Marcey, Todd Rader, and Lilly Ferrick at Bean Traders in Durham, mapping out their 100 Day Plan over Habanero Mochas
Last year I reached my 100 day Freedom Journal goal on day 98 and wrote about how it tripled my income. My friend Lilly reached hers on day 97. Lilly and I are both very focused, goal-oriented people who need numbers. Shareholders don’t care that you tried harder or did better this quarter. They want the $$$. The FJ sets our eyes on the prize and keeps us focused on getting there. We brought my brother in for this round, and I warned him. The Freedom Journal is not goal-setting for the week or the weak. It is intense. He’s in.
For the love of it?
Why a money goal? When people say, they do what they do because they love it and don’t care about the money, good for them, but I do what I do because I love it AND because I want to make money. With money I can do cool things, not just for me, but for people I love or want to help. In the last year, with the help of one generous client and friend and a few others, we rebuilt my assistant’s home in the Philippines. They had a roof that leaked, their house would flood, and they slept three to a room. Now they are dry and comfortable, and my assistant will have her own room and bed with a proper workspace.
I donate money to my favorite cause, The Fistula Foundation. Each year I pay for a surgery so that a woman suffering from obstetric fistula can go back to living a productive and happy life. On my best year, I contributed for ten. I couldn’t have done that with warm fuzzies. I needed cash to provide.
I have another money goal this year that involves speaking engagements, private coaching clients, consulting, and online sales of my Work Well. Play More! online course. Achieving those goals mean my business is growing, I can pay for one more surgery than last year and a couple of other things I don’t want to share (it’s a surprise!).
Why Freedom Journal goal setting? Because I know it will get me there. It will push me even more than I already push myself. I have two people in it with me who are also in this intense phase. We will do a 45-minute wrap-up and planning every 10-day sprint and will text our brags and bummers with a bunch of bitmojis for fun. Oh, and there's daily texting involved to make sure we are doing something Every Single Day to get to our goal.
I’ve had two clients start this journal and not make it past one week. The one I ordered from Amazon was $5 off because it was ‘like new – some writing on the first few pages.’ I laughed when I saw this and thought “yep, they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.”
I am very focused and write my Top Priorities for the quarter, month, and week religiously. I also determine my Top Three Tasks for every following day before I shut down at night. There’s something about this journal that puts it into hyper-mode. I am giving myself a week to get psyched up to start. I feel like I’m in carbo-loading phase for an ultra-race, except it’s more like creative-loading, determining exactly what and how I want my goal to look.
How I’m going to change this round of the Freedom Journal goal setting:
- Continue the 5min journal app even though it is redundant. I don’t want to lose my streak, and I like the ability to add photos. I’m planning a week-long 20th-anniversary trip in July, and this will be part of my diary of the trip.
- Changing the wording of ‘two struggles I encountered’ to the 5min question – How could I have made today even better.
- Crossing out Sundays, holidays and my vacation on the first day I get the journal, so I don’t feel compelled to put entries in those days. As a productivity and health coach, I believe we should all have days off (and science backs me up).
- Since I am a big fan of transition activities to start and end a workday, especially if you work from home, I will start each morning before I hit the computer with one round of Lunchmoney Lewis dance to Bills to get me psyched.
We began on May 29 and was lucky to have my brother fly in to see me debut a keynote (that's it below) on June 1, so the three of us sat down over Habanero Mochas at Bean Traders Coffee, where I had ceremoniously written my final entry the last 100 days. We discussed our strategies to give 100 days of kicking ass toward our Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
