Entre-Talk: Meetings with Yourself

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy Entre-Talk: Meetings With Yourself.

This is Better Than Happy, the podcast where we study what the healthiest, most successful people in today’s world think, feel and do. And we leverage this knowledge to create our best lives. Are you ready, little bird? Let’s fly.

Hey there, everybody. Tomorrow is the first of just two opportunities this week only to join me for the workshop webinar I’m going to be teaching, which I’m going to show you exactly what I would do if I had no business. If I was starting from scratch today, if I lost all of my followers, my email list, my podcast and my reputation and everything. If it all went away for some reason, or if I was just starting out today, except that I have now the knowledge and experience I have, here’s what I would do.

And it’s three simple steps. And it’s perfect for anyone that is trying to start or grow a coaching practice. Or if you’re some kind of teacher, healer, expert, that type of business that is a service-based business, I know very well. And I can help you get to six-figures, multiple six-figures, and even seven-figures with the strategy I’m going to teach you, because I’ve done that.

And I used this simple three part strategy, and I’m continuing to use it. And now I’m trying to figure out how to get beyond that. So whoever can help me, I need that. But I want to help you get to where I am and surpass me. That would be really fun, I’d love to help you surpass me.

But anyway, make sure you’ve registered for that. It’s at jodymoore.com/webinar. Like I said, I’m teaching it twice this week because I wanted to give you a couple opportunities to come live, so pick either one. We will have a replay, but it will be a limited availability replay, you’ll have to have registered to get that. So head on over to jodymoore.com/webinar.

Today, I want to talk to you about having meetings with yourself because I have meetings right now with my team. We have a meeting every week, just kind of a quick touch base of what’s going on. And then I have meetings with individuals on my team on varying frequencies depending on what they do and how often we need to talk.

And I know most people don’t like meetings. I can’t say I love meetings, they’re not my most favorite part of the job. But I think we also all understand that some meetings are necessary. Communication is necessary. The accountability happens in those meetings. Keeping everyone in the know about what’s going on, what changes are happening or what’s coming up, things like that, that’s all important.

And so some meetings are necessary, right? And it made me think about how before I had a team that I met with, I used to have meetings with myself because I was the one. I was the customer support. I was the graphic designer. Not great at it, by the way, but I did what I could. I was the coach. I was the marketing person. I was the salesperson. I was the bookkeeper.

I was all the things. You might be in that position if you’re a solopreneur, right, where you are doing all the things. So the main reason, though, that I had a meeting with myself, and I will tell you, I actually still do have meetings with myself as well because what I would do in that meeting, and I’ll tell you about, for me, the frequency and what I did and all that.

But it was like getting my head out of my head, onto something more concrete, like a piece of paper, or a planner, or a Word document or a calendar so that I could relax and trust that the things that were needing to happen, the things I wanted to see happen in my business were going to happen.

I don’t know about you, but if I don’t get it out of my head into someplace more concrete like that, there’s a good chance it’s not going to happen. I’m going to forget about it or other things are going to come up that feel more like emergencies that are going to get in the way.

And eventually I would find myself spinning in just not even knowing what to do with my time or having a little pocket of time and not wanting to do it, like I just don’t feel like doing those other things. And it’s so easy to put things off and think I’ll do it tomorrow if there’s no plan and you can’t see why certain deadlines are necessary.

I don’t know about you, but everything in my mind when I do this, when I do this meeting with myself and I put everything down, it all feels necessary to happen right away. I’m like, well, that has to happen today, or at least by the end of this week. And so does that, and so does that, and so does that. Everything feels like it needs to happen this week, which it doesn’t, by the way, but we’ll talk about that in a minute.

But then when it’s time to actually do the work, it feels like none of it needs to happen today. It’s like, you know what? I could do that tomorrow. It wouldn’t matter if I put that off a couple more days because I don’t feel like doing it right now, right?

So that kind of back and forth dissonance or battle that we have with the prefrontal brain that is thinking more long-term and big picture and strategizing. And then the default lower brain, the primitive brain that is always operating in the moment and just wants to do what sounds easy and fun. That battle gets minimized, it doesn’t go away completely. But it’s less likely to cause confusion and chaos and prevent you from achieving your goals if you have meetings with yourself regularly, if you’re anything like me.

So here’s what I do. First of all, I liked to have a meeting with myself, and this is the one that I probably don’t do now that I have a team, it’s not as necessary. But if you don’t have a team that you’re meeting with regularly, you need to probably be having a meeting with yourself maybe monthly, or at least quarterly to look at the big picture, okay?

I would, on a monthly or quarterly basis, look at what do I want to try to achieve in the next six to 12 weeks? What is the next kind of project that I’m taking on that I think might serve my business, with whatever that is that your business needs.

Maybe you’re recreating your program or your offer. Or maybe you’re creating it for the first time. Maybe you’re going to experiment with some new marketing. Or maybe it’s the same marketing, but you need a new opt in or freebie. Or maybe you’re creating some new step in your marketing funnel that you’d never tried before. Maybe it’s something you’re going to offer to your clients on the other side, once they’ve already paid. Something you want to deliver to them. Whatever it is, right?

The thing that we’re working on that we hope is going to help our business either grow or improve or become more efficient. Whatever it is that you’re trying to work on in your business, okay? So, again, I gave you some examples, but for me, in the beginning when I was first starting, those were things like I needed to get my website up and running.

And then it would become, I need to get my email service provider, I need to get one and figure out how to use it and get it set up. I need to create a couple of images. I need to have a handful of images that I can use as branding. I need to have a logo, if you want that.

I need to get a podcast. Maybe I want to launch a podcast and I want to have the first four episodes live. These are the kinds of things that as I was creating them, if they were new, then those would be my either six to 12 week projects that I’m working on, okay?

So then I would take that particular project and break it down into what are all the steps that need to happen and where are those going to go in my calendar? Let’s just take one. Let’s just say I need to get my email service provider set up so I can start growing an email list. And I need to figure out how to sync that with, I don’t know, I’m trying to think of how the technology works. There’s some tech work to be done there, right?

I need to get my freebie uploaded to that. I need to create the auto responders that are going to go out after somebody signs up for a freebie. If you don’t know what I’m talking about with some of this terminology, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. I will teach you. Come to my webinar and I will show you how and I’m going to teach you what all of this means.

My point is there are a lot of steps involved, right? So I might just get out a piece of paper and outline, okay, what are all the steps as far as I know? That’s the thing, you get into a project and there are steps you didn’t even think of or didn’t even realize, which is fine.

As of today, I know I need to choose an email service provider. So maybe I’m going to ask three people I know who have businesses and get some opinions. Or maybe I want to just Google it for 15, 20 minutes, whatever. Give yourself a limit, okay?

Then I’m going to choose one. Then I need to go register for one. I need to spend however many hours you think it’s going to take you to figure out the technology. To maybe go through their tutorials, to figure out how to use it and get it set up. You block out that time and then you look at your calendar and go, okay, here’s where I’m going to fit that in. And put it in your calendar over the next six to 12 weeks.

I like to leave lots of cushion because I know there are going to be steps that come up that I didn’t even realize I needed to consider. So I don’t want to cram my calendar too tight. I need to have room because I want to make sure that by X date, however many weeks out you think that’s going to take you based on how many hours you have that you’re working, I’m going to have this task completed.

So those are either my monthly, I say monthly or quarterly because it would depend. When I was working more part-time when I had some kids not in school yet and things like that, my kids were a little bit younger. I liked to just work three days a week and I liked to have two days when I was just with my kids.

Now that my kids are all in school all day, I work five days a week, the hours that they’re in school. So it just changed how much I could get done in any given time based on how many hours I’m working. And so if I have a project that’s going to take me two months, once I’m working more hours, it might only take me a month. That’s why there’s a discrepancy there.

So use your best judgment, but I didn’t like to have any more than two projects like that I was working on at any given time, sometimes just one. If it felt like a big project, or it felt overwhelming to me for whatever reason, I would just have one. And it goes on my calendar so I make sure I’m working on my business, not just in my business, right?

Okay, so that’s the first meeting I recommend that you’re having with yourself. Like I said, I’m having those meetings with my team now. I actually bring my whole team to Spokane about quarterly. And we talk about what are we working on? What needs to happen from each of us to make sure we meet those objectives. And so that is happening more with my team.

But if you don’t have a team, do it with yourself. Or even if you only have one person working for you, if you have a virtual assistant or something like that, it’s not a bad idea to say, “I want to meet with you monthly or quarterly and talk about objectives,” just because it helps to have somebody to brainstorm with. It helps to have somebody to bounce ideas off of and get a little bit of input.

Okay, the other meeting, and this is the one I still do with myself, actually. I do this, I should say, with myself and my assistant a little bit as well, she helps me. But the other meeting with myself happens weekly. And I will tell you, whenever there’s a week where I don’t do this, because occasionally I blow it off, it’s a totally different week in terms of how much I get done.

It is a way less productive week, if I don’t have a meeting with myself, because I spin in, when was the last time I had a day to just myself? I need to get away. I need to get out of my house, get out of my office. All of that nonsense comes online if I don’t have this weekly meeting with myself.

In the weekly meeting with myself I begin with all of the things that are already scheduled that need to happen. Those would be things like coaching calls that are scheduled at certain times that I need to be at. Meetings that I need to attend. Maybe if I’m doing podcast interviews. Things that are scheduled with other people that are at set days and times, I put all of those onto my paper planner.

I do have an electronic planner and calendar, but I’d like to take it from that electronic calendar and put it into my paper one that I like, the one that we give out in our business program. But whatever you like. Then I take the other things that are scheduled, which would be the things that came from my monthly or quarterly meetings, right?

There are these projects or tasks that are part of projects that need to happen this week. They’re scheduled for me this week. When are those going to happen? Those go on my calendar next. And then I brainstorm all the other things that I feel like need to happen that week.

Now, there are certain things that are set that I do every week, like record a podcast, create a Take Tuesday video, create a Monday Magic video for the people in my program, right? So there are a few things that are just routine that I know. Every Monday I do that Monday video for my clients. By Tuesday we need a video. So now I have to get that done by Monday so that it can go to the person that edits it.

Anyway, so you’ve got your regular tasks. That’s not really what I’m talking about, although you have to make sure you have room for those in your schedule somewhere. What I’m talking about are the extra things, right? The additional things, like I need to prep for the talk that I’m giving whenever it is, and I need to work on that a little bit. I need to prepare for the class that’s going to be coming up next month in Be Bold and make sure that I’m working on the content for that so that it’s good and I don’t have to just figure it out at the last minute.

Sometimes I even throw in some of my personal things, like I’ve got to teach a lesson in young women’s. I need to make sure I have time for that. Maybe it’s writing emails for something happening in our business, for a funnel. We need some follow up emails to go out after this webinar. I have to make sure I get those written. Or somebody else can write them, but I needed to give them an outline of where to get started.

So any of the other tasks that aren’t regularly recurring tasks, but they’re just things that have come up that I know need to get done. They’re floating around in my head, you know how this is right? You wake up at night going, oh, I forgot I was supposed to send that video to this person. Or I forgot I was going to make a page. I was going to add this to the page or correct that typo.

All of those things, you get them down, you brainstorm them all, you get them on paper, and then you write which days you’re going to complete them. I like to do it on my calendar. Wherever you want to do it is fine. I like to do it on the same calendar where I have all my appointments so I can see if I have a day where I have back to back calls and meetings, I don’t have a lot of extra time in that day to do these other tasks.

On a day when it’s lighter in terms of the scheduled things, and I have a couple of hours here and there or some chunks of time, that’s when I’m going to write down, on this day I will write those emails. On this day I will work on the talk during this two hour block, right?

So it’s basically a plan. It’s having a plan. Some of you are like, duh. But for me, I didn’t used to operate this way. In my personal life, I’m not really great at calendaring everything out and planning everything. And so in my business I had to learn how to. And I really resisted it at first. I don’t want you to think of this as a strict something that you have to follow and if you don’t, you’re never going to be successful. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

I am honestly not perfect at following my calendar. I’m not even perfect at doing this process. Like I said, every now and then I just kind of go, I don’t have that much. I’m pretty sure I can remember it. And I blow it off and I don’t do the meeting with myself and I just figure it out as I go. And you know what? It’s fine. It’s fine, okay.

But the weeks I do it, like this week, for example, I just had a lot going on this week and there’s a lot coming up and a lot of milestones in our business and a lot of really exciting things. And so I was like, I’ve got to really make sure I dial in my time. And I can’t even tell you how good it feels at the end of every day to know I was so productive, I got so many things done that I want to get done.

And I know tomorrow I’m going to have another productive day, but I don’t feel like I’m killing myself. I don’t feel overwhelmed because, like I said, I don’t book my calendar nonstop. I have lots of cushion space in my calendar, and I have lots of personal time in my calendar. I have lots of time and space for me because I know I have to do that.

I have to give myself opportunities to move my body or else I get cranky and I don’t have good ideas anymore. I have to let myself do things like get my hair done, get my nails done. Whatever it is that, for you, is an escape and sort of rejuvenates you, you’ve got to have time for that in your calendar too. I should have mentioned that first.

That stuff is already in my calendar. Like I’ve got a hair appointment today. And hair appointments for me now are long. And I’m not mad at it, I like it. It’s a break for me. It’s an escape from the routine. I rarely get to leave my house these days, so I get out of my house. That was in there before anything else. Hair appointments get booked like eight weeks out. We all know this, right?

So make space for you as well. I’m not talking about overbooking your calendar. Remember, like I said, a lot of the things that I think this has to happen this week, I realized, no, it doesn’t. Not if it means I’m going to be stressed. Not if it means I’m going to burn myself out and I’m going to hate my job in the end. It can wait till next week or the week after. Everything is not as emergent as the prefrontal seems to think it is, okay? All right.

So have a meeting with yourself. Let me know how it goes. Come over to Instagram. I’m on there a lot, Jody Moore Coaching, and send me a DM. If you have a question or you want to just share with me how it went, I’d love to hear from you. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow on the webinar. Jodymoore.com/webinar, if you haven’t registered yet. I’ll see you there. Take care.

If you are a coach, healer or expert who is not yet making six figures, or not sure you’re set up properly to grow to seven figures and beyond. Go take my free training. It’s at jodysfree-training.com. I’ll see you there.