Stop Lying to Yourself: Redefine Success in Your Online Business

Ah goal setting!  A goal without a specific plan is just a dream. 

But let's talk about the dark side of goal setting for a moment

My business coach and friend, Michelle Vroom, posted this around goal setting and how it shows up when people don’t reach their goal:

“Most people avoid setting goals because they don’t believe they’ll reach them.⁣⁣

They say things like: “I’m okay with slowing down.”⁣⁣

Or⁣⁣

“It’s okay if I don’t sell that many spots to my program. I’m just having fun.”⁣⁣

Only they don’t REALLY mean it.⁣⁣

What they’re really saying is: “I don’t believe I can have xyz and so it’s safer just to say I’m good with whatever happens so I don’t have any pressure or expectation on me and so I don’t have to risk failure.”⁣⁣

Yikes.⁣⁣

Instead of saying you don’t care if you hit a certain goal, how about asking yourself WHY you don’t care? ⁣⁣

Is it because you truly don’t care or because you’re trying to avoid failure?⁣⁣⁣

Yes, it’s important to be detached from the outcome...but not if you don’t believe the outcome is possible in the first place.”  Michelle Vroom

I’d like to add my thoughts on her post.  I totally agree with her.  

Will you allow me to guide you in this area so you can feel more confident in your goals and stop lying to yourself?

It’s one thing to lie to others (that’s your business if you do this),
but it is deadly to the success of your online business to continue to lie to yourself.

We tend to “hedge our bets” and set a low bar before we go live or launch so we can ultimately “save face” and pretend it’s no big deal so we can protect our “ego and feelings” or “project a certain image”.  

We are essentially setting ourselves up to expect a huge goose-egg and that anything more than that is a win.   

Especially when our family asks and they already think we are “playing at a hobby”, or what we say to “save face” to our coaches, in group coaching, or other peers in our industry.

“What are your goals for your webinar/challenge/course/launch?”

“What do you hope will happen?”

“What if you don’t hit your numbers/goals?”

“Didn’t you just start your little business XYZ? Has it taken off like you’d hoped?” (I got that from a family member)  

“How did your launch go?”

“Did you make any sales from your last webinar?”  

“Was your recent launch a success?”

“Can you share with the community how your launch went?” 

Responses I have actually given before and after around launches that DIDN’T hit my goals (before I got coaching around goals and defining success):

• “I’m just doing this for $#its and Giggles” (Um, no one puts in that many hours, spends money, and wastes that much energy and puts their heart and soul out there to put something online just for “fun” as THE goal)
• “I’m just throwing something out there to test to see if it works” (when that is NOT my goal)
• “I’ll consider it a success if anyone shows up!” (when that is NOT my goal)
• “I was just happy that someone showed up to the event!” (self-deprecating, as usual)
• “Fine” (ha one word answers for the win, but internally I was beating myself up)
• “Great” (and left it at that)
• “I got less people to sign up than I’d hoped, but that works out better for me anyways.” (At the time I said this, it was me trying to save face around my disappointment at the low number INSTEAD OF reframing it as a success and what I learned from this)
• “I was just testing out an idea to see if it worked” (when that was NOT my goal)
• “I’m happy to just have been nominated” (Just kidding, I was channeling my inner Emmy Nomination where I didn’t win)

In all seriousness this speaks to a bigger issue with goal setting and setting our definition of success.  Something we can “buy into” and believe.

We need to redefine REALISTIC goal setting & decide what we will measure as success and set those intentions beforehand.

You must stop throwing arbitrary numbers up and pray you hit them!

Shut down the “face saving, emotion protecting, hedging your bets” mentality!

KNOW your specific situation and what you are working with as you start to set your goals and define what you will consider a success. 

KNOW the statistics for your market/industry/niche!

• Do you have a list or community that you have been nurturing, communicating with, serving and demonstrating your “super power” in action? 
• Did you do your “ITAP” (I’m thinking about it) post to test if what you are marketing has legs? 
• Are you truly testing out a method to see how it resonates with your Right Fit Client® and how it converts? Sales isn’t the final goal or expectation but to split test it with another method? 
• Are you using FB ads to a cold market or retargeting a nurtured market?
• Are you emailing your list of (insert # of people here) in this case lets say 1000 people, who have been stagnant on your list for years or downloaded something at some point in time, but that’s the extent of your outreach to them?  That the ONLY time they get an email is when you are selling something?
  

Sadly, most are in the last scenario above and setting an arbitrary goal of 100 people signing up for your webinar and 10 people buying.  Um, can you say, “I’ve just set myself up for failure?”  

Instead, when setting a goal and what you will consider a success remember this truth:

 In sales, you will either sell something, learn something, or, if lucky, both.

Many sales success authors quote this or something like this.  A client I worked with, Barry Rutten - The Insurance Sales Doctor, lives and demonstrates this motto.  It is how I choose to run my business and what I preach to others.

 Set your Intentional Goals and define what Success will look like to you:

 It can look like this:

• My goal is to reach x people by (email, FB, etc.) and out of that Y will register to the event, Z will show up, C will stay for the entire webinar, and W will buy.
• I will define success as my having fun during the event, getting engagement in the Q&A/Chat section, that this event will result in uncovering what works and doesn’t work with my event to hone in my messaging, delivery and conversion, that x amount of people stay on the event and Y people buy/book a call/join waitlist.

Or it can be detailed specifics (one or all of these):

• X emails had link clicked on to register
• X FB ads clicked on to get to registration page
• X People Sign up for Webinar
• X People Show up
• X Stay on the entire time
• X People Buy/Book a Call/Sign up for waitlist

Picture a dartboard and the sections on the dartboard are the intentional goals / milestones you set based on your audience/community.

Goals are the targets on the dartboard that you are aiming to hit. If we define success as selling something, learning something or both, then…Success is where the dart actually lands (where you end up).

What if the dart ended up in the bullseye of 100 people showing up for your webinar?  Success
What if the dart ended up in 2 showing up for your webinar on the board? Success
What if the dart ended up on the wall next to the dartboard?  Success.
What if the dart ended up hitting the board and it didn’t stick but fell to the ground? Success.
What if the dartboard fell off the wall?  Success

When someone asks you how you hope it goes or how it went, be confident in your goals or respond with what really happened and how what you learned will move you forward. 

• “I’ll consider it a success when XYZ happens”

• “My goal is X, and I’ll consider it a success when Y happens and if it doesn’t, then I’ll have learned something to move forward for next time.”

• “It was a success because….”  

• “I got exactly what I needed to refine it and am launching again in xxx”

• “I hit my goal of X and it was a success because of Y”

Don't try to downplay your goals or lie to yourself because…

It’s one thing to lie to others (that’s your business if you do this), but it is deadly to the success of your online business to continue to lie to yourself.

In sales we either sell something, learn something or, if lucky, both.

Love, Kimi B