It’s that time of year again. Time to review 2019 so that I can better plan for 2020. I take goal setting very seriously, and this year is no exception.

My two main focuses for 2020 are consistency and intent.

Believe me, I have plenty of specific goals, which I have listed for you below. But this year, my goals have goals. And they are consistency and intent. 

The whole choosing specific words to focus on versus just making measurable goals is a new concept for me. But I think I’ve made solid choices in the two I’ve picked. Those two words, consistency and intent, are the basis for the what and the how of achieving my goals.

As I move away from being the day to day sales guy, I’m finding that I need to slightly adjust my thinking. Planning and hitting my KPI’s are still just as important to me as they’ve always been, but those KPI’s have changed. Now they are geared more towards things like team building, long term results, and protecting my time.

As they should for everybody, 

my thought processes and priorities are always evolving. 

My goals are broken down into separate categories. I have goals for each business, and then I have personal goals. I love what I do, but I am always mindful of the possibility of burnout. One of the biggest things I have learned over the last two years is that if I am not working on self care, I am going to struggle when it comes to doing the big things in my businesses.

So let’s dig in: 

John Small Mountain – Personal brand

I have written mountains of articles and content for this blog talking about finding overlap, sales, business, and personal improvement. I am going to focus on putting that out more consistently. Since my significant other, Melissa, has come onboard with me full time as my Marketing Head of Content, this will help me out significantly. 

She will help me with editing because I am not good at that. She’ll also help me get articles posted and then shared on social media so that, hopefully, they will lead to growing this blog and my newsletter.

Goals:

• 52 blog posts this year – This is gonna take some focus.
• Get the weekly newsletter formatted and going – This is something I have wanted to launch for awhile, but I always struggle with perfection. I’m working on “done is better than perfect.” I’ll get there. 
• Two speaking appearances about entrepreneurship, sales, or personal development – These do not need to be paid engagements, as speaking is a somewhat new thing for me. But it’s something I would really like to get into. 
• Publish a book – I’ve spent most of my adult life working in the sales industry in one form or another. And I’ve studied, trained, and experimented with how to be my best for years. Being able to spread the knowledge I’ve gained about my approach to data driven sales could help a lot of people not struggle with it the way I did for years.
• 2 LinkedIn posts per week – This one should be easier if I can stick to the 52 blog posts a year goal.

Adapted Growth

I learned a lot over the past year of building and running Adapted Growth. This is where most of my goals fell short last year. I thought I would make about $300K last year, but unfortunately, I fell short. 

When I knew I wasn’t going to hit that goal, I started working with a team to handle the marketing and sales side of it because I think there is a lot of room to grow. This allows me to work on processes and the eventual team building that will take place. There are parts of this company I love and parts that don’t energize me very much at all. To fix this, I am working towards getting to the point where the parts that don’t energize me are being handled by someone else. Eventually, I’ll even find someone to come in and handle the parts I do like so I can take a step back and start looking at what I want to do with it next. But I need to be a couple of notches higher in revenue before I can do that. So to help get me there…

Goals:

• $300K – I would like 80% of this to be from new projects and 20% from lead gen and on-going training.
• Be more consistent around my social media for this company – I am not really sure how important this is, but I will test it and see how it goes.
• Get at least five clients for Melissa to work with – We help people find clients on LinkedIn, and I want to get her to where she is writing and managing writers for the clients we do this for. The hope is that this will help both of us build our careers. 
• Create a course – I want to help as many people as I can, and I believe that the concepts that Adapted Growth uses can help just about everyone who has a sales component in their job. That being said, not everyone can afford our rates. An online course would make it more accessible to a higher number of people. For those who don’t have the budget for my company, it would be an option for them that could still help their business without overtaxing their finances. 

Sales Throwdown Podcast

In September of last year, some friends and I launched a sales focused podcast called Sales Throwdown. We discuss the different aspects of the DISC personality profiles, how those play out in sales, managing our own personality traits, and identifying it in others so that we can improve communication and close more deals. We have been putting out one episode each week, both streaming and on YouTube, but we have a lot of room to grow. Because we think DISC assessments are incredibly important for being more successful in sales, we’ve started selling the assessments to those who are interested. Our ultimate goal is to work with small teams about how to work better together and how to have better conversations with prospects and clients, but we offer individual assessments as well. 

Goals:

• $50K after costs – This will come from assessments, ads, and merchandise.
• Create an additional segment – Ideally, we’d like to release two episodes per week, but it is hard to organize the four of us to record that often. I have some ideas for another possible segment that I could record by myself, and then two episodes per week would be much more doable.
• 5K email list
• 1K downloads per episode in the first week

Personal Goals

For me, goal setting doesn’t start and end with business. Being a better, happier, and healthier person will carry over to my businesses. And I’ll be more motivated to improve there when I feel secure and strong in my personal habits.

Self goals:

• 200 LBS – I am a big guy at 6’4” but have been unhappy with my weight for awhile. I have been doing the intermittent fasting thing, which has helped, and cutting way back on fast food and soda. 
• Develop cooking as a skill/habit – I really don’t like to cook, but I know that if I want to be at 200 pounds, I need to eat home cooked meals more. I recently bought a gas grill which should make cooking at home a little more approachable and fun. I really dislike standing over a stove in the kitchen, but being outside is way more appealing. 
• 2 trips in 2020 – To me, being able to travel is a big indicator of if I am doing well or not. Since we have a school age kid, doing the nomadic lifestyle is out for me, but two trips is easily doable. One of them will hopefully be out of the US this year because that would be a new experience for me.
• 1500 bicycle miles – I really enjoy bicycling and want to do more of it. This goal breaks down to about 30 miles per week. I have an indoor trainer, so cold weather shouldn’t stand in my way of this goal.
• Blue Belt in Jiu-Jitsu – I started training in Jiu-Jitsu a little over a year ago. The blue belt is the second level. I believe that with the frequency that I’m training at, (three times a week or more), I should hit blue around the middle of the year.

Hitting and Maintaining Goals

Setting the goal is not enough. I am not one of those people who believes that simply writing down a goal will make it happen. Keeping your goals in front of you will certainly help, but that doesn’t get you to the finish line.

I’m a process guy. So after deliberately picking specific goals following the SMART method, I then develop a process. I plan weekly and monthly activities I believe I need to be doing to hit each goal. Some of that is broken down here, but to avoid making you read the tediousness of what I need to accomplish things, I didn’t include everything. You’re welcome. 

Most importantly, all of these goals mean something to me. It isn’t a number just for the sake of a number. These goals all resolve to larger things in my life. The really big, lifelong goals that I hope to reach. Bucket list type stuff. Remembering that will keep me moving towards them even when motivation occasionally gives out.

Here is to everyone crushing their 2020 goals. 🍻🍸🎉

I’d love to hear about yours, comment below. And if you’re unsure where to start, I’m happy to help.