Why Business Goals Fail and How to Set Goals That Stick

Okeydokey, going to record a podcast. This is episode 26, Why Business Goals Fail and How to End the Goal Fail Cycle. All right, here we go, y’all.

If you have ever set a goal and didn’t hit it, well, my friend, you’re normal. If you’re someone who often sets goals and rarely hits them, then you’re just like I was. I tried all the goal setting things. I tried SMART goals. I tried this system, and I just never could get it to work. And I thought, what’s wrong with me? Everybody else can reach goals, but I can’t. And I finally discovered the answer to end the goal fail cycle. And that is stop setting goals, stupid. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. You’re not stupid. And you should definitely set goals. But you have to set the right goals in the right ways that works for you. And I’m going to cover in this episode what I finally discovered works for me when it comes to setting goals.

Welcome to the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast. My name is Eric. I’m a full time digital nomad entrepreneur traveling the world with my wife and four kids and having an amazing time doing it. So today, I want to share with you five tips to setting goals. Kind of a five part framework, maybe even. That’s probably a better way to say it than tips. These aren’t five random kind of tips or anything like that. This is a specific order that I use when I go to set goals. So let’s just go ahead and jump right into it.

Number one, I define the win. I realized after reading, I think it’s Jim Collins’ Good to Great, that “start with the end in mind” was something that really did work for me. And when it comes to setting goals, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to define the win. I need to clearly define the outcome that I’m looking for, but also why I want it. I have to understand exactly what success looks like and why it matters. When I set a goal and I don’t fully understand the why, I often find myself setting the wrong goal. Once I get to the point where I’ve got a really clear why with a goal, that’s when I’m almost always able to achieve it, or at least get really darn close.

Now for this, for each of these, I’m going to give you two examples. I’m going to give you a weight loss example, because that’s pretty common, a lot of people do that. And I’m going to give you a business example, because I use this in personal life and business life. So defining the win for a weight loss example would be: I want to lose ten pounds in three months so I can eat whatever I want on vacation. That would be an example of setting a weight loss goal. Why? Because when I go on vacation, I don’t want to be constrained and I don’t want to come back bigger, you know? And so I’m going to put some time in now, and I’m going to lose some weight at a pace that doesn’t make me hate life. And when I go on vacation, I’m going to have a great time. And that, that’s what the win looks like for me.

Now for a business goal, I may say we’re going to launch one new client project every Monday, so we can hit our team’s dreams. You see, I like to dream with my team. And we have a dream list, a dream board, actually, the team dream board, that says this is what we’re dreaming to do, this is where we’re going. And then we can sit back and say, okay, well, what has to happen for us to get there? What do we have to do? What’s the win look like? And we can work backwards from there.

So the first thing I do when I go to set a goal is I clearly define the win with the picture of the why. You have to have the win and the why.

Number two, once I’ve defined the win, I determine the inputs. I now have to sit back and go, all right, well, for this to happen, what has to be true? And I may end up asking that question five, six, ten, twelve times, because as I start to walk backwards from these things, I’m like, well, if I want to lose this weight, if I want to increase sales by this, what has to happen for that to be true? And this is where people get things really wrong. They set a goal specifically for the outcome, the output at the other end of this time period, “I’m going to have achieved this.” And they’ll make it SMART, okay, specific, measurable, actionable, and realistic and time bound. That just doesn’t work for me. Great, it might work for you. It doesn’t work for me.

And so when I set it, I define the win, then I determine the inputs. I decide what actions, because there’s going to be more than one action it takes in almost every single scenario. So I’ve got to decide what actions I’m going to take, and how often, and when, so I know when I’m going to achieve the desired outcome. And I need to really create a detailed plan.

So for weight loss, I may say, all right, three days a week I’m going to walk four miles, and I’m going to reduce my calorie intake 500 calories per day by fasting breakfast Monday through Friday. Okay. And then what has to happen to see if this is working? I have to track the progress. So I’m going to take these three walks a week, and now I can look at my calendar, figure out when these are going to work. I’m going to reduce calories by 500 calories a day. By how? By fasting breakfast and still eating a balanced, healthy lunch, and maybe taking a smaller portion for dinner. And I’m not going to eat anything after dinner Monday through Friday. On the weekends I can have breakfast, I can have a beer with dinner, I can have that extra slice of pizza. But Monday through Friday, I’m going to lock in. All right. And so that’s the inputs I’m going to put in to get the output I want.

In business, if I want to launch one new project every Monday, I step back and I have to go, well, what has to happen for that to be true? Well, I have to do four sales presentations per week. With a 25% close rate on this big ticket item that we sell, if I do four a week, I close one a week, that’s a project a week. But to get those four sales presentations, I have to do five initial discussions. What has to happen for those five initial discussions to get booked? I have to call 25 warmed prospects per week. Well, what has to happen for that to be true? And so I just keep asking myself that question and building this whole list of inputs. I’ve got to do this, and then I do this, and then I’ve got to do this. And when I do these things, this happens. These are called lead measures.

All right. So, number one, define the win. Number two, determine the inputs it takes to win. Number three of five, I’m going to share that in just a moment.

First, I want to take a second and ask if you’ve downloaded my Remote Work Success Bundle yet, because if you haven’t, you really should. There are three main parts to it. First, I share with you my portable office. There’s a video where I show you exactly what I pack, how I live out of a backpack for my entire portable office. The world headquarters of my corporation fits into my backpack, because we travel with carry on luggage only. And so with this I can seamlessly work from anywhere. It significantly helps increase productivity on the go, because I have a set up that works and it reduces setup time. I can land someplace and be up and running, and I don’t just have my laptop, I’ve got a few different things that I need. I do some videos, so I’ve got some backlights, and I like to have a good tripod. So you’ve got to see the whole thing. I have a stand that I can set up as a standing desk, or I can be sitting down, and I share that in there. So that’s one of the reasons you should download the bundle.

The second part, I go into detail on my time management and productivity process. I’ve got some videos of my screen shares, I’ve got a little workbook guide that goes with it, and this is really how you can also optimize your work life balance, find enhanced efficiencies in your day, and definitely reduce stress. The third part of the Remote Work Success Bundle is my onboarding process for new hires. This is going to make a very smooth integration process for you finding and bringing on new team members, and increase your team’s morale and retention rate. So those are just three of the elements of the Remote Work Success Bundle. Head over to DNE, that stands for Digital Nomad Entrepreneur, DNEPodcast.com, and you’ll see that available at the bottom of every page.

All right. So back to the five tips. We’ve covered number one, which is define the win with the why. Number two, determine the inputs. Now we’re at number three, dream regularly. This was kind of a game changer for me with my goals. I had to keep the dream alive. I had to regularly remind myself of the benefits and the reasons for this goal, because you have to recognize it’s going to get difficult, and it’s going to get really difficult the longer it goes. And so you have to prepare yourself to push through. The wrong time to motivate yourself is in the challenge. What you want to do is when you’re excited about it, when you first have put the dream down, before you even want to get started, you define, how am I going to keep this dream alive? How am I going to keep this motivation going?

Now, some people, it helps them to tell somebody of their goal, and they’re like, I’ve got accountability now. I just, quite frankly, don’t care. If I tell you I’ve got a goal and I change my mind later, I might change my mind and I don’t really care. So that doesn’t work for me. I am more self motivated than externally motivated. So when it comes to the weight loss example, I have to visualize my success. I keep pictures of the food I want to eat on vacation around, look at it and go, ooh, I want to have that. Maybe I’ll take a little extra money and set it aside, and say the only way I can take that extra restaurant money is when I hit my goal. And so I put it in an envelope, I write the names of some restaurants on it, and I look at it every day and go, ooh, this is going to be good.

And so I’ve got to set something up for the business goal too. Well, for that goal, I share success stories and positive feedback from new clients. When we make a sale, I get excited and we celebrate this at our weekly leadership team meeting, and we make it a big deal. But is the sale the actual win? The win we’re looking for is a project every week. And for us, a little side note, what we really celebrate as a company, when we go all out celebrating, is when a client pays their 13th month invoice, because that means they’ve signed up, they’ve been with us through a whole year, they’ve chosen to stay with us a second year. We celebrate the retention. We celebrate year two, year five, year ten. That’s how you keep the dream alive. How do you do that? Dream regularly.

I’m back on topic now for setting goals. Number four, diagnose and optimize. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, whoa, wait a second, Eric, you said there are five of these, and so far you’ve done define, determine, dream, diagnose. Is number five also going to have the letter D at the beginning? Well, let’s get to it here in just a few minutes and find out.

But number four, diagnose and optimize. Here, what I’m doing is I’m regularly analyzing my progress and optimizing my strategy based upon results. I don’t wait until the end of the goal to see how I’m doing getting there. I’m making micro adjustments regularly. Now, this isn’t this week’s leadership tip of the week, but leadership isn’t about getting it right, it’s about making adjustments. And so to lead myself right, I have to make adjustments. To lead my team right, we have to make adjustments. We’ve got to keep this going, we’ve got to keep ourselves on track. We make micro adjustments regularly.

So, for example, in the weight loss example, I’m going to weigh myself every week, all right, and I’m going to adjust my routine and diet as needed to address any obstacles. And in business, I’m going to review the weekly sales performance. I’m going to look at the activity calendar. I keep an activity calendar tracking how many text messages I’ve sent, emails I’ve sent, calls I’ve made, initial discussion meetings I’ve had, sales presentations I’ve had. I’ve got to look at that. Are the numbers matching up? How many hours did I dedicate to this? What’s getting in my way? Maybe I have to refine my pitch a little bit, or adjust the copy in an email or a text message or my phone script. But I’ve got several metrics I can look at along the way, and I have to review these weekly, and I adjust my targeting strategies and address any bottlenecks that I discover in the process.

Why do I have to do this? Because the dream and the why are compelling, and I haven’t forgotten about it, because I’ve looked at it regularly. I’ve reminded myself, I’ve reminded my team regularly of it, and we have a plan, we’ve determined the inputs, and we’re going to tweak and adjust, we’re going to evaluate. There’s a guy, Jamal Miller, I have never watched any of his stuff, I literally know very little about the guy, but I have a really good friend, Jackie, who is regularly quoting Jamal to me. And he says one of the things he’s learned from Jamal Miller is launch, analyze, optimize. He launches something, he analyzes it, and then he optimizes. And that’s really what we’re talking about here. You’re going to define the win and the why, you’re going to determine the inputs, and then launch yourself working on the goal. After you’ve determined the inputs, then you’re going to continue to dream regularly while you’re analyzing, diagnosing progress, and then optimizing for success. And a lot of times, doing this, we often end up reaching goals much faster than we thought we would, even faster than the time we put on it, because regularly we’re finding ways to make things work more efficiently and smoother.

All right, so number five is coming your way. But I can’t share it with you until you hit the subscribe button. That’s right. I’m going to sit here and wait. Okay, I’m going to wait until you do all the nice things. Subscribe, leave a review, send me your thoughts, send me an email, Eric at DNEPodcast.com. Okay, I’m not really going to wait, that would be ridiculous. But I would so appreciate it if you would do all the nice things. I really enjoy getting emails from listeners, seeing the subscribe and follow counts go up, reading reviews. It would really mean a lot to me. It’s how I know what’s working, what’s not working. It’s how other people find the show. So if you’ve made it this far and you’ve gone, hey, this isn’t terrible, then leave a review. And if you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking, man, this is really terrible, you should just stop listening, okay, I don’t know why you’re still here. But if you’ve made it this far and you’re getting anything out of this, please leave a review, subscribe, or email me your thoughts. Do one of those.

All right, number five. Recapping real quick: define the win and the why, determine the inputs, dream regularly, diagnose and optimize. And now, number five, delight in the milestones and the win. Don’t wait until the end to celebrate. You’re going to set some milestones. You want to celebrate milestones on the way to the ultimate achievement of your goal, recognizing and rewarding your efforts. What gets rewarded gets repeated. That’s important to note. What gets rewarded gets repeated. And with milestones, I don’t just reward outputs, I reward inputs. If I say I need to do X, Y, Z this week, and I do X, Y, Z, I get a reward. I get a reward even if the output isn’t there yet, because I’m going to diagnose and optimize. I’m going to step back after I did the inputs I did, and if I did X, Y, Z, I give myself a little celebration, a little gift for myself, I do a little something to celebrate. And then I’m going to sit down and go, now, it didn’t work like I thought it would, so what didn’t work, what part of my hypothesis is wrong, and I’m going to change something. But I’m going to stay committed, and the next week I’m going to do X, Y, Z, and I’m going to celebrate it. And that the person on my team does X, Y, Z, I’m going to celebrate that too. And then we’re going to look at the output.

Don’t be focused on the outputs, focus on the inputs, focus on the journey. Every time you take a week and you’ve walked your three times four miles and you fasted breakfast, celebrate. Give yourself a little something special for breakfast on Saturday morning. Doesn’t matter what the scale said, you’re the winner, you did the work. Celebrate it, be proud of it. Then measure and go, whoop, that didn’t work, adjust it. When you celebrate the journey, you’re going to enjoy the journey better, you’re going to stick to it longer, you’re going to start getting results.

I have the same thing with sales activity. We work together as a team, and we do all the things we said we would do. You know what I do with my team? We have a virtual break room. Because my team is remote, I’ve got staff in Bulgaria, El Salvador, India, the United States, and as a digital nomad, who knows where I’m going to be, we’re all over the place. Here’s the thing, I have learned about all of my staff, all over the world, they’ll have a Starbucks near them. Socially, they all have Starbucks, and they all like it. So we have a virtual break room. We use an app that we don’t use for anything work related, it’s literally just WhatsApp. In there we share about our plans for the weekend, pictures of our kids, we do a picture scavenger hunt as well, we’ll share pictures of what we’re having for lunch, because these are the things you have in a break room. And some of the time, the time to celebrate, I throw up a screenshot of a barcode in there for a Starbucks gift card, and my team can go into their Starbucks in Bulgaria, they can go into it in India, and they can go treat themselves. And they go in there to celebrate because they did the things they said they were going to do. And then we come together and we go, all right, did it work? And many times it did. Sometimes it didn’t. So we diagnose, we optimize. This is the framework I use to break the goal fail cycle.

Just to recap: define the win and the why, determine the inputs, dream regularly, diagnose and optimize, and delight in the milestones.

Now, if you’re a regular listener, you know what’s about to happen right now. I’m going to share this week’s leadership tip of the week. If you’re a new listener, you might be going, what’s the leadership tip of the week? In every episode, and I’m up to episode 26, y’all, this is so exciting, 26 times now, I have shared a leadership tip of the week. Why do I do this? Because your leadership capacity, my leadership capacity, is the capacity of our business. Our businesses cannot grow beyond our leadership skills. So I am constantly working to up my leadership game, and I want you to be successful whatever you do. The best way I can help you do that is help you increase your leadership.

But the last thing the world needed, I think, was a leadership podcast. What I saw, and what I was getting asked a lot about, was being a digital nomad entrepreneur. How do you build a business that you can run from anywhere, even if you choose never to leave? I’ve got plenty, a lot of people listen to this that have no desire to leave where they’re at. They’re just tired of working in the cubicle, and they’ve decided, I’m either going to work from my home office, my kitchen table, or the back deck. And that’s totally okay. But I’ve got just as many of you that listen who have the wanderlust, who want to hit the road and do some traveling. Well, your ability to do that is going to be directly in proportion to your leadership.

So this week’s leadership tip is this. Are you ready? You may want to be sitting down, unless you’re out for a run or a walk and you’re listening to this, why, you keep moving. But for the rest of you in the yard, turn the mower off, sit down. All right, here we go.

Organizations get the results they’re organized to get. Yeah, right, seriously. Organizations get the results they’re organized to get. So if you’re not getting the results that you want, your systems are broken. It’s always a systems failure. Don’t blame the people. People are people. People are going to do people work and thrive in healthy systems. Organizations get the results they’re organized to get. If you’re not getting the results you want, change your systems, work on your systems.

Now, does that mean you may have some bad people? Sure. Here’s an indicator of having bad people. If you have to make up a bunch of stupid rules, you have bad people. If you have to have a rule that says don’t watch Netflix when you’re supposed to be working, you’ve got bad people. Like, you shouldn’t have to make that a rule. Our first policy in our HR policy manual is the no policy policy, that says we’re not going to create a bunch of stupid policies. Be responsible, be an adult, and I’ll treat you like one. That’s how we organize for the success we want. And if we are regularly getting bad people, I’ve got a bad recruitment system, a bad interviewing system, a bad onboarding system. I have a broken system. Don’t blame the people.

“Ah, but there’s no such thing out there as good employees, Eric, you should just, it’s hard to find good employees.” Yeah, okay. So you’re saying that no business out there has good employees, there’s no good people on the planet? Is that what you’re telling me? Then you’re not a good person. Of course there’s good people out there. You’re a good person, I’m a good person, I’ve got a team of great people. Organizations get the results they’re organized to get, my friend.

Thank you for listening. I look forward to reading an email or a review from you before the next episode. Until next time, chase the big dream, lead with courage, and safe travels.