#036 - The Power of Setting 90-Day Goals

Welcome back to the Hit Splits. This is Shelly Hits and today we're going to talk about the power of setting 90 day goals. Now I know some of you when I talk about goal setting, you get really excited and this is your thing. That's me. I love this. I love setting goals, I love planning, I love all the planner stuff, you know, the office supplies. Some of you just almost go, you know, break into hives. Like you just you or you just get, you know, it, it upsets you because you set goals and then you haven't reached them and it hasn't been a good experience for you, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So today, whatever your experience has been with 90 day goals or goal setting in general, I want to encourage you to look at it again with fresh eyes today. So I have been doing this myself and teaching this for a long time. I have a video, very detailed training on 90 day goal setting called Plan It Day and it's available only right now in the bookmarketing shop.com. so if you want to get a hold of that, it's very comprehensive. It's, I mean I've gotten such great feedback about it. It does take time to really go through and so you know, you have to devote a few hours to doing it. But it is good and it really gives you that foundation that you can then use forever. Like I've been doing this for so long now. I don't need to look at the training, I just, I do it almost instinctively. Do you, do you know what I mean? Like when you've done something so many times, like when you get into drive your car, there are just things that you do instinctively. You don't even think about it anymore. Like when you were first learning to drive. So if you're just still struggling with goal setting, just know that as you stay consistent with will become easier. We also have, if you're a Christian Book Academy member in the orientation module there's a lesson called Clarity the click I can't talk right now. Clarity call. And that's a really shortened version of what I teach on Planet Day. And so you can get it done in a lot shorter time, like maybe an hour or 45 minutes to an hour and you can even do it shorter than that. You don't have to watch the video, you can just take the worksheet and go through it and set your goals from there. And I also give you.

Just some sample 90 day goals depending where you're at in the Kingdom writers path. So those are the resources I have for you. But I was just setting my quarterly goals recently, and I have annual goals, like goals that I hope to. To reach for the whole year, and. And those are, you know, bigger goals and then breaking it down quarterly. One of the things I think that gets us disappointed the most with goal setting is setting goals based on numbers and things we can't control. So if you set a goal based on the number of books that you will sell, and then you get to the end of the quarter and you look back and you haven't sold that number of books, that would feel hard right now. I'm not saying you never set any numbers based on goals or any goals based on numbers. I mix that up. I do have a goal based on the number of Christian Book Academy members we want to see come into the academy this year. It's a goal that actually we've had for several years. And, you know, the last several years, we have not reached that goal yet. And so I just, I keep rolling it over and it's a number. It's a goal that I feel like God has given me. The number is based on a scripture, you know, and so. But I don't feel like the Lord told me necessarily it was going to be 2019 that, that I reached that goal. That's when he gave that number to me. Numbers can be tricky, so I just hold it loosely. I hold it loosely. I'm still working towards that goal. But what I encourage you to do more so than set goals based on numbers, is to set goals based on your actions. So another one of my goals for this year is to do more search engine optimization. If you've heard me talk about marketing before, there are three main ways you can find new people for your audience. SEO search engine optimization is one of them. And we're going to be having a new training coming out in February 2023 for you on this, so stay tuned. If it's past 2023, then it's probably already been released and you can just email US supportraining authors.com for that link. And so with marketing, you can use SEO, which is blog posts, you know, that are. Have keywords people are searching for. It can be YouTube that has certain keyword phrases. It can be Pinterest. The second big way is other people's audiences. So this is podcast interviews, hosting collaborative events of any kind, and so forth. The third main option is paid ads. And so those are really the main things with all of marketing. And, you know, you get to choose. You get to choose which option you want to focus on. But I've been focusing a lot on other people's audiences with the conferences with, you know, different things. And so I thought, you know, I want to start again, you know, let me go back to my roots. Because SEO is how I first started my business, if you don't know. I had a website that was all about, you know, exercise and I was a physical therapist at the time and it actually paid our mortgage and that's how we first got into online marketing and all the things. But I know, I know about SEO, but it has changed a lot over the years and I want to get back into it. I want to see if, you know, we can get some blog posts that start getting in the search engines and that people are able to find us that way. I know we do have one blog post about.

I think it's 100 plus places for Christian authors to market their book. And that one get, you know, people will email us and they'll sign up for our, our email list and, you know, let us know that they found us through that blog post. And so I, I want to do more of that this year. So my goal is an action goal. It is to research, write and publish three keyword rich blog posts targeting Christian writers.

A quarter. So that means one blog post a month. And that feels doable to me if I try to do that every week. Like I am doing a podcast every week, but that podcast, and it does go on the blog, but that's not like a keyword rich blog post. That takes a lot more time and energy. So, but anyways, can you see, like at the end of the quarter I can look back and say, are those three blog posts published? If, if yes, I can say, yeah, I met my goal, right? And so it's an action oriented goal. Another goal of mine is to record and publish 12 podcast episodes on our public podcast, Kingdom Writers. Now this hits Bliss podcast. I record a lot more episodes, but I'm not setting a goal on how many. I mean, right now I'm trying to record something once, Monday through Friday, but you know, it just, it'll just depend. But for our main like public podcast, I want to at least have one a week. And so that would be 12 podcasts for the quarter. So I can look back and say, okay, did I record and publish those 12 podcast episodes? If yes, I hit that goal. And then I also want to host a one day conference in March. Now this will all depend on how things go. And sometimes with these bigger events, I have to Move them around. But.

My goal is to do it in March. So that would be for quarter one as well. And.

So I can look back at the end of the quarter. Did I host that conference? Now, I'm not saying that I'm having so many new people subscribe to my email list or so many people sign up to CBA because of that conference. I'm just saying that I'm going to host it. So if you can, if you consistently take the right actions or the actions that are going to, you know, build momentum for your book. So your goal could be to sit down and write 15 minutes a day, five days a week. If you look back on your quarter and you've sat down and you've written 15 minutes a day, five days a week. And like, I would encourage you to have a little calendar or a little thing that you can check it off. They have little habit trackers and you can just check it off and look back over the quarter. Did I meet my goal? I can almost guarantee you if you meet that goal, you will have made progress, right? You may even have a first draft of your book. And typically in 90 days, we say you can write your first draft. And so what if you start writing.

Action oriented goals, you know, instead of focusing on just numbers of what you want or the big goal of I want to publish my book. Yes, of course. Maybe that's your goal for the year. I'm going to publish my book. But then what are some smaller action oriented goals that you can set for this quarter? For quarter one now, we're already partway through January. That's okay. You know, if you have it set, you're going to set one. No, and, and you know, you would just, instead of 12 podcast episodes, it might be 10 or, you know, whatever. I mean, but if your goal is to get booked on more podcasts, then set a goal of how many podcasts you will pitch. So I wouldn't suggest saying, I'm going to have five new podcast interviews. Instead, make your goal action oriented. I'm going to pitch, you know, five new podcast hosts every week. See the difference? It's a mindset difference too, because when your goal is action oriented, then it actually fuels you into action. When it says, I'm going to have five new podcast interviews, that can also, like, bring up fear. It can bring up like, I don't know, just all sorts of emotions of, oh, but I've already gotten rejected from these many podcasts or, you know, whatever. It's a numbers game when it comes to podcast Interviews, you just have to keep pitching. And so if you have your action goal being I'm going to pitch five people a week, every week, no matter what, then I guarantee you're going to get some yeses, you're going to get booked. And if you haven't yet, if you have a published book and you haven't yet gotten interviewed on our new podcast, Christian Writer Success Stories, please, please, please go do that. You can email us supportrainingauthors.com if you need that link of how to do that. But that's one that you can get booked and, and get interviewed on this quarter. So anyways, I hope that this was encouraging for you. Take a deep breath, have a business meeting with God, pray and ask the Lord what are my goals for this quarter for my writing, publishing or marketing and how can I make those more action oriented? Yes, I still have, you know, one main.

Like number oriented goal. And for me that big goal is growing Christian Book Academy right now. But for you, it could be growing your email list, it could be, um, it could be selling so many books, but instead of fixating on that, which a lot of times we can't control, instead write goals that you can. So those action goals, I know no matter what happens, I can still write those SEO blog posts, I can still publish or record and publish those podcast episodes, and I can still host that one day conference. No matter what else happens. And regardless of how many people do sign up for Christian Book Academy through other promotions or other things, I know I can do that. And that will continue to help build our audience, build the momentum, all of those things. So I hope this was encouraging to you and I hope that you have.

That you set aside some time to sit down and really look at your quarterly goals if you've already set them or, or take some time to plan with God again. If you want a resource, check out my Plan it day training in thebookmarketingshop.com it's a awesome comprehensive goal setting training and it also helps you to center on Christ. And then if you're a Christian Book Academy member, you can check out our clarity call training in the orientation module. All right, I will talk to you next time. Bye bye.