Goal setting

March 27, 2021 by katmillar Leave a Comment

What I Wish I’d Known When I First Started Out In Business

In business, we all make mistakes. I’ve made hundreds… and some were absolute pearlers.

When I first started out in business 18-years ago, I didn’t have any qualifications, business knowledge, or money. I just had a lot of enthusiasm, drive, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed.

I was much younger, more stubborn, and ignorant back then. I look back and see how much faster I could have propelled my growth if only I knew what I know now.

Making mistakes is normal and it’s one of the ways we learn and grow. But there are some mistakes that are unnecessary and waste precious time, money, and energy.

So I’m going to share with you how to avoid some of the mistakes that can trip you up and fail and what to do instead.

Here are the top 5 things I wish I’d know when I first started out in business…

1 – The Value Of Investing In Coaching and Mentoring

A mistake I made when I started out, was that I didn’t value other people’s input who had been in business longer than me.

If someone asks why I’m successful – it’s hard work, a strong work ethic and dedication etc. but the number 1 reason absolutely comes down to investing in coaching and mentoring.

When I was younger, I was so stubborn and naive.

I started my first job in insurance when I was 17 as an office junior (earning a whopping $17,000 a year)

I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do, I just wanted freedom when I left high school.

When I was 25, I left my office job when I decided to become a personal trainer. I didn’t know anything about sales or marketing.

I could have seeked help from the experienced personal trainers at the gym I worked at. I could have taken them for coffee to ask for their advice. But I didn’t. Maybe I thought I knew everything. ?

I wish I knew the power of mentorship and coaching back then.

One of my favourite mentors says the fastest way to succeed in business is to attach yourself to a fast-moving vehicle, and do what they’re doing. Stand on the shoulders of giants and don’t try and reinvent the wheel.

Once I realised the power that they bring you, I’ve always had multiple coaches and mentors.

Some people say to just have one mentor or one mentor per year. Everyone’s different, it’s totally dependent on your style, personality, and character. I invest in multiple. I’m coach-greedy.

Without mentoring and coaching, I would not be where I am today.

The CEO of Google has a coach. Every great athlete, ca,tor or actress will have people around them that are supporting them and coaching them. If they need coaching and mentoring, then so do we.

2 – The Value Of Networking

When I started out in business I was so such an introvert. I hid behind my laptop and my phone. In fact, some people that knew me back 10 to 12 years ago, would say they knew a completely different person.

A lot of people who knew me back then have been telling me lately that they have seen my transformation. Anyone can change. Even if you are an introvert, you can get out there and network. I never used to network, in fact, I hated it.

When I moved from New Zealand to London, I realised that I desperately needed to improve my communication skills and my confidence, so I read books on the plane. I bought books on how to become confident. And I learned one very important thing. I learned that you don’t get confident from reading books.

You become confident by getting out there and confronting your fears. Confidence is a by-product of being competent.

When you’re facing the fears of things that challenge you, you’re moving to your next level and outside of your comfort zone. When you do that, confidence comes like a gift and a reward for doing hard things.

Networking for a lot of you is not easy, and you feel like you’re not good at it. I network a lot and some people are really bad at it! They are not present, not listening, and not hearing what you have to say. They are half distracted.

You only get good at networking by doing it. When I started networking, I would hang around the food table because it was my comfort. It was like a blanket. Now, I try and meet as many people as I can.

I don’t give out business cards. That’s one mistake people make. I was at an event recently and I went home with a stack of business cards. I don’t have business cards and haven’t had them for eight years. I don’t have them because I like making contact with the other person.

When I was a personal trainer, I handed out hundreds and hundreds of business cards. Let’s be honest, most business cards end up in the bin. I only keep people’s business cards if I make a connection with the person.

If you’re not putting yourself out there, and networking, now is the time to do it. Because of the pandemic, people are now getting out and the energy is amazing. I can feel my energy has shifted so much since I started going to more live events.

Have a look at Meetup.com or Eventbrite as there are a bunch of events happening. Challenge yourself to get out there and network. The only way you get better is by doing it.

3 – The Value Of Investing

My third mistake was not realising the value of investing in my business. I used to try and hold on to money, whereas I’ve come to the point where I invest, because that’s the way to grow.

I invest in 3 main things – marketing, coaching and education.

You don’t get wealthy by saving money. You get wealthy by getting your money working for you. And so, I love investing money into marketing, like Facebook ads.

I also love putting money into education. I’ve spent over $130,000 on education, not on formal education, but through learning specific skills.

Back when I started in business, I wish I had known the value of investing in marketing, sales copywriting, and coaching skills. I never used to think of copywriting as an essential business skill. I just thought I could put up a post and people were going to sign up.

Copywriting is one of the most undervalued, underrated skills, but being able to write well is one of the most important skills.

Knowing how to craft your language in a way that is compelling and attracts your right clients is a skill and it’s one that is worth investing in.

In the past, I’ve printed off flyers but now I mostly do all my marketing online because it enables you to track and see the ROI on your marketing dollar and investment.

If you’re starting out in business or you are struggling in business, you always need to be investing.

4 – The Value Of Daily Income Generating Activities

All of us do low-value tasks. We are human. Our brain is wired to take the path of least resistance.

Our brain is wired to keep us safe, so it doesn’t easily accept change. We naturally want to follow the path of least resistance. It’s really natural for us to do the easy things.

You know you need to go to the gym, but you stay watching Netflix. It’s normal so please don’t beat yourself up. This is not about making you feel guilty.

I do want to challenge you and encourage you to spend a good proportion of your time on income-generating activities. Ideally, do them every morning.

Instead of waking up and consuming on social media, create something. Delete apps off your phone if you need to. I have recently deleted the email app off my phone so I don’t waste time on it.

One of the easiest ways to change a habit is to just remove it. I always taught my clients this when I was a weight loss coach. At the time I was helping people change their habits. I would tell them that they needed to remove everything unhealthy from their house, so they didn’t get tempted.

If you’ve got a problem with sugar, don’t put things with sugar into your shopping trolley. Make up healthy packs of veggies or nuts and keep them in your bag. Don’t end up buying crappy food because you’ve gotten stuck out somewhere without being prepared.

It’s the same thing with business. Remove all things that take you away from income-generating activities. Are you tracking your sales conversion rates? Are you showing up and giving value rather than just consuming?

Entrepreneurs show up and give value and help others solve problems. Entrepreneurs do income-generating activities.

I wish I knew that earlier because I spent way too long faffing about making my PowerPoint slides look amazing.

5 -The Value Of Fast Decision Making

Do you fall into the trap of perfectionism?

None of us wants to make mistakes in our work. We don’t want to fail.

But overcoming perfectionism is not about doing rushed or sloppy work. There’s a difference between perfectionism and excellence.

Striving for excellence shows you have a good work ethic and strength of character.

Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. And the reality is, nothing is ever perfect. ⠀⠀

Getting something out there, (even if it’s not ‘just right’) is better than it sitting on your laptop or in your head, not helping anyone.⠀ ⠀⠀

I’ve never done a Facebook Live or webinar or an event and been 100% happy with how it’s gone. There are always things to improve.

If we want to grow as entrepreneurs, we need to value speed. Perfectionism can be a handbrake on our success. It keeps us from accelerating. We don’t have time to be afraid of mistakes.

As one of my mentors says, get it out there ‘quick and dirty’ and learn from it.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of delaying our decisions and let things pile up. Then we get overwhelmed by how much we need to do.

I was challenged in an event recently to write down 5 decisions we’ve been putting off, and decide when we’re going to do it.

I calculated that if I live until the average age, I have approximately 2000 weeks left of my life. Only 2000 weeks! I plan on living longer than this, but none of us are promised a set amount of time. So I don’t want to waste a second of the time I have left on the planet.

What have you been putting off? I invite you to write down one thing NOW and make a decision on when you’re going to do it.

Want help to grow your business?

Do you need help to get more right-fit clients, free up more time and create a profitable, lifestyle-friendly business that you LOVE?

I offer a free 45-minute business strategy session, where you’ll get personalised guidance, direction, clarity, and a clear action plan.

I’ll walk you through a proven business growth roadmap and personalise it to show you exactly what you need to do to hit your financial and freedom goals.

I’ve helped people get fully booked with clients, double their income, increase their conversion rates, fill their events, and more. I would love to help you navigate to your next level.

Apply for your free strategy session here

January 21, 2021 by katmillar Leave a Comment

3 Things Your Business Game Plan Needs For A Successful 2021

Having a business game-plan sets the course for your quarter and your year.

Without it, you don’t have a roadmap to travel on so you can get off track and lost… With it, you have more clarity, direction and inspiration.

There’s a way to design your plan so that it feels exciting, and there’s a way that feels depressing…

A study done by the University of Scranton found that 92% of New Year’s Resolutions fail. Why?

Because most people don’t have a successful plan to go with their goals.

We all need a clear plan for our business. Creating a clear business plan at the beginning of the year will help you achieve greater business success in 2021.

Today I’m sharing with you a powerful process that you can follow to create a successful business this year.

Here are 3 things your business needs to create a successful 2021 game-plan…

1 – Have A Clear Vision

The first essential element you need is a clear vision.

I recommend that your vision is always based on your ‘why’.

A powerful vision has a few elements to it…

1. Match your vision up with the identity of the person that you want to become.

I’ve done goal setting with clients for years and I’ve noticed the difference between people who match their vision with their future desired identity and those who don’t.

When I first started out as a personal trainer in 2001, I would get people to set goals around their weight.

After a while I realised that what was more powerful for many people is attaching their vision to an identity, for example being the kind of person who consistently goes to the gym, maintains a certain dress or pants size, does a marathon, or competes in a contest.

Make your goals line up with who you want to be. This is super powerful.

Think about the identity of the business owner you want to be.

Do you want to be a thought leader? Do you want to disrupt your industry? Do you want to be a fully booked coach? Do you want to be more courageous?

I’ve been a goal-setter since I was about 8-years-old. My first memory of setting goals was having a big scrapbook with a picture of dogs on the front of it. I would sit there on a Saturday afternoon and write my goals.

My goals back then were to have a million dollars, have a pet gorilla and own a lolly shop. Goals have always been a big part of what I do hahaha…

But when I was about 20, I started listening to Tony Robbins and that was when I really started writing my goals properly.

2. Break your goals into milestones

The second important factor is to break down your goals into achievable milestones.

This is a big game-changer.

If you want to be a guest speaker on a podcast, for example, you want to think through the steps you need to take to achieve this. What steps will you take to make the goal possible?

If your goal is to do 50 Facebook Lives this year, write out your plan for how you are going to do it. For example, you could lay out your steps of doing 1 Facebook Live a week to hit your goal.

3. Set Defining Words And Intentions

Every year I set 3 words for the year and these are the characteristics that I want to crown my year with.

In 2019, my words were discipline, fun and courage. And these words really shaped who I was in that year.

These aren’t tangible goals, but for example, if I’m the character trait of ‘disciplined’ then I will get my goals. If I’m courageous, then I’ll do consistent Facebook Lives and run more webinars and I will set my income goal higher.

In 2020, my words were explosion, ease and example. My life kind of exploded in the best possible way. Ease didn’t really happen as much as I would have liked, but that’s coming haha.

My 3 words for 2021 are fruitfulness, fulfillment and freedom.

Fruitfulness is being fruitful and having lots of self-care time, nature walks and taking time away from the business. However, when I am working in the business I’m really focused and productive.

Fulfillment is making sure you’re fulfilled in what you do. Tony Robbins says that success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.

Fulfillment is so important, especially if you have a massive vision and you’re in this for the long haul. Fulfillment comes when you are aligned with your values.

So you want to build your goals around your values.

Do you want to know what you value?

Look at your bank statements and see what are you spending your money on, because what we spend our money on is what we value.

Look at your home. What is on your walls, your bookshelf?

Look at your Google history.

All of these things tell us what our values are. And you can have different personal values to your business values, but they have to line up with the core of who you are and who you want to be.

One of my business values is radical resilience. Being resilient means I’m not going to stress out when things go wrong. I’m not going to react when technology isn’t playing the game. I might get a bit annoyed in the moment, but I’m not going to let it ruin my whole emotional state.

Authentic expression and creativity is another value I hold. I choose to show up, be real, and not be perfect. I share my vulnerability and my struggles to my communities.

I’m listening to a great book called ‘Extreme Ownership ‘and it’s the concept of radical ownership and responsibility. It’s owning our stuff and not being stuck in blame and excuses.

Extreme ownership is taking 100% responsibility for everything in terms of my thoughts, my actions, my beliefs, my values and my behaviours.

If you haven’t revisited your values and aligned them with your vision, I recommend that you take time to do this. Our vision can change and evolve over time, so it’s good to revisit them.

My vision is to equip, support and inspire millions of people to live on purpose, doing what they love, creating and contributing from a place of abundance and freedom. My vision is to help people be authentic and live the fullest expression of their potential.

Sometimes we need to grow into our vision. My vision is to inspire millions of people, but you start where you are at. Your vision needs to be inspiring, aspirational and energising.

If you haven’t revisited your vision wall recently, then I recommend that you do that. Put your vision up on your wall. Have it actually in your face and then make your decisions based on your vision.

Your mission then, is how you are going to outwork your vision. My mission is supporting and equipping business owners and leaders to do what they love and feel they are called to do. It’s to encourage business owners and leaders to use their unique brilliance and make a significant impact in the world.

When you have your vision and mission, then you can work out your delivery methods for how you will get your vision into the world.

2 – Have An Up-levelling Mastermind

Having a mastermind small group is one of my favourite things for enjoyment and group.

The whole purpose of the group is that it’s designed so that everyone grows into the best version of themselves and they do it together.

Doing things together is more powerful than everyone doing things individually. I love to do visioning with other people.

My sister Vicki and I do a regular summit. We call it our ‘KV’ (cavey!) Summit. We get together either in Australia or New Zealand, usually at a holiday resort or Air BnB.

If Vick is over we usually go to the Hunter Valley or Port Stephens. We spend 3 days together visioning, planning, goal setting and breaking things down into milestones at our summit.

This year we did our summer online because we couldn’t travel.

I also did a vision day with my partner Josh. We went to a beautiful park with a view and we just sat together and did the wheel of life. We talked about what we wanted, and did some coaching together which was awesome.

I did a mastermind with a couple of friends at my house also, where we literally spent 12 hours, visioning and planning. One person would take the hot seat and the other 2 would coach. It was incredible.

2020 was a huge year, and it was so good to sit back and re-vision what I wanted 2021 to look like.

I had to up-level my vision and doing it in a mastermind is so great, as everybody knows what each business vision is, and what goals they have.

Being in an up-levelling mastermind helps you stay accountable. You inspire each other and collaborate to bring out the best in each other. When you spend time with people who are going places and are reaching the heights, it’s going to rub off on you.

Who are you surrounding yourself with?

Are they influencers and high achievers? Do they want to push themselves? Do they want to hold themselves to a higher standard and potential?

Do they consistently want to meet you and not just have random meetups?

Are they committed to being reliable and supportive?

Having a supporting mastermind group is a game changer.

The great author Napoleon Hill talks extensively about the power of being in a mastermind and how it’s been such a key to his success. He is one of the world’s greats, so he’s worth listening to.

3 – Have A Focused Action Plan

Having a focused action plan where you know what you’re doing every day and every week and also where you’re heading towards that quarter is such a game-changer.

An action plan makes sure you’re not waking up in the morning and opening your laptop and getting lost in the sea of the internet and getting sucked into the internet black hole.

I moved house recently and I’ve created a bit of a different space in my office and set up my environment in a way where I don’t come into my little office until I’ve done all my morning self-care routine.

My morning self-care routine gives me a fresh mind and I can then sit down and know exactly what I’m doing each day.

I plan and schedule my day the night before. It sounds so boring, but we have to know what we’re doing, otherwise we will just waste so much time.

I’ve wasted so much time getting sucked into the internet and lost down rabbit holes. Instead of creating, we ended up consuming and it’s such a waste of our talent and our ability.

Without a game plan we become lost. Sports players have a game plan and they know if they are clear on their plan, then just need to execute it. The coach develops the plan for them.

To make your action plan, I recommend that you start with a brain dump of your priorities that you want to do for this year. It could be that you want to do more online networking, run more workshops, learn and develop certain skills like increasing your copywriting or sales and marketing skills.

Once you’ve got your priorities, then work out how you are going to measure your KPI’s. You might say you are going to spend 2 hours a week doing a Facebook course, learning how to create Facebook ads and test and measure them.

Or you might want to write 50 articles in 2021. So you set the big goal and then you set the numbers and steps to get you there.

An example is if I want to earn $100,000 in 2021 and you break that down by financial quarters. Then you have to earn $25k per quarter. So you would then work out how many clients you need each quarter to earn your target income.

Typically the year starts out slower and the growth increases throughout the year, so you might be a little bit more conservative in the first quarter. You then work out what you need to do to get those clients. That may be doing a certain amount of webinars or it may mean you need to create 5 new freebies and funnels with nurture sequences.

You work out the numbers so you have a focused action plan, so you know exactly what you are going to be doing on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Focused action plans help you keep on target with your goals and vision.

I’ve tried so many goal setting methods over the years, and I believe the 3 best things you can do straight away to ensure you are successful in 2021 is:

1 – Have a clear vision

2 – Have an up-levelling mastermind

3 – Have a focused action plan

If you’d like help creating a successful year in your business, my next free event is happening on the 6th of February, 2021.

I’ll be sharing how to write compelling copy that is going to help you attract new clients in 2021.

You can check it out here

See you over there,

Kat

P.S Want to chat one-on-one instead? You can book in for a free strategy session here.

July 17, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

3 Essential Keys For Getting Fully Booked With Clients

Wondering how to get more clients?

In this training I share with you how to get fully booked with ideal clients who are reliable, consistent and pay you what you are worth.

Over the years I’ve been so blessed to work with hundreds of business owners, and I’ve noticed there are 3 main problems that many business owners face, when it comes to getting fully booked with clients.

1 – Lack of Strategy

The first problem is a lack of strategy.

Many business owners don’t have a clear, effective roadmap to put all the pieces together and join the dots. They find themselves busy, but not productive.

When you have an effective strategy with clear action steps, you can create a consistent pipeline of clients and a reliable income stream.

2 – Lack of Skills

The second problem is not having the skills. If you’re not regularly attracting paid clients, it’s probably because you haven’t developed the right business skills.

These skills include packaging, offer creation, marketing, content creation, funnels, selling, presenting, and technology.

If you’re willing to learn these skills, you will fast-track your results, so you can have a profitable business doing what you love.

3 – Lack of Support

The third problem is a lack of support. Without support from the right community and mentor, many people struggle to make it in business.

There’s nothing more valuable in accelerating your business growth than receiving clarity and guidance from an expert who has achieved what you want to achieve and believes in you.

This includes having a community, coaching (getting feedback on your business from an expert) and clarity.

Today I’m sharing about the first main problem, which is a lack of strategy.

Lack of Strategy

Having the right strategy is key for your business.

Do you ever find yourself sitting at your desk and staring at a blank screen, struggling to create content?

Do you try a little bit of one person’s ideas, then a little bit of another, and feel like you’re busy, but you still don’t have enough paid clients?

Maybe you’ve put out some free content like videos, but you’re not getting the results that you want?

Without an over-arching business strategy, you can find yourself busy, but not productive.

There are 3 areas that need to be addressed when building your business strategy.

1 – Predictable Pathway

You need a predictable pathway that’s going to give you a pipeline of clients, that’s going to give you a reliable source of income and a steady stream of clients.

Having a predictable pathway is having specific things that you do step-by-step, every day, week, month and quarter.

This way you can guarantee that if you do these specific tasks, and you follow this path every single week, then you are guaranteed to get clients.

If you’d like a free checklist of things that I suggest that you do every day, every week, every month and every quarter to actually build your business to get more clients, you can download it here.

Part of your predictable pathway may be you are going to get a certain amount of discovery calls booked in every single week. Or it could be that you are doing a certain amount of webinars or workshops every week, month or quarter.

With this you know that if you do this output each week, month, quarter and you know that you have a 50% conversion rate, you know that from 10 discovery calls, you will get 5 new clients.

Your strategy might be to run a webinar once a month, and a free workshop once a quarter. Based on your conversion rates and sending out a certain amount of emails and posting a certain amount of social posts or social ads, then from this you can work out your predictable client signups.

When you follow a predictable pathway, you can get consistent income within your business.

2 – Personalised Plan

What a lot of people get wrong is that they try and follow all sorts of mixed information and they are doing what I call ‘pick and mix’. They’ll use a little of one person’s method and then they’ll try another person’s method.

You need to think, ‘What is the best plan for me and my business?’ Don’t do a podcast because someone else is, and don’t write a book because someone else is.

You want to make sure that your plan is personalised for three different things…

1 – Personalise Your Plan According to Your Unique Personal Preferences

It is really important that you enjoy your business and there is a really big difference between people who are doing what they love in their business and people that are not. This is where identifying your unique personal preferences is important.

What are your unique personal preferences? You might not like showing up on video, but you might be a great writer. Instead of forcing yourself to be on video initially, determine to write a blog once a week.

I personally feel we all need to show up on video, so if you are struggling with that, I recommend working on that area. But in the meantime, you might have be a really good writer, so determine to show up every single week and write a blog.

If you love doing Facebook Lives, but don’t like writing, pay someone to transcribe your video into a blog for you. Choose what you love to do in your business that you are good at and outsource the rest.

I do recommend if you’ve been doing one-on-one coaching, that you definitely consider overcoming whatever your block is, so you can start doing one-to-many.

Your personalised plan might start with one-on-ones and when you get to 10 clients, then you will start doing one-to-many. Or your plan could be that you are going to research for 3-6 months and then you will start to create an online course.

Your plan needs to be tailored to suit your preferences of what you enjoy, so your business does not become a burden around your neck.

I love creating content and videos for my online course. I love updating my content. I love running webinars, plus online and live workshops. I don’t love writing blogs, so I get my Facebook Lives transcribed for me into blogs.

2 – Personalise Your Plan According to Your Ideal Clients’ Needs

What do your ideal clients’ want? How do they want you to show up? Do they want videos or do they want a podcast from you? Maybe they want to read your book or they might want to do a mini course or a six-week course?

What type of topics do they want to hear from you? The only way to get answers for these questions is to ask your ideal clients!

When I first started my Facebook group, I put up a poll asking people what they wanted. I talked to hundreds of people and asked them what they were struggling with and what their challenges were.

I started creating content specifically for my ideal clients based on their needs, not what I felt they needed.

Your personalised plan needs to be designed precisely for the kind of clients that you want to work with.

3 – Personalise Your Plan Around Your Values and Vision

You want to make sure that your plan is designed around your values and your vision. What is your 5, 10 or 20-year plan for your business?

My vision for my business is to have a big company, that’s helping thousands of entrepreneurs every year. I aim to employ coaches and have offices in other countries, and I aim to do national and international tours and retreats.

When I’m setting my goals, I’m always thinking about that vision and how can I get closer to that vision all the time. I ask myself what skills I need to master in order to get to that big picture vision.

I ask myself; What systems do I need to put in place to get to my vision? What support do I need? Do I need different coaching? Do I need an assistant? Do I need a virtual assistant? Do I need a marketer or a copywriter?

So you start with your values, then your vision and then you set your goals. I have my annual goals and then quarterly goals, so I’m always setting my strategy according to that quarterly plan.

My goals are always output focused and not always result focus. I do put results in terms of numbers and targets. I find it really motivating to say I’m going to write 50 blogs, so therefore I’m going to do 50 Facebook Lives in a year that will get transcribed into my blogs.

I encourage people not to always be focused on the results, but on the output you are doing. When I was a personal trainer, I would encourage people to focus on what they’re outputting over the results.

So if the goal is to run 100k’s a month, then aim for that and not the result of losing a certain amount of weight.

I recommend that you set goals for yourself and for your business, quarterly, and also weekly, where you have a set amount of output that you’re doing. With that output, you know if you are doing that, then you will get a great result.

Make your personalised plan that fits into your strategy, according to your skills. If you’re brilliant at coaching, then make sure that you focus on coaching as your core product. If you’re terrible at designing a funnel, then outsource it to someone.

If you think of it like a matrix, you’ve got the things you love and the things that you’re good at. These are the things that you should be spending your time on. This is strategic planning.

There will be things that you love and the things you’re good at. Then there will be things that you love, but you’re not so good at.

You need to decide if you should keep doing those things or if you should outsource them. And then you’ve also got things that you really don’t like but you’re good at them.

It’s important that you enjoy your business for sustainability. I just have to enjoy my business.

I have to have passion and I need to be smiling every day. I enjoy the people I’m working with. Because it’s your life and every hour you spend in your business is an hour of your life that you’re not going to get back.

It’s really important that you set your personalised plan according to your skills, the things that you are good at in your genius zone.

So many business owners spend their time faffing about on things that they either don’t like or they’re not good at, and it’s such a waste of time. We want to be putting out energy into things we love and things that we’re great at.

3 – Profitable Product

The third one that we need to think about when it comes to strategy is having a profitable product. Now by product, I don’t mean a physical product.

A product can be that you’ve pulled together your services into a program and offering that might have multiple pieces.

It’s like a fruit salad. You don’t just want to sell someone a banana. You want to cut up that banana, mix it with some cut up apple, melon and other fruit and sell it as a fruit salad. You’ve got to package it as a product.

I got this concept from Dale Beaumont. He says if you try and sell an apple for three bucks, but someone thinks they can go and buy it for 80 cents from the supermarket. But if you cut it up with other fruit and you mix it into a fruit salad, you can sell it at a café for $15. People eating a fruit salad aren’t asking what the fruit cost the café.

If you’re a service-based business owner, you want to think of your service like a product business, as if you’re selling something that has multiple paths to it. It’s not just time exchanged for money.

Time exchanged for money means you’re always going to be stuck and it’s not scalable.

You want to make sure that you’re starting to systemise and automate things. You package includes video trainings and you’ve got group coaching programs and you’ve got a community online – this is what I mean by having a fruit salad.

If I say to people, I’m $180 per hour, then people break that down and think $3 a minute is expensive. So you want to make sure that you’ve got this product that is a whole bunch of components that maybe includes one-on-one time with you, but then it also includes other things.

Maybe you have people join your private community, where they can network and get their support. Think about how to make a product and program that’s really appealing, irresistible and profitable.

When it comes to having a profitable product there are 3 things to think about:

1. Pain Points

Your product needs to address and solve people’s biggest pain points.

It’s not that your product improves people’s lives a little bit. Your product needs to actually solve the pain points your ideal client is dealing with. That’s what will make it profitable.

2. Practicality

The second one is practicality. You can sell a course to help people with their mindset. But how practical is it when they do change their mindset? What will they do with a new mindset?

It’s like selling weight loss. You need to be talking to people about what kind of clothes they will be wearing and where they will be going once they lose the weight. Maybe they’ll be dating or doing some rock climbing?

It’s not just about the scales and the losing weight, it’s what will people do once they’ve lost the weight. You have to explain the practical reality of what your product will bring into people’s lives.

3. Packaging

When it comes to having a profitable product, your packaging is so important. You need to package your product to be irresistible. There needs to be a clear price and a clear payment plan. I recommend you have a paid in full option and a payment plan option.

Your product needs to be branded well with nice design and show a step-by-step path so there is a clear start and end, with the result promised for the end. Then you’ll have a great profitable product.

What this means for you is that you will have a business which is an asset that will keep providing for you and is sustainably profitable. This gives you the flexibility, freedom and funds you deserve.

Want to more about know how to best attract new clients?

I’m running a free online live masterclass for service-based business owners who want to know exactly how to attract more clients and build their business.

You’ll discover a proven client attraction formula, step-by-step and pick up the tools that you can use to grow your business.

Click here for more info and to register your place

Remember – the world is waiting for your unique brilliance!

Kat

January 12, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

5 Essential Elements of a 2020 Success Plan

How has the start of a new year, a new decade been for you?

I have a massive sense of excitement and energy and expectations coming into this new decade!

No doubt you are seeing all sorts of articles on goal setting and new year’s resolutions at this time of year.

According to research from the University of Scranton, a staggering 92% of people who set New Years resolutions never actually achieve them.

Over the years, I’ve discovered why I personally didn’t always achieve goals I set.

I looked at research, science and studied successful people and started applying what they did to ensure they followed through on their goals.

In this video and article, I share five essential elements of a success plan you can use to achieve your goals in 2020.

They can help you choose the right goals and follow through to the end and achieve them.

Here are the 5 elements:

1. A Why-based Vision

The first thing you need for your success plan is a why-based vision. What’s the vision that you hold yourself in your mission? I recommend your vision has a few elements.

The first one is the identity of the person that you want to become. A lot of people set goals about what they want to have and what they want to do.

But if you want to do and have the things you want, you first need to be the person that does and has those things.

Instead of starting with what you want to have and the things you want to do, think about the person that you want to become.

What type of characteristics do you want to have? Who do you want to be known as in 2020? That’s the “Why Based Vision” I recommended you grab a piece of paper, title your three columns Be, Do and Have, and brain dump.

I’ve been doing this task with my clients this week and there were some truly inspirational things they wanted to be- Thought leaders, authority figures, experts, courageous, trustworthy, brave, masterful at marketing, coaching, or presenting.

So ask yourself, what type of person do you want to be and build this vision of your self-image. Not just the material things you want but the vision about who you want to be and what type of person you need to be to create that vision.

Most importantly ask yourself why…. Why do you want this? Why do you want to be successful? Why is it important to you?

Think about the words that you want to resonate with 2020. What’s your intention for 2020? What would you want want to declare and put there as your words for 2020?

Last year my three words were discipline, fun, and courage and I look back at the last year and I was all those things. I was disciplined, I did have fun and I was courageous.

Set your intentions and build those goals from your why based vision from your identity of who want to be and the words that you want to put over the year and visualise it.

I’ve been working on my vision board with a couple of friends and I’m still building it out, but I have five words for 2020 that I want to focus on. Don’t just write down your goals and put in your draw or in a spreadsheet and forget about it.

Start with that vision of who you want to be and what you want, and then start building the plan based on that.

2. An Up-levelling Mastermind

This is one of my favourite things to have and this an up-levelling mastermind. The purpose of a mastermind is a small focus group that is designed so that everyone up levels, everyone grows, everyone goes into the best version of themselves.

Everyone knows what each person’s vision is and the goals they have. I was working with one of my masterminds today on setting our intentions. We started creating a manifesto for the group, we looked at things that we want to do together as a group.

We discussed what each of our strengths and weaknesses is so that we could collaborate and bring the best out of each other. We then had one person in the hot seat getting coached by three other people, and each person was given suggestions and advice.

When you spend time with people who are going places that are reaching for the heights that that’s going to rub off on you. Look at your surrounding influences, are they high achievers? Do they want to push themselves and hold you to a higher standard?

Do they consistently meet you, not just random meetups but are they committed to showing up, being reliable and want to help and support each other because have a supportive group is such a game-changer.

3. A Focused Game Plan

The third element to a successful plan for 2020 is having a focused game plan.

It’s just like in sports. The players know what they plan, they’re clear on it and they need to execute it. There are five things I recommend in your game plan.

I recommend you start with your annual priorities. Brain dump the priorities that you want to do for the year. It could be networking, presenting, workshops or skills like copywriting or sales that you need to build as a business owner.

Maybe you have goals for the year that you want your business to accomplish. Break it down into actual numbers, for example, I said I wanted to do 50 articles in 2019 and I chipped away at that goal and ended up doing 53 articles last year.

Every week I showed up because I wanted to give original valuable content that could really help people. It was amazing to have one strategy in place and committing to that goal with an actual number in place.

Your game plan could be that you want to write 50 blog posts, or you want to launch five new freebies. Break it down into actionable steps and create quarterly goals for each step.

For quarter one, what do you need to achieve by the end of February? It could be a webinar or a workshop, or launching a funnel, that’s your one big bold move for the quarter. Once you’ve got that as your goal, then you go into bite-sized goals.

Under that one big bold move. Let’s say it’s a webinar, you might say, I want to enrol 100 people to the webinar, knowing that maybe 50 will turn up, out of those 50 people, 10 people take me up on my offer for a discovery session and I close five of them.

Set clear number goals, those are your outcome goals. But then you need to set actual tasks. So under the webinar, you have all the different action steps you need to take in order to run a webinar.

There is so much to it. But once you’ve done it, it’s an incredible asset. But what a lot of people do is they put a project on their to-do list, and it mixes up with their habits and skills and the action gets confusing and overwhelming, causing your brain to say no, this is too hard.

Make sure that you separate your habits, your skills and your projects. Make sure on your action list, you take one step at a time. That’s your game plan- your priorities, goals, quarterly goals, and your one big bold move for the quarter.

Under that, you’re going to have goals, and your bite-sized action steps so that each week you know exactly what you need to do to get your result.

4. A Strong NO Commitment

A strong NO commitment is something you’re going to say no to.

I’ve realised that this year, that if I just keep piling things up on top of my existing schedule, goals and to-do lists, I’m going to get massively overwhelmed.

I realised that I need to decide what I’m going to say no to and it was a massive relief when I decided what I was going to say no to. I can actually achieve the goals that I have because I’m clearing things out of my schedule instead of pouring and piling things on, and creating white space for myself.

I was reading back diary entries from 2016 and writing that I needed more space, I need to create more margins. That was my goal for 2016. That was four years ago and I’m still saying the same thing!

This year, I’ve decided what to say NO to and I’m going to choose a new NO every month.

In order for you to have a successful life and achieve your goals, you’re going to have to clear stuff out of your life. It could be a relationship or friendships, it could be things that you’re wasting time on.

I was coaching one of my clients last night, and he was telling me, I don’t have time to study. I don’t know how to put it in without sacrificing my lifestyle. I asked him to open up his phone let’s have a look at your screen time. It turns out that his screen time was five and a half hours average per day.

We worked out that over seven days he was spending 35 hours on his phone. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s what most people do – hours and hours on the phone.

Can you imagine just one decision, a strong no commitment to eliminate your time online? For me, I said no Netflix in January, and no social media before 12pm and now I have all this space and energy that has opened up.

It’s incredible. I’ve been writing my goals and reading more books. I never thought that I could commit to something like that. But in order to get your goals, you’ve got to say no to things.

So what would you like to have as a strong no commitment?

5. A Monthly Habit Focus

And then number five is to have a monthly habit focus. Focus on one habit for a month. If you nail one habit, every month, by the end of 2020, you’ve got 12 brand new successful habits.

Remember, it takes time to build a habit. Some people say 21 days, 30 days, some say 60.

It really depends on you and it depends on the goal. Personally I like 30 days. I like using a month because it’s just a pure focus month on one goal.

Last year I had this app called streaks where you can add your goals. Last year, I had 12 habits I was trying to do; Daily meditation, daily journaling, daily exercise etc. and I did it for the first quarter and it was going really well, by quarter two I started dropping off and by quarter three I hadn’t even looked at the app.

Now what I’ve done is I’ve got two things on there, but my focus is daily journaling for the month of January. I know that if I write every single day it brings you back into mindfulness. It’s like that one Domino that knocks over the other dominoes in the chain.

If I can daily journal, it helps me stay present focused on my goals. It helps me brain dump, it’s like a cleanse at the end of each night. It helps me plan and do planning in my journaling. I write out my visualization and I write my goals. It’s just one habit that covers so many for me.

Charles Duhigg, in his book ‘The Power of Habits’, talks about one keystone habit that if you get that one thing, it’s going to affect every other area of your life.

It might be every morning going for a walk, and that one walk is going to set you up for success because of that one habit.

Set one habit that knocks down all the rest of them like a domino chain.

To recap, here are the five essential elements of a 2020 success plan…

1. Have a why-based vision, keep it in your face, and make sure that you include your identity, your words for the year, your intention for the year, and exactly who you want to be.

2. Have an up-levelling mastermind. A mastermind where you meet regularly in person with these people. These people are all about growth, up-levelling, supporting each other, holding each other to account and holding you to a high standard.

3. Have a focused game plan. in the game plan have your priorities, your goals, quarterly goals, bite-size goals, action steps.

4. Have a strong no commitment. What are you going to say no to in 2020 to allow all this space to the things that are most important and meaningful for you?

5. Have a monthly habit focus.

Draw a line in the sand for 2020, make it a priority to leave it all behind in 2019 and know that you can achieve anything that you set your mind to.

Put the action steps in place and check it off as you go. It’s not just about dreaming, it’s about having your head in the clouds but your feet on the ground.

P.S Want to know how to attract and sign up more clients in 2020?

My next full-day client attraction workshop is happening on Saturday, 1st February 2020.

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? The BEST methods to connect instantly with your audience and INFLUENCE them to your ideas

? How to become a master influencer and build authentic trust and a powerful connection with your ideal clients

? How to use neuro-marketing to influence the SUBCONSCIOUS mind in your written and spoken content

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2020 is the year to finally let go of what’s holding you back and create the life you dream of!

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December 31, 2019 by katmillar Leave a Comment

3 Effective Alternatives to New Year Resolutions

How are you feeling about entering a whole new year?

I think the fact that we’re about to enter a whole new decade just makes it even more exciting!

You’ve probably seen in your feed, lots of posts about goal setting and new year’s resolutions.

There was a recent study done by the University of Scranton, and they discovered that only about 8% of people will achieve their new year’s resolutions.

There has been lots of research that has gone into studying why new year’s resolutions don’t work.

My personal observations of why people don’t achieve them boils down to this…

1. They haven’t chosen the right goal for them. They’ve chosen things that they think they ‘should’ do, not things they really want to do.

2. The goals aren’t aligned to their values. They haven’t really taken the time to ask themselves “What is important to me? What are my values and how can I set goals in alignment with who I am as a person?”

3. They haven’t created an effective action plan. Many people set a goal but don’t make a plan for the achievement of their goals, including the necessary skills and habits.

Often, people set goals that are someone else’s goals and they’re not even consciously aware of it. It could be their Dad’s or Mum’s, Brother’s or Girlfriend’s, it’s usually those influences that we have around us.

Sometimes we can shift our goals according to other people. For example, there was a guy who every year set his new year’s resolution to have abs….

…He really wanted a six-pack, or he thought he did. He would buy the latest ab cruncher, whatever the latest fad was at the time and it would just sit in his lounge room…

…and he would walk past it every day, but just wasn’t taking the action to get on these pieces of equipment and get the abs.

After a few months went by, he was being coached and the coach drew out of him that, he thought he wanted abs, but he realised that was his dad’s goal.

His Dad always said to him, you’ve got to exercise, and you’ve got to be healthy. He was trying to live up to his Dad’s expectation and had convinced himself he did want abs.

But the reality is, if you’ve had something on your new year’s resolution or goals list for years and years, the most likely conclusion we can draw from this, is that it’s not really that important to you or you would have done it by now.

When you really want something and you’re why is strong enough, you will find the how. You’ll find a way to do it. If you keep setting the same goal year in, year out and you haven’t done it yet, then we need to have a look at whether it’s the right goal and maybe if you’ve set too many goals.

My friend Natasha today was talking about trying to catch five tennis balls. If you try to catch five tennis balls, you’re probably going to miss them all. It’s that old Chinese proverb of if you try and chase two rabbits, you’ll catch none of them.

This is the biggest one that I’ve been guilty of. I don’t know if you’re the same, but when you set too many goals for every single area of your life, you become split focused, you don’t have a singleness of focus.

Napoleon Hill talked about having that definiteness of purpose, that single focus, and that burning desire for one thing and by going after that one thing, you channel all your energy into that one thing, and that concentrated energy makes it happen.

Whereas if you dilute your energy across a lot of things, then it’s probably likely those goals or those new year’s resolutions aren’t going to work.

I’ve seen this a lot with my clients as well, where they’ve either set the wrong goal, they’ve set too many goals or they have set the right goals, the right amount of goals, but they don’t have an action plan and the action plan has to include a review.

Rather than waiting till the end of the year, and going “Did I/didn’t I?”, regularly review your actions if you want to make sure that they succeed.

I recommend that you do a review at the end of every single day. Just a very short review – What worked well, what didn’t. Am I on track? Did I do the actions? If not, why not.

Get into the habit of reviewing every single day and looking at the progress that you make. Happiness is attached to progress and we can’t be fully content and happy unless we’re progressing.

Besides a daily review, also do a weekly review, and a quarterly review where you set goals for a quarter, instead of only thinking about the full year. Every quarter, I put aside three full days to review that quarter and make sure that I’m on track and if not reset for the next quarter.

It makes it less overwhelming, do it in chunks instead of saying I’m never going to do this again or I’m going to achieve this amount of income, or I’m going to get to this weight that we’ve given us a whole year to do….

…whereas when we chunk it down into very small goals, where can check in regularly and have that review, we’re way more likely to achieve it.

So, here are three effective alternatives to new year’s resolutions:

1. Skill Acquisition

There are other ways of setting goals that are a little bit different, but powerful and proven. The first one is skill acquisition. What skills do you need to develop in the coming year? What skills do you want to master in order to get that result that you want?

Think about your perfect life, your perfect year. Think about your ideal year – imagine it’s New Year’s Eve 2020 and you’re sitting with a friend having a drink celebrating the year. Think about that person that you’ve become, the characteristics of the person that you want to be that you’ve evolved into.

What kind of skills do you need to acquire to become that person? Not the outcome or the results but the person you want to be. What are the skills that you need to acquire?

For me, I’m setting three skills that I want to acquire and develop in 2020. Marketing, communication and time management.

1. In 2020, I’m going to be putting time, energy and money into skill acquisition around marketing, specifically Facebook ads.

2. I want to get masterful at communication. How I present, how I speak to one on one clients, how I speak to groups, how I speak on camera. That’s a skill I want to get better at.

When you want to develop a skill, you must invest time, energy and money into it. Otherwise, the skill won’t grow. If you really want to get better at let’s say attracting clients, what are the actual skills you need when you break it down?

If you want to have a successful business, say you want to earn five figures 10 figures a month, when you’ve got that kind of goal or result that you want, break it down to what are the skills that are going to get you there….

…and if you’re not quite sure, I would recommend if you have a financial goal in your business for yourself, and you want to attract a certain number of clients and earn a certain amount of income.

Then you need to know marketing skills, you need to know sales skills, and not just know them but practice them. The more time and energy and resources that you put into it, the more you’re going to get out of it, the better that you’re going to be at it.

If you want to be excellent at something, you’ve got to invest time, energy and money into it. Maybe you’ve already invested money, you’ve done a course but now you need to apply it, you need to practice it and you need to embody it…

…because it’s one thing to say “I’ve read that” and another thing to actually be able to teach it, and until you can teach that skill, you don’t really know it. You might understand it intellectually, but you don’t really know it because you haven’t embodied it.

3. The skill of time management. Being a super high performer, being productive and performing at the highest level that I possibly can.

What are some of the skills that you want to develop in 2020 In order to get the result you want?

Maybe the results that you want is to have a fully booked calendar of clients, you might want 10 clients a week. What are the skills that you need to get there?

Maybe you need to learn copywriting – which is writing to influence. In quarter one you might focus on studying it, practicing it and observing other people’s copywriting.

I learned how to write copy by putting out a piece of copy and seeing what works, seeing what people engage with, by reading other people’s copywriting, and by reading Facebook ads. I also learn it by other people reviewing and giving me feedback on my copywriting.

2. Habit Forming

Number two is habit-forming. Whenever you want to make a change, it’s always about thinking – how can I build it into my habits? How can I do it until it becomes automatic like brushing your teeth or driving a car?

We need to put things into our life as habits but the more habits you try and change at one time, the less success you have.

If you try and change one habit, you’ve got around a 90% chance of doing it if you just focus on that one habit…

…but if you try and change two habits at the same time, it drops from 90% to around 60 to 70%. And if you try and change three habits all at once it drops to less than 50%.

Knowing that, maybe you want to change one habit and give yourself 30 days to do it.

You might say my one habit is meditation or my one habit is daily movement. If you just focus on that for 30 days and then once you’ve mastered it, you add the next one.

This is what I’m doing with an accountability buddy of mine. And the habit that I’ve committed to is journaling, morning and night, every single day, no excuses. If I miss one day, I need to start the 30 days all over again. That’s my January habit.

If you think about it, if you do one a month for the whole year, you’ve got 12 new amazing habits. Instead of trying to change 10 all at once and just throwing the whole thing out the window, you’ve got 12 new habits instead of no new habits by the end of the year.

I recommend that you have an accountability partner for this as well. That same study that showed that only 8% of people will achieve any new year’s resolutions also discovered that if you do it with a group, or you do it with other people, or you join a supportive community, it boosts your success by 46%.

That’s a massive amount. There’s the proof that it works. Instead of just privately having your goals, staying accountable to other humans is powerful.

3. Output Commitments

Number three is what I call output commitments. Instead of saying “I want to earn this much money”, visualise that amount. I recommend that you make it a habit.

The classic book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, talks all about visualising that exact amount that you want, and every single day visualising that amount, but also knowing the result you want, and really using repetition on that result that you want.

Have a commitment to specific outputs.

In 2019, my output commitment was 50 articles on my website, and I did 53. That was an output commitment. I made it public in December last year. And because I made it public, it was a commitment and I did it.

A lot of people don’t set goals because they don’t want to fail. But it’s good to make your goals public because when people ask you about them, you don’t want to let them down and it becomes a good way to stay accountable to achieving them.

Think about what you want to output. Maybe you want to make a certain amount of sales calls every single week. Maybe your output commitment is a certain amount of Kms that you’re going to run every week, or a certain amount of Facebook live videos, or a certain number of webinars or meetup events.

You might even want to just set one for January or set one for quarter one – it doesn’t have to be for the full year. I’ve enjoyed doing it for the whole year because it really made me commit to something for a whole year, but you can also set it for per day, week or month.

So, to recap, my three alternatives to new year resolutions are:

Skill Acquisition
Habit-forming
Output commitments

Want to know how to attract and sign up more clients in 2020?

My next 1-day client attraction workshop is happening on Saturday, 1st February 2020.