55. Resolution for the best year - 7 Steps to Goal Setting Success as a Business Consultant

7 Steps to Goal Setting Success as a Business Consultant [Everything Business Consulting EP 55]

In this episode, we look at the difference between success and failure in a consulting business.

Transcript

Julius: With 2020 almost over, resolutions, that is New Year's resolutions, decisions that we're going to make now to make next year, a better year. They are on the cards. So today we're going to be talking about the proven theory of success, is this a resolution or is it a goal? And we're going to dissect that into seven steps.

David: Welcome to Everything Business Consulting, a podcast dedicated to business consulting success. It's for those of you who already are business consultant, and you want to improve your skills, are an accountant and want to offer consulting services, or you may be an ex-corporate who wants to get out of the rate race and become a self-employed business consultant, or you may have owned a business before and you now want to use the skills that you've learned to help others in business. I'm David Thexton. 

Julius: And I'm Julius Bloem. 

David: Everything Business Consulting is brought to you by ConsultX. A global business consulting company that has everything you required to become a successful business consultant or offer consulting services in your existing professional firm. If you'd like to find out more, visit consultx.com. 

Well, firstly, I think that our audience needs to understand that everything in the world starts with a thought. It's a thought in somebody's head and it doesn't matter who it is, where they are, what they do, what the thoughts about, but it all starts with a thought. Like for example, Sir Isaac Newton was trying to prove gravity and that was the thought that he had.

So he had to come up with the equation for it, and then one day an apple hit him on the head, sitting under an apple tree. And, the idea came to him and he achieved something, but it all starts with a thought like Bill Gates and his friend whose name I can't remember with Microsoft, and Richard Branson with Virgin Airlines, it all started with a thought it started off as a chain of record stores and things like that.

So a New Year's resolution, I was talking before with you and, you know, it's kind of a curious thing. It is a curious thing and it's triggered by the end of one year and going into the next year. And people think, the thought process, there's that thought again, the thought process is yuck 2020 was just awful for a whole lot of reasons.

Julius: Especially the year that just been. 

David: Yes, correct. And, 2021 has got to be better, we've got to have it better. So I am going to resolve, there's the resolution part, resolve to do better. And I want to be at the end of this year or further on, I want to have achieved this, but it's lightweight. 

Julius: It sounds like a good point in time to make a decision to do something. Because I guess you kind of putting the year that's just been, behind you and lightweight, you say that. Why is it lightweight? 

David: It's lightweight because there's only a thought without all the rest of the things that need to be put together to make it come to life. It's only a thought, some New Year's resolutions don't even last till the end of the first week. 

Julius: They might just only ever be a thought, or sometimes they get turned into words and that's where they stop. 

David: Yeah, but that's being a thought, it then for the people who are not used to planning properly, it ends up being a wish. It ends up being a nice to have, it ends up being a whole variety of things, but it's lightweight. It hasn't had any work or the correct work that should be put into it to ensure that it comes to fruition, and it happens. 

Julius: It becomes more than just a thought. So I just want to take a step back and just define what is a resolution? So resolution is a firm decision to do, or not to do something. 

David: Correct. 

Julius: And a New Year's resolution is just the time when the New Year comes around and you decide that you're going to do something or not do it in the next year. So we see this phenomenon, I assume it happens all around the world. I know it certainly happens in our corner of the globe. We had gym memberships spike, they go absolutely through the roof. And for the first couple of weeks, maybe the first month of the year, there are more people in the gym than you have ever seen before, and then slowly but surely as the weeks and the months go by, they drop off until near the end of the year when almost no one goes. Empty. 

David: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I said it's a curious thing because it doesn't have all the rest of the things that it needs for it to be accomplished. 

Julius: So you're saying that typically a resolution by itself doesn't really work? 

David: No, it might work for one or two weeks, enough time to go down to the gym and to sign up for a year with your credit card and everything. And then by the end of the second month, you don't go there at all kind of thing. 

Julius: Well it's a good business model for gyms though, who make you pay a 12-month subscription or an ongoing thing, and they only see you for a couple of months. So why doesn't a resolution work? 

David: Well because it needs to have more thought put into it. Again, it's not just a wish, I want to lose five kilos, and I'm going to join a gym. It needs to be more than that, it needs to be really thought through, and it needs to be turned into a goal. 

Julius: That's when it starts to work when a resolution becomes a goal. According to Wikipedia, a goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envisage, they plan and commit to. People endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines.

Now, a goal when it's put like that it sounds so much more powerful than just an idea or a resolution, which is basically a thought that pops into someone's mind. 

David: Yes, and it's only a wish or a nice to have. 

Julius: So this is what we're talking about today, David, that goals are essentially the foundation for success. They're what all high achievers use and they effectively give a system to these ideas or these dreams or these thoughts that people have, and as they work towards the things they want to achieve. So we've come up with a success in seven steps, it's based on goal setting, and this can be applied to any, any, anything really, can't it? And specifically, we talk about business consulting and you as a consultant and working with business owners.

But it is so much more than that, isn't it?. 

David: It is, it is. It's a bit of an art, and in the seven steps, we can tell you what's involved in this art.

Julius: Step one in our success in seven steps is to set long-term goals. These are visionary goals, big picture, typically they're over, what, five years or something? You want to go big, so wherever you are now, you'd think five X or ten X that is five times bigger or 10 times bigger than where you are now. 

David: Yeah, and the bigger the goal, the bigger the gravitational pull. And for those of you who don't know about gravity and things, the moon is a third of the size of the earth, and it has only one-third of the gravity that we have on the earth. And the sun is way, way big, and it's got massive gravity, it can pull planets in if it wants to have those sorts of things. 

Julius: So you're saying that a bigger goal is going to pull you towards it more.

David: Yes, and five years out, you need to have time to do it. 

Julius: So you suggest doing a five years out? 

David: Yes, starting there. So that it's absolutely fabulous. So in five years, for example, a personal goal, you can go from renting a house, to in five years, time buying a house and owning it a hundred percent. Now you're not going to go from renting to buying and owning a house in three months if you don't have the money. So, so goals, big goals need to be long term and they need to be really, really worthwhile, something you and your partner really, really want. 

Julius: In terms of business consulting as the consultant, what could be a big five-year goal? 

David: Well, in the case of a business, it could be to become the market leader in five years time. And of course, you've got to break it down, but we'll come to that in a minute. 

Julius: So then you come up with these big long-term goals David, you write them down, don't you, and then you need to create a vision that you're looking at every single day. What do you suggest we do? 

David: Lots of things you can do, you can put pictures on your office wall. You can put things written on the bathroom mirror. You can use a thing called a vision board, which you can buy. You can get free software on the internet, and you might have a car, you might want to own a Harley motorcycle, so get a picture of that. You might want to have a house of five bedrooms next to a lake, so you find a picture on that and so on and so on. You might want to lose 10 kilos, you might want to be really fit, et cetera, et cetera. And you put these on your vision board and every time that you turn your computer on, voila, it comes up in front of your face and remind you every single day. 

Julius: So you can see what you're working towards in the long term. Now that reminds me of a story, from Jim Carey in 1985, the famous actor, he wrote himself a cheque for $10 million and he dated it 10 years in the future. So we've just talked about five years, but this is taking it to the next level where there's this huge sum of money. And he worked hard from 1985. And then in 19 95, 10 years later, he got the biggest deal of his life when he was signed on to do the movie Dumb and Dumber, can you give how much he was offered to play the part in that?

David: Have to be $10 million.

Julius: $10 million dollars. That is kind of an example of that at work, having this huge goal with this big gravitational pull that he was obviously focused on. And he managed to do it in the timeframe that he set himself.

David: Yeah, I bet if we were able to talk to Jim, I bet he would tell us that he took that goal and he broke it down into sub-goals. Do you want to tell us about them? 

Julius: Well, so sub-goals, that is our second step. So once you've got these big long-term goals, we break them down into manageable pieces. 

David: There's an old saying, isn't there how do you eat an elephant? 

Julius: One bite at a time? 

David: No one teaspoon at a time. 

Julius: One teaspoon at a time? Well, it's very small compared to the size of the elephant. 

David: It is, it is. And I remember when I was a kid there was actually, I lived in Palmerston North in New Zealand, at the Easter show every year there was this guy used to come down to New Zealand and his job was eating a car.

Julius: What?

David: A car, that's what I said. I looked it up on the internet about three or four months ago. 

Julius: What about all the aluminum and steel? 

David: Yes, yeah. I don't know how he did it, but all the bits were ground up into pieces, the tires, everything. 

Julius: It's not like minced meet. 

David: No it's metal and things like that. And he did. And then I also found, which I didn't know, he actually ate an airplane as well, took him two years. So I used to go around all these shows and he'd say today, I'm eating the propeller and so on. 

Julius: He'd have to be really hungry. 

David: He'd have to be, well it's his job, it's his job. 

Julius: I suppose that's a good analogy. If you want to achieve a goal, you've got to be really hungry and have that burning desire to want to do it. 

David: Well, one of the goals that I had, I learned this technique in the early nineties, I owned a drinks company and we did about $4 million a year. So we were small and I actually learned about goal setting and how to do it effectively. So what I did was, and it was 1992, basically, I did a, what they call a mind map and with the goal in the middle. And the goal was to become the number one juice beverage company in New Zealand.

Julius: So the market leader. 

David: Yes, market leader. And off it came a whole lot of spokes and it went into all the different parts of the business, the manufacturing, the branding, the marketing, and so on, broke it down, and then it was broken down and broken down and broken down.

And then, so what I set was sub-goals, and these are the goals, the mini-goals, you might even call them, along the way to getting the major goal. So I did this giant mind map and everything on a piece of A3 paper. And what happened was like I said, we were $4 million a year in 1992, and by 2002, we were a hundred million dollars a year.

4 million to a hundred million bucks a year, and we were number one in every category, but not soft drinks, Coca Cola was. 

Julius: Wow, that's very impressive. So, as I understand it, you start with this really big goal and your instance, in your case, it was to become the market leader. And then you break that down into different goals for perhaps each area of your business, or if it's your personal goals, you're going to break that down into areas of your life or something like that. 

David: Yes, so we had milestones all the way, which we'll talk about in a second, and we had all of the major goal broken down into lots of sub-goals. 

Julius: So step three, after you've set the major goal and broken that down into sub-goals, is to set milestones. So this is measurement points of basically where you are now, and they mark your progress, David. 

David: Yes, it's that old saying again, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So if we're the Roman army, for example, 2000 years ago, and we're marching from Rome to some other town, to Milan or some other town in Italy, and we've got 50,000 troops and we're marching along, we need to know where we are. Cause there's no real maps and there's no GPS or anything like that, so when they built the roads, cause they built roads everywhere, the Romans, they put milestones every mile. And so as the army was marching along, they'd go oh there's mile one mile two, they know that at mile four, this is where they're going to camp.

Right. So, so yeah, so it's measurement along the way, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So that's where milestones came from and we use them in business or even in personal goal setting as well, as we might be wanting to lose 10 kilos. And we put a milestone that every kilo that we lose, or we attach that milestone to a chronological date.

I want to lose two kilos by the end of March or whatever the milestone is. And that gives you what it gives you, enthusiasm, it inspires you and it shows you whether you're going good or whether you're going bad. 

Julius: I imagine that it'd be much easier, you've got this large goal, it's much easier to be working towards this milestone that's closer to you, than a goal that is five years out. 

David: Yes, it has no impact. Has a little impact, got a huge gravitational pull, but you don't want to enter into disappointment. So you need lots of little rewards along the way, we're getting along, we're getting closer, we're getting closer, we're getting closer. We passed all these milestones and so on. 

Julius: So works to keep you focused? 

David: Does, yeah, absolutely does. Do you know what focus means? And the anagram for it? 

Julius: Is it follow one course until success? 

David: Perfect, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. And we recommend that if you're doing anything, you should try and concentrate in one area rather than having your attention all broken up by multiple things.

Julius: Going back to the story with your beverage company, what were the milestones that you had? 

David: Well, it was, we divided the market up into categories. Like we had fruit drinks, fruit juices, we had spring waters, we had fruit, oh I said fruit drinks. We had energy drinks and so on. All the categories and we worked on each category, every, about every year, basically.

So we'd come into summer, or be midwinter actually, and we'd be saying, okay, we're going to launch a sports drink. So we do all the work on that, all of the beverage work, branding and all of those sorts of things, all the marketing that we do for it. And then that's what it was. So by the end of summer, our target was to be the market leader in that category, and that was how we measured it. 

Julius: And for people out there, how long would you typically say, or how big should these milestones be? 

David: Probably six months is about right. Yeah, I'd use six months. That's a good enough time to actually achieve something. That's very, very, exciting really that, Hey, we've reached the milestone, we've done this, we've done that, we've done that, we're on track. It also enables you to make a couple of course adjustments over those six months. If your trajectory is not heading towards a milestone, you might have to make some changes. 

Julius: Breaking it down one step further, we've got step four in our seven steps to success. So just to recap, we started with a large goal, we've broken that down into sub-goals, then we've set out these milestones, which are kind of like the road markers to success. And then we break it down into tasks, now these are kind of like the small stepping stones, as we move towards the bigger goals. They've got completion dates using our eating an elephant analogy, this is every single bite. 

David: Yes it is, so just to give an example, a concrete example here is that, let's look at creating a brand in the juice company. And that's a sub-goal, like to be the market leader, which is the big goal, and the subgoal to be the market leader in sports drinks for example. Then you will break it down the tasks to do that, brand development, product development, packaging development, marketing, advertising, there's a whole lot of tasks there. Getting the labels printed and such and such. So inside that task, well, that sub-goal, the tasks that are in there, there might be 30 tasks within that goal.

 That sub-goal, basically, because you've got to achieve that, you gotta be able to create the market-leading product before you can launch it and become the market leader on that category of the industry. 

Julius: So it's all kind of intertwined, but you've got to have a framework to make it manageable and break it down into something that you can actually achieve and you can see the finish line if you go down this route. It becomes a map kind of when you do this whole process. 

David: Yes, yes. It is a map. It is a map and it's got all the instructions on if of what to do. 

Julius: Absolutely, so once you've got these tasks, then we need to be able to manage it and typically use a system. So that is step five in creating success through goals is to have a system to manage it. Now, there are all sorts of ways to do this. 

David: There are, there are, there's lots of them out there and they mostly all tend to be separate in doing pieces of it, what you want is a system that where it's all together in one system, it just makes it easier to work.

Julius: I've used a lot of applications in the past to help me do this kind of stuff. I know Trello's quite a big one, there's Taskly, and David, you use a mind mapping software. What is it called? 

David: It's called Mind Manager. 

Julius: What I've done in the past, David, is I've done this process on a spreadsheet where I've had, one of the pages of the spreadsheet has been the long-term goals. And the next page of the spreadsheet has kind of broken it down into sub-goals. And then it breaks it down into what I'm doing every month and then every week. So there's, it's kind of a big convoluted process, but that does that. And I know there are all sorts of other apps you can get on your phone, including Strides.

I've heard that's quite a good one, and that is a goal and a habit tracker, but we use, both you and I, we use the program, which is within ConsultX to manage the businesses that we work with, and we also do that for ourselves. 

David: Correct, we do, and it works really well because it goes right down to the task level. You can measure the task, you can see the this is with clients, you can see the performance of all of the people that work in the business and all of the tasks that they're working on and what percent is there through the task. It's very, very useful. 

Julius: I also saw that Google Calendar had a good one for sort of personal goal setting where you can map it out on a calendar, and that kind of thing. But the main thing is you have to have a system to manage it. Otherwise, it's going to turn into one of those resolution things where you forget about it and it doesn't get done. And that very nicely brings us to the sixth step, which is accountability. This is another thing we put in place to make sure that we are held accountable.

And basically, you want to find someone who is probably quite close to you and going to be able to keep you accountable. And they're going to help you to track the process of moving through the goals, moving down to the sub-goals, and every month looking at them. So you can make a commitment to them to actually achieve those.

David: Yes, yes, of course. And of course, this is what you do when you're consulting to business owners. 

Julius: It is exactly what you do when you're consulting to business owners. 

David: It is because somebody has to be there as the accountability partner and to make sure they are doing and carrying out all of the tasks that need to be done for the business to reach its sub-goals and its major goal over time. 

Julius: To reach this major goal over time, we need ongoing management basically. And that's the seventh step and the ongoing step basically in our seven steps to success. So we suggest that you track your own progress or the progress of the person you're working with on a monthly basis at the very least. And you should reflect on what you've done and you should look and make sure you're at the right point you're meant to be in your course. 

And if you need to make an adjustment, well, that's the time to do it, but you need to really want whatever you want and be focused on it. So you are hitting the targets and the milestones and achieving the task every single month so you're going to get where you want to be in five years. 

David: Yes, exactly, absolutely, so, so important. All of those things all add up to giving yourself confidence and motivating you, giving you the discipline routine. All those sorts of things. 

Julius: That sounds like it's kind of self-perpetuating, where if you can stay on track for a little bit, you're going to build up some of that confidence and be more motivated to continue doing it. It becomes a habit. 

David: Yes, it does. And what do they say? It takes 21 days to establish a habit and all of the psychological experts have done experiments on this. And they say, take your rubbish tin, and if it's on the left-hand side of your desk like it is with me and put it on the right-hand side and you'll see, it'll take you 21 days. With me, I've tried it and I just keep throwing it on the left-hand side and there's no bin there. So it takes you 21 days to establish a habit, it's not that long.

Julius: No, it's not. Especially if it's going to get you this long-term goal, you really, really want. That you've got this burning passion to achieve, you know, it's really a small sacrifice to change and, create some habits over 21 days or whatever period of time.

David: Yes, of course, absolutely.

Julius: So I want to link this back to consulting, David. So how does this relate to the consultant themselves? 

David: As a consultant, you need to have your own goals and you need to have your own sub-goals. You need to break it right down, just like what we've been discussing here. 

Julius: So you need to know where you want your consulting business to be in the future and basically how you're going to get there.

David: Yes, yes, and you know where you want to be and you know where you are today, so you essentially, you put a whole lot of tasks, sub-goals, and tasks from the start, just today, to the five years. And that's the same process that we recommend for consultants is what we do with clients.

Julius: Well, if you want to be a successful consultant well, that kind of makes sense to have a goal like that, doesn't it?

David: Yes, it does, yeah. 

Julius: Okay. And I imagine that would have a really positive impact on the business owners that you're working with as well, you're demonstrating to them, you know, what a successful person looks like?

David: Yes. 

Julius: Because you're going to be successful in your own business, you're going to walk the talk. 

David: Yeah. What we want, I heard a famous person say that when he walks in the room with his clients, he wants trumpets to blare, and people, yeah. And they say, David's here, David's arrived. And you want to have that sort of impact. And when you're goal-directed and when you, improving a whole lot of things in your life as well it shows, and the clients can see it. And the clients get into a situation where they want to have what you've got. 

Julius: So what sort of goals might you have as a consultant?

David: Ooh, you might have earnings, you might have lifestyle and you might have time of work. You might have number of clients, type of clients, all those sorts of things. It might be physical, it might be a mental, from a self-education point of view, everything. 

Julius: You can probably be quite personal as well, you could have the flexibility to spend the time you want with the people you want, your family or doing the pastimes you enjoy, that sort of thing. 

David: Personal goals could involve taking your wife out for a date night every month. And the kids go to mum and dad or something like that or going on a holiday. And it's everything, it's involved in your life, but it's the things that you want and it's the better side of life for what you're looking for.

Julius: Talking now about the business consulting clients that you have, how does this goal-setting relate to them? 

David: It relates to them because they are taking you on as their consultant. Because they're not happy with the way things are and they could be personal things and they could be business things. They kind of interlinked must remember that.

So what they do is they need you to give them direction as to how to get to where their goal is, where they want to go to. And of course, it's going to be a mixture of personal things and business things, isn't it? 

Julius: So it's a very important part of your relationship that you're basically helping them to achieve their business goals. That's what you're there to help them do, isn't it? 

David: Yes, because more often than not, if they achieve their business goals, then they will achieve their personal goals because they're linked in together.

Julius: So this time of year is when people are typically thinking about resolutions and making next year, bigger than last year, as we've already discussed. Is that the same with business owners? 

David: Yes, it is, absolutely, absolutely. And it's a mixture like a human being is a very complicated person, and that's a mixture of personal things and business things, and they're both interlinked. So, we know from history, of being in this business for 15 years, we know that the best time to approach a business owner is in the new year. 

Julius: So that makes right now the perfect time to be out there as a consultant or starting out as a consultant to get as many clients on board as possible. 

David: Yes, and we can see it going back in history every first quarter is the highest signup time of the year. 

Julius: Just to recap, the seven-step process. So goals are the foundation for high achievers and that starts with having a long-term goal, that is step one. Step two is breaking that down into sub-goals, these are things that kind of make the goals more manageable and they're probably something that's going to take around a year, perhaps a little bit more or a little bit less.

Then we place milestones at each significant point along the way, and these might be around about the six-month mark. And then we break these down into absolutely bite-sized pieces that we can chew on and do on a monthly basis, and we call these tasks and that's the fourth step of our process. The fifth step is to have a system to manage this.

The sixth step is to have someone that's going to help keep you accountable along the way as you've made a commitment to achieving these, but you do at times need a little bit of extra assistance to push you through. And the seventh step is to have ongoing management to ensure that you can achieve what you set out to, and you're always progressing towards step one, which is having big long-term goals.

Now this affects both you, the consultant, and your business clients, in a pretty good in a significant way. So my challenge to you then is to apply this in your everyday life. Now that we're looking at a fresh year, what 2021 will be, don't set a resolution. My challenge to you is to set goals and to break them down into steps so that you can actually achieve something rather than ending up like the person who signs up to a gym and ends up quitting within a month. 

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If you'd like to find out more, come visit us at consultx.com.