
In today’s episode, I want to talk to you about clear financial goals for your business and having lifestyle parameters around them. I cover why this is so important for perfectionist entrepreneurs (and why we tend not to set them).
I’ve been having conversations with people about this topic – and we discuss this a lot in my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done – so I hope you find this episode helpful.
When you listen to the end, you’ll learn about how a clear financial goal and lifestyle parameters help you go all in on your business without sacrificing work-life balance.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode463.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Why you need a clear financial goal
- What happens when you don’t have a financial goal for your business
- Why perfectionists tend not to set a clear financial goal
- How to set lifestyle parameters so you can show up fully without burning out
Featured In The Episode::
- Free training: How To Plan Properly As A Perfectionist with Power Planning
- Sign up for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) – samlaurabrown.com/pgsd
- Take The Perfectionism Quiz: samlaurabrown.com/quiz
- Sign up for daily Perfectionist Power-Ups – samlaurabrown.com/power
- Follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject
Work With Me:
My coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) teaches you how to plan properly as a perfectionist so you can get out of your own way in your business. To find out more about the program and sign up today, visit: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
Listen To The Episode
Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 463 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project, a podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionist Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business. You can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject
Sam Laura Brown
Hi and welcome to another episode of The perfectionism project, a podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sandler Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the perfectionist getting shit done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PTSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram at perfectionism project.
Okay, so something I want to talk about in today’s episode is clear financial goals and having lifestyle parameters around them and why that’s so important for perfectionist entrepreneurs. I’ve been having a few conversations with people recently about this. And also, this is something we talk about a lot in my program PGSD, and that you will learn how to do. But I just really want to share with you in this episode, why having a clear financial goal for your business is so important, what happens if you don’t have one, why perfectionists don’t tend to set clear financial goals for their business, and then also what to think about when it comes to lifestyle parameters.
And really what that means basically, having constraints around your business so that you aren’t scared that you are going to let your personal life burn to the ground that right now, you might be holding yourself back in your business, because you were scared that if you go all in and show up fully that you are going to neglect your most important relationships that you are going to burn out again, if you’re someone with a history of burnout like most perfectionist are, or you’re scared that your work life balance, which is already pretty shit is only going to get shitter. So when it comes to this topic, I just want to begin by talking about why you need a clear financial goal. Like why this is actually so important for you as an entrepreneur. Because not everyone gets taught about goal setting. And it can kind of just sound like you know, that’s a nice thing to do.
Come January that I’m going to set some goals and intentions for myself. But most people don’t take goal setting seriously simply because they don’t really know the power it has and how to do it properly. Especially as a perfectionist. The way that it’s typically taught isn’t going to work for your perfectionist brain, if you’ve heard about smart goals, for example, where the goal is. What is the “S” for, specific, measurable, and then I think it’s like achievable realistic time bound. Like I’m a believer in all of that except the piece about it being realistic. And there’s a very particular reason as a perfectionist, you don’t want to have a completely realistic feeling goal.
So I’ll talk about that a bit in this episode. But having a clear financial goal is so important for not just your business success and being able to make the money that you want to make in your business, but also for your day to day enjoyment and satisfaction. And there’s a lot of problems caused by not having a clear financial goal. In PGSD, the goal you’ll set is a growth goal. And so I’ll talk about that in a second. But you need to have a clear financial goal. For your business, I recommend for those who come into PGSD, the way we do it, is you set your growth goal and that is a 12 month revenue goal. And it’s set just a bit above what you believe is possible because if you set it to be a realistic goal, what you’re actually doing is not thinking about reality.
But what you’re doing is you’re setting the goal where your beliefs currently are. And it feels realistic, because it’s matching your identity and your current thoughts that you have about yourself and what you’re capable of. So perfectionist will typically tend to either set no goals at all with regard to disappointment, will have really vague goals like I want to go full time in my business or make six figures or replace my income. Or we just have these like massive goals that are so so big. And what we actually just need to do is have a 12 month goal. And as you get more experienced with goal setting, you can think about bigger timeframes. But even for a lot of perfectionist entrepreneurs, when they begin working with me that having a 12 month goal is a pretty scary thing that feels like a pretty big commitment.
And this is why when you set your growth goal is going to be a 12 month revenue goal that said just above what you believe is possible, I’ll guide you through it in the program. And then you’re going to break it down into quarterly milestones that incrementally increase. So for example, if your goal is 100k, quarter one, the first three months of the year will be 30k, no, sorry, I’m getting confuse with three word. With 10k and then 20k for the next quarter, 30k for the next quarter. And then 40k would overall equals out to 100k. So over time, you were incrementally able to increase your belief and break it down. Use power planning to achieve those goals within the lifestyle parameters that you set for yourself which we’ll talk about soon. But you need to have that clear goal and be exactly clear on that. This is how much I want to make.
And you’re going to be open to the how it actually happens, you don’t have to decide, okay, I need to make exactly this much from having this service or this product that I sell. And exactly this month from that. Future you can figure that out, you’ll get specific about the first quarter and trust your future self, to figure certain things out along the way. But if you don’t have this kind of goal, there are a few things that are going to happen. So you will be driving with no destination, if you don’t have a growth goal, if you don’t have a clear financial goal that really works for your perfectionist brain. So when you are if you think about the analogy, driving around in the car, if I was like, Okay, I’m gonna go for a drive today, because I want to be productive, like I want to be doing things.
So I’m going to go for a drive, and we’ll see where I end up like, I’m just going to be driving, then who knows, like, I’m probably not going to get anywhere. If I do, I’m not going to notice that I’m somewhere because I hadn’t planned to get there. And I’m probably not going to be really enjoying the journey. Maybe I am. But for most perfectionist we’re so focused on like, trying to get somewhere that we tend not to really be just like enjoying the journey when we have no destination at all. And it’s also really hard to know like, which turned do I take and to just really feel like what is the point of this, it’s such a waste of time. And so probably once we have to do anything that’s even remotely hard, we’re going to avoid it, we’re going to procrastinate, and try not have to do it because we don’t actually have a destination in mind.
But if you think instead about like if you were saying I’m going to drive from Los Angeles to New York, and you have that destination, that is what creates a meaningful, enjoyable journey that you actually can figure out where you need to turn at different roads and all of those things. And when you get to a hard point, you can make decisions, you can prioritize what matters, you can actually know when I need to rest and might need to keep driving, because you have a destination in mind that quote about it’s the journey, not the destination, I think like the next little bit after that needs to be. But without a destination, it is really hard to have a meaningful fulfilling journey. And most likely, if you are someone who wants to be working, and having a business for an extended period of time for decades, then really caring about and catering to your day to day experience and enjoyment and fulfillment levels is very, very, very important. And without a destination, it is so easy to get in a slump. And just really find it hard to motivate yourself.
If you also think about the analogy as well of building a house without deciding what kind of house you’re going to build. You’re not going to know where to start, you’re gonna be overwhelmed with options. You can’t make decisions like if you don’t know even what kind of house you are trying to construct. You don’t know like, do you need cement? Do you need plasterboard? Like, do you need to have like floorboards and wooden flooring? Or like what actually are you even doing? Do you need tiles like it’s so hard to even figure out where to start, it just becomes this huge overwhelming thing. It’s like I don’t even have time to lay out what kind of house I’m going to be building I just need to start building, then it’s going to be a shit experience, you’re not going to end up with a house.
And really when we think about it in terms of business, like having that direction, having that destination in the GPS is so important. It’s such a gift that we give to ourselves, when we actually decide this is where I’m going. And future me can update that at any point in time. This isn’t set in stone. And this isn’t at any cost. But what I am saying is this is my intention, this is where I’m heading. It’s really important to know too, that the goal always comes before the plan because the goal is what creates and informs the plan that I have seen so often this kind of mindset towards goals, which isn’t intentional, but just if no one has taught you about why goals actually matter. It’s just again, a nice thing to do at the New Year, then you might not have understood this and have maybe made this mistake. But when we’re like okay, I’ll make the plan. And then I’ll figure out the goal afterwards. And we’re kind of in that saying like, Okay, say for example, if you’re doing a launch, and you say okay, I’m going to make the plan of like, I’m going to do this number of posts, and I’m going to show up on live on this team, whatever.
And then after that, I’m going to say how many people I think will come from that how many signups or sales or whatever. That is us not actually getting to own our power that we have as creators. And also, who knows, like, we really don’t know what the result of that plan is going to be. And we can just say, Okay, well, maybe this number will come from that instead of actually saying if we think back to that analogy about like, when you’re building a house, typically most people you have a house plan, like when we did our renovation, we didn’t start on that we didn’t lift a finger and do anything until we actually had all the plans drawn out and a lot of the foundational decisions made and then things could move ahead quite quickly. But when we don’t have that goal, then we’re just busy doing shit that doesn’t matter. And that is when if you’re feeling like you’re in a slump if you’re feeling a bit directionless and like you’re exhausted the end of the week, but you don’t really even know what you got done, and you feel like you’re lazy, because you have things you need to do when you aren’t doing them, a big part of that is going to come down to your goal setting and your planning.
And if you don’t have a goal, that is informing your decisions that you’re making, about how to spend your time, what to do, when to rest, when not to rest, and all of that, then you aren’t actually going to be able to create a sense of progress or any actual tangible project progress, you will just be driving around with no destination, and then feeling so disheartened that you haven’t gotten anywhere. So you need to actually set for yourself a clear financial goal. A few other things I want to mention as well that can come up when we don’t have this and we haven’t actually taking the time to think about like, what is the financial goal for the business, and then I’ll talk about why perfectionists don’t tend to set clear financial goals is that you will work towards other people’s goals without realizing that it is such a gift to invest the time. And as they even take that long, but to invest the time into thinking about like, what do I actually want what is actually important to me, this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about personally, recently, in terms of the goals that I have for a million in revenue in a 12 month period that I have made over that amount in terms of my business as a whole.
But when it comes to having that be achieved in a 12 month period, which I definitely believe I’m capable of. And so it is tempting for us perfectionist, we’re like, well, I can and I’m capable, so I should. But when I’ve actually looked at part of the reason that I haven’t got to that goal is because I don’t actually have my own personal reasons why. It’s just like, well, because that’s a cool thing to do. And others have said like, once you’re making 100,000 a year and then multiple hundreds of 1000s a year you should be going for a million and then you should be going for more than that. And so I just kind of adopted that goal. And it has been therefore harder to really be committed fully to that goal. Because I don’t feel like it’s actually my goal. But for example, a goal that I did have that was genuinely my goal. And something that was very important to me and very, I was very driven to achieve was going full time in my business and being able to support myself comfortably with a full time salary, not just like not working another job, but being able to pay myself more than I got paid in the corporate world.
And for me specifically I wanted to be I had decided the figure was making 150,000 per year in my business before I quit. And in hindsight, I don’t think I needed to be making that much. But that was the amount to my brain that felt safe. And so once I made that amount, I was able to go full time in my business, it was a full journey actually recently reshare the episode where I share that journey, because that episode, like I just really walk you through it. And if you are on that transition, and that journey, it was such a impactful, like, I don’t know if anything else I achieved will create such a feeling of success for me, because that was like that actually fundamentally changed my day to day life. Whereas making a million dollars, yes, there are benefits to that in my day to day life.
But I’ll still be sitting at the same desk also be doing the same bushwalks with the same dog, like there are things that will change, but because it hasn’t been my goal, and I just kind of adopted it, that it’s so beneficial to just have time to reflect on like, what are my actual goals, and what makes sense for me. And I think I’m so glad that I did adopt other people’s goals while I was on the journey of figuring that out. And now I’m at a point, especially after having the twins and having three little ones now, that’d be like I have actually really fundamentally changed as a person in so many ways. I’m such a big believer, we talk about this all the time in PGSD, you’re always achieving your goals in a way that’s alignment, in alignment with your values. And those values might be family, and taking care of yourself and doing things in a sustainable way. It’s not at any costs, it’s in a way that’s in alignment with your values, and my values have shifted.
And so what I’m doing is now reviewing everything and getting everything, again in alignment with my values, which I think as entrepreneurs, if we have a business for any significant period of time, we will need to be doing that multiple times across our entrepreneurial career where we will have a life shift for whatever reason. And we will need to reevaluate, like, do I still want the same things that I wanted before and it being okay to have different priorities. And for me, for example, having much stricter lifestyle parameters, which I’ll talk about later, and still getting my brain to solve for ultimately that question of a million dollars in a 12 month period. But changing the timeframe a bit. I’ll do a podcast episode update on that as well. But when we don’t actually have a clear financial goal, and we haven’t had any time to even think about the goal. We just end up adopting other people’s goals. And then we can have a lot of these like existential crises around like what I’m even doing this anyway. And what does it even matter if we haven’t actually found our own reasons for having a goal.
So having a goal, and setting your growth goal is really a great opportunity for you to find and connect with those reasons. And it’s okay as well, if you’re like, I don’t know the goal, and I’m just gonna pick this goal because someone else has it, that’s totally okay too. But over time, you will develop such an intimacy with yourself such a deep knowing of yourself and a self trust, that will allow you to want things that other people don’t want, and to not want things that other people do want. So if you don’t have a clear financial goal, you will be busy doing a lot of things that are not adding up to people. So basically, like, if you think about it, I’m just trying to give you all the different analogies so you can really think about it. But if you’re trying to build a puzzle, do a puzzle, whatever. And you just have like a couple of pieces of the puzzle, but you don’t actually you know, when you’re doing a puzzle, and you can see the image that’s on the top of the puzzle box of like, this is the puzzle you’re making.
So much easier, so much more enjoyable, like, Okay, this piece fits here, this piece fits there. Yes, it might be a long and tedious process, especially if you’re in like 1000 piece puzzle. But ultimately, if you know what puzzle you’re making, you were able to persist through that. Imagine now you’re doing 1000 piece puzzle, and you haven’t been showing the box and you just have that massive pile of puzzle pieces to organize and figure out how they go together. Not only is it so frustrating me like I don’t even know like, what’s the point of this, I don’t even know if I’m gonna like this puzzle at the end of it. Like I don’t even know what I am doing here. So that is a symptom of not having a clear financial goal, not making the money that you could be making. So especially because our perfectionist brain like we don’t want to disappoint ourselves and like be judging ourselves and shaming ourselves. So we tend to then just completely underestimate what we’re capable of, and shoot a lot lower than what is possible.
And also because we’re scared of going all in because we’re scared about like all or nothing mindset having us achieve that goal at any cause, that we actually end up making a lot less money than we can make. And I’ll talk about money mindset in a second. Because we have some kind of like false associations as well, we’d like more money means less time with family, what it means is, it means that we don’t invite our brain to release solve for, okay, this is the amount of money I want to make. And this is the values that I have when it comes to making that money. Okay, clever brain, let’s figure out a way to do it. Not actually getting to see your own capabilities as well around problem solving, selling, being courageous, being brave.
Like I know, for me when my financial goals was so vague and indiscriminate, that I wasn’t actually able to even believe in myself as much as I can now, because I didn’t give myself opportunities to show myself what I’m capable of, and not from this proving energy and like I need to prove it because that will burn you out like nothing else. Even if you’re just trying to prove it to yourself. Proving energy always creates burnout. So when it’s really just like, I wonder what I’m capable of, from this more growth minded place of like, I can develop skill sets, I can develop emotional capacity and courage. And I like I wonder what I can do. I wonder what amazing creative things I can get up to, when we’re in that state of mind, it’s so much more fun than when we are actually like, I’m not capable of anything we believe all the self doubt we have. We believe what we think about ourselves is true.
And so we don’t actually get to create a new reality for ourselves. So I want to talk now about why perfectionists don’t set clear financial goals. I’ve touched on a few of these, but I just want to tell you why we tend to not actually take this clear approach. And instead take like, I’ll see where I end up approach and have things be more vague, or maybe you have like 17 goals, which is actually also just having very vague goals, because it’s impossible to do all of it and focus on all of it at once you’re not really committed to any of it. So we haven’t been taught about the importance of goal setting could be one of the reasons. So also, don’t beat yourself up when you’re listening to this, like I haven’t had a clear goal like I can help you set one and PGSD that’s one of the first things you will do have personal support with setting your goals goal setting at the right level, and then creating a plan that’s really going to get you there. But it can be simple as you haven’t been taught the importance of goal setting and how that comes into business.
And it’s not just like a New Year’s thing to do. Maybe you don’t understand the connection between your thoughts, feelings, actions and results. And therefore you feel like achieving goal is out of your hands. So there’s another one that we’re like when you have that fear of disappointment. And you also just feel like you know, I can’t actually control whether other people decide whether to buy or not. Or maybe it’s like the only way for me to control that is for me to convince people who don’t want it or it’s not a good fit for. So we end up in this just like well, there’s actually no point setting a goal because I’m not in control of that. But if you really start to learn and understand which I won’t go into too much into this episode. But if you start to understand how your brain works. And when you think a certain thought it will create a feeling in your body, and that feeling will generate a certain kind of action, which will create a result.
So for example, if you believe I could never have a successful business just as a random thought I’m picking, if you believe that, I don’t know it can feel so true when we think that style of thought, If you believe that I could never have a successful business, most likely when you think that you will feel in your body a feeling of inadequacy, a feeling of shame, a feeling of helplessness from that place, are we going to have our best creative ideas are we going to be courageous and show up and put ourselves out there are we going to be doing new things that we need to be doing or following through on the simple things that we need to do? No. So when we look at the result that creates the result is you don’t have a successful business, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. And when you can start to understand the connection between your thoughts and the result that you’re creating. Like you can’t control whether other people buy or not, but you can really feel yourself create the feeling and action that attracts a certain kind of result and it might not be the exact person you thought would buy it.
But you do have so much influence over the result simply from the way you are thinking and feeling because that determines the action you take and the quality of that action that you take that say regardless you might spend a day doing sales calls or whatever or creating social media content but if the underlying thought is I’m not good enough this is never going to work, why am I bothering? Is that content gonna sell the same way where who someone thinks like, I love doing this, this is so helpful for the people that I’m talking to I know how to sell I love what I’m selling like that person is getting much better results from the same Instagram strategy as the person who is thinking the thoughts that has them not actually executing that fully. So that’s why that’s such a big thing that we teach you and coach you on inside perfectionist getting shit done. We want to get your thoughts and feelings to a place where you can actually take effective action and stop stopping yourself from doing things.
So another reason perfectionists don’t set a clear financial goal is fear of failure ie fear of not being loved by others anymore, ie fear of the painful emotion of shame. Another reason is fear of disappointment, ie fear of not being loved by yourself anymore slash being less loved by yourself. Because probably right now you wouldn’t say you love yourself, being less loved by yourself, ie the fear of the painful emotion of shame in your body, the heart face, the beating heart, like those feelings. Ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to avoid here. If we’re in that perfectionist mindset, the feeling of shame. And as you can develop shame, resilience, which is something that we talk about inside PGSD. And you’ll learn about as you can develop that as well. Not only will you not have to avoid shame so much. But also you will actually be able to show up fully because you aren’t fearing your own capability or presuming your own capability of being with that emotion like there is no way to avoid feeling shame. Ultimately, in your life, it’s the human experience. We are wired to be in a tribe to be connected to others.
Shame is the fear of not belonging, of being on love. Like it’s just human for us to experience that emotion. Everyone experiences that emotion no matter what their circumstances are. But our relationship with shame, when we can change that. That’s when we can really have such a different experience when it comes to business. Money mindset is another reason that perfectionists don’t set a clear financial goal. So this is really like the all or nothing side of the perfectionist mindset that comes out that we think that having a financial goal means you’re only doing it for the money. And then there’s this fear of judgment from others. And we are projecting our own judgment of ourselves like, well, if I have this financial goal, especially if it’s a big one, especially if it’s more than people are making who were doing real jobs, then I’m actually like just doing this for some kind of cash grab, like I’m not a good person, we can have all these like tricky little money, thoughts that stop us from having a financial goal, even though when it comes to business money is oxygen for the business. It is the measure of value of commercial value of what you’re doing.
And even I think this is such an important thing for those who are like, I just want to help people like what a charity is doing all the time. They’re fundraising because you need money to help people. So it’s like just really understanding if you want to play the game of business, money is a factor in that. And the healthiest way to look at that is to actually just embrace that and have a clean relationship with it. Versus when we’re avoiding that money is part of business, then we actually spend so much more time thinking about money, we end up then making less and then we end up having to do things for the money. And so having a clean relationship with money and not thinking about money in a perfectionist way is really important as well. So perfectionists also don’t set a clear financial goal because it requires you to sell things and it comes back to money mindset as well.
But like fear of rejection, that often the approach that I see when people come to me in the program, they are really focused on posting consistently on social media, or having a certain follower count, because they have equated that maybe even just unconsciously with if I have a large enough following, and if I’m creating high enough quality content that I don’t actually have to sell, I don’t have to be salesy. And instead, if we can actually have a financial goal, do some of that work on money mindset, I don’t think I’ve even mentioned this in ages. But there is a money mindset, of course, with infectious getting shit done. But if you are doing that work on your money mindset, and you are able to actually like, learn how to sell and embrace that that is part of business and that you are selling to people who want to buy and who will be helped, and that they have free will. And it’s not about trying to convince people, then it’s just such a more enjoyable experience of business.
And even if you decided to not for profit, you would still be spending a lot of time thinking about money, you’d need to have goals in terms of financial goals for your not for profit, you just wouldn’t be making a profit. And also, we’re scared that we’ll sacrifice important things in order to get to that goal that it will be at any cost. Again, it’s an all or nothing mindset that perfectionist have, that we are scared of letting ourselves go all in because we’re worried we’ll let everything else burn to the ground. And I want to say like, you don’t have to be worried about that. And there are ways to really set things up that work for your perfectionist brain, which is what I help people do for a living. That’s my thing, that’s my jam it really helping you be productive and show up and get shit done and build your business in a way that works through perfectionist brain.
So you don’t have to be just working under this constant pressure. And then feeling like you’re just avoiding everything that you should be doing. And then you feel like shit because of that. But then you don’t have to get out of it. Because you’re in this slump and like you should be further along by now you’re so behind like all of that, you don’t actually have to have a goal where, okay, if I have a financial goal now as at any cost, and like I’m just gonna lose myself in this goal. No, you’re not. And when we are talking about the growth goal. So as I said that basic underlying principle is it’s always in a way that’s in alignment with your values in alignment with the way that you want to do business. In alignment with the business model you actually want, like you don’t like I don’t have sponsors on this podcast, because I don’t want them.
And so even though, that means leaving money on the table, I’m willing to do that. Because ultimately, what matters to me is having a business that I actually enjoy working in. Because regardless of how much money the business is making, or how successful I am, or there’s like milestone moments, day to day, on my three days a week that I’m working, I’m going to be working on the business, and I want to actually have a business that I like working in, because if I didn’t what’s the point, I may as well have a job, therefore not having the risk of having a business. So lifestyle parameters, this is something you can be thinking about when you’re setting your growth goal, that you are going to just essentially, like articulate a few of your values that you have, and be able to feel safe, really going all in on your financial goal because it will calm your brain down when it comes to that thought particularly about well, this goal means I’m gonna have to like sacrifice time with my husband or my wife, it means I’m not never gonna see my kids, I’m not going to have any time for my hobbies, I’m never gonna be able to figure out what my hobbies are, I’m not going to have basically any time for anything else, my health and fitness is completely gone and go.
And it’s so interesting, our brain does that even when we’re not spending like the ideal quality time we want. And maybe we’re wasted at like scrolling or doing different things like that. And even if we’re not already looking after ourselves, who won’t like, but I could be and this goal will stop me from doing that. So what we want to do is have these lifestyle parameters and basically like constraints. And this is something as I mentioned, I’ve been looking at a lot myself recently. Because when it comes to the like my shift in values in terms of like just wanting to spend a lot more time in my personal life, then previously wanting to spend time with my kids and my husband and just like having a life beyond my business, and also having a lot of my personal growth be in my personal life instead of just in my business as it has been, especially before I had kids, that I have a shift in my priorities. And so I’m updating the lifestyle parameters around my business.
So I’m not going to go into all or nothing mode about okay, well, if I had that shift in values, and like I need to just completely let it go. And I’ll just like tinker away at things in the hours that I have, like, no, I still want to be showing up and like experiencing my own power and creating and doing things that I love, I’d still love it. But I’m just going to have a bit of a different look like a different set of parameters that I previously had. And these, as I mentioned earlier, can change at different periods of your life. So don’t be thinking like, I have to know what this is perfectly. You will figure this out through trial and error and you will update it as your life changes as your wants and needs change. Like you can just change this at any time that you want. But actually articulating this to yourself is so powerful. because then you can actually get your brain to solve for how to achieve your goal with these positive constraints that you’re going to have around your goal, for example, number of work days, or a certain amount of time off per year or work hours, or having certain priority rules that you can actually really just have your brain going, okay?
For example, if you want to make 100,000, and you want to work three days a week, okay, let’s figure out how to do that versus okay, I want to make $100,000. So that means I need to be doing everything in this world, perfectionist brains love to go, I need to be doing more, I need to be doing better, I need to be doing harder, I need to be doing it faster. And so that actually isn’t the way to get there. And is on an enjoyable way to get there. But if you look at okay, what if I asked my intelligent brain to solve for doing that in three days a week. So what I’m doing is having it be three days a week, having a very significant amount of time off. So at least six weeks off, not including all the like four days a week, I already have, but six weeks fully off throughout the year, and really just having as well, like when I am not working. I’m not and this is this is an update, because before I was like, I will listen to business podcasts and things I’m really wanting to have now like when I’m not working, I’m like fully switched off.
And I can listen to your business podcasts every now and again if I want to. But ultimately, what I’m saying is like, I want to have that time that I’ve listened to a business podcast actually be listening to a different kind of podcast. And I want to have the investment that I put towards personal growth, I like consuming things, I want to be consuming things about other areas of my life. And so I’m going to really constrain it to like the three work days, which it already has been. But it was three work days. Plus, throughout the week, I’m listening to a whole lot of things and like mentally working on the business. And of course, my brains are going to be thinking about things. But I know to from experience, like the best ideas that I have. And my best creativity like is really when I have a lot of time off. And there’s been so much evidence for that in my business that when I have the most time off, the business has been the most successful.
And I think this is really something to that I’m such a deep believer in it, my brain can function at such a high level, it’s so much easier to trust myself, things get done so much more quickly and easily. I’m willing to say no to the things that don’t actually matter, and all of that. And so it’s so helpful to just articulate these lifestyle parameters. So again, you can feel safe going all in on it. And you can no future you can update these at any point. So here are just some things to be thinking about. And options for you don’t have to have all of these. But these are just good things to guide your brain towards number of work days per week, how many work days do you want to have? Don’t be like ourselves working through so I should be working three? No, like what do you want? What do you actually want. So number of work days, and again, you’ll figure out through trial and error, like I’ve traveled like, four days, but I like having like I like seeing the kids are more days than I don’t even I do see them on work days.
But I like having more days with them that I don’t have with them. So what I’ve tried doing four days, like actually don’t love that I’ve tried to in two days, that’s not enough. And so having three is really the sweet spot, kind of use my power planning to figure out what that looks like for me number of work hours on a workday. And also as well like this is I think really like the benefit of power planning. And having such a great tool to help you figure it out yourself that some people and like for example, some PGSD is they love doing like a few hours of work every day, or say five days a week, like they’ll work for two or three hours. And they have the afternoons off, or they’ll have the mornings off and work for a few hours in the afternoon. I personally and I’ve experimented with this so many different ways. But I personally love having either a work day or non work day, I don’t like just dabbling a bit here and now like to like get into things, do some deep work and then be completely switched off.
So you can figure that out as well. But for me, like an ideal work day, I’d say wouldn’t be any more than seven hours, six. I think at that point, I’m really doing courageous work and like doing important things. Having a six hour work day is really like gives me that nice balance of a lot of rest, and then having a constrained period of time. So if I’m only working six hours a day, and I’m only working three days a week, there isn’t really much time to do the unimportant stuff, because I’m not going to make any progress. So it really just helps me prioritize and direct my time. In PGSD, you’ll learn more about figuring out your work hours and things like that amount of time off per week or per year. So you might say I want a certain number of days of per week, which will kind of come up in your number of work days. But for example you might have I want to have a certain number of weeks off per year. A lot of entrepreneurs have zero weeks off per year, and you’re the boss don’t forget that you are the boss you can decide and you can ask your intelligent creative brain to solve for how to have that time off without you being there.
And so I’ve had significant periods of time off like when I had Lydia I have I had three months, I think, and the twins, I had another three months. And in 2022, I had like, lots of weeks here and there, I was just like hanging out at home. Last year, I didn’t have any weeks off. And I paid the price for that in so many ways. And it’s just so easy to get into this mindset of like, when things aren’t working, I need to work more to get them on track, and then I can rest again. And I’m so glad that I’m not in that pattern. And I just see that pattern come up again, for my brain like, oh, okay, we’ve been here before, let’s get back to resting. But it really doesn’t help me have better ideas, it really doesn’t help me have more cards, it doesn’t help me have more self trust, it only means they end up doing things that don’t actually matter. And so I have just had it confirmed to me in so many different ways that having that clean rest, which you’ll learn about in PGSD. But having that clean rest, is what actually allows you to really be functioning at your best. And so for me a six hour workday, if I’m not getting clean rest, then I’m not gonna be productive in that workday. And so it feels like I should work more.
But if I am actually getting the clean rest, if I am having time off, and time to just be me, then when it is go time, I can actually show up and get shit done. Also, really, the last one I mentioned here, just for you to think about is what you will prioritize. So when you’re doing your power plan in your power hour, you will, as part of that process, create a few contingency plans. And I’ll teach you how to do that. But I want to mention here that you can create for yourself little rules that are kind of like lifestyle parameters. But like for example, if one of my kids needs me, I will prioritize that over my business. And that might already be a default rule for you, for example. But there might be some other ones that you want to set up in place as well. So that you are really prioritizing the things that matter to you. For example, I’m not going to start my workday until I have done my workout, or whatever.
And it’s really important to then like not use those things against yourself and be like, well, I can’t work out. So the afternoon because you have something brave you need to do. So you’re like oh, just procrastinate on the workout. So I can’t start start work yet. In your weekly review and your self study session the end of the week. That’s what that weekly review is, you will really be studying and understanding like when you are self sabotaging and when you aren’t, but it is safe to have rules around like generally speaking, this is what I will prioritize if there is a conflict between my work or my goal. And something that’s really important to me. And I’m going to choose this thing over that goal at any given time. And it could also be, for example, doing that within your business like getting to solve for like, for example, like I don’t want to ever be on TikTok, I’m going to solve my own brain keeps telling me I should be, I’m going to solve for how to have a successful business without that, like your brain is so intelligent. But when we’re thinking I have to do it right, I have to do it like everyone else.
And we don’t even know where we’re trying to get to, we just end up doing a whole lot of shit, that doesn’t actually matter. And so when you can have these lifestyle parameters around a certain number of days, certain number of work hours, and you are taking that to your power planning. And you also have safeguards for yourself essentially, that mean that you know that you can anticipate ahead of time some conflicts that might come up. So say for example, if you do a service based business, and one of your fears is like I have too many clients and then I’ll have to be like on calls in the evening or like on call all the time. And then instead of hanging out with my partner and I was watching our show, like I’ll have to be on the on a call. You can have a real I just don’t take any calls after 5pm or after 2pm or whatever it is like you are the boss. We tend to forget that with our perfectionists brain, we think that we just have to have everyone else is doing it so we can get it right. And so we can be loved.
So with that said, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, it’s been really helpful you to hear about having a clear financial goal, having that growth goal, why that’s so important for your not only your success, but for your satisfaction as an entrepreneur and then having lifestyle parameters around it. So that you are able to feel safe going all in and that you’re not going to do it at any cost and you’re not going to burn your business or your personal life to the ground and you’re not going to have to do all the things you don’t want to do. We’re getting our brains to solve for what do I want to create? And how can I do that in the way that I want to do it. And it’s such a powerful thing and I absolutely love teaching it so if you do want to join me inside perfectionist getting shit down if you want to be taught how to set your growth goal if you want to be supported with that and then learn power planning, learn how to coach yourself, learn how to show up and get shit done. Then samlaurabrown.com/pgsd is where you can go to find out more about the program and sign up. We are open for enrollment. I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.