Episode #666: How To Set Goals Effectively

Feeling stuck with long-term goals? You’re not alone.

In today’s Ask Allison, I talk about how to stop spinning out over “growth” and start getting clear.

You don’t need a five-year plan. You need to know what kind of growth you’re after—more income, more time, a new revenue stream? Each one has a different path.

Start with your “why,” then break your goal into micro-steps and actually schedule them. What doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t happen.

And remember: ambitious is great, but realistic wins every time.

Sponsored by TherapyNotes®: Use promo code Abundant for 2 months free

🗓 Struggling to get therapy clients? You're not alone—private practice has shifted. Join my free live webinar: “Filling Your Practice in a Challenging Economy” July 14 at 1:00 PM ET. We’ll cover what’s changed, why referrals are slower, and how to market effectively and ethically. Come live to ask questions and build your confidence! Register for this FREE event here: http://bit.ly/4llK3BJ 

🎉 Grab our free tools to grow your practice—weekly worksheets, the Tasky Checklist, and more: www.abundancepracticebuilding.com/links 

🚀 Ready to fill your practice faster? Join the Abundance Party today and get 75% off your first month with promo code ASK: www.abundancepracticebuilding.com/abundanceparty 

🙋‍♂️ Have a question for me about practice building? Submit it via our Ask Allison form, and I'll add it to the queue: https://www.abundancepracticebuilding.com/ask_allison 

🎧 Prefer listening on the go? Stream this episode on your favorite podcast app anytime!

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to Ask Allison, y'all ask the
questions about having a fun and thriving practice
and I answer them.
We have a worksheet for you today so
you can bring this answer into your life.
You can access that at abundancepracticebuilding.com slash
links where you'll also be able to ask
any questions you have for Ask Allison.
If you want more support, we've got some
free trainings in there too.

(00:28):
If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check
out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask
Allison library.
Welcome back to Ask Allison.
Here's today's question.
How should I approach long-term goal setting?
I know I want growth in a couple
different areas, but I feel overwhelmed about planning
ways to achieve that.
Thanks.
So before I answer this, I would like

(00:50):
to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison.
I've talked about them for years and you
probably know their features by heart just like
I do, but what really sets them apart
is that they genuinely care about your experience.
It's not just about troubleshooting.
They actively implement user-suggested features like therapy
search, secure messaging, clinical outcome tracking, their new
AI notes.

(01:10):
Everyone at TherapyNotes believes in the product and
they want you to love it too.
Plus they're independently owned, which means no venture
capital and no pressure to prioritize investors over
customers.
This independence allows them to keep their prices
fair, to focus on innovation and prioritize customer
experience.
With over a hundred thousand therapists on board,
they've proven you don't have to compromise success

(01:31):
for quality.
If you're ready to see for yourself, try
TherapyNotes for free for two months with the
code ABUNDANT at TherapyNotes.com.
Okay, goal setting.
I love this question because when we don't
set goals, we often don't progress in the
ways that we want and need.
It's why we have treatment plans for clients.
It's why we establish goals in general in

(01:52):
our lives when we're really, really focused on
making progress in certain areas.
So how to do this depends on your
goals.
So I'm going to go off on a
tangent, but I'm going to come back and
I will answer your question.
So I'm going to go through a few
scenarios.
Let's say your goal is currently to have
20 clients a week paying $200 a session.
I would move that from a long-term

(02:13):
goal setting, which is what you asked about,
to short-term because this is something that
can happen within a year, even in this
economy.
For most of my students, they're hitting this
at about six months.
That takes a clear specific niche, a niched
website, regular networking, and up to three other
marketing strategies.
And those are going to vary based on

(02:34):
your skills, your interest, your niche.
We teach all of these in the Abundance
Party.
You can DM me the word party and
I'll send you the link.
Let's say you're wanting an alternative stream of
income.
First, I want you to do research on
what you can realistically expect from another income
source.
The most popular sources I hear about are
group practices and courses.
So I'm going to touch on both.

(02:56):
With group practices, people assume it's going to
be great.
I'll make about 40% of what other
therapists that I take on end up bringing
in.
But the profit margins in group practice are
very slim.
The overhead is high.
It can be really stressful if you don't
prepare properly.
Typically, after hiring your second clinician, you are
bringing home less than you did when you

(03:17):
were in solo practice because so much of
your time is eaten up with management and
marketing.
You're not seeing many clients and your overhead
is higher.
Your employees are going to need support in
inconvenient times.
Basically, only consider group practice if you really
enjoy management.
If that's you, I really love the group
practice exchange to teach you all the ins

(03:37):
and outs of how to structure your practice
to hire clinicians.
Create a group practice that's based on values
instead of it just feeling like the next
logical step to make more money.
So I want you to look into the
group practice exchange.
I also want you to start stocking away
money now.
Group practices need a much bigger financial cushion.
I think there are enough of us who
have worked in group practices and didn't get

(03:59):
paid what we were supposed to that we
can speak to have a big cushion so
that in the moments when it's tight, you're
not having to go into crushing debt or
shirking your responsibilities and not paying your people.
I also want you to start looking into
leadership training as soon as humanly possible.
Poor leadership in group practices is a really

(04:20):
big reason that I am successful in helping
people start their own practices.
So let's say you're not interested in group
practice.
You're interested in courses.
Digital marketing is a very different animal.
When I started Abundance, I thought it was
going to be a more intense version of
the marketing I was doing for my therapy
practice, but I was dead wrong.

(04:40):
The learning curve was super steep.
The time, the money, the effort that I
had to put in for it to make
any money was significant.
It's not like all the people who sell
courses on how to sell courses represent it.
It is not just like waking up to
money every morning.
Yeah, I wake up to money every morning,
but the amount of work I have to
do to get there is significant.

(05:01):
Know that 80 to 90% of people
with an online business like this earn under
$12,000 a year or don't reach meaningful
income.
You'll be working a lot for that amount,
like less than minimum wage per hour.
And if you don't love marketing and you
don't want to do it five days a
week and you don't feel super passionate about

(05:25):
getting your message out there, then online courses
probably aren't for you.
It is not the quick path to more
money.
If you love marketing, you're super passionate about
whatever your message is, then I suggest finding
a program or a coach to walk you
through those steps.
I'm not going to go through all this.
I don't teach this, but from a goal
-setting perspective, come up with a really realistic
timeline to get everything set up based on

(05:47):
your research.
Be really coachable with whoever you hire.
Just because you don't like something or you
don't want to do it doesn't mean you
can just bypass it with online business and
still get the same results.
If it's against your values, definitely skip it,
for instance.
But when people say, I really hate social
media, I don't want to be on social
media for my practice, I'm like, sweet, don't

(06:09):
do it.
You don't need to, but you're going to
have to do that if you're doing an
online business.
In terms of general goal-setting, I'm sure
you already know about SMART goals, so I'm
not going to go on about them, but
I'll add to SMART goals that you need
accountability.
Even the most disciplined people I know benefit
from accountability.

(06:30):
Specifically, you need accountability from someone you deeply
don't want to disappoint.
And if your future goals are in the
alternative stream of income realm, know that the
easiest, fastest, most efficient, cheapest way for you
to make significantly more money is actually to
raise your rate and get off insurance and
have a full practice.
You need to know that there's each step

(06:51):
to do that, like bolstering your marketing, working
on your mindset.
Those things have to be done in order
for you to be successful in a premium
fee, full private practice.
If your practice is full of lower fee
or insurance clients and you want somebody to
help you with the steps to get to
full fee, message me limitless and we'll talk
about that.

(07:13):
So goal-setting wise, you need to be
clear on your goal and you need to
be clear why it's your goal.
Make sure that the timeline you have in
your head is realistic.
Most of the time, we expect what we
want sooner than is reasonable.
We do that in our private practices too,
right?
So get really clear on the actual steps
towards your goal.
That's gonna help you have a realistic timeline.

(07:33):
Don't just make assumptions.
You have to get support in doing this
new different thing.
None of this is intuitive.
Now, it's great if you have a big,
hairy, audacious goal.
These are known as BHAGs, big, hairy, audacious
goal.
And that doesn't feel entirely realistic.
So let's say you set a goal to

(07:54):
make $300,000 in your first year of
private practice.
You might not hit that, but you might
hit 225.
But if your goal had been 200,000,
you might've hit 175.
I always have three goals whenever I am
launching something or anything like that.
I have my BHAG that feels impossible.
I have what I call my great goal
that would feel like I surpassed what I

(08:15):
expected.
And I have a good goal that like
is basic.
I'd be happy with it.
I've actually hit my BHAG a couple of
times in the last decade.
And if I hadn't imagined what that BHAG
was, I wouldn't have done the things that
got me there, even though I didn't think
that goal was realistic at all.
So schedule out the steps.
It's another really important piece.

(08:37):
If you have figured out what steps you
need to take, get it in your calendar.
What doesn't get scheduled doesn't get done.
I never, ever set a goal without thinking
through the steps, laying out what I'm gonna
do over the next 24 hours, 48 hours,
72 hours, then week to week with the
ongoing goals to get there.
It goes in my schedule with specificity.
So it's not just a list somewhere.

(08:57):
And it's also not in my schedule as
like market.
It might be reach out to A, B,
and C to talk about XYZ.
Today's free worksheet is actually about the other
thing that impacts whether you achieve your goals,
motivation.
You can DM me the word sheets if
you're on social, or you can click the
link for the free worksheets and the show
notes if you're listening on the podcast.

(09:19):
Reach out if you need help.
I will see you next week.
Take care.
If you're ready for a much easier practice,
Therapy Notes is the way to go.
Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo
code ABUNDANT for two months free.
I hope that helped.
If you have questions for Ask Alison, or

(09:40):
you wanna get your hands on the worksheet
for this episode, go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash
links.
If you're listening, you probably need some support
building your practice.
If you're a super newbie, grab our free
checklist using the link in the show notes.
I'd love for you to follow, rate, and
review, but I really want you to share

(10:00):
this episode with a therapist friend.
Let's help all our colleagues build what they
want.