Today is the first day of the second quarter of 2013. It is also the first day of a new month, and we are early in a new season. It’s a good time to take stock of your business, your goals, your progress towards your goals, and make some adjustments. In January, pretty much everyone is listing goals for everything from losing weight to getting organized to making more money. By the end of the first quarter, those lists are often lost in a file, or buried on a hard drive. But what good are goals that are never revisited?

Last week, my fantastic “writing buddy” asked if we should take a look at our goals and progress from the last quarter when we talk this week. I grumbled. I didn’t want to look, or to talk about it. Later,

I had a conversation with a couple of friends about tracking calories and how much I hate doing it and how it feels borderline obsessive. One of them gently suggested that perhaps some denial was at play – that I hate tracking calories because of what doing so reveals.

In both instances, my hesitance is directly related to my lack of progress in reaching stated goals. Sometimes, after you have broken your goals down in as many different ways as you can think of, and you still aren’t making progress, you just want to hide from them. Or maybe deny they ever existed.

As we all know, hiding won’t get you any closer to what you want. So, maybe it’s time for me (and maybe you, too) to analyze the goals themselves, and perhaps begin to think about them a little differently. Here are some questions I’m pondering this week:

1. Are my goals realistic? Are they things that it is actually reasonable to attempt? Pretty much everyone knows about SMART goals – the kind that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. While those requirements are usually part of professional goal-setting, they can be useful when it comes to personal goals, as well – especially if you are not seeing the kind of progress you would like.

2. Do I have all of the necessary tools to reach these goals? For example, if you want to build a deck, you are going to need some lumber, some nails, a hammer…along the same lines, if you want to complete a half marathon (a goal I recently achieved!) you are going to need a training plan and some good shoes.

3. What outside forces are going to impact my ability to reach this goal? Most of the time, there are going to be factors that you cannot control that slow your progress. Yes, personal responsibility is important, and yes, you have to be disciplined to reach most important goals, but you live in a world where things get in the way. Early in my half marathon training, I hurt my back. I had to take about a week and a half off. Even with plenty of stretching and strength training, I still had to deal with a minor injury. This is probably the part of working towards my goals I most often ignore. That may be true for you, too.

4. What part of the plan did I fail to execute? Oh, this one is so very hard to think about. Sometimes, I have no problem heaping blame on myself, and other times, some stubborn part of me refuses to acknowledge that I might be shirking my self-appointed “duties.” Of course I don’t want to track calories because I am sure that I’m eating healthfully. No need to track. None. I have no idea why I’m not getting more writing assignments from trade publications. I’m sending out tons of letters of introduction – no need to count them. I know I have been.

5. Are there factors I was not aware of when setting this goal? Sometimes when you start working on your plan, you find out about obstacles you never imagined getting in your way. Much like the outside forces that slow you down, these things are mostly unpredictable. You might even find that you need a whole new plan once you find out about them. One thing that I learned in my running program was that a trail run and a road run are quite different and make different demands on your body. That isn’t really written out plainly anywhere in Running World and the only way I learned it was by living it. (Hush! I don’t care how logical it seems. I didn’t know until I was gasping for air on the side of ridge!)

I would so much rather watch the season premiere of Game of Thrones than sit down and try to figure out why my first quarter numbers add up the way the do. I would one million times rather finish reading Season Three of  Yesterday’s Gone than add up how many calories I’ve consumed today. But neither escape would get me any closer to being the super-fit, financially comfortable person I aim to be.

Do you have any techniques that help you analyze where or how or why you are not reaching your goals? 

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Last weekend, I got into an argument with a crowd of people about how many laps around a .3 mile track it would take to complete 6 miles. Everyone one involved possessed a high school diploma at the very least, yet there we were, a roomful of adults, disagreeing about some very basic math. If you have read many of my posts, you know that math is not my strong suite, and so I lacked the confidence to back up my assertion that it takes 20 laps – despite the fact that I had, that very day, thought about it quite a lot while running those 20 laps.

Spreadsheets are important to my business life because they remove the fuzziness inherent to mathematical questions for me. I have spreadsheets for prospects, articles written, publications queried, letters of introduction sent…I even use spreadsheets to organize books that I am writing. With the information so neatly laid out, it’s easy to figure out the ratio of queries sent to assignments received, and to compare time spent marketing to monthly income changes.

Last week, looking at a spreadsheet brought about an epiphany. Wait. “Epiphany” isn’t quite the right word. It connotes something good, right? This was not good. Maybe “startling realization” is a better descriptor. Or possibly “stark realization.” Yeah, that’s what it was. Stark.

In general, I think of myself as a pretty determined person. I tend to keep trying long after common sense says to stop. But, my spreadsheets tell a different story. Most of my freelance clients are business owners, and a great deal of the writing I do is ghostwriting. In other words, I don’t have many bylines. My name is generally not attached to my work, and often, it is a condition of my contract to not disclose I wrote an article or a book or whatever. Several months ago, I decided to query a few publications in order to have some work published under my own name.

I have a great accountability partner, and since most of her work has been for trade publications, she has been helping and encouraging me to send letters of introduction and queries. She helped me put together some good query letters and shared her own (very successful) process.

After a couple of months, I was ready to quit. I had gotten two assignments for print publication. Neither paid well, and one ended up being such a fiasco I eventually withdrew my article from consideration for publication.

My accountability partner encouraged me to continue. She said it hadn’t been long enough for me to make a judgement about whether or not the process of querying was working for me or not.

“But I’ve seen so many!” I whined, pathetically.

Pondering her advice, I decided to go to my trusty spreadsheet and count exactly how many. To make my point about it not working.

Of course, counting proved her point, not mine. It felt as if I had sent hundreds of emails to editors, some pitching story ideas, others simply introducing myself. In all reality, I’d only sent about 25. Determined, huh?

The same kind of thing has happened again and again. I feel like I’m working so hard, only to check my spreadsheets to find that I’m not, really.

How do you track your activities? Have you ever found that you are not working quite as hard as you thought?  

 

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As a goal-oriented person, lists are part of my day-to-day life. There are lists on my desk of chores to do, groceries to buy, bills to pay, tasks to accomplish, long-term goals to strive toward, and more. But, one list I’ve never made is my bucket list, for a few reasons. One is that the idea of “before I die” is weird to me. Philosophically, I lean more toward “I could die at any time, so better do things I love everyday.” Another is that bucket list goals are BIG goals, and I find it much, much easier to focus on smaller, easier-to-attain goals. However the challenge has been issued, and I shall rise to it!

My bucket list is going to be divided into categories, because…well, that’s just how I think.

Business/Professional Goals

Earn $_____ in a year. I’m not telling you how much, but there is a number in my head!

See significant income from (non-fiction) book sales. So far, I’ve only published one book, but another is on the way soon. Several more are in the plans. Hopefully, the sales of these books will

supplement my retirement income.

Begin publishing fiction on a regular basis. Maybe two books a year. I don’t expect to write “the great American novel” but I would like to be a solid mid-list writer and entertain some people.

Earn an award, or other public recognition, for my professional expertise. Yes, it’s shallow, but I love a gold star.

Travel Related

Take a 6 week or two month vacation and drive across the country. I haven’t been many places, and would like to see the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the Pacific Northwest. We have friends all over the country. It would be awesome to take a couple of months and go visiting.

Visit Mexico. This one has been on my mind since college. I have a minor in Spanish, and taught Spanish for several years. Studying the history and culture and language of a country gives you the desire to see it.

Personal 

Run a half marathon. This one is in the works. I’m training for a race in March, on my birthday.

Write fiction. Yeah, this one is on here twice. It qualifies as both professional and personal, and it’s an important one.

Make my home beautiful. I’ve always dreamed of a beautiful house and yard that can serve as my oasis. Right now it’s more of a moldy shack, but I have big dreams.

Raise a substantial portion of the food I eat. I’ve always wanted an amazing garden, and now I’d also like to raise some animals, too.

Learn to knit, and beekeeping, and much more about herbs, and soap making, and quilting…this list could go on for a long time, so I’ll just stop.

 

And finally:

Be surprised by and delighted with and appreciative of  whatever comes my way. Some of the best events in my life have been completely unexpected. I would hate to miss out on something amazing and wonderful because it wasn’t in a plan or on a list.

 

 

 

 

 

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The idea of minimalism is really appealing. To skin your possessions, and your commitments, down to the bare minimum and be left with only the stuff that is most important offers what seems like a beautiful escape from the consumerism that surrounds us. The phrase “a full life” is warm and fuzzy; it’s something we all aspire to. But when you have a full life that doesn’t feel like your own the situation can be more cold and hard than warm and fuzzy.

Wake up early, shower, wake up your family, get them cleaned, fed and ready for the day. Take everyone to school, go to a job and do work you don’t love so that you will have money to pay for a house and a car and nice clothes so that society will know you are successful. Leave work, pick up the kids, take them to practice whatever they are practicing at the moment, rush home, try to do a little cleaning, cook dinner, clean up after dinner, make sure there are clothes and food and supplies for everyone tomorrow, pass out in front of the TV exhausted by 10. Then do it again. 

If that is the loop you are caught in, with no time to really talk to your kids, or your spouse, and certainly no time just for yourself, to think or pursue the things you love, you probably long for a more

minimalist approach. Or to win the lottery.

For possessions, minimalism is probably a wonderful approach: pare down what you have to pay for and maintain, and you won’t need to work quite so much. But, when it comes to setting goals, minimalism is not the answer. For years, I tried to focus on one goal at a time. It makes sense to think that if you put all of your energies toward reaching an important goal, you’ll get there faster. When I worked in an office, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to set up and run my business. I figured that once I got it going and had a regular income, I’d move the bulk of my attention to getting in shape.

Of course, when you are running a business you never get to the point you can focus the bulk of your attention to anything else. There is always another milestone just out of sight. You always need a few more clients, or to write a couple of more blog posts, or to sell a few more items.

What I learned is that pursuing multiple goals at the same time can give you confidence and  momentum. Right now, I’m working toward a whole bunch of super exciting things, and any time I have success in one area, the enthusiasm and excitement transfers to the others. Here are some of my current projects:

• With a wonderful partner, I am preparing to launch a new company.
• I am participating in a weekly creative writing group that requires writing, researching, and critiquing.
• Finally, after years of talking and thinking about it, I’m writing a novel.
• If you are a regular reader, you know about the interviews in the Independent Writing Series, which are part of a broader self-education on the publishing industry.
• After thinking about it for two years, I have committed to a half marathon training program.
• With several other family members, I am building a big garden, relearning how to preserve food, and learning about bees.
• As always, I am working hard to build Smiling Tree Writing into the kind of business that will support my family and help my clients reach their goals for years to come.

That is a long list, especially when broken down into an actual, daily schedule that includes a little bit of everything. Smiling Tree is my top priority because it pays the bills, and because I love it too much to risk letting it go into a decline. But, launching a new company also requires a tremendous amount of time and effort, and writing a novel is a notorious time-suck. Throw in working out, learning about a whole industry, and gardening, and you have a full and busy life – with all the warm fuzzies anyone could ever ask for. That list doesn’t even include my highest priority of all: spending time with my husband and children.

When I interviewed Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, we talked about how working 70 hours a week doing work you love is an entirely different proposition than working 70 hours a week at a job you don’t hate. I certainly don’t work 70 hours a week, but I understand now what they are talking about.

What are you chasing right now? Have you ever found that working toward more than one thing at a time propels you forward?

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“Super secret sale! This Saturday from 4-6pm only! Get 10% off all men’s underwear!”

Have you ever gotten an email that advertises a “sale” where you might save 15 cents, IF you get there at the right time, IF you know what to buy, and IF you know the super secret code word? Poorly executed email marketing annoys people you should be pleasing. It hurts your reputation as a business, and it could even have a negative impact on your sales. Here are six mistakes to avoid:

1. Sending the same thing all the time. You might think you are varying your offer, but a 15% sale on shirts one week, then a 15% sale on skirts the next week, and a 15% off sale on socks the week after that, and on and on for 3 months? I quit opening your emails after the second week, and everyone else probably did, too.

Keep a list of promotions and ideas as they occur to you and refer to it when you need inspiration. It’s a good idea to send email without a promotion now and then – just share information, or advice, or even a joke. It’s fun to not know what to expect when you open an email.

2. Focusing on what YOU need instead of what I need.You opened your business so that you could have more flexible hours, be in control, and live the life you want to live, right? You want to rule out customers who argue about price, or who are rude, or who are always late, or who always complain, or whatever. Focusing on reaching your target audience and your ideal customer is great – just make sure

you aren’t alienating them in your efforts to rule others out.

Read your emails as if they were coming from a company you do business with as a customer. For example, if you own a clothing store, you could pretend your email is from one of your vendors. Practice seeing things from your customers’ point of view.

3. Overload! Hubspot says their studies have shown that people do not unsubscribe at a higher rate whether they send weekly or daily emails. Even though they are a big, well-known agency with all kinds of expertise, I’m going to have to disagree. Unless I signed up for daily emails, don’t send me daily emails. Or even every-other-daily. You are cluttering up my inbox, taking up my time, and really getting on my nerves.

When deciding how often to click “send” consider both what your subscribers signed up to receive, your own preferences, and whether or not what you have to say is really worth your subscribers’ time.

4. Sending to me without explicit permission. If you require my email address in order for me to complete a transaction and don’t tell me that you are also adding me to your list, it’s not only rude, it’s skirting violating the law. The CAN-SPAM Act exists for lots of reasons. Besides getting my permission, you need to make sure there is a way for me to unsubscribe.

5. Using a horrible template. Just because you can use lime green text on an orange background doesn’t mean you should. Just because you like a 24 point font doesn’t mean everyone else does. You get the idea. Try to take an objective look at your template. Is it hard on the eyes? Do you have to scroll for three days to get to the bottom? Is it cluttered? Are things off-center and weird looking?

It might seem petty, but I’m pretty quick to unsubscribe from ugly newsletters. Of course “ugly” is subjective, but it’s hard to go wrong with the basics. If you have any doubts about your template, go with the simplest, most basic one you can. After all, your message is what’s important, right?

6. Being consistently negative. You don’t have to act like one of the Stepford Wives, but try to look for a little brightness. Chances are, if you are sending out marketing email, you are selling something. Happy people are more likely to spend money.

Of course, if you are selling bomb shelters or something, by all means, be negative and create as much fear as you can muster. Just don’t expect me to subscribe to your emails!

Note: As I was writing this post, it felt a little familiar. Apparently these things have been bugging me for a while. A very similar post appeared on Smiling Tree Writing on February 15, 2012. It bears repeating, though, so I’m posting this one too! Maybe this counts as a blogging mistake, but oh, well. 

 

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