Your process for goal achievement is key. Because you’re doing a lot behind the scenes before anyone even knows that you’re alive. So we’re essentially moving from being invisible and working hard behind the scenes — to ideally, at some point, bursting on the scene and being recognized as a force in your marketplace. But none of that happens by accident and it doesn’t just come from setting goals. It requires having those processes in place. David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing your process for goal achievement. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, David. Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to be with you. I’m going to be brutally honest here. I’m really good at setting goals. But I’m not very good at mapping out how I’m going to accomplish those goals. I think it’s good that I’ve taken that first step. And I kind of have a mental idea, but I never really go back and say, “yeah, I accomplished that thing.” So I think I’m missing some of the motivation to set more goals. That’s one of the key things about goals. Once you’ve checked ’em off, you should feel good about yourself and then do more goals. And I don’t know if I ever reached that point. David: Interesting. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. I know I’ve certainly had that situation over the years and still do to some extent. We talked about goals several weeks ago. I really wanted to get to the idea that it’s great to have the goal. But it’s like looking at the top of a ladder and saying, okay, that’s where I want to go. Or it’s like looking at the sky, that’s where I want to go. But ultimately, the goal isn’t what’s going to get you there. The goal may motivate you, but the goal is not going to get you there. Ultimately, it’s the process that’s going to get you there. Assuming you have a process. So if the goal is to generate a certain amount of revenue in your business, or have a certain amount of money in your personal bank account, or start a business, whatever your goal is, the next step is to say, okay, what are the specific steps? What are the combinations of tasks and projects that are going to be necessary to help me achieve that goal? Because the tasks, the individual things I have to do, and the projects, essentially the things that are composed of a bunch of tasks, are what’s going to get us there. And the combination of these things is essentially the process. If my goal is to generate a certain amount of sales revenue, and I’m not there yet. I generally want to start with a process that says, Okay, let’s take a look at exactly how much your existing clients are worth to you. What did they spend with you last year? And then, do I think they’ll spend more, less, or about the same this year? And generally, you’ll have a reasonable idea of that. Whether it’s going to be about the same, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. You won’t know for sure, but it’s a great place to start. Then you say, “Okay, if I can count on my existing customers for this level of revenue, and I want to get to that level, how do I fill that gap? Because if this is the goal and this is where I am now, then we have to look at the process that will get us there. What’s the combination of tasks and projects that will allow us to reach that revenue goal? When we focus on that, everything we do during any given day now leads toward the goal. As opposed to just having scattered focus, just doing a bunch of different things. Just thinking about our goal, but not exactly sure how we’ll get there. But when you start to think of it in terms of tasks, projects, and ultimately your process, that’s what’s really going to make the biggest difference. Jay: Yeah, I think if you don’t do that, it can be really demotivating, right? I think I’ve told you in the past, when I was in the restaurant business just starting out, I would have an area manager come into the store and we would set goals, and the first one is always what you’re talking about. How are you going to increase sales? And he would just increase our sales on the goal by ten percent, right from the previous year and never tell me what I can do to, you know, I’m new, “okay, how am I going to do that? What are the steps?” And it was just this arbitrary number that he came up with and never trained me or told me how I could accomplish those things. So then the follow up is like, “oh, you didn’t achieve your goal.” And I’m like, “well, you never told me how to achieve my goal,” right? David: Yeah, the what is very often easy, it’s in the how that we get into all the details. And that’s what’s missing with a lot of people .And that’s why when we work with our clients in our Total Market Domination course, majority of it is the how, the specific steps that need to be taken in order to get to the desired goal. And when I say how, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it, either. It means somebody has to do it, right? So you can get into this idea of who versus how, which is a great book, by the way. Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy wrote a book called Who Not How. Excellent book. But that concept still requires somebody to know how to do the things. So either you’re going to find somebody who has that skill and you’re going to get them to take those actions, or you’re going to have to know what to do, either do it yourself or train someone else to do it so that those things can be done. And then when you start focusing on that sort of approach, that becomes your process. You say, “okay, when I take this action, then I am likely to get this result.” And then you look at those results and you gauge it based on what you’re expecting. And then you tweak and adapt it as you go. But ultimately it’s all about the process and whether the process is figuring out what to do or knowing what to do and then taking the action to do it, or whether the process is identifying the right people that you need to bring into your organization to help you with it, it ultimately all boils right back down to the process. Jay: Yeah, I think it’s so important to say it’s not all on you, right? Identify those things that you need to do and put the other things on other people’s shoulders so that you can focus. I also love how you pointed out that as you’re assessing your goals, if you’re not getting there, you need to tweak and change. I think sometimes we just say, Oh, that was it. Didn’t work. So I guess that that goal wasn’t right and so again, you’ve demotivated yourself instead of kind of reworking that goal. David: Yeah, and so often we don’t even realize how close we are to something until it actually happens. And it reminds me of that analogy about how an airplane is off course for 90 percent of the flight. And so the pilot’s job is to make constant little tweaks to get you back on track toward wherever it is that you’re going. So you take off, you’re headed in a direction, and then there’s a little bit of wind and it sends you one way and then they have to compensate for it. So most of the little steering we do, even when we’re driving a car, your hands are moving slightly back and forth. And the reason it’s doing that is because you’re slightly off course most of the time. When you use an analogy like that, and when you recognize that it’s exactly the same in life, it’s exactly the same in business, you’re going to be off course, most of the time. And so you have to just keep adapting and keep making these tweaks to make sure that you’re back on track and following the path that you’ve set, which, of course, in what we’re talking about today is your process, the tasks, the specific things that have to be done, the projects, the longer term things that require multiple actions and the ultimate process that you’re using to get there. Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I also think when you talk about, you know, find the who, I think that one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is they don’t, and I really struggle with this, they don’t share their process with other people. They don’t seek mentorship. And so they’re reinventing the wheel. You know, a lot of these things have been tried and tested and you can skip a lot of pain and a lot of hassle if your who includes somebody else, just another ear call you, right? You know, bend people’s ear and see what they think. And like I said, I really struggle with this. I do everything quietly. And if it doesn’t work, then I’ll go, okay, I should do something else. Cause I don’t want somebody else to know that I failed. David: And of course you haven’t failed until you’ve decided that you failed until you give up on it, right? Because a lot of times we can be trying the same thing and it’s not working. It’s not working. It’s not working. And you keep doing it. And then eventually it works. So it’s like, okay, but if you quit before then, you may consider it a failure, but it might not have failed as long as you keep going. It’s also interesting when you talk about the idea that people tend to keep to themselves and they don’t share stuff. That’s really where we came up with our brand, TopSecrets.com, is the idea that not so much that these things are impossible to find out. It’s just that they’re not often shared. A lot of sales and marketing training boils down to essentially fortune cookie kind of stuff. Be good to your clients and they’ll be good to you. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. And these platitudes are maybe a little helpful, but until you know how to put them into action, until you know the specifics of, “okay, what do I do with that information? How do I get people to know, like, and trust me” if that’s the goal? And they’re three
