#135 - Plan Your Epic Year - Part #2 - How to set goals that WORK (Encore Episode)

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben. Where every week we're here talking, nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey. Hey lovelies. Welcome back to episode number 26 of the Doing It Online podcast. I'm your host, Kate McKibben from HelloFinals co. And today is actually the second part of our special five part plan out your most epic year yet special series. So if you haven't actually listened to yesterday's episode, I suggest you hit pause, go back, listen to that one first. You're going to need it before we dive into today. So yesterday we talked about, you know, sitting down and actually figuring out how much money you need to earn, both right now as a baseline, as a minimum, and also in the future, possibly not even that too distant future to actually have and be able to do all the things you want to do both in your life and business and how much more powerful it is to set your goals based on these real life, real meaningful numbers. So hopefully you've already listened to that episode, you've figured it out. You figured out your baseline number and also your dream life budget number. And now it is time to actually put those to work and to start breaking these down into more specific goals and action points. So if you haven't already, make sure you go and grab our 12 month planning spreadsheet. It's going to make this whole process so much easier. All you need to do is head to health. HelloFreebies Co Link is in the show notes. If you can't be bothered typing it out, jump in there, grab the spreadsheet. Like I said, it's gonna make it so much easier cause literally it's ready to roll. You just pop in the numbers and it kind of does the heavy lifting for you. So today is all about choosing your goal for the next 12 months and then breaking it down to see what exactly you need to do to achieve that goal. So like I said, grab your spreadsheet, open up to tab number two, which is the budget tab, and I want you to pop in a goal number that is feeling good to you right now. This isn't necessarily going to be the goal number, but it's a place to start and then we're going to play. So choose a goal that is somewhere between that baseline that you figured out. So that minimum number and your dream life number from yesterday, hell, it might even be your dream life number. See what that looks like. It's kind of the fun of these spreadsheets, right? And surely I'm not the only person who finds these nerdy spreadsheets fun. So once you've popped that in, you'll be able to actually.

Start playing and seeing. Okay, what does that mean in real terms? What does that mean? Like, how many sales do I actually need to make of your offer or offers in the next 12 months to be able to hit that number? So if you have just the one offer, then it's super easy. Obviously, you just divide your goal by the price of your offer and that is the number of sales you need to make. And for anyone who's thinking or asking, yes, make it, make it easy for yourself. Just divide it by your full price. If you have different payment plans or whatever, just go with the full price option. And if you have a membership site or something that's more of a recurring type of payment option, you might need to take a second and just figure out, okay, what is the average amount that people spend with you? Like, do they normally sign up, they join your membership site, Are they normally a member for three months or six months? Figure that out first. That becomes your average amount or lifetime customer value. But don't need to get too technical here and use that to help you to calculate it. So if you have more than one offer, then this is where you get to really have some fun, because it's good for you to know right now what the split is from the last 12 months of your different offers. So for example, if you have three offers that you've sold in the last 12 months and roughly 20% of sales was one, 30% was another, and 50% was another one, that is good to know. And again, you'll see the space in the spreadsheet for you to assign a rough allocation of the percentage of your sales that you expect to come from each of your offers. Once you've done that, along with the price points for your different offers, it's going to tell you exactly how many sales you need to make of each offer to hit your goal. And personally, this is where I need. I like to take a little moment to pause and play because, yes, you can play here. And because sometimes you'll pop these numbers in and you'll go, oh, that's really high, or, oh, okay, that's actually really achievable, maybe I need to push it up a little bit. And play some more. Or sometimes it can also be fun to play around with the percentages of your offers as well and say, well actually if I focus more on this offer, offer one rather than offer two and increase the percentage of that up a little, what does that mean? Does that mean that I'm going to, is that going to be easier? Is that going to feel better? Is that going to actually suit my plans better? That's kind of the point of, of these spreadsheets. So personally my, what I like to do is have a bit of play with these numbers, see what that means, see how it feels and try and start use it to find a goal that is sit somewhere between feeling like a stretch and just feeling achievable. It's finding that happy new medium between the two and you know, being able to have those real facts and figures of what it means behind it so that you know, you know what's involved and you know really what you're getting yourself in for when you set this goal and that you're going to feel really good and confident about being able to achieve it. But we don't stop there, guys. That's just the starting point. That's just still like, it's still a fairly vague number I would say to say, oh, okay, I need to make 200 sales this year to hit my goal. What does that even mean? So now we like to go one level deeper.

Hey, it's Kate here and I've got a bit of a super nerdy present just for you. It's my six figure course calculator. Inside it shows you exactly the impact that growing your list, creating a course and going evergreen can have on your business and exactly how quickly you'll be able to do it too. It's pretty powerful and totally free. Just head to HelloFunnels Co Calculator and grab it now totally for free. And then jump in and start mapping out your own epic six figure course empire today.

And next you jump on over to the next tab and I want you to start actually breaking this down by launch and also by funnel if you happen to be in part of the funnel family or funnel curious if you're thinking about adding one. So you'll see on spreadsheet that we have a section for launches and there's a column for each month of the year and there's also a section for funnels with the same column for each month. So what you're going to do is you're going to have a look at this. Think of it like a Calendar, okay, and go, okay, well, I'm going to be doing a launch for product one in February. And I kind of expect that we'll make 20 sales in that launch. And so you pop 20 into, you know, into that cell and it'll start, it'll just pre. Populate, you know, how much that is and you know, the totals from there. So basically go through the launch section highlight. And I also find it often it's, it's kind of valuable to actually sort of like change the color of the cells for the launches. So like, okay, February is product one, so we're going to make that pink. In June, I'm going to do a product 2 launch. We'll make that green or whatever. And then, you know, pop your numbers in and again, feel free to play. And for anyone who's going, oh, well, I'm just getting started or I don't really know what numbers I should be putting in here. I normally like to start with like, looking back on your previous launch. Assume that your next launch is going to be, unless you're going to be doing things drastically differently or going to be spending a lot more on, you know, Facebook ads or something like that. And you haven't done that before. I use, like the way that I teach launching to people inside my programs is we teach it that every time you do a launch, you sort of, you add another layer, you improve another thing. So it's usually not going from, you know, five sales to 500 sales from one launch to the next. Sometimes you can, it's normally more of a gradual, more steady approach. So if you say, have done one launch before and you made 10 sales and then you go, okay, well next time, hopefully I'll make 15 or something. Like, just think of it at a percentage each time, somewhere between, you know, 15 and maybe 30% of an increase each time. Chill launches is probably, you know, bearing on the more realistic side here, guys. Feel free. If you're not, if you're like, hey, I plan on kicking it out of the park this year, I'm going to triple my launches. You know, pop those numbers in as well. That's what these spreadsheets are here for. They're here for you to have a play. I normally like to, when I'm setting goals and mapping out the year, I tend to like to err on the side of caution. And, you know, I tend to like map out the worst case scenarios first, see what that is and then go, okay, well if we just, you know, if we tweak things up here, and tweak things up here. What does that mean? And then that's kind of how I set my numbers. But if, if you're more of a top down girl than a bottom up, go for it. This is your tool to play with and use how you like. So go through as said, block out your launches, pop in what you estimate the number of sales to be for each launch, and then that's going to start to give you your totals for the gear for all of your launches and you'll see how that sort of suits and fits in with the goal that you previously set. And then the second part of that spreadsheet is looking at your funnels. Because of course, if you have funnels set up, and I hope that I'm convinc and more of you every day to go and to do that because I think it is such an important thing to have as an asset in your business, even if it's just ticking away in the background making a couple of extra sales a month. Those extra sales add up over the year and you'll see that in this spreadsheet. So if you have a funnel for whichever product, so we've got a different section for that there, just put in the average number of sales your funnel makes every month. So it's two sales, 10, 20, whatever it is, pop that in there. And again, if you want to, you know, assume that there's going to be a slight increase month after month or quarter after quarter, or if you're just going to leave it as it is, that's all fine too. Whatever sort of feels more right to you. And if you don't have a funnel yet and you want to use it as something to play with and go, well, maybe if I had, you know, a couple of weeks spare sometime or I could, you know, pop this into the diary is something to do in sometime these next 12 months and I was to add in a funnel, what impact would that be? And you know, again, use this to help you to make your decisions. Go. Well, actually this is going to add an extra $50,000 or $20,000 to my business maybe. This is definitely a thing that's worth doing. And you know, you can set that as a goal for yourself to have a funnel up and running by X date as well. So one last thing for those of you who are, as I said, who don't have your funnel yet and maybe go are going, okay, I'd like to see what that's going to mean, but I really don't know what numbers to put Here, our just general, like super, super baseline number for what a funnel should convert at is if you take the average number of subscribers that you get in a month, usually you can expect with your funnel. And this is like a not optimized funnel. Like this is a pretty, you know, a pretty poor. I didn't say funnel. You would expect that it converts 2% of those new subscribers. So if you get 100 new subscribers a month, which is like three subscribers a day, then you'll make two sales a month in your funnel. And you know, and, but that's without having to do anything. And over the year that's 24 sales. And over, you know, more years, it becomes hundreds. And obviously as your business grows, that will increase as well. So pop those numbers in, see how that all matches up. And for anyone who's going, oh my gosh, this sounds a bit too complicated. This is why we have the spreadsheet. Like I said, go grab it. Hello, freebies. Co. Grab the link out of the show notes and just start playing with those numbers, guys. And then tag me when you're done. Shoot an Instagram story and tag me and let me know, like if you don't want to publicly announce your 12 month goal, that's fine, but just let me know how you feel. Like how the process has been so far, what your aha's have been from actually sitting down and looking at the numbers this way. I'd love to hear it. I'd love to see. This has been valuable for you because if it has, we'll try and do more content like this. But I need to hear it from you guys to know if this is something that you're loving and you want more of. So once you've kind of been playing with those numbers a little bit again, it's time to now choose your goal. And if now that you've sort of seen it all mapped out like this, if you go, oh, I actually think I could bump this up a bit and that would be fine, that would feel more exciting. This feels too easy. Or if it's otherwise, like, actually that's going to be a stretch, I'm going to have to launch more than I want to or, you know, I'm going to have some busy periods this year. You know, all of that, it's, this is your number, guys. You're the one who gets to set it. You're the one who gets to set the tone for your year. So feel free to adjust it up or adjust it down. Find that sweet spot for you that is somewhere between the, you know, the achievable, realistic side of your brain and the super optimistic, super excited, let's shoot for the stars side of your brain. Somewhere in between there is a really powerful, great number that you are going to be able to achieve next year and it's going to motivate you and inspire you to have your most epic year yet. And I can't wait to hear all about it. As I said, tag me over on Instagram. So if you've done all that, guys, just one last thing to do for today is to go and hit subscribe so you don't miss out when our next episode drops tomorrow morning because we're going to start taking you through step three and it's a goodie, you don't want to miss it. And until then, guys, just keep doing what you do, lovelies, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@stealmyfunnel.com.

Sam.