Corinne Lennox - Lessons from a former life coach - Why SMART goals don't work

00:01  Hello and welcome to lessons from a former life Coach, Why SMART Goals Don't Work, brought to you by me, Corinne from Maree May Design Co. So I'm so excited to be here today as part of the Raw Breaking Entrepreneurs Summit. I hope you've been enjoying all the other presentations and let's get started with mine. So what you'll be learning today is why SMART goals don't work and they're keeping you stuck. So I know that might be a bit controversial for some people, but I will explain why as we go through the presentation. And then two, how zone of genius may be making your business life more difficult so again, I know that's probably a little bit controversial for some business coaches, but I will explain why i'm not knocking zone of genius, I'm just explaining why it might be making some people's business life more difficult.    

00:51  And then three, what you can do instead so you feel like you're in the right business and you can start achieving your goals.    

00:59  So why should you listen to me that is an excellent question so to reintroduce myself again, my name is Corinne and I've spent the last 20 years being a serial entrepreneur. So as a former life coach, I used to preach SMART goals and zone of genius because that's what you learn becoming a certified SMART, a certified SMART coach, a certified life coach, and you do learn other goal setting methods, but they're all kind of based around SMART they're just different synonyms or acronyms I should say.    

01:29  And zone of genius, you learn that too. And I used to preach that to all of my clients despite them never working for me i never admitted that to any of my clients clients but neither of those things ever worked for me. One day I then decided to stop listening to all of the cookie cutter advice. So I'd been working with business coaches, mentors, I'd been through all different kinds of programs and I still was struggling to get my business where or I wanted it to go and enjoy what I was doing.    

01:59  And so once I stopped listening to all the cook cookie cutter advice, including my own as a life coach, that's when I realised I wasn't actually meant to be a life coach. That's not what I wanted to do. It was A to do with the zone of genius and I'll explain a bit more when we get to that, how that all came about. But I realized that yes i, was not in the right place and building the right business.    

02:22  When I started doing what felt right for me, my businesses started to work. And yet I actually decided to build 2 businesses instead of 1. And so now I have 3 thriving businesses of various sizes and genres and they all make me happy. And that's the important thing, as I know some other advice that there is you can't build more than one business at once you can, if you can make it work for you.    

02:47  So it's up to what's going to work for you.    

02:54  So you're in the right place today if you too you too feel like you've never quite mastered the art of SMART goals and if you haven't, that's OK. I'm going to explain some other ways that you can work that might work for you or you're building your business in your zone you're as genius, but it just doesn't feel right and you're maybe scared to admit that to people it took me a long time to actually say that out loud, but hopefully you're in the right place if that's how you're kind of feeling about your business at the minute doesn't mean you necessarily need to burn it all down and start again, but it just might be something that you're thinking in the back of your mind.    

03:29  And you're also in the right place if you're ready to build a business or businesses that you love and start achieving your business goals so if you feel any or all of those things, you're in the right place. So why are SMART goals keeping you stuck so just as a refresher, or if you've never come across a SMART goal before, SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely that's what SMART stands for.    

03:54  And if you've been through any kind of business coaching course, any kind of life coaching course, if you've worked with mentors, business coaches, that kind of thing, chances are they've got you working on SMART goals or a version of that like I said before, there's a few different acronyms out there, but they're all pretty much the same version. The problem with this is they keep you playing small because they don't push you out of your comfort zone. And that's because of the words achievable and realistic. Then there are actually studies on this, about how this works in people's brains.    

04:27  And what actually happens in your brain is if you tell it to do something that's achievable and realistic, it will go back to how you have done things in the past that are similar and keep you on track with that. So it keeps you kind of in a safe space. You've done this before, so I know we can do it again. So it's not pushing you out of your comfort zone and that's where you might find it a little bit frustrating is that if you found smart goal or frustrating or you found that they're just not working for you, or you're finding that you're feeling stuck in your business and you, you can't figure out why because you're doing the smart goal things.    

05:05  That could be it because it's keeping you within your comfort zone. Whereas to keep growing, you need to move out of it a little bit you don't have to move out of the whole way out of it all in one go, but you need to move out of it, keep moving out of it a little bit at a time so that you can keep growing and your business can keep growing with you. And because of that word realistic, it keep your, keeps your brain working in a way that's protecting you and saying, I guess we know how to do this, so we're going to do this again.    

05:34  These goals are also usually disconnected from your why, which is especially important when you're running a business. And when I say your why, what I mean is your big overarching dream about why you started this business in the 1st place. So not why you're serving your customers, not what, what goals and sorry, not goals, what vision you have for your business or your mission that you have for serving your customers it's about the big trim of the big trim about why you started this business in the 1st place. And it'll usually it's something like time freedom, financial freedom, not wanting to work for a boss anymore, wanting to be your own boss.    

06:16  Whatever the reasons are that you started your business and the big dream that you have and how you want it to help structure your life, that's what I'm talking about with your why. And your SMART goals are quite often disconnected from that because they're working on things like how much money you can make and how many clients do you want to bring in and all that kind of stuff so because they're disconnected, it kind of keeps you stuck and keeps you unfulfilled because it's not even though you might be doing the things, it's not fulfilling the reason why you started this business in the 1st place.    

06:48  And the other reason why they might be keeping you stuck is because there's no flexibility in them. So if you don't achieve the SP exact specific thing that you mentioned in your goal, the specific and you know the S and the SMART, then you feel like you failed. So for example, if your goal was to make a hundred thousand dollars in a year and you only made ninety thousand dollars and that was your SMART goal, chances are you feel like you failed. Whereas ninety thousand dollars is still incredible, especially if this is something you haven't achieved before. But because you haven't hit the hundred thousand, even though you're pretty close, chances are you feel like you failed.    

07:30  And I'm sure you felt, I felt, and I'm sure we've all been there. And that's the other problem with SMART goals because they're so specific and so measurable, like specifically measurable then if you achieve close to but not exactly that, you feel like you failed, which makes it hard then to plan your next set of goals.    

07:56  So boring goals lead to boring wins. And unfortunately, SMART goals can be really boring because again, like I was saying before, they're keeping you they're not connected to your why and they're keeping you in your safe space because they're realistic. Then they're keeping you working within what you already know rather than pushing you outside of your comfort zone just a little bit. So, and if you're not excited about them, then you won't achieve them it makes them so much harder to achieve your goals if you're just going through the motions, but you don't feel emotionally connected and excited to them at all.    

08:30  You are capable of more than you think. So that's the other thing with these goals is they are playing to what you already know rather than being like, OK, what can I learn outside of this to help me get to whatever I want my next goal to be? And doing it that way reminds you that you are capable of more than you think, rather than you've reached the limits of your capability because I promise you, you haven't.    

08:58  So how does this all relate to your Zone of Genius and usual Zone of genius making your business difficult? So Simply put, Zone of Genius is where competence, talent, and dedication meet proficiency, creativity and potential and that's an exact quote from the person whose name is escaping me right now, but the person who created Zone of Genius in the 1st place with the book they wrote about it. So that all sounds really good. And there is a lot of business advice out there that encourages you to build a business around your zone of genius. But that's how I kind of got stuck being a life coach and stuck with another business that I'm running down now, which is a trust is a trust accounting business.    

09:38  I am aces at trust accounting. You throw numbers at me, I'm so good at them. I do actually enjoy problem solving with them, but what I found was even though that's what I signed up for is the trust accounting business isn't challenging my zone of genius on a day-to-day basis because I'm just put going through the motions of receding money and doing payments and that kind of thing. There's no challenge in it for me at all. It's, you know, numbers are good, but there's no challenge in it for me anymore because even though it's in my zone of genius, it, it's not the kind of work that is challenging me and making me excited about having the business.    

10:23  The same thing happened with the life coaching. I decided back in 2013 that there was a whole bunch of things that happened in my life which are not important right now, but it kind of led me to the point where I had a light bulb moment sitting in a movie theater one day when I'm like, right, I want to help people cross things off their bucket list, especially travel i'm a seasoned traveller and I want to help other people cross their bucket list, travel off their bucket list. And so I decided to go out.    

10:52  I started the business, came up with a name for it and started talking to business coaches and every single one of them said to me, you're a life coach. That's life coaching. That's not life coaching. It's a facet of life coaching, absolutely, but it's not life coaching. And so I started building my business with these business coaches who had the best of intentions intentions i was still in touch with a lot of them because I did learn things off them. But it wasn't building a business that was connected to why I wanted to build a business in the 1st place i wasn't dealing with people who wanted to cross things off their bucket list, which may have been a marketing issue but again, that's because I felt like I should be doing all the life coachy things instead of doing specifically what I wanted to do, which is help people cross travel off their bucket list.    

11:43  So I spent years trying to build this business and not enjoying it at all. And I'm like, how is there such a disconnect here i don't understand. And when I sat down and stopped trying to do all the SMART goals and stopped worrying about my zone of genius, I realized that I was building someone else's business it wasn't a business that I wanted to do, was a business that everybody else told me I should be doing because I'm really good at helping people and I'm really good at helping people work out what they want to do with their life.    

12:14  And while I enjoy it to a certain extent, that's not what I wanted to do. So Zone of Genius was making these businesses really, really difficult and it was not fulfilling anything, fulfilling anything in me because I wasn't building a business that I wanted to build. And so while Zone of Genius is good because it may help you work out what you're good at, what you excel at, what you really, really enjoy, what fulfills you are these things that you actually want to monetize and do every day. Because if they're not, then you don't want to be building a business around your zone of genius.    

12:57  And that doesn't mean you can't build a business at all it just means that that's your little sacred thing for you. That's not what you want to monetize. What you want is something you can do for other people or you can teach other people how to do that you enjoy doing and you know enough about, which may not be your zone of genius, but you know enough about and enjoy showing or doing for other people that you would happily monetize that you would happily take money for and continue to enjoy doing it. Because there's so many people out here these days monetizing their hobbies and things well, which is their zones of genius.    

13:35  And they're not happy because it's taken away the joy of what their hobby was in the 1st place. So zone of genius isn't a finite thing. You can start with the zone of incompetence and you can learn how to do something. And really to show somebody else how to do something, you only have to know 10 % better or be 10 % further ahead than somebody else. Or if you want to provide a service to someone that you just need to learn how to do that service well and you get licensed and things like that, depending on what kind of service that you want to provide.    

14:10  So that may not necessarily be in your zone of genius right now. It may not even make it to your zone of genius, may even make it to your zone of excellence. So that's OK if it's something that you enjoy doing and you're happy to monetize it and you're happy to work on it every day. And you can show teach people how to do it if you're trying to be a coach or something like that. Or you can do it for other people 'cause you enjoy doing it, then that's a thing that you can make a business out of.    

14:42  Doesn't necessarily have to be your zone of genius. So exactly what exactly what I'm talking about here is what you enjoy doing and want to share. So not something that's your hobby that you just want to keep for yourself. What you enjoy doing and want to share and would be happy to take money for. Plus what you can do for someone else or you can teach to other to other people equals a business that is set up for success doesn't necessarily have anything at all to do with your zone of genius it's what you enjoy doing and you want to share and that you can do for other people or you can teach other people and they're two very distinct things distinct things.    

15:21  So for example, the two main businesses I'm running now, 1 is a course creation and graphic design business. That's where I'm doing things for people. But my other one, which is the bucket list 1. So I finally made it. That's teaching people how to cross things off their bucket list. So they're two different things they feed two different parts of my brain, which is why I have the two businesses, but they're things that I'm can do for people or teach people so whether you want a service, provide a service to people or you want to show people how to do a thing, whatever that is, if you enjoy doing it and you want to share it and you know enough about it that you can do it and you or you could learn how to do it, or you can teach it to other people, that's where you set your business up for for success.    

16:12  So what is it that you do instead? If you aren't working with the SMART goals or the SMART goals are making you feel stuck like they were for me and you're saying a genius isn't sitting right, what is it you do instead? So instead you set big scary audacious goals. And so, OK, technically the term is big hairy audacious goals as coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Paris in their book Built to Last Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.    

16:40  But my brain didn't really want to compute the hairy part, so I renamed it to scary. So you could stick with Harry i'm going to stick with scary, but you want to set yourself some big scary audacious goals. So what are big scary audacious goals and how do they work? So big scary audacious goals or B sags work by number one making your goals exciting again and there is all kinds of scientific study that has been done on this from both a practical and a psychological standpoint, which is part of that book that I was just telling you about there's all sorts of articles if you want to Google it, you can see there's all sorts of articles about this on the interwebs.    

17:20  So the main things are though, is that they make your goals exciting again. So your goal should be, as it says, scary, but not too scary scary in a way that they get you excited to try and achieve this goal. Not scary like, Oh my God, that's never going to happen it should be, It should be scary enough that you're excited about it, but not scary enough that like, oh, it's never going to happen.    

17:44  The larger and more challenging they are, though, the more likely you are to achieve them and like I said, there is scientific study on this. So number two is they should stretch you out they work by stretching you out of your comfort zone. So these big scary, audacious goals, they're not so big that they're unachievable, but they push you a little bit because if they push you a little bit, there's a 50 to 70 % chance of them actually happening. So if they're a little bit outside of your comfort zone, a little bit unrealistic for your current circumstance, but something you could see yourself actually achieving because it's just a little bit outside of your comfort zone, then there's a 50 to 70 % chance of them actually happening.    

18:29  Again, there's scientific studies back in all this. And then three, the other way they work is by flooding your brain with all the possibilities, and that gets your creativity and your brain flowing with all the different ways that you can make this happen. So I'm sure you've had something in your life where you've thought, yeah, I want to go and do this. And as soon as you've thought that may even be starting a business, your brain has started thinking of all the different ways that it can actually make this thing work.    

18:58  So that's the difference between your smart goal and your big scary, audacious goal is because a SMART goal, like I said, is realistic so you're working within your comfort zone. Your brain's like, OK, we know how to do this. We've got it. And it doesn't think outside the box. Whereas if you think of something you haven't done that's close to what you're doing, your brain starts thinking of all the different ways it can make it work. And so that starts pushing you out of your comfort zone. That starts getting you to take the steps that you need to take to get to actually achieve this goal.    

19:35  So how do you achieve your B sags? So first thing is to know your why so this isn't just about serving your customers. It's again what I was talking about before your big dream of why you created your business in the first place. So you want to connect to that. Is it time freedom is it 'cause you really love this thing and you want other people to love it too? Is it financial freedom is it because you want to only work three days a week is it because you don't want to have to set an alarm ever again in your lifetime? So all of all of those things, not anything to do with your customers, but about why it is you created this dream in the first place.    

20:16  And then write down all the big, scary, audacious things you want to achieve with your business in the next 12 months. So this is when it's a little bit more practical, where you might be looking at what you want your revenue to be, how much you want to grow it, all that kind of thing what are the big scary things that you want to achieve doesn't matter how unrealistic they feel right this second, try to keep it a little bit realistic like if you've only made 100$ in your business and you say you want to make 1000000$ by the end of the year, that's probably a little bit too big.    

20:47  But if you're saying you want to make 6 figures, that's definitely achievable. So that's something you could write down. Then you want to make a note of all the things that you might need to plan around that might get in your way so things like holidays, things you might need to learn in order to to achieve these things, things you might need to outsource if you're at that point in your business, if you've got kids you've got to work around and schedules, you've got to work around, all that kind of thing, then you're going to use these three things to create good, good, better and best goals so no more anything, just specific one thing you're gonna turn each of these goals into good, better and best goals so what that looks like is, for example, your revenue goal if you wanna make a hundred thousand dollars in the next 12 months, you might say, OK, well, a good goal is eighty thousand dollars a better goal is a hundred thousand dollars, and the best goal is 150 And that's really important because it takes the pressure off.    

21:49  So where's before you might have said you wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars and then you only made ninety thousand dollars and you're like, whoops, I failed. If you had a good, better and best goal and your good goal was eighty thousand dollars you've absolutely crushed that. So you still feel like you've achieved something and the pressure's off to achieve that specific thing because you know, you've got a range that you can land within and you still achieve success.    

22:14  And Speaking of that, you need to write down what success means to you. So not what it means to everybody else, not to any coaches or mentors that you're working with, what it specifically means for you how will you know when you've achieved these goals? So not just I've made this money. How are you going to feel what, what do you want to feel when you've achieved these goals? Because again, that gets your brain thinking about how it can make that happen. Then you're gonna break your good, better and best goals down into the actions you need to take to achieve them.    

22:44  So there will speak, then be specific things you have to do to get them. And the more you can break them down into little steps, it's gonna feel a little bit overwhelming to start with. But when you realize how small the steps are you need to take, that makes them so much more achievable and again, it's not kind of pressuring you into any kind of, oh, I have to do this specific thing. It's breaking it down into, well, I just need to do this tiny thing right this, and that's going to get me one step closer to my overall big, scary, audacious goal. Then what you're going to do is schedule that time into your calendar to work on these action steps.    

23:20  So you know your schedule, you know when you can fit time into work on these things. You know how your brain works as well. So whether it's you, you need to do a couple hours at a time or you might be doing like a Pomodoro thing where you do 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off. So recurring appointments are great for this, especially if you've got a lot of other things in your schedule. Make recurring appointments with yourself to do these things and then make sure that you're referring back to your action steps, that these are the things I've got to achieve and this time that I've scheduled for myself.    

23:53  And I've kind of given you an example there on this slide where you've got goal on action plan this is what your goal is so that would be arranged so like we're saying, good, better, best deadline so that could be 12 months when you've achieved it so you can fill that in these are the three main steps that you need to take to achieve that goal. And then these are the individual tiny little steps that you need to take on a regular basis in order to get to that goal.    

24:21  So keeping track of it that way, again, just breaks down into achievable pieces so you can get to your big scary, audacious goal. And then the last thing you're going to do is keep track of the steps that you're taking so you can celebrate your wins and figure out if you need to make any adjustments so there will be times where you feel like you're not getting anywhere. Having something like this goal action plan where you can make yourself kind of a little checklist and you can take off the things as you do them. You can always refer back to that to see how far ahead you actually are.    

24:52  Or if you're struggling, then it might be that you just need to make some adjustments to how much time in your schedule you are or try a different way of approaching it. So it will help you work out then what will work and what won't.    

25:06  So again, good, better and best goals take the pressure off because you're not worried about achieving just a specific thing. You're worried about getting within that range, which makes it so much easier, so much easier because you still can have it achieve something if you don't quite get to the specific thing that you would have if you picked a SMART goal. They allow you to have different levels of success so like I was saying, you've got good level of success, better or best, and they're great if your brain works differently. So if you're neuro spicy or neuro sparkly or just SMART goals just don't agree with your brain like they don't agree with mine, then they're great for your brain.    

25:46  If because they work differently.    

25:51  So what if you still feel disconnected from your business? So that's okay, Don't panic so if you've gone all these through all this and you still feel like your business isn't quite right, it's most likely that's most likely that zone of genius things so write down what you love and don't love about your business, and then once you've written that down, look over your list and see if it's a life thing or a business thing that's making you feel like this so if it's a life thing, it might be just that you need to adjust your schedule a little bit so if you're still enjoying the work, but you feel that life's always getting in the way, I've had that happen too on top of all these other things, I've got chronic illnesses as well and sometimes they can just Take Me Out for a week at a time.    

26:31  So it could be something like that where you just need to adjust your schedule a bit more or give yourself a bit more time to achieve the goal so if it's a life thing, like saying can brainstorm what you can do to manage that life thing to help you structure your business to suit you better. If it's a business thing, as in you know, this isn't the thing you should be doing, don't burn it down all down yet. Can you make tweaks to pivot it back to something you love so for example, with my life coaching business, when I realized that's not what I wanted to do anymore, I pivoted to travel coach. So it meant I had to, to let some of the customers I had go because that's not what it was working for them.    

27:10  But I kept that that happening and the trust accounting business happening while I was building up the other businesses. So is there a way that you can tweak it a little bit while you start moving it and pivoting it towards what you want it to be? So there's always different ways and that's also when I decided to start my second business doing graphic design because that fed a different part of my brain.    

27:32  And then I could be doing two things that I enjoy doing, I enjoy helping people with and.    

27:39  Hopefully once you've done all those things, you'll realise exactly where you're at and you can turn that into a big scary, audacious goal to work out how you where you're moving to next. Again, just a reminder if that's how you're feeling disconnected from your business to break it all down, what do you enjoy doing and want to share and add that to what can you do for other people or teach to other people? That is how you set up a business for success.    

28:11  So I've got a freebie for you it's part of the swag bag you can also scan this QR code if you want a bit more help with getting started on with getting started on these business goals and these good, better and best goals and setting up an action plan, which is called My Best Business you get Blueprint so it helps you go through all of that what kind of what we've been talking about and I've got it for you for free today so you can scan the QR code or it'll be in the Summit swag bag.    

28:39  So to recap what you've learned today, why SMART goals don't work and they're keeping you stuck. That's one thing you've learned how your zone of genius may be making you, your business life more difficult. And then what to do instead so you can feel like you're in the right business and start achieving your goals.    

28:59  So one last thought I wanted to leave you with is what would Chad do? So this is from one of my business mentors, Vivian K, who's an empowerment expert and if you haven't, don't know, but go and look her up on Instagram she's amazing. But she's coined the term and she actually trademarked it now, what would Chad do? So no offence to any Chads that are out there that are listening or any Chads that you know, but this we kind of all know a mediocre person who seems to be getting a hidden laugh in ways that they shouldn't be.    

29:31  Especially the state of the world right now. There's a lot of that going on. So when you're finding these things difficult and you're a bit scared of your big scary goals, just remind yourself, what would Chad do what would that mediocre person that you know do? Because they're out there taking the jobs and saying they can do the things that they really not qualified to do. You know, all these amazing things. You're ready to help people either by doing something for them or showing them how to do something. So what would Chad do? And use that to motivate yourself to keep moving forward and achieve big, scary, audacious things. So thank you for watching and thank you so much for being here today i hope you feel ready to start planning and achieving your big scary, audacious goals now if you'd like to keep in touch, you can find me at Instagram, you can find me by email, or you can find me at my website.    

30:27  I'm so happy to have been sharing all this with you i'd really hope you got something out of it. I'd love to hear any of your feedback about it and I hope you enjoy the rest of the summit. Thanks again.