Goal setting can be fun and stressful at the same time. Dr. Deb shares how to stay on track to meet your goals and grow your practice while maintaining your sanity and personal life. 

Do not miss these highlights:

02:08 Start making progress and changing the landscape of your life and your business to accomplish a bigger goal 

02:24 You need to have a plan on how you’re going to get there,  just like going on a trip 

03:53   It's easy for things to derail us in our life, the same way for businesses. You might derail from your original goal.

04:40 Write down your goals for one year, five years and 10 years, break them down and reevaluate 

06:17 Your desired future - Track your progress.

09:37 The desired future statement - It lays out where you're going in the next 12 months and how you plan to get there.

11:08 Define your objectives - Outline how you're going to reach that desired future, determine what must happen to achieve your goal over the next 12 months

12:24 Follow your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) - Define what it takes to accomplish your goals and your objectives. 

15:15 It is your job as the leader in the practice, to tell people what you’re thinking, share the objectives, goals, and the expectations to help reach the goal

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

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Transcript of Epsiode #29:

0:01
You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Devin has a wealth of knowledge, and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive. And for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry, because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care, she will discuss it all with you.

0:54
Hi, welcome back to the FMBI podcast. And today I want to talk to you about accomplishing your goals. You know, every year we set goals, and oftentimes we set them and we forget them. Now, at the end of every year, I go through and I look at what did I accomplish last year, I pull out my goals that I wrote down at the end of the year before and I see what I accomplished and what I didn't. But part of the problem with doing that is when we set our goals and I was notorious for this, when I first started out in business, and even just in my personal life, I would write down all my goals and I would be excited about accomplishing them. But then I'd forget about them. I put them in a book and I'd never look at them again until the end of the year. And if I manifested them, and they came true, great. And if not, I'd put them on the list for next year, when I really got good at setting goals, and not only setting them, but each week writing down what are the big three things that I'm going to do in my personal life and my professional life to accomplish my bigger goal is when I really started making progress and changing the landscape of my life and my business.

2:18
So it's important for us to know big picture, where are we going? What are we doing? But then we have to have a plan on how we're going to get there. If we don't have a plan, then oftentimes it doesn't happen. It's kind of like going on a trip right? Back in the day before we had GPS, we'd have to have a map. And we'd we'd write out like where are we going? Where were we going to stop? How are we going to get there. And then we knew by you know, 10 o'clock on Tuesday, we would arrive at whatever destination we were going to. With GPS, it's a little different nowadays, we don't have to plan so much, we just have to put in our end destination and let GPS take us where we want to go. Now, if any of you are like me, and you've used GPS before, sometimes it takes you to a destination that's not on your target. I actually remember one time I was with my mom and we were in New Mexico. And we were looking for this ghost town we wanted to go see this ghost town. And we plugged in the address. And we went on this trip. And we started taking all these cattle roads and we were way in like the middle of nowhere. And all of a sudden we got the sign from GPS saying you've arrived at your destination. And the only thing around us were these huge rock outcroppings. And we looked at each other and started laughing and said, I don't think this is the ghost town we were looking for. But we are in the middle of nowhere. So if something weird happens, well, I guess we hit the ghost town. And you have to laugh a little bit about things like that, because it's easy for things to derail us in our life. And our businesses are the same way. We can write down a goal and have an end in mind. But maybe an employee leaves or someone gets sick, or you don't have the funds that you need to make that dream happen. Or even something better happens you get a new person, and they have a completely different outlook on what they want to provide. So you now transition your goal and you start focusing on adding a new service adding a new employee marketing that person strategy and expertise. But it derails you from your original goal. So I always like to set up goals in small fashions and big fashion.

4:39
So I would say you know write down your goal one year, five years and 10 years. These are our big picture goals. Where do we want to be what do we want to be? Who do we want to be when we grow up right? And then you need to take a step back and say okay to reach that one year goal, what do I need to happen? Each quarter to reach that goal, and then break it down again, what do I need to do each month, and then each week to make that happen. And if at the end of the week, we are starting to look at and say, Okay, I had three things in my professional life that I needed to accomplish to hit this goal by a month, and it didn't happen. And week after week, after week, it doesn't happen, then we need to reevaluate our goal. Is that goal really important? Or are we not going to meet that goal, because maybe it doesn't matter anymore, maybe something bigger or better came in, and we want to change that whole outlook on things. Or maybe we're saying, you know, what, I'm letting other things get in the way of me achieving this goal and I need to become more disciplined about achieving that goal. I need to really buckle down and do what I need to do to make this work. So that each week, then we look at that, and we evaluate tha and it allows us to be honest with ourselves and be honest with our goals and decide whether or not these goals are going to make it or not. So that's my first thing about accomplishing goals.

6:16
The next thing I want to talk about, is the term desired future. We use this term a lot, what is the desired future? What does winning look like in your company over the next 12 months? What's your annual goal over the next 12 months? Now, you should track your progress. And we have a tool called the financial tracker that we use to track our progress. We track the number of patients we see the number of patients or new patients that we bring into the practice. And then we track individual financial value to the practice, how much did each provider bring in to the practice, and we can look at that month over month, quarter over quarter. And we can see if we're growing, or if we're stagnant. And we can see if all of the marketing expenses and all of the marketing things that we're doing, are actually driving more traffic and more business to the practice? Or are we not driving anything is our business not growing with the marketing aspects that we're doing. So I really love the financial tracker, it's been really helpful for me, it even allows me to go back to my providers and say, hey, you know, you're asking for a raise. But this is how much you've brought into the practice, this is your contribution to the practice. And I can either meet that raise, or I can maybe even give you more because you've brought in x to the practice. Or sometimes unfortunately, we have the conversation and say, I can't have your salary be more than what you're contributing and bringing into the practice. So we need to look at this a little bit. And how about if we make this goal, if you bring in X to the practice, then I can give you x in a salary. And here are the steps and the things that we're going to do to help you gain that financial future for yourself and for the practice, I will do this, but I need you to do that. And so this, this takes all of the emotion out of these financial