Dream Wheel. Image by: 笨笨的小B
What Great Goals Are you Working Towards (and what’s holding you back?)
In this post I’d like to ask you an important question:
What great goals are you working towards (and what’s holding you back?)
So technically there might be two questions in there – sue me
Having great goals you’re working towards is one of the most powerful motivators to achieve great things – it’s also one of the main reasons I started this blog. I’d love to help you achieve yours.
Later in this post I’ll ask you to share what your goals are, and what you think is holding you back, but first let me tell you 4 reasons why these two questions are so important:
4 Reasons why sharing your goals and roadblocks are so important:
1) The very act of deciding what your goals and admitting your roadblocks are, in themselves the first steps towards achieving them. It makes forces you to clarify your thoughts and focus on what you want to achieve most
2) Admitting these goals and roadblocks in public gives us you a sense of accountability. It turns a pie in the sky idea into an inspirational dream worth pursuing.
This is the very reason why I share my life goals and crazy targets I’m working towards so publically – it forces me to focus and makes we want to achieve them even more.
It’s really empowering and it only works – I highly recommend you try it
3) Sharing your goals and roadblocks may inspire someone else reading this – to do something amazing.
No matter what stage you’re at, or what trouble you’re facing – rest assured someone else out there is experiencing something similar to you. Your goals and roadblocks can help give them the inspiration they need.
4) Sharing these will help me, and others reading this, help you achieve your goals – so I can offer advice and share my experience to better help you reach your goals. I’d love to help.
We’re all here to do awesome things like startup a business, change the world or journey into space. By helping each other we can all get there faster
So let’s hear it.
If you have a minute right now, I’d love to know what you’re working toward at the moment.
What are you trying to change about your life? What’s your biggest and most pressing goal? Are you Starting a business – or something else completely? What’s keeping you from achieving that? What are you frustrated by? What makes you want to give it all in sometimes?
Please Share Yours in the comments below
June 12, 2012 at 9:40 pm
I’ll go first:
Working towards: Many but current is launching my next startup
Holding me back: Focus (I can be a bit of a magpie, and need to be a lazer)
June 16, 2012 at 1:56 pm
My goal is to replace my 9-5 desk job with a remote working job or business so I can travel/live in different places throughout the year. More so than my current 3 weeks of vacation affords. I started freelancing http://www.salarynegotiators.com but haven’t had a paying customer yet (just free ones). So what is holding me back most is probably just my fear and worry about whether or not this is going to work out. Oh and how to get some paying customers…
June 17, 2012 at 9:51 am
Hey Joseph -> that’s awesome, can totally relate to that goal (it’s something I went for about 18 months ago). Very inspiring goal to be working towards!!
Love the idea for your service, defo think there’d be a market for that. How are you currently trying to acquire customers? (Linkedin, SEO, Blogging etc?)
June 16, 2012 at 6:04 pm
I’m trying to figure out what my goals are – > I’m pretty sure I want to set up a business of some sort, but not sure what kind exactly
June 17, 2012 at 9:54 am
Hey Sam
Yep – can relate to that too. I’m going to see if I can get some interviews to cover this subject soon
Stay tuned
June 17, 2012 at 1:47 am
I want to set up a deaf-centric ecommerce site to facilitate products and branding between the two worlds (deaf and hearing).
June 17, 2012 at 9:56 am
Hey Andy – sounds an awesome idea for an ecommerce site. What stage you at? What do you think your next steps are?
Howard
June 18, 2012 at 7:31 pm
Thanks Howard.
Right now we are filling in the blanks using the lean canvas method and doing research. More specifically we are trying to ascertain the potential size of customers out there that would need this. Did you have to go through this?
June 21, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Hey Andy – yeah totally use Lean Canvas. It’s always the first thing I fill out for new projects.
It’s an interesting question. I guess there’s always 2x elements:
1) the size of the potential market
2) How big a problem it is for people within that market
Are you doing web research or speaking to potential customers?
June 24, 2012 at 7:31 pm
I’m in the same boat as you Howard, focus is my main roadblock. I have a ton of different startup / app ideas that I have started building and then dropped for another “better” idea. It’s such a cool time we live in where you can create web apps and execute on ideas with such a low barrier to entry (especially if you are a developer). BUT, it also makes focusing difficult when I have tons of cool projects fighting inside my brain and competing for my time. I have definitely realized the importance of focus and following through with an idea, because in order to truly know if you’re on the right track with something you have to push through the tough boring stuff (where I would normally switch and work on a new idea).
The project I’m focusing all my time on now is a community driven deal site that I have in private beta at the moment. I have a lot of ideas on where to go with it, and I now have to focus (again, it keeps coming up!) on what features are most important to build. Using the Pomodoro technique has helped me a lot with staying focused and time management.
June 26, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Hey Jodi – thanks for your comment. Ha – I can TOTALLY relate to what you’re saying about Focus!
How did you decide to go with your latest idea? Gut feel / it ticked boxes / given yourself a specific time schedule for it? I’m going through similar at the moment so really interested.
Would you mind posting a link to your deal site? Would love to check it out!
Oh yeah – love Pomodoro! And recently discovered Trello boards for prioritization – use it?
Awesome!
June 27, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Oooh Trello looks pretty cool! I definitely fit their use case of having random “scattered notebooks, sticky notes, and text files”, I’ll check it out.
To answer your question, I chose to focus on my deal site because I know the space really well and the problems / improvements that can be made there. I spend a good amount of my spare time scrounging the net for deals and finding ways to save money on items I’m looking to buy. For whatever reason, I just think its fun
So I decided to go with what I know the best, will have fun doing, and its also nice that there is a clear answer to the question “How will you make money”.
There are several other deal sites in the space, but I have some solid ways to differentiate that I’m working on as well as creating a better user experience where people won’t have to wade through advertisements to find what they’re looking for. Whew, so anyway…that’s the gist!
The link is http://stingycoin.com . I would love any feedback or recommendations you have on how to start marketing or anything else (although I know you’re really busy)! Feel free to shoot me an email if there is anything I can help you with on your projects.
July 13, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Hi folks,
Right now I am working on tools and methods to make the search for early customers easier and more focussed – using a mixture of lean canvas, rapid prototyping, structured questions and most of all helping get folks out on the street and actively looking! Many engineers (of which I am one) see customer acquisition as something for sales – its not! its about identifying the persona or typical user , building an identikit, then hunting for them using all the social tools available – and tracking progress. So its about changing perceptions – from pushy sales (booooo, hate it, customers will run a mile) to hide and seek (Yay, I love a challange – I’m totally up for this, let me grab my keys…..)
I’ve already left the 9-5 and have joined the legion who wander the earth outside of the corporate world
My Fear is quite unstructured really – like all the best Fears
It centres mostly around falling flat – a deafening silence to my great proposals – and running out of runway before things have a chance to develop…..