Join us for our next episode of Fill My Cup to learn how to get the results you want.
Fill My Cup: Episode 5
If we focus on discipline daily, it is much easier to achieve our results and we won't get easily distracted.
Fill My Cup Transcript
(00:02)
Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to our fifth episode of Fill My Cup. Today we are filling our cups at Stan's Coffee Company in Thompsontown, Pennsylvania. As we approach year end, this is the time for many of us to evaluate our accomplishments or lack of accomplishments during the year and think about what we hope to accomplish in the new year. But before we dive into our content today, let's review from our previous episode. Last episode Angela Hummel joined us, and we were talking about abundance versus a scarcity mindset, and here's some key takeaways from that episode. We all tend to have that scarcity mindset. We just feel that there isn't enough, and if I win, you lose or if you win, I lose. Competition is more about getting better than trying to beat someone, and we need to focus on that.
(00:59)
It's about making ourselves better. In order to get into more of an abundance mindset, we should spend time with people who have an abundance mindset. We also can practice more ways to have gratitude, being thankful for what we have. We may not have as many clients or as many sales as we hope for, but we are grateful for those who are clients or the sales that we've been given, and to be more generous towards others. People don't share because they're not generous. It's more because they're afraid of running out and there won't be enough for me. Hopefully in the last month you've had an opportunity to practice an abundance mindset. Today we're going to talk about accomplishments and results. Do you ever feel that you're busy all the time and you get to the end of the day and you ask yourself, what did I do today?
(02:00)
I don't feel like I got anything accomplished. I don't feel very productive. Me too. It's called distractions. Distractions take us away from reaching our results. Some distractions are important and others are just time-waster. So how do we manage our distractions? First of all, we all desire to achieve results, but to achieve those results, we need to first clearly identify the results we want, put a strategy in place, and then stay focused on that and not drift. So let me share with you what I am learning to do. In the fall of each year, I write down four results I want to achieve by the end of the following year. My recommendation is to keep that number small so it's not overwhelming, and we can stay focused. Usually I have two business results and two personal results. What I'll do is get four post-it notes, and on each one of those post-it notes, I will write one of those results and then I post it on the wall in my office.
(03:10)
Every day I'm looking at those results that I want to achieve. Now, this method works for me, but you may have something different. Whatever it is, the key is to make those results more visible. Annual results can feel overwhelming. So the second step is to break down each result into what I call bite-sized chunks. Let me explain the revenue example for just math simplicity. Let's say our annual revenue goal is $120,000, and we can break that down then into 12 months of $10,000 per month or a little over $2,300 per week. And that way we can focus on those small chunks. I need to get $2,300 in the week, or I need $10,000 in the month. Next, we'll determine how do we get that revenue per week or per month. Since we're in a coffee house, and I know nothing about running a coffee shop, so I'm just going to take a guess here.
(04:13)
If we're selling coffee for $3 a cup, we would need to sell 769 cups of coffee per week or 110 cups per day. If we're open seven days a week, what do I need to do to sell 110 cups of coffee per day? Well, first I need to identify who's my target audience, and then I can put in place my marketing strategy. What are my promotions? What is it that I need to do to get foot traffic into my coffee shop? I need to have the best coffee around so that I get repeat business. A personal example is when I wrote my book, I knew my goal of writing was to be done by the end of the year. So in the fall of 2021, I said, by the end of 2022, I want to have my book written. I know if I didn't break that into smaller steps in January, I would keep putting it off because December is still months away.
(05:12)
I have plenty of time. The next thing you know it would've been February and I'd be thinking December is still 10 months away, I'll be fine. But I knew that I would keep putting it off because I had done that in the past. So instead, what I decided to do was I recognized that there were going to be 10 chapters in my book, and I decided that each month I was going to write one chapter. Every Wednesday morning I blocked out on my calendar writing time, and I was focused on that chapter. Each month has approximately four Wednesdays. So I knew if I wanted to write one chapter a month, I needed to write a quarter of a chapter every Wednesday. And that's what I did. I blocked out of my calendar, and I made sure that that activity for that time was to write my book.
(06:06)
After we break down each of our results into smaller chunks, it is time to come to day-to-day activities to stay focused. Let me tell you, there are so many good activities that can distract us, but we have to discern which activity is an opportunity or a distraction, which activity is going to help us move toward the result that we want. No matter how good it looks, we have to be able to say no to certain things so that we can achieve our results. I'm pretty sure I've shared before that I'm a people pleaser and I don't like to say no, but if I say yes to everything, my results won't happen and I will get burned out. In this season in my life, I am learning and I'm still learning that it's okay to say no to good things. So I have the capacity to say yes to the best things.
(07:04)
As a business owner, I get asked for donations, sponsorships, all kinds of business opportunities. People asking me to do things for them. And there are just so many good programs out there and there's so many of them do so much good for other people, but I just can't do it all. I have to learn to evaluate which ones are opportunities that move me closer to my results and which ones are distractions. One for me is networking. I absolutely love to network and I'd love to spend my days just networking with people all day if I could, and this is an area that I am really trying to work on right now, what are the networks that I need to be involved in? I love to meet people and there are so many great ways to meet people, but investing in networking can be overwhelming, takes a lot of energy and a lot of time.
(07:57)
It's important to evaluate those networking groups that align with my target audience and my business. I am still working through that. Another example is today, this is what I'm going to do to move forward to my results. And so each day looking at what are those one or two things that I need to do to move forward and not be 50 different things I need to do? And just to focus on that. Today I'm doing a Vlog that was what was marked on my calendar. I'm doing a Vlog today, and that's what my focus is. We need to step back and take time to evaluate our progress towards our results. We don't want to wait until the end of the year and say, oh, I didn't get where I needed to be. If we are veering off track, it's important for us to get back on track. And before we go too far. Last week, if we missed our 769 cups of coffee goal, what can I do to make that up this week? Or maybe I need to identify what happened. Sometimes we missed it and it's outside of our control. Maybe the weather was bad and people couldn't get to our coffee shop, or maybe the township was paving the road and the road was closed and people couldn't get to our coffee shop. That's okay. We just have to figure out how to sell more cups of coffee at another time.
(09:22)
Just to wrap up this bite-sized thing that we need to do, we first start with what are the results that we want? What is it that you expect at the end of the year? Make sure you limit that number. Sure, there might be 10 things out there that you want to do by the end of next year, but what are the maybe up to four that are really important and you need to prioritize, make those visible. For me, like I said, it's using post-it notes. Yours might be something different, but make it visible so that you can see it every day so you know what the focus is. And then take the result that you want, whether it's a revenue result or whether it's another business goal or it's a personal goal and break it down into bite-sized chunks that you can handle.
(10:09)
Break it down monthly, break it down weekly, break it down daily. And then identify those practical things that you can do daily or weekly to move toward that result. Can identify distractions? If somebody has asked me to do something, is that going to help me move toward my result? Or is that a distraction? Take time and your energy to focus towards your result. Don't forget to evaluate whether it's on a daily basis or a weekly basis to evaluate if you're drifting and you need to get back on track. And the last thing is, and this is one that again I'm still learning, is learn to say no to the good so you have the space to say yes to the best.
If you enjoyed our vlog, please like, share, and subscribe. Our intent is to fill our cup at a different location each episode. If you have a favorite spot, that would be a great place to fill our cup and would love a free shout out, let us know.
Thank you for joining and I hope you will join us for our next episode. Until next time, please take care and keep filling your cup.
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