Where Are You in Your Goal Plans?


June 1 is the perfect mid-year point for a goal check! We're a tad past that and on the downhill slide of the year, but any time is a good time to check on goal progress—take stock and reset as needed.

First Question - Are You Even a Goal Setter?
Not everyone is! I do my best to come up with a few (and only a few!) focused goals for a given new year, but I invariably fall off the rigorous bandwagon. My independent "roll with the punches" nature struggles to maintain daily goal tracking. I've tried. Multiple times.

A more fluid quarterly (at most) check works better for me to ensure I'm at least flowing in the right direction. So let it be said - no shame for not being a goal setter!



No Time Like the Present!
There's also no calendar you need to be tied to. So it's not January 1. You can start any time in the year that suits you, even if it's completely random such as July 31! Simply start with today, whatever day that is. 

NOW What?
There are a thousand-and-one Goal Gurus who will be happy to sell you their philosophy on how to best achieve your goals. You've likely tried a few of those! 

I'm a big fan of the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid! You know best how your brain works for how to create and monitor goals and keep yourself on track. 

• Jon Acuff is a "goal guru" I follow who has some great ideas about goals. I fell off the daily tracking wagon after a few months last year, but his basic categories are a useful framework for reference.
• April Perry of Learn. Do. Become. suggests no more than 8 goals at any one time (too many for me) and bases hers on Me, Family, and Beyond. (I think my speed is more like no more than one in each category!)
• I've even caught recent podcasts advocating for only one "big, hairy, audacious goal" (thank you, Jim Collins) and all other smaller goals work toward that one. 
• You may prefer a few categories for your goals such as Personal, Finance, Health, Work, Volunteer, or Family for how your goals resonate for you. I need more focus to make any progress in this regard!

What's Next?
You've got your goals, either from earlier this year or just created. Now comes the tracking piece. 

• ​Spreadsheets - numbers across the top (calendar/date reference, new tab by month), simple yes/no one/zero number sum at the end of a month. How often did you put in time toward your goal?
• Journaling - leave yourself notes on your progress
• Win Jar - this is more for visual folks where you drop a penny, bead, or something in a jar to show "did something" toward your goal to reward yourself with a treat once full or see how successful you've been. Think "swear jar" as a reference point. It can be as mason jar simple or fancy as you'd like! Pinterest and Amazon are your friends here. 

How's It Going!
Those ideas help get you started if you haven't tackled goals for the year yet but would like to. 

For those who have set goals, how's progress! Are you making gains in work/life balance? Health? Financial? Family focus? Social or even Spiritual? 

Personal Report
My goals this year have been more about maintaining what's working to stay consistent with a few new ones thrown into the mix. 

• Maintaining consistency
  • Health - daily walk: generally on track with only slight modifications in distance and timing to accommodate local conditions. (* I'm writing this in July in Phoenix, AZ - it's 110 degrees this week so walks have shifted to extra early, in the dark, and occasionally slightly less if needed for sleep + work timing)
  • Work/life balance - nightly cross-stitch: helps me unwind before bed. Aiming to improve on this one, tough for me to maintain as I work later than I should many nights.
  • Work - weekly blog posts: this has finally become real this year thanks to committing a time to go to a co-working session at a local library. Added bonus: social + networking opportunity! 
• New this year
  • Work - monthly business newsletter: in process but hasn't happened yet. I'm fighting procrastination and perfectionism on this one and need to just get started, heeding the advice I give clients! Time is also a factor - maybe I need another locked in the calendar co-working session to make steady regular progress rather than hold myself to one long marathon session. Working on a business rebrand with a client load is holding up newsletter production as well. In process with lots of thoughts!
  • Health - add weight training or balance work to daily walks: not happening at all at this time. Likely time to admit defeat and move on for now—try again in the future. Layering more exercise on top of the daily walks I enjoy is too much.
  • Family/Home - transition a craft room into a sitting room for my college kids: after a year of not touching this project, Daughter #2 poked me at just the right time to take action on this. Pleased with the progress made over one weekend. Now to find ways to continue to inspire myself to keep going.

Status Check - Your Turn!
Love to hear how your year is going, with or without goals! Are you making progress toward reaching your dreams in personal or work life? Let's Chat by email or connect on LinkedIn to message! I'm here to cheer for you!

What Does It Mean to ENGAGE
at Read. Write. Engage.?

We aim to help you ENGAGE with your customers!
Encourage
New
Growth
And
Generate
​Excitement!

How Do You ENGAGE Customers?
It's all based in "brand marketing." Let's break it down into its components.

Brand is you, whether it's you personally or a company. In a freelancer/solopreneur or even author's world, you--ARE—the brand. In this current "gig economy" or instability, it behooves all of us to create a social presence to be able to share who you are and why choose you to partner with should corporate job loss find you needing to stand on your own feet on no notice.

• How do you want to be seen by the world, especially your customers?
• Are you especially kind? Generous with your time and knowledge? 
• Do you have a particular skill set or knowledge base? This does not need to be business or strategy oriented, especially if you don't have yourself positioned as a business yet! Lean into sharing about your gardening hobby or that you geek out on Star Trek having seen every episode three times!
• Do you have a "just folks" tone or do you lean into sarcasm or cheeky? 

What if you don't really know?

• Start asking friends and family - "How would you describe me?"
• Pay attention to testimonials you may receive.
• What do folks say about you? A friend of mine, John Espirian, became Relentlessly Helpful® after a few years in business and noticed comments from grateful customers and colleagues. 
• Just be you! You may not have words for your general attitude or style, especially if you don't have a business yet. Just be, and share you with the world!

Marketing is as broad as "how to get your name out there." Anything and everything is fair game!

• Social media presence
• Website
• Newsletters/email correspondence
• Flyers, brochures, and business cards - oh my! (the "stuff" you'd print and hand out to potential customers)
• Events
• Simply interact with others - everyone's a potential customer! Respond to emails in a timely manner. Comment on social media posts. Strike up a conversation in the store check-out line!

Encourage in the Small Ways
Encouraging others can be as simple as commenting on someone's socials or reaching out in a message or email. Simply be nice. If you have suggestions to offer, at least offer them in kindness, adding comments about what's going well along with those suggestions. As you encourage, so shall others encourage you. It's a beautiful feedback loop! 

Growth Is a Two-Way Street
I'm a firm believer in the give-and-take of all relationships. As I may help a client grow, that same client helps me grow to be a better person, entrepreneur, and typically even grow my skills as my limits of current knowledge get pushed and stretched to do more and be more.

Generate Excitement
You can't help but get excited if you love what you do! As you get excited, your customer becomes excited as well. That excitement is reciprocal and builds. As your customer becomes excited, you become excited to offer and assist the customer more. That excitement feeds your own enthusiasm for the work to spur you to do more and better. Excitement is contagious and we all win!

ENGAGE Your Customers!
I am here to help you find your excitement to help you reach your goals as a nonprofit, freelancer/solopreneur, or author. As you find your excitement to help you ENGAGE your customers - just as the gardener tends the sprouts - your customers will take their own seedlings to ENGAGE their audience!

What a beautiful place to live, don't you think! 

Not everyone needs or wants a hand, but sometimes it's nice to celebrate with someone who gets you. I look forward to being your cheerleader and helping to grow your garden!

How have you been growing and generating excitement, for yourself or your customers? I'd love to help cheer you on!

If you'd like to share your experiences ENGAGING customers, looking for assistance to develop your own brand, or need a hand with the marketing aspect, I'd be honored to listen to what you're up to, advising only as requested! Sometimes someone listening is all you need. 

​Let's Chat by email or find me on LinkedIn!

Chicken or Egg - Which Comes First?

According to an episode of Ilise Benum's Marketing Mentor podcast episode 529, guest Stephanie Mickelson suggests courage comes first - confidence will follow. I can get behind that.

It takes courage to step out and do the thing - whatever "it" is. Once you take that first step (or leap!), repetition will bring confidence. 


Reframing
Stephanie also suggests reframing butterflies as excitement, not danger. This also makes sense as it can be easy to get lost in anxiety and paralyzed by fear thanks to those butterflies. Dial down the "flight or fight" mechanism for yourself with a little self-talk mental adjustment. Excitement moves you forward! 

A friend recently alluded to this reframing in a different way - Fear vs Adventure. 
​
About Your Business
Whether you're starting your business or a new endeavor in your business, most of us don't start out with much confidence to get started. Questions abound!

• Will it work?
• How do I even get started?
• Will I be able to afford the start-up and initial growth period?

Return On Investment (ROI)
At some point, you break out the yes/no paper or spreadsheet to weigh your options. Depending on the fire in your belly, the dislike of your current situation, or the length of your "yes" list over your "no," it takes courage to take that first step to simply start. That first step is the hardest. 

Confidence Keeps You Going
After that, it's moving a fly wheel (thank you, Jim Collins!) with momentum on your side. Repetition and the daily work move you forward, even if it's little by little. That repetition helps you gain confidence to repeat and do even more. 

Where Are You?
Do you feel like you're lacking courage or confidence? Can you see the difference between them in your situation? How do you propose to move yourself forward? 

If you'd like a hand or even a simple pep talk, I'm very happy to lend an ear and share ideas how you can make progress! Let's Chat by email or message me on LinkedIn! 

What's a Brand Update?


A "brand update" is a pivot in your marketing—a change in how you want to be seen or known. This can be mostly cosmetic—your brand colors, logo, font style—or it can be bigger like updating your business's focus or messaging. 



What Would Prompt a Brand Update?
This has as many answers as the day is long—it could be anything.

• Your business has evolved. Maybe you've changed directions or niched to focus on particular aspects of your business when you started broadly to see what your customers really wanted or needed. You want to update your message. 
• You have evolved. We're human. We grow—continually. Maybe your interests have changed or your knowledge base has changed to help you focus your efforts. 
• It's time. Maybe you're bored with the look of things and need to shake things up! Maybe it's been a couple of years with the same look and you want to try something new. 

How Do You Do a Brand Update?
It depends on the type of update. Much can likely be done on your own or you may feel a need to hire assistance. I'm a big fan of easy template-based options where you can hire someone to do the work and train you in the process so you can manage it on your own with updates anytime you wish. This is what I do! If you're eager to learn, I'm happy to teach!

• Updating the look. How tech savvy are you? Did you create the initial brand to begin with? Have your skills grown so you can handle tech updates? There are many tools available to DIY the project (do it yourself). All of these provide ways to keep colors and designs consistent.
  • Canva offers a number of template items to create logos and social or PR items in a consistent color code. 
  • MailChimp and other email providers offer template products for your email branding. It's often easy to change the colors or images.
  • Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace offer template-based websites that are reasonably easy to figure out to start creating immediately or have YouTube training videos available. 
• Updating the messaging. 
  • If you can write, you can do this as you wish. You can also hire someone to do the writing on your behalf with some ideas from you for the message to get across.
  • Talk out your ideas with others. Get out of your head. Whatever network you've created, in person or online, toss out acronyms you're considering or pieces of your LinkedIn profile. Many of the social medias have groups you can join of like-minded businesses with folks happy to share their insights. 

Changes Ahead!
Read. Write. Engage. is in the process of some updates in look and messaging! I'm beginning year #3 for my business—it's time to shake things up! I'm getting bored with the look of some things. I'm also getting more confident in my messaging and niches. I've added a couple of new professional associations to share. 

• The logo will remain the same but the banners that are at the top of website pages will be updated. 
• I recently purchased a professional email address which necessitates a change in banner images.
• I'm ready to get that newsletter started, even with a very small initial audience! It's time to get things freshened up to start publishing. Enough with the excuses in my head. (yes, it happens to me as well)
• LinkedIn is always evolving. It's time to review it and likely update a few things for consistent messaging. 
• I'm testing out a new acronym for what's become my favorite word in my business - ENGAGE! What do you think?
  • Encourage
  • New
  • Growth
  • And
  • Generate
  • Excitement! 

What About You?
Have you gone through a brand update? Words of wisdom to share with me and others? 

Are you considering a brand update and you're looking for a hand? Happy to help you with ideas or to find assistance!

Love to hear from you - Let's Chat by email or find me on LinkedIn! 

What Do You Want to Do More or Less of?

That's really the crux of the matter with Artificial Intelligence (AI), isn't it. How will AI actually be useful to each of us?

We're urged to "Just play!" "Get comfortable with it so maybe you have a job in the future." (whaaaaaat?!) 


​Benefits to Enterprise or Corporate Businesses
These are seemingly fairly obvious. Changes are already happening. Rather than a Human First approach - what could we do with all of the existing human staff if each were equipped with this amazing tool to unlock discovery - we're instead faced with AI First mentality - how can we reduce staff and replace with AI capability to achieve status quo (but with greater profit margin) and maybe see improvements beyond what humans could do.

The entire AI discussion really needs flipped. My thanks to Robert Rose of This Old Marketing podcast for initiating the thought in episode 484. Robert suggested rather than AI cutting jobs, why don't we keep jobs and instead expand reach, productivity, and creativity of the existing work force. 

Absolutely brilliant. 

AI Forward vs AI First
Words matter. 

A number of corporations have recently posted news they're "AI First." A review of this Forbes article shares "AI First" places AI at the core of their corporate strategy. Companies such as Amazon, Duolingo, and Shopify recently said the quiet part out loud, initially with quite a bit of backlash, but more large corporations with the same message is dulling the response. 

Compare that with "AI Forward" as suggested by Paul Roetzer of Marketing AI Institute. AI Forward is more focused on ways to help humans maximize their use of AI as a partner. 

There are no delusions. Even with AI Forward, jobs will be impacted as less humans will seemingly be needed. But AI Forward aims to maximize the human factor and benefit rather than simply replace humans for the sake of saving money or higher profits. 

But What DO We Want AI to Do?
AI is lovely when it conveniently works in the background to make our lives easier - restaurant or purchase suggestions based on our history, smoother phone use with connected applications, advances in science and research. 

But what do we want to do with all of this supposedly new-found free time thanks to the wonders of all that AI will do for us? 

• Take over the "boring" or routine parts of our jobs. That may work for some but not all employees. Some jobs are rather bespoke - highly individualized - and not much "routine" about them. Some folks (raising hand) also like our jobs! 
• Give us time to pursue endeavors we wouldn't otherwise have time for. Swell idea, but many endeavors rely on a paycheck or funds to happen. True, not all. We can all share free to low cost activity lists. But realistically and seriously - it takes money to make this world go 'round which comes in the form of paychecks. If we're not earning paychecks or far less, then what?

What Do You Want to Do MORE of Thanks to AI?

• Be more creative at work. Let us keep our jobs, have AI do some functions, and let us focus on the purely human, integrated, creative tasks. 
• Expand our creativity and thoughts. I welcome AI as an occasional thought partner - a better-than-search-engine entity - to bounce ideas off of to help me think outside of my box. 
• Analysis and summary. Thank you, AI, for integrating and compiling pages of information to then summarize for me - yes, please! And in multiple formats? ("podcast" option in NotebookLM) Cool!

What Do You Want to do LESS of Thanks to AI?

• Dry, repetitive, boring tasks. Ok, ok! If you have these in your job, delegating these tasks to someone (or something) else would be useful. 
• Ask others for assistance in complex projects. I'm a big figure-it-out'er. Independent gal. It is pretty nifty to be able to do bigger, deeper "searches" ("old" days of Google/basic search engines) with a "thought partner" from the comfort of home at any time of day. Caveat: Be sure you have resources and people to vet the assistance provided.
• Run and review complex data or mounds of text for information. Thank you, AI, for your distilling and summary features! AI does help save hours in some processes. 

AI is Here - Now What?
None of us necessarily asked for it or had any concept to consider AI in our lives, but here we are. We're going to need to figure out how to make the best of it while hopefully limiting the worst of it. (cue old B-rated sci-fi movies with AI taking over the world and unstoppable!)

It does behoove us to stay on top of advances. Play with models and features regularly. Use it where useful in your life and business without letting AI do everything for you. If you're not actively involved in the task you assign to AI or your intern (whoever you delegate to), you will not be able to cogently speak on the topic. It's Learning 101.

But be aware. Be selective. Be Human.

How are you using AI in your business? Love to hear your thoughts - Let's Chat by email or connect on LinkedIn!