Your process for goal achievement is key, because you’re doing a lot behind the scenes before anyone even knows that you’re alive. And so we’re essentially moving from that — 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.
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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 because I think that’s one of the key things about goals is 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. And we had actually talked about goals several weeks ago, but what I really wanted to get into this time around is the idea that it’s great to have the goal, but it’s like looking at the top of a ladder and you say, 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. A process that I generally want to start with is to say, 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? Okay? And then, do I think they’re going to spend more than that, less than that, 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. So then you say, “Okay, if I figure I can count on my existing Customers for this level of revenue, and I’m looking to get to this level of revenue. Then 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’s going to get us there. What’s the combination of tasks and projects that will allow us to reach that revenue goal?
And when we focus on that, everything we do, during any given day is now leading toward the goal, as opposed to just having scattered focus, just doing a bunch of different things, kind of thinking about our goal, but not exactly sure how we’re going to get there.
But when you start to think of it in terms of these types of steps: 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 different things, right? First of all, do they know that I’m alive? You know, creating that initial awareness. And so in our program, we refer to it as First Contact. What is your First Contact with a new prospect or client going to be?
Because that’s going to determine whether or not they even know you’re taking in air on the planet, which is a prerequisite to them either being able to like you or being able to trust you. It all starts with that.
And so when you have specific processes in place for here’s what we do to get ideal prospects, not just anybody who can fog a mirror, but here’s what we do to get ideal prospects to know who we are. And then here’s what we do to get them to like us and trust us better.
We don’t really use those terms specifically in our program, but what we do focus on is how do we create that level of awareness in the mind of the ideal client, so that they think of you as the obvious go to choice for them?
Because if they don’t think of you that way, and they think of someone else that way, then it’s very likely that someone else is going to get the business.
Jay: Yeah. , those are all really, really good points. And like you said it’s a process. You have to be meticulous about it. I think one of the things that is hard is that, you know, we compare ourselves to successful people in business and we know them as already successful.
And so we don’t really understand that they went through these processes, right? They suffered. They struggled. And so the fact that you’re going through that, the fact that it’s hard and it doesn’t look hard to other people, it’s deceptive, right? We don’t see what they’ve had to go through.
We don’t see that they took these steps.
David: Right. And neither does the market. If the people that could buy from us don’t know we’re alive, they have no idea what we’re going through. They have no idea that we’re struggling because we haven’t figured out a way to introduce ourselves to them that is in any way compelling, right?
It’s just like “overnight success” in any capacity usually doesn’t happen that way. There’s usually a lot of behind the scenes. One of the things that we also focus on in our training is the idea, since that theme is so common, we focus on the idea that a lot of what you do in the early stages is going to be invisible.
And so, you’re doing a lot behind the scenes before anyone even knows that you’re alive. And so we’re essentially moving from that, 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.
Jay: Yeah, I think that’s so important. Every once in a while, you see somebody who had an idea and it just explodes, right? And they fall into a pot of gold. But, you know, we tend to think that that’s how it’s going to happen for us.
You know, I see these people who are like influencers on YouTube or whatever, and they have millions of views.
And I’ve looked at some of their stories. And again, what you don’t see is that they publish videos without any success or following for an entire year before their channel blew up. And they just kept pounding their head against a wall, but they had goals and they had plans and they worked towards it. And that’s the work sometimes that we’re just not seeing.
David: Right, and clearly they resonated with other people because back to what we were talking about earlier You’re not going to generate that level of revenue unless you’re impacting enough people.
So if your story is just that compelling and other people say “wow, this is really impressive,” then yeah, then you can really sort of attract that thing without a whole lot of effort. But for most people particularly if you’re going to do something as a business, it’s going to require a little more thought.
Jay: Yeah, it’s going to be hard, right?
But that effort is going to change you. It’s going to change your views. And I think you find out after the journey and after the pain that you’ve learned so much and now you’re better prepared to, you know, set your new goals and to work towards them.
You build a strength, like you build muscle mass, right? So how can people find out more?
David: You can go to TopSecrets.com, schedule a call with myself or my team. We’d love to have a conversation with you. If you know where you want to be in terms of your goals, and you’re not quite sure about the processes for getting you there, this is a great way to have a conversation.
We can see if we think the same way, if our approach makes sense for you. If it does, great. Even if it doesn’t, we’ll have a great conversation. You’ll probably get a lot of good ideas from it.
Jay: Yeah. And sometimes that conversation is enough to get you kind of moving in the right direction. David, as always, it’s great pleasure to talk to you.
David: Thanks Jay.
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