The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 393 - BHAGs

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer.

Jen: I am really excited to talk to you today, because I had a bit of an aha moment the other day about how to create...what should we call it...a risk progression, as one moves towards a goal. Like, how do you coax yourself to take bigger and bigger risks?

Pete: Right. A risk progression.

Jen: Maybe.

Pete: I have no idea where this is going. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Risk progression. Like, I start with a less risky idea and I slowly move to a more risky idea? Is that what we're talking about?

Jen: Yes, that is exactly what I'm talking about. Okay, so here's the origin story. So every year in the Career Collective, we do a month that we call the Reach Out Rally. The Career Collective, listeners, is my online community for artists who are working on career strategy. And so, we do a month, we call it the Reach Out Rally.

Pete: And can I say, this Career Collective consistently comes up with the best ideas, the best names for things. The alliteration of this whole thing, it's just, it's so good.

Jen: Yes, I love it. It is a really fun creative project for me. And I love the community so much. But in any case, we have a Reach Out Rally month coming up. And so, each time we do this, I try to come at it from a different angle. And so, I was thinking, "Okay, there are some people in the group who now have been here for multiple Reach Out Rallies. Maybe it's time to raise the bar and challenge them a little bit more." So, I should back up a little bit and say that a Reach Out Rally is essentially exactly what it sounds like. You practice reaching out to people. But in the past, I have created a Bingo card that has a bunch of different methods and categories of people, and we play Blackout Bingo. So it's like, "Someone you haven't spoken to in more than a year," "Someone you worked with once upon a time," "Via email," "Via DM," "In-person," "Send a compliment," "Ask a question," "Ask a favor." So, you know, we do Blackout Bingo.

Pete: As an aside, I borrowed this idea off you. And just this morning, I have an email in my inbox from, you know, like a corporate senior leader. And the subject line is, in all capitals, "BINGO".

Jen: Yes, I love it. Well, that is the most fun part, is when someone gets bingo and shouts it from the digital rooftops, and the rest of the group is like, "Damn, I better step it up."

Pete: That's great.

Jen: So, this year...spoiler alert for those of you in the Career Collective, this is coming for you. I've decided that people are going to need to get kind of specific about how they want their Reach Out Rally to move the needle in their career. So, getting clear on what the purpose of the experiment is that month. Maybe it's to connect with creatives who have access to the opportunities I'm looking for access to. Maybe it is to find a new collaborator to write with. Maybe it's finding new agent representation, whatever it might be. And here's what I came up with for the progression. I'm so excited about it, Pete.

Pete: She's so excited. I wish everyone could see how excited your face is right now. This is great.

Jen: Are you familiar with the term "BHAG"?

Pete: Yes, I am. It's a throwback to my first ever corporate job, when I was an account manager back in my early twenties and I looked after a bunch of corporate accounts. And I was encouraged to come up with a BHAG, i.e. a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, for each of my corporate clients. Which, I've got to say, is not super easy to do, as it relates to corporate clients and having a big hairy audacious goal. But I am familiar. I feel like you're going to have a much funner, more creative version of a BHAG though.

Jen: Well, I love the term "BHAG". I think it's so silly. Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And what occurred to me is that if you go backwards through a BHAG, you can create a risk progression. So, let me spell it out for you backwards. Level 1: Goal. Level 2: Audacious Goal. Level 3: Hairy Audacious Goal. Level 4: Big Hairy Audacious Goal. So as this relates to the Reach Out Rally (but you can apply this to so many other things), if you know you're going through this progression and it's got four levels, you're like, "Okay, the thing that I'm aiming for is to meet a new potential writing collaborator. Okay. So, my first reach out is just going to be a goal. It is just going to be a goal. I'm going to ask my friend who's in a writing group, 'What does it take to become a member of that group? What's the application process?' Okay, that's a goal. I'm going to get information. Now, the audacious goal might be to write to the head of the program and say, 'Hey, I'm going to follow all the appropriate steps, but I wanted to introduce myself, so you need to keep an eye out for my application.' Maybe that's an audacious goal."

Pete: There we go. That's a good idea. Everyone listening, take notes.

Jen: But then, a hairy audacious goal could be to write directly to a writer whose work you admire and say, "Hey, I'm working on something that I think your voice in this might be the level up it needs." That's a pretty hairy audacious goal. And then, a big hairy audacious goal might be to write to the person who won best screenwriter at the Oscars this year and say, "Want to collaborate with me on my next project?" That would be a big hairy audacious goal.

Pete: I love it.

Jen: It reminds me of how you and I have talked in past episodes about 10x-ing something, and really giving yourself permission to blow the walls out and see much bigger possibilities, even if they're ridiculous. And in this case, it's hairy.

Pete: Right. Hairy and ridiculous.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Okay, two reactions. First, when you said, "I've figured out a way to inverse this or put this backwards," I wrote down, "GAHB?" G-A-H-B. I was thinking, "What's she done here? A goal that is hairy, audacious, and big. I guess it's still the same. GAHB." So, that wasn't what you meant. That was just a funny aside. But the other thing is, in the same way you mentioned this reminded you of the 10x conversation we've had before, it actually reminded me of, gosh, one of my favorite and most impactful podcast episodes of all time was an interview with Brian Chesky, who founded Airbnb, with Reid Hoffman on the Masters of Scale podcast. I can literally picture the car park that I was sitting in, in Melbourne, when I listened to this podcast. And I couldn't get out of my car to go and do the groceries because I needed to hear what was about to happen next.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: That's wild. That's such a vivid memory. Anyway, one of the things that Brian talked about is in the very, very, very early days at Airbnb, they asked themselves a series of questions that sounded...and I'll paraphrase, I'll put the actual link in the Box O' Goodies. But it sounded something like, "So what does a five-star experience at an Airbnb feel like, sound like, look like?" And they mapped it out. "It's a beautiful venue. Maybe there are really great photos, so that you know that the venue is great. When you get there, the following amenities are there, etc." And then, they said, "Okay, what would a six-star experience look like? What would a seven-star experience look like? What would an eight-star," I think they went up to, "What does a 10-star experience look like?" And it was something absurd, like, "A helicopter picks you up from your destination where you are, and takes you to the helipad that whisks you away." It was absurd. But the point of doing it enabled them to see these really actually interesting and accessible ways that they could make an experience exceptional. That most hotel rating is only up to five-star, but if you expand that to the big hairy audacious version of that, the 10-star, what would that look like? However, they laddered themselves up there. They worked their way up from five to six to seven, in the same way that you're saying you go from goal to audacious to hairy audacious to big hairy audacious. And that, for whatever reason, makes it easier, more accessible, because I just have to go one rung of the ladder at a time.

Jen: Right. And you've given yourself a warmup.

Pete: Right.

Jen: You know you can do the goal. The goal is not that big a deal.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: The big hairy audacious goal might be the deal.

Pete: The other thing that this has reminded me of, I guess I do a version of this without knowing that that's what I was doing. I've literally pulled up my spreadsheet that tracks this. Each year, for better or worse...we can go into a whole bunch of stuff around goals, which we have before. I like to just set a revenue goal for my business every year, just because I find it useful, motivating, and an interesting thing to track. So, I set a revenue goal. But then, I do something else. I set what I call a cheeky goal.

Jen: I love it.

Pete: That is the...I guess that's the audacious goal version of this. I only have two levels, though. And now, I'm looking at it and going, "Huh, maybe I need the four. Maybe I need the hairy and the audacious. And then, the big and the hairy and the audacious." But I've done this for myself, to go, "The goal would be a really great thing to achieve. And I'm super happy if I get that. But what does the cheeky version look like? What's the like, 'Oh, that's a bit risky. That's exciting. That's a bit crazy if I did that.'"

Jen: I love that so much. That's making me think about how you might apply the concept of the BHAG progression to something like negotiating or laying out certain terms for a possible agreement. Like as an example, if you sat down and were like, "Okay, I have this opportunity." We have a lot of people who listen to this podcast who own their own business, and therefore set their own rates. So you sit down, and you go, "Okay, so here's my goal. The audacious goal with this client would be this. The hairy audacious goal would be this. The big hairy audacious goal would be this." It might give you the confidence to go beyond the initial goal. And / or, one of my favorite tools is a range. "Typically when I do this kind of work, it is somewhere between goal and big hairy audacious goal."

Pete: Nice.

Jen: And let them figure out where in the scale it's going to be.

Pete: 100%. I mean, I do this. So many people do this with proposals. Everyone who is listening to this podcast, I'm sure, has been influenced by the psychology of providing three options that start at the bottom of a range and end at the top of the range. And maybe you list in each of those three options, the benefits of said option and the inclusions of said option. And you could think about it as like the far left or the base package might be the goal, and the far right or the premium option might be the big hairy audacious goal.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And so, you can then have the person that you are servicing, the client or hopeful prospect, to choose where they want to be on that spectrum. And yeah, I think that's interesting to overlay that as your big hairy audacious goal. The thing that I feel compelled to call out is, for me, the goal is still something I have to be happy with.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Like Level One, I'm still pumped or it's still successful if that's all I do. If I have a four stage goal and I have this idea of, "Wow, it would be awesome if I did get the big hairy audacious one, but I still want to be comfortable, satisfied, and happy with the goal being achieved, because it's almost like the minimum dose of happiness or the minimum level of satisfaction," not to go, "Well, actually, the one I want is the big hairy audacious. I'll actually be annoyed if I just achieve the goal." It's like, "Well, then, maybe we've got the scale wrong here."

Jen: Yeah. That's a really good point.

Pete: I guess in the hotel example, a five-star hotel is still a great experience, but a ten-star is outrageous. But five-star, I'm still very, very, very happy in a five-star hotel.

Jen: When I'm thinking about this in relationship to taking risks, I think about the baseline goal as a real confidence builder and almost like a quick win, where it's like, "This is something I know I can do, and it doesn't cost me a lot emotionally to try it." And I get this dopamine hit, I guess.

Pete: Yeah. It's a momentum builder, isn't it?

Jen: Right.

Pete: It's like the first lap of your five lap run or something, and you're like, "Oh, okay, I did the first one. I feel pretty good. Now, I can keep going. I'm going to continue."

Jen: I'm realizing now, I have some frameworks within my studio that I've never overlaid this particular idea, but they kind of work like this. For example, we did an episode once upon a time called The Five Points of Contact, which essentially explains the arc of an audition (and explains many an arc). And the very first goal would be to introduce yourself. "This is who I am." If you can nail that goal, you can move on to the audacious goal, which is to perhaps strike up a conversation with the auditors. And then, the hairy audacious goal, which might sound odd to listeners who are not actors, but when someone behind the table in an audition says, "Thank you," you answer audaciously, "You're welcome."

Pete: I love that. That's audacious? It's just like, what are we talking about? That's wild.

Jen: Right? And then, maybe the big hairy audacious goal in an audition is to compliment someone in the room on your way out. Like maybe the person, if you were singing, who was playing the piano for you, "You are amazing. That was incredible." So it's like a momentum builder, a courage and confidence builder. I just love it.

Pete: Yeah. I'm a little stuck on how that is a BHAG to say, "Thank you," to the person that played the music in an audition. That's wild. It's a threatening place. It's a confronting place. I get it.

Jen: It really is.

Pete: I get it. I mean, I don't get it, but I do get it. Well, I love this.

Jen: Maybe for the purposes of this conversation, it needs to be a BHAR.

Pete: What are you talking about now? No G, just an R?

Jen: So it's risk, an audacious risk, a hairy audacious risk, a big hairy audacious risk, all in pursuit of a goal.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah. Or it could be BHARG.

Jen: Oh my goodness.

Pete: Big hairy audacious risky goal. I'm just adding letters for the sake of it now.

Jen: It is kind of fun though. And even having the silly acronym alleviates some of the pressure around it.

Pete: Yeah. And either way, what I take away is like, what's the goal? And then, sort of yes anding it four times. You know? Like, what's the goal of this? Okay, yes. And what would slightly more look like? Ooh, this, yes. And what would slightly more audacious look like? What would hairy...I mean, "What would hairy look like," is just such a great question to ponder. What would a hairy version of this goal look like? So, I love it. Encouraging us to think bigger, but to think bigger in a way that feels accessible and achievable and step-by-step.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.