the blog!

Giovana Bier is the founder and owner of My Cats and Me, LLC – boutique bookkeeping services for creatives and entrepreneurs. While working on the background of very diverse industries – from wedding planning to environmental resources analysis – Giovana found herself in awe with the history all numbers tell. And she found herself amazed at how many business owners are afraid of asking finance questions. After working ah-so many years for big corporations, and suffering a big burn out from overwork; Giovana took some time to heal and define what success is to her. Spending time with her husband and cats, she started to understand her own balance, cycles, and success. Being a creative at heart, she could see how difficult it can be to understand and talk about money. From breaking taboos to overcoming fear itself, Giovana finds her strength in organizing all things finances and translating the results to her clients a gift that needs to be shared. Success is impacting as many entrepreneurs as she can along the way. Because wealth is not for the few, it is for all of us.

We’re getting closer to the last quarter of the year – and, I know, it felt like it was yesterday that we’re poppin champagne by the fireplace watching the ball drop in Times Square on the TV.

Now, when that ball dropped, I was still in my full-time job. And I did very little planning for any business goals. I guess my goal was just “start my own business” – which, to be totally honest, it’s not the best goal to have. At all.

I didn’t have any guidelines or things to accomplish – I didn’t have a way to measure my success. Making some money and people are looking for my services is not a good enough goal for a  profitable business. A growing business even.

It was June, I wrote down where I wanted my business to be in 10 years. Yes, 10 FLUFFY YEARS! Now, if I want to get there, I need to start acting MEOW!

Then I started to work backward – where I see my business in 8 years? In 5 years? In 2 years? A year from now?

Once I reached the “One year from now,” I started my plan. So, I want :

• Serve X clients paying me an average of Y a month.
• I want to start a DIY series for creatives just starting their business – because I know I need some guidelines for, pretty much everything other than my books.
• I want to hire someone to help me with workflows and social media eventually (I’m terrible at social media)
• Up my blogging game while giving people USEFUL information
• Have an assistant
• Donate 50% of my profits to a rescue group every quarter.

You see, now I have a few tangible goals. And from the goals, I’ll work backward to the steps I will take to get there. Every quarter, I can review my goals.

And from my goals, I extrapolate to actions/projects that I will need to achieve. And I break them down by quarter.

Why quarter, you might ask? I don’t have an answer for that. Working in finance, we always look into goals and metrics every quarter – it was something I felt comfortable doing.

Listen, while having business goals are great – mine are always tied to personal goals as well. I started my business to 1) make a positive impact in my community, and 2) time flexibility/freedom. My business goals are tied to achieving the freedom and the positive impact – you can see them on the donation, content creation and outsourcing what I’m not good at.

This process also helps me see what is working and what is not working. My instagram add was no bueno, but guest blogging was very good for visibility. I can use this metric to work on my future goals. It’s this simple.

While we’re approaching the end of Q3-2019, I’m already in tune with how far along I am on the goals I set in June. Certain things, I did big strides – I’m developing a whole DIY Bookkeeping system! and, others, not so much (read: no profit due to a last minute big business purchase; and needing to make the system I developed live).

I don’t want to sound too “woo woo” – but here we go… I do believe in intention. I do believe in the power of our thoughts. Personally, once I take the thoughts and dreams out of my mind they become a little real. Once I roadmap how I’ll get there – it feels it’s possible. When I believe I can accomplish it (because why not?) – then I know I can do it.

Heart-to-heart now – we change, our dreams changes and out goals changes. The Roadmap, the 10 year plan might not be the same today as they were yesterday. That’s why I tie them to my personal life – it makes it easier to be flexible and navigate any change of focus. And I tie my personal goals to my values – those will most likely never change.

Going back to “woo woo land”: I did accomplish most of my goals because I believe in them and because I put in the work to accomplish them. It’s simple like that. I try to practice what I call “detachment attachment”: I’m working my plan, doing what I feel I should do to accomplish the ultimate goal. I’m not 100% attached to the goal I had in mind – but I want to get the results – even if the road is not the same.

My mental process in a nutshell: ultimately, I’m happy with the results I will get from the action and energy I’m putting in. Even if the results are not what I expected – it’s a lesson learned and I move on to the next. Because of my bigger goal.

My goal setting process breakdown:

My review process breakdown:

Getting real with the impact you want to make is hard. Bringing your crazy dreams and goals to reality is even harder. Because now they are real.

And because they are real, they are attainable – that is the key.

A few things that I always keep in mind when bringing dreams from “la la land” to real word is: 

• Give myself some grace
• Do not compare my beginning so someone else’s ending
• My journey is my own

And you can do it! I know you can.

I can’t wait to hear of all the places you will go once you make your dreams a tangible goal!

Xoxo,

Gigi

You can connect with Giovana through her Outsourcing With Love page, website, Instagram, and Pinterest.