Our process for effective goal setting — Benjamin Shapiro // MarTech Podcast

Quotes

• “We published a grand total, out of 365 days of content, 363 episodes. We had a little error on a weekend and we forgot to republish some of our greatest hits. But you know what we’re gonna round up because it was a tough year and we deserve some credit. It feels like a great accomplishment and I appreciate all of you listening.” - Ben “When you set your goals and you think about what you accomplished, sometimes it just manifests itself to be what it’s supposed to be. You don’t always set your goals and achieve them but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be doing it.” - Ben “When I was in my early 20s, I felt like I was struggling with life. I was working at an OK job, I was at eBay. I was single, trying to find a girlfriend and figuring out what the meaning of life was and I just wasn’t happy. Even though at the surface it looks great, I didn’t feel like I had direction.” - Ben“It was the end of the year when I decided I was going to make some resolutions but I didn’t want it to be just qualitative. I really wanted it to be something that I could keep track of.  So I broke up all of my goals into what are my resolutions, just the general things I want to accomplish.” - Ben “By breaking up my goals into categories I was able to say, ‘Look, I want to lose 10 pounds and I want to do 50 workouts a month. Those were quantifiable and I was able to break them down. I also said I want to accomplish XYZ from a career perspective and in social life, I wanted to play more music. Now obviously my life dramatically changed and I turned 40 this year.” - Ben “At the end of every year, I go back and I look at how I achieve and what I achieve and I spend a couple of hours looking through my calendar, remembering what activities I actually did. I try to look to some data sources like how much did I exercise, how many miles did I cover, how many meetings, how many podcasts did I record, how much revenue did we make, how much did we spend on marketing. All sorts of different data sources and they come from all sources in your life.” - Ben “I try to make some notes like, I feel this year was a success in one department and a failure in another. I think about why and what I can do better and differently.” - Ben “I do this because it allows me to clean the slate. 2020 is done. It’s over. You go have a cocktail tonight or if you don’t drink, have a slice of pizza. Do something that you enjoy. But you gotta let it go for tonight and tomorrow morning, you start over and you have 365 days to accomplish whatever you want out of life.” - Ben “Truthfully, I’m recording this mid-December because I’m going to take a little vacation before the end of the year but as I start to think about what my 2021 goals are, I can tell you from a podcast perspective there’s always going to be some sort of growth goal, a monetization goal. Also a goal about how we are building our team, taking care of the people around us and if anything, that is the biggest learning that I had from 2020.” - Ben “2020 has given us enough reason to be disappointed. I don’t need that. What we need is a fresh start and a sense of what we can accomplish, what we have accomplished and then the ability to say, 2020 is behind us, 2021 is here. Let’s clean the slate, let’s start over, set new goals and put our best foot forward on day one to achieve them.” - Ben “If there’s one thing I learned this year, what matters the most is the relationship between the people that are around you and the outbreak of the coronavirus, the changes that we’ve had in our work and our personal lives have on some level re-shuffled the deck.” - Ben “I hope that, like me, you walk away from this year not necessarily feeling like it was a  success but it helped you reshuffle your priorities in a way that makes you appreciate the things that really matter in life.” - Ben