8 months ago, my good friend and I were sitting at a Starbucks on a Sunday morning. This had become a weekly ritual for us. We would get together 3 hours before a hot yoga class, or “broga” as we like to call it, and we would talk about our goals. We never really had an agenda but our weekly sessions quickly became focused on keeping each other accountable. We pushed each other to get better. We started recording each other’s goals so we could ask about them the following week. We became accountability coaches for one another.

Fast forward a couple months and we ended up becoming roommates. I was putting up an obnoxiously huge whiteboard that I always used for brainstorming sessions and then it happened – an idea hit us like a ton of bricks. Since we had both spent most of our professional lives in sales, our crazy idea was to write our goals down each and every week. We then proceeded to schedule a time to stand in front of the whiteboard and talk about our week. Obviously, when you stand up and tell your friend you are going to do something and you don’t, you kind of feel like an idiot. This is exactly what sales organizations figured out a LONG time ago. We wanted to figure out a way to bring this accountability into the living room of our friends and family.

Our grand plan was simple – write our goals down every week and then post them to Facebook for all of our friends to see. We did this diligently for 4 months with approximately zero followers. We always felt that the best leaders lead by example – so we did. We had great weeks and we had terrible weeks. We were excited for people to see our great weeks and embarrassed to showcase our awful weeks. We noticed that the virtual accountability component (i.e. posting to Facebook), gave us a little extra energy to accomplish our weekly goals. BINGO! That’s exactly what we were after. After about 4 months people started to ask us what we were doing. We just told them it was The Whiteboard Experiment, which has since become the name of our little venture.

People were repeatedly asking us how we were doing with our weekly goals and how The Whiteboard Experiment was going. People wanted to know more. They wanted to get involved. People all have burning desire to do great things, a lot of times they just don’t know how to get started. This is where are fun little idea began to transform into something useful for our friends and family – a system.

The Whiteboard Experiment’s objective is to help people make positive, impactful, habit-building decisions every day that will help move them closer to the things that excite them in life. That’s it. We share videos, motivational quotes and of course, our weekly whiteboard (succeed or fail) to help show people that we too, are working to get better each and every week. Ultimately, The Whiteboard Experiment is not for everybody, but we think it could be. If you have some goal that you are reaching for this year, or something that you are desperately working to get better at, join us. We would love to share in your success with you.

https://www.facebook.com/TheWhiteboardExperiment

@TWBExperiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz0GZ9aFXGg

Matthew Harris