Wendy McCallum (00:01.25)
Hello there, welcome back to the coaching edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. I am doing a spontaneous episode because I just have been talking about this topic a lot in the last couple of weeks. And I know it's an unconventional time of year to be talking about goal setting, but I honestly think goal setting is really an iterative thing and is something that you should be revisiting regularly, just thinking about.
where you are in your business and what it is that you would like to achieve and where you'd like to make change. So this has been coming up a lot lately because as I'm recording this, we're just coming into resolution season. So a lot of people start making really specific goals around their business at the beginning of January because they're feeling like, oh, last year maybe didn't go exactly the way I wanted it to go. And I'm feeling like I need to get really specific with my goals this year and...
aim high so that I can actually achieve some targets. I'm not against goal setting. I'm not against specific revenue goal setting. I actually think it's a very helpful practice to have a very specific revenue goal for the year. In the years that I didn't set specific targets for my business financially, I didn't do as well. And the reason I resisted setting specific financial targets is because I was afraid I wouldn't meet them. What I've learned is better to set them high.
because I have a much greater chance of getting really close to them or sometimes even blowing them out of the water. So I am a fan of doing the specific goal setting around your business when it comes to revenue goals. But what I want to talk about today is a different type of goal setting. And I actually think this is the type of goal setting that works best when I'm coaching in my personal coaching practice with the clients that I support and also when I'm coaching coaches in the business coaching side of my world.
And that is setting goals based more around how you wanna feel and less around what you wanna do. So the first thing that I did with my coaches when they started coming into calls at the beginning of January, thinking up, saying, oh, I need to set some really specific goals or I'm feeling like I didn't get where I wanted to get to in the last few months and I really wanna change that was say, okay, let's talk about how you're feeling now versus how you were feeling a year ago. So this is a reflection exercise and this is a really great place to start.
Wendy McCallum (02:20.522)
when you are thinking about doing goal setting. Start with a reflection. How was I feeling this time last year about my business versus how I'm feeling this time this year about my business? What have I actually changed and achieved over the last year? And not just how much money have I made or how many new programs have I created, but what things have I done that I didn't think I was capable of doing? What things have I learned that are now just part of the way I roll as a coach?
What are some of the places that I've made really, really amazing improvements in terms of how I coach or how I think about my business? Those are all just as important as how much money you've made, honestly. And it's often really easy when you sit down and think about it that way to identify some areas of major progress and really tremendous change over the last year, especially in those early years.
when the financial side of it can be a bit tricky and it takes time to build a steady stream of revenue as a coach. So before you get into the goals going forward, take some time to reflect on how you're feeling about your business now versus how you were feeling about it a year ago and where you have made progress and really positive change. Now, here are some of the questions that I posed with my business building group this week that I thought might be helpful questions for you to think about your business.
doesn't matter that it's end of winter, beginning of spring. I do this all the time. I'm constantly thinking about where I wanna be with my business, how I wanna be feeling about my business, where there are areas for me to make some more improvement and what I wanna be focusing on. So the first question is, how do you wanna feel?
about your business a year from now. So we just talked about that reflection exercise where you look back from a year ago today, how are you feeling? How are you feeling today about your business? And how do you wanna feel a year from now or six months from now, you set the timeframe about your business and how you're showing up in it. How do you want to feel? A feeling-based goal is so much easier to achieve than a behavior-based goal. And this is why I'm such a fan of them. So I'll often do them in tandem where there'll be like a behavior-based goal, especially around business. Like I said, maybe a financial target.
Wendy McCallum (04:40.642)
but also a feeling-based goal, an emotional goal. The thing with an emotional goal, how you wanna feel. So let's say I say, well, you know, this time next year, I wanna feel really confident and clear about the direction that my business is going in. Because right now I'm feeling a little bit uncertain about that. I'm feeling like there are a bunch of different ways I could go, and I'm sort of testing all of those different things out, and I don't have a ton of clarity about which...
where I want to land on this or where I'm going to land. But this time next year, I want to feel really clear. I want to have clarity. If clarity is your goal, there are so many different paths to getting to a place where you feel that way. There isn't just one linear path to feeling more clear. You could get there through all kinds of different permutations of behavior and activities and experiments and trying things.
However, a behavior-based goal is often one that there's just a linear, there's more of a linear one path to achieving it, which means there's more chance of failure. There's more chance of feeling like a failure, feeling like you didn't succeed on a behavior-based goal, especially on a revenue target, than there is on an emotion or feelings-based goal. I love a feelings-based goal because it allows for flexibility. It allows for real life to happen. It allows for things to shift. I could have, maybe I get really sick this year and I have to take five months off work.
If this time next year, I'm feeling more clear about what direction I wanna take my business in as a result of taking those months off of work and having time to think about it, or taking those months off of work and having no time to think about it, but recognizing what my priorities are, I've still succeeded, right? But maybe I get to that clarity because I try four different, very specific business ideas out this year and realize that only one of them is the one that feels really good to me, and that gives me the clarity. You can see like two completely different paths, but to the same feeling. So setting a feeling-based goal,
is always a great thing because people have a better chance of succeeding at it. It's much more flexible and it feels better to people as well. So I want you to try a feeling-based goal as well around your business for next year. How do you wanna feel this time next year about your business? Okay, here are some other questions that you can ask yourself when it comes to setting goals around your business. Who do you wanna support more? So is there a particular avatar client, a specific dream client that you have, a little sub niche that feels like
Wendy McCallum (07:00.798)
a place that you want to spend more time and you want to do more coaching? What is that? Who is that person? And then how are you going to find them? Where are they? Where do they hang out, right? How can you access them and show them what you have to offer them? How can you support them better? So is there someone, a type of client that you would like to support more next year?
This next question, I think, is really great too. And I want you to think about all of these things because again, if you have a variety of different goals, all of which are in place in order to get you to that feeling-based result that you want for yourself, then you have a much greater chance at the end of the day of feeling successful, right? So you don't have to knock it out of the park with every single one of these. But if you think about these questions, do some journaling on them and then go back and revisit this in a year or.
six months, whatever the timeframe is you're setting for yourself on this exercise, you're much more likely to feel successful if you have a number of things you're working on and you've done really well in many of those, but maybe a couple of them haven't gone so well. So this one I really like because how, the question is how do you want to show up differently as a coach? So this is really to do with your actual coaching skills and the hours you spend with clients.
What do you want to do differently with your clients? So for a long time, the thing that I struggled with as a coach, really, really struggled with, and I think this is a very common one, was being okay with silence and coaching calls. I really struggled with not, this probably won't surprise you, I'm obviously a talkative person, but I really struggled with not filling the space in calls and what I had learned through the times that I had kept my mouth shut and just sat back.
and let the silence be the silence, is that actually some really beautiful, amazing, transformative moments often come from the silence. And so that was a goal for me in terms of how I showed up as a coach was just to sit in silence more often. In fact, I say it to my BBBers all the time, like, I'm just sitting in silence over here, waiting for someone to say the thing that is on their mind or to say the thing that they've gotten some clarity on.
Wendy McCallum (09:21.562)
or to get the confidence to say the thing that they've been resisting saying. And so that for me was a goal for a long time and it shifted now over the years, I have different goals about how I want to show up as a coach, but every year I set new goals for myself. I'm always trying to pay attention to what I'm doing well and what I'm not doing as well or where there's room for growth. I also get feedback from my clients after every client engagement. And I use that feedback to try to hone my skills and get better and better at it as a coach. So.
How do you want to show up differently as a coach this year with your clients is another really great question and area to set some goals around.
I also encourage my coaches always to look for an area outside of business where they would like to have some personal growth. So is there a new skill, a hobby, a creative pursuit that you would like to explore this year and improve in or learn more about? So an area of personal growth or personal development outside of the professional business world.
Oftentimes these things are in alignment. And, you know, for example, for me, the thing that I focus most of my attention on outside of business is creative writing. The better I get at that, the more that serves me in my business when it comes to writing copy and communicating clearly and all the rest of it, but they are really very separate things for me. But what that does, having that as one of the things that you think about when it comes to setting goals for yourself for the year as a business person is that it...
reminds you of the importance of balance and of having things outside of the business that also light you up and fulfill you. So I love that question. What's an area of personal growth that I would like to focus on this year? And this is probably my favorite one.
Wendy McCallum (11:17.73)
Where am I going to take a risk and do something that scares me this year?
hardest one for people to commit to usually, definitely the hardest one for me to commit to. I often find myself coming up with answers to this question that actually don't feel that risky just so that I can answer the question. But if I'm being really honest with myself, then I'm looking for something that truly feels incredibly uncomfortable for me, but that I am going to really push myself to do.
I have found as a small business owner, and this won't surprise anyone, I don't think, that the biggest upside has come from the business decisions that have felt the scariest to me, the riskiest. And it's usually not risky financially, like I'm worried, oh, this is just gonna be a total flop. It's not usually that, it's usually more of a personal resistance or fear that I feel. So for example,
starting the podcast, not this one, because I already had the other one for several years. And so it felt very comfortable to me to start this podcast and it made perfect sense to me. But when I started my other podcast, Bite Size Balance, which is now on hiatus semi-permanently, that was terrifying for me. And I suspect if you're being honest with yourself, whatever the thing is that you're resisting, it probably feels terrifying for you personally, right? It's a fear.
a personal fear that you're gonna do it and your tongue's gonna be tied, you're gonna stumble, you're not gonna know what to say or mess something up. And if that's the case, if you're afraid of looking stupid, that's almost always the underlying fear, I really wanna encourage you to put that on your list as your goal for next year. And then what I want you to do is apply the beta mindset, which I talked about in another podcast episode, one of my favorite ways.
Wendy McCallum (13:16.894)
of thinking about doing things for the first time. The beta mindset is the thing that's gonna get you through this. So the beta mindset is where you decide when you try something for the first time to treat it as a trial. So you're not trying to create the perfect final product the first time you do something. You're trying to do your best, you're trying to make it as good as it can be, but you are assuming that
you will improve this, it will change. This isn't the final iteration of this thing. And maybe you even say that out loud because that really helps you in that. So whenever I launch a new program, for example, especially if it's one that I feel like it's brand new and it's something I haven't tested before, tried before, I'm going to run it as a beta and I'm going to tell everybody it's a beta. I'm going to sign people up as beta trial participants in the program. I'm gonna charge them less for the first iteration of the program, even if I think...
there's more value in it, I'll probably charge them a little less. And I do that in exchange for them knowing that this thing isn't perfect and that I'm going to be building it a little bit as we go and responding to the feedback that I get from them as to what's working really well and maybe what's not working as well. And that takes a ton of pressure off. It makes it far more likely that I'm actually going to take the risk of trying that thing. Case in point, the podcast. So the first podcast, Bite Size Balance.
I was terrified to do that. I thought about it for years because I am pretty comfortable with public speaking. I've obviously done it in my past career as a lawyer. I do a lot of corporate wellness speaking and I've been doing that for 13 years now. So I'm really accustomed to being in front of a large audience. And I think I'm a fairly articulate communicator, but there was something about putting myself out there publicly like that, that just really terrified me. I'm sure it's the-
fear of feedback, right? It was the fear of the negative criticism, the feedback, the trolls, the all the rest of it that comes with it. And I resisted it for a really long time, but I had this intuitive feeling, this gut feeling that the podcast was gonna change everything for me business-wise. It was gonna be a catalyst for growth and change and for me being able to actually reach the audience that I wanted to be reaching. And it turns out, by the way, I was right. So trust your intuition on that stuff.
Wendy McCallum (15:40.354)
but I was also really, really afraid to do it. And the very first episode that I've put out there, episode one of Byte Size Balance, the entire time I talk about it being my fake podcast. And I did that because it was a beta. And I was really clear about that. I was like, I'm putting this out there. I just wanna see what kind of feedback we get back. If people like this episode, then I will definitely do another one. But this is something that I've been resisting and afraid to do, and I'm just gonna, I'm just doing it anyway.
And I had such tremendous response to that first episode. And I honestly think part of it was that I said it was a, I said it was a fake podcast and I was nervous about it. And the truth is most people want you to succeed and most people get that, get that fear. And I think a lot of people really appreciate and respect it when people are out there doing the scary things that they aren't doing. So treating it as a beta,
might help you to be really truthful and honest around that thing that you're avoiding that you intuitively know in your gut would be really good for you as a coach and as a small business person. And then making a plan for how to test it. How can I get out there and do this in a way that feels safer to me? And it might be that you test it as a beta. So I will talk about this beta mindset around everything with my coaches in the BBB. Whenever anyone's feeling nervous about an opportunity that feels like it...
could be really good for them, but they're hesitant because they're worried about it. I will always say, what if you treated this as a beta? What would shift in your brain if you thought of this as a test or as a beta or as an opportunity to just determine whether you wanted to do more of this or not? And there's usually a sense of relief that comes from that, from switching that lens to a beta lens. So I really encourage you to try that if you're finding it hard to identify something.
that feel scary that you're willing to push yourself out of the box with going forward with your business. So that's a different way of looking at goals. I knew this would be a little bite-sized episode. I don't have a lot more to say about it. I just wanted to give you a framework for that. So let me go back through those questions for you, the types of things that you might wanna ask yourself if you wanna grab a notepad or pull out the notes app on your phone and type some of these out. Here are some of the questions that I think are really helpful as business owners to set goals.
Wendy McCallum (18:04.938)
in a way that really sets you up for success. And also, yeah, for meaningful change this year. So the first question is, how is that reflection question, right? How do you feel right now versus one year ago, let's say in your business? Or if you're a new business owner, maybe that like since whatever the week was that you launched your business, what's shifted for you between the time of launch and now in terms of how you feel about your business? How are things different? Where have you made...
change? Where have you made progress? What achievements are you really proud of? Both achievements in terms of things you've added to your business, steps you've behavioural, like steps that you've taken, actual action steps, clients that you've got, revenue that you have now that you didn't have before, but also mindset shifts that have happened. What have you noticed about your confidence? What have you noticed about how you're challenging yourself? What have you noticed about how you're showing up as a coach? All of those things.
So the reflection exercises first. The next question is, how do I wanna feel this time next year about my business? And remember, focus on how you wanna feel, not on what you want to do in this exercise. The next question that is an interesting one to think about is who do I want to support more? So what demographic do I wish I was spending more time with as a coach that I'm not right now?
So when I asked myself this question a few years ago, it was coaches. It was so clear to me that I loved coaching new coaches and coaches who were looking to build their businesses. And I was doing a lot of that one-on-one, but I didn't have a way to help a group of coaches at once. I just didn't have enough time in my schedule to do this as much as I wanted to, which is actually the thing. That question is the thing that led to the creation of the BBB in a beta format, guys. I did not.
know how that was going to go over. I had a really good feeling intuitively. My gut was telling me it was needed. There was a gap in most certification programs. Coaches were getting certified, but had no idea how to build resonant, profitable, sustainable businesses afterwards. And I had a feeling it was going to be good, but I launched it as a beta because I wanted to create the best program possible for coaches. And I actually ran three different levels of beta in that program before it was released in its final iteration.
Wendy McCallum (20:28.414)
And it's still changing, it's not even final now. I'm constantly tweaking it and adding new things. And I think that's a really great way to do it. So that was the answer to that question. Who do I want to be serving more? Who do I wanna be supporting more as a coach? Next question. How do I want to show up as a coach this year for my clients? What do I want to do differently or better this year as a coach?
Wendy McCallum (20:56.066)
What is an area of personal growth that I want to invest some time and energy in this year? Something outside of my business that's important to me, that I know makes me feel good, that I'm not doing right now? An area of personal growth. And then what is one place that I'm going to take a risk, challenge myself, feel the fear and do it anyway, however you wanna characterize it in relation to my business next year?
And if you're playing it safe on this, really challenge yourself, really push yourself on this one. Because the biggest results for me, as I said, have come in the places where I felt most uncomfortable. I've had a really good intuition on it. I've had really good feeling. My sort of inner knowing future self has been very clear that this is the right step for me, but I've still resisted it because I felt afraid. Really challenge yourself, find something like that. And then...
Try it this year, but try it in a way that feels safe. And if using the beta mindset helps you feel safe in trying that risky thing, then please by all means adopt the beta mindset. One of my favorite things of all time. So good luck to you in your goal setting. I would love to hear if you do this exercise, I'd love to hear what you discover and what goals you set for yourself. You can always communicate with me on Instagram at Wendy McCallum Coach. Love to interact with my coaches there and stories and in the DMs. And if you have
Feedback from this episode or any other episodes, I would encourage you to share it with me there. If you have ideas for upcoming episodes that you'd love to hear me talk about or experts that you'd love for me to bring in, send me a DM. As I said, always happy to hear from you. And if you wanna learn a little more about the BBB, really, really easy, just go to wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB, all the info's there. Join the next open house. We have open houses regularly, just a chance for you to come in, meet me personally.
and for us to chat about your business and whether the BBB might be a great fit. And I almost always have some of my BBB coaches there to tell you about their experience in the program and why they are loving it. So have a wonderful couple of weeks. I'll be back with another episode of The Coaching Edge before you know it.
