#735: Keep Showing Up: How to Win in a Year of Missed Goals

Just because you're not hitting your revenue goals doesn't mean you can't show up as the best version of yourself. In fact, this is when your leadership skills are truly put to the test. I'm Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small but mighty business.

Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today. One that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible. One that used to only exist as a daydream.

I created the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur or one in the making who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.

Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Online Marketing Made Easy. I'm your host, Amy Porterfield, and today we're diving into a topic that might feel a little uncomfortable to talk about, but it's so important.

And that topic is not hitting your yearly goals. So if you have crushed it this year, if you are going to finish better than you ever have, if you are on top of the world, this episode is not necessarily for you. And I don't think you should waste your time listening to it because today I'm going to speak to those of you who feel frustrated.

You feel maybe like a little shame or embarrassment that you're not going to hit your goals this year. You shouldn't feel that way, right? None of us want to feel shame for not hitting the goal, but I'm just trying to be real here. Some of us do. Or just like really just mad at yourself for missing some goals. And so now if you're listening to this episode right when it comes out, we're days away from the last month of the year.

And so you're looking at this last month of the year, and either you're pretty sure you're not going to hit your goals, but you're leaving a little room for magic, or you just know, like, no, I'm not going to hit that goal. And so what do you do about that?

Because what we're not going to do is create a bunch of campaigns in the last 30 days and kill ourselves to just like try to bring in some extra money, knowing that it's probably not even gonna close the gap. Like I'm all for a little small promo just to close the gap. If it's not a huge gap, I'm talking about if you know you're not going to hit that yearly goal and you have a lot of feelings about it, what do you do? How do you end the year strong?

And I'm not talking about how do you make a bunch of money in order to hit the goal. We're talking about perspective. We're talking about insight. We're talking about mindset shifts. And then I do have one very specific strategy at the end of this episode that I think is absolutely crucial. So stay with me here because if you come to my podcast because you're looking for strategy and marketing tips and you're like, Amy, you just told us you're going to help shift our perspective or mindset. I need strategy.

Well, I think you need more mindset than strategy. Just trust me on this one, but I promise to give you a strategy at the end. Okay. So first things first, if you're not going to meet your goals, I want you to know that it's okay. Every successful entrepreneur I know, including myself, has had years where they didn't hit their targets. It's

part of the journey. Welcome to entrepreneurship. Welcome to having a business. Not one successful entrepreneur. I know who's been in business, let's say more than five, 10 years. I'll give you 10 years, but really five is probably more appropriate.

that they haven't had a down year, and probably several of them. And here's the truth, because I've had down years. The down years typically lead to the breakthroughs. The down years lead to the recalibrations, the resets that are absolutely needed in every business.

Sometimes you need to break down to build back up and they're necessary. So if you didn't hit your revenue goals this year, welcome to entrepreneurship, but also it is okay. It is part of doing business.

Now, I didn't always know that in my first down year that I remember really vividly. Actually, I had one before this, but it was when I was getting out of my partnership. So I actively was not promoting until we came to an agreement to get out of the partnership. So I knew that was going to be a down year by design. But in 2021, I've talked about it a million times. It was a really hard year for me.

But what came out in 2022 because of what I went through in 2021 was so cool. It was like the changes I made, the mindset that I had, that was the year I finally got my health in check because I was just feeling horrible. So I'm telling you, the breakdowns, that's where the magic happens if you let it. So first of all, we're just going to be okay with sometimes it's a down year. And then

I need you to continue showing up as a great leader. That's the second thing we're going to talk about. You've got to keep showing up as a great leader. Just because you're not hitting your revenue goals doesn't mean you can't show up as the best version of yourself. In fact, this is when your leadership skills are truly put to the test.

Be transparent with your team about where you are and where you want to be. Show them that setbacks do not define us. It's how we respond to them that matters. You have to lead by example. And even if you don't have a team, be a great example for yourself.

Show yourself what you're made of here. Show up as your best self, even in times that you don't want to, even when you want to hide, even when you want to cry, but then show up as your best self. And coming back to my solopreneurs, when I said, you just got to show up for yourself, even if you don't have to communicate this to a team,

Leadership isn't just about managing others. It's about managing yourself and how you show up in your business and for your audience. So even if you are a team of one, you're still leading your audience, your customers, and most importantly yourself. So stay committed to your vision and keep showing up consistently. That's leadership in action.

Next, let's talk about enjoying the holidays because I'm being very specific right now. How are you showing up in the last month of the year if you're not hitting your goals? So I did a whole episode on how to really enjoy the holidays as an entrepreneur. It's episode 733. So emiporterfield.com forward slash 733. But what I want to say here about the holidays is there's no space for punishing yourself.

There's no space for, well, I'm not gonna hit my goal, so I need to work harder right now. I don't get to take weekends off. I don't get downtime because I didn't do what I said I was going to do. No, we are not doing that.

We cannot let disappointment overshadow the joy of the season and you deserve to enjoy this time with your family and friends. So I want you to make a conscious effort to be present and grateful for the moments you have with your loved ones. So check out episode 733 if you need a little extra help with this. Maybe you decide you're actually going to take a full week off.

You're like, what Amy, I need to make some money. I'm not hitting my goals. I can't take the last week of December off, which is something I talk about in that episode. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

So sometimes pushing ourselves to walk away and starting fresh with a new perspective is exactly what is needed. So maybe you give yourself permission to step away a little bit so that when January 1, 2025 hits, you are ready with a fresh perspective, a new attitude and some new drive to get you to actually hit those goals in 2025.

Okay, so let's dive into the mindset that you need to finish as strong as possible. And this is where gratitude comes in big time.

I want you to take a moment, maybe even a journaling moment, to reflect on what did work this year. What are you most proud of? Sure, you might not have hit all your end of your goals, but I bet there were some wins along the way. For example, maybe you launched a new product that didn't quite hit the revenue targets, but you launched a new product, my friend. Most people fall short of that.

They think they're going to do it. They start working on it and then they get distracted and they never do it. You did it. Or perhaps you grew your email list by 50% even though the sales weren't really there. You still grew your email list and that was maybe one of your goals. You have to find them. And listen, I've been in those moments where literally I can't find one. And what I have to do is go to somebody else and say, share with me the wins.

What am I missing? Why can't I see it right now? Or I know why I can't see it. I'm in the pity body, so help me. So maybe it's somebody else on your team that can remind you of some of the great moments of the year. Hey there, a quick word from our sponsor, Shopify.

If you sell digital products in your business, such as templates, planners, checklist, guides, any kind of printables, you should definitely check out Shopify. In fact, I just did a whole podcast about how selling digital products like printables is a great way to get a quick cash injection. So I want you to upgrade your business and get a high converting checkout when you use Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period

at Shopify.com slash Made Easy, or lowercase. So go to Shopify.com slash Made Easy to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash Made Easy. It's also crucial to be mindful of why you didn't hit your goals.

Because here's the thing, I don't want you to beat yourself up. I want you to give yourself grace. I'm even telling you to maybe take some extra time off that you didn't plan to take off in December so that you can just let it go. However, I am about being honest with yourself.

And really examining maybe why you didn't get to those goals. And the only reason, this has nothing to do with beating yourself up. The only reason is that you don't make the same mistakes twice. You learn from what didn't work. You get your takeaways. So it's not all wasted. So I do think having a moment of just saying, okay, let's just examine what happened here. So it doesn't happen again.

What can I do differently next year? I've done episodes about planning for the next year. I've talked about how important it is to make that time and part of planning for the next year is to look back at what didn't work this year. What worked and what didn't work. So yeah, I do think you should take a moment and also sometimes just getting it out of our head and onto paper and just leaving it there. Also a great experience, just kind of clearing your head.

And the thing is when you do this, you got to look at the data. One of my favorite quotes is from my friend Jasmine Starr, and she always says, go to the data. Go to the data. What does the data say? And she's been saying this all year and it's been making a huge impact on me because I tend to be way more emotional than Jasmine is. And so I will go to my feelings first. But the challenge with that is the feelings turned into a story I tell myself.

I wasn't good enough. I messed up here. I should have done this. I'm not cut out for this. I don't know enough. Like, feelings can lead to a dark place sometimes if I don't look at the data.

and take the emotion out of it. What does the data show? What can you learn from the data? Where can we grow from the data? So I tend to force myself to get into the metrics and the numbers, even though I'm really not a big numbers person. I'm uncomfortable sometimes in trying to figure them out. But once you get systems and dashboards together, it's way easier for the record.

Go to the data. Stop making up stories. It is what it is, my friend. It happened. You converted at 4% on a webinar. It happened. But what can we do next year so that we're converting at 8%? How can we take our numbers as benchmarks?

and create new goals and milestones from those. I love this approach because it helps us make clear-headed decisions about what to tweak and what to do differently without all the emotion. So if you're emotional like me, go to the data.

And then finally, look forward to next year. How can you ensure that you actually do hit your goals by the end of next year? This is where you need to get strategic. Remember, I said I'm going to give you one strategy. So we talked about the emotion. We talked about gratitude. We talked about shifting your mindset so you show up as the best leader to the very end. But here's the strategy.

First, if you haven't already, go back and listen to episode 731, where I talk about planning ahead for the new year. There's some great tips in there. It's a quickie episode. It's not the end all be all for everything planning, but it will get you started in the right direction. I'll link to it in the show notes.

But here's the key. You've got to DSD do something different. If this year didn't go as planned, you have to change things up. You have to show up differently, do things differently, plan differently. There's no doubt about that. So maybe you need to reassess your pricing strategy. Perhaps you need to charge more, but really define who your audience is for that offer.

Maybe you need to focus more on building your email list before launching your next big product. It's not magic. You can't just launch a product without an email list and expect big results. Maybe it's time, finally, to really focus on that email list.

Maybe hiring a consultant to help you figure out where you're missing the mark and what your funnels need to look like and how to really dial in that email list. There's experts out there for anything you need. So maybe it's time to say, okay, maybe I'll bring in one expert in 2025 in this one area. Or could it be that you need to invest in some additional training or coaching for yourself?

to either level up your skills or level up your mindset, or maybe it's time to finally hire that person that you've been putting off forever. There is no badget honor of doing it all yourself. You're just making yourself stressed out and overwhelmed, and your ability to grow in scale is absolutely halted if you do not grow your team.

And it doesn't have to be full-time employees, it can be contractors, but getting some people on your side in your business in a big way could make a huge difference. Whatever it is, allow yourself to learn from this year's experiences, mistakes and challenges, and then make changes accordingly. Remember, it's not always about working harder. Most of the time, it's about working smarter.

Also keep in mind that in business, it's not always an upward trajectory. I talked about this in the beginning. I don't know of any successful business that they're always going up, up, up. And so because of that, we need to remember, we're just going to take the judgment out and learn our lessons.

Because it is a wasted year, my friend. It will be such a wasted year if you didn't hit your goals and then you didn't take any kind of takeaways or learnings from that. You didn't grow from that. You didn't change from that. You will waste all of 2024 if you don't learn from the mistakes and challenges and be willing to DSD do something different in the coming year.

So those are four things you can focus on at the end of the year to help you close out strong, even if you are not going to hit your revenue goals. And to wrap up, I want to circle back to gratitude because it's so important to practice, especially when things don't go as planned. The challenge is when things don't go as planned, it's very hard to be grateful. But here are two things I want you to be grateful for.

Be grateful that you're still in the game. If you're listening to this podcast, this podcast on business and online marketing and entrepreneurship, you're still in the game. You're still committed. Be grateful for everything that happened this year, the good, bad, the ugly, because it's all contributed to making you who you are in this very moment.

Don't lose the lessons. And at the end of the day, remember why you got into this in the first place. You wanted to make an impact, right? Well, I guarantee that you have done that this year, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. You wanted to create more freedom for yourself. Hopefully you've made strides in that direction. You wanted to impact lives. I promise you, you have. And if there's something you really wanted to do that you haven't, now's the time to change it.

Remember, you've got this. You're an entrepreneur, a problem solver, a go-getter. This is just a bump in the road, my friend, not the end of the journey. Keep pushing forward, keep learning, and keep growing. I believe in you.

and I can't wait to see what amazing things you'll accomplish in the coming year. That's it for today. If you found this helpful, please do share it with someone who also might need to hear these words and encourage them to keep moving forward. I'll see you on Thursday for more entrepreneurial goodness. Same time, same place. Can't wait.