This episode runs 30 min.
It’s 2019 so David and Josh ask each other 10 questions to set 10 goals for the year. This episode is part two of two. For part one, click here.
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Mentioned in This Episode 135: Goals, Part 2
From Jinny Ditzler’s book, Your Best Year Yet
- What did I accomplish this year? (looking back through your 2018 calendar helps)
- What were my biggest disappointments (acknowledge, and look at what caused them, then move forward)
- What did I learn during the year? (look at accomplishments and ask how did I do that? look at disappointments and ask what would I do differently?)
- How do I limit myself..and how can I stop? (what story am I telling myself to explain these limitations? Pick one, and shift it into a positive affirmation)
- What are my personal values?
- What roles do I play? (i.e. husband, boss, designer, podcaster, dad, etc. List them all, be sure one role is to take care of yourself)
- Which role is my focus for the upcoming year (which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance?)
- What are my goals for each role? (list as many as you like but at least one per role)
- What are my top 10 goals for next year? (not discarding ones from #8, just creating a manageable, focused list. Aim for balance. Make a one page summary including guidlines from #3, new paradigm from #4, major focus #7, top 10 goals #9. Keep this summary where you can see it, share it.)
- How can I make sure I achieve my goals? (accountability partner, coach, friend check-in. Review summary while weekly planning)
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Announcer: Welcome to the PSM, the Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.
Josh: Hello and welcome to PSM show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m Josh Miles, and today I’ve got my partner David here with me. Hello David.
David: Hi Josh. Glad to be back just a week from last time.
Josh: Yeah, nice to do the old back to back so we could do part one and part two of our topic on goals, and I would encourage you if you have not listened to our previous episode, which I believe is 134, make sure and go back and listen to part one on goals, and I think this episode will make a whole lot more sense.
Josh: Yeah. Especially ’cause these sort of build on the previous five questions, and we’re gonna we’re going focus on six through 10 today, and I’m excited.
David: Well, hey, before we get too far, I’d like to give thanks to our underwriting title sponsor SMPS who reminds us business transformed through marketing leadership. Visit smps.org to learn more.
Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.
Josh: Okay David, so I think we left off last week … We just kinda wrapped up a little chat about our personal values. Again, if you haven’t already listened to that episode, make sure and go back and check out 134, but we’ve got this list of these 10 kind of goal setting framework things that you’ve been using for like, what’d you say? 10 or 15 years now?
David: Yeah. I can’t remember when I first started doing it. My parents sent me this, and at first I was like, “Oh man.” But then once I did it, I was like, “Wow, this is really insightful.” And so yeah, it’s been super helpful for me.
Josh: Yeah. I love your consistency with this because I am like always, “Ooh, shiny.” And then I’ll try a different goal setting approach for the next year or maybe three different ones in the same year, but I think this has got to be really cool to be able to go back and look at historically how you’ve answered these questions over the years.
David: Yes. Especially, you remember last time we talked about like question number four was how do I limit myself, and I can look back over 10 years, and if I’m seeing I’m limiting myself the exact same way every year, then I’m not following number three, which is what did I learn? So it is really kind of cool to go back and just kind of remember some of the accomplishments and disappointments. It’s sort of like a history of my life in a way like the things that matter, and it’s fun to kind of have that little time capsule to check out.
Josh: Well, I guess speaking of your life, we could jump into number six, and I’ll let you answer first, but that question is what roles do I play? So that’s like, for example, you might be a husband or a boss or an employee or all these other things. So, how would you list that out?
David: Yeah. So first, I just want to say that it’s really important for our audience to list all the roles that you play, and I think you’ll be kind of surprised in today’s modern society, how many different roles we play, but if you don’t sort of acknowledge the fact that you’re playing all these roles, then you could sort of short change one or the other just by sort of lack of awareness. So, I’ll list these real quick, and some of them are pretty self explanatory, but some might need a little explaining.
David: So, first one is I’m a husband. Second one is I’m a Principal of my firm, LecoursDesign, which means I’m the owner and the main driver of strategy of the firm and then business development and creative. The next role I play is as designer. I still get my hands involved with designing brand identities and websites. Often, the next role I play as brand strategist. So within projects, I will take the lead in terms of helping our clients strategically position themselves in the marketplace. One of my roles is athlete. I mentioned last time I’m a competitive pickle ball player and a surfer, and that part of my life is important. Family member, so other than my sort of immediate family of my wife and I, my sister lives nearby, and my dad lives nearby, and then close with my mom who doesn’t live nearby, but it’s aunts and uncles and cousins and things. So, I value that as well.
David: The next role may require a little explanation. I call it saw sharpener, and I think I got this from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but it’s this idea of like kind of looking out for myself, not in a selfish way, but more of like a self kind of care way of continually to sort of improve, and that may mean just sort of like taking time out and doing like a reflective day or a workshop or something where I don’t do a whole lot. But oftentimes, it means like taking classes or going to conferences and just sort of continuing to sharpen my saw or like make me better at using my tools, whatever they may be.
David: One of my roles is as a manager, helping to mentor a staff and guide them and move them forward. One of my roles as homeowner. My wife and I are about to embark on a backyard remodel, and so that’s gonna be fun, I hope.
Josh: You guys have had the epic journey of remodeling for the past few years.
David: Oh, I mean, yeah, that’s the kind of the benefit of buying a house that needs some love and having kind of a blank slate, and we both like it. My wife’s an interior designer, and I’m a designer, so it’s sort of a hobby in a way.
David: So two more. One is a role I play as thought leader, and I think of this as being a writer of blog posts and then as a speaker and a podcaster, and then final one, the role I play is friend, being friends to my friends.
Josh: Excellent. Well, I’m sort of like the last episode when we were talking about your values, I think I could probably just say yes and to yours, but definitely would agree with the husband and dada number one. Dada is what my kids call me. So this is kind of new for me in that kind of business owner entrepreneur role that I played for a really long time has shifted to being an employee and more of a manager and leader within another organization. So, that’s a big shift for me, and it’s something I’m still learning my way around, I think. I would kind of wrap up a lot of the things that I do with the heart of a teacher. So whether I’m speaking or on video or on podcasts, like the thing that I really enjoy is helping other people learn and helping people apply their learnings in new skills into … We talked about this with the values thing as well as that just kind of my desire for impact.
Josh: So, as I’m teaching, I want to give people, not just fill an hour but also deliver some value to the listener or the viewer or the audience, and I think maybe also similar to one of yours is I am just a crazy consumer of data, of information, of learning. I love to improve myself and kind of learn tips and tricks and techniques and hacks and all of that good stuff for how to do things better or to learn and acquire new skills. So again, would agree with a lot of yours, but those are some of the ones that are maybe unique to me.
David: I love that you framed that one sort of like whether you’re podcasting or doing video or writing or giving talks as teacher because then it’s like, so serving. There’s that whole sort of school of servant leadership, right? So it’s like you’re really serving an audience. It’s not like you’re getting up there to sort of feed your ego, but it’s … Yeah, I think that’s a great way to sort of frame that, and I think our audience, when they’re thinking of how can we share our expertise, people call this content marketing, but if you just sort of think of yourself as a teacher or think of your people as teachers, that’s just a great way to consider it.
Josh: And it also saves time from listing all the other things.
David: Yeah.
Josh: Just say teacher, then I don’t have to say author, writer, speaker, podcaster, blah blah blah.
David: No. Yeah, no, for sure. So yeah, we all play a lot of different roles, and I think as I mentioned earlier, it’s important to identify those. So the next one sort of plays off of that is identifying, hey, what is your focus role going to be for the upcoming year? It doesn’t mean you’re going to neglect any of those other roles, but maybe ask yourself this question: Which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance in that particular role?
David: So for me this year my focus role is going to be on principle. I am interested in growing our firm a little bit and taking on more national projects which we’ve started to do and sort of elevate our brand out in the marketplace. I’m also very interested in kind of improving some of our internal processes about how we manage projects and how we kind of forecast our workload and sort of all the things that go along with that.
David: So, I’m working with a consultant, and that’s gonna be my focus role, and I have my wife and other people that sort of keep me in check making sure that I don’t neglect those other roles. But I just feel like if I make a really significant impact in that one role, it’s going to have a cascading effect and make me a happier and better person in the other places too.
Josh: Yeah, that’s good.
David: How about your thoughts? Do you have one or two that you are going to kind of put in front?
Josh: I think the one that would be the biggest difference is in the teacher piece. So, being more focused in what maybe media or venue through which I’m teaching, and I don’t have all the answers just yet, but I’ve kind of started out the year doing a little research on a potential new book, and unfortunately I wouldn’t … It’s just not practical for most humans to lock themselves up in a cabin for a month and just write, so for me, it’s getting in regular like maybe 30 minutes a morning just to focus on it or maybe 60 minutes if that’s possible first thing before I really start my work day to just focus and think about what I’m writing. So, putting out regular content and/or compiling something for what might become this new book that I’m exploring is the thing that I think would be the biggest difference if we sit here next year and had this conversation.
David: Yeah. No, Well I look forward to what that new book might be. If I could take the role of sort of your accountability partner, you also mentioned wanting to do the audio recording of your existing book, Bold, Bold Brand 2.0. So, I’m just going to ask you a sort of provocative question. Would it be better to finish that first or do you think you can do both?
Josh: I think I can do both. I think there … I think I can record in the evening or on the weekend and get the book recorded pretty quickly. It’s just a matter of making that a to-do item that actually gets to done. The writing thing I think is more of like you can’t just sort of find time here and there and end up with a book at the end of the year. Like it’s got to be a much more focused endeavor for sure.
David: Yeah. Much more intentional.
Josh: Yup.
David: Nice. Okay. So number eight is … All right. You’ve identified what roles you play, so now we’re going to get into some goals, and it’s essential that to sort of keep yourself as a balanced human being, that you have at least one goal for every single role, and I, of course, am a fan of making these goals smart, in other words, specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time based, but kind of even more important in this case is just making sure you have a goal for each role that you play. And you can list as many as you like, and then we’ll kind of narrow the focus a little bit in a subsequent question.
Josh: Yeah. I feel like most of my … I guess in full transparency, I’ve been working on this goals list for like the last week and a half, and it’s been kind of a few minutes to think through things here and a few minutes to think through things there, and like we talked a little bit last episode, if anything, I sort of find myself over committing to doing all of the things so I end up with like 800 goals, so then I have to go back, and maybe 800 is a slight exaggeration, but sometimes it’s tough for me to prioritize the top three or the top five and then to like really focus on those.
Josh: A lot of the things that were bubbling up for me were kind of in the area of publishing. We talked a little bit previously, about, my learning of video last year, so I ended up publishing 52 short videos to YouTube last year, and I wanted to up that this year. So, I wanted to still do … I do a weekly series called 59 Second Friday that came out just about every Friday last year and then also did a couple longer form pieces. So, my goal this year is to do 72 total videos in addition to whatever this new book becomes and then also to record that audio book. So, those are kind of my three big publishing goals.
David: And I think it’s important in this sort of … This question number eight is don’t feel like you do have to edit down and narrow the focus. We’ll have an opportunity to do that. So just sort of get it all down, sort of like in the creative brainstorming, like now is not the time to edit. Get it down, and then you can start to prioritize from there.
David: So one of my roles as principal, so I set a goal of certain revenue that we’re trying to hit of course, set a goal of improving project management. As an athlete, I’ve identified like four big pickle ball tournaments that I want to play in. What else? Thought leader, I want to do another 25 episodes of this podcast, identified a couple of conferences that I’m going to try to get hired to speak at. My wife and I have identified some joint goals, and one of which is to, on a monthly basis, get together with friends, certainly out in the real world or IRL, in real life, whether that’s hosting dinners or going for hikes and .. And then also, she and I want to move out and just sort of get outside of our little bubble of exploring the vast area of Southern California and doing kind of more hikes and finding interesting things because there’s just so much cool stuff, and it’s real easy to hang out at home.
David: So yeah, those are some of the goals that are related to specific roles.
Josh: Yeah. Good stuff. Like it.
David: All right, so question number nine is to identify … So, question eight was just to come up with a big list of all your roles, all your goals, and then question number nine is just to identify, hey, what are my top 10 goals for the next year? So you’re not going to discard roles from number eight. It’s just, you’re going to sort of create a manageable focus list. And the way I sort of like to think about this is like, once you get those first 10 done, now you’ve got that manageable … Now you’ve got that other list that you created for question eight that you can go back to. So you’re not like killing your dreams. You have a list that you could go back to.
David: But you also, I think, and I think you alluded this earlier, Josh, that if you just have so many of these things, you just can’t focus the time or energy to accomplish the ones. And I’m guessing there’s some that are just going to be … And this is why I sort of asked that question of like, hey, if I were to make a difference or accomplish this one goal, like it would probably have this kind of cascading effect on other things, and the other part of this is after you’ve established these 10 goals, create some sort of like maybe cheat sheet or summary. Maybe you print it out and post it on your screen or in your workspace. Or maybe there’s a private place you have in your home so that you’re just constantly seeing it. It just sort of becomes like part of your life. I use Evernote and kind of on a weekly basis when I plan my week, I review that list and say, “Hey, is there one little thing that I can do to kind of move forward to meeting one of the particular goals?”
Josh: Yeah. That’s good. I think like we were discussing before, I don’t really have all of them fleshed out yet, and some of the ones that were easiest for me to kind of put my hands on were some of these content goals, and some of those are ones that maybe I need to revisit and say, “Okay, is making 72 videos really, really that important?” Or is it more … One of those goals in particular is I’ve got some friends that own a coffee shop, and we’ve been talking forever about making a short film/video for their coffee shop. Like, you know, just for free. Like, “Hey, how about we work on this project together?” They’re creative people. I would want them to collaborate on it and just to make a really cool piece at the end, like that almost is more important to me than the 72 individual episodes.
Josh: I think like you’re saying just getting all of those goals out there is a great way for you to really think through and like give weight to okay, if I could only do a portion of these, which are most important? Or like my business coach would always say, “You know, most people make all these goals for the year. Most people don’t write them down, and most people will never accomplish any of them because they’re not focused really on any particular one or two.” But he would always say, you know, at most three, but ideally, you’ve got one or two really, really important goals, and if your focus is on those and you get some of the others done, that’s great too.
David: Yeah, and I don’t think 10 is a magic number that you absolutely … But I would cap it at 10 for sure. I think anything more than that is probably not realistic because either that or you’re not setting high enough goals. Like if it’s so easy you can accomplish 50 of them, maybe you’d be better off just doing 10 that are like really more stretch goals that can help you.
Josh: And some of these might even be like semantics, right? It’s like, what’s the difference between a goal or a habit. Like is going to the gym four times a week, is that a goal or is that just, I want to make that a habit. The goal is to have the habit of going to the gym.
David: Yeah. And I think I could address that in a way like I think if it is specific, going to the gym. It’s measurable, four times. It’s actionable, you have to take certain steps to get yourself to the gym. It’s realistic, you can probably do four, and it’s time based. It’s within a week. So I would definitely category that as a goal. It’s awesome if these goals do become a habit because then they’re just so much easier to do. It just becomes just part of your … Like the last probably three or four years ago I started a meditation practice, and now I just feel kind of awkward, something sort of off if I don’t do the 15 minutes that I set out to do every morning, and it just like, feels weird. So yeah, that’s become a habit.
David: Yeah, so from the sort of list of goals that I shared before, I don’t have new ones. It’s just a few of those that I’ve identified that I mentioned earlier that I want to hit.
Josh: Yep. Sounds good.
David: So yeah. Alright. You have your 10 goals, you printed it out, you’ve made it real. There’s a 10th step that’s like really kind of critical to this process, and I think it’s something that people sometimes don’t do, and it prohibits them from meeting those goals, and that is having a plan which is different from your goals, but it’s basically how can I make sure I achieve my goals, and that can take the form of a lot of different things. It could be having an accountability partner. Josh and I have now publicly shared some of these things with each other, and so we have this kind of like built in accountability. I can check in and say, “Hey Josh.” And maybe we do that throughout the year even here on the podcast like, “Hey, how’s it going with this?” Although that could be really embarrassing if we haven’t made any particular progress.
Josh: A little public shaming via podcasts.
David: But you could step it up, and you could potentially hire a coach to help you. There is something about paying for help that makes it a little more real and painful if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do because then you’re just kind of wasting your money. But maybe you just have a friend or a family member that you can check in with.
David: You know, I found that what helps me really well is, like I said, I do this kind of weekly planning usually now kind of on Sunday nights. I try to plan my week ahead so I can kind of hit the ground running Monday morning, and part of that, and I used David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, and he suggests having this weekly kind of check in with yourself about like what are the outstanding issues? What are all your projects you’re working on? What sort of state are they in? But one of the things that I review is that list of goals that I’ve set, and so I can check in and see how I’m doing there.
Josh: You know, two of the variations on the reviewing your goals thing. Something I’ve used in years past is kind of a visual version of that. So keep a little poster of a vision board or like hanging that up at your desk or making that image your desktop background, or there’s a lot of different ways that you can make sure that you are literally visualizing your goals, and some people will say, “Okay, not just your goals, but maybe like the so what.” So if you sell so many widgets, you’re gonna buy yourself a new car. Well, what car is that? That’s the image that goes on the vision board. So it’s not so much a visioning the X million dollars in sales, but it’s envisioning your [crosstalk 00:25:17] that you’re going to buy when you close those deals.
Josh: And I just heard this one yesterday actually, Sunny was one of our SMPS Max speakers, at Build Business back in Indianapolis in 2017. She’s got a really great podcast. If you check out I think it’s probably slash podcast, but we’ll put the real link in the show notes, but she was talking about what she does is she writes herself a letter from the future so she writes it to herself from herself for every 90 days.
Josh: So, she kind of chunks her goals down into quarterly, and every 90 days she updates this letter and then she reads the letter aloud every day. So, you know, I’ll let her explain the rest of it, but I thought it was a really powerful idea of like hearing yourself say the things as if it were already done, kind of creates something in your mind that you think, “Oh yeah, this is doable. This is happening. There’s no question about it.” So again, check that out. I thought that was a really interesting take on how to review your goals.
David: Oh Man. Some great stuff there, Josh. I think whatever sort of format you feel comfortable expressing yourself, if it’s calligraphy, if it’s a graphic design, if it’s photography, if it’s making collage, I think we can all tear things out of magazines. Yeah, I love the idea of like taking your, hopefully your own magazines, not like public library ones, but like taking your goals and making it visual into some sort of piece of art, your own little special art piece that represents your goals.
David: And there was one other thing you said. Oh, it was about chunking. Let’s say you’ve got a year goal of like a certain revenue target. Let’s say it’s a million dollars. That kind of year long is super long, and that number is real kind of big, but if you start to break it down by month or even a by week or something, then it becomes more realistic like when you’re in the moment trying to hit those, and then you have a better sense of like a thermometer reading of how you’re doing.
David: That was something that I did a while back, and I think I’m going to do again is literally sort of make one of those sort of like almost fundraising thermometers. And there’s something really fun about each week getting out the colored marker and sort of filling in the ink of letting that thermometer starts rise and seeing like, “All right, I’m making progress. I’m hitting these goals.” And you can do that, not just for revenue, but kinda anything. Like, you know, you can have little four check boxes a week for every time you want to go to the gym. And like just the satisfaction of checking off that box. There’s just something visceral and analog about that that I think encourages you to keep it up that behavior.
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So, if you are extra stubborn and did not go back and listen to episode 134 on goals and you made it all the way through 135, I would encourage you to now go back and listen to the first half of this, and if you made it through both of them, thanks for listening. You’ll have to Tweet out to us and let us know what you think about goal setting or maybe if you have other thoughts or approaches that you use, make sure and tell us that in the comments over at PSM Show.
Josh: So, I think that about wraps us up for today. If you have any other questions or comments or thoughts on future guests, make sure and write to at psm.show. Just scroll all the way down to contact and drop us a line.
Josh: Thanks again to our sponsor, SMPS. Visit smps.org. That’s all for today’s episode of PSM Show from myself and David. We’ll see you next time.