By Josh Chernikoff
Featuring Rose Hastreiter
Ever noticed how every New Year brings a wave of goal-setting fever? It's that time when we're all jazzed up, jotting down dreams and aspirations, especially for folks like education entrepreneurs looking to scale up their businesses. But let's be real – how often do those goals actually come to life?
So, why do some goals fizzle out like a deflated balloon? And what's the secret behind others that flourish? In this blog post, we're ditching the usual goal-setting playbook. Instead, we’re diving into why many of us trip up and how to dodge those common pitfalls. And we’re going to look specifically at the goals you may want to have around your lead generation to grow your education business in 2024.
To do this, I’m teaming up with Rose Hastreiter, affectionately dubbed, The Time Optimizer.
Our guest, Rose Hastreiter, is a transformative figure in professional development and upskilling tech. With two companies under her belt, she's spent decades empowering thousands to turn their time into tangible impact. Rose's mission? To help individuals optimize their days meaningfully.
1. Going Beyond Goal Setting
Most people who set goals, think of a bunch of things they’d like to achieve and set a list of goals. But within a few weeks they’ve fallen back into old patterns and routines. The secret to setting (and achieving) powerful goals lies in something much more important. The experience. You have to start with a powerful end-game and then identify what goals will create that experience in our lives. Rose advises moving beyond mere goal-setting. Begin by envisioning the experience of success. What will it look and feel like once you’ve already achieved your goal? Literally, the moment after you’ve crossed that finish line, what does THAT moment look like and feel like? Make it REAL for your brain to experience. Immerse yourself fully in this vision. And then work it back into a sustainable action plan.
Take 5 min, write down or audio record yourself - design the experience of the successful outcome you’re looking to create: What does it feel like to achieve it? Who is with you? What are the sounds, sights, and emotions surrounding that moment?
By capturing this experience, you create a tangible connection point. Whenever challenges arise or motivation wanes, revisiting this recorded vision reignites your passion and commitment. It serves as a compass, guiding both you and your team towards a shared understanding of success, fostering alignment, resilience, and a culture rooted in experience-driven action.
Example: I could just set a goal to speak at a TedTalk. And then hope it happens. Or I could say: I want to experience speaking at a high-profile conference like a TedTalk this year - the experience of that - for me anyways - would include the moment I step OFF the stage, and have those amazing conversations with people, and I feel the experience of impacting and helping be of service to people, cause they’re smiling and the energy is great. People are lining up at my booth during the break, we’re generating hundreds of leads, my books are selling like hotcakes - in fact, we sell out - and people have to QR code the digital version. NOW that’s the BEYOND THE GOAL moment. That’s the experience I want to experience as a human being. And so now I can work with my team to help flesh that experience out a bit, and define that as the experience we’re going to work towards.
2. The Power of Past Tense: Working backwards
Once you’ve gotten clear on your vision, it’s time to work out the steps that will lead you to that experience. There may be multiple goals and milestones that come from that. The key is to imagine it’s already done. State the experience in the past tense and then convert your success vision into actionable steps. Break it down, work it backward, and narrate your success story in detail.
Example - “I’ve successfully presented my talk at this amazing conference, and I’ve met so many people that I genuinely connected to, and our sales were the best of any conference to date”. Great - now I gotta Work the plan backwards.
And based on that vision I can see certain steps have to happen for me to achieve this experience. E.g. I have to have a talk in order to present one… so I need to plan to create that. This is where everything gets broken into actionable steps. And every decision in the future is made based upon whether it’s getting me closer to or further from this experience I envision.
Listen to the podcast episode sharing more juicy moments and insights on goal setting here: Apple & Spotify
3. Moving From Vision To Action
Actually DOING the action and getting INTO action is where many of us struggle which is why it’s important to have a system to get the critical tasks done. Here are some of my favorite productivity hacks:
Separate your task-focus time and people-time - like writing that LinkedIn article - you might want to close that door and turn on DND on your phone, and turn on ambient music.
Break things down into actions your brain can see better - tell the task story in detail. For me, I do pre-writing work, like research, outlines, before I write - and that’s an example of me breaking it down, so there’s less resistance to the action.
BATCH similar tasks together - in your task focus time - optimizes your time you do have - like create one piece of content for your brand for multiple posts/channels
PAIR something you don’t like to do, with something you DO like, like walking and talking. You can pair (but our brains can’t multitask)
Design the EXPERIENCE of your first 90 minutes and your last 90 minutes each day - like, end of day, do a brain-dump on your next steps, turn off phone by 9:30 - whatever that is for you - tailor it for you.
Remember to KEEP aligning to that experience of success for EACH day, and work that back to the moment you’re in.
These are some incredible tips shared by Rose. Now I want to shift focus towards goal setting in different areas of your business and in particular, generating more leads.
Goal Setting In Different Areas Of Your Business
You can use this method of visualizing the success experience and then working backwards from there to improve any area of your life and business. Including getting more leads to grow your business.
So often my clients tell me they need to get more leads. So if your goal is to get more leads, to have a consistent stream of clients and cash flow, and feel confident as you grow and scale your business, then the first thing you need is to get clarity on what that experience will feel like and give you. And then work backwards on how to get there. And when you do that, you’ll see that one of the steps to achieving that is to get visible. Because you can’t get leads if they don’t know you exist. So working backwards, to get a lead booked in your diary, they first have to be aware of you… and one of the best platforms to connect with your ideal client in LinkedIn. People are on LI to do business and connect with other professionals as opposed to other social platforms which are there to just entertain you. It’s a powerful platform when you know how to work it right.
And it ends up being part of a very powerful lead generating system.
Here’s what Rose says about her own LinkedIn Journey:
The biggest thing I’ve realized in that LI is not a CV - I’m shifting my mindset and culture from it being a space where it’s about me, and turning it into a space where I can be of service to my community. From BLAH boring disconnected static - to feeling more genuinely connected with my community there - just wanna shout out to everyone’s that helped, including you and my EdSales cohort.
We’re also recalibrating our editorial calendar, posting and engagement system - And really focusing on experience design - getting myself out of “MEH I don’t wanna do it” to falling in love with it - and I see it no longer as a workload, but rather, a growth load in my day. I ask now, What am I contributing to my community?
It’s been incredible.
Want to get started increasing your visibility and getting more of your ideal clients connecting with you and booking calls in your diary?
Come join the LinkedIn Attractor Workshop: Transform your LinkedIn profile from a CV to a sales funnel and boost your professional presence.
Together we’ll transform your profile from a CV into a sales page that instantly attracts attention from your ideal clients. And we’ll share the power of LI and where it fits in your lead generation system so you can bring in a steady flow of leads on repeat. More details at JoshChernikoff.com/LinkedIn.
Summary of Powerful Goal Setting:
In order to create success goals that stick, here’s a simple but powerful three step process:
Beyond Goal Setting: Rose advises moving beyond mere goal-setting. Begin by envisioning the experience of success. What does it look and feel like? Immerse yourself in this vision.
Making It Tangible: Convert your success vision into actionable steps. Break it down, work it backward, and narrate your success story in detail.
Productivity Hacks: Rose offers actionable strategies like separating task-focused time from people time, batching similar tasks, and designing your daily experience for success.
And if having consistent high quality leads coming into your business on tap is one of your goals for this year, don’t miss the LI workshop. Join here.
THERE’S MORE: Go deeper in the podcast episode:
Hear what Josh’s #1 goal is this year and how he’s going to achieve it.
How to build a vision-to-action path and get your team aligned with it!
One shift in how you see resolutions and goals that can truly help you to grow.
And hear more about Rose’s journey with LI in achieving her lead generation goals!
If you don’t want to miss an episode, join the newsletter here and be the first to know when the show drops.
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