What Brian Tracey & Grant Cardone Taught Me About Goal Setting

What Brian Tracy & Grant Cardone Taught Me About Goal Setting

The first book I read about goal setting was Brian Tracey's The Miracle Of Self Discipline.

The premise of the book is simple. Work harder than everyone else. Study more than everyone else. And you will achieve any goal you set yourself.

That's certainly not the "magic pill" way to achieve your goals. And it is believable.

There was one statistic in the book that stopped me cold.

People that write their goals down are 70% more likely to achieve them than people that don't.

So...

I wrote my 2013 goals down in Evernote and more or less forgot about them. I probably looked at them once or twice during the year because Evernote made it easy. Evernote automatically puts all my notes on all my electronic devices.

So I wrote down my goals. I looked at them 3 or 4 times during the year. Then the law of attraction and the power of my subconscious took over. I had achieved everything on the list.

It was spooky. And it was wonderful.

So, I started setting bigger goals. And I started reading more books on goal setting and achievement.

Brain Tracey's book Goals taught me a simple 3 step process to achieve your goals.

1. Write down your goals
2. Make a plan for their achievement
3. Act on your plan every day

Those 3 steps really can change your life!

If... you act on them.

You see the most powerful part of my goal setting system is creating a daily habit. With this step, I plan out when I'm going to do my daily habit, and it happens. And when I don't achieve my goals there is always a simple reason...

I didn't act on my goals every day.

There might be a good reason for that. And this is where you have to change your approach.

So let me tell you about a goal that I have never achieved.

My health goal is to weight 78kg.

Why 78kg?

Because that's what I weighed when I was 18. So I'm chasing a ghost.

My wife thinks I'm crazy for this. I know that I can achieve anything I want if I act on it consistently.

At the start of the year, I ran 12km 5 or 6 times a week. And I lost 2 kilos a week.

I was thrilled. It looked like I had found the secret that I'd been searching for. Then...

I got injured.

Okay. So, I have to rest a bit. What's the big deal.

Then I got injured again.

So I started giving my body more recovery time. I started running 10K 4 times a week. This helped but it didn't solve the problem.

The simple solution was to do something else. But it took me months to see it. In fact, it took my brother telling me that he started rowing again for me to see what I needed to do.

Now, I'm rowing 6km every day and I'm losing half a kilo a week. I feel great and my body is not breaking down.

If I have the discipline to keep going. Then achieving my 78kg goal is inevitable.

And this is where the power of habit kicks in. You see, there are plenty of times when I don't want to go into the garage and push myself for 20 minutes on the rowing machine. And I set myself a goal of rowing for 30 days straight. And it's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning.

So...

It happened. The first 5 days were easy. The rest were not. And proving to myself that I could row every day without my body breaking down. Proving to myself that daily exercise makes me more productive and a much nicer person. And doing it for 30 days...

Created a habit.

A habit that I don't have to think about. A habit that doesn't require motivation to achieve. It's a habit that is now part of my day.

If you're thinking, that's fine for weight loss but what about something more challenging like growing your business. Then Brian Tracey has some more advice in his Goals book.

What Do You Need To Achieve Your Goals

Here are 7 additional tools to help you achieve your goals from Brian Tracey's book Goals.

1. What new skills do you need?
2. What new relationships do you need?
3. What new habits do you need?
4. Visualise your goals
5. Be flexible - don't lose sight of your goals and be flexible in the way you achieve them
6. Manage your time
7. Persist until you succeed

#1. What New Skills Do You Need?

This is a powerful question to ask. This holds the key to your success. After all, you know that "What got you here, won't take you where you want to go."

So what new skills do you need to achieve your goals? And how are you going to get them?

Books?

The school of hard knocks?

An online course?

Mentorship?

Something else?

Once you know the new skills you need to learn to achieve your goals. Finding someone to help you or diving into the school of hard knocks becomes the next step.

Maybe you start the year thinking the problem is not that hard (like me with making lead generation free). And it's only after struggling for a few months, you realise that you need some help. When you are clear on the skills you want to develop. The right teacher will appear.

I knew before I started that I needed help to make lead generation free. So I did an online course and joined a mastermind program.

Then I took action. I put my money behind myself and my vision.

And...

When you take action... things don't always go the way you hope! That was the case with me.

And I persisted. I knew that I had to roll up my sleeves and stay at the coalface if I wanted to learn and grow.

I'm not going to lie. Learning like this hurts! It stamped on my wallet and bruised my ego.

And...

It gave me something I never expected...

Resolve & Self-Belief

You see if you are going to step into the boxing ring and try something new...

... you are going to get hit!

The punches hurt. And...

It is a privilege to be in the ring!

That's what I kept reminding myself. Being in the ring is a privilege. I wanted to step into the ring. Now it's up to me to stay standing and keep moving.

How did I keep moving?

I got a mentor. Someone I know that runs a lot of ads. Someone I know can give me feedback based on real-world experience.

This helped. My results improved dramatically then...

Facebook banned my account!

I didn't see that one coming.

My plan was to get up and keep fighting. Then consulting pulled me away from this. Today I'm running ads for other training companies. I'm helping them get much better results.

The only reason why I can do that is because of the months I worked at this on my own dime.

So...

What new skills do you need to grow your consulting or training business?

And...

Who can shortcut your learning curve because they are ahead of you on the same road of discovery?

#2. What New Relationships Do You Need?

This could be the fast track to achieving your goals. After all, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

So do you need to tell more people that you already know who you want to work with?

Or do you need to create relationships with new business owners?

If you're anything like me. Then you need to do both of these if you want to get fast results.

I want to work with training companies that have an email database of 8,000 or more.

If they have a database of that size. Then I know that I can create a campaign that will give them a giant leap in sales.

And...

How many people to I say this to?

No one!

How many people do I ask if they know any training companies that would like a surge of sales with none of their time?

No one!

So, this is something that I need to change next year.

So, who do you know that can recommend you to your ideal client?

Who can recommend you speak to a specific person to win a new consulting client?

What training company can you do a promotion with so you grow your training company without lead generation?

Once you are clear on the relationships you need to nurture. You are half way to making it happen.

#3. What New Habits Do You Need?

I think this is the most powerful thing on the list.

This is what transforms a big goal into something you move a little closer to every day.

As Warren Buffett has said

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

When you do something every day. You will always move closer to your goal. You won't notice the change on a daily basis. But when you look back after a month... or 6 months... or a year!

That's when you'll see the giant leap you've taken towards your goal.

Depending on the size of your goal, you might also see how much work you still need to do to achieve it. And that's okay because you are now on the path to becoming the person you want to be.

I want to be one of the top copywriters in the world.

I know I'm not going to achieve that in a year.

I also know that if I work on my craft every single day... if I seek help and guidance from expert copywriters... that I will become one of the world's top copywriters.

So think about the daily habits that you can create to achieve your goals. Get clear on when you will do these tasks each day. And then guard that time like your life depends on it.

Rather than work through the rest of the Brian Tracey goals list. I'd like to share with you

What Grant Cardone Taught Me About Goal Setting

The 10X Rule is Grant Cardone's most famous book. And I believe his best book, the most useful for grow your training or consulting business is Be Obsessed Or Be Average.

There are 2 key takeaways that I'd like to share with you...

1. Write your long-term goals every day
2. When problems seem insurmountable it's because you've lost sight of your goals

We all have times when everything feels like it's going wrong and we want to throw our arms in the air and quit.

When you've just lost a big client. Or when a client that you've been speaking with for months say No.

Or when you've done a promotion and not got the sales you hoped for. This could be for an online course. Or it could be to fill an event.

Regardless of the situation. These moments can feel like you are staring into the void. You've poured your heart and soul into something and real-world-feedback has told you that you need to work harder.

That's a bitter pill to swallow.

That's the time when Grant Cardone's rules will carry you through to a new client or another campaign.

The 2 rules are essentially 1 rule. You simply write your long-term goals down every day.

When problems seem insurmountable, it's because you've lost sight of your goals. Or what is more likely... you have stopped writing your goals every day. At least, that's what I've found.

The beauty of long-term goals is that you know you can't achieve them in a day! You know that you'll have to endure short-term setbacks. So when you get a set-back that feels like you've just crashed and burned. That's when you need to write your long-term goals. That's when you remind yourself of what you want to achieve. That's when you see that this is another stepping stone on your journey.

So what goals do I set each year?

I Set Goals For Every Area Of My Life That's Important

Like me, your life is about more than work. So don't only set work goals.

These are the categories that I set goals for each year...

1. Business
2. Education
3. Health
4. Family
5. Friends
6. Travel

You might think that Education falls under Business. And if it does for you that's okay.

The reason why I've put it in its own category is that I know that education is the key to my success.

I want to give Education the same focus and attention that I give making money.

For Each Category I Plan...

1. What I want to achieve
2. Plan for success
3. Habits for success

This is what transforms an idea into something that happens.

Without knowing what you want to achieve it's impossible to plan how you are going to get there. That's obvious enough.

Once you have a big vision of success that you have written down. You have made an important step to achieving your goals.

But please don't put your success only in the hands of the law of attraction and your subconscious.

When you make a plan for success. You know exactly what you need to do to achieve your goal. And if you don't know everything that you need to achieve it... you know who you need to speak to for guidance.

But...

I had a couple of years when I wrote down my goals and made a success plan. Only to fall short of what I wanted.

Why did that happen?

Because I didn't work my plan. It was as simple as that.

So... is the answer more discipline?

That's what I thought at first. And when that did not create the changes I wanted I realised I needed something much more powerful than discipline. I needed something that would not fail when times got tough.

That's why I plan out my Habits For Success.

The beauty of a habit is that you only need discipline and motivation to get started. Once you've got the ball rolling then habit is the momentum that carries you through dark days.

When you plan your Habits For Success you also decide what time you will do things.

If I don't carve out time every day for an activity... it doesn't happen. It's as simple as that.

So, with my exercise I know that I wake up and head straight to the garage. 20 minutes later I've pulled 6km to 6.5km. And I can celebrate because I've achieved my most important goal and it's only 6:30am.

That sets me up for the day. That puts me in a much better mood than drinking mountains of coffee.

The habit to achieve my business goals is NOT as simple as showing up to work every day. You see the daily chaos can make it easy to miss your most important goals. You are working hard but not doing your most important tasks.

So the habit to achieve my business goals is to focus on my 1% tasks. These are the tasks that take no more than 30 minutes to complete. So there's no reason why I can't do them.

When I focus on my 1% tasks... they get done. When I get overwhelmed with work. They might not get done. Simply because I don't focus on them.

The habit to achieve my education goals is about carving out uninterrupted time every day. Right now, that time is from 7pm to 9pm.

As my daughter grows up. I'm sure that will change.

So the specific time is irrelevant. What's more important is finding uninterrupted time every single day. That's what creates the success that I want.

So, what about you?

What categories of goals are you going to create this year?

What areas of your life do you want to focus on?

It was Tony Robbins that said

"Where focus goes, energy flows and results show."

So if you want bigger results. Give that area of your life more focus.

If this has helped you see how you can make small changes in your life that could lead to big success achievements. Then please leave a comment below.

If this can help someone you know. Then please share this with them.

Until next time...

Carpe diem

Roland Eva

P.S. If you'd like to learn more about the value driven system that I use to make multi 6-figures for my consulting clients. Then you read my book How To Turn Expertise Into Cash.

To download your free copy. Click the link below.

http://rebrand.ly/How-To-Turn-Expertise-Into-Cash-Book