6. 3 Steps to Get What You Want - Step 2: Making the Plan

Hi, it’s Deidrea Kiesling and you’re listening to The Success Minded Woman podcast, episode six. In today’s episode we’re going to continue talking about step two of the three step process on how to get what you want. And it’s all about planning. So learn how to make a plan and stick to it in today’s episode. But one thing I wanted to let you know that I forgot to mention in last week’s episode is I talked about making your plans and making your goals doable and realistic.

And I wanted to let you know that I first learned that concept of being doable and realistic from Corinne Crabtree who is a mentor and a coach at The Life Coach School and that is also where I got my certification as a life coach and how I first met Corinne Crabtree. So I just wanted to give credit where credit is due and I will always do my best to do this but some things I just forgot where I learned them because I’ve been using them for so long. But anyways, I wanted to let you know that she is an amazing coach and she’s got just so much, so many nuggets of inspiration and wisdom and I have learned so much from her.

So I just wanted to let you know that. So stay tuned in today’s episode and we’re going to learn all about how to actually create your plan, make it doable and realistic so you can follow it, you can do it and you can get your result. Alright, stay tuned.

Hi, I’m Deidrea, wife, and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob, and certified life and business coach. If you’re a high-achieving, goal-oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a success minded woman and you’re in the right place. I’m here to help you make the money and the impact you’ve been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that imposter syndrome, and harness the power of your mind. If you’re ready to create a life and business you love, then let’s go. I’m so glad you’re here.

Welcome back. I'm so excited to talk with you today about planning, making your plan. So last week I talked about planning for results and planning for outcomes and the difference between those. So planning for your actions, what I call, do goals are the things you’re going to do to get the outcome, the result that you want. So today we’re going to talk about how to actually decide on what those do goals are and decide on what the result that you’re going after. So there’s three parts to creating the plan. There is the timeline, there is the program and then there is the actual planning process that you’re going to use.

So let's start with number one, the timeline. So the timeline is the actual amount of time that you’re going to give yourself to go after your goal. And what I recommend and what I love and what I have my clients do is to use 90 days. So I love the 90 days because it's short enough to get you into action quickly and to take a lot of action in a short amount of time. But it's long enough that you can create a result. The power of 90 days is that it creates urgency, it creates deliverables, it creates milestones to help you stay on track and get results quickly.

There is a book called The 12 Week Year that I discovered, I think around Christmas time last year. And it will convince you that 90 days is the best timeline to use when going after a goal. So the authors of this book are corporate consultants where they go in and help companies and help the salespeople achieve their goals. And what the premise is for them is that you can do as much in 12 weeks as you could achieve in a year by following this 90 day approach. So I've been following using 90 days for a long time but reading that book was just sometimes you know you just need that external confirmation, yeah, this works, this is good.

So in the book they give a lot of examples of this but one that just really jumped out for me is they went into a company, a billion dollar company and they trained their people in this 12 week year approach. And within six months they increased their revenue by 50%. 50% in six months, that is the power of 90 days. So I highly recommend that you break out your goal in 90 day chunks and go heads down all in for 90 days at a time. So I did this for the first time, I don’t even want to say how long it was. It was over 20 years ago when my friend, Susan, and I decided to run a marathon.

We met when I first started at KPMG Consulting. She was my mentor. And we went out to lunch and we just hit it off, I mean immediately. We had so much in common. We both had big dreams for our life, for our career and we just talked and talked. And one of the things that we talked about is that we both wanted to run a marathon and neither one of us had and we had really never even really attempted to train for a marathon but we decided that let's do it. Let’s do a marathon.

And within, I don’t remember the time from making that decision and actually doing it but we were going to do it. And so I said, “Well, I’ll figure it out and I’ll come up with a plan.” Because I’ve always been a planner and I have always been a project manager so I’m like, “I'll take care of this part.” So I went out and did my research and I found a book called 16 Weeks to a Marathon. Now, 16 weeks is longer than the 90 days that I'm talking about but it's the same philosophy and approach. So what this book said was, you give me 16 weeks and I’ll give you a marathon.

And so I read that book. I bought into their program and their approach and I told Susan, “Okay, this is what we’re doing. We’re going to follow this program and we’re going to do this in 16 weeks.” So I created a spreadsheet and I tracked everything. I broke it out by week exactly like it said in the book. I basically created my own tracking mechanism. And so the book said every day we were going to do certain distances and it built up over time like a mile, and then do a shorter one and then do a sprint one. And every week it had a long run and every week the long run got longer.

So I don't remember the first week, the first long run but I think it might have been a mile or maybe two miles. It was really short but we were all in on that program and we just basically followed what the book told us to do and what I had written out on the schedule, which was from an Excel workbook because you all, I love Excel, I love. I’m very linear and I like to break it all out in a spreadsheet. So I had our spreadsheet, I had it week by week on what we were going to do and I had a checklist and we marked off what we did or if we didn't do it or if we didn't do exactly we would write that down and I would track everything.

And I wish I’d kept that tracking because it was very detailed and it had a lot of notes in it but anyways we followed that program and we did it. And it was hard. It was really hard sometimes to do what that program said to do, what our checklist told us to do because we both met and lived in Dallas but we worked in Denver. And when we decided to train for this marathon we trained in the fall and in the winter. And so we are two girls from Texas, it’s very flat and it doesn't really get that cold for very long.

And we were training in Denver at that higher, much higher elevation than we were used to and it was cold and it was snowy. So one of the things that we had to do when we were following that 16 week program is we had to adjust it. We had to adjust it because we had to incorporate the elements of cold, snow, elevation. So we pivoted as we went but we did do it. We actually, I will never forget this because it was so, we were so amazed with ourselves after this. One of the long runs was to do 13 miles and which is just so crazy because when we first started we were, I don’t think either one of us was running more than a couple of miles.

So we were planning to do 13 miles. And so we found a marathon, the Dallas Marathon and we signed up for the half marathon. So we did that half marathon and we, at the end of it we knew that we could do a marathon. We had gone halfway through and we knew we could do it. And that's what I love about these milestones along the way is it starts building proof and evidence that you can do it. So we did that marathon, I think it ended up probably taking us 20 weeks because we missed the window for the marathon that we had planned to do. So then we looked around and found the next marathon which was in Houston. So we ended up doing the Houston Marathon.

And you all, here’s another funny story and then I promise you I will get back on track. But this was a side-effect of training in Denver and doing the marathon in Houston is that we had trained in high altitude and we had trained in cold and snow. And we’d really gone against the elements and way out of our comfort zone in our training. And so when we did the marathon it was very mild cold. And by the end, lots of people are taking off their sweatshirts and stuff. It was getting warm throughout the day and it's very flat. I mean there was basically no hills.

And we kept to our pace. We had planned out the pace of what we were going to do. And at the end I swear I could have kept going. We had paced ourselves so well and we had trained so well that at the end I felt like I could keep going. Anyways, the point of this is, is that we had a program, the 16 weeks we followed the program we believed in the author of the book that he said we could do it if we just followed this program and we followed it and we did it. And so that's what I want for you. So part two of the things that I’m going to tell you today is the program.

You need to decide what program, what approach, what methodology, what you're going to follow for the 90 days. So for us it was the 16 Weeks to a Marathon book. For you it could be a certain coaching group, a mentor group, a peer, a colleague that you know, that has already done it, that can show you the way. But you need to find something, some kind of program so that you’re not starting from scratch and so you know that it’s a proven way to get the goal.

This in itself, just finding someone, a book, a program, a methodology that has already done what you want to do, it takes a lot of the guesswork out and it takes a lot of the doubt out. Because as long as you believe in what you’re following, the program, you know it's possible because someone already did it and they did it this way. So step two, find your program that you’re going to follow. And what this does is you're not starting from scratch. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're just doing what the program is telling you to do.

So I love this quote from Jim Rohn. And Jim Rohn has been an inspiration, a motivation, a leader for me, a mentor for me since I was a teenager. And I would listen to my dad’s cassette tapes and I would even have them in my car when I first got my driver's license. I would have these cassette tapes in my car and I was so embarrassed. When my friends would get in I would immediately take the cassette tape out, you all. I’m dating myself, we had cassette tapes. I think we had eight tapes, I don’t remember. But I would take it out of my car and put something else more teenager appropriate because I was embarrassed.

I was embarrassed of my drive for success and my drive for achievement and my attraction to personal development. I was embarrassed by that. It’s so funny now but of course that’s just my whole way of being. That’s just who I am. Anyways, Jim Rohn has this quote and it is, ‘Success leaves clues’. And that’s why it’s so important to pick a program because that program already has success. And it has already left the clues and created the program so you just need to follow it to create your success.

And you probably have heard that quote from Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins says that a lot and it’s kind of a core principle of his personal development programs and philosophy. And this is what I want to tell you. He learned it from Jim Rohn. Tony Robbins worked for Jim Rohn and that is how he started in personal development. He used to sell Jim Rohn programs. He went door to door and made sales calls on companies to sell them for their employees and their salespeople to come to Jim Rohn trainings. That’s why it’s so important. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You don’t have to start from scratch.

You find a mentor, you find a program and you follow it. And the reason I point that out is because we all probably have heard of Tony Robbins and this basic philosophy of his that success leaves clues. And he didn't invent that. He learned that. He followed a program and then he refined it, improved it and made it his own along the way and I want that for you. But first just pick a program, pick a mentor, pick something that you're going to follow that you can leverage on the success and get the clues that they have.

The other thing that Jim Rohn says, he says a lot of things but the thing that’s appropriate for this is he says, “Don't take shortcuts. Don't try to beat the system. When you trust in the program that you've selected you go all in on that proven method. Don’t change it. Don't try and find a way around it. Don't take shortcuts.”

So there is a YouTube video that I highly recommend that you watch. And it’s Jim Rohn giving this talk and it talks about this idea of success leaves clues and don't beat the system. So it's about 13 minutes and we'll put the link in the show notes and you won't regret those 13 minutes so watch it.

Okay, so after you’ve picked your program the next step is to decide on the planning process that you’re going to use. So the process is how you are going to create your plan and work your plan. So the planning process that I like to do is to take that 90 goal and break it down into monthly goals. And once you have your monthly goals then you can break that down further into weekly goals and then you can break that down even further into daily goals. And remember what I said earlier there is these two types of goals. There is the do goals, the things that you're going to do and then the outcome, the result that you're going to get from the actions that you take.

So I like to do this in this way of commit to three. So you’re going to commit to three at the monthly level, at the weekly level and then at the daily level. Three actions that you will take to get a result. So you're going to have a result, an outcome every day and three actions every day, every week, every month. And that is how you’re going to get your goal in 90 days. I love this quote, it’s really become a mantra of mine. ‘Every day in every way I'm getting better and better’. And this commit to three process is the way that you can prove that to yourself. You can track it. You can see it on paper.

So after you have adopted this commit to three approach you want to decide on how you’re going to do your planning. Are you going to do it online? Are you going to do it on an app? Are you going to do it in a journal or a planner or how, the actual mechanism of how you're going to write down your commit to three, where you're going to write down the result that you get and where you’re going to do your assessment? So decide on that, on how you're going to do it. I like to do it on paper and I recommend that you do it on paper.

And just like I want you to write out your goals every day I want you to write out your plan every day because when you see it outside of you on a piece of paper or if you decide to do an app or whatever but it becomes separate from you. And then you can look at it and then you can follow it. So it’s not all just in your brain. You have it in front of you. So the other thing that you want to do is decide on when you’re going to do your daily planning, where you're going to do your daily planning and then your daily assessing.

So there’s a couple of ways you can do this. You can decide to do your planning, let’s say every morning and you could do your assessing every night. I don't do it at night. I do everything in the morning. So in the morning I plan my day and I assess the previous day. The point is with all of this, you have to figure out what's going to work for you, what is going to be doable and realistic for you. So for me I do it in the morning. I do it at 6:00am in my office. I sit on my couch and I get out my planner and I do this every day. So you're going to want to come up with that mechanism that you're going to do, paper, app, whatever.

And when you're going to do with it and where you're going to be, just as many of the details as you can. But again because it's going to take out all the decisions that you have to make. You’ve already made those decisions. So then you just have to do what you say you're going to do. And that's where this discipline comes in where you learn this developed integrity with yourself, that you are going to do what you say you're going to do.

And the other thing that I love about this daily assessment is you will start to find where you’re not doing your three actions that you committed to. And you can really start investigating why, why did you not do that? And that is where the awareness comes up. That’s where you start to really learn about yourself. And that's where this idea of looking at your thoughts and really noticing what you’re actually thinking throughout the day and the feelings that you are having and then the actions or the inactions that you are taking. So by doing this daily you're really going to start gathering a lot of data.

And the data is what is going to help you understand where you’re getting off track and why you're getting off track and then how you can get back on track. So you're going to have data every day. You're going to have concrete data of here’s the three things that I committed to and here is what I did, what I didn't do and why I didn't do it. So you will figure this out as you go, the actual day-to-day of when you’re going to do this to plan and assess. It doesn't really matter. You could do it at lunchtime. You could do it at 3:00pm. It really doesn't matter.

It just matters that you do it, that you do it in a way that you can be consistent with it because consistency is what actually creates your result, taking those daily small actions is going to build up over time. It's going to create momentum. And from momentum is really where you create your results. And then you’re on a roll and then you can keep doing it over and over again. So the other part of this that I want you to think about is what are some thoughts that you can think that you can go to for yourself when you catch yourself not wanting to do something or beating yourself up if you didn't do something.

I am almost 100% sure that you're not going to be 100% in committing to three and doing three and that’s okay. They show that if we’re 80%, that’s good enough. 80% will get to your goal. And I like to think about this too and I remind myself of this a lot. You only need C’s to get a college degree. You only need 70% to graduate from college. So 80%, B minus, it’s really all you need. So we’re not going for perfection, we’re going for progress and how you create progress and how you know you're making progress and how you create more progress is following a process, analyzing your results and making pivots and changes as you go.

So after you’ve done these three things, you’ve decided on your timeline, which of course I highly recommend that you do 90 days. You’ve decided on your program, whether it’s a coaching group, a course, a book, a training, a mentor, whatever that is, you decide on a program that you’re going to follow and you stick to it. And then the third part is this actual, the planning process of how you're going to do your planning and how you're going to do your tracking and how you're going to do your assessing.

And the next part of that which we’re going to pick up on next week is putting it all together, anticipating what’s going to get in your way and creating strategies on how to overcome those obstacles and creating a scorecard so you can gather lots of data along the way, learn and grow, learn and grow. And that's all we can de really is do our best. And this process will help you show up and do your best and your best can just keep getting better and better as you go through this process.

So thanks for hanging in there with me today. I know this was a lot but I promise you if you follow this approach of picking one goal, committing to it for 90 days, finding a program, committing to that for 90 days and then committing to daily planning of your actions and your results and assessing all of that you will achieve your goal. You will get what you want and you will create this momentum and consistency that you will believe in yourself. You will believe in your goals. You will believe in your dreams and you will believe that it is possible for you.

So I want to leave you with a couple of quotes that I just absolutely love. One of them, this isn’t really a quote, it’s kind of just a saying but ‘Everything is always working out for me. And with that mindset it’s working or you’re growing, it’s working or you’re growing. You’re learning and taking action. And it's all working out for me.

And this other one that really has hit home for me and this is what I've been living into for probably the last, I would say probably eight years, this one mantra has been driving me and it is this, ‘If it is to be it's up to me’. And that gives you so much power and also so much responsibility. It is up to us. It is up to me. It is up to you to get what you want, to make a plan, to have discipline, to honor yourself, to have responsibility for yourself, to believe in yourself and believe in your dreams enough to take the actions to get the results of what you want.

And finally this last one that I heard on a clip from Mel Robbins. And she says, “No one's coming. No one’s coming to rescue you, to save you, to do it for you. No one's coming. It really is up to you.” It’s up to us to save ourselves, to create the life we want. If you want a better life, if you want to live your best life, if you want to be the best you it's up to you to make it happen. So surround yourself with people who share that approach. Find support and accountability. Find a program. Find a process. Commit to daily actions and you will get there. Progress over perfection 80%, that’s all you need.

So your action step for today is to find a program that you're going to follow. So you can do some research. You can talk to friends. You can look up, maybe there is a certain mentor that you’ve been following, whatever it is, find a program that you're going to follow. Do your research to understand that program and then build your 90 plan around that program and that philosophy so that you’re not starting from scratch. You're not making it up as you go. You’re building your plan and then you’re just going to work your plan by taking those daily commit to three actions.

So next week I'm going to share with you really the secret ingredient that you need to pull it all together to set yourself up for success. And this is really part of the reason why most people don't achieve their goals. And I know I keep saying that over and over because you really need all of this to achieve your goals but this last part is what most people miss. And this last part, if you don't do it, it will be harder. So stay tuned for next week and we are going to wrap this all up so you are ready to go, you’re set up for success to go after your 90 day goal.

So thanks for listening. I'm so glad you're here. I want you to know that I believe in you and I believe in your dream. and I know that your dreams were meant for you. Your dreams matter and so do you. So go out there and make your dreams happen. I’ll talk to you all next week. Bye.

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Thanks for joining me this week on The Success Minded Woman podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast and you want to know more, then head on over to thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to you all next week, bye.