Track It If You Want It

When you’re a virtual assistant, you’re mostly focused on client work. But it’s important to move forward with your business goals as well, something that’s not always easy to do.

In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll talk about how I track my progress every week to get my client work done and achieve my own goals.

TRANSCRIPT 

I'm Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl. Today we're going to talk about if you track what you want, you're going to get what you want, and I'm going to show you how.

I get it, when you're a virtual assistant, you are working on all of your client work. It's so easy for you to just sort of put yourself aside and say, "I'll do that later." "I'll do that another time."

But, if you want your business to grow and be successful and thrive, it's important to not only create goals, but track them on a regular basis. And today we're going to talk about exactly how to do that. Okay, so here are some tips for tracking.

The first thing you want to do is you want to decide what's important. It can't be that you're doing 20,000,000 things that just doesn't work. There's a name for that. It's called Shiny Object Syndrome. And what happens is, we're just popping all around and we're not getting one thing done. And the feeling of getting one thing done and having it done well is FABULOUS. So don't miss this opportunity.

So decide what's important, and then I want you to write it down very specifically. It could be double the number of clients that I have. It could be double last year's revenue. It could be, drink eight glasses of water every day. Whatever it is, you need to really think about what it is that you want to accomplish. Okay.

So once you've decided the goal is to have better health, you're going to work out or drink water all day. You want to get to that next step. The next step of saying, "What are the things that are going to get me there?"

If you want to double your revenue in your business, one thing you could do is to have lunch with a new person every week. Every two weeks, you could start publishing a newsletter on a regular basis. There's a ton of things that you can do, but what you need to do is decide what they're going to be.

Okay, once you decide what they're going to be, and also, you want to decide how often you're going to do them. Are you going to have lunch with someone every week or every other week? You know, make it very specific.

Then you have to create a tracking system. Now, the tracking system has to be one that you'll use. So it could be an Excel spreadsheet. It could be a word document that you print out. It could be project management software. And honestly, it could also be a posted note.

Let's say your goal was to have lunch with a new person every week. You could write July. Then you could write week one, week 2, week three, week 4, and then put their names there. Really simple. So the mechanism doesn't have to be hard.

And one of my friends hurt his knee, and went to physical therapy. And the physical therapist said, "Okay, you've got to get on the elliptical and you've got to do this on a regular basis." So like a good Do Bee, he went to the gym, and talked to the gym guy and he said, "Which is the best elliptical for me?" And the guy said, I love this. The one you'll stay on the longest." Okay.

So pick a system that you'll stay on the longest. I really like the post-its. I track a lot of stuff on posts-its. Like when I'm monitoring my weight, let's say I want to take off a couple of pounds or working out. If I decide I'm going to walk four miles 5 times a week, I'll write the days down when I plan to do it and put check mark. Big check mark person. I love check marks. Alright. So create that tracking system.

Then, the most important thing is you need to schedule a regular check-ins. Now, those of you who have been in the accountability challenge that I do twice a year where everybody creates these big that I do twice a year where everybody creates these big goals and get stuff done in four weeks. The whole key to that system and why people get stuff done is the regular check-ins. As part of the challenge, they have to check-in on, one of it, Sunday night. What are you gonna do this week? Friday, what did you do? That is critical to your success, because even if you don't accomplish what you set out to, you're looking that goal right in the eye again. Right? And that's so important.

So the downside of tracking is it's easy to be hard on yourself. It's easy to say, "Oh my gosh, three weeks in a row, I wasn't able to do this." "Why am I even trying?"

So I want you to shift that and look at this as an opportunity of, "Okay, here's a fresh new week." "How can I make this work?" "How can I be successful at this?" So go easy on yourself. Don't necessarily change the goal. But think about how you can be successful. Like if I want to get my weight back into line, I need to make sure that on Sunday I go to the grocery store and buy the food that I want to eat. Otherwise, I'm going to stick a pizza in the oven. Right? So you just have to think ahead a little bit, "What's my success strategy for getting this done?"

All right, now, here's something. When you track your goals, you actually know what they are. Right? So it's easy to set a goal, "In January, I'm going to double my revenue." And then in November, you think, "Well, didn't I set a goal?" "What was that goal?" "I don't really remember."

But by looking at it every week, keeping it present, I think what happens is it sort of lives in the back of our head back here. And then when opportunities present themselves to you and to me that are supporting that goal, we can see them and grab them. And so that's one of the reasons, too. I think it's important to track your goals so that they're present right in front of us.

Tracking goals, setting goals is probably the number one thing that helped my business to grow and thrive, just knowing where am I heading.

It's like, I'm sure you've all heard that story, if you get in the car and you don't know where you're going, who knows where you're going to end up.

But if you're clear, "I want to double my clients." "I want to double my revenue." "I want to get my first client."

I want whatever it is, and you get clear, and then you figure out the tactics. Even if you don't have the tactics right, right out of the gate, at least you're in the flow of doing it.

Okay, so I want to tell you about my free online classroom. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. It's on Facebook, and I would love to have you join. We have almost 14000 members. We have community and friendship and tons and tons of resources for you, whether you're just starting out or you've been a VA for a while like me. So definitely come over and check it out. Just type The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top of Facebook.

If you're watching on YouTube, please click the Subscribe button so you'll be notified each time I go live. So go set some goals. Write them down. Get your tracking system. I know you've got this. Until next time. I'm Belinda Wasser, RocketGirl. Signing off. Bye.