Ep #392: Horizon Destination Planning

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, and welcome to the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, a show that proves you can generate referrals without asking or manipulation. I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall.

I teach a science-backed methodology and framework that generates referrals without having to ask for them. This podcast and working with me is all about taking control of your referrals on your terms. Join me every week as we break it down.

Alright, so for this week, we’ve got a little bit of a different topic. I am welcoming my friend and client, Kathy Brown, to the podcast to teach us her Horizon Destination Planning framework.

Now, Kathy is the owner of GoalFirm and is a fabulous business coach. I have gotten to know her really well, though, because she’s also, as I mentioned, a client.

She attended my February referral accelerator. So back in the beginning of the year, February 2025 for that referral accelerator.

The referral accelerator is my two day in-person event where for two days you come to Charlotte. We spend that time together and you walk away with your fully stacked framework and everything that you need, that fully stocked toolbox of what you need to really start generating more referrals.

And you learn it all in two days without having to watch videos or take your time. You just get it all in those two days. And we do some shortcutting so that you get exactly what you need and walk away with a roadmap to follow.

It’s a really cool event. It is not for everyone, but it’s a really cool event and I love doing it. And so Kathy attended the February Referral Accelerator.

If you want to learn more about the accelerator, just go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/accelerator. You can learn all the information we have except for the dates.

At this moment of I’m doing the recordings of these, we don’t actually have the live dates. The moment we have the dates, it’ll either be late, late January or early February. The moment we have the dates, it’ll be on the website.

But if you want to go ahead and get on the waitlist now, you’ll be the first to learn about the dates. You’ll also be the first to be able to secure the limited seating that we have for our early bird pricing.

And of course, we keep the room small because that’s how we’re able to make so much progress in just two days together.

So you can definitely join our no-obligation waitlist just to learn more. Be the first to hear about it. That’s StaceyBrownRandall.com/accelerator.

And Kathy and I talk a little bit about her experience attending The Accelerator, and she’s actually now in my Referral Master’s program, which is our maintenance kind of program that after you finish working with me in any of my programs, you can move into the Referral Master’s, that being the Accelerator, the BRB coaching program, or my VIP program.

So I get to keep working with Kathy and I get to keep learning from her as well, which is awesome.

And that’s what I’m so excited for you guys to learn about from her today is this really cool thing that she does called Horizon Destination planning.

Now, you may kind of have an idea of what that is, but you may be surprised as well. So let’s dig in to the interview with Kathy.

Stacey Brown Randall: Welcome Kathy to the podcast. I am so excited to have this conversation with you.

So I gave the official bio of you, a little bit of one, in the introduction, but I think it would be great if you could just quickly tell our audience so they can put some context around who you are.

Kathy Brown: Who I am.

Stacey Brown Randall: Big question, but I’m asking for like a 30-second answer.

Kathy Brown: I was gonna say, that is a very big question. So, I started my career, my first career was in the field of special education and special education leadership.

When I decided I wanted a little bit more flexibility than that career offered me, I made a shift and took some of the things that I did with staff and with the programs that I oversaw with other team members into the space working with solopreneurs and small business owners.

And my kind of little corner of the world is really figuring out what you want and then how do you get what it is you want.

Stacey Brown Randall: I love that. I love that. And so I decided I wanted to have you on the podcast because you are a client of mine.

So let me just go ahead and like, I know I said this in the introduction, but you are a client of mine. You came to the February Referral Accelerator. And I’ll ask you about that, but we’ll talk about that at the end.

But you came to the February 2025 Referral Accelerator here in Charlotte. And then after that, you moved into our maintenance program or our extension program called Referral Masters.

And so you’ve been in that since, I don’t know, April or May. And when I was doing the retreat that I do every year for my clients, our end of year retreat that we do in December, I thought, you know what?

I usually do like a business planning goal setting session kind of thing the morning of the first day of the retreat, but I’ve got an expert in my client repertoire, right? As a weapon that I could just have do it better.

So you came and you presented at the retreat for my clients that were there. And that’s why I want to have you on the podcast.

It’s just to talk about how you look at what you call Horizon Destination and what I sometimes call Horizon Destination Planning. So let’s dive into like, give us the, like just the basic definition of what that means.

Kathy Brown: OK, horizon destination is a long-term goal. A long-term goal is a goal that is from 3 to 10 years into the future. And it’s really important because when we have short-term goals and long-term, there’s a magic to it.

Stacey Brown Randall: I think that people are, I think a lot of people totally understand the whole concept of goal setting. But you don’t call it goal setting. Why?

Kathy Brown: No. So a lot of people have an issue with goals. They’ve not had good experiences. Numerous people tell me they don’t work; they don’t do them. So there’s a lot of negative energy and thoughts around the word goals.

So I really, as I was listening to that, I reframed that into really talking about what it is you want and horizon destination.

And a horizon destination It really just opens up, it gives us more space, people don’t freak out over it and then we can like lean into curiosity and exploration and then people start having fun with it.

Stacey Brown Randall: And the fun is so important. Like if you’re not having fun with this, you won’t do it.

Okay, so I’ve got a couple of questions I want to ask about this, but can you give us an overview of like if someone were to meet you on the street and they were like, what, how do I do it? Like, what does it look like?

Can you give us like the high-level overview of kind of like the process someone would go through to set their horizon?

Kathy Brown: Sure. So the first thing is that we are looking to tap into our imagination and our curiosity. Those are skills we all have, although they may have atrophied a bit as adults.

As kids, we have no trouble with those things. So this is really about starting to get into the mindset of curiosity and exploration.

Because what tends to happen is we get caught up in our lives going from day to day, month to month, and we stop playing in the sandbox of life.

So the first thing is, is we start tapping into what are the things we enjoy, we try some new things, we change our route to work, we may try some new recipes. So we’re just starting by just kind of rekindling our curiosity and imagination. And that’s where it starts.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay, so then what does it look like for someone to figure out like, obviously, you don’t need to tell us all the details, right? Because I know it takes more than what our usual podcast recording for an interview is. And I don’t want you to give away all your secret sauce. But what is the process that someone would go through?

Kathy Brown: So the process to go through is we generally start with our current life. And these are the four questions I encourage people to consider.

When you consider your current life, what do you want more of? What do you want less of? What would you like to start? What would you like to stop?

So we start from where we are today, and you look out three years, anywhere between three and 10 years, and you start thinking about when you’re at that point, what do you want your life to look like?

It’s easier if you start with what your life is now. And if you are a parent, it’s easier. Like choose a time like when your kids, like for you, Stacey, when your kids start leaving high school. So that’s an automatic change, you know, things are going to change in your life.

So it’s sometimes easier if you have some anchor point that you’re like, I know my life is going to change anyway. So I can kind of wrap my head around more thinking about what would it look like.

We’re really trying to get to the point of being able to describe your average Thursday. In the future, what do you want your average Thursday to look and feel like?

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh, ok. I sometimes think when people are trying to set goals, it’s about these big, hairy, audacious goals that are going to like light the world on fire or do something that is hard and scary. And there’s nothing wrong with those.

Kathy Brown: No, not at all.

Stacey Brown Randall: But so how does that fit into what an average Thursday would look like?

Kathy Brown: Well, that’s the whole point. We’re really trying to wrap our head around the majority of our life.

So those big moments and big trips and accomplishments are awesome, but we spend most of our time in kind of our average, ordinary Thursday, or pick any day of the week. So it’s really grounding ourselves in the anchor of what is most of our life look like.

And like, so it’s things like, well, do you set an alarm in the morning? When you get up, what’s the flooring that you put your feet on? Who are you spending time with? Where are you living geographically?

I’m in Michigan. A lot of people want to get out of the snow. So many people go somewhere south. So it’s like, where are you living? What does your house look like?

Who are you spending your time? What are you eating? What do you do for fun? How many vacations do you take? So it’s the questions of everyday life which is really the starting point.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, that’s just so different, I think, than how people look at this. Usually, it’s the, where do you want to be in 3, 5, 10 years? What do you want to have accomplished?

That’s the word that most people pay attention to. It’s like, what do I want to have accomplished in 3, 5, 10 years?

You’re talking about, what do you want an average ordinary Thursday to look like in 3, 5, 7, 10 years, whatever it is, and start from there.

Kathy Brown: Yes.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay, is this hard for people? They have never been like, what do I want an ordinary Thursday to look like? For me, I’m sitting here thinking, this may stretch my brain a little.

Kathy Brown: Yes, for most of us, it stops us cold, myself included. When I first started kind of playing with this and when I heard some people talking about some things similar, it’s not how we think. And yet, when we start, this is how I describe it.

When we are intentional and we pay attention, we can do and create almost anything. But really, most of us want our everyday lives to be lovely and abundant and all these kinds of wonderful things. Well, that only happens with intention and attention.

Stacey Brown Randall: So good. Intention and attention. You’re right. Because if not, we just have the same Thursday we probably had for the last 1,000 Thursdays if we’re not intentional about next Thursday looking different.

Kathy Brown: Mm-hmm. And for many of us, there are at least elements that we don’t like. That if I were to say, what would you like to just have disappear from your life, almost everyone can tell me something.

Yet, we tend to not do anything about changing it so that it actually does exit our life. And sometimes it can’t. Sometimes it’s just a season of life. And other times, there’s a lot we can change.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, I think it has all to do with what we’re willing to put up with. Like for me, it feels like I always remind myself like I am living at what I allow.

Like you got to raise yourself to another level if you want your life to look different because you kind of live at really like a default state of like, this is what I allow. This is what I’m okay with.

Kathy Brown: Yes. And that is the point of the curiosity and imagination.

Because if there’s something you know that you would like to replace that, you are more likely to make the change. But once we get in the routine, without something that interrupts our pattern, we just stay there.

So this is about introducing that curiosity and imagination as sparks. And then we look at it and go, oh, is this an occasional thing? Is this like every Thursday I want to do this? Is this an average thing? So we start then looking for and trying different things.

Stacey Brown Randall: So where do you find people who, like where do you find, like you kind of mentioned this, but where do people struggle with this? What makes this hard for people?

Kathy Brown: The fact that as adults, typically we have very little imagination or curiosity. That is the starting point.

So there’s all sorts of things that I’m like, so mix up your routine. So this is where you start with both of those. Change your routine. We all have routines. Routines benefit us.

But we can get in a routine, and I am one, I can form routines very easily. Then that’s just what we do. We don’t give it any thought. Now we’re back to the attention and intention.

So by choosing a different recipe, watching a movie from a genre you don’t typically watch, trying a new restaurant, a new route to work.

A new, I like the same, I almost always, you know me, I love lattes, I love vanilla lattes. So I will go to almost any coffee shop and order a vanilla latte.

And yet, when I start looking at the menu and like what they’re known for and try them, I’ve had some amazing lattes. So it’s interrupting our routines enough to introduce some new opportunities.

Like, before I went to Paris, I was not excited about going to Paris, because I love history. And Paris is all about art.

And my story before I went there was, I’m really not much of an art fan. And that’s still true. In fact, I went to see, I think it’s Monet’s water lilies in a special place that you’re surrounded by them. Did nothing for me.

Stacey Brown Randall: Wait, do you say, is it Monet? Is it Monet?

Kathy Brown: Monet. Well, I see. I don’t even know who that is. It’s the water lily.

Stacey Brown Randall: I’ve always said it as Monet. Now I’m wondering if I’ve been saying it wrong.

Kathy Brown: No, I’m sure you’re saying it right.

Stacey Brown Randall: I got it. Ok anyway. Keep going. It did nothing for you.

Kathy Brown: But what I discovered is I love sculpture. I love sculpture. But had my friend not pretty much insist that we were going to take a trip to Paris, I never would have discovered that because I was sure I did not enjoy art.

Stacey Brown Randall: So true. I mean, then you really need to go to Italy and see the David.

Kathy Brown: Yes. So it’s things like that. And sometimes it is people who can help move us out of it.

But it’s the things that you’re sure by the time we become an adult, there’s things that we are sure we’re going to enjoy and not enjoy, period.

Well, that’s just one of my stories of what I was sure I wouldn’t enjoy and then found a section of art I love. Similar to the hot tub I got because I love hot tubs, only to discover after having it that I love hot tubs but not owning one.

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh my God. That’s like the story of my life. I like the idea of owning something, not always owning it.

Kathy Brown: Correct. Correct. So that’s really where you start, is we just have to start introducing some new things because it’s not about immediate decisions. It’s about well, let’s just play around, which is why I refer to it as playing in the sandbox.

Stacey Brown Randall: I love that. That’s so perfect. This is so good. OK. So people, like, I love the fact that you’re like, imagination, curiosity, start there, the ordinary Thursday.

The what do you want? Like, you know, the starting and the stopping. And what do you want to get rid of? And what do you want to keep? I love all the frameworks that you’ve given.

And I think it’s important that people understand that this is just different from sitting down and saying, where do I want to be in three years and backing into some goals.

And so they have to take their time with it. And I think that’s really important. And clearly, I’m asking all these questions for you. Like I haven’t experienced it at the retreat.

Because I wanted people who are listening to this to hear it, like the curiosity factor that I have about what this looks like without me sometimes knowing the answers since you walked us through it at the retreat.

But if someone’s doing this and it feels really overwhelming, is there any like one or two things you just want them to keep in mind?

Kathy Brown: Go small. Go really small. Change your route to work. This is not necessarily on a time frame. This is your time frame. So it’s not like you need to have this figured out in a week or a month.

And when you’re talking a long-term goal, it’s going to change. It’s going to change. Mine is a 10-year goal. I’m generally setting 10-year goals.

My horizon destination is 10 years into the future. It continues to change. So it relieves some of the pressure of I have to figure out the right answer because I need to like do this.

And this is, yeah, I’m pretty sure I know the answer. I’m gonna try this out. Alright, I’m gonna go a five-degree turn this way on this thing.

So just relax. There’s no deadline. You don’t need 100% of the answer and it’s going to change and it’s supposed to change.

Stacey Brown Randall: That’s so key. I think the first time I heard you say that, like, they’re supposed to change. I was like, yes, say that again for everybody, including the people in the back of the room. Like, it’s supposed to change.

Like, I’ve always told this story about, for forever, I thought I was going to, the kids were going to go to college, and Norm and I would move to the mountains and live in a tiny house.

And he’s like, I don’t want to live in a tiny house. I’m like, okay, guess we’re changing that horizon.

And then I went up and experienced the mountains and realized, oh, like I go to the mountains a lot. That’s my place, right? But I went there with a different viewpoint of like buying land, building a tiny house, hopefully a couple of them.

And then I started realizing, I don’t actually want to be miles and miles and miles away from the center of the little downtown of the mountains, because that’s what I love.

So maybe the whole idea, right? Because I thought that’s what I wanted. I started exploring it. And I’m like, nah, change. We’ll do something different.

Kathy Brown: Right. And the challenge is that it’s easy for us to then call it a failure. It’s not a failure. Because you set your horizon destination, and then as you started to gather more information, you are adjusting it.

Stacey Brown Randall: Right.

Kathy Brown: There’s no failure in that. There’s not even a failure in the fact that I bought a hot tub that then later had torn out.

Stacey Brown Randall: Sorry. I love that.

Kathy Brown: It’s information.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah.

Kathy Brown: No, people love this story.

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh my gosh. Okay. You have dropped so many knowledge bombs. Thank you so much for spending time with me.

I would be remiss of course, if I did not just spend a couple of moments asking you to share your thoughts on attending the Referral Accelerator.

Just for anybody listening who’s, who’s definitely digging everything you’re talking about with the horizon destination and now thinking also maybe they want to do things in the referral world as well. What was it like for you to be an attendee at the Referral Accelerator?

Kathy Brown: It was awesome. To be in a community of other learners. I do a lot of learning. I love to learn.

But to be in a community of other learners, with you in the room, so I’m not, because I had taken one of your other programs on video, which was good. I learned a lot from it.

But that ability to ask questions, to hear other people ask questions, and as they’re making sense of the content and how they would apply it.

And then the way you structure it that we’re doing the work while we’re there, so then we’re getting the feedback. So to me, it had all of the elements of solid content, great delivery, a community of learners, doing some of the work so that I wasn’t coming home with a whole list of work.

It had all of it, and it just makes sense once you say it. Because you’ll say something and I’m like, oh, that makes so much sense. No, never entered my mind. So for me, it was all of those pieces that just together wove it into something that was greater than the sum of the parts.

Stacey Brown Randall: There is something special about The Accelerator experience and being in the room and learning it, doing it. and getting immediate feedback from me on it.

I love all the ways that I work with my clients. I love my VIP clients. I love the people who are in my coaching program, but there is just something special and unique about sitting in a room with other business owners who want the same thing you want and then doing it together.

And they’re in totally different industries. So, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. Well, Kathy, thank you so much for spending time with us on the podcast today.

I’m going to link to all the ways people can connect with you. They can follow you and connect with you on LinkedIn. I’ll put your website in there. But for the person listening right now, what is the best way for them to connect with you?

Kathy Brown: The best way is to look for me on LinkedIn. That is where I am most active. Yeah, LinkedIn.

Stacey Brown Randall: Well, we will put that in the show notes page for this episode. So I am so thankful to have spent this time with you. Thank you.

Kathy Brown: Thank you so much. It’s been fun.

Stacey Brown Randall: I really hope you enjoyed this conversation that I had with Kathy. We are going to link to how you can connect with her on LinkedIn and learn more about her on her website in the show notes page for this episode.

So for the show notes page, you’re just going to go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/392. But before you go, can I ask a favor? Well, technically two.

One, if you have purchased and read my new book, The Referable Client Experience, we are just a couple of days away from this arbitrary deadline I set of December 19th to hit 50 reviews on Amazon.

Now, if you prefer to buy your book off of Amazon and somewhere else, that is awesome. You can still leave a review on any of the other platforms, whether that is Bookshop, or maybe it’s an indie bookstore, or maybe it’s Barnes & Noble, whatever works for you, leaving a review on any platform where you buy the book is amazing.

But we are trying to hit 50 on Amazon and preferably 50 5-star ratings and reviews. So we’re trying to hit 50 by December 19th. That’s just a few days away from the time that this episode goes live.

So can you help me out? Can you leave a review? Can you try to get us to 50? I would be so very grateful.

And then the other thing I was going to mention is if you want to learn more about Kathy and her Horizon Destination planning, please do.

Actually, Kathy attended our end of year retreat and taught this to the attendees. So if you’ve never worked with me, that may not make any sense.

So what I do with my clients is when you come into one of my higher-level programs, you either do the two-day referral accelerator. I offer that a couple of times a year. We may be taking that on the road in 2026 to different locations.

Or my Building a Referable Business 12-month coaching program, or my VIP Referrals in a Day, which is actually a 13- to 14-month program with me. When you finish those, you can move into what we call the Referral Masters Program.

And this is how you continue to get access to me and support from me as you are implementing in your second year or your third year or your fifth year. We have people who’ve been in that group for many, many years.

Eventually, everyone graduates. It’s kind of the point. But you can get everything you need after that one program with me. But some people like to stick around because they still want access to me.

They still want me to review their language. They want to be able to talk about situations. They want to go refresh on trainings. And so they’re in the Referral Masters program, which Kathy is a part of as well.

And so what I do for the clients who are in Referral Masters or in their first year with the Accelerator, the coaching program and the VIP, I host an end of year retreat at the end of every year.

And this year, I thought it’d be really cool to have Kathy come in and actually present to the other members, right, and me, because I got to participate, the Horizon Destination Planning Framework that she uses.

So we decided to, I was gonna release this episode earlier, but just waited a week, because Kathy was actually with me in Charlotte last week, if you’re listening to this when this goes live, and actually presented to the attendees of my end-of-year retreat, which is really awesome.

But when I was making that decision to have her come to the retreat, I thought, how great would it be for you guys to hear it too? And I know it was a high-level kind of overview, but hopefully you got some great nuggets out of that, and you can go apply it.

And I would love it if once you go through your horizon destination planning, the framework that Kathy broke down or learn more from her on her freebies on her website, you can definitely find more on the show notes page for this episode about how to connect with her and how to get access to her resources.

But if you do set some big horizon destination goals, I’d love to hear them. So that’s the second thing I wanted to ask.

First is that five-star rating and review. Second is if you do set some big horizon destination points for you, I would love to know what they are. I think sharing them is always the next step after creating them.

Alright, so everything that I’ve mentioned, including the transcripts for this episode, can be found on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/392.

Thank you for making it to the end. Until next week, take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.