“Most people fail because they don’t understand what they’re trying to do.” Lou Holtz
I recently came across the above Lou Holtz quote, and it has become one of my favorites. To me, he talks about the need to know the endgame, the goal, and the action plan to get there.
Have you heard of Lou Holtz? If you’re a sports fan, you probably know him as a broadcaster for ESPN or as a former head coach at Notre Dame and other football teams. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lou led Notre Dame to many great victories.
Lou knows a lot about the value of goals! When he was younger in 1966, he became an assistant coach for the football team at the University of North Carolina. He felt this would be a long-term position, so he and his wife spent almost all of their savings on a down payment on a house. Soon after, he learned that the team’s head coach had resigned, and with that resignation, Lou’s job ended as well.
With a new home mortgage, his wife eight months pregnant with their third child, no savings, and no apparent means of income, Lou was very discouraged. To cheer him up, his wife gave him the book “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz. Reading it, she was not only encouraged, but he was also excited! He began to consider all the things he wanted to do in his life and made a list of 107 goals. With his new optimistic attitude, Lou landed another college football coaching job, and another, and another, and along the way, he, too, hit 102 of the original list of 107 goals.
That’s an inspiring story, isn’t it? As Lou said most recently, there were many other goals that came along the way besides the original 107, however if you hadn’t taken the time to identify your goals and ways to make them happen, probably only a fraction of them would have been achieved. .
How do you measure up in the area of goal setting? Take time to look back at what you’ve accomplished, and then consider what you want to do in the next 3, 6, and 12 months.
Many of you reading this are entrepreneurs or want to become one, so I encourage you to look at the business/career area first.
- What are your income goals for the year?
- What are your numbers goals? Do you want to increase the margin per sale, the number of sales, the number of new products or the number of customers?
- What do you want to happen? Do you want to enter a new market, reinvent an old product or create a new one, or work fewer hours for the same income?
- What habit or system do you need to develop to increase your productivity?
- Do you need to learn a new skill to transition to self-employment or to take it to the next level, if you already have your own business?
Keep asking yourself questions such as what if I try this, how do I get there, who do I know who can help me, where can I find more information, etc. to get a list of ideas. Once you’ve brainstormed goals, pick your top 3-5 and ‘build’ them. Define and describe them clearly.
Include a ‘thatet un’when’for each objective. What, specifically, do you want to achieve and by what date? If you can’t articulate this clearly, go back and rework the goal until you can.
Once the goal is written, see how to achieve it. This will be your action plan.
An important question to ask yourself is ‘because’you want the goal Understanding the ‘because’adds excitement to the goal and increases the likelihood that you will achieve it. Ask yourself questions like these:
- Why do you want to be in business?
- How will your life change?
- When you create X (your goal), what will be different?
This process can be used for every area of your life. Start with some new business goals. If you’re really brave, do what Lou Holtz did and make a long list of everything you want to accomplish in the rest of your life.