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.

Subscribe to PMS Show on iTunes

Mentioned in This Episode 135: Goals, Part 2

From Jinny Ditzler’s book, Your Best Year Yet

1. What did I accomplish this year? (looking back through your 2018 calendar helps)
2. What were my biggest disappointments (acknowledge, and look at what caused them, then move forward)
3. 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?)
4. 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)
5. What are my personal values?
6. 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)
7. Which role is my focus for the upcoming year (which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance?)
8. What are my goals for each role? (list as many as you like but at least one per role)
9. 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.)
10. How can I make sure I achieve my goals? (accountability partner, coach, friend check-in. Review summary while weekly planning)

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

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Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

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Read the Episode

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.

SaveSave

This episode runs 32 min.

It’s 2019 so David and Josh ask each other 10 questions to set 10 goals for the year. This episode is part one of two.

Subscribe to PMS Show on iTunes

Mentioned in This Episode 134: Goals, Part 1

From Jinny Ditzler’s book, Your Best Year Yet

1. What did I accomplish this year? (looking back through your 2018 calendar helps)
2. What were my biggest disappointments (acknowledge, and look at what caused them, then move forward)
3. 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?)
4. 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)
5. What are my personal values?
6. 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)
7. Which role is my focus for the upcoming year (which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance?)
8. What are my goals for each role? (list as many as you like but at least one per role)
9. 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.)
10. How can I make sure I achieve my goals? (accountability partner, coach, friend check-in. Review summary while weekly planning)

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

We Want to Hear From You

Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

Subscribe to our Podcast

To subscribe to the PSM podcast in iTunes – click here

 

Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

David: Hello, and welcome PSM Show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m David Lecours, and I’ve got Josh Miles here with me. How are you doing today, Josh?

Josh: You know what, I am doing well, sir. It has been all winter without winter here in Indiana, but we are expecting seven inches of snow tomorrow and I can’t say I’m excited about it. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of winter.

David: You’re not gonna pull out your sled and your saucer?

Josh: I’m probably gonna pull out my shovel for sure.

David: Oh yeah.

Josh: Fireplace and wish I were in sunny San Diego with you.

David: Yeah, I hear you. Well I just got back from Portland, it wasn’t so sunny there, so I am glad to be back home.

David: well, hey, it’s 2019 and I thought it’d be great for us to talk about goals, and we can unpack what that means in a minute, but first I want to point out we’re so happy and proud to have our underwriting production sponsor, SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership.

David: If you want to find out more about SMPS, go to SMPS.org.

Announcer: This is PSM, it’s incite applied.

David: Alright Josh, let’s talk a little bit about goals and maybe we should sort of set this up in terms of why we thought this was relevant and how this can sort of be for SMPS marketers to establish some personal goals and also some professional goals, does that sound good?

Josh: Sounds good, this is like the time of the year that every other influencer on Instagram or YouTube or Twitter or whatever is talking about their own particular life hacks and all the ways of setting goals and all that good stuff, so it’s good timing.

David: Yeah, and I think setting goals can happen anytime of the year, so if you already have something in place, maybe this can be a framework that you can add to or maybe you change it up going forward.

David: And so, what Josh and I are gonna do is we’re gonna go through these ten questions, sort of a top ten and it’s a process that kind of builds on the previous question, and by the end, you end up with your top ten goals of the year, and I think it’s a great way to kind of reflect on where you’ve been, take stock of where you are now, and then really consider where you want to go in the future.

David: So let’s start off with question number one, and that is what did I accomplish this year? And one of the great ways that I’ve found to sort of go through this task is literally go back through my calendar, I use a digital calendar through the Mac, and just sort of look at all the different things I did and that sort of helps jog my memory ’cause I can’t remember everything I did all year. Certainly the highlights are gonna stand out organically.

David: But it’s a really amazing exercise, ’cause my experience in doing this, and I’ve done this same sort of ten questions for the last 10 or 15 years, is that you really forget how much you’ve accomplished in a calendar year, and all those sort of great things that you’ve done. It’s real to sort of get sucked into negativity bias and think about maybe things that you didn’t accomplish, but this is a really great sort of self esteem booster and just memory booster to remember what you did that year.

Josh: Yeah, I think it’s helpful, too, in addition to the calendar thing, however you’re producing content to kind of go back and look through that, whether that’s your Twitter feed or blog posts that you’ve written or YouTube videos or even just a notebook.

David: Instagram, yeah.

Josh: There’s so many ways to just be like, “oh yeah, I kind of forgot we went on that trip or did that thing or learned that new skill,” so I think in addition to the calendar, maybe look back through your social and otherwise publishing and just recall all the things that you did knock out that year.

David: Right, and also look at the sort of projects that you completed or maybe sort of review all the proposals that you put out as a way to jog your memory. Hopefully those will be positive memories, but yeah.

Josh: As a side point, there is a designer that worked for me a few years back and every year that we would do his annual performance review, he would always hand me a print out of here’s every project I worked on in the last year. So he just did a great job of cataloging all the things that he did and just as a side point, as an employee I think that’s both a great way to talk to your supervisor about your performance, but also to handle this, number one, to remember all the things that you’ve accomplished.

David: Right, so our plan for this episode is to, of course, share these really intriguing ten questions, but we want to let you, our audience, sort of get to know Josh and I a little bit better, and we want to share our answers to these questions because this has been a great exercise for us and it’ll be a great way for you to get to know us a little bit better.

David: So Josh, why don’t you start us off and maybe highlight the top three to five things that you accomplished this year?

Josh: Yeah, well I went through some pretty major changes this past year, so selling my portion of the business and taking a new job at SMPS, now the chief marketing officer, so that was very exciting.

Josh: One of the maybe less significant things, but was exciting to me was sitting for and passing the EFAA drone license exam, so that was a pretty exciting thing so I can officially-

David: You’re now a pilot!

Josh: … I’m a pilot, a very small pilot, but yeah.

David: That’s super cool.

Josh: Yeah, so those were some of my chief highlights, of course. How about you?

David: Yeah, I think one was a personal highlight which was my wife, Holly, and I traveled to Africa for the very first time, back in July, and I’ve always said, oh Africa, that’s a trip of a lifetime, and now that I’ve been and had such an amazing experience, I don’t want it to be the trip of a lifetime, I want it to be one of many trips to Africa because it was so incredible. The wildlife that we saw and just the topography and the people, just the whole experience was so positive and so amazing and it just reminds me of how much travel opens you up to new ideas and new cultures and I just think it makes me a more tolerant, more global citizen and it also kind of rekindled my love for photography.

David: It’s really hard to take a bad picture in Africa, the light is terrific, the subject matter is phenomenal. So I got some really great shots of wildlife and so that was unbelievable.

David: Probably the second big highlight was the national conference at SMPS, and the national conference just happened to be in San Diego this year, which is of course my hometown and I had a nice role at the conference where I got to MC the Max talks, and if our audience has never been to a national billed business conference, you should. It’s gonna be in Washington D.C. next year.

David: We have these things called Max talks which are sort of like short talks similar to a TED talk where members and professionals get up and share sort of more personal stories and more, less sort of educational content and more inspirational content. Is that a safe way to sort of describe the Max?

Josh: Yeah. Yeah I think that’s great.

David: Okay, yeah. So at that conference I got to MC and then my firm, along with our client won three national awards. Won the best website, best rebrand, and best print recruiting piece and so as someone who hasn’t entered a lot of awards contests, and if you’re interested in learning more about awards, we’ve got a previous show that was all about awards. Episode number 129, but of course it’s fun to win awards.

David: And then the third thing is, and it’s still sort of in soft launch, but for the last two years I’ve been trying to launch a new website for Lecoursdesign.com, my firm, and it’s sort of been a case of the cobbler’s kids not having shoes, which if you’re trying to sell website services and your website isn’t outstanding, there’s a bit of a disconnect, and that disconnect has been painful for me, but finally we’ve soft launched and still kind of tweaking things, but I’m proud of this new site we launched.

Josh: Yeah, very exciting and you guys kind of swept the awards show, that was pretty impressive, so congrats again on that.

David: Thank you. All right, so those are some accomplishments, and again we think it’s great to sort of list as many as you can, and I think you’ll be surprised by how long that list can be.

David: So of course it’s probably, you can imagine what’s coming next, which are what were your biggest disappointments of that year? And I think it’s important to acknowledge those, maybe look what caused them and then maybe how to move forward and avoid or pivot and learn from those. ‘Cause, you know, not all disappointments are bad, a lot of times it’s just information and it can help learn and pivot.

Josh: Yeah, I think maybe along the lines of your Africa trip I had big hopes early in the year to do a European trip and that just didn’t work out in the schedule, couldn’t’ get everybody’s calendars to align for that, so that was a bummer, maybe we’ll work that in this year.

Josh: But one of the things I wanted to get done that just keeps kicking the can down the road is doing the audio version of my book, of Bold Brand 2.0, so actually the whole impetus for writing the second version of the book was I got halfway through recording the audio book for the first version and realized I had some things that I wanted to update and rewrite and I thought, you know what? I’ll just take the time and do version two of the book first, which I did, but now I’m still stuck on getting this audio book done, so I just need to lock myself in the studio for a couple of hours and go read the book to myself.

David: Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Yeah, in terms of disappointments I had a couple pursuits that we did not win, that we really had no business going after, and it was just kind of a reminder of making sure that you have a really go, no go, and you kind of stick to your values there.

David: And not sort of overinvest in a sale, and I think people don’t like to hire somebody that’s real needy, I think that maybe we over invested in the sale, like flew to the clients location and did a bunch of presentations, and we didn’t do free work for them on spec, which we absolutely don’t do, but just over invested in the sale, so I’m gonna try to not do that going forward.

David: Another thing that kind of happened at the last part of the year was I seemed to get into arguments, but offend or upset, it happened, like I offended four people within a period of about two weeks via email communication and it was just a further reminder to me that email is just a terrible way to communicate anything sort of sensitive, you should definitely pick up the phone or try to meet in person because you just lose all tone and you just can’t control the environment in which somebody reads an email, and usually that environment is not great because you don’t know what email came before yours and it could have put the person in a bad mood, so that was kind of a heads up.

David: And then finally, I had set some pretty high revenue goals for our firm, and we did not hit those, and it kind of forced me to sort of think about what my role in the organization is gonna be and I’m probably trying to do too many things because I like the design, I like to bring in business, I like to project manage, but I’m really world class at any of those things, and in order to become world class I think I need to narrow my focus a little bit and hire other people that are really great at some of those other roles.

David: Alright so that’s kind of-

Josh: I think you might be cutting yourself a little bit short, having won three of the biggest awards in the industry this year, so maybe, maybe.

David: … so any other thoughts about the disappointments or should we move on?

Josh: I would just love to say this time next year I won’t have the same disappointments on my list.

David: I love it, right.

Josh: So I need to make sure I chalk those up to get those knocked out this year.

David: Yeah, you’re now making yourself accountable because everybody that listens to this is gonna check in on you, “hey Josh, have you recorded that audio book?”

Josh: Exactly.

David: Yeah, I like that and I think that’s an important part of goal setting is making yourself accountable, putting it out there, like literally putting it in writing, and we’ll talk about that later as we go through our list.

David: So question number three is what did I learn during the year? And I think probably the best way to do that is look at all your accomplishments, look at all your disappointments, and say for the accomplishments, hey, how did I do that? Don’t just take it for granted that it happened, there were certainly decisions and steps that you made to make that happen, and then the second part is of the disappointments, what would I do differently? Or what are some things that could be better?

Josh: So I think looking at, as far as learnings go from the year, I guess I could have included this in accomplishments, but one of the things that I had mentioned so many times the previous year and early last year that I just wanted to try to figure out this YouTube thing as a marketer, looking at video on the whole and thinking, I don’t really know enough about that. I don’t know, I had never tried to optimize a post on YouTube, I had never tried to get views, I’d never really done the product piece of filming and adding audio, and how do you do transitions and so I kind of jumped into that with both feet towards the end of February last year and looking back on some of the videos that I made early on in the year, they’re a little bit more cringey than others, but towards the end of the year, I felt pretty good about it so I was excited that I feel like I figured out kind of camera basics, frame rates and sound, and all that good stuff.

Josh: So I was very excited about what I learned in the world of video to the point of like, now I’m kind of addicted to it, so already looking, maybe I need to upgrade my lighting or maybe I need a different microphone. So I’m sort of becoming a video gear head, but that was something I definitely jumped into and I feel like that’s probably an area that I grew the most last year.

David: Yeah, no, I think that’s super cool and I think one of the things I’ve always admired about you, Josh, is that if you want to do something you just kind of jump in, and you’re kind of fearless about sort of taking it on, I think sometimes I, “oh I gotta like do this in private and figure it all out before I take it out into the world,” but there’s something about sort of having the pressure of starting to just do it and you have learned this whole new skill that, yeah, if you want to learn something new, and I this is a take away for our audience, just start doing it.

David: There are so many resources out there, one of which is YouTube, you can pretty much find out how to do anything, and there are so many coaches out there and resources for figuring out how to do stuff. I firmly believe as marketers, we gotta always be uping our arsenal of tools and as technology changes, we gotta try new stuff.

David: So one of the accomplishments that I didn’t mention, but that I am the proud of is the fact that you and I put out 25 episodes of PSM Show last year, and I guess, yeah, go us.

David: And I think the sort of take away there is to just kind of say yes. You had asked me to cohost with you and I was like, oh I don’t know, I don’t know to do that, got a lot on my plate, but I said yes, and I kind of learned somethings along the way, so yeah. Just the same sort of theme as your video, just sort of jump in and start to learn how to do things.

David: I think another sort of important thing I learned or just reconfirmed is like how important it is to make connections offline. There’s this real ease, I sort of think of social media sometimes as junk food, right? It’s sort of gives you an instant hit, but about 30 minutes later you bonk and bonk meaning like you hit a low blood sugar and it’s not really very nourishing.

David: And I think sometimes we can mistake likes or people reaching out to say happy birthday on social media as like a real connection, and I don’t think, at least for me, and I’m not gonna proselytize here, but for me, man, getting together with people in real life is so much more validating and just get a lot more out of that.

Josh: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Anything else you want to include in your learnings or you want to move onto number four?

David: I think that’s it, yeah, let’s move on to number four, and so number four is how do I limit myself and how can I stop? And sometimes this means, like what stories are you telling yourself?

David: So we all have these internal dialogues and often it takes the form of I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, that kind of thing. But I think it’s critical to acknowledge what’s going on in your head and ways that you may be limiting yourself and then pick one of those and sort of shift it into maybe a more positive affirmation or to turn the corner on it and change it around, because a lot of times these things are just in our head, they’re not actually real.

David: I heard this acronym once about fear standing for false evidence appearing real, and a lot of times we’re scared to do new things or try new stuff and it often, once we start doing it, we’re like “oh, that was ridiculous, I can’t believe I was so scared to do that,” it was false evidence that appeared real until we started doing it.

David: So were there any ways that you thought about that you limited yourself in the last year?

Josh: This might sound like an oxymoron to this answer, but I think the way that I limit myself is that I tend to feel like once I start doing something, I have to keep doing it, and so I end doing quote, unquote “all the things” and I think that that’s a good example of why I don’t have an audiobook recorded because I’m doing 20 other things that are also, they feel like the right things, so sometimes it’s hard for me, when there’s so many shiny things to choose which three shiny things really are the most important or the most valuable, so it probably limits my ability to go really deep in any of them because I kind of dabble a little bit or kind of chase them all at once. If that makes sense.

David: So let me see if I understand you, so the idea that you start something and you feel like you got to just continue it no matter what rather than maybe cutting your loses and focusing in on fewer things?

Josh: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve done a really great with this show in that we weren’t overly ambitious to begin with so we’re not trying to do a daily or weekly show, we publish about twice a month, and we were really good at doing that consistently, so it was a very sustainable pace, but other things that I’ve done maybe are less sustainable, so cramming them all into the day and then you feel like you can’t go, for instance, maybe I wouldn’t have time to do more PSM show if I wanted to, but maybe we should do more, I don’t know.

David: I think we’ve had a great sort of format in that, well, it’s just having a partnership. It doesn’t all fall on you or it doesn’t all fall on me, and so we do these individual interviews and we’ve alternated episodes between the two of us and then also episodes of interviewing people and so that helps kind of break it up and allows to us to get more episodes done and yeah, have to sort of cram it in.

Josh: Yeah, and I guess to just let people a little further behind the curtain, even when we do our episodes together, we frequently, not always, but frequently try to record two in a row so it’s even a single time commitment as opposed to multiple times a month.

David: Yeah, ’cause just the scheduling of it takes time and energy and so yeah, if we can just bang out a couple at a time while we’re together, we’re focused, we’re sort of already warmed up and we can just sort of flow from there.

Josh: Yeah. How do you see that one or do you find yourself limiting in certain areas?

David: Yeah, for sure, I really kind of had this epiphany and it’s such a constant problem that I find myself in and I have to remind myself of being reactionary in terms or planning my day, my week, it’s so easy to get sucked into those sort of dopamine hit of answering an email as it comes in, thinking in your head, “oh I’m a hero, I just answered that,” or a text or a slack message or whatever.

David: And it’s so counter productive, because I’m somebody that needs to have long periods of time to do deep work, and think about things and I need it to be quiet and so if I get distracted by a bing or a beep or a whatever, the email or text, it just throws me out of my rhythm and I have to ramp back up and so that is really a microcosm, but really the idea of planning my week and letting others maybe dictate my priorities and what I’ve reminded myself is what I need to do is Sunday nights or Monday mornings, real early, is plan the entire week and literally put in the calendar, I’m gonna have deep creative work for these five hours and break it up, I like 90 minute increments.

David: And be proactive, rather than reactive, and man at the end of the week I just feel so much more productive and like I did something that nourished my soul, and got stuff done rather than just being quote, unquote “busy” for the sake of being busy.

Josh: You know, that’s a really great point, I just did a little story on one of my recent YouTube videos about, similarly, how valuable that first hour in the day is for me. If I let email or whatever other pings or dings or whatever dictate what I’m doing in that first hour, then that just starts your day off on the hamster wheel.

David: Yeah.

Josh: If you start your day with an hour of writing or an hour of thinking or an hour of really deep design work or strategy and it’s focused time. The rest of the day you just feel like you’re three inches taller. Wow, I just killed it all morning and then you get into all the busy work and maybe the urgency of the moment, but not letting those things drive your day I think is huge.

David: I love that you said that, and one of the things that I do is I’m not allowed to look at email until noon and the idea of starting your day with something that is creative or maybe contemplative or reflective and that’s you sort of controlling your destiny and you’re setting a tone, and it seems like so much of this is about momentum.

David: If you set the tone at the first part of your day, you’re less tolerant of distractions or things that are gonna deviate you from your goal, and I recognize that our audience, there’s other people who have priorities and they have kids and they other things, but man, if you can just set boundaries to give yourself permission to start your day, start small, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Whether it’s like meditation or writing or journaling or something to help you maybe plan the rest of your day, I think you’re gonna find that to be incredibly effective.

Josh: So maybe we should move onto number five?

David: Yeah, let’s do number five and so number five is identifying what your personal values are and I think we all sort of know what values are, but the things that you hold dear and you’re passionate about so that it can help you make decisions.

Josh: You want to go first on this one?

David: Sure, yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll list most of these ’cause it’ll go pretty quick.

David: So one of my personal values is creativity and I sort of make an equation that creative input equals creative output, so I’ve got to feed myself with creative inspiration if I’m expecting to pull out creative work.

David: The other one is winning, I’ve come to realize that I’m a competitive person, I like the pursuit of winning, don’t always win, but the pursuit pushes me to elevate my game. I’m a competitive pickle ball player, and I also like the new business process.

David: I alluded to this earlier, but personal connection is a value, so my affirmation there is I reach out to friends for connect and laughter.

David: Another one is renewal, I practice yoga, I try to sleep well. One of the things I haven’t done in a while is take a quarterly retreat or take a personal day where it’s just me or maybe it’s a weekend where I go away and do some sort of long range planning or writing or thinking.

David: Travel and adventure is a big value, I love going to new places and learning new things, tasting new food, experiencing new culture.

David: And let’s see, my marriage is a value, I try to continually invest in our relationship, and then maybe the final one is design. I love marrying beauty and strategy to communicate the soul of a brand.

David: I feel kind of naked, just sharing all that stuff, but-

Josh: Wow.

David: … It’s fun.

Josh: Well maybe I can help you, I would just say yes to all of yours.

David: Okay, yeah, me too.

Josh: Yeah, me too. I think with the nuance of really putting family first is something that I have talked about often and have actually been able to live out here recently so that feels good to have that as well as health and fitness had not really been a thing for me for most of my adult life and the last few years they’ve been really important parts of being very aware of what I’m eating and maybe more importantly of what I’m not eating.

David: Yeah.

Josh: And just taking care of myself, actually using that gym membership instead of just paying for it, which I used to be really good at sending in the check, but not so good at sending myself in.

Josh: And then, I heard a quote the other day that was that the entrepreneurial types impact is their drug of choice and I’ve thought, man, that hits home. That’s been my pet word for such a long time is that with all of these things, impact is the thing that I’m always kind of hungry for, to make sure that where you’re spending your time and where you’re putting your effort is actually moving the needle and making a difference so, if I could accomplish that in everything that I touch, then that always feels more valuable.

David: Yeah, no, for sure. All right, well, I value your values. I think those were solid and inspiring. So we’re half way through the list Josh, and I think we’re gonna wrap up today, and then do the second half of the list, so we did one through five, we’ll do six through ten in our next episode, that’s gonna come out a week from today, so if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future shows or guests that you think we should interview, pop on over to our website, we are at PSM.show, and if you scroll down there’s just a simple contact form, and you can tell us what you think, we love feedback. Of course we love ratings on iTunes, we’d love referrals of this show to other people.

David: We’re also very thankful for our sponsor, SMPS, you can find out more about them at SMPS.org, so that’s it for this episode of PSM Show. David Lecours, who’s me, and Josh Miles we’ll see you next time.

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