In this episode, Sally Koering Zimney guides speakers on how to set and track meaningful goals that move them toward their speaking aspirations. She begins by encouraging listeners to set ambitious, future‑focused big goals and to calibrate them using a "4‑out‑of‑5" impossibility scale, which helps identify targets that feel challenging yet attainable. Sally then introduces three concrete activity goals—visibility, networking, and pitching—that serve as daily or weekly actions to keep progress on track. For visibility, she emphasizes showing one’s face and voice on a single chosen platform (e.g., LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok) on a consistent schedule to build authority. For networking, she highlights the importance of cultivating relationships through coffee meetings, conferences, and community groups, noting that opportunities often arise from low‑hanging‑fruit connections. For pitching, she defines the act of reaching out to potential clients (both warm and cold), advises setting modest, slightly uncomfortable outreach numbers, and reminds listeners that rejection is part of the numbers game. Throughout, she references the "Tiny Goals" approach from speaker Emily Perrin, advocating for small, consistent steps that gradually expand. The episode concludes that by aligning big dreams with these three activity goals, speakers can systematically grow their speaking business.
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Hey movers, it's Sally Koering Zimney with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved. This moved me. What is moving We are talking about a really important concept today, and that is really thinking about how we can track our progress as speakers and what is worth tracking. So I don't know about you, but right now in my life, I, I'm very focused on the future. I am an ENFP. An Enneagram 7, like all of these things are very future-focused people. We just want to think about possibilities. So I love this time and space. So let me know if that is you, if you are someone who's like, yes, I just want to dream. I want to set goals. Wonderful, right? And we often come to this space setting that big high-level goal. So maybe for you in the past, as you've been thinking about what goals do I want to set for myself, you think about a revenue goal, perhaps, like I want to make this much money through my speaking. Or maybe you have thought to yourself, okay, I want to do 10 keynotes this next year, right? Something quantifiable like that, which is great, right? That sets us thinking about the ultimate destination for ourselves, and we want to do that. And I want to encourage you as you are setting those big things, right? Those big ideas. This isn't what we're talking about today, but, but while you're doing that, that's a really important place to start. As you're doing that, I want you to think about this concept for yourself. What does, let's say, let's take your revenue, for example. What number feels like a 4 out of 5 on the impossibility scale? Like, oh my gosh, that, that changes things a little bit, doesn't it? Now, if you put your revenue on an impossibility scale, right? Your goals where it's like, okay, my safe goal is like a 1 or a 2, the goal that I'm pretty sure I can get, but it's gonna take a little work, might be a 3. That 5 is just out of, out like crazy. Oh my gosh, there's no way that that's gonna happen, right? That's your 5. But that 4 is like, ooh, I mean, this is big. It's big. Can I really do this? Right? We wanna set our sights on that to begin with. Okay? All those goals. Your revenue goal, perhaps like your ultimate number of engagements that you want to do. These two goals here help orient yourself in that direction, which is great. Just setting the goal doesn't make it happen. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. I set really big goals for myself. I don't think I've ever really met my goals. I'm totally okay with that because if I didn't set big goals, I wouldn't create plans that help me. Get there. I wouldn't be able, I probably wouldn't have progressed as far as I have without setting these big, big goals for myself. So I want to encourage you to set those initial goals for yourself big. Go big. 4 out of 5 on the impossibility scale. I love that concept, and I didn't make that up. I got that from a training. For myself on goals. And I wish I could tell you who offered that little gem. I can't remember. Just know that it's not mine. And if you know who did that, who has said that, who's kind of created that concept, feel free, put it in the comments. I wanna give that person all their due credit. It's just my brain doesn't remember things like that. Eee! Just know it's not mine, but I've adopted it and it's a wonderful way to push ourselves. And to orient ourselves towards a dream for what is truly possible for us, rather than holding ourselves back a little bit. Now, that's a, that's important. That's a great start, but that's not how we get there. So how do we start taking steps towards that ultimate vision that we have, that ultimate dream, and what can we track to help ourselves get there? Well, what I wanna do is orient all of you around 3 things that I think are worth tracking that will help you make progress towards your ultimate speaking goals. Okay? Whatever they are, these things are worth tracking. The first thing that I want you to track is your visibility. I want you to set a visibility goal. Now, if you are new here, I talk a lot about visibility. Sometimes I'll do like a, a visibility month, a challenge where I'm really encouraging people to show your face. And share your voice and your story. Okay. To me, visibility is not just you're writing blog posts. To me, especially if you want to move towards being seen as a go-to trusted speaker, this piece is really important. Your visibility, showing your face and speaking words with a story driven message. This is how we start to build authority. That's what we're doing when we're focused on our visibility is we are building authority. We are building authority when we are focused on our visibility. So I want you to think about your visibility and your goals around visibility to set them for yourself in small chunks. Now, all of these, all of the goals I'm going to be talking about you today, I call activity goals. These are things that essentially will help us just keep, keep on the progress, keep on the track, keep on track towards this goal that we are focused on. So as we think about building your authority and getting more visible, maybe it looks for you like Okay, at least once a week, I'm going to show my face and share my voice and my stories. Okay. That's, that's a great way to start. You don't need to do it every day, but I want you to at least be doing this once a week. Okay. That to me is minimum, right? So if once a week is too much for you, that's okay. But set some kind of goal so that you can be consistent with it. And I want you to pick a platform that works for you, that is friendly, that you enjoy being on. Maybe it's LinkedIn, maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's Facebook, okay? YouTube, maybe you're TikTok, maybe whatever. There's a, we have a lot of options. I want you to do, just focus on one platform. And one visibility goal so you can track your activity. Okay? What you're moving towards is you're building your authority. We really want to do this because ultimately when you are seen as an authority, we do that by showing our face and speaking our words and ideas and our stories. Okay? Once you do that, engagements will start coming to you. Rather than you having to do all of the external side of it. But we will always be doing some external, which is where our next two goals come in. Okay, so we first have our visibility goal, but next we have what I want to call a networking goal. Okay, so as you're thinking about how to build relationships. Okay, that is what we're really building when we're thinking about networking. It's about relationships. It's about connections and ultimately how you can serve other people around you. The best opportunities have come to me because of relationships, because of connections that I've had. So we're back to being in person for so much of life, which I'm super grateful for. Every time I'm in person in a group or meet up for coffee or do all of the groundwork of building relationships, there's some— we're, we're laying the groundwork for potential possibilities. Now, that's not why we do it. We do it because we are building community. And even if the person you're talking to may not be someone who you can help, they might know someone who can. Right? This is a way for you to show up and serve. Okay. So ultimately, so much of your opportunities will come from your network. So are you building it? And what does that look like? So think about when you are building your networking, networking and setting your networking goals, think about perhaps how many coffees you want to do, perhaps it's You wanna join a networking group. Maybe you wanna focus on going to more conferences and being in person in those sorts of ways to just connect, meet, and talk to people and start building who you know and who they know. Okay? Because oftentimes when you are trying to build your speaking opportunities and network, It comes from what I call low-hanging fruit, and that is just people that you know and people who they know. Hey, we do that by building our networking. So what are your networking goals for 2023? All right, so we have visibility goals, we have networking goals, and then we have our final thing I want you to think about, which is probably people's least favorite things to think about, but still really important, and that is our pitching goals. Okay. What are your pitching goals for this next year? In other words, how many reachouts do you want to make about what you could possibly do for other people? Right? So pitching is when you, on a, on a very basic note, and I'm sure you know this, but just to be clear, pitching is when You reach out and say, hey, I had a thought. Or you fill out an application or a form and say, you raise your hand for something and say, I think I could help you here. I think I could be of value to you and your audience. That is pitching. Okay. There's lots of variations in pitching. There's cold pitching. There's warm pitching, right? When, when people who you're, you're pitching people who you know, that'd be a warm pitch. But if it's a for somebody who you don't know, you're filling out an application online, those are cold pitches. Okay? I'm not going to go into too much in depth around this, but we do need to be setting goals around the activity of pitching because what you're building when you do that is you are building opportunities. Okay? You're going to get a lot of nos. I just want to be really clear about that. That is okay. That is part of it. You are going to get lots of nos. You're gonna, it's a numbers game more than anybody likes to talk about. Okay, but it's true. So as you are building opportunities for yourself, it's really dependent on how much you're willing to put yourself out there. Right? Now, we would ideally love to be in a place where everything is just coming to us rather than us being the ones who are drumming up the business. But honestly, that, that's not how it works for most of the time as you are growing this business. Okay. As you build your authority and become more visible, right? Some things will start coming to you more so because people will start to see you and understand you and, and say, oh my gosh, this person is so good at that. Or that was really thoughtful. Or now they begin to associate you with that idea. So wonderful. That's why we want to focus on being visible. As you're focused on networking, right, you're building relationships and it's not just about you getting help, but it's also about you being of help to other people. Maybe you can connect other people with your network, right? And it builds a sense of trust. It builds a sense of loyalty. It builds your relationships. And then as you are pitching, perhaps deciding for yourself, okay, I'm gonna send out 30 pitches this week, or I am going to focus on sending messages or responding to messages or getting into a pitching conversation with 10 people this month, or whatever that number is. Okay. I want you to, for all of these, as you're setting your goals, I want you to think about a number that feels just a little uncomfortable for yourself. Okay. Not that we're going to set a sky-high goal and not reach it and then feel bummed about it. One of my speakers, Emily Perrin, has a process called Tiny, Tiny Goals. I think it's called Tiny Goals. She's brilliant. She's amazing. She's writing a book and it's all about a different approach to goal setting. And her whole idea is just start small. So as we like set a huge revenue goal for ourselves, and as we set a huge, like, I'm going to do 20 keynotes next year, whatever that number is for you, great. But as you think about these things, okay. I want you to think about what you can be consistent in. And I, my push is to make yourself just a little bit uncomfortable. Okay. If we go back to the 4 out of 5, the impossibility scale, as we think about the impossibility scale for, for these kinds of goals, I want it to be like a 2. Okay. So something that you're like, I can do that. I can do that. Not a, not a something that pushes you too much. I want you to just think, okay, I can do that. That is a no problem. Okay. So that you start to build your consistency with it. And then as you grow in this, you can push yourself a little higher and higher up. Okay. I hope that makes sense. If you start focusing on your visibility, start focusing on your networking, and start focusing on your pitching, these 3 activity goals are going to help you grow your speaking business. They're going to get you farther and farther down the path, down the road, so you can ultimately achieve those speaking dreams. So I hope this is helpful for you. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.
