You’re setting goals, but are you setting BIG goals? Watch this video to learn what setting big goals truly means, and how you can set your own!
Understanding what “Big Goals” Means
I remember when I had my first opportunity as a mortgage professional to actually go out and talk to potential real estate agents. Obviously my end goal was to be able to engage those agents to refer buyers to me. And I remember a mentor that I thankfully stumbled across in my first couple of months, told me that the idea in life is to set big goals. And I didn’t know what that meant. I understood big, but I didn’t understand what it meant in relation to being a mortgage professional.
So I started working with real estate professionals and I started having conversations about answering a question, “What does a victory look like this year for you? It could be professionally, personally, financially, physically, you could add anything you want to it. But whatever it is, it’s got to be big enough to pull you from where you are normally.”
And I think what ends up happening in this idea of goal setting is we have two kind of extremes. We set Big, Hairy Audacious Goals, which is called BHAG, which has been around for 30 years, and comes from Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth. And we set the other side of that, which is small, realistic goals. And there’s nothing wrong with small goals that lead to big goals. And there’s nothing wrong with big goals that require a bunch of small goals to be met.
But I think the thing that I’d like to convey is that a goal that is big enough to stretch you should be a goal that when you attain it, you look back and go, “Wow, I can’t believe that I did that.” But yet in that moment, you now believe that you can. I think back to the quote that I used as a new loan originator by Henry David Thoreau, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,” so in the direction of his dreams requires goals, “And endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,” so that requires every day moving towards your goals. And it goes on to say, “he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” So there’s no downside to setting big goals as long as you understand that I need to keep advancing confidently in the direction of those dreams supported by those goals, and everyday try to live those goals out.
The Key to Setting Goals
So one of the keys is let’s not have too many goals. Another key is to determine: Are you better off having a big goal and missing it or having a small goal and hitting it? And I think that depends on what you’re trying to do. If you achieve a number of small goals, they’re in sequence, and they compound to make the big goal work, that’s great! There’s nothing wrong with micro victories. There’s nothing wrong with daily victories. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Today my goal is to get one, and if I get one today at the end of the year, I know that I will have gotten 240, and boom, there’s my business plan.”
When we talk to loan reps and real estate agents about goal setting, there seems to be a lot of energy on wanting to do it, but then there seems to be less energy on focusing and following through. And I think part of that is because we don’t really understand why we set goals in the first place. And one thing I’m going to address at our upcoming Sales Mastery is this idea of Why, “Why,” works?
Connecting Goals to Inspiration
Your goals have to be motivated by a deep inner spirit. Something going on inside your soul that is the inspiration for the goal. And when you can connect the goal to the inspiration for the goal, and you do it in such a way that reflects every day on your frame of reference, and doing what you’re doing, then all of a sudden you start to get that momentum.
And what we know about momentum is that it creates this kind of flywheel effect. And the flywheel fact is super straightforward. The more you achieve any one goal that leads you to the big goal, the more likely you are to achieve the big goal, because you have this flywheel experience. It’s the inertia that drives you to goal achievement.
I remember early on my mentor said to me, “You’re better to have a big goal and miss than to have a little goal and hit.” And he said, “If you aim too high and you miss, it’s not as detrimental as aiming too low and hitting, because it actually forces growth and causes you to move towards that level.”
So I think goal setting is huge. I think a lot of us underrate it. I remember sitting down with Dave Liniger’s, who’s the founder of Remax, and he was at Sales Mastery and he said, “Here’s my formula. Define the goal, define the work to the goal, do the work every day for the goal, and at the end of every day measure how you’ve done in attaining the goal.” And he said, “If you follow that recipe every single day, you’ll be successful.”
Helping You Define Your Goals
One of the many reasons I’m excited about Sales Mastery this year is that we have one whole day based on setting big goals and accomplishing them.
This year’s event is free for your success, and virtual for your safety. You won’t want to miss it. Register for Free Today.
