How To Set Bigger Goals With Confidence & Overcome The Urge To Rush Ahead
What you’ll learn in this Multiplier Mindset blog post:
- How to think about goal setting in a way that keeps you motivated and inspired.
- Why it’s important for entrepreneurs to have an expanded time frame for their goals.
- How to set yourself up for success now and into the future.
Twenty years ago, I did my first Bigger Future exercise in a Strategic Coach workshop where we mapped out what we wanted to happen 20 years into the future. Well, that’s this year for me, and my first bigger future has been achieved—bigger and better than I imagined!
Today, my husband, Tony, and I enjoy our lives. We have 11 grandchildren, ages six to 26. We get to do more of what we love as our second generation owns and runs JANCOA Janitorial Services, with almost 600 full-time employees, the largest in the region. We are growing to 85% market share with a turnover rate 300% better than the industry average.
I have these Strategic Coach workshops to thank for our success because they allowed me to think about my thinking in a way that my competitors certainly do not. One powerful strategy I learned in Strategic Coach was setting bigger goals confidently and without rushing, which I want to share with you today.
Looking at the future in decades, not years.
The strategy I want to share isn’t about the goals, but the time frame you give yourself to reach them.
Instead of setting goals for tomorrow, next week, or next year, try thinking in 10-year increments.
This will help you look at the future in a way that keeps you motivated and inspired—and keeps your vision within reach.
Here’s why it works:
Life is bigger than we allow it to be sometimes, like when we give ourselves such small windows of time to reach our biggest goals. All this does is add unnecessary stress and pressure to our entrepreneurial journey, which is more likely to lead to burnout than to accomplishing our goals.
But when we think in terms of decades, we give ourselves room to breathe—the spaciousness of time and the flexibility to change, grow, and become our best selves in the process. And for entrepreneurs in our community, the people we become in the process of building our businesses is just as (if not more!) important as the destination we want to reach. It also allows us to think and dream bigger because we’ve got time on our side.
The 25-Year Framework.
Take the time to imagine what’s possible 25 years from now. What do you want your life to look like? What must you do over the next ten years to get there, and how will you remain ambitious and focused? What capabilities do you have or need to get there, whether the capabilities are your own or others?
The truth is, you don’t always know what capabilities you’ll need five years from now, let alone 25 years down the road. The trick is to start where you’re at, regularly assess what’s working, recalibrate, and keep building. Every quarter, pause, reflect on the past quarter, and plan for the next. As you do this over time, the cumulative value builds to get you where you want to be.
How to set bigger goals with confidence.
I’ve learned that life is always about the setup.
Everything you do—from your diet and exercise habits to your business conversations and chosen collaborators—sets you up to either succeed or fail.
Once you’ve created a clear picture of what you want to happen 25 years from now—and at each 10-year increment leading up to that mark—it’s time to chart the course to get there with clarity and confidence.
To start, ask yourself, “What are the basic things that I know get results when I do them?”
This is your setup for long-term success, so don’t rush it! Everyone loves a good shortcut, but trust me: you don’t want to shortcut the foundation on which everything will be built.
Think of the things you’ve done that have gotten you to where you are today, and also consider the things you know that, if you started doing them now, would help you get to where you want to be in the future.
This could be as simple as going to the gym in the morning or focusing only on what you naturally excel at in business. It could also involve using a specific tool, receiving mentorship from a particular person, or, like Dan Sullivan, scheduling dedicated creative thinking sessions. For me, it’s focusing on creating value for our team and customers because when I’ve done that, it has consistently improved things across the board.
Whatever these things are, incorporate them into your routine first, then build on them. This ensures a solid foundation of the essential building blocks of success, making your future efforts more effective and enjoyable.
Most importantly, don’t rush ahead. You’ve got time. So, be intentional about how you grow. Those basic things you determined above? Done well, at scale, and over time, they will ultimately lead you to a future that’s likely even better than you could have imagined.
