One Thing Better

How to Achieve More With the Right Goals

Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that’s me) shares one way to be happier and more effective at work — and build a career or company you love.

Today’s edition is sponsored by Dare Gift Boxes, a perfect gift for the holidays. See details at the end of the newsletter.


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You have many goals. But you’re not sure how to reach them.

Maybe some goals fell flat this year. Maybe others feel perpetually out of reach.

Today, I’ll help you set goals you can actually reach — by avoiding the goals that’ll drag you down.

To start, I’ll tell you about the goal I hear all the time… and why I keep telling people to ditch it.

What everyone (unfortunately) wants

I was recently talking with the founder of a restaurant company. It’s successful. You’ve probably heard of it.

“My goal,” this person told me, “is to be on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine.”

I hear this all the time — from big-name founders, executives, YouTube stars, investors, and more. It used to make me uncomfortable. Here were all these accomplished people, asking me to fulfill their long-held desire. And here I was, with the theoretical ability to do it — even though I probably wouldn’t.

Now I’m used to this. And if someone seems open to advice, I always tell them the same thing:

“I really appreciate that,” I said, “but the cover is not a great goal.”

Because here’s the thing: There is nothing specific that you can do to achieve this goal. There are no metrics, no qualifications, no barometer, and nothing to work towards. It is not an award, and it does not mark a certain level of success. The decision is completely subjective — it’s just whoever a small group of people at Entrepreneur think would make a good cover.

If you set a goal based on something you can’t work toward, then you’re setting yourself up for a quest with no ending. You might feel like a failure, unnecessarily so — because you chose a goal that’s disconnected from everything you can achieve.

So here’s a better way to set goals: Set them based on actions — not based on outcomes.

How to set action-based goals

There are things we can control.

There are many more things we cannot control.

We all know this. But we don’t always respect it. We sometimes throw ourselves into situations outside our control, and then measure ourselves against outcomes we couldn’t shape. That’s not fair!

So let’s start setting our goals differently.

Here’s how we usually articulate our goals: “My goal is to…”

I don’t love that. It’s like marking a spot on a map, but with no plan to get there.

Start your sentence like this instead: “I’m going to…”

Now follow it with an action you will take — not an outcome you desire.

For example:

  • Bad: “My goal is to hit $1M in revenue this year.”
  • Better: “I’m going to reach out to 10 new potential clients every week and refine my sales process.”

Or…

  • Bad: “My goal is to get promoted to VP by next year.”
  • Better: “I’m going to demonstrate leadership by taking on a challenging cross-department project and delivering measurable results.”

Or…

  • Bad: “My goal is to have 50,000 email subscribers.”
  • Better: “I’m going to publish a high-quality newsletter every week and promote it consistently on LinkedIn.”

Notice how all the “bad” goals are anchored to a number or achievement. The “better” goals are simply committing to an action.

When you do this, you never measure yourself against an arbitrary number. You only measure yourself against your own efforts.

How this helped me not go crazy

As any author can tell you: Launching a book is awful. It is endless work. Extremely hard. And it never feels like enough.

I went through this in 2022, when preparing to launch my book. People kept asking me: “Is your goal to get on the New York Times best-seller list?”

At first, I wanted to say yes. Then I realized: The much better answer is no.

Don’t get me wrong — I’d love to make the list! But I couldn’t make it a goal.

Why? Because I was too many degrees removed from the outcome. I couldn’t control how many people bought my book, or whether they bought it at the right time from the right retailers, or whether the mysterious Times list-makers included me.

If my goal was to make that list, then I was basically saying: “My sense of worth is in someone else’s hands.”

Instead, I set three goals:

  1. Write a book I was proud of.
  2. Write a book that matters to people.
  3. Use it to accelerate my speaking career.

In the end, I did not make the Times list. Womp womp. Although, a friend sent me this photo from the Orlando airport — so lol, I guess I was a best-seller there!

A stack of books on a shelf
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But whatever.

In the end, I was proud of the book. Many people said it changed their lives. And my speaking business accelerated. So I consider it all a success.

(Btw, my 2025 speaking calendar is filling up quickly. I’d love to speak to your team, virtually or in person — learn more and get in touch!)

That is the difference between outcomes and actions.

You cannot control an outcome. But you can control your actions.

So why not set goals based on what you control?

It’s time to think about 2025 goals!

You accomplished so much this year. And you have so much room to grow next year.

So don’t handicap yourself at the start. Don’t say, “Next year is riding on someone else’s decision.”

No. It’s riding on you. You’re in control. You drive it forward. You can make it great, one action at a time. And the outcome will follow.

That’s how to do one thing better.


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