105. How do you set goals?
Have you started thinking about your 2021 goals? ✅ In the final episode of 2020, hosts Phil and Lauren have a productive discussion about lessons they’ve learned (and wish they’d learned earlier) about goal setting. Get ready to learn about qualitative goals, quantitative goals, and tactics for ensuring you’re staying on track. If you’re determined to make 2021 your year, this episode is for you. Happy New Year!
Episode transcription
Phil
Before we dive right into this episode, I wanted to let you know about a tool and an app that we absolutely love. In fact, we mentioned it in this episode, it's called pipedrive . They're not sponsoring this episode, but we're affiliates of theirs. And we love this tool. And that's why we're telling you all about it. Pipedrive is our pick for sales CRM, even smaller businesses will benefit from using a CRM. It's full of features that help you prioritize deals, track performance, and predict revenue. You can manage leads and deals, track your communication, so calls emails and contact history for full visibility. And it allows you to eliminate busy work by automating repetitive administrative tasks. We know how many leads we need in the pipeline to make a sale. And prior to pipedrive our business didn't really have that kind of insight. For more information on this amazing tool, go to philp.al/pipedrive that's philp.al/pipedrive for all the details. Now onto the show.
Phil
Well, hello, welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position build, promote your brand. And wow, wow, can you believe that we've made it a whole other year of podcasting. A whole other year of talking about ways people can position build, promote their brand, we thought to round off this year, which has been something hasn’t it?
Lauren
Oh boy. It's strange, because the year it's felt so long, but also gone by so quickly, at the same time. Very strange.
Phil
Very strange. And so we thought that this episode would be a bit reflective, we'll look back on how we and how you are measuring your success, as well as looking forward, which is probably the most important one. Thinking about goals, thinking about new realities and how you plan to sustain and grow in a new year with a different reality is really what a lot of people are facing as a result of this here.
Lauren
Oh, yeah.
Phil
So yeah, you're listen to the intonation. You're excited about this topic?
Lauren
Oh, yeah. I'm trying to make my voice a little more exciting for our listeners. I tend to be a little monotone. So I'm trying to give some more inflections in the way that I speak. How does that sound Phil?
Phil
Is that one of your New Year's resolutions outlined for everyone?
Lauren
No. But when you took your hosting classes way back when, did anyone talk about inflections are those important?
Phil
Of course they are.
Lauren
They make it more like a melody. Right?
Phil
Yeah. Well, it keeps people's attention. But that's fine. We balance each other out, someone's got to bring the facts. It can't just be a glitter party over here. Right. Got to balance it out. So what are we talking about?
Lauren
I thought it'd be useful for us to talk about goal setting. You know, this year was a challenging one. And I consider us to be extremely fortunate that it was a very good one for business. And also, I would say it was a really good one for our quality of life, too. We've never until this year, been able to make a lot of money in the business while also having balance in our lives, ever. But I would say that that we did achieve that this year, which is exciting.
Phil
Correct. We've learned a lot. I think we are more comfortable now in a variety of ways than we've ever been in the business, which seems strange considering 2020 just happen for us. We've made more of a profit this year, we've been more selective about the clients we've said yes to. So we've said yes to some incredible client projects, people can see the finished ones on our website, philpallen.co. But we also said no to a handful of people that were wanting to throw money at our heads, but didn't have the right attitude. And frankly, just weren't a good fit. And so that's also new for us as I think we've been more selective. And we are now I think, at least in the final month of the year, we're kind of enjoying a slightly more chill pace versus earlier this year when we committed to a lot of projects at once. And I was just saying to you before we started to record, that I think we kind of earned that to enjoy some not downtime, but I think you said balance and balance is definitely a theme this year. Making time to exercise not having phone calls with clients or anyone on a Monday using Monday to start the week in the way that you want to get the week started.
Lauren
So I think how can people do it? Well, I think the most important thing that we learned in 2020 is that we like to work with nice people, because I don't mind hopping on a phone with Juli Bauer Roth on a Sunday, because she's a freaking angel from heaven, and it makes my life better to have her in it. So I think first, making a conscious choice about the vibe you want for the year, based on the people who are in your life is a really, really good first step that gives you perspective to help start making some more specific goals from that.
Phil
And how are you attracting those people is something that you want to be thinking about. And it might be in ways that you can’t anticipate right now you can't necessarily map it out like a roadmap. But I think all of this trickles down. So it could be the tone and the the types of freebies you're creating. Right? The content you're creating via YouTube videos, tweets, Instagram posts, all of that ways in some part of how people experience, you learn from you decide, if they want to shop from you buy a product, a course hire you to render a service one on one or what have you. All of those things contribute to a first impression. When I think about this year, I think about how Ramon, who is on our client website from Spain, I always get a little bit excited when someone hires us from another country, but Ramon found us by entering one of my sequences, which by the way, for years, I didn't even do email marketing. I sent like three emails a year. And at the end of last year, I thought, okay, I need to start taking this more seriously, you and I decided let's create freebies with titles using keywords that we've talked about a lot on this. So the right people find us and the right person found us. Ramon bought a course he bought coaching, then he bought a personal brand, and then his wife bought a personal brand with us. That's one of my highlights of the year is just that proof of concept.
Lauren
Yeah, for sure. So we mentioned how we turned down a lot of people. But I will also say that I do think it's important to be at the same time, open minded to different experiences and different opportunities, because you never know what kind of butterfly effect will happen. You never know who knows someone. But as long as you stick to your values, and work with nice people, for example, even if it's in an unconventional way, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. So I think there's basically, to get back to goal setting, I think there are a few goals that are more qualitative, and a few goals that are more quantitative. On the qualitative side, I know that I wanted to have a life that felt like it wasn't just work, that was a really, really big thing for me this year. I have always loved reading and it has always brought me so much joy. And so I made a real effort to read more this year and to go on long walks where I could also listen to audiobooks. At the time of recording this, I've actually consumed over 70 books this year, which is really exciting. But it also is where I get really good ideas and feel more grounded and more fueled up to be able to deal with some not so fun work situations as they come up. So think about how you want your life to feel. Think about where you get your energy. Think about if you're going to be having a nice day, what are the things you can control that would be in that nice day, like exercising regularly, etc. And then if you've got that foundation, I really, really do think that you're in a better place to achieve some of those more quantitative goals.
Phil
I can contribute to this at the time of recording this. I've already got my workout for the day.
Lauren
Have you?
Phil
Yes, I went this morning, at around 7:30 I set my alarm for 6:15. And that's the normal time that I wake up now. And this morning was a good example of, um, it went at six feet not hot. Not quite yet. I'm not quite ready. But it was like a gradual progression. But I was out of bed ready to go by 7am and get that thing out of the way. And then I can focus for the rest of the day. And that's definitely a change, being able to commit to that and create that structure. Goals shouldn't just be about making money. Certainly making more money, you know, is a totally viable goal. And maybe we spend a few minutes on that. I feel if we were to actually, if we were to actually like poll our audience, and we had to choose what's the answer, that's going to be most common, I think people would make it about business growth, money making in a different climate. Maybe their jobs have changed, or maybe they're building a brand or a business themselves, so they're not reliant on someone else. I don't know, if someone has that as a goal for 2021, what are your first thoughts?
Lauren
There's an author and speaker who I love named James Clear, Phil and I've been talking a lot about him recently. He is essentially a specialist in habit building and James has basically advocated for doing something every single day 1% better, because if you're doing 1%, better on something that's already 1% better, that's already 1% better, it actually has an exponential effect. And by the end of the year, you will be 37% better if you do 1% better every day.
So those are some pretty powerful, convincing numbers. A lot of times people will set goals for themselves with kind of minimum amounts to gross every month. And I think that's fine. But I also think it's important to look at the bigger picture because there are things like seasonality that you can't necessarily control. And for us, q4 has taken a little bit of a dip, but that's okay, because q2 and q3 were high. So by knowing that you're on track with that big picture, annual goal, I think it's totally fine if you aren't setting or achieving that monthly goal. So instead of putting this big kind of all or nothing imposed goal on yourself every month, when you don't necessarily control any of it, I think it's better to try to do 1% better every single day, or maybe 10%, better every single week, and use that as kind of your more microscopic goal.
Phil
I love the focus of 1%, because it makes it feel doable, I can think of lots of things in my to do list that are still there, not even started because when I think about it, I'm like, oh, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work to unpack that I'm just gonna move the deadline on that and not start. But if you can just start, it could be seo sales or business growth. One percent could be sending a message to one qualified stranger on LinkedIn, one per day or something like that. I remember we a few years ago decided in one week that we were going to start doing some basic outreach to people that looked interesting to start conversations. And I remember more than one, this was like 2015, or 2016, just from that week of us doing outreach, that created relationships that are still relevant in our business today. And I was just one week, reaching out to a handful of people that we thought were interesting.
So just make the effort. And don't feel like it needs to be something that has to take up the entire day. Just put yourself in situations where you are spreading the good word and allowing people to discover you.
Lauren
Yep, for sure. I also think that having a mindset shift of selling your services to helping someone solve a problem takes out kind of the ickiness of reaching out to old contacts and or new ones, I will say we found that it's a lot easier to sell to existing clients who have purchased from us in the past. And we've really made an effort to now have a long list of everyone we've ever worked with and going into 2121, we're going to be incorporating into our workflow, reaching out to those people every two to six months, depending on really how much they've invested in the business and in our services in the past, the more they've invested, the more we're going to be reaching out to them. And I think I would highly recommend that everyone really does that. It's just so much easier to reach out to people that you already know, and catch up and casually ask them if there is anything that you need help with? Or is there anything I can help do for you? And very often people just need to be asked that question, to be reminded that you can help them.
Phil
So true. And we've never even in almost a decade of business, we've never had to be super super salesy. We've just had to be helpful, and relevant and viewed as an expert, and trusted and loyal. And I'd say a big when I reflect on this year, and I think about what we've done well, we put a lot of time and effort and resources, both of us and our team into our new website, which is another contributing factor into how someone experiences you. This really was, like everyone all effort in, to create over 50 projects that we've done comprehensive, not just visuals of pretty brand identities, but brand sentences, bullet points of what that client has accomplished since working with us. You know, we've been around for a little while now. so we had to iterate and put our best foot forward. And I would say having something that sells you on your behalf becomes very powerful. In the early days, you're going to have to be involved with that one to one kind of spreading of the good word. But now we're pretty lucky to be growing by email subscribers to have people that find us in Google. I mean, we always want more and more and more. And it's always when we think about that we always think about what we haven't done yet. I'm like I need to be running Facebook ad selling my courses and I haven't done that yet. But it's like, you also have to take a step back and go look at all the things that are working. Email subscriber growth for us. It was a year ago, we still hadn't quite cracked that. I'd get excited if it went up by like, four in one day. Now it's a lot more.
Lauren
You've literally like tripled your email subscriber list in a year, which is crazy.
Phil
Yeah, just by doing it, do just do if you start something, finish it, if you begin a habit, keep the habit up. YouTube has been one of our drivers of email marketing and subscriber traffic, and there are times still when I can post a YouTube video, which is a newer platform for me. And it'll get 100 views fairly low, but then others have have had over 50,000 views. And there's no real way to anticipate that other than listen and know your audience and look at keywords and all of that. But the people tend to focus just on the wins. If I pull someone up, I can wow, look, Phil has this video of over 50,000 views posted a few months ago, well look at the video from last week that has 200 views that I thought was going to be amazing. And it wasn't, you know, you just never know. But really you got to do.
Lauren
But I mean, how interesting is it that you set a goal at the beginning of 2022, posts a YouTube video every week, that was your goal, you achieve that goal. And now that goal is paying off and notice how the goal isn't rooted and like anything quantitative, you didn't have a goal of achieving 10,000 views on every single video. Your goal was based in habits. And so I really, really think kind of the secret of goal setting is to think of where you want to be a year from now. And then break that down into small things that you can do regularly, either every day or every week, and really learn and build on your actions.
Phil
Well, it's right in line with the 1%. James clear model idea, because when we think about being more active on YouTube, to go from zero to 100, that feels like an overwhelming marathon that you have to run. But when you break it into steps, ideally you have to do and then also steps that other people can help with it was on this podcast that I talked about how much I enjoyed creating my own YouTube thumbnails, guess what I don't do anymore, create my YouTube thumbnails, Thahn, our designer helps me with those. And even in having his help, they've gotten better and brighter and more exciting, and they're converting more. So once you figure it out for yourself, then you need to almost obsessively delegate and figure out how to make the most of the time that you have on what needs to get done by you, and only you and start to loop in others to help.
Lauren
Mm hmm. So on the quantitative side of goal setting, something new that started this year was basically Phil, you went and you hired a consultant to give the tools so that we could start really measuring what's going on in the business.
Phil
The money because I just like to cringe.
Lauren
Yeah, and it's uncomfortable. And it's kind of overwhelming, I've always kind of felt like projections are pardon my French bullshit, because a perfect example of that is that in February, no one could have projected that a month later COVID would have hit and chaos erupted around the world. No one could have predicted that. But what you can do is measure what's in the pipeline and what's expected. So I would highly recommend, start really tracking what you're making in a spreadsheet and notebook, whatever, and compare that to your goal for the month. And even further, something that we started doing is tracking actually where the money is coming from. So is it coming from a brand audit? Is it coming from retainer clients? Is it coming from courses? Is it coming from group coaching? Have an understanding of where your money is coming from so that you can adjust accordingly at a micro level?
Phil
Let's take it a step further and talk about those adjustments. Can we give some examples?
Lauren
Yeah, we can. So we have some group coaching programs at the beginning of the year. And those group coaching programs take a lot of effort. And they're also very short term. So while our total sales of getting people in the group coaching program were good, it stopped. And then we'd have to come up with a whole new program to sell.
Phil
Launch, launch, launch, launch, launch, forever launching.
Lauren
We adjusted and we also noticed that at the same time, our clients usually our projects will be anywhere from three to six months depending on the project. And to kind of get into the sort of the dirty details, we basically take the total project value and just divide it over whatever time period we're working with the client, and then it ends. And a lot of clients we noticed, were, bless their hearts, trying really hard on social media with their new brands but just not doing it quite right. So we kind of put those two worlds together and created a program that helps clients keep working with us for a long period of time, but in a group capacity with other clients, minimum six month program. And what's great is that it actually helps extend the total project payments of a client, so they could say yes, since their monthly payment would be lower, but longer, and it just helps everyone.
So that I think was a really, really big adjustment that was highly successful. We just started it last month at the time of releasing this. And I think that's a really, really good development that we wouldn't necessarily have noticed, if we weren't paying attention to the group coaching, sales, how massive they were at the beginning, and then how rapidly they just fell off the spreadsheet.
Phil
Again, in this discussion, we're focusing on some of those wins. So for every one, can you hear us talk about that we got the idea for and then we did it, there are lots of other things that I started and didn't finish. I signed up months ago for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and I have been paying a few months for that subscription. And I haven't even opened at once. That's an example though. It's like on my to do list, but it gets pushed. And so there's only so many hours in the day.
So know, when you need to take action on something. I felt strongly that we need to take action on a solution for our existing clients that were kind of, you know, facing challenges with promoting their brands after they had hired us to help them with the earlier stages of that. So we took action on that, which means we didn't take action on other things. And that is perfectly okay. I've discovered in business, you have to focus on the balancing of those things. So even if I have a subscription to LinkedIn, and it's $80 a month, but I haven't used it yet, it's fine. All of this contributes to decision making and business and moving forward.
Lauren
Yeah. Now, one thing that I that just came to mind, that kind of goes back to the outreach conversation that we had at the beginning of this episode, is that I highly recommend someone signs up for a CMS of sorts. They're called CMS, right? I don't even know what the formal name is.
Phil
Content management software.
Lauren
No, I'm thinking more of a contact one, whatever the acronym is.
Phil
Wait, I'm gonna google this.
Lauren
So anyway, while you're googling and figuring out the acronym, we love the software pipedrive . Now, pipedrive basically allows you to plot out who you're in contact with, and what stage of your sales pipeline you’re in.
Phil
CRM
Lauren
CRM. Thank you.
Phil
I didn’t know the acronym either. I knew that CMS wasn't right. But I couldn't get it.
Lauren
It's not CMS is not correct. What is CRM stands for?
Phil
Customer Relationship Management.
Lauren
Ooh, okay, great. So this was a really, really big win for us this year, implementing a software a CRM software, like pipedrive , it's not very expensive, it might even be free at certain levels. So we've got our spreadsheet, we're now tracking how much money is going to be planned or coming in how much money has already come in, where that money is coming from. And now we've also got the CRM that tracks basically our conversion of sales, and how long it takes to make a sale.
So what's interesting, and the reason why this is important, man, I know it sounds really boring. But it's exciting once you get into pipedrive , if your track your sales, over a certain period of time, and really stay on top of it. And really stay on top of noting, when you're reaching out to someone and starting that entry into the pipeline, the pipe drive can actually predict how long it takes to make a sale, and what the average sale amount is. Now the reason why this is important is because if you're tracking everything for the whole year, and you see, oh, all our products are going to be up in two to three months. And pipedrive says you make an average sale, it takes about 45 days to make an average sale, then you know, you need to start reaching out to people now, if you want to avoid that dip in two to three months. Sorry, I don't know how to make this more exciting.
Phil
No it is exciting, and people might be thinking, well, I'm just a small business, I don't need all that. But as someone wise once said, without data, you're just another person with an opinion. That's it. That's the one. And so even for small businesses to know for example, project duration or know when you need to start selling based on this information based on actions you're doing. I think it's highly important and it's something just to make time to set up and do even if it takes a little bit to get the hang of it.
Lauren
I mean, when you were first starting out, Phil, and you were a one person business, Don't you wish that you had something like this?
Phil
Yeah, because you think, oh, I don't need that. But actually, a lot of times it is worth it. If it saves you time or gives you intel on something that allows you to perform better than, you know, sometimes it's worth it.
Lauren
Great.
Phil
Any final thoughts as we head into a brand new year that's hopefully a little bit better than this one?
Lauren
I think read the book, Atomic Habits by James Clear, that would be a great first step, a good holiday read. And I think also just be really realistic with yourself. I think it's not realistic to reach out to 75 contacts a day, not realistic, but it's better, and you'll burn out very quickly. Whereas if you're reaching out to five people a day, I think that's realistic or maybe 10 before 10 as I heard someone muse once. And then just track everything. So that way if you get this organized now and the new year starts, you'll be in a really really good position to have true confidence in the ebbs and flows of your business.
Consider this episode your little pre year, new year, pep talk. That's going to be it for us this year, as we head into a brand new one. We thank you for listening to our episode hanging out with us. We can continue the conversation over the holiday I’m @philpallen
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil
Let's continue the conversation #brandtherapy that's where you can find us on social media and do us a favor consider this our Christmas gift. Please take the time to leave us a review on iTunes five star, five star. This helps other people discover this podcast that we work so hard to create. And we'll be back in 2021 with a brand new fresh episode and many, many that you're gonna love many that are great. And we look forward to it. So we'll see you then. Thanks for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy. Happy New Year.
Lauren
Happy New Year.
