Yesterday, I attended the International Networking event and the keynote speaker was Bob Burg. Bob is partnering with one of my business associates so I was on a mission to “check him out.” What a surprise I was in for – the event pulled in about 500 people which is awesome and may I comment it was cold yesterday AND the Steelers parade was just winding down so I assumed attendance would be low…. Nope! Bob spoke for 2 hours and just gave nugget after nugget of relevant ideas to the audience. He shared insightful tips on how to network and build a referral system. It was very entertaining and content filled. I recommend that you research Bob Burg as he can show you how to build a referral system and increase business.
Everyone’s Blog Posts – 412 Local Business Networking
Networking
Don’t make a “Goal” instead make a “Promise”
This is the time of year that many of us start to think about ‘setting goals’.
I try to pull out my “Goal Plan” (a sheet of paper I wrote them on) to see where I am on their achievement on a regular basis.
I end up ‘hitting’ some and not others.
I started to give this more thought and study this month in anticipation of the New Year (Resolution). I came across a Bill Bateman video on iLG where he was talking about his “10 Step Goal Setting” process. It was all really good information – much that I had already learned, but it was good to revisit. He said ‘one thing’ that completely changed the way I’m looking at my personal and business ‘goal setting’.
He said to replace the word ‘Goal‘ with the word ‘Promise‘ when we go about this task. He offered up a study by Harvard that indicated that people “miss their Goals” 76% of the time – but “achieve their Promises” 98% – and that got me thinking about how my own mind interprets the difference between the two words.
First off, I am rare to make ‘Promises’ – I completely understand on a very “Conscious‘ level what that means and I always remember both Mom and Dad teaching ‘how you never make Promises you can’t keep’. Which explains on my subconscious level how I feel about this same word… It is to be taken very seriously!!!
As to ‘Goals’ – for some reason I seem to have an entirely different internal perspective about that word. I’ve made them most my life and if I did not achieve them I would refine either the goal or the time frame and simply forgive myself – or hit a mulligan (do it over).
This year I intend to do this one simply thing; I intend to create my ‘Promise Plan’ for 2009 and in it I intend to make some real ‘Promises’ on what I ‘will do’ both Personally and Business wise this coming year. So far the list is already much shorter as it forces me to ‘filter’ things better and interestingly it also ended up covering the ‘most’ important things.
Maybe this will help you as well. Best to you and yours in 2009 – I ‘Promise’ :)
Everyone’s Blog Posts – 412 Local Business Networking

