Achieve Your Creative Goals and WASTE LESS TIME

Hello, creative folks. Good to have you back into another one of the livestream podcast. I don't know, whatever you call these things, I'm not even sure yet. This is my second episode jumping in here. And today we are talking about ways to achieve your creative goals and to waste less time. So if you're one of those people that is anything like me, where, you know, when you get into something, it's really easy to get the shiny object syndrome. You get the whole, like, squirrel thing going on where, like, as soon as you see something, it feels like the most important thing that you have to do in that moment. I'm going to talk about some ways to get past that. And it all starts with making sure that you have the right goals set. And so while we are going to talk about goal setting, it's not your typical, I don't want to call it typical, boring goal setting, but it isn't really that typical thing. What we're going to talk about is making sure that your goals align with who you are and what you really want and not just like, you know, hoping for the best kind of thing. So I'm going to take a sip of coffee here before we get started.

And say thank you so much for being here. Thank you to our sponsors. Our sponsor today is my wife, who turned a fabulous 40 years old yesterday. We got to spend the afternoon hanging out and went down to the pool here at the apartment. Got to just kind of chill and it was really fun.

Yeah, I'm so proud to be her husband and for her to be the mom of my kids. And she's just amazing. If you are a parental figure, especially a mother, and you're listening to this or watching this, please go check her out. Mommingwithtruth on Instagram. She does amazing illustrations for moms that are dealing with postpartum depression, stress. Any of these, like, societal norms that moms need to get past and so they can start to do more stuff for themselves so they can understand what being a good mother means for them. And so, yeah, I love you, babe. I'm so glad that I get to be your husband. So we spent some time at the pool. We got to hang out. And let's see what else happened this week. Not a ton, honestly. It's been a really stressful week. I released a video on Monday of me kind of talking about overwhelm, and that's really where this idea of.

Goal setting and that kind of thing started to come into play because I was like, I was reminded that the reason I was feeling this overwhelm was because I had misaligned with what my goals were. It reminded me of how I had set those goals initially and what I needed to refocus on.

I want to talk about that today. Born 100 years too late. Hey, what's up? Good to have you here. That's awesome. Yeah. If you're here, please say hey in the chat. If you have any questions about any of this stuff as we're digging through it, please just make sure that you type it in the chat, and I will do my best to answer those questions as we run through it. So let's start with ways to achieve your creative goals and waste less time. The key here is waste less time. Right. We get into this place of everything is super important. How do we get past that? Well, it starts by setting really clear goals and expectations.

It starts with, why do you do what you do? Think about that. For me, when I'm thinking about helping creative people, trying to do my best to help artists and musicians and photographers, all these types to be better business people.

The reason I do it is because I feel like they have this under. We're often undervaluing ourselves as creatives. We're often living in the world of.

Imposter syndrome. Actually, my buddy Kyle is the one that taught me about imposter syndrome. Kyle is in the audience right now. Kyle, thanks for that. We had this big talk about imposter syndrome, and we feel that as creatives, really often.

That'S why I do. What I do is to help artists change the way they see their worth. Understanding that. Why is that important? It's important because if I don't understand that, then I don't have something to hold onto when things get really crazy and when I start to get foggy on what I need to be doing next. If I can't understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, it's going to be really tough for me to recalibrate when things get difficult. The second thing is, is what is it that you want from the thing that you want? Right. Why do you do what you do? And then what do you want? But not only that, but what is the thing that you want? Or what is it that you want from the thing that you want? I know that sounds a little convoluted, but I want you to think about it as you know, I want. Let's say your goal is that you want to grow an Instagram following and you want to get more people to view your art. Right. Why do you Want that? What's the thing that you really want from that? Is it money? Is it just popularity? Like, what is the thing that we're looking for that's beneath that thing that we want? Right? And.

This is the thing I see people miss all the time. When I'm doing consultations with people, whether it's here or at video creators, the thing that I hear the most is like, well, I want this. I'm like, well, why do you want that? What is it that you hope to get from that? Well, I don't really know. If you don't know, then it's hard to know where to set your focus. For me, again, I just like to use myself as an example because I feel like it's the easiest way to teach this stuff. But the thing that I want is I want to grow a really large audience. But why do I want that? Again, it goes back to the thing, like to my why? Why do I want that? So that I can make enough money to support my family and the dreams that we have. And why do I want that money and why do I want to be able to support them? Because I think there's a lot more to life than just work. I think there's a lot more than like, I don't like the hustle mentality, I don't like any of that kind of stuff. And so that's the thing that I want, is to overcome that and be able to dig deeper into that thing. So what I try to do is set one to two big goals for a 90 day span. And so think about it that way, like just one to two big goals for yourself. Okay? Keep it simple. And the reason is, is because with that one goal, I wanted to challenge you. I want it to feel like something that, okay, this is attainable, but it's actually going to take a bit of a stretch. Like I'm going to have to really push for this thing. And when you think of it that way.

It allows you to obviously feel a little pressure and we want to feel a little pressure and then we start to move toward that thing. And it's also going to create a whole list of objectives that we need to have or like tasks that we need to do in order to reach that goal, right? So this goal that you set, it can be measurable. So when I say measurable, it could be something like, you know, I want to hit 15,000 subscribers in the next three months or I want to make $1,200 extra a month. Whatever it is, it can be measurable in that way, but it doesn't have to be. So how do we set these goals? What do I need to think about is like, what would be.

I realized that at that point I didn't even say words. It was just like hamah da Simon. So anyway, what I want you to think about is what would be the one ideal thing that you would like to have in the next three months? So a 90 day period, what would be that ideal thing that you would like to have?

So part of what I'm trying to do here is I have a full time job where I do a lot of consulting work helping people with their social media, YouTube specifically. And so with that job, I don't have a ton of time to put into this. I don't have the time that I want to really try to develop this channel, but I still have time. And so I've set goals that feel attainable to me, but also feel a little like I'm pushing it. So one of those is I want to make an extra $1,200 a month through revenue that's being generated from this channel and from serving creators like yourself. Right. And so that feels hard to me, but it also feels doable. So I've set that as my one thing that I want. And then I think about, okay, now that I know what I want, how would I feel when I've accomplished this thing, when I've accomplished this goal, what's the feeling that I have? As people, we don't often just chase data. We have to think about this feeling that we want. There's something to being able to correlate this feeling to the thing because when we have that feeling again, it's a driver, it's something that helps us to think, okay, if I make this $1,200, what does that do for me? Well, it relieves a lot of stress because I know that now my wife has to make less money. I also know that now I can reinvest some of this into the business and be able to have more resources to give to my audience. I know that this also allows me. And what's that going to make me feel? Joy. It's going to make me feel again, less stress, less anxiety. It's going to make me feel happy, excited, and I'm going to try to anchor myself to these thoughts and these feelings. I want you to go as deep as you possibly can. I have much deeper, more personal things that I've attached this stuff to as well. And if you watch the video that I did on overwhelm, you might see I'm feeling overwhelmed lately. And again, I think it's because.

Six months ago I had set my goals, went through that quarter, and now for this quarter I was very lax on getting that stuff together and I didn't put myself back in touch with that feeling of what I was trying to do. So I've been trying to recalibrate some of that stuff for me. So I've been going deep again to try and think about that so that it's easier for me to reattach.

So now we have our goal kind of laid out, right? We know this is the one thing or two things that we want to accomplish over the next 90 days. So how do we mark out what I'm going to call our creative targets? So we want these targets to be measurable. So while our goal doesn't have to be measurable, we don't have to say I want to make 1000 new subscribers or I want to make 1200. It doesn't need to be measurable, but these targets should be in some way. So they need to be attached to either a date of some kind.

Or to some sort of monetary number, a percentage. Whether that if you're thinking of analytics in your Instagram or your Facebook or YouTube, what's a click through rate that you're trying to attain, what's an audience retention number you're trying to get to what is a monetary value. Maybe you're growing your email list and your audience in that way. You, you know, so thinking about those things and making it measurable. And I want you to think about three to five things that if you accomplish those, that would then accomplish your goals. So this is the basics of what is called OKRs or objectives and key results. So while I've renamed it to creative targets, this goal is our objective. And these three to five things, or I'm sorry, these goals, yeah, are objective. That's our goal. And then our little things here, our targets, those are our key results that we have to meet in order to meet the objective. So theoretically we hit these three to five things, we're going to meet the goal, right? But what we think about here is while we want these to be measurable, they shouldn't be task oriented yet. Because when we just set up tasks, we can't measure that. That's not gonna assure us that we actually get to the place that we want to get to. And so be sure that you're looking at that. So it's not just like publish 15.

Pieces of content within 60 days.

While that's a measurable thing, if you publish those 15 pieces of content, will it actually meet this goal that you set, or will it get you. It may be part of that, but what is the publishing content for? Is it so you can then grow this other thing? Right. Maybe it's like, publish 15 pieces of content to grow my Instagram by 20 people. Right. So it should be more measurable in that way. Just making sure that you're getting somebody to that next space or getting your creative targets into that zone where we can understand what the next move is. Right.

So if you don't really know what to do there, I would start by reverse engineering all the tasks that you think you need to do and then looking at those tasks and saying, like, okay, if I did all these tasks, what are they going to get me to? And then starting to bunch those. You'll see patterns start to form. If you just make a whole outline of here's all the things I think I need to do to reach this goal, you'll start to see, like, oh, these all fit into the content creation category. These all fit into just creating artwork. These all fit into whatever. Right? You'll start to see those patterns and then start to lump those together. Then you can start to develop those creative targets from that. Okay, so let's take a step back. Go back to our bird's eye view. And then I want to talk about what happens when we get off course, which is inevitably going to happen.

So the first thing we want to think of is to set our clear goal and expectation. Think about, why do you do what you do? Think about what it is that you want from the thing that you want. Think about one or two big goals for the next 90 days. Keep it really simple. And you don't need to wait until the next quarter to do this. I would encourage you to start this now. Like, put this together now. Number two, how do we set these goals? We want to go deep on this. Like, how will we feel when we accomplish these things? And what's the one ideal thing that we would like to have accomplished? How would we feel about that thing once we understand it? Go deep on those feelings. Attach yourself to those feelings. Write them down. It's really, really important. And then how do we mark out these creative targets that go underneath our big goal? Well, we want to reverse engineer all the tasks and things that we think we need to do. And then we want to put those into measurable things. Three to five things that if we hit those measurable little goals almost, then that would hit us for our big goal. So our creative targets are these little things that if we meet those are measurable, they will hit this ultimate goal. So that's how we do that. That's the idea about goal setting. So if you have questions about that, you're here, you're listening, you're watching, whatever. Put those in the chat and I'll take those questions here. But what happens when we get to this point of all? Right now, I'm off track, which is where I've been. What do we do? What do we start to look at oftentimes? And it's going to happen. We'll have these things set, and all of a sudden it's like, no, I need to do this thing over here. This feels really important to me. And so what I want you to remind yourself of is this is why the feeling of what it is you're looking to do is so important. Because right now, what you're chasing right here in this moment of, I think I want to do this, you're chasing a feeling. You're not chasing facts right now. So this is why attaching yourself to that feeling over here in your initial goal is so important. So now you can say, okay, would this outweigh this initial. This first goal? So let's just call them. First One is make $1,200. That's our main goal. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, yeah, but I think I want to. I want to start a new Instagram account. Like, that seems cool. Maybe that would help. Maybe that would help me make $100, right? This is me. I'm just telling you, this is real life.

So maybe I want to start this new Instagram account. And then I have to look and say, okay, how does that align with wanting to make $1,200? Okay, yeah, content, like, that's something I need to do, right? But it's not necessarily something that right now, in the next three months is going to help me make this money because I'm going to have to grow this whole new thing. It's going to be a whole new set of content strategy. I have to put all this other stuff together, right? So there's just a lot that goes into this. So now I say, okay, let's shelve that. I'm going to put it on a to do list. I actually have a notion document that I use.

Maybe I'll do. If you guys are familiar with notion, maybe I'll go over that in some other video or something. But so I have a task list that I just write down all these things that I want to do and I categorize them so that I can say, okay, I now have this put away somewhere I can let it go. Because if I don't do that, what I find is that's when the shiny object syndrome gets to be the worst is.

I feel attached to something like, oh, I need to do this now. And that's not serving me in my bigger goal. So I had this idea. I wanted to start a new Instagram account, and I was like, okay, but I also need to make this $1,200 a month. What's driving me toward that thing? Well, creating the course that I'm working on, putting out YouTube content so that I'm reconnecting with people. So I'm serving people well right now for free, because nobody's going to buy anything unless I'm giving them value. And they can trust that the information that I have is, like, worth paying for. Right. So that's important. Yeah. Does Instagram align with that? Yeah, it does, but I already have a small audience over here that I'm building, so why would I start from scratch? And so I had to just look at that with a number of things and see if it was appropriate. So when you're off target or when you feel like you've got something in the way, always look back and say, is this important right now? Can this be important later? And that's why we only pick one or two things to focus on at a time. Because then when that happens, we can say, okay, I'm here now. This is what I'm going to do. I know that this is just a short, seasonal thing. I can put my 90 days into this time and I'm going to see results, or I'm not. And then you can move that goal and change it to growing an Instagram following, trying to do those other things, bringing on new platforms, whatever your heart is in that moment, but just not getting into that shiny object syndrome. So that's it. That's the basics of how I goal set, how I try to prevent from wasting too much time. If you have questions, would you please drop them in the comments here?

So born 100 years too late says.

I would love or I would just like to make a living doing what I love to do, the way I like to do it. I would like to just make a living doing what I love to do, the way I like to do it. I love that. And I think, you know That's a.

That'S totally doable. I think that sometimes though, what I've unfortunately learned is that.

The way I would like to do it sometimes doesn't align with, okay, if the goal is here, then I'm gonna have to twist that a little bit to make it meet up with that goal. So I would like to do more like bigger drawn out story type video content. But what I know is I'm in the season of like, okay, I, I'm not there yet. So if that's my ultimate goal, like five year goal, which I think is still important, then I'm going to say, okay, how do I serve this so well that when the revenue starts to come in and things change now I have the time to do the thing that I really want. So I mean, you know that, but you know, that's just something I'm always kind of thinking about. Cool. Any other questions in the chat? Got a few people here. Cool. So I just want to say thanks so much for coming in, tuning in, being a part of this. I am going to try to upload these to a podcast, potentially put these out there more. If you're digging this, would you please let me know in the comments? Leave a, like, do the thing. Not because it helps the algorithm, because it really doesn't. It's just because I want to know that this is valuable to you and I should keep doing this thing. But I'm going to try to upload these somewhere. So if you're listening to this on a podcast format right now, you are like in, you're in the crux of something new. For me, this is being taped live on YouTube right now in front of a handful of people. And I just want to say thanks so much to you guys for being here, being a part of this. As of right now, I will be back around the same time next week and I will look forward to seeing you guys then. Thanks so much again for tuning in.