The Ryan Hanley Show - 238. Stop Wasting Time on Goals (and do this instead)

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comToday, we tackle the contentious topic of goal-setting and share my candid thoughts on why this practice may not be as beneficial as we've been led to believe.✅ Join over 5,000 newsletter subscribers: https://go.ryanhanley.com/✅ For daily insights and ideas on peak performance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhanley✅ Subscribe to the YouTube show: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanleyThe conversation draws from a profound piece of wisdom by Les Brown, which underscores the essence of our achievements as a reflection of who we are rather than what we set out to attain.This chapter questions the validity of goals and challenges us to rethink our approach to success, emphasizing the importance of the journey over the destination.It's a fresh take on ambition and progress that might change how you frame your objectives.In a separate discussion, I outline the practical steps to building effective habits that can lead to success, particularly in sales.The focus is on the power of structured environments and the discipline of time blocking, which can significantly enhance productivity.I also weave in personal stories highlighting such practices' transformative impact.Moreover, I extend heartfelt thanks to our listeners and encourage community engagement, underscoring the value of sharing our experiences to foster collective growth.Tune in to gain insights into habit formation and how appreciation within our communities can drive improvement.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home What's up guys and welcome back to the show. Today we're going to have a solo episode and we are talking about goals and specifically why I don't really like goals. I hate spending too much time on goals and I firmly believe that most organizations, both entrepreneurial and bureaucratic, waste an inordinate amount of time on goals. And ultimately, I want to talk about what we should be doing instead. And this comes from – I had the opportunity to sit in on kind of a private little mastermind call. Very blessed. My very good friend, Mick Hunt, has just launched his podcast, Mick Unplugged. I highly recommend you go over to Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen.

You can even go on YouTube and watch the episodes, subscribe to Mick's new podcast. It is tremendous. I'll have a link in the show notes as well. Uh, but if you just go to Mick Unplugged on wherever you watch podcasts or et cetera, listen to podcasts, you're going to find Mick Unplugged podcast. It's tremendous. Now, Mick recently had one of his mentors, Les Brown, on the podcast. And by happenstance, I got invited to this little mastermind call that Les was on. And Les was just, and I mean this in the most positive way, just kind of lecturing the group, like talking to the

group about different business concepts. And then we got to ask some Q&A. It was phenomenal. But in there, Les said something that struck me to my core. We were talking about goals specifically. And he said, you don't get what you want. You get who you are. And that resonated with me because I think I become, I don't get annoyed by a lot of stuff. Most things that happen, particularly in social or in business life, I just find interesting. And they're just data points, right? Whether I agree with them or disagree with them, I find these things to be interesting and intriguing. And I love dissecting why people think the way they do, how they make decisions, their mental frameworks, et cetera.

It's why I spend so much time talking about these topics on the show is because I – even people whose ultimate conclusions I don't always agree with, I'm always interested in how they got to that conclusion. It's just kind of the way my brain works. Okay. So I forever have not appreciated goals because to me, someone says, okay, I want to hit a million right is it 10 more than you're doing now is it 20 more right like whatever number you pick you know i'm just using a million as a placeholder but like whatever number you pick for your goal for for revenue or for for uh uh the number of new clients you want to add or new people you want to hire or the ebitda you want to get to whatever that goal is for your business or for your life you know maybe you want to read or the EBITDA you want to get to, whatever that goal is for your business or for your life. Maybe you want to read X number of books, et cetera. If you're a writer, you want to put X number of pages. Whatever that goal is that you set for yourself, to me, it oftentimes feels arbitrary. It feels like a goal we set because it will feel good to tell people in our community that we set that goal. So, so we don't set goals

oftentimes because they're what we actually want to hit there because I, you know, we, we think to ourselves, this goal will make me look good on LinkedIn when I post it, right? That's the annoying part to me about goals is when people are like, you know, my goal is to 5X my revenue. Okay, that's great. What are you doing to get there, right? Like how are you going to get there? Why do you think you can get there, right? Those are all the things that come to my head because to me, and I'm going to walk you through my mindset on goals, and I love your feedback.

But what I'm hoping for is that this is just another way for you to think about these things. You don't have to agree with me. Again, as I stated, I never want to tell you what to do. I like to walk you guys through a framework or mindset or set of mental filters that I have that you could possibly apply to your life if it works, right? So for me, I think setting goals or spending too much time setting goals is silly. I think it is okay to have a target goal and a reach goal, but ultimately they're meaningless. And the reason they're meaningless is because the goal alone does not get you there. It might make you look good or sound good on LinkedIn or in front of your board or whatever, or to your other executives or to your team to set a goal because there's ego around it and there's status around having this goal. And frankly, the dopamine rush that we get from setting the goal is more

than hitting the goal oftentimes, which is crazy. And there's all kinds of research around the actual process of setting a goal and announcing it gives you the same, if not a larger rush of dopamine to your brain than when you actually hit that goal down the road. Because the process of verbalizing it and putting it out into the world, your brain actually acts like you've already hit it. Bam. Okay. So what then ends up happening when we set these goals, particularly when they're something that we've set because we feel like we need to for some reason, is we then we've already gotten the dopamine rush. So now we don't take the time to do the things on the back end that get us to that goal, right? We may give them lip service, we may write them down, but we've already gotten the dopamine rush. We've already gotten that hit,

that internal rush of good feelings from announcing the goal. And then we never actually set our lives up in a way that allows us to hit it. So how do we get there? Okay, now back to Les Brown. So Les Brown, so I'm sitting there and I have these feelings around goals in general. And someone asked a question about goals. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode.

But as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous

lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show.

Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. So now my brain is triggered and let's say you want some result X amount of income in the new year for 2024. And we're almost at the end of Q1. So we should be evaluating our Q1 results and how they align with our personal goals

and what we're trying to do, both personal goals to individual performance, as well as our business performance. So Les says, you don't get what you want. You get who you are. Okay. So if we're thinking through that then the answer is who are we right that would be the next answer so we don't get what we want we get who we are so who are we well how do we determine who we are well there's a quote that i use all the time which is

what you focus on is who you are i've also framed it what you focus on is who you are. I've also framed it, what you focus on is who you become. But I kind of like what you focus on is who you are even better. And I've started using that version more. And I think it perfectly aligns with less. So you don't get what you want, you get who you are. So if you want something, you don't just get it because you want it. You have to be that thing. You have to be worthy of that thing. Okay. So, so then we ask, well, who are we? Well, how do we define who we are? We are defined by what we focus on. Okay. So what do we need to focus on to become that thing, to be that thing? Well, what we need to focus on is a set of habits or a habit that allows us to be that thing and then not to bury the lead here but even if we stop at defining the habit we will

not ultimately build a lifestyle or set of processes that will allow us to become the thing that lets us reach the goal we have to go even one step deeper than deciding to engage in a habit. And this is why most people waste time on goals is they do not go all the way down to what is the structural systems that we put in place to ensure that we have the time to execute on the habits that create the focus, which allow us to become the thing which produces the results. So let me walk through that in a plausible example. So if we say, want to produce X amount of additional revenue this year, personal revenue to ourselves. Let's say we're an insurance producer, an outbound insurance producer, and we want to create

X additional revenue for our book of business for ourselves. So what we need to do then is say, okay, we need to become the type of person that makes that additional amount of money. So we need to become that person. So then we need to figure out, okay, what does that type of person focus on? And then when we figure out what they focus on, what are the habits that allow us to have that focus? And then, and this is the part that most people miss.

And the the filter and framework structure, which I want you to take away from this video, is we then have to go one step deeper and create the structure that allows us to execute on that habit. OK. So I want to write X amount additional revenue for my book of business this year. And I am an outbound hunter, cold caller. Okay. So who do we need to become? We need to do more outbound prospecting, right? More outbound prospecting to a more intent driven, maybe niche focused group. We just had a few episodes ago, I did the great debate with Charles Speck and I on micro niche versus generalist. And in this particular case for an individual

outbound, you know, a focus producer, a niche is a, it's a necessity. So we have to have a intent driven niche focused group of prospects. And we need to do more outbound prospecting to that group in order to extend our success beyond what we've traditionally done. And in order to do that, we need to put habits in place. Okay. So what most people say is I need to make 20, you know, in order to, you know, right now I'm making 10 cold calls a day to a randomized list. And in order to get there, I need to make, in order to improve my overall production, I need to get to 25 cold calls a day. Okay. That seems reasonable. However, and we may do that for a few days. However, eventually that, that habit is going to break down because of a few things. One, there is large myths around how

long it takes to create a new habit. Some people will say seven days. Some people say 21 days. Both of those have been found to be statistically inaccurate. It takes on average 66 days of execution of a habit for it to become a lifestyle routine, something we just do. Up until that point, we are still fighting with our willpower, using willpower every day to execute on that habit. And what's going to happen is over time, that willpower is going to drain and we are going to lose our focus, which makes us not be the thing, which makes it so we do not hit our results. Okay. So if we know we have to make 25 cold calls a day, we have to build a structure in place. What that structure may look like is something that could be like time blocking. So maybe we say every day at nine o'clock, every day for the next

three months, every single day, Monday through Friday, every day, we have a 30 minute time block from nine to nine 30 that we have in our calendar for doing prospect research. So we are going into databases. We are pulling lists, we are making sure that we're not just randomly calling people, that we are using insurance X dates or rocket reach or Zywave or whatever resource, you know, that we have at our disposal to pull out targeted lists of prospects. We're doing that prospect research every single day through time blocking. And when we do time blocking, again, this goes to the structural piece. We are putting do not disturb on our phone.

We are putting do not disturb on our email. We are closing our slack. We are closing our text messages, closing our Facebook Messenger. We are building a structure around the habit, which allows the habit to be successful, which means if you are going to do targeted research, you can't have your phone blowing up or emails coming in or anyone else prioritizing your time to hit this goal. So that's the structure that creates the habit,

market research to go after more niche-focused, high-intent prospects that have a higher likelihood of closing. That by focusing on that, by creating the structure that allows the habit to be successful, it allows us to focus on that habit. And then we become the type of person who does the proper research and people who do this type of research ultimately hit this goal. Do we see how this works all the way down the chain? Right. So doing research alone is not enough. We then have to create a structure to do the cold calls. So maybe we give ourselves a half hour break or a 15 minute break to reset and reload. Oftentimes when we set up these types of structures, we stack them on top of each other,

which defeats the purpose, right? So we have a half hour from nine to nine 30, we take a 15 minute break. And at nine 45 from nine45 to 11 o'clock every day, we only turn our phone back on and we make our calls or we do our outbound email prospecting or however we like to do our outbound prospecting. And every single day we have that baked in. Client call, claims issue, personnel issue cannot disrupt us. We have to turn everything out. We have to create that structure. We have to create that structure. We have to announce it to our team. This is my prospecting time.

If we want to increase our revenue as an agency, if this is important to us, then I have to have this time to create the structure by putting in guardrails, by literally disconnecting from communication services, by forcing our team or enforcing a guideline inside of our team not to contact us, not to disrupt us, that there isn't anything more important, right? By putting that structure in place, we are then able to focus on the habit, which is prospect research, making cold calls, right? And by having the structure in place and then being able to execute the habits, we can focus. Now we're focused on the habit, right? Because if we just have the habit of making phone calls, but we're not, we don't have the structure in place, we cannot focus on the habit. And if we do not focus on the habit, then we do not become the type of person that consistently makes 25 cold calls a day, right? And the person who doesn't focus on and become the type of person

who makes 25 phone calls a day, that person does not increase their revenue. So where we miss in this process and why setting goals is a waste of time is because we do not go all the way back into our lives and literally create the structural framework for the habit. And that miss is something I'm just as guilty as you guys. I don't want you to think that I'm perfect in this, but I will say when I have something that I need to get good at and that I want to become a priority, this is how I do it, right? Like when I was writing Content Warfare back in 2015, I literally got up at 3 a.m. every day and wrote until 5.30 every single morning without fail.

I had an alarm, 3 a.m., every morning at 3 a.m. Now, in order to have enough energy to write at that time, I had to set an alarm for myself to be in bed no later than nine 30 or 10 o'clock. Right. So that gave me that block of time, you know, five hours at a minimum, hopefully more time if I could get to bed earlier, but every single day, right. When I was at Agency Nation, I was doing, I set up production time, right. I was literally producing, editing and producing the videos every night after 8 a.m. or after 8 p.m. Sorry. So I put the kids to bed, et cetera. My wife would go to bed and then I would sit, I would sit up and I would have that time from

eight to 10 every single night to edit those videos, to make sure these videos that were incredibly important to the agency nation platform and growing that audience got out, right? So if we do not build the structural components around the habits, then the habits will not be able, then just having the habits, we won't be able to sustain them. And if we do not sustain the habits and they do not become our focus, if they're not our focus, then they're not who we are. And if we are not the type of person who does targeted market research to create qualified lists of prospects and then make the 25 calls, then we will not hit our goals. And frankly, having the goal doesn't even matter because if you have the structure and you have the habit and you're focused and you're executing on the habit every single day and it becomes who you are, you will blow past these goals.

The goals won't even matter. You will just do whatever the max amount of results that are possible through that can be. And that is how you become great. That is how you rapidly grow a book of business. And that, my friends, is how you make sure that you do not waste time setting goals. Now, I hope that this process wasn't confusing to you, but the idea here is that we have to back all the way down into the first principles. And the first principles are, if you do not have a structure in place

that will allow your habits to be consistently executed, then they will fall apart. And that is the piece that so many of us miss. We set these amazing goals. We honestly want them to happen, but we do not go all the way back into first principles and make sure that we have the ability to actually hit those goals and not only hit those goals, but we'll blow past them. So hope this helped. It's just another framework, another idea for you. It's kind of a simple thing

essentially, but walking back through this thought experiment all the way to building that structure to make sure the habits work, to make sure the habits can be focused on so that those focused on habits become who we are. And if the particular set of habits that we create and execute on and focus on turn us into the type of person that gets the result that we want,

then the result that we want is inevitable. And that, my friends, is the key. I love you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this show and you're watching on YouTube, tap that like button, let other people know, share the show with friends if you love it. If you disagree, have questions about this process, love you to leave questions, guys.

Tons of people have started leaving questions in past episodes as they watch them or thoughts or their own experiences. That only adds to the overall value of this community. But appreciate you. I hope this helped. I hope you go back and create structures in your life that build those habits. And you have questions about those structures or questions about my own experience building those structures. Happy to answer them for you. I love you. Thank you. so so so

so so so so so so so so

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