Hey. Good morning. Welcome to Coffee Talk. A little bit different time than usual. I'm just kind of getting back into the swing of it. I've been on a beautiful island at the Cape for the last couple of weeks actually, without much internet, so I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I want my business to be. It's a great time to calibrate, and come back inspired with lots of new motivation and lots of ideas for how I want to really be in business and in life together, so it's a really good combination and I'm happy about what I'm doing. You know, Seven-Figure CEO, people ask me all the time what is this one thing that I need to do to take my business to the next level and many of you guys have heard me say this before. It's always mindset and strategy together, so mindset is that thing that really helps with everything and makes it happen, so you have to get yourself out of the way before you really get started, and it's something that you have to practice all the time.
We talk, of course, about strategies, but we always want to keep in mind what the mindset is that can really help us achieve what we want to achieve, so what's the one thing that can be the catalyst for getting to seven figures? Goal setting is a really big one, so I want to talk a little bit about that. If you want to take your business to the next level, you can't just come up with little goals, like normal goals. You have to really think about the stuff that is outrageous. You know, what's your BHAG? If you don't know what that is, it's the Big Hairy Audacious Goal. What's that thing that really scares you where you don't have a whole lot of motivation to do it because it's something that is not comfortable, but you know intuitively it's the thing that you should be doing, and because it's not comfortable, you create all this resistance that keeps you from getting into action? That's a lot of times what our egos come up with to keep us safe.
You know, why is goal setting important anyway? I heard this podcast by Jack Henfield a long time ago and he was talking about how the top 2% of the population are the people who are doing active goal setting, so they're not just goal setting at the beginning of the year, but they're also actually looking at the goals they set. They work on them all the time. They are aware of when things change, so it's really this living, breathing thing that you work with. It's not like you just do it once in a while or for New Year's Eve, and put it in the drawer and forget about it. It's really around making sure that you set your goals from your heart, from your center, from who you are and who you want to be, and then you actively work on them throughout the year to make sure not only that you're on the track, but also that you take care of the opportunities that come along so that you can do the best you can.
It's kind of, when you want to take your business to a new level, you have to start thinking in a very different way. You have to get away from what's normal. You have to get away from what you would usually do. You have to train your mind to go a whole new level, so really go into this idea of what is a ridiculous for you to set? Think about the different buckets in your life and in your business that are important for you, so money goals, of course, are always really quite big. Then you want to maybe look at what you want the money for, so get really outrageous with that. For a lot of people it's difficult to really admit to what they want, you know? Like, okay, if you want that next fancy car, admit to it. It's fine. You deserve it. Really get into this frame of mind of deserving this. You deserve whatever you want.
There's nothing wrong about what you want, so it's a really good idea to actually start writing the stuff down. Make a big sheet and just put it all down what you want. Now you know what your money goals are. Then you know what you want the money for. Then, of course, the next step that's really powerful is to really understand what impact you want to make in the world with that. For a lot of people who have a hard time wanting something for themselves, they do it a lot better when they admit or when they actually start designing goals for the bigger world, so think about what do you want for the world? What impact do you want to make? It's good for you to make this money because you have something really great in the world that you want to contribute to, so go ahead and write this stuff down so that you get really clear on that.
Once you have your money goals, what you want the money for, your impact, then the next thing to figure out is like, what are the solutions? How are you going to make that money? What are the steps that you have to take so that you can get to this new big, outrageous, crazy goal? Stay in the frame of possibility. What was so cool about getting away for a couple of weeks where I didn't have much internet, and I didn't have much possibility to really go to work was that it forced me to really look at the basics. Like, what's important for me right now? Where do I want to go with this? It's kind of getting disconnected almost so that you can reconnect, so I really recommend that you do that.
In terms of practical goal setting, there's a great way of doing it where you take a whole weekend and the first day you spend just rejuvenating, relaxing, recalibrating, not thinking about work at all. Just really letting your mind kind of go limp. Then from that completely relaxed state, the next day you go back and you really think about, "Okay, what do I want to create in this?" You also want to think, once you have the solutions figured out, it's really important to figure out who's your team. Who's going to help you with this? Who's going to support you? Also, do you have a tribe? Do you have a mentor? Do you have somebody who's going to help you with every step of the way so that you can actually not feel like you're doing all this by yourself? Those are some really important steps.
Going back to the practical aspects of goal setting, so you want to really like, have that weekend. Really give yourself some time, really relax for a while, and then get into a practice where every month ... Well, actually quarterly, you want to go back and really look at your big goals, and you should really be working only on like, one, two, three things a quarter and really focus on those. Every quarter, you want to reexamine your goals and then every month, you want to look back at it and go, "Okay, so what's still important? What am I still doing? What has changed? Who do I need to bring in?" All these really important questions so that you can get to this practical aspect of really realizing your goals. Then you want to take that even a step further. Every week at the beginning or at the end of the week, you want to look at the new week and go, "Okay, how do I want this week to go?"
Every morning before you start into the day, you really want to make a plan for your day so that you can be effective and you can really get stuff done. I hope this makes sense to you guys. Keep your goals as a living, breathing real thing that you work on all the time. For a lot of people, goal setting is difficult because it feels like they're taking away kind of being spontaneous, being creative, so the way I like to look at it is, set your goals and then forget about it. Once you've set those goals, your unconscious will actually keep directing you to the right things. This is where you get really clear around what you want to do and then you detach from the outcome.
What that does is it gives you more opportunity to get creative, and notice opportunities and dance with the opportunities. Sometimes when you're super hyper-focused on something, then you miss a lot of stuff that comes up that could be just as good or even better because you're so focused on this one thing that you thought you were working on, so give yourself a little space. Give yourself a little room around that. Then you get to dance with the opportunity and really have some fun with it. This is about being creative. This is about noticing what else is coming in that could make this even better. Of course, this is the practical stuff.
Then when we get into mindset, you also have to think about how do you change your thoughts, your consciousness around what you want, especially when you get to that next big level? Because as I was saying before, if you focus on, you want to create this new outrageous thing, guess what? Your subconscious is going to go, "Who are you to do that? What do you know about this new big goal? Why are you the person to do this?" There's going to be a lot of self-talk that comes up that's not exactly going to be resourceful for you to get to this next level, so then you have to get into this mindset where every day you interrupt your unconscious thought patterns and you start creating new thoughts, and those new thoughts actually control what your subconscious does. When you think about that, your consciousness is like, you have five senses. What you're seeing, what you're smelling, tasting, all that kind of stuff, that is what controls your consciousness.
Your subconsciousness is your intuition and that's actually what controls the whole train, so that's why it's so important that you control and change your conscious thoughts around what you want so that then your subconscious can control your actions. One way to do that is when you wake up in the morning, how do you feel? What are you thinking? What's coming up for you right away? It's that in between awake and sleep thing that lets you really know where you are at, what stage you're at subconsciously, so notice that. Then you can start creating a practice for yourself throughout the day where you check in and you go, "Where am I right now? Am I in creative and flow or am I in doubt, fear and holding myself back?" Then you can create pattern interrupts for yourself, so you can go from your old habitual pattern that is controlling your subconsciousness at the time until you get into this new practice of thinking how you really want your things so you can reach these new goals.
Your habitual thoughts have to be very powerful to support that BHAG, that Big Hairy Audacious Goal. You're thinking of the ridiculous, of the outrageous new thing that you want, so really get into this practice of creating new habitual thoughts that are supporting those goals. It's kind of like going to the gym and starting to train for something that you have never done before. It might feel uncomfortable. You might get sore. You might want to throw in the towel and go, "I just don't know how to do this." So there could be a lot of stuff that's happening for you in the beginning that doesn't make this super fun, but it's just one of those practices. Apparently, my dogs have some comments about that too. I would invite you to do this all day long. Set yourself some times where you go and notice what's going on with yourself, and then consciously turn the boat at that time. Consciously flip your thoughts, so maybe affirmations are a great way to go. You can come up with a new thought that you really want and then you can start thinking on that track.
If you don't do this, if you can't change your thoughts, your subconscious will constantly direct you back to the old thought patterns and that will direct you back to the same behavior patterns, and that means you're never going to change the level where you're at, so it's a very important practice to get into.
I hope this all makes sense to you and it's inspiring to you so you can really start thinking on a bigger level. Of course, this is just the beginning. This is just a tiny Band-Aid. If you want to talk more about this, and you're really serious about changing where you're at and getting to the next level in your business, and taking it in a way where you love what you do, you're doing it in a sustainable and fun way, I am happy to talk to you further. I've actually cleared some time in my schedule this next week so I can talk to some of you guys, one-on-one.
If you're interested in doing that, go to sevenfigureceo.com. All one word, all written out, /apply. Sevenfigureceo.com/apply. Again, http://sevenfigureceo.com/apply, which will direct you to my scheduling page and you can just book a time. We can get on the phone and really talk about what it would be in your business that would help you to get to this new level, and what plan and what action steps you need to take so you can do this sooner rather than later. Love talking to you guys. The other thing you can also do, if you want more support and you're not quite ready for a call, go into our Facebook group, The Art of Scaling to Seven Figures. We'd love to you see in there. We have lots of interesting discussions going on, so we will see you there soon. Have a great week!