TES 013 - The Keys to Accelerating Your Acheivement

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy, where we teach you how to design a business and create a life, a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. Welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution show. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the last stage of the think up phase of the three phases of building a business or building a product or launching a product. And so in this, in this segment, we're going to talk about goals. Now, I know you're probably all going, oh, my God, another one of those smart goals. Yeah, no, it's not going to be your smart goals. We are going to touch on smart goals. This is really about how do you take and infuse electricity and energy and vibrancy into those goals to give them life and have them come to a reality. So that's really what this is about. We're using what I call my ladder of achievement process to do that. And so when we come back after the short introduction, we're going to get into the ladder achievement. We're going to talk about your goals. We're going to infuse them with electricity and we're going to see them come to life. And by the way, if you're not by your computer and you want to make sure that you get the guidebook to take you through this process, the free downloadable guidebook. Go ahead and text mylegacy one word, no spaces. My L, E G A C Y to 38470. I'll see you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur Solution, where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again. And you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

Hey there, I'm Mel Abraham. Welcome back. I'm the author of the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution. This episode we're going to take a moment to start to go into some things that you probably heard over and over again. This concept of goal setting and everything. But I want to give you a different way to look at it and I want to give you a way that will fuel them, that will energize them, electrify them and bring them to life. And so what we're still dealing with is this whole concept of the three phases of a business life or product life. And we're in the think up phase. So remember, there's the think up phase, there's the get up phase, and there's the reach up phase. We're in stage one, the last part of stage one. In the think up phase. We're talking about the decisions that we need to make. And remember that all of everything we are doing is overshadowed and in the shadow of the customer promise, the brand promise that you're making first, then we build everything on top of that. So what we're going to do is we're going to finish up stage one, decide, and then we'll move on to ideation and in the upcoming episodes. So let's just talk about this whole concept of where we've been in decide. We talked about why, we talked about what, we talked about your core strengths and how to use your core strengths as a means of distinguishing yourself and creating distinction in the marketplace. We hit on and touched on a number of the obstacles and challenges that you might butt up against and how to navigate through that and the challenges about that. We then dealt with the element of what is your elegant solution? How do you create an elegant solution in that process? And then we're going to talk about, in this session all about the goals. But my process called the ladder of achievement process, that's going to infuse them with energy. So let's touch on this concept of goals. And I know that many of you have heard of all right, smart goals. Smart goals, Smart goals. And you know, the concept of smart being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant or results oriented or time frame. And so there is a tremendous amount of.

Truth to doing things that way. The challenge that I find with this concept of smart goals, first, there's one element that I think is missing there. Well, there's a couple of elements that I think is missing there, but one in particular, I kind of change it and say it's not smart goals, it's a smart goal. So smart still being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time driven. But I put an A in front of it because the goals, in my estimation, my belief, the goals need to have alignment. They need to be aligned with your higher mission, your higher vision, you, your higher purpose. They need to be goals that are the needle movers towards that outcome. And many times we set goals that aren't driving us to where we want to go. They're just goals. And yeah, we accomplished them, but did they move the needle for us? So when I look at goals, one of the first things I ask myself is this in alignment with the higher purpose, my higher vision, the greater mission of what I want to do. If I achieve this goal, does it move me down the path at a fast rate? Does it move me closer and in the direction that I want to go? So again, alignment is first. I believe in dealing with this. Then we deal with this concept of specific making sure that whatever goal you're creating is specific. It's linked to your strategic plans. This answers the question of who and what the elements are. And then it needs to be measurable. If we can't measure it, we can't manage it. So we need to make sure that's measurable. And so the question then is how? This answers the question of how are we going to get there? How are we going to measure it, how are we going to manage it? It then needs to be attainable, which we talk about and saying it needs to be reachable, attainable and realistic, then relevant. It needs to be relevant to our outcome, the tasks that we're doing, and it needs to be time driven. There needs to be a deadline to it. There needs to be something attached to it to start to draw us forward. Most of the time, people will not operate without a deadline. So that's the kind of concept of smart goals, or in my world, we call them a smart goals.

The challenge that I find with this is this is a lot of left brain stuff. So it lacks energy, it lacks movement, it lacks the emotions that come about with trying to really drive yourself forward. Because we can put these up on a chart, we can put these up on the wall and look at your goals every day, like people say, and journal about them, but if there's no emotion attached to them, if there's no energy, electricity, vibrancy attached to those goals, there's not going to be any movement. So they become stagnant goals. They don't really drive you anywhere. And so what I found is that I needed to attach, attach a process to these goals that allowed me to start to move them forward, which is what I call the ladder of achievement. Process is something that I use in that when I move my goals, if you think of it as almost like wheels that are starting to spin and you're pushing your goals to, and they accelerate the goals, that's what this does. It starts to allow you to, to move forward through the goals. And when you look at the framework for the process, you'll understand why and what it is. What we're really doing is connecting threads from the left side, the left brain side of your and the logical side of your brain to the emotional side on the right side, to your heart, to your soul, to the energy elements that are going to really start to drive you forward. So when you look at this process, really it's focused on a couple of different things. That is personal growth, perseverance and practice, primarily. And perseverance and practice, we break down, and I'm going to break them down for you here. But what I want you to do is I invite you to look at this in the context of a checklist to a process that you go through and you continually go through when you're setting goals and looking at goals. Because you're going to find as you get used to this, they get infused with energy and you start to move towards them because you're emotionally connected to them. So let's start with the first element, which is really this concept of personal growth. And I think the concept of personal growth is the foundation for goal achievement. It's the foundation of everything. Because if we don't have the desire, the innate desire, the emotional desire to, to move forward, if we can't bring that up, we're not going to do anything. You can set a hundred goals, you can set all kinds of inspirational goals, but if they don't move you and you don't have this innate desire to move forward, then you're not going to do what's necessary to really bring it to life. So I need to look at and say I need to be committed to this concept of personal growth, because trust me, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, you're going to have obstacles when you set goals. In fact, the higher Your goals are, the more obstacles you have. But you got to think of that resistance as if you're building a muscle and allows you to grow stronger as you continue to do so. So focus on it from that perspective. So I need to have a desire to be more in this process and to have that foundation of personal growth, the desire to be more, and then make the commitment to strive to grow. And, you know, I think that the.

Foundational elements of human nature is to grow, to become more. And what society does, we train it out of ourselves as kids, as children. If you ask a child what they want to do when they grow up, they give you a laundry list. They'll tell you they want to be an astronaut, a policeman, a doctor.

A fireman, they want to be an author, they want to be an actor. And they give you this whole list as if they're going to do it all in their life. Which is. Which is so amazing. And it's such an amazing energy for a child to have this vast imagination and this energy put behind it. And then for some reason, as they grow and as we grow, society says, well, get your head out of the clouds, Maybe quit dreaming. And that could be really hard. And what society does is it educates and trains all of that inspiration, that vibrancy, that energy, that vast vision out of us, out of many of us. And we have to bring it back into our lives to realize that possibility is a wide expanse, it's limitless, other than what we put in our own head. And this concept of personal growth becomes really, really important. It eliminates, when we focused on personal growth. It eliminates our tendency to rationalize why, why we missed the mark, why we didn't get this done, why we didn't move forward. Why, why? Why? Because of the economy, because I was born on this side of the railroad tracks, because of whatever. I think that we can see numerous examples of people that were on the wrong side of the tracks and made success of themselves, people that were handed nothing and had to battle the whole time and made success to themselves. And on the other side, we find people that were handed everything and couldn't make a success out of anything. So I don't think that our circumstances, our conditions, our current conditions set the level that we're going to rise to. Our desire, our commitment to strive, our desire to be more and personal growth is what allows us to do that. So one of the questions, and one of the things that I typically do in this section of the Ladder of Achievement is I set some very specific growth Commitments with myself. Now it may simply be, it could be something personal in nature, like I want to learn the piano and I want to learn it and to learn to play certain types of songs or pieces in the next 12 months. So I do make it time driven and I put some specific growth goals in place that are going to allow me to be better at the end of that journey and will then reset the goals and reset the goals and we continue to review them on a regular basis. But this is about your growth. So I invite you at this stage to look at some of the things that are skills that you want, that are emotionally compelling, that really drive you forward and list them out. And as you list them out, also list out when you want to achieve them. And then what is the very first step you need to take to move towards that goal and then take it. So that's the first level. Now we move to this next level, which is called perseverance. And this concept of perseverance is freely about your stick to itness. I don't even know if that's a word, but it's your determination and your focus. It's something that in my belief, every entrepreneur needs. It's a must have characteristic in our personality. This concept of perseverance, that's the bad news. The good news is that it can be learned, it can be developed, and it can be nurtured. So when we talk about perseverance, I think there's three elements that go into perseverance. It's the concept of purpose and the concept of passion, which a lot of people talk about. Purpose and passion. We'll touch on that. And then there's the concept of patience, which I think actually for entrepreneurs that might actually be one of the hardest things for us to nurture, to grow, to learn, to do. So purpose is really your emotionally compelling. Why, why am I doing this? If it is truly just for the money, I can assure you this, it is not enough. Because that's in some senses that's greed driven. And when you reach it, all of a sudden it's an empty success. I, I know a lot of entrepreneurs that went down that road until they realized it's not sustainable because it's not energizing, it's not emotionally compelling. Sure, suffering, comfort, because you got some finances. But bottom line is, how do we create fulfillment? There's a difference in life from being rich and being enriched. And that's where we need to focus on, on this concept of enrichment. And what does it take? And so what are you passionate about what you know, what is your purpose as you, as you start to build, what is that? Why that isn't some logical perspective, left brain concept, but something that's emotionally stirring on the right brain side. Figure out what that is and then write that down, write a couple of them down. The more you have that stir the energy and you stir the emotion, you, the more likely you're going to light a fire under these goals and under the goals to move forward. The second part of perseverance, I think that in order to have perseverance, we have to have purpose, we have to have passion.

This is what drives you forward, this is the fuel. This is what's going to get you to say, I got to get up at 4 o' clock in the morning. You're not going to sit back and go, oh my God, it's 4 o' clock in the morning. You're actually going to look at it and go, man, you know, I'm excited to get the day started. I'm excited to, to get up early or stay late and work through this because this is my passion. And time seems to just warp. All of a sudden you look up and 5 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours have gone by because you were deep in flow, in passion as you move forward. So what is it, you know, when you talk about, is this goal really create passion? What's the passion from it? And I'd rank them, I'd actually rate it and say on a scale of 1 to 10, when I think about this, how passionate am I? And if you're finding that that passion rating is, I would say below an 8. Anything below an 8, you need to rethink it because it's not enough to sustain you when the, when the challenges and the obstacles and the things get in the way, to push through it, to put that head down and say, I can make it, I can make it, I can go through. And I know that you have that in you. So look at it, rate it, and then start to reevaluate it. And then the last piece on perseverance, I think, is this concept of patience. Let's be real. We don't have the ability to control everything that's going to come our way, whether it's in life, whether it's in health, whether it's in profession, whether it's in relationships, whether we don't have the ability to control everything. And things will come into place in their own time and space sometimes. And so we need to find patience. Now, I'm not the person necessarily to Teach you about patience. I remember when I was in Japan training in the martial arts with my teacher years ago, and I sat with him and I said, oh, sensei, Sensei, I'm having problems getting the this technique. Problems getting this technique. And he looks at me and he says, he says, oh, just have patience. And you know, frustrating. It was this Zen like answer, but then it got even more Zen when I said, but Sensei, what, what if I don't have patience? And he looks at me, he says, oh, pretend you already do it. Just frustrated the hell out of me even more, more. But the fact is that we need to cultivate, we need to learn how to be patient, to realize that we can't force things, we can't control everything. And so the real key is to sit back and say, how do I cultivate the patience and the fortitude and flexibility to continue forward? And one of the ways that I found to do this is to create a list of alternative paths, not destinations, but alternative ways to get there. So if one path gets blocked for some reason, I've got an alternative. I'm not trying to create something in the moment. I've already thought it through. And so I have the fortitude, I have the flexibility, and I start to build the patience in that process. And so we start with personal growth and then we create perseverance through purpose, passion and patience. And now we then go to this concept of practice. And the concept of practice is really your discipline of action. It's the discipline of execution. It's the steps you take and the joy that you make in the process. And there's three elements to practice also. I call it the plan, the people and the positivity. So the plan is really taking this long journey. And you know, some businesses will set 10 year, 15 year goals and then we'll break them down and breaking them down into bite sized chunks. Things that one, are digestible, manageable and foreseeable, and two, chunks that we can do. What I call micro successes. I want to break things down where I can have micro successes. One of the biggest things that I see in success today is that we're really good. You know, whether it's in the media and the press or even at schools at times or at the workplace. We're really good at criticizing, we're really good at pointing out what went wrong, what you did wrong, what you could have done better. We're really good at that. What we're really bad at is celebrating the successes. So what I want to do is load the process.

With what I call micro successes, with embedded successes. And so every step along the way, it's a high five. You know, it's like that relay race where they're handing the baton, and every micro success, you're handing the baton and you get rejuvenated to take the next leg of the race. And that is so important to continue to move you forward. So here's what I do typically in this place is when I figure out the goal and I figure out the path, I then break it down into micro successes and little milestones that are micro successes. And then with each of those micro successes, I then state next to it how I'm going to celebrate that success, who I'm going to celebrate it with. So I invite you again to sit back and take those goals and say, what are the micro successes along the way and how are you going to celebrate those successes as you move down the path, and who are you going to celebrate them with? Which brings me to the next piece of practice, which is the concept of people. No, success, in my belief, is a solitary achievement, a solitary pursuit. It is my success. For instance, I look at my success, it's on the shoulders and the arms of a lot of blessed people that have come into my life that have supported me, that have friended me, that have helped me, that have mentored me, that have nurtured me in the process. And I don't lose sight of that. Many of you that are watching me here are those people that have driven me forward to be better, to do more, to build on my own personal development, to continue to grow, to continue to serve. And so I think it's important for us to be intentional about the people that are in our lives, to look for the mentors that will really move the needle for us, the people that understand that maybe have done the journey. And I know that there's coaches and mentors, and many of you have heard me talk about this. I differentiate between a coach and a mentor. A coach may not necessarily have traveled the path, but they understand how to draw the information out of you so you can travel the path. But a mentor, a mentor's traveled the path. They've skinned the knees, they've got the bloody nose and the broken toes. In the process, they understand it. They've been down the road before, so now they can say, come on down the road, and I can tell you where the potholes are and what to do to avoid them. So I want to look at and list out.

Who are the mentors that I need to Move this needle forward the fastest. List out. You know, whether it's in tactical skills, types of training, if it's in marketing or personal development, who are the mentors that you think really will move you forward? List them out. Then ask yourself, who knows them, who might know them? And list those out. And then ask, when are you going to contact them? And start the process of connection.

Begin the process now. Maybe it takes a while before you get a chance to really connect with your mentor. And when you. When there are people that may want to serve you and others, it'll be instantaneous. But when you go to these folks, serve them first. Help them achieve what they want to achieve. Work with them, support their mission, understand them. Don't just go to them. Say, I need, I need, I need, I need. Some are willing to do that, but others are not. So serve them first. Come from a place of service, but find someone or some people. Because I've got multiple mentors and people in my life, and some of them are personal. My own beautiful wife is a mentor of sorts. She's my partner. We have a dialogue, we have conversations about things, and we grow together in process, the process. There's others that are business mentors that have been down a road already that I can rely on, their expertise and their vision of what it looks like. So understand who the people are. And then this last piece is this concept of positivity. I want to live life with something that I call positive expectancy. Positive expectancy.

It'S been said, and you've seen many studies, and in the personal development space, how we think about life is how we become in life. And so if we're constantly filling ourselves with negative thoughts, negative thoughts, negative thoughts, all of a sudden, at some point, it brainwashes us into a negative place, a place of lack, a place of inability, a place of lack of self worth, lack of self determination, lack of belief in ourselves. So this positive expectancy, this positivity about your thought process. And I'm not talking about just.

Mantras and things that you say to yourself per se, but I'm talking about really how you view life. We have the ability to look at things that are bad, that happen and really look at just the negatives and say, woe is me, woe is me. The problem is that that doesn't solve anything. Tendency is then when we say, what was me? We start to blame. And when we put things outside of ourselves, we relinquish responsibility and the ability to do anything about it. So I'm inviting you to Find the positive, to find the positive response, the positive learnings and then create in a sense two to three emotionally compelling statements those things that you know viscerally are really you and really build on that. So when things get tough or when things get challenging and you find yourself in this negative space, these things will snap you out of it and anchor you back to where you need to be. And here's the other key to it is that the mentors and the people that you brought into your lives in the people part of this, have at least one or two of them that you can call up and say, you know what, I need a kick in the rear end. So let's talk this through because that's the other thing that they do. There's plenty of times in my life where I've doubted myself and I wasn't sure and I was confused and I'll call some friends up, I'll call some of my mentors up and they are certainly more than happy to take the two by four to my attitude and start to knock it out. So I hope that this gives you an understanding of what I call the ladder of achievement process. This is how I take those smart goals, or in my case the a smart goals with the alignment piece. And I filled them with energy, I filled them with electricity, I filled them with a vibrancy. So there's movement in them and they're not just some logical list of things that I'm going to achieve, but rather they turn into something with movement and action associated with it. And so I invite you to take this, I invite you to actually download the workbook, the guidebook associated with this. You can get the download if you go to the guide. You can get it@melabraham.com session 013 and you'll get to be able to get a link to get the download. And if you're not at your computer and you're not.

By you're out running or you're driving and you can't write down the link, then just text, go ahead and text. MyLegacy. One word, no spaces. M Y L E G a c y to 38470 that's 38470 and that'll give you. That'll send you a link to a download page to get the downloads if you have. I hope this helped and I hope it shifted the way you look at goal setting and everything. And I hope that you go through the process and I invite you to go through the process in detail, emotionally invested in the outcome because as we start to move down the rest of the three phases in this business life, this product life, you're going to see that this is what's going to drive you forward. So if you have questions for me on this or other business issues or entrepreneurial issues or success issues, please reach out to me. That's why I'm here. I'm here to be your entrepreneurial mentor, your business coach, if you will. So reach out to me by going to www. Askmelnow.com that's askmailnow.com and leave me a message. You'll be able to leave a voicemail there with your comments, your questions, and we'll make sure that I get to them on one of the upcoming episodes so I can be there to support you in your journey, to support you to continue to grow. And if you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to this channel. Subscribe to the show so you'll get notified every time I put out a new episode. New training, new tools, new tactics, use strategies. And why not, while you're at it, tell a friend. Send this off to a friend. Let's give them the gift of possibility. Let's take their dreams out of the darkness again. Let's shake them out. And let's give them, give them life. So in the next episode, when we come back, we're going to, we're going to start talking at stage two, phase one. We're going to talk about the ideations stage. How do you create your ideas? So I hope you found this valuable. I hope you found this insightful and helpful and I look forward to supporting you and being with you in the next episode. But until then, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way. Because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us afraid the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.