Every year, we spend the 4th of July with my partner’s parents.
They own a house on a lake in rural Indiana, and so we pack up our things, drive 10 hours, and settle in for two or sometimes three weeks to work remotely and reset.
Last year, at this time, I was working a full-time remote job for Precision Nutrition. The business that is now know as Body Brain Alliance barely existed. We had a name and an LLC — but I was still a solopreneur.
I had no team. The Alliance Coaching program didn’t even exist. It was just me, my four clients, and a whole lot of dreams about what could be possible.
It’s almost impossible for me to TRULY grasp just how much has changed.
It makes me wonder where I’ll be next year, when I return to this same place and stare out at this same lake.
I like to take time in July to be a little nostalgic like this.
We are six months into the year, halfway through the marathon that is 2022. I started off the year by setting three very clear goals:
- Create $250,000 in revenue for my business
- Lift 600+ total pounds at a powerlifting meet
- Become tidy
If you set goals at the beginning of the year, now is a great time to pause and reflect.
How much progress has been made?
What’s still left to do?
Do I still want each of these things?
Are they serving me?
Here’s how I’ll answer those questions for each of my goals.
Goal #1: Create $250,000 in revenue for my business.
Well… as of today, July 1st, our YTD revenue is $221,522.
Because of subscriptions, we are essentially guaranteed to hit (and surpass) that $250,000 goal in the. month of July. So although I won’t celebrate until it actually happens, I can confidently say that one goal.. is as good as done.
Honestly, this feels INSANE to me. For context, our revenue for the entire YEAR of 2021 was $107,000, so to be on track to essentially quadruple that feels unfathomable to my brain.
A lot of you will ask me… well Karin, what happens now that you hit that goal? Do you set another one? And the answer is… yes, I could if I wanted to, but I honestly just don’t feel like it. My team has set goals on certain metrics for Q3, and so we’ll see where the rest of the year takes us.
Goal #2: Lift 600+ pounds at a powerlifting meet.
I work with a nutrition coach, and I was recently talking to her about my own workout resistance and about the goal that I had set for this year. She asked me a very good question, which was — what is REALLy important to you about this goal?
I thought about it a lot. And I came to two conclusions.
First — what I wanted, what I REALLY wanted here, was to BECOME a powerlifter. I wanted to operate like a powerlifter, eat like a powerlifter, WORKOUT like a powerlifter. I wanted to be dialed in with my workouts, get through my workout resistance, become more frequent with movement.
Second — I set the goal of a 600+ pound total because it felt impossible to me, and I LOVE working towards impossible things. There is NOTHING quite like the thrill of achieving something that a prior version of you would have believed was not possible. To be honest… it still feels totally impossible. (More on that in a second). Reflecting on it now, I’ve realized that what I REALLY wanted here was to LIFT that much weight. If I can find an official powerlifting meet, awesome. If I have to host my own “meet’ at the gym, I’m cool with that too.
In terms of progress…
- At the beginning of the year, my 1RMs were as follows: Bench (100lbs), Squat (145lbs), Deadlift (215lbs).
- I haven’t tested my 1RMs recently, but I do know that I benched 105lbs last week in a training session (and it felt pretty damn easy), I squatted 145 last week WITHOUT a belt, and when I did test my deadlift a month or two ago, I could pull 245.
- Basically… we’re making progress, but we’re still pretty far away from 600.
However — what I will say is that especially in the past 2 months of chaos, I have come a LONG WAY when it comes to my personal consistency & dedication to getting to the gym. I have unpacked a LOT of drama and resistance surrounding workouts.
I am feeling closer than ever before to “dialed in” Karin.
Goal #3: Become Tidy
Honestly, I feel like I have made very little progress in my tidy journey.
I definitely have made SOME progress… but when it comes to my actual behavior, not too much has changed.
Reflecting now though — what I will say is that I have a WHOLE lot more AWARENESS of my own tidiness. I recognize when I’m making (or ignoring) messes.
Here’s the interesting thing… I have identified the factors that put me in messy / chaotic Karin mode… and the #1 factor that puts me there is STRESS. (Unsurprisingly, this is also the #1 factor that influenced my workout adherence, too).
As BBA has grown over the past few months, and I’ve grown into more of a “CEO” role, the pressure has risen. The number of eyes on me has increased. The lines between work and rest have been, honestly, much blurrier than I prefer them to be.
I’ve worked a lot of weekends. I’ve sent a lot of emails late at night.
Being tidy, for me, is more of a symptom than an illness. It’s not the core issue, but a sign that something deeper is going on. When my thoughts are chaotic, my environment follows.
Where That Leaves Me & Where We Go Next
Here’s what we discovered on this journey today. (If anyone even reads this far).
Two conclusions:
One, I’ll still pursue my powerlifting goal — but I’ll pursue it with the caveat that what I really want is to FEEL dialed in. To FEEL strong. To be eating and moving and sleeping and de-stressing in a way that is intentional, and strategic, and a deep and automatic part of my life.
Two, in order to achieve the goal of becoming tidy, I need to shift my focus AWAY from cleaning itself, and focus on the root cause — my stress management. ????
Soo…. what now?
It’s July 1st today. A perfect, incredible re-start. The second half of this crazy year is ours for the taking — a blank canvas, ready for whatever we want to create.
To follow what we do in our coaching program, I’m going to pick my “core four” behaviors and “core four” qualities that I want to focus on over the next quarter. These are small, daily actions that keep me anchored and grounded in the person I want to be.
My core four qualities: Peaceful, Tidy, Active, Playful
I picked peaceful because it’s one of the most POWERFUL emotions that fuels the behavior I want… especially the behaviors surrounding work and social media boundaries. I picked tidy because.. well, that one’s obvious. I picked active because I LOVE to move. I picked playful because for me, playful means feeling AWAKE — it means feeling present and passionate and following my heart.
My core four behaviors:
- Wake up before 7am
- Tidy or reset 1 space
- Go for a walk
- Drink 1 gallon of water
What does that mean for July?
Let’s do a super quick June review/recap: (read my June goals at the end of this post)
- Workouts: My #1 priority in the month of June was to get back on track with working out, and I can safely say that I did that. Of the 16 workouts on my calendar, I completed 14, so that is super solid.
- Habits: I had some form of protein drink 25/28 days of the month, which explains why my macro targets went so well in the month of June. Feeling great about that, and will keep that up.
- 6pm social sign off & 7am self-coaching… hit each of these less than 5 times, and honestly TOTALLY forgot about them. I took my habit tracker OFF my bathroom mirror, and LOL – that was a mistake.
So, for the month of July…
My biggest focus is to take time OFF, decrease my stress level, and ADJUST to the absolutely massive growth my business is experiencing right now. I really really really want to focus on having work life boundaries, getting OFF my phone and into my life, and TRULY separating the life I’m living from the “job” that is my business.
My goals would include…
- Complete each of my core four behaviors at least 27 days of the month
- Do all 16 of the 16 workouts on my calendar
- Hit my protein goal at least 27 days of the month
That’s all for now! Check back on August 1st to see my next review post.
