Setting non-financial goals for the new financial year

It’s the last day of the financial year in Australia and a few other countries, too.

The EOFY is a time when many people reflect on their financial and professional life, and then set some goals for the following 12 months.

And that’s a good thing…as long as you’re not completely ignoring personal growth.

To acquire some attributes that will improve your entire life – and not just your work life or bank balance – I’m sharing a broader definition of what success means to me.

Because (news flash!) there’s more to life than just success in commercial real estate.

Listen to episode 94 of CRE Success: The Podcast to get some ideas on the types of non-financial ambitions you can include within your goal-setting process.

You may well find that, by improving in these areas, you also acquire some attributes that equip you for greater financial and professional success, too!

Episode transcript:

There is more to life than success in commercial real estate.

So today, as we're halfway through the year, I want to remind you to not only check in on how you're doing in your professional life, but to spend some time checking in on how you're doing in your personal life, also known as your life.

Hello, welcome to episode 94 of CRE Success: The Podcast. I'm Darren Krakowiak. I help commercial real estate leaders to develop their people and grow their business.

And we are halfway through 2022. And at the start of 2022, we did an episode on How to Win in 2022, which was episode 68.

And then 13 episodes later, in Episode 81, which was at the end of q1, we talked about the metrics that matter in relation to your performance.

While we're now another 13 weeks later, we're at the end of the financial year in Australia, and we're halfway through the year, in the calendar year, wherever you are.

And I think it's a good time for us to check in on your performance from a financial perspective, but also from a personal perspective.

And I do encourage you, before we talk about the personnel to really just do a bit of a stocktake on your financial and professional performance.

And because we're halfway through the year, it means there's still another half of the year to go.

So you can upgrade your goals that you're well on the way to achieving. But also you can reassess goals that you were perhaps a little bit bullish on at the start of the year, or you can stretch yourself if you are still absolutely committed to achieving them.

Even if at this point in time, it may look like it's going to be a stretch in order for you to get there.

So putting that aside, and again, you can go back to Episode 68 or 81, for help with your own goal setting. I want to talk to you today about the match the metrics that matter in life outside of commercial real estate.

And I think some of those metrics are just simply asking yourself, are you happy? Is life outside of work (also known as just life) passing you by? Are you feeling appreciated? Are you fulfilled? Are you motivated? Are you respected and are you respectful?

Being valued for what you do at work is important. I talked about that in some recent episodes talking about your success in commercial real estate.

But I want to talk today about things outside of work. But I think these things have intrinsic satisfaction.

We can get some of those things from work, but also we want to make sure that we're getting them from outside of work.

And goals should be professional and personal. So when you're setting goals, make sure that you are setting goals that relate to work and non-work related areas of your life.

And an exercise that I like to conduct, if you're a leader of a team, this is a good one to do with your team is to ask people to set a personal goal and a professional goal.

And to have them commit to the team that they will accomplish that goal within a certain time period.

And everyone in the group can commit to a personal goal or a professional goal.

And that's separate from the KPIs that you're all working towards or that are in people's individual performance agreements.

These are things that they themselves want to achieve.

And the reason why I recommend that is because it helps you to get to know people in terms of what they think is important from a professional perspective.

So you get an understanding of the way they see things, but also you get an understanding of who they are, from what they pick as their personal goal.

So, as I was preparing for a podcast interview yesterday, and hopefully I'll get to share that interview with you as it comes out.

One of the questions in the run sheet that I was provided with by the podcast producer really stood out to me and as I was preparing my thoughts on what I would answer if that question comes up.

I was kind of surprised with what I wrote down. So I thought I would share that with you today and how my answers reflected the fact that there are things outside of commercial real estate and outside of your professional life are important.

So the question was, how do you measure success? And some of the things that I wrote down, were being calm, being more patient, being more present with people, less arrogant, more generous, a bit more gracious towards myself.

And I was thinking about some of the professional goals that I've set this year that have not been met yet and that I'm not on track to meeting.

And I have quarterly goals and quarterly revenue goals for the business that I did not hit in q2, but just being a little bit more kind to myself with not having achieved them.

And also being humble enough to accept that I do need more support to achieve what it is that I want to achieve.

And recently, I've decided to get a new business coach that's going to start working with me in July.

That's going to help me put a little bit more structure and systems around the way that I prospect for business inside this business.

And that is about humility, right? That's admitting that I do need some support, and that there's a better way a more efficient way to do things that I am currently doing them.

And another thing that I thought of sharing with you, which was some progress that I made in an area, not related to commercial real estate, was in relation to generosity and in relation to money mindset.

And I did a 30-day audio program about money mindset and was basically just about changing your relationship with money.

Because a lot of us have a poor relationship with money where money controls us, rather than us. Having control over money and getting money to work for us.

And put it a little bit more simply, I think I was probably a little bit stingy with money in the past.

And one of the exercises that I decided to do and I did all the exercises in this audio was I thought that it was going to be helpful to me.

One of the exercises was to go and get seven $5 bills, and to give them to people who needed them more than you needed, the $5 bills.

And the way that I interpreted this exercise was that I tipped $5 at my coffee shop when I wouldn't usually tip here in Australia,

You don't need to tip when you buy a coffee at a coffee shop. But I did.

And also, whenever someone came up to me in the street, and said, you know, do you have any money? Can you give me two bucks. Hey, give me five bucks.

Or if there was someone who was obviously in need, sitting on the side of the street with a sign saying I need help, then if I made contact with them, and if I noticed them and they notice me then that was the indication to me that they deserve the $5.

And one day after I was decided to do this, and I had all the $5 loaded up in my wallet. And I was with my wife and we were looking for somebody to have lunch in the city.

And this guy came up to me and he said that he needed money. He needed $2. And I said, "Okay, here's $5."

And he was like, "Oh, wow, okay, thanks." And my wife looked at me like I was a stranger just like, "what happens?"

And I said, well, you know, I explained to her about this program. And, you know, for me, that was a big step, because in the past, I was too focused on preserving money, on keeping money.

And I was also very focused on the goal of just making money. And you know, I had ideas that if you're making X amount of money, then that means you're doing well.

And I was probably also into comparisons with other people and how much they're making.

Now, there's nothing wrong with making lots of money, right? But I think if that's your sole purpose, you're going to lose a bit of focus around more important things in your life, like your personal relationships, like your health.

And the money that you're making can perhaps, if you're happy with that, because that's the yardstick that you're using to measure success, that can pipe over some of the bigger cracks in your life.

So I share that story with you just to hopefully help you uncover an area of your life outside of commercial real estate where maybe you have set a goal, and you've done it informally or formally, and maybe you've made some progress towards it.

Acknowledge that, recognize that you've made progress in that area.

And if it's something that you haven't yet addressed, but you can see that it's something that could use some addressing, for example, maybe you can improve your relationship with money, then why not take some steps to actually do something about it.

And to set some goals and to provide yourself with the opportunity, to improve in areas that aren't only related to commercial real estate.

So as we get to the halfway mark of this year, my message to you is take a look at your professional goals. Take stock of them, see how you're going in relation to them.

Put in place some mechanisms to help you achieve them, that full goals for the year by the end of this year, but also make sure that you're putting some attention and focus on those personal areas of your life as well.

I really appreciate you listening to the show. And if you enjoy the show, one thing that I'd like to ask you to do is to leave a rating, or a review for the show on Apple podcasts or on Spotify.

If you enjoy the show, that's one little thing that you can do to help us to improve our ratings in the algorithms with the podcast gods that send out recommendations to people.

If we can get a little push of this podcast by getting some more ratings, then hopefully that will help more people find the content.

As always, I do really appreciate you being there. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.