Crush Your Targets with Accurate Goals

It’s a new year. That means it's time to crush your targets with accurate goals, new dreams, and fresh determination.

Keeping that momentum heading in the right direction is critical to winning the leverage point that is a new year. Having a clear vision of where you are aiming to be at the end of 2021 is critical to crush your targets with accurate goals.

In today’s article, we’re going to get into how Chris and I set goals for our companies, the frameworks we use, and how we get enough vision to set goals.

By the end of this article, you should be well equipped to crush your goals and accomplish more in 2021.

Let’s get into it.

When To Begin

As we start talking about goals it’s important to start working on the goals early. Waiting until December 30th is not going to be very helpful.

Chris and I typically set our goals in September or October for the coming year. This gives us plenty of time to revise and think critically about our targets and ensure that they are accurate goals that match our vision.

A quick note on that :

“As you grow your business your vision will be able to extend further and further into the future”

We’ll come back to that.

Extracting Learning Lessons into Principles

In September or October, Chris and I start looking back over the year for lessons that we have learned. These can be repeated things that came up, difficulties we encountered, big successes, etcetera. Some examples of these: “diversifying ad accounts, invest time in training your team.

As we create this list of learning lessons we extract principals out of them that we can take into the new year.

So what does this look like?
These are a few learning lessons from 2019 that we learned from the mistakes we made.

Lesson 1: Simple. Do More With Less Stuff

In 2019, we created a bunch of stuff, like a metric crap-ton of products. But it really didn’t move the needle for us. You’ve got to know where your leverage is. One of the things you’ll learn when you are trying to rise to the next level is that most of the time it’s not going to come easy.

Think about this with me. Answer this question: How many activities were you involved with over the previous year that you thought would be of value to you that ended up not being worth it? In our experience, this tends to be MOST things.

What we found is that this is not necessarily an issue of discipline, it’s an issue of targets and goals. You have to have a clear assessment of what things are going to be leverage.

We’ve gotten better at finding and working on the cream at the top and doing more of that. You have to stay zoomed out and make sure you are allocating yoru time and efforts on the most valuable things.

Lesson 2: Fun

We’ve decided that we want to grow things that we enjoy. This is a longevity play. Many business owners end up hating the things that they build. Why? How can that be?

Because they do not enjoy them. They build them because they bring quick money. Or they build them and it’s just not a good fit for them to personally manage.

What if you could actually, before you built something like that, zoom out and see that you’ll hate it? Would you still do it? NO. Of course not, you wouldn’t do that unless you’re stupid and HAVE to learn things the hard way.

A way to get some perspective on the things you know you will not enough is to build at “ I Will Not Do…” list. Have one for business and one for your personal life.

Some examples home “I will not do “might be:

• Mow the lawn
• Do yardwork
• Vacuum
• Worry about cooking

For me some work examples are:

• Do anything operationally
• Hire/fire people
• Have anything to do with checking/managing money

As the business owner, you have to know what things you are equipped for and enjoy doing. As you are beginning to grow you have to know that there is a net (net positive, net negative, etc) attached to every action you take.

You also have to what will be worth it for you. Because there will be times where you are faced with the option of doing something that can make you $1,000 but makes you hate your life so much that you don’t work for 3 days.

So in the end, doing that one thing you hate, ends up costing you $27,000. It’s not worth it. Track the ‘net’

Lesson 3: Depth

Quick note: Don’t copy these principles unless you really align with them

One of the biggest lessons we learned was deeper is better than taller. In some ways, this goes back to lesson 1 but fewer products, more optimization, keeping our efforts more locked down and more locked in on our targets.

It all comes down to a matter of bandwidth with a dash of risk management. It’s better to have a few areas or pieces, say 2 or 3, that work REALLY well with a fully developed root system, than 5 or 6 that have shallow roots.

Getting Into A Future State

One tactic we use to help us think through the goals we are setting for ourselves is to “get into a future state.” We give ourselves a Date/Time, say December 1st, and asking from the present tense “what made the year so good?” It feels a bit strange but it helps you create a list of things that will great, but it can also help identify potential pitfalls as well.

Quick tip: As you are setting your goals keep on the lookout for what type of goals you are identifying. If everything thing is a business goal, everything outside of work will begin to crumble.

50/50 Business and Life

As you are setting your goals keep on the lookout for what type of goals you are identifying. If everything thing is a business goal, everything outside of work will begin to crumble. It’s important to keep goals 50/50 between business and life.

Chunks

The way we set up our goals is by pulling our process goals from our ‘big’ things you want to happen in your life. If you set your big chunks from your process goals you’ll end up becoming aimless because you won’t have a clear direction.

So you use the big goals, or “chunks”, to set your process goals which help prepare for the big goals.

As an example, if I want to take off the month of September, How am I going to do that?

If the business is dependent on me then I cant. So I have to figure out a way to set smaller goals that remove me from day-to-day responsibilities and decisions making processes.

If I’m not required for decisions or the day-to-day then I can seamlessly take September off. See how that works?

Constraints

For every goal, there must be a constraint. Make it a natural part of your goal-setting process. Without a constraint, you are naturally going to follow the path of least resistance.

So what does a “constraint” look like?

Here are a few examples:

• I want to make 25 Million while only working 10 hours a week. The constraint here is 10 hours.
• Make 25 Million with 7 advisors without me hiring them. The constraint here is without me hiring them.

A Quick Note On The 2 Types of Outsourcing

A little while back I wrote another blog about how you utilize the 2 types of outsourcing in your business. Just as a cliff notes version there are two types of outsourcing: Outsourcing of Work and Outsourcing of Decisions.

The Outsourcing of Work

The first level is the outsourcing of work. Outsourcing your hands, what you do, “go do this, do it by this time, and here's how to do it.” Most entrepreneurs kind of get stuck there and there's not enough profitability at that level of outsourcing to justify having a big team. Stay with a personal assistant and you'll be good.

The Outsourcing of Decisions

The second level is outsourcing decisions, backing yourself out of the decision-making process. Having solid, trustworthy people, to make decisions for your business.

When you get to that place, your job is to set a target, then leave. If you can’t walk away have had the leader hit the target, they are the wrong person. They are a work outsourcer, not a decision outsourcer.

The Growth Curve

This is one of two frameworks I’ve developed to help in setting goals. As you can see with the chart below your vision is generally limited to your most recent growth curve.

So say that you’ve had a four-month explosion of growth, you’ll only really be able to see 4 months into the future. You know this because you have lived it. You know how long that lasts.

This scales. So as your business grows, you’ll subsequently be able to expand your vision the same amount.

The Visibility Curve

The second frame I’ve developed is called The Visibility Curve. When you set goals you set them ahead of you, not based on your current level of vision. So look at this chart below.

When you grow as a person, as a business owner your vision increases. If you set your goals to match your current state of vision, it will limit you.

You’ll also be perpetually moving your goals. While this might not sound like a bad thing, but it will be exhausting to your team because the goalposts and expectations are consistently moving.

They’ll get tired of it and it’ll make you look like you don’t know what you are doing.

You have to set your goals where you want to be, pushing yourself and your team, so you aren’t having to constantly update them.

Remember: If your goals don’t serve an area that you aren’t winning in outside of work, then you won’t be able to achieve them inside of work

Closing Thoughts

Are you ready to Crush Your Targets with Accurate Goals? One final thought for you: Goals are set by the individual. Do not get into the trap of comparing your goals to another’s goals. That will take you out of the game fast.

If you begin to compare yourself against people ahead of you, you will burn out fast. If you got a lot out of this our goals training is a part of our Productivity Pack Training System which goes deeper into this and will help you accelerate your results. It is one of the highest-rated systems that we teach our clients and teams.

In your service,

– T