3 Important Ways To Find Support When Pursuing Your Goals
If you ever want to achieve anything serious in life and hit big goals, you will need support.
At this point in my life, I own a successful business. I have published a book, run a podcast and I write weekly blogs too.
However, I just wouldn’t be able to do all of this on my own. I have had a lot of help and support along the way:
- I have a great team around me.
- I have learnt from some of the best minds in the industry.
- I have a loving circle of friends and family fighting my corner.
Let’s dive into why these three things are so important when it comes to achieving your goals.
Going solo will only get you so far
When you first start with your goals, they are going to be smaller and more modest, so going solo may be all you need. But as we have learnt from previous blogs, your goals will scale with your progress. This means that if you are setting and achieving goals in life, there will always come the point where they are too big for you to achieve on your own.
For most entrepreneurs, achieving bigger, more audacious goals means making more money. Even the most altruistic entrepreneurs out there need money to do what they want to do.
However, there are only so many hours in the day and there is only so much that one person can do.
Bringing in a team – sharing the load
Eventually, to scale your business and help more people, you will need to bring in a team who can do some of the stuff you can’t or don’t want to do.
A phrase I heard recently from my friend Nick James is that there are three different types of tasks in your business:
£10 tasks
£100 tasks
£1,000 tasks
To grow, you need to get to the stage where you only focus on the £1,000 tasks and delegate the other £10 and £100 tasks to your team.
Each person can focus on what they are best at
It’s not that these other tasks aren’t important – many of the smaller tasks are vital to running a business – but there will always be other people out there who are better at doing them than you are.
To hit the big, hairy, audacious goals you are setting, you and your team need to focus on their own unique skill sets.
This way, each task will get done in the most efficient manner possible, meaning hitting your goals becomes less of a chore.
Coaching and mentoring
Although setting up your team is important, we also need to look outside of our business to find the right support to move us forward.
Of course, what I mean by this is coaching and mentoring.
A lot of the time, you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s fine. However, it’s vital that we recognise this and look for people we can learn from.
Someone has done it better – learn from them
Ultimately, there isn’t much left in the world that is completely unique. Unless you are Elon Musk or the next Steve Jobs, most of your goals will have already been achieved by someone else.
This presents us with a fantastic opportunity to find these people and learn from them.
Finding the right support networks
In one of his famous motivational speeches, Jim Rohn says that “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, which I think has a lot of truth to it.
In life, there will always be people who have done better or worse than you, so you have to choose your groups wisely.
If you are always hanging around people who don’t have goals and are not achieving anything important, the odds are you’re not going to be doing much either.
On the other hand, if you find a prestigious group of high achievers, who are in the arena you want to play in, chances are you will discover ways to get to where you want to go.
Coaching is an investment, not a cost
Of course, these groups may not come cheap, but trust me, they are well worth the investment!
A few years ago, I joined the Strategic Coach® programme, which has been an invaluable resource in helping me achieve my goals. Many of the lessons I have learnt during that time I still use today.
Ultimately, the value of having the right coach or mentor is the challenge. To achieve those big goals, you need somebody to challenge you and keep you pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
You’re not going to get that kind of support from a self-help book or an online course. As good as these things may be, they’re just not the same as having a real expert helping you step by step.
So, when it comes to coaching, never see it as a cost. It’s always an investment.
Personal support
So far, we have spoken a lot about professional support in the form of your team and external mentors and coaches.
However, you also need to have a lot of personal support when pursuing these big goals.
You need the support of the people you love most in order to feel good about the goals you are working so hard to achieve. Otherwise, that’s going to have a knock-on effect on everything else.
We all have a tremendous amount of negative thoughts and self-doubt, and knowing that the people in your personal life are behind you can make all the difference and keep you fighting on when things get rough.
Don’t take this support for granted
This support may not always come instantly, so don’t just make big decisions and expect the support always to be there.
You have to communicate your goals and what you want to the people around you so that they understand the journey you are on.
I learned that the hard way when I told my wife I had invested X into a high-level mentorship programme at a time when we weren’t doing very well financially.
We were in Venice at the time, which I thought might have cut me some slack…it didn’t.
Constant communication is key
The point here is that to have your loved ones’ support, you need to be very transparent about what you are trying to achieve.
This way, you will avoid any unnecessary conflict or backpedalling when your goals lead you to make some big decisions.
Things to remember
So, as you embark on your goal-setting journey, always remember to look at how you can find the right kind of support to help you on your way.
Your team will help by sharing the workload, allowing you to focus on the £1,000 tasks that will scale your business.
Mentors and coaches will be able to teach you new strategies you could never have discovered on your own.
And finally, but perhaps most importantly, this journey should never come at the cost of your family, so make sure you are constantly communicating your vision to them to get them on your side.
If you’re keen to learn more about goal setting, seizing on opportunities or just getting the most out of life, I’d love to hear from you.
You can also learn how other people have achieved their goals by tuning into my weekly podcast Goals Do Come True.
Or just email me at doug@dougbennett.co.uk.
