I think the title of this post should actually be, are you realistically planning for your goals? In #MotivationMonday Tip No. 7 I shared a little sketch about how vision & purpose lead to mission, goals and ultimately your everyday action items (to achieve those goals and fulfill your mission, vision & purpose).
Sketch from #MotivationMonday Tip No. 7
Sometimes, it’s very hard to wrap your head around something like a ‘purpose’? What am I here to do? What greater good am I fulfilling? Am I really capable of delivering on that? There are a variety of ways we can start to tackle some of those questions. But for now, I want to focus on how to ‘scale’ that purpose, based on your ‘life’ goals.
So many times, there are articles that urge any entrepreneur to be the next Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. That’s completely all fine and well, but when we start to look at the practicalities of what that entails many don’t take into consideration the trade-offs and sacrifices that have to be made. Or conversely, they have an excellent life that they love but it’s not conducive to, oh I don’t know world domination. :)
And secondly, let’s stop playing the comparison game. Because, the truth is that YOU (yes, you!) in and of yourself have something incredibly special to offer the world. No, this isn’t that fluffy ‘everyone-gets-an-award-because-you-are-special’ type thing. This really is honing in on some talent you have or maybe you’re in a completely saturated market but it’s the way you deliver that message a little differently that actually starts to resonate with someone. In my humble opinion, if you even have the idea in your head to go into business for yourself, it’s because subconsciously you have a way to do something different than the norm.
Today’s activity won’t solve your entire brand positioning for you. But, we will help get you off on the right foot by having an honest conversation with yourself about your lifestyle wants & needs. This isn’t really what a normal ‘consultant’ would be asking you about! But, in my experience it’s the thing that makes whatever strategy and plan you put into place actually work. Will there be some trade-offs? Sure. But thinking about your life how it currently is or aspirationally will help you develop a more sustainable plan to achieve those goals.
What do you want for yourself? Below are a few questions that will help you to get the ball rolling with asking yourself some realistic questions about your personal lifestyle goals:
Are you a homebody or do you like to go out all of the time?
Do you like to cook or eat out?
Do you like to go out to get your coffee every day?
Are you financially responsible for yourself and/or your family or other dependents?
How frequently do you travel? Do you want to dial that up or down?
Do you want to have kids?
If so, do you want to be involved in a lot of their day-to-day activities or do you want to hire out a nanny or au pair or do you have other people (e.g. a grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, etc.) who you can rely on to watch your kids?
Do you want to live in a big city or the suburbs or the country? Or maybe you want to split your time between a couple locations or live abroad for part of the year?
Do you want to work 40-50-60+ hours per week or do you want to work only 2-3 days per week?
Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list of questions. However, it will certainly help to get the ball rolling with 1) thinking honestly about the life you want to live & build for yourself and, 2) understand some of the financial and practical implications of your chosen lifestyle.
For instance, let’s say you love eating out multiple times per week, you would like to take 2x more vacations/holidays per year and you want to split your time between a big city and living abroad for part of the year. The reality is that if you are planning to set up some kind of boutique, I would highly encourage you to explore as much as you can offer online opposed to a physical brick and mortar location so that you can achieve more of your personal goals. Or maybe you want to launch a new company but for whatever reason you only have 4 hours a week to dedicate to it. Maybe in that scenario we would plan how to make the absolute most of those four hours per week and set a very realistic launch date.
It’s not to squash what you hope to achieve by any means. It’s about setting practical expectations for yourself - so that you will actually fulfill them! Heck, sometimes, we work with our clients and they actually didn’t even realize that they wanted that extra vacation, until they were asked!!
Later on when we chat more about service offerings, we can look at your price points and more realistically start to determine how much you need to sell in order to hit those targets. It all ties in together, I promise you. Now, what life do you want to live?
Need help getting there? Check some some of the ways you can work with D&Co. Because not only do we mind your brand, but we look after the brains that built it.