TES 051 - The Process to Make Goal-setting Goal-getting

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 number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution, the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy, where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize what you know, the ideas in your head so you can have more impact, more time yourself and more income. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution Show. This one, this one's gonna be kind of cool. You know, I'm actually going back over something that I do every single year with you and that is achievement. You know, during this time of year, we're always constantly looking at, you know, what are my goals, what are my goals, what do I want to do, New Year's resolutions, all those types of things. But we never talk about a process to make them come to life. And that's what we're going to talk about here. I'm going to talk about my ladder of achievement. It's what I've used in my life to accomplish the things that I've done and it's what I've used for my high level clients as I mentor them or in my workshops like Thoughtpreneur Academy, our business breakthrough Academy to help them achieve what it is they're looking for. So I'm going to give that to you today in this episode right after this brief introduction. We'll be right back. But if you want to make sure that you get the guidebook, the action guide, the ladder of achievement action guide, go ahead and go to melabraham.com session051 or just text me mylegacy one word, no spaces. 38470. I'll make sure I send you the download link so you can have the action guide right by your side as we go through this. And I'll see you back here right after this brief introduction. See you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's 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. Welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book, the Entrepreneur Solution. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solutions show. And this one is going to be kind of cool. There's a lot of new things that are going on in a lot of people's lives as I've talked to them through this type of season. And I know that you probably look around go, that's a different background. You're right, you're right. We're in a different place and still in the process of finishing a move right now. And so I've got boxes, if I turn the camera around, I got boxes all around me and stuff all around me. We're still unpacking, but we're slowly building out the new office and the new digs that we're going to be coming to you from. This is the first episode coming from here and it's kind of a cool episode to just kind of start a new year and new fresh year. And like I said, we're going to talk about in this episode the concept of ladder of achievement, this.

Framework that I use around this time of year. There's a lot of talk about goal setting and there's a lot of talk about New Year's resolutions. There's a lot of reflecting on what you did in the past year and maybe what you didn't do in the past year and wondering, gosh, why didn't it come to fruition? Why didn't it come to life? Why, why did it, you know, what was it that allowed me to be such success in this last year and how can I duplicate it again and magnify it in the coming year? And so what this is all about really is not necessarily goal setting. Although we're going to talk about it, we're going to talk about goal setting, we're even going to talk about smart goals. And I think that there's some great things about smart goals. There's also some things that are lacking. And I'm going to give you what I think is the Missing link to making two missing links. One, to make smart goals a little more actionable and, and two, to make them more achievable, to create a process that's the fuel to make the goals that you create come to life. Because we never focus on the process. We simply set a goal. And I'm going to tell you, you know, I've heard it over and over and over again. Oh, just write your goals down, put them on a wall, read them every morning, read them every night before you go to bed. Well, I got news for you. Just reading your goals isn't going to make them come to life. It isn't going to make them come to, to fruition. What's going to make them come to fruition is your actions, the discipline you apply to those goals, the process that you create to make them come to life. And that's what I want to focus on here and is to give you a process, something that through that process, the goals you set will be achieved over time. So the fact of the matter is that yes, we're going to set some goals, we're going to talk about it, but I want to give you more importantly the process. But let's talk about the goal setting process for a moment. And we've all heard smart goals. Smart goals, Smart goals, smart goals. Ugh. You know, we've heard it over and over again. Now I'm not disagreeing completely with them. I think that they're great and I think there's some, some really cool things about it. One, you know, it stands for those of you that aren't familiar. Smart goals is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable or actionable, results oriented and time driven. Now those are great characteristics for goals. I do it to be specific. If it's some generic general goal, we're not going to be able to achieve it because it's nebulous. It's like trying to grab onto a cloud. You can't do it. So when you're setting your goals in this ladder of achievement process, they do need to be specific. They need to be very, very specific. Then we want them to be measurable. In other words, this is one of the key questions I often ask when, when I'm working with someone or I often teach when I'm working with businesses or that my mentoring, my high level mentoring clients and in my workshops is that what does success look like for you? And we ought to be asking that same question, what does the destination, if there is such a thing, the destination of success, at least in this circumstance, what does the destination of success look like for you? You know, it could be in a relationship. What does that good relationship feel like or look like for you? And being that specific, because here's the challenge is if we don't know what success looks like, we're never going to know when we get there. And this is a great question to ask when you're working with businesses and clients and other folks and even in relationships, what does success look like for you? Because now we know what we're going towards. Now we know what it is we're trying to achieve. So what does it look like for you? Make sure it's measurable. Make sure that you have a system in place that tracks it so you can see how much closer you're getting to it, getting to it and where you are so you can adjust and tweak as necessary. Well, so measurable is a great characteristic for a goal. Actionable or achievable? I've seen it said both ways. Is it achievable? And I think that given time and resources or resourcefulness, almost everything is achieved. There were times where people said we'd never walk on the moon. We did.

When you look at some of the great technological advances, the great accomplishments in society, all we got to do is look a decade earlier and see said. I said it was impossible, but today we're doing it. Today we have 3D printing. Today we, we have cars that are starting to self drive. We've got all kinds of amazing, incredible things that were just a figment of an imagination or an idea at one point in time. So I do think that almost all things are achievable given time and approach and all that. So we need to think about it in, in that context. But what I don't want you to do and when, when I look at this element of achievability or the a part of the smart goals is I don't want you to make them so grandiose that you don't have to take action on. Here's what I mean. If I turn around and say, well I'm trying to build my, I'm going to build my business into a hundred million dollar business and you're just starting out. Okay, let's start with making $100,000. Make it achievable because $100 million, it's easy to procrastinate because you really can't see it. It's so far in make it achievable in a time frame that makes sense for it. So Achievable, then.

Results driven, that all the goals are going to drive the needle towards the results you want. And then time, time bound. So the concept of time bound really becomes important, is putting a deadline, a time frame on things, scheduling. I have a very close friend of mine, Bo Eason, who said, schedule your fears. When you schedule your fears, things in your mind and things in your life start to shift, start to change. You start to think things differently. And this came to full circle. To me, it was an incredible reality. One day, I happen to be standing backstage with a good friend. I'm always backstage with him, Brendon Burchard. And we were sitting there chatting before I ever did any kind of live events of my own. I would do a lot of speaking on other people's stages. I but I was thinking about doing a live event and he was trying to get me to do my live event. He says, hey, do me a favor, just put it on a calendar. He says, you don't even have to do it. Just put it on the calendar and then we can talk about it. And so I calendar the date for my very first business breakthrough Academy. This was a number of years ago. And we were backstage again. He says, did you put a date on the calendar? And I said, yeah. And he says, cool, when's the date? And I said, well, it's June 4th, 5th and 6th. He said, Great. He says, that's before experts Academy. I said, yes. I mean after experts Academy. And I said, yeah. He says, good, bring a jacket to that Experts Academy. You're getting on stage and we're going to fill that event. I freaked, okay? Because now all of a sudden, because it was scheduled, it became real and now things had to shift to make it come to life. And, you know, it was an absol. Blessing because as those of you that know me know that the journey's been like with, with the live events, business breakthrough Academy and thoughtpreneur Academy and some of the things and titans think tank and all the different things that we've done. It's been an incredible ride for me and a blessing for me. But it's because someone made me schedule it. And when you schedule it, things had to shift, had to change, had to do things differently. And so. So that's the thing that I want to consider, want you to consider is time. So those are smart goals. Here's the thing that I think is missing from the smart goals. Here's the one aspect that I think when you do that whole smart acronym, when you put this in Place before it. And through the process, it'll shift and change things. And then we bring in the ladder of achievement to make them come to life. And that is the A. So instead of smart goals, I call them a smart goals. The A for me stands for alignment. The question that we sometimes fail to ask. It's a great idea to sit back, go, oh, I want to be a millionaire, I want to make a million dollars, I want to have my own plane or I want to do this or I want to do that. My question, and this is a question that those of you that know me know that I ask in a lot of businesses and a lot of my mentoring clients and a lot of times is always a values driven question. I think values will start to will lead everything we do. And the question is this. Is the goal that you're setting through the smart process aligned.

With your vision, your purpose, your mission and your values? If it is not aligned, I can assure you this one of two things happen. You will never accomplish it because it's really not aligned with what you want to do. And there's going to be this internal conflict constantly going on, this tug of war between your values and vision and what you set as goals.

Or worse yet, you actually do accomplish it. And it's this empty success that has no meaning. And you get there and you go, wow, is that it? And you're disappointed and you start to reflect on goals and say, maybe this isn't what I was meant to do, maybe this isn't. Well, so what I want to do is that before you set goals, that you get clear on your vision, your values, your purpose, your mission, however you want to call it in your life. And that all the goals that you set are the needle mover goals.

That are in alignment with, with self actualizing that vision, those values, that purpose, that mission, when that happens, when that's truly in alignment with that, when that happens, that's what fuels the goals. That's what gets you up out of bed in the morning to do the things that you do. I mean, the things that I do, I enjoy doing because they're in alignment. And so I don't go, oh, gotta shoot another video for you guys. No, man, you can see my energy and it is early morning here right now.

And we've been moving for days. But my energy is because it's in alignment with my values, my vision, my mission, my purpose to be here, to support you, to give you what I can for you to be the greatest success possible. And so the question that we always need to lead with, I think is alignment. And so instead of smart goals, I'd like you to think about what I call asmart goals, the needle movers. Because without the alignment, what happens is you can create goals that are left brain. They're left brain stuff. It's logical stuff that seems to make sense. I'm going to, you know, do my retirement, I'm going to make certain money, I'm going to buy this or I'm going to do this, I'm going to be a good parent. But when we connect them through the alignment process, when we connect them through the alignment process, it joins the left brain and the right brain together. It brings the emotional fuel to those goals to bring them to life. And so before you set goals, let's make sure that all goals that you set are in alignment with your vision, your values, your mission or your purpose. Okay? And so once you've done that, you're clear on that. Now we can bring in the process, now we can create the process to make them come to life. And that's what I call the ladder of achievement. Because here's what happens. We set goals up and we put them in place and we say, here's the goals that I want for the next 12 months or 6 months or 9 months or 3 months, however you do it. And I, you know, if those of you that know me know that I set some long term goals, one year goals, but I always break them down into 90 day, 13 weeks, if you will, 13 week wind sprints to make them accomplish, to accomplish them. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. But here's the challenge is we set the goals but we don't create a process. So there's this gap between the goals and then success, the achievement of those goals. And that gap needs to be filled with a process. And that process is what I call the ladder of achievement. And that's the key to achieving those goals. That's the key to coming back here 12 months from today, nine months from today, six months from today, and looking backwards and saying, man, we can tick that off. We did all right. And that felt good because one, they were in alignment with the vision, values, mission and purpose with what you're coming about. So here's the ladder of achievement. This is something that has served me well for many, many years. Serve my clients, the people that have come through my workshops and my high level mentoring clients that I've worked with. And it primarily focuses on three things. It's about personal growth, it's about perseverance and it's about practice. And I know that some people hear that the term personal growth and say, oh God, personal growth, here's the deal. And I'm a left brain thinker. I'm an accountant by education, I'm a CPA by trade. But I'm an entrepreneur by exhilaration because it energizes me, it juices me to see people's dreams come true. And here's the thing, personal growth, believe it or not, is where it's at. Our desire to grow is what I think the natural state of humanity is, is that there is this desire to grow. And what happens when people stagnate without growing is that's when they start to get depressed. I think that that's when they start to shrink down. That's when they start to question what their worth is. And I think that there's this. And it's not about not being satisfied with where you are. It's about seeing how you can be of greater service, of greater impact from a positive standpoint on society and the people around you to be better than you were. It's not about. Some of you will see the quote that goes around that I say it's not about being the best out there, it's about being the best you out there. And can I better myself today from where I was yesterday? And I think the answer is always yes. And there's plenty of room to improve. I'm learning that being married now for the last five years, there's always room for me to improve. And.

It'S an incredible, incredible journey. So. So I think that what happens is that there's this desire to be more as a humanity. But society poisons us. They poison us with this thing called mediocrity. Think about it, you know, as a child, those of you that have children out there, and if you asked a child or if you recall when you were asked, what do you want to be when you grow up, does the child turn around and say, for my case, it certainly wasn't, I want to be an accountant. Okay, I'm not even sure I understood what an accountant did even when I was in college. But someone told me I needed to be there. So at any rate, it worked out well in the long run. But bottom line is that when you ask a child what they want to do when they grow up, they don't give you one thing. They give you a list of things. I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a fireman. I want to be A policeman. I want to be a doctor, I want to be a nurse. I want to do this, I want to do that. And they give this laundry list because.

There are no boundaries on their possibility thinking. And what happens is that society trains it out of us. They educate it out of us in the process of education. Now I love education and I believe in education and I believe in all the education programs that are out there, whether they're, they're online university. And I think that we as a society, the more educated we can be, the better we will be prepared to deal with all the shifts in society and be better, more productive citizens of a global community. So I am not.

Belittling education at all. What I am belittling is the societal tendency to have people shrink down their dreams. I think we need people that dream big. I think we need people that have great aspirations. I think we need people that, like an Elon Musk or rest his soul, Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates, that see a vision greater than what it is today and are willing to run the miles, are willing to go after it, are willing to go against the naysayers. And in order to do that, we need personal growth. In order to do that, we need skill sets that maybe we don't have right now. And so one of the questions in this ladder of achievement when I look at my goals, is what are the skill sets that I need? What are the things that I need to develop inside of me to make that happen?

And in fact, what I do is once you get your a smart goals set up and they're in line with your mission, your vision, your purpose and your values, and you have that set up, ask yourself this question, who must I be for these to come true?

And when you answer that, you now see.

Am I that person? And if I'm not that person, personal growth has to come in because without that, then we're not committed to do what it takes to make those come true. And that may be education, maybe taking classes, it may be associations with other people. We'll talk about people in this ladder of achievement in a moment. The key is this. Be committed to specific growth elements in your life, whether it's in relationships, whether it's in technical skills, whether it's in writing skills, communication skills, whether it's in health, whatever it is, and be committed to it and strip away the rationalizations of why you can't. That's what personal growth is about. Okay, that's that, that's this process of doing it. We don't want to Allow society or society's norms poisonous with this poison called mediocrity. Agreed. So once we get this personal growth piece in place, then it's about perseverance and practice that really starts to drive us in the process. So perseverance, when we, when we look at perseverance, I think there's, there's three elements to perseverance. And this is really about what I call the stick to itiveness. Now I don't even know if that's worth it. And if it's not a word I've just coined it, stick to it. Iveness. Because here's the thing that I know is going to happen. We're going to set goals in place, we're going to set plans in place, we're going to put things in this journey. And as soon as they're in place, it's like the computer. As soon as you buy the computer, it's obsolete. As soon as your plan is in place, things don't go as planned. And if we're not prepared to persevere, if we're not prepared to move through those obstacles, those challenges, those reroutes, those detours, then we're not on the ladder of achievement. We're not going to achieve those goals. Our achievement isn't a line, it's a squiggly and a couple of turns and all kinds of other things that go along that way. And so perseverance is the key. And the things, three things for perseverance that I see is about purpose, passion and patience. And so when we look at purpose, we kind of talked about this in the a part of the A smart goals is that if you're in it and your goals are tied to money only, oh I want to make a million dollars or oh, I want to do.

I want to build a 20 million dollar company. If that's your driver, then you're coming from a place in my belief, you're coming from a place of greed and it's not sustainable. I know a tremendous number of successful people in their eyes, from a monetary standpoint, in my eyes, I don't believe that they're successful because they're not holistically successful. When I think about success, I think about holistically successful. It doesn't make sense for me to be running a hundred million dollar company and this is just my personal belief system. And you can tell me I'm wrong, that's okay. I know that others might think differently, but it doesn't do me any good to run a hundred million Dollar company. If my health is declining and it's suffering because of it, if my relationships suck because.

I'm an awful boss to work for, I'm an awful person to my wife or to my kids or anything. Now maybe that success in some people's mind, but I believe success is a holistic thing. It is about your life in not balance. The challenge with using the term balance is you think equality, but balance in the context of intentionality, in other words, being intentional with how you create your life monetarily. So financially, spiritually, emotionally, relationship wise, health wise, all of those things contribute to success. What is the purpose of what you're doing? And tie that down. If it is solely to accomplish, achieve to acquire, then I can tell you that it's not going to be sustainable. I've watched it over and over again and if you think it's sustainable, what happens that it's is that it's empty when you get there. This is your emotionally compelling why. And those of you who've heard the story about Jeremy drawing that picture of me when I was raising him as a single full time daddy was young, is that I lost sight of the why.

And so I lost the meaning in my business in that moment. And I was reminded by a six year old boy what's important, what's your why? And take every goal that you set and write next to it why? What is that emotionally compelling why? Because I need the money? Because that's not necessarily emotionally compelling emotion compelling is something that stirs you inside. What is the why? And then once we go from that, then we can turn around and say, all right, what's the passion?

What is it about this why that brings it up that allows me to say if I need to get up at 3 o' clock in the morning or work 12 hours to make it happen, I can do it. And it doesn't feel like work. You feel like you're in a state of flow and you're moving and you're doing things. So what's the passion part of this? And identify and when we list out the goals and the process the same time, that's what starts to bring life to it. And this last piece of perseverance, what's going to really start to bring you through this is this concept of patience, patience in dealing with that. So as you move through it.

You will realize really quickly that you can't, you can't control everything. And I know that, you know, especially entrepreneurs and some of us are really, really controlling. We gotta let go, let go and be okay with it. I know, and it's a challenge for me too. So we can't control everything. And there are certain things that we can affect and control, and we can do that. But here's the thing. We need to be patient. We need to find patience in this process. And I am.

I'm not that. I'm not the. This is not one of my strong suits. I will tell you this. In fact, years ago, I was training in Japan. May you know that I've been in the martial arts for four and a half decades, almost four decades now. And I was training in Japan with my sensei, and I was trying to get this technique, and I couldn't get the technique. And I'm like, ah, you know. And I was sitting down with sensei and I said, sensei.

I'm trying to get a niece looks at me and he says, oh, just be patient. I said, patient. I said, but what happens if you don't? And it was like, you know, he gave me this Zen, like, answer that irritated me. But his second answer irritated me even more because I said, but say, what happens if I don't have patience? And he looked at me, and he looked at me and he says.

Pretend you have patience.

It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but he was right. We ought to have patience. We can't control everything. And it's not necessarily going to happen in the same time frame we want it to. And we need to be adjust. Be able to adjust and be flexible in the process. Now, one of the things that we do at this point to give us that flexibility, to give us that variability, is to create alternatives to turn around and ask ourselves this, what is an alternative approach to accomplish the same thing? So if I'm setting my goals and what I want to accomplish, and I create a path to get there, what's an alternative path? So here, what I'm saying, because this is. This is really, really important, an important distinction. I'm not telling you to come up with an alternative destination. I want to keep what your goal is the same. I want the destination to be the same. What I'm asking you to do is to create alternative ways to get you there. To have two to three, I would say three to four ways that could accomplish the same thing. You know, I had a conversation yesterday with a good friend of mine who was. He was building a business and he was looking at acquiring different equipment. And he came to me, he says, look, I've got three possible ways to do this. Can you help me Kind of evaluate which one is the best right now. See, that's a great place to be because he's already got three ways to get it done. We're going to take the most effective way first. But we also know that if that starts to go by the wayside or not work, we've got another way to do it. Here's the thing. I want to have alternatives before I get on the journey and know that I have those in my back pocket if I need them. It makes it much easier. It builds your confidence because you've already thought through the challenges and how you might be able to navigate them. When I do business planning and strategic strategic planning with my high level clients, and even in some of the workshops I asked them to let's create multiple paths to the same destination, multiple paths to the same outcome. So we have exercised the muscles in a way that gives us the nimbleness, the agility to accomplish what it is we're trying to accomplish. So what we want to do is build that in, which then gives us a little basis for that preparation in that process. So building alternatives. As you're going through goals, I'm going to land this plane a little bit here for you. As you're going through your goals, I want you to answer the question why under purpose, answer the question why. Now that answer of why needs to be an emotionally compelling why. And the guide, the action guide, is going to help you walk through, through this process. Then I want you to understand how much passion you have for that. And I would tell you to do this, rank it on a passion scale, 0 to 10. If your passion for what that outcome is isn't an 8 to 10, it's probably not in alignment with values, vision, purpose and mission. So rank them on a scale of 1 to 10 and then patience, make sure you have at least two to three possible ways to the same outcome before you start on the journey. And that'll help you with the perseverance part. And then, then we got to come to this, this last piece of ladder achievement, which is called practice. And in the practice part, it's really about your discipline of action. Now we've gone through the planning process, we've gone through the documentation process, and in order to do this, it's really about creating a plan. It's about the people that you have to help you execute on the plan around you. And then the positivity, we'll talk about that as the last piece. So here's the plan. When we talk about plans, and I've already mentioned this is that, that we can take these grandiose plans and we can create this journey for 10 years. You know, I've seen it so many times with businesses. Let's do a 10 year business plan. That's great. Do you know what stuff changes in 90 days? Stuff changes in 30 days, stuff changes in six months. What are you going to do in the short time frame to make that 10 years come to pass? So that's fine if you want to make a long term plan, but that in order for that long term plan to become a reality, we need to break it down to small bite sized chunks, small bite sized pieces. That's what we want. Now my bite size is typically, like I said, I want to run 13 week sprints, I want to run 90 day plans. I'm going to create a one year, I'm going to create a three year, a one year plan and I'm going to break it down into 90 day chunks and, and then break it down into weekly actions. I'm only going to do two to three action steps at a time to move me forward on that process. So I need to create that plan. Now here's the challenge with it is that many people create a plan and we have a society. Remember I said that society has this poison called mediocrity. It also has this other poison. It's got two poisons and may have more, but it has this other poison of celebrating negativity. And here's what I mean. Turn on a news station, how many negative news stories are there compared to positive news stories? And how this shows up in our life becomes important because I think that we as humanity have gotten used to.

Pointing out the negative, pointing out the lack, pointing out what's not there, pointing out the mistakes and criticizing and becoming critics, which I'm okay with because through some of the process of that we can grow, improve and get better. What I'm not okay with is that we don't celebrate the successes. Why shouldn't we celebrate the successes? Why shouldn't we point out what was good and doing that? And we as individuals are probably the worst when it comes to ourselves. Because we, for some reason, and I include myself in this, we seem to step over our little successes. Remember I said at the very beginning is what is the definition of success? So if I'm going to create a plan, I'm going to create a bunch of micro steps. Those micro steps are little milestones. Those are little success points for us to celebrate. So when you create your plan, here's my one year, my 90 day, my micro success steps that are maybe week or two week steps. What are the things I need to do? And then I attach to it what I'm going to do to celebrate when we achieve it. Going to program in the celebration process, the ability to go, hey, it's okay. And you know what, it's okay to pat yourself on the back. It's okay to recognize that you know what, you did something and you did something good. Celebrate it. Celebrate it. That is so, so important. For some reason we seem to be lacking in it at that level. So create the plan and the action steps to get there. Document it, write it out. Don't necessarily, I'm not even thinking to put it on a computer. I'd sit there and handwrite it in a journal. There's something different about putting pen or pencil to paper than fingers on a keyboard.

Then ask yourself this. Success is not a solitary pursuit. Achievement is not a solitary pursuit. Business is not a solitary pursuit. My success and what I've achieved is on the shoulders and through the honor of the people that have blessed me in my life, including you out there. I feel blessed that I'm sitting here having a chance to speak with you, you digitally at this point, but hopefully live at some point where we get a chance to have a dialogue. But, but I feel blessed that, that my success is because of the people around me and not because of me. It's not a solitary pursuit, you know, it's, it's not, you know, I hear the term, oh, self made millionaire, you know, self made billionaire. And there's no such thing as self made, made, self motivated maybe, I don't know. But the fact of the matter is for me to be a success for you to be a success for others, for Bill Gates, for Steve Jobs, for other people, be successful, other people had to be involved in the process.

So who are those people for you?

Who are the mentors you need that are going to encourage you, that are going to, going to move you, that are going to direct you, who have actually ran the miles before you in a way that they understand what it is you need to consider? Who are those people? And if I talk about, I've got a framework for the different kinds of mentors, it's in one of the earlier episodes that you can look up if you want to understand the different types of mentors that you have. There's the ally, there's, there's four different types of mentors. But I think we need a level of mentorship in Our lives. I've got mentors, I've got colleagues, I've got friends that are all in my life for different reasons, and they support me in different ways as I do them. And indirectly, you being here, I feel like I'm in your life in some way, trying to support you in your journey, in that process. So the question is.

What are the mentors that are in your life.

That can help you? Now you may say, I don't have any. Great. Let me ask the question another way. Who are the mentors or the people that you need in your life or would want in your life to help you on this journey?

Then ask yourself.

What does it take to get them? What does it take to connect with them? And start to look through that process to figure out how you can connect with them. Now, here's the thing, when it comes to mentorship, and again, I'm going to encourage you to go back to that episode on mentors, is to not go out there and go, hey, I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. Your help. Because they're going to look at you and go, I get that all day long. Now, some people will be willing to do that, but here's the better way.

Serve them first and they'll serve you. What can you do to support them, to support their causes, support what they're doing, to show interest, to understand? And then they turn around and say, what can I do for you?

Because if we're always going with our hands out and they're empty, expecting them to be filled, that's different. If we go in our hands out.

With a gift, and that gift might be just service, that gift might be something that serves them. Serve first and see what comes back later. That's the way you start to build those mentors. But I would sit down in this process. Let's land the plane here. Create the plan. Break it down. One year, 90 days. Action steps and the celebration points.

That's the key. Then who are the people in your life that will help this plan come to life? Who are the people that you need in your life to help this plan come to life? It might be. It might not even be a mentor. It might simply be, I need someone that understands technology. I need someone that can help me write, copy better and all that.

And write those people down and say, then next you'll go, all right, do I have a connection with them? If I do, how am I going to contact them? And when? Remember, time driven. If I Don't have a direct connection with them, who does? And when am I going to initiate that contact? Okay, then once we have the people dialed in, we have this last piece of the achievement ladder. That's positivity. Here's the deal with positivity. And it's something that I call. I want to approach everything I do with positive expectancy. It's rather than going, yeah, I'll give it a shot.

I don't know if it'll make it. You know, that isn't positive expectancy. I want you to be. I want you to be real, but I want you. It's the question of how you think.

About what you've set that starts to set things in motion. If I've got hesitation because I'm unsure and I don't have that positive expectancy now, maybe, maybe, you know, it's like being able to say, look, I know that I'm going to achieve all my goals. That's just the way I am. Now, I may not achieve it in the same timeline and I may not achieve it in the same pathway that I had originally anticipated, but I'm going to continue on it because I know that they're aligned with my mission, my vision, my values and my purpose. I know that I've created an emotionally compelling why and that I know that they're high on my passion scale. And I've set alternatives in place to make that happen. And I've created a plan that I've broken down the action steps and celebration points that allow me to do that. And I've associated in and served the people to help serve me to allow that to come to happen. So positivity really becomes easy when I've done the process of the ladder of achievement. In this process, it'll allow you to navigate past the obstacles as you move forward. So here's the deal. I hope that.

In this short segment we can go deeper on this ladder of achievement. I can spend a lot of time on it, and I do with my high level mentoring clients and in some of the workshops and stuff. But if you just take this and say, all right, let me shift my smart goals and make them a smart goals aligned with mission, vision, purpose and values. And then let me put a process in place, the ladder achievement process, to make them come to to life, to give them life by making sure that I've got personal growth elements in place to give me the skills and the tools necessary to make them real, to make my goals real, set a perseverance plan in place and get My practice in place, your execution in place. Success is 90% done at that point. Now we just got to travel the journey because you've tied it to purpose, you've built the passion, you've got the alternatives and the patience in place. You've got the plan in place, you've got the people in place and because of that you have positivity in place. So I hope that you found this of value to you. I trust the process, build this process out. I assure you that when you look back 12 months from today, if you do this process on a regular basis, things are going to be totally different for you. And so again, thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of this journey with me. You are a blessing in my life and my wife's life and my kids life. It is a blessing and an honor to be here with you. So if you found this of value, do me a favor, share this with a friend. Because I think that this is what society needs. I think people are starved for a new way of doing things and starve for a way to accomplish. And this is the process to bring life and energy and to electrify and energize those goals and bring them to life. So share this with a friend and if you haven't done so already, subscribe, subscribe, Stay with me. Let's get on this journey together. Let's see what I can do to try and serve you and support you in the process. And if you have a question for me, that's what I'm here for. I really want to be your entrepreneurial mentor, your success mentor, your wealth mentor in the this process. Go to askmelnow.com and simply leave me your question and we'll make sure that we get it on one of the upcoming episodes and try to get it answered for you so you feel supported in this journey and to make sure that you get the ladder of Achievement Action guide, go ahead and go to melabraham.com session051 or just text me mylegacy1word to 38470 and I hope to hear from you. I hope to see you around and get a chance to meet every single one of you as we go through our journeys together. And if I can serve you, please reach out to me. And until we get a chance to see each other again, talk again. May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

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 significant.

And that's it for this episode of Building youg Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress or 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 Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at 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.