Three things to add to your Q3 goals

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Podcast Transcript

We are into quarter three. I can’t quite believe it. Quarter one and quarter two have whizzed past and now we’re into quarter three. Last week, I sat down with the members of the freelance business lounge. Every quarter, we sit down, and we all just plan out our goals together, get that accountability, get it done, so it doesn’t slip further and further into the month, and you’ve already lost your first month. So, we all sat down and we recorded all of our goals and we all do it in different ways. Some of us, I have mine on my notion board, but I also write mine on a giant, very colourful sticker that’s on my wall that I can use erasable pens on. So I put all my goals there as well, some people turn them into beautiful graphics and print them out. Some people put them on their iPhone background or phone background, that kind of thing. Anyway, lots of different ways to do it. But there are actually three things that I think are really important that everybody should be doing when they’re writing down their quarter three goals. Now, first of all, if the idea of a quarter three goal is too overwhelming, just go for monthly goals, sometimes that is much easier to do. So don’t get too caught up in the fact that I’m saying quarter here, you can do it as a monthly goal. But the three things I think are really important to do, are first of all, once you know where you want to be in three months, break it down into tasks. So if you say, I want to bring on three new clients in the next quarter, what do you need to do to do that? And then break it down into monthly and then weekly tasks? So do you need to be going to networking events? Make sure you book those in. Do you need to be sharing your office on social media? When do you need to do that? Do you need to do it once a week? Do you need to do some kind of launch for it? Do you need to contact the press, like local radio stations and talk about what you do. So, my first suggestion to do is to break down what your goal is into tasks and then put that in your calendar. And it’s one less thing that you have to think about, then going forward. It’s the hard work is already done in terms of that bit. The second thing is, please make sure you build in rewards. And this is something I see so often with freelancers that they don’t build in rewards, whether that’s one big reward or little rewards to keep you going. And we’re being pretty bad bosses to ourselves if we’re doing that. Imagine if you worked on a big project at work, finish the project as an employee and then there wasn’t a pat on the back, there wasn’t after work drinks, there wasn’t pizza for lunch, there wasn’t a bonus. You’d feel pretty crappy, so please make sure you build in some kind of rewards and they don’t have to be monetary rewards. It could be an afternoon of Netflix or take yourself off to a coffee shop or just time off or reading time or anything like that. They can be little ones. And particularly someone with ADHD, rewards are really, really important for me to build in to keep that momentum and also the dopamine going. So, I highly recommend building rewards in and it is something people struggle with. So it might be something I put in the Facebook group at some point to discuss a bit more because a lot of people have a really mixed relationship with rewards. So you might want to call them milestones instead. And even if it’s just posting somewhere and sharing that you’ve hit that milestone. And the third thing, and this is something I see so few people do is look at what potential obstacles you might face with your goal. So it’s very easy to set beautiful goals, create a beautiful plan and then it either never gets implemented or something derails you. So, think about what might derail you, and plan ahead – plan for that obstacle. And this is something I use a tool called Sunsama every day to plan out my day and one of the questions that always asks me is, what are some potential obstacles you might deal with today? And that really helps me think what problems I might face and how will I then overcome them? So, for example, if you have to do lots of assignments, or you’re trying to do a qualification, what might be a potential obstacle? Are you going to get bored? Are you going to get distracted? Is there a lot of information you have to access? Is it gonna get overwhelming? And then you can start to plan for that. And the same goes for finding clients. Could the obstacle be that the market is quieter at the moment, things like that. Then think about how you can overcome that. Planning at the start is much smarter than letting it derail you later on and getting to the end of that quarter and feeling gutted. And actually one bonus point I’m going to make here as well is with any of your goals, write down three outcomes you want from it. Your meet, stretch and smash, kind of measurements basically, of how you’re going to complete that goal. So, for example, it might be, I’m going to bring on one new client, two new clients, three new clients this quarter. It might be, I’m going to post two times a week, three times a week, five times a week on social media. Having a very basic level goal is fantastic because then when you meet it, you’ve got the momentum to keep going to achieve those other ones. But if you don’t meet it, or if you don’t go past that, you still met your basic standards. And it also allows a lot more flexibility when it comes to those days where you don’t have the energy or you haven’t had any sleep, or lots is going on, or like I’m about to face this week, teacher strikes, which I’m very much in support of, but yes, they are an obstacle that I’m gonna have to deal with. So, anything like that, try to give yourself some wiggle room for what’s the very basic that you need to reach? And then how can you surpass that.

So, I hope that helps. It is really challenging with goals and as I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, people feel like they have to make their goals very hard. And I am a big fan of actually making one or two of your goals, very easy, just to get momentum going. If you make all your goals really difficult, and then you get to the end of the quarter and you haven’t achieved any of them, that’s not going to feel great. Whereas if you’ve got to the end, you’ve achieved two of them, which were easy or medium and the hard one you made progress on, but you didn’t quite complete, that’s going to feel a lot better. I have lots more gold tips, so I actually have a course which is Goal Setting for Freelancers. And now all my courses are now moved over from Teachable to Podia, you can find them all over there. So, if you go to my website, www.freelancelifestyle.co.uk, and click on courses, you’ll be able to find it there or I’ll pop the link in the comments below. I hope that’s helpful. I’d love to know how you’re getting on with your goals and I’d also love to know if you have set any goals for the quarter three already. Do come over onto Instagram. Drop me a message, I am Emma Cossey over there. Again, the link will be in the notes. I really do love to hear what people’s goals are. Until next week!