Mastering Goal Setting - Balancing Life and Business
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Setting goals is a critical component of success, but for many, it can be a daunting task. In a recent Leadership Bootcamp, Jens Heitland shared his expertise on goal setting, emphasizing the importance of balancing life and business. Here are some key takeaways from his session that can help you achieve a well-rounded and fulfilling life.
The Importance of Balance
Jens Heitland begins by addressing a common issue faced by many, especially startup founders: the tendency to prioritize business above all else. While dedication to your business is crucial, neglecting other areas of your life can lead to long-term dissatisfaction and burnout. Jens advocates for setting goals across four main pillars: family and friends, health, business, and personal brand.
Four Pillars of Goal Setting
Family and Friends: Relationships are foundational to our well-being. Jens stresses the importance of nurturing these connections. Whether it's spending quality time with family or maintaining friendships, setting specific, measurable goals can ensure these relationships remain a priority.
Health: A healthy body supports a healthy mind, which in turn supports your business and personal life. Jens recommends setting clear health goals, such as weight management or regular exercise routines, and tracking these metrics to stay on course.
Business: For most professionals, business goals are at the forefront. Jens suggests setting both short-term and long-term business goals and measuring them consistently. Whether it's increasing sales, growing your user base, or enhancing product offerings, having clear, measurable objectives can drive success.
Personal Brand: Building a personal brand can open doors to new opportunities. Jens encourages everyone to define what they want their personal brand to represent and set goals to enhance it. This could include public speaking engagements, social media presence, or networking activities.
The Power of Measurement
One of the key points Jens highlights is the importance of measuring progress. "What gets measured gets done," he says. For each pillar, identify both input and output metrics. Inputs might include hours spent on an activity, while outputs are the results of these efforts. By regularly tracking these metrics, you can make informed adjustments and stay aligned with your goals.
Practical Examples
To illustrate his points, Jens shares practical examples. For instance, in the realm of health, you might set a goal to maintain a certain weight and measure it weekly. For business, daily sales tracking can provide immediate insights into performance. For personal branding, you might track the number of speaking requests you receive.
Achieving SMART Goals
Jens also emphasizes the importance of setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals. This framework ensures that your goals are realistic and structured in a way that makes them attainable.
Watch the Video of the Live Leadership Bootcamp here
Incorporating these goal-setting strategies can lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life. By focusing on family and friends, health, business, and personal brand, and by measuring your progress, you can achieve a holistic approach to success. Remember, the journey to achieving your goals is just as important as the destination. Start setting your goals today, and take the first step towards a balanced and prosperous future.
Transcript of the video:
Now we go more into goal setting, and that goes back into the totality of yourself.
Where do you want to be in the future?
And I put four main topics here because I think every one of us should have goals on all things because if you want to be a healthy human being, it's important not just to focus on business. I know that business is most likely everything you think about, especially if you are at least a little bit like I am as a startup founder, business is number one or two in your life.
If you're younger, most properly, it's even number one. If you don't have kids and family, then it's a hundred percent number one. But what I found out for myself and seen interviewing a lot of people over the last years, you need to have a balanced life as a totality. That's why I want to emphasize this for you as well.
Early on, focus on all four pillars. The pillars are family and friends.
If you have a family and if you here are not taking care of them, if you are not spending, in my case, spending time with my daughter, spending time with my wife, there will be a time in the future if I'm working 24 7 where they say, Hey, thank you, but we don't want to spend time with you anymore.
Health the same if you work 24 7 as a startup founder, which a lot of us are putting more work in than in other jobs, if you are not healthy, you can't sustain that long term. Obviously the business part, which everyone gets, if you have a business and you focus on the business to grow it it's not helpful.
And then I add the personal brand. I highly recommend every one of you doing that in the way you are comfortable with building and nurturing your personal brand. And you don't need to be as public as I am. I can just tell you this is one of the biggest benefits I have. I can shoot out a question to a lot of people I'm connected to, and I think 80% of the people will answer me if I'm not trying to sell something.
So there are huge opportunities in this and you need to start measuring it. What gets measured gets done, and that's a critical part for all of this. So how do you build metrics around your family and friends? What are the things? And I love output metrics. Sometimes we focus just on inputs that, okay, I play one hour per day with my daughter.
That's good already, but that's not measuring output. So what are the things that help you to measure out? I'm just doing a silly one. I am.
Married to my wife, which the same wife I have today in 2040. So this can be a goal and you can measure that this is just a yes no goal, but just giving you an example. And of course you could say time spent time spent with family, and then you can measure how much time you spend per month per year per five years.
So this is just giving you an example. Let's do an easier one That's health. I always use the example weight, so I want to be healthy. And weight and fat percentages is a measurement which helps you to understand if you're healthy or not healthy. So you can have. Let's just put a couple of numbers.
Let's say you are whatever kilos right now, let's say 80, 85. And you know that this is not healthy for the height you are. That's not the best thing to be. And then you just, okay, I will put 80 in a year from now and I want to keep between 75 and 80, 0, 79, and five years. So this gives you a clear, measurable goal.
Obviously you do this, hopefully I do with a business topic where you go really into details. If you have an easy thing, weight, you can measure this daily, and then you might might think that's a little bit obsessive, but if you want to reach a goal as more, you measure as better. It is if you measure sales every day.
Then you know exactly how much sales you do and what is impacting that sales. Same with all the other topics. So this is an example here. Business, obviously as you just said it, you can use sales, you can use users of the platform. If you build a digital product, whatever you do, it helps you to measure that.
Then you can put a goal, which is what is your goal in a year from now? What is your month monthly goal? And then you can write it down and follow it up on a daily basis. Personal brand, the same, depending on what your personal brand is about. You could say
for me, one of my goals is speaking requests. I want to speak at least monthly on stage and getting paid for that properly over the next years. So if I'm not getting speaking requests, then I'm not building my brand in a way that people are interesting, having me on stage speaking. And then depending on what the metrics are for you, if you just use them, build them up, and then measure them at least weekly more is better in this, at least in my eyes, that's maybe the German way of thinking.
But it helps you to get into this topics and find out what your goals are. It's often daunting, some people struggle with this because you're not tuned into goal setting on specifics and it's really about be specific as possible.
And then you most probably have about smart goal setting. If not, then Google it. It just helps you to put goals, which are as well achievable, and then how you can measure them. So really put goals for yourself so that you understand. Where do you want to go and what are the things that help you measure it?