bike-race Originally uploaded by indywriter

Earlier I discussed how I am making some changes in how I set goals for 2010.  I’m trying to make my goals with very compelling outcomes, I’m creating specific action plans and I am going public with them.  In that spirit I am sharing my goals in three categories (Personal, Business and Health) over the next few days.  These are my Personal Goals for 2010.

1. Weight below 205 by 12/1/10
I weigh more than is healthy, and I want to live into my 90’s. I don’t just want to hang on, I want to live a healthy active lifestyle even when I’m old, so I need to lose weight. Plus I like to ride my bike FAST, and the leaner I am the faster I will go. In 2009 I had a goal to reach 225 lb by Dec 1. Though I lost 30 lbs in 2009, I still had 20 to go on 12/1/09. This year I am still shooting for roughly one lb per week, for a goal of 205 by 12/1/10.

How is 2010 going to be different from 2009?
I got an indoor bike trainer for Christmas, connected with the Cadence Revolution Podcast and am committed to working out 6x per week.  In the spirit of going public, I’m posting my workouts at DailyMile.com (My Profile). If you want encouragement and support for your exercise goals you can join to, send me a friend request and we can ride “together”.

I’m terrible at keeping food logs, but I know that’s an important part of any weight loss program. I came across this idea of using your camera phone and flickr.com as a food log and I jumped in. You can see what I’ve been eating on a dedicated flickr feed. I’m also recording my perceived hunger (before I eat) on a scale of 1 (Full) to 10 (Famished) . This helps me calibrate my portions and “get real” about what I’m eating.

I’ll evaluate these actions and my weight on 3/31 and see if more changes are needed.

2. Ride one bike race in 2010
Biking has been my sport of choice for the last few years, and as I’ve gotten in better shape, I’ve gotten better at it. Signing up for a race would give me a goal to drive toward and a measure of how much I’ve achieved. It could provide me confidence that I am getting fitter, or provide me with motivation to do more. Plus it would be fun!

How I’ll do that:

1. Find a group to ride with. I need some experience riding in groups. I’m thinking about riding with the XXX Team on Saturday mornings when the roads thaw out.
2. Book an event. I need to pick an event an book it now, so that I have a goal to shoot for.
3. Get advice from others about what I’m getting myself into!

I welcome any ideas or resources that you know of that can further help me achieve these goals in 2010.

You can see my Personal and Business goals as well.

Earlier I discussed how I am making some changes in how I set goals for 2010.  I’m trying to make my goals with very compelling outcomes, I’m creating specific action plans and I am going public with them.  In that spirit I am sharing my goals in three categories (Personal, Business and Health) over the next few days.  These are my Business Goals for 2010.

1. Put my Ideas “out there” more in 2010
April 1, 2010 will mark the start my 10th year at Anchor Advisors; ten years of serving growing small businesses.  During that time there are some ideas that have proven to be true with client after client.  I want to write those down and get them out into the marketplace.  In part I want to do this because it will attract clients with problems that I know how to solve.  But I also feel like these issues are largely solved for me.  If I can write these things down and send them out to the market, there will be more of an opportunity to learn new things, and deal with new problems.

How I’ll do that:

1. Book in the Market by 3/31: I spent significant time last year creating a draft of a book.  My goal last year was to have it out by 12/1/09.  When I got the book all together in November it was clear that it needed at least one more re-write before it could go to production.  That re-write was completed last week.  There may be more tweaking required, but I’m planning to have it in production later this month and be out in the market well before the 3/31 due date.
2. 12 Speaking Opportunities: In 2009 I had a blast speaking to a variety of audiences, from trade shows to Vistage groups.  It’s great to interact with business owners who know their business and care about making it better.  They are the best audience you could ask for.  I want to do more of that in 2010.  I have booked two speaking engagements already for 2010 and want to keep a pace of about one a month.
3. 125 Blog Posts (2.5 per week): In order to get better at expressing these ideas, I need practice expressing them.  This blog is one way that I can write, and write and write, until I get really good at it.  Sorry that you have to be my guinea pigs, but in return you get to see my new ideas first!

2. Explore different ways of offering our services.
I have used primarily a model of providing services under a fixed monthly fee to my clients.  This works great for smaller companies (think $1M – $10M) who value having a resource that they can count on and a bill that is predicable and manageable.  However, larger companies ($10M – $100M) are more comfortable buying projects with defined end-points and deliverables.  I believe that our services can be effective in these larger companies, but I don’t have as much experience with this delivery model.  In 2009 I  added a new team member who does.  My goal is to do 2 projects in this fashion by 6/1/10 and evaluate at that point what is working/not working.

3. Demonstrate sales growth over our high of 2008.
2009 was a down year for Anchor Advisors, Ltd. We had a strong start, and finish to the year, but the middle of the year was quite soft.  This afforded me some downtime to work on the book, but I am looking forward to being really busy again.  I love seeing companies grow and create great jobs for people to make a difference.  I don’t care if the economy stinks, we need those kind of jobs in good healthy businesses.  I am looking to bounce back from that and reach sales levels and profits that exceed the year we had in 2008.

I welcome any ideas or resources that you know of that can further help me achieve these goals in 2010.

You can see my Personal and Health goals as well.

Earlier I discussed how I am making some changes in how I set goals for 2010.  I’m trying to make my goals with very compelling outcomes, I’m creating specific action plans and I am going public with them.  In that spirit I am sharing my goals in three categories (Personal, Business and Health) over the next few days.  These are my Personal Goals for 2010.

Personal Goals

1. Take 10 one day retreats in 2010.
I am generally a go getter, a do-er.  I’m good at knocking things off of my to-do list and getting work out the door.  So much of my energy goes into climbing the tree, I need to have structural ways to make sure that I still want to get to the top of the tree I’m climbing.  I want to always have a clear view of what I am doing and why I am doing it. This helps me to set priorites, and say “no” to good things that just don’t fit in my life right now.

The best tool that I have found to maintain that perspective is to periodically take 6 – 8 hours on my own, away from my house, family, business, and everything to review everything that I have before me, my projects, relationships, tasks and commitments, to make sure that I am doing all that I can to do only those things that are truly important to me; and that I am making acceptable progress on those things.

How I’ll do that: The major barrier to doing this is getting them on the calendar.  I have scheduled a retreat for Jan (the 30th) and I need to add them to the calendar for the rest of the year.  If I create that schedule with my wife we can work together to respect that schedule, or re-schedule when it can’t be kept.

2. End 2010 Debt-free
In 2009 my wife finished a graduate degree, and we had a new baby. In the process we accumulated some debt; consumer debt, education debt, and depleted savings.  In 2010 I’d plan to substantially eliminate that debt.  I plan to retire the totality of our debt (excluding the mortgage) through a combination of reducing expenses and increasing income.  This would reduce our monthly income needs to allow us more freedom to choose how to spend or save our money, and our time.

How we’ll do that: Our family has converted to a cash budgeting system for 2010.  We withdraw cash for our “out-of-pocket” expenses for each month and when the cash is gone, it’s gone.  This will prevent overspending from continuing to deplete our resources.  The business goals, if successfully implemented, should result in income sufficient to retire the debt.

3. Get started on a recipe blog
I’m the cook in my family, and I often invent new recipes.  I have a binder containing these recipes as well as a number of recipes adapted from other sources; many of these are my family’s favorite foods.  I’ve long had a vision of creating a cookbook of these family favorites to give to my kids when they go out on their own, but it’s seemed like a daunting project.  Yet these recipes are a powerful part of our family culture and heritage that I want to pass along to them.

So I’ve decided to start a recipe blog to begin the process of capturing these recipes one at a time.  This breaks the work into bite sized pieces and gets me started on the project at a pace that I can sustain.  In 2010 I’m going to record 20 recipes.

How I’ll do that: As I plan the menu will denote one of the recipes for the blog, As I make that recipe I’ll try to capture the exact measurements and direction, as well as get some pictures.  Over the next week I’ll try to get the blog written and published.

The blog will be up and operational by 3/31/10.

I welcome any ideas or resources that you know of that can further help me achieve these goals in 2010.

You can see my Health and Business goals as well.

As I sat down to create my goals for 2010, I reviewed my goals for the last few years and I wasn’t so happy with the results.  It looks like I’ve been batting about .500 in achieving my goals and that’s not good enough. So this year I’m doing three things differently with my goals to insure that I will achieve a higher percent (like 100%) this year.

1. Make them compelling. The more compelling the goal, the more we will invest in achieving it.  Randy Hall of 4th Gear Consulting created a blog post about this last week and it really inspired me.  So I have rewritten my goals with compelling visions of the outcome.
2. Include specific action steps. Each of my goals is accompanied by specific actions that I will take now and throughout the year to make it a reality.  I’m not just wishing, I’m planning to make it happen.
3. Make them public. I’m going to make my 2010 goals as public as I can (Michael Hyatt wrote about this last week too.), both in the making of them, and with progress reports along the way; believing that public humiliation will help me to keep this year’s goals.

At each progress report (quarterly) I’m plan to update my plans and progress here as well to insure that the goal can be met (or abandon it if I find that I’m not committed to it).

I have goals in three areas, Personal, Business, and Health.  I’m planning to share my goals from one area each day this week.

What are you doing to insure that you achieve your 2010 goals?
Update:  I posted my personal goals Jan. 14th, and my business goals Jan. 15th, now my health goals are up as well (Jan 18th).