6 Questions That Will Challenge Your Goals in 2020

Hi everyone, it's Richard Milligan here, 4C Recruiting, and, uh, we are videoing our podcast here. You probably have seen this before if you're seeing this now. And so we're about to go live into a podcast, and it's the beginning of the year, which is always a cool time, and it's a fresh start. And we're always asking all the great questions: what are my goals? What do I want to accomplish? We dream. Right, both personally and in business. And it's like our ambitions kind of like soar around the beginning of the year because anything seems possible, right? And so I love to ask myself a handful of questions around the beginning of every year that, that give me clarity and give me kind of a foundation that I can start from in terms of just dreaming and, and, and getting some clarity around things that are important. in the upcoming year. So I'm gonna share those with you today in a podcast. And so we're gonna go live there in just a second. So if you'll bear with me, I'm gonna get everything set up here and we will go live here in 3 and in 2 and in 1. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan and we're back. It's another Recruiting Conversations. It is the 1st of 2020 and, you know, it's just I don't know. I'm just at a loss for words. It's the beginning of the year and this is a moment every year where it seems like we're more clear on where we want to go. It's a moment where we look back as much as we look forward and we assess, remembering the things that happened over the past 12 months. Then it gives us a fresh slate to look forward and say, What's possible? There's just a lot of power in dreaming. And this is one of the few times per year where people just clear their heads and really truly get to a place where they can really dream about what they want to do and what they want to accomplish. There's just something powerful about it. So I take this really serious. I've had several seasons in my business as a recruiting leader where I would dare say for about 10 years I was successful, but I didn't accomplish the level of success that I could have accomplished. And I think one of the reasons for that was I've always been a goal setter, but I haven't always been more specific around my goals into making them actionable. While we're not going to talk about that on this podcast, we'll talk about this on the next podcast that I do, I do want to talk about once you've gone through a process I'm going to give you here today, I'm going to give you a handful of questions that you should have already asked yourself. We're into the first of the year. If you hadn't already asked yourself this, you really should. It's never too late. Ask yourself these questions. Then next week, we're going to talk about how do we make these things not just these arbitrary goals, these arbitrary dreams that are pie-in-the-sky dreams, How do we actually make these things something that's so specific that we can actually map them into a day-to-day measurement to determine whether we're going to win or lose on a daily basis instead of looking at this in such a large window of time? I think that I kind of look at goals from this end-to-beginning mindset. Go all the way to the end. What do you want to accomplish? And then bring it relative to today. And if you can't do that in a way that's not abstract, it's got to be concrete. So abstract in the first 10 years I was in a recruiting leader role was work harder, be more tenacious, be more disciplined. It's in these generalities. It's not in the specifics. And what you have to do is if you want to accomplish whatever X is, you might say, I'm going to hire 12 people on my team in 2020. A lot of people go, well, that's a specific goal, when in reality it's a very general goal until you can make it relative to today. What's the actual action or behavior that you're going to do today that's going to lead to the larger goal? But we've got to start first with doing some dreaming. So let's just talk about that today. There's a handful of questions I ask myself at the beginning of every year. The first question is just a general question. What do I want to accomplish this year? So ask yourself that. What do I want to accomplish in 2020? And this is really where you're setting vision for yourself. I love the Hebrew definition of vision, which is dream. It's pretty simple, right? Like, like anything's— I think one of the reasons why we love the beginning of a year is because it allows us this opportunity to actually dream. Like, anything's possible, right? Anything's possible. One of the things I think that I've done well is not just dream in the current year, but actually dream into the future. One of the reasons why I love just dreaming farther into the future is because of this: I think we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, but on the flip side, I think we underestimate what we can accomplish in larger quantities of time— 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. So I love to look out in a 10-year window of time, and what that allows me to really do is truly dream, because within a 10-year window of time, more so than this year, anything's possible. Like, literally anything is possible. And so I ask myself that question, what I want to accomplish in a 10-year window, okay? And then what I want to accomplish in this current year. So my method is— my method, my madness is to go out to 10 years, What I want to accomplish, and I bring it relative to this current year, and that gives me the size of the objective in 2020. So as an example, when I started this company in October 2017, one of the things that I said in that moment was in a 10-year window of time, that as an organization, we would impact 10,000 individual recruiting leaders. Now, that was a really big number given the fact that in October 2017, I didn't have a single coaching client. I was just starting the company. So, it was a huge number, but it allowed me to dream. And from that larger dream, some really, really big things took place. It allowed me to have the vision for this podcast. It allowed me to have the vision for a book. It allowed me to have the vision for a digital recorded coaching component. It allowed me to think in terms of moving from not just coaching and consulting, but into actually being a strategist, a recruiting strategist. So, a lot of things came from having the larger vision. But then, in the moment, I got to make it relative to this year. So, our objective this year is to impact 2,500 individual recruiting leaders. That's an enormous number. It's almost— there's some vulnerability in even just sharing it with you because we're an organization that's 26 months old, 25 months old, something like that. And so, that's an enormous number. That's what I want to accomplish in 2020. And so, I think that's a good framework. Go out 10 years, figure out what that is, bring it relative to this year, and dream around all of that. Now, with that said, there's 2 components of that. What is that personal and what of that is business? So, inside that, inside what do I want to accomplish in this current year, I ask myself, what are my personal goals? And then I ask myself, what are my business goals? So a lot of times for me in the personal goal, my word for this year is intentional. I want to be more intentional. Now, I think most people would look at me and say that I'm pretty intentional right now. I've got regular routine and habit in my life, but there's a handful of things that I'm not real intentional about. And those are the things that I want to focus on this year. Yeah. is like, I'm never going to arrive. I've come to that conclusion. I'm never going to arrive. I'm always going to be on this journey of growth. And so in the year to year, I look to see like, what's this year's journey going to look like? So when you heard me just say right now, maybe I'll elaborate on this. I said my word for the year is intentional. For the last 8 years, I followed Jon Gordon's principle that he wrote about in the book One Word. And I've had a single word as part of my larger goal planning every single year for, I think, the last 8 years. That's been a really cool journey for me to look back and to see, like, the things that have happened in my life and how those words have had meaning to me over those seasons. So it's a, it's a powerful exercise. If you haven't picked up Jon Gordon's book One Word, I'd highly recommend that. It's great framework to begin the year with. Okay, so what do I want to accomplish in 2020 as it relates to personal and as it relates to business? Now, let's just say we've got those set. The thing that I ask next is this: why do I want to accomplish that? Why? If I said— I don't know. We'll come up with some arbitrary goal here. Let's just say you want to make 7 figures this year. Then my question behind that would be, why? Why do you want to make 7 figures? If you can't answer that question clearly, here's one of the things I know is that at some point in 2020, you're probably going to get slapped upside the face with something pretty difficult. If you've got a family with 4 kids like me, that's going to happen. I look back at 2019, man, on the personal side with 4 kids, there were some struggles. And so, then we move over into the business side. And again, we're kind of at a stage in this business, just over 2 years old, where we operate more on the business level as an adolescent or a teenager than we do as an adult because the business is maturing. And so, man, it was a difficult season even though we celebrated some enormous wins last year as an organization. So, you recognize hard times are going to come. They may not stay, but hard times are going to come. And if you're not clear on the why you want to accomplish that, it'll be pretty easy to give up on those goals. The data around this is pretty staggering. Most people do not— and when I say most people, most people do not accomplish the goals that they set. And I think there's multiple reasons why. We'll talk more about that next week. But one of the things I know is that, man, you better be really committed to what these goals are. Or you'll simply just give up on them. And look, I'm gonna say this on a podcast here. I love unmeaningful things ultimately in life. My brain loves novelty. I mean, I'd rather watch a YouTube video than work hard. And that's just being honest. I would rather watch a cool YouTube video than work hard. I'd rather eat chocolate cake than work out. Okay? There's something about my brain that says, go for the trivial. Versus doing the hard things, doing the right things right. I don't know what it is. I'm sure that most of you, if not all of you, can relate to that. If I'm not clear on why I want to accomplish something, there's no way, there is no way that I'm going to accomplish these enormous goals that I set out. You've got to be clear on the why. The process is now we know what we want to accomplish in 10 years. We know what we want to accomplish in the current year. We know what part of that is personal, what part of that is business. Now we know why we want to accomplish that. The next part of this is I ask myself is, where could I double down on my efforts and get my biggest results? I'll say that again. Where could I double down on my efforts and where could I get my biggest results? For me, this podcast has been a huge part of me being able to accomplish a couple of things. Okay. This is part of my larger content strategy. And if you're a recruiting leader, you have to have a leadership brand. That's just quintessential to successful recruiting today. The data is all over this. We're not here to talk about that today. So I don't want to get off on that as a side note. But the thing is that this is at the top of my content strategy. So I record this as a video that allows me to break this down into multiple short-form videos. I'm taking the audio from this and it's obviously being turned into a podcast and then taking some of the audio from this and turning this into soundbites and then transcribing this and turning this into articles and short-form content pieces. Some of the— if I say something that's of interest or good in short-form quotes, we put it into memes. So, one of the reasons why this makes sense for me is that there's a lot of content that can come from a podcast. That's part of that. Now, the other part of that is the reach of this podcast. I'm reaching a couple thousand people with this now and I could never do that as a small company, as an individual that's trying to grow a company to something of significance. So we've done well over the course of 2019. Throughout the year, we were always in the top 200 and there were a lot of times where we broke into the top 100 and even the top 70 in iTunes. And so, because of that, I'm able to actually create influence and reach in places that I could never do. And so, when I— this year, coming in this year, I said, gosh, what's been working? What do I need to double down my efforts on to get better results? This podcast is going to be one of those. And so, I ask myself that question every single year. Where can I double down on my efforts and get my biggest results? What that does is a couple of things. One, it forces me to say no to the good and yes to the great. You all probably have heard that before. Jim Collins wrote a book called Good to Great, so that framework has been around for a while. But what it forces me to do is say no to things. If I'm going to double down on something like this podcast, then I'm going to have to say no to some other things that aren't as meaningful to my business. And so what it does is it allows me to get hyper-focused on the things that are working, and it forces me to answer that question, what's been working? So I'm doubling down on that, and I think you should consider that as well. Where could you double down your efforts and get your biggest results? And then the last question I asked myself coming into this year is this, what events could I attend that would open my eyes to where something bigger is available? I say this Now, it's a pretty dumbed-down statement, but it's so simplistic. And when I say it, you'll know it's true. You don't know what you don't know until you know something different. And I'll say that again. You don't know what you don't know until you know something different. And how do you know something more is available, something bigger is available, unless you actually put yourself in a position to see it? So, I'm attending just here in the first quarter, in the first 2 months of the year, I'm attending an event that's a 4-day event and another day event that's almost a 4-day event that are not really in my particular lane. These are going to be venues that I've never attended in the past. They're way outside the industries that I'm coaching in. But the reason why I'm going there is because this year I'm really challenging myself. I think that recruiting is changing very quickly. And I think that the recruiting leader is lagging in the understanding of what's changing quickly. Look, because of social media and because of things like social proof being a, uh, being very legitimate and very real, your leadership brands matter more today than they've ever mattered in the past. So that's a component most people don't really grasp and don't understand until they move into this space. And then they realize, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? This is available. So, I'm going to some events where there'll be a number of people there that have built subscriber lists north of 3, 4, 5 million people and I want to attend those so that I can innovate myself, so I can help you all innovate into the future. And one of the things I'm also very well aware of is that in one industry alone, and I'll just give you this number, one industry alone that we serve a lot of people, which is the mortgage industry, there is 54,500 leaders that recruit. Okay? So, we know this data, just pulling it from Sales Navigator, which is a LinkedIn tool. Now, beyond that, there's approximately 7,200 internal recruiters, And then beyond that, there's about 8,000 external recruiters that service one industry. Okay, I say that kind of like laughing because that's like you start working the math, you're like, oh my gosh, it's like 70,000 people that are recruiting inside one industry. And while a lot of those are into specific markets and pockets like regions, that's a lot of noise that we're up against and it's growing. And this is true of most industries today. What do you do when you open the door to the gym and there's 70,000 people already yelling someone's name and you become the 70,001st person to yell someone's name? People are becoming deaf because the noise is so loud. What do we do in that environment? One of the things I know, Einstein said this, he said, creativity rules the world. And if creativity is the key, which I think it is a key to this, then one of the things I'm aware of is that, man, I got to get outside of the normal places that I would attend an event or people that I would see. And I got to get to some places where I really stretch myself in 2020. And I think you should be asking that question too. What events could you attend that would open your eyes to something bigger being available? Because when you see that, when you have that moment where you see it, you can't go back because now you know something different. That statement, you don't know what you don't know until you know it. When you do know it, it almost always influences you to change. So those are the questions. What do you want to accomplish in the 10-year window? What do you want to accomplish in 2020? What part of that's personal? What part of that's business? Then we're going to define why do we want to accomplish that. Now I'm going to ask myself these 2 questions: where could I double down on my efforts and get my biggest results? And that's a space you should move towards. And then lastly, where could you go in terms of events or in terms of engaging with people that would open your eyes to something more being available than you currently know? And I think if you can answer those questions, when you come back here next week, then I'm going to really challenge you to take those components and to make them very specific and intentional in like a day-to-day action plan. So I'll give you context around that next week. So I am confident if you do this, you will exceed the expectations that you have for yourself in 2020. There's a challenge. So I encourage you to do it. So until the next Recruiting Conversations, we'll get more specific about this. Enjoy this, share it with somebody as we're going into this year. Maybe you've got someone that's a recruiting leader that's, you know, extension of your team or someone in the company that you— that's in a similar role as you, or maybe, you know, someone in another industry that's a leader that's got a team they manage and is also responsible for recruiting that team. You could share this. I would be honored if you would share the podcast. It's our goal here to reach the recruiting leader who has very limited resources in the area of recruiting and training around recruiting. And so we want to reach more people in 2020 than we did in 2019, and we will with your help. So thank you for sharing this, and I look forward to seeing you again here next time on Recruiting Conversations. Have a great week, everybody. There you have it. We will hit this up again next week, and what we're gonna do is We want to make it very specific in terms of what do I need to take action on today. So we're going to— this is the larger framework, move towards a larger framework. When you come back here next week, let's get real specific. How do I take a plan that is this big, right? Because it's a big plan. And then how do we make it so intentional that I know what I'm going to actually operate in tomorrow in terms of behavior and actions? So we'll talk about that again next time. So until I see you again. Bye. On the next video. Have a great week, everybody. Bye.