"...really look at your week, be intentional about it and be intentional about your business and your goals because these are the types of actions that will compound. These are the thousands of steps and the thousands of choices and decisions that will ultimately get you closer and closer and closer to that impossible goal."

Full Transcript

Sari 0:04
I'm Sari Kimbell and I've done just about everything in the food industry. I have helped hundreds of packaged food business entrepreneurs and now I want to help you make your delicious dream a reality. Whether you want to be successful at farmer's markets, online, or wholesale on the store shelves, Food Business Success is your secret ingredient. I will show you how to avoid an expensive hobby, and instead run a profitable food business. Now let's jump.

Sari 0:38
Hello, and welcome back to another week of the podcast. Really excited to be here with you today as we kick off 2021. But before I do that, I want to read a review that came in from Amy of Amy's gourmet confections. Sari! Exclamation point. Thanks, bunches for your podcasts! Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. You are like a lifeline for me. Well, I have surrounded myself with a great team, you somehow speak right to the heart of the matter, for which I am grateful. Keep up the great work.

Sari 1:12
Thank you, Amy, for those very kind words. And I'm glad that the podcast has been useful for you. And you as well keep up the great work. And I look forward to seeing everything you do in 2021. All right, let's get on with the show. It is 2021.

Sari 1:32
Wow, we did it. Yay. Congratulations for making it through 2020. And I am actually very excited about 2021. I don't know about you. But I think that there are some amazing lessons that we are all gleaning, many of us are gleaning from 2020 around our priorities and our lives and what's most important, and really, for many of you, and maybe while you're listening to this podcast is really about finally going after that big goal. So last week, I talked about setting your impossible goal, creating that impossible goal for your life for this next year. And remembering that because we are setting this really, truly impossible goal, there's a lot of benefits that come from that. And this is a concept that I've been using inside self coaching scholars with Brooke Castillo for the last two years, that has radically changed my life and blown my own mind. And so I am excited to share it with you all here. And to continue on with the impossible goal strategy. An impossible goal will give us the inspiration, the fuel, to break out of our fear, to step beyond that and to do bigger and bigger things. So where do we start? That is what this podcast today is all about. It can be very tempting to set an impossible goal, and then try to convince ourselves that it really is possible and try to do it all in the first two weeks. I don't know about you guys, but I have had many years of setting big resolutions, right? The New Year's resolutions to lose weight, or to run a big race. I don't run anymore but some of you might have that goal. Or maybe it's to get in shape, or to quit doing something like smoking or drinking or write a book or start that business. And we set these big, big goals, right? These resolutions, I'm going to do this and we're really fired up out of the gate. So January hits, and we're like, Alright, I'm gonna do this diet plan or this x, you know, I'm gonna go run my 10 miles when you haven't even run one. And so we get jump out of the gate and we're all fired up and we take this massive action fueled by this very impossible goal. And what happens? Well, we all know the classic tale of the resolutions, right? Resolutions passed, the graveyard that I have of those, where we we burn out very quickly, right? We stopped taking action, we we take that first few big giant steps, and then we get no results. And we give up, right? It's not enough. We're not creating a sustainable framework that will keep us going throughout the year. I think we can be so easily wooed by instinct gratification. I mean, we live in an instant gratification society, I can have something delivered, in some cases the same day from Amazon, right? I can pull up information so quickly on my phone or my computer. There is so much that I can achieve instantly. And yet an impossible goal, a goal worth going after is going to take time. It is going to require more of you over a consistent period of time. And so we need to remember that there is no instant gratification when we are going after something really meaningful in our lives. I really believe that the purpose of setting a big goal for yourself like this impossible goal for 2021 is to evolve into the next best version of yourself, to take action and in the action, you will become someone different. You will become your best self as you work towards your big goal and get out of your fear and do hard things. I mean, the things that are the most rewarding are the things that are absolutely the hardest, right? I mean, think about your own life. I know we all think that we just want it now. Think about the things that are really important to you. They probably took a lot of time, they probably took a lot of you becoming somebody new of evolving, doing hard things, right, and then making yourself proud. We need to let go of this instant gratification piece. And recognizing that this is a journey, this is actually a fun journey. This isn't about the destination. And if you really think about it, we actually live most of our lives in the journey not in arriving at the destination. So let's have some fun with it. Let's make this an enjoyable process. There's a great quote that goes something like we always overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in five years. And if we take that even further, I know that we overestimate greatly what we can do in a month, or three months or six months versus what we can do in a year. Let's set ourselves up for success so that at the end of the year, your success, whatever that looks like. Remember, you're not going to achieve your impossible goal. So relax. But at the end of the year, what will you have done? What are the thousands of actions and decisions and choices that you will have made? And who will you be at the end of this year? 12 months from now?

Sari 8:01
Alright. So how do we set up a framework for success? Because it's not just about getting it started having a product to sell, it is also about having a business that's going to work for you that is set up to fit into your life and one that you can sustain over a period of time. So today is all about how do we set you up for success. So your next step with your impossible goal are going to be two pieces. And I'm going to talk about the first one today. But the two pieces are action and a willingness to fail. And I definitely recommend you go get the full worksheet that is used quarterly for planning out and continuing to work on your impossible goal all year long. And you can go get that at FoodBizSuccess.com/impossible. And of course the links will be in the show notes. So yes, I did say the big F word that no entrepreneur wants to talk about. And I will talk in a future episode about failure and how to fail better and making that a part of your impossible goal action. But first, let's set up some some foundational actions that we can take daily or weekly that are going to compound. We are setting up the foundation of your impossible goal for the entire year. So inside action, I see really two types of action. There's the consistent small actions over time that have a huge compounding effect. And then there's also kind of this massive action where we take huge catapulting leaps of potential failure that that will grow our business and could potentially have great upsides. But I really think we actually need to start so much smaller. We need to set the bar so low, that we can basically step over it when we get started, right? I really think we need to work up to massive action, we need to create that foundation, the scaffolding for putting into place our massive action. But without that foundation, we're not going to be successful, it's not going to be sustainable. And remember, the baked into our impossible goal is our hard why. Our hard why is going to help us with the motivation with the commitment to doing these small actions. So if you don't know what your hard why is go back and listen to that episode. So you might be saying yourself right now or saying to me, Sari, come on. I am excited, I am ready to go. I am fired up. I have decided 2021 is the year I am launching my salsa business, my scones, my coffee, my cookies, whatever it is my jam, right? I could go on and on. Whatever it is you make that you're like, yes, I'm finally going to do this. 2020 has shown me that life is short, and then I need to go after my goals. I'm ready, I'm ready to take big action. Why are you telling me to slow down, to start small, to break it up into small, low bar, you can easily achieve them every day of the week actions?

Sari 11:43
Well, so many of you come to me and you are all fired up and you're like, yes, there's I'm gonna do it. And then you're like, but I don't know how to do this. I don't know what I'm doing. What's the formula Sari? Give me the magic bullet. Well, the great thing about doing a baby step guide for yourself, especially as we're getting going is we're gonna lay that framework that foundation, is that it helps get you out of the trap of needing to know the how. Think about if you had to know the how of how you were going to get married, and how you were going to have kids and be a great parent. If you are going to figure out the how of your career, right? I mean, we would never get started. And I think that there's a big trap that I see people get into when you do want to start a business like this is that we get paralyzed by the how. Sari Give me the checklist, just give me the list of the magic formula of how this will get done and how it will happen for me. And the thing is, is that I don't know the how. I can help you with a lot of pieces and give you a lot of guidance and expert insider knowledge and help you skip a lot of steps and not waste money and get there faster. But I don't know the how exactly for your particular situation. How is the gift we get at the end of the journey when we reach the destination. And if we're going to spend most of our time inside the journey then we have to release our need to know the how, and starting small with a baby step guide is going to help get you more comfortable with just taking the next step that you can do. And the other piece that's tied up in that I don't know how to do this, I've never done it before, is that fear, right?

Sari 13:49
We don't have the confidence yet to know that we know what we're doing. Of course you don't. You've never done this before. So we don't actually get confidence by not doing anything. We actually get confidence by going out there and failing and compounding those failures. So Dan Sullivan offers us the three C's. First, we need commitment. Are you all in? What is your hard why? Like you have to be 100% committed you are jumping into the deep end of the pool. You are never giving up. This is happening. So first you have commitment. Then you have courage. Because again as soon as we make that commitment, we're gonna get terrified right? And then we find all these reasons why this is a terrible idea and we procrastinate and we do all these crazy things. First we commit then we find our courage. Super important to must to constantly be mustering up that courage and your hard why is what is going to help give you the courage to take the next actions. So if we can start really small, it doesn't actually take that much courage, right? We're going to build up our courage skill. So courage then leads to competency. So through courage, there's action. And as we take action, then we create competence, we get better, we build up our resilience, we build up our skills, which ultimately creates your confidence. So so many of you want to just have confidence before you ever get started. And that's not the way it works. It just isn't. I wish I could give you the confidence 100%. I often let my clients in Food Business Success borrow my confidence in them. And I help a lot with the confidence building. But ultimately, you can't start from confidence. You don't know how to do this. And that's okay. This is part of the journey. This is supposed to be fun.

Sari 15:59
Here's how I recommend that you start with building your foundation in January. For this month, we are working on building up your confidence and your belief in yourself. Your belief in your goal, your resilience, your commitment, your willingness to do harder and harder things. Because you recognize that you can rely on yourself, that you follow through, that you make yourself proud, and that you can do hard things. So the two things that I recommend you doing are setting up a mindset practice. You need to build your belief in yourself, a belief in your abilities and your worthiness, as well as kind of just, it is so important to grow your faith and belief in yourself. What is a mindset practice? What does that look like? For me, that looks like a meditation in the morning, that grounds me and gets me focused. And then goal writing. So I do two pages. I said I write out my goals, and some affirmations. And then I do a belief plan. So I do this almost every single day. And if you think about the compound effect, I actually took a photo recently when I got a new journal, and I'll put that up on Instagram, but a stack of the journals over the last two years, a year and a half maybe that I started doing this practice. And when I think back about and even kind of look back and glance, right, at like when I first got started, and how much I would write and what I would write about to what it is today it's like, blows my mind. I mean, there's probably five, six journals filled. Every page almost every day, I'm super consistent. And I just think about like, what is the compound effect of me writing daily my goals, my beliefs, my belief in myself, my belief in you. I am achieving my goals. I am working towards my impossible goal becoming my next best version of myself because of this practice, and I don't know that this is like the key to success. But what if your success did depend on you writing for five minutes every single day?

Sari 18:45
Would you be willing to do that? Just think about it, like you knew at the end of this journey, five years from now, two years from now, and you could look back and you could say with confidence that my success was fueled by my ability to create a daily practice to build my mindset, to build my belief, my competence. Would you be willing to spend five minutes a day? Now I spent about 20 minutes, but still 20 minutes writing is not that long. But again, I want the bar to be so low that you can step over it every single day. It could also look like listening to inspiring podcasts or audible books, right, books on audio. It could be books, so anything that's going to really help you get into a frame of belief. So books on entrepreneurship, books on you know, spiritual mindset. Affirmations, meditations, these are the kind of practices that I want you to think what is one thing I can incorporate right now into my day, for five minutes, that I commit to myself to do it daily? And then think about, at the end of a week, at the end of a month, when you look back and you go, holy cow, I just did 30 days where I wrote every day for five minutes, my goals. You're going to be so effing proud of youself. Isn't that cool? Right? You becoming that person is what is going to lead to your eventual success in this business. So pick a practice, I don't care what it is that every day before you turn out the lights to go to sleep. And that may mean that some days you have to get back up and do something for five minutes, that every day you will commit to building something in your mindset that takes five minutes a day. That's it. I know you can do this.

Sari 20:56
The second thing I want you to work into your week is what I call a Pn'P list. And I got this from my business coach. It's a problems and priority list. So, so many of us have that giant to do list. And we're really just focused on the to-do's, the tasks. I want you to shift that concept and really think about what are the three main problems in your week? And what are the priorities around that? So it doesn't have to all be business, this could be in your career, or this could be in your family. Each week, where we can look and see, look ahead and say, you know, I can foresee three kind of focus areas where there may be problems, or I need to set priorities. So for example, let's say you have a product and you're building out a website, and you want to get more people on your mailing list. That's a problem. Your problem is you don't have enough people on your mailing list and you're going to make it a priority that week to grow your mailing list. So if you don't even have a product, you just have an idea, your your problem is that you don't have a product and your priority is that you need to focus on what is the next thing you can do? What is the next right thing to be working on in your business to get that product to come to life, right, to be legal to be packaged to have all the things? So again, we're not gonna achieve this in one week. But within that priority, what are three things that you can be working on this week that are results focused, that will help achieve the priority that will put the priority in focus and achieve the result that moves it forward? So that could be I need to do I need to do some research around licensing. I need to find out I need to research packaging. I need to find somebody to help me with my labels. I need to know what my cost of goods sold is. Whatever it is right? Or if it's the mailing list example, if my problem is that I don't have enough people on my mailing list are very few, then okay, what are some of the what are three things I could do? I can do a Facebook post and offer something of value. Well, now I need to go create something of value. So what is, what is something valuable that I could offer people in exchange for their email? So for a lot of people in this food industry, it's maybe a recipe, right? So putting together some kind of fun recipe, that people will give you their email in exchange for this piece of value that you're giving them? It could be a discount. So you want to think about, okay, what are three things and they don't have to be big, they can be small, but three things that move your priority forward, that address that priority and address that problem. Maybe it's sending an email out to your friends and family asking them to, to let people know or reshare this on their social media, right? There are a lot of ways that we can be really creative problem solvers and be working on our priorities. But when we're so caught up in the has to get all done this week, we panic, right? And we're no good at problem solving when we're panicking. So relaxing and understanding this isn't going to get done in a week, we're going to do three Pn'P's. So write out on a piece of paper 1-2-3 What's the problem? What's the priority? And then underneath that three actions that are results focused, that you can generate results that address those priorities and problems throughout the week. So I recommend that at least one of those is about your business. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew with this, right? Like, don't make all of your problems and priorities about your business when you also work a full time job. And you have two kids that you are homeschooling and all the things right? And knowing that like the holidays, and and whatever else is coming up, right, be realistic about it. Some weeks, we're going to have a lot more energy to be able to devote to our business. And some weeks, family demands and other priorities are going to come up. So I recommend just consistently making one of those Pn'Ps about your business and then be realistic about the others. Because what we want to be doing is building confidence in ourselves for following through. How much of the time do we just beat the crap out of ourselves, when we say, Oh, I'm going to exercise today, I'm going to eat this way a certain way today. And then we don't follow through because we make the goals way too big? And then we beat the crap out of ourselves. And then we don't want to really keep doing it. Because we know we're gonna beat the crap out of ourselves, right? It's like, if you set a goal to get, you're going to run five miles every day. Well, that one day that you don't do it, you're gonna beat the crap out of yourself. And then the next day, right, and it's like this compounding negative effect. Versus I'm going to put on my tennis shoes and I am going to walk for 10 minutes a day. What if that was the goal to start? Then when you achieve it? It's so easy, right? Anybody? Okay, I can you like any of us could go and do a 10 minute walk or 10 minutes of yoga. And generally, once you start, it's a whole lot easier to keep going. But starting is the hardest part, right? It's that momentum. That you know, it's like physics, right? Like, it's hard to get things in motion. So we want to build consistency, we want to build compounding action. When you go take a walk for 10 minutes every day, it adds up right? Over the course of a week, that's 70 minutes. So let's start really small, let's baby step it. I want you to commit to doing one mindset practice. If it needs to be five minutes, give it five minutes, and then work up from there. If you can commit to ten do ten. But I want it to be something you can absolutely achieve every day. And then commit to doing a PNP list every Monday or on Sunday. And really look at your week, be intentional about it and be intentional about your business and your goals because these are the types of actions that will compound these are the thousands of steps and the thousands of choices and decisions that will ultimately get you closer and closer and closer to that impossible goal.

Sari 28:05
All right, I have so much more to talk about on this topic. We're going to talk about how to fail, and you're increasing your capacity for failing. And I will talk more about the massive action that will need to accompany your business. But let's start with to being doable. We want something to be uncomfortable, we create a goal and discomfort and then we start taking action in comfort. We achieve that goal by taking small daily actions that lead to competency and ultimately confidence. So let's start here. And I cannot wait for you to go over to the private Facebook group and let me know what your mindset practice, what your commitment is going to be for 2021. All right, you guys have a fantastic week.

Sari 29:00
Are you ready to start that delicious idea that you make in your home kitchen, or grow your existing packaged food business and take it to the next level? The most successful food business entrepreneurs have support, guidance, focus and accountability to help them make it happen quickly without wasting time or money. Plus, I think starting your packaged food business should actually be fun. Food Business Success is your secret ingredient to creating your food business dream. Please don't go this alone. Check out the private free Food Business Success Facebook group to connect with other foodprenuers, get your questions answered quickly. Share your wins and receive special training and tools I only share inside the private community. Just search for Food Business Success on Facebook, or get the link in the show notes. Curious about how Food Business Success can help you? Head over to FoodBizSuccess.com and fill out the application to see if you're a great fit for the program. Together let's make your food business dream a reality.