Goal Setting Q&A

In this weeks episode, I’m welcoming Ben, my husband, Hey, Ben welcome, how are you?
Ben – Hi yeah thanks I’m good, how are you?
Claire -So do you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself before we get into the Q&A section.

Ben – So I’ve got a background in higher education. My roles are really involve making change happen, currently program manager so I’ m really about envisioning, how we make a big change and trying to turn that into reality and then making it happen. So I’m interested in goal setting, because in some sense I do it for living and then on a more kind of personal level, I am making a big change and have decided to leave my job and pursue other things. So I’m going through a process of trying to work out what next, this is going to be really relevant to me too.

Claire – So I’m going a hand over it to Ben now, and he can ask the questions, he can put me on the spot this time.

Ben – I look forward to it. Okay, so how would you say the first six months of moxie have gone?

Claire – Yeah it’s been yeah good. I started it because I wanted something that was my own and I had complete ownership of and it’s evolved and grown with every month, and I just feel like it’s started to become something really important and special to me. June was my best month yet, so it feels like I’m on the up which is lovely, I’ve worked really hard from the beginning, trying to build something from scratch and I’ve had lots of great support around me and yeah it’s going really well.

Ben – that’s really good to hear! I mean you say it’s going well, How do you measure that success in your business? and that’s a question that’s come in from Niccolos and Instagram

Claire – Okay, so I think that it’s how I feel. So, I measure my success by how inecessarilye feel working in the business, how I feel on a day to day basis, whether I feel like I’m achieving things or accomplishing things. I don’t necessary measure it by what I achieve but by what I feel when I achieve something. So, if I’m moving forwards and I feel like I am stepping out my comfort zone, then I really feel like that makes me feel good. It makes me feel challenged. It makes me feel you know, like my mind, is being engaged, and that, for me, is the most important thing. Yeah hitting those big targets, getting those great income goals sorted is also really good. But for me, it’s about how I feel and I just think that I like to step back and revalueat it and reascess what I’m doing all the time and that’s how I really understand how I’m doing an in my business.

Ben – No, I like that that way of looking at it. In success we can often feel is something kind of external and something that is competitive and measuring ourselves against others and in the business world success tends to mean more money, and you know mor interest. You know more power and all of that kind of thing and yeah for me it’s always been about you know the things that actually are real to you. I totally agree toally agree. So do you, we’re going to talk about goals setting today? So is that something you use in Moxie?

Claire – Yes, definitely. I ran a business about ten years ago. When I first left UNI and it didn’t do very well. It did great for the first six months, I had loads of business coming out of university, loads of interest, loads of clients, and it was really great, and then I hadn’t really thought about the future. I hadn’t really planned for the future. I haven’t thought about marketing or getting more clients. I just kind of focused in the now. I think that taught me a really good lesson that goal setting is so important. And it doesn’t have to be, you know this huge process. It can be very small, but I think if you don’t know where you’re going then you’re probably not going to get where you want to go. And I think that’s the whole point of goal setting for me.

Ben – So so, could you say a bit more about what you get out of it then, how does it help you to get what you want to achieve?

Claire – Well, I think that by looking at the things I’d like to achieve and making the steps really actionable and easy to achieve. By doing that, it helps me to feel a sense of progress, a sense of moving forward. It helps me to you know, grow in confidence andcompetitivebusiness and to help other people. So I think that I get that feeling out of it, that feeling of accomplishment, but without it being compasitive like we just talked about.

How do you feel about your achievements so far?

Claire – Yeah, I’m really pleased with my achievement so far. I think that for a business, that’s six months in I’m doing really well. I’ve got clients and I’ve helped lots of other business owners to market themselves or design a website themselves. And I’m growing a course angle, which I think really taps into my prior experience of being a teacher and working in industry and helping other people. So I’m really pleased at where I’m at right now. I think that I probably didn’t quite expect to be where I am now. When I set out I thought I would be doing marketing for everyone and as I grew and as the business grew I kinda felt like that was not where my skills lie. I can do marketing, I can build web sites, but I actually find that helping other people to do it for themselves is much more empowering for them and I enjoy it so much more yeah.

Ben – You can see that. I’ve kind of worked a lot in projects and programs so I’m kind of interested in your process for goal setting and how you approach it.

Claire – Yeah, I always work on a reflection basis and iterative strategy. So I will look at what I’ve achieved, what I thought I might achieve, and sometimes I dont always achieved every goal, because who always achieves everything, nobody’s perfect, we all have other things come up and get in the way. So I will look at what I’ve achieved and what I feel like have been wins for me as a person and as a business and then I’ll just reflect on that and how that made me feel. and I what I want to take forward. So a lot of my girl setting process is about, do I want to be doing that in six months time? So it’s not necessarily about what task am I going to do it’s about what do I want to feel like in six months time? Where do I want the business to go? and what does six months time look like to me now? What does good look like in six month time? So that’s how I start that process and then I come up with the goals I’d like to achieve in that time frame and then I work backwards from there. So I start with the big goal and I usually do this at the beginning of the year. Start with the big goal and just work backwards into six months, three months, weekly, monthly, etc,

Ben – How naturally do you find it comes to you?

Claire – I find it fairly natural, and I think I’m surprised, because when I ran my first business, I did have all these skills really because I learn these skills quite early. When I was working in retail and I managed big teams and big budgets. So I learnt about goal setting on a daily basis. We would be goal setting for every individual member of a team. So it feels odd to me that having ran business and not done goal setting before but now it seems that I’ve tapped into this and it’s really working. It feels like. I should have been doing this in my previous businesses as well, because it feels natural to me.

Ben- Tell us a bit about the goals you’ve set for the next six months.

Claire – Yeah, okay, so one of the big ones is the website. I really want to give it an overhaul and make it more fun and more like me and the brand. I think that I kind of put something together very quickly, because I wanted an online presence, and I was really focusing on what the other bits of the business looked like and now I think it’s time to go back and just look at that and make it more personal, make it more user friendly. So I’ll be looking at customer journey and UX design. So that’s going to be one of the first goals.

Ben – Taking that as an example what’s the purpose of that, so at the end of that process what do you want downloadt of it?

Claire – The whole idea is tStreamlineill be one platform where all online courses that I desigrn will sit. I want it to be powerful and want it to user friendly, and I want people to be able to go there and get free resources. I want them to be able to find the podcast on there, be able to read blog posts, that Septemberng, downloard calendars, buy products that helps them to streamline their business, and you know just generally be a platform where people can go and find the right thing for their business.

Ben- mhm sounds great you got the website and what else is on your list.

Claire So, I want to launch two more courses that I’ve designed and that’s going to happen one in Eptember, one of them the New Year. I think I want to streamline my offer. I want to reduce some of the services because I feel like I do a lot and I feel like that needs to be taken down because I’d actually prefer to work with people one to one and help them to mage their own marketing or design their own websites, so that they have that power. So they can be in charge of those things and not feel like they’re, giving that to somebody else. I think there’s so much that developed taught, that people can do for themselves in aqualificationnt time, everyone’s thinking thats going to take me ages, I’ll just give it to somebody else. But actually, if you talk how to do these processes in astreamined manner, you can definitely do it for yourself.
So that’s kind of where I’m going with that and then in order to be able to do that, you know to mentor people or to coach people. I started a qualication in coaching and I am looking to start another one in the new year, just to kind of wrap up the skills I’ve already got from teaching, and I did some coaching and mentor qualifications before, but just to kind of refresh those skills and make me the best person that can, to help people to improve their business, basically.