Do 80% of Agency Goals Fail Before February?

Do 80% of Agency Goals Fail Before February?
Most agency owners start the year with ambitious goals but many start slipping by February. Why? Because setting a goal isn’t enough. You need the right strategy.

In this episode, I break down:

• The biggest mistakes agency owners make in goal setting
• How to reverse-engineer success instead of relying on hope
• Why arbitrary timeframes can sabotage your progress
• The key to setting goals you’ll actually achieve

Transcript

[00:00:00] Russel Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I'm your host, Russel. Today's episode is all about goal setting. We're going to walk through today, some strategies that I think might be helpful for you to have better goals to set you up for success in 2025.

[00:00:16] Russel So let's get to it. 

[00:00:17] Russel Did you know that there's an official quitting day? January 10th, I just found this out the other day. Quitting day, they did a study and this is the day where they've determined 80 percent or more people give up on their new year's resolution two weeks into the new year.

[00:00:35] Russel Do you think there is a day for this for agencies when they give up on their goals? I bet a study might predict something similar. I'm all about a foundation's first approach. What are simple things we can do, or maybe not always simple, but what are things we can do that solve many other problems and that for me is what if you got really, really good about setting and hitting goals for your [00:01:00] business?

[00:01:00] Russel The same way someone that found the genie lamp and tried to get as many wishes as possible. I think this is that version. If you could just get really, really good at setting and hitting goals, what would that allow you to accomplish? 

[00:01:12] Russel By the end of this episode, you're going to be able to rethink the way you set goals, be able to create a strategy that is actually going to help you get there. And really just make sure you're not part of that 80% or more of folks that give up on their new year's resolution less than two weeks into the year. 

[00:01:35] Russel I've had the opportunity to hear many goals of many, many agency owners.

[00:01:39] Russel And here's a few things that I tend to see a lot, like a lot of folks setting their new year's resolutions, goals get created with the best of intentions. And then the habits and the daily grind and so many other things seem to get in the darn way. And those goals tend to take a backseat, get forgotten or just otherwise [00:02:00] unintentionally overwritten with these real time issues and opportunities.

[00:02:03] Russel And then that leads to what I often see a lot when, cause I talk to a lot of folks and hear their goals and their hopes and their dreams and what they want is one, there's the group that lowers the bar. Agency owners or business owners in general tend to be very success oriented folks, and it kind of sucks to feel like you're just not hitting your goal.

[00:02:23] Russel So next best thing to do, lower the bar and make it more attainable. Um, other camp raises it, um, doubles their goal or whatever. And, you know, kind of the whole shoot for the moon land among the stars type mindset that, Hey, if I only get halfway to a really, really big goal, then I'm already better off than I was before.

[00:02:44] Russel And then there's another group that just stops setting goals. You might've heard the expression out there that, uh, the key to unhappiness is expectations. But I'm not entirely sure that works in the business sense. We, we have to have some measure of goals out there. And so not setting them all is certainly not going [00:03:00] to help us move the needle.

[00:03:01] Russel So let's talk about three things that I think are really critical in the way we think about goals that are going to. Again, allow us success in this new year whereupon. Like any good process or endeavor. It starts with the fundamentals and number one is just a proper setup. And that's how we differentiate the idea of goals, strategies and tasks.

[00:03:23] Russel And I tend to see that most goals aren't really set up properly to begin with. I think some of the common nomenclature that's out there, you know, might've heard of the SPAM method, the SMART method. I think those methods actually set us up for a little bit of failure. And they just assume if you meet these four little criteria, specific, actionable, and measurable, that that is the key to having a good goal.

[00:03:47] Russel And I don't think that's quite the case. And so if we want to define a thing , and if we want to get to the fundamentals of it, So let's just go real quick and talk about the definition of each. 

[00:03:57] Russel I want to use the comparison lens of what is probably [00:04:00] often the most common resolution out there. And that is weight loss. And so we'll, we'll do a little comparison as we go through each one of these and what that looks like in a weight loss setting and what that looks like in a business setting. So let's talk with first one goal.

[00:04:12] Russel What is the goal? It's a desired outcome result. It's the end zone. It's the goalpost. It is the, uh, stake in the ground that we want to get to. Nothing more and nothing less. In a weight loss scenario, I want to lose 10 pounds easy enough. Oftentimes in a business or an agency, I want to grow my business by X amount of revenue, 500 K and that's a goal.

[00:04:39] Russel Next we have the idea of a strategy, a little more nuanced, a little more complicated, but really you could break this down. Intentional choices about how to allocate resources, prioritize your efforts, navigate challenges or otherwise things that are going to maximize your success and make sure you hit your goal.

[00:04:56] Russel From a weight loss perspective, you hear the common things. I'm going to work [00:05:00] out, I'm going to eat better. I'm going to sleep more. And then from an agency perspective, it might be for going to increase revenue. I want to get more leads. I'm going to add a service. I'm going to raise prices, lower expenses.

[00:05:10] Russel I guess, you know, lower expenses to get more revenue in theory. , and then we have a task. This is just a specific set of actions. A todo, thing we can just check off does not imply a result is just a thing that happened or did not happen from a weight loss analogy perspective. I'm willing to go to the gym five days a week.

[00:05:30] Russel I'm going to eat five, 1500 calories a day. I'm going to go to bed by nine. All the things your doctor says to do from an agency perspective. I need to get 25 more leads a quarter. I want to get five, six figure clients. I'm going to go to three conferences and network. You know things that again that I can just check off and say I did or did not do So there's a few things where by definition where these things might where some of our goals are kind of set up for for [00:06:00] failure at the get go is one.

[00:06:01] Russel I see a lot of goals where It's goals and tasks, goals and things to do without necessarily knowing that those to dos are actually going to achieve the end result. And generally speaking, I don't, I don't think anything significant happens. If we already know the to dos, we would have already done them.

[00:06:19] Russel We've already hit our goal to begin with. And if hitting a really awesome goal was nothing more than a set of tasks, then I think we'd all be rich.

[00:06:27] Russel Another thing,, there might be a strategy. And sometimes even behind the to dos, there's an unimplied strategy or unstated strategy. But oftentimes that strategy is hope and not certainty. And there's no shortage of talking about strategy when it comes to the agency space. We do it all day for our clients.

[00:06:46] Russel Like many things in the agency space, we're not always the best about applying or doing it to ourselves. A strategy should not be hope. It should be certainty. We do the hard work to come up with a good strategy to have a generally good idea or [00:07:00] belief that that strategy will actually achieve the intended or desired result.

[00:07:03] Russel Ultimately there is no box checking unless you're really at the point of scalability and you can actually play a numbers game with your business, which most aren't, I imagine most of you are not playing a numbers game yet that you're, you're not ready to achieve this, that you probably don't know how to get those 50 more leads or that you don't know that for sure that going to a conference is, is going to get you more clients or customers, um, that ultimately we cannot hit a goal again by having a series of to do's. To give that a more practical example, uh, I was talking to an agency owner recently and they were sharing just, you know, how really burnt out and kind of frustrated they were with their business, their goal or what they wanted to do was to still grow it.

[00:07:49] Russel Um, but I could imagine that would be pretty hard. To just one, find the energy or whatever it might take to grow your business. If you're generally just not happy. And I don't know that [00:08:00] success leads to happiness. Probably talked to a lot of people that get a lot of money in life and unless they use it right, they're not generally happy because they have it.

[00:08:08] Russel So I don't know that getting that, getting a growing agency was going to lead to happiness, but we just took a step back and, and the strategy was really, Hey, how do you get excited about the business again? What does that actually look like? We need to get there long before we can ever get to, um, whatever it actually might take to grow the business.

[00:08:28] 

[00:08:28] Russel And that's kind of gets us to our next idea of reverse engineering. That, if we agree that we might not have a good strategy in play to get the into the goal we want to achieve that we need to take a look at our ability to reverse engineer

[00:08:45] Russel . The most important part of any goal really is the ability to break it down into meaningful segments, keyword meaningful.

[00:08:51] Russel Because what I often see, you know, is when someone has a goal and let's just say, you know, oftentimes that's around revenue and they want half a million more a year, [00:09:00] they take each quarter, break it down by 125 K and say, let's go. And you might be able to whip into shape that first 125 K, but where's the next one going to come from and the next one and the next one, and so in most cases.

[00:09:12] Russel I say, never divide a goal equally. That we've got to take a step back and we got to meet ourselves, our business, where we're at. If we want to achieve something bigger and harder and, and, and that generally is more successful for us, we have to look at the obstacles in front of us. And so let's go back to our, our weight loss analogy for a minute.

[00:09:33] Russel And in a weight loss scenario that might be finding the time to go to the gym that might be balancing it with life demands and work demands and your overall schedule. That might be breaking eating habits. Uh, there's a McDonald's on your way from home and you just got to stop by there and, you know, get it's not even 99 cent cheeseburgers anymore, man.

[00:09:54] Russel It's like almost 3 cheeseburgers. Anywho, Russel problems, [00:10:00] break those eating habits and then an agency example, we can take it over the agency space that we know we want to grow revenue most oftentimes the owners in charge of sales are creating that revenue that they don't have enough time that their schedules already booked and busy.

[00:10:15] Russel That they don't know the actual tasks that are going to generate those more leads or otherwise get that revenue or right. We might need more cash or other resources. And so this is where there's no, there's no shortage of methodology and practical tips on how to lose weight out there, but it might start with something that the first best strategy to do is not add all these very complicated, very rigorous habits that you're not quite used to.

[00:10:40] Russel That's generally what leads to a lot of failure, but it might just be to get to the gym five days a week. Screw what you do there. Uh, just show up, show up to the gym. You can turn around and go right back home if you want, but that. That's the best step to start with, that we figure out all the little things we need to do to just do that.

[00:10:58] Russel And right, you've heard of [00:11:00] things like, you know, set your clothes out ahead of time, set your shoes out. Have, have your car, you know, warm it up before you have to get out there. Um, you know, set your alarm away from your bed so you have to get out of bed too make sure you get up in time. All those little things that, that are a lot more closer to home and that are really going to pave the way that if you can show up to the gym five days a week.

[00:11:22] Russel You can probably then take the next step to do whatever you might need to do when you're there. But that's, that's a secondary problem. We're just worried about getting to the gym. The next, from an agency perspective, that might be if we go back to our time example of, if we, if the owner needs more time, how do we create that?

[00:11:42] Russel How do we remove some meetings? How do we offload some tasks or responsibilities? How do we otherwise carve out the space that they're going to actually be able to focus on what they need to do to even figure out how to build more leads in the first place, or if you have a good idea, even get the time to do [00:12:00] it.

[00:12:00] Russel And so when we kind of think about that for a second, the first most important step to achieving a big goal and as, and as a strategy has nothing to do with the end result. It's going to be something hard and challenging, and you probably shouldn't have all the answers yet. That, that it, and this gets us away from kind of the task and to do is being part of our goals is that we don't know that it's actually what the results are quite yet, but we've got to figure out that process, that messy middle that we might call it.

[00:12:30] Russel And, and then generally the, the third thing that runs us into to failure when it comes to these is arbitrary timeframes that if we're trying to achieve something big and beautiful. A good strategy for a tough goal does not understand the concept of time. It doesn't know how long it's going to take you to figure out all those little steps to get you to the gym five days a week.

[00:12:51] Russel It doesn't know how long it's going to take to find someone to step in and help you with additional parts of your role, you know, [00:13:00] hand off some of those client meetings or otherwise just free up your schedule to focus on that. It doesn't care,

[00:13:06] Russel But that's the messy middle. We have to have a strategy that is going to help us solve that messy middle that's actually going to set us up for the goal. And so for those that don't know, I was a, a D1 athlete for, for a hot minute and surrounded by a lot of amazing athletes. Just over the years in my athletic career, wrestling was my sport of choice.

[00:13:29] Russel And one of the things I started to observe with the folks that were really, really successful wrestlers is that they enjoyed the process. Over the result, in fact. They, yes, they had the big goal and they knew where they wanted to achieve, but, but that was out of sight, out of mind. And then every day, it was, it was enjoying and finding satisfaction in the process.

[00:13:48] Russel And I don't know how many of you are familiar with wrestling, but I love wrestling, so I'm going to use the analogy anyway, is, you know, in a practice, I can be honest and say that I was not cut out for it at that point in time in my life. I was not of the right mind set. I wanted the [00:14:00] result, and I would show up to each day of practice and just try to, try to, try to suck it out through practice and get through.

[00:14:07] Russel Not to say I wasn't working hard, but my goal was to get to the end of practice. Versus their goal is to constantly challenging themselves throughout the practice, trying to do something a little faster than they did it last time, trying to do something a little more, uh, a few more times than they did it the last time. Practice to them is nothing but 10 to 15 challenges that they found some enjoyment in just the competition of it, the tweaking of the process to get slightly better results each time.

[00:14:35] Russel And just imagine that compounded over time. And how they looked at practice, they were, they were setting themselves not to be disappointed by any day just of, you know, am I a national champion today or not? But again, finding satisfaction and solace in the process and progress over perfection.

[00:14:54] Russel And inside that you can hear right, a little measurement doesn't hurt. And you've all heard the adage, [00:15:00] you improve what you measure, be careful what you measure. But I think too often with that in mind that, that folks focus on how close they are to the end result. If we're to take another sport, for example, in football, if we're just constantly looking at how far we are away from the end zone, that could be really daunting, especially when you're on the 90 or the one yard line, the opposite one yard line.

[00:15:18] Russel And you just need to focus on the next first down. What are the things that we need to do to get to the next first down? And the next verse down, and the next verse down. And that's actually how you get to the end zone. And that ultimately, and I think this is a challenge for a lot of folks to kind of understand, is that you can't scale with uncertainty.

[00:15:36] Russel The idea of that is if you really don't have it figured out on how to play a numbers game to grow your business, then you've got a lot of messy middle to figure out before you're really ready for that place. And, and, and that again, goes back to, we can't really do that within arbitrary timeframes.

[00:15:54] Russel And we have to embrace that this is going to be a messy middle, that we have to solve some fundamental things, freeing up [00:16:00] our time, paving the way, removing obstacles that are ultimately going to allow us to hit a goal.

[00:16:04] Russel Let me sum this up for you real quick. And if we break this down into kind of the three parts that I shared today. Number one, it's all in the setup. If we want to race a good race, we've got to start up, have all our gear with us and set up out of the gate. And that's having a proper goal. That's got a clear end point, but that most importantly has a well thought out strategy that's going to actually help us get it there. 

[00:16:32] Russel Number two, in order to get to that proper strategy, we have to do a better job of reverse engineering. That we have to be able to identify that first critical step that's going to get us on the path to meaning something and solving something hard.

[00:16:46] Russel Most cases, that's removing obstacles, removing whatever the biggest obstacle, whether that's time or that's resources, whatever that case may be. That's the first most important step of our strategy towards a goal. It's not a set of to dos or [00:17:00] anything like that. It's, it's a meaningful strategy.

[00:17:03] Russel And last but not least. Yes, time pressure is good. We want to fight Parkinson's law, that work will fill the time which is allotted. But just measuring something across a quarter, or a month, or a week, I don't know that's always going to get us there. That, again, something hard doesn't know time frames. And so just embracing that a little bit, finding satisfaction in the process, and measuring, making incremental improvements on the way.

[00:17:29] Russel If I could just add a couple more nuggets of wisdom for you on this road is start with what, you know, if I didn't mention it already, success is the ability to match effort and reward. We are going to be inherently more motivated to do things once we're certain that the, that we can match our effort and reward.

[00:17:47] Russel And the best way to do that is start with some glimmer of light, something that we can hold onto that. I generally know this might work and I just need to fine tune it, polish it, otherwise do more of it. And that's going to lead to success. So start [00:18:00] there. Less is more. I would rather see an agency hit one meaningful goal than get 10%, 15 percent of the way of four, um, goals.

[00:18:11] Russel And the idea that if we can flex this muscle, if we can get good at the art of setting and hitting goals and then enjoying that process, then we're going to achieve far more in the long run. And that the process itself will put us in a far better place. Rather than, striving for and resetting goals constantly.

[00:18:30] Russel And last but not least, give yourself grace. If this was easy, everyone would be millionaires. There would be no failed agencies. Everyone would be successful. And that ultimately just give yourself some grace that you're doing a very hard thing.

[00:18:43] Russel Anybody that knows me and works with me knows that, uh, we can't leave here without some action steps. So, number one, take a quick self assessment of your goals. Where do they stand against what we discussed today? Do you have a good goal in place? But most importantly, do you have a strategy that ladders [00:19:00] up and that you are certain, or with a relative degree of certainty, know that that's going to take you in the direction of that goal.

[00:19:07] Russel And to kind of cross check our, our stress test, our strategy piece of this, take a step back and ask, where do you want to be a year from now? Articulate that to yourself and then take a look at what would be the most fundamental thing that you would need to do first to make absolutely certain you would get there.

[00:19:28] Russel What is the biggest obstacle between you and that goal?

[00:19:32] Russel That should kind of really be your goal. Or that's, that's your first strategy towards the goal. And again, that goal is down the road. Let's focus on this core strategy and start moving at that. That should be the only thing you care about right now. And for the next however long until you've gotten that in a good place, whatever that might be, getting more time for yourself, identifying what is a surefire lead generation strategy for yourself, whatever that might be.

[00:19:58] Russel That's your goal. That's what you need to [00:20:00] support. That's what you need to focus on in order to actually hit your goals in the end. 

[00:20:06] Russel Best of luck to you in 2025, hit the ground running, make sure you've got a good goal in your place and know that I'm cheering you on. And if this episode somehow resonated with you, send me an email as well. Russel at performancefaction. com. I'd love to hear from you.

[00:20:22] Russel I'd love to hear what you think about this conversation and any thoughts you have, or, or if you just want accountability partner in 2025, send me your goal, put it out in the universe, send that to me in an email. I'd love to see it. Thank you for listening. I'll see you around soon.