Sincerely, Future You - Gap to Goal
Whatever is possible becomes inevitable once you choose to believe it. Today we're going to be talking about the future and about using your future self to think about your growth. To inform the decisions you're making in your growth. Why do some people grow fast, and some people grow incrementally. And really, the reason for that, I find is because people are making their gap to goal means something.
Sincerely, Future You on YouTube
Full Transcript
Jessica McKinley 00:00
whatever is possible becomes inevitable once you choose to believe it.
Jessica McKinley 00:08
Welcome to sincerely future you a podcast for entrepreneurs looking to scale their business by mastering their time, money, and drama. I'm your host, Jessica McKinley, founder of what's happening coaching, a life coaching program that helps ambitious women like you make decisions today with the future you in mind
Jessica McKinley 00:29
you guys, this episode is going to be so awesome. You know why? Because I wrote it. Between 1am and 3am. In the middle of the night, when the baby was up, she like kicked me awake and was like you are inspired. And it's time. And so I wrote two full podcast episodes for you guys, in the middle of the night on the note section of my phone. And Mark woke up and he was like, is everything okay? Like what's going on with the baby? And I was like, oh, no, it's just my other baby. My, my idea, baby. And I think of my ideas and my podcast and my business as like, my other children that I have to like, nurture them, and grow them and get them on to live independently outside of my brain. And I really hope all of you guys think about your ideas in that same way, in this equal importance to raising a child. It's like, how much time are you spending, valuing this human being being like, my job is to help you become independent, so that you go out there and contribute to the world in a beautiful way, so that you are not dependent on me forever. So that you can go out and make the world a better place. So fun, and your ideas can do the same thing. So this podcast episode is gonna be really good. Before we do that, I wanted to give you a little update what's been going on over here. So as you know, I recently got married, and also am about seven weeks out from having a baby, and how things are just going on.
Jessica McKinley 02:12
First of all, it just feels not like what I thought it was gonna feel like it feels so different from the last time I had a kid, because, and the last time I got married, to be honest, but because I had no support system, no people out there that were showing me what was possible in terms of being a woman, and having strong desires to make lots of money, and have lots of impact and help so many clients, and also want to have time with my kids and want to spend time with my family and still do all the fun social things that I want to do. I want all of that I want that for you guys, too. And this time around, I'm starting to just claim it. It's so fun. And Happening Sessions is going to continue to run without me, which is the most fun thing I could even imagine. Like, we have hired eight of the best life coaches in the world. No joke, we I found them. There, they're tuning in some of them from England, some of them from India, like just the coolest, coolest thing. And I'm so excited for everybody to have access to the brand and just feel like it actually has made the value of happening sessions just go up so much. And I'm so excited for everyone and all of that to say that I'm so grateful to my coach Stacy for even just saying like, what's your plan for maternity leave, and I was like, I'm just gonna take off. And I'm just gonna make enough money and hustle enough money and save enough money so that I can just have it and spend it and like lower my expenses during that time. And she was like, why would you do that? I was like, what? I thought that was the answer, right? Why I didn't even occur to me that my business could run without me.
Jessica McKinley 04:16
today we're going to be talking about the future and about using your future self to to think about your growth and to inform the decisions you're making in your growth. And this was such a prime example of what we're going to be talking about today, we're talking about is why some people grow fast, and some people grow incrementally. And really, the the reason for that, I find is because people are making their gap to goal means something. So we talked a couple of weeks ago about the numbers that you need to be tracking monthly. And one of those was your gap two goal. So obviously, if you haven't listened to that episode, please go back and listen to it, I'll link it in the show notes. But the real meaning of your gap, tickle means you've set a very clear measurable goal. And you have current results that are showing you how much more you need to do in order to reach that goal, right makes a lot of sense. So for me, my goal for the year was 250k, this year. And I wanted to do that, and I didn't really have a, it didn't matter to me what months I made it. But it didn't even occur to me, like I was making my gap to goal mean that I was going to have to work harder, or sneakily take on more one on one clients behind the scenes, even though I don't really do that anymore. In order to accommodate for what I was going to have to take off during those eight weeks. And anyone who's pregnant or planning on having kids or in the middle of your child's rearing conversation, or you're thinking about in the future, we're gonna think about this, I want you to think about the fact that how much you make, and whether or not you're having children should be not a one or the other conversation. And I think that that's what we're taught. And that's what we see outside in society, we just see like, oh, the, in order to avoid that you need to work for a company that has crazy good benefits. There are a lot of people that will not leave a job because they just say the benefits are so good. And I'm like, it's always seemed so backwards to me. But now it really seems backwards, because I'm like, you just create those benefits for yourself.
Jessica McKinley 06:53
Before we didn't have any evidence of that with my son, because I didn't create it for myself. I knew that there was something wrong with this system, but I didn't know how to fix it. And now I'm just like, oh, I wasn't asking myself any high quality questions. There wasn't like, I was seeing the gap to my goal. And I was making it mean that I needed to hustle, which is a policy of mine that I don't hustle. But I was like, Oh, what do I do? Do I just like, lower my goal. My goals are very public, I don't really want to lower my goal. So it's not a big deal, I start to do a lot of justifying so a big deal if I take on another extra one on one clients, not a big deal if this that or the other thing, right? If I just am hustling for two months, right, one of the beginning one after I get back from maternity leave, like it's not really the hustle, I've got great self care routines, right? No, it was not what I wanted to do. And I knew if I was really being honest. So I want to talk to you about this idea. In a couple of different examples, and one is going to be really out of left field, there's going to be like in terms of relationships, right? So this is an indicator of whether you are spending your time thinking building your future from your future, or from your present feelings and from your past history.
Jessica McKinley 08:18
When I was getting divorced, and we were in the thick of the pain, I told my ex husband that I wanted to be friends. I was like, we're going to be friends. It's going to be great. And he was like, I don't think I want that. And my thought was, of course you do. First of all, who doesn't want to be friends with me? Second of all, friendship is amazing, right? So beautiful relationship to hat. It would also be amazing for cows, parents, my son, Calvin's parents, to be friends. Like why wouldn't you want all of those things in your future. But it's because he was basing what he was, what was possible for his future and how he felt in that moment. And we were in pain. And he couldn't imagine a future where he thought of me and wasn't in pain. And I just lived in that future. The possibility of that future is actually part of what allowed me to even go towards and have the bravery to actually get the divorce to do the painful things that I knew are going to create some more pain for me in the short term, right? Because I was able to not disconnect in a bad way but to really redirect almost and refocus my brain on the future that I knew was possible for us of being friends. So because I was living in a future in which inevitably, the pain got us to a beautiful place. I was able to just say like of course like of course we can do this and he would incrementally get there. Like, after a couple of months, he would be like, okay, you know, we could maybe do some holidays shared, or, you know, maybe we can text her. Now we go to soccer games together, you know, they were invited to the barbecue after my wedding. Like he's getting married in the future, we were talking about all of these things that he didn't see as possible until a couple of months before. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. But I want you to see how we can apply this same philosophy of growth if you do desire this growth faster. And I really did. And I also think it makes the present moments, it helps you take the action that you really do want to take and not take action in reaction to the feelings, the negative emotions that you're having, because I was in pain to remember.
Jessica McKinley 11:00
But the reason I was able to take the actions towards the future I wanted was because I was consciously spending time living in the future in which we were friends. And which cow was just surrounded by love. And it wasn't awkward. And it wasn't painful. It wasn't uncomfortable, right. And I held space, and I was in the pain, and I was processed all of that in the present. But I was taking action towards and holding the belief for the future, right? Now we get to do that with money, you get to look at the math of your goals, some of you and happening sessions for the very first time. And you get to say, I want to make 100k, for example, then you get to see the reality that what you're charging now won't add up to that. And I experienced that in my own business as well.
Jessica McKinley 11:52
I remember, I think I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I was charging about $2,500 for six months of coaching. And now I charge four times that right. But in order to get to a place where I knew I could help the amount of clients that I had and not sacrifice, all of my time, like it just the math didn't add up. And when you see that, you have some options. Your brain gets to decide what you want to make that gap mean about you. And your brain is also going to pile on all the other reasons why this gap is too big for you to overcome the fact that historically clients haven't flowed in at a rate that you would that would create the goal that you want, that maybe people aren't converting at 100% at your current price. So why would you be able to convert at a higher price, right? You get to decide that none of that is a problem. I had all those thoughts to write. And I just got to redirect my brain task at a higher quality question, which in this case was Yeah, but if my my future self made 100k. So how did she do it? Like, none of this is relevant to me anymore. I'm just in the I get to be in the process of experimenting and failing and figuring out Well, that wasn't the way No, well, that wasn't the way well, that kind of worked, oh, maybe it's, maybe it's this plus that, right. And then when something doesn't work out, I don't mean make it mean that I'm never gonna hit the goal. It's just I'm in this space, where the there's a gap. And then the gaps gonna get smaller and smaller until there's no gap, then I set a new goal. That's just how it works. Right.
Jessica McKinley 13:50
So one of the best ways for you to not make your gap to go mean anything is for you to live in a future in which your goal is done. We've talked about done energy before on the podcast. So this comes from that same type of belief. But here, I want you to get deeper in terms of your goals. And I want you to allow yourself the space to look at the math, and then not make the math mean anything about you. Same thing with sales, right? It's like your sales record is not attached to your value as a coach or your worthiness, just evidence of how well you're selling. Just usually I say like, oh, well, I obviously didn't say the thing that I needed to say to them yet. Whatever I said to them yet. It's just like a more productive way to approach the question, to approach the situation and to reduce that gap to goal. Right? Because ultimately, if you live there, if you spend the time there where you're like, I don't know see in the Has it hasn't worked out, I'm not that good at this. This is not going to add up. Why did I even invest this money and happy, you could go down that rabbit hole just not useful to you don't recommend it 10 out of 10 do not recommend or what a zero out of 10 recommend.
Jessica McKinley 15:14
Okay? Now, what do you get to say when you see the gap to goal, and you see it as back, you just get to go, Oh, I love that. It's my favorite that oh, the equation that creates my future is different from the one that I'm using now. And then you get to ask more specific questions and answer them. What's different? What do we think it's different? What am I thinking about differently? What do I have to think differently? Like the example I gave you in my maternity leave, I had to believe that it was possible for me to make money on my maternity leave. You know what else I had to believe that people weren't just buying coaching, because of me, because I'm so special unicorn. It's like, no, they want results, they want more time and the more money and I got to believe my future self, the future self, that I had to believe in that now I am, I just am her. But at the time when I was making the decision, I wasn't her yet. I got to believe, Oh, my future self trusts herself enough. And people trust her enough that if she's enrolling me in a program, and she has someone else, showing up to coach that she is hiring people that are at her level or better, that the process of lines management is gonna get the results like, Am I an idiot, I get to put a money back guarantee on my program, and then hook you up with another coach that I don't think is going to help you get the same results. Like, I would never do that. Right. So, of course, I had to get to that place. But the time my brain was freaking out, my brain was like, No, people really want me it would be so it would be so shady for me to like, come into contact with someone and be like, Yeah, I definitely I can't wait to work with you, and then be like, bye. Which is like so hilarious, because actually, I just talked to the people on the console and was like, and how awesome.
Jessica McKinley 17:15
The last eight weeks, you're gonna have eight different coaches, because I'm going to be on maternity leave, get to lean into this place where I was like, You know what else? Now that I'm doing this, you can see that it's possible for you to how could you go on maternity leave and make tons of money in your own business? How fun I got to pay forward and offer them that possibility in their business. Right. But if I lived in that place where I was like, believing what what had worked for me so far, it wouldn't allow me to level up to that next level of my business. So the high quality question there is what do I have to think differently? In order to create that results? What do I have to believe that I don't yet believe? How do I feel differently to create that 100k feel like it's done? It's inevitable? I just feel like 100k is a reflection of the value that I'm giving people, right? How is the math different? Right? And what do I have to do differently that isn't adding up in terms of expenses in terms of investments, but most importantly, in terms of my pricing, and in terms of how many sales I'm making, how's the math different, then you get to claim that future, you get to decide it's for you. I want you to hear me really deeply when I say this, whatever is possible becomes inevitable once you choose to believe it. And that is what this episode is all about. You just have to make room for something to be possible first, and then once it's possible, you just get it, believe it in the future, it's possible for me to go on maternity in the future, it's possible for me to be making a million dollars. And for me to be coaching maybe one hour a week in my business and for people to be getting results even faster. What that's just sounds so fun to me. And then you get to believe it harder and harder and harder. And then it just becomes inevitable. Last week and happening sessions, I asked everyone how much time they're currently spending living in their future versus their past or their present.
Jessica McKinley 19:32
And they were like it's actually pretty funny because they were like, what I mean, we're just getting a handle on scheduling and budgeting and all that is about our present and our past, right like what's happening. What are we doing wrong? And I was like, listen, there's times to zoom in and times to Zoom Out just another high quality question for you. Not just planning for your future or dreaming about it both great and important, but living there So we're gonna talk about the difference. Now, of course, I know the answer when I was asking them this, I can see it in the results. When people shift from planning their future to living there, they shift from incremental growth to big leaps and growth. The same way I did in my own business, when I realized, Oh, I could just make money on maternity leave, I was like, I'm just gonna live there, I spent so much time writing out all the thoughts that I had, that I had to believe in order to take the action to create that result. It's like, oh, if I have already created this result, what did she believe? What did future just believe? Why, what was she feeling? What was she thinking? What was the math of that? And it was, it was a safe space for me to do the math. And now my brain wasn't on the defense, because it wasn't about me, right? It's about future me. That's fine, safe space. So like I said, all of a sudden, people start to have massive big leaps in growth, they shorten the gap in time between their future goal and their present, it literally starts coming to them instead of you feeling like you're always building towards it. So one thing that you have to do in order to live in your future is suspend your disbelief, you have to suspend your disbelief in what you can current ly see in order to make room for what needs to be to reach your goal. So what I mean by that is, right, when you start to do this work, and you start to set those goals, and you start to see your gap to goal, your brain just piles on, it's like, Oh, I see an opportunity to make her feel uncomfortable enough that she might click this and we'll be safe. So it's like, oh, you set this goal here are all of the reasons that you're not going to be able to hit it, here are all of the obstacles that we have, and that we're going to have, and that we could potentially have, like, we could, you know, I don't know, get COVID And just like be down for the count. It's like, your brain just starts coming up with all of these crazy things to block you from taking any action, we have a process for that in the goal setting and happening sessions. And it's called an obstacle list. We're not going to go into that here. But just so you know, it is required for you to suspend your disbelief in what you can currently see. In order to make room for this future, you have to let go of the past to make room for your future. Your brains not gonna like it. Your brain loves the facts. Your brain loves the evidence from the past, that's where they live. But they're relevant to you now, I have a hipster that she's going to be laughing if you're listening to this podcast, she knows who she is. She's like you always call me out for just trying to use my past against me. She every week, she just talks about what her business did last year, or what her business was doing in the previous years. And I'm like, it's just not relevant to you anymore. Like, we can use it, we can evaluate it, but she has those numbers. Now it's time to decide what is done in the future and then get to collecting failures. She knows how to do that. But that's the more uncomfortable stuff, right? So it's okay, if your brain springing out totally normal. She's got to be onto ourselves so that we can cut it out and get back to the part that is uncomfortable. The failure collection, right? Because that's where the results start to trickle in. Now, the road to your future often requires you to drop everything, to drop every tool in your arsenal, and pick up new ones from scratch.
Jessica McKinley 23:46
And I'm gonna give you some examples for us to close out. So you know, like, what does that look like? So, Erica in happening sessions, when she came in, she wanted to get really, really clean about her numbers and her back end, as she's done more hiring this year and she wants to be more profitable. And she was using a system called Profit First which I actually think is a very good business models. I don't disagree with that. It's just that I teach you need a budget and you need to a budget is a much more hands on meticulous budgeting way that allows you to make big decisions and small decisions yourself without passing it all off to a bookkeeper. I still also use a bookkeeper but I think foundationally it's it's the way that I teach right. And Profit First had helped her get to where she was she was still kind of trying to hold on to both and I just said like, holding on to both is not working. What do you want to do? What she wanted in your future self? Did she use YNAB this year to get to that result that we're working towards? Or did she use profit first and just She just disregard the YNAB section of what I teach and had in happening sessions. And she was like, well, when he asked me like that, I think I need to drop it profit first. And I just need to go all in with YNAB. And I was like, Okay, great. And it was easy once she was thinking about it from her future. But her brain was like, but you've spent all this time working on profit. First, you set up all these different accounts. And I was like, yeah, just cancel the accounts. Just transfer them all into one. And we're just gonna build from here, right? And it was like, I could feel her like have this sense of relief of like, oh, okay, I don't have to feel bad that I set all this up. And that I did all this, it worked for her up until she found me now she has me she doesn't need that shed anymore, right? It's awesome. So another example is letting go of an employee, sometimes like something like we like the employee or the served us to a certain purpose. But then we grow and the responsibilities that we need them for have outgrown what the person can do or the results, aren't there, whatever it is, it's like, it's, we get to decide, Is this person a part of our team that builds us to the future that we're going to yes or no? And if the answer is no, then we get to love them and love what they provided for our past, and not make it mean anything, that they're just not the equation, they're not a part of the equation for the future.
Jessica McKinley 26:27
Another example is going from one on one to group if you have some sort of coaching business like I do, when I was one on one, they just were just working really well, I got to a max waitlist, I could have stayed there for a whole nother year, I could have continued to raise my prices. I know coaches that raised their prices up to 25k. To work with them. I was at 10k, before I decided I wanted to get a group. But for me, I looked at the future. And I had to say, hey, is my future goal just scaling money? Or is it scaling time, too. And I knew for me with having a baby and with where I was at just in general that I was willing and with my lifestyle, I hadn't like overextended myself in any way. I was like, You know what, I'm really willing to slow down or just hit a maintenance, you're on my money in order to scale my time. And because I approach it from the future, that was easier, instead of being like, Okay, I have a system that works. I built it, I spent a really long time on it. What should I do now, right? That would be a harder, a harder path towards your future when you're trying to include the past in it, right? Like, we can't all fit through this, this funnel here in our brain. So then finally, another example is changing your funnel from being more sales based. So if you have consults to booking clients, or you are one on one selling people into buying from into more of a funnel based sales process, so whether it's high quality copy, or whether it's an email funnel, or Facebook ads or something like that, like when you're building from your past, what worked for you to get you here is not necessarily going to get you there. So sometimes we just need to drop everything that's working. And your brain doesn't like that either. Because it's like, what are you doing? This works. And it's like, yeah, but it doesn't work for our future. Because we are growing, we care about growing and the part of your brain that's trying to protect you doesn't care about growth, it cares about survival. The part that cares about growth is the part that's making decisions 24 hours in advance your prefrontal cortex, so we want to access that as much as possible. And we do all of that within the specific ways. We approach it in the worksheets in happening sessions. But I needed to give you guys this information, it became apparent to me that you all needed it very suddenly in the middle of the night.
Jessica McKinley 29:09
But I hope that this was eye opening for you, I hope that you are able to see that planning and dreaming is still a way for you to safely disconnect from your future. And living there feels different. You can feel it in your bones, all of a sudden, right? So I'm offering this to you and if you are intrigued by this if you want to apply it. This is the perfect time happening sessions enrollment for September starts June 1 and closes June 3. You don't want to miss out on it because technically then the next time you're saying are available to work together. Probably won't be for almost another full year until March. When I will be opening the doors to work with people again, now is the time. I just was just writing some some posts that are going to you're getting a sneak peek maybe of the post that's gonna go up soon, but it's like there's no rush. There's plenty of time. But also, what are you waiting for? And I want to leave you with that. Because there's there's no rush and there's plenty of time but also, like, there's no better time than now. What are you waiting for? All right, you guys have a beautiful weekend.
Jessica McKinley 30:35
Hey Happters. If you want to learn more about today's topic, head over to what's happening.com forward-slash podcasts. That's what's happening. podcast that's what's happening w-h-a-t-s-h-a-p-p-y-n-i-n-g com forward slash podcast if you're a business owner and you're resonating with what we talk about here what are you even doing come hang out with me over where the party's at on Instagram at what's happening w jets again that's happy h-a-p-p-y-n-i-n-g and book a discovery call to see if coaching is your next best step
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