Diana Alt [00:00:02]:
Hey there, everybody. Happy New Year. I'm trying something new. I'm out live on YouTube right now recording this solo podcast episode that's going to come out sometime next week. If you're watching live, feel free to hang out. If you're listening later. Welcome to the party. Let's get into it.

Diana Alt [00:00:17]:
Here on work should feel good. The show or your career growth meets your real life. Last week when I was planning out this episode, I actually asked on my Facebook page just for ideas for what would be useful to people for the first solo podcast episode of the season. Oh, and here's what we came up with. Basically, people had a lot of great ideas and the one I ended up really resonating with me is the person, it's a friend of mine named Bill. That said, everybody has all these great intentions for the new year, but sometimes we have trouble turning them into action. So today we're going to talk about exactly how to do that at a high level. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on here and try to boil the ocean because that's one of the things people are doing wrong.

Diana Alt [00:01:03]:
So the pattern that we all have seen if you've been on Planet Earth for any length of time, is that this type of time of year for so many people creates reflection and hope and this sense that I'm going to crush a whole bunch of goals and make this the best year ever. And they spend time noticing what has been working, what hasn't been working, and just plan things that they want to do. And then a few weeks later, after they've made these long lists of resolutions, they end up doing exactly the same crap that they were doing before. I've been very guilty of this in the past and a lot of years I just don't even worry about trying to do new things at the start of the new year. But even years where I really have been focused on that, I haven't always done a great job of follow through, hence the episode today. So this is something that is not about motivation or discipline. Though a lot of times when people make some New Year's goals or resolutions and then aren't able to turn it into action, turn it into the results they want, they will beat themselves up as if they don't have the motivation, they don't have the willpower, they don't have the discipline, they somehow suck in some way. And it's actually not that usually there's a few different patterns that people do.

Diana Alt [00:02:23]:
They kind of get wrong, they make mistakes that are from the very beginning, dooming them to not be able to turn their ideas into action. So we're going to talk about all three of those. These things can apply whether you're doing just one or two small things or whether you're trying to set goals for your whole entire business, which is very much in mind today because I spent my morning today building myself a high level plan for the first quarter of 2026 for my business. So the first thing, first mistake people make, and I have been the absolute worst at this. In fact, I was constantly fighting with myself today to make sure I didn't do it again. And that is trying to change everything instead of selecting just a few things to focus on. If you're like me, you have a whole bunch of ideas at all times about how to improve your life, how to improve work, how to improve your family, your health, your business, all the things. And that can be really paralyzing.

Diana Alt [00:03:25]:
Now, if I have the luxury of time, I can sit down and make copious lists with smart goals and all the things of what I'm going to do, but they don't turn into action because there are too many of them. And sometimes also because I went into such depth, like when I had the luxury of time over say a two week holiday vacation to write those things down, they don't stand up to my normal life. So what ends up happening is that people have all this great reflection and it falls apart because of a lack of focus. So here's a couple of examples of how you can take a great intention and turn it into something that actually will become part of your habits. The first thing is, is fitness and health. A lot of people have goals to lose weight, they have goals to eat healthier, those types of things. But what they end up doing is going from nothing or in some cases worse than nothing because they indulged and gained extra weight and absolutely didn't even do the minimal workouts that they had planned for the month of December, say. But instead of trying to fix everything all at once, it's a really great idea to pick just one thing every two to four weeks and work on that.

Diana Alt [00:04:41]:
That. So last year I did this really well up until I found out. I, you know, I had to have surgery and my, you know, some medical leave and things I had to do really messed me up a little bit. But I did really well with reducing caffeine and reducing sugar a lot in the first six to eight weeks of the year because I took small steps every couple of weeks. So. So if you have lofty fitness goals. Don't go from zero to I'm going to be at the gym every day at 5:30 in the morning. If 5:30 is when you need to work out, fine.

Diana Alt [00:05:17]:
But try to do it twice this week, twice next week, and then re evaluate whether you want to add more. Another thing is like I said for business planning, when you have something large like I work full time in my business, having a practice of choosing a few key things to focus on for the quarter instead of spreading yourself too thin is a really good idea. I am a solopreneur that has support from a VA team. So for me I have a lot of operational things that have to happen no matter what or I'll be breaching contracts that I have with clients. So what I did today is ask myself a few questions to help me target the first few extra projects above and beyond normal operations that I was going to do for Q1. So some of the questions I asked myself were what is costing me the most energy in my business right now? That uncovered some stress around pipeline of new clients and it also uncovered some annoyance with some systems, things that I need to dial in and improve. Another question I asked is if I fixed only one thing, what would make everything else easier? In my case, the answer to that was actually lead generation, which is almost always the answer for business owners like me. But if I know that whenever people are aware of me and are interested enough to come and talk to me about my services or investigate, you know, some other things that I have going on, like one off coaching calls or digital products, I convert at a pretty high rate.

Diana Alt [00:06:57]:
I have data that tells me that. But if I don't have anybody that's in the lead in the lead pipeline, then there's nothing to convert. So for me, fixing lead generation fixes a lot of other problems, including revenue and the ability to buy more help and delegate more tests. And then another question is what fits the season that I'm actually in? I have found that I'm now wanting to go into a growth season, but I don't want to be too crazy about it because I still am learning like what are my limits physically after having surgery? The recovery from my surgery till you feel at your best can take up to a year and I'm only five months into that. So for me, a season of making things effective but not trying to do too many things is really important to me. So for reference, some of the things I came up with are that I really miss teaching. Another thing I asked is what Do I miss doing? I really miss teaching workshops and things like that. So I've got some tentative plans to do at least one free workshop under my own banner, meaning for my business, not for somebody else.

Diana Alt [00:08:13]:
And also I want to do something paid by the end of the quarter so, so that people can access something robust. But that isn't just the surface level that we sometimes get whenever all we're doing is a 45 minute webinar. So that's some of the things that are on my list. Focusing isn't quitting. A lot of times people feel like they have a bunch of goals, they have a bunch of dimensions of their life that they want to improve. And if they don't put everything on the list right now and start taking action, that's actually some form of quitting, some form of being less than. It's actually the direct opposite. When you focus, you can actually start things and finish them so that you can start the next thing instead of having a whole bunch of stuff that's 10% done.

Diana Alt [00:08:57]:
When you choose what you're going to change first, you actually have a chance for that change to happen. The second mistake that I see people have all the time is they'll have intentions, including maybe focusing on one or two different things, but they don't build a plan to make it happen. Intentions sound great, but they aren't actionable. Some of the examples I hear people say are, oh, I need to get out there and network or I really need to go find a new job, or I need to get better at leading my team. All those things are really great and they are the start, but they're not the end of the story. Those intentions need to turn into something concrete that you should can measure and build a plan from. So let's take the example of networking, because I hear this all the time from people, especially people that either got laid off so they're not working right now, or they want to basically prepare so that if something happens and they decide they need to enter the job market or they want to enter the job market voluntarily, they're ready to roll. When you say I should network more, you're not saying how, you're not saying how often, you're not saying who you're going to network with.

Diana Alt [00:10:10]:
You're not saying what success looks like. You're just saying you're going to do a thing and there's nothing behind it. And so what ends up happening is you text a few people that you used to work with and three quarters of them don't text back yet because you're doing this at the very first of the year and they're trying to work on their 10 goals too. A better way to think about this is to say, what do I mean when I say I'm going to network more? That could be as simple as I just want to reach out to two people per week that I used to work with sometime in the last 10 years and send them a text and say how they're doing and ask if they'd like to, you know, get together and have a coffee conversation or go to lunch or whatever. That's it. Two, that's measurable, it's easy. Another person that doesn't like one on one networking though, they might choose to say, well, I'm going to set a goal that I'm going to go to at least one user group meetup in person thing every two months this year and then they'll go start looking for that. So you get the idea, you have to define it or nothing's going to change because you don't know what to do next.

Diana Alt [00:11:24]:
A bigger example for me, like I said, lead generation is a big thing for me. What I see solopreneurs do all the time though is they just say, oh, I got to get my marketing in order. Marketing is one of the largest domains in business. It covers everything from search engine optimization on your website to lead generation to like customer experience and customer relationships and like that ongoing relationship that we have with people whether they're already a customer or not. Covers reference and referral programs like there's just a million other things. So instead of saying I'm really going to get going on your market on my marketing, I said to myself, I'm really going to get going on activities that I do well that promote lead generation. And for me, one of the things that I'm going to be doing is workshops. So a real plan includes the following.

Diana Alt [00:12:21]:
It includes what is going to change, it includes how that change is going to support, be supported and it includes how you'll know it's working. So in my case I know that I want to have more sales calls on my calendar and I want to have more people following me on social media and joining my email list. In particular, I'm going to support it by having workshops where people will opt in to my email list so they can get all the information about the workshops and other things. And I'm going to support it also by using my VA team to help me set things up for those events. And I'm going to know it's working, because I'm going to track how many people sign up and how many show up and what the feedback is. And then I can decide if I want to repeat the same workshop or I want to change something. Plans don't need to be complicated. They just need to be concrete.

Diana Alt [00:13:19]:
Like I said, a plan of simply brainstorming 10 people that you want to connect with in January and, you know, scheduling 15 minutes twice a week on your calendar to send those people a text, that is a plan, and it is concrete. It meets the bill. The last mistake we're going to talk about today is that people just don't assess whether things are working in general. Part of that's because they never decide, they never defined what it looks like to be successful. For some of these goals, everything's still really squishy. But people just don't do this. They don't do a good job of assessing, they don't do a good job of iterating, and they definitely don't do a good job of celebrating or retrospecting what they're doing. So I actually came from a scrum background, so I did like a mini retrospective on Q4 for myself today.

Diana Alt [00:14:09]:
I wrote down some notes, and I'm going to start doing that every quarter going forward. So the. These mistakes happen at every scale. It happens at everything from the networking. I. I want to just start getting better at that by reaching out to two people a week. It also entire businesses, entire giant business schools to make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars also have the problem that they don't get assessed, iterated on and celebrated. So here's what a small example might look like.

Diana Alt [00:14:42]:
If someone says they want to reduce their caffeine consumption, their diet Coke consumption, in my case, because that's my caffeine of choice. What will end up happening is they'll do that. They'll set a concrete goal. They'll say, oh, I want to go from drinking it all day long to only drinking it up through lunchtime, and then after that I'm going to switch to water. I did that last year, but they won't acknowledge that they've done it. So in my case, I actually took myself for a pedicure last year. Whenever I had reduced my Diet Cokes and I wasn't drinking any after lunchtime for if I think it was like two weeks, I let myself, you know, go get a pedicure. I probably would have got the pedicure anyway.

Diana Alt [00:15:23]:
But I tied the celebration to the goal and it just Made it stick a little bit more for me. A bigger example of where I've seen this happen is that someone will have a lofty revenue goal for the year, which means they need to have lofty revenue goals for the month. And so they'll meet that great record revenue month, or they'll meet that goal, and then they will immediately move on and immediately say, I need to do more next quarter. It may actually be true that you need to make money for financial reasons. That's more in Q2 than it was in Q1. That is a legit thing. But not stopping to say, you know what? I set a goal to make $25,000 in Q1, and I hit $26,000. I actually beat my goal, and I'm excited about that.

Diana Alt [00:16:11]:
I need to make 30 in Q2. That belongs in Q2's planning. You need to celebrate the fact that you made $26,000 against your $25,000 goal. Progress doesn't end up sticking if it's invisible. And one of the best ways to make it visible is to celebrate it, especially if you can celebrate it with someone. And that could be as simple as, let's go have tacos to celebrate the fact that I hit my revenue goal, or could be something large. But just observe the thing today, when I was doing my retrospective on Q4 in Q4, I actually didn't have a revenue goal. My goal was more towards making sure that I was getting back on the swing of things, of working, understanding my limits, and preparing some things for Q1.

Diana Alt [00:16:58]:
But my goal was basically just to start Q1 in better shape than I started Q4 last year. And I just simply journaled about it for a few minutes and said, I survived this. I accomplished this. I feel better about what's going to happen for me in 2026. I didn't set a celebration or anything. I couldn't think of anything that I wanted to do because I just invented this retrospective this morning and then did it on my Q4. But I took a pause. And sometimes taking a pause, especially for the really smaller goals, is all that you need in order to psychologically say, I've made it.

Diana Alt [00:17:36]:
So when you are trying to look at those goals, when you're trying to not make mistake number three, some of the things that you're going to want to do is ask yourself, did this thing help? Did the act, did the goal help me in the ways that I expected it to help me? Then you can ask yourself, what needs adjusting? Do I need to continue with this goal next quarter as is or next month or whatever time period. Or do I need to change something? And if you need to change it, what do you need to change and why? And then acknowledge your success. We're not trying to go for gold star culture, but we also don't want to beat people, ourselves up for being perfect and we don't want to blow past by the progress that we've made. Anyway, that's my thoughts. It's just, you know, fairly simple stuff that eludes a lot of us, especially those of us that are really analytical and we have a lot of on our plate with work and home and family and life. I think it's a better way forward to look at things in an easier way, to look at things in smaller chunks and to really pay attention to what you're doing. This is human nature to some degree. We like to see progress.

Diana Alt [00:18:53]:
A lot of the ways I think about this are informed by agile software development because I worked in that world for a long time. But that's just what I'm going to be trying for 2026 to be more disciplined about. I hope that helps you and I would love to hear what kind of goals you're pursuing and if you need some help with trying to figure out how am I going to assess and iterate or how am I going to select which of the 10 goals that I set for myself, I'm going to start with first. Thanks so much for being here. If you caught this live, I'm really glad that you were part of my very first YouTube live. If you're listening later, I'm also glad you're here. Work should feel good and the real change in your work and your life is going to be designed. You're not going to get it just from willpower.