2019 Goals Update (halfway through the year!)

It’s July and it’s official. We’ve made it halfway through 2019.

I made and shared a lot of goals at the beginning of the year. It’s been a whirlwind of a first half and I have learned a LOT about what I’m good at, what I suck at, and where my true heart lies when it comes to running this or any business.

It’s been tough. There have been tears. There have been many, MANY moments where I said out loud, “I am so DONE with this!” and felt ready to just give it all up.

But there have also been breakthroughs.

For me, AND for my clients.

There have been BIG wins. I made more money in the first 6 months of 2019 than I did in all of 2017. And I have learned so much about myself, what I want, what I DON’T want and what is MOST important to me.

Beautiful things grow out of the dirt yall, and these first six months I got dirty.

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Creative Small Business Coach | Goal Planning

Goals I listed at the beginning of the year:

Contribute 5k/month in income to my household income. That means around 8k/month gross income. - there is obviously a LOT that goes into this. Number of clients, keeping my expenses low, planning for passive income...a lot. I will be doing a lot of pushing forward this year to make this number a reality!

I am doing decently well at this. Because my income is highly dependent on the season (hardly anyone gets married in March and everyone gets married in June…) I’m more so going off of an average.

My average total income so far for the first 6 months of 2019 is just shy of $5k/month. However, that includes the three slowest months of the year so the back end of the year should raise this average substantially.

With the plans I have regarding changes in my business model (more emphasis on client/coaching work as opposed to pushing “passive” online sales) I believe I will be able to either hit or get really close to this overall income goal.

Lose 70 lbs before the end of the year - going to continue doing what I am doing now with a few tweaks here and there, but this should be the year when I finally get back to a weight and body composition that I haven’t seen since high school. I finally feel free from the uncertainty about how to lose and maintain and eat foods that don’t harm me but fuel me properly.

Even though this has nothing really to do with business, it’s an important goal for me to be tracking. I am still learning a ton about this new way of eating, and overall I am not on track to meet this goal by the end of the year.

The main lesson I have learned over this past year of completely changing the way I eat and think about food and weight loss is this: You can easily lose a ton of weight by simply calorie restricting. HOWEVER, this is the absolute LEAST effective way to sustain long term weight loss.

When you restrict calories you end up changing BMR (basal metabolic rate) and your body adjusts to the lower calorie intake. Once you start increasing calories again you will instantly gain the weight right back.

Looking at weight loss and gain as a function of hormones instead of the overly simplified CICO theory gives you better ability to handle and affect your weight loss in the long term, sustainable way. Keeping your insulin levels low for longer periods of time (not eating 6 times a day etc…) allows your body to tap into burning mode instead of storage mode. I am fully on board with the hormone theory behind weight gain and loss and am using that to move forward to reach my goals.

Ultimately, I know that I could hack this goal to reach it by doing something that wouldn’t be good for me in the long run, so instead of doing that, I’m going to continue losing slowly in order to maintain better health and weight in the long run.

Read 50 books - I’ve done this before and I am so excited to do it again. I don’t read to feel smarter or important, I simply love getting lost in the pages of a book. I’ll be keeping track on instagram and on goodreads if you want to follow along!

At this exact moment I am slightly behind on this goal...mainly according to Goodreads (they have a built in tracker. But ultimately I am maintaining my focus on having a book I’m currently reading at all times, reading on flights and at night and I am fully confident that I will be able to reach this goal by the end of the year.

Get more visible to increase my impact - this will include specific goals around speaking and being guests on podcasts!

I have not focused on this goal AT ALL. I have had zero time in my schedule to attempt to gain visibility in the creative community by increasing appearances on other blogs, podcasts or speaking opportunities. Feeling overwhelmed by the work that goes into this and do not know if I will continue any efforts on this for the 2nd part of the year.

That being said, I am joining Jessica Rasdall’s Speaker Circle mastermind group and am excited to put some structure and goals around future talks I would love to present and share and look into other opportunities to teach and speak at various other conferences etc…!

Grow in my faith and be more open to what God is calling for me to do in my life to serve Him better - pretty much a constant goal of mine but I want to put some more specific parameters around this so I can stay on track!

The only real action item I have put into place surrounding this goal is to be in the Word every day with Paul. We are continuing to read through the Bible in a year by utilizing The Bible Project program on YouVersion app. We spend time every morning going through the assigned reading together. Sometimes we discuss it, sometimes we don’t, sometimes we are super distracted going through it even though we should be able to focus for the 10 minutes it takes us. I’d like to expand on this further this year by intentionally praying and spending time listening to God so I can have a better understanding of the things he has for me and my life. I have no doubt he wants to talk to me, I just don’t make the time to listen and I want that to change.

I also continued attending the women's bible study at my church for the Spring season and have continued building some deeper relationships there. I plan on continuing to attend in the Fall once it starts back up again!

Finish the first draft of a book - yep I said it...lots more to come on this!!

I have 8 pages and 4300 words written. It’s a mess. Those 8 pages have come out of me in three different short writing sessions where I was feeling inspired. Have not created time and space for this project like I want to. Have a LOT of mental blocks around this and need a mindset shift. Feeling like I bit off more than I could chew with this project this year and am vacillating between wanting to focus more efforts on it in 2020 and feeling like I’m just making excuses because it’s a hard, emotionally draining project. Feeling lost.

Alrighty! That’s where I’m at right smack dab in the middle of 2019.

I think it is so important to take a quick break from the constant go go go, to take stock of: