you getting onto a plane, expecting to end up in Los Angeles, and you end up in Vancouver, British Columbia. You've gone somewhere different because you didn't even know what you were doing to get there. I'm going to give you an example of a company that does exactly what I'm talking about. Apple. Most people have heard of Apple. In fact, you might be listening to this on an iPhone or a Mac right now. And what Apple does is they define the user experience that they want, the feeling of holding the product, the problem that it solves for its ideal customer, and then they engineer everything backwards from that goal. So they don't build a product and then figure it out who it's for. They figure out how they want their customer to feel when the customer has the thing that they're going to create, and then they reverse engineer backwards from that. So the goal is crystal clear before a single line of code is even written. Are you doing that in your business? Or are you just showing up every day, spinning your wheels in chaos in a hope that you will achieve some final great outcome that you want? Maybe you write your goals, maybe you take courses, maybe you do all the things that look like you're doing everything that they teach you. But if you aren't reverse engineering from a crystal clear goal that you want to achieve in your business, then you're doing what most people do when they set goals. That's they create the goal from the moment that they're in now, and they do a bunch of things that they think will get them to that goal instead of thinking and planning backwards. Because when you think and you plan backwards, you're going to cut out a bunch of noise. Millionaires and billionaires think differently than the rest of the population, which is why they are millionaires and billionaires. Most people think about chasing and consuming. And yet, people who have built success think about growth, expansion, and building. So let's imagine this. Imagine that you want a million-dollar business. Don't ask, how do I make a million dollars? Ask instead, what would a million-dollar business look like? Then you start thinking about how many clients would I need? At what price point am I charging? What am I offering? What are the systems? And once you come up with how much you need to actually get to that million dollar business in terms of outcome, then you start thinking of what systems would I actually need in place to be able to operate that business effectively and efficiently? Who would I need on my team? How many people would I need to hire? I'm no longer guessing that I need 10 employees. I know I only need seven. What am I going to do for my marketing? Who am I marketing to? When you know the outcome, you know who you're speaking to. You know that they're never on Instagram. So why are you wasting your time and your money on Instagram when your ideal client is looking on Google and other search engines for the services that you offer? Or your ideal client is on Facebook most of the time and they never Google search. So you're not going to spend money on SEO and Google ads when you know that your ideal client or customer is on Facebook. You're going to put money and resources and time to where you're going to see the greatest return on investment of where your time, your money, and your resource goes. Let's say a woman wants to earn $100,000 a year. And instead of obsessing about $100,000 a year, break it down backwards. 12 months, that's $8,333. How many clients, how many customers, how many sales of my products are going to get me $8,333? You figure out what number that is, and now the goal becomes tangible because now it's how many sales do I need to make a day? How much do I need to do a week? How much do I need to do a month? And you can start tracking that and you can start to see when am I on track? If the goal is that you need three customers a week and you're only at two, then you know that you're going to have to make up for it next week. Or if you have a week where you have five customers when you only needed three, great, now you're ahead. Now you're actually more on track to do more than $100,000. And if that's the case, then you want to start looking at what did I do in the week that I signed five customers or that I received five new customers in my business? What did I do differently that led to that outcome? Because then your goal actually gets to expand and you can actually expound upon that. So once you understand what you need in terms of customers, sales, product sales, once you understand what those numbers are, then you start to identify what is the gap? Where am I currently? And where does that goal force you to have to be in order to achieve the outcome that you want to achieve? So then you figure out what the gap is. And once you understand the gap, then you start looking at what you are doing right now? And does it actually lead to that destination and to that goal? Does it close the gap for you? If it doesn't, then it's just a wasted time and it needs to go. So if you're currently investing in advertising that you realize isn't going to actually move you towards that final outcome, then you stop investing in that specific type of advertising. So with that, you're going to ruthlessly cut what doesn't move the needle. And that's why so many people end up procrastinating is they spend their time doing things just to keep them busy, which again, it's just not getting them closer to their goal. IKEA is a company that has really mastered reverse engineering. They start with a target retail price and then design the product to hit that price. That goal ends up driving every decision that they make after that. Materials, sourcing, assembly method. Most entrepreneurs will do the opposite. They build the product first and then panic about what to charge, which is why so many companies end up undercharging and having smaller margins than they thought that they would have, because usually they end up missing things. Another reason why you should reverse engineer your brain needs a map to its final destination. We do better when we understand that there is a clear direction to getting where we want to go. That just creates anxiety for people to not know the path. The brain struggles with vague goals. It also struggles with goals that feel way too big. When I wanted to build my business to six figures, it seemed so far out of reach. So I broke it down into manageable steps, knowing that each small step would lead to one big outcome. A lot of people will only reverse engineer the revenue, but you can reverse engineer everything. You can reverse engineer hiring. Oftentimes, what people do when they make hires, especially earlier on, and even in businesses that have been around for a long time, they just look at the fact that they have a lot of work and an overload on their work and they hire based on that. It's kind of like in greater Metro Vancouver, how they seem to continue to just build roads and bridges for the population that we have now, as opposed to the population that's going to exist in five to 10 years. A lot of companies do the exact same thing. They make decisions based on where they're at now without thinking about where are we going and how do we hire for that. Go where the puck is going, not where the puck is. I always say that having your own business will be the greatest personal development course that you'll ever take. And the reason for this, as I've stated before, is because you will have to become somebody completely new to build a successful business. You can't build a successful business just as who you are today. It won't work because you've only been able to achieve whatever level of success that you achieve today based on who you are up until this point. So to achieve something new, you're going to have to become somebody new. And with that, means sometimes we have to accept responsibility for when we just created chaos and busyness in our own business because that's what we thought that being an entrepreneur or being a business owner actually looked like. And that there was an easier way to do things. I'm not saying that being a business owner is going to be easy, but there are easier ways to do things. Hire for where you're going, build your business for where you're going. Create systems and processes for where you're going. Oftentimes, I have seen this with clients and companies that I've worked with time and time again. They build based on the pain that they're experiencing right now. So they're constantly building from a place of pain as opposed to where do we want to go? What exactly does that look like? How much are we earning? Who are we as a company? What are our values? What is our mission statement? What are our morals as a company? What do we stand for? Who are we serving? Why are we serving them? What experience, what value and vision are we trying to create for our ideal customer? Rarely are people asking that question when they're thinking about the bigger decisions like changes in their business, structural changes internally, changing locations, equipment that they might use. Let's talk about another business, Starbucks. Everybody knows Starbucks, and they had come up with this third place concept that positions its stores as welcoming spaces for their customers between home and work where people can connect, they can relax, and they can feel a sense of community. This was an intentional concept by Starbucks. And Howard Schultz had a specific vision for what the customer experience should be. It wasn't a coffee shop, but it was the place between home and work. So every store layout, product, and hiring decision was reverse-engineered from that vision. Let me illustrate this further. When you want to lose weight and when you want to get in shape, you don't focus on losing 50 pounds. You think about what habits would a healthy person perform every single day. For relationships, you don't focus on finding your dream partner. You ask, what kind of person would my dream partner be attracted to? In your business, you don't need to focus on the six figures. You just need to know that that's where you want to go. You focus on becoming the woman who is capable of creating a six-figure business. Who does she have to show up as? What do you have to do differently in your routine? What do you have to cut out? What do you have to add in? Who do you have to hire to support you? What do you need to learn? What needs to become better about your product or your service? And this is the next part of the episode that I want to get into. I want to give you guys something that's really going to land for you. So let's get into doing an exercise while you're listening to this episode that's going to help you create in your mind a plan that you can do for where you want to be. So I want you to think about three years from now. Not one year, not two, not five, three years from right now. And everything has worked out the way that you want it to with your business. Your business is thriving, it's doing well. You're earning the income in your business that you want to earn. You're making all the money. Cash flow is good. You have the clients or the customers, you have the type of freedom that you want. And I want to ask you, what did you do differently? What did you have to cut out to get to that three-year version of you? What did you have to learn in order to become that three-year version of you? What standards did you have to raise within yourself? What excuses did you have to stop making? Are you just as chaotic as you are right now? Because if you think you're just as chaotic, then you're still building from the place of today. Because I want you to think about who is the woman in three years' time that's running the business that I desire to run. How do I feel in my business? And then you have to think about working backwards from that. Who will you have to become along the way? Can the person that you are today build what you want to create in three years? No. You need to become somebody new and you can start making those changes today. Because as you start making the changes today, by the time the three years comes, you're there because you've closed. The gap between where you are today and who you want to be, which is the woman that's capable of running the successful business that feels peaceful instead of chaotic, that feels profitable instead of broke, that's working with clients that see her value instead of clients that question every decision that she makes. Here is the thing about all of our goals. If we were really honest when we create a goal, it's because we believe that by creating that goal, it's going to give us something when we achieve that goal that we're hoping to feel, right? Like if your goal is I want to become a millionaire, you're hoping that becoming a millionaire or earning your first million in your business, you're hoping it's going to give you a feeling that you're hoping to feel today that you don't currently feel. You think it means something. You have attached some kind of meaning to that goal about what it will mean for you, either what it will mean for your life, the choices that you get to make, how you feel about yourself, the people that might be around you. You think it means something. And that's not a bad thing. It's not a criticism, it's an observation of what happens when we're creating a goal. We think it's going to mean something new about us that we want to feel that maybe we aren't currently feeling. And that's perfectly okay to admit, and it's actually a really good thing to admit that because this helps me illustrate my point further that we need to reverse engineer from our goals. Because if you start today from where you are and strive for the goal that you want to achieve, maybe it's your first six figures, maybe you want to earn $30,000 a month or $100,000 a month in your business. If you start from that goal where you are today, without reverse engineering, you're starting from the place of I feel like something is missing, and I'm hoping this goal is going to fill whatever it is within me that I think that that will provide. And maybe you think that it will provide more economical choices for you. Maybe it will provide more opportunity for you to do good in the world. But again, that all brings us back to we're still getting a feeling from that. There's still something that we hope to receive internally from that goal. So when we reverse engineer and we look at, okay, well, if I'm earning $100,000 in my business every month, what does that look like? Who am I when that happens? If you have a lack of systems and processes in your business where so much of you has to be involved in the everyday, you will never get to that goal. If you have an outrageous income goal in your business, you'll never get to that goal without the right systems and processes in place or the ones that you have today, because right now it's chaotic and it's busy and you can't build from that. And you'll recognize that really quickly when you begin to reverse engineer. The goal isn't the six figures, it's not the million dollars, it's not the clients, it's becoming the woman who's capable of producing those results time after time again. Because once you become her, then you can create the result over and over again. Just like the results that you keep getting today are because of you being the woman that you are right now. The six figures isn't the prize. It's the woman who knows how to build the six figures that's the prize. The women who win in business aren't working harder. They're starting from the exit. They know where they're going, and that makes every single decision easier, faster, and more profitable. So if you were to look at everything that you did in this last week, how much of it is actually tied to the goal that you say that you want? How much of it is actually tied to the three-year outcome that you want. All right, everyone, I'm your host, Samantha Noel, and you've just been listening to episode number 15, building from the goal. I hope that this landed for you. I hope it provided you some insight that you will consider in your business and every time that you decide where you want to go in your business. And I hope that it helps contribute to massive, wildly, crazy, obnoxious success for you. And I can't wait to hear all of your success stories. Feel free to comment and like this episode and like this podcast. If you are finding value in this podcast, please go ahead and like this, rate it, give us the thumbs up. And please do come join me in Built for Profit, my Facebook group for female entrepreneurs where we discuss all things business and helping you grow your business. Also, feel free to email your questions and your suggestions for the show to the overcomeherpodcast at gmail.com. Again, it's the overcomeherpodcast at gmail.com. And I am working on an offer for you. I can't wait to launch this course. It will be coming in the middle of July. So stay tuned. I'm really excited for that. And as always, I hope you have the most amazing and blessed day. And I will see you guys soon.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

We made.