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Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Buffini, founder of America's largest business coaching company. Here's a short classic cut from one of our all time favorite episodes.

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Well, the top of the morning to you, and we're still in the top of the year. We've tried to get you off to a great start this year. Today it's how to be a goal getter. We know about being a goal setter and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So this is really about transforming the goal that you've set into now being an achiever of those goals. And so I have three major points for you, as I always do, we're going to talk about the top traits of winners. We're going to talk about making your goals visual. And then we're going to outline pleasure and the pain. So the top traits of winners, and you're going to hear me use that word a lot this year. Our coaching company, our programs are designed to help people win. And so we want you to win. We want you to be a goal getter. And I think it'd be fair to say that people who set goals, achieve goals and do it in a timely manner are the people who are winning. And so I want to share with you right now that top traits of winners, there's 10 of them altogether. Number one, winners don't make excuses. One of the things in our culture today is it's easy to make an excuse, right? The fact of the matter is all excuses are bad. What inspires us is when we see a person who does the hard thing when all the odds are against them. Number two, they make the priority the priority. Jim Rohn said, if it's a priority, you'll find a way. If it isn't, you'll find an excuse. So when it's a priority, it's really key that we pour our energy into our priorities. One of the reasons you can get off to a good start in your year is you focused on the highest and best use of your time. The highest and best use of your time for your business, the highest and best use of your time for yourself. And if you do that, you're off to a great start. The next dynamic with winners is they don't waste time. Now, it doesn't mean they're perfect. It doesn't mean that every hour of every day and every minute of every day doesn't mean they don't scroll, Instagram or watch Netflix once in a while. It's just they don't waste a lot of it. And what they don't waste is the pivotal production hours. On a personal level, it's that first hour of your day from a standpoint of spiritually, physically, emotionally, health wise, food wise. That first hour of the day, don't waste that. Don't start your day with the emails or scrolling or distracting stuff. The first part of your day, if you're a small business owner, you got to be in the focus of generating leads, right? I'm not going to waste my time. I got to get it going. Bruce Lee was a master and he said, if you love life, don't waste time. For time is what life is made up of. So love your life, love your business, try not to waste the time. And the real key is don't waste the most productive hours of your day. The next thing is you got to expect to win. That's another trait of winners. They expect to win when they're losing. They know something's not right here. One of the things for me is getting in shape and losing weight. It's very easy to get comfortable. But being heavier, out of shape, having to get the bigger size pants or shirt or dress, whatever, the thing is, you're comfortable with it. No, you got to get uncomfortable with that and expect to win. Zig Ziglar said, you were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, expect to win. The next trait of winners is they appreciate feedback. Bill Gates said, we all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve. One of the great dynamics of coach coaching. I just feel like I just walking through the coaching floor and listening to the coaches at Buffining company, They're able to give constructive feedback. They never tear down the person. They're always able to find a way to help a person hold them accountable in an encouraging way. We need the feedback. Another trait of winners is they don't give up. Now I'm going to give you particular specificity on this because for almost 30 years we've been the largest coaching company in the country. And I can tell you about this because you go, hang on a second here. I must not be a winner because I've given up before. Well, so have I. There's a difference between giving up and. And stopping. Stopping is you set a goal, you had some momentum, you're achieving some things. And then something happened. Either a major life event, a major business event. What happens is the habits stop. That's what happens with habits. It could be working out, it could be eating right. It could be doing the proactive lead generation tools and systems. It's very easy. And so we just kind of drift and we don't know it. So it's not that you give up on those things. You just get distracted. So the key is someone who gives up is someone who says it's not possible. I set a goal to lose weight five times before and I'm not willing to try again. That's someone who's given up. The person I'm interested in talking to is a good person who set the goals five times to lose the weight and set it again a sixth time. And what can I do different? And how can I get back on the wagon? How can I do it right? Winners don't give up. Next trait of winners is they take responsibility. Something that's not too cool in the culture we live in today. People don't want to take responsibility. People want entitlements, people want rights. People rarely want responsibilities. But that is one of the key traits of people who win. Abraham Lincoln said, you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. We got to take responsibility. Take responsibility for your health, take responsibility for your finances, take responsibility for what you can do. The next trait of winners is they're always learning. I have this brass plate behind me when I do the broadcast here, and it's a quote from Michelangelo and it says ancoro emparo, which means I am still learning. Michelangelo said that at the end of his life and he was a master. I want it said of me at the end of my life, too. The ninth trait would be always give more than expected. In the world we live in today, where customer service is at an all time low. Making eye contact, giving a smile, giving a little bit of energy, man, if you give more than expected, your business is going to thrive. One of the most important principles of success is developing the habit of going the extra mile, man. That makes you a goal getter. That makes you a winner. And lastly, don't follow the crowd, especially now. And the crowd is so easily manipulated now. A headline, a story, a post, misinformation, it gets out. It's like a wildfire. It goes viral, as they say, and the crowd goes with it. Margaret Thatcher said, don't follow the crowd. Let the crowd follow you. That's what a winner does, that's what a leader does. Those 10 traits, think them through. I hope you listen to these podcasts over and over again, whether you're walking or working out or in your car. I hope you listen to it over and over again, what one or two or three of those traits can you grow in this year, this month? The second thing here in being a real go getter is to focus on making your goals visual. This is really key because it is the eyes of the windows to the soul. And when we make our goals visual in front of us and we come in contact with them visually, it just ignites our unconscious. And 80% of our actions come out of our unconscious mind. And the way to do that is through what you see. The first part of that is what we call focus the flame. So one of the ways to do that is an old fashioned goal board. And we used to do this exercise not only at our seminars, but also inside our company. Every department in buffining company would set aside time. The leaders would get together with their team and say, what are you hoping to achieve this year? And it turns out we were onto something for a long time. Forbes just recently reported that 82% of small business owners who used what they call a vision board accomplished more than half the goals they included on it by just seeing it every day. I really highly recommend you make a goal board. The second part of making your goals visual is to engage with your visuals daily. Obviously, you can do the cardboard cutout, so some of you are a little more technological, technologically savvy. You could turn it into the screensaver on your computer. There's just so many benefits to something like that. It's a way to get your goals in front of you. So we want to focus that flame and then engage with the visuals daily. The third part of making your goals visual is to track your progress. Now look, we're a coaching company, so tracking things is a big deal. People were here when we met them and now they're here. It's very important because people lose perspective on that, even people who are achieving. What we found with the coaches is that our clients that are on their way to doing it well don't feel like they're making enough progress. And it's not until they look back to where they started that they're so shocked. So that's why we invested millions of dollars over the year into a contact management system called referral maker CRM, which is part of our do it now campaign. What it does allows you to track everything you do, all the results you're getting, the activities you're taking, and it lets you know, well, hey, here's what you got in the hopper, here's what you got in your pipeline, here's what you've gotten achieved. Here's what you've done. It's a fantastic thing. Another version that would be, let's say you're working out at home or you have a piece of exercise equipment in a garage or in bedroom, a simple little whiteboard where you have your goal, you have your workouts that you're trying to achieve and you track it. And again, it's important. Now I know there's all kinds of cool stuff and you might use your Apple watch and you might use a whoop or a this or that or the heart monitors, all those things, it's all great. But you have to visually connect. When you start to see that progress and you start to see those results, you don't want to give up on it. So you want to see it visually. Pearson's law says when performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates. Very powerful. And then lastly, you want to outline the pleasure and the pain. So I'm going to share with you this Lou Tice method that changed my life. In fact. So what I've done for you is on the It's a Good Life website. You go into tools and resources and we have a sample goal for you that you can learn the Lou Tice method and then we have a blank one that you can apply it for yourself and just do this for yourself and write as if it's already happened. The positive power. Why the cost of non completion and then ultimately, what's the price of completion? What do I have to do to make it happen? I did that 30 some years ago ago and it changed my life forever because I became that day a goal getter. And by the way, I blew off the ceiling of what I thought I could do and what I was told I could do. And that's what I hope for all of you today. What if you left everything out there? What if you set your goals and became the embodiment of the top traits of winners? What if you made your goals visuals and then what if you outlined the pleasure and the pain and you went out there and just became a goal getter? Well, let me tell you by the end of the year, what a story you'll have to tell. This is a very powerful month. Most people fail in the month of January. We want you to win and learn how to be a winner and hopefully this podcast has helped you on your way to that.