Episode 200 | Hitting Your Big Goals: From Overwhelmed to Freedom with Andrea Liebross

Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Group Practice Exchange Podcast. This week I have a guest expert on them, her name is Andrea Libras, and she owns Andrea Libras Coaching she actually already did a podcast episode with me a few weeks now. And yours truly forgot to hit the record button. Um, and as many of you podcasters know, this might have happened to you before.

And so this was my first and. Super appreciative that you, Andrea, were totally okay with coming back on a second time because what we talked about was so awesome. Ok. You know, it doesn’t even me better than the first time. Yeah. Cause now we know what we’re gonna talk about. So why don’t you talk to my audience a little bit about who you are and why the topic that we’re gonna be talking about is something that is relevant to you and that you’re an expert?

Sure. So I work with women, mostly women who own businesses. And what I find is that as they get to a place where they’ve got a viable business, so you know, there’s money coming in the door, people are happy, it’s all good. They get, they have a viable business, but they really wanna turn the corner and grow and they need to make a decision.

Even if they maintain where they’re, they need to make probably some different decisions than they did in. So my expertise is really helping them create a framework in which or from which to make those decisions. And these decisions can go from who they need to hire and hire to what they’re gonna do this morning.

So all of that requires some decision-making skills, and if you’ve got a framework from which to make those decisions, things are gonna be a lot easier and you are going to going to get where you wanna go a lot faster. So the clients I work with are women who are pretty, you know, they’re overachievers, they’re driven, and.

They know that there’s probably a better way to do things than they’re doing them now. So we figure all of that out through the process of making these decisions in making these decisions. You are going to talk about this acronym, right? Yes. So that is part of the framework. I really wanna share with you today, number one in an acronym that I call How to Create Smarter Goals with an ER at the end.

And then I want to hit upon how to create what I consider your daily big three or the three things that you need to or want to get done in a day. So it’s kind of like backing your daily win to reach those big goals. Ok. Kinda like the first thing you gotta know, what are the big. Right. So that’s where the smarter framework comes in.

And I can, we can kind of just go through a letter by letter and I’m gonna share with you what that’s all about. So Smarter Goals, the F in Smarter stands for specific. And some of this, I know your listeners have heard before, but I want you to kind of really think about this as we go through it, as if I can write goals.

This way it’s helping with decisions. It’s not just to look at them at the end of the year to see if I got it. It’s kind of giving you these funnels, and if they’re specific, okay, it’s gonna give you some focus. So I always like to think of a hose outside and if you’ve got two pipes or two hoses and one has a bigger diameter than the other, right?

The one with the smaller diameter, the water going through there is gonna have a lot greater. Just by reducing the diameter, you’re gonna have greater force. And that’s really what happens when we narrow our goals. The more specific we go, the more likely we are to engage our focus, our genius brain I like to call it, and our consistency and persistence to get there.

So the goals really don’t inspire us. It’s hard to know where to put your effort in creativity. If the goal is too vague, specific goals really create a channel for our creativity and our effort. And all it takes is really identifying precisely what you want to accomplish. Okay? So I just literally got off the phone with a client and we were working on goals, and the first thing you wrote down was to create guidelines.

I’m like, ok, that’s too vague. Okay. A number. What guideline? What angle are you coming to this effort from? When do you want guidelines for the whole department or really is it just for one person? Right. So we really gotta narrow it down. So, I mean, we rephrased it and said complete guidelines for X, Y, and Z. Job description by October 30.

And implement them. Okay. So that got super, super specific. And as humans, we’re always kind of imagining how the future might work out, how we’d like to see it work out. And so we’ve gotta stay committed to the goal in order to create the future that we want. And there’s so much research out there that shows that we are so much more likely to stay committed.

The, more specific we are makes a lot of sense. I think totally with like holding ourselves accountable to actually doing it, but also feeling the win at the end of it. If it’s not specific, you don’t really know if you did the thing. You know, if you’re vague about it, like completed sort of maybe, I don’t know.

Yeah, so it’s like Duke University did a study a few years back where they found that people with more specific gained more momentum and grew in motivation as they progressed, while people with less specific goals had the opposite. So they lost steam along the way and had decreased motivation even when they were making some progress.

So that greater goal specificity is more important than we realized. Cause a lot of. I’ll say to someone, Well, what do you need in order to achieve this goal? And they’ll say, Motivation, I need to be motivated. Well, you’re gonna be way more motivated than more specific. Yeah. So that’s kind of number one.

That can be easy or easy hard. I think when we’re in our own peanut butter jar, I call it, when you’re stuck in your own peanut butter jar, it’s really hard to read the label and to see what’s going on. You know, my expertise comes in, and asking you the questions to get super specific. Like this morning with the guidelines, I kinda pounded a bunch of questions and it got a lot better.

Yeah. All right. So the second attribute of smarter is Measurable. Okay. The M and SMARTER stand for measurable, and I think this is important for two reasons. Number one is the most obvious, Okay? Without some sort of measurement, you can’t tell whether you’ve achieved the goal or not. All right? But the second reason for keeping your goals measurable is that you need to be able to track the.

Okay. So a measurable goal really allows you to set markers along the way in milestones. And honestly, I mean, half the fun is in making the progress, right? So it’s not really about reaching the goal. Once you reach the goal, we’re like, what’s the next goal? So the fun of the long in the progress part, and if it’s not measurable, then it’s really hard to see if we’re making progress.

Mm-hmm. , what’s number two or the. And I guess to make it a letter, it ties in with, would you say it was Duke that did the study? Mm-hmm. , It ties in with that whole concept that they, you know, sort of figured out, which is those that had these, uh, specific goals, got more motivation to keep going, didn’t have a measure or didn’t have specific goals even though they were having success.

As I air quote this moving forward in some way, I can see how. That kind of ties in with this concept we like to see wins even if they’re small wins. And so having these measurable goals that we can reach and move, you know through is oftentimes more fun to look back at once we complete the thing is just seeing how our progress was to get there and how much work we went through to get to that.

It’s so true when I work with clients who we’re creating some annual goals, but then we create quarterly, what I call rock. Kinda like the quarterly steps, so you know us Yeah. So I was, this week I’ve been going through a lot of people’s last quarter, like quarter three, if you’re using a calendar year.

It is so fun. Yeah. To be able to, or the like, And that’s the quarterly goal, right? So it’s adding to the annual goal. So they haven’t really reached the annual goal yet, but they the progress. So totally a smart goal. A stands for actionable. So if you think about it, Schools are fundamentally about what we’re going to do, right?

So when you’re formulating your goals, it’s really important to get clear on what is the primary action. All right? So it’s the primary action. And the easiest way to do that is to get out your theory and find a strong verb to describe and, and prompt that specific act, and you’re gonna. You don’t want to begin.

A goal with BM is ours, as we’re beginning any of those You wanna begin it with? Run, finish, eliminate, and sometimes people write to be more consistent. In saving, it’s not actionable, but deposit 10% of each paycheck into the savings account. That’s actionable. And even I want to like your listeners, when we kind of talk about what we are doing, the daily big three, even those daily big three could start with an actionable verb word, not just the, And even if you just wrote like payroll, Not helpful.

What are we doing with the payroll? Right? So, okay, so A is for actionable, and then R, the First, R, and Smarter. This is one of my favorites. It is risky. Okay, so normally we talk about setting goals that are realistic. Okay? But the R, that’s what they are. And if we’re just doing smart goals, usually refers to, but when we start asking what’s realistic, we really are setting the bar too low and then we can kind of get into that.

Not super motivated, right? Mm-hmm. , it’s kind of. Well, I mean, of course, this is gonna happen. If it’s realistic, it’s inevitable. So we end up accomplishing a lot less than we might have if we went too risky. Okay? If we rise to a challenge, if we rise to a challenge, but hold back when it’s easy or being human.

Ok? So we sometimes hold back when things are easy cuz we. We don’t have to put effort into it, but as humans, we love rising to challenges. That’s like part of us. Mm. So we’re conditioned to reach for the easy, but we do love and thrive off of challenges. So, Risky is definitely, definitely important. It helps us move from boredom or minimal engagement and playing it safe and kind of lowballing to rising to the occasion.

Lowballing is really kind of like a defensive strategy too. It’s like you’re on the defense, you wanna be on the offense. Right. But as a business owner or a practice owner, I think a lot of times we are on the defense because especially if we’ve gotten to the place where we have a viable business.

Cause you think, Ugh, but if I change this, I don’t know. It might not go so well. Right? So you hesitate, but. The struggle is really what keeps you engaged and when you finally do achieve that difficult goal as you said before, it’s gonna mean a whole lot more cuz you kind of had to fight to get to the finish line, right?

So R is for risky, it’s really gonna stand somewhere outside your comfort zone. It has to be somewhat. Uncomfortable. And if you know exactly how you’re gonna do it, that’s not risking enough either. So you’ve got to really dig into your resources to figure it all out. I love that I’m someone, and I think most of us as business owners, we started off at least being, uh, drawn to some amount of risk, right?

Yeah, yeah. Totally true. Wouldn’t

where we’re kind like, okay, are going. Pretty well, and I’m not sure I can really take on any more than I have, so maybe I’m just gonna cruise along right here. Yeah. But in the end, that doesn’t serve up at all. Yeah, so sometimes, again, my clients a little push to make the goals a little risky, but it moves along.

C and SMARTER stands for timebound. Okay. Now, sometimes people are like, Well, what’s the difference between that and measurable? Or Time is a form of measure, but I think it really has to include one of these five types of timebound signatures. So it’s gotta have a deadline or it could have a frequency like, I’m gonna do this twice a week.

I start. Is also a way to make it timebound or a time trigger, like when this happens, this whole next thing will happen, or a streak target. Okay, So if you look at your goal and it says, first of all, is this an achievement goal or is it a habit goal? You can kind of determine how you wanna make it timebound.

So achievement goals are focused on one-time accomplishments. Paying off the credit card, Improving your PR on Peloton. Okay. Finishing your first novel. All right. All of those are achievement goals and deadlines are essential for all of those. Cause the deadlines to drive the action. But if you have a goal that is more of a habit goal, then it might be more of a frequency type thing.

Or if this happens, then that happens. Time-bound can look like a lot of different things depending on what type of goal it is. So you’ve really gotta kind of assess that in your head and think, Okay, is this habit, goal and another place to go is, is this habit goal really just feeding an achievement goal?

Yeah. And am I kind of like topping out on having the habit goal really be the big goal? Should the achievement goal be the big goal and know that I have to create a habit to get there. So that’s what C stands for. Okay. And I, I feel like this is something even in my own practice with my leadership team, we had to get really intentional with, and I think EOS has helped us with that too.

Yeah. When it comes to the timepiece, because the staff was, you know, holding themselves accountable to getting things done, but without. This timeframe of when people, yeah, are relying on each other. Some like me are fast movers and we’re like, when are you gonna get that thing done? Where others are, you know, more intentional and paced about it.

And so setting those time goals also helps everyone around you know what to expect. Absolutely. Kind of move at different. It also helps eliminate the, something suddenly came up like, I need to get what I need to get done today. Done and then I’ll get to that. Yeah. Right. So we all can fall into that trap too, but if it’s timebound, then you’ve kind got that kinda like a Yeah, exactly right.

So, alright, so the sixth is E. And again this is one of my favorites. It, stands for exciting. Okay, so these goals have to inspire you. So kind of like an EOS when you’re looking at your three-year plan, right? It’s gotta inspire you to move forward. So these goals have to inspire you. And again, research has shown that we stand a better chance of reaching our goals if we’re internally motivated, right?

So, Motivations might work for a little while, but we’re gonna lose interest eventually with an external motivator. So the problem is most of us set goals we think are good breadth. Yeah. Okay. Or good for our business. This would be really good if we could get this done. And if we’re really being honest, we often set goals for that.

Other people think are good for us. Yes. So spouses, friends, bosses, investors, Okay. Board of directors, whatever you got. So the trick is to set goals that are not only personally or professionally important, but are also personally and professionally inspiring. . And a lot of times this is actually easier to do professionally to get into this exciting, inspiring place than personally cause personal goals, we can really disappoint ourselves or we really try to play it safe there.

So if you don’t find your goals compelling, you won’t have the motivation to push through when the go and gets tough. And this is where you kinda have to be honest with yourself and ask, does this goal inspire me or does it engage me? Right, And am I willing to work hard to make it happen? You might even ask yourself if it’s fun, like I always like to say, Is this simple, doable, and fun?

Yeah. Right. And I usually do that. I usually try to make my goals fun, because that’s gonna kind of help us get to something that’s in the next step, which is really finding out why you’re doing it. So only an exciting goal can really access that internal motivation. This brings me to the seventh letter R, the last R, which is about being relevant.

So effective goals are relevant, not realistic, but are relevant to your life, like R or your business. Are they in alignment with where you wanna go? Okay. Or where you’re heading. And it comes at the end of the smarter because it’s a really good way to do a gut check before committing to the. Because we can all get to this like the last letter here and then we think, Mm, I don’t know.

Is it really relevant? Cause if we’re gonna succeed or if we’re gonna continue to grow, we need goals that align with the legitimate demands of life in business. If you are a working parent with young kids, then your goals are gonna look a lot different than the working parent with kids that are outta the house, right?

Depending on your circumstances, you might have to tweak your goals, or if you don’t have enough money to fund. The goal, Okay? It’s not relevant right now. Like you need to create more revenue or profit to fund the goal. So your goals have to align with what you kind of think about it. Like where are you in life and where are you in business right now?

And they also have to align amongst themselves. Okay? They have to be relevant together as like a big set of goals. You’ve gotta look at them together. You can’t just look at them as one. So is it relevant given all the other things that we’re trying to achieve? Yeah. Cause sometimes our aspirations are really far bigger than our calendars or our wallet.

Yeah. Or our rain power. Right. And so the main thing here is to kinda watch your bandwidth. And so some of these goals might just not be relevant right now, but might be correct. A year or you know, two years. Yes. I like to say it’s like if you’re gonna eliminate it, it may be a no for now, but not a no forever.

Yeah. Right. So it can go kind of hang out on an issues list or in the next year’s list. Right. But it doesn’t have to be for right now, but you’ve got to really understand what’s relevant. For the next year when taking this smarter acronym. I know you in our last episode that we are just knowing. You talked about, is it the big three.

The, Yeah. So your daily big three. Okay. Tell me about that and then how we can, Cause I’m assuming we can then use the smarter goals on the big three. You totally can. So if you can like to harness the power of a big three, you are really gonna make these goals happen. I like to say we need a daily big three and we need a weekly big three, and we even can have a quarterly big three.

All right. But I’m gonna get down to like the daily big three, just because that’s probably the most relevant right? Today. Yeah. Your big three is what sets you up for being focused and productive. Okay. So you have to ask yourself, what are the three biggest items or things that I need to accomplish today to?

My goals are projects. Okay? Now, these could be related to one of the official smarter goals that we just talked about, or they could be related to a significant project that you have going that might feed into a goal, right? So the only thing really required is your daily big three. Are relevant to your weekly big three, which are relevant to your quarterly big three.

You kind of have to think of it in that way. So sometimes you really gotta zoom out. You might question, Is this really relevant? Yeah, it is. Like, let’s say it’s in my personal life. Let’s say it’s like a health and wellness goal you have for the year, and your goal for today is to drink your 64 ounces of water.

Ok. Yeah. That like feeds back into that bigger health and wellness goal. So I see this new business too. We often get distracted by the things that we should be doing with the things that don’t bring us forward in any sort of way. Like scrolling through emails or Right. You know, things that just, we might need to do them at some point, but they’re not the big important things for the day and they end up taking up more time than they should, which then doesn’t allow us to actually get to the things that are more meaningful and move the needle forward.

Totally true. So I kind of walk my clients through a signature, I call it a signature process for establishing your daily big three. Okay. So your daily big three should be things that you have a little bit of resistance to. Again, they’re not the things that you’re just gonna do automatically. Brushing, your teeth are not a daily big three.

Okay? Hopefully. So here’s what I ask my clients. Number one, is this something that you are committed to, not just interested in? Okay, so that’s really a good thing to ask yourself. Is this something I’m interested in doing, or am I gonna be committed to it? All right. For me, an example of that would be every year in January, I have made a workout goal.

I was interested in it, but I was never committed to it, which is why it is only every year, it would only last about a month before I would figure off on it because I wasn’t actually committed to that. It was like something, in theory, I would’ve really liked to do, and so I thought do it. I mean, I’ve gotten to a place where this is now all different, but it took a whole mindset shift to make it so that I was committed to it.

It’s totally true. And also think about this as something you’re committed to. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something you want to do at the moment. So let me like go backtrack on that. Like, let’s say working out right, I need to go like every day. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t wanna actually do it, but I do have like something that I get out of it at the end, which is, uh, at the gym.

It has a strawberry smoothie thing that I really like. I mean, hey, everybody would like to do that. How I get, that’s where my motivation comes in. I don’t really wanna go, but I know I get this little fun reward at the end. Right. It’s awesome. So you don’t want to get up and go to the gym. Okay. But you’re committed to doing it.

Yeah. All right. So you’ve moved away from just being interested and now you’re committed. You know, we don’t wanna go outside and shovel snow probably, but we go out anyway because we’re committed to getting out of our house in the snowstorm. Okay, so, That’s a really important thing to ask yourself if you’re not getting something done.

Ok. Is it just because you’re interested and not committed? All right, so that’s kinda number one in the process. Ok? Number two in the process is being decisive. Okay? Being decisive. This is a human privilege, okay? We do not see dogs outside. Having meetings because they don’t have the ability to be decisive.

All right? We have the privilege of being human and being able to be decisive. So when you’re writing your daily big three, be decisive. Kind of think about that smarter framework. So this is kind of a way you can borrow from that and be very clear. And so you’re being clear and then you’re also being committed.

Mm-hmm. . Okay. And then the last part of this process is really asking yourself if I can create a daily Big three and a weekly Big three and quarterly and write smarter goals, what is it gonna do for me? How is it going to help me? And I would argue that you need to assess how this is gonna save you time if we have this framework in which to make, create our goals.

All right? And then actually to follow through on them, it’s going give us freedom and energy. We do not waste time deciding whether or not we’re gonna do something or not. Like you’re not wasting time in the morning deciding if you’re going to the gym. All right? Cause you’ve already decided. Already decided.

So it is saving you time. But there are so many things in life where we hang out in this indecisive. And that takes so much and it just sucks us up. Sucks the energy out of us. Like, it’s like we’re in limbo land. And limbo land really does cost us time and it postpones progress. Yep. Right? Yep. Now, I do wanna say that sometimes what I hope my clients do is to decide that they’re not gonna decide.

Okay. But like they’re not deciding right now. And that’s ok. But that’s a decision in and of itself. We’re great. That’s different though than staying in a place of confusion or doubt or fear. All right? Because when you decide, you’re not gonna decide. It’s actually pretty freeing. Yep. Right. Seth, how is this saving me time?

How can I see that this will save me time? And then the next piece is making these decisions. It actually increases action. Right? We are not taking enough action most of the time toward the things we want. We kind of hit and ha, we say we’re confused or we don’t know what we’re really doing is not contributing to the world.

Yeah. Or ourselves. Like we’re not putting our contribution out there and we start to feel purpose. Okay, so how many people have we heard, I wanna do something that has a purpose. I wanna be passionate about it. Okay. All that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. , when we don’t decide and we don’t take action, we are actually consuming things like we’re consuming.

Literally, you could be consuming more food or alcohol, but you’re also consuming more brain power than you could have been spending. Doing, taking the action on whatever it is. So it’s really not until we make the decision can we start taking action again. This is harder than it sounds too. Yeah.

This is why you know why I’m supporting my clients in this way. I’m helping them create these frameworks to make the decision so that they can start to take action. I love all of that and I feel. It’s especially, I mean, it’s relevant for everyone, but I feel like especially relevant right now for business owners who are coming on, you know, two plus years of having to make radical changes in their businesses because of Covid and feeling burnt out and maybe unsure of what their next step is or what they wanna do.

We’re seeing a lot in the mental health space, business-wise, people trying to decide if they wanna step out of business ownership and owning a group practice and. The idea of like getting back to a space of being excited by goals and intentional, I think is really relevant. So I appreciate you coming on and, and talking about these things cuz it’s really timely.

You just start showing up in a better way, right? Yeah. Like you’re showing up for your life and you’re showing up for other people, and your confidence totally increases. So when we make a decision, we get out of the, I don’t know what to do, our confidence increases, our insecurity goes away, and we just show up as a better person.

Yeah. If people wanted to reach out to you or learn more about what you do to support business owners, how can they find you? So I think the easiest way to find me is to go to Andrea’s. Dotcom, So A N D R E A S L I N K S, Andreas links.com. And if you go there, you’re gonna find links to my own podcast, which is time to level up.

Also a quiz. There’s a quiz on there that really helps you kind of get to the root of the problem of why you are not making decisions or why you’re not reaching your goal. So go take that quiz. I think that’s a great way, and then always you can find me on probably Instagram the best place. Andrea dot le.

Coaching. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on a second time and I promise this is being recorded, so I really appreciate you taking that time. I know your time is really valuable and I know our audience is going to really enjoy this episode, so thanks. Thanks for having me, Marty. Yeah, have a good one.

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