Keeping Your New Year's Resolutions with Matt Spielman

Intro: Welcome to the Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with my good friend Matt Spielman. Matt and I have worked together a couple times in our career over the course of the last 20 some years. Matt is a longtime media marketing and sales executive. He founded a firm and runs a firm that's a professional development firm called Inflection Point Partners, and he's also the author of an amazing book called Inflection Points, How to Work and Live With Purpose. Matt, good to see you.

Matt Spielman: It's great to be here, Matt. It's terrific to see you.

Matt Blumberg: All right, so my question for you today, which sort of digs into the book a little bit, is most people make New Year's resolutions. Most of those are kaputt by February. What are three things that people can do to make sure that their goals are achievable, actionable, and don't fall by the wayside?

Matt Spielman: Yeah, this is the key component of the book where we really want people to win, however they define it and really set. And what we do in our coaching partnership is co- create meaningful actionable goals. So the three things that... And there are more than three things, but in answering the question, these are the three that rise to the top, and I might even say in this order. So the first one in order of importance is really understand the why, the consequence, the meaning, the so what, why is that goal important? And I'll just come out of this for a moment and share with you. Let's say there's a fitness goal of Matt, do you want to run the New York City Marathon next year? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good goal. If that is an exogenous goal that comes from somebody else is not necessarily aligned with your values and what you really want to accomplish and you understand why, on February 11th when it's 12 degrees outside and it's pitch black, when that alarm goes off, you're likely going to hit the snooze button. So that's number one. Really understand the why. Sometimes we go as deep as the Toyota Five Whys. Let's really get down to the root cause of that. Really understand why crossing the finish line, your tavern on the green is important to you. The second one is sharing your goals, the power of sharing your goals. The research indicates that if you think about a goal, you have a certain percent chance of it happening. If you think about it, write it down, you have a greater percent chance of it happening. If you think about it, write it down and verbally share it with somebody, you have a greater percent chance of it happening. The platinum standard, Matt, is think about it, write it down, verbally share it, and actually give them a copy of your goals or your game plan document is what we call it here. And the third one-

Matt Blumberg: Let me ask on that one, is that so you have multiple accountability partners, or is that to prevent the self shaming of not making it or a little inaudible or something else?

Matt Spielman: So it's a little bit of both. And we do encourage... Our best practice is to create a roadshow and launch a roadshow. And something that I did within Return Path when I was there and I onboarded as a chief marketing officer, I didn't call it a game plan and it wasn't branded like this game plan I'm holding up for you right now, but it was the three or four outcomes that I'm working towards by a certain timeframe, and I shared it with you in the executive leadership team when I was there. So there's an element of being on the hook, but also you identify interdependencies as well. So a lot of people will say, " Oh, Matt, I know you're trying to do this. I know somebody at the following firm and I can make an introduction for you." Again, all going to the heart of what is going to give you the greatest chance of you achieving or bringing about this outcome. So sharing goals is number two. Number three is while these are all by definition future oriented outcomes that you're working towards, we have a maniacal focus on winning the day. So let's put you in Chicago, Wrigley Field, what do we need to do to hang the white banner after a Cubs win, to denote a win for that particular team, but for us? What are the three things we need to do today that will further us getting closer to the goals and that work in service of us achieving those outcomes? So this really, what do I need to start? What do I need to finish? Or what do I need to continue? Recognize we don't always finish stuff in a day, but really keeping it to three. I might give you four things for today, but not beyond that.

Matt Blumberg: One more.

Matt Spielman: One more. I think identifying a team of experts. Oftentimes, if we stick with that marathon example, because it's quite tangible and I just had a conversation with somebody about it yesterday. Let's identify other people who've done it. Let's identify a running expert. Let's make sure we have the right shoes. What kind of nutrition? Let's identify potentially nutritionist, or how do we need to cross- train for it so we don't get hurt? So identify a team of experts, almost creating a personal board of directors for you to achieve those outcomes.

Matt Blumberg: I love that. I always talk in a lot of my talks with CEOs about putting a bunch of support structures in place, whether it's a peer group, a coach, a mentor, a board. So that's great. I love all four of these. As a side note, you and I did run the New York City Marathon in the same year in 2005, along with inaudible, and I think you beat me by an hour and a half. Matt, thank you so much for being here today.

Matt Spielman: You got it, Matt. It's really good to see you.