It’s happening. The goal to reach 1M people through speaking and writing is underway, and today I’m sharing about my progress tracker, what numbers I’m sharing publicly, why I chose them, and my reaction to seeing the current number and just how far I have to go.

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If you've ever ridden a roller coaster, then you probably know the feeling

when you are ascending towards the top of the hill and your stomach just

kind of drops and you start to question your decision-making

and whether you should have gotten on this thing. That's

essentially how I am feeling this week as I return to the

podcast with this, this new focus where I'm sharing

behind the scenes as I pursue a goal to reach 1 million

people through my speaking and my writing. And specifically today's

episode, I'm sharing this public tracker that I'm going to be

using throughout this journey. And it has real and

somewhat sobering numbers that I will show you.

And, uh, I'll explain which ones I chose, why I chose to track

these, and also my reaction to seeing the numbers as they are

now and just how far I actually have

to go, because honestly, It's pretty far. I also want to

say, if you are new here, welcome. I am Kat, and on this

podcast, I'm sharing my personal experiments to help me follow

through on what matters and to find my momentum as a speaker

and a writer. That's what we're doing here. And because

this first episode of this new direction is sort of

kicking things off, I wanted to, to focus on

what is it that I am tracking? A few people have asked,

how do you actually count if you have reached the goal or not? Like, how

do you calculate if you've reached those people? So we're going to go over

that. I'll share the actual tracker. I'll also share how you can access it and

you can access it at any time and see how I'm doing.

Um, and so we're going to get all into that. Now, before I

do, I want to kind of pull back to an idea.

It's a concept I've shared before, but I think it's really relevant and it's

about how I look at goals. Yeah. Because I have stated this

public goal of reaching 1 million people with speaking and

writing. We'll get into the nitty-gritty of how I'm calculating it, but

I would like to take a moment to recap the 3 different

types of goals and where does this land on the

spectrum. And so I'm going to— now I'm going to show a visual, and if

you are listening to the audio, I'm going to walk you through it.

But essentially, whenever we have A goal, we, I often

picture that it's kind of far off and up away, like I'm climbing a hill,

that that is the outcome. It's far away and there's a flag

pointed or planted on the top of the hill. And that's where I'm trying to

go. That's where I'm trying to climb. And when I am working on

my own goals, I actually like to have them laid out on a graph

where along the bottom of this graph or chart,

that's where we have the time horizon. And along the kind

of going up and down, this is control. And towards the bottom, it's the

most control. But as you kind of climb higher and higher, you have a little

bit less control. And ultimately this outcome

goal is the thing that's at the top of the mountain. It's far away.

It's the furthest thing on the time horizon, but it's also the thing

that you don't have total control over. And that's where I think

about out outcome goals. The next level,

which is sort of in the center of the graph. So it's, it's a little

bit further away than right now on time horizon, but it's closer. And also you

do have more control. This is your performance. So how you

actually do as you are making your way towards your outcome goal.

And then finally, there's what I call the process goal. And this is

just what are the things that you actually have to do to get there? So

if I'm trying to climb a mountain. Um, my outcome is where I wanna get.

The performance is me moving in the direction towards the top of

that mountain, but I have to take step after step after step to get there.

So the other way to look at this is thinking about your destination, where

you wanna get, the direction you need to travel in order to get there,

and then what are the daily actions or the daily steps that you have to

take? And I think a really simple

analogy or just a simple example, it's just A straight up example would be an

athlete. So often with an athlete who's competing,

maybe you wanna win a gold medal. That is the destination, that's the top

of the mountain, but you don't have complete control over who you're

competing against. So you can't guarantee that you are going to

win a gold medal, but what you can work on is the

direction that you're traveling, and that is setting new personal

best records, just trying to get better and better at your craft. Mm-hmm.

every single time you work on it. And that is that

performance that you're working on over time and that you can actually measure.

Are you getting better at this? And then finally, there's the daily action,

which is actually going to your practices, following your training

program, whatever you need. So I think an athlete is just a really

relatable one. Now for mine, let's take a look

at mine. My destination, this outcome, which I have

publicly declared is to reach 1 million people,

and this is through speaking and writing. Now, the direction, the

performance that I have, this performance goal, is that I

want my speaking and writing to have a high impact. And when

I say high impact, I mean that I am hearing from people that it had

an impact, so I'm getting feedback, I'm having responses to what I'm doing.

But the other way you can measure it, or the other way I plan to

measure it, is Am I getting more referrals? Are people saying, oh, this

is good. You really need to book her for speaking, or hey,

you need to read this, this article or this piece that Kat wrote, or when

the book is out, hey, you really need to buy this book. And so

is it referable? Is it shareable? Is it the type of thing that people, it's

so good, the quality is good enough and the impact is actually

happening. And that's something with each repeated step, I can

make sure that I'm focusing on enhancing the quality. Which

brings me to that final thing, which is that process goal. This is

where I need to regularly publish and I need to

present regularly. And each time I do that, I can focus on

quality, focus on getting a little bit better. How do I make sure that the

message is getting across? And so I wanted to sort of

go over that because this is what's lining up

what I'm actually doing when it comes to what I'm tracking

and how I'm actually measuring this. Because at the end of the day, yes,

I have this goal of reaching a million people, but that, and it's an

ambitious, fairly audacious goal when I, when I look at the numbers,

especially when you're gonna see where I am starting from.

And it's not zero, but it, in, uh, relation

to a million, it feels like it might as well be. I wanna

share that because ultimately the goal gives me that

direction. It's that thing to. To look

towards. It's that the peak of the mountain, the place where it's like, I

really would like to get up there. Now I don't have full control, but what

I can control are the actions I take regularly and also my

performance. And am I getting better? Is the quality getting better?

And does it have an impact on people? And so that to me is

actually focusing in that middle. That performance is actually

what's more important than the outcome. It's that

direction that I wanna travel, but I think having that audacious

goal, it really does feel like a motivating factor and it's

something I wanna, wanna climb towards. So

let's actually look at the tracker. So this public tracker that I set

up, and you can actually see it if you go to katmulvihill.com/tracker,

and I, uh, I'll share that. I'll make sure that that, that's linked.

But over here, we've got this, I've got a screen share that

I'm showing. And if you're listening, I'm just going to walk you through it. But

on this public page at the top, I just remind people what it is.

And also the whole, the whole purpose of reaching people is I

want to shift perspectives around follow-through, the reasons

people don't follow through and just shift it because I think there's just

so much blame and shame around if you're not

following through, you genuinely want to do something and you're not doing it.

I think that can be really hard. Well, I know it can be. I know

it's hard. And the more I start to do this work, the more I

realize I'm kinder to myself, I'm more compassionate, and I also

can start focusing on what's really getting me stuck. So

down here on this tracker, I have—

so aside from the blurb of what it is, I call it monthly tracking.

So my intention is that I am going to track on a

monthly basis what my numbers are.

However, I'm going to make an effort to update every week as

part of my podcast prep, because on this podcast I'm sharing real numbers. I'm talking

about what works, what is not working. I want to

update it every week. That also means that I can see when I'm kind of

trailing behind my goals and make sure that on a weekly

basis I'm trying to keep up. But when I look at a whole month, it

also gives me some breathing room because there are going to be some weeks that

are harder or busier if I am traveling for work, or if

just life, life's again, then I have a little

bit of breathing room. But by updating it every week, I'm making sure that I'm

keeping it top of mind. So what will happen and what I've set

up so far is that I've got the month of August. So August

2026, because we're recording this at the end of July. Is that I

will start tracking how many posts. So

I said I have to publish. And so how many times have I actually published

my writing? And I think I'll also include speaking. So if I post a

video, that is also sharing the message and getting that out there.

And so that's me refining and honing how I share this, what I'm saying.

And so you'll see I've got my goal and my actual, so you'll

be able to follow along with, am I reaching the goal that I set out?

The next one that I'm tracking is outreach, and this has to do

with me reaching out to contacts, making new contacts, having

conversations about booking speaking engagements, because

that is a big part of what I want to be doing

as part of earning a living. I want to be in front of crowds.

I always, I love speaking. I've done it for so many years. My very first

job out of school was traveling around talking to groups

of people. And it really, it's where I come alive and it's what I love

doing. So I want to make sure I'm reaching out to people though, because those

gigs aren't just going to fall in my lap. Maybe later as I start to

get that performance goal and I'm more referable, they might, might get more inbound. But

right now I have some work to do with outreach.

Then the third thing I have on this tracker is the

results of my outreach, just to show you what's actually happening. Now

I have this broken into 2 categories.

Appearances and booked speaking gigs. They are separate

because I see them as 2 different things. An appearance is

a public appearance, like being interviewed on a podcast.

I cannot know for a fact how many people I reach.

So they're not actually part of my total number, but they are part of getting

the message out there in front of people. And so I think it's still an

important thing to track. Whereas booked speaking gigs, that's when

there's just a defined number of people who can be in the room.

This can be in person, but it can also be virtual. And

when it comes to the booked speaking gigs, this is where

either there's a concrete group, like doing a

presentation for a specific community or at a

conference, et cetera. Um, or it could be a little bit wider,

like an open thing that people can come to, but at the end of the

day, I'll be able to actually count how many people attended. And so that is

a speaking gig. Booked speaking gigs, just for the record, in case you're wondering,

these can be paid or unpaid. There are some examples where I think it will

be worthwhile to have a complimentary, like waive

the speaker fee. But my, because I am a person who needs to earn a

living, I also want to make sure that I'm focusing on some paid,

paid opportunities and not some, I would like multiple paid opportunities.

The other thing that even though I'm starting the tracking, the public tracking

for August. I have summarized in

the outreach results how many I have done

since I have shifted and started talking about

follow-through and momentum. And so from

January 2025, which is when I first announced that this was the direction I'm

taking until the end of the month, I have

had 5 appearances. So being a guest, um, appearing

either on a podcast or a summit. And then I also have had 11

speaking gigs. That's a combination of in-person, but

also virtual. And actually, I think that the virtual outnumbers it is much

easier, obviously, to do a virtual presentation

than it is for, for the in-person. But I do, I love being in

the room. And so I want to increase that. Finally,

the outcome. This is where I am tracking the

outcome. Obviously, I don't have any numbers for August because that hasn't happened

yet. But for the January 2025 until the

end of July 2026, I have

calculated approximately how many people have been in the audiences. Now,

there were some talks that I did where I don't have the exact number.

There are some of the virtual ones have recordings and I can actually see.

And for others, I have the registration or actually Zoom, for

example, can give a report of how many people showed up and attended the meeting.

So I use those numbers where possible. For conferences,

I had estimated those numbers at the event, so they might not be

100%, but I think they're pretty darn close. And

so for speaking gigs, like being in front of people in the

audience, there's 392 right now. And

then for subscribers, this is my current newsletter subscriber

count. It's 3,369.

And the adding those 2 together, this is how I am going to be

tracking my 1 million is by adding the numbers of people I've

spoken to for speaking engagements, but, and the number of

people who are subscribed to my newsletter, meaning they are actually

receiving my writing and they've opted in and said, yes, I want to hear your

message. So the total right now is 3,761.

Now the difference between that and between 1

million feels like About a million. So

I have a really long way to go,

but it also is kind of— so seeing these numbers, my

reaction is a little bit of that drop in the stomach of, oh boy,

what have I done? But also I do feel inspired

and you have to start somewhere. Now, the other thing I want

to share about this reaction and like when I look at the numbers

so far, I will admit that I have a very mixed reaction,

especially to seeing that I have a category, which

is January 2025, when I first publicly said

this is what I'm doing now, to July 2026, which

is right now. That's a very long time. And seeing the

numbers the way they are, I feel

a little bit of a disappointment.

And simultaneously compassion. So

disappointment because I think there were many more opportunities that I

have potentially had or missed out that

I could have been in front of more people. I probably could have had a

few more speaking engagements. And also, as I have

shared publicly, I had a very difficult year last year. I lost

my brother and I stepped away from my work for a long time, and it

was a very emotionally trying year. Yeah. And so there have been some

real challenges that are indisputable challenges

that made it harder for me to do some of this work regularly.

So I can hold both. I can see that there's some missed

potential, but I can also understand the place that I was coming from.

Now, the reason I share this is because one

of the main reasons I wanna do this public accountability, this

have a public tracker, share what's working, what's not working.

Is because the reason I didn't do as much outreach

is because of how I work and because of how I'm wired.

I am somebody who genuinely works better when I'm accountable to

someone. I technically work better with a boss, but I am my own

boss. And that's part of the inspiration for taking this new

direction with my podcast is I am not

alone. There are so many people out there who

are Self-employed, they are their own boss, and

they work better when they have a boss. And so it is a real challenge.

You know, so many entrepreneurs have ADHD,

or even if they don't have ADHD, they just are someone who works better when

there's a real deadline and there's true accountability.

In a way, I guess by sharing this publicly, I am kind of turning the

public into my boss in a way.

Except that at the end of the day, it's still the buck stops with me.

And yes, I can share this, but I also know no one's coming in and

tapping on my shoulder. And I really want to make—

part of this is making a commitment to this matters to me. It's important

to me. So how can I make sure that I'm following through? The

tracker is just one of those things. This is part of the

experiment that I'm trying by building in public and

being public about my goals. But that's not all.

And so over the next number of episodes, I'll share some of the other

things I've been trying recently. But this truly is my

effort to share experiments in what

interventions, what strategies can truly work for a person

like myself, who, if there's no

urgency or there's no real deadline or there's no

accountability, it is harder for me to follow through on things.

And so what am I doing? What's working? What's not? And I do really want

to be candid and share things. For example, in an upcoming episode,

I will share one of the reasons that my newsletter, so my newsletter subscriber

number, I have had this newsletter for

almost 7 years. And when I see that number, the

3,300, um, give or take, I

I genuinely think to myself, man, I have so many missed

opportunities to, you know, have more people to be on my list.

And there are a lot of real reasons that I sort

of self-sabotaged on that. So I'm going to share what happened

there, why that number is much lower than I think it could be

based on how long I've been at this. That being said,

I've changed directions and I know that's part of it, but There's,

there's some reasons and I will share those. Those are coming up on, on, uh,

one of the next episodes. I'll be sharing a little bit of behind the scenes

around why my newsletter growth was so stalled and what are

some of the things I'm doing to change it. But today's episode, really, I just

wanted to take you through the tracker, um, explaining. So the

tracker is katmoville.com/tracker. You can see that,

uh, hopefully the intention is updated once a week, but ultimately

I will be tracking this at the monthly level. And I just wanted you

to understand what I'm tracking, why I am tracking it. And if

I'm being really honest, at the moment, this

rollercoaster thing, it kind of feels like,

oh wow, there's so much to do. And this week I'm really

trying to catch myself when I am feeling

overwhelmed or when it feels like the list of all the things I want to

do is starting to feel overwhelming. And just remember that the

things that need to happen will happen. I need to temper my

expectations. Now the other thing is that currently this tracker does not

have goals yet. And that is because I am giving myself

a few more days before August starts to decide what

are my goals for the month, knowing I tend to be a

person who picks an overly ambitious target and then I

start to feel like, whoa, what have I done? This is too much. So I

also want to be realistic about those targets that I set both for my posting

total and also my outreach total. What are realistic

numbers that I can do to start? I think that

that is, I think that that's one of the

most important things I can do is just make sure I temper my expectations and

also learn from past experiences where I have just

swung a little bit too far and then regretted it. So start

slow. I think it's better to maybe lower the bar as I get started, but

I haven't decided those yet. I will, I can share those next week. of

what are the actual targets that I am starting with. And

hopefully you will come along for the journey and just

see how this goes. I think there'll be good weeks, there'll be bad weeks, and

my intention is to just not hide it and to

share the real, the real challenges, but also

share some of the successes along the way as I follow through on what

matters and find momentum.