I’ve always been a goal oriented person, but a while ago I found myself in a place where I was becoming a bit obsessed with achieving my goals.
Now, I didn’t REALIZE I had an unhealthy obsession with achieving my goals and anytime I read something that suggested otherwise – I thought they were flat out wrong. I’d purposely seek out books, coaches, and social media accounts that shared my obsession and reinforced my beliefs.
Over the last year in particular I’ve experienced an intentional shift in my relationship with goals and have begun to detangle my self-worth from whether or not I achieve them.
This has led to increased happiness and funnily enough – I’m reaching more of my goals.
So, how did I intentionally change the way I thought about and behaved around goals? Well, it started with THREE key beliefs.
Today I’m going to share these three beliefs with you so that you can transform your relationship with goals so your business can grow with more ease, more profit, and way less overwhelm.
Let’s get started.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
Today we’re talking about how to intentionally shift your relationship with business goals and I want to be very clear about one thing. GOALS were never hurting my business – but, my unhealthy attachment to achieving them was.
If you’re still listening, it’s likely that you have found yourself in the exact same situation.
Afraid to set goals because you might not reach them.
Reaching a goal, but instead of feeling good, feeling terrified it will all go away.
Missing a goal and making it mean something about YOU as a business owner.
I do believe that goals are a good thing and your business hinges on your ability to achieve them, but there is a line between focusing on meeting your goals and obsessing over them – and the latter can become a problem because it can cause you to see things through a black and white lens when there is really so much gray area.
This leads me to the first belief that will radically change your relationship with goals (and actually increase your chances of reaching them.)
Key Belief #1: You can’t control the outcome, but you can control the process that INFLUENCES the outcome.
Ultimately, you don’t have 100% control over how much money you make.
I want to pause for a minute because that statement may sound a bit shocking. Especially because we operate in a culture that constantly sends messages that if you’re not achieving your goals, it’s YOUR fault and it means you’re a bad business owner.
Realizing you don’t have 100% control over how much money you make can also feel scary, especially for those of us who LOVE having control.
Here’s why you will never be 100% in control of how much money you make: the act of enrolling isn’t done by you – that decision is made by your prospect.
I mean, you can’t FORCE someone to enroll in your program – you can influence them to make a decision that’s right for them, but your prospect is the one who decides whether or not to enroll and there are a million other things outside your control that are ALSO influencing your prospects’ buying decision.
This doesn’t mean you should throw your hands in the air and feel helpless or that there is NOTHING you can do to influence your income.
Because, there’s actually a lot that IS inside your control.
That’s because YOU get to determine what to include inside your sales and marketing process: the offer, the way you talk about your offer, the webinar, the objections you decide to call out and overcome, and so on.
YOU are accountable for observing and investigating your prospect’s behaviors inside your funnel to better understand what’s working and what’s not so you can make it better.
The amount of money you make isn’t fixed, it’s limitless. You get to decide what your revenue goal is and you get to decide how you want to reach it.
Key Belief #2: Growth isn’t always linear and results aren’t always visible.
The revenue results you’re experiencing today are likely caused by things you were doing (or not doing) months ago – which is why I always tell my audience the best time to build your Profitable Sales Engine™ is yesterday and the next best time is today.
It’s hard to keep going and have a positive outlook when you can’t SEE the results of your hard work, but if ALL you do is focus on the distance between where you are now and where you want to be – it’s going to feel a lot harder.
It’s your responsibility to look for and appreciate the effort you’re putting forth and the inner growth that’s happening: learning new things, increasing your resilience, putting yourself out there again and again.
All those seemingly “little” things add up and the resilience that you are building now is preparing you to handle the success that is yet to come.
Posting content that nobody sees, making offers that nobody buys, every single successful entrepreneur on the planet has experienced that – not once, but hundreds or even thousands of times.
That’s why they’re successful. They built the muscle of resilience, they strengthened their growth mindset (even when things felt hard), and they continued to focus on the things they had control of (posting content) and let go of the things they can’t (exactly how many people see the content).
You have to do the work of becoming the person who can keep going even when results aren’t yet visible in order to have the results that ARE visible.
Key Belief #3: You don’t have to give up just because you didn’t meet a goal.
The only way to guarantee that you don’t meet your revenue goals is to give up on meeting them – which is something you do have 100% control of because YOU are the sole decision maker when it comes to giving up.
There is ALWAYS a work around, a solution, or a way to figure things out. So, the idea that “this is your last chance” to make something work just doesn’t exist.
Sometimes we create stories around how long our goals need to take or what the path looks like in order to achieve them. We tell ourselves, well – this goal didn’t happen in the time frame I wanted it to happen, so I guess it’s just not meant to happen.
I’ve made over $11m since I started selling courses and I can tell you that there have been loads of times I’ve set goals I didn’t meet. Where would I be if I quit the first time something didn’t go as planned, or even the hundredth time something didn’t go as planned?
We live in a society where achieving things as fast as possible is valued above all else. As women, we’re told if we don’t achieve X, Y or Z by age 30, 45, or 60, it just won’t happen – which is super convenient to tell a woman if you never want them to achieve anything.
So, what would life be like if you stopped placing artificial time lines to define your worth and instead, just do the work.
You are the only person who gets to decide whether you do or don’t pursue a goal and the only way to NEVER achieve it is to give up trying.
So, don’t do that.
I appreciate you being here and tune in next week for another episode of Scale With Success® – The Podcast.
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