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| Press Room: Interview Q & A Sheet |
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Members of the press, please contact press@mygoals.com to schedule an interview.
Sample interview questions are provided below. In the absence of an interview, questions and answers provided on this page may be copied freely if the answers are attributed to "Greg Helmstetter, CEO, myGoals.com."
Sample Questions:
What is myGoals.com?
myGoals.com is a Web-based personal productivity tool designed specifically to help people do whatever they set out to do. Some goals are short-term, simple, and practical, whereas others are long-term, complex, difficult, and sometimes very lofty. It makes no difference whether you're trying to lose a few pounds or buy a new house, or take on something big, like reforming public education; myGoals.com is designed to help people accomplish whatever it is they set out to do.
How does myGoals.com help people accomplish their goals?
myGoals.com first helps people create a comprehensive plan for accomplishing their goal. This is achieved through what amounts to nothing short of a breakthrough in the world of Goal-Setting. That is, that people are better at creating a plan of attack if they first identify the obstacles that stand between them and the goal. It turns out that identifying these hindrances and problems between here and the desired outcome is a real "a-ha" for people, in terms of creating a thorough plan of attack, one that will actually work. Once they've gone through this process, we help them stay focused and on track with a full suite of features such as task reminders, tips, and expert advice, all with the explicit purpose of helping them accomplish the goal.
Who uses myGoals.com?
Because myGoals.com is designed to be a universal personal productivity tool—for any kind of goal, big or small—anybody can use it, regardless of what they're trying to get done, from losing a few pounds, to solving a family crisis, to hiring a new sales force, to preserving the rain forests. So as you can imagine, anyone from students to teachers, to soccer moms, to Fortune 500 CEOs would find myGoals.com useful. A better question might be "Who isn't interested in myGoals.com?" Answer: people without access to a computer. For now, anyway. Stay tuned.
How many people actually set goals?
Nearly everybody has goals, whether they state them formally or not, such as places they want to travel, things they want to buy, things they'd like to get done around the house, getting in shape, and so on. And most of us set New Year's resolutions. But only a small percentage of people consistently write down goals, create a plan, and manage the process proactively. This isn't because they're not serious, it's because nobody taught us the habit of goal-setting in grade school and, until now, there was no convenient way to stay on top of it. That's exactly why we created myGoals.com, which uses technology in a completely new way to help anybody and everybody who has something they'd like to get done, even if they've never written down a goal in their life.
What kind of goals do people set using myGoals.com?
You name it, just about everything. There are some goal categories that are very common, such as weight-loss, paying off debt, career, travel, relationships, and so on. Take home ownership, for example. It turns out that just about everybody either wants to buy a house, fix up their house, buy a bigger house, or buy a second house. But then there are hundreds of nichey topics like learning languages, beer making, or people trying to set world altitude records with homemade rockets.
Does this help someone who's never set a goal before?
Yes, myGoals.com is designed to be easy and approachable for first-time goal-setters. For the power-goal-setters, we've got power features that they won't find anywhere else, and we're constantly adding more.
A lot of us know what we should be doing, but then we procrastinate. Can you help?
Absolutely. myGoals.com's mission is "to help you get it done," which means helping people stay focused and on track, and that's exactly what we do. Goals aren't so much about making a big decision to pursue a goal, it's about making the right dozen little decisions every day that get you over the finish line. So once you've created a Goalplan, we help you stay on top of it with email reminders that show up exactly when you've specified, reminding you to do exactly what you've planned to be doing at that time.
Is myGoals.com a motivational tool?
myGoals.com is, more accurately, a personal productivity tool. That many people find it to be motivating is a by-product of the fact that we help people stay reminded about and focused on the goals they've set. We fundamentally believe that motivation must be internal if it is to last long enough to be of use. myGoals.com helps people tap into their own priorities and sense of purpose, largely by reminding them about the goals they've set and the tasks they've asked us to remind them about. It sounds simple, but it works.
How is myGoals.com different from day planners, Outlook, or reminder services?
These are all fine products but they are calendar-centric, focused on a given day's activities such as getting your oil changed or showing up for a meeting or doctor's appointment; essentially, remembering obligations and avoiding schedule conflicts. This type of scheduling is important but utterly fails to put anything into a longer-term context. If you want to accomplish a real goal, it takes a comprehensive and structured approach—a plan. myGoals.com, first and foremost, helps you identify the obstacles that need to be overcome to accomplish your goal, and then the tasks that need to be done. We help you break down complex tasks into manageable, bite-sized tasks. We literally walk you, step-by-step, through a process that works not just for goals you can accomplish in a month, but also for life's long-term goals, even those that take years to accomplish. Only after this planning process do the reminders kick in, and by their very nature they keep you reminded of your longer-term objective, the bigger picture.
Is goal-setting a complicated process?
The amount of effort required to create a good Goalplan depends on the nature of the goal. Setting a goal "To Paint the House" might take just a few minutes, whereas a goal "To Retire By the Age of 45" would take more planning. What we've found is that our process is inherently simple, and therefore fast, but that many people really enjoy the introspective process and level of detail that is possible, spending quite a bit of time on something that is, when you think about it, possibly one of the most important things they'll ever do.
We've also found that there are some goals that many people share, such as goals to pay off their debt or learn to speak another language. So we've created what we call "Pre-made Goalplans" that come loaded with expert advice on how best to accomplish that goal. With a nod to Amazon, call it "one click Goal-Setting" if you like, as these Pre-made Goalplans can be adopted literally in seconds. From there you can customize them to suit your unique circumstances.
Would myGoals.com be useful for New Year's resolutions?
Definitely. New Years is a busy time for us. The popularity of New Years resolutions is proof that everybody has goals, whether they state them officially as goals or not. Unfortunately, resolutions—like diets—have bad reputation because they usually don't work. Gym memberships spike during January and most of the people stop showing up by February. See, during New Years, we're culturally conditioned to reflect a bit on what we'd like to accomplish over the next year. That's a good thing. But we were never taught the skills or equipped with the tools to take the next steps, so resolutions are forgotten before the work has even begun. That's where myGoals.com comes come in. While you're reflecting about what you'd like to accomplish, whether it's New Years or any other day, you need to take immediate action. The first step is to record the goal, in other words, to commit. The next is to make a plan. We make it very easy for people to do this. The next part is to stay focused on the goal every day thereafter, and this is clearly the part where people have historically had the most problems, causing us to refine a very robust solution. With a regimen of highly tailored, user-defined reminders—and some forthcoming features that we can't discuss yet—we've made it virtually impossible to get distracted or forget about what you should be doing at any given time.
You mention short-term and long-term goals. Can you give some examples?
Sure. Some goals are quick and relatively easy, like a goal to throw a party or paint the house. Others are multi-month or even multi-year, such as a goal to get a law degree or retire by the age of 45. Not only is myGoals.com designed to accommodate goals regardless of their time horizon, we explicitly encourage people to set some of each type. The short-term goals are easy to check off and good for building up a pattern of accomplishment. The long-term goals keep you focused on the big picture, life's bigger and, ultimately more important, issues.
What if a person's goals change?
It's very normal and healthy for goals to change, particularly longer-term goals. For that reason, we make it easy to edit your Goalplans, at any time down the road. But there's a dangerous slippery slope between modifying a goal to suit circumstances, and giving up on something prematurely. So we provide lots of advice about how to honestly assess your situation and know when to make changes versus when to stay the course.
You've got features that may sound like heresy to old-school goal-setters. How come?
Yes, that's true. For instance, we provide an option called "on-going goals," which flies in the face of everything that we heard in those seminars during the 80's, that a goal must have a definite due date. While it's true that most goals should have a due date, we recognize that certain "lifestyle" goals such as eating well or spending time with your family—might never end. You want to keep doing them as long as you can. The point is, that's a totally valid and worthwhile goal. Fortunately, technology and the Web have allowed us to do things you couldn't do very well with a paper-based day-planner or Post-It Notes. So, in addition to including the traditional aspects, we've invented some entirely new types of goal-setting aimed at being more effective and more flexible in today's chaotic world.
How can companies use myGoals.com?
myGoals.com is, simply put, a personal productivity tool. It doesn't matter to the software whether you're goal is to learn to fly an airplane or to double your quarterly sales. Or, for that matter, launch an entire new division or reduce absenteeism. Companies are always trying lots of ways to boost productivity, increase revenues, and cut costs, and setting goals is a fundamental ingredient to all of the above. We're seeing tremendous interest coming from corporations, big and small, who are interested in empowering their employees to set and manage their goals. It's not all about the short-term bottom line either; we're finding that companies would also like to wrap corporate training and employee satisfaction initiatives within the context of goal-setting. Naturally, these ultimately affect the bottom line as well.
How did myGoals.com get started?
The founders of myGoals.com each brought an important part of the mix that's required to create a strong software product and company. Parts of that mix included experience from Web-based enterprise application development as well as the self-improvement industry. When it became clear that the category we call "goal-setting" had miraculously been missed during the hyper-experimentation of the late 90's Internet, we acquired what we felt was the best goal-setting methodology ever invented, one that had been perfected over several years in a live seminar format with tens of thousands of participants. From there, we've invented roughly seventy features and methodology improvements which we're patenting, creating something truly unlike anything that's ever been done, either online or offline.
How much does it cost to use myGoals.com?
It's completely free to explore the service, such as reading our pre-made Goalplans. At the point somebody wants to set a goal, then the service is free to try out for ten days. After that it's $9.95 per month and people can cancel at any time.
What age groups use myGoals.com?
For privacy policy reasons, we ask that users be at least 18 to use the service, though we acknowledge that it's not unusual for teenagers to set goals aggressively, particularly related to grades, college admissions, and sports. Aside from that, our service makes no assumptions about age and we have categories of pre-made Goalplans that will appeal differently to different users, such as new parents or retired individuals.
How would my particular audience (or listeners) use this?
[Note: Answer depends on the type of audience. In most cases, myGoals.com has a sub-category of goal topics that directly relates to a particular audience, such as home-based businesses, geriatric health, or home restoration. Additionally, virtually all people set goals across multiple facets of their life such as health, finances, leisure, etc. This means that a user might first come to know of myGoals.com based on a particular goal-setting topic, but then branch out into other areas once there.]
You launched at DEMO 2001. Tell us about that.
The DEMO Conference is the high-tech industry's premiere debutante ball, where, out of 1200 applicants, only a handful of companies are chosen to demo their new products. It was a great honor to be chosen as one of the year 2001's "Companies to Watch," and it's hugely validating to have the show's producers, Chris Shipley and Jim Forbes, lend their endorsement. It suggests we could be onto something pretty big.
People set goals at myGoals.com but you also provide "goal-setting" to other Web sites. What does that mean?
It turns out that goal-setting relates to basically everything. We've created a great general-purpose goal-setting site in myGoals.com, but imagine how many other sites could use the technology for their own unique purposes, like colleges; non-profits who are fundraising; special interest sites for golf, parenting, or healthcare—the list is endless. And when you then consider that virtually every company has goals and that many companies want their employees to set work-related and quality-of-life goals, then it just became obvious that this was a truly universal need looking for a universal tool. Fortunately, we had discovered this early on and architected our technology from the ground-up to be served as a co-branded or private-labeled application into all kinds of different environments. At the end of the day, we're a software developer. We're focused on making the best goal-setting software in the world.
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reserved. Patents Pending.
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