How to Crush Goals and Live Your Best Life with No Regret with MJ DeMarco

0:28Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! as well as the founder of the Fastlane Forum and co-founder of Goalsumo.com. And today we'll be chatting about the six-year time frame. We'll talk about setting ambitious goals and failing why. We'll talk about making an actual goal that might make sense, how to maintain willpower and motivation, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to MJ and our sponsors. Success Story, hosted by my friend Scott D. Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversation on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship.

1:09In a recent episode, Scott brings Kate Bradley on the show, founder and CEO of Lately.ai, to discuss the best ways to use AI to create content. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Want to meet me, JLD, in person? Attend Clay Clark's two-day interactive business workshop and meet me, Tim Tebow, and Clay Clark this June. Experience the highest rated business workshop in America and hang out with me in person at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, that's thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Learn more and request your tickets at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. MJ, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:53A good 15, 20 years ago, I was always screaming from the rafters, for the love of God, do not follow your passion. And at the time, it was this radical outlier, extreme opinion that that's just a terrible thing to say. If you want to never work another day in your life again, do something that you love. And I absolutely 100 % disagree with that. And at the time when I was making that statement, it was, again, an extreme opinion. Today, I see more and more people, very successful people, billionaires, entrepreneurial leaders who now say that. And it is because passion for a particular thing does not guarantee any kind of market resonance, doesn't guarantee that what you love, there's a market for.

3:02And usually things that you love are extremely crowded and highly competitive. For example, I love to play basketball. Well, there's no way in hell I'm ever going to become an NBA player because the top 1 % of the 1 % in that field, there's just literally gazillions of people doing it. So what I like to say is you want to have a passion for general type of things. Like I have a passion for freedom. I have a passion for waking up and doing whatever I want to do. I have a passion for writing books without a publisher that tells me what I can and cannot right. I have a passion for walking into a store and buying whatever I want and not having to look at prices.

3:47So what you want is a passion for generalized states of being, a purpose, a meaning. And at that point, you will do anything that it takes to achieve that goal. Anything. See, when you follow a passion, then you start telling yourself, well, I'm not passionate about doing this, this hard work. I'm not passionate about dealing with Amazon. I'm not passionate about editing a book. I'm not passionate about X, Y, or Z. And what happens is you don't do the work. You don't do the hard work because you've convinced yourself that you're not passionate about it. Therefore, you don't do it. A lot of do things that don't scale is a popular concept.

4:31And that's talking about things that people just don't want to do people things that are hard things that are just grinding I still do things I mean I've I live a fantastic dream life have been for 25 30 years and I still to this day do things that I hate every single day and that's because I have a passion for generalized things and not a passion for specific basket weaving or a specific type of industry, which really pigeonholes you into a particular market. And you can't pigeonhole yourself into a market if you want to succeed at entrepreneurship. MJ, I'm going to add to that with a story. And this story I have not told for over 11 years, because the last time I told this story was January of 2013, which is the last time that you were a guest on Entrepreneurs on Fire.

5:31So over 11 years ago, I told this story, which is so true, Fire Nation, so you need to listen to this, is the year is 2011, and I am sitting around a campfire in Joshua Tree, and I'm just having a random conversation with a random guy that was there, and he brings up your book, The Millionaire Fast Lane. And I had never heard of it, and it sounded interesting. So on the drive home, I listened to the audio version of that. And then I proceeded to listen to that book about 13 times as I was driving around to various jobs and doing the things that I was doing. And everything that you said in that just really was ingrained to me because of that repetition, and especially that point that you made about not needing to have passion and the thing, and sometimes where that even can be a negative.

6:17And when I decided that I thought there was an opportunity in daily podcasting, I was like, but wait a second, I don't have any passion about communications or podcasting or things, but I'm like, wait a second, MJ said that can actually be a good thing. So I went into it, you know, with a vengeance, did it daily. I never had a passion for it. I never loved it. But guess what? Over time, and this is years and years and years, I actually became good. I honed my craft. I got better at doing the thing and actually grew a love and some sorts of passion for what I did, but it was over time. And that was because of becoming good at it.

6:50I never started with it. I never started with any kind of a passion. So I love that, MJ. And go ahead, you want to add something? No, it's just an amazing story and kind of circumscribes what we're going to talk about today. And it is because we're talking about how to crush goals, Fire Nation, and live your best life with no regrets. And you've been talking a lot recently, MJ, about this six-year time frame. I've actually never heard anything about this as far as a six-year time frame. I think a lot of people in Fire Nation have probably not either. So what is this exactly? Well, it was something that came up at the end of last year.

7:25If people don't know, I've run a business forum for over 15 years. It's quite an old forum. And there's a thread there on this forum talking about Bitcoin. It was started in 2017, which at the time was a little bit more than six years. And this thread is hundreds and hundreds of pages long. And the interesting thing about this thread is every time Bitcoin goes up in price, this thread reactivates with people, oh, you know, all excited and all, you know, full of vim and vigor about how rich they're going to become and this and and then bitcoin goes down and that thread dies again well as you know bitcoin has gone up in the last uh i don't know six months to a year and that thread started percolating up again and somebody was on that thread who's been on that thread for years was ranting or not ranting he was raving about the 25 000 he made in bitcoin i basically found out that nothing else in this guy's life changed in six years, but the$25 ,000 he made in six years.

8:37And I said, if you have the only win in your life in the last six years was a$25 ,000 gain in Bitcoin, you are doing life wrong. You are losing at life. And I don't say that to be mean. I don't say that to say, oh, don't invest in Bitcoin. I own Bitcoin. But the amount of change that can occur in your life in six years is immense. And if your only win is, gee, I invested in X and I earned 25, well, that doesn't even count for the inflation of the last six years. So this is about having the right focus with the right goals and having perspective. Think about that, John. How much has your life changed in six years from that year in 2013?

9:30You went from some obscure podcasting guy to the podcasting guy that was there and started, from what I know, started the whole thing. In six years, your life has just dramatically changed. It's because you focused on the right things. Sure, you might own Bitcoin, But your Bitcoin gains is not what you're what you're proud of. It's what how your life has changed in those six years. So put your focus in things that can actually change your life. So you look back in those six years and you say, oh, my God, I don't even recognize myself from back then versus, boy, I got twenty five thousand dollars extra.

10:16It's just put in perspective how some people just are lost when it comes to pursuing goals, meaningful goals that are life-changing. Fire Nation, how can you not love MJ's energy? It's what wrote me in back in 2011, inspired me to start the podcast in 2012 and to do something different daily. And now guess what? He's episode 4354 as we speak right now. So that is what happens when you find something that you know you can commit to and you get up every day and you do that thing. And that's what we're going to be talking about next when we get back from thanking our sponsors. You know your customers want fast, personalized support, but how do you find a customer service solution that actually delivers?

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12:47Remember, knowledge will only attract money when it is organized and directed through implementing practical plans of action. Become the next success story and request tickets to join Tim Tebow, myself, and Clay Clark at the June Business Conference today at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. MJ, we're back and listen, every January, it's the same thing. People set these ambitious just goals, and then they fail after just a few weeks. Why? Why is that? Two reasons. The first is people don't have a system to achieve their goals. So their only system is on January 1st, say, hey, I'm going to lose 50 pounds.

13:26And it's a mental note in their brain. So they have no system. As James Clare said in Atomic Habits, which was probably his most popular recited quote in that book was, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you rise to the level of your systems. So most people fail because they have no system in place for creating any kind of life change, for creating habits, which is actually responsible for life change. And then number two, people fail to achieve their New Year's goals or any goals for that matter, is because they fail to fire a motivating feedback loop. And this, again, goes back to the system.

14:10Their system does not enable them to achieve any kind of feedback loop. Now, a feedback loop is validation that something you are doing is working. It's progress. It's when you're losing weight and going to the gym and eating right, and that person comes up to you and says, oh my God, Donna, you look great. You must have lost 20. I mean, what are you doing? That's a feedback loop. A feedback loop is your first sale. You just talked about this in your story about you started podcasting and people started telling you they liked what you did. So it was firing a feedback loop for you where you weren't passionate about it, but suddenly you were seeing the impact and the purpose and the meaning you are having with your work.

14:59And it fired that feedback loop for you, which compels motivation. It's easy to keep going when you have a million downloads a week. It's easy to keep going when you wake up and you see a thousand dollars in sales and you haven't even been up for five minutes. So now for me, for years, I used a simple pencil and paper system for my goals. It was something I created custom. I designed it on an old program called Fireworks. I printed this up and I did this for a good 25 years. And it was pretty effective. It was a pretty complicated to-do list that had goals on the side. It said one-year goals, five-year goals, 10-year goals.

15:48And my feedback loop was always fired when I just got to cross off something on my to-do list. I'd take a marker and cross it off. And that was the feedback loop for me. Today, I don't do that anymore because one day I realized, why am I still doing this pencil and paper version because it wasn't as effective as it should be because I was always rewriting my goals. I was always rewriting the habits. And so I started looking at different productivity systems, Notion, ClickUp, and none of them would do what I wanted them to do. So that's why I co-founded a service called GoSumo.com, which actually is this pen and paper version of the system I've used for 20-30 years put into a simple system online.

16:40So whether anyone uses that service or they can download my free planner or they use Notion, you have to have a system and you have to use it regularly. And there's a bunch of options out there available. So I encourage people to find what they like and what works for them. It's a very personal preference. So get a system and get that feedback loop firing. I love that idea of a feedback loop fire nation. Like what is going to continue to get you excited, fired up about what it is that you're doing? And that feedback loop can really spur you on. Now, a lot of people, they frankly have what I would call bad plans when it comes for a goal that they're setting.

17:28What makes a good plan for a goal, MJ? A good goal starts with a good plan. Pertinent to this is to actually envision where you want to be in five to 10 years. And then you want to work backward. I call it backwardization. Backwardization is a term in the financial markets, but I use it for goals. It means starting where you want to go in five years, 10 years, some significant period of time, the six years we talked about earlier, visualize the end and where do you want to be? And then you work backwards and segment that goal into smaller goals, smaller milestones. And you do that until you get all the way down to a weekly goal.

18:13And then you task that weekly goal. So you attack your weekly goals one day at a time. The interesting thing that happens is that all starts to cascade up into this five-year plan, 10-year plan, whatever it is you designed. And what people fail to understand about this type of backwardization concept, this is the whole concept behind the GoSumo that I founded, is that it gives you this incredible decision framework for life. It makes your decisions, hey, is what I'm doing today actually moving the needle on what this life is that I designed in three, five, 10 years? Is it moving that needle? So it provides a powerful decision framework.

19:01And if that decision doesn't fall in line with that vision, you know it's maybe not a good decision. Now, an interesting story here is 30 years ago when I was 22, 23, I actually did this in an old journal. And I found that journal in an old crate. I was moving out of my house a couple of years ago and I found it buried in a crate. It was dusty. I opened up the journal and I saw my 10 year vision from when I was 23 years old and everything I wrote in that journal came true. And I'll just list you some of these. Mom gets an early carefree retirement. I retired by mother, happily married. Get to do whatever I want to do.

19:50Do what I want. Wake up without an alarm clock whenever I want to. Lamborghini. Get up when I, become a mentor to others. Have a beautiful white. $10 million in assets. See people smile due to my work. These are all things that I wrote in my 10-year vision when I was 22. And every single one of them has come true. And that's because I designed it out, I planned it, I framed it, and then I attacked it one day at a time. Fire Nation, powerful plans, powerful goals. And so many people, MJ, have literally the best of intentions, but they seem to simply lose the willpower and motivation somehow, somewhere along the way.

20:36What gets in their way every time? I think life, distraction, prioritization of what's important, which is why the system is so important. For instance, on my particular productivity system that I use. There's a habit function and I have five habits set for every single day that are there automatically when I wake up. I don't have to enter them. I don't have to do anything. It's stretching. It's working out physical exertion. It's practicing piano, which is cognitive. It's drinking a health elixir, which is this terrible concoction of nutrients taste horrible, but I'm hoping it's adding some years to my life and also some social media management.

21:28So these are five things that I am reminded of every single day to do. I can't forget them. As long as I'm logging in and seeing my list here, I have to do them. So when you don't have a system, these things are put aside. You forget about them. And I don't think the problem with habits is people do not prioritize them and they do not put them in the forefront. So for me, I look at these habits on my list and I say, oh my God, I got to do that. I got to make time for that. So this is why it's so important to put a system behind your goals, no matter what it is, piece of paper, whatever. You have to have a system behind your goals and then you have to had that system being able to fire a feedback loop for instance if i check off something on my list there's an explosion and there's a you know there's all this confetti and yeah yeah yeah it kind of fires the feedback loop so you have to build yourself a system that encourages your goals but also encourages the habits that are going to achieve them these types of habits here you know you see a list like this and you think oh my god i don't have time for that all together it's about 50 minutes out of my day you know 20 minutes uh working out 20 minutes at the piano five minutes to create the health elixir so it's not this huge thing when you think about how much time people waste on social media reality tv just bs and that is a poor prioritization.

23:03What's more important, knowing who gets the rose on the bachelorette or knowing that you're going to live a healthy, vibrant life until you are 85, 90 years old. So get that system behind your goals. And then also make a promise that you will act until you fire your feedback loop. Once that feedback loop is fired, then ask yourself, okay, do I want to continue? How do I feel. It's a act, assess, adjust loop, which is something I've practiced in all my books. I preach it. Act, assess, adjust. Kind of mimics the scientific method. You do that every single day. You're going to win the day. You're going to win the week.

23:47You're going to win the month. And then you're going to win the year. And then in six years, you're going to look back and say, oh my God, my life has never been any better. And it's because I've made a choice to win the day. I love that. And Tony Robbins has a great quote that we overestimate what we can do in a year, but we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. And we're going to adjust that a little bit today to we underestimate what we can do in six years if we have the right systems in place, if we are focus on winning the day. So MJ, you have dropped countless value bombs today. What is the one thing, the one theme that you want to make sure Fire Nation walks away from our conversation with today?

24:31There's an old statement. If you don't know where you're going, any road is going to get you there. So define where you want to be so you can identify the roads that will get you there. MJ, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? If you want to set up an account at Goalsumo.com to put into action this backwardization philosophy, you can do that. It's a free trial. There's no credit card required. Also, if you have no interest in that, there's a free link there for the planner that I've used for 25, 30 years prior to instigating this system.

25:16That also is free. There's no email required, no login, nothing like that. You just click and download. I am at the fastlaneforum.com. That's the forum I discussed with you that I've run for over 15 years. I am there every single day. I'm not spending a lot of time on social media. I find it to be somewhat cancerous. So I can be easily connected on any of those platforms. I actually answer support tickets at that platform. If you want to connect with me there, you can. but overall I'm pretty easily found. Fire Nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and hello you've been hanging out with MJD and JLD today so keep up that heat for links to everything we talked about visit eofire.com just type MJ in the search bar the show notes page will pop right up and by the way listen to our 2013 interview it was January of 2013.

26:16So it was over 11 years ago. I think you'll find it fascinating. MJ, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, brother, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, thanks for having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and MJ for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. Freepodcastcourse.com. Freepodcastcourse.com. I will catch you there or on the flip side. Success Story, hosted by my friend, Scott D.

26:55Clary, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q &A sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, and conversation on sales, marketing, business, startups, and entrepreneurship. In a recent episode, Scott brings Kate Bradley on the show, founder and CEO of Lately.ai, to discuss the best ways to use AI to create content. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts. Want to meet me, JLD, in person? Attend Clay Clark's two-day interactive business workshop and meet me, Tim Tebow, and Clay Clark this June.

27:27Experience the highest rated business workshop in America and hang out with me in person at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, that's thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Learn more and request your tickets at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.