I was like a kid on the night before Christmas. I could not wait for my new goal setting kit to arrive!
It was all the rave with my entrepreneur friends, and most had already bought their sets. I didn’t want to be left behind. It was expensive, but I took the plunge anyway.
This is the first of several articles I have written on my initial misperceptions on what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur. The main page with links to all the articles is located here.
Three months later the kit was on my desk, collecting dust.
I had worked through every page of every module, but my business was still nowhere near where I wanted it to be.
I just didn’t get it. Why were my friends able to set goals and make progress? Why were they seeing growth and I wasn’t? I was trying just as hard as they were.
I kept sticking to my guns. In all the books I had read and all the audios I had listened to, I had heard that “half of success is just showing up”. Well, I had been showing up month after month, but the success wasn’t showing up at all. I had been duped.
Does goal setting work?
Of course it does. Just look out your window. There are roads. You have electricity. You have running water. All these things were goals on someone’s desk at some point. Somewhere a plan was drawn up, a schedule was put into place, and orders were given. Items got checked off the list and things happened. Done deal.
Setting goals does work, but there’s a lot more to it than jotting your aspirations on paper.
So, when and where does goal setting work?
This may sound a little basic at first but bear with me. Goal setting works when people can actually do the work. Read that one more time really closely.
Why goal setting wasn’t working for me
We’ve all heard the tired expression of setting SMART goals, right? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and so on.
Here’s the part that I had to admit to myself, and it took me a few years of distance and reflection to finally get to admitting this — most of my goals were not achievable.
Achievable by me, that is.
In those early days I had written goals such as “develop a business with multiple streams of income”, “have x number of clients in the next 90 days”, “grow my revenue by y dollars 12 months from now”.
Here is the vital problem with those goals — I had absolutely no idea how to actually achieve any of that. I was taking the field of dreams approach. Write them and they will come.
See this article to learn What is an Achievable Goal, Anyway?
I had also entered the land of unfair comparisons. At the time all my entrepreneur friends were at least a decade ahead of me. They had established businesses with established clientele. To some degree they had it easier. They could set goals that they actually had a good chance of achieving.
In contrast, I was still trying to figure out who I was and how to take that to the market. I had no idea if I should call myself a “coach” or a “consultant”. I had absolutely no idea how to prospect for new business. After I was sitting in front of a prospect, my closing skills were mediocre at best.
All this sums to a fantastic beat-my-head-on-the-wall experience when it comes to achieving the goals I had set for growing my business.
How I broke the cycle of false starts
The key that really started turning things around for me was simple persistence. I just didn’t give up.
Much easier said than done.
When I first started I didn’t know much about selling my speaking engagements. I started small where I knew I could be successful. Most of my friends suggested pitching my presentations to local Rotary groups as they seem to be in constant need of speakers.
I was able to land several of these gigs with a couple emails and a few phone calls each.
My confidence started to increase.
Then I tackled paying gigs by reaching out to local community colleges. Again, I found success here.
My confidence increased even more.
Now I’m raising the bar again by pursuing gigs that pay even more. This has taken me quite a while to build, and my confidence is growing in stages.