Why Most Goals Fail (And How to Beat the Odds)

Summary

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast: Episode Summary

Title: Why Most Goals Fail (And How to Beat the Odds)
Host: John Jantsch
Guest: John Acuff
Release Date: December 5, 2024

---

1. Introduction to John Acuff

In this episode, John Jantsch welcomes John Acuff, a New York Times bestselling author renowned for his insightful works on goal setting and personal development. Acuff, known for his engaging blend of humor and wisdom, discusses his latest book, All It Takes is a Goal: The Three-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap into Your Massive Potential, which offers a fresh perspective on achieving personal and professional goals.

Notable Quote:

"He's a known for blending humor with insight, he once opened for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium." – Jon Jantz [01:02]

---

2. The Dolly Parton Anecdote

John Acuff shares a memorable story about an unexpected opportunity to open for Dolly Parton at a charity event held at the Ryman Auditorium. Despite the daunting task of performing 20 minutes of comedy to an audience of dentists, Acuff found the experience transformational, both personally and professionally.

Notable Quote:

"She's everything you hope. You know, they always say never meet your heroes, but definitely meet Dolly Parton." – John Acuff [02:37]

---

3. Filling the Gap in Goal Setting Literature

When questioned about the necessity of another goal-setting book, Acuff emphasizes the unique aspects his book brings to the table. Unlike many goal-setting resources that kick off with a 20-year vision, Acuff starts by reflecting on past experiences to inform present actions. He criticizes the "vision wall" many encounter and advocates for a more grounded approach that leverages one's history to build a sustainable future.

Notable Quote:

"What I felt was missing was how easy the initial goals should be... redeem your past to provide clues to your present and build your future." – John Acuff [03:51]

---

4. Good Regret vs. Bad Regret

Acuff delves into the concept of regret, distinguishing between "good regret" and "bad regret." Good regret leads to actionable change and personal growth, while bad regret traps individuals in a loop of negativity without fostering improvement. He encourages listeners to focus on transforming regrets into positive actions that propel future success.

Notable Quote:

"Bad regret is something that doesn't lead to change... Good regret, by nature, leads to change." – John Acuff [05:37]

---

5. The Three-Step Plan: Building a Goal Ladder

Central to Acuff's methodology is the Three-Step Plan, which involves constructing a "goal ladder." This approach addresses the common issue of overly ambitious goals by breaking them down into manageable, incremental steps. The ladder comprises:

1. Easy Goals – Small, achievable tasks that build momentum.
2. Middle Goals – Intermediate steps that bridge easy and guaranteed goals.
3. Guaranteed Goals – Reliable actions that ensure steady progress.

By adding rungs every six inches, the ladder becomes simple and less daunting, facilitating consistent advancement toward larger objectives.

Notable Quote:

"Most people have a 12-foot tall ladder that only has two rungs. The top rung says final step and the bottom rung says first day." – John Acuff [07:12]

---

6. Addressing Diverse Opportunities and Challenges

Acknowledging that not everyone starts with the same opportunities, Acuff emphasizes a personalized approach to goal setting. He advises individuals to focus on what they can do with their current circumstances rather than lamenting what they cannot change. By identifying and leveraging available resources, individuals can navigate their unique challenges effectively.

Notable Quote:

"Life is certainly not equal, but I think it comes down to going, what can you do with what you have?" – John Acuff [08:30]

---

7. Balancing Aspirational and Realistic Goals

Acuff highlights the importance of striking a balance between aspirational dreams and achievable steps. Goals should inspire and push individuals outward while remaining grounded enough to allow for consistent progress. He advocates for setting big-picture aspirations complemented by daily, realistic actions that make goal attainment feasible.

Notable Quote:

"You need the aspiration to get you started... but then you have to break it down at the daily steps." – John Acuff [10:59]

---

8. Motivation and Personalized Tools for Success

Understanding that motivation varies among individuals, Acuff underscores the necessity of identifying personal motivational tools. Whether through accountability partners, visual aids, or auditory stimuli, finding what uniquely drives each person is crucial for sustained effort and goal achievement.

Notable Quote:

"It's really about figuring out what are the tools you need to get it done." – John Acuff [15:25]

---

9. Embracing Failure and Learning from It

Acuff candidly shares his own experiences with failure, including unsuccessful ventures and poorly received books. He stresses that failures are integral to the goal-setting process, offering valuable lessons that refine future strategies. By being transparent about his setbacks, Acuff encourages listeners to view failures as stepping stones rather than obstacles.

Notable Quote:

"I've written books that didn't sell, and it's a public failure. But that's part of writing a book that does sell." – John Acuff [21:52]

---

10. Overcoming the Fear of Success

Addressing the often-overlooked fear of success, Acuff explores the anxieties that come with achieving significant goals. Whether it's the concern of outgrowing one's background or the fear of increased expectations, Acuff advises redefining personal definitions of success and surrounding oneself with supportive, successful communities to mitigate these fears.

Notable Quote:

"You have to raise your level of what's an acceptable amount of success." – John Acuff [19:10]

---

11. Conclusion and Connecting with John Acuff

As the episode concludes, Acuff invites listeners to engage further with his work through his podcast, All It Takes is a Goal, and his audiobooks. He encourages aspiring goal-setters to connect with him online to access a wealth of resources aimed at fostering personal and professional growth.

Notable Quote:

"If you like podcasts, I have a podcast called All It Takes is a Goal where I interview folks about the goals they're working on." – John Acuff [24:28]

---

Final Thoughts

John Acuff's insights offer a pragmatic and personalized approach to goal setting, emphasizing manageable steps, learning from the past, and overcoming personal barriers. His conversation with John Jantsch provides valuable strategies for anyone looking to set and achieve meaningful goals while navigating the complexities of personal growth and success.

---

Connect with John Acuff:

• Podcast: All It Takes is a Goal
• Audiobooks: All It Takes is a Goal and Soundtracks
• Online Presence: Follow John Acuff on his social media platforms for more resources and updates.

Transcript

[Anonymous Testimonial Giver]

I was like this. I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for, I can honestly say has genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly. It's the best investment I ever made.

[Duct Tape Marketing Host]

What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing Certification intensive program for fractional CMOs, marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You can choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM World Scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It's time to transform your approach. Book your call today. DTM World slash scale.

[Jon Jantz]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is Jon Jantz and my guest today is John Acuff. He's a New York Times best selling author of nine books, including his most recent, All It Takes is a Goal. The three step plan to ditch regret and tap into your massive potential. Translated into over 20 languages, Acuff's work is both critically acclaimed and beloved by readers. He's a top leadership speaker named by Inc. And he has addressed audiences worldwide including FedEx, Microsoft and Chick Fil. A known for blending humor with insight, he once opened for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium. So John, welcome to the show.

[John Acuff]

Thanks for having me, John. Looking forward to it.

[Jon Jantz]

Should we blow a little time hearing that story? It's in your bio.

[John Acuff]

The Dolly Parton story. Yeah, that happened like most of those things happened via my dentist. Obviously. I go to what I say, the dentist to the stars. And John Acuff. So famous people go there and also me. And he said one night he was like, hey, I've got a charity event at the Ryman. Would you be willing to open for Dolly Parton? And I said, I guess, I guess I can do that. So I did 20 minutes of comedy, just straight comedy. The audience was dentists. I had some killer mouth jokes that would not be funny if I told them to do right now. And I met Dolly. She did a 75 minute show that started on 9pm she's unbelievable. She's everything you hope. You know, they always say never meet your heroes, but definitely meet Dolly Parton. I would have that photo of us on my driver's license if the DMV where it's such jerk.

[Jon Jantz]

Yeah, I've. I can't remember what it was some a. It was a series of podcasts, but it was a serial where the somehow the person met and ended up like doing all these interviews with Dolly Parton. He turned it into almost a Booklands podcast. And it was so good. It was so good.

[John Acuff]

I don't know any. It's like there's only three people in America nobody hates. It's like Dolly, Denzel and Tom Hanks. I think, like, it's hard to find somebody who's like dead Tom Hanks. I hate his stupid face. I think they're universally loved.

[Jon Jantz]

Well, I, my like opening for Joke was I actually used to talk about the fact that Bill Cosby opened for me. Now technically he was the closing speaker at an event and I happened to be the next morning's opening.

[John Acuff]

Oh yes, that counts. That I've counted. Month distance. Totally same arena. That counts.

[Jon Jantz]

However, that joke hasn't held up as well. I don't use it.

[John Acuff]

You're going to want to retire that one. You're going to want to. That one has. Yeah, that one has a different feeling.

[Jon Jantz]

Yeah.

[John Acuff]

This current year.

[Jon Jantz]

Yeah, it does. So let's just start with the obvious. Put you on like, defense right off the bat.

[John Acuff]

Sure.

[Jon Jantz]

Does the world need another book on gold setting? I mean, there are a few of them. What in your mind said, yeah, I've got like something that hasn't been written before.

[John Acuff]

That's a great question. Well, habits had already been done. I mean, James Clear wrote Atomic Habits. If you ever write a book about habits, God bless you, that that one's been done. No, for me, what I felt like was missing in a lot of goal setting books was how easy the initial goals should be. I think our culture does a really big job of going go big or go home. And what happens is people usually go home. And so I was teaching goal setting techniques for five or six years to real folks accomplishing real things and felt like that was a big part of what was missing is, okay, how do you, you know, how do you do that? And then the second thing I thought was missing was that a lot of goal setting books, their first step is come up with a 20 year vision for your life. Like, and we've misinterpreted Stephen Covey's Begin with the End in Mind into if you don't know the end, you can't begin. And so I kept seeing people run into what I call as a vision wall. And so I wanted to write a goal setting book that started from the past, meaning the first thing it did was say, what are the things that have lit you up over the last five years, the last 10 years? What are the clues? Because most people go, don't look backward. You're not going that direction. And we leave all this real learning about who we really are and what really fires us up. So I wanted to redeem your past to provide clues to your present and build your future.

[Jon Jantz]

So the word regret in the title is a tough word for some people. I mean, there's. There's certainly people look at it as a negative, but there's a school of thought, I think Dan Pink actually had a book on it that that kind of talks about. Now you learn from that. There's like good regret or there's no regret. I don't know which. There is. So how do you help people distinguish between the. You know, you can learn from regret as opposed to just saying, every mistake I made was regret.

[John Acuff]

Yeah, I mean, I guess for me it always comes down to, well, so what did you do with it? What was the action that came out of that? And so I think a really simple test is bad regret is something that doesn't lead to change. It just leads to more bad regret. Like, you get stuck in that loop. Good regret, I think by nature leads to change. You go, I regretted the way I said that. I'm not going to say that kind of thing again. Here's what I'm going to practice to make sure I don't say that kind of thing again. Here's the. You know, I made this mistake. And so, yeah, for me, that's what I meant. I think a lot of times with regret, we go back to our past and hope there's a single thing we can find that will change the rest of our lives. And we have this kind of misinterpreted version of counseling sometimes, like, maybe there's something that happened to you at six and once you unlock that, you'll be a completely different human going forward. And I think there is benefit to going, yeah, I had this challenge and I. And I needed to process it. But sometimes where I see people get stuck with regret is it's like if you visited the same beach town every summer for 20 summers in a row, you'd know that beach town so well. And they visit the same story 20 years in a row and they keep giving it more power, more power, more power, more power versus going, yeah, that was a thing that happened. I can't change that. I can change tomorrow. So I'm going to give more of my time More of my energy to that. What does that look like? And so yeah, I would say as for me, it's how fast can I turn it into action for my future versus rumination about the past.

[Duct Tape Marketing Host]

Can you.

[Jon Jantz]

And we can talk about the individual ones. Can you just kind of quickly, what's the three step plan?

[John Acuff]

Yeah, so the three steps are essentially you build what I would call as a goal ladder. Most people have a hard time with goals because they have a 12 foot tall ladder that only has two rungs. The top rung says final step and the bottom rung says first day. And the final step could be make a million dollars, lose 50 pounds. First day says, you know, get your LLC or buy sneakers. And there's a huge gap between there and you go, I can't get to the top that way. And so the three steps are you build easy goals, you build middle goals, and you build guaranteed goals, essentially adding rungs to your entire ladder so that you have a rung every six inches so that it's a really simple ladder to climb. So those are the three steps.

[Jon Jantz]

The fact of life is that there are people. I count myself as one. I had access to a lot of resources. I had privilege, you know, growing up. And there are a lot of people that don't, I mean, that want to take themselves out of the situation they have and don't have the. Some of the things that other people have. How do you talk about that person is like, and again, I know people can use that as an excuse because we've all seen people that have risen from abject poverty, you know, to like un. Incredible, you know, achieving incredible goals. But how do you address that just when you're talking to these, the normal person out there, that there are definitely differences in opportunities that people have.

[John Acuff]

Yeah, I try to talk it to the individual person. I can't talk to global people. I can talk to individual readers. So where I see people get stuck there is if I go, man, I think you'd feel great if you walked around your neighborhood today. And then they, they push back and go, well, not everybody has a safe neighborhood. Okay, well let's pull the thread on that. So are you saying until everybody has a safe neighborhood, you can't walk in your neighborhood? How will you know, will the government email you and say, hey, we did it, we did it. Everybody has the same exact safe neighborhood. Now you can go take a walk. I had a friend, Chip Dodd, he's a PhD, say we suffer from global codependence. When you say not everybody had the same opportunity. You're saying I'm dependent on them having the same opportunity before I change my life. So in a situation like that, I'd say to somebody, hey, I think this could be beneficial. And if they said, well, I don't have those same opportunities, I would say, well, which ones do you have? Let's talk about you as an individual. If they said, hey, John, there's a lot of people that can't do that, I'd go, well, what are their names? And more than likely they go, well, I don't really know any. I just know that, like the world. And then I'll go, okay, well, like, is it a friend? Let's talk about your friend doesn't have that opportunity. Let's help them fix their specific problem. I just think that, yeah, life is certainly like. Life is certainly not equal, but I think it comes down to going, what can you do with what you have? Versus, like, I don't. Like, take for me, for instance. I was never going to be in the NBA. I'm at my height at 5 7. There's five people in the history of the NBA that have played at my height. Like, so I can't go like, man, it's. It's crazy that Steph Curry gets to play in the NBA and I don't. Like, we didn't get the same opportunities. Like, yeah, height wasn't one of my opportunities. And in some ways it encouraged me to develop a sense of humor because I wasn't going to be the tall, confident kid in the seventh grader because I was not tall and confident. So I thought, man, I better develop a little bit of survival skills in my middle school and maybe personality be one of them. So I always try to get it back to the individual because I think there are people, you know, everybody gets a different set of opportunities, and it depends on what you do with them.

[Jon Jantz]

So you started talking about the. One of the challenges people have is that they set these, you know, impossible goals for.

[John Acuff]

Or.

[Jon Jantz]

Or they think, you know, that's not big enough. How do you kind of help keep people keep a perspective on. On that tension? You know, that, like, what's aspirational? What would put. I mean, because a goal should push you a little bit, probably.

[John Acuff]

Right.

[Jon Jantz]

But also some know, set something so big that they can't take the first step.

[John Acuff]

Yeah. So you do need both. You, like, you need the aspiration to get you started. You need the small goal to keep you going so nobody gets excited. If, you know, John. I know. And you know, if Somebody wants to write a 50,000 word book, the first thing they have to do is write the first 100 words and the next 200 words. But that's so boring. If you say to somebody, you're going to get to write a hundred whole words. That doesn't get anybody to the desk. You want to paint for them this big picture of like, the book is on a shelf you're holding in your hand. It's been translated into Italian. You're at a book signing. You need the aspiration to be inspired, but then you have to break it down at the daily steps. So it's really a dance of both in that sense. And so for me, one of the fastest ways to do that is to deal in terms of time. Like, I get to time so fast with people. I. Most people's goal is divorce from their calendar. And you never accomplish a goal if that's how you're living. And so one of the things I do, which is not necessarily fun right out of the gate, is if somebody's serious about a goal, I go, all right, let's do a quick time gap analysis. Like, let's add up the hours that your new goal is going to take. And most people that read my types of books and listen to your podcast have more goals than they need. The average person, I did a study, had 22.8 goals. Your listeners feel overwhelmed because they should feel overwhelmed. They're juggling 22 balls at a time. So I'll go, let's put an hour with it. And they'll usually go, okay, it's 22 hours of goals. And I'll go, okay, how many hours of free time do you have in your week? This week? And they go, free time. What? I'm very busy. I have zero. Okay, you have a new goal system that costs 22 hours. You have a calendar that accepts zero hours. You're just going to get into a fight constantly. So I'll always try to get them to, like, make friends with reality. The problem is with goals is you dream and then you plan. And dreaming is based on optimism and planning is based on realism. And a lot of people have a hard time making that transition. And so I try to help them ease that transition from, I've got a big, crazy, amazing goal. I dreamed with unfettered limitations, and now I want to actually bring it into the real world. How do I do that? In a way that is still encouraging, but it also does stretch me. And so that's always, you know, it's a. It's Definitely a dance. And it's not something. It's why Most goals fail. 92% of all new Year's resolutions, according to the University of Scranton, fail. Like Strava did a study of 800 million athletic activities. Biggest fitness tracking app in the world. The biggest drop off day they saw was the second Friday in January. So let's not sugarcoat that. Like if you have a goal that magically happens, it doesn't. But man, is it worth it. Like man, is it worth it.

[Duct Tape Marketing Host]

Even if you think it's a bit overhyped. AI is suddenly everywhere from self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power. So how do you compete with costs spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or oci. OCI is a blazing, fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, including MGM Resorts, Specialized bikes and Fireworks AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI. For new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends 1231 24. See if your company qualifies for this special [e-mail] duct tape. That's oracle.com duct tape.

[Jon Jantz]

You know, one of the things that I'm, I suspect most people, most listeners can think back in their life and have seen is that like, I know that if I make something a priority, it's going to happen. Yeah. If I wish that something happens, it's probably not. I'll, I'll fill up my calendar with other stuff. The one everybody always relates to is, you know, on April 14, if I haven't filed my taxes, all of a sudden I got time to figure that out, right?

[John Acuff]

Yeah, yeah. I'm motivated. I'm motivated.

[Jon Jantz]

Right. And, and I think that that's true probably that that idea of getting the right, like making something a real priority is the only way you're going to make it happen.

[John Acuff]

Yeah. I mean, and you have to figure out what that means to you. Some people are people motivated. So some people are really helped when they have another person who's holding their feet to the fire. Yeah. And you go, okay, great. Some people are, you know, visually motivated. They need to do that exercise where they cut out the pictures from the magazine and they can envision it. Some of them are, you know, audio motivated where they, they need the Eminem song kicking them off at the gym, and they're going to lose themselves. So it's really about figuring out what are the tools you need to get it done. Like, what is your kind of set of tools? And for me, I throw thousands of tools at my goals. Like, I really, you know, I've now written 10 books. Like, this year I will have run 650 miles and walked 450 miles. I read 100 books a year. And there's people that'll go, well, man, that's a lot. That feels like a lot. And I always think, yeah, I want a lot out of life. It is a lot. Like, I want to hold, I want to make a lot of money and help a lot of people and, and run a lot of miles. But I just use a lot of tools that make that easy and fun. And I'm always figuring that out and I'm always dialing that in. And you've seen the same thing. Like, if you spend time with successful people, they're never accidental. Like, nothing in life gets awesome accidentally. I've never met somebody who accidentally got in shape who said, yeah, I was just binge watching Netflix. Next thing you knew, I was, I was doing burpees in the living room. I don't even remember getting off the couch. I've never met somebody who had an awesome marriage accidentally or had an awesome business accidentally. They're always intentional, and they're very intentional about how they stay motivated to actually commit to the goal.

[Jon Jantz]

Yeah. And I think another thing is when you see that person that you think, wow, look at the level of success. You know, you should go back and listen to my first podcast, go back and listen to my first speech, go back and read my first article.

[John Acuff]

Brutal.

[Jon Jantz]

Brutal.

[John Acuff]

So I've been public speaking for probably 15, 16 years now. My wife still doesn't really enjoy to go to my events because she still has ptsd. For my first couple events, she would come and sit there and just watch me. Like it was a suffer fest for me and the audience. And that's part of it. And so that's the other thing is that we often don't get to see that process. And I think that's what people relate to with you, is that you share, you share the process. Like entrepreneurs that share the process are honest and vulnerable and go, yeah, this thing blew it. Like, I wrote a book once and the. It was this was a literary magazine that reviewed it. And their last sentence was, you can essentially, you can tell John's passionate, but ultimately, this reads like a pamphlet that got stretched into a book. That's every writer's nightmare. That, like, somebody goes, this could have been a pamphlet. And. But at the same time, I'm like, what's the trade off? That I wouldn't have done that, like, and I didn't get a book out. And then think about, think about, okay, if your first episode stinks, what's the trade off? You. You want the episodes to get worse? Of course not. You want to look back and go, wow, I've gotten better. Like, that's what you want. And so if you remember that, you're willing to do the work of being like, yeah, dude, that one was rough. Or like, wow, the crowd didn't connect on that. Or like, I wrote that book and it just did not. I've written books that didn't sell, and it's a public failure. And that's not. That's not fun. But that's part of writing a book that does sell.

[Jon Jantz]

I've read research on. And this isn't everybody, but there's certainly people out there that. That are actually afraid of success.

[John Acuff]

Oh, yeah.

[Jon Jantz]

It's like, what's going to happen to me? What's going to happen to my family if I succeed? I mean, how do you get people kind of past that barrier, if it exists?

[John Acuff]

Well, it depends on what, you know, the cause of theirs. So it seems like when it comes to a fear of success, there's a. There's a couple versions of it. There's. I can't be more successful than what I grew up with is an acceptable amount of success. So I can't make more money than my dad. I can't make more money than the town I grew up in. There's also. If I get successful, life will get harder and more complicated. So that is what I call M.O. money. M.O. problem Syndrome. The idea that if I make more money, life's going to get harder and more stressful. But I'll tell you, I've had no money before, and it didn't make life easier. It didn't make the problems simpler. So. Or it's, you know, okay, if I get successful, people expect me to be successful every time. Some people like to surprise people. People, they're afraid to have expectations, so they'd rather you have no expectations and they show up and then they exceed them. So it depends on which variety of that you have. But for Me, it's, you go, you're gonna have to raise your level of what's an acceptable amount of success. And one of the ways you do that is in community. So you and I, where we connected, was a community of very successful authors. And I can't speak for your level of success. I was not the most successful person in that room by a long shot. And but being around them, I go, oh, wow, this person, that's how they did it. They seem like they really love their family, they seem like their life is really fun and they have a level of success that I thought came with a lot of complications. Or maybe like, I have this broken soundtrack that says if you get that successful, you never see your kids and you end up, you don't really even know your wife. And this guy seems to love his wife and he seems to love his kids and wow, that breaks my framework. And so now just being around those people challenges me to go, I'm going to raise my own personal definition of what's an okay amount of success, you know, and see what that looks like. But the other thing for me with that is I'm really deliberate about studying and working with people who are, have sustainable long term success. So I'm no longer impressed by the person that has a YouTube channel that's hot for a year or one book that did well. I'm curious about the guy who's 40 years into his career or the, the woman who's 30 years into her career, who has a family that loves her, has a spouse that loves them, has a business that's healthy. They're, they're in moderate, you know, health shape. And I go, how do they do that? Like, how have they not blown it up? How have they not? Because there's plenty of examples of leaders who have. And so I'm, I treat it pretty serious about how do you, how do you enjoy success and how do you make success not change you?

[Jon Jantz]

I'm guessing I could be wrong that it'd be hard to write a book like this or at least shape the ideas in a book with this like this that you hadn't experienced a significant goal that you failed to achieve. So do you share maybe how some of that shaped this book?

[John Acuff]

Yeah. So I mean, you could say, I mean, think about this. Like, I spent three years working with Dave Ramsey and that was a really amazing experience. And then I ended up starting my own company, which was not successful for a period of time. So there were a lot of people, friends who would say, wow, what you blew it you were on the radio with 10 million radio listeners, and then the next day you had zero radio listeners. My wife said to me, she said, hey, I think it's going to be hard for you to handle that your next book won't sell like your last book because you don't have 10 million radio listeners to talk to about it. And that was a reality. So for me, you know, that was a big. A big moment to go, wow, I have to start over. Like, I started at the bottom of a lot of ladders in that moment where, you know, so that was definitely one that I would say, okay, I had to start over in that moment, starting my own business in that moment. It's going to speak to. To 80 people in a Ramada in January in Effingham, Illinois, when I had been on stage to 10,000 people three months before. Like, I don't know anybody in the world that would go, this is working. I'm doing it. This is the trajectory. So, like, that's definitely. That's definitely one of them. And then, and then there's been too many books. There's books I've written that just didn't find the sales market. Like, one of my books, do over, which is about career transition, it just had the wrong title. And I came up with the title. That's. No, like, I don't. I'm not pointing a single finger that I came up with that title. Seth Godin said it was the greatest career book ever written. That was his endorsement. It's the best endorsement I've ever received. And it didn't sell well. And the reason why, in my opinion, is the phrase do over was so negative to so many people. I saw it as positive. I saw it as a phoenix rising from the ashes. But nobody wanted to give anyone that book because you would never say to a husband, hey, it's a book about failures. It's called Do Overs. Made me think of you. Here you go. But, like, no one would gift that book. And, dude, we changed the subtitle from the hardcover to the paperback. Like, we did everything, and it just didn't work. And I worked as hard as I could on that. I wrote the best book I could. I got, you know, great feedback from other writers like Seth Godin, but the titling, the way I positioned it, and again, it was me, like, I would love to blame somebody else. It was. It was a guy named John Acuff that did that. And so, yeah, that was a. That was definitely a humbling one.

[Jon Jantz]

Well, John, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast where would you invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work and your books?

[John Acuff]

Sure, if you like podcasts. I have a podcast called All It Takes is a Goal where I interview folks about the goals they're working on and then I read all my audiobooks. So if you're a listener to audio, I add a ton of bonus content. If you ever write your own book and get to record the audio, add a bunch of bonus content because it's really fun. So you can check out my two most recent All It Takes a Goal and Soundtracks, which is about mindset. And then I'm just John Acuff everywhere online.

[Jon Jantz]

Awesome. Well again I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

[John Acuff]

John yeah, thanks. Great seeing again John.