Ep 594 | From Easy to Excellent: How to Set Bigger, Better Goals

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day is a new opportunity to get a little bit better. Today I want to share a real message, a real message that I received from one of my, one of my business partners. It was a moment, I think, that she had of self-awareness, and it opened a door for me to maybe have a more powerful conversation and one that, you know, I want to share with our No Days Off Nation here today. So my friend sent me over— my friend and partner sent me over a text that said something along the lines of, hey, I think I need a bigger target for my sales team. Our goals feel small and they feel attainable. And I know we're not there yet, but it seems like it's coming as we continue growing and we continue our activity. She said, we'll keep going, but also, what kind of frameworks might you use to think about setting appropriately larger targets? The example she then gave was she said, "Hey, I have this team member who has a goal to buy a house on her own without the help of anybody else, in particular, the father of her child." And that's a pretty big target. But they know that if that goal is within a year or two as it is, it's gonna happen. Like, of course, it's gonna happen if they're doing the activities. In other words, as cool as that goal and achieving that goal happens to be, it also doesn't feel like a really big one to this individual, to my partner. So, she was again asking me, well, how do I appropriately set larger targets? And I love, love, love that question because I think how you move from a goal that's attainable to one that actually stretches you is something that, that maybe is needed for all of us to consider. I think we all set, you know, some attainable goals or overly attainable goals, or we get into something and realize, hey, I'm closer to achieving this than I even realized. See, most people don't fail, in my opinion, from setting their sights too high, they end up failing from operating too long in the comfort zone. So let's talk around this framework. I'm going to call it a 5-part framework that I think is more tactical. It's not woo-woo in any sorts of way, any sort of way, but I want to talk about this 5-part framework for maybe how to set bigger and better and more stretch-like goals that, in my opinion, really drive growth. So part 1 Let's start with the obvious goal. So going back to that message, the team member is gonna buy a house in 1 to 2 years. Now, this is clean, it's attainable, it's, it's good. It's what I would call a baseline goal. You can probably get there if you just keep doing what you're doing. Again, it's a baseline goal, but it doesn't drive urgency. It probably doesn't require any sort of new thinking. It doesn't force any sort of real innovation. And most importantly, it's already emotionally assumed. So, I don't want to throw it out, but I also don't want to stop there. So, part 1, start with the obvious goal. In this particular case, buy a house in 1 to 2 years. Part 2, and this is where we start upping the game, upping the ante here. Compress the timeframe. If you want a stretch goal without making it absurd, shrink the timeline. So, 1 to 2 years in this particular example was the original timeline. What would happen if we reduced that timeline to 9 months? Well, in compressing that timeframe, it creates a stretch goal. Why? Why does this work? Because the urgency reveals the inefficiency. In other words, it forces us to work faster and, and think differently, eliminate dead time, rethink how we're going to prioritize our day. If we had her getting her home, let's say by December, and here we are sitting in July, if we had to get her that home by December, what would have to change today? I think lots would have to change today. Again, if you compress that time frame, You've got to really figure out where the inefficiencies lie. Once you figure that out, I think that's when you start getting better. Now, part 3 in this 5-part system is to multiply the goal. Once you shrink the time frame, now let's add some scale. So going back to the example, um, if there's one person that feels it's achievable to buy, buy a home in the same— in the situation we were describing earlier, What would it take to help, say, 5 people just like that individual in the next year? So, we multiply the goal. Instead of helping this one person to achieve the objective in, say, 9 months, what would happen if we took that same, you know, goal and multiplied it by times, you know, by 5? Now, we're talking about shifting the challenge not from just service but also to systems. We've got to look at pipelines and capacity and referrals and repeatable education and branding. I mean, there's so many more things because we've again multiplied this times 5. Multiplication is going to turn a personal win into more of an organizational sort of evolution. Okay, so part 1 was start with the obvious goal. Part 2, compress the timeframe. Part 3, multiply the goal. Part 4, shift to activity-based metrics. What do I mean when I say that? Don't let the target sit in like the outcome category over here. Put it into your control zone. So instead of saying something like, you know, she's gonna buy a home, let's maybe shift it to, we're gonna host 3 workshops for women just like this individual, and we're going to do it this quarter. We're going to attract 50 leads and we're going to build 15 purchase plans for, for other people. This is trackable. This is completely in your control. You can control the number of workshops you're hosting. You can control to an extent how many leads you attract. You can control conversion to some point. It's trackable, it's repeatable, and it's within your control. And I think that's how you set a stretch goal that you can actually measure. Before the lagging results show up, what are our lead measures? And then lastly, part 5, I want to create visibility and pressure. You really want to up the goal? Take it public. If it's just a quiet goal in your head or a note in your phone, it's probably not gonna stretch you. But in my opinion, you wanna stretch, go build some tension around it. So for example, maybe report your progress on social media every week on this journey to buy, you know, for so-and-so to buy a home. Maybe put the results up on a whiteboard or a dashboard, maybe share success stories, monthly with the whole team. You know, I think about John Wooden, basketball coach, even the most process-driven coach of all time, he made his players track their stats and report to each other. It wasn't about ego, it was about ownership. And again, I think here in creating this visibility and pressure, it creates more ownership and it's going to stretch you because it's no longer a quiet goal. So in wrapping up today, I don't think bigger goals or big goals require magic. I think they just require new design. You know, to my partner that sent me that message, the simple fact that she's asking that question is a sign that, that she's growing, right? And she's already getting better just because she's thinking bigger. The, the statement she made, well, of course we'll get there. That energy is, is really interesting because what great confidence, but at the same time, it's a sign that maybe it's time to raise the bar and that's why she's inquiring. So how do you do it? Compress, multiply, control, expose, repeat. And then you go from easy wins, in my opinion, to real breakthroughs. So for today, I want you to take one goal that you currently have right now, one that you're working towards, and, and, and especially one that feels maybe attainable. And I want you to stretch it using the playbook we just went through. Shrink the timeframe, multiply the volume, make it activity-based, create visibility. And then I want you to ask yourself, what would have to change in my day-to-day to make this new version of this goal possible? That's the work we get to go do. And I think that's what— it's what this No Days Off concept is really about. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.