Member Article

How goal-setting led to an MBE

Whilst I’m a big fan of living life at a fast pace, last week was one of the most hectic of my life, culminating on Friday as I received an MBE for services to the digital economy. The energy had been building since Wednesday night when we hosted Inspire MCR, an event for start-ups and budding entrepreneurs to plug into the knowledge and experience of some truly great business minds, including Brother UK MD Phil Jones.

Although the stage is certainly not my natural habitat, I also spoke at the event, sharing some of the lessons I’ve learnt from the people who have inspired me along the way. One of the single biggest game-changers, in my experience, was goal-setting. It’s a principle my wife Gail and I learned from Tony Robbins many years ago. Initially, I remember feeling sceptical but decided I had nothing to lose in putting it to the test. So, together we set a variety of small and large goals, and when we revisited our list a year later, we’d hit them to the letter. It was too accurate and uncanny to ignore.

Yet, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Goal-setting is used in sports science and has been studied extensively. In fact, in the 50s, a group of graduates at Yale University were asked where they thought they would be in twenty years’ time. About 3% of people had written down their goals. Ten years later researchers sat down with the same people to see how they measured up against their predictions. The 3% who had written down their goals and given off a positive energy about achieving them in the coming decade were worth more financially than the other 97% combined.

I had MBE on my list of goals and, last week, I collected this award - the way I see it - on behalf of UKFast. There is so much more in the pipeline and I don’t want to spoil the fun by giving it away, but we’re writing plenty more goals including some completely daft ones and even goals for our employees, kids and friends. There’s no limit on how big you can dream when setting out what you want your future to look like.

So if you have never tried goal-setting, now is the time. There’s no point in keeping your dreams in your head. You need to get them down on paper, jotting down every detail of what ‘perfect’ looks like for you. If you want a sneaky cheat to help you hit them all, make sure you go through the list and put a reason ‘why’ next to them. Now, when you write or reflect on your goals, you have personal and powerful reason to achieve each and every one of them.

Have fun, dream big and let me know how you get on.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lawrence Jones .