Donna: I have something to celebrate. This episode marks the 50th show of the She's In Business podcast and I feel like that deserves some celebration. I'm always encouraging my clients to celebrate their wins and I practice what I preach, so I'm recording this episode with a glass of bubbles on a Tuesday afternoon, because I'm feeling really great about what I've achieved with this podcast so far.
And it got me thinking about all the small steps that lead to big goals and how important it is not to underestimate the compounding results of those small steps. In this episode, my aim is to inspire you to take more small steps to achieve those big goals.
If you're an Aussie listener, then you'll know this Aussie classic written by Paul Kelly and I'm going to go so far to say that it's a bit of an Aussie Anthem. Whenever I think about how small steps lead to big goals, I start singing that song from little things, big things grow, because it's so true. They really, really do.
And as I mentioned, just a moment ago, it's the 50th episode of the She's In Business podcast and I'm feeling really proud. If I rewind back to when I first started considering creating a podcast, I want to share with you that I had no idea where to start. No idea. I didn't have a budget to pay for someone to do it for me.
Obviously not the recording part, but all the production side of things, I had to do it all myself from scratch. So let me tell you, it is a huge project to take a podcast from an idea through to launching it into the world and then it's a shitload of work to publish an episode each and every single week.
And I researched, I asked my business buddies, I consulted with my business coach about how they did and there was points of troubleshooting and mistakes as I was learning the how to, as I went and I was super nervous wondering whether people would like it, hoping that people would actually listen to it and get some value from it.
So, I launched the podcast in July, 2021, which is like 12 months ago, crazy and people from all over the world are now tuning in which totally, totally blows my mind. So, thank you so much. If you are one of my regular listeners and you tune in every week, if you are a new podcast listener, welcome. I hope you enjoy what I've got for you today and feel free to go back and have a bit of a binge and listen to the previous podcast.
But the whole reason for creating the podcast is really to inspire you. Either through sharing my own experiences, providing bitesize tips and information to boost your business success or to help you with your mindset and your self care, which I believe is so important for business owners.
But the other purpose is to invite other business women into the podcast, who are at the top of their game and who have something really valuable to share with you.
It's also about shining light on the journey of business. You may have noticed that with every guest who comes onto the podcast, I ask them to share their business journey thus far and that's because I want you to know that even the most successful business women started at the beginning, they've been on a journey.
They'll continue on that journey. There'll be highs and lows, there'll be twists and turns and every journey will be different, but guaranteed the similarity is that their success was a series of small steps towards a big goal.
Now, you might be right at the beginning of that journey, perhaps you've got a business idea, maybe you haven't quite started yet or maybe you've just started and you're at the very beginning of the business journey, or maybe you are like 2, 3, 4, 5 years into your business journey. Maybe you are ready to sell your current business and move on to something new, all of that each and every example that I've just shared with you, takes guts and ambition and it takes courage.
So, my friend before we go any further, I want you to celebrate your journey thus far, because it is extraordinary. You have chosen to back yourself and to go after a big goal and that has cause for celebration. I want to also draw attention to the fact that it's really natural and normal to be scared of big goals, because this is.
It can be around the fact that we're scared of failing and the bigger the goal, the bigger the failure, the higher the risk, that we have to perhaps go back to maybe our family and friends with our tail between our legs and running through your head might be like, what are people going to think of me if I fail?
And, you know, that can be really, really challenging and failure mostly happens because we get overwhelmed and discouraged and so we give up.
And the thing is as a business owner, there's always going to be a new goal, a new level and for that, you need to be working on your mindset and finding the things that are going to work for you to break through that fear and not let it hold you down.
It doesn't matter if you're a new business owner or at the end of the other end of the scale or that you're a seasoned serial entrepreneur. There will always be bigger goals. There will always be harder challenges and there will always be beautiful opportunities for growth. You may have heard the saying new level, new devil.
Meaning that as you level up, there'll be something else that will challenge you to either learn more about yourself, to learn more about your industry or to upskill your business skills. There's always, always more to learn and more to grow in those challenges and reaching those bigger goals.
So, how do we work through that? Well, I've got a few suggestions for you coming up.
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Okay. So what we can do, some of the suggestions that I have for you, what we can do is create the vision for the big goal, but not get overwhelmed by the how.
Instead, it's actually a lot easier and more effective to do lots of little things slowly that get us closer to that bigger goal. Smaller goals also work in favor of our fear of failure. So, the possibility of failing a small goal is much less daunting than failing at big one, and there's always the option of course, to try again, if you do fail.
And when we do succeed, which is much more likely when you have small goals, which are attainable, we can celebrate those wins and we gain more momentum. So those wins, those small opportunities where we succeed, where we hit those goals, that gives us more momentum.
We get that hit of the dopamine that, then spurs us on to achieve the next small goal. So, write down your big goal and then spend some time breaking it down. What can you do over the course of a year? What could you do over the course of a quarter, over a month or even within a day to keep moving forwards towards that goal?
Now, I remember having a conversation with my dad in the days leading up to his passing and stuck with me and I want to share it with you because it's one of those things that once you hear it, like you, it stays in your mind, right? And he had been a business owner for the majority of my life and so I said to him, we would often go outta the hospital and go and find like a little quiet table, somewhere with a coffee and just talk.
And I said to him, what's one of the things that you do when you're feeling overwhelmed, like when you are in business and he said that, I imagine that I'm at the airport and I'm in the control tower and I know that I need to land all of the planes, but if I try to land them all at once, it would be a disaster. It would be mayhem. It wouldn't work.
So, I concentrate on landing one plane at a time. Then I land the next airplane and then the next one and so on and so on and that's how you need to look at your business goals. Hearing my dad tell me that's really stuck with me and I wish I'd known that years ago, but I'm so grateful for that advice.
It's so simple, that it's so effective to remove the stress and the overwhelm when you're juggling all the balls in the air like we do as a mum in business, or when you're pushing for that big goal and you've got like so much, that you're trying to achieve all at once. Don't think of it as a hundred planes in the sky, think of it as landing one plane at a time.
And at the end of the day, our big goal and our small goals, they need to work together to get us to where we want to go. So, our big goal may not get off the ground if we don't put the work in and get the momentum. But our small goal won't get us to where we want to go, if we don't have the big goal to see where we're going.
So, the big goal is important to have. That's how we can strategically craft the smaller action steps that will get us towards that bigger goal that we're aiming for. So, just remember that people either get frustrated because they don't see the immediate results and to that, I say business is a long game. There is no such thing as an overnight success.
Again, the reason why I invite my guests on the podcast to share what their journey through business has been like, because there's never an overnight success and the other commonality is that people will become paralyzed by the enormous amount of effort and time that it takes and the anticipated challenges that you'll face along the way towards those goals.
And to that, I suggest you follow the next three tips. Now, just before I dive into those three tips, if you want to learn more about this kind of stuff, you want more of this, then you can download my free eight step guide to optimize your time and accelerate your business goals. I've put all of this into a pDF download.
So, if you are driving, if you're walking, if you're like, ah, where's my notepad, then I've done it all for you. You can just go and download it. So, it's donnahann.com/eight steps, I'll link that in the show notes as well, where you can, uh, follow my guide to really optimize your time and accelerate your business goals.
But here are my three tips. The first one is to write down the reasons why your goal is so important before you start. Then when times get tough and you feel like giving up, you read what you wrote down and you are reminding yourself why you should keep going. You have to be really brave and sometimes another thing that you can do, in addition to writing it down, is to record a voice or a video message for your future self and then watch it when times get tough, to remind yourself why the goal is worth the effort.
Tip number two. Write down why you failed to achieve the goal in the past. If you've tried it before and what ideas you have to overcome those challenges. So, if you've got a goal in mind that maybe you've tried before, it didn't quite work out the way that you thought it would, didn't quite hit the mark, use those previous attempts or those previous learnings as an opportunity.
If it's a completely new thing, reach out to somebody who is a few steps ahead of where you are right now, surround yourself with people who are, where you want to be in your business journey and learn from them, learn from those failed opportunities that maybe didn't quite work out, right?
And also learn from the people around you or reach out to people who are a few steps ahead of you, so that you can fast track those goals and remove the fear of failure around those things, because it's almost like having a game plan already in your pocket.
My third tip is to schedule small steps in your calendar.
So, the likelihood of accomplishing anything significantly goes up when you schedule it in your calendar. This is why I teach 90 day goal setting and action planning because it works and I say this all the time to the, uh, ladies in my Ready to Rise program, that the reason why I believe I've had success in my businesses over the years, is because I do 90 day goal setting and action planning every single quarter and of the times in the past where maybe I didn't quite get around to it.
I did not hit my goals. I was nowhere near. Where I was on during other quarters, if I had done the planning and so this is why it's so important to map out your steps, create a bit of a 90 day goal for yourself and map it out into your calendar, because you'll see it every day and it'll motivate you to keep pushing through and keep going towards those goals.
And again, that's why I created the eight step guide to optimize your productivity and accelerate your goals in supporting you in being able to do that by having a tool, a guide that you can download for free and start on that straight away. So, that's in the show notes.
Now, remember that the path to success is not a straight line, so expect there to be challenges, expect there to be setbacks and when that happens, reflect on what happened and think about how you can prevent it from happening again, and then hit the reset button and try again.
At the moment, I'm four weeks away from opening the doors for the next intake of the Ready to Rise program and I just want to mention it briefly here because, it's a program that combines self-paced learning with weekly group coaching and a brilliant online community of like-minded women.
And if you would like to have me as your business coach to support you on your business journey, this is a really affordable way to do it and the results that the ladies in the program are getting are incredible. So, you can jump on the waitlist now so that you get the early bird bonus, when I open the doors and you join the program.
I'm going to link it in the show notes again, but just head to my website, donnahann.com. There's heaps of information available there about the program and links for you to join the waitlist.
Now, I'm going to leave you with a parting thought, a Chinese proverb to finish this episode.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step and so, the journey of your business success is all about those small steps that lead you towards the big goals.
So, in celebration of the 50th episode and in celebration of you embarking on this business journey, in showing up within your business, in being courageous and chasing after those big goals and putting action steps in place to make your ideal lifestyle happen for you? I want to say cheers to you as I enjoy my glass of bubbles and I want to wish you the very best day, go out there and smash your goals and celebrate you.
