Do You Set Goals and Intentions for Your Business Every Month?

Good morning, happy Monday. It's Monday Momentum, and as soon as I went live, I realized I had no earrings. I feel naked. I feel naked on camera right now. Um, I've been running around this morning like a crazy person because it's Monday and there's so much to do. So if you're joining me, let me know that you're here. Also, I'm having some delay with our text messaging, so if you've got the text message, um, let me know that you've got the text in the comments. And just tell me what time you received it. I'm kind of checking that. I want to make sure that those are going out on time, but I don't know that they are. I still haven't received it. So let me know what time you received the text message so I can test that a little bit. But today we're talking about goal setting. New week, new month, fresh start. And I love it. I love it when a Monday happens at the beginning of the month. I didn't know if that was a sneeze or a cough. I love it when a Monday happens at the beginning of the month because it really gives you a complete fresh start on things. And so today I thought it'd be a great day for us to talk through what August looks like for us and how we can set some goals and intentions for the month. Let me, let me have a drink. Good morning. Yeah, okay, so no text yet. I'm glad you had the Facebook notification on. Um, but let me know when you guys receive the text message. I feel like it's gonna pop through. The other day I had someone on my live on my retail page say that they didn't get it for 12 minutes after I was live, so I think it's delayed. But we're gonna keep going. If you're watching on the replay, also let me know Um, also let me know if you're hearing that. Cheryl says my volume's all the way up, I'm having trouble hearing you. Let me get the microphone a little bit closer, Cheryl. Let me see if that helps you out this morning. Um, Vanessa just got the text. Diane got the text. Okay, text is rolling out. I still haven't gotten it yet, but it's coming. So let's talk about setting some goals. Here's one of the first goals that I've set: I gotta move. I gotta move my body this month. And the first thing that I'm also going to do is stop drinking sugary coffee. I've got to quit drinking calorie-filled coffee. So I'm drinking black coffee this morning and it's not great, but I think I can get used to it. I put one Splenda and a little splash of cream in there just to take the edge off. But I don't know, that's a, that's a habit. That's one of my August habits, one of my goals for August. So we're going to talk about that when we talk about personal goals. But if you've got your notebooks, grab them. We're going to talk through 4 goals that I want you to think about for this month. And you might be newer in business, and so these goals might not all apply to you. So if you, um, if you're newer to business, don't get overwhelmed by these goals because they may not apply to you. But I want you to take the ones that will apply to you because there will be some that will apply to you. If you're a little bit more seasoned in business, all of these are going to apply to you. So I want to take what you need from the goal setting thing today, and then we're going to work on it. And I'm going to check in with you. I'm going to be your accountability buddy with your goals this month. I'm going to text you. You know, I'm going to— I'm going to— we're going to follow up in the group, but we're going to definitely work on these goals. Andre says, I need to get my body moving. I only drink black coffee. Okay, so you're one step ahead of me, Andre. I drink some really— it's not super sweet, but I need it to be sweet. Well, today is changing, but I gotta get my body moving. As my business has grown, I'm in this desk more hours of the day than I'm not, and I didn't used to be that way. Used to be all walking around, you know, the studio, the warehouse, doing things, um, very labor-intensive things. But my body is sitting most of the day now because I'm teaching, I'm training, I'm recording videos, I'm you know, going through that never-ending email box. So I've got to make some intentions to get my body moving this month to see if I can feel better. I haven't been feeling that great and I just want to feel better. So that's, that's on there. But I digress. Let's talk about our 4 goals. Okay. Your first goal that I want you to set today is your sales goal. Now, what I want you to do is I want you to look at August 2021, and I want you to see what sale— what your sales were for August 2021. If you haven't looked that up already, I want you to go look that up because, um, it's important. Now, I did not have the best month last month. I had a pretty good June, but I was down 23% for July, and I don't like that at all. And I didn't expect to be up because just the way the The world's been shifting this year, but I didn't expect to be down so much. And I think that if I would have really had a handle on what I needed to do each week, I probably wouldn't have ended down 23% for July. So I want you to go look and see what that number is for you for August. If you were in business last August, go look and see what that sales number is. Now, whether you have a goal to beat that or just meet that, like my goal is just to meet what I did last year. If I beat it, great, I'm excited, but I just want to get there. I want to get to the point where I was just hitting last year because this year has been down. I'm not down terribly. I'm down about 8% total for the year, but I took a hit last month and I don't want to continue that for the rest of the year. So I'm going to be very intentional about what that number is. Take that number and I want you to divide it into the weeks. So it looks like we've got We got 4 weeks, but I'm gonna call it 5 because we have a little bit— we have a little bit of extra time. Let me show you. I pulled my August calendar off the wall so we could talk about it, but we've got 1, 2, 3, 4— I'm gonna count this as 5, um, just because I can. But we've got some time, so I need you to know what your sales goal is. You don't have to tell me, I just want you to physically write it down, divide it into the weeks you have for the month, and let's make a weekly goal. If we can stay on top of it weekly, we're more likely to hit it at the end of the month. You can even go daily, like, what is my daily sales goal, um, so you can hit that. One other thing I want you to do when you think about last year, if you were in business last year, I want you to go look at your top 10 items that you sold. You can find it in Google Analytics. You could probably find the top 5 in Shopify Analytics, um, but I want you to look at your top 5 or 10 items that you sold. And what was surprising when I looked this up this morning was it was all fall. My top 10 items I sold last August were all fall-related designs and sweatshirts. Now, it's no surprise that in Texas it's still 105 outside, and I'm sure it was still probably 100 degrees last year, but people are people are ready for the transition even though it's still hot. We're buying school clothes, and when we buy school clothes for our kids right now, even though we live— if you live in the South, we're buying them fall clothes. We're not buying them summer clothes. Okay, so I want you to think about that. Think about whatever your business is. People are ready for fall. Okay, whether you do decor, DIY, apparel, food, whatever you do in your line of business, I want you to transition to fall this month. Okay, so look at that. Look to see what you were selling this month last year. That'll help you get a handle on where you should be at. So sales goal is number one. Number two is your subscription goal. So early on this year, I planned an increase this month. I planned 100% increase this month. Um, not knowing what the— what was going to happen in the world. The great thing is, um, I think that I, I think I have no problems making that. Um, we've been very consistent with retention. Our retention rate is in the high 90s every single month. So me adding in 100 subscribers this month, that's a goal. I've, I've got products, I'm gonna have to sell it. So that's something that I've got to set a goal. I'm going to add 100 subscribers this month to my subscription box. That was planned well over a year ago. The product is on the way, so I've got to make it happen. So I'm going to talk through a little bit of that too. So do you have subscription goals? Are you increasing your numbers this month? Are you feeling cancellations? What's the goal for your subscriptions? If you've already— if you're launching this month for the very first time, that's your goal. What's your launch goal? I need you to set the goal. So is your goal to fill the empty spots, and how are we going to do that? Is the goal to increase your subscriber number this month, or is your goal to launch this month? And if you're not there yet, you're not launching, you, you don't skip this goal. You're not there yet, but you need to have a subscription goal this month because we have to be working towards something. You don't have to do anything, but we want to backfill any cancellations if you're not launching, um, but Write down your subscription goals. Number 2, what's your subscription goals for this month? It has to be top of mind for us to make progress and move forward with it. Number 3, every single person watching right here, right now needs to have this goal. Audience building goal. Every single month, this has to be on our top 4 goals for the month. What is our audience building goal for this month? Is it increasing our email list, increasing our text lists, increasing our social media following, increasing our video views because we're about to launch next month? But every single person here watching needs to have an audience building goal. And you could say, yeah, I want to do all that, Sarah. Yeah, I want to increase my list. I want to increase my text list, my email list. I want more followers. I want more video views. You could say, yes, I want everything. And that's, that's not a lie. That's true. But what are we going to work on? What's tangible for us? We can say we want all of that, but if we don't ever put anything into our weekly plans, we're not making progress the way we want to. So what's your focus going to be this month? Okay. Is it building your email list? Is it building your following? Is it building your video views? I want you to pick one or two. And I want that to be your sole focus as you're going through audience building, because what we focus on grows. Okay? What we focus on grows. Right now I'm focusing on the videos. And if y'all haven't seen my video from this morning and you need a good laugh this Monday, go watch my TikTok or Instagram reel from this morning. I'm focusing on videos. Could I focus on email lists? Yes. Could I focus on text lists? Yes. But when we focus on too many things at once, the message gets muddled of what we're trying to do. We're trying to grow everything at once. So I want you to have a singular focus. Okay. When we think about audience building, if you are 30 days out, it should be email, text, or even video views of launching. If you're just in the middle of launches and you're just growing, it should be followers and video views, okay? So think about where you're at and what you need to move the needle right now, but I want you to focus on one thing this month. If you can focus on one audience building tactic, it doesn't mean you're not doing the other things, but you're really focused on one thing, you're gonna move that needle, okay? So let's move the needle and not just keep lobbing things out there hoping we're moving all the needles. Let's get focused on moving that one audience building needle this month. You're going to make an impact. And once you have that down this month, you're going to create habits this month. So if I'm focused on video this month, right, I've been working on my TikTok for the last like 8 or 9 days. I'm focused on video views. I'm getting better at it. Okay. I'm creating habits in my daily routine. And so those habits are going to They're going to work with me the rest of the month. Okay. So whatever that is, if you're focused on building your email list right now, we've got to be talking about opt-ins and lead magnets and pop-ups. We need to be doing those things and those need to be on the forefront of our mind this month. Like, my goal is to get 2,000 new people on my email list. I got to have a plan to do that. I can't just say, oh, here's my new opt-in. Yay! Hopefully I get 2,000 new people. I got to put that into plan. The problem is when we have so many ideas and goals, we're all over the place and we're not really moving the needle in one, one direction. So I want you to have one audience building goal this month. Okay. So that's number 3, audience building. Michelle, number 1 was your sales goal. Number 2 is your subscriber goal. Number 3 is your audience building goal. Okay, and here's the fourth one. We talked— we touched on this a little bit this morning. It's your personal goal. Okay, so I want you to have a personal goal this month. Um, for me, I told you I've got to get moving. I've not been feeling well, um, and I, I think it's because of a lot of different reasons, but, um, I want to I want to eat better, drink, you know, drink, not drink my calories every morning. I want— I need— I think my body needs to be moving more than it has been. And so that's my personal goal. Yes. Do I need to lose 30 pounds? Yes. Do I lose 50 pounds? Yes. But right now, that's a bigger goal than just one small goal, which is moving my body every day in a healthy way. And number 2, stop drinking my calories. Drinking black coffee this morning is fabulous. So those are my 2 personal goals for the month. If I can create a habit of moving every day and I can create a habit of not drinking the fluffy coffee every day, that's going to help me move into September. And then I can create a new goal where it's not this big overwhelming goal. OK, and that's the same thing with each one of these 4 categories, is that if you create a small goal Focus on that for the whole month. You're actually creating a habit, whether that's in business or in your personal life. And so if we can create the habits, the habits will propel us into next month and then we can focus on new goals and create more habits. Okay. So I pulled my calendar down because I want to— I really want to talk through this with you realistically. And I saw someone asked about this calendar. This calendar is in my shop. I had these custom made. I have hundreds of them if you need a calendar. They are not dated, so if you're buying a calendar right now, you can use it for the next year because you're putting your own date in. And they are an 18 by 24, so it's pretty tall. Um, but I want to talk to you about— I want you to pull your August calendar. If you've got a calendar out, I want you to pull it out. I want you— let's talk through the month a little bit. So when I start— I started looking at this this morning because I've got sales goals right? Number 1 is sales goals. So if I am going to make my sales goals, I've got to make sure that I have my, um, I have a plan for my sales promotions for the month. Okay, so I put some ideas that I was— when I was looking at what I was selling, I thought, okay, I've got to create some promotions. I put those in purple. This one, this is my subscriber goals. I've got to do a promo right here, new subscriber promo. I'm going to run it this week. It ties into my box opening for the month. So this is going to be my big push for new subscribers. I'm going to put it right here on the calendar. Then I thought, you know, what would be really great to do is an end of summer sale. I got tank tops, I got beach towels. If I keep that stuff too much longer, it's going to be sitting here until next summer. So I really need to liquidate that. And so I was thinking that I could probably put my end of summer sale up here this week. We could pull some stuff out, do some deep discounts, clear out— clearance out our end of summer sale. And then I thought about other two things. So I told you that fall was what I sold— my top 10 items from last year in August was all my fall stuff. Well, shoot, I gotta get on making a fall collection. I gotta, I gotta get some things ready. I'm not ready. My brain's not ready for fall. I'm still hot. I'm not ready for fall, but people are ready, so I need to work on that. The other thing that I really want to do this year that I didn't do last year was a game day collection. We're getting ready for fall sports. Football, all that great stuff. So I want to do a game day collection. So when I think about how am I going to make sales this August, I am going to go ahead and throw in maybe a game day collection here, and then I'll be ready to start lobbing in fall. Not this week because I'm going to reserve this for my new subscriber promotion, but maybe this week I'm gonna put in fall. Okay, so this is what now what my sales marketing promotions look like for the month. And if you have a plan, you're much more likely to get things done. So now that I know next week I gotta do some game day designs, I have to get on that. I have to get printing, I have to get some things ordered. I need to do that. So this is what I want you to look at. I want you to look at your month and how are you gonna make sales? Okay, that's your sales goal. How am I gonna hit that sales goal this month? I don't wanna wait till the end of the month and realize I'm down 23% again like I did I did last month and think, well, there's nothing else I can do this month. I've done everything I can. If we can tackle it week by week, we're going to be okay. So then number 2, my subscription goals. I'm going to run my subscription promo this week and see how, see how that goes. Um, audience building, I don't have that on here, but I've got to make a plan for my audience building. Um, that's going to be more of a habit, but personal goals are on here too. I think it's so important as women, um, and even in men too, especially if you have children, that you give yourself the time and space you need personally. So lime green is, is where I need some time away from work. Okay, I got soccer mom duties here. We've got a tournament in Dallas, um, and I need to make sure that my schedule is clear for that so that I can be soccer mom that weekend. My son's first football game of the season is actually our rival game, and so I need to make sure that I got all hands on deck to be football mom this day. Um, and then my— both my kids are in the high school band, and we have our first rivalry varsity game on Friday night. I gotta be band mom, okay? I gotta be a band mom that day. So I need to go ahead and put those on the schedule so that I'm not overwhelmed in those days when I really want to be mom. I want to be a soccer mom, I want to be a football mom, I want to be a band mom, okay? And so I need to put those into my schedule right now before my whole month gets filled with things. And then I got a girls trip coming up, got a girls trip I'm looking very much forward to at the end of the month. School starts, it's going to be a hectic month. But if I plan it out and I feel like I'm making progress week to week, the last week of the month while I'm on a girls trip, I'm not stressed out about how I'm going to make my goals for the month because I didn't wait till the end of the month to get there. Okay, so, um, I'm going on a girls trip and, um, let me hang out with Cindy at the beach and I cannot wait, Cindy. But I need you to look at your calendar today, and I want you to set some goals, and I want you to be intentional about what you're doing this month. You know, I can so relate to this. Carrie said, I need to make new goals for the month. Summer was so meh. I had big plans this summer to chill and to not work and all the things, and I didn't do any of that. I didn't do a lot of chill. I worked my butt off this summer because I wasn't planned correctly. And I know that about myself. And I'm not a super planner, but I have to plan enough to run two very successful businesses. And so I just want you to pull your calendar out today and I want you to take these four goals. And I really want you to look at your calendar and make a plan, make a plan for your sales. Make a plan for your subscriptions. Make a plan for audience building. And you don't have to put that on the calendar. But if you have a singular focus on audience building, it's going to keep you from feeling overwhelmed by trying to do all the things. And then I want you to have a plan for personal goals, days off, places you can be a mom, whatever that is for you, places that you can be a dog mom, a dog parent, places that you just need some me time. I took some time over the weekend. It was technically for work, but it was for me too. I'm really behind in writing and getting this book together, and my deadline is looming. And I just left for the weekend, locked myself in a hotel. I made TikToks, and I, and I was working on the book. And sometimes we have to do that. So I just want you to be mindful that we have to plan some things out in order for us to keep pressing forward. There's no better time than today. It's a brand new week. It's a brand new month. We can really kind of revitalize ourselves by creating a plan, and then we're not just running around trying to do everything. All right, so I'm going to follow up with you. I'm going to follow up with you in text. This month. I'm going to follow up with you weekly inside Launch Your Box. So, so today I'm going to ask you to just tell me you've got your goals and you can share them in the group if you want to, or you can just say sales goal check, you know, subscription goal check or doesn't apply, audience building check. You can tell me what you're doing for audience building. You can tell me your personal goal or you can just put check. I want you to make sure you have these goals set for the month and just take an hour today. Literally, when you get off this live, sit down, take an hour and map out your month. You're going to feel so much better. You're going to feel like you're in control and you're going to feel like you're making progress. And if video views, growing your following is one of your goals, we've got a great training this month, actually this week with Susan Bradley. We've been talking a lot about video. We've been talking about Instagram Reels. We've been talking about TikTok inside Launch Your Box today or this week. She's going to show you how you can take those videos and turn them into ads to continue to grow your audience. So let's get going. Yes, Missy, refocus August 1st, no matter what happened last month. I think I said it last month too. Whatever crap happened last month stays in last month. Okay. Whatever didn't go right last month stays in last month. New start, new fresh. It's August. Let's get some goals and let's get moving forward. Okay, I'll see you guys soon. Have a great week.