How our little podcast got to 50,000 unique downloads (and counting)

I'm happy to be able to say that the podcast clicked over 50,000 downloads last week.

It only took us 129 episodes and close to three years to get there (yes, sticking with it and releasing lots of episodes helped us to hit the milestone 😃).

I appreciate each and every person who has taken the time to write a review, leave a rating, subscribe to the show and listen to an episode.

I want to thank the numerous guests who've come on to share their expertise (with more to come), and the advertisers we've had along the journey (i.e. Hub Australia, ReLeased and Unispace).

If you’ve never tuned in, now’s a great time to listen – there are 130 episodes for you to sink your teeth (or ears!?!?) into.

This week, we’re talking about the science of success, and how setting goals will get you and your team further, faster.

For the lowdown on how goal setting can forever change your life, check out episode 130 of CRE Success: The Podcast.

And, to let us know what you'd like to hear more of (or less of!) on future episodes, send an email to [email protected] – if you listen to us, we also want to listen to you!

Episode transcript:

On last week's episode of the show, I spoke to the CEO of X Commercial, Dan O'Brien.

And he told me that he's got a goal to reach 10 offices in Sydney or in the State of New South Wales before he starts expanding to other states in Australia.

That's a pretty big goal.

I even said to him, 'Just a lazy 10 offices', But it sorts of reminded me of the importance of goal setting. 

And if you're not in the practice of setting goals, then I want to show you why you're missing out.

So, today's episode is all about the power of setting goals.

Hello, and welcome to Episode 130 of CRE Success: The Podcast. My name is Darren Krakowiak. I helped commercial real estate leaders to develop their people and to grow their business.

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So, if you do enjoy it, do subscribe. You'll also get the benefit, of course of being informed every time we do release another episode. 

Today I want to talk to you about goals. And I particularly want to send this message to those of you who don't set goals and don't believe it's important to set goals.

And a couple of goals that I achieved recently was in relation to this podcast.

One was hitting 50,000 downloads that we just achieved a few days ago. Thank you to everyone who has contributed towards us hitting that milestone. 

I actually didn't think that we were going to hit close to that by this point. 

In fact, if it asked me three months ago, where we would be right now, and I would have told you a number that's much less than that.

But I set a goal for last year of 30,000 downloads. And we really exceeded that. And we exceeded that because we had a really big push that happened towards the end of November, early December. And that meant that we exceeded our goal by a lot.

And I don't think it matters how you exceed a goal. In our case, it was because whatever the episodes really took off and had a really big impact on the overall downloads, it only matters that you do exceed your goals when you hit them.

So that was a really good accomplishment for me. And I think that having set the goal, it meant that when we achieved it, it meant something more.

And also in the business, in terms of the revenue of CRE Success, I set a goal for last year of a certain amount of sales in the business.

And again, around that time, the end of November, I didn't think that we were going to hit the goal that I had set.

But then a whole lot of sales happened in December. Even though I was away for half of the month, we ended up achieving about 30% of the total sales for 2022 in the month of December.

And that meant that we exceeded the revenue goal or the sales target that I had set for the business for the year by it was less than 1% that we exceeded it by it.

But we exceeded that. And again, that was a great accomplishment.

So, I'm telling you this because I want to use those stories as a little bit of fodder for some of the reasons why you should be setting goals.

And I want to also, I guess, address some of the objections that if you're not currently setting goals that you may have about setting goals.

So, one of the objections or one of the reasons why people don't go through the exercise of goal setting, I think, it's because they don't want to be disappointed if they don't actually accomplish the goal that they've set.

And I guess my response to that is, well how will you feel if you do achieve the goal?

It's going to be a real sense of accomplishment just like I've shared with you.

Another reason why I think people don't set goals at least that some of the reasons why people tell me they don't set goals is because they feel like it might be limiting their potential, right?

They could be setting goals, which is actually lower than what they're capable of achieving.

To that I would say, you can always exceed your goals. They're not a limit. It's just a target.

And you can also revise your goals upwards if it seems like you're on track to exceed them, or if you weren't actually ambitious enough when you initially set them.

Some people say that setting goals is kind of like a bit of a waste of time because it takes time to do and it's actually slowing you down and taking you away from getting things done.

'Why not just go ahead and start doing things as opposed to setting up goals because it takes time?'

And I think my answer to that is, sometimes you do need to slow down in order to speed up.

It's important when you prepare for a big event that you take some time to focus to think about to plan and strategize, when you show someone else how to do something, in order to make sure that you don't need to continue doing it.

That's an example of slowing down, it takes time to do that. But once you've shown someone else how to do it, you can then get more and more done, it adds to your productive capacity.

Even aeroplanes slow down, literally, they go very slowly on the tarmac before they speed up. 

So, I think sometimes it's appropriate to actually just take a little bit of a breather before we start to achieve big and great things.

Another one, which I hear from clients, and this is probably the big one that I wanted to share with you, because it's one that I've been facing with a couple of clients recently.

It's, 'What's the point of setting goals? I know that I'm going to work just as hard, whether I set the goal, or if I don't set the goal, and I'll work as hard as I can. And I'll achieve as much as I possibly can. So therefore, what's the difference between whether I set a goal or if I don't set the goal?'

And, you know, that's a hard one to actually answer when people have told me that, but I guess I don't know how many discoveries have been made. And how many breakthroughs have been accomplished when people aren't working, working towards a certain goal, right?

I think that yes, it's true. The harder you work, the luckier you get. And if you do work hard, you will achieve more, and you'll get more done than people that don't want to put in the effort.

But at the same time, if you're not working towards something, how will you know what it is that you're looking to achieve, right? 

And when you are working towards a goal, I think that you start to subconsciously think of ways that you can achieve bigger and better things.

Because you start to move towards it with not only the intention that comes from having set the goal, but also your brain will start thinking of ways in order to get you there that perhaps you wouldn't have thought of if the goal didn't exist.

So I think goal setting is the first step towards making something a reality.

Before something can be real in the world, it needs to exist as a possibility in your mind.

And it's when you think of it as possible that you start to intellectually engage and emotionally connect with a goal. And the best way that I know to do that is to write it down.

And I think I've shared on the podcast before.

You are 42% more likely to achieve a goal if you commit it to paper. And then it becomes even more likely if you're willing to share it with somebody else and have someone else to be accountable to to achieve that goal.

As I mentioned, you'll start consciously and subconsciously working towards targets as you do set goals.

And I think that's how innovation happens. That's how efficiency gains are made.

When you actually set a goal, which is more than what you're currently doing, then you are almost forcing yourself to think of new and better ways of doing things.

And if you are a leader, I think that setting goals is really important because it motivates other people.

Even if you're not somebody who feels that goal setting helps you work harder, or achieve greater things or think more strategically or more innovatively, it will motivate some people to do that.

And I think it's also a way just to measure progress against objectives, right.?

So if you've got a vision, and you've got some idea of where you want to go, I think setting the goals is how you can monitor if you are making progress towards getting there. 

So goal setting really helps you with achieving results, whether that result is around the amount of revenue that you want to achieve.

And we can work backwards from that, we want to achieve a certain amount of revenue. If you're a commercial real estate agent, then you need to have a certain amount of listings.

Well, to get those listings and to do a certain number of proposals or listing presentations. In order to get those opportunities, you need to have a certain amount of meetings.

You need to be having a certain number of phone call conversations. To get those people in conversations, you need to make a certain number of dials, right?

And I think that this all comes back to prospecting.

And when you have a prospecting system that helps you achieve consistency in the number of conversations you're getting into, then you're more likely to do the things that will make it more likely for you to achieve your goals.

And that's why we're deciding to share a workshop that we put on for our members last month, which was all about how to build a prospecting pipeline.

So this is a new workshop that we're presenting for commercial real estate professionals that you can see. If you go to cresuccess.co/pipeline.

If you do feel like the market slowdown is impacting your deal flow and you want to get your pipeline filled with prospects in the next 30 days, that's the promise of this session.

We will show you how to do that in just 1 hour, we'll work together to create a system that will get you reengaged with existing clients.

It will get your pipeline full of opportunities from perhaps contacts that have gone a little bit stale that you haven't spoken to in a while and will also get you in touch with completely new or cold prospects.

So to make sure you get access to this free workshop, make sure you go to cresuccess.co/pipeline and you will get access to that.

I hope that today's session has inspired you to set even just one goal, and I really hope that you start taking action towards accomplishing that goal.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you soon.