Lessons from Goal Getter School: Kathy Ramsperger

Episode 14

Lessons from Goal Getter School: kathy ramsperger

Sue Campbell

The new year is coming and I want you to be well prepared to set goals in a new and more effective way, so I’m bringing you interviews with students from my Goal Getter School for Writers.

In this episode, we look at how one writer met her goals to create and execute a launch plan for her novel while pivoting on her memoir.

Sue Campbell interviews Kathryn Brown Ramsperger, a lifelong journalist and novelist. She's written for Nat Geo and Kiplinger publications, the MacGuffin and Thought Catalog, and many more, She's the author of three award-winning novels, the most recent (to launch in 2023) is titled A Thousand Flying Things. Kathryn worked for the International Red Cross for 25 years, and she brings that humanitarian eyewitness viewpoint to her writing. She's also a coach who founded Ground One, LLC who helps creatives and families with differences get unstuck. 

You can find more about her writing at https://kathrynbrownramsperger.com. Connect with her on social media @kathyramsperger.

In Goal Getter School, you will set a big goal for your writing career and learn a framework to manage your mind to achieve it. The goal of the program is to teach you to manage your mind so you can better realize your creative potential for the rest of your life.

If you’re interested in learning more about Goal Getter School and maybe even applying for the January 2023 cohort, visit http://pagesandplatforms.com/goalgetter

transcript

Sue Campbell: Hey writers, you are listening to the Pages & Platforms podcast with me, Sue Campbell, a book marketing and mindset coach. I'm so happy to bring you a mini-season on goal setting. The new year is coming and I want you to be well-prepared to set goals in a new and hopefully more effective way. So I'm bringing you interviews with my students from Goal Getter School for writers. Katherine Brown Ramsperger is our guest today. She's a lifelong journalist and novelist. She's written for Nat Geo and Kiplinger Publications, The MacGuffin, Thought Catalog, and many more. She's the author of three award-winning novels. The most recent to launch in 2023 is titled A Thousand Flying Things. You can find out more about her writing at kathrynbrownramsperger.com. And now let's hear the interview.

Sue: Hi, Kathy Ramsperger. Welcome to the Pages & Platforms podcast.

Kathy Ramsperger: Hi, Sue Campbell. It's so fun to be here and to sing your praises.

Sue: Oh, I'm so happy to have you here. And you don't have to sing my praises today. You can totally sing your own praises and we'll talk about you and your goal.

Kathy: Both. Together.

Sue: Okay. All right, great. Well, why don't we start by you telling us a little bit about yourself and what you write.

Kathy: My byline since 1985 when I got married is Kathryn Brown Ramsperger. I'm a lifelong writer. I went to school for it. I'm the author of three novels, one unpublished Moments on the Edge, one published The Shores of Our Souls, and one that I'm getting the galleys for next week, A Thousand Flying Things, which will come out in early spring of 2023.

Sue: That's so exciting. Congratulations.

Kathy: Thank you. I was a humanitarian journalist and so I bring a lot of that experience into my writing. I'm also a master intuitive coach that helps families communicate and creatives get unstuck. I’m first and foremost a writer and an author. It’s what I've always wanted to do. It's been my life goal and dream, but I love helping people too.

Sue: Fantastic. I think you and I have a lot in common where all of those, like we love the coaching, we love the writing, we love all of that. So tell us a little bit about why you joined Goal Getter School.

Kathy: I initially joined because I had been on Pages & Platforms and I thought that number one, it would give me more access for conversation. I also knew you were extremely organized and I needed organizing because I was about to have a launch or at least a pre-launch. What I got was so much more enriching though. So my two top goals were that I wanted to have a launch plan. I wanted to institute as much of it as I could during our time together, which was really compacted. And I wanted to figure out how to revise my memoir. Those were my goals.

Sue: And we have a week left, just over a week left. Tell us where you are with those goals.

Kathy: I am just sort of flabbergasted because I looked through before we spoke just to see where I was and where I am now. I had four top accomplishments and I'll save the best one for last. I finished my launch plan for A Thousand Flying Things. I created a content calendar that fits my novel and its brand. I have 40, count them, 40 — it's a big deal for me — new email subscribers, they're all avid readers. And my big one was that I came in expecting one thing about my memoir and got a completely different but wonderful aha about it by asking for critique at Pages & Platforms with Rachelle and doing a lot of self care because I decided I was going to revise as I wrote something new. It really needed to happen for me personally, for self care, and that I didn't know whether I was gonna keep the memoir or not. Ten days later after I made this announcement, I was in the shower, as we always are, and I got a download like you wouldn't believe.

Sue: Oh, amazing.

Kathy: Why I was writing the memoir. So now I'm back on track.

Sue: I love it. Well, why don't you talk, cuz we talked last week during our normal private call that's part of Goal Getter School and you were like, well I don't know how I feel about it because I kind of came in to do the memoir and then was thinking about pausing the memoir cuz my agent changed the date that she needed it so it wasn't as urgent. Just talk a little bit about that process and where we landed.

Kathy: I did pause the memoir, actually. I probably won't touch it again until January, because initially I thought I would be sending in the memoir right after my book launch, my novel launch, sorry. In the last conversation on the phone that I had with her, she said nine months from the day to publication. At that point I knew it was sometime between March and early May, but I wasn't sure. I'm a lot surer as of yesterday now. So I thought I really don't know what to do with this memoir. Mainly the three first chapters, but they're the all important ones. Those in the end and the middle. I call it the mirror moment. I talked to Rachelle who said, write what you love. I was just gonna put it aside entirely. But that's when the inspiration comes when you're just fed up and you're like, I can't do this, it's boring, all this mindset stuff. The minute I gave myself a break — so that's my biggest lesson is to just give myself a break. It all just downloaded in the shower.

Sue: I love that so much. I love it so much. When you and I talk too, it's like, you know, sometimes we can set a three-month plan, we can set our three-month goals and create all of our lists and we do have to be willing to be flexible. You got the big curveball of your agent being, well I don't need it when I said I was gonna need it and you had the influence of Rachelle and I being like, do what you wanna do, Kathy. Right? Both of those things kind of came together for you to put a pause on it. When we spoke last week, I'm like look, it's not a failure to meet your goal if you really truly like your reasons for pivoting. We may come in with a goal and if we decide to pivot because we're terrified or we don't wanna do the hard work or we are afraid we can't do it. If there are true mindset obstacles and that's why you pivot and give up, that to me is a quote unquote failure. That's not what we wanna see. But if we do the thoughtful work of really examining, okay, well why did I set this goal in the first place? Does that still make sense for me? If I pivoted and changed it, why am I doing that and do I like my reason? Do I love my reason for doing that? And you totally checked that box.

Kathy: I did. It took me about a week to check it. It did. I was concerned that I was afraid cuz I don't like that. I don't like being afraid and making that block me in any way. I did a lot of sort of meditative work on myself and I thought, no, it really isn't fun for me right now because I don't know where I'm going. It's like being on a hike and being completely lost, night is falling or something. So after I got past that, I thought it's not going to hurt anything if I switch gears, do a pivot, write fiction, which is, I have to say my true love. I was a journalist for a long time and I write non-fiction really well. It was just the structure that was giving me problems. So it made sense to step away. I just didn't expect the answer as fast as it came.

Sue: That's beautiful. I think a lot of that is because you gave yourself space. You weren't expecting an answer, you weren't pressurizing yourself to come up with an answer about that. You were just moving forward on all the other things you said you were gonna do.

Kathy: Totally. You and Rachelle gave me lots of feedback and encouragement to be able to do that. A lot of times I do what other people expect and not what I love. And that's not what I tell my clients to do at all. It stunts creativity when you're doing it for somebody else all the time. But I kind of grew up on a news desk and so I was used to deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline, deadline. I kept thinking, I can do this, I can do this — and I can do it. But giving myself permission was the most important thing. Loving myself.

Sue: Yes. A hundred percent. I think that is what is missing in so much of people who are setting goals and striving, striving to reach them is you don't agree to love yourself until you get to the goal. That's not gonna work. Even if it works once, it's not gonna work for very long. In Goal Getter School, we are all about like, look, let's set a goal. Let's love ourselves through the whole thing. Let's enjoy the process itself. We're not gonna withhold happiness, satisfaction and contentment until we reach the goal and then just move the goalpost on ourselves. It really is outside the mainstream way of looking at goal achievement. I think that's why we're at a hundred percent success rate right now. Even with a few pivots here and there. You had a pivot, Joy had a little pivot, but overall it's not like anybody threw up their hands and gave up because we are uncovering during the process what really needs to happen. You don't know what really needs to happen until you get in there and start doing it.

Kathy: Right.

Sue: So what's been the most helpful aspect of Goal Getter School for you?

Kathy: The combination between organized structure and accountability and mindset. A lot of times a writer or at least I, they need a little tweak with mindset And so a lot of times they won't go to a coach and say, I need a mindset overall. But the great thing about you, Sue, is that you intuitively sort of figure out what your client needs, what your student needs in terms of the mindset. You can tell when we're stuck and then you go in there and we can do it so fast. I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if I didn't have the structure and the accountability because I really needed it because I had a looming deadline that's been extended slightly but not much. But sometimes we don't see what we don't see. We just don't know what we don't know. Even as a coach I can get stuck in my own mindset place and you get me out. So thank you for that.

Sue: Oh you're so welcome. And my coaches do the same for me. There's no coach completely immune, that doesn't need a coach themselves. So what have you learned about goals specifically and how you work with them?

Kathy: I've learned to be easier on myself, kinder on myself. It's a lesson in progress I have to say. I have to constantly be reminded because of that newsbeat mentality about the deadline’s tomorrow, the deadline’s tomorrow. But the pivot on the memoir did that more than anything we did with the launch plan because I was stuck in this mindset that I had to do it and I had to do it now and I had to finish it by this date. And as soon as I let that go, it just flowed in. There was a huge piece in the theme that I was missing.

Sue: Yeah, I love that. This is kind of a complementary question, but what did you learn about yourself in relation to those goals?

Kathy: Well, I guess it is complementary. So maybe I'll answer the other question now. In terms of setting goals, I'm really good at setting them and I'm pretty good at the follow-through. What I think you've given me is a blueprint, a template that I can now make my own in terms of goal getting that I didn't have as much when I started Goal Getters. I tend to go by deadline first and then priority. And I've changed that to a degree. You can't change it entirely. You do have deadlines sometimes and you also have life intervene, but goals are process and they're not a destination. And in a way that does tie in with being kind to myself.

Sue: Yes. I'm pulling that quote and that's going in the show notes. Goals are a process, not a destination. That's really, really beautiful. We can't jump magically from setting a goal to attaining a goal. It is about the process to achieve it. And there are a lot of people who are even saying, we shouldn't be setting goals, we should just be creating systems. Systems and processes that keep getting us there. I like both. Why not set both?

Kathy: I like both too. If you just gave me a system, I'd be lost. That's just my personality and my skill set. I'm not a systems person, I'm not a procedures person. I can do it, but it's not the way that I'm made and so it's more difficult for me. And so I think if we have both then the person can gravitate toward what works for them best.

Sue: Yes, exactly. And in Goal Getter School, I created a framework and a process that we can use but there is a lot of flexibility in there and there's a lot of ways to customize it to meet the individual's needs. All of you, all five of you have such different personalities and different strengths and skillsets. And completely different goals. We had some people who strictly had marketing goals. We had some people who had strictly zero draft, first draft goals. And then we had a couple people, you included, who had a mix of marketing and writing goals. So we have to have flexibility and customizing to account for different external factors but most importantly different internal factors. So that was one of my goals going into creating it was how do I create something that is flexible? That's something I will continue to work on but I feel like it, I nailed it for the most part. Even if I kept it the same, there was enough of that built in between the group calls and the private calls and the different elements of goal setting where some people would clinging to that. They would lean on certain parts of it more than others. There was enough there where somebody could find some element of that that would work for them.

Kathy: That's true. And I think it was a really good balance. You did nail the balance between one-on-one and group. I loved it. I loved the combination. So often in one of these programs you'll get just a group and if it's a huge group it's even more difficult. But just those tiny little one-on-ones. That's the other reason I signed up frankly.

Sue: Yeah. The 20-minute one-to-ones, there's so much that you can get done in 20 minutes and that was something I learned from the coaching program that I'm a part of. It was like 20 minutes you go in thinking I'm not gonna get anything done in 20 minutes. And it's like, oh my god, I just didn't cover a mindset block that's been messing me up for months and now like I'm onto it and it's all of its power is dissipated in 20 minutes sometimes in 15 minutes. There were a couple times where I was having private calls with you, I'm like, okay, anything else? And everyone's like, no, I'm good. Thanks. Right. You're like just that the check-in. Um, and then again, like me helping pull out, if I sense that something's there and I can kind of dig into it a little bit, but having those regular check-ins and building them in makes such a critical difference cuz we often just don't do that. Especially when we're really like heads down on a deadline or we've just got a ton of stuff going on in our personal lives and we don't really make time for that thoughtful check-in to really look at what our brain is doing by default.

Kathy: I totally agree. I had both, so to be able to do that is a bit of a miracle for me. And I thank you for that. I know I would not have gotten — I would've gotten half of it done, the other half I would not have, and I would be scrambling now. Now I can go into this pre-launch period calm, cool, and basically collected. And I have you to thank for that. So I do.

Sue: Thank you so much. Well tell us cuz tomorrow's our last group call. So in our last group call, we're gonna be doing a mirror celebrating first and foremost, but we're also gonna be doing like, I wanna set all five of you up for your next three months. Like what do you wanna tackle on your own now that you have this framework and this toolkit? So give us a little preview of what you think you wanna do for your next future project.

Kathy: I'm really excited to say that I had sent out two magazine articles, two essays, and two short stories. And as of about five minutes before we went on, they've all been accepted.

Sue: Oh, fantastic.

Kathy: And they all were over 18 months time. Like it just happened like that. I think that's the kind of magic that happens. So I wanted to say that. I have some content to produce because it's all gone. I can't resubmit now and I'm going to alternate days in January. My memoir one day and my time travel novel on the second day. And I might add that you've got me into the habit of always, I call it winning and wearing. Wearing isn't as important to me, but I still do it and sometimes it's really saved my butt. I almost have as many followers on Twitter as people I follow. So I'm gonna continue with that. I think I've gotten a thousand followers over the time we've been goal getters. Followers aren't everything, but it's good marketing. I'm excited about that. I'm going to figure out how to nurture them. I have three lead magnets that are complete and now I just need to set up lead pages. I'm gonna continue getting email subscribers and just content, content, content and connect, connect, connect. That's what it's about. My very next project is to rewrite my welcome sequence for my email list. That's something that really needs to happen. The old me would've said should have happened, but it hasn't yet and it will.

Sue: Fantastic. Well, Kathy, it's been an absolute pleasure having you in Goal Getter School and getting to know you even better and, um, take such a tremendous amount of pleasure in watching what you've been able to accomplish in three months. So you're gonna be in the club still in the Happily Ever Author club, so we'll still get to see each other and I get to stay updated on your next three months. Thank you so much and thanks for sharing all of your takeaways. For everybody out there, whether they join Goal Getter School or not, there are some absolute pearls in here that they can take and use.

Kathy: Thank you. It's my honor and pleasure to be here with you. You've done so much for me and I thank you and happy holidays everybody. Have fun.

Sue: Happy holidays.

Sue: If you're interested in learning more about Goal Getter School for Writers and maybe even applying for the January 2023 cohort, visit https://www.pagesandplatforms.com/goalgetter.