597: Goal Setting: How Scott & Alyssa Use Strengths and Accountability to Achieve Bold Goals

Alyssa Barlow 00:01

I am a creature of habit, and I like to do the same things all the time. But it was a big realization for me this year, is that if we just keep doing the same things all the time, we will only continue getting those same results, and we have to be able to recognize those triggers when we're ready to move on to make things move bigger.

Introduction 00:23

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does, and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:46

Over the past few years, five years in particular, we've had one episode that got so much positive feedback, and we did it year after year after year, and then didn't do one last year. But back by popular demand is another one of the exact same episodes where I get to bring on Alyssa, my wife, and we discuss our goals from the previous year–what worked, what didn't work, our goals for next year. And now I have... I was actually really sad that, you know, I didn't get to do one of these episodes last year. Just timing didn't work out, we didn't put it into the content schedule. But I've really grown to look forward to these meetings, this conversation, these episodes, and really the goal setting process in general. But that wasn't always the case. If we go way back to 2009, our goal setting began from a place of fear. Fear that we weren't going to be able to afford the life that we wanted, fear that really pushed us to get very intentional and then eventually to set some very, very big goals. And once we started hitting those goals, I realized, "Hey, this actually works, and it can be really fun." So now, many years later, I get excited to have these yearly chats, go through this annual process, and this year, we once again decided to let you be a part of our takeaways from doing goal setting for 2025. My hope in doing this is that you can see what really goes into our annual planning, specifically the parts that went well and what we want to do differently, and then be able to take our learnings and use some of those things, use some of the tactics, use some of the takeaways to be able to make your year, 2025, the best year ever for yourself. The year that you hit some very big goals, some huge goals, and maybe even some that you thought were impossible. So all that to say, Alyssa, I'm really excited to have you back, really pumped to have you back for two different reasons. Number one, for people who aren't aware, we've transitioned you in and out of the business in various different capacities several times over. Is that right?

Alyssa Barlow 03:04

Yes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:04

Okay. That is...

Alyssa Barlow 03:06

Some by choice, others not.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:08

Yeah, as it turns out. So before we jump into this, catch people up on what's happened the last couple of years. Because it was two years ago where you entered... you left the business completely. You stepped out of every single role, except for a small advising role, and stepped into your dream job. And there's a lot that's happened since then.

Alyssa Barlow 03:29

Yeah. So two years ago, I stepped away from our business to go back into education, a field that I am passionate about. I did it for two years. I loved my job. It really was my ideal career, until it wasn't. So we kind of did it as an experiment, and I did love what I was doing, but we have taken on some other projects. We opened a short term rental, and life got busier with three teenagers. And so we decided that it was no longer a fit for me to be working outside of the home full time, and so I decided to come back to HTYC a tiny bit, mostly the short term rental family passport, and then being there for our kiddos.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:10

So I gotta say, though, you and I have had a bit of this conversation, but I'm really super proud of you. Because over the last, oh my goodness, yeah, I guess it's been about three years now, you started out you were experimenting, saying, "Hey, you know what, now that the kids are all in school, do I want to go back to a different type of job or role?" And you experimented with that a little bit. You took on, you know, some long term sub positions. Decided, "No, I don't actually want to be in the classroom in a traditional environment." And then you found this really wonderful fit for you that wasn't directly in a normal classroom, that was English language learning, right? And then after you decided this is no longer good for you, and then also, I know you care deeply about our family as it turns out, good for the impact of the family too, you had decided to leave, which I know was a really difficult decision for you. What made it most difficult for you?

Alyssa Barlow 05:14

I think because it really was an ideal position for me. I really loved what I did. I loved the people that I worked with. And of course, I love the kids. That's part of why I went back to education. But it just had become where, rather than one of the things I was going to talk about today, things that energize you, it had become one of those things that instead of energizing me, even though I loved it, it was actually I felt like pulling me away from the family.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:40

Well, you cared about even more at that time. Yeah, absolutely. And so super proud of you for making that decision, incredibly difficult decision, and then acting on it. And then also, you stepped into running our other business, which we formed about a year ago. Is that right?

Alyssa Barlow 05:59

Yeah, almost a year now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:01

Wow, 11 months ago at the time of this recording, we're recording in November. And stepped into like building the operations up and then, and for a little bit of context, you mentioned short term rental. It's a company called Family Passport, and it started out just as a brand, not even its own separate organization, where we had a travel journal, we had a blog, a website, all kinds of things like that. And then has now morphed into short term rentals, vacation rentals for families that want to make memories together, right? So that is... is it fair to say that that has been way outside your comfort zone?

Alyssa Barlow 06:37

Yeah. This is a big step outside my comfort zone.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:40

Yeah, so I think you've done a really nice job at it. I know from all the conversations we've had, it doesn't always feel like that, but what do you feel like was most outside of your comfort zone stepping into that?

Alyssa Barlow 06:52

I mean, parts of it are similar to what I had done for HTYC and in other positions I'd held in the past. Parts of it are not similar. A lot of learning in as far as specifics for analytics and data for short term rentals. I've done analytics and data in other places, but not specific to real estate or rentals.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:18

You know what was really surprising for me, you and I had a conversation, why are certain pieces of analytics and data, why are you glomming on why are some of those pieces easier for you to learn than other pieces? And you made the point that some of the skill sets that you developed in education is looking at all of these different sources of data and analytics, even in some ways that people don't think about it as data and analytics. And so you were able to carry that over from working in a classroom, and I think a lot of teachers don't necessarily think about it that way. And those types of transferable skills was that, and easy is not the right word, that's why you're laughing, but easier in certain circumstances than...

Alyssa Barlow 08:06

Oh, for sure. I mean, just looking at data and understanding how certain sets of data go together to make impacts. Which education is data driven, if you look into it and dive into it, and that was a piece that I actually enjoyed about my most current role is that because I was working with English language learners, there was a lot of data to drive into to help them make progress and understand what I was doing was working or not working. So it's similar, but real estate data is quite different.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:39

Let's relate all of this... let's bring this around the goals. One of the things, like, if we go back more than a few years, I can't remember what year this happened, but at some point you started talking about wanting to own a vacation property in California. It was at the time we were down in California, we were staying at this beautiful Airbnb on the water, and at some point you're like, "Hey, I get used to this. This would be a dream that I would have." And then that evolved into what we'd call a someday goal, if we're borrowing some of the language from the folks over at the one thing, what they might call, and we'd call a "someday goal" of we want to own properties all over the world, especially as our kids grow up, we want to be able to make it easy to be in the places they are. So we want to own properties and spaces, beautiful properties and spaces that are in the same places that they are, and the places that we want to spend more time in. Right? So this evolved into this really big dream. And then, so if we're bringing it closer to today, or rather, this actually started out several years ago, three/two years ago, three years ago. Three years ago, we said, "Okay, well, how are we going to make that happen? Well, we probably need to start with one. How can we buy our first property?" And then that's where we had said, turned it into a goal, and then eventually that goal led to purchasing a property in the same town, the same city that we currently live in. So we bought this beautiful log cabin on the lake across from us. And that was us trying to dive in and see, do we even want to really, like, we have this dream, but is this even now we want to spend our time? So take over for a minute. Like, what has been your... before we talk about our learnings for this past year, what, from your perspective, has that experience been like?

Alyssa Barlow 10:33

Well, definitely the first time I wrote that on a piece of paper. It was a little hard to take because that was pretty early in our, like, dream big goal setting, I guess, if you want to call it that, writing those someday goals. But then the more we talked about it, and the more we planned, the more realistic it became to not just, you know, the someday goal was to own a beachfront property somewhere, and then it kind of evolved into owning multiple vacation properties. But then as we broke it backwards, it was, "well, we have to start with one somewhere. So how do we get to the one?" And so then, as we started making plans, then it became more, "Oh, well, it is realistic. We can start with one to see if we like it" kind of similar to other experimentations, like me going back to work, like started with simple iterations of it to determine whether that was something we wanted to do and fit our life. So yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:28

And now is the part where we get to say, okay, now, several years later, now we actually have this other business. That's one of the goals that we accomplished, which is pretty cool, fun to see that in action now. It was just an idea, just about 3 or 4 years ago, and now it's a reality. But let's go into 2025 here. We did goal setting very differently this year compared to how we've done it in the past. And feel free to go back to some of the past episodes where we've talked about goal setting. And you can find some of the evolution of our goal setting, you can go to episode 316, 439, or 494, we'll link all of those up in the show notes, in the description, and you can just click on them if you're interested. But it's evolved quite a bit. And so this year, we ended up creating a retreat, a small retreat with some really good friends that also wanted to be able to set goals and set really big goals, and that we met 3 or 4 years ago, whatever it's been now, and they've just turned into really phenomenal friends that have really pushed us. And so we went and reserved an Airbnb in Arizona, a beautiful part of Arizona, and over a four, what, four or five day period, we got to have a really fun, wonderful trip and go through all the parts and pieces of what is now our system for a goal setting. So that sets the stage. What would you say, you know, if you're looking back on this year, 2024 goals, and then setting new goals for 2025, what do you feel like worked very well from your perspective? Or what were your... Actually, let's do this. What were your takeaways coming out of this past year, going in and setting new goals for this new year?

Alyssa Barlow 13:29

So I think a couple things that really made this year impactful for us and a big takeaway that I had was that things work great until it's time to move on. And I think this year was our year to move on from what we were doing, not that what we were doing wasn't great, and not that hadn't worked great for us for the past four years, but this year, we were ready for something new, kind of like when we had changed the way we were setting goals the last time, four years ago, we were ready for something new, and then it worked really great for us, until we got to the point where we were like, "Well, we think we need something else in order to keep moving bigger." So we could keep doing the same things again and probably get to the same places. But in order to do something bigger, we had to make some adjustments, and we had to reframe our minds and do things a little differently. So I think that was the biggest thing for me. It's like I am a creature of habit, and I like to do the same things all the time, but it was a big realization for me this year, is that if we just keep doing the same things all the time, we will only continue getting those same results that sometimes we have to be able to recognize those triggers when we're ready to move on to make things move bigger.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:41

Yeah. If we want to level up or grow or evolve in what we are accomplishing and achieving the life that we want to build, and, you know, the people that we want to impact, then that's going to require our the way that we set goals and think about goals to evolve along with that, right? So, yeah, it's the whole "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" thing, right? So that's a really great takeaway. I had a similar one too, and to kind of spin off that, I'll say that one part of my takeaway was that the more years that pass, the easier it is to set more intentional goals, or to be more intentional and more impactful with goal setting. And in some ways, those things didn't necessarily need to evolve. Like here's a couple examples. One of the things that we found, as we were going through and setting goals this year, one part of our system in the past has been taking time to block everything for the entire next year on the calendar that is important, like, what are the vacations, trips, birthdays, time off, all of those types of things, whatever we wanted to make space for in our lives. We've done a pretty good job of that. And so when we started to do that this year, I realized,oh, you know what? In some years in the past, I don't even remember when it was, we created a resource that I'd totally forgotten about, and it's literally a SOP or standard operating procedures for ourselves and our family that has all those days and all the things to think about. So we just literally handed it over to Heather on our team, who's amazing and is our assistant, and she has just added it to the calendar, and it made it so much easier versus trying to think about all those things. So in some ways, we're continuing to build every year, and that gets easier. But the flip side of that is exactly what you said, which is, there are some parts that are no longer serving us well. And I think one big example of that was, instead of going to a conference where everybody, you know, if you have 100 people, or 300 people, or 900 people, or something like that, and it's built around goal setting, you're sort of moving at a pace that you can move with 900 people. And after doing this for 10, 12, 15 years, then we don't really want to move at that pace anymore, necessarily. So it was no longer serving us. So instead creating our own agenda with the people that we wanted to spend time with, and including some of the pieces that were most important to us, that was a huge... I was surprised at how, and maybe I shouldn't be, but I was surprised at how well that worked. When we went through and said, "What do we want out of this goal setting? What do we want to have accomplished? What do we want to achieve? How do we want to feel coming out of it?" And then that led us to, here's a really simple takeaway. You and I both agreed that in past years, we had left a goal setting conference and felt amazing, except that it created a whole bunch of extra work for us. Because we had the goals like 90%, not 100% complete, and we didn't want to do that anymore. We wanted 100% complete, and that required a lot of extra time and space. Right? So we built that in this year. So there's an example. What other takeaways did you have?

Alyssa Barlow 14:56

[18:11] I think the other takeaway I had kind of mentioned earlier, but it actually came out of the portion that you did on strengths, which I've heard you talk about strengths, watch webinars on strengths.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:10

Which little bit of context for people, one of the things that we put into this overall, you know, four or five day agenda, was the three other couples that we were traveling with and setting goals with had asked if I would do a, I don't know, I think it was like a 90 minute session on signature strengths. So something obviously I love. Anyhow.

Alyssa Barlow 18:40

So I've heard all of the content, a lot of different times over the years, I've read it through emails, you know, been immersed in it since you started this business. But what I came away with this time that I had not gotten before was using the activities that energize you are typically the activities that are within your strengths. And so that really helped me with writing my own personal goals, thinking about which activities I'm putting on my calendar that energize me, using my strengths versus just writing a goal because I feel like I need a goal on the paper.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:14

Is this something, "Yes, maybe I want to do it, but is this really how I want to do it in this particular way too?" Yeah, that's really interesting. And I, along the same lines this, you and I have had a lot of conversation about this over the last year, because at the beginning of this last year, we had a team member that went on maternity leave, and then we had a paternity leave, excuse me, and then we had another team member that later on went on maternity leave, and then we had a person transition off the team, and then another person we had been transitioning off the team had been part of the plan for, I don't know, like a year and a half or something, and all that sort of happened around the same couple of months. So I stepped back into a couple of roles in Happen To Your Career that I hadn't done for a really long time. And for some reason, it's easy to say this now, but for some reason at the time, I couldn't see that I was staying longer than I should have. It was great to step in and help out as we were transitioning the team and, you know, finding new people and everything like that. And then, for some reason, I persisted to stay in those areas which I have enjoyed those roles, for example, one of the things that was actually really fun is I got to step in and help out with meeting new people who were considering working with Happen To Your Career, and helping to custom build them plans to be able to accomplish their goals and their career changes and whatever they were going after at that time. So that was really fun. I hadn't done it for a while. And also, it's not strictly in my strengths. There are definitely people, many people out there in the world that are far better at it than I am, and we have some really wonderful people on our team that are in those roles now. So I overstayed my welcome, and it made operating not strictly within my signature strengths, ended up making a good chunk of the year much more stressful than it needed to be, and I forgot about that. It has been a long time since I've done that in that particular way, and I forgot about the profound impact that it has. At some points, it downright sucked, quite frankly. And also, there's this whole thing looming in the back of my mind where it's like, "Hey, this is what we teach people to do, like, you have to be able to role model this." So you know, hindsight is always 2020 but I feel compelled to share that takeaway because it was a relearning for me, just how much of a difference it makes quality of life feel when you get to operate within your strengths versus around your strengths, or even conflicting with your strengths. So yeah, there it is. What any other takeaways that you had from setting goals this year?

Alyssa Barlow 22:09

[22:10] Yeah, I think the other major takeaway that, I think this was one that we both shared, but you know, we did accomplish our goals last year.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:20

Yeah, almost all of them. Right?

Alyssa Barlow 22:21

Yeah. However, like you just mentioned, some things were probably more stressful than they needed to be, or we made them more complex. Or...

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:30

Yeah, we never made things more complex. That's not a thing that we do at all. 100% sarcasm.

Alyssa Barlow 22:34

But I think what we came away with is that we do far better at excelling and succeeding and thinking big and moving big when we have someone to hold us accountable for that. And this last year, we chose not to have a person to hold us accountable for that, to make us sit down with our goals, weekly or monthly, or whatever it was that we chose to do, because we just we're going to go in our own this year, and at the end of the year, it's not that we still didn't accomplish the goals, but I feel like we could have accomplished them with a little bit less stress and a little more ease had we had that support. So I think that was the takeaway that I took. Who can we ask for support? Where can we get support from? And how can we build in that accountability? Whether it's with a coach or with, you know, the members of the retreat that we went to, whatever it is. But that's something that we both flourish off of, is having that accountability and the presence with our goals more frequently.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:35

Yeah, that wasn't a takeaway that I wrote down, but you and I definitely talked about that, because last year we had a coach that we both worked with as a couple, and we were sort of dividing the time, and that actually worked really well for that time period. And then we stopped doing that this year, and normally, what we have done, if we look back and see where were we successful, we've done a great job of lining up people to help us focus on those particular areas, whether it's health, like you were doing that with physical therapy for a while, like, there's a lot of areas in our life where we have, like, find a person help us accomplish whatever that thing is that's really important to us. And then, yeah, we just, in some ways, didn't do that in a poor couple portions of our life this year, and it made it feel very different. It's funny. Yeah, you're right. We still accomplished the thing.

Alyssa Barlow 24:25

We did.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:26

And many of the things, and it felt so drastically different. So, yeah, learn from us. Find the people that are going to make things easier and feel different, in so many different ways. That's a really great takeaway. I think that the last question I wanted to ask here before we break is just when you look back over this last year, what was your favorite goal that we made an impact on or accomplished? You remember off your top of your head?

Alyssa Barlow 24:55

I mean purchasing the short term rental, that definitely was a big one.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:00

That was huge.

Alyssa Barlow 25:01

And then I think, although I guess it wasn't really a, well... So it wasn't really a goal for me to leave my job, however, I feel like it was an accomplishment to be able to make that decision and be in a mindset, in a place where we were able to recognize that although it was my ideal position, it was no longer the right place to be. So I think that was pretty big. And then I guess the other one, you just briefly mentioned physical therapy, but I had a goal to run a half marathon, and I did complete that this year.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:33

Yeah. You're tearing. I know nobody can see, but you're tearing up, and that was a big deal for you, and you did it. So you've run, this is not your first half marathon, you've run...

Alyssa Barlow 25:45

No, I think six or seven.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:47

Yeah, six or seven. So this is not your first rodeo or half marathon. But it was the first one that you did pain free on the other side of it, which is a big deal. I'm proud of you.

Alyssa Barlow 25:59

Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:00

Nicely done.

Alyssa Barlow 26:00

Thank you.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:02

And so on that note, I think that's where we end this. This is our takeaways for the end of 2024 moving into 2025. Hope to do another episode next year. We'll get you back on.

Alyssa Barlow 26:12

All right, I'll be back.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:19

Most of the episodes you've heard on Happen To Your Career showcase stories of people that have taken the steps to identify and land careers that they are absolutely enamored with, that match their strengths, and are really what they want in their lives. If that's something that you're ready to begin taking steps towards, that's awesome. And we want to figure out how we can help. So here's what I would suggest. Take the next five seconds to open up your email app and email me directly. I'm gonna give you my personal email address, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Just email me and put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And when you do that, I'll introduce you to someone on our team who can have a super informal conversation with and we'll figure out the very best type of help for you, whatever that looks like. And the very best way that we can support you to make it happen. So send me an email right now with 'Conversation' in the subject line.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:11

Here's a sneak peek into what we have coming up in store for you next week.

Speaker 3 27:17

I recognized I was burnt out. And here I am, thinking, corporate America just quit. I won't be burned out. That solves my problem, moving on. And it really did not. At all.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:29

When you're burned down, it's easy to think that finding the perfect role will fix everything, but that's not how burnout works. Simply leaving a job doesn't cure the burnout without giving yourself time to recover and get clear on next steps. Burnout has a way of following you around. But here's the real challenge, not everyone can afford to take a complete break from their career to recover. And that's often where we recommend what we would call a 'bridge role' or an intermediary role. A well chosen bridge role can give you the time and space to step back, reset, and figure out what you really want out of your career transition. Think about a bridge role as a strategic step in the right direction, an intentional step building the bridge to your ideal career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:20

All that and plenty more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Make sure that you don't miss it, and if you haven't already, click subscribe on your podcast player, so that you can download this podcast in your sleep, and you get it automatically, even the bonus episodes every single week, sometimes multiple times a week, until next week. Adios, I'm out.