How to Set REAL Goals

The Wrap Biz

By Matt Richart

I have been told my entire life by my father to set goals and to achieve them. Easier said than done right? My old high school basketball coach always had us write down our goals to see where we wanted to go in life. When I first got married, I set some goals that I wanted to achieve. When we first started Digital EFX Wraps in 2004 my partner and I made up some goals that we wanted to achieve. While I tried to stay on task with those goals and did achieve a fair amount of them I still didn’t know how to set real goals. Talking and speaking out loud about your goals is one thing. Achieving them is another obstacle.

For about the first three to four years of business, my business partner Dallas and I would just speak out loud about what our goals were. When you first start out in business you just want to survive. You live each week just making sure you generate enough income to pay your bills and hopefully pay yourself.

I still remember getting paid $385 per week when we first started out. I still remember looking at our bank account multiple times per day wondering how we were going to make it. I still remember the time when we were waiting for a past-due check just to make our monthly rent payment. I say all this to explain where my mindset was twenty years ago. When you are hanging on for dear life every day it’s very hard to set real goals when you are not disciplined. That is the hardest battle to conquer in my opinion.

Are you truly disciplined? I had to look at myself in the mirror and ask that hard question. I can honestly tell you that I was not disciplined. I thought I was but in fact, I was so far away from being consistently disciplined. I also think a part of me didn’t have enough faith in what we were truly trying to accomplish.

I have asked our business coach many times if my fear or being cautious has hurt myself and our company at times. He has said that some things have affected our growth but being careful and cautious is not a bad thing. If anything, it has protected us from outside noise, and distractions, and allowed us to save money for growth.

Ask yourself for a moment where you want to be in five years. Think about it for a few. It’s kind of a hard question in my opinion. Is dreaming about your future realistic? Do your goals and dreams seem attainable? These questions were hard for me to answer at first. It’s easy to say I want a 25 thousand sq ft facility with 20 team members producing 5 million a year in revenue. It’s easy to say I want a lake house with a boat, jet ski, golf carts, and land to enjoy with my family. It’s easy to say you want a certain type of new car or a new house that you have always dreamed about. For the record, I do not own these items above but have thought of them during our goal-setting process. Many things I listed are materialistic items that don’t necessarily bring happiness. Keep in mind that many goals cannot be materialistic.

One of our main goals here at Digital EFX Wraps is to create a culture with our team that they feel wanted, respected, lead the proper way, and that they have a future to build on. My partner and I want our team to be the highestpaid installers, designers, and sales representatives in our entire area. If they decide to leave our company, we don’t want it to be about money!

My business partner Dallas Fowler and I started to make goals for our company about 8 years ago. We would talk out loud during late-night installations of what we were doing. What we wanted to accomplish and what was truly attainable. Then we would close the shop, go home, wake up, and do it all over again. But those discussions about our goals were just spoken verbally. No organization, nothing written down, and it just became all talk. After a few months would go by we would pick back up the conversation and discuss other goals. As this broken record of discussing our goals became a habit, I believe we started to get frustrated with each other and ourselves. When you are just trying to survive it was hard for us to focus on what our REAL goals were. As I stated before I believe that fear, not being disciplined, and not knowing how to truly set goals were what was holding us back.

Dallas and I then started to step away from the business to have a lunch meeting and discuss our new set of goals. We would have lunch at Skyline Chili and write down what we wanted to achieve and when these goals could happen. This same routine would go on about every 6 months. What we found out was we really enjoyed chili but were horrible at setting real goals.

Once again this made us even more frustrated because we were setting time aside to work on our business but not getting any real results. This is when Dallas and I reached out for help and hired a business coach. One of the first things we attacked was goal setting. Let me tell you how much of an eye-opening learning experience that was. We both found out that we had no idea how to set real goals. How to achieve those goals and reach them consistently. When you get a blinding flash of the obvious it’s a huge wake-up call. Most importantly a much-needed wake-up call that truly changed our company, our vision, mission, and most importantly our culture. How to set REAL goals is something that I now look forward to working on. The first step is getting your team together to come up with some ideas, direction, and goals that they may want to achieve. If you are a solo owner, then set those goals and ideas by yourself. Once you get a list of goals that you want to conquer, I recommend picking out four to five of the most important goals. Now write those goals down on a Word document or something easy to change or modify. We even created a fillable PDF form to utilize during each of our quarterly goal-setting meetings. Type in your first main goal as the header. Then list the potential benefits of achieving your goal and why. This will help you understand

WHY you are achieving this goal.

The next important step is to list all the possible obstacles that you might come up against in achieving this goal. To the right of that section write out all the possible solutions for this goal.

The final section that information would be your specific action steps for achieving this goal. List out all the necessary steps that would need to be taken place to get your goal achieved. To the right of that put down who is responsible, what your target date is, and then the date your goal was achieved. This goal workflow page would be used for your first main goal. Then fill out separate forms for each goal that you have on your list.

Now the difficult part. Always keep this goal sheet in front of you and your team. Utilize this sheet in team meetings and any other forms of communication that you have with others. Make a point to discuss this with your leadership team each week to make sure everyone is staying on task along with getting over any hurdles and how those solutions are working out.

Our company does goal-setting each quarter of the year, so we have four main goalsetting meetings. We then use these goals in our meetings with our team to show what has been accomplished and what has not. Also, don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet one of the four goals you set for yourself and your company. Simply put that goal down on the next quarter goal session and get it knocked out. Now the fun and exciting part. When you reach the goal that you set it’s the best feeling in the world. Not only does it make you feel like you accomplished something important, but it builds trust with your entire team. When they become a part of goal setting, see the work being done to obtain those goals, and then see it get executed properly your entire culture can change overnight. The other great benefit of setting goals is it made Dallas and me a stronger unit. We now trust each other more than ever. Especially when you obtain a goal you both set and achieved in the right amount of time.

If you have a hard time coming up with a few goals to start with, ask another business owner if they have goals. Ask one of your clients if they have a goal setting in their organization. This may help you with goal setting.

As an example, I want to give you the first four goals we ever set for our company:

1. Process areas of operations (weekly meetings, daily huddles, and scheduling meetings) We had to set a goal to be consistent in communication so that REAL goals could be obtained.

2. Overall sales in vehicle wraps and design fees to be increased by 25%.

3. Market our company with social media and have 4 posts per week along with obtaining 2 Google reviews per week.

4. Get our cost of goods sold tracked through new software along with using Trello properly.

After our first goal meeting and three months had passed, we achieved every goal that was set.

It was the most gratifying feeling that I had in a decade. Ever since that point we set goals every three months and get 80% of them completed. I highly recommend you start today and set some REAL goals for yourself, your team, and your company. This goal-setting consistency will also bleed into your real life and allow you to conquer tasks that you never knew were possible.

Matt Richart Matt@digitalefxwraps.com

Co-Owner/CFO, Digital EFX Wraps LLC. Instructor, Inside The Wrap Shop