Do you often set goals for your event planning career and then give up on them days or weeks later?
By setting goals you’re going through a powerful process of thinking about what you want your future to look like. Your your (ideal) future.
So, even if you feel like an expert goal setter and your event planning career is on track, take a few minutes to learn a new way to reach your goals (no matter what time of year it is!).
Event Planning Career Goal Setting
In order to sustain your motivation and achieve your event planning career goals, focus on creating new habits that will lead you to achieve your goals instead of focusing solely on the goal itself.
For example, I set 12 yearly goals that include contribution and paying it forward, spirituality, travel and experiences, and personal and professional growth and education; then I focus on my habits that will get me to those goals.
It’s a much more effective and productive way to attain success.
For five years I worked with one of the best entrepreneurial coaches in the world, and he taught me incredibly useful tips for achieving my goals. I guarantee that if you follow these 4 simple habits then you’ll see a huge change in your event planning career and your personal life, too.
They are known as the ‘Referability Habits’– by Dan Sullivan:
- Always show up on time
- Do what you say
- Say please and thank you
- Finish what you start
What are your event planning career goals?
Do you want to start your event planning business, get your first event planning client or maybe your top-paying client?
Do you want to workout 3-5 times per week so you look and feel good?
Whatever you want to accomplish, first create the habit and your goal will follow.
It’s about the small daily changes that create our achievements over time.
Here are some examples that you can use:
- I’m going to show up 5 minutes early to every meeting.
- When I commit to something or someone I’m going to do exactly what I said I would do.
- I’ll say please and thank you to people who hold doors for me, give me advice, or whenever I order a meal at a restaurant I’ll thank the staff for their service.
5 Tips to Create a New Habit
Understanding how to create a new habit is vital to your personal and professional success and your event planning career. With a small amount of work, you can create a new habit that takes little effort to sustain. Here are 5 tips to create a new habit:
- Only change 1-2 habits at a time, never more because you’ll give up when things don’t go according to plan.
- Keep a 30-day journal of your new habit – do it at a specific time every day and write about it. Charting your progress will help you stay on track and celebrate your success.
- If you get off track one day, start again the next day. Don’t give up, keep going.
- You don’t have to start on Jan 1 or the 1st of the month or the beginning of the week. Start NOW! The earlier you start the more success you’ll see and the more positive habits you’ll create in a year.
- Reward yourself. This is my favourite! When I create a new habit, and I only tend to do one (maybe 2) per month, I love creating the rewards that I’ll “pay” myself. For example, when I get a new client I do a happy dance. Yes, I actually get up and dance, and sometimes I look like Elaine from Seinfeld!
We’d love to hear from you…
What’s the most important goal you’ve accomplished in the last three months and what habit did you change or use to achieve that goal?
Remember: we love hearing from our event planning community, but links to outside posts and videos appear as SPAM and are deleted.
It means so much to me that you’re a part of our supportive and growing International community, so thank you for sharing.
P.S. Plan any event with The Event Toolkit. Get your copy here.
This is so me. I can no longer count how many times I have set goals and been excited about them, but then after a while I get discouraged and before long, I just give up on them. Soon after, I’m setting new goals that I will likely give up on too. It is true, they say that you must do something for 30 days before it becomes a real habit. So it doesn’t happen overnight.
The best definition of success that I have ever heard is: success is the realization of a worthy ideal. Now, that is an awesome definition of success because it means that as long as you are pursuing a goal that excites you and gets you up in the morning, you are already a success. You don’t have to reach a destination to be successful. A teacher whose trying to improve her students’ grades is a success.
Great points, thanks for sharing Ella!
When I got into Event planning, I did not really have this life changing moment or some epiphany. I graduated college and worked for 3 years in aircraft financing knowing all along that it wasn’t for me. Math was never my favorite subject. I resigned from that job in hopes of finding a better career fit. I’m still not sure how I landed on event planning, but I thought, who knows, that could be fun.
Life has a funny way of working, doesn’t it Alan!
To me it sounds like your referability habits are just manners and common sense. I loved your 5 tips for setting a new goal though and I am hoping to use those in even my weight loss goal this year. Keep a journal is hard for me but I will try my best to do it because I have heard it really helps keep you on track. Thanks for posting this.
Hey Timothy,
Yes, it’s all common sense but it doesn’t mean we do it. That’s why creating the habit is important! For example, you know you should keep a journal to help with your weight loss goals, but it’s “hard for me”. That’s why you want to set the intention and do it every day so it becomes a habit. Soon it’ll be so easy and you’ll forgot that you thought it was hard before you started.
Good luck!
We all want to follow through with our goals better. A friend I consider a mentor taught me to start the planning process by determining the goals and objectives of your event or conference. While some of the basic issues surrounding events are very straightforward (such as location, date and time), a strategic assessment of goals, messaging and planning will further ensure that the event provides tangible value to the department and supports campus efforts.
I think it is safe to say that those who have had military training are used to being punctual for obvious reasons. In fact, a few years ago, New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin (an airforce vet), fined one of his players for arriving to the team meeting one minute late. He lectured his team about being punctual by stating that being on time to team meetings, or anything else in life, is arriving five minutes early.
I started in this industry when I was 21 as an intern. At 22, I was a full-time event planner. Now that I am over 40, I look back and realize I experienced overworked fatigue and stress-heightened motivation that came with trying to be “super planner and manage all the details by myself. Seven years into my career, I started getting help when I began managing a team of eight planners in three U.S. offices.