Bradley Hamner shares a three-part framework for setting business goals: mindset, skillset, and toolset. Each will take longer, cost more, and look different than you expect. He pairs this with a Business Blueprint of 3-year vision, 1-year objectives, and 90-day targets, noting that longer horizons mean fuzzier forecasts.
Hey everyone, so one of the mastermind groups that I'm a part of, we had just gotten back from a retreat. And so there was dialogue going back and forth on a number of different topics. And one of the questions came up, which was really around timeframes, around setting goals. And one of the members of the group sent back and he said, you know, this frame has always served me well. And I've shared this before, but I do try to think about things in mindset, skill set, and tool set. And I don't mean mindset as these woo-woo type fire you up, uh, things or affirmations that you shout in the mirror every morning, but it really becomes how to think about it or how to approach it. And he shared this, and I thought, wow, that is incredibly helpful to me. And I'm going to adopt that. And so I thought I would share it with all of you. And he said, what has served me well is to think of it as— and know that it's going to take longer, it's going to cost more, and it's going to look different. It's going to take longer, it's going to cost more, and it's going to look different. And so I think that the three frames that I began to think about goal setting, or basically the vision that I have for the business. And I've shared this before, but it's the— what, what I would call the blueprint for the business. What do you really want the business to look like 3 years from now, a year from now, in 90 days from now? But then I think if you apply that framing— hey, it's going to take longer, it's going to cost more, and it's gonna look different. The reason I believe that that was so impactful for me is because then it sets the frame or the expectations in the right way to know, look, at the end of the day, this is where I stand today and this is where I want the business to be in 3 years. But I also recognize that whenever I get there, that it may have taken me longer, it may cost more to make that happen, and it most certainly is going to look different. Now, that begins to beg the question that is it then worth it to begin to set, you know, targets, vision, goals? And I would say that undeniably it is. Even though it's gonna take longer, it's gonna cost more, and it's gonna look different, that doesn't mean that it's not a worthwhile endeavor to do that. And so let me give you a couple examples. If I go back and I think, at the time I'm recording this is in 2024. If I go back and I think about and actually read some of the things that I wrote down about what I wanted to accomplish in 2021. Now I'm actually coming up on in December, I have some 3-year visions that are sunsetting. And some of those visions have already come true. In fact, they came true within the past year, so they happened sooner. But the majority of them, however, when I set those, I look at that and I say, yep, that was— it looks a lot different than it did back then. I didn't know in 2021 what it is that I know now. And so I think that even though it looks very different in a lot of ways it has cost more and it has taken longer to get there, those still have served me really well because they have become the lighthouses or the beacons to help me to begin to try to navigate and make decisions off of. Even though things have evolved, we've pivoted on some areas, um, we've even changed course completely in some areas, we've continued to charge forward in some areas, etc. And so I think that what this frame has done is given me some language that I normally would not be able to have. And so when you're going out and you're setting— now I do believe, uh, well, let me finish that thought and I'll come back to that. When you're going out and setting the targets of where you want the business to go, the further out that you go, the fuzzier it is, meaning the difference between the next 3 months and the next 3 years is pretty significant. And so it's much more likely to be able to predict what's going to happen the next 3 months. And so it's not likely going to cost as much over the next 3 months as you originally thought. It's probably not going to look fundamentally different over the next 3 months than you thought. And it probably is, um, you know, hopefully you'll be able to get the more that you set 90-day targets, the more that you'll be able to set them and then be able to actually achieve that in 90 days. But you lean out 3 years, it becomes much more true. It's going to take longer, it's going to cost more, and it's going to look different. And so I think that that application of those 3 framings applied to what we call the Business Blueprint— 3-year vision, 1-year objectives, and 90-day targets— I think it's those 2 things together, the way to approach those. And no, there's that it's going to take longer, it's going to cost more, and it's going to look different is a really good mental model to begin to think about. So I hope that served you well. When he shared it with us in a, just a voice text message, I immediately— that was a writer downer that went into the log of lessons learned. So much so that I thought I would share it with all of you. And a few days after I got that, I was doing this exercise in person with a business owner. And I said, you know, it really is just these 3 things. It's still, even though we're laying out these projections of sales numbers and marketing numbers and lead volume, et cetera. It's probably going to cost, cost more than we think. It's probably gonna take longer than we think, and it's probably gonna look different. And that even helped him. Well, I hope that episode helped you. I'd love to invite you to be able to come to our upcoming quarterly to be able to help you actually set quarterly targets. We run this every quarter, March, June and September. In December, we do the 2-day annual. And so if you go to abovethebusiness.co, abovethebusiness.co, you'll be able to go to the page and register for the quarterly for 2 hours. We'll help you look back on Q2, we'll help you plan for Q3 ahead. Totally free to register. Look forward to seeing you there. So I hope that served you well today as well. All right, till next time, lead well.
