In this week’s Make It Happen Monday I want to walk you through a quick and easy exercise to get super clear on your ‘Financial Freedom Profit Goal’.
By knowing exactly how much you need to fund your ideal lifestyle you’ll achieve two things;
- You’ll realise you probably need less than you think to lead an incredible life, which means reaching your goals is more attainable than you might believe
- You’ll have absolute clarity on why you’re starting and growing your lifestyle business and a clear target to aim for
Unfortunately most beginner lifestyle entrepreneurs ignore this critical step and plunge into starting a business or side hustle without clear goals, leading to a lack of focus and excitement that fizzles out in no time.
It’s Not Time, Money or Talent Holding You Back, It’s Lack of Focus
What you think is holding you back:
— Bikenn Njukang (@bikenn_njukang) April 1, 2023
– Lack of time
– Lack of ideas
– Lack of money
What is actually holding you back:
– Lack of focus
– Lack of clarity
– Lack of discipline
Kill your distractions.
And create the life you want.
Not having a crystal-clear FF profit goal in mind can present several challenges that might stop your lifestyle business from growing and succeeding.
- Running in Circles: If you don’t have a clear goal, you’ll end up pedalling fast but going nowhere.
- Wasting Time and Money: If you don’t know how much money you need, you’ll likely spend your time and cash on the wrong things. You can’t prioritise your efforts without a clear outcome.
- Lack of motivation: When you don’t have a specific money or lifestyle goal, it’s hard to stay excited and push through tough times. Without that drive, your business can hit a wall and go nowhere.
You can overcome and even avoid these challenges by starting with absolute clarity on how much money your business needs to generate (after costs) every month for you to live your dream life.
Here are the 3 steps to follow;
1. Know What You Want
Do you know specifically what your ideal life looks like? Can you taste it, smell it and visualize it clearly in your head?
All I have to do is watch one episode of ‘Race Across the World’ and I can literally see myself, in glorious multicolour, experiencing the sights and the sounds, backpack in tow, busing across the coastal plains of Chile!
That’s how specific you need to get with visualizing your ideal life.
- Are you traveling, working from home, living in your dream city/country/place?
- Do you need funds to pay for your folks, or your kids’ education?
- Do you need enough that your spouse can pack their mind numbing job in?
- Do you want to buy your dream home, drive a Ferrari or live in the middle of NYC or London?
- Do you want a big team to run your many business ventures or do you want to start and run not for profits making an impact as you grow your ecommerce business?
- Do you want to earn enough to be a philanthropist and get involved in charitable projects around the world?
To figure out what you want, I like to do what I call a Perfect Day Exercise. I’ve written a guide on it as a free extra for my goal setting journal I’m launching later this year. You can access the short guide here.
In summary, take some time to work out what your ideal lifestyle actually looks like and what you’d love to be doing on a day by day basis.
2. How Much Will it Cost?
Now you know what it is you want, you can start to calculate potential costs.
All the information you need is online. Use Google and ChatGPT to help you find out how much you’ll need to spend to live your ideal lifestyle (always fact check ChatGPT).
- If you want to travel, nomadlist.com is a great resource for getting some rough living expenses for countries and cities around the world.
- Real estate websites will tell you how much a home in your ideal area will cost, car websites will reveal sale prices or monthly payment plans.
- Upwork or onlinejobs.ph will give you an idea of how much it would cost to build a team.
- Perhaps you want to house sit or volunteer your way around the world. There’s websites for that.
Take some time to do your research and start gathering cost details for all the things you want to do to live your ideal lifestyle.
3. Complete a Budget Sheet
Stop guessing and sticking your finger in the air and write it down!
Use the budget sheet below as a starting point and create your dream life financial plan today. Download the Lifestyle Planner Budget Sheet Here.
You may not be able to calculate exact costs, and of course inflation and the economy come into play for all future plans. But by doing your research, asking people who already live the lifestyle you want and gathering as much data as possible, you’ll get pretty close to the magical monthly number you need to generate to live your dream life.
Once you do display it somewhere you can see it every day!
Now with your Financial Freedom Profit Goal in mind, you can start to make a game plan for your business or side hustle, including working out what products or services you’ll need to offer, how much to charge and how many customers you’ll need to attract.
Boom! You’ve got the start of a no-nonsense guide to building your business.
That’s a wrap for this week, I hope this exercise gives you some clarity & gets you excited! Have a great week and Make It Happen!
Jo 🙂