Goal setting tips and tricks from highly effective people
Inspiring Goals: Reinventing Proofreading
Interview with Adam Harvey, CEO of Proofed
‘Inspiring Goals’ is a series of interviews with highly effective people who have set extraordinary goals on the Elephants platform.
By highlighting their stories we hope to inspire others to start taking an intentional approach to living a more connected, accountable and fulfilling life.
Today we are interviewing Adam Harvey. Adam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Proofed, a marketplace that connects professional proofreaders and editors with businesses, researchers, and individuals all over the world.
Elephants: Hi Adam. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your relationship with goal setting? Is it something you’ve always done?
Adam Harvey: I’ve always set myself goals, but the process has definitely become more concrete as I’ve got older. For example, I always wanted to do a tech masters, to move to New York (from the UK), to experience working at a major corporation, and to start my own business. I always thought about those things as my major life goals, but I never wrote them down anywhere. I’ve also always set myself personal goals related to exercise, health, and finances. I like to tie goals to rewards, specifically with health and exercise. An example of this is whenever I go out for dinner and know I will be having a couple of drinks, I always try to go out for a run that morning; it just makes me feel like I’ve earned it and can enjoy the experience more.
Elephants: So tell me, how did you come to build Proofed? What was the idea behind it?
AH: Credit for the initial idea belongs to Proofed co-founder and COO Kiran. He really struggled to find a great proofreading and editing service, so he decided to create one. He found his experience with other services to be clunky and time-consuming, so we designed a customer-first solution: allowing for the instant submission of documents, which we immediately pair with the most relevant editor for professional editing within 24 hours. At the beginning of our journey (10 years ago), we were the first company to offer this instant submission and payment process, which really set us apart from our competitors. Keeping our customers at the centre of everything we do has been fundamental to Proofed’s growth and our values, and it has allowed us to maintain the highest-quality service and a very loyal customer base. It also means that we always have a best-in-class platform.
Elephants: Was building Proofed a relatively straight shot, or were there some changes and pivots in the way the business developed?
AH: For the first seven years, it was a fun creative project we ran while maintaining independent careers; however, it got to the point where the company growth warranted our full-time commitment and our loyal customers deserved that. This was probably the most pivotal change to the business. Around this time, we decided to focus on supporting business customers with their editing needs whilst providing a self-service portal to maintain our direct-to-consumer offering. This enabled us to scale, reduce peaks and troughs in the flow of work, and to build the world’s best editing team. We also used to maintain separate websites and brands related to those websites, which we switched to a single consolidated brand in 2017. This was a game changer, reducing complexity and broadening our brand reputation.
Elephants: What a story! From a side hustle to what it is now. And obviously the aggregation was another big move. They must have been hard decisions for you to make at the time, but they certainly seem to have paid off. Risky, but worth it!
Fast forward to today, what are some of your ambitions for the future of Proofed? AH: I think about our goals for Proofed as a business differently than from my professional goals, even though they are intrinsically linked. It really is key to our business to set overarching annual goals; we use an OKR process to do this. OKRs are used to establish overall objectives and key achievable results related to those objectives. I think this concept is a great way to approach goals both personally and professionally, as it provides a framework to deliver major achievements by completing manageable bitesize tasks. For Proofed, our ambitions are to grow our business support services, so we’ve spent a lot of time setting up the structure for success: establishing an amazing team, functionality, and processes that enable us to rapidly scale, while maintaining service quality. We are now starting to use this foundation to scale in supporting many more businesses (and individuals) that hugely benefit from our service.
Elephants: So it sounds like there are some meaty challenges ahead. Any tips for breaking down big ambitions into concrete goals? AH: We have quarterly planning sessions to catch up on progress and reflect on successes and challenges. Each major objective we have is given an aggressive, but realistically achievable timescale. We do the same thing for the key results linked to those objectives and try to align the entire teams’ development plans and professional goals against those OKRs. This helps everyone understand how they are contributing to the success of the business and supports them in delivering on their goals.
Elephants: As you know, a big motivation for wanting to build Elephants was to help people achieve a better work life balance. As someone who has an extremely demanding day job, how do you think about prioritization between work goals, and personal goals?
AH: Balancing personal and professional goals is imperative for me to achieve both. The more satisfied I am personally, the more I achieve professionally.
I’m also a huge believer in exercise and healthy living and the positive effects this has on goal delivery and every part of your life. Staying active keeps me in a great mind frame to best deliver professionally. I think it can also be very difficult to put in a huge number of hours at work and still deliver on your personal goals. That’s why it’s so important to try and secure a job that you enjoy — so it doesn’t feel like work — to set yourself goals at work so you are using your time professionally to develop, and to balance work with time off, as well as family and personal time.
Elephants: Digging into that a little bit, and thinking ahead, what’s your number one personal goal for Q1 2021?
AH: My fiancé and I had to postpone our wedding due to the pandemic, and while this had a relatively minor impact on our lives in comparison to what so many people have gone through, we would really love to get married in 2021. I’ve also had a recurring wrist injury that has restricted my ability to exercise, so I’m committed to getting that fixed next year.
Elephants: Congratulations on the impending nuptials! I have my fingers crossed for you. Unfortunately I imagine there are quite a few people in a similar position. Changing tack a little bit, what influence do you think sharing your goals with friends has had on what goals you set, and how you go about achieving them?
I find that sharing goals increases your chance of success in delivering on them. Structured goal setting at work is proven to increase success in delivery, because you publicly state what you are going to do, introducing accountability and allowing for the creation of a support network of people who are aware of your goals and can help you achieve them. That’s why I think Elephants is such a clever idea, because sharing personal goals with people that care about you will add a level of support and personal accountability to help you get there.
Elephants: And how did you go about choosing your accountability partners? Was it an easy decision who to invite to your group?
AH: This was quite easy for me as I already had a very casual WhatsApp group set up with some friends where we shared running goals. I simply invited those people to join me on Elephants. The intuitive functionality, goal segments, and reminders has helped everyone create, share, and feel more motivated to complete their goals.
Elephants: I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you for the kind words! As one final question before I let you go, any tips for people thinking about setting goals and sharing them with friends for the first time?
AH: If you aren’t used to setting goals, then I think starting small and working your way up is essential; it will help you to see progress in and to think about bigger goals that are achievable.
Right, so getting some runs on the board, and then building up from there. Makes a lot of sense to me! And with that, I’ll let you go, but I really appreciate your time! Thanks Adam.
Adam Harvey is a Co-Founder and CEO at Proofed.
Proofed helps people take their writing to the next level, providing fast, affordable, high-quality proofreading and editing services.
Proofed ensures that authors, students, professionals, businesses, and researchers at all English levels are confident their writing is error free and the best it can be.
Adams goals for 2021
Professional
- Listen to one rework or rocketship.fm podcast a week
- Have two 1–1s with the team per week
Health
- See an orthopedic specialist about my wrist injury
- Do three Peloton classes per week
- Run 20k per week
Relationships
- Get married
- Cook for my partner three nights each week
Financials
- Contribute 15% of my monthly income to my SIPP (Self-investment Pension Plan)
Leisure
- Finalize plans for our kitchen extension
- Plant evergreen hedges in the front garden
