Hey, squad. Here we are, episode two of The Hell Yes Entrepreneur. On this episode, I’m going to be sharing why thinking about your massive, big-picture goals may actually be hindering you. Let’s dive in.

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur Podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and you know how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Hello, my entrepreneur friends. Welcome back. I hope you guys are having a wonderful week. Today, here, while I’m recording this, it is raining outside. And it just has this feel of coziness in my house. You guys know that feeling, right?

Like it’s raining. All of a sudden, you’ve got blankets and pillows around you. Honestly, I can’t decide if it’s because of the rain that I’m feeling so calm and dreary, or if it’s because I ate my edible way too late last night and my body is still processing it.

Either way, I’m having all the cozy feels right now and I can’t wait to record this episode. It feels like the perfect day for it. And then after that, I’m just going to put my head down and get to work while it pours outside my window.

I love working on rainy days. So, sidebar, when I was 15, I saw Usher being interviewed on MTV and he was filming his music video and he was talking into the camera about how it was pouring outside.

He was like, “It’s pouring outside, it’s raining cats and dogs. But these are my favorite days to work.” And he explained it like, he was like, “I don’t get pulled to be outside because it’s not beautiful and sunny. I don’t have an urge to go out there. I just might as well stay inside and grind. And when it’s raining, I feel like all my competitors are sleeping in.”

And y’all, I don’t know why it stuck with me the way it did, but it did. And whenever it’s raining and I need to work, I just picture Usher flexing on all his competitors and it gives me all these boss feels. So, today is the day that I get a ton of work accomplished. And I hope you guys do too.

Now, I hope you all enjoyed my first episode and you’re ready to dive into episode two. I’m going to give you some quick tips on why baby-stepping into your business’s growth can really lead to much more productive and massive strides.

Five years ago, when I was starting my first business out of the back of an old warehouse with no AC and not a dollar to my name, complete beginner, if I had told myself, “Hey, Becca, in the next five years, I want you to have 40 employees, build two brick and mortar locations from the ground, and make sure that company sees 800 clients per month. Then, I want you to start a second company from the ground, an online company, make sure you make it through a pandemic, and then get that company to half-a-million dollars a year in the first 24 months. And you’ve got exactly five years to do this. It is non-negotiable. And go.”

I would have absolutely shit my pants. I would have said, “No way, that’s not possible.” My brain wouldn’t have been able to even comprehend such a crazy leap, right?

The only reason that I was capable of doing the things that I just listed was because I learned the key component of successful goal setting. And thank god I did. I learned how to put my head down and focus on the tiny improvements, and basically not look up for like five years.

The not-so-noteworthy improvements are the noteworthy improvements, guys. The, “Oh look, I made $50 more this month than last month,” improvements. The, “Oh my god, someone visited my website today,” improvements. The, “I got dressed nicely for work every day this week, even though I work from home,” Improvements.

The ability to ask yourself how you can slightly move the needle towards your success every single day is a question most people don’t ask. But also, putting in effort to repeat, repeat, repeat this question to ourselves every day will solve more problems than you might think it will.

Because I promise you guys, one step at a time, if you add that up long enough, it will equal 1000 miles. But what do we do instead? Because we are humans and we are funny little creatures, we’re like, “Oh look, I made my first $100. How can I turn it into $100,000?”

We love grandiose. We love massive. We love shiny. We love fast and big and bright. Our culture has taught us this. Movies, TV shows. I can’t even lift weights anymore without Cardi B telling many Range Rovers I should own.

Like, I leave the gym there wondering why I don’t have red-bottom shoes and an all-white Range. Then, as my endorphins finally normalize on my ride home, I’m like, “Bitch, Honda is fine.” We must trust that the baby steps will lead to success.

Now, I get it. This isn’t as sexy as blowing the roof off of our dreams instantaneously. It’s not as sexy as becoming TikTok famous overnight. We want these massive, quick, mind-blowing results like we see on TV. But sadly, this obsession with quick growth, massive result culture is killing us.

And listen, no one is out here in the real world bragging about how they spent their day learning how to ever so slightly change the direction of their business for the positive.

Could you imagine, like, “Hey, Carol, can you believe it? I just ran some numbers and since last year, my retention rate has increased by 1%. I am on my way to the riches.” No. But we should because, guys, this is where the magic happens.

Keeping our eye on the smaller prize that is right in front of us and not trying to become an overnight success is the answer. And just to be clear, 99.9999999999 of the overnight successes that you see are not overnight at all.

You’re just seeing the product of 100,000 nights of work finally coming to fruition. My marriage coach Maggie Reyes said the other day, “It’s like the Oscars. You see them in their big, beautiful gowns and they’re accepting their awards. But an Oscar is made up of the countless hours and the up-all-nighters and the practicing your lines at dinner and the sacrifices.” And it’s so true.

Our greatest obstacle is our lack of patience with these goals. And a lack of strategy too. But they combine together. And sometimes they even look like not taking our first step at all, or not taking the next step because our goals seem so overwhelming that we freeze at the idea of how much work we have to get done to get there.

I have met so many people who have started a business and they just sat spinning in circles for a year. And what is so interesting is a lot of times, they think it’s because their business isn’t working or they think that their marketing isn’t working, or they go and they try to change what they’re selling because they think that no one wants their product.

And then we start digging deeper and we start uncovering what’s below that. Their procrastination is often stemmed from not knowing how to start moving the needle because they’re not thinking of the needle. They’re trying to figure out how to build the Taj Mahal out of their Instagram following of 30 people, right? That would be a hell of a project.

We are often taught to look ahead several years and focus on this big picture future. “Where do you want to be in 10 years?” I’ve heard that question 1000 times.

And yes, I agree, we need at least like a basic roadmap to know where we are going and where we want to be, but just for this episode today, I want you to just focus on the next step in front of you. And only that.

These smaller bitesize goals, they give you more opportunities for celebrations, which will keep you motivated for the long haul. When you’re B-lining straight to the big 10-year goal, you’re running on motivation and willpower. That shit runs out, trust me.

And for me, it usually runs out at like one o’clock in the afternoon every day. Imagine that you want to lose 100 pounds. Would you be more motivated if you deeply celebrated every pound that came off? Or if you only celebrated once when you hit that minus-100-pound mark?

If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re pulling $1000 in per month, the question to ask yourself is how to make this $1050 per month, not how to make this $15,000 per month.

For the first two years of my business, all I focused on was trying to make each month a bigger sales month than the last, even just by a dollar.

Now, it didn’t always happen. But it was my main focus. If you’re making 2K but you’re only focusing on how to make 200K in a year, your brain will skip the important smaller details that are going to get you to that $200,000 mark.

Do you guys know what buffering is? If you’re unfamiliar with this word, it’s a word that we use sometimes, especially in the coaching world. But we use this to explain what we do any time we want to put space between us and a feeling that we’re having or an obstacle. So, it’s like strong-arming the reality or the circumstances in front of you.

Some people buffer with alcohol, food, videogaming. For some people it is overworking, overuse of social media, or just piddling around and blowing all the time at work up their ass, AKA procrastination.

Buffering is a protection mechanism. So, our brains have a very important job. And one of those jobs is to keep us safe. We are capable as humans of thinking our ways out of dangerous situations. So, our brains offer up thoughts that will protect us.

That’s good and that’s what we want. We want our brain to continue to do its job to protect us. But we also have to learn how to override what is not a threat.

When people feel overwhelmed with their goals, a lot of times, procrastination and buffering come into play as a way to keep us safe from our fears.

Tripling our business this month seems hard and scary. Better scroll my newsfeed for an hour so I don’t have to face that failure. Am I right?

When we focus on the very next tiny step ahead, the one that seems so easy to achieve, our brain stops trying to protect us. And instead of focusing on adding 2000 people to my emailing list, I’m going to focus on adding two quality contacts. And when this happens, when the brain stops trying to protect us, it allows our creativity to flow more freely.

We are only capable of being creative when we feel safe and secure. When our brain thinks we are in a threat, all creativity is shut off and we go into survival mode. And if I’m trying to raise my sales by only 3% this month, I will have far more creativity on ways to do this than if I’m trying to raise it by 300%. Holy shit, seems impossible, right?

So, guys, grab a pen and paper. Ask yourself, what are two microtasks that you can do this week? Take some time to remove the pressure off of your big overarching huge goals and focus on these two teeny-weeny tasks. And they might sound something like this.

So, a couple examples might be, “Add one person to my emailing list Wake up 10 minutes early to go over my calendar. Reach out to one person from my past that has enquired about my services before. Listen to Becca Pike’s podcast at least three times.” Obviously, that should be number one. “Read three pages out of a book on entrepreneurship.”

You see these teeny-tiny tasks? But they have to be true for you and they have to feel good for you. So, you’ll have to make up your own ideas and after you do this, trust that these small steps will lead to more motivation. These successes will trigger your brain to want to do more because feeling accomplished makes you want to feel accomplished.

Okay, folks. That is it for today’s episode. I hope you guys go out into the world and you use this to your benefit. I will see you right here next Wednesday. Bye.

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Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to today’s episode. If you’re looking to get more clarity and momentum for your business, visit hellyescoachingonline.com. See you next week here on The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast.