Have you laid out your goals for 2022?

While some of you have begun setting goals for the coming year, many of you may have not yet started. That’s ok, because I know a lot of us can begin to feel overwhelmed when thinking about mapping out a plan for the new year.

I sat down with Neill Williams to talk about how to set and achieve goals for the upcoming year.

When it comes to setting goals for next year, there are two ways to do it: achievement-oriented goals, and growth-oriented goals.

Achievement-oriented goals are set with an accomplishment in mind. Reaching these goals are pretty much 100 percent under your control. You either do it, or you don’t. Success is not dependent upon anyone but yourself. We set these kinds of goals just to get something done.

The other kind of goal you set is for growth. That’s literally it. You set a goal that requires you to grow in some way to be able to achieve it. The point of that goal is not to reach it. The point of it is the growth that you get while going after it.

Today, Neill and I are going to walk you through a goal-setting strategy for 2022. We talk about the mindset challenges that can come up, and how to deal with them. We also look at how to decide what kind of goals we want to set for the new year.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Two types of goals for a successful 2022
• How to expand your decision-making abilities
• The million dollar mindset for business growth
• How to double your revenue
• Why failure is crucial to your success
• The right way to set goals
• Building upon what’s already working

Links & Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Multiple 6-Figure Coaching Business (in 12 Months) w/Neill Williams
• BONUS: How to Get More Done In Less Time w/Neill Williams
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business website
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

Neill Williams’ Links

• Neill Williams’ Website
• $10K In 10 Hours
• Neill’s Instagram
• The Unbusy Your Life podcast

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Quick Tip: Thinking Differently About Goals

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Quick Tip: 6 and 7-Figure Mindset Secrets

[00:00:00] Neill:
Right now, you learning to fail, and support yourself through failure, is going to be the skill that will crack open your life for the rest of your life. This is the stuff, right here. That’s the thing we don’t learn as kids. We get to adulthood, and we get to business, and we still have this idea that failure’s this horrible, negative thing that has all these bad consequences.

We hold ourselves smaller than we need to be. That really does prevent us from getting to the success we could have.

[00:01:13] Rick:
What’s up, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, as always, for tuning in today. Super appreciate you. Hope all is going well, whatever you’re up to right now.

I am recording this intro immediately after my interview with Neill Williams, which you’re about to hear in just a second. I don’t really do that. I normally wait in between, which is a terrible idea, by the way, if you’re a podcaster. If you do your intros and outros separate from an interview, or separate from whatever, do it as quickly as you can afterwards, because it’s so much fresher in your mind and you have a different energy around the intro.

That energy right now, just hanging up with Neill, I cannot wait for you to hear this episode. At the end of the interview, we challenge you with something. We decided literally, while this is recording and in our interview towards the end, we decide that we’re creating a movement for 2022. It all has to do with setting goals for the new year. I’m going to leave it at that, because you’ve got to listen to it when we get to it.

So, whether you do notes or not, I start these interviews with a blank document in front of me. I have an idea of where I want the interview to go, meaning what I think that you, my listeners, are going to get the most out of.

So, I start with a blank document, and I always tell people it’s like you and I are sitting down for coffee. All of my listeners are there just to have coffee with us and also learn. Basically get a free training as we’re talking.

So, today, I asked Neill to join me on the show to share her expertise around planning and goal setting, because Neill is a master life coach, and she specializes in productivity and goal setting, and mindset and money mindset. She’s one of our coaches inside of our Accelerator coaching program. She has calls with our members every two weeks, and everyone just loves Neill.

Now, if you’re new to the podcast here, and you have not yet heard Neill in past episodes—she’s been on a couple of times, and they’re must-listens—I asked her to come on here and talk about her recommendations on looking at how to plan for the new year, in this case for 2022.

And you can use this on any year, depending on when you’re listening to this podcast. But as we’re recording this in late. 2021. For those of you who either have not yet planned the new year or have planned it, this is going to be super, super helpful for you. So, um, Neill breaks down, like when it comes to goals, she likes to say that there’s two different goals and I’ll, leave it at that.

And she breaks down. We w the whole conversation is around what these two types of goals are and how to. Use them in our goal planning for the new year for 2022. We also talk about the mindset challenges that can come up and how to deal with those mindset challenges. When we start setting bigger goals for ourselves.

And we also look at like how to decide what kind of goal we want to set for. The new year. And a lot of that can depend on, you know, sort of what kind of season are you in, in your life and in your business. And you want to set a goal or goals that support that season. Right? So many of us just set like this huge.

Revenue number as a goal, just with no context behind it, just like, oh, I want to set that goal because of whatever. And that’s all well and good, but let’s be more intentional about, you know, with our, with our goals. Okay. she also shares what the failure feedback loop is. It’s hard to say the failure of feedback loop, um, and how to leverage the failure feedback loop in planning for 2022.

So you’re going to walk away here today with a step-by-step goal setting plan for the new year. And then again, at the end of this interview, She shares. She says, you know what might be a fun goal for you to set for 20, 22? And then she shares what it is. And then you literally hear us kind of go back and forth on that.

And the result of that, it was we come up with, A movement that we’re creating for 2022. And I’m really, really, excited about this. And so, by the way, if you’re a more established online course creator and online, uh, coach, and you’re already very successful in your business, and you’re looking to take things to the next level to increase profit increase impact with less hustle, then I want to invite you to learn more.

And apply it’s application only for my Accelerator coaching program. Okay. This is one-on-one coaching group coaching and a mastermind experience all wrapped up into one program. So if you want to learn more and fill out the application or taking applications, go to Rick mulready.com forward slash Accelerator.

All right, without further ado, let’s go hang out with Neill Williams. So when I decided to have, when I made the decision, I should say to do an episode about planning for 2022, I was like, there’s no other person I want to have on here. But Neill Williams to have on the podcast here to talk about this. Because I was looking at the calendar and I was like, ah, we should talk about planning for the new year.

And oh, by the way, it’s the middle of November and that, which, which shows you how much planning did I’ve done for the new year. Um, but, uh, that’s where we’ll be talking about here today. You’ve been on the show before, welcome back. But for those people, we have thousands of new listeners of the podcast.

So for people who do not know who Neill Williams is, can you share with us who you are and what you do in your business?

[00:07:35] Neill:
Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me back so fun to be here. And we just have such an amazing time talking with you on the podcast yeah. So my name is Neill Williams and I am a master certified deep dive certified COVID. And I work primarily with entrepreneurs, but also the high achieving corporate hustlers.

And I help those groups of folks. Really scale back their crazy work weeks. So what I’ve been focusing on over the last couple of years, I’m also now a little bit transitioning into helping people at my, my goal really is to help people break the idea that hard work equals success is the only model in the world to achieve success.

To make money to live the lifestyle that you want. And so I’m also diving into a little bit of money coaching and incorporating the two together now in, um, in a program that I just piloted this year called 10 K and 10 hours, where I help you figure out how to make money in a small amount of time.

Because if you can do that, then you never have to believe that hard work creates success. You never have to hustle for money, right?

[00:08:49] Rick:
Wait, when is that? When did that roll out? I didn’t know about that. Well, yeah. When did that roll out? And, and, uh, I should also say that, um, Neill is one of our coaches and Accelerator I had people telling me they’re like, Yeah, I just go to Neill’s calls and I get everything I need. Right. Then I’m like, wait a minute. What about all this? Um, but no, you, personally coach our Accelerators on all the stuff that you just, that you just mentioned, um, which is, which is awesome.

And so I’m honored to have you as part of that, of that program. And you’ve been with, you’ve been with Accelerator and me for a while now. Um, and it’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s a huge part of the program. So I want to talk about, as I mentioned earlier, I want to talk about planning for the new year, because one of the things that you are so good at is looking at goals, setting goals, because so many of us, for example, and I did this for a long time, myself is set a goal that is.

Totally achievable. That isn’t really any kind of stretch for us because we know that if we set a bigger goal than we think we can hit and we don’t hit that goal, we make it so many. We make it mean so many things about us. So then, then we kind of play smaller and set a goal that like, oh, I know I can hit that.

So cool. We hit that goal and you know, then everything’s working. Well, so when we’re looking at, you know, some people have already planned, some people have not yet planned for 2022. Where do we start? When we’re looking at setting up goals for the next year? Because a lot of people can start thinking about it and get overwhelmed.

They’re not really sure where to start. So why don’t we start the conversation there? Where should people start as they go looking at planning for the upcoming year

[00:10:40] Neill:
Yeah. I love to start the idea, the topic discussion of planning with, uh, goals in mind, because. When we’re making a plan, we need a destination. that’s what a goal gives us is like, if we’re going to make this plan to get somewhere, where is it that we want to end up and how do we know if we even get there?

And so I think about goals, There are two types of goals. In my mind, there is to speak to what you just said a second ago. There is the goal I really call the achievement-oriented goal. Purely set to achieve, to accomplish. that kind of goal is totally fine. I don’t want to give the impression that you shouldn’t have those kinds of goals.

They’re absolutely fine. it all depends on what you want. That kind of goal. Really the way that I like to think about is pretty much a hundred percent under your control, it’s like, here are all the steps I need to take to get this thing done, to accomplish this thing. Maybe it’s a project.

Maybe it’s something. else I will either do it or I won’t. it’s not dependent on anyone else really it’s either you do it or you don’t. primarily we set those just to get something done, to accomplish something, to achieve something. So there’s that kind of goal, that category of goal. then there’s the other one, which you just mentioned, which is a goal that is not set to be achieved.

Which many people listening would be like, wait, what, why would you even set such a goal?

[00:12:18] Rick:
Yeah, right

[00:12:20] Neill:
Of it is entirely different than the achievement goal. that kind of goal is there for you to achieve it, to accomplish it. But the other kind of goal what you set is just for growth.

That’s literally it you set a goal. That requires you to grow in some way to be able to achieve it the point of that goal is not to achieve it. The point of it is the growth that you have on the going after it. So let me stop there

[00:12:48] Rick:
Okay, let’s break that down for a second, because that’s a big concept that, um, a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around. Right. So it’s like, why would I, why would I set a goal that pretty much no, that I’m not going to achieve. And so what, like, why would, why would we, you talked about like who we are becoming in the process.

[00:13:10] Neill:
Yeah.

[00:13:11] Rick:
Right. Or the growth that I’m experiencing in trying to hit that goal. Like let’s like, what does that mean? Exactly.

[00:13:19] Neill:
Yeah. So you want to think about like the way that I think about it is okay. If I set this school, it’s going to require me to either. Make leaps of change in my own mindset. That’s one kind of growth. It might require me to master or get really good at some new skill that I’m not good at that I’m going to have to do in order to get to that goal.

Right. There’s going to be something that I’m going to have to change about me. It’s like my own internal growth in some capacity. I’ll have to do that in order to go after or try to accomplish that goal. So it’s not like we’re not trying to accomplish the goal, but the point of that goal isn’t to accomplishment, the point is the journey that we take in going towards it.

If that makes sense, does that

[00:14:06] Rick:
Okay. Yeah, totally. And like something that you and I have talked about before, it’s also, so let’s just say we want to do $5 million, whatever in our business. we pretty much know that we’re not going to do that, but this is our growth goal. And so we are making, so the idea is to make decisions. Through the lens of that $5 million CEO.

[00:14:32] Neill:
Totally.

[00:14:33] Rick:
Break that down a little bit for us, from your perspective.

[00:14:37] Neill:
Yeah. So the idea with setting a growth-oriented goal, like that is really cultivating the skill of making decisions showing up every day and handling situations the way that you who has already achieved that big, crazy goal that you don’t know how to do yet would achieve it. That’s the internal growth.

You think about Okay. to hit $5 million, maybe my business, is at 2 million? I have to think bigger to hit 5 million, than I’m thinking now to just recreate 2 million. So I have to start asking myself different questions. Like, what would I need to do to more than double my business, maybe I have to think about what kind of new offer I would create or what new revenue streams and like, how would I do I have to literally think differently to.

Be that person who knows how to create $5 million. it also means that I have to start making decisions differently than I’ve made them in the past. Because if I, keep making the same decisions that I have in the past, I’m just going to recreate the $2 million version of me. But that’s not what I want.

What I want is the $5 million version of me. And so I have to ask that me, which sounds very wounds, very weird, I, don’t know, but, you actually do know. If I was my $5 million me, what would I do here? And we could give up like some examples of things that might come up where you would think about it differently from the $2 million U versus the $5 million you write.

[00:16:13] Rick:
Let’s do that. Do you have any that come off the.

[00:16:16] Neill:
Yeah. So for instance, one thing I see a lot with, Accelerators and, um, entrepreneurs in general is thinking about, okay, $5 million me, if I’m at $2 million right now, $5 million me, does that me For insight, I’m just going to do like a coaching example. So maybe you got to $2 million in your coaching business.

And You’re doing some one-on-one, but you’re going to $5 million. Does $5 million me coach one-on-one I’m guessing probably that’s not part of the business model, Maybe, but probably not. It’s not as scalable as maybe a group a membership or something like that. that’s the kind of example that you want to start.

Not that you make that decision overnight, but you start moving your business towards that. oh, one-on-one’s probably not part of this business model. So I’m going to have to start transitioning into this other business model that I see. I can make $5 million with, and that’s going to bring all of your mindset stuff up.

All of it.

[00:17:26] Rick:
Okay, talk about that before. I I’ll share another example too, but talk about that for a second, because this goes into. The whole, this isn’t what most people think about when they’re planning the year, most people are thinking oh yeah, I’m going to set a goal of a million dollars next year or 500,000 or whatever it might be and say, okay, I’m going to break it down by quarter.

I need to do this, this and this to do this. But what most people don’t think about is exactly what you just brought up is like, when we think about that bigger goal and we start to be thinking oh, I need to be making decisions through this lens. Then it brings up a whole bunch of mindset stuff.

So let’s talk about that for a second. What, types of things does it bring up

[00:18:10] Neill:
It really brings to the surface. All of the belief I call them glass ceilings. They’re your own mindset, beliefs that are your glass ceilings. I call them blessings because it’s hard for you to see for yourself until you put yourself into a situation where it breathes, like rises to the surface.

Then you’re like, oh, I don’t believe I can make $5 million or $5 million. Isn’t possible for me. Or I can’t let my one-on-ones go, or I can’t make this transition, or I can’t make this change. Like all, all of the things you believe now are the things that got you to where you are, but many of those things will limit.

You From getting to the next level. that’s really the whole point of setting a goal. this is for you to see very clearly what are those things that are, maybe they were great for me now, but I have to let them go in order to move to the next level.

[00:19:03] Rick:
So are we talking about a situation where like, I’m getting kind of tactical with this, but like, if we notice something, are we like literally like writing it down or like capturing it so that we’re aware of it? Or like, how are we handling when we start to. Well, actually, before I ask that question, what are some ways to make it easier to recognize when those things are coming up?

Because they might be coming up for us, but we don’t even realize that they’re coming up or like, oh, this is one of those things that, where my mindset is limited here or hitting a glass ceiling as you put, because I’m thinking through the lens of, you know, a different level of businesses.

Does that make sense?

[00:19:51] Neill:
Totally. I think the best way to, gauge this. is an awareness exercise, number one. And okay. If I’m thinking the way with a brand I have today, decision do I make? And then you ask yourself. But if I like, what does my $2 million me say It’s probably easy for you to come up with that.

Because that’s who you are today. But then if you say, what if If I was $5 million me? If I was making $5 million, I had a $5 million business I’m already there. What decision does that me make an art? If those are not in alignment, you know, there’s something different about what you’re thinking now and what you’d be thinking at that level.

That’s how, you know,

[00:20:32] Rick:
So the inevitable question that comes up is someone’s going to say, I have no idea what $5 million me, how that person thinks, because I’m not there. If I were thinking that way, I’d already be there.

[00:20:46] Neill:
Right. my response to that is you use your best guess this is a skill too, most people don’t have the skill of thinking from their future and acting from their future because the way the brain is structured, the way it’s designed is to make decisions from your past.

You use past data to help you make decisions today. the only problem with that. is if you vote for those decisions, you just keep recreating your past. If you want to create a different future, you can’t rely on your past for those decisions. So it’s really a skill to be able to dive into future you so that you can create the future that you want, even though your past.

Tells You you don’t, you can’t do that yet because you haven’t done it yet. But if you ask yourself those questions, I think one of the biggest problems is we have been trained out of listening to ourselves and our own inner wisdom. We want someone else to tell us, because that’s what we’ve been trained to do from childhood, in school you ask the teacher when you don’t know the answer, You ask someone. else But this is a skill of developing deep trust in accessing your own inner wisdom people are going to think it’s really woo-woo but it’s literally one of the most powerful skills you can create for yourself is to trust your own instincts and your own knowing you will come up with an answer, whether you trust that answer or not, is the thing that we got to work on because the answer you get from yourself is, is something that.

Is true. And you can rely on it. It’s just that we’re, we’re trained not to do that. that’s part of the skill, right? That’s part of the mindset piece in, in cultivating that skill.

[00:22:34] Rick:
Yeah. And as you’re, as you’re saying that, you know, I just, I had a call. I had a coaching call this morning with one of our Accelerators and, uh, they were saying that they consume content in a different way. Like Vail they’d rather watch our recording. And then, um, you know, while they’re out doing their own thing, listen to it.

And they use an example this morning. Of listening to one of your recent calls and having some huge light bulb moments go off for them. And then it was like, oh, I have questions now based on this.

But then they said, I took note of them and like, just thought through the questions and because I was putting, uh, listening to the training through the lens of, oh, I can figure this out myself.

They were answering their own questions that they would have asked you

[00:23:30] Neill:
Exactly. There’s so many times where I get on those Accelerator calls and I just ask the simplest questions, right? It’s not like I’m like some genius or something. I just ask well-placed questions. you always have the answer inside of you, then this is why I always tell them. I see you already had the answer.

You just had to ask the right question to access it inside of you. And that is the skill that I want. All of them to develop is being able to do that for themselves. They’re like, I wish I had Neill in my pocket. Like how would I get you in my pocket? One of them says that to me, every single call. Listen, you already know you just ask yourself questions and you listen to your answers. That’s it.

[00:24:10] Rick:
Yeah. And it’s created a space for yourself to be able to do that, um, to be able to, yeah. And this person said, you know, I often, and I don’t know if we’re talking about the same person, but he said WW, N D what would Neill too is part of their normal day to day, day to day, you know, SEOing, if you will, of their, of their business and.

Another thing that, what you were just talking about brought up for me is that recently, one of the members have offered an optimized, jumped up from OTO into Accelerator because they were doing so well in their business. And they weren’t super comfortable being able to have conversations and so forth, um, w in what she was accomplishing and nothing does not, it was wrong with it, but like, Clearly the business had gone to a new level and she wanted to take her thinking to that new level as well.

An exact example of what you’re talking about. Um, well she emailed us the other day and said, actually, I don’t, we haven’t, I haven’t told you this yet. She emails the other day and said, I haven’t even had my kickoff call yet. And just from. Expanding my thinking, being around this, this group of people and watching the recordings and trainings and so forth, I did a promotion because I got an idea from something that somebody said, and she made her, she made her Accelerator investment back in.

I left within 11 daysof joining and yeah. And I’m like, that’s what it’s about. Right. It’s having like thinking differently. and in one more example, Before we get into like the, you know, actually planning out now that we have our achievement goals in our growth goals, understanding what those are. Thinking through a larger lens of where the business is going. Uh, it was, I had a conversation with somebody today and they were having some challenges with a T a member on their team. And no one, you know, no one likes dealing with team stuff. Like, especially when you know, like it’s confrontational as people put it, no one likes to do it, but it’s part of like, this person has an amazingly successful business and can see huge growth.

Next year. They’ve all, they’ve already seen massive growth this year, but even bigger growth next year. And the conversation was around exactly. Or talking about here where it’s like, we have to be thinking through that future, you know, that lens of future CEO, because the people that got us to where we are right now are probably not the people to take us through that next level.

Thus necessitating a CEO quote, unquote conversation, even though it’s going to be hard, or even though, you know, it’s being framed as being hard, it’s, it’s just a different level.

[00:27:07] Neill:
And one thing I wanted to add to this, that I am not sure that I said this earlier, when our, when we’re differentiating the two types of goals, like the accomplishment achievement goal versus the growth school, oftentimes the growth school. Isn’t something that was, is 100% under your control. Right.

And that’s what makes it challenging too, because oftentimes like, as entrepreneur. We set revenue goals. Like we’re pretty notorious for setting revenue goals, right. And we like to keep setting the goals higher and higher and higher. And while we do have a lot of control over that, we can’t make our people buy.

So there is that little piece of. Uncertainty in it. And that is also part of the growth process, right? Like how do we handle uncertainty? How do we show up to uncertainty? It kind of, we learn how we want to do that. And so that’s the other piece that I really like about the growth goals is that there is some uncertainty that we have to reconcile that we have to kind of contemplate as we’re going through it.

[00:28:09] Rick:
Yeah. And so glad you bring it up because we have to be careful on what we’re comparing to, and I see this a lot. I know you see this a lot too, but especially, especially in the, in the, in the teacher entrepreneur space, the teacherauthor space, it’s, it’s a big breakdown. If you know, September.

Revenue didn’t surpass last September’s revenue or this month. And it’s like, well, you know, and a lot of, a lot of people try to compare like this month, like this year to like COVID in 2020, and it’s just like, wait a minute, wait a minute. And it’s fascinating for me because I, you know, we work with a lot of teacher entrepreneurs and an Accelerator I’ve been doing so for years, but like, it’s that mindset of.

Uh, oh, I’m doing something wrong or something must be wrong if this month didn’t be last year at the same time, you know?

So now that we’ve laid that groundwork, we’ve got our achievement goal, our growth goal. How can we leverage that when planning out the new year?

[00:29:19] Neill:
Yeah, I think number one is deciding what is number one? What kind of goal do I want to set for 20, 22? And I think we’re the under the mistaken illusion. Cause this is what we do as humans. It’s either black or white it’s yes or no. It’s all like you have to have a growth goal. You do not. You just get to choose which one you want.

Right. So maybe you don’t have any growth goal for 20, 22. Maybe you’re like, listen, I know I’ve spent the last three years, like growing a lot and I would just want a break from growth. Like I just want to kind of settle in for a year. I want to make sure that, that your listeners see, like, there is a spectrum here and there are seasons of business.

There are seasons of life. And making sure that you choose the goal that’s really supportive for where you are and where you want to go. It doesn’t have to be that we always push, push, push more and more and more growth. All of that. But if you do want to set a growth goal, that’s where I say let’s, let’s start there.

So that is Bugel and you know, me, I like to have our students constrain, not set 10, like let’s pick one and go after one at a time

Because totally. Because the entrepreneur brain is like, it wants to offer a million ideas. It has the shiny object syndrome every other day. Like, oh, I’m going to do this. Oh, but this sounds so much more fun.

I should do this instead. And then we change our, we just add on we’re like, oh, I’m gonna just do two bowls. And then it becomes five goals in this 10. And then we’re like, wait a minute. What

[00:30:55] Rick:
Yeah.

[00:30:56] Neill:
Right.

[00:30:57] Rick:
And then they all suffer because there’s not focus on.

[00:31:01] Neill:
Yeah.

So I would say, especially if we’re going to do a growth goal for 2022, you pick one only one because there’s going to be so much that services like. The reason for that goal is for your own growth. Right? And so we want to pick those strategically, but also in a ver in a constrained way. So one of those, so if that’s what you want to do, then I would say set that goal first.

And then the way that I would do it is I would take the accomplishment goals and I would structure them in a way to help you. Get to that growth goal. So you might have like a quarterly achievement goal or a monthly achievement goal or something like that. And the great part about that is you’re going to have some discomfort as you’re going towards the growth school.

That’s a part of it, right? Because you’re learning, you’re growing, you’re changing. You’re going to have failure. If you set that up. The growth school for sure. That’s going to be part of your journey. And so when you have these other kinds of goals kind of coming alongside and you pair with them, at least you still have that, like the achievement, the accomplishment that gives you a little bit of like excitement and like I’m, I’m making progress, I’m moving forward.

So it’s nice to pair those both together in that way. If you’re going to set the growth goal,

[00:32:24] Rick:
So let’s, can we break that down into I don’t know if this makes sense an actual yet hypothetical example. So, all right. So what would be a growth goal? Like let’s, let’s just make one up.

[00:32:38] Neill:
Um, let’s do something general that people might be able to apply. Like let’s just say the growth school is going to double my business. At 2022 from whatever, whatever it was in 2021, we’re going to double it in 2022. So already you’ll probably notice if that’s the goal that you set your brain is probably going to freak out a little bit, which makes sense.

Right? Because. It’s a big goal to have set and already your brain is going to want to say, but I don’t know how to do that. I can’t do that. Like already, if you just listened to the story, you tell yourself when you set that goal, you’re going to find a lot of your mindset things, which is pretty fun to see right.

Immediately. Oh, here it is. so you might set that growth goal. Okay. So the goal is to double the business in the next. And then you might ask yourself, okay. I’d like to take you to like that future place where like Rick, you and I are sitting together December 31st, 2022. We’re having like a cup of coffee.

Cause we both love coffee. And we’re talking about how you doubled your business that year. Like put yourself in that place. And then just, what would you tell me? Like, how did you go about doing it? And you just kind of do like a brain dump of all the things that you did to get to that goal.

[00:33:57] Rick:
It’s important note for everybody listening. Like if you do this exercise, I should say, when you do this exercise, It’s not like all, you know, all these things will work. It’s just like, like Nilda said, like you’re just brain dumping, all the potential things that can get you to achieving that.

Doubling the business.

[00:34:16] Neill:
Yeah. And that was such an important point because you’re using your best guests based on what you know now and what you, what that you, that you think you are going to be when it’s doubled, is telling. Right. So you get a list of all the things that you think you’re gonna do. And then I would like organize them, like, well, I would do this first and this second, maybe even just like number them, start to finish.

And then I would take like the first one and I would decide, okay, when do I want to accomplish this by? And I would set that into my calendar. So like, let’s say in doubling your business, what do you think Rick what would be one thing someone would want to do in order to double their business?

[00:35:02] Rick:
One simple thing could be to increase The price of their offer.

[00:35:08] Neill:
Yeah.

[00:35:08] Rick:
One could be, oh, I need to sell more of these.

[00:35:12] Neill:
Yep.

[00:35:13] Rick:
Um, another one could be, I need to hire help to do X, Y, and Z. one could be, I need to. increase the listenership of my podcasts because I get a lot of, you know, customers from my podcasts.

The same thing could be for YouTube or what have you, um, just ideas off the top of my head.

[00:35:37] Neill:
Yeah. let’s say that, was the list somebody came up with. if you were coaching them, what would be the first thing you would say let’s, let’s do this first.

[00:35:48] Rick:
Well, I think the easy thing would be to, uh, increase the price.

[00:35:53] Neill:
Increase the price. That’s exactly what I was thinking. what is the fastest, easiest thing here, So increasing the price. then you might decide, okay, I’m going to increase the price by this date. maybe it’s January 15th, maybe it’s January 31st, whatever it is. then you start thinking like, that is an accomplishment goal, Because you’re in fully full control of that. When you decide to do that, how you roll it out to your people or how you tell them or communicate that, So that would be maybe accomplishment, goal, number one, I’m going to increase the price by January 31st. And here’s how I’m going to dothat.

[00:36:29] Rick:
Yeah, like then you can start thinking like, okay, I’m going to do it by this by January 31st. And then within that accomplishment goal, I can say I’m going to email my existing email list minus my students and let them know. Hey, just want to give you a heads up that the price of such-and-such is increasing to this dollar amount after, you know, from February 1st on, here’s an opportunity to get in.

Now, if you want to get this price,

[00:37:02] Neill:
Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So then you just think about looking, what would it, what are the steps I take to increase my price? I mean, you make the decision, right? And then probably you have to get some coaching on all of them, pretty drama that you’re going to have about increasing their price. Well, people are going to think about it.

Who’s going to be upset, like all of that, right? Yeah. And that’s why you joined Accelerator to get the coaching that you need to fulfill on that. And then you’re right. You just literally like thinking about the steps that you would need to take in order to get that done by January 31st. then you might look at the next thing on your list and you might say, okay, what is the next thing that I’m going to do that I believe is going to lead me to doubling my.

Business you set a deadline for that one. then you think about all the steps you need to take to get there. So we’re just filling in We’re setting the major milestones and then we’re, backfilling from there. Now I like to think about this as maybe you do this for quarter one.

Because here’s, what’s going to happen when you set a growth goal, you are going to make your best guess for how you’re going to get there. And you’re going to make some plans and execute on those plans, but some of those are going to fail. You want them to fail? Because then you learn what you didn’t know you needed to learn.

So then you might take those learnings, those failures and learnings, and you might adjust your second-quarter plan then you might execute the things on your second quarter. you take the failings and the learnings. And then you create your third-quarter plan. All having in mind, the whole point of this is for me to try and double my business.

So the whole point of doing this.

[00:38:40] Rick:
So when you’re planning, I like that in your saying, like, all right, let’s just start with the first quarter because things aren’t going to work and along the way, so that you get to almost reset for Q2. and because you get to look at like, what didn’t, what works, what didn’t work, what do I need to, what can I improve upon, et cetera?

So what I’m hearing you say and correct me if I’m wrong is that you’re not necessarily planning the entire year upfront from a quarterly perspective.

[00:39:16] Neill:
I think you could have like, Big milestones. You could have like milestones, you’re trying to hit in each of the quarters. And you could do the detail if you wanted to. The thing that I notice is it’s totally fine. If you do that, I think it’s fine either way, but if you do it that way with a growth school where you try and plan out the whole year, you sometimes then don’t take the learnings from the failing.

And incorporate those. Cause you’re like what? I already set my plan. So if you’re going to do that totally fine, but be willing to be open and flexible and like be willing to let the plan navigate a little bit and pivot a little bit, depending on what you learn from what you execute.

[00:39:54] Rick:
Yeah, totally. We get, we get so tied to like, oh, but wait, I’ve already set my plan for Q2. I can’t move it around. You know, like I can’t do anything to that.

[00:40:03] Neill:
Right, right. And I hear students say this all the time, like, but I set my plan and I shouldn’t change my plan. I would say, well, who says, I mean, the whole point of the plan is to get you someplace, right? If you learn something that’s going to help you get there easier, why wouldn’t we change our plan?

[00:40:23] Rick:
Right, right.

[00:40:25] Neill:
But kind of get stuck sometimes. Like, there’s this one way that we should do it.

[00:40:29] Rick:
Yeah. and if we figure out that there’s a better way, we, like you said, we often get stuck in like, wait, I already set it up to do it this way. I can’t change

Now for whatever reason. so when we start looking at like, all right, we’re going to set up for Q for Q1, for example, and this is what. You know, we broken down, these are the whatever five things.

I think that, that can help double the business. We’re going to prioritize in this case here, raising our prices, you know, raising our price of our flagship offer. Let’s just say, and we want to do it by the end of the month in January. And then we can look at okay, what goes into. Increasing the price, like what kind of messaging, what kind of, you know, are you going to a special promo or whatever whatever it might be. Well, then someone might say, okay, that’s a big thing that we’ve like, quote, unquote, accomplished by the end of January, how are we treating the rest of Q1 at that point? Are we simply moving on to our next biggest priority

[00:41:29] Neill:
You could like think about, okay. So what’s the next thing on my list that I think I want to try to get myself to, and maybe that maybe you do six take 60 days to accomplish that thing. Right? You do want to have like a couple things I like to think about like, My work container, like what can I fit into my work container from this list?

And what, what do I want to do? I almost always give myself that question too. Like what I want to do in the first quarter to try, what am I willing to try in the first quarter to be able to double this, right. Instead of like telling myself that I have to, or I have to make through all this lists, The whole point of entrepreneurship is to give us like a playground and we put so much pressure on ourselves and like so much obligation. And I think that’s part of what burns us out. So I like to just look at the list and be like, oh, that sounds like it might be interesting. I’m going to do That That might be fun to do in the first quarter. Let’s try that.

[00:42:24] Rick:
So what kind of achievement goals are we setting? Cause we’re setting, we’re talking about the growth goal and the types of things that we can do

To try and get to that growth goal. You mentioned setting achievement goals along the way.

[00:42:39] Neill:
Yeah.

[00:42:39] Rick:
Would be an example?

[00:42:40] Neill:
Yeah. Like trying to think of the things that you said on the list. So number one, achievement achievement is increasing the price. That’s an achievement goal. Like you achieved increasing your price, right? You told your people about it gave them opportunity to buy in at the lower price. And now here’s where it is.

Um, something else that you said, I think was,

[00:43:00] Rick:
Well, sell more, of whatever the offer is. Sell more courses. Let’s just say,

[00:43:04] Neill:
Yeah. So maybe, so this is kind of like a little mini growth goal inside of the bigger growth goals. So when you say sell more, I would say, just be really specific about that. Like sell maybe in February. So I increased the price in January and then February, my goal is to sell a hundred. Or whatever it is, right.

How would I go about doing that? Or maybe in the second half of the month or February and March. My goal is to sell a hundred by the end of that quarter and increase the price first. And then I’m going to try and sell this many. So that’s a little bit of it’s achieve it, but it’s also a little bit growth too, because again, any time we’re talking about selling something like.

We’re going to Do everything we can to hit that goal. But at the end of the day, there’s still a little piece of that. That is outside of our control. That’s a little bit uncertain because we can’t force our people to buy that number. what I would say is. Having those along the way is really great because it allows you to experience failure If you don’t get to a hundred, you just ask why, what happened? What do I need to change next time I try this goal to hit it. It’s just this constant failure-feedback loop We get really good at, and that’s what helps us get to success is being willing to experience the failure-feedback loop

[00:44:30] Rick:
So would you say that that right there is the key to achieving our bigger goals?

[00:44:38] Neill:
Totally. Totally.

[00:44:40] Rick:
And that’s not it’s not, I didn’t mean to like, tee that up for you. That’s like literally like

[00:44:44] Neill:
Like that’s it right there.

[00:44:46] Rick:
Like, is that really does that, what it boils downto.

[00:44:49] Neill:
If you don’t take anything away from this podcast, except understanding that the failure-feedback loop is the thing that creates. growth That’s all you need. that is literally like the crux of it. Because in our society we’ve been trained that failure is this really bad thing that there are these negative consequences, even in school, I’m watching my son. Um, he’s 12 and he struggles with math because he has, um, a little bit of dyslexia. so math is very challenging for him. last night I was sitting at the table with him. We sit at the table and we do math homework. literally every single night it’s painful, and excruciating for both of us.

We both want to cry by the time we’re done with it But it was so interesting to me to watch him from this perspective, because he’s so concerned about other kids seeing him fail already at age 12 in this math stuff. He’s like, mom, I’m the only one that’s struggling with this. I’m like, who cares?

It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re struggling with it because you’re learning how to fail and come out of that right now. Of course, he’s like, not that he agreed with me. I want to Make clear, but I was trying to teach him like this skill of letting yourself exactly like this. He said to me, mom stop life-coaching me,

But I’m like No buddy This is the stuff This Right now you learning to fail and support yourself through failure is going to be the skill that will crack open your life for the rest of your life. This is the stuff right here. I think that’s the thing we don’t learn as kids, so we get to adults we get to business and we still have this idea that failure is this horrible negative thing that has all these bad consequences.

So we hold ourselves smaller than we need to be. We fail less or less hard than we need to. And that really does prevent us from getting to the success we could have.

[00:46:48] Rick:
I mean, I I love that. And. That, like you said, that’s it right there is. That’s what this is all about. incorporating that mindset into our, our our planning for the new year. That right there can set us up for massive success in whatever success looks like for you.

So, and I, as one thought that came up here, as we start to wrap up is like, that becomes, I think that that becomes easier for people to. Be willing to accept when they know they’ve already been successful. Let’s just say the previous year. And let’s just say it again. They’re like, let’s just say it’s there at a half, a million dollar business. And now they, their growth goal is like, I want to double, I want to get to a million dollars next year.

Yeah. They’ve already been very successful to hit a half a million dollars.

So it’s like, okay, well, I can pretty much, I know that I can repeat, you know, cause I’m always talking about, do more of what works. I can continue to do that, but I can now add in these additional. Things that we’re talking about from a growth goal perspective, to try to play that bigger game of doubling the business.

And if I don’t hit that, I’m already doing what worked last year. So it’s kind of like a, it’s kind of a sense of, you know, for lack of a better way to say it security, if you will, even though there’s not no security, it’s like, I know this works. I can do it. And then I can also do these other things. And if they fail that’s okay. I know what has been working, but I’m also learning from the failure.

[00:48:17] Neill:
Yeah. love that so much. Yeah. It’s kind of like balancing both, right? Like, we also want to make sure that. That everybody hears me say this too. We don’t want to set the growth goal to be so big that you literally, your brain melts down and you stall out like that’s that’s too far. Right. And so many of us tend to do that.

So we want to set a growth goal that gives us enough to work through at a time that it feels like we’re, we’re making progress on our growth, but not so much that we like. Are stuck and stalling out and we don’t want to do our business and we don’t want to do anything. And we feel burnt out and completely depleted.

That’s not helpful that doesn’t serve you either. So we want to make sure we do balance that. And here’s something that I just, just, this just occurred to me when you were talking, what might be a fun goal for anyone who’s listening to consider is like how many fails. Would I be willing to give myself this year, maybe you have a goal for a number of fails that you do.

Maybe it’s 50 to fail 50 times this year. Can you imagine, like if we gave ourselves one year to just experience failure over and over and over again, how like resilient we would be at the end of that?

[00:49:35] Rick:
I think I might set that goal formyself.

I like that.

[00:49:39] Neill:
Maybe that’s my goal.

[00:49:42] Rick:
So wait.

Okay. So in context, would that be your achievement goal?

Or

[00:49:47] Neill:
Yeah.

Yeah. But think about helmet. That’s kind of a wild way to think about. I haven’t thought about it until this just literally came to me. Right. As we were talking, like it’s a way to use achievement goals to create growth.

[00:50:01] Rick:
Did you just work that out right now in your.

[00:50:02] Neill:
Like literally right now.

[00:50:05] Rick:
I’m glad that I could be that, that we could be the container for you to do this because now I know you’re going to use it. That’s amazing

[00:50:12] Neill:
Holding space for me to be able to think through that.

[00:50:15] Rick:
Glad we could help. So, yeah, I mean, it let’s just say you have 50, it’s essentially one a week

[00:50:23] Neill:
Yeah. Right?

[00:50:25] Rick:
Like, okay, I’m going to fail at least once this week.

[00:50:28] Neill:
How amazing would that be? Right?

[00:50:32] Rick:
Yeah.

[00:50:33] Neill:
Let’s start an Instagram movement, like hashtag 50 fails. Who’s in.

[00:50:38] Rick:
I think we should do that. Okay. So here’s an assignment for everybody listening right now. Okay. Number one. I want you to post on your stories, you know, maybe a screenshot of this episode and use hashtag 50 fails tag me at Rick Mulready and Neill. What’s your Instagram

[00:50:57] Neill:
At Neill Williams coach.

[00:50:59] Rick:
At Neill Williams, coach and Neill is N E I L L

[00:51:03] Neill:
Correct? Yeah.

[00:51:08] Rick:
That and use the hashtag

[00:51:09] Neill:
Yeah.

[00:51:10] Rick:
Failed.

[00:51:11] Neill:
And then Rick, you know, we’re going to have to do, we’re going to have to do a recap a year from now or the end of 2022.

[00:51:18] Rick:
Yup.

[00:51:19] Neill:
On our journey to 50 fails.

[00:51:21] Rick:
And what we can do, I’m just thinking about this right now, as well for everybody who commits to doing that, who tags us using that hashtag, my team and myself, we’ll keep up with how you’re doing and we can profile your growth on the podcast next year.

[00:51:42] Neill:
Totally amazing. Yeah. And I would have you on my podcast too. So you get two podcasts.

[00:51:49] Rick:
There you go.

[00:51:50] Neill:
Right.

[00:51:51] Rick:
Podcasts that get a lot of reach. How’s that for incentive for you to be failing, be failing every week for your business.

I love it. And by the way, everybody listing, this is a blank doc. Like I tell everybody and Neill’s been on. So she knows, like I start with a blank document in front of me when I do these interviews.

And I know where we kind of want to go, but I tell Neill like, Hey, this is like you and I sit down for coffee and we’re going to talk about 20, 22 planning. That’s it. And look at where we’ve ended up here.

[00:52:22] Neill:
I think it’s just so amazing. Like I knew this happens every time we talk. Cause we’re just like we pitch and catch really well. but I was thinking like what an amazing model this would be. Like just thinking about the contribution, like this experience this year, those of you who are going to like go in with recogni and do the 50 fails to our kids, to other entrepreneurs, to the humans in our culture who think about failing as this thing, that means we are not worthy, that we are somehow less deserving and changing that entire attitude.

[00:52:55] Rick:
Yeah.

[00:52:56] Neill:
I know.

[00:52:57] Rick:
I love it. Yeah. It’s, it’s one thing that I’m and you, and I’ve talked about this, it’s one thing I’m trying to, you know, I mean, my turns three in a month from now, um, but I’m trying to be the example and example for her and showing her, I mean, among many other things that like, just exactly, we’re talking about failure, isn’t

Bad.

We, you know, we, we,

Learn from it. And so as she starts bringing up things that happen or at preschool and stuff like that, Yeah, it just allows us to be an amazing example for, people in our lives when we’re doingthat.

[00:53:28] Neill:
Totally. Cause can you imagine if like the entrepreneurs that we are now and that our students, like if they had this idea baked in already. That like, no, failure’s a good thing. Like, can you imagine the crazy levels of success that we would see? Like

[00:53:44] Rick:
Yeah.

[00:53:44] Neill:
Off the chain?

[00:53:46] Rick:
Hashtag 50 fails. Take a screenshot of this, of this episode, sharing your stories tag at Neill Williams coaching and tag me at Rick Mulready. if you commit to this, we are going to, um, sounds really weird. We’re to keep track, we’re going to touch base with you and stuff like that and make sure you’re doing it.

And then next year, we’re going to do a followup to this and see how, how your business and your life changed as a result of. being okay with failing a whole lot more and on this podcast here, and then also on Neill’s podcast, which by the way, tell people about your podcast and where people can connect with you outside of.

[00:54:26] Neill:
Yeah. So my podcast is called unbusy your life. And the whole idea behind that is that I share. Time management, but also a lot of mindset stuff on how to, I really want to eradicate the epidemic of being too busy and really think about lifestyle and what enough is for everyone. So I teach a lot about that on the show, and you can connect with me, like Rick said on Instagram at Neill Williams coach my website with my current offerings.

Anything you want to know about. Www dot Neill Williams. Or come joinAccelerator, And then I.get to coach you.

[00:55:06] Rick:
All within the call with an Accelerator every, every two weeks.

So deal so much fun as

[00:55:13] Neill:
Yeah.

[00:55:14] Rick:
Not surprising at all. So thank you for coming back on the show and, uh, I super appreciate you.

[00:55:20] Neill:
Yeah, thank you so much for having it. This is like, I feel like we just have the most amazing conversation. So I’m so

Grateful to have had this one with you had no idea where it was going to go. Like we literally had no idea what path this was going to take and it was amazing.

[00:55:34] Rick:
We’ve set up this whole hashtag

[00:55:35] Neill:
I know, right.

Created a movement in one episode. Thank you so much, Rick.

[00:55:41] Rick:
Thank you.

Alright, are you in on the #50Fails movement for 2022? I mean, can you imagine what your business could be as a result of failing at least once a week? I’m definitely gonna be doing this. So, again, tag us on Instagram. Take a screenshot of the episode here today. Use #50Fails, and tag me @RickMulready, and then tag Neill Williams @NeillWilliamsCoach. It’s gonna be a whole lot of fun.

Again, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, and as you heard me throughout the episode here today talking about our Accelerator coaching program, this is a one-on-one coaching group, a coaching and mastermind experience all wrapped up into one program for established, more advanced, online course creators and online coaches who want to take their business to the next level, but are not quite sure how to get there.

You’re not really not really sure what steps to be taking. You’re often overwhelmed. So many people are heading towards burnout, or are already there. You just want to improve your sales and marketing, improve your systems and processes, and improve your mindset so that you can up level your business.

We help you achieve more profit, because it’s all about profit, right? Top line revenue is great, but it’s how much of that is actually going in your pocket. So, more profit, more impact, meaning how many more people are we helping? What does impact mean to you? All while accomplishing those things with less hustle, right?

As we talked about here today, you heard it from Neill, it’s not about how many hours we’re working. So, we’re achieving this through less hustle. If you want to learn more and apply—it’s application only—go to RickMulready.com/Accelerator.

Alright, my friends, super appreciate you.

Thank you, as always, for tuning in today. Until the next episode, be well, and I’ll talk to you soon.