356: How to Set Impossible Goals Using a VTO

Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're gonna 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 You. We are here today talking about end of year goals as we are shifting into 2023. I'm getting used to saying that number. And the reason why I think this is so, so important is because it gives us a target. It gives us an orienting mindset, an orienting frame. So I got the idea for this impossibility scale. Did you read my email on Monday? I hope so. In that email, I talk about this impossibility scale. I was sitting in a seminar about goal setting and We've all done the goal setting thing, right? We've put some numbers on a piece of paper. We've said, okay, this is what I want to do. And it's sort of like a hope and a wish that we put out into the world. It's not always effective. One of my amazing speakers, Emily, who's in the Movers Lab, maybe you've seen her here in the group. She talks about an approach to goal setting that I think is so beautiful. She calls it small goals. I think that is awesome. It helps you do the thing that you ultimately want to do. But in that seminar, we weren't talking about the small goals. We weren't talking about the ways in which we are going to accomplish this thing. What we were talking about was that dream. Okay, where we are going, what is the ultimate landing spot for us? What is the ambition? What is the vision? Okay. And as I was sitting there in that seminar, I wrote down a number. And just for the sake of, you know, ease of understanding, let's just say I wrote down the number $100,000. Okay. And then the woman who was leading us in that seminar said, how impossible Is that number for you? And I was like, not, not impossible. That's like what I expect to make this next year. And she said, I want you to relook at this number and set it at a 4 on the impossible scale out of 5. What is 4 out of 5 on the impossible scale? And I was like, hmm, that, that I don't know. But I can tell you this, $100,000 in my mind at that time, and that was not the number, but in that, in my mind at that time, let's just say $100,000 on that scale would've been a 2. Like 1 is like, for sure I'm making this much money. 2 is like, yeah, I'm probably gonna make that much money if everything kind of works the way I think it's gonna work. But it's a really great exercise. What would be the 3? Sally, what is the 3 on that scale? It was like, mm. And a 3 on the impossible scale is like, okay, if you stretch and if things really work for you, what would the 3 be? So I was like, mm, okay. I think a 3 would probably be $150,000. And I, I think that can probably happen, but I don't know. I never made that much money before. Hmm. What's a 4, Sally? What is a 4? 4 on the impossibility scale. Then I started thinking, hmm, well, if a 4 on the impossibility scale might be 200, 250, gah, that feels impossible to me. And then what's a 5 on the impossibility scale? 5? Well, if I think about that, what is a 5 on the impossibility scale? A 5 being like, there's no way, there's no possible way that that could happen. Well, then I put that at $500,000. Well, now you start to see the scale. If a 5 is $500,000, then actually my 4 might be more like $400,000. $100,000 F. What? Because maybe the 4 is like, if I created this revenue stream, and if I really made progress on this, then that could happen. It's unlikely, but it could happen. I loved that exercise. It changed the way I think about what is possible for me in my business. And the honest truth, team, is that we often under-vision, we often under-ambition what is possible because so much is possible. And if we don't, at the beginning of the year, set our sights high enough, then it's possible that we will underperform for that year. Now, the truth is, as I revisioned that $100,000 number and I set it at $400,000, it was like, oh my gosh, that didn't happen that year. But that's okay, because what I did is I landed smack in my 3 on the scale. And that was more than I thought I would do when I was just like, okay, what's my goal for the year? It's this number. So I would like you to do a similar exercise for yourself. That number that you've been thinking about, the revenue number. Okay. And even if for clarity's sake, for simplicity's sake, if you just want to think about How much money do I wanna make in my speaking this year? I want you to place that on the impossibility scale for yourself. And it's okay. Just be honest. How impossible is this number for you? Okay? And if it's like a 1 or a 2, that's fine, but label it that. And then for the sake of this exercise, what is a 3? On that scale? What is a 4 on that scale? And what is a 5? What's that number that you don't even think about because you're like, people will laugh at me if they hear that I'm imagining that much money. I want you to put those numbers, write them down, and put them on that scale for yourself. And here's why, because as we shift into Planning and actually saying, okay, this is all vision. It's all theory. How do we start to put it into practice? And this is where the VTO comes in. And VTO stands for Vision Traction Organization. Vision Traction Organizer? Vision Traction. I can't remember what that was. VTO. Now this is based on the concept of Rocket Fuel. Now there's a book somewhere around here. It's called Rocket Fuel, and this is a whole entrepreneurial operating system. The Vision Traction Organization is part of the concept of the entrepreneurial operating system. It's called EOS, and EOS is a whole wide big framework that I'm not gonna go into right now. But EOS is one of the strategies and one of the approaches that I use in my business. Okay. There's a lot more to it, but right now I just want to talk about the VTO. And the VTO is the way in which you start to make these dreams come true. And what we're going to do today is look at, do, do, do, we're going to look at The Vision Traction Organization and what these rocks are. Okay. So let's just imagine that your, your overall big goal around revenue. I like to think of our goals in two different ways. Let's just say your big goal for this was this next year for simplicity's sake, you want to make $100,000 with your speaking. Okay, let's write that goal down. And that's your big ambitious 4 out of 5 on the scale. Okay. We call these rocks in a VTO because if you think about, if you're filling up a jar with everything that you're going to be doing in the next year with rocks and pebbles, you want to start with the big rocks. Okay. So you've got this jar. You put the rocks in, they're gonna take up the most space. And once you've developed these rocks, once you identify what these rocks are and how you're going to make them a reality, then you can start thinking about all of the other little things that you're gonna throw in that jar. But if you don't start, if you only start with the pebbles, like the little things that you wanna do, there's no room for the rocks. So we wanna start with the big things that are gonna take up the most room. In your business. Okay. And those are the big goals that without those, your business will not thrive. The rocks are the essentials. So when I'm developing goals with my speakers, the big rocks we look at are your, what are your revenue? What are your revenue goals? And I also look at, and this is more of an FYI for today, I also look at system goals. Okay. How are we going to, how do we do this business? Of speaking. Okay. How do we automate? How do we think about the process, the customer experience? Okay. So FYI, we're not going to worry about that right now in this training. We're going to just focus on this piece right here, the revenue goal. Okay. So once you establish your 4 out of 5 on the impossible scale, you're like, I don't know how this is going to happen because it feels impossible to me. That's okay. That's okay. That's what I want you to think through today. Okay. So what we're going to do right now is after you establish that 4 out of 5, we're going to look at essentially how, what are the things that you need to do in order to get $100,000 with your speaking. Now it's all theoretical, but I want you to start thinking in tangible tactical terms, okay? That right now it can feel a little fuzzy. It's a little big idea out there, but I want us to get a little more tactical with this. Okay? So we're utilizing the impossible scale of 4 out of 5. We're setting a big number that feels a little like, ooh, I don't know how we're gonna do that. And now we're going to just take a moment and think about how we are going to get there. Okay. You've got your revenue goal. It's for simplicity's sake, we're saying $100,000. And let's think about what that means in terms of number of keynotes or speaking engagements. Okay. So if you do, let's say right now you're getting paid. $2,000 per keynote. Math is hard, but what that means is you're going to need to do 50 of them, right? You can do that math. That's a lot of keynotes. That's once a week, basically, right? If you think about that. Okay, but what happens if you say, okay, instead of $2,000 per keynote, my goal this year is I want to go for $4,000 per keynote. Now we only need to do 25 keynotes in order to make $100,000. Now that's just one way, but let's say you also have in your business, you also have trainings. Okay, let's say you do trainings and let's say you charge $5,000 per training. All right. Now you only need 20 trainings to get there. Okay, so this is a math exercise, but I want you to start putting some numbers together. What happens if I do 10 keynotes at $4K, right? And then that's $40,000, and let's say I do Um, 10— oh, that's confusing, isn't it? The 10K, 4K, but we know what we mean. Keynotes. Let's say then I'm going to do 10 trainings at 5K. That's $50,000. And now you're at $90K just right there. It starts to feel a little more doable if you can then break it out from this ambitious goal that at the beginning you're like, there's no way I can do this. But actually, if you start to break it out and think about it really intentionally, it starts to feel a little more doable. Okay? So if you are listening right now on the podcast and you are not watching this, you're— I'm scribbling all over my iPad to show you how to break this down, but hopefully my math is still making sense for those of you who are just listening. Okay, so now this is all still theoretical. We've broken down that revenue goal and said, okay, what are the, how do we make this up? What's the pathway that we can get there? Now, I still think this is a really, really helpful exercise, but what we are still left with is a question of the how. How do we actually make our way towards that? Now, in the Movers Lab, we go through a very systemic approach. You guys have seen my Movers Lab roadmap. You guys know this roadmap here that we follow is the how. Okay? It's, we look at all kinds of different things. We look at Your talk, right? How well positioned is it? We look at all of this around promotion. How are your materials? How is your presence? How are your partnerships? We look at how are you pitching? How is that going? Is it working? How many prospects do you have? How courageous are you feeling around this? I call it pluck. What's your mindset around it? And then we look at what is the experience that people have with you in the process, either from an audience perspective or a client perspective, because those two people are often not the same, right? So contracts, offboarding, onboarding, all of that. Okay. But underneath all of this are three things that I want you to be tracking that will help in all of these areas, okay, if you're not going to be in the lab, I want you to be doing 3 things. There are 3 things I want you to track that are going to help in all of the areas of the roadmap in terms of raising your awareness for other people that you are a speaker and you want to do more speaking. And it's going to, these are essential wherever you're at in the roadmap. Everybody needs to be doing these things. Okay. So number 1 is we're going to look at visibility. And I want you to, this is the how, I want you focusing on visibility in 2023. What does that mean? What does visibility mean? In 2023, it means you are showing up on social. Okay. It means you are showing your face and using your voice. It might mean you're on podcasts. You've got some original content that you want to share, right? So visibility is one of those goals. That is a must-do for speakers wherever you're at in the roadmap. Visibility is key. Okay, that is the first thing I want you to be tracking. Right now we're getting in, you know, it, you, as you're focusing on that big revenue goal and you're saying, okay, now what are the actions underneath that, that will help get me there. Visibility is one of those. Now we're not just, of course, to make it a good trackable goal. It's not just, I'm going to be more visible. What would that look like for you? Maybe what that looks like is you want to make sure that you are going live on whatever platform you want one time a week. Okay. This is where Emily's Small Goals will really help. I want you to make this doable, but I do want you to set this goal. Okay. There's another podcast where I talked about these 3 goals, but we're going a little more in depth with this. So if you want to think more about these 3, what I call the how goals here, right, to track, then go listen to that podcast. It's over on This Moved Me so that you can dig in a little bit more, but this is the follow-up to that, FYI. Okay, so we have our first one, which is visibility, and then we have our second goal, which is about networking. Okay? Speaking is ultimately a relationship business. How strong are your relationships? How can you really engage in your network that you have? How can you build your network so that it's a little bit larger? So what that might mean for you in 2023, when we think about goals, What that might mean is perhaps you are doing things like you are going to events. Maybe you are joining a group of some kind, right? Where, so you can connect with other people. Maybe you're just. Gonna be focused on LinkedIn and how you can be present there and support other people there. Networking, as you know, is not about you just getting what you want. It's truly about community, support, connection, building a sense that we all benefit from each other. Obviously. So that is really, really important. Having a strong network can get you really, really far as a speaker. Okay? So we're thinking how about our visibility. We're thinking about networking. And the last thing that I want you to track, even if you don't feel ready for this, this final one, pitching. Now, this word might scare people a little bit. Like, how do I pitch? Who do I pitch to? There's a lot to dig into there. Okay? If you are in the Lab with me, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about pitching, preparing ourselves to pitch, having the right materials to pitch, and doing it in a way that is relationship-focused and long-term-focused. So we've been talking about that here in the group. How do we build partnerships before we pitch? These pieces help you do that, but at some point, at some point, we've got to ask the question and say, and raise our hand and say, I have something that might help you here. Okay. At the very least, I want you tracking this for yourself. So if you're at a place where you're ready to pitch, how many? How many pitches? Where? How many? Where do you want to pitch? How? How will you pitch? Maybe you want to just stick to connections that you've got happening on social. Perhaps you want to take people out for coffees and see where that relationship goes. Right? Networking often leads to pitching, but obviously that's not a guarantee. Okay. So these 3 ideas right here, networking, visibility, and pitching. These are the key. These are the key for how you are going to ultimately build up to this number right here, or whatever that number is for you. Okay. Because we can say, oh, I'm going to do 10 keynotes and I'm going to raise my prices a little bit. Okay. I'm going to focus on trainings and I'm going to get on more podcasts. Right. But if we don't. First, say, okay, what are the activities, the how goals that will help me get there? Okay, then it ultimately doesn't ladder up to your ambitious goal. Does that make sense? Okay, we did some really big stuff today, so let me just review everything that we talked about today. Okay. We talked about our VTO, Vision Traction Organizer. Okay. There's a lot more to this, but what we're focusing on today were the rocks. What are the big goals that are essential for us in our business? Okay. And we're going to set that goal, whatever number you just talked about, we're going to set that number at 4 out of 5. If it feels scary to you, that's good. Because the goal is not to land at this number. The goal is to, to start creating the plan that will help you get there ultimately. Once you've done that, then we start to think about how, how can we get there? And we're going to look at 3 main goals, visibility, networking, and pitching. Okay, those are the activities that every speaker needs to be doing on a consistent basis. I don't care what level you're at. My Movers Lab people are always doing this stuff, and I want you doing the same thing. Okay? And it's not that there aren't other elements to your speaking business, as we looked at over here. There is. There are a lot of elements required in your speaking business in order for it to really fly. But pitching, networking, and visibility are 3 things that are undercurrents beneath all of this. Okay? Underneath everything we do in the Lab are those 3 things. Pitching, networking, building relationships for the long term. And visibility. And this is how you build towards a powerful VTO. Goals that are going to scare you. Yay! All right, my friends, it was so, so good to see you all here. I hope this was helpful. And if you yourself right now are like, I know I wanna up my goal. I know I wanna scale my speaking this next year. Then I hope what you'll do is come and grab some time on my calendar. I would love to connect with you, and you can do that at bmoove.com/clarity. We'll book a little clarity call. It's a 15-minute call. We just do it on the phone. It's for me to help you get clear on what's next for you and your speaking. What is the next thing that you need to do that's gonna help you continue to grow? And once we do that, I have a much better sense of where you're at and can point you in the right direction. Okay? It might be towards something I have, but it might not. There's plenty of times where I'm like, you know what we need to do first is we're gonna focus on some other aspects before you're ready. To jump in and join me officially in any of my programs. So just know that. And I think these calls have been really helpful for folks, so know that that is a resource for you once we hit the ground running in 2023. All right, team, ma'a, see you all in 2023. Bye-bye.