It's 2020 Let's celebrate with a Shift to RICHes plan for Success!

Blog Talk Radio. Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone, and happy, happy, happy, happy New Year's! It's New Year's Eve here in the States. I know it's already 2020 in some places around the world. As I've been watching some of the highlights this morning, I was watching New Zealand ring in their new year, and it just is getting me so pumped up. And excited, not only to put kind of a red ribbon around 2019, but also take off the, the red ribbon of a new year and all the excitement and the opportunity that a new year provides. And that's what we're going to talk about today, is simply what your Shift to Riches plan, as we call it, could look like for 2020. And there's something about— there's something about this coming year. I can't put my finger on it, but I call them my God speaking moments for a reason. And I've just had this inkling of a feeling for at least the past 6 to 9 months about what 2020 is going to bring about. And not only for myself, but for many, many, many of you. And of course, as the old adage says, it is what you put into it, whether that's mentally, emotionally, productively— productively, is that a word? It doesn't matter. But, and I want everybody to be going into it with, you know, big eyes, almost like childlike, curious, excited. Creative eyes as to what you might be able to— and we— what we'll do is make sure you can achieve whatever you want in 2020. But we also have to put a year behind us, and that's okay too. So one of the things I want you to be thinking about— and I'll— excuse me— I'll address our Rich question right now. One thing I want you to be thinking about is How would you theme? What would your 1, 2, 3 word theme be for 2019? A description of kind of when you put it all together, this is how you would theme 2019. I like doing that because it then provides actually a great memory bank for when you want to reflect back and you want to consider consider what you were able to do, what you were able to achieve, maybe what got in your way so then you can avoid it as you move forward. It just helps you recall, um, even multiple years back when you put a theme to it. At least it's been very effective and actually very fun for me. So that's an initial rich question for you as we talk through our Shift to Riches plan for 2020 today. Is how would you theme 2019? We won't really discuss assessing 2019. We did that a few weeks ago, and you can go back and listen to that program on sheddingthebits.com. You can go to blogtalkradio.com or just download it on Apple Podcasts to really kind of get an idea of how you should be viewing where you've been in order to prepare where you're going. And certainly we'll use all that information as we, we go into defining your rich plan. But some of our previous shows as well that I want to mention is we had talked about dealing with the crazies of family and friends during the holidays. This time of year can be very stressful, can be very painful, can be very thankful for people And so we need some tools and we need some support in order to kind of manage it, deal with it, or optimize it in many cases. So take a listen for that. We also had a number of subjects and episodes around giving thanks and creating riches in your life. We talked about shedding the intimidation bitch on previous programs, Shedding the Mental Health Stigma, bitch, and many more. And of course, at any time you can go and download our past episodes, ones that we've had guests on the program, like Catherine Carrigan, who is a regular guest talking about holistic healing and intuitive healing and just how to kind of use you know, what you have physically, mentally, and emotionally to heal yourself versus artificial or medications of any kind. She's always a great guest. Take a listen for one of the 3 or 4 interviews that I've done with Katherine. And of course, like I was saying, you can find any of those on ShellyNevitch.com. Blogtalkradio.com or Apple Podcast. You can download any of our previous episodes there. But right now we're going to take a quick break because obviously a cold I caught just on my return from Christmas holiday— I went to Philadelphia, as many of you might know. That's where my entire family of 11 brothers and sisters and 22 nieces and nephews and now they're boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives. It was a beautiful but maddening celebration, and I returned home very healthy, very excited about the whole week of New Year's. And yet, just over the last like 24 hours, I have felt this cold coming on, so Forgive my even huskier, deeper voice. So we'll take a break, I'll get some water. When we get back, we're gonna dive into this Shift to Riches plan that you could be thinking about. Granted, you want to go out and celebrate and have a great time tonight, tomorrow, but as you're working your way in Thursday, Friday, and into a full first week of 2020, this template and literally it's a template which I'll also share with you how you can get access to it. Will provide you some structure and some organization and some creativity around what it is you may want to be doing in 2020. All right, so we will take a break and when we get back we'll dive into it. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. We are talking about walking into 2020 with your own Shift to Riches plan. We call it our Rich Plan, and what we want to do is we want to talk about not only your goals But what I also then layer on top of goals, and that is your Victory Plan. And as, as a result of both your Rich Plan and your Victory Plan, you will be able to shift to riches, shift to those goals and those dreams that you have, and achieve them in a very kind of effective and actually an exciting fun, rewarding, and exciting way. And so I had asked you to be thinking about a— your initial rich question at the top of the hour, and that kind of focused on 2019. And that is about the only thing we're going to talk about when it comes to 2019 and looking back, and that is just a theme theme your year of 2019. And as I mentioned, the reason why I like to do that for myself is because then when I am, you know, sitting down and I'm laying out my, my goals, my measurements, my plan, my challenges, my opportunities, you know, my to-do list of what I need to do to even start acting on, on things, I I can use that theme of 2019 or a past year to then quickly in my head, or going back to the pieces of paper that I have in my journal around assessing 2019, to really determine what worked for me, what didn't work, what changes I need to make. I already kind of have that done so it could feed into what I now want to be doing and need to be doing in 2020. And it's the exact process that I take my clients through. So over, you know, the next several weeks, you know, especially throughout January, I will walk through with all my clients what their goals, what their plans, what their victory plan will look like, and all the elements that make up both of them so they too have their very own rich plan for 2020. So your next, your second rich question I want you to be thinking about then is really a kind of another umbrella type of question, and that is, at the end of this year, what is it you want to be able to theme your year around? So you now have a theme for 2019, but I want you to say, at the end of this year, 2 or 3 words that would describe how this year turned out, how 2020 turned out, is blah. So for 2019, for example, for me is 2019, I simply called it my retirement year. And the reason why I say that is because I had laid out my plan at the beginning of the year that it was really heavily focused on finishing my screenplay, giving myself the room mentally, physically, financially, spiritually, the room to sit down and get my screenplay that I've been working on for a number of years now to the finishing line so I can start putting it out into the universe, literally, and, you know, and taking it to the next stage. Because if you write in any way, shape, or form, or do anything creatively in your world, you probably know and understand that you, that you could be working on a piece— I'll call it a piece— forever. Literally forever. You could be changing it, you could be rewriting it, or redrawing it, or reconfiguring it until, until the cows come home. And so you have to kind of put a halt to it. At least I had to put a deadline to it. And so at the beginning of this 2019 year, I said, okay, I'm gonna give myself the room to do that. And now that meant, you know, how do I restructure the clients that I have, the new clients that I want to acquire, you know, how that affects my media projects like radio and my video and my writing outside of the script. So I really, you know, kind of looked at 2019 that way, and I gave myself that room in such a way that I let my kind of my spirit and my creative juices lead me where I needed to go. So I wasn't in my normal, like, pounding the pavement, you know, going at it 150% like I normally do. So it felt almost like— not that I wasn't working and not that I wasn't living and thriving, but it just felt like I was retired. It felt like I gave my— you know, I had the time, I had the space to be creative. I had the space to really support my clients over and beyond what I had in the past. And so retirement for me is not a negative term that people look at like, oh, you know, they're slowing down and that kind of thing. It was more that I just gave myself that space in all aspects of my world in order to accomplish that one goal and objective. And I'm happy to say that I did. I am very, very, very excited and happy to say that I did. It took until like December 20— 27th, 26th, 27th, you know, but that's for another day, for another time. But I did. It's not really a but, is it? I did. So that's all that really is critical for me to know and believe is that I was able to do it. So let's dive into you. Let's dive into you. You have your theme for 2019. I want you to be considering what you want to accomplish at the end of this year. So for instance, 2020 theme that I'm planning for is The Big Screen. That's what I'm calling it, The Big Screen, meaning that I don't expect that my script will have been bought, pre-produced, produced, and and, you know, out there on the big screen. That's not what I'm saying, but the, the big screen is my target. The big screen is making sure that I now am taking that finished product, and I'm doing— taking the steps this coming year to get it into the hands of someone who would be interested in it so they can then take it and produce it. So that is kind of my theme that I've used when I sat down to define my, my goals for 2020. And that's what I'd like you to be thinking about. What would your theme be at the end of this year that can then help you frame out what your RICH plan needs to look like? All right, so let's dive into this. So your RICH plan, as I mentioned, my— in the way that I do it and in the formula and the the process that I walk my clients through is broken into two pieces. One is very— you all know it, and if you don't know it, you'll learn it. But at the same time, you really want to kind of live in it and really take it on as something that you, that you do regularly. It doesn't even have to be just at the beginning of the year. It should be on a weekly monthly, quarterly basis throughout the year. And that is a SMART— your SMART goals. It's goal setting is the first key piece of my Shift to Riches plan. The second piece is the Victory Plan. The Victory Plan is an acronym. Victory is an acronym for then defining elements of who you are and your world and your universe that will then feed your, your goals, your SMART goals. And we'll get into all this as we, as we go forward. So we'll have your goals as part of your Rich Plan, and then we have your Victory Plan that makes up the overall plan. So this is what I want you to do first. I know you might be listening to this, uh, and you're driving or you're walking along the street or you're in a place that you don't have an opportunity to have a piece of paper and a pen with you or a journal, uh, and a pen with you or your laptop or your phone, whatever the case might be. But plan on having those. The number one key to success is to have your plan documented, have your goals out of your head and onto a piece of paper. And for those of you who listen to the program on a regular basis, you might be sitting here going, okay, here she goes, here she goes again in regards to getting it out of your head and onto a piece of paper. And you're right, I will be on my soapbox when it comes to that because it is a proven fact that As long as you have your, your goals and your dreams and aspirations and your plan, if you want to call it that, running around in your head, and that's the only place that they are, they're just dreams, they're just wishes, they're just hope. They're not, and they're not a concrete plan that will then lead you to achieving those those hopes, those dreams, those wishes. What you need to do is you need to get it out of your head onto a piece of paper into some sort of structure, whether it's the structure of the SMART goal methodology or something else, it doesn't matter. I have no preference. Well, I'll take that back. I have a preference, but for you, you know, I don't care how you do it, I just want you to get it out of your head and onto a piece of paper. So, um, I do have a preference when it comes to goal setting because I— it's proven time, time, time, time, time again. Uh, it's, it's not my plan in any way, shape, or form, or my process for setting goals. Uh, it's been around for forever and a day, and many top, uh, coaches and gurus use it, and many top business leaders and community leaders and home leaders, I'll call them, use it as a way of structuring what it is that they want to be pursuing and achieving. And it's called the SMART method of goal setting. So you can Google it, you know, when you have time. But overall, it's another acronym. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable Actions, Realistic or Realism, and Timeline. That makes up SMART: specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timeline. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to break down each one of those things so you understand how to formulate your goals. Now, you know, many people will say to me, especially, you know, whether it's clients or friends or family, that they have goals And so I'll ask them, okay, what's your goal? Now this time of year especially, the number one goal is to get fit, you know, to lose weight, to make more money. And I'll say to them, okay, but that's not a goal. It's a very, very, very, very high-level goal, but it's really not a goal. Now why is that? Well, to get fit, What does that mean? Is it fit physically? Is it fit spiritually? Is it fit financially? Is it fit to, you know, to match yourself up to the real job, the real career that you want? What does fit mean? So the very first part of the SMART method acronym, the F, is specific. You have to get a specific as possible around the goal that you have. If someone says to me, "Well, I wanna make a lot of money." Well, great, we all do, right? But what's a lot of money to you? Is a lot of money $100? Is a lot of money $100,000? Is a lot of money $1 million? You know, what exactly is it? And not only what the quantity in regards to money is, but Is that coming from work? Is that coming from winning the lottery? Is that coming from marrying into money? Is that from, you know, expecting that you're going to maybe invent something? Is it a screenplay that you're going to sell, you know, such as myself? Is that how you would define making money, making a lot of money? So you really need to get very specific about the what where, when, how, and why of your goal. So when you sit down and you say, and you know, go ahead, put, you know, I want to get fit. Great, that's a start. I want to get fit. And then underneath that, you're going to lay out S-M-A-R-T underneath that, and you're going to then start detailing out each piece of that acronym of SMART. Now, speaking of which, you don't have to worry about actually, you know, kind of creating that template of your own. By the time that this radio show is over, we'll have it on both SheddingTheBitch.com. I will have had it go to my blog post on SheddingTheBitch.com, and you can download it from there. Or you can go to even ballofireconsulting.com and you can download it from there as well. Even right there on the home page, you'll see where you can download your 2020 Rich Plan. So sheddingthebitch.com or ballofireconsulting.com. And of course, Deborah of Parker House Virtual Services, she'll be sharing it on Facebook and Twitter as well. She'll be sharing the link back to sheddingthebits.com as well. Alright, so that's specific. You have to get very specific about what it is that you're going to pursue and answer the question of what, where, when, and how, and why of that goal. So the what, where, when, how, why of making a lot of money, the what, where, when, how, why of getting fit, the what, where, when, why, how, finding a new job, get it as detailed as possible. All right, now the next part of this acronym is measurable, M for measurable. Key, this is key. So if you can't measure your success toward a goal that you have, it's not a goal. Okay, if you picture goalposts— goalposts means that something goes through that goalpost, whether it's a football goalpost, a soccer one, an ice hockey net, whatever the case might be. And there's points, there's something measurable as a result of that goal. That's what you need to also be thinking about as well towards your goal. What are those measurable things Now, this gets a little tricky too, because measurements aren't only quantitative, they could also be qualitative. So I do a lot of work around leadership coaching. Not a lot of quantitative hard numbers in that regard when it comes to, you know, one's personal behavior, one's personal achievement, one's personal productivity. There's not a lot of quantitative goals there. So, but yet we have to be able to measure it. So the measurement could be as far as what other people say, what their 360 assessment looks like, what their performance rating, you know, if it— I have many clients that I'm called in because they're struggling. They're high-producing, but they're struggling in certain skill areas. Or mindset areas. So they may be considered, let's say, a bully employee, you know, or a bully boss. And so the goal is to get them to not be bullying or just a hard, hard-nosed employee, someone that creates maybe some havoc or some difficulty. They have trouble communicating and delegating, those type of things. So our goals would be around them Being more effective in communicating, being a servant leader, having strong communication skills that are compassionate and engaging and collaborative and not, you know, X, Y, and Z. So they're not necessarily numbers, quantitative numbers, but they are still measurable. So you really want to come up with what your measurable metrics are toward your goals. So if it's fit, your measurements are going to be how much— how many pounds do you want to lose? What's your BMI? What— how many days of the week are you going to work out? How many days of the week are you going to watch your diet? So those are all numbers that you can also— that you can put toward that goal of getting fit, which is more specifically you want to lose weight and there's a certain number that you want to lose, and then we'll talk about some other aspects of that. So what are those measurements? Now the actions are actionable. Your goal has to be actionable. It means that you have to lay out what actions you need to take in order to pursue and achieve those goals. Now most people talk about achieving goals, achieving goals, achieving goals. Well, to achieve a goal, you actually have to take action and pursue that goal. So that's where actions fit in. What are those actions you need to take, whether it's day 1 or day 360, that you need to take in order to achieve your goal? I think I just added years or days to the year. I don't know. But so you want to start thinking about what are those big actions you need to start taking. Now the next one, R, realistic. Is key. And actually, it's been talked about the last couple days as many of the programs on online and on television are, you know, kind of helping you with tips and whatnot on setting your goals for 2020. Realistic, the R, some people also call it relevant, but that one is the most critical piece of the whole smart goal setting process because it's the number one reason why people fail. They set too aggressive, too ambitious, too glorious of goals that don't allow them to kind of crawl before they walk, let alone before they run, let alone before they sprint. And therefore they give up on themselves easily. Say you have goals to quit smoking or to quit drinking or to get sober completely. Or maybe to make, you know, a certain amount of money a year or to find a certain job. They set their goals so ambitiously that the minute they fall into a hiccup, let alone a boulder that comes crashing down on them, they throw up their hands and say, "Ah, you know what, I'll wait till next week, next month, next year to deal, to, you know, to do this goal." And so you don't want to kind of give up before you even have an opportunity to move forward. So this R within the SMART acronym is critical, and I want you to be spending the most time thinking about, as you've laid out your specific, measurable, and actions, I want you to be really thinking about, did I say set a realistic goal that I know based on my history of being on this earth, of my successes and my missteps, of what's worked, what hasn't worked, all those things we've talked about in, in, you know, previous year assessments. You know, do— am I being realistic about this particular goal? I had, um, I'll give you an example of my own downfall. And my screenplay is proof of it. When I started writing the screenplay, you know, there was so much excitement from family, friends, more so the industry and colleagues around the fact that my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch, could— would— would make a great screenplay, make a great film. It's almost like a Devil Wears Prada meets My Name Is Earl. So of course, all of their excitement got me so pumped up and me, you know, so geared up, and my eyes weren't, you know, weren't just open, they were just blown, you know, blown apart, blown open, almost childlike again, that I set a goal that I was going to finish my screenplay in a year, by the end of that year. Now, for many people, for many people, especially those that have done it before, that That's a realistic goal. That's a realistic goal. They can spit out, like I've always talked about on this program, my longtime business coach and friend, but she's a 9-time bestselling author, and she can put out a book, and a really good award-winning book, within 3 months. That's just not me. That's just not my way of creating. That's not my writing style. That's not my editing style. So, you know, here I went in, as I finished the first year and it wasn't done, and I went into the second year and of course again I said, okay, by the end of that year, and it wasn't done. I was, you know, it was starting to, you know, eat at me. It was starting to, you know, kind of pull me down. And I, you know, I, not that I didn't consider, but at the time especially the first 2 years, I was working full-time. So for me to think that I could, you know, do this and never have written a screenplay before— so I have to spend a lot more time learning about screenwriting than, you know, and I was only doing it on Saturdays and Sundays— I wasn't being fair to myself. And that's not fair for you either. So be fair to yourself. Set yourself up for success. And really spend a lot of time on thinking about whether it's realistic. So for instance, if you say that, you know, getting fit. If you say that you're going to get fit and you're going to lose 50 pounds and you're going to become an amateur, you know, bodylifter, and yet you've never really been successful on diets, let alone on fitness programs. You've never lost anywhere near 50 pounds. You hate the gym, you don't like to lift, so forth and so on. Well, is that goal realistic? Another thing to look at is, 'cause I deal with this with many of my corporate clients, let alone my entrepreneurial ones, but if you are at a, let's say you're a manager level and your goal is to become a VP and there's one or two steps between manager and VP, Is it realistic for you in a year to be able to, you know, work up that ladder, so to speak, to that VP level? Is that a realistic goal for you to have in 12 months versus if you were to have it in 18 or 24 months, or even 36 months? You know, if you're going, you know, having a goal around money, and say it's around a salary, and say you make about $75,000 a year right now, and you're looking to make $150,000 next year, this coming year. Is that realistic for you to be able to double your salary, or even if you were to get 25% over and above where you are at now? Now, you might go through the steps of how you're gonna do that and say, "Yes, that's realistic, that's realistic." And so it is a realistic goal, because maybe you switch jobs, maybe you switch companies, maybe you go to a different state or country, that has a very different, uh, salary scale for that particular career, that particular job. Um, it, you know, so it could be realistic. You just need to do the work to verify that, that it is realistic because you don't want to be setting yourself up for failure at the beginning. And lastly is timeline, and timeline is what, where many people say that if you don't have a timeline or do date of when you're going to achieve your goal, then your goal is just really a wish or hope, uh, and hope is not a strategy. You have to put a timeline on it. And again, you have to go back to that R. You have to put a realistic timeline on it. Uh, so set a date for your overall goal. Now you'll have a lot of other dates underneath that because you're going to break this goal down and you're, you know, it might be a year-long goal that you break down to maybe quarters and months and then weeks of what it is you're gonna work on to start like making achievements toward that overall goal. But you need to have a deadline, an end date to that ultimate high-level goal that you've established for yourself. 'Cause again, that also helps you really to kind of tune into tune into what it is that, where it is that you're going and how you're getting there and whether or not you're on target and you're on plan. So if you think about project management, you know, they're always looking at on time, on budget. That's what you want to be kind of putting in your head as a routine assessment of your progress is here's my timeline, my end date, my due date, whatever you want to call it. Here are the things that I've done, here are the things I need to do. Is that date still realistic? And therefore, do I need to make changes? Do I need to get more aggressive? Do I need to— whatever the case might be. All right, so as you kind of pull all that information together and compile it, you have your SMART goals within your RICH plan. And that's a great start and, and a beautiful start to really ensuring that you're walking into not only a new year, but a new day with a roadmap of how you're going to get to the end of the day, even, let alone the end of the week, the end of the month, the end of the quarter, the end of the year. And you're going to have made some achievements. You're gonna have some missteps, you're gonna have some struggles, but you're also gonna have some, you know, accelerations and some accomplishments that are gonna just continue to drive you toward your end goal. All right, all right, so that's one part of our overall R.I.C.H. plan. When we get back, we're going to talk about your Victory Plan and how that feeds into your SMART goals and your overall R.I.C.H. plan. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, confront and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at media relations questions@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone! I am so pumped up and excited. We just wrapped up defining your SMART goals, providing you a framework at least for defining your SMART goals. And as a reminder, I'm gonna have this out on sheddingthebitch.com. Go to our blog and you'll see a template that you could be using for your 2020 rich plan, as well as bolafireconsulting.com and Deborah Parker House Virtual Services. She certainly will be sharing links back to those sites on Facebook and Twitter. Now we want to kind of amp up your SMART goals. We want to enrich your overall plan by having you consider other aspects of your world and of you yourself, who you are, and that part is called your Victory Plan. Now, why I came about this, because of course when I was starting off in 2008 as a leadership coach and business consultant and working with businesses small and large and individuals, leaders within those companies, both entrepreneurial and corporate, we really focused on goals, and of course I used the SMART goal method for doing that. Yet, I started learning is even I went through my own shedding process, my own transformation, self-awareness, stripping down, really kind of wanting to shed the bitches that I was discovering about myself by honoring the riches. I was also appreciating, you know, what I already knew were my riches, and yet finally being able to acknowledge and accept and, you know, kind of honor the riches that other people pointed out or that I just kind of started to learn about myself as I allowed myself to really love who I was. So what I really learned, and it centers my whole practice, my whole approach to my coaching and consulting, is that You can have and be the most talented, skilled, expert, experienced individual when it comes to your job role, the function that you play, the, um, the processes and procedures that you follow, the methodologies that you might implement, the plans that you might lay out and execute against. But none of that, absolutely none of that matters if you don't have a strong mindset, if you don't have a strong level of self, if you aren't confident and secure and optimistic and positive and collaborative and engaging and, um, you know, you know how— and empathetic. You know how to, you know, get others to work with you, you work with others, you know, if you don't have those, what I'll call foundational traits within yourself, then your skills and your talents are going to mean little to your success. Now why I say little is, I recognized in myself after I left corporate, and the reason why I wrote my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch, is that I was a very high-producing, very successful consultant, and after that, executive. You know, I always made my numbers, if not exceeded them. We delivered on time, on budget. You know, the customers valued and considered me their trusted advisor. Because I always, you know, was looking out for them and protecting them and doing what was right for them. Yet I lost all of that. I lost my career because of the fact that I wasn't a confident, strong servant leader, collaborative, engaging, supportive, teaming individual. I didn't, I didn't have the mindset that I needed to kind of optimize all of that skill set, all that experience and that talent that I had. And so the Victory Plan that I, you know, started to see as I was going through my own journey was even more important than having my SMART goals, because you can have your SMART goals, but if you're not confident and strong enough and determined and persistent enough to push through the highs and the lows, the ebbs and the flows, the mountains and the valleys, then your SMART goals aren't going to be realized. So I really started centering everything that I did for myself and with my clients and with my community here in Shedding the Bitch, really making sure that your Putting your mindset, putting your heart, putting your person, putting you into, uh, your plan and learning about yourself each and every day— the good, the bad, and the ugly. And that's where, you know, Shift to Riches Formula came from— discovering who you are, good, bad, and ugly, confronting all of that. Because especially women, we even have a hard time confronting our riches. You know, we have a hard time acknowledging we need help, that we are good at something, that we deserve, we're worthy. So confronting is very important. And then of course there's the shedding, and, and that helps you then create and accelerate what you want. So your Victory Plan is now kind of digging into who you are and what do you already possess, what do you need to possess, and in order for you to achieve those SMART goals. So VICTORY is another acronym, and it stands for V for vision, I is inspiration, C commitment, T truth, O overcome, R for regrets and rewards— R is regrets and rewards— and the why is you. So let's break this down, and keep in mind this template for your RICH plan is going to be made available to you on sheddingthebitch.com, Facebook, and Twitter, and also ball-of-fire-consulting.com. All right, so your victory plan is made up of your vision. Describe what it is that you want. So Summarize your SMART goals, and that is your vision. You know, we talked about the theme at the end of 2020, so that is your vision, is whatever that theme is. That's what you're, you know, you're targeting. That's what you've set out for yourself. That's what you're visioning for yourself. So to describe that in as much detail as you want, and the more detail the better, as to what your vision is for yourself first, and then your family, then your community, and then the world should, you know, they be included in your vision. But what is it that you want and are working toward? Then the I for inspiration is I really want you to give thought and make lists, because remember, it's important for all of this to be out of your head and onto a piece of paper. And putting it onto a piece of paper, a lot of these elements of both the SMART goal planning process and the Victory Plan will create lists for you to use as you're working toward your goals. So your inspiration or that list of people, places, things that really inspire you, that give you motivation, that give you the support that you need. That is the sounding board that you need when things are going well or things are, you know, going, you know, in the toilet. They are those people, places, and things that help you be accountable. So even accountability always sounds like it's about a person, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. What if accountability was the fact that you're paying for a, you know, renting an office? And you know, you want to make sure that that investment is getting, you know, you're getting the money's worth of that investment, and therefore you can be accountable to that investment, and therefore that is something that is inspiring you to go to an office, get out of your comfort zone, and get the work done. So list the people, places, and things that you can lean on for inspiration, motivation, accountability, and support when you need it. And, and also not only when you need it, proactively. And we'll be having a conversation in the near future regarding masterminds, support groups, mentoring, that kind of thing, because it's critical you have a tribe, as many people call it. You have your circle of influence, you have your circle of supporters that you can lean on in order to you know, kind of have that set of ears, that set of eyes, that set of truth in order for you to, you know, deal with whatever might come up as you go to pursue and achieve your goals. The C is commitment, and what's important here is you need to make a commitment not only, you know, well, it's for yourself, but you need to make a commitment as far as what are you willing to do, what are you willing to sacrifice, what are you willing to compromise to achieve your goals. So for instance, you know, if you're looking to lose weight, if you're looking to make more money, if you're looking to find a new job, all of those things come with both, you know, commitment and sacrifice, and you would hope compromise. And if you're married, if you have a family, if you have commitments already, you know, within your community, All of those things are going to influence what your ultimate vision and your goals are going to be. So you need to really understand what are you willing to commit to. So if you want to lose weight, get healthy, get fit, you describe that as, you know, losing a certain amount of weight, getting down to a certain BMI, getting, you know, into a muscle building contest, whatever the case might be. Well, the commitment's going to be to a workout plan, to a diet plan, to maybe some coaching, some training. You might have to sacrifice the fact that you can't go out with friends. If you are, you know, looking to make more money and you have to, you know, work, you know, either longer hours or additional jobs. Maybe you want a new job, a new career, and so you're going to sacrifice living where you are because you're going to get up and move. In order to really find that, that career that you ultimately want. So there's commitments, sacrifices, and compromises in everything that you do, in every decision that you make. So you really need to give thought to what those are and what you're willing to do or not to do. And the not to do is going to be important because if you're not willing to do the work, if you're not willing to make the sacrifices, make the commitments and the compromises that are needed, then that R in your SMART goals is not realistic. It's not R, because these are the things that you've acknowledged that you're going to need to do or not to do. And, you know, and if it calls for it and you're not willing to do it, then your R, or realistic, around your goal is not true. All right, okay. Truth. Now, many of you will, you know, will hear me say that truth sits on the surface. And what I mean by that is You know, if you're ever asked a question or you're ever provoked in some sort of way, your first initial thoughts, feelings, emotions, beliefs that come to the surface, that come up for you, is your truth. So you can try to mask it. I did for decades. You could try to mask your truth, uh, and you might be successful in doing that, but eventually those walls will crumble. And at the same time, you don't want to hold them down. You don't want to suppress them. You want your truth to rise to the surface because that's who you are. So you want to identify why the goals that you've defined are so important, are so important to you. Why is it you want to, you know, get fit, make more money, lose weight? It's typically not what you're thinking. It's typically not the fact that you want to be healthy, you know, you want to get fit or you want to be able to fit into a pair of jeans if you want to get fit. It's typically more personal than that. It's typically, I want to be around for my kids, you know, I want to live a long life, you know. If you want to make more money, it's typically not just so you can, you know, go on vacation and, you know,— and take care of the mortgage of your house, it's because you want to provide security and safety to you and your family. So you really want to be thinking about the truth of what it is that you're defining as your goals, the truth of who you are and your goals and your dreams, and acknowledge them and be okay that if you have dreams to be a screenwriter with a feature film on the big screen and going to premieres and all that kind of stuff, Some people might say, oh, you're just vain and cocky and conceited, blah, blah, blah. But you want it because you want to tell your message. It means that accomplishing that is you're getting your message out, the message that you've, you know, you know, you're so devoted to. You know, you want it out and you want to help others through that message. So that's your truth. Now, O is overcome. You need to recognize and acknowledge right up front what you might struggle with, what challenges you might always, you know, come up against, what you might lack in skills or talents or resources like money or, you know, emotional instability or insecurity or doubts or negativity. So you want to lay out all of those things that you might have to, and you will come up against as you're pursuing your goals. And you want to then be able to, you know, kind of create a plan, and we're going to have a whole episode around this, but you're going to want to create a plan around how do you overcome and proactively plan for those challenges and those weaknesses and those lacks and those insecurities. Because you don't want to, you know, you're not going to be surprised by them because you've already hit up against them at some point in your life. And so why, you know, why be the epitome of insane, which is doing the same thing expecting a different result? You want to be able to ensure that you've done this before, you've come up against this challenge, you've come up against this insecurity, this is the fear that you have about it, I know it, I've experienced it, now, you know, what am I going to do to proactively combat it and overcome it? And that's what your overcome is all about. Now, your next one is regrets and rewards for your R. Now, I don't have regrets, so I don't necessarily live in this space. I live in more the reward space. But I do want you to think about if you were not to achieve this goal, what regrets, disappointments will you have about yourself or for your, for your family, for whomever if you do not achieve this goal? Because those regrets— sometimes I'll call them consequences, like I want you to define what consequence, you know, you'll have or you'll give yourself if you don't, you know, achieve your goal. Because you know that there is. If you want something so bad and you don't get it, there's got to be something that you're going to regret or a consequence that you're going to feel as a result of not doing that. So what is it? Because what I want to do is I want you to use that to keep you coming back, keep you coming back, keep you coming back, keep you coming back. Um, so what is that regret? And then of course the reward. What reward will you get as a result of, of achieving your goal? It might be something that you deem for yourself, or it might be something that you that you acquire as a result of it. So what are the regrets and rewards that you would have for yourself? And then lastly, you. Everything that we're doing and talking about here and everything that we do here in Shedding the Bitch community is about you, is about you finding who you are, your true self, and what it is that you want, and then how do you go about getting it. So you have the best and most rich life that you can have and you deserve to have. And so between the SMART goals and your Victory Plan, putting those two things together, you're going to have learned so much about yourself through the process. You're going to have such a great proactive, thought-out roadmap and plan for how to go about doing it. Then that you're going to be ready and armed with what you need to do to not only pursue but achieve the goals that you want, not only in 2020 but in years down the road. And that's what we want for you. And if you ever need support, you need help, you need guidance, you need that accountability, then that's what I am here for and what the Shedding the Bitch community is here for. And I would hope that you just reach out and ask for that support. So as I mentioned, we're gonna put these— this template out on sheddingthebitch.com, ballofireconsulting.com, and of course, Deborah of Parker House Virtual Services will ensure that it's out on our Facebook and Twitter pages, a link back to those sites. So I hope that each and every one of you have a safe and glorious and fun New Year's Eve celebration and a great entry and welcome to 2020. I, I just know, I feel it in every cell of my being that 2020 is going to be an amazing, amazing year. And so I hope I can be part of that amazement for for you and that you get everything that you want from this world. So until next week, next week is our Ask Bernadette episode, so post your questions, stories, or challenges out on Facebook and Twitter and we'll make sure that we get back to you right away. But we'll talk about them next Tuesday at noon Eastern time with another edition of Shetty the Bitch Radio. Thanks everyone, happy, happy New Year's. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.