This is the first year I wrote down goals for my business. And almost all of them felt like stretch goals and some of them really were stretch goals and some of them ended up being easier to obtain than others. But what I have learned from writing down goals at the beginning of 2019 is how important it is to set goals and how it keeps you focused and pushes you farther than you thought you could go.
This week on the podcast, I’m sharing my five goals for 2019 and five goals for 2020. And having that accountability of putting out there for the world to see is a little scary, but I know that it will continue to give me the motivation to reach farther and grow even more.
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Here are the five goals for the Women of the Military Podcast I set for 2019:
#1 Launch Women of the Military Podcast
Although this doesn’t feel like a stretch goal, it was something I was terrified to do. I was afraid of diving into a new platform away from blogging and then when my basement flooded last December it gave me an excuse to push the launch date back. And there was always a reason I could wait another week. Move it back. But I had said January for months and felt comfortable enough to keep true to that promise. And January 22, 2019, the first Women of the Military Podcast episode launched. It was a 15-minute trailer letting people know about the why for Women of the Military Podcast! I released it out into the world and the journey began.
#2 Share 52 Stories of Military Women
My philosophy for 52 was there were 52 weeks in a year and even though my launch date was a few weeks after the start of the year I knew that I would be sharing 2 episodes a week in the beginning. Where the women would come from? How I would find enough women to meet the 52 mark. I had no idea. I had been working on collecting stories for my now book, Women of the Military Book, for over a year and had only collected 26. So to get to 52 felt like a leap.
Not having the stories of women to share was my biggest fear of launching the podcast. But I had already collected 15 stories before I launched the podcast and was planning to use the stories I had collected in the book as a backup plan in case I couldn’t find more women to share their stories. But the response turned out to be one of women lining up to share their story. So much so that I have recorded so many episodes I had to take a break from recording because I already have stories lined up to get me through July of 2020.
#3 Having a wide variety of stories and branches
My book Women of the Military starts with 17 stories of Air Force Women, followed by 7 Army stories, 1 Marine Corps, and 1 Navy. My military journey was with the Air Force and that is where my connections for this project began. But I wanted the podcast to be more balanced. And I’m excited to say I have interviews from all 5 branches. And the highest number of stories came from the Army, not the Air Force. The breakdown ended up being 19 Army, 18 Air Force, 4 Navy, 3 Coast Guard and 2 Marines.
I also wanted a variety of people to share their experiences. What it was like to be enlisted, officer (Reserve Officer Training Corps, Officer Training School, Military Academy). And the different ways that people can serve Reserves, Active Duty and National Guard. I was able to cover a number of different aspects of military life and loved hearing and learning about all the different experiences.
#4 Have a General Officer and a World War II Veteran on the Podcast
These felt like weird goals and I had no idea how to make either of them happen. And although I didn’t get a General Officer on the podcast I did interview the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force, Deborah James. The civilian equivalent of General Officers is Senior Executive Service (SES) and she was an SES. Secretary James had just published Aim High: Chart Your Course and Find Sucess. And I interviewed retired Major General Mari Eder for Season 2. 🙂
I also interviewed Erin Miller who’s grandmother served as a Women Air Force Service Pilots during World War II. She captures the story of her grandmother and what her family went through to get her buried in her book, Final Fight, Final Fight.
#5 10,000 downloads for Women of the Military Podcast
This goal was a dream. It didn’t seem possible in January when I started my podcast with zero downloads. During my first 3 years of blogging I didn’t hit the 10K page view within a year and some weeks I was posting multiple articles a week. So to think I could get to 10K within my first year of doing a weekly podcast, felt impossible.
The first week I got approximately 80 downloads. Getting to 1,000 downloads felt like a huge mountain to climb. But the podcast continued to grow and gain steam. Today the podcast has over 9K downloads and am slowly closing in on the 10K mark. To be able to hit that within the first year of being a podcast will be an amazing feeling. (Update 1 Jan: ended 2019 with 10,440 downloads)
Goals for Women of the Military Podcast 2020
#1 52 Episodes (plus a minimum of 4 bonus episodes for Patreon Members)
#2 Launch Patreon Sponsorship and have a regular income of $500, click here to become a Women of the Military Patreon sponsor
#3 Continue to interview a variety of guest
#4 Hit 40,000 downloads before the end of 2020
#5 Bring in $10K in sponsorship for the Podcast
Listen to the whole episode here.
Would you like to be a guest or know someone who might want to share their story for the Women of the Military Podcast? You can sign up here and I will be in touch with you shortly.
Do you want to support Women of the Military, check out my new Patreon site and become a monthly supporter!
Are you interested in becoming a sponsor for Women of the Military Podcast, check out my sponsorship package here.
