Goal setting sucks

Goal setting sucks. There I said it. I know I know you’re supposed to love setting goals and they are key to you finding success in life and business. But they suck and, in my opinion, they don’t work for 99% of people. There is that 1 % that crush their goals, and I applaud them. For the rest of us, there is a way to find success without goals.

Crazy right?

Let me give you a little background. I grew up in the self-help world. Since the age of 22, I have devoured books, tapes, CDs and now podcasts on everything I can get my hands on. I love listening to inspirational stuff and learning how to better myself.

In all that learning everyone said you must set goals. So, I did. Time and time again. I’ve set so many goals that my middle name should be goals The problem is I didn’t reach a lot of them - well most of them.

I could tell you all the excuses in the world as to why, but it comes down to this. For me, goals just do not work.

So, I had to figure something else out that would keep me inspired to act and it’s called milestones.

I figured this out one day while working with a young sales guy.

This salesperson had just wrapped up their first year in sales and had a decent year. They sold almost $120k of goods when a top rep would average a million in sales.

When we talk, I asked him how he felt about the year he said he felt awesome and was excited to get the next year going. I asked if he had an idea of how much he wanted to sell next year, and he did not skip a beat when he blurted out 1 Million dollars.

He enthusiastically exclaimed “I will be a million-dollar rep and be a top rep in the following year.”

I said awesome, that’s amazing! How are you going to do that? How are you going to sell a million dollars next year? His response was “Work Harder”

See that’s what most people think, if I just work harder, I will accomplish that goal. It’s not that simple. Although it does help. We started talking about why he wanted to sell a million dollars and he talked about how he would spend the money and how his peers would see him.

He went on about how proud his family would be and that he would get the respect from his brother. I was excited for him.At that moment I could tell he already saw himself cashing the checks and enjoying the accolades.

I asked him a harder question what do you work harder on?

He said I don’t know whatever gets me more sales. That’s when I knew he didn’t believe he could hit a million dollars. He didn’t know how to get there. Like best ideas do, a thought popped into my head. He doesn’t need a goal he needs the next steps.

I look at him and said, “What if we don’t aim at a million dollars next year, we aim at a million dollars in 5 years?” He said, “ok I’m listening.”

“Last year you sold roughly $120k or around $10k a month. Next month can you sell $11k?

He smiled and said, “sure I can do that”.

“The next month after that can you get to $12k?”

Laughing he said, “I can do that.”

“Each month increase by $1k and by the end of the year you will have sold almost $200k. Then the next year I want you to increase by $2k a month then year 3 $3k per month.”

“By the time you get to year 4 increasing by $4k per month, you will be selling almost $1.3 Million per year and adding almost $3 million in revenue for the company.”

He laughs and said, “that’s completely doable.”

Almost every rep I showed this to embraced it and went on to find great success. The point of this story is simple it’s not goals you need its milestones. You need incremental growth to evolve into that next level version of yourself.

See when you set a goal (especially a Big Hairy Audacious Goals) in your head you already think “I can’t hit that.”

You’re setting yourself up for failure. Then the self-sabotaging sets in and you find yourself not going for it because what’s the point. By setting milestones in every aspect of your life you trick the mind to grow and go bigger.

I believe we must go through it to become it. We must face what life throws at us and keep stepping forward.

Ninety percent of success is mental the other ten percent is action.

When you set a milestone that is the next level you need to get to - you set yourself up for success. Subconsciously your mind knows you can do whatever that next step is, and you can get to work.

Imagine if every day you grew a little bit more you would evolve to that version of yourself that people already think you are. Over the years people would tell me they had X amount of years in sales. They had X amount of years of experience. But looking at their life and what they had done. They had year one repeated X amount of times. They were not growing, they were not evolving, and they were not putting themselves into a situation where they must learn.

When you mentally beat yourself up before you even get started (Goal Setting) then it’s a tremendous mountain to climb. Set a big vision that others want to go through and help with. Then set your milestones to make it happen.

What areas in your life do you need to evolve in? How can you set a milestone to get you to incremental growth.