5 Simple Steps to Make Your 2023 Goals a Reality
Ever wonder what sets people apart who consistently hit their goals? Looking to make huge strides in your career? If so, this episode is for you. I'll share the secret of my successful clients - the learnings they applied along their journey toward success. From promotions, and earning Presidents Club for top sales attainment, to starting successful businesses. Listen now and discover how these strategies could help power up your own achievements today.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
Goal-setting principles for success
The COBO planning framework
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Steps to Make Your Goals into Reality
Do you know somebody that it seems no matter what they do, they are successful at everything. Whatever the outlandish goal we think they set, they seem to be successful at whatever they do. It's the new year, and if there's one thing that I love about the new year, it's setting new goals. I know firsthand that the successes that I've had throughout my life, professionally and personally are a direct result of the time that I've taken at the beginning of each year to set goals.
What I'm going to be sharing with you today is the framework that I use to help myself, as well as my clients achieve their goals. 2022 was such an exciting year for so many of my clients. I had clients who had achieved President's Club, which is the top performer in sales throughout their whole organization. They finished in the top 10%, and they've always historically been very successful in sales, but this past year was the first time that they achieved president's club. I've also had clients this past year who had earned back to back President's Club, which is another accomplishment in itself because it's one step to achieve President's Club one year, but to do it back to back is consistency, and that's a direct reflection of a top performer.
I've also had clients this year who have started new businesses and have been profitable within their first year. Also clients who have gotten new jobs, who have been promoted within their organization. And it's because of this framework that I work with my clients that they've been able to achieve their goals.
I'm sharing a little bit with you today, the secret to accomplishing your goals. When you think about where you want to be professionally and personally in your life, a lot of times we focus on, I want to accomplish X, Y, Z goals. I take that a step further and I ask, when you accomplish that goal, who do you get to be when you accomplish that goal? What type of lifestyle do you want when you accomplish that goal? How do you want to feel? When I was working with some of my clients and we were talking about, okay, your goal is to achieve President's Club and to be awarded a top performer, what does that mean to you? For some of my clients, they wanted to earn President's Club because then they get promoted into a senior territory executive. Then because of that, they get to be recognized as being a leader amongst their team, and they were able to get promoted into a training role as well.
For some people their goal was to start a new business, and it was giving them the freedom to pursue something that they felt was a purpose for them. Something that they enjoy doing day in and day out and leveraging their strengths to help other people. For some individuals, their goal was to get promoted within the organization or to get a new job. It's because they wanted a new challenge they felt that fire inside of them would be something new and exciting. Also, progression within their career.
Create a Vision Board
When you're looking at the goals that you want to set, take a step further and ask yourself when you accomplish that goal, who do you get to be? What impact do you get to make on the people around you when you achieve that goal? The first step that we do is we create a vision board. A vision board portrays different pictures, words, or inspiration to help you stay focused on the goals you want for that next year? I've created a vision board every single year since my early twenties, and it's been so fun to look back at some of the goals that I have set and have actually watched them come to fruition. Goals such as being promoted, goals such as earning President's Club, financial goals of paying off debt and paying off a house and saving for my kids' College Fund. A vision board provides a visual depiction of what your goals are. And I say, take this a step further, and looking at your vision board, looking at all areas of your life, when you're putting together a vision board, it could be anything from a hardboard or one of those poster boards, but having fun with it. Maybe it's inviting your friends over. Maybe it's doing it with your kids, maybe it's doing it with your significant other. But taking pictures and taking words, and putting a visual representation of what your goals are now, what might that look like in the different areas of your life?
Maybe what are your financial goals? For example, one of my goals is to pay off my kids' college fund, and so I have a little cap and count on my vision board, and next to it says, pay off college fund. Another goal might be health or fitness. And so one might be to ride your Peloton three days a week and achieving that goal so that you're maintaining a healthy lifestyle. One goal might be to pay off debt. Another goal might be to get promoted into a new role or to start a business. But putting a visual representation is a way of manifesting your goals, but also putting it in a place that you get to look at every single day. I have my vision board and it sits above my desk. The first thing that I do when I step into my office is I look at my vision board.
Whenever I'm feeling maybe tired or I'm second guessing myself, or I'm just needing a quick boost of motivation, I look at my vision board and it's my daily reminder of what I am working towards achieving. I also add pictures of different rewards that I get to reward myself with. For example, if you're in sales and your goal is to earn President's Club and to achieve a top performer, how are you going to reward yourself when you achieve that goal?
I think back at some of the rewards that I've had, maybe it's been my favorite pair of shoes or it's been a purse or my husband when he's achieved some of his goals. He might have bought a new toy for his truck, but whatever it is, it's having to work towards something, but also rewarding yourself when you achieve that goal.
Sometimes having those rewards as visual representations of a reminder are another way of boosting your motivation, and then when you achieve your goal to actually go out and reward yourself, it feels good and provides a boost of motivation in working towards other goals. The first step in achieving your goals for 2023, create a vision board, manifest your goals and manifest how you're going to reward yourself when you achieve your goals.
Setting Our Mindset
The second step is mindset. And mindset is important when it comes to achieving your goals, because when we are confident in our abilities, we are more likely to achieve our goals. Mindset is understanding and believing in. And there is a therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy that a lot of therapists use towards reframing and rewiring our negative thoughts to our positive thoughts. If you are in a situation where you're going, I can't get that job. I don't have the qualifications for that job, or I'm not an effective leader, or there's no way that I can start a business, it's too risky, or, I don't have the right territory to achieve President's Club.
When you start to tell yourself these negative phrases, you begin to believe it, and that's not going to help you accomplish your goals. Sometimes the step towards reframing and rewiring your negative thoughts is through writing positive affirmations. Some examples might be, if you're looking to get a new job starting each morning by telling yourself the experience that I have is transferable into other roles. My experience is valuable. The experience that I have will translate into leadership roles.
If you were in sales telling yourself that you can achieve President's Club, telling yourself that you are successful at what you do, that you can be successful in the value that you add in helping your customers achieve their goals. If you're looking to start a new business, reminding yourself and telling yourself that the experience that you have can build a profitable and impactful business that the skills that you have are unique and can help others. Affirmations are important in telling yourself and rewiring those negative thoughts to positive thoughts because when you take those steps, you can reframe your mindset. And when it comes to achieving goals, a lot of it is really believing in yourself and having the confidence that you are able to achieve your goals.[HOBC1] Again, that second step is mindset.
Knowing Our Strengths and Develop New Skills
The third is understanding your strengths and taking steps towards developing new skills. A lot of times we don't always know our natural strengths. Sometimes our strengths become so natural to us that we don't even know what they are. So one of the steps that I've recommended for some of my clients when they were thinking about starting a business is I said, ask the people around you. Ask them what they think your strengths are. When I was looking to start my business, I posted on social media, if there's one way that I've impacted your life in a positive way, please share how. Also I asked if there was one word to describe me, what would it be? It was so exciting and it felt so good to see the positive words that other people said about me, and I was able to use those words to clearly define what my strength is and how I was able to use that strength to help others.
If you don't know what your strength is, ask your friends, ask your family, ask your colleagues, your peers, because it might spark some ideas to either start a new business or it might spark some ideas on how you can use your strengths to really lean in on them and to develop them even further to help you towards achieving your goals. While you're also looking at your strengths, one way of developing confidence towards achieving your goals is also looking at the new skills that you get to develop. I'm a big component that we could constantly be learning. Adopting that growth mindset helps us achieve our goals because we're constantly learning new skills. We're developing our and taking them to a step further.
Looking at what are the skills that you want to develop so that if your goal is to get promoted into a new role, you're developing the skills for that particular. new role. If you want to start a business or you want to grow your business, what are the different areas within your business that you want to grow? How can you develop those skills to take you to that next level? That's the third step, is looking at your strengths and developing the new skills towards achieving your goals.
Reflection
The fourth is reflection. Reflection is just as important as looking at the future. Reflection is taking the time and understanding and reflecting back on the previous year and asking yourself, what worked well, what didn't work well, and what might you do in the future to change the outcome? For example, if you were looking for a new job, but you kept of coming into a roadblock, were you applying to jobs one after another, but not able to actually get an interview or you've been interviewing but maybe haven't gotten the job offer, reflecting back and saying, okay, well what has been working. And what hasn't been working. Is it time to invest in a coach to help guide you towards what steps work and what steps don't? Maybe looking at your LinkedIn profile and revising your LinkedIn profile, is it time to revise your resume? Is it time for interview coaching?
I can tell you I've worked with clients who have been looking for a job for six plus months and just continuously hit a roadblock. Some of them were either applying to jobs online but weren't actually getting interviews. I had other clients who were interviewing but weren't actually getting the job offer, and it was just a few tweaks that we made to help them put themselves forward and achieving their goal. Where there were some clients who had been looking for a job for six months and then within a month of working with each other, they received a job offer. There's been some clients who just felt like they were in a roadblock within their career, and they didn't necessarily know what steps to take and what steps not to take to get promoted into the level. So when we were working together, we were looking at, okay, what are some of the challenges that have taken place thus far? What kind of roadblocks are you running into? And maybe what are some adjustments that we can make to help you towards achieving your goal. Looking at and reflecting as to what's been working, what hasn't been working, and what can we do differently to achieve the results that you want?
Reflection is key, and I always advise you if you're looking at goals, take that time to reflect. It's often a step that a lot of people forget to take or don't take or ignore, but it's a critical step in understanding what steps to adjust towards working towards your goal.
The COBO Framework
The fifth and final step is creating goals. Now, you've probably heard of SMART goals. Smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. But I'm going to share with you a little bit of a twist towards setting goals, and it's the COBO framework. As you guys know, my last name is Cobo, so that's the framework that I use first.
Starting with “C”, “C” is your courageous goals. Often we put together the goals, but really, are they stretchy enough? Are they going to stretch us outside of our comfort zone enough where we're going to develop new skills [that we're really going to stretch ourselves into going above and beyond what we normally think that we can do, because when we lean into the discomfort, that's when we grow the most. So I look at when I'm working with my clients, what are some courageous goals that you can set? What are some exciting, courageous goals that you can set?
Then the next is, objectives. What are the specific steps you're going to take to achieve that goal? If you're looking to start a new business, that objective might be to write a business plan, to take online courses on how to scale and grow your business to look at the different revenue goals within your business. If your goal is to end sales and you want to achieve President's Club, then the objectives might be reevaluating your territory and looking at how many new accounts do you want to grow in your business? What percentage of year over year growth do you want to achieve? What are the specific steps you're going to take to do it?
For my clients that are in sales, often what we're doing at the beginning of the year is we're looking at their overall territory and we're analyzing their business, and we're saying, who's growing, who's not growing? Maybe who's hurting our business? And then what are the specific opportunities within each of our accounts and our customers and what are the resources and maybe the business plan that we're going to prepare for each of the clients to get to where we want to grow our business towards that courageous goal. Those are the objectives. If you're looking for a new job, that objective might be the specific is you're going to update your resume, you're going to update your LinkedIn profile, you're going to invest in interview coaching, and having specific steps to outline towards achieving your goal will help you achieve your goals.
The B is benchmark. When we set specific timeframes or timelines that we want to achieve our goals, it helps us be accountable. This past year, I've written a book. I had set this goal last year where I wanted to write a book and I wrote a book. This benchmark was key towards me achieving this goal.
I had an accountability partner, I had a writing coach who was helping me with brainstorming ideas and helping me stay on task. And we set specific benchmarks as to each time that I was going to be submitting in a chapter. And the word count that I wanted to set as a goal for each week. Each week we would meet, we would talk about what I was going to be writing, we'd set a goal, and then by Thursday afternoon I was going to be submitting that chapter N. And that benchmark has keyed that has helped me towards being accountable towards my goal. The benchmark was also extremely valuable because when I looked at my upcoming week and I said, okay, what are the different timelines for the different projects that I have going on right now? And I was able to look at where I wanted to prioritize specific projects in relation to other projects based on the timelines and when they were going to be due. Benchmarks are a way of checking the progress and settings, specific timelines towards achieving your goals.
The next O, the final O and the COBO framework and setting and achieving your goals is being open-minded. What I mean by being open-minded is that life evolves, business evolves, things change in our life, and sometimes the goals that we set at the beginning of the year may not be the same goals that we want at the end of the year. And so being open-minded and adapting to change can also help you in achieving your goals.
Let's say one of your goals is to get promoted, but then maybe that particular year you expand your family and you realize that promotion to move up may require you to relocate to a different state. Maybe it requires you to travel more. But you realize that maybe that's not specifically the goal that you want for this year. Maybe you put that down and as a three or five-year timeline as your life changes, that's okay. Sometimes as society, we focus so much on this goal that we have and we have to achieve this goal, and we have to stay focused towards it. But sometimes our goals change. I'll give you another example. This past year I was working on writing my TED Talk while I was also working on writing my book, while also supporting my clients and having speaking engagements and companies that have brought me in to do leadership trainings. And what I found is I was putting myself in a bit of an overwhelmed state because my business started to grow a lot faster than I anticipated, and that I had projected, which is a good positive accomplishment. But at the same time, I realized, okay, well I don't want to put myself in overwhelm. One of the reasons why I became an entrepreneur is because I wanted to follow my passion in helping others, but I also wanted to be more present with my kids. And so I took a pause on writing the TED Talk so that I could focus on writing the book, and then I just adjusted the timeline for the TED Talk. Sometimes part of setting goals is being open-minded and knowing that we can adjust our goals as our life evolves.
I would also say too, I had one client where her goal was to achieve President's Club for the second time in a row, and she did accomplish that goal this year. But also she learned from working with each other because she wanted to start a business, something that she had never anticipated or planned out in the beginning when we first started working together. But as we started to look at and work on identifying what her strengths are and what her passion is and what her vision is for the future, she started to really look at and say, “Gosh, maybe starting a business is something that I want to do.” She added a goal that she may not even have set earlier in the year, but it was because she was open-minded, that she's been able to adjust and look at the different areas in her life where she wants to have goals. And that goal of starting a business, ended up being a lot sooner than she anticipated, because we started working together.
When you're looking at 2023, there's one thing to take away from this episode is it's such an exciting time at the beginning of the year to set goals, to be super clear on what your vision is, looking at what your goals are, who do you get to be when you accomplish those goals? Putting together a visualization and manifesting your goals, and not only looking at what your goals are professionally and personally, but also how are you going to reward yourself? Putting it in a place that you're going to look at every single day.
Mindset. Ensuring that you are reframing those negative thoughts and rewiring those negative thoughts from, “I can't” to “I can” through cognitive behavioral therapy. It's reframing so that you have the right mindset and a confident mindset to achieve your goals.
That third, again, is identifying what your strengths are. What are the new skills that you want to develop to achieve your goals? Whether it's to start that new business, to get promoted, or to get a new job, or to earn President's Club in sales. But what are the specific skills that you want to develop and that you want to continue to strengthen to help you in achieving your goals? Understanding that growth mindset and taking time to invest in learning every single day will help you achieve and accomplish your goals.
Fourth, remember is reflection. Reflecting back and looking at what were some of the successes from the previous year, what worked, what didn't work, and what are you going to do differently in 2023 to help you achieve your goals.
And then again, that COBO framework when it comes to setting your goals. What is your courageous goal? What are the objectives, the specific steps you're going to take to achieve your goal? Your benchmark is how are you going to measure your goals, the progress of your goals, so that you can continuously boost your motivation every time that you move towards accomplishing your goal and at that specific benchmark, progression is key. And then always being open-minded and knowing that as our life evolves so can our goals. Evolving and adapting with it and being open-minded, that sometimes the goals that we set in the beginning of the year may change throughout the year, and that's okay. As long as you're working towards something will help you achieve the success that you want to achieve.
I’m going to include workbooks that you can download, one of them is a business success workbook. If you're thinking about starting a new business or growing a business, there's the business success workbook, with our actionable steps to start and scale and grow an impactful and unprofitable business.
I also have a Career Accelerator workbook. A career accelerator workbook is for somebody who's working in corporate. Whether you want to get promoted or you want to find a new job in that workbook are actionable steps to clearly define what your strengths are, the areas that you want to develop, and steps that you can take to achieve your goals working in corporate.
There's also a Crush Your Quota workbook. If you are in sales and you want to achieve President's Club and you want to be recognized as a top performer, there's a workbook that's in there that you can download with steps to crush your quota. Max out your comp plan and earn President's Club. I also have another workbook because I'm a big component on achieving your goals without sacrificing your personal life. There's also a workbook that you can download with actionable steps to transition from burnout to fired up. I believe that you can have a successful career and a family and a balanced life. I know that firsthand being a mother to five-year-old twins, a business owner, a wife, having a successful career and a balanced life is possible. And with this particular workbook, the Burnout to Fired Up Workbook, I provide actionable steps on how you can create balances in your life. Everything from starting a morning routine, daily affirmations, looking at your particular goals and how you're spending your time are all in this workbook.
My promise to you is to follow these steps and you will work towards achieving your goals and accomplishing your goals for 2023. Take the time, download the free workbooks that are available to you and work through those workbooks so that you can achieve your goals as well.
If you are looking to start a business, find a new job, scale your business. Or if you're working in corporate and you want to lead your team towards helping them achieve their goals, I invite you to schedule a time with me today through keynote speaking, individualized consulting, as well as a couple other resources. I have helped clients achieve extraordinary accomplishments. Often companies will bring me in to do keynote speaking. I also do workshops within organizations where we do everything from leadership development to change management and burnout prevention. I also work with clients who are starting new businesses or they're scaling their businesses, and then also helping people achieve their sales goals.
