Today’s topic is giving your best yes how to set and crush your business goals. Now, this is a concept that I’ve heard multiple times from people like Jenna Kutcher, Allie Casazza, and some others. Setting solid business goals has everything to do with knowing boundaries and how to set them properly. You need to know how to make sure that you feel healthy through the process of setting up your online business. We see a lot of websites (obviously) at Weeknight Website, but I want to talk to you about some of the life choices that you can make that will actually help you get further, faster, in your online business.
Watch the Video Replay Here
1. Determine Your Ultimate Priority (1:10)
This is a lesson that we have to learn from the time that we are 10 years old. My daughter is 12 and she’s learning priorities right now. She’s homeschooled and I don’t tell her when to start on her school work. She has learned that if she starts on her schoolwork at five in the afternoon and she’s working on it until bedtime the choice was hers.
The funny thing about this is that a lot of times, in the society that we’ve grown up in, the structure has been part of our daily routine. Most of the time other people’s structure and values have defined how we process information and how we organize our day. If you are actually looking to make a move from working that nine to five grind to your dream business online, the thing that you first have to understand is that your priorities are going to determine your schedule.
In reality, your priorities are going to determine everything about your day. Everything from conversations, tasks you do, and even to the people that you meet and the events that you say yes to. Knowing your priorities is really important.
If you’re a Weeknight Website member, I have a little cheat sheet for you. It is my personal goal tracking worksheet and it actually has helped me know step by step what are my goals, what are my priorities and where I putting my time, my focus, and my energy.
2. Develop Healthy Boundaries (3:45)
Boundaries look like all sorts of different things. They’re not just saying no, they’re also saying yes. If you listened to Kristen’s weekly webinar last week, she talked about practicing the art of saying no. It was such good advice because a lot of times we feel the necessity to say yes to people out of guilt or obligation.
Not all sacrifices will produce the right kind of results you WANT.
Let’s think about this in a holistic mindset. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re not willing to sacrifice donuts, that’s going to be problematic for you. You’re either going to have to go burn all of that at the gym (P.S.I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work, just FYI), or you’re going to end up feeling frustrated because you’re never meeting your goals. All of this is just because you didn’t set healthy boundaries for yourself.
It’s the same thing with our schedules and our online business. When you start a website, it can be really easy to be overwhelmed with all the things. There’s a lot to do when you start a website. Honestly, you have to set boundaries that work for you and work for your family and the only way you know what those boundaries are is if you have set your ultimate priorities. And remember that your priorities have to line up with your boundaries. For instance, if I say my priority is blogging for the week, but I make a priority of doing client work over my blog, then I’ve essentially said no to my priority and given preference to somebody else’s priority.
Now I’m not saying that I’m perfect at this. It’s taken me years, almost 10 years of trying to refine this process for myself, and it looks different in every season. But once I defined my priority properly, then I could set boundaries that aligned with that priority. I was able to ask myself ‘What can I handle within that priority?”
3. Priorities Shift with Seasons (7:36)
I want to be clear, your ultimate goals, your calling, the thing you love and you’re passionate about, that will never change. That’s your heartbeat.
What is going to change is the things underneath of that. The priority tasks the serve that ultimate calling will change throughout your life. You need to have the flexibility to say, “this summer my kids are out of school and I want to be with them” and that be ok with you.
From there you can ask yourself “what do I need to do now that will enable that lifestyle later without me feeling like I’ve totally missed everything?” and make a list of those things.
With an online business, people are consistently and constantly reaching out to you and expecting immediate responses. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to connect with somebody who might genuinely really want what you’re offering. Can I just encourage you? Don’t run yourself into the ground so much that you can’t function as a person and you’re no longer valuable to the people around you.
This is about protecting you and building an online business, it’s a balance.
4. Batch Everything (9:45)
I’m telling you when I learned the secret of batch working, which I now do from my blogs and I do for certain pieces of content, website redesigns, creating freebies, meetings and coaching calls, I allow myself the time and the space to batch my life for better productivity.
You have to do it the right way because you can’t just shut off email off for two days not going to do anything without warning. Now I’m going to tell you guys something else.
This secret is the dirty little secret to HIGH productivity.
All those influencers online that you see, all those people churning out content day after day, it’s because they’ve scheduled it. They didn’t just happen to decide to do a live talk or a webinar or a blog post. Sometimes they will and it’s spontaneous and that’s cool, but most of the time those things are planned in advance. Especially when it comes to a marketing campaign, all so I want to give you guys permission to give yourself a little bit of runway to get started, okay? This is not easy stuff. You’re talking about things that have taken marketers and other online influencers years to learn.
So that’s pretty much it for me today. If you want to read more about getting more productive check out our blog, mindset shifts to stay consistent, it has some awesome info there to help you plan and get more content done FASTER.