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Foreign. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Locally Owned. Today's episode is going to be a mini episode and it's going to be a little bit of something that I did before. But what I did before in helping in talking about a template that I use for goal setting was only part of it recently. As many of you know, I owned a company for 28 years. I started out as a carpet and upholstery cleaning company, and we ended up with a cleaning plant that handled high end textiles like area rugs, linens and silks and things like that. And one of the things that helped me grow my business and eventually sell it was a system for goal setting that I over the years just put together from reading a lot of different things and try it through trial and error, figuring out what worked. I came up with a system. And recently I was at a conference and I had the opportunity to speak. It was a conference for the industry that I was a part of. And I got the opportunity to speak and to present this. This template that I use for goal setting. And what I'd like to do is basically recreate the talk that I gave so that all my listeners can have the full version of this template. So for any of you that own a business, what I'd like you to do right now is just take a minute, right, you can pause this, but take a minute and to think about how far you've come in life and a little more specifically, how far you've come in business. Think about where you were five years ago. And if you're like me and you can't remember where you were five years ago, just think about where you were a year ago and how far you've come. Maybe some of the ideas and dreams and plans that you had and some of them have come to fruition. So go ahead and pause and take a minute just to think about how far you've come. All right. You know, that's a good exercise to do almost every day. It really is. And you know, I don't think you can do that exercise too much. You know, one of my favorite things to do when I had my business, I would get there in the morning before everybody else, and I would walk around the, the building where our shop was. Basically it was one of those buildings that was. Had some office space and it had a big warehouse area and that's where our cleaning plant was. And I would get there before everybody else and I would just walk around and I would think about the fact that none of this existed at some Point. And I started out my business as small as you could possibly start. I had a cargo Astro van and a piece of portable cleaning equipment. And that's what I started with. And I grew it into this really amazing business that had a great reputation and had just fantastic employees. And we had a full rug cleaning plant, and Everybody had a 401k and health benefits and paid time off. And it was really. I would just walk around and just look at the equipment and look at the fleet of vans and look at the customers who entrusted us with their goods and just stand in amazement that at how small this started. You know, just like a little acorn grows into an oak. It all started from basically nothing. And, you know, it's amazing how far you can get in life by just pushing forward. And we all sort of have that drive now. We all have goals. That's a natural thing that we have. We all have this natural drive to not be content with where our life is at. And we can still experience contentment with the things that we accomplish. But there's always a part of us that is looking at what's next, at what we can do next and how we can grow. And that's a very healthy thing. But, you know, most of us just naturally have goals, but only a few of us write them down and even less actually ever look at them again after we write them down. And hardly any of us, after writing them down, take time to create a plan on how we're going to achieve them. And part of that is because goal setting is hard. And it's hard because there's an element to it where we are actually trying to predict the future. Right? And no one can really do that. Right. And only God can do that. But while we can't predict the future, we know that the best predictor of the future is the past. Right. It's not the psychic hotline. And I'm going to tell you a little story about how I use the past to help me be smarter about achieving my goals. Now, a lot of people that are in business, a lot of my, you know, a lot of the folks that were at this convention, a lot of business owners that I talked to have read this book called the E. Myth by Michael Gerber. And his big premise is to create systems in your business. And he uses several examples. But one of the examples that he uses is McDonald's, and that McDonald's has created this system for cooking their food that you can teach to anybody. And anybody can make a McDonald's burger. And McDonald's fries and a shake. They don't need to know how to cook. They don't need any sort of experience. They can just follow the steps and it's going to come out the same whether the guy who's been working there 10 years cooks this burger or whether the guy who's there for one day. And it's because if you create a good system, that system can then reliably produce the same results time after time. Now, of course, it's the same crappy burger time after time, but you know, you can create a system for getting great results. And as long as you follow that system, you're going to get those same great results every time, right? So a lot of people built systems into their business because, because of the value of doing that. Now it occurred to me one day, and I'm going to tell you a little story about how this happened, but it occurred to me, what if I built a system for creating goals right? Now you can accomplish a lot without a goal setting system. Many people do, a lot of people do. A lot of people get very far and they don't really have a system for setting goals. But imagine how much more you could get done if you did have a system. And beyond that, I can tell you how having a system has helped me grow and develop in really positive ways. Because here's the thing, when you have a good system, it produces those predictable results. So if you're not getting the results, you, you immediately know that it's not the system that's the problem. It's because I'm not doing something that I need to be doing. And so I want to share an experience with you that proved this to me. It was a moment that made me realize just how powerful a system is not only for getting great results, but for helping me grow. Right? And so one Saturday at my shop, and I'm, you know, it's, it's Saturday, there's nobody else there. And I'm, you know, thinking that I got it, it'll give me a good chance to take care of some things that, that I wanted to get done without having to worry about getting interrupted. But as many times as we think that we've got a good plan, there I was interrupted by this really creepy noise. It was sort of this weird mixture of, almost sounded like a voice and a scraping sound, right? And so I'm, I'm thinking, what in the world is that? And so I, obviously I can't work when I'm hearing that, this weird faint noise somewhere. And so I Track it down. And I notice that it's coming from the storeroom that we have. So I get in the storeroom, and I'm looking through a shelf and I find this old notebook, and on the front it's labeled goals 2006. And I think that this was like, 2014, right? So it's eight years later, and I'm like, huh, I wonder what I wrote down as my goals 2006. So I had to know, right? And so I'm flipping through the pages and saw some of my old goals, and it was like it was jaw dropping. Because what I realized is that I'm standing in the very shop that I wrote down I wanted to own. And there I was owning it, right? And then I keep reading and I see another goal, and it's another goal that I accomplished. And I had this goal to do 25,000 in rug revenue my first year in the shop, right? And so now that doesn't seem like a whole lot, but it was a whole lot when you're not doing anything in rug revenue. Because we didn't clean rugs at the time, or at least we didn't market that we did. We would clean them if a customer asked. And. But we didn't have a. We really didn't have a great setup for doing it. So. So I knew I wanted to get in the shop, and I wanted to. To, you know, have that as a goal. And so here's another goal that I wrote down and. And hit. And I didn't even remember having a plan on how I was going to do it. It was just a goal that I wrote down. And so somehow it stuck in my brain and it. And it drove me to do that. So I know that there was at least power in writing these things down, right? But it also inspired me, you know, because I thought, well, let me set some more goals, because I wrote these things down, and here I am having accomplished them, and I didn't even realize I accomplished them. So immediately I thought, that's what I'm doing while I. While I've got the chance here, right? So I'm sitting here staring into space, like, trying to envision a future that doesn't exist yet and, like, what goals I want to set. And then I have this realization that, you know, maybe it would be helpful if I look at the ones that I had achieved and figure out what did I do to accomplish them, right? Maybe I could reverse engineer the process and see what I did and set my goals and come up with a plan to follow and so what I ended up doing was I noticed the commonalities for how I achieved these goals and I basically created a template. And so that's what I spoke about at this conference. I gave everybody this template that I use for achieving a goal. Now, everybody's heard of smart goals, right? You have to make your goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. Right. And that's a good, that's a good formula to use. I'm not saying don't use that. But the template that I'm going to give you is more about when you get to the next step where you're going to plan how you're going to achieve this goal. You have to think through how you're going to plan it. That's where this template becomes really useful. And so the first thing that you're going to have to think about is the resources that you're going to need and the basic resources for any goal that you're going to try to achieve. You're going to need financial resources. You know, what am I going to have to invest in order to achieve this goal? Time. Time's a resource. And you're going to have to figure out, how much time can I dedicate to this? Relationships, assets. So you got financial time, relationships and assets. Those are the four areas of resources that are essential for achieving any goal. And you know, your goal can only be as big as the resources that you currently have. So in other words, if you set a goal to make a million dollars a day, if you don't have the resources to do that, that's not a good goal to set. Now, somebody like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, if they set a goal to make a million dollars a day, they have the resources, they have the network, they've got what they need in order to do that. As a matter of fact, they probably do make that. That wouldn't even be a reasonable goal for them. But the point is that your resources are going to determine just how far you can stretch. And once you achieve that goal, your resources increase, your network of people will increase, your finances should increase. So you have to think through your resources, of what you have and how they're going to help you achieve your goals. The other thing that you got to think about, the second thing, is skills. Every goal is going to require skills that you don't currently have. And so you have to think through how you're going to acquire those skills. And you really only have three options. You can either learn and develop the skills Yourself, you can insource them by either having an employee receive specialized training so that employee can now have the skills to help you achieve this goal, or you can hire someone who has those skills. And thirdly, you can outsource them. So, in other words, if your goal requires a few different moving parts, you can pay someone who already has those skills so that they can do that part of it for you. And the benefit of outsourcing them is you can move the timeline of your goal to accomplish it quicker. Because if you want to learn and develop those skills yourself, and you may want to, but you got to realize that's going to take a lot more time than finding somebody who already has those skills and being willing to use the resources of finances to pay them so that they can do that part of it for you. So skills are crucial, and you have to think through, you know, how you're going to either develop the skills, insource them, or outsource them. The third thing is habits. Habits account for 80% of our behavior, which I think is actually higher. But if you think about it, when you wake up in the morning, you pretty much go through the same motions. You make your coffee, you drink your coffee in the same spot, maybe even in the same cup. You drive to work the same way. When you get to work, you do the same things. Habits are great because they free our mind up where we don't have to spend any mental energy to do this task or behavior. We're sort of on autopilot. We don't have to think about what to do next. We know when we wake up, we're gonna go downstairs, we're gonna make our coffee, we're gonna drink our coffee while we email, and then we're going to take a shower. And we just. Our habits become our routine. There's a lot of different thoughts out there that it takes 14 days to build a habit. It takes 21 days to build a habit. It took 66 days to build a habit. The most convincing evidence that I found is that it takes 21 days in a row to build a habit. In other words, consistency is crucial. So if. If you're going to keep a habit for 14 days, but you don't do it every day, if you're going to keep a habit for 21 days or 66 days, but you're not doing it every day, you're not going to build that habit. Consistency is the key. And so the key to consistency is to start really small. In other words, if you want to build a habit of working out every day for an hour. Don't start out working every day for an hour. Start out working every day for just one minute. I know that sounds ridiculous, but you have a much better chance of establishing a habit if you say, I'm going to go to the gym for one minute every day. For the next 21 days, you will be in the habit of going to the gym. And from there you can build your workout. Now, you can work out for longer than a minute once you're there. But. But give yourself permission to go there for just one minute, and I guarantee you, if you start out small with any habit, it's gonna stick. It's a lot more than if you try to start out with the full blown habit. Now keep in mind that once habits are built, they're super helpful, but it works in reverse. And bad habits can be built and get in the way as well. So when you're thinking through your goals, think about what behaviors am I currently doing that don't align with my goals? And what behaviors does someone who already has achieved my goals, what do they have? And those should be the behaviors. You know, someone who has already achieved your goal, the goal that you're trying to achieve. Their habits should be the habits you're trying to attain. The fourth thing is accountability. And nobody really likes accountability. I can hear the collective groans. And I know because we've probably all been in a situation where we've either been tasked with holding someone accountable, an employee, or, you know, somebody under us for something, or we've been held accountable and it was a bad experience because it's a difficult thing to do. But there's a couple things about it. One, if we feel resistant to accountability, let that be a signal to us as to stop and question that. And the question can be, why do I feel resistant? You know, because if we're, if we resist it, we don't want anybody holding us accountable because we know we're not really going to do it. Then we have to find out what's blocking that, especially if it's a goal that really aligns with who we really are. And then the other thing that it can signal to us is maybe we feel unsure of exactly how we're going to accomplish this goal. Right? And so that's. So we don't want anybody holding us accountable because we know we don't really know how we're going to get this done. And that's a, that's a good thing because then we can go, okay, who do I know that I can talk to, that can tell me how to get this done or that I can hire who can get this done. So if you're feeling that resistance, sometimes the best question to ask is not, why am I feeling this? But who can help me accomplish this goal? Now, what that means with accountability is that we're never going to be striving for this goal alone. If we've got someone holding us accountable, then we've always got somebody in our corner that is wanting to help us achieve our goals. And that's a really positive thing. So if you're feeling unsure of how you're going to accomplish it and you find someone who can help you figure it out, or someone who already knows how to do this and you can hire them, well, now you've got somebody that you're automatically accountable to achieve this goal, because you're gonna hire them to do their part. So you have to do your part. Now, the other way is you can ask someone to hold you accountable, or you're gonna be holding other people accountable to do their part. And so there's this negative way that we look at accountability, where we don't really want people to hold us accountable. We don't like it, but there's a positive way that we can frame it. We can frame it this positive way towards ourself and towards anybody else that we have to hold accountable in order to get this goal accomplished. Let's look at the negative way first. The negative way, if we don't hold other people accountable, it's negative because what we're really telling them and what we're really telling ourself when we don't want to be held accountable is, I don't really believe you can do this. I think you're gonna fail, so I'm not really gonna hold you accountable. The positive way is just the opposite, where we say, hey, I know this is gonna be challenging, but I've seen you overcome challenges, and I know you're really smart, and I know you've got skills, and I know that you can do this. So I'm expecting you to figure out how to reach this goal. That's a much more positive way of looking at it. The fifth thing that we have to think about is next actions. What are the next actions that we need to take? So in smart goals, the very last thing that you do is you set a deadline, right? So with your next actions, when you're going to think through your plan, you start at the. At the day of accomplishing the goal and work backwards and so by starting from the due date of achieving your goal and working backwards, you get all the way to today. Let's say you have a 90 day goal. You work from 90 days, you work backwards. Now you're on today. You think, what do I need to do today so that tomorrow I have everything in place that I need in place in order to move it forward? And so those are always going to be your next actions. Every single day. You're planning your day by looking at your goal and figuring out what your next actions are. Now, for me, I have a extremely simple, rudimentary way of doing this. I use sticky notes, and I have all my goals written out, and they're on the wall in this one area in my loft. And, and under each goal is the next actions that I need to do for that day. And I hand write them on sticky notes and I. And I put it under that goal. And at the end of the day, or as the day is going on, as soon as I accomplish that next action, I have another section of the wall that has two columns. One, one heading says done. The other heading says not done. And I get to move that sticky note into the done column when I'm done doing it. And everything that I didn't do at the end of the day goes in the not done column. Now, every time I move a sticky note into the done column, I get a little hit of dopamine, right? I feel good. It's kind of like I'm one of those guys that, you know, I've got my to do list. And then if I do something that wasn't on my to do list, I write it down on my to do. Now, I've already done it, but I still write it down on my to do list. And then I check it off, you know, because I like getting that tiny little hit of dopamine for having done something. Checking it off gives me that little hit of dopamine. And so at the end of the week, I want to see a lot more of these sticky notes in the done column than in the not done column, right? So I write out, as I'm planning out my day, every day, I'm writing my next actions, putting them down. So if I didn't do something the day before and I don't take that sticky note and move it, I put it in the not done column and write out the same exact sticky note and put it under the next action again. So writing out your next actions every day, even though they're the same ones, it builds that Memory, because you're using your muscles and you're writing it down and you're seeing it. Now, I don't know how that works. There's smarter people than me that figured out it's better to write it down every day than to just move it over. But that's the advice I've been given, and that's what I do, because I really do see that it works. And then the sixth thing that you need to think through is obstacles, setbacks, and distractions. So just like when you plan a trip, you're going to have contingencies. Things are going to go wrong, right? You're going to get a flat tire, you're going to lose luggage. There's going to be, you know, some. Some frustrating things that happen, right? Things. Nothing ever goes as planned. So you have to think through on your goals, well, what if. What if this goes wrong? What can go wrong? And then if this goes wrong, in other words, well, what if this, you know, what if one of my technicians quits? That's going to stall the goal. I'm going to have to hire somebody. I'm going to have to hire somebody else. That's going to take extra time. Okay? So you create a plan for exactly what you're going to do. You know, if that happens. Just like you have a spare tire in case you get a flat tire. Sure. If you get a flat tire, you're going to be running behind. You're not going to arrive at your destination at the time you thought you would. But at least you're not stuck on the side of the road wondering what to do. All right, You've got a spare tire, you've got a jack. You take care of the problem. So it's just a setback. It doesn't mean that the goal is not going to happen. It's just there's things that go wrong and set us back. And of course, if you think of, you know, think of everything that could go wrong and you come up with 14 different things. If just one little thing goes wrong, you've already thought through everything that's going to go wrong, but it's probably going to be something that you hadn't thought through. That's just the way life goes. But anyway, it's still good to, you know, to account for contingencies because you can't avoid it. Stuff goes wrong. So those are the six things that you think through on every goal right now. To me, I really think that goal setting guarantees not just that you're going to hit your Goals, but and not just that you're going to hit your goals in a less frustrating way or in less time. It really does help with that. But I really think it guarantees a better life because no one drifts towards success, right? Nobody just gets up every day, tries to figure out what to do next, and ends up becoming a surgeon. Right? Nobody becomes an Olympic gold medal winner just by drifting through life. You know, it takes having a plan and then working hard and staying disciplined. So there's a lot of hard work and there's a lot of discipline, and I guarantee you achieving those goals. There's a lot of boredom of doing the same thing over and over and over again when it comes to staying disciplined. But, you know, that's just part of it. But you get those little hits of dopamine along the way when you can see your progress. And that does help us. And so you're actually living your life with a little bit more dopamine, this natural feel good hormone that the body produces. Now, somebody much smarter than me figured this out, and James Clear wrote about it in his New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits, which is a phenomenal book. I highly recommend reading it. But he says in there, he says every behavior that is highly habit forming, like taking drugs, eating junk food, playing video games, browsing social media, it's associated with higher levels of dopamine. The same can be said for our most basic habitual behaviors, like eating food, drinking water, having sex, and interacting socially. Each time we do those things, dopamine is released. What's interesting is that not only is it released when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. And your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking it. So in other words, just thinking about our goals and just moving forward with our goals, accomplishing the little things that it takes to accomplish the goal, even though we haven't accomplished the goal yet, we spend another day working out at the gym, getting closer to our goal. Dopamine is released, and we're getting the same pleasure as if we hit that goal. So what a better way to live your life? Arguably, progress is the highest form of motivation. I mean, I think there's probably three main ones. Pleasure, pain, and progress. Those are the three main things that motivate us. But just the act of thinking about achieving your goal releases dopamine. And making progress gives us the same hit of dopamine as what we would receive, as if we achieved the goal. And I know I said that in two or three different ways, but that's an amazing point, because that's what makes our life better, is that we're getting these little hits of dopamine because we're moving in the direction we want to move in in life. And when things go wrong, we just see them as setbacks. We see it as a flat tire, but we have a plan for how we're going to take care of it so that we're not just drifting through life. And then when something bad happens, we're all depressed and we want to blame it on. On life is unfair, because life is unfair, and it is hard. But when we're moving in the direction we want to move in, we feel our purpose, and we're able to stay focused on where we want to go and who we really are. Now, one thing that I found is that the moment you set a goal and start working a system to achieve it, the universe starts shaping itself around your vision. Try it. Just try it. Set a goal. Do everything that I've told you to do. And if you have any trouble, just email me and ask me for help. I'm more than willing to help anybody because I have seen the power of doing this. Shoot me an email, say, hey, Dave, I'm having some trouble getting this part figured out, and I'll be glad to tell you what I think. We can get on the phone, we can get on Zoom, and we can talk about it. I'm more than happy to help anybody because your wins would be my wins. Well, that was the talk that I gave, and I hope you found it helpful. And I am serious. If there's any way that I can help you, feel free to reach out to me. Hey, thanks for listening to another episode. And remember, your wins are my wins. Sat.