#79 - Plan Your Epic Year - Part #4 - It‘s all about holes + habits! (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 guys. It is Kate McKibben here and welcome to episode 28 of the Doing it online podcast. Today is actually point four, part four, sorry, of our special five part plan out your most epic year yet series. If you haven't listened to episodes one to three, I recommend you hit pause right now, go back and check them out. It's going to make a lot more sense if you listen to them in order, guys, I promise. But everyone who is up to date today, we're going to add another little layout that is going to help you plan for and create your most epic year yet. And today it's a bit of a random sounding one, but today is all around what I call habits and holes. So bear with me here and I will explain exactly what I mean. But usually it's around about this point in the planning process that stuff starts to come up for people. Like, you've sat down there, you know, you've mapped it out, you've reversed engineered, you set these goals, you've got these plans and you're kind of like, yeah, I can, I can do this. Like, I'm pretty sure I can do this, maybe I can do this. And you start to have doubts. You start to go, oh, you know, well, you know, I didn't quite get this thing right yet. Or, you know, I'm, I'm really not that great at this. And you know, you start to worry, the worries start setting in, right? The voices start to set in. And this is where this part of the planning process I think is really, really key. Because it's one thing to know these numbers and yes, these numbers are super meaningful and powerful all on their own and to put dates in a calendar and say, yep, I'm going to get them done. But if you really, really want to grow this year, if you want the outcome of this year to be different from the outcome of last year, then you yourself, as a human, as a entrepreneur, as a business owner, need to grow. You're going to need to your business as well, it needs to grow. You can't just keep doing the exact same things as you were doing last time and expect a different result. That is the definition of Insanity. So this part of the planning process is around identifying and starting to look for solutions to, like I said, the holes that are probably in your current state, skill sets or support system or just business. And also thinking about some habits that would be beneficial to you, that are going to help you to, you know, to be the business owner that you want to be, to show up how you want to show up, to grow the business that you want, and just generally that are going to be useful assets to add to your tool belt. And at the end of the year, you can be so glad you did. So I'm going to break these down and the really, the aim of today is that you're going to find two to three of each. Two to three? Like there's not a point. I'm not gonna say you have to do three. If three is not meaningful, there's no point, you know, adding one just for the sake of it. I think any more than three is probably a little unrealistic for a year. Obviously, if you nail them all really quickly and you wanna add in more later, do it. But just for the sake of doability, which is what I'm all about, let's stick with two to three for each. So let's start with holes. So what do I mean by holes? Holes are, like I said, they're gaps that you currently have. They're things that maybe is not in your current skill set things or is not in your team's current skill set. And it's not always skills. Sometimes it's just, you know, looking at the fact that you just don't have the time to be able to grow. You know, if back in the, you know, back at business school, we'd sit down and we do a SWOT analysis is where you look at like strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, opportunities and threats. So this is, would be the weaknesses and probably the threats side of things. So this is where, like, if you're wanting to grow, if, when you were mapping out your numbers, you're like, I need to hit my goal. I need to take on 200 new clients this year. If that has you breaking out in a cold sweat, there is probably some holes that need to be fixed. And they can be fixed and these holes can look like different things, but it's, it's time to sit down and figure out what they are right now. So is it that you're, if you bring on 200 people, you're not going to be able to keep up with the customer service or you're not going to be able to keep up with the service delivery. In which case you're like, okay, a hole for me right now is that I'm going to need some help. I'm going to need someone else on my team. So that is a hole I need to plug this year. And the sooner the, you know, as soon as you can afford to. Usually when it comes to hiring help, you do it, the best time to do it is slightly before you can afford to because they're going to help you to get to that next level anyway. But you know, it's, it's a hole that you've identified and you need to plug. Maybe it's a hole in your, as I said, in your knowledge. Maybe if you're like, okay, I see that this is. I'm going to need to get to be able to do the launches I want to do. I'm going to need to be really good at webinars and I'm not good at webinars currently, so I'm going to need to go and learn how to be good at webinars. So that's a whole, that's something that you want to have in your plan that you are going to go, okay, I'm going to find the best freaking webinar course. I would say ours is one of them. We teach that inside Ecosysempire. But you know, that's my humble, not so humble opinion. And I'm going to make sure that you. Obviously I'm going to be launching this in this time, so I'll want to do it at least a month or so before that. So I've fully learned it and feel good about it. And this is part of mapping out your year. Guys, another hole, and this is another really common hole is maybe it's a mindset thing. Maybe you find that, yes, you make all these plans but you self sabotage yourself or you get overwhelmed and you chuck it in, or you start chasing shiny new objects and you abandon your plans two months in or you have some serious problems believing that they're possible. So, you know, you find excuses and stuff like that. Like that is another hole. And maybe the solution for you for that hole is either you're going to go and do a mindset course or read up on some mindset books or go get a coach who can be there in your corner and, and you know, help to sort of cheer you along and help to talk you off the ledge when you need it. You need to be able to identify these holes in yourself and in your business. And it sounds terrible saying holes in yourself. I'm not saying that you're not a totally complete human being with all the resources you need. You are. But to be able to, you know, for us to grow, we need to and for our businesses to grow, we need to grow. We need to be constantly up leveling and upskilling. And when we do, our businesses reflect that. So as I said, it's time to pick. You don't need to go crazy, guys. Like we obviously all have a lot of things we could always be learning just. But just pull out some that you two to three things that you think that if you had more support, if you had more knowledge, if you had that key person in your business are going to be the biggest needle movers for you this year and lock them in, make them part of your goals. These are things you're going to get done. Put them in the calendar, set a to do task with a date, sign up for a webinar training, get a coach or start asking people who's an amazing coach, make those to do's into to dones and you will have an amazing year.

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So that's the holes. The other thing is habits. So this is one that I've actually been really fascinated with. I've always been quite fascinated with habits. Just as in how adding habits and layering in habits one by one into your life can make such a huge difference. Like can make something that seemed really if basically if you take a big goal that you want, like you know, if you go I'm here and I want to be there to get there, there's certain things that you're probably going to need to do, certain repetitive things that you're probably going to need to do. And at the moment when you list them all out, you're like, oh, I'm never going to be able to do all those things. If you try and force yourself to try and add 10 must dos every day to your to do list, it would be too hard and you wouldn't do them. And it would feel like a lot of work to be able to make these changes and make this progress feel effortless. You need to turn these to do's into habits. And I prefer personally to be adding these habits one at a time. And there are habits in business too. This isn't just in life, you know, so a life example would be like if you're wanting to get healthier, maybe it's, you know, you get up half an hour early and you go for a walk and that's one habit. And you add that in and then another one might be you swap out your second coffee for a green tea and you know, you know, if you sat down and listed out 10 things that would all add up together and impact a massive change and then you added them one by one over, you know, a month or something, each at a time. You'd be amazed that as they each just became second nature, how many of these you could build on top of each other and it wouldn't feel like a lot of work and then how much easier that progress would be. And the same thing happens with business. There are habits in business that us as business owners, when we sit back and look at them all, we're like, oh, it's all these things I know I should be doing. That's the magic word there, people, in case you're wondering, but you know, just feels too overwhelming, like I can't, how am I going to do this? Where am I going to find the time? So it's a matter of, you know, of breaking, breaking it down. And some simple things might be like if, you know, you should be sending more regular emails to your email list, that could be one habit. And so you're going to commit and say, okay, my first habit that I'm going to commit to that, to taking on is every week sending an email to my email list. I'm not going to worry about the other ones, but I'm just going to commit to doing that for a month, to putting some systems in place to make that easy for myself, to having reminders set up or repetitive tasks set up or whatever, finding a VA to help me actually do the scheduling and take some of it off my back, or batching it, like whatever it is, sit down, figure out what the habit is, figure out how to make that habit as easy as possible, do it for a while. I'd recommend a month, if not two, because some of these things take a little bit longer to sink in, particularly the business ones, and then say, okay, well maybe what's the next habit. Now, I've got this one down pat. I'm starting to see the benefits coming in from doing this regularly. What is another great habit I should be doing? Maybe it's sitting down and tracking your sales every day. Maybe it's having a regular weekly meeting with your team. Maybe it's sitting down every quarter and planning out, doing a big brainstorm and planning out your content and then popping it in the calendar so that you know what's going to happen. Like, there's so many habits and routines that we as business owners should be doing, and you don't need to do all of them. It's your business, it's your rules. You know, I know a lot of people hate the word should, but we all know that there are things that we should be doing that aren't just, you know, that aren't things that should be on a Pinterest motivational quote. It is actually things that are going to benefit our business. We just need to find the way of making them feel like less effort and less work and easier. So those are the holes, guys, and the habits. And like I said, if you pick two to three and actually get them in the diary, get them in the calendar, say, yep, for this month to this month, I'm going to commit to showing up every day Monday to Friday and doing an Instagram live. All right, what am I going to need to make that easy? Maybe I need to go and get. Buy one of these prompt thingies. So I've got prompts there ready to go. Or maybe I need to sit down to a brainstorm and come up with, you know, a bunch of different ideas that I can do and have them on a list and I'll just work my way through them, commit to doing that, get it done, and then, you know, a couple months will go by, you won't even realize. And then, ding, this next one comes up, go. Okay, new habit time. I'm going to keep doing this old habit because it feels. It feels good now. It feels effortless. I'm going to add another one. And the same with the holes, guys. Figure out what are those three biggest holes that need to be plugged. Get a plan to plug them, get them in the diary, get them in your project management to do list software, whatever it is, don't try and necessarily do them all at once. Map them out at a timeframe that makes sense. Make sure that they're in there for somewhere over the next 12 months, because that's preferably probably first six months. If we're honest because you want to be able to see the replica, you know, see reap the rewards of doing these over time. And if you get through them all and you know it's coming to the second half of the year and you're like, oh, I want to add some more, go for it. But let's not bite off more than we can chew. So let's just keep it at 2 to 3 for now. And yeah, I love to know what these are going to be as well, guys. So if you want to pop up an Instagram story, you know, popping what are going to be your holes and your habits and tag me@Kate McKibben, let me know. I love, love, love seeing this stuff, guys. Any aha's from this episode, let me know. And if you haven't already, if you want to go and grab our 12 month planning spreadsheet, which just makes this whole planning process super easy. It's super plug and play. Just go to hellofreebies Co right now and grab it. And last thing guys, is make sure, if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe because we have one more epic episode in this little mini series to go and you don't want to miss out. You want to get that notification when it comes through. So go subscribe now. But otherwise, guys, I will see you in tomorrow's episode. See you here. I don't, I don't really. You know what I mean? And until these then guys, keep doing what you do. 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.