As I sat across from my good sis, Eunice, I felt defeated, like a failure, and that all the plans I had put in place had come to nothing
The other thing I felt was embarrassed (lol) because all these feelings were causing me to cry in public
Eunice and I had met up (as we normally do every month) at a restaurant and, what was supposed to be a fabulous girls' night out, had dissolved into this cry-fest that I was trying to hide by at least not crying loudly and attempting to wipe away all evidence of
But of course, the tears just kept coming and at a certain point, I just gave up and let them flow
You might be wondering why I was feeling this way. Well…
This moment was back in early 2023 when I first attempted to launch Media Magic
My retreat for business women, experts, coaches and authors who want to uncover a quick and systemised process to pitch the media so that they can get onto more top platforms, be seen as industry experts, and start raking in larger paydays
I first had the idea in 2022, but as you can guess from the scene I painted for you in the middle of that African restaurant, the first launch didn’t go well
Looking back now, and hindsight being 20/20, I can see that I hadn’t done everything correctly during that first attempt. But at the time, sitting across from Eunice in that African restaurant, I believed that I had done all that I could- making my poor results all the more painful
Flash forward to now and, not only did I successfully get Media Magic off the ground (in Tulum, Mexico last July), I’m currently planning my second one (which will take place in Mykonos, Greece in October)
But the Nina of 2023, didn’t know this would happen. She wanted to throw in the towel, crawl into bed and not get out, to be honest. And, truthfully, I did do that for a while…
But then I eventually got myself back up
You may be wondering why I’m sharing this with you, sis
I’m sharing this story and the lessons learned because I know there will be people who will come across this post who have goals but are too afraid to say their goals out loud let alone commit to them
Why?
Because they're scared of ending up like the Nina of 2023 instead of asking, like Steve Mackey, “What if I become my wildest dreams?” (like the Nina of 2024 did)
Perhaps you’re one of them?
If so:
Here are 3 things that I’ve learned about planning and goal setting since going through that process
#1 Your plans are a working document
Your plans should not be fixed. In other words, it’s not that you just write them down and they never change. It’s that you write them down, commit to them and work on them. Then, after giving it your all, you:
Evaluate and assess them (in terms of what went right/wrong)
Tweak or fine-tune them (off the back of your evaluation)
Take action again (factoring in the new tweaks)
Rinse and repeat
#2 Failure is feedback
Although things did not go 100% the way that I wanted in 2023, it showed me what:
Not to do
To improve
To change altogether
In other words, it allowed me to further develop my plan to cover the blind spots that I had and hadn’t accounted for when I first started. Because of that, I was able to launch again successfully and, this time, actually have people join the retreat until we were able to go and have the fabulous time that we did in July. What this taught me is that there’s no such thing as failure so long as you use it as feedback for future success
#3 Systems trump deadlines
If you’ve been rocking with me for a while, then you’ve heard me talk about my struggles with productivity anxiety. However, productivity anxiety isn’t only feeling like you’re not doing enough or haven't worked (hard) enough, it’s also imposing impossible deadlines on yourself- creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And this is exactly what the Nina of 2023 did. I can look back now, having hosted my first successful retreat, and see that the timeframe that I gave myself then was way too short. This is because, I thought that the simple act of setting a deadline for my goals would help me achieve it. What I’ve come to realise since is, having the right systems in place makes reaching your goal(s) a complete and utter inevitability whereas deadlines alone do not
PS) Want to go from stumped to savvy about how to get PR for your business? I'd like to personally invite you to join me at Media Magic, my retreat where I will be taking you through my system for PR success (The PR Powerhouse Playbook). I'd like to personally invite you to join me at next year's Media Magic retreat. Will you RSVP by joining here?