There is a way to achieve your goals this year. As I look back on this year and all I’ve accomplished I know my success is due to the goal-setting I did last year. Listen in as I share the step-by-step process that you can use to have one of your best years yet. It’s simpler than you think.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Why it’s important to create space to plan.
- The power of handwriting your goals.
- The steps to take to achieve your goals this year.
Enjoy the podcast! It’s my hope that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to reaching more people with your message.
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Godly Gain Segment:
Each week, I share a Godly Gain segment for entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center of their business.
Today’s scripture: “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 3:14 (NKJV)
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You ROCK! I appreciate everyone of my podcast listeners. If you have a specific question for me, submit it here: www.shelleyhitz.com/ask
“Even the weakest light can hold back the darkness.” – Unknown
It’s time to let your light SHINE!
Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
I was looking back on 2015 recently. It’s getting near the end of the year. I realized that I had met almost all of the goals I set at the end of last year. It was amazing. This year has just been an incredible year for me and my business. I want to share with you the power of setting goals and how you too can not only have a dream or a wish, but it can actually become a reality. I want to share with you the exact steps I took and be able to help you have an amazing year this next year in whatever God has called you to do. Because ultimately I believe you have a God-given message to share with the world. The question is, are you ready to shine?
It’s time for this week’s Center-Stage Spotlight Training. This is where I share training and strategies to help you grow your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. I’m not just about books, but so much more. I’m here to help you connect with your audience in the best way possible. I’m a lifelong learner, and that is one of the things that I love: sharing what I’m learning.
Now I have been engrossing myself in reading and learning and researching all about goal setting and planning, because I’m preparing for an upcoming virtual planning retreat called PlanItDay.com. This is going to be an existing day where I’m going to walk you step by step through this process that I’m going to share with you in today’s episode. This episode is number 22, titled “How to Achieve Your Goals This Year.”
The first step is really, really important. I believe if you skip this part of the process, it just will not have the same power. That is simply to schedule out time to not just work in your business or ministry, but to be able to work on your business or ministry. That just means setting aside time to think, pray, plan, and strategize. That’s what I did at the end of 2014. I set aside time, blocks of time, to simply pray and ask God for his direction. I believe that is ultimately the very most important thing you could do. Then to sit down and to plan out and to strategize and to take these steps I’m going to lead you through, you have to set aside that time. I encourage you: put it on your calendar now. I’d love for you to join us live on PlanItDay.com. If you’re an Author Audience Academy member, then you will have access to this day. I want to see you there. With the replay you can access that at any time, whether you’re listening to this podcast years later or at the time that it’s published.
Step One: Position
The first step in being able to reach your goals and achieve your goals this year is what I call position. You want to position yourself in knowing what you want. Now I’ve done a ton of research, like I mentioned, so I know that these steps don’t just work for me, but they work for a lot of people. This first thing is really, really important. It’s to find your sweet spot, to position yourself in the best place. Most of you know my story. This last year I rebranded from a general brand from my website, TrainingAuthors.com, where I had a partnership with Heather Hart. I rebranded into a personal brand at ShelleyHitz.com. Now Heather and I have decided to go our separate ways. We are both happy with where we’re going and what God’s leading us to do. I’m moving forward with ShelleyHitz.com on my own.
Part of this whole change, and the reason that I went through this—it was a difficult process to do the rebranding and going through and setting up the website and the logos and the colors and all that stuff all over again—was because of this step. I finally found my sweet spot. I was trying to be everything to every author at TrainingAuthors.com. With my new branding, with Author Audience Academy, I’ve niched down to helping nonfiction authors of whom a majority are Christ-followers, or Christians. I have found that sweet spot. I can’t even explain it. It’s so rewarding. It just has been such an amazing year. I know that I’m doing what God has created me uniquely to do.
I want you to find your sweet spot. What has God uniquely created you to do, and how can that apply to what you’re doing in your business or ministry? I think there are three different things. When you find all three of those things, the place that they intersect, that is your sweet spot. It’s your values. During PlanItDay.com I’m going to take you through a values exercise. I did this last year, and I found my top five values. I realized number one on my list personally was faith. Now I’m not saying everyone has to integrate their faith into their business, but for me it made such a huge change for me. To be able to open my webinars in prayer, to be able to open my trainings in prayer, it really just took everything to the next level for me. I love it. I love being able to do that.
I had to know what my top values are and then what my top strengths are. I took the assessment through Strength Finder 2.0. If you purchase the book on Amazon, you get a free code to take that test. Then I was able to find out, what are my top strengths? Some of my top strengths are speaking, networking, things that I wasn’t doing as much of. I was behind a computer screen. I’ve been able to get out and do more of those things that are in my strength. This podcast is including my strength of speaking and communicating.
So, knowing your strengths and knowing your passion. It is my passion to help Christian authors get the gospel to more people by publishing and marketing books and resources. I love helping anyone. I love helping anyone reach their goals, fulfill their dreams, but that is my ultimate passion: to help spread the gospel to more people. When I intersected my values, my strengths, and my passion, and I saw that sweet spot; that’s where Author Audience Academy was born. It has been amazing. It’s really important to really get that first step, positioning, correct.
Step Two: Plot
The second step is to plot. This is where you’re going to write out your goals. I really believe, and I’ve heard so many people say, it’s so powerful to handwrite your goals. We have apps. We have our computers. We have mind-mapping tools. We have all this software, all these tools, but for this I really do recommend that you handwrite your goals. There’s power in writing out your goals with pen and paper. I did this last year. It was looking back on those goals. It was amazing. It just literally amazes me how many of those goals I met.
You want to not only write out your goals, but you want to write them with a specific deadline. Now I’m going to recommend that you write goals in ninety-day increments. It can be really overwhelming to just write out goals for the whole year. I still recommend thinking about the big picture of what you want to accomplish for the next year. Do it in ninety-day increments, because things change. Things have changed dramatically over the last year. You want to have some flexibility. You don’t want to be rigid. Set your goals for ninety days and one year. I recommend at the minimum that you do that, then your lifetime goals, your big goals, things that you want to do over a lifetime. Those will change, and that’s okay.
You have your position, your sweet spot. Now you’ve plotted. You’ve written out your goals with specific deadlines.
Step Three: Prioritize
Now it’s time to prioritize. This is what was really powerful for me last year: I was able then to decide, what is my breakthrough goal? What are the goals that are going to bring the biggest impact? Prioritize. There’s a ton of things that you could want to do, but what’s going to really bring the biggest impact, the biggest bang for your buck? Prioritize those goals and decide, what is it you really want to go for? Then I want you to pick one of those goals to be your breakthrough goal.
This breakthrough goal for me last year was launching Author Audience Academy. It’s not only been able to be a vehicle for me to help authors. So many books are being published through Author Audience Academy. So many things are going on in the forums. It’s also been able to provide income for my husband and me. That was a significant part of my goal setting last year. What is the one thing that could be your breakthrough goal that would make the biggest difference for you? Pick one. That’s step four. Step one was position. Step two was plot. Write out your goals. Step three is prioritize everything so you find the goals that are your highest priority.
Step Four: Pick One
Then step four was to pick one. Pick your breakthrough goal. Step five is to now plan. You want to do a brain dump for your breakthrough goal and write out all the steps it’s going to take to accomplish your goal and that deadline.
Like I said, I did this for Author Audience Academy last year. I’ll just share with you a couple of the things I wrote out. Create an opt-in gift video series on the Ascent Method. I did that. You can go to my website at AuthorAudience.com and you can sign up for that free video series. Something else I had written out was to research other methods and programs. Did that. Another thing was to outline my modules. Did that. Decide on my membership program, the software and the different technology I was going to use. Did that. Set up my list and get response. Did that. Set up my member area. Create PowerPoint presentations for each module. Create worksheets. Receive videos. Create templates in Word. Decide on my payment and affiliate system. Then to launch to a paid beta group on March 1st.
Anyway, it can sound overwhelming, when I just list it all out. But you want to list all these steps out. You can get even more specific than I did. Because there’s a ton of stuff even underneath each of those steps I mentioned. You want to write out your steps. What are the steps? Prioritize. What needs to be done first, then next, then next, then next? Add deadlines to those steps. You have a big deadline. My big deadline was to launch to the beta group March 1st. I did that; I reached that goal. Then I had all these smaller goals where I set deadlines towards them as well.
Step Five: Progress
The last step is progress. It’s to take action. It’s to start going through your list. Start taking action and doing those things on your list. Now I am so excited to help you go through this process. I have a full twelve-step process for Plan It Day that we will be going through. I just shared six of the steps with you briefly. We’re going to be spending hours together, and we’re going to actually be doing these things together. You’re going to be writing out the things. If you have questions, you can ask me either live in the comments or afterwards in the members area. I encourage you to find out more details and join us at PlanItDay.com. If you just want to fast-track into Plan It Day, you can sign up for Author Audience Academy and get right in at AuthorAudienceAcademy.com.
I know this process works. You may have to tweak it a little bit for you, but I encourage you to set aside some time, whether or not you join me for Plan It Day or you do it on your own. I did this process on my own last year. Now I did hire coaches along the way, and I did get a lot of great input and advice, accountability. I had people that were helping me through the process, but I actually did this time on my own. I’d love for you to join us or to set aside a time on your own. Let me know how it goes. I just love working with action-takers and would love to hear how this process goes for you and what the results are that you get in the next ninety days.
It’s time for this week’s Take Action Tip. My recommendation is to get out your calendar, look at your schedule, and set aside at least two hours for planning and strategizing. We’re going to take a full four hours for Plan It Day. If you can join us for that, put it on your calendar. You can find out more information at PlanItDay.com or within your Author Audience Academy membership. Just go and block out that time so that you can go through these steps. Get a notebook, get some markers, some pens, whatever you want, some calendars, and get ready to have an amazing year where you’re able to reach your goals and have an impact far beyond anything you ever dreamed possible. Also make sure to get the show notes and author resources from today’s episode at AuthorAudience.com/22. That’s the number: 22.
Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week’s Godly Gains Segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. Now I just want to be really honest with you. At the time of recording this podcast, I just found out this morning that my cousin’s husband passed away. He’s young. He’s in his forties. He has two young children. Not that long ago I was sobbing, just grieving the loss of his life. It’s just been a puzzle, a mystery that they didn’t even find out what’s wrong with him. I don’t know what we’ll find out in the days to come, but I questioned whether or not to still record this episode. It’s due in a few days. I just took a vacation, so I’m catching up. I thought no, I’m going to go ahead and record this.
You know the reason why? The center of my goals and my planning that I did last year, my number one goal, was to glorify God. That was my goal. My overarching biggest goal for anything that I do through my life is to glorify God. I know that my cousin Mike, he was a mighty man of God. He was in ministry for many years. That was his goal as well: to glorify God. I want to dedicate this podcast to Mike and all that he has done throughout his lifetime and to all the ministry that has been done through his life and will be done through his legacy. He was an amazing, amazing man of God.
I want to dedicate this to him. Today’s scripture is from Philippians 3:14. It says, “I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Now Mike, I know, right now is with Christ in heaven. He’s had his ultimate healing. I know that I know that I know that he is in a better place. Life is short. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. I had no idea I’d be losing a cousin this week. Crazy. I don’t understand it. I may never understand it this side of heaven, but I want to encourage you to make the most of every day, to continue to press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, to do what he has called you to do, to not let fear, to not let the obstacles hold you back, but to continue taking that next step.
I truly believe if you go through the process that I outlined in this podcast, if you plan, you set those goals, and then you take the action, that this year will be a breakthrough year for you. That God will do immeasurably more than we can even think or imagine. That has been my year. I would never have imagined a little over a year ago all that God did this year. I give him the glory. He did it through me, but I took the action. I took the steps. I encourage you to take the next step. Do what God is calling you to do. Use your gifts and your strengths for his glory, and may he be glorified through all that is accomplished in our lives.
It’s my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine and reach more people with your message. This is such a critical, critical podcast that I recommend that you listen to it again and take notes if you didn’t take notes. Do it. Plan out the time to take these steps and strategize for your next ninety days. I encourage you to join us for Plan It Day, P-L-A-N-I-T-D-A-Y.com. You can find out more information. My husband helped me come up with the name. It’s a play on words for planet day. The tagline is “the world is waiting.” I thought that was such a fun way that just encapsulates what this virtual planning retreat will be all about.
I also recommend that you take those next steps to what God has put on your heart. I look forward to seeing what you accomplish and what God accomplishes through your life this next year. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I’ll see you next time
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