Nathan Joyes | Wednesday, January 28. 2015 | Comments (2)

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Jim Estill started a tech distribution company out of the trunk of his car and grew it to $350 million before selling it to SYNNEX where he was CEO for 5 years, driving their sales from $800 million to $2 billion. In his classic humble style, Jim says, "we grew from 0 to 2 billion dollars and we never had an original idea." Jim has learned that execution is a lot more important than having a great idea and notes that, “many people fail not from lack of ability or brains or even courage – they fail because they have never organized their energy around a goal."

If you do not have an action plan to go with your goals, then you really just have dreams.

I have the privilege of championing one of Communitech’s Peer2Peer groups and when we were thinking about a session on setting goals to kick off the new year, I immediately thought of Jim Estill. Jim wrote the book on time leadership (literally) and is an advisor to many tech companies, so I asked him if he would do a goal setting seminar for our Peer2Peer groups. There was one catch though… in the spirit of Peer2Peer groups, I needed him to do the seminar for free. Always the gentleman, Jim graciously agreed; although not without noting that I owe him “big time”.

People tend to overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

The seminar was well attended by about 200 business professionals, and needless to say, Jim left us with some great tips on setting and achieving goals. Here are ten things that I learned:

1. Start by considering your values.


2. List 3-5 goals to work on this week that align with your values.


3. Write down all the benefits of achieving each goal.


4. Create a to-do list that supports your goals.


5. Each morning, record what you plan to accomplish that day in a journal.


6. Willpower is limited, so develop good habits.


7. Avoid temptations, or at least make them difficult.


8. Do the worst thing first thing each day.


9. Compare your journal to your accomplishments at the end of each day.


10. Adjust your goals weekly, deleting those that you did not spend at least one hour on.

The "Big Time" Time Management Watch

The session was very valuable to all those who attended and although I wanted to repay Jim “big time”, the best I could do was to present him with a Time Management Watch that I cobbled together from a dollar store clock and a wrist band. My goal is to start distributing them out of the trunk of my car… just working on the to-do list…

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