The Importance of Goal Setting Transcript

Greg Wilkes (00:01):

The construction industry can be a tough business to crack from cash flow problems. Struggling to find skilled labor and not making enough money for your efforts leaves many business owners feeling frustrated and burnt out. But when you get the business strategy right, it’s an industry that can be highly satisfying and financially rewarding. I’m here to give you the resources to be able to create a construction business that gives you more time, more freedom, and more money. This is the Develop Your Construction Business podcast, and I’m your host, Greg Wilkes.

(00:37)

Welcome to the podcast. It’s episode two and I’m your host, Greg Wilkes. I’m the bestselling author of the book Building Your Future, a Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Million Pound Plus Construction Business. So if you haven’t got a copy of that, make sure you pop onto Amazon and grab yourself one of them. You’ll find that helpful if you are trying to scale your business profitably. So, in episode two, what we wanted to talk about today was the subject of goal setting. I’m a big believer in setting goals and tracking your progress and really feel that setting goals is the absolute key. If you want to get somewhere in life, then goal setting is absolutely crucial. Now, often liking it to imagine you are setting off on a long car journey that you’ve never traveled before, your destination is hundreds of miles away. The roads might be a bit unfamiliar. Maybe they’re even a bit dangerous.

(01:30)

Now imagine you set off on that journey without looking at the Sat Nav or without looking at a map and roughly what direction you’re heading in, but you don’t have an exact location and no definite idea of how to get there on your journey. Now, if you did that, if you embarked on a journey like that, it would seem a bit crazy, wouldn’t it? If you did that sort of journey without planning it. But the crazy thing is that’s what many business owners are doing, day in and day out. They might start up a construction business, and they’ve got a general idea of maybe how much they want to earn or broadly what they want to achieve with their construction business, but they haven’t got an exact end goal in mind and no detailed plan of how they’re going to get there to their destination.

(02:18)

So what about yourself? Have you thought about where do you want to be in five years time? Do you want to be off the tools? Owning a big new office? Maybe you’re driving an expensive company car or company truck. Maybe you’re just working three or four days a week and playing a bit of golf. Maybe you’ve got your mortgage completely paid off, whatever goals you might have. These sound like great goals, and no doubt you’re sitting there now thinking of some goals that you personally have. But do you sometimes find that maybe you don’t even set these goals? Maybe you are so caught up in the rat race of running a business and you’re working so hard just to pay the bills and feed the family that all of a sudden the months and the years are just ticking by and you don’t seem any closer to getting into your dreams.

(03:12)

Maybe five years tick by and you look back and you think, what did I actually achieve in these five years? Are you potentially still on the tools, still driving around that battered work van that you promised yourself? You’ll get a new one. And sometimes you look back and you get really frustrated and you think, where have I actually got to? Now, often sometimes it’s because those dreams that are simply that they’re just dreams rather than an actual concrete goal or a destination. So you might say that you want to change things for the better, but have you actually got an actual plan, an actual roadmap in place to ensure that these changes are going to happen? Because if you haven’t got that plan in place and you answer no to that, then really it’s like you’re just daydreaming, aren’t you? It’s just a waste of time daydreaming, isn’t it?

(04:05)

And maybe even worse than just being a waste of time, it can actually be quite destructive, quite discouraging when you’re dreaming about something and then you realize you haven’t achieved it. You can actually get a bit fed up and then stop dreaming because you’re not achieving the goals you set. So that’s why I believe it’s so important to get your end goal. Think about what your end goal is, your destination, and make it a real concrete goal, not just a wishy-washy dream. Now, goal setting is such a powerful strategy, and if you haven’t tried it, you’ll be absolutely amazed at the difference it will make in your life. So I encourage you just to think about this. Sit down for maybe just a few moments. Now, get yourself a pen and paper or a nice diary, or write it on your iPhone. Just sit down and think about it for a few moments.

(05:02)

Write down what are your goals, what are your goals in business, and what are your personal goals in life. Now, the reason we say both business and life is because really these things are so intertwined, aren’t they? It’s important that if you’ve got business goals, it’s no good having a fantastic business if your personal life is suffering and not going anywhere. And at the same time, there’s no point having, well, you’re not going to have a great personal life if your business goals are suffering. So we want to do both. Maybe just write down five things. What do you want to achieve? What are five things you want to achieve in business? And what are five things you want to achieve in your life? And think big. Don’t necessarily limit yourself. Think big on this. Now, just the fact that you’ve put this down now in writing, you’ve put it down on a bit of paper, you put it down in your diary or on your phone, that’s a really powerful thing.

(06:00)

Just doing that, just getting those concrete goals out of your head and onto paper, is really powerful. Now, I was absolutely amazed the first time I ever did this. Now what I do is I often write down a five-year plan and then a one-year, a six-month, a quarterly, and my monthly goals. Now I call my five-year plan, my destination goal or my roadmap. Now, some people will increase this. They’ll do maybe a 10 or 20-year goal, but I often find that things change so often in life and we change as individuals. We grow, and our personalities change, don’t they over time. So I just feel five years is a good reflection of what we want in our current period of life because all of a sudden before you know it, something might change. You might have kids, or you might find a new partner, you might get married, or you might get divorced.

(06:54)

Things happen in life, don’t they? So I just find that if you write a five-year goal down, that’s just a good reflection of where you’re currently at in your current headspace, and it’s quite realistic that you might be able to achieve those things. So stop for a moment and just write down those five-year goals. Now, as we said, you want to think big. You want to try and push your boundaries a bit with these goals. You want to be realistic to some degree, of course, but make it a big goal. Make it a real stretch goal. You might not be able to imagine at this time how you’re going to achieve it just yet, but don’t let that stop you from writing it down. Still write it down as a goal that you want over the next five years. Now, this is a great tactic to do in business, and there’s a book written by the author Jim Collins, a very famous book called Built to Last.

(07:45)

Now, what Jim Collins did is he analyzed the most successful companies that consistently delivered market beat in return. So real successful companies. And what he noticed from these big businesses is that their leaders were visionaries. They’d all set themselves huge goals. Now, he referred to these goals as BHAG goals, B-H-A-G, BHAG, which stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals, BHAG (B-H-A-G). Now, isn’t it amazing that some of the biggest companies in the world set themselves these kind of goals, these goals that really stretch themselves, Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. So, can you do that for your business? Can you do that for your personal life? Set yourself a BHAG goal, push your boundaries, push your imagination, and see what you can come up with. You might be fascinated about some of the things you might want to achieve.

(08:49)

There’s a saying by Joel Hawes, he said, “Aim at the sun. And then you may not reach it, but your arrow will fly higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.” Yeah, maybe you’ve heard of a saying or a similar saying, “Aim for the stars and you might hit the moon.” That’s so true, isn’t it? If you don’t aim big, you’re not going to push yourself and stretch yourself and get further than what you could ever have imagined. So write down that goal and then what you want to do next. Once you’ve got your goals written down, your personal and your business goals, you want to try and tie some emotion to that goal because if you can tie emotion to the goal, then it motivates you more to try to achieve this. So the way you can tie emotions, you can tie negative and positive emotions to a goal, and both of them can work quite well.

(09:40)

It might be one or the other that will motivate you more, but you can, first of all, you can associate a negative emotion to that goal. So maybe think about, what it would be like if you don’t achieve this goal and think about how the best way to do it, think about how it’s going to affect others that maybe are quite important to you. So maybe think about if I didn’t achieve this, what would it mean for my partner? Or what would it mean for my kids if I couldn’t provide this life for them? And think of it in a negative way. Think about, imagine you’re still on the tools and you’re not earning enough money and your kids haven’t been able to get the presents they want or the holidays they want to go on. Maybe you can’t afford to give your daughter that wedding that she always wanted.

(10:27)

Think about things. I know it sounds quite negative and depressing, but you want to tie a negative emotion and really create some pain by not achieving that goal. How bad does it make you feel? So, that can be quite motivating and quite powerful to be able to do this. And then what you want to do is then think about positive emotions. Tie positive emotions to that goal. So now think about it, if you have achieved it, think about your daughter having that dream wedding that she’s always wanted. Think about yourself off the tools now, maybe driving your company car around and you’re not on the tools anymore and getting dirty every day. You’re enjoying life. And think about how good you feel about that. Think about the time you get to spend with your partner and the holidays you might get to go on and the lunches you can take he or she out on that could be really powerful.

(11:21)

Start thinking of the positive things. So you’ve got a negative emotion and you’ve got a positive emotion. Now, as we say, one will motivate you more than another, but what you want to do is tie some emotion to it because if you tie that emotion to it, you can start creating a burning desire. It can start building up inside you this burning desire that you have to achieve this goal. Now, I was amazed when I tried this for the first time. I always write my goals down, and I write them in diaries and journals throughout the years. And I look back recently on some of the first times I started writing my goals down, and it was absolutely incredible. I wrote down how much money I was going to make, how much money I’d have in my savings. I wrote down who was going to be working for me, actually wrote names down of people I wanted working for me.

(12:13)

I wrote down what my turnover would be in business, how many properties I’d own, how many hours I’d be working a week, and so on and so forth. And it was absolutely incredible. When I look back on it now, I can honestly say that at least 75%, if not more of those goals have been achieved or well surpassed at least. So that’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? But funny enough, the only thing that wasn’t actually achieved was my six-pack beach body, which I’m really annoyed about because no matter how many times I set that goal every single year, I never get there. So it’s not foolproof. You’re not going to achieve all your goals, but you’ll certainly get close to many of them if you do this. Now, one person I’ve always been pretty amazed by, who was someone who clearly set goals, was Richard Williams.

(13:08)

Now, that name might not come to mind straight away. I think he’s Richard Williams, but he’s the father of Venus and Serena Williams, the tennis players. Now, we often give credit for Venus and Serena being world-class tennis players to the girls themselves, don’t we? You think? Oh, it’s incredible, their mindset and the drive that they have and their ability, but actually their mindset and drive came from their father, Richard. Now, Venus was just five years old when Richard decided to take her to the tennis courts. And it wasn’t long before Serena joined them shortly after. Now, Richard didn’t take them there just for a fun game of tennis because he was convinced from an early age that they were going to become world-class tennis players, and he was quite vocal about that and told a lot of people and had absolute determination and a plan for them to become world-class tennis players.

(14:05)

Now, sure, without any doubt, Venus and Serena both have natural ability, don’t they as tennis players, but so do thousands of other children that are out there, but thousands of other children aren’t world-class tennis players. So the overriding factor with Serena and Venus was the continual drive, the continual goal setting, and the determination and planning that Richard Williams put in place when they were just young girls. Now, in his book, Richard Williams’ book, Black and White, he lists his top 10 rules for success. And his number one rule is failing to plan is planning to fail. That’s what he says. Now, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement that failing to plan is planning to fail, but I find it shocking, how many business owners I speak to have no real plan in place. They don’t have any plans at all. So it’s interesting isn’t it, just thinking about that?

(15:10)

That’s why many business owners fail in business because they’ve got no plan in place. So, I always encourage my clients, the business owners I work with to make sure they write down their goals. They’ve got to put a plan in place. So you don’t just write down your five-year goals and think, oh, how am I going to get there? But you actually put a plan in place by breaking this down into your one year, your six month, your quarterly, and your monthly goals, because it just seems so much more palatable, doesn’t it? And achievable if you do it this way. It’s just much more actionable. If you’ve got bite-sized goals to attack rather than one big goal that seems impossible to achieve. What do they say? There’s the saying, isn’t there? What’s the quickest way to eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time.

(15:59)

That’s the saying, isn’t it? So if you’ve got bite-sized goals that you can achieve, that get you on your way to your big goal, then it’s much more likely that you’re going to get there. Now, often I liken achieving your goals to conquering Mount Everest. I’m fascinated by Mount Everest, sitting there at the summit at some 29,000 feet. It’s really formidable mountain to conquer, isn’t it? With hundreds losing their lives attempting to do so. Now, can you think of anyone who would try to attempt to climb Everest without a rock-solid detailed plan? If you didn’t have that plan, it would be absolute lunacy, wouldn’t it? Anyone who’s serious about reaching the summit and staying alive in the process will be planning and preparing for months, even years, potentially before they begin their climb. Now, running a business is no different to that, is it?

(16:57)

Hopefully, by now you’ve got your destination. You’ve taken the time to write down what your five-year goal is or your destination, and I hope you’ve pushed your boundaries and set yourself a BHAG goal that seems challenging to reach. But now you need a plan. It’s not just enough having the goal. You’ve got to have a plan on how you are going to reach your Everest. And it is an Everest, isn’t it? It’s something that can be conquered, but it’s hard to conquer. Now, if you were actually climbing Everest itself, you’d never be able to make it in one go, would you? Because it’s just too big. The mountain is too daunting, and to do it safely requires that you take on Everest in stages. Now, they generally break it down into six stages along the way, which makes it seem a little bit more achievable.

(17:44)

So the first stage is you’ve got to make the journey from Kathmandu. It’s a base camp. That’s journey number one. Now, that journey alone is no easy feat, base camp’s at an altitude of 17,000 feet just to get to base camp. So that’s a bit of a time, and there’s planning and preparation that will just get you to that stage. Now, although some may say, well, that’s not a great achievement, getting to base camp, it’s actually essential. You are really laying the foundations from which you’re going to push onto the more challenging stages of climbing Everest. So you’ve got to get to base Camp First to settle down to acclimatize. You’ve got to prepare your equipments and your rope. And then, once you’ve done that, you’re ready to make the next step, which is Camp One. Now, Camp One sits at some 20,000 feet. Now, this journey is quite a challenge because it involves traversing over a moving glacier of tumbled ice and crossing deep crevices.

(18:48)

So that’s a real challenge. And then you come on, once you get to camp one and you acclimatize, you then got to get to camp two. Now, that can be flatter and easier in some respects, but sometimes you go from real extremes in temperature. One minute is baking hot, the next minute is ice cold. So that part of the journey can be really mentally tough to deal with. Now, very importantly, once you get to Camp Two, this is where you get to see the peak of Everest for the first time when you start approaching camp two. So that’s quite important. Now, the journey. Then you get to Camp Two. You get to Camp Three, which is extremely difficult and dangerous. You’ve got the steep ice wall that’s got to be traversed, and there’s a high risk of avalanches here and falling ice rocks. There are lots of deaths that can be met on the way to camp three.

(19:44)

And when you get to camp three, the danger’s still not over because the camp is perched like an eagle’s nest jutting right out of the wall. So it’s really dangerous this camp, but at the same time, it’s absolutely incredible when you get to that camp and you’re looking back. The views here are known to be absolutely stunning, and it’s these views that often give the climbers the mental push they need to keep going. They can see how far they’ve already come, and this strengthens their resolve to push on to the South Col, which is camp four. Now, Camp Four is the highest camp on earth, sitting at some 26,000 feet. And this is the point which is known as the death zone. Because once you get to the death zone, at this point, the body just struggles to survive unaided. Oxygen levels are so low, and most at this point need some supplementary oxygen to make that next push to the summit.

(20:41)

So even though some people are so close at this point to get into the summit of Everest, many climbers, they’ve got to turn back. They’re forced to turn back at this point, and it could be due to bad weather or just complete exhaustion. There’s many that might get to Camp Four but will never make it to the summit. So even though the climbers have come so far, there’s still another 3000 feet to go. So it’s a real strength of character and inner belief that push the strongest to keep climbing at this point. And then once they make their way from Camp Four to the summit, they navigate the South summit and the treacherous Hillary step, they edge ever closer to Everest Peak, the highest mount in on Earth, and then they’ve made it. They scan the horizon, they look at the world below, and they can feel that satisfaction and achievement of knowing they’re one of the few people on earth that have actually conquered Everest.

(21:40)

Now, they might think, well, why have you just gone into the journey of how you climb Everest? But really there are so many lessons we can take from this, which is vital for business, because the path to climbing Everest can be applied to the path in business. The first one, first lesson you can take is that no one can reach the summit of Everest without being determined to set that as a goal. It might seem like a distant reality at first, but slowly but surely because that goal’s been set, their plans come together and things start to happen, and they start to make the climb. And it’s the same as business goals. We’ve already discussed setting that BHAG goal, a goal that seems impossible to start with, but eventually, it can become a reality. So you’ve got to set that goal.

(22:28)

First of all, just like someone sets that goal forever, Everest, you’ve got to have that end destination in mind to achieve your dreams in business. The second lesson is to ensure you build a good foundation before you start your climb. So we spoke about Basecamp, didn’t we? It might not seem like much getting to Basecamp, but often, this is where all the planning and the preparation is carried out that serves you so well later on. Now, in business, setting up a good foundation, it can seem boring, can’t it? It might sometimes seem like you’re not actually getting anywhere in business. But when you’ve planned, when you’ve prepared, and when you’ve started putting all these backend good systems in place, these are absolutely invaluable to you as you start to scale up, because it can stop things getting out of control. When you start to grow fast, you’ll be really thankful you put in the groundwork and got the base foundations in place in your business.

(23:26)

Now, the third lesson you can learn is that you really need to make plans now on how you’re going to reach your goal. You can’t get to the top of Everest in one go. There’s plan stops along the way, and these plan stops or these plan camps, that’s a chance where you get to regroup, you take stock of what you’ve just achieved, you build your strength, and then you push to the next camp. Now, our business goals are no different. We set them. You set your BHAG goal, you set your big five-year goal, but then you need to break that down, break that down into camps, your one-year camps, your six-month camps, your quarterly camps, your monthly camps. Now, you could even go further if you wanted to and break these down into weekly and daily goals if you think that will help.

(24:11)

But the important thing is, is that you consistently take a few steps every single day in the right direction to get to your next camp. That’s so vital. Just take it step by step. And often they say that on Everest, don’t they? Sometimes all they’re focusing on is placing one foot in front of the other. So when you set these interim goals, the journey just seems so much more achievable, doesn’t it? I mean, they say like weight loss, not that I’m a good example to give on weight loss, but if you want to lose weight, you might set a goal of, right, I want to lose a stone. But it’s so much easier to tackle that goal if you say, right, let me just do one pound at a time, one pound a week over 14 weeks, and then I’ve hit my goal.

(24:53)

That’s just much more achievable, isn’t it, for people to be able to take on. Now, the fourth lesson you can think of from Everest is that you can’t be afraid to ask for help because no one could climb Everest without the help of those Sherpas. Those are Sherpas on Everest absolutely vital, aren’t they? They’re the world’s best mounting climbers. They’ve been there and they’ve done it before, and you need them to guide you up Everest. Now, as you grow in business, you are also going to be entering unknown territory at times. You’re going to come across problems that maybe you’ve never had to deal with before. How do you fire someone who isn’t performing without the risk of a tribunal? How do you deal with a client who’s reneging on a complex contract? These might be things you’ve never even thought about and never had to deal with.

(25:43)

So when you come across these things, don’t be afraid to ask for help so you can tackle these challenges in the best way. Now, I’ve done this throughout my business life. I’ve always sought the help of coaches, consultants, and friends who’ve been there and done it before. I’ve always thought it was worth spending the money out on those things, and it saved me a lot of heartache along the way. They can save you thousands of pounds because making a serious mistake when you’re a large company can be really costly. So you want to listen to people, but ultimately, you are responsible for your own choices, aren’t you? You’ve got to listen carefully to people, but only you know what the best decision is for your company, and you’ve got to take that on the chin and take that responsibility yourself. The other benefit of using coaches is that they can fast-track you on your way to your goal.

(26:33)

So just like Sherpas, they know the quickest and safest route up to the top of Everest. Often, coaches and consultants, they can see past your day-to-day problems that you’re facing, and they can work out a strategy for you to reach your goals faster. They’ve helped other companies do it. They’ve got a proven path that can get you to your goal. So it’s often worth thinking about coaches if you’re trying to fast-track your results. And the fifth lesson from Everest really is to remember that the end goal isn’t the only significant achievement. It’s not all about just getting. Of course, you want to get to the top of Everest, but that’s not the only achievement on the way, is it? Because each time you reach an interim goal, each time you get to another camp, you really need to celebrate that. And it’s the same in business on Everest.

(27:21)

Climbers will often look back at each camp they’ve reached, and they’ll stop, and they’ll enjoy the views. They’ll let it sink in at what an achievement it is to get so far at this point. And we need to do the same in business because sometimes we can get so caught up in chasing our dreams that we forget every now and then just to stop and enjoy the journey. Just enjoy the journey to get there. If you can stop periodically, review what you’ve done, look how far you’ve come, that can be a real psychological boost to help you continue the journey, because as we said, it’s a daunting journey. It’s a tough one, and some people may not even get there. They may not make it. But if you can enjoy the journey along the way, enjoy the process, enjoy your achievements as you go, then you’re going to have a much happier life, aren’t you?

(28:11)

And it’ll be a lot happier with the progress that you’ve made. So, make progress each day. Celebrate that and enjoy it. It’s not just the end outcome. There’s a saying: “Take pride in how far you’ve come, have faith in how far you can go, but don’t forget to enjoy the journey.” And I think that’s absolutely crucial. Now, the other thing to bear in mind too with your goals is that your goals can change. You can have a five-year goal, and life can present a few surprises and challenges along the way. Like we said earlier, maybe a new baby arrives, or maybe something more serious. There could be a long-term illness in the family. So sometimes life just doesn’t take your goals into consideration, doesn’t it? So, sometimes you’ve just got to reevaluate your priorities. Perhaps you need to stop that goal, maybe set a new goal, and that’s fine, isn’t it?

(29:06)

It’s not about just achieving the end goal, as we said, we want you to enjoy the journey. That’s the thing that defines you enjoying it and making progress. And that’s what happens on Everest, doesn’t it? Sometimes goals change, circumstances insist on it. Sometimes climbers can be right up at that camp four, and then they realize bad weather’s come in, and they’re not going to make it to the summit, and they’ve got to change that goal. Sometimes, that goal is, I’ve just got to get down. I’ve just got to get to base camp as quick as I can and as safely as I can. And then they may decide to tackle Everest some other time in life or may give up on it at all. But what an experience they’ve had, what a journey they’ve had. They’ve already achieved so much more than the average person, haven’t they?

(29:48)

The average climber. So that’s worth something celebrating. So do the same in life. Don’t be too despondent if you can’t get to your goal and life gets in the way. Just reevaluate. The important thing is, is that you’re always making progress and you’re always setting new goals and challenges for yourself. So I hope you found that podcast valuable. That’s a little bit there about goals and how you can set yourself some big goals, your BHAG goals, Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. Try and break them down if you can, into your five-year, your one-year, your quarterly, monthly, even weekly and daily if you need to. But the important thing is, write them down and then have a plan on how you’re going to get there. Not just writing them down and forgetting about it. Actually, map it out. How do you get there? And if you do that, if you break it down, you’re much more likely to achieve the goals you want in life. So I hope you found that valuable. Stay tuned for the next episode. If you’d like to work with me to fast-track your construction business growth, then reach out on www.developcoaching.co.uk.