READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Hello, my friends! Happy week… I hope you guys are having a great week and kicking off that new year strong. And if you’re not, you still have time to turn it strong. I know I didn’t necessarily kick it off strong because I had COVID, so that was interesting, but  I think there was a lesson in there. 

 

Normally I plan my goals and I’m really crazy about it. I love planning. I love goals. I always set too many goals and spend a lot of time on them, which isn’t a bad thing. But having COVID into the end of like the last week of the year, and then going into this new year, I didn’t really do that. I just treated it like a regular week and that kind of made me slow down more than I would’ve.

 

It also made me realize, “oh, well, the new year is actually also just another day”. I create all of this in my head and I don’t need to. So I think there was a lesson there for me to go through that.

 

 I did set goals this year… It’s interesting. I didn’t feel very motivated to have all these health goals. And usually, I have goals in every category of my life. So health, relationships, business, personal development. 

 

I set a lot, and I looked at my last year’s goals and I was like, this is too many. I’m setting myself up for overwhelm because I’m setting too many goals. So instead of setting a lot of goals, I set four or five key goals: a revenue goal, savings, and financial goals. We want to buy a second home in the mountains. So there’s a savings goal attached to that. 

 

So those big goals. But then I decided to make a list of places I wanted to travel to, and bucket list items that I wanted to do this year and, and experiences that I wanted to plan. Because, to me, if I can get to the end of this coming year and go, “wow, I lived, I lived hard. I did fun things. I had adventures. I took my kids on surprise trips or whatever we end up doing. We went to all these places”, then that’s a good year for me. Of course, I care about the revenue and the savings and my health and my relationships and all those goals. But also at the end of the day, I feel like I had the best year if those things happened. So that’s how I set my goals for this year, which we’ll see, we’ll see how it goes.

 

So, all right, you guys, today’s podcast episode might be on the shorter side but is going to be really good. I have to give credit to Alex mosey, who I’ve talked about before on this podcast, who is a friend of mine. He and his wife used to live where I live, but they’re not currently living really close to my house. So we used to hang out, and I love his book. I sent it to all of our clients. Our team is reading it a hundred million times, so good. He’s one of the smartest entrepreneurs I’ve ever talked to. 

 

So he said this the other day on a podcast… I was listening and I was like, that is so good. Why it’s so simple and so good, which is,.. “what if success wasn’t optional for you?”

 

What if you went to the extreme? What if your child was going to die unless you achieved this certain goal that you had? Or you were going to be sick and unable to work or whatever, or another scenario you want to put in place. What if that was gonna happen? If you weren’t successful? If you had no other option but to be successful. 

 

And you could look at this for any goal for, for revenue goal, for a goal, a marketing funnel for the overall goal of your business, for achieving a personal goal. And I love it so much because it’s like, why don’t we just look at things like that? 

 

We set these goals. And then the only reason we don’t achieve them is because we just don’t do the actions required to get there. And if you were to just sit down and ask yourself today, what if the business goal that I set for myself this year, whatever that revenue goal is, what if it wasn’t optional… Just play in your imagination. 

 

What if somebody you loved was gonna die if you didn’t hit that goal? I know that sounds so terrible and extreme, but seriously, it makes me think differently. What if that was the consequence of you not hitting the goal now, what would you do differently? What decisions would you make? What would you be doing differently today next week, this month? What actions would you be taking if that was your reality? 

 

And I think for me– a lot of times, at least this is my experience– I feel like I’m doing everything I can to achieve a goal. And if we don’t achieve a goal, we’re like, “oh, well, we tried our best,” right? And that’s important to feel like you gave it 110%, but this did make me sit down and think, and wonder if I had no other option, what would I do differently?

 

And sometimes that’s not achievable. For example, if you have a huge revenue goal and you have no option, but to achieve that revenue goal, you might have to work so much that you’re not willing to work that much. You might have to take away time from your family or your health to achieve that goal. 

 

Now I’m not saying to go do that, but I’m saying at least look at it from the perspective of you are choosing to not achieve that goal. And there are things where I choose to set lower goals, because I know I want to spend time with my family. And because I know I’m prioritizing health– but that’s a choice. 

 

It’s not like, “well, I tried my best and we didn’t achieve the goal”. No, we didn’t achieve the goal because I chose to prioritize other things. But that can come into play in your business in a negative way, too, where you set this big goal and then a month goes by and you don’t make progress towards it.

 

And you don’t take the actions necessary to get to that. 

 

And so that’s a choice. We’re always making choices that are leading us to achieve our goals or not. And so if you are somebody who can say last year didn’t achieve my goals or I struggled, or, I was way off and I didn’t grow how I wanted. Why didn’t you? 

 

And what if this year was not optional? If you had no choice if you were gonna die at the end of the year unless you achieved those goals. And it sounds so extreme, but it’s so good to think that way. And if I look at last year, I can pull out things of why we didn’t achieve some, our goals. That was my choice, whether they’re right or wrong choices, there’s still an action that impacted those goals.

 

We should have changed our offers sooner. I should have had less ego around it and more awareness and taken action faster. That’s something I chose to do, whether I knew it at the moment or not.  I also don’t work as much as I could. I could work out less or be with my family less and work more, but I’m making that active choice. And so I do have to take that into consideration when I set goals to make them realistic. 

 

But if we are just looking at your marketing, your business revenue, your business growth for this year, I want you guys to sit for a minute and just ask yourself “what if success wasn’t optional? What if at the end of the year, I had to achieve this revenue goal that I set for myself.”

 

If there was no other choice. What would you do differently? What decisions would you make? What would you be doing today? Would you be doing what you’re doing today? If it wasn’t optional because you, as a person, look at a goal and say, there is no choice but to get there. 

instead of saying, “well, I hope I’ll get there.” 

 

Like, this is my goal. It’s kind of crazy. But if you look at something that you wanna achieve and you say, there’s no option around it, you’re going to act differently. You’re gonna act with a different level of urgency. It’s as though there’s not a question about it. So it’s having this conversation with my husband too because he likes to get in-person clients. And I love him, but he’s not necessarily a natural entrepreneur. So sometimes he struggles and I’m like, “babe, you’re just waiting for the clients to come to you.”

 

Like, what if it wasn’t an option, if you want two new clients, you have to sign them this month. You have no choice. What would you go do? And he’s like, well, I would probably go out and, and network more. We have a local health club. It’s called alive and well. And there’s a bunch of people who go there for different health services and there’s supplements and whatever. He’s like, I’d go network more. I’m like, “see? there are actions that you are choosing not to do because your goals are optional.”

 

And so that’s the case for everybody. I think it takes some self-reflection and maybe even a conversation with somebody who’s like on the outside because I do think an outside perspective can help us realize our actions better. We’re so in it, we’re like, “well, I’m doing everything” when it’s like, are you, or are there things that you could be doing differently?

 

And if your success wasn’t optional, would you be doing those things differently? 

 

So let’s just micro-break this down. Because I love looking at this for big goals. So your revenue goal or company growth goal, or maybe it’s even a personal goal. Maybe you want to lose 40 pounds. Okay. What if that wasn’t an option? What if, unless you lost 40 pounds in this amount of time you were going to die? What would you do differently? What actions would you take? It’s definitely going to be different than trying to diet or trying to work out. Like there’s no try anymore. Right? I don’t know. I love it. 

 

I’m an extreme personality. You guys might hate this, but anyway, let’s look at it. Even from the level of a webinar funnel. What if you have a webinar funnel right now and it’s not working, but I said to you, Hey, you have 45 days And your webinar funnel has to be bringing in a sale every single day. What would you or you’re gonna die? Or your kid’s gonna die. That’s the consequence of it. What would you do? Would you network more to try to get people to have eyes on your webinar? Would you spend more money on ads? Would you make the time every week to refresh your creative? Would you re-record your webinar every single week until it was converting and you got better every week? 

 

Ultimately I think what you would do is you put more time and effort into it. I think you put more focus into it. It would become the top priority in your life. If you had something that you had to be able to achieve, or there was gonna be a consequence like somebody you love or yourself is going to die, you’re gonna put the necessary time and effort and energy into that in order to get to that result. Right? 

 

And so if we look at that and we say, okay, if that’s what I would do in order to get there, why am I not doing it now? Why am I not rerecording my webinar every week to make it better until it works? Why am I not making the time to create the amount of content I need to create to stay visible as a business? Why am I not making the time to network to get my name out there, to build my funnel, to get it done? And I can tell you on the inside– we vet clients for this in both of our services because I don’t want to give people the tools and the resources to be successful if they’re not gonna do the work. And when we have a client and we ask them, “Hey, we need these two reels or these two types of videos in order to be successful,” or 

 “We need you to meet with us so we can do a deep dive messaging workshop and change your webinar title” and they’re not willing to do it. Well, then we’ll never be successful. 

 

And so we vet people who are like, I want to do the work. And I want my business to be insanely successful. And I just wanna hire magic bullets to make that happen. One that doesn’t exist. And two, that is not realistic. So I vet people constantly in our sales process that are not willing to do the work. And so a lot of times, this is some real talk. When I look at a webinar funnel or a business in and of itself, a business as a whole, and I hear about the problems they’re experiencing. And then I tell somebody the actions that they should go take, they already know the actions. They’re just not doing them.

 

They’re not making them a priority for some reason, recording a video or rerecording a webinar seven times until you get it right, or investing in their ad spend, or getting somebody to help you build your funnel. All of those things for some reason. It’s going to be different for everybody, what is not a priority. 

 

I think a lot of times it’s because people are afraid. They’re afraid of success. They’re afraid of making that progress and they are sabotaging themselves. That’s a whole different story that I’m not necessarily qualified to talk about, but I observe this happening so much where I’m a CEO and I’m a business owner and what they’re doing makes no sense… Do they hate money?  It doesn’t make any sense. 

 

If I was to go to them and say, Hey, you have to do things, or there’s gonna be this very serious consequence. You have 45 days, they would go about it so much differently. Right. And so would you. So I want you to look at your big goals, but also your small goals, like a webinar funnel. If you’re like this year, “I just wanna get my webinar funnel converting. And I want one sale coming in every day”… Okay. You have 45 days to do that. And if you don’t, there’s a serious consequence. Pretend that what would you do? What actions would you take? How would you spend your day? How much time would you spend on this webinar funnel? What resources would you hire? What content do you need to create? What do you need to be doing? And there’s your answer. And most of you guys know the answer to this, you know what you need to be doing. And you convince yourself that you don’t have the right information and you don’t have the right strategies.

 

And you’re not sure. And is this the wrong idea? You know, you have no choice but to be successful, do whatever it’s gonna take to get there. And you can apply this again to any goal, a health goal, a relationship goal, a personal development goal. Something you wanna get better at… like you have no choice but to get better at it. It’s going to require you to put more resources in your life, and time into that goal. And it’s going to dominate your life. And as long as you’re willing, if that goal is important enough to you, that you’re willing to do that, you will do it and you will find the time to get there. 

 

So this is something I’ve been pondering for the last several weeks. And it’s really changed the way I’m thinking. I think that a lot of times we convince ourselves like, “well, I tried my best and I just didn’t get to that goal.”

 

I tried this and I tried that and we blame other things. I bought that course. It didn’t work. I hired that person. It didn’t work, whatever it is, the reality is it’s you. It’s me. Like we are the reason our business isn’t where we want it to be. And we also– on that same note– have the power to get it to where we want it to be. 

 

So take that into this year and do not forget it. I can guarantee you that you’re going to create more success than you did last year. 

 

I have something super exciting coming. And I want to give you guys the first sneak peek of it, which is why I teased it a little bit in the last episode. So last year was the hardest year in my business. I’ve been in business for seven years.

 

Last year was very difficult. It wasn’t necessarily a bad year in terms of growth, we just didn’t really grow. And we didn’t hit the goals that I wanted to hit and I’m talking about it. We had our best month in December. So I’ve also turned it around. We had a massive– we did $75,000 more than the month before in December. And so I’m ready to share the transparent, behind the scenes, pull the curtain back of the struggle. 

 

And I’m also going to share how we turned it around. I think I wasn’t alone. And as a business owner who struggled last year, I know a lot of successful entrepreneurs who struggled last year. So I’m pulling back the curtain and sharing the struggle, why we were struggling, the mistakes I made, and then the actions we took to turn it around and have our best month.

 

And then this month we’re back on, you know, we’re on track to again, have an incredible month, hopefully, better than the last. And there’s a lot I’m gonna share like that. I haven’t been ready to share because it’s been too raw. 

 

So what I’m doing is a free series. It’s happening on this podcast. It’s starting this coming Thursday, January 13th, which will be the first episode. And then every weekday, except Saturday and Sunday through the next week, I’m going to do a daily episode. There’ll be six total, and I’m calling it “The Great Reset.” So if you just go to Hirshmarketing.com/reset, you can add it to your calendar. Also, it will be happening on this podcast, so all you have to do is come here and tune in and we’re gonna have some bonus episodes for you.

 

And I’m laying out the year in the story, but more importantly, the story matters, of course. And I’m sure you guys want to hear the behind the scenes of the struggle. I’m going to be a little nervous, because I’m very vulnerable about sharing some things that I’m like, “Hmm. They don’t make me look the best”. You know, sharing what didn’t work and the struggle…but I’m doing it because I want you guys to not feel alone.  

 

Last year I did a podcast episode, I think in maybe August or September, about how hard business is, and it’s still talked about. People still message me about it. So I think there aren’t enough people talking about when things are hard. You guys all hear about the success and how awesome it is. And I could just decide to share how we made $75,000 more last month than the months before, but I’m not giving you the full picture.

 

So I want to give you the full picture. I want you guys to learn from what I did and also not feel alone if last year was hard for you. 

So if you want to add it to your calendar, you can go to Hirshmarketing.com/reset. That will also sign you up for a few extra notifications throughout, but otherwise, it’s happening on this podcast. So you just have to tune in there. 

 

The first episode will drop on Thursday and you get to tune in. I’m nervous and excited to share this with you guys. So talk to you then. Thanks, everybody.

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