Failing at personal goals is fulfilling

Three years ago I placed my first order on GoWild's new shop.

We built it in just 90 days over the fall of 2020. We had just seven brands agree to work with us.

Seven!

But we were proud of every single one of those seven brands. 

Come November, we were ready to go. We launched, and the site was riddled with bugs. We worked through it, although it would be February before we were really humming.

Despite the bugs, I can't express how excited I was to get to the moment you see in this picture—opening my first package from the freshly launched GoWild shop.

It was surreal.

Today we've come a long ways:

• We have nearly 900 brands on GoWild

• We've made it easy as pie for other brands and creators to launch their shop with Holler Commerce

• We ship from dozens of distribution centers across the country

• We've integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, Big Commerce, and many other shopping platforms, as well as EDI (electronic data interchange, which to oversimplify, you can just think of as an API for ecommerce)

It's amazing the progress you can make in a short time. If you're grinding right now, keep your head up. I promise the hard work is worth it. There is no reward like seeing something come to life by no other result than the keystrokes of your own team's hands.

While these workplace accomplishments are rewarding, they fall short of being truly fulfilling on their own. It’s not the checking of the box, it’s knowing what it took to get there. Resting on the laurels of building our first shop doesn’t do a thing for me now—we have new priorities.

Today I want to talk through how personal goals vary from those workplace goals and accomplishments.

And I’m going to encourage you to focus on you—the part of “you” that doesn’t have a job title. 

Christmas wishes

I’m once again sitting in my living room, looking at this same Christmas tree. It’s adorned with many of the same ornaments, but we’ve added a few new ones since I took the picture above. Each new ornament represents a milestone—kindergarten for one child, a first Christmas for another, and a new memorial ornament for Ernie, our family dog, who we lost last month. 

There is something comforting about a tree full of familiar ornaments, but it also reminds me that I don’t want to be sitting here again in 365 days without having added a few of my own milestones (figurative ornaments—it’d probably be weird if I was making actual ornaments to celebrate my accomplishments at the ripe age of 36). 

I did something tonight that I haven’t done in a long time—I wrote down a list of goals for 2024. I used to keep a list of five year goals, broken up into one, three and five year goals. I always found that when I wrote it out, I was more focused and actually worked towards the goals. Usually I got through my one year goals in a matter of months, and my three year goals were accomplished in one year or 18 months, and so on. These weren’t the kind of startup goals I wrote about recently, they were for me personally.

The goals I’ve written down for 2024 are largely personal and unrelated to my work as Brad the founder and CEO. They’re about my ever-evolving identity, and they’re focused on things that I think will bring me joy or enrichment as I pursue them. 

They’re also about re-aligning my priorities.

As I said a few weeks ago, achieving work goals can be a fleeting high because once you reach a workplace goal, you’re left wondering what’s next. This isn’t necessarily bad—it means you’re improving and having to move the goal posts to keep yourself challenged and improving. The skills you built achieving those goals will help set you up for a new challenge. 

But as big milestones pass, it can leave you feeling empty. I find it interesting that so many founders who exit their companies—the goal they had since the day one of founding the company—say the same thing. They talk about feeling adrift at sea, without purpose or direction. 

I find that personal goals have some nuance when compared to professional goals, especially when they are framed them around enrichment or tasks that are going to bring you joy.

For example, “read 20 books in 2024” or “run my first marathon” are the type of goals that enhance your life in pursuit of the goal—and well beyond—even if you don’t achieve the goal itself. These two examples accomplish benefits purely from trying to reach the goal, and not only achieving the goal itself. If you try to read 20 books, you are going to gain knowledge, insights, inspiration or entertainment along the way. Training for a marathon gets you into great physical condition, long before you ever step foot on the race course. 

There are some instances where this can happen within workplace goals, but it’s more rare. So often workplace goals are all or nothing—get the promotion, launch a new product, land the big client, etc.

Try setting your own goals

As we wrap up this year, I encourage you to think about what you want to accomplish by next Christmas. It happens for me every year—you’re going to have a few hours where the Christmas madness settles, and you’re just sitting on the couch. Maybe your kids are off in the basement with their new toys, or the family has left and you’re finally getting to sit and rest after a night of prime rib and red wine. 

Whenever that moment hits, pull out your phone, open your notes app, and write out at least five things you want to accomplish before next Christmas. Next, pull out your calendar app, and set a reminder at the first day of each month to review your goals. When that alarm hits, look back at that note. Think about how you’re doing, and what you’re going to achieve some progress. 

Try to find goals that aren’t work related. Sure, getting 20% more sales or whatever feels good. But think of your identity outside of work. Find what matters to you—the person, not the employee or leader—and for once this year, make it about you. 

Inspo for your list:

• Read X books

• Run a 5K

• Establish a monthly night out with your spouse or friends

• Learn a new skill

• Travel to a new place

These sound simple, but think about how often you actually prioritize efforts like this. Few and far between? Christmas is the perfect time to change that—it’s the best gift to yourself to make you whole. When you’re whole, you're in better shape for your family, friends and your team at work.

Special note: Thank you to everyone who shares these posts on LinkedIn and Twitter. I appreciate all of the @ mentions and love. It means the world to me when I hear back from you all every Saturday morning with notes like “this is exactly what I needed today.” Just this week I was at a networking meeting and met two people who said my newsletter is one of the only ones they read front to back, and I promise you, that kind of feedback keeps me motivated to keep writing.

Who I’m listening to: Keily Connell

What I’m reading: “The Innovators” by Walter Isaacson

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