Gearing up for 2020: Set Yourself Up for Success by Setting Challenging, but Attainable Goals

By Kristen Quinn, Director of Public Relations

Our team often shares interesting tidbits we come across in the news or on social media. This can range from funny memes and GIFs, smart tweets and motivating or inspiring stories. Recently, Paige came across this article on Inc. that explains how setting goals actually changes the structure of your brain so that it’s optimized to achieve said goals. It additionally says that if you’re going to set goals, don’t set the bar low. Defining challenging goals creates a stronger emotional resonance which alters your brain structure more quickly and effectively than weaker goals.

I love this article for a few reasons.

1. It scientifically supports the fact that setting goals does indeed help people reach those goals. I’m a fan of making lists (aka, Type A) and feel like I absorb information better if it’s written down. In public relations, we’re all about setting measurable and attainable goals for our clients. We typically lay this out in an initial strategy session. Who would have thought by doing so we were setting ourselves, and our clients, up for success.
2. It talks about the importance of setting personal goals, not goals assigned to us. In other words, practice what you preach. To motivate others, set, and communicate your individual goals, encouraging others to follow suit. Assigning goals to teams doesn’t have the same brain-changing powers, so please no micro-managing. Our clients’ goals and needs are so very different. There is no “one-size-fits-all” template we roll out when we start working with a new company. Instead, we listen to pain points as well as communication and business goals and customize a plan that will seamlessly integrate into an organization’s current PR/marketing plan. Or if there is no plan, we work with our clients to create one that makes the most sense for them.
3. It made me reflect on the goals our team has achieved this year. Our team sat down at the end of 2018 to set some organizational goals, and they were challenging to say the least. 1. Diversify our clients by 50% so our roster is not oil and gas heavy (you never know what the price of a barrel is going to do these days), and 2. Grow Paige PR’s year-over-year revenue by 15%. As we near 2020, Paige PR can proudly say that we service clients in medical safety, space medicine, financial services, recruitment and commercial real estate among others, and that list is still growing. We met our goal, and then some. As for our agency’s growth, earning the number nine spot on Houston Business Journal’s Fast 100 List speaks for itself. We walked into that luncheon proud that we had made the list, even if that spot was number 99 or 100. To be named a top 10 company was mind blowing.

Here’s to the new year and here’s to achieving goals. And don’t forget to write them down.