Intentionality vs. Drift: Charting Your Path to Success

Summary

Business Lunch Podcast Summary
Episode: Intentionality vs. Drift: Charting Your Path to Success
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Host: Roland Frasier
Guest: Ryan Dice

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Business Lunch, host Roland Frasier engages in a deep conversation with Ryan Dice, exploring the delicate balance between intentional goal setting and the often unseen drift that can derail one's path to success. The discussion delves into personal goal assessments, the psychology behind maintaining ambitions, and practical strategies to stay on course.

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Goal Setting and National Quitters Day

Roland opens the conversation by emphasizing the importance of setting specific goals for the year 2025. He highlights the scientific advantage of goal-setting in significantly increasing the likelihood of achievement.

"Setting goals for '25 and fairly extensive specific goals... has been proven to increase your likelihood pretty dramatically of achieving them."
— Roland Frasier [00:00]

Ryan Dice brings up National Quitters Day, a day when many abandon their New Year's resolutions just ten days into the year.

"January 10th... everybody's given up on their New Year's resolution."
— Ryan Dice [05:13]

Roland shares his positive outlook on his personal goals, particularly focusing on family and social aspects, while acknowledging minor setbacks in areas like fitness.

"I've really made family stuff the most important thing this year... I'm actually pretty on track."
— Roland Frasier [05:30]

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Types of Drift

The core of the episode revolves around the concept of drift, influenced by Napoleon Hill's ideas in Outwitting the Devil. Roland identifies three primary forms of drift:

1. Financial Drift:
   Settling for less financially than one's potential, often due to self-imposed financial limits.

   "Financial drift... we're making money but not building wealth."
   — Roland Frasier [14:45]

2. Strategic Drift:
   Confusing continuous learning and planning with actual progress, leading to stagnation.

   "Strategic drift can look like over planning or constantly replanning and restrategizing."
   — Ryan Dice [25:37]

3. Vision Drift:
   Adjusting one's vision to align with current circumstances rather than striving for original ambitions.

   "Vision drift is that the vision you had... is toned down to where you are, and you settle."
   — Roland Frasier [27:13]

Ryan relates these concepts to personal experiences, emphasizing how internal fears and comfort zones contribute to drift.

"Why am I so slow in responding to that email... it's that internal fear."
— Ryan Dice [17:42]

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Addressing Drift: Shift vs. Drift

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the distinction between shift and drift:

• Drift:
  Unconscious and insidious movement away from goals due to complacency or external factors.

• Shift:
  Conscious and intentional adjustments to goals or strategies based on new insights or changing circumstances.

Roland underscores the importance of recognizing drift and making deliberate shifts to stay aligned with one's objectives.

"Shift versus drift is the big takeaway... if you are missing your objectives because you are deciding to tweak, that's shift."
— Roland Frasier [42:48]

Ryan echoes this sentiment, advocating for intentional changes and the patience to allow new habits to take root before deciding to pivot.

"Intentionality is the difference between shift and drift... I'm going to intentionally change the goal."
— Ryan Dice [44:44]

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Personal Experiences and Strategies

Both Roland and Ryan share personal anecdotes illustrating how drift can manifest and the strategies they've employed to counteract it.

Roland recounts his passion for music and the conscious decision to not pursue it professionally due to the high personal costs involved.

"I wasn't willing to pursue the cost... I wasn't willing to make the investment."
— Roland Frasier [36:09]

Ryan discusses his attempts to grow his YouTube platform and the realization that aligning such efforts with his family life required him to reassess and adjust his approach.

"I decided that the best way... conflicted with what I wanted from a family perspective."
— Ryan Dice [38:14]

Together, they emphasize the necessity of breaking down goals into actionable habits and regularly evaluating progress to prevent drift.

"Break down your goal into its component parts... figure out what habits you need to develop."
— Roland Frasier [33:20]

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Practical Takeaways

1. Set Clear, Specific Goals:
   Writing down goals allows for regular assessment and adjustments.

2. Identify Leading Indicators:
   Establish habits that directly contribute to achieving lagging goals.

3. Distinguish Between Shift and Drift:
   Be intentional in making necessary changes rather than falling into complacency.

4. Regularly Reevaluate Goals:
   Every 90 days, reassess whether current goals and strategies still align with your vision.

5. Prioritize High-Impact Tasks:
   Focus on activities that truly move the needle towards your objectives, avoiding comfort tasks that offer little progress.

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Conclusion

In this episode of Business Lunch, Roland Frasier and Ryan Dice provide a comprehensive exploration of how intentionality can steer one away from the pitfalls of drift. By setting clear goals, establishing impactful habits, and making conscious shifts when necessary, listeners are equipped with the tools to chart a successful and fulfilling path in both personal and professional realms.

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Notable Quotes:

• "What gets measured gets managed."
  — Roland Frasier [05:30]

• "Writing every morning for 30 minutes... I don't like this."
  — Ryan Dice [42:48]

• "Don't settle... if you're happy, just don't lie to yourself and settle."
  — Roland Frasier [27:13]

• "Being really clear on what is the most important thing... to move the needle."
  — Ryan Dice [23:35]

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Transcript

[Roland Frazier]

Speaking of how things are going, how I know that you and I talk about. We didn't really get to talk about it that much this year, but very briefly, we set goals for 20, 25 and fairly extensive specific goals, which is, I think. I think scientifically has been proven to increase your likelihood pretty dramatically of achieving them. And goals can be looked at as resolutions of a sort, because you're resolving to do these things. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch with your host, myself, Roland Frazier, and the wonderful and hatted today, Ryan Dice. Ryan, you are home because of an ice storm, I understand.

[Ryan Dice]

Happy casual Monday. Yeah, we typically get two seasons in Austin, Texas. Scalding surface of the sun, hot and blizzard, and we're apparently about to experience the latter of those. There's like three or four days out of the year where it feels like California, where you live.

[Roland Frazier]

But the thing is that houses cost almost nothing in Austin. Right? I mean, so, like, the cost of living is significantly lower to reflect the, you know, climatic challenges.

[Ryan Dice]

That statement was definitely true 15 years ago.

[Roland Frazier]

I know.

[Ryan Dice]

Which thankfully, was when I was buying all the houses and stuff, which is good.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ryan Dice]

No, that's great. Yay, me. Sucks for everybody else coming in, but. No, no. Yeah. We're working from home today, and I forget, man, like, it's really not. I. I enjoy going into an office. I don't know about you, and I know this isn't the topic of what we're talking about.

[Roland Frazier]

I do not enjoy going into an office.

[Ryan Dice]

You see, I've always liked it, and I think, you know, for me, like, you know, know, and early on, it's like having little kids running around. And so that was, you know, that was. That was tough, you know, to. To not get distracted and to be able to kind of stay focused. Like, I sort of needed to get out of my element, and that would be for sure. Yeah, yeah. But. And. But then, like, during COVID when we really couldn't go anywhere, what I found is that, like, I never stopped working because I didn't have the break. Right. And so it just develops a lot of bad habits. And so I found if I just, like, go into an office and I start work around nine, and I leave around, you know, you know, 5:30 or six. Like, I just kind of maintain a better pattern. But, man, sometimes it's nice just to, like, say, ah, screw it, I'm not. So I think. I think maybe I'm going to try, like, once a week just working from home and, you know, getting some more creative work. Done. We'll, we'll see.

[Roland Frazier]

We'll see how it's that severance thing where you're like, if you could live, you live that life at work and then you live that life at home. And when you walk out the door, it kind of, you move into the other. It's kind of interesting. I think the concept of that show is, is interesting that way. But also you have, and I, we both have the benefit of an office that we built for ourselves to have a dedicated space to be. Because I think it would be really hard if you were working and didn't have that. Like if you were trying to work out of your bedroom, sitting in bed all day or in the living room while your family was trying to live their lives. That, or even in that, like, I think the dining room is a, is a typical place people will try to do that. My dad used to grade papers and do work at the dining room table, you know, because it was a kind of quiet. But I was running around going, you know, so that, that, that, that, that can be tough.

[Ryan Dice]

But I'll tell you on that again, not, not the topic, but I was on the show.

[Roland Frazier]

It could be the topic.

[Ryan Dice]

I don't think we had enough. We'll see. I was on a sales call the other day, which I don't do them very often, but like we were looking at a particular technology tool which was a higher level tool, like a higher end kind of thing, premium priced. And the person that I was talking to on the other line, it was clear that they were just, you know, it was a remote company. But like where their setup was, was. Yeah, I mean, obviously just kind of their kitchen table in the background. I just, I remember thinking like, it's not 2020 anymore. Like I feel like if you're going to be doing, if you're going to be selling a premium tool and doing kind of like premium level offerings, you should probably be in like premium surroundings a little bit. And I don't know, like, don't look like you're in your pajamas still. I think, I think a lot of that has, is starting to shift back a bit where it's not just okay to be on your sweats, which I do right now. Basically I'm doing this podcast and I had in my sweats for those who aren't watching. So total hypocrite.

[Roland Frazier]

This is your Eastern European gangster look.

[Ryan Dice]

You know, that's what I'm going for. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going for. Jumpsuit.

[Roland Frazier]

I'm very intimidating. I'M a little. I'm a little nervous about how this is going to go. Yeah. Speaking of how things are going, how I know that you and I talk about. We didn't really get to talk about it that much this year. But very briefly, we set goals for 20, 25 and fairly extensive specific goals, which is, I think. I think scientifically has been proven to increase your likelihood pretty dramatically of achieving them. And goals can be looked at as resolutions of a sort, because you're resolving to do these things and aspiring to do them. And we were talking a little bit before we went live here about was it International Quitters Day, Is that what you said, or just Quitters Day generally?

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah, I think it's National Quitters Day, but my guess is it impacts. We could just as soon say it's international. Yeah. January 10th, we. Which we're now just, you know, on the other side of, but that is National Quitters Day. So this is the day that by January 10, essentially everybody's given up on their New Year's resolution, is the idea.

[Roland Frazier]

10 days. Yeah. 365, 10 days in. And I thought that was interesting. I don't know if you have yours handy or want to share. I pulled mine up just to kind of like, temperature check. How you doing? You know, on what you. What you set in place. And as I'm looking. As I'm looking through, I'm feeling pretty good. I've really made family stuff the most important thing this year. From romantic with my wife to family with our two kids and their families to spending more time, I've actually been pretty good. The only things that haven't happened have not happened because of challenges in scheduling, but everything has been like, we actually set up to do it, and then something came up and we said that we'll have to do that a week later, but I feel pretty good about that. And then on the social side, I'm pretty good on that. I'm on the musical side, which is its own separate category for me, which I guess you could say is, you know, fulfillment and stuff. I'm pretty good on track on that. On the fitness, I'm pretty. I haven't. I haven't hit the ice bath as much. That's a big, intimidating body of cold water to jump into. It's just not. I've done the cold showers, but haven't done the ice bath as much as I want. But other than that, I mean, actually, I'm actually pretty on track. And I'm mindful because I'm looking at Them, which is one of the reasons that you want to write them down. Because if you don't write them down, you can't look at them and go, hey, how am I doing? You're not measured. You know what is, they say what, what gets measured gets managed. So how, how are you feeling about yours? And then I want to talk about kind of what happens that causes us not to hit them. And then I know business wise, we set some pretty good ones that, you know, even, you know, we're as, we record this basically two thirds of the way through the first month of the year and you know, we got to do some stuff to make those happen. It's all in process. But it's tough, particularly it's tough to stay the course and not say, well, I'm not getting it as fast as I want. So maybe I either change the goal, move the goal post or I changed the strategy, but I didn't give the other strategy the full chance to work out. So let's go first with how are you? How do you feel like you're doing with yours so far? And if there's anything that's taking you out, for me, the only thing it's really been is schedules of all the people that, that have to be there. And let's start with that.

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah, same as I look at it, you know, so far so good. But it's early still plenty of time, plenty of time to screw it up. I. Similar to what you do, I said I try to have like one big business goal a year, one big kind of relationship, like, you know, wife, you know, marriage goal, family related goal, and then a health goal and then some type of avocational habit, you know, hobby goal. Right. So that's, that's kind of how I will, will spread mine out and I will look to accomplish those generally by the end of the third or fourth quarter. So it's, it's tough because I'll set goals that are obviously like lag goals. But then what I do is I back into what are the habit goals that I need to establish this year that I believe if I complete these, it'll make those far more likely.

[Roland Frazier]

So I like it. You've got your, you've got leading indicators for your goals, right?

[Ryan Dice]

Like these are the, these are the habits that I don't have right now that I believe are essential for me to develop if I want these goals to, to happen. And not just happen, but to then become baked into my lifestyle. Because I like, I know, for example, there, there are extreme things that I could do to like hit a fitness goal, let's say. But if it doesn't get habituated and baked into what I'm doing, then it won't, it won't stick. And I do think that a lot of this is true with business as well. And so I appreciate what you said about. Yeah, I mean, we're looking at these goals that we have and I kind of feel like, you know, coming out the first week of the year, you know, you had the first, you know, January 1st was like on a Wednesday. And so I feel like we didn't really start working until like the 6th, the 7th, so we kind of didn't have the first week of the year.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah.

[Ryan Dice]

And that was kind of coming off of December where we didn't have that whole week, you know, as well. So it was like there was three weeks of nothing.

[Roland Frazier]

Because Christmas Day for us, Christmas is the one we celebrate. So Christmas Day was on a Wednesday and then New Year's Day was on a Wednesday. And then you were at the sixth. And so like you kind of the whole like 19th ish all the way through the sixth was nobody wanted to do anything. And even if you wanted to do something, which I didn't, um, no one else was around. Right.

[Ryan Dice]

And. And yeah, because of that, I found that come. Even coming back, like normally I'm like ready, like raring to go. Like after, after the break, I'm like, let's go. I had such a nice, long, relaxing break that I was not particularly ready to get going again. My oldest son, who's back from college, like, he literally left today, like he was still like home with us. So he was still on summer break. So I'm like another week here. So I feel like if I'm being completely transparent, like I feel like I'm behind everything feels like it's behind because I feel like I let the summer break, I'm sorry, the kind of the holiday break bleed over into like halfway into January. And so I feel everything feels like it's off to a slow start. And the tendency is to do what you said, which is like, well, we obviously need to shake things up to get caught up. What I say to myself is I give myself permission every 90 days to reevaluate and change my goals. So I've got that just as built into my goal setting thing. And I do that because one just stuff happens, you know, life happens, change happens. New information, new data comes in. And so I think just to set a goal, you know, in January and just to like force yourself to stick to that through the end of the year when sometimes crap happens and sometimes good crap just to me seems arbitrary. So every 90 days, every quarter, I completely redo the process. Like, completely. And the first question I ask myself is, are these still my goals? And more times than not, yes. But if something came up where it's like, whoa, way behind, swing and a miss, need to move the goalpost, or sometimes like, this just doesn't matter to me anymore, this isn't meaningful anymore, maybe I tried it for a while and Marie Kondo kind of didn't bring you joy. So I'm like, that one's gone. So that's where I've got to look at my habit goals. So when I look at my habit goals, and these are fairly simple, right? Like, am I waking up by 6am Like, I've just found if I do that, then certain things happen. So far so good, right? I'm not seeing it show up in terms of the lagging yet, but so far so good. I've got a goal to. I want to be in the gym lifting. In my home gym, lifting, you know, three times a week. So far it's been twice a week instead of three. Because I wanted to like Tuesday, Thursday, and then sometime on the weekend. Well, the weekends have been crazy with kids stuff and so it just hasn't happened. So. But I'll call it two out of three on that. And then, yeah, you know, on, on the, on the business side, on the company side, it's do we still have the right plan? We just need to let the cake bake, you know, or is something, you know, there. That is a question that I know. We've got a monthly business review and so every single month we have the opportunity to ask that question. So I think it's important when you set goals to also set check in times. And I'm thankful that I did that, that I've established that as a practice, because I think in some of these cases I might have pulled the rip forward.

[Roland Frazier]

That's. It's interesting how it happens and if you feel yourself slipping and it's kind of what I wanted to chat about a little bit today, which was there's a mastermind group that a friend of ours has that's a virtual one that I'm part of. And one of the. It's several different business owners and one of them was talking about sales strategies and they had just done a big event and they're trying to get people to take action. Any sales process is trying to get people to take an action that you want them to take that you feel will get them a better outcome or the outcome that they desire. The get them from the place they are, that's not perfect to the place where they're jumping up and down and clicking their heels. And to help those people do that he used Napoleon Hill's book, kind of an underappreciated book called Outwitting the Devil. And in that book Napoleon Hill talks about drift. And so there are different kinds of drift. And so I kind of wanted to take a couple of notes on it. Is there three deadly forms of drift? Financial drift. You're making money but you're not building wealth. So this would be. Are you stuck financially? And this is interesting. I read a long time ago that there's kind of like a thermostat and I have found this to be true. And it always annoys the crap out of me when I am thinking too small. And I am always thinking too small. So I guess I'm just always annoyed. But, but.

[Ryan Dice]

General state of Malkin typically.

[Roland Frazier]

But, but they talk about this, this thermostat and that there's a financial thermostat and that like we, we, we might have. Ours might be set at $60,000 a year. Let's say, you know, 60k a year is my financial thermostat. And so if I make less than that, I'm going to figure out a way to get back there. I'm going to turn on the, you know, the heat or the air I guess it'd be the heat to you know, to move up. But also it works in the opposite that if I find myself tracking 80, you know, which is, you know, a decent amount above my, my 60 thermostat, I'm feeling uncomfortable. I'm feeling like maybe it's a little too hot and I need to cool down a little bit and I get back there and so we hit these walls that are self generated, that aren't real, but we do because something in our head says this, this is the place that I, that I belong. I know how to do that. And throughout my life I've watched that thermostat grow. But it's still a frickin thermostat. And even though, you know, I have succeeded in breaking through it because I am consciously incompetent in and having them erected time and time again. It's amazing. And I know, you know, several years ago we were at a. You and I were at a dinner and the people were all talking About I'm doing this, I'm doing this and doing this. And I was like, what the hell? You know, these people are great, but they're not like any smarter than we are. Their businesses aren't any better than we are. And we upped the game and, you know, and hit a new one and it was a pretty big jump. And I've watched that again and again and again. And so that financial drift, I think, is that we're kind of, okay, stuck where we are. So that we drift from the goal that we set or the objective that we've got, or the desire that we have to have a certain level of income or wealth and we allow ourselves to drift back down to that comfort point that we've established. And that, you know, it's funny because I know you and I have created multiple seven figure businesses and several eight figure businesses in our time to where it's not really that hard for us to do that. And for a lot of people it'd be like, holy crap, how do you create a seven figure business? Or how do you create a, you know, an eight figure business? But there's also Elon Musk who's, you know, the CEO, I think of three or four now, you know, multibillion dollar businesses because that's his thermostat and he might not know how to create the, you know, the. I don't know, I can't even pick a number for him, I guess that. Has he got trillion. I don't know if Tesla got there or not, but like, you may be looking at, you know, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and saying, you know, I've Never created a $3 trillion business but, but we've all got them and they're just fricking artificial. And so I guess that's the first thing is like being. I just wanted to talk a little bit about being aware. Do you, does any of this ring true?

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah, I mean, I remember reading and we talked about this at the Get Scalable Live and kind of the opening keynote that I did. And it was prompted by you saying, hey, you should talk about this because it's a big issue and it's the upper limit problem is what you're describing. Gay Hendricks talked about this in his book the Big Leap. And yeah, it's this idea that we've all have this internal thermostat that it sets the upper limit for our success. And when things go well, we get really, really, really excited and we get close, close, close, close, close. And then right as we start to Hit it. That's when the self sabotage begins. That's when the self doubt begins and that's when we, you know, unconsciously begin to act in accordance with our self imposed limits. And yeah, and I think drift, drift is a good word for it because I do think it's, it's not this like obvious thing. It's the little bitty things that you do that in retrospect you're like, why did I do that? Like, I didn't have a good reason to do that. You know, why did I say no to that thing? Why was I so slow in responding to that email where somebody wanted me to have, you know, go speak at this event, which is a great opportunity, or, you know, somebody wanted to have me on their podcast or, you know, I could have done this strategic deal and I didn't reply right away. Replying right away would have been the obvious thing, but I didn't. I sat on it. Why did I do that? And oftentimes, you know, it more times than not, I think it is that, that internal fear of I've never been there before and therefore it is scary. Human beings are really, really, really bad at doing things until we first imagined ourselves doing things and have seen it, doing things and imagining things that we haven't done. And so that exactly makes it tough.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah. Which is interesting because I know that there's been studies that if you imagine yourself doing something, you're much more likely to make it happen. If you imagine yourself bench pressing X amount of weight or hitting this golf shot or whatever, and then you go do it, even if you didn't train, but you imagined yourself training, you get the benefit of having trained for the most part. Obviously your muscles not. But from a mental standpoint, there's a whole big thing about that. And so the things that I wanted to talk about were that first one then is financial drift. So are you financially drifting? Catch yourself if you are, because as Ryan said, it's kind of insidious. It just kind of happens. And what are the things that you're doing that are that you're measuring how you get to where you wanted to get. And if you're not, if you do find yourself drifting, what are you going to do different? Do it now, you know, a few days into the year instead of waiting until next year where you're like, oh man, I never, I didn't really hit those things I wanted to hit because I think that's what happens to a lot of people. And obviously it happens to a lot of people. In the first 10 days of the new year that they're drifting from the things they want to do. The second kind of drift is a strategic drift. And I thought this was an interesting concept too. It's like confusing learning with progress. I bought a course and I do this all the time. I am a study, research. I want to do something new. Study it, research it, obsess about it, Gather all of the information and then use that information. Consume it, digest it, concatenate it, get it down to where I've got just the essence of it, and then I'm going to go forward and do the thing. Now, I do more often than not do the thing, but I also have gathered lots of information. But I do know lots of people. And probably when I was practicing law long ago, the thing that I saw people do the most was this strategic drift is I'm going to start a business doing this or I'm going to get a new job doing that. And then they would get the logo done and the letterhead and they'd go rent an office and they'd sign up for some software and then they'd buy a book about it, but they weren't doing the thing that mattered. Which is what I like about our scalable operating system, kind of our whole scalable plan, which is like that very first, when we were talking about the seven levels of scale, the very first thing was go sell something, Go sell it, don't make it perfect. Don't, you know, get your mvp, your minimum viable product, and sell the son of a gun to at least 10 people that aren't your family and that aren't your friends. And then, you know, you have a thing. So strategic drift, so many places to go. I'd love to kind of brainstorm with you some of the places, but I think that learning equals progress and simple comfort tasks that aren't the hard thing. Brian Tracy wrote a book called Eat that Frogs. Like do the do the thing. If you've got to eat a frog and that's the worst thing in your day, do it first and then do the comfort work. But. Thoughts?

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah, I think it's one of the tragedies of the to do list, right. Because a to do list in its native form, it simply lists all the things that you want to do and, and they're not really ordered all that much by impact. And so I think the simplest things.

[Roland Frazier]

We have a friend who has a.

[Ryan Dice]

A long, long, long, long, long, long.

[Roland Frazier]

To do list that only grows and never seems to get smaller. Right.

[Ryan Dice]

Well, and as long as you are even like remotely ambitious or high performance individual, you're always going to see opportunity in places. Yes, like always, you're always going to see things that could be better. And so like being clear about, okay, what are those high impact items? And I see this a lot with, certainly with entrepreneurs, we're very, very good at defaulting back to the comfort tasks. You know, it's this idea of like comfort food as well. Like when I eat this, it makes me kind of know, feel good in the moment. We do that as entrepreneurs with tasks. Like there are certain things that are.

[Roland Frazier]

Balance the checkbook instead of making the sales call. That's a great, some of the most.

[Ryan Dice]

Organized desks and most organized file cabinets and all these other things. But, but the cash register ain't ringing. And so I do think being really, really clear on, you know, what is the most important thing and something that I started doing is just saying if I can only work one hour today, what, what's the one thing I would do if I could only work one hour? That I found that, that to be a really good litmus test of if I'm, I got one hour a day, that's it. That's the only, I'm only allowed to work a singular hour every single day. What are the things that I prioritize that are actually going to move the needle? You know, you find that if you give, if you believe you have eight hours, which you don't, not, not eight good hours, you will come up with all kinds of things to fill that space. And that's exactly what it is now. It's filler and, and it's very, very easy to look busy. It's very easy to even seem productive. But the product of your activity is, let's say, slim to say the least.

[Roland Frazier]

So can you think of any other kinds of strategic drift? Because what I was thinking too is that, and I don't want to get it confused with the next one I want to talk about, but strategic drift to me would also be what we talked about, what we touched on earlier, which was you're not getting what you want right now. So you change your strategy. And so you have, you've taken the time to chart out a strategy and say, this is what's going to get me from where I am to what I want to be. This is my gap filler. And you've, you've blocked it out and you've gotten, you know, progress chunks and everything, but it's just not quite kicking in. And it, it would be foolish to stay on track of an obviously flawed, not working strategy. But it's also equally foolish and maybe even more so to abandon a strategy that you have charted out too soon because it's not getting you the result you wanted as fast as you thought it would. So I'd like to talk about that a little bit.

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah, I think it could be. I think strategic risk, strategic drift can look like comfort tasking. I think strategic drift can look like over planning or constantly, like you said, replanning and re. Strategizing, talking about what you're going to do instead of doing it. Because you cannot fail in that, like there's no way to fail. Setting a strategy, like you will succeed in setting a strategy. And it feels good and fun to do it, but it winds up just being entrepreneurial. Arts and crafts time. Right? We've got to actually do this stuff and put it into practice. But that's when we figure out like, do we have, do we have the right one? And so the second you reach the slightest bit of resistance, that's when it's like, oh, maybe we should have new strategy because it's hard. And so the always replanning, restrategizing, another type of strategic drift you referenced, it is the always learning, oh, we just need to know a bit more, you know, before we get started. We need to do a bit more research, we need to talk to more people, we need to run another survey, we need to hire another consultant. I need to read this other book, go to this seminar, like add that.

[Roland Frazier]

One more module onto our sas, that one more feature.

[Ryan Dice]

Exactly. And so I think it's any. Anytime you find yourself just spreading work out as opposed to condensing and consolidating and pushing it forward, that's probably what, you know, that's what drift looks like. It's, it's, you know, to quote Tolkien, it's, you know, too little butter spread across too little, too little bread.

[Roland Frazier]

So the third kind, and then I want to kind of talk about what can we do to fix them, because I think that's a good rap for us would be vision drift. And the perfect example of vision drift is that I had a vision that I was a CEO, college graduate, top of my class, with a network of powerful friends and perfect spouse and perfect kids and maybe even a level of wealth or living in a particular area, driving a particular kind of car. That's my vision. But I'm here now and it's not there. And in the words of the talking heads, this is not my beautiful Life, right? And the days go by, and the days go by. And what you do is you basically say, you know what? Almost like an Aesop's fable, sour grapes thing. It's like, you know, I didn't really want that because those guys aren't really happy. What I want is, is to be a regular, working kind of person, you know, who's not up there in the ivory towers. And, you know, those fancy houses, they cost a lot and those lifestyles. People with money are generally bad people and have to do bad things to get there. And so. And you come up with all these rationalizations, but your strategic, I mean, excuse me, your vision drift is that the vision that you had of where you actually want to be is toned down to where you are, and you settle. And if you're happy, like, if you find out that you didn't want all those things because they're not all they're cracked up to be, then you're probably right. And for you, you're where you want to be. If you're truly happy, just don't lie to yourself and settle. I think that's the biggest thing. And it's the same thing in a company. And we have to be careful of this. When we're sitting saying, by the end of this year, we want to be serving this many people and doing this in profit and this in sales and, you know, so on and so forth, and then saying, you know, ah, well, but, you know, we pivoted along the way and, you know, we thought this was going to work, but it didn't. Don't settle, I think, is the, is the thing for vision. Any other thoughts about that?

[Ryan Dice]

I think it goes back to kind of what we were talking about before. I think vision is really, really helpful in providing a direction, a heading. I think where vision becomes dangerous is when it becomes an aspect of your identity. I think that's when it can become dangerous. And I've been there before where I so wanted to be something that I was not. And when you wake up every single day and you've decided that you're going to be something and you mean it and you want it, and the thing that you want is really, really, really good, but you're just not that thing. Right? It's hard. And if you want to be anything that you're not, then by definition you're not that thing. And so this is where a lot of people get into, like, affirmations and all this. I can't look at myself mirror and lie and be like, I'm this like I'm. Because I'm not. And so I think it's easy enough to do for a while because you say I'm moving in this direction. But at some point you have to do business with the fact that it's not happening right now. It's not happening as fast as I thought it would. And the only remedy that I've ever found for any of this, because I will do, I think anybody who's rational is going to reach a point of despair. I think you got plenty of just absolute nut job, irrational people. And you and I have known them who are just delusional narcissists who have no problem whatsoever believing themselves to be something that they are not. And they just, you know, saunter on blissfully through the, you know, through the universe. And like, everybody's kind of like, what the heck's up with that guy? But I mean, I guess they're able to be somewhat productive in spite of that. Most people that ain't them, they want some, they want to be more than what they are, but they're not that today. And eventually they get tired of not being that thing that they want to be. And so if you're rational at all, you're going to reach a point of despair. And the only remedy that I've ever had, and that's what's going to create the drift that you talk about, the only remedy that I've ever had goes back to the habits. Am I at least behaving like someone who has those things that I want, that I want to be? And that's why I always want to have goals and those goals should give me a heading. But ultimately it's just there to inform the habits that need to be true today. So if I can look at myself in the mirror and say, you haven't achieved these things that these people have yet, but you're at least acting like someone who does that is enough to keep me going. Like I can feel confident in that now if I'm not behaving like someone who has those. So like, let's get it out of the money business thing. Let's get into the health thing, right? So I want to, you know, have whatever 12% body fat, a six pack and all this other stuff. I don't. Let's say I did right, it's easy enough for me to set that goal and then to reverse engineer the habits that must be true from a diet and exercise standpoint to achieve that. And even if I don't know and can't Google and can't chat GPT. And I could certainly ask somebody to read a book and figure that out so I can wake up in the morning, you know, take my shirt off, look at myself in the mirror and not see a six pack. But if I'm doing all the things that I know I'm supposed to do to get there, then then I can at least say I'm not there yet, but I'm from an identity person. I'm beginning to take on the identity of somebody who is that I haven't arrived yet, but I'm becoming that person. That's the only way I know to do it. And I think the mistake that people run into is they set the goal without allowing the goal. Not just merely to reverse engineer into a plan. I think people do that a lot of times. You set your goal and then you figure out the steps you need to take to get there. I think way more important than the steps you need to take. Breaking up your goal into the its component parts is to figure out what habits do I need to develop. What needs to be true about me personally, what needs to be true about the business at large that isn't true today from a, from a habit standpoint, from a resource, from a who we are identity standpoint. And if you can connect those dots, you got a shot. Beyond that, I don't know how to, how to make it through.

[Roland Frazier]

I like it. And I think that the thing too is when you get to the point of identifying the habits and the chunks of things that you're going to have to do to get there, it becomes a lot more real and the cost or the investment that you will have to make because I think they're two sides of the same coin, but it's important to distinguish them. There is an investment to being Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, right? The investment comes frequently at the cost of having personal relationships, you know, deep family connections, etc. Because the demand of the, of the vision is so great and the vision itself is so great that it will not abide other competing things. And so, and this isn't like don't do this as a cop out, do this as an assessment and say I want this thing now. Let's chunk what we have to do to get that thing now. Let's say, okay, to get those chunks to hit those milestones, those sub goals to the big goal. I have to do these habits. Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to make the investment in doing the things that I need to do to do that, and in thinking the thoughts I need to do to do that. And what will the cost be in the other areas of my life? Because for sure, time is a finite resource that you've got. And so if you're committing that you've. And there are seasons also, so you can accept this is a season. I had a money season. You know, during the pandemic, I decided I wanted to focus, you know, exclusively for a year on, you know, or, you know, primarily big time, for a year on this. And I've had it on health before, etc. Because I'm not a balanced person. I need to go, you know, go after something all the way. So if I rotate those things, I can generally have a happy life. And I'm not ignoring all the other things. They're still there. But the primary focus, like I said this year, it's, you know, family and, and personal relationships. It will cost me to do that because to. To get what I want. The vision of being the family person that I want to be and the relationship person that I want to be will require time that will not be dedicated to the money thing and the money thing will suffer. It's not. I'm not going to go broke. I'm not. I mean, but I could make the opportunity cost of what I could do if I was willing to go all in on that other thing is significant. And so I have to look at both those things and say, am I willing to make the investment? Oh, heck yeah. Am I willing to accept the cost? Gosh, I don't know. Am I?

[Ryan Dice]

That's a lot of goals that you had set initially, and then upon you know, evaluating the habits that would be required, you. You kind of opted out of them. I can think of a couple of times when that's happened to me.

[Roland Frazier]

Absolutely. Yeah. So. So one was with music, because I played out in clubs when I was young and really, really continue to be passionate about music. And I would love to be a professional musician and songwriter, composer, you know, I don't need to. I like performing, but, like, I don't need to go on tour. I just like it. I like the creative process of it, but the dedication and the, you know, the commitment of time out there, getting your 10,000 hours playing in clubs and, you know, you know, for. For nothing and all that. I actually enjoyed it at the time, but I didn't, you know, I wasn't willing to pursue the cost. And a really great. It's a really great example for me because one of the guys that I played with. Who wanted to go and do that when I was like, I was I think 16 or 17 at the time. And he went on to be a multi platinum metal guitarist that does tours all over the world and has, I mean, it's. And I know I could have done that. You know, it's like, because, because I know when I was playing and writing songs, he was like, man, that's great. We should do something with that. And I was, and let's go do this. And I was like, eh, I'm going to finish school, you know, so that was a big one for me. And then the same thing with respect to, I don't know, several years ago there were opportunities to do things which would take me away from my life that I had built up. And the cost of doing that, I feel like it would have definitely leapt me multiple years over where I am now, but I wasn't willing to completely leave and uproot and do all that. That was, that cost to me was too great. What about yours?

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah, I remember, I mean, a couple years ago I had kind of made the decision and set some really big goals around YouTube and kind of growing kind of my platform. You had just started on it and I had some other friends who are really starting to blow up, you know, on YouTube. And I was like, I'm gonna do it, you know, I'm gonna, this is gonna be my year. And I remember going and talking to some, to some, some friends who to this day now have, you know, million plus, you know, person accounts many, many millions and asking them, you know, so what does it look like? Like what, what to, to do this? To like, what habits need to be different. And I was hearing things like, I mean, you know, you're gonna basically need to have a full time like, media crew following you around and you know, you're essentially going pro. And in hearing what it was going to take, it completely conflicted with what I wanted from a family perspective, you know, and I knew my wife was not going to be okay with me having, you know, a film crew following us around on vacations and, you know, everywhere I went and filming all aspects of our life, which is what these people who were blown up were doing. They were basically. I was like, no, and I think that's important. There was another one. I had some, you know, health goals that I wanted to achieve from a fitness perspective. And I was, you know, talking to somebody and they were talking about how well, you're going to have to work out, you know, this, this much Time. And the only time that I would have had to do that, I would have either had to wake up so early in the morning that I would have had to have gone to bed so much earlier than my wife did that I would have missed evening time with her. Yeah, like, you know, kind of that time between like 10:00 and 11, which we're sort of sitting up in bed and catching up on the day. Like, I pretty much would have had to have gone to bed around like 9:30 or 10 to wake up at like 5am or I would have had to say, hey, you know, honey, can you drive the kids to school so that I can exercise? Which would have created some additional burden, you know, for her at the time because she had stuff to do. And I love that time with the kids when I'm in the car. So I'm. I'm either to achieve these health goals when I'm talking to people, I'm either going to have to lose quality time with my wife or lose quality time with the kids. So what did I decide? I'm not going to achieve those health goals this year at this time. Now the kids are getting older, they've got their own cars, like they're starting to drive now. I can pick it up. But that's making a mature decision. Right. Evaluating it and saying, you know, the difference. I've decided that this is no longer a good thing. I'm not going to be that kind of person who now hates anybody with a six pack and thinks that they're just wasting all their time. I'm not passing judgment. I'm just saying, like, for me right now, today in this season, there are other things that are more important. So I'm gonna have to say no to this.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah. And that the difference is that it's conscious. So there's drift and shift. Right. Drift is unconscious, insidious. You're falling, you're, you know, you're not really thinking about it and it just happens and you are then reacting and life is happening to you. Whereas shift is you're making a conscious, informed decision based on the data that you've got and the experience that you've got. And you are deciding to take action and you are affecting life. And so that like, to me it's shift versus drift is the big, the big takeaway, you know, I think is if you are missing your, you know, objectives, goals, resolutions, whatever, because you are deciding that that's not exactly what you want or you need to make tweaks. I had that same thing with YouTube, as you know, by the way. And I was like, filming every hotel room before we'd go in. I'd tell my wife, no, no, no, don't go in yet. Let me. Let me do the tour. And then we'd be at dinner and I'd be, you know, she's like, are you recording us again? You know, I was like, okay, that's. This is bad for my relationship. I'm. I'm not going to do that anymore. So. So. But that was a conscious decision. Your decision was conscious decision. The. All the things we talked about were that and not that we're perfect guys. I mean, you know, I've got all kinds of drift in my life all the time. I catch it, you know, And Ryan I'm sure does, too. It's. It's just to me, having this distinction really helps you to think about it. And I think thinking about the. The investment and cost duality of that and then thinking in these, you know, am I shifting or drifting with my finances? Am I shifting or drifting with my strategy? Am I shifting or drifting with the vision of what I ultimately want helps you to be a happier person. Because you can be the person that's deciding instead of the person that was affected. And that makes all the difference, I think, in living an intentional life.

[Ryan Dice]

Yeah. And I think similarly, if you set a goal and you back into a habit, and maybe you're willing to accept it, but maybe you said along the way that you just hate it, give yourself permission to change your mind and to quit. But my rule is I'm going to quit on a good day and I'm going to quit after I've been trying it for a while. Like last year, I said I wanted to do more writing, I wanted to do more publishing, more posting. I did want to do YouTube in a different. Different way. And so I decided that the best way to do that was to wake up and write every morning for 30 minutes. And so I set that as a. As a habit goal. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to write. And I did it for a couple of weeks, and I'm like, I think I kind of hate this. But I wasn't going to stop immediately. I was again, I was going to do it for, you know, I didn't quite make it to 90 days. But what I realized is I don't like. I don't like this. Like, I just don't. What I thought would be good, I don't like it. And I eventually changed it up to Instead of the habit being right for 30 minutes every single day, it was take a day and write for like two hours. Like get a, get to a two hour block in. And that I found was a lot more effective for me. But I didn't change it until I had given myself enough time to do it. And so I think that's another thing. Don't quit on something just because it's hard. Give it enough time to see that this, in fact, is not serving me in the way that I thought it would. But it goes back to that word that you said, intentionality. That's the difference between shift and drift. I'm going to intentionally change this and I'm going to intentionally move to something else or I'm going to intentionally change the goal. I'm not going to, you know, immaturely expect to still achieve this outcome if I'm not going to have the same inputs. I think that's the difference. And if you can align those two things, you're probably going to find that even if you had quit like everybody else did on January 10th, maybe you got an opportunity to pick it back up again.

[Roland Frazier]

Yeah, I, I like that. I think it's, it's, it's, hopefully this is helpful to you guys. It's, it's helpful to me to talk about it and get distinctions. I think the shift versus drift distinction, which I really got from our conversation is going to be very, very helpful to me thinking about, you know, thinking about that and, and, and then remembering how important the habits are as a leading indicator to get you to where you want to reverse engineer into your goals. So hopefully this was helpful to you guys in business and in personal and if you found this interesting and exciting, please share it with a friend and have a conversation with them about it. If you'd like to share it with us, we are all on the socials with forward slashes usually followed by our names and would love to hear from you. So that's it for today and we'll see you on the next Business Lunch.

Hey, Roland Frazier here.

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