Is Goal-Setting Outdated?

If you believe what the self-improvement books about goal-setting, listen to this (audio) interview. You’ll hear Rosalind Resnick talk about the different business ideas she and her partner tried before they hit on the big one — the idea that took their business from a “kitchen table startup” to a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ.

Rosalind Resnick

Rosalind Resnick

NetCreations

Rosalind Resnick is the co-founder and CEO of NetCreations. She turned the 2-person website design firm to a $58 million (sales) industry leader.

A few lessons from this program

My business mind was shaped by reading books like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich as a kid. Most of those business philosophy books talked about setting clear goals and refusing to stop until you achieved them.

As you’ll hear in my conversation with Rosalind Resnick, that’s not how she built NetCreations. She didn’t set out to build an opt-in email business and take it public. As far as I can tell, she didn’t start out with a burning desire to get into the email business in any way. She and her partner tried a bunch of different ideas. Most of them either failed or just did okay. One of the ideas they tried was an email list management business. It hit. She loved growing it. And that’s the business that changed her life.

Have you read Founders at Work yet? Most of the entrepreneurs in that book started out chasing one dream and ended up realizing another. Evan Williams tried building a project management tool and ended up with Blogger. Max Levchin was focused on the Palm Pilot before steering PayPal towards what it is today. And Steve Wozniak was just trying to build cool stuff.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you can hire Rosalind’s company to help guide you and you can read her book about what really goes into building a great success.

Who should we feature on Mixergy? Let us know who you think would make a great interviewee.

x