716: Your Best Year Yet: Goal Setting and Action Planning that Gets Results

24:04Think about what you need in order to make that decision easier and then go and do that. I like that question. Or those combination of questions. What, you know, what's it going to take to condense the timeline? How, how we can be, how can we make this a reality in four weeks instead of four months? And what would it look like if it were easy? What would it look like if it were fun? I think that's another Tim Ferriss question. You know, how can I get excited about this and bring a sense of speed and play to it versus, you know, just an automaton that says, well, this was the, this was the goal.

24:34This is how it broke down to the daily action plan. And now I just do my, do my thing. and keep at it. Yeah. And I'll give another tip too, like as we're executing on this, because it can get stressful or, you know, we can get frustrated if we try things and it doesn't work. What I always tell people is be committed, but not attached. And this is one of the biggest, I think, mindset shifts because when we try something and it doesn't work, what we end up doing is we tell ourselves a story about that. It didn't work. I'm a failure. This is never going to work. All the people that told me I shouldn't start a side hustle were right.

25:10But if we realize that that was just one way it didn't work, but I'm committed to getting the result, then I'm going to show up the next day and just try something different. So I think it's really important to know the results we're going after. But if we don't achieve them right away, realize that's part of the journey and just keep showing up and taking what you learn and try something different. And be committed, but not attached. Do you have a rule of thumb for like when to throw in the towel of a side project, you mentioned, Hey, my goal was to retire at 35. A lot of the projects I tried didn't work out.

25:40Like at what point were you like, ah, this one, it's not going to be the one I'm going to call it quits on this one. Yeah. I think it changes based on like the type of goal and stuff you have, but here's the guideline I like to think about. So if you remember back in like high school science class and we would design an experiment. So I'm a huge proponent of designing experiments with all of these goals. And so my experiment starts with a hypothesis. I believe if I do this, I'm going to achieve that. And then so I give myself a timeframe for that. And then at the end of the experiment, I then say, okay, is this like showing me some proof or some progress where I should continue on?

26:22Or is it not showing me where I should pivot or ultimately let go of this and do something else? So I don't think it's an easy answer, but I think the biggest thing is like, give yourself a timeline, run some experiments, and then usually in your gut, you'll figure out, okay, I've tried enough of these things. It doesn't feel like it's gaining momentum. Let me go back and try something else to get there. Have you played around with using AI as kind of a brainstorming or goal-setting tool to plug in maybe some information about your lifestyle in your business and seeing what comes back, what kind of recommendations come back?

27:00Absolutely. And I'm so glad you asked because AI has been a game changer for this entire process. Now, what I'm about to say is probably going to be controversial to some, but I recommend you give AI all of this information that we're talking about. Now, some people are worried. They're like, I don't want to give all that information. I believe that all of our information is already out there between Facebook, Google, Instagram, all these platforms. So here's what we do. I have a personal AI that I had to interview me on all those areas on the wheel of life. So I said, Hey, here's the areas that are important.

27:38I want you to interview me and ask me how I feel about these and what a 10 would look like. So then I just spoke my responses into it and I had it summarize all of that for me. This is ChatGPT or a different tool? Yep, this is ChatGPT. Okay. And so what I did was it then summarized all of the things that I gave it. And so I then created a project and each of those categories became a different list or a folder. So I have one for my health. I have one for my marriage. I have one for my business. And then I said, based on this, here's where I want to be a year from now. Help me define a roadmap or a plan to get there.

28:18And the first version it came up with was probably 80 % of what I would have done. Yeah. And so I gave it some feedback, it tweaked it, and then now it gave me the plan. So just like GPS, it gave me the roadmap. Okay. But here's what's super cool. Every day, I give it two additional things. When I wake up in the morning, I tell it 10 things I'm grateful for. Okay. And it connects back the things I'm grateful for to those categories. And then at the end of the day, I give it my daily rating and I just summarize what went well, and then what my challenges were. And it then connects those back to the goals I'm working on.

28:52So it's kind of giving me this ongoing feedback and then recommendations for where I can adjust. Okay. And this is ChatGPT, just like the$20 custom plan? ChatGPT,$20 plan. I basically made a project. I had it interview me, and then I just give it updates every day and then ask it for any feedback. Or if I'm running into a problem, like for example, I'm working on improving some areas of my health. So I gave it like my blood test results. And then I said, based on my goals and what you're seeing, help me come up with like a meal and a workout plan that will help me achieve this. Yeah. I've done the same.

29:31It's a really cool use case for that. Cause like when you go to the, go to the doctor, in some cases, they're just kind of like, yeah, you're, you're, you're fine. Don't stress, you know? And it's like, well, I know you got to get onto the next appointment, but I was hoping for a little more analysis than just that. Yeah. And what's really cool with this, Nick, too, is a lot of people talk about like journaling or writing things down, and that's really good. But what AI and ChatGPT will do, which is next level, is it can take a ton of data and understand patterns and make connections that we don't.

30:00So for example, when I did one of my end of the week kind of like check-ins, it actually called out that there was a correlation between my energy being low and some things that I wasn't doing. So it reminded me that when I do these things, my energy is higher. And it recommended that next week I focus on incorporating those back in. So just like GPS will tell you like, hey, you missed a turn, go back this way. Chessy BD is kind of doing that for me with my plan. You're using it almost like as a accountability partner, where it's like it came up with the roadmap for you and then you're checking in and how you're doing.

30:34And it's like, hey, yeah, you missed a turn back there. No wonder you're not feeling so great. Exactly. And the biggest thing I'd say with this is use it as a thought partner. The more context you give it, the better the responses are going to be. And then just like any AI, it can hallucinate or not be correct. So we always want to double check it. But I find like, for example, a lot of people will type. If you do the voice note and you talk, like a lot of times I'll go and do like a 15 minute walk and I'll talk to it the whole time. I'll give it a summary of how I'm feeling, what's going on. The more information we give it, the more accurate the responses are going to be for us.

31:09And this is true of a text prompt as well. But the more detail you can feed in, the more context it has to give you what you need on the other end. Exactly. And the reason that I talk about voice so much is we can usually type like 40 to 50 words a minute, but we can talk 150. And when we type, sometimes we'll try to filter it. when we talk, we don't filter and we might say ums or pauses or whatnot. And all of that gives context too. Oh, okay. Okay. And you know, I've used the voice just for quick questions out and about, but not, not having this whole back and forth conversation. Yeah. Usually what I'll do, like when I go on a walk, it's not a back and forth conversation.

31:47It's like, Hey, I'm going on a 15 minute walk. I'm going to just brain dump what I'm thinking and what's going on. And I want you to basically save this to help as I'm asking you questions later on. Okay, got it. Yeah, it's like a robot therapist. Robot therapist. While we're on this, you know, AI and kind of the different tools, like any other tools that you recommend here or apps or tech that might be helpful in the goal planning and execution process? Here's what I say. Like, I come from a tech background, but I actually tell most people, like, don't get too caught up in tech. So I like to keep it simple.

32:21ChatGPT is probably the main one. And if you use a different AI, like, that's fine. Just pick one. and stick with it. There's a tool that's called the whisper flow. It's essentially going to allow you to talk and then it will translate it into text. So a lot of times as like, we're actually doing goal planning with a lot of our business owners next week. And so what we'll do is we'll take them through the process and we'll have them talk out their responses to all the questions that we have as part of the process. And then they'll feed that into chat GPT to then give them their initial plan. So those are the two main tools that I use.

32:57There are definitely other ones that are out there, but I tell most people, keep it simple and don't get too complicated. Yeah. I think another key component to any goal planning plan or goal setting session is, you know, after you've broken it down into the, well, what are the, you know, monthly, weekly, daily actions to move forward and make progress is some kind of measurement system, some kind of tracking system. So, you know, you're making progress and kind of like having that daily, weekly accountability where like, I got to go fill in the spreadsheet or I got to, you know, check the box.

33:30Like there was a streaks app on your phone, like people use for a long time, like, Oh, I, whatever it was, I did my meditation or I did my 10 pushups or whatever it was. I'm going to keep the streak alive. I think the biggest thing with that is twofold. When we think about tracking, there's the ultimate result. So in our case of like adding an additional 5k in income, that's the end result. But what we want to think about is like, what are the leading indicators or the things that we can track on like a daily or weekly basis? So if we're breaking this down, the goal might be add an additional$500 this month.

34:02So we may break that down and say, okay, well, we're going to add an additional$100 this week. So whatever that goal is for the week or the day, we want to be able to know what that is. And then every morning, look at where we're at and then adjust our actions based on that. Well, then breaking down the value chain of where's the hundred dollars going to come from? It's like, okay, well, I got to call five clients or five prospects, or I got to make this type of social content posts. Because when I do that, you know, every so often it hits and I get a hundred new email signups and like kind of figuring out, well, what are the inputs?

34:41And I'm glad you brought that up. Cause it's like a lot of the goals that we set are going to be outcome goals, the$5 ,000 a month, the dropping 20 pounds versus the process goals, the input goals of, well, what do I actually have to do to make it happen? Yeah. And the process goals are actually really important because like the example I always go back to is like weight loss, right? Like if we want to lose 30 pounds and we break it down to a pound a week, well, when we step on the scale at the end of the week, the scale is going to tell us if we hit it or not, but we can't really change it. But if we know every day that we're going to have a 500 calorie deficit, part of which is by working out, part of which is by the food we eat, that is the thing every day that we do that creates the result at the end of the week or the end of the goal.

35:28So it's really important to know correlation because a lot of people will, for example, they'll be like, I need to go make more money. Let me go make all these social media post or let me go do this thing. But if we don't understand how that thing is going to lead to the result, we may do a ton of actions that don't get us there. So it's really important to your point with the value chain to say, I know that this leads to this leads to this. So I'm going to start with that first thing. Yeah. And sometimes, especially if you're early on in your business, you're not going to know, well, you know, this many social followers leads to this many email subscribers, at least to this many clients, you may not really have all that data just yet.

36:07And so there's a certain element of throwing spaghetti at the wall, but trying to come up with some kind of process or input goal. I mean, early on for Science Hustle Nation, the goal was just write 500 words a day, you know, because that turned into blog content, it turned into book content, it turned into social media content. And that was the goal. It didn't matter if it got published or not, but it was like, could I do this consistently to try and build up this body of work and ultimately like the authority in the side hustle space? There's a process goal versus an outcome goal. I want 10 ,000 more followers.

36:39And kind of like what we talked about earlier, even if you didn't explicitly say this, you basically had a hypothesis in your head. Your hypothesis was if I wrote 500 words a day for long enough, it would turn into assets that would then be monetized. So what I like to do is to have us identify what is that hypothesis? And then we say, how can we test it? We might test it on a week. We might test it on a month. But if we can then check in, that's going to help us to say, hey, the process things that we're doing are leading to the results. So let's do more of them. Or the process things aren't leading to the result.

37:14So maybe let's change that or try something different. More with Tom in just a moment, including getting goal buy-in from other stakeholders in your life, like your spouse and your team. and carving out time to do the goal planning when it just feels like you're too busy to come up for air. Coming up right after this. Right now, we're all trying to do more with less. And I want to let you in on a tool that lean, mean, high-performing teams are using right now to be more efficient and buy back some of their time. Our sponsor, Augusto, is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses.

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39:31Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash sidehustle. That's Quo, Q-U-O dot com slash sidehustle. So earlier you mentioned having kind of going through the process with your wife and kind of doing it separately and then coming back together and comparing notes and kind of doing a joint version of that. And I imagine that probably comes up quite a bit for listeners who have, you know, big business goals or side hustle goals and their spouse maybe or partner may be a little more lukewarm on that. Like, why, you know, why are you hanging out over here?

40:11Or if you have a team in place and they're like, well, who are you to just set these big arbitrary goals? And now it's on us to go hit them. We don't have any buy-in in that. So do you have any suggestions or advice there? Yeah. Well, it's funny because people like, we'll take like me and my wife, people hear us do this process now. And they're like, oh, it's so good that you guys are like on board and aligned. And I'm like, it wasn't always that way. So whether it's your partner or your team, usually we have an idea of where we want to go. but we don't stop and ask the others around us where they want to go and what's important.

40:46So I find the key part of this planning process, like, let's start with your spouse. Like, first off, ask them the same questions that you're asking yourself. Like, where are you at today? Like, how are you feeling in these areas that are important to you? And then like, where would you want to be a year from now? And like, when my wife and I did this originally, what we found was that we were similar on the things that we wanted, but our timeframes were very different. Okay. So a great example was we both wanted a new house, but her timeframe was like two years. My timeframe was like five. And so just through having these discussions and really asking what she wanted and uncovering that, we could see where we were aligned and where we were different.

41:26And then talk about how do we bring this plan together that works for both of us? So you compromised and got the house in two years? We actually ended up pushing it off. But the reason that that worked was because we planned out where we wanted our life to be. And in my case, I was like, well, if I can spend a little bit of time getting this business working to where we're making more money, then we're going to be able to afford the house you want. If I can't get this working, then it's going to be a bigger stretch. So which one do we want? And we mutually agreed we would rather wait a little bit longer and have exactly what we wanted.

42:03Yeah. So you're working with a lot of business owners who are neck deep in the weeds of their business and putting out fires day to day. It's really hard. And I'm kind of guilty of this sometimes, too, where it's like very much maintenance mode versus growth mode. Like, how do you get people to come up for air when it feels like I'm too busy chopping down trees to sharpen the saw here? Like you're talking about, you know, 12 month goals. It's like I'm worried about tomorrow or making payroll at the end of the week or stuff like that. It's really challenging. I start with results. So I check in, I'm like, hey, Nick, how are you feeling with the business?

42:38Like, is it where do you want to be or do you want it to be different? And if you're like, well, I really want to make more money or I'd rather have more time. It's like, okay, sweet. Talk to me a little bit more. What does that look like? How much more money? How much more time? So it starts out with understanding that they don't have what they want. And then we define what do they want. And then we go back to that question of like, well, why do you want this? because if we can start there, we're exposing the gap and then we can start talking about, okay, now is this really what you want? And then we can define how do we go about getting it and making that happen?

43:12Yeah. Sometimes it's tough to carve out even a half a day of on paper, like do nothing time, like thought time, reflection time, planning forward, planning time. But it's really some of the most important work that you can do if it dictates the future direction of your business. Absolutely. And here's a thought practice that I do with a lot of people. And I call it future pacing. So it's like, hey, Nick, we're going to kind of walk through two scenarios. Scenario one is you're too busy to do this planning and you just keep doing what you're doing today. Then what happens? And you tell me something.

43:44And I say, okay, so if you then are heads down and doing this thing, then what happens? And we play it out until we get to a point of where you're going to end up in the future. Yeah. And I'm like, sweet. Nick, now let's come back and play a different scenario. Let's imagine you were able to carve out this time, get super clear on what you wanted, and then a good plan to get there. Then what would happen? And you'd tell me that. And I'd say, then what would happen? And by the time we get to the end of both, I say, great. Nick, you get to decide, do you want pain now, which is the planning, to make it easier later?

44:14Or do you want it easier now by not doing the planning and the pain later? And usually that will help people realize, yeah, it makes sense to do the harder thing now because I want that result later. Yes. Set the GPS versus continuing to just drive around in circles, do anything. Yeah. Well, Tom, this has been a blast. I've got a ton of notes from this and some homework to do as well as I'm sure listeners do as well. What's going on with you? What's next? What are you excited about this year? What we're looking at is, you know, for business owners that are looking to build their business to create that freedom, how can they properly leverage AI to do what AI does best so they as business owners and their team can do what they do best.

44:57So we've got some projects that we're working on now and we'll be announcing soon to really support that. But I just think in this time where there is like so much innovation and so much going on, there's such an opportunity for all of us to be able to really be in our zone of geniuses. So that's my focus is how do we identify what all of our zone of geniuses are? And then how do we focus on spending more of our time in there? Yeah. Is this on the lifestyle builders side, the 2X side? Yeah. I think just in general, like if I, if I look at, you know, where my focus is, it's all of us want to be happy and live our ideal life.

45:32And the group that we work with is business owners. So we basically say, how do we do that across all the things that we do? So in every business I touch or every effort I'm in, it's coming back to that question of what's the zone of genius for this person and how do we help them get more into that? And I'm glad you framed it that way as just building the lifestyle that you want. And you probably saw this Harvard study from probably a few years old at this point, but they asked all these millionaires, what level of wealth would you feel happy or would you feel comfortable? And inevitably, whether you were worth 1 million or whether you were worth 10 million, it was double.

46:10So the 5 million people said they wanted 10 million, the 10 million people said they wanted 20 million. It was like the goalpost keeps moving, right? If you're only measuring in terms of monetary success. So you have to have these other measures, you know, that's one in this, you know, wheel that you're describing, wheel of life that you're describing as one pillar. It's fine, but it doesn't, it can't be the only thing because you see plenty of really wealthy, unhappy people. So make sure you're designing your goals for this year with the holistic view in mind. Absolutely. And I'll share one more thing, Nick, that I do that has helped a lot.

46:44I've always had this challenge between being grateful for everything that I've created and achieved in the life I have, while also feeling driven to do more. So actually in my office here, I've got one wall and there's a sign on it that says, create your future. And it has my vision, my goals. And I look at that every day to remind myself of what I'm creating. But then on my other wall, there's a banner that says, love your life. And I've got pictures of key moments in my life, people, places, experiences. And every morning, one of the practices I do to reset is I remind myself of where I'm going and what I'm creating.

47:21But I bring it back to gratitude and just a reminder of like this experience I had or this impact that I had on somebody. And I find that that helps me stay grounded and grateful while I'm also building. Because otherwise, it can be so easy to just see the goalposts moving and not really appreciate everything that you've created like we talked about with the gap and the gain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This create your future, love your life, this combination of growth plus gratitude. And the best way to predict the future is to create it. So, yeah, it's on you to make it happen this year. 2x.co is for six and seven figure business owners looking to scale up and grow their operations while reducing the business's reliance on themselves as a business owner.

48:04Stop you in the bottleneck. And wearelifestylebuilders.com. Check out the Lifestyle Builders book by Tom and Ariana, his wife. Really fun read there. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. Yeah, I'd say take time to really think about what you want and then be intentional with everything you do to get there. There's a quote, Tony Robbins says that, I don't know if he created it, but we often overestimate what we can do in a year, but we underestimate what we can do in a decade. and if you're not where you want to be now, just realize you're on the path and you get to go through this process to get there and you can probably do so much more than you think is possible.

48:49Yeah, totally. You're in the driver's seat. So it can be really, really powerful there. Tom, again, this has been awesome. I put together a goal tracking, a goal planning template based on our conversation, based on everything that we've been talking about today. You can download that for free as your free listener bonus at sidehustlenation.com slash goals. goals again side hustle nation.com slash goals or just follow the link in the episode description it'll get you right over there big thanks to tom for sharing his insight thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone side hustle nation.com slash deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place that is it for me thank you so much for tuning in if you're finding value in the show the greatest compliment is to share with a friend fire off that text message let them know you're thinking about them and you want to help them have their best year yet.

49:38Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen, and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.