Michael Anderson, founder and CEO of BizScale: Okay, well, let’s get started. Welcome, everyone. This is our 3rd event at our new BizScale learning series. Very excited about this series to help entrepreneurs in many ways: Reducing their operating costs, scaling their business, or even just ad-hoc projects.
BizScale event house rules
Michael: Just a couple quick rules: We are recording this, but we will not share it without your permission. It’s an interactive session, so it’s really a combination of a webinar meets Mastermind, so we really appreciate your involvement here — ask questions, share some learnings. Treat others with respect, and stay on mute if you’re not chatting.
Michael Anderson (introduction)
Michael: A little bit about myself: I’m the founder of 3 companies, and am currently still running those companies. I have 20 years of technology and startup experience. I’ve worked at big companies like E&Y, Thomson Reuters, and a bunch of small startups that we’ve scaled to a billion dollars in revenue. I’m very passionate about business and helping others, and I’m obsessed with growth hacks and scaling businesses.
About BizScale
Michael: A little bit about BizScale: we’re a managed services company. We have different practices — accounting, design, branding, software development, and our goal is to partner with clients and reduce operating costs, increase revenue, and really free up founders and executives from the day-to-day tasks.
You wanna outsource and delegate those tasks so that you can have more of a percentage you can see down below: 70% for building relationships, 20% for sales and marketing, and 10% to know your numbers.
Learning events recap
Michael: Just a quick recap of the past events: The first one we held was on 2020 Lessons Learned, which tied in retrospectives. If you’re not doing retrospectives, I definitely recommend doing those. They’re super helpful in looking back and seeing how you can address problems that happened; also look at what things are working well, and focus more on those things.
And the next event was on SWOT exercise, SWOT analysis. That is looking at your strengths, your weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. That was a really good session. If anyone wants the decks for those sessions, just let us know, you can put that in the chat.
And then the next event, coming next week, is a waste exercise. We have a very exciting event next week where you look at your processes, and you look at how you can be more efficient, how you can reduce your time spent in those areas, and you end up saving a lot of time, money, and operating more efficiently. You can see some of the types of waste there — over-processing, waiting, transporting, defects in products — so it’s going to be a very good session.
Michael: So for today’s session, we have our first guest speaker. Carlo’s joining us from Startup PH, and he’s gonna go over how to set goals. So, I’ll turn it over to you, Carlo.
Carlo Valencia: Alright. Thank you, Michael. Hey, everyone! Great to be here! Thank you for having me as well.
Just really quickly introducing myself: I was a startup founder, now I teach startup founders not to make the same mistakes that I’ve made, that’s the foundation of what I teach. I’m holding a couple of hats right now, as mentor and facilitator, and hopefully bringing Startup PH — right now, it’s a freelance job, but hopefully within 2021, the goal is to make that its own startup by producing digital products — digital learning products, similar to this one.
We teach — myself, sometimes with other teammates — design thinking, lean startup, and agile, so I love working with BizScale, knowing that they believe in the same things I believe in. Lean, all about reducing waste, is very much applicable if you’re a startup founder, and it’s about figuring out what is the one, two, or three things that move you forward, everything else is waste. Doing regular reviews and retros before figuring out what you’re gonna do next is also a very agile thing to do. Of course, design thinking, if you’re not familiar, happy to do another talk about that in the future.
Here in the Philippines — I’m based in the Philippines — we’ve had the opportunity to teach a bunch of organizations: Smart is a telco, everyone knows Microsoft. We’ve also been able to do work in some government offices: Department of Information and Communication Technology, also the Department of Science, among others.
I also teach in some schools, sometimes workshops, sometimes speaking engagements, and of course we’ve had a lot of opportunity doing, or working with small startups. More on startup coaching, focusing on founders and helping them understand what is it — what is their idea, what assumptions they’re making — and then helping them design and experiment to test these assumptions, teaching “begin with understanding” and “fail fast, often, and forward,” as a mindset.
So that’s me. Before I proceed, I wanted to get to know the people in this class, in this room. Maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re coming from, if you’re in a startup, or in a company, freelancing, whatever it is that you do, and then tell me about your experience in setting goals. I like to begin with understanding, so I want to practice what I preach, and begin by understanding the people in the room.
Anybody wanna go first or should I go alphabetically?
Michael: Greg usually volunteers, we’ll see if he volunteers.
Greg: I think you just volunteered for me. Hey Carlo, how are you doing?
Carlo: Good, good. If you guys can open your cameras, that would be really good. Seeing your faces is better.
Greg: I’m happy to do that. I just have to comb my hair first.
Greg: I think a couple of people were on the call before, so this is a second introduction. I sort of have a hybrid, where I have one business that I own called Real Advantage, and we sort of act as a brokerage between growers and supermarkets. So, my background is in fresh produce. We used to run a sales office. So, the way that I describe it is I’m the sales office for a lot of these companies based outside of North America that want representation. But, for various reasons, the cost, or the fact that they’re seasonal, they don’t need a physical sales office, so that’s me. So that’s one, that’s sort of an entrepreneurial thing; it’s gone very well.
And then the other part is more of a — I'm a partner in a traditional import and distribution business for produce. And I say it’s a hybrid because they have infrastructure, capital, and that’s where I’ve come from, so I’m sort of integrating what I've done previously in different ways in both of these.
And to answer your question on goals, I think I mentioned it in the first session, I actually have a bit of an issue where I have too many goals. And in the past, it’s been difficult to sort of remember what they are, and actually effectively chase after these goals. And actually, over the years, I think it’s grown, because my goals will be business, family — I got more kids now — personal fitness stuff. We could talk more about this as we go, but I think I tend to overplan and have too many goals, so I need to figure out how to make them more effective and streamline that process.
Carlo: Very nice, thank you very much. I guess I have the same problem and it’s always a work in progress, right? As you go along, you get better. Hopefully this quick crash course on goal setting will help you resolve some of those things. Cool.
Michael, who do you wanna go next?
Michael: Let’s just see if there are any volunteers. I don’t wanna pressure anybody.
Carlo: What state are you based in, Greg?
Greg: I’m actually in Toronto, Canada. So, originally, I’m from Jersey, my wife’s Canadian, and she gets to choose where we live. It’s a nice place.
Carlo: I heard, yeah. Universal healthcare, too.
Greg: It ain’t free, though. You pay for it in taxes.
Carlo: For sure, for sure. Alex, are you there? Alright, I’m gonna move on to Brian Fernandez.
Brian: Hey, what’s up guys? Hang on, let me turn my video on here. Nice, cool, alright so my name is Brian Fernandez, I’m a software engineer, I’ve worked at quite a few different startups over the past 6 years or so, and this last year I decided to start my own business. So it’s essentially a mobile app; it’s like a virtual marketplace, where chefs can do cooking classes, like live online cooking classes. That’s what I’m working on now, and that’s been a lot of fun. Mike’s been helping me with that immensely.
I would say as far as goal setting goes, my process is pretty informal. I just usually like to write things down physically. I have a notebook about 75% of the way full and it’s really just full of lines that I cross out. I try to turn my long-term, strategic goals, into more tactical goals so that they can easily be crossed out and executed on.
I guess because I come from an engineering background and we have sprints, that’s how I’m used to thinking about breaking down work. So that’s what I try to do, but it may not be the best approach going forward.
Carlo: Alright, so you write your long-term goals in a notebook and you break it down into epics, I suppose.
Brian: Yeah, like that, exactly. I’ll say a month from now, I wanna have this feature, or I want chefs to do this. That’s sort of how I think about it.
Carlo: Cool, thank you very much, Brian.
Ryan, I know we know each other already, but you’re in this call, so I’m gonna ask you to share as well. For the benefit of everybody here, quickly introduce yourself and what you have been doing to set your goals.
Ryan: Hey guys, sorry, I can’t turn on my video because I’m in my room and my wife’s sleeping. But yeah, my name is Ryan Guzman, and I’m part of the BizScale team.
So, one of my main goals is to actually try to help grow this team, and grow the business, and make sure that we are moving forward as fast as we could. The thing is, of course, being in an international setting, it doesn’t always work out well, so that’s one of the biggest challenges for this goal, and hopefully, we can try to see how we can solve that.
Carlo: Alright, and goal setting experience?
Ryan: Pretty much with any goal I set, I try to visualize it and see where I wanna go, and then I try to set mini-goals, which would lead towards it. Hopefully, those mini-goals would actually lead to those goals. But yeah, that’s how I’ve tried to do it in the past. It’s been effective.
Michael: Carlo, sorry to cut you off, but due to the interest of time, maybe we should jump right in.
Carlo: Alright, sure. Federico, I’m gonna skip you, unless you wanna introduce yourself. Kai is in your team as well, right?
Michael: Yup, she is.
Carlo: Alright, no worries. So this workshop, before I get started, is heavily influenced by Jack Conte’s video on annual planning for creators. If you haven’t seen this, I highly recommend that you do. We’ll be sharing the deck later; the link is in the notes section of the deck.
Jack Conte, in case you guys don’t know, is an artist. He’s got a couple of bands, each of them doing millions of views. He’s also the CEO of Patreon, and Patreon basically allows creators to make a living off of their creations, more than just depending on advertising. Based in San Francisco, California, he made a video — I've been doing goal setting for a while — he made a video on how to set goals and it really answered some of the things that I felt was missing with my system.
So, I created this deck, and later on a template to help me out, worked it with other people, now I’m gonna be sharing it with you guys as well.
So, by the end of this session, you’ll be able to understand the value of goal setting (though I think you already know that); define the difference between goals, plans, and planning; and also come up with a whole bunch of ideas on what your goals are for 2021, and get started on the process. This is a teaser to a full goal setting workshop.
That full workshop, we’ll dive into a little bit later on, it’s essentially two sessions long, 3 hours per session. The first session is really a review of what happened in the past year, also doing a retrospective of yourself. Between sessions one and two, you’ll essentially start drafting your goals, we’ll talk about it in session two, you’ll share it with the rest of the team, and of course we’ll be giving you feedback to give you an opportunity to refine and plan. That’s the full workshop, so let me dive into the webinar now.
Why goal setting and planning matters: number one is goals, for me, is your North Star. It talks to you about where you wanna go. I’ve met people that do pretty well, but there’s nothing that really excites them, because they don’t really have that goal. They’re a top-notch developer, they grew into it, and they didn’t really set much goals. I've seen them, once I’ve helped them, and I asked, “What is it that you want to achieve in the next year? Or the next two or three years?” And their eyes light up. Setting goals really allows you to do that, getting excited about what you wanna do. And of course, also, it’s a filter, it’s a really good filter.
If you’re not sure about things you should be doing or not be doing, the best question to ask yourself is, “Does this align to what I wanna be or where I wanna go in the next two to three to five years?” Of course, knowing that you’ve been able to achieve goals that you’ve set is a really good feeling, so I think there’s that value as well.
Just some terminologies here — sorry, by the way, before I dive too deep into it, I’m gonna be doing a lecture, maybe 15 to 20 minutes, then we will be doing some activities. Brian, I noticed, I think you’re on your phone, if you could get on your laptop, that would be great, I’ll be sharing a link with you later on.
Brian: Sure.
Carlo: Alright, and then we’ll do some initial goal setting. So goals are where you wanna go, the plan is the document that talks about your goals and how you’ll get there, and planning is actually writing down your goals and writing down your plans.
Very important to define each of the three. Also, plans are not very useful. I love this quote by Mike Tyson, which is, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I saw another quote, but I couldn’t add it here, but essentially, people don’t rise up to the occasion, they default to their systems. In a crisis situation, people don’t suddenly become heroes. The heroes that we see? They’ve always been that way. And in a crisis situation, they come back to what they’ve been trained, or what they’re used to doing.
So my hopes are in setting goals and making plans, also in identifying your focus areas, we’ll be able to help you stay consistent despite getting punched in the face, because I think a lot of the people here are in the entrepreneurial space, and we take a lot of punches in the face. Dwight D. Eisenhower, again, plans are useless, but planning is very important.
Planning allows us to be prepared, planning allows us to make changes, but let’s make sure that we do not follow the plan if we know that plan is flawed, or if that plan will lead us down a cliff, then it’s time to make turns. And that’s really the value of making those plans, or the act of planning.
So, how do we make a plan? First, we understand. We gain an understanding of ourselves, what is it that we like doing, what do we enjoy doing, what do we do well. Moving onto retrospectives, it’s really understanding ourselves, and understanding what we’ve gone through, what we’ve been through, what we’ve been able to achieve, and how we would like to fix the things that really suck, right? The bad stuff, so to speak.
Once we have that level of understanding, steps one and two, the next step is to visualize the future. When visualizing the future, it’s important that we’re not editing ourselves, that it’s just really a stream of consciousness type of thing, and really dumping all our ideas into paper, if that’s your thing, or into Notepad, if you like typing.
Once you’re done word-vomiting, or really getting everything down, the next step is to organize, categorize your answers into buckets. From there, you’ll be able to see this a lot clearer. What are things that matter, what are things that don’t matter? Personally, I like prioritizing and ranking them, and then from there, you can start writing your vision statement. Your vision statement, essentially, answers the question, “What does extremely successful look like?”
Let’s say everything you did in the next two or 3 years succeeded, no failure at all, what is your life like in the next two or 3 years? Or what is life like at the end of the year? That’s your vision statement. From there, counting your key results, and then figuring out what it is that you’re gonna be doing on a regular basis, that’s gonna be your area of focus.
Just to give you an idea, BizScale, one of their areas of focus is creating these digital learning series, and creating this content, and creating engagement. So, if you do that on a regular basis, the theory is you should be able to get closer to your goal. Again, defaulting to your systems.
Alright, before we do activity number one, it’s important that we talk about brainstorming.
Question for you guys: Have you ever been in a brainstorming session that just devolved into one, two, three, or four hours, or even the entire afternoon of debating? Of somebody coming up with an idea, and then somebody will contradict that idea, and then somebody has questions. And the next thing you know, you’re going down that rabbit hole of things that you feel that aren’t really that important, until finally at the end, somebody just goes, “Yeah, let’s just do that.” Not because that’s the best thing to do, but because you wanna stop the pain already.
So, if you’ve ever been in that situation, this, divergent and convergent thinking is a really good solution. And that philosophy is when you’re coming up with ideas, you’re ONLY coming up with the ideas. That means you’re NOT using logic, that means quantity is key.
So, if you’re thinking about what you want to achieve in 2021, to Greg’s point, he has too many goals, that’s okay, when you’re doing divergent thinking. Just keep writing all those goals down. When everything is done, when everything is written down, the next step is to start organizing, start categorizing, start voting, start prioritizing. That is now a logical endeavor.
Divergent is creative, convergent is logical. When you do these things at the same time, that’s when the pain starts, that’s when the confusion happens.
Michael: Do you recommend doing those at completely separate times?
Carlo: Yes, absolutely. That’s what we’re gonna be doing in a little bit, is 5 minutes, or 10 minutes, everybody just writes. Write, write, write, write, write. Everything that comes into your mind, you write it all down. Since it’s the right brain, it’s all creative.
If you’ve ever had one of those mornings that you just had some coffee, and everything’s clear, and feeling like there are no problems in the world, and you go, “I have an idea,” then you just keep writing it down.
Or if you’ve ever needed to write an e-mail that you felt was complicated, and had a lot of points, what you can do is just write bullet points of the things that you want to say, and then you fix it up later on and just clean it up.
So that’s you first doing divergent thinking, and then doing convergent thinking. But if you, as you’re writing your e-mail, you’re also editing, it’s gonna take you a lot longer, and you might actually miss some points. So, this is a good idea for goal setting, it’s a good idea for innovation, it’s a good idea for problem solving.
Just generally coming up with brainstorming as a whole, as a solution, I highly recommend you doing it this way. So, that’s the philosophy of it. Don’t worry, we’re gonna practice that. So, are you guys ready?
Michael: Ready.
Carlo: Alright, so I’m gonna share the template with you guys, I’ll share the link on the chat, and you should be able to access that. What I’d like you guys to do is don’t ask me for access, but what you wanna do instead is file, make a copy. I hope you guys all have Gmail accounts, and then change that from a copy of goal setting template to “Greg’s Goals 2021,” for example.
Once that’s done, if you guys don’t mind, share it with me later on, so we can take a look later on so we can guide you. Share the link over chat, make sure I have view access to carlo@startupphtraining.com. Don’t worry, you can remove my access later on.
Cool, so Greg, Alex, Brian, and Ryan as well, if you guys wanna participate, and Michael.
Greg: Hey, Carlo, I have a question. As I said earlier, part of my problem is that I have goals, categories, and subcategories of goals. Are we approaching this just in the context of our businesses? Or is it broad? Because it’s hard for me to disconnect business from my family, and all that kind of stuff. What do you think?
Carlo: Me, what I have is what really matters to me from a work perspective, then what really matters to me from a personal perspective. Top two or 3 per category, and that’s what I really focus on.
What I’ve learned over the years is that a lot of what I think as subgoals were actually things that I would definitely be able to do if I’m achieving my most important goal. So, for example, I wanna hire 15 people this year. But you’re not gonna be able to hire these 15 people if you don’t hit a certain revenue target. So, I remove that 15 people hiring target goal, and I just focus on number one, achieving that revenue target; and then how do I achieve that?
Because for sure, if I hit that revenue target, the next step is I’m gonna hire people, just so I can focus on the main thing. Having the 15 people hiring target, together with my revenue target, it distracts you a little bit. But when you start, you’re not thinking about which is the most important here. When you’re starting with your goals, you have your revenue target, your hiring target, you have all these other things listed down, and that’s what we’re gonna be talking about in a little bit. And then from there, you filter it down to what really matters.
What are the one, two, or 3 things that really matter. Cool, good question.
Alright, do you guys have the file open?
Michael: Yes, we do.
Carlo: Alright, share the link so I can comment.
Michael: Which tab are we using here?
Carlo: We’re gonna do Visualize the Future for today, but I’m gonna walk you through first all the tabs, just so you have an overview of all the files that we have here.
So, remember the steps. Step number one is to ask questions to gain understanding, so you wanna be able to understand yourself, and this is tab number one, ask questions. What is it that you want? World peace? Make the world a better place? Maybe drill it down even better, do you wanna be CEO of your company? Of the company you’re working for? Do you wanna run your own company? What is it that you want? What matters to you? And what doesn’t matter to you? What are you really good at? What are you currently doing? Why are you doing it, and all these other follow up questions.
When you’re answering these questions, again, my recommendation is don’t filter yourself, just keep writing what comes to mind. So, that’s the first step, really just asking questions, because writing things down really helps you understand what you’re thinking of, and it kind of unloads onto the sheet so it becomes a point of reference.
That’s step one. Step two is if you guys have been in Michael’s retrospective session, first you figure out the things that worked, what are the things that you learned in the past year, or in the past couple of years. What I do here is I’m gonna set a timer, 5 minutes, sometimes I do 10 but 5 minutes is a good enough time. That’s all you’re doing, writing. Writing, writing, writing. No interruptions, you’re not watching YouTube like I do sometimes. J
Just write everything that went well, things that you are most proud of, things that you were able to achieve. That might have been a sales target, that might have been certain people you’ve hired, that might have been businesses you’ve created, or awards that you’ve had, or just relationships that you’ve been able to create.
Michael: Hey, Carlo, sorry to interrupt, but going back to Greg’s question, I still struggle with the line between doing it for the business and doing it for myself. So I think what you’re saying here is that they can be business-related but you’re doing it for yourself within the business, not necessarily the business as a whole?
Carlo: Yeah, ‘cause for me, I’m a freelancer so there’s a grey space between personal and work. But also, even if you’re working for a company, there are personal development goals that make you better at your work, so that’s difficult to define. When you’re here, I don’t recommend that you filter anything, but what you could potentially do, is you do one — if you wanna really have a clear line between — is you do one session doing everything for work, and then this will be personal.
Michael: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you.
Carlo: Yeah, for me, even just this simple thing, it moves you from creative to logical, because now you’re defining the lines.
Michael: Exactly, I could see that.
Carlo: Right, so you could do that after the fact. So, what worked, what did you learn, what are the things that you’re most proud of. Always, always start with a retrospective — always start the retrospective with the good stuff.
Sometimes, if you’re doing this with your team, or you’re doing this on a regular basis, sometimes you might be tempted to skip this part and jump to the things that didn’t work because those are the things that need fixing. Do not do that, you will end up fighting, and you will end up hating each other, and you will have a very counterproductive retrospective session.
Always start with the good stuff. And then, ask yourself, what are the things that sucked, that definitely falls under things that I’m not proud of, things that I could have done better. Maybe you drank too much, maybe we watched YouTube too much, maybe certain targets were not hit, whatever it is. Especially if you’re doing this for yourself, even better, because now you can be openly honest with yourself, about the things that you were not able to achieve, or not able to do.
So, Greg, you might be able to write here, “Too many goals, and I forgot about them.” That’s definitely something worth mentioning as well. So that’s what didn’t work. Remember, what worked is the good stuff, I don’t recommend you categorize it, it’s just really to put you on a more positive note, because that’s what prepares you to talk about what didn’t work.
Now, the bad stuff, you wanna categorize these things. You wanna categorize them, and per category, per bad item, you wanna think about what are the things that we can do to fix the bad things. So the example earlier, too many goals and I forgot about them. Maybe let’s do top 3 goals only, and also attend workshops. Use a tracker. For every bad item, you wanna think about what we can do to fix or make things better.
So that’s your retrospective. Again, this is also in preparation for the actual goal setting. And actually, you can do this once a month, on a regular basis. Or everytime you complete a project with your team, you can do this as well. But you can definitely do this for annual goal setting for yourself.
Moving onto step 3, visualizing the future. Now we start thinking about what we wanna do this year. And how you wanna do that is you fast forward to the end of the year — and by the way, when I say end of the year, I don’t mean calendar year, it could be whatever today is plus 12 months. Or if you want, you can do it for two or three years, that’s fine as well. But think about that point in time, now you’re looking back.
So it’s now — let's say we start in March, so it’s March 1, 2022. What happened? Think about it from the perspective of being extremely successful. What did we do? Did we hit that sales target? Were we able to hire people? Were we able to get promoted? How many people or customers did we get? What did you create or build? Did you collaborate with anybody? Were you able to find the BizScales of the world? Were we able to work with AT&T, Whole Foods, or Amazon? For example, if that’s your target partner. What are you most proud of? And what customer or what collaboration are you most proud of?
Just keep going through the questions, what’s your team like, how did you spend most of your time, what’s the difference between last year and this year, what kind of relationships did you have with your fans or your customers. If you’re within a big company, perhaps with your colleagues.
And then again, just word vomit. You don’t need to categorize at this point, just really write all of that down. When you’re done writing all of that down, then we start categorizing. Then we start putting them into buckets of key ideas. This is where we start filtering, this is where we start saying, “Oh, this is a personal goal of mine. This one is all about work. This one, I’m not so sure yet, but I’m gonna put them in one bucket.”
So that’s the point where you start thinking about the themes, the buckets that you would like to get into.
Once you have those themes, then you start writing your vision statement. In 2021, or by the end of 2021 — if you guys don’t mind, let me share mine. I’ve had a vision statement for a while, but this is more long-term and ongoing.
So my 2021 vision statement, “This year will be the year that Startup PH Training finally becomes a legitimately registered, receipt-issuing organization. But it won’t just be a one-man team, it will be a self-sustaining team of amazing creators and advocates for startups and innovation.
“Startup PH Training will create a shit ton of content, and this content will be the source of leads and businesses, as well as growing our audience size exponentially.
“We will deliver a lot of remote workshops and also start generating revenue using digital products and passive income.
“2021 will be the year where we really grow beyond Startup PH.”
So your vision statement is something that really gets you excited like, “Yeah, that’s what I wanna do.” But you can’t get here, you can’t jump to the vision statement. You need to figure out what are the things that you’ve been doing, where were you good at, what sucked, what do we need to do to fix it. And then, word vomit, and then start drafting your vision statement.
I actually have a personal vision statement, separate from my work or SPHT vision statement. This one I did a little bit more with my wife. Fully pay our debts, secure our future with life insurance and HMO and all that good stuff. Move out of our apartment here and into a place that has a great view, and then start laying the groundwork to — so Bayanan and San Fernando, these are the towns where my ancestral home is, and my wife’s ancestral home is. That’s fallen into disrepair and we really wanna get that fixed.
So that’s our vision statement, that’s extremely successful. Thinking about it gets us excited, it makes us say, “Alright, let’s do this.”
So it needs to start there, with your vision statement. From there, the next question is, “How do you define success?” And these are your key metrics. I’ve created a bit of a template here; this is based on my personal key metrics.
So key metrics and focus area, you need to play around with it a little bit. You need to figure out what your focus area is, and per focus area, what are your key metrics, and then organize it.
In my case, I had 3 focus areas. Under work, create useful content; create systems; and create, sell, and deliver workshops and digital products. So your focus areas are things you wanna do consistently, all the time, over time. And then, if you do these things, these will help you achieve whatever it is.
So creating systems, right now, I do all my sales, I do all my marketing, so I wanna start to put in place the pieces or create a system that creates content on a regular basis. Content, as well, is a struggle for me, so now I’m tracking on a monthly basis, starting in February. What have I been able to do? So I really like the challenge that you have, Greg, which is that you tend to forget what they are because there’s so many of them.
The top two solutions there are to filter it down to what things really matter, and then look at it on a monthly basis. So if you have a file like this, it’s saved on your desktop, and you’re looking at it at least once a month, and then figure out where you are relative to your goals.
So there, those are the key components of your goal setting template. I would recommend, if you were to do this, probably do two weekends, a couple of hours each, or at least an hour or two, and you’ll have it done. I don’t recommend you actually sit down in one session and everything’s done. I’ve tried that as well, and I end up just not doing it, not completing it, and it just falls by the wayside. Also, accountability partners really help. And that’s one of the things that we wanna do when it comes to the workshop, is have a monthly checkpoint.
So what I’d like to do as an activity for today is this little thing here. Visualizing the future. We still have time? 2:53.
Michael: Probably not.
Carlo: Okay, no worries. But if we’re not doing it, I recommend starting with tab number one. You can probably do one, two, and 3 on your first two hours. Take a break, and then another two hours, organizing everything you’ve written down, and then start drafting your vision statement.
Once you get your vision statement, the focus area and the key metrics sort of fall into place, that’s what I’ve seen. But your vision statement is really important, just imagine that feeling of extreme success. If you’ve ever had one of those years where you were able to hit everything, like, “Wow, I can’t believe we’re here now.”
Bring back that feeling, and where you are in the world, and then write that down. And then move back to your key metrics.
Michael: I really like the idea of splitting the session into two. It’s a different way of thinking, so it makes a lot of sense.
Carlo: The first three steps are really about dumping everything, down into paper, or into the spreadsheet. And then the next session is organizing them, and then starting to paint a picture.
So if you were to attend that full workshop, session one would be exactly that, reviewing the results, then a retrospective, then the word vomit, or asking the questions about what you wanna do. Between sessions, we’d recommend you to organize your thoughts, write the vision statement, draft your key results, and then find your areas of focus.
Finally, in the second session, together with your classmates, you’ll be sharing and talking about the goals that you’ve set. What I’ve found is that people sharing goals with each other kind of gets people excited about each other, and then you get excited about your own goals.
Talking about key metrics, that’s also something that I’ve found my participants found very valuable is getting immediate feedback, like maybe use this other metric. For example, somebody said, “This year I’m gonna make P25M.” That’s about $500,000. And then I asked them, “How much did you make last year?” “About $15,000.” “Maybe we should set it at a hundred thousand.” A hundred thousand is still gonna make you a happy puppy.
Picking $500,000 from $15,000, it might just set you up for disappointment. But, if you achieve $100,000, by all means. Or if you do more, fantastic. You’ll feel even better. And then scheduling monthly checkpoints. I’ve set one already with a group of people. I’m happy to see you again once a month, an hour per checkpoint, just to really check on each other, what we’ve been able to achieve, and what we haven’t.
Michael: That’s something that we’ve tried doing in the past, and I feel like setting the goals is one thing, but tracking them and reviewing them is very challenging for people. I love that idea, you have an accountable party, you schedule the reviews, it makes a lot of sense.
Carlo: Yeah, ‘cause it’s embarrassing to say, “Actually, I don’t know what happened.” So there is that social contract, so to speak. I’ve found that it helps me stay focused on my goals.
Yeah, so if this is something that you guys would like to do, we’re happy to do that, we can do something similar to this setup, individual participants doing each of their own goals, or we can do it for your team? Bringing in other members, up to 5 members, and then setting goals as a team. If that is something interesting to you, definitely e-mail us, sales@bizscale.com. Of course, if you know Michael or myself, you could definitely reach out directly, carlo@startupphtraining.com, or with Michael.
Michael: Carlo, you mentioned monthly check-ins. Is that something that you do with your group? Is that part of your package? Or is that something that you do with a separate group of colleagues?
Carlo: Good question. Well, right now, this is the first group I’m doing it with outside of that group, so I’m happy to do it just to make the product better, and make it part of the package. So $79 for the individual, consider that as the free add-on, so to speak. I’m happy to see you once a month, to see the progress, because that also — I also have selfish intentions there, I wanna talk to you about my goals, make myself responsible.
At the same time, I wanna see how this workshop is able to help people, and then that allows me to refine and improve this workshop in particular, and the file that I just shared with you guys. So, I’m happy to do it, no extra charges needed.
Michael: Okay, that sounds great.
Carlo: Questions? Thoughts? Comments?
Michael: Thoughts, I think this is great. Where I’ve failed in the past is really tracking them and holding myself accountable, and for me, that’s the most important thing, so this is really beneficial.
Carlo: Yeah, the monthly check-ins I think is the sweet spot. Because weekly, it can get a bit tedious and tiring, and then you’re constantly thinking, “Should I keep this goal or not?” At least on a monthly basis, it keeps you grounded, and it’s not too tedious.
Michael: That’s right. Cool, and it looks like we’re at the top of the hour. Any last-minute questions or comments for Carlo?
Carlo: Greg? Ryan?
Greg: No, I think it’s really good information, so thank you. For me, the important thing is getting to a vision statement that I can remember, and that sort of changes my behavior, and it trickles down to some of the individual goals, and that’s the important part, for me. Defining the year in a vision statement for this year.
Michael: Don’t worry, Carlo, I’m gonna make sure I hold Greg accountable.
Carlo: By the way, you don’t need to remember the vision statement, but put it somewhere you can see. It could be your desktop, or print it out and put it on the wall. And then also the focus areas, so at least when you’re planning on a weekly basis, or on a monthly basis, you’re looking at the focus area and going, “Oh yeah, what do I need to do for that focus area?” At least for me, I’m literally looking at the focus area I wrote down on the whiteboard on the wall.
Michael: Alright, let’s wrap it up. Thank you so much, Carlo. Really appreciate it. Thanks everyone for joining, have a good one.
