Startup New Year’s Resolutions

Accomplish More. Juggle Less.

When you love what you do, it can be easy to take on more — more tasks, more deadlines, more hours – but before you know it, you don’t have time to do what you loved in the beginning. Don’t just do more – do more of what you do best.

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Hey Shifters!

(I am working on naming this community that I’m building; if you hate the name “shifters,” then let me know)

Every company sets goals at the start of the year. Most of them are wildly unrealistic. I know because we've put plenty of them ourselves at Chezie.

Take two of our goals from this year:

1. Zero customer churn in 2024

2. Moving our product entirely off Bubble

These goals failed because they were unrealistic about things we can’t control or came from people not working with us daily. But more importantly, they taught me valuable lessons about how early-stage startups should approach goal setting.

As we prep for 2025, I wanted to share what I’ve learned about goal setting to make it easier for you.

The EOS Framework

In 2022, I was at a loss as a founder. We had a team of five full-time employees working simultaneously with many different priorities. We did a decent job tracking them, but it never felt like we made real progress, and I kept feeling like I was doing a lousy job as a CEO.

I asked a few founder friends if they’d ever felt like this, and that’s when I got introduced to the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) framework from the book Traction.

While there are plenty of frameworks for different startup workstreams like marketing, sales, and product management, there aren't many for running a company. EOS fills this gap with:

1. Annual Goals

2. Quarterly Rocks (similar to OKRs)

3. Weekly Level-10 meetings to track progress

While we've modified the timing, the core framework still guides how we operate.

Our Old Approach to Goal Setting

Our previous process was deceptively simple:

1. Figure out where we wanted to be at year-end

2. Work backward to set milestones

3. Track progress toward those milestones every week

Using this approach, these are the goals we defined at the top of 2024:

Why This Didn't Work

While it was good for us to identify some EOY targets, these goals were unrealistic because we didn’t consider outside forces.

We wanted to reach $1M in ARR by the end of 2024. At the start of the year, our ARR was about $400K, so we calculated that with an average contract value of $25k, we’d need 32 new customers to reach that goal.

Seems logical, right? Wrong.

What we didn’t consider was how challenging 2024 would be for DEI. We saw longer sales cycles with companies we thought were our ideal customers (tech companies with 1,000-5,000 employees). Surprisingly, we gained traction with larger enterprises—companies we'd initially avoided, thinking their requirements would be too demanding.

This kind of pivot is impossible to predict in January when setting annual goals. You can never predict market changes.

What We've Learned

1. Six-Month Planning Cycles > Annual Goals

Startups move too fast for annual planning. While big companies need that timeframe because they can't move quickly, startups get new insights monthly or even weekly that can completely change their trajectory.

Had we been on a six-month cycle, we could have formally pivoted our goals when we realized that our sweet spot was big enterprises, not mid-sized tech companies.

2. Focus on Process, Not Outcomes

It is tempting to focus on quantifiable outcomes like "$1M ARR" or "32 new customers," but startups lack the data to reliably achieve milestones like those.

A more established company knows that spending $100 on paid ads will generate $250 in new revenue. Early-stage startups don't have reliable input-output formulas like mature companies.

Instead, focus on what you can control. For us, that meant breaking down our revenue goal:

• Assumptions

  • Goal = 32 new customers

  • Close rate = 5%

• What we need

  • 640 prospects (5% of 640 is ~32)

  • 1,280 target companies (assuming 50% of the companies we target enter our pipeline)

  • ~5 new customer touches a day (1,280 / 250 working days per year = 5)

Using these numbers, we know we need to contact five new companies daily to reach that goal. This is what it means to focus on process over outcomes.

We can control "4 outbound touches per day," but we can't control "32 new customers this year."

3. Be Ready to Adapt

Goals shouldn't be abandoned at the first sign of trouble but should change when market signals are clear. When we saw enterprise customers showing interest, we should have moved faster to redirect resources from mid-market efforts to enterprise sales.

Looking Ahead to 2025

I can't share our specific goals for 2025 yet because we haven't set them. And that's okay. We're taking time to analyze what we've learned this year and set realistic, process-focused goals for the first half 2025.

Remember: goals should serve your business, not your ego. They should be flexible enough to adapt to market changes but structured enough to guide your daily actions.

If you're setting goals for 2025, try this approach:

1. Plan in 6-month increments

2. Focus on processes you can control

3. Build in flexibility for market changes

4. Be ready to adjust when signals are clear

See you in 2025!

Happy Holidays,
Toby