Intentionality vs. Drift: Charting Your Path to Success

0:00Speaking of how things are going, how I know that you and I talk about, we didn't really get to talk about it that much this year, but very briefly, but very briefly, we set goals, but very briefly, we set goals, we set goals, we set goals, and goals, we set goals,

0:34hey everybody welcome to another episode of business lunch with your host myself roland frazier and the wonderful and hatted today ryan dice ryan you are home because of an ice storm i understand happy casual monday yeah um in uh it we typically get two seasons in austin texas um scalding surface of the sun hot um and uh blizzard and um we're we're apparently about to experience the, the, the latter of those. There's like three or four days out of the year where it feels like California where you live. It's like, the thing is that houses cost almost nothing in Austin. Right. I mean, so like the cost of living is significantly lower to reflect the, you know, climatic challenges.

1:17That, that statement was definitely true 15 years ago. I know. Which thankfully was when I was buying all the houses and stuff. Which is good. Yeah, exactly. No, that's great. Yay me. Sucks for everybody else coming in. But no, no, yeah, we're working from home today. And I forget, man, like it's really not, I enjoy going into an office. I don't know about you. And I know this isn't the topic of what we're talking about. I do not enjoy going into an office. You see, I've always liked it. And I think, you know, for me, like, you know, early on, it's like having little kids running around. And so that was, you know, that was, that was tough, you know, to not get distracted and to be able to kind of stay focused.

1:55Like I sort of needed to get out of my element and that would be for sure. Yeah. But, and, but then like during COVID when we really couldn't go anywhere, what I found is that like, I never stopped working because I didn't have the break. Right. And so it just, it develops a lot of bad habits. And so I found if I just like go into an office and I start work around nine and I leave around, you know, you know, five 30 or six, like I just kind of maintain a better pattern, but man, sometimes it's nice just to like say, ah, screw it. I think maybe I'm going to try like once a week, just working from home and, you know, getting some more creative work done.

2:28We'll see. We'll see. It's that severance thing where you're like, if you could live, you live that life at work and then you live that life at home. And when you walk out the door, it kind of, you move into the other. It's kind of interesting. I think the concept of that show is, is interesting that way. But also you have, and I, we both have the benefit of an office that we built for ourselves to have a dedicated space to be. Because I think it would be really hard if you were working and didn't have that. Like if you were trying to work out of your bedroom, sitting in bed all day or in the living room while your family was trying to live their lives.

3:04Or even in like, I think the dining room is a typical place people will try to do that. My dad used to grade papers and do work at the dining room table, you know, because it was a kind of quiet, but I was running around going, you know, so that can be tough. But I'll tell you on that again, not, not the topic, but I was on a topic. I don't think we have enough. We'll see. I was on a sales call the other day, which I don't do them very often, but like we were looking at a particular technology tool, which was a higher level tool, like a higher end kind of thing, premium priced. And the person that I was talking to on the other line, it was clear that they were just, you know, it was a remote company, but like where their setup was, was, yeah, I mean, obviously just kind of their kitchen table in the background.

3:49And I remember thinking like, it's not 2020 anymore. Like, I feel like if you're going to be doing, if you're going to be selling a premium tool and doing kind of like premium level offerings, you should probably be in like premium surroundings a little bit. And I don't know, like, don't look like you're in your pajamas still. I think a lot of that is starting to shift back a bit where it's not just okay to be on your sweats, which I do right now. Basically, I'm doing this podcast and I had in my sweats for those who aren't watching. So total hypocrite. This is your Eastern European gangster look.

4:22That's what I'm going for. That's exactly what I'm going for. Jumpsuit. It's very intimidating. I'm a little nervous about how this is going to go. I get that a lot. Speaking of how things are going, I know that you and I talk about, we didn't really get to talk about it that much this year, but very briefly, we set goals for 2025 and fairly extensive specific goals, which is, I think, I think scientifically has been proven to increase your likelihood pretty dramatically of achieving them. And goals can be looked at as resolutions of a sort because you're resolving to do these things and aspiring to do them.

5:04And we were talking a little bit before we went live here about, was it International Quitters Day? Is that what you said? Or just Quitters Day generally? Yeah, I think it's National Quitters Day, but my guess is it impacts, we could just assume say it's international. Yeah. January 10th, which we're now just, you know, on the other side of, but that is a national quitters day. So this is the day that by January 10th, essentially everybody's given up on their New Year's resolution is the idea. 10 days. Yeah. 365, 10 days in. And I thought that was interesting. I don't know if, if you have yours handy or want to share, I pulled mine up just to kind of like temperature check, how you doing?

5:44Um, you know, on what you, what you set in place. And as I'm looking, as I'm looking through, I'm feeling pretty good. Um, I've, I've really made family stuff, uh, the most important thing this year from, uh, romantic with my wife to family with our two kids and their families to spending more time. I've actually been pretty good. The only things that haven't happened have not happened because of challenges in scheduling, but everything has been like, we, we actually set up to do it and then something came up and we said that we'll have to do that a week later, but I feel pretty good about that.

6:27Um, and then, uh, uh, on the social side, I I I'm pretty good on that. I'm on the musical side, which is its own separate category for me, which I guess you could say is, you know, fulfillment and stuff. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty good on track on that, on the fitness. I'm pretty, I haven't, uh, I haven't, uh, hit the ice bath as much. That's a big intimidating body of cold water to jump into. It's just not, uh, I've done the cold showers, but haven't, haven't done the ice bath as much as I want. But other than that, I mean, actually, I'm actually pretty on track and I'm mindful because I'm looking at them, which is one of the reasons that you want to write them down because if you don't write them down, you can't look at them and go, Hey, how am I doing?

7:11You're not measuring, you know, what is it they say? What, what gets measured, uh, gets managed. So how, how are you feeling about yours? And then I want to talk about kind of what happens that causes us not to hit them. And then I know business wise, we set some pretty good ones that, um, you know, even, you know, we're, as we record this basically two thirds of the way through the first month of the year. And, um, you know, we got to do some stuff to make those happen. Uh, it's all in process, but it's tough, particularly it's tough to stay the course and not say, well, I'm not getting it as fast as I want.

7:48So maybe I either changed the goal, move the goalpost, or I changed the strategy, but I didn't give the other strategy, the full chance to work out. So let's go first with, How do you feel like you're doing with yours so far? And if there's anything that's taking you out, for me, the only thing that's really been is schedules of all the people that have to be there. And let's start with that. Yeah, same. As I look at it, you know, so far so good, but it's early. Still plenty of time, plenty of time to screw it up. Um, I, similar to, to what you do, I said, um, I try to have like one big business goal a year, uh, one big, uh, kind of, uh, relationship, like, um, you know, wife, you know, marriage goal, um, family related goal, uh, and then a health goal and then some type of avocational habit, um, you know, um, hobby goal.

8:41Right. So that's, that's kind of how I will, we'll spread mine out and I will look to accomplish those generally by the end of the third or fourth quarter. So it's, it's tough because I'll set goals that are obviously like lag goals, but then what I do is I back into one of the habit goals that I need to establish this year that I believe if I complete these, it'll make those far more likely. So like it, you've got your, you've got leading indicators for your goals. Right. Like these are the, these are the habits that I don't have right now that I believe are essential for me to develop if I want these goals to happen.

9:16And not just happen, but to then become baked into my lifestyle. Because I know, for example, there are extreme things that I could do to hit a fitness goal, let's say. But if it doesn't get habituated and baked into what I'm doing, then it won't stick. And I do think that a lot of this is true with business as well. And so I appreciate what you said about, yeah, I mean, we're looking at these goals that we have. And I kind of feel like, you know, coming out the first week of the year, you know, you had the first, you know, January 1st was like on a Wednesday. And so I feel like we didn't really start working until like the 6th, the 7th.

9:50So we kind of didn't have the first week of the year. Yeah. And that was kind of coming off of December where we didn't have that whole week, you know, as well. So it was like, there was three weeks of nothing. Yeah. Cause Christmas day for us, Christmas is the one we celebrate. So Christmas day was on a Wednesday and then new year's day was on a Wednesday and then you were at the six. And so like, you kind of, the whole like 19th ish all the way through the sixth was nobody wanted to do anything. And even if you wanted to do something, which I didn't, no one else was around. Right. And yeah, because of that, I found that even coming back, like normally I'm like ready, like raring to go.

10:29Like after, after the break, I'm like, let's go. I had such a nice long relaxing break that I was not particularly ready to get going again. My oldest son who's back from college, like he literally left today. Like he was still like home with us. So he was still on summer break. So I'm like, I got another week here. So I feel like if I'm being completely transparent, like I feel like I'm behind. Everything feels like it's behind because I feel like I let the summer break, I'm sorry, the, the, the kind of the holiday break bleed over into like halfway into January. And so I feel everything feels like it's off to a slow start.

11:03And the tendency is to do what you said, which is like, well, we obviously need to shake things up to get caught up. What I say to myself is I give myself permission every 90 days to reevaluate and change my goals. So I've got that just as built into my goal setting thing. And I do that because one, just stuff happens, you know, life happens, change happens, new information, new data comes in. And so I think just to set a goal, you know, in January and just to like force yourself to stick to that through the end of the year when sometimes crap happens and sometimes good crap, just to me seems arbitrary.

11:39So every 90 days, every quarter, I completely redo the process, like completely. And the first question I ask myself is, are these still my goals? More times than not, yes. But if something came up where it's like, whoa, way behind swing and a miss, need to move the goalpost, or sometimes like this just doesn't matter to me anymore. This isn't meaningful anymore. Maybe I tried it for a while and, you know, Marie Kondo kind of, it didn't bring you joy. So I'm like, that one's gone. So I've got, that's where I've got to look at my habit goals. So when I look at my habit goals, and these are fairly simple, right?

12:13Like, am I waking up by 6am? Like I've just found if I do that, then certain things happen. So far, so good, right? I'm not seeing it show up in terms of the lagging yet, but so far so good. Um, I've got a goal to, I want to be in the gym lifting in my gym lifting, you know, three times a week. So far it's been twice a week instead of three. Um, cause I've wanted to like Tuesday, Thursday, and then sometime in the weekend, well, the weekends have been crazy with kids stuff. And so it just hasn't happened. So, but I'll call it two out of three on that. Um, and then, yeah, on, you know, on, on the, on the business side, on the company side, it's, do we still have the right plan?

12:52We just need to let the cake bake. You you know, or is something, you know, there, that is a question that I know we've got a monthly business review. And so every single month we have the opportunity to ask that question. So I think it's important when you set goals to also set check-in times. And I'm thankful that I did that and that I've established that as a practice, because I think in some of these cases, I might have pulled the ripcord. That's, uh, it's interesting how it, you know, it happens and you feel, if you feel yourself slipping and it's kind of what I wanted to chat about a little bit today, which was there's a mastermind group that a friend of ours has that that's a virtual one that I'm part of.

13:30And one of the it's, it's several different business owners. And one of them was talking about sales strategies and they had just done a big event and they're trying to get people to take action. Any sales process is trying to get people to take an action that you want them to take that you feel will get them a better outcome or the outcome that they desire, the get them from the place they are, that's not perfect to the place where they're jumping up and down and clicking their heels. And, um, uh, to help those people do that, he used Napoleon Hill's book, uh, kind of an underappreciated book called outwitting the devil.

14:07And in that book, Napoleon Hill talks about drift. And so, um, there are different kinds of drift. And so I kind of wanted to like take a couple of notes on it. Is there three deadly forms of drift, um, financial drift, You're making money, but you're not building wealth. So this would be, you know, are you stuck financially that, and this is interesting. I read a long time ago that there's kind of like a thermostat and I have found this to be true. And it always annoys the crap out of me when I am thinking too small and I am always thinking too small. So I guess I'm just always annoyed. But, but, but they talk about this, this thermostat.

14:50and that there's a financial thermostat and that like we, we, we might have, ours might be set at $60 ,000 a year, let's say, you know, 60 K a year is my financial thermostat. And so if I make less than that, I'm going to figure out a way to get back there. I'm going to turn on the, you know, the heat or the air, I guess it'd be the heat to, to, you know, to move up. Um, but also it works in the opposite that if I find myself tracking 80, you know, which is, you know, a decent amount above my 60 thermostat, I'm feeling uncomfortable. I'm feeling like maybe it's a little too hot and I need to cool down a little bit.

15:28And I get back there. And so we hit these walls that are self generated that aren't real, but we do because something in our head says, says this, this is the place that I, that I belong. I know how to do that. And throughout my life, I've watched that thermostat grow, but it's still a fricking thermostat. And even though, you know, I have succeeded in breaking through it because I am consciously incompetent in, in having them erected time and time again. Um, it's amazing. And I know, you know, several years ago we were at a, um, you and I were at a dinner and the people were all talking about, I'm doing this, I'm doing this and doing this.

16:08And I was like, what the hell, you know, these people are great, but they're not like any smarter than we are. Their businesses aren't any better than we are. And we upped the game and, you know, and hit a new one. And it was a pretty big jump. And, um, and I've watched that again and again and again. And so that financial drift, I think is that, um, that we're kind of okay, stuck where we are so that we drift from the goal that we set or the objective that we've got, or the desire that we have to have a certain level of income or wealth. And we allow ourselves to drift back down to that comfort point that we've established.

16:45And that, you know, it's funny because I know you and I have created multiple seven figure businesses and several eight figure businesses in our time to where it's not really that hard for us to do that. And for a lot of people, it'd be like, holy crap, how do you create a seven figure business? Or how do you create a, you know, an eight figure business, but there's also Elon Musk who's, you know, the CEO, I think of three or four now, um, you know, multi-billion dollar businesses. Cause that's his thermostat. And he might not know how to create the, you know, the, I don't know. I can't even pick a number for him.

17:22I guess that, well, has he gone trillion? I don't know if Tesla got there or not, but like you may be looking at, you know, Steve jobs and Tim cook and saying, you know, well, I've never created a$3 trillion business, but, but we've all got them and they're just fricking artificial. And so I guess that's the first thing is like being, I just wanted to talk a little bit about being aware of, do you, does any of this ring true? Yeah. I mean, I remember reading and we talked about this at the Get Scaled Alive and kind of the opening keynote that I did. And it was prompted by you saying, Hey, you should talk about this because it's a big issue.

17:53And it's the upper limit problem is what you're describing. And Gay Hendricks, you know, talked about this in his book, The Big Leap. And yeah, it's this idea that we've all have this, you know, internal thermostat that we it sets the upper limit for our success and when things go well we get really really really excited and we get close close close close and then right as we start to hit it um that's when the self-sabotage begins that's when the self-doubt begins um and that's when we you know unconsciously begin to act in accordance with our self-imposed uh limits and um yeah and i think drift drift is a good word for it because i do think it's it's not this like obvious thing it's the little bitty things that you do that in retrospect you're like why did i do that like i didn't have a good reason to do that you know why did i say no to that thing why was i so slow in responding to that email where somebody wanted me to have you know go speak at this event, which is a great opportunity.

18:55Or, you know, somebody wanted to have me on their podcast or, you know, I could have done this strategic deal and I didn't reply right away. Replying right away would have been the obvious thing, but I didn't. I sat on it. Why did I do that? And oftentimes, you know, more times than not, I think it is that, that internal fear of I've never been there before and therefore it is scary. Human beings are really, really, really bad head at doing things until we first imagined ourselves doing things and have seen it doing things and imagining things that we haven't done. And so that makes it tough. Yeah.

19:31Which is interesting because I know that there's been studies that, um, if you imagine yourself doing something, you're much more likely to make it happen. If you imagine yourself bench pressing X amount of weight or hitting this golf shot or whatever, and then you go do it, even if you didn't train, but you imagined yourself training, you get the benefit of having trained for the most part. Obviously your muscles not, but from a mental standpoint, there's a whole big thing about that. And so the things that I wanted to talk about were that first one then is financial drift. So are you financially drifting?

20:07Catch yourself if you are, because as Ryan said, it's kind of insidious. It just kind of happens. And what are the things that you're doing that are, that you're measuring how you get to where you wanted to get. And if you're not, if you do find yourself drifting, what are you going to do different? Do it now, you know, a few days into the year, instead of waiting until next year where you're like, oh man, I never, I didn't really hit those things I wanted to hit. Cause I think that's what happens to a lot of people. And obviously it happens to a lot of people in the first 10 days of the new year that they're drifting from the things they want to do.

20:42The second kind of drift is a strategic drift. And I thought this was an interesting concept too. It's like confusing learning with progress. I bought a course and I'm, I do this all the time. I, I am a study research. I want to do something new, study it, research it, obsess about it, gather all of the information and then use that information, consume it, digest it, you know, concatenate it, get it down to where I've got just the essence of it. And then I'm going to go forward and do the thing. Now I do more often than not do the thing, but I also have gathered lots of information. But I do know lots of people.

21:22And probably when I was practicing law long ago, the thing that I saw people do the most was this strategic drift is I'm going to start a business doing this, or I'm going to get a new job doing that. And then they would get the logo done and the letterhead and they'd go rent an office and they'd sign up for some software and then they'd buy a book about it, but they weren't doing the thing that mattered, which is what I like about our scalable operating system, kind of our whole scalable plan, which is like that very first, when we were talking about the seven levels of scale, the very first thing was go sell something, go sell it.

21:57Don't make it perfect. Don't, you know, get your MVP, your minimum viable product and sell the son of a gun to at least 10 people that aren't your family and that aren't your friends. And then you know you have a thing. So strategic drift, so many places to go. I'd love to kind of brainstorm with you some of the places, but I think that learning equals progress and simple comfort tasks that aren't the hard thing. Brian Tracy wrote a book called Eat That Frog. It's like do the thing. If you've got to eat a frog and that's the worst thing in your day, do it first and then do the comfort work. But thoughts?

22:35Yeah, I think it's one of the tragedies of the to-do list, right? Because a to-do list in its native form, it simply lists all the things that you want to do. And they're not really ordered all that much by impact. And so I think one of the simplest things - We have a friend who has a long, long, long, long, long, long to-do list that only grows and never seems to get smaller, right? Well, and as long as you are even remotely ambitious or a high-performance individual, you're always going to see opportunity in places. Yes. Like always, you're always going to see things that could be better. And so like being clear about, okay, what are those high impact items?

23:14And I see this a lot with, certainly with entrepreneurs, we're very, very good at defaulting back to the comfort tasks. You know, it's this idea of like comfort food as well. Like, oh, when I eat this, it makes me kind of, you know, feel good in the moment. We do that as entrepreneurs with tasks. Like there are certain things that are - Balance the checkbook instead of making the sales call. That's a great one. Some of the most organized desks and most organized file cabinets and all these other things, but the cash register ain't ringing. And so I do think being really, really clear on, you know, what is the most important thing?

23:46And something that I started doing is just saying, if I can only work one hour today, what's the one thing I would do if I can only work one hour? that I found that that to be a really good litmus test of if I'm I got one hour a day that's it that's the only I'm only allowed to work a singular hour every single day what are the things that I prioritize that are actually going to move the needle you know you find that if you give if you believe you have eight hours which you don't not not eight good hours you will come up with all kinds of things to fill that space and that's exactly what it is it's filler and um and it's very, very easy to look busy.

24:23It's very easy to even seem productive, but the product of your activity is, let's say, slim to say the least. So can you think of any other kinds of strategic drift? Because what I was thinking too is that, and I don't want to get it confused with the next one I want to talk about, but strategic drift to me would also be what we talked about, what we touched on earlier, which was you're not getting what you want right now. So you change your strategy. And so you have, you've taken the time to chart out a strategy and say, this is what's going to get me from where I am to what I want to be. This is my gap filler.

25:04And you've, you've blocked it out and you've gotten, you know, progress chunks and everything, but it's just be foolish to stay on track of an obviously flawed, not working strategy, but it's also equally foolish and maybe even more so to abandon a strategy that you have charted out too soon because it's not getting you the result you wanted as fast as you thought it would. So I'd like to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I think it could be, I think strategic risk, strategic drift can look like comfort tasking. I think strategic drift can look like over planning or constantly, like you said, replanning and re-strategizing, talking about what you're going to do instead of doing it.