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Is Goal-Setting Outdated? –The Rosalind Resnick Interview

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.

So here’s the question: Is goal-setting an outmoded idea?

Right click here to download the interview!

(1 hour long)

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.

July 30, 2008 | Filed Under Interview, podcast 

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6 Responses to “Is Goal-Setting Outdated? –The Rosalind Resnick Interview”

  1. gammill on July 30th, 2008

    Very important point. Startup stories regularly involve some major shifts in strategy. The internet makes it possible to change course relatively quick. I think the tricky part is to know when to change strategy. I’ve seen it done too early and too late and just at the right time. Tricky business, but the very nature of startup-ville. Good clip Andrew.

  2. Andrew Warner on July 30th, 2008

    Gammill, that’s brings up a question that I’ve been wondering. When are we giving up and when are we adjusting properly?

    In my interview with Ori Brafman about rational decision-making, he told me you have to ask yourself “would I buy this idea/business/whatever now, if I didn’t already own it? Or am I sticking with it just because it’s mine.”

    But I don’t think you can ask those questions on a daily basis and get a clear answer. When MySpace’s parent company was trading publicly, there were days when it was considered such a POS that being inside the company hated coming to work. They struggled for a long time and turned things around.

  3. Andrew Warner on July 31st, 2008

    My brother Michael gave me helpful feedback that I think is worth posting:

    The punching of the screen reminds me of blinking text on a web page. You’re
    not a silly blond with a blog. Just because you’re doing something on a
    webcam doesn’t mean it has to be silly.

    The stumbling at the end reminds me of that unrehearsed unedited mumbling
    video. This isn’t a live video, you can reshoot. The mistake was at the end
    and the rest of the video went well? Oh well, rerecord. Just because you’re
    doing something on a webcam doesn’t mean bumbling should be overlooked.

    I know you want to have a slightly informal feel to the video but it’s
    coming off as childish and unprofessional. If you were broadcasting this on
    TV would you still act the same way?

    These are professional interviews with professional people for professional
    listeners. You can keep it interesting without having to be silly. The
    clipboard is a great example of that.

    The rest of the stuff is great.

  4. on Failure [updated]… « traction matters… on August 5th, 2008

    [...] had me thinking about strategy, decision making and failing.  Andrew Warner of mixergy.com had a post on goal setting where he talked about changing directions in a startup.  That got me thinking a lot about my own [...]

  5. An Ebook On Birds Made $500,000?! The Bob Dunlap Interview : Mixergy.com on October 30th, 2008

    [...] sell your product and earn a commission on what they sell–you can reach unlimited revenue. Rosalind Resnick told me in her interview that affiliate relationships helped her grow from a small home business to a successful, [...]

  6. What He Did After He Sold His Company - The Ryan Scott Interview : Mixergy.com on November 5th, 2008

    [...] I interviewed Ryan Scott to find out what he did after he sold Netcreations, the email list management company that he co-founded. (Curious about how Netcreations was built? Listen to this this interview.) [...]

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