Why You Don’t Hit Your Goals (And What Actually Works)

If you didn't hit your goals this year, it's not because you suck. Nothing's wrong with you. It's because you're setting goals in a way that almost guarantees that you're gonna fail. And the crazy part is it's actually easy to fix. Most of the advice out there is just a bunch of hype, a bunch of motivation, a bunch of, you gotta want it more. What a bunch of nonsense. Today I'm gonna teach you the real reason you haven't hit your goals and how to fix it in a way that actually works in your real life. The first reason why you haven't hit your goals is simple. You are not setting goals, you're setting wishes. Like you have some sort of lamp and a genie is going to pop out and grant you your wishes. And often this sounds like, I want to make more money, I want to get in shape, I want to grow my business. These are wishes, they're not outcomes. A real goal includes inputs, the things you actually can control every single day, every single week. And a real business goal looks a lot like this. 10 hours a week of deep work, publish one piece of long form content, one sales action every day, review progress every Sunday night. Those are goals. They create results. If you can't measure the actions you take, you can't achieve the outcome. It's that simple. I'm going to say it again. If you can't measure the actions, you can't achieve the outcome. The second silent killer of goals is that people try to overhaul their whole life overnight. This does not work. I'm the first to say that I don't recognize the person I was 10 years ago. But it didn't happen from one day to the next. It just happens. Happened because I made small changes every single day that compounded. And then 10 years later I'm like, wow, my life is totally different. I'm a different person. I set goals for my finances, my business, my health, my relationships, my routines, my hobbies. If you try to set goals for your finances, your business, your health, your relationship, your routines, your hobbies, all at the same time, you are asking for failure. No one can do that. You need to focus on just a couple at a time. I'm giving you the truth that not you, not me, not the most disciplined person in the world can pull that off. Momentum comes from focus and consistent focus. Focus comes from doing less, actually, not more. And one good rule of thumb is just having one major goal per quarter. Now listen, you're going to get better at this year after year and you're going to be able to do more than one goal a quarter. But at the start to just do one and see it through so that you can get a win under your belt and see this actually works, see the fruits of your labor. And I'm saying this knowing I'm speaking to people with jobs, with responsibilities, with businesses they're trying to run, family life, all kinds of stuff. So I want to share with you things that actually create change. And that is just focusing on one thing at a time. And one quarter, three months is, is a good amount of time for you to make meaningful change. The third reason why you haven't hit your goals is that you have no real system. And a lot of people think they're not hitting their goals cause they lack motivation. But really what you need is structure. And a lack of structure is a recipe for disaster. You don't have endless willpower and structure allows you to stay on course. Listen, if you're relying on emotion that is unreliable, emotion is unreliable. You can't count on feeling like doing things all the time. The beauty of systems is that they work even when you don't feel like it. Systems don't care if you're tired. Systems don't care about your mood. You don't hit goals by being inspired. This is what I've learned. You hit goals by building a life where it's harder to fail than to succeed. You see what I'm saying here? You got to build a structure that makes it easy for you to not fail. That's the difference between building a business and thinking about building a business is that you're actually building the system that allows the business to thrive. Reason number four, you never review anything. This is the simplest fix and the one that almost no one does. A lot of people, they have no scorecard, they have no scoreboard to see if they're winning. They don't track progress. They don't review their week. They don't analyze anything if it's working or not. So every week feels the same and your results stay the same because you are not actually checking if you're making progress. A 15 minute weekly review changes everything for you. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself for just 15 minutes every week. You could do it at the end of the week or the start of the week, but do it. It's just four questions. Question number one, what did I actually do last week? What did I actually get done? Where did I slip? That's question number two. Where did I slip up where do I make mistakes? Where did I kind of fall behind? Question number three. What needs adjusting in next week's plan? And then lastly, what's next week's plan? What am I going to do the same. What am I going to do different? It's very simple and you may want to rewind that just so you can write it down. But you don't need to overcomplicate this. Those four questions will help you stay on track and give you the structure you need to make progress to hold yourself accountable. I just wanted to take a quick second to say thank you for being here. You're a learner, you're a doer, you're my kind of person. And if you want to join people just like you and our growing community of entrepreneurs, hit subscribe right under this video. You grow, we grow. We all win. Thanks. Reason number five, you're not hitting your goal is your life is not designed for your goal. This one is brutal but honest. You're trying to hit a goal with a lifestyle designed for the opposite outcome. If you set big goals while living a life that can't support them, you are asking for failure. If you're exhausted after work, if you have no dedicated work, block times to work on your side, hustle or work on your business, if you sleep badly, if your environment distracts you, your physical and your mental environment distracts you, if your calendar is full of obligations for everyone else except yourself, you are asking for trouble. Your lifestyle is producing exactly the results it's designed to produce. So whatever results you're getting right now, it's because of the lifestyle you have. So if you want different results, you need to change the way you're living your life. It's just that simple. And until that changes, nothing will change. When I was teaching full time, I was a teacher. That was my job for over 10 years before I was a full time entrepreneur. I was building my first business on the side and I missed my goals year after year after year. And I was really frustrated. I was really down on myself and I was really beating myself up honestly. And I wasn't hitting my goals, not because I wasn't putting any effort. I was putting time after work and the weekends and even my summer breaks, I was working constantly actually. But my effort had no structure. I didn't have dedicated hours. I just kind of did it whenever I could instead of when I told myself I had to. I had to realize that I needed deep work blocks. Where I do deep work, I didn't have a weekly review. I Didn't have a simple plan. I didn't ask myself those questions and hold myself accountable. I had ambition, I wanted it. But I had no foundation or system. So what I'm sharing with you today is out of experience. I've been through it. I've been through the frustration you're going through and probably a bit more too. So I'm sharing with you what has worked for me in hopes that you can apply it and see how it works out for you. Because the moment I built a system, I had fixed weekly work sessions, minimal distractions, I had a scorecard. Everything changed. Like literally within months. The business took off. My side hustle started to make more and more money. And I was actually shocked. I was like, oh, I was just kind of doing this haphazardly thinking that I was going to get a result. It's only because I leveled myself. And I said, hey, I got to figure out a better way to do this because I can't compete with people that are doing business full time. I'm in a full time job doing this halftime, you know, doing this part time as a side hustle. How am I going to compete with them if I have no structure? I'm actually shooting myself in the foot and making it more difficult than it needs to be. And the biggest takeaway of all this is that I started to do better. Not because I suddenly became more disciplined. It's because I finally built a life that supported the person I was trying to become. Here's a trap that keeps people stuck. They think they need more discipline, they need more motivation, they need more willpower. They don't. You don't. You need clarity. You need structure. You need boundaries around your time. You need an environment that matches your goals. Most people fail because they expect their lives to stay the same with the exact results. And they think things will just magically change. You need your environment to match the goals. Most people fail because they expect their lives to stay the same while the results magically change. It doesn't work like that. Think about it for a moment. Think about when you went to a conference or some sort of event where they had a structured day and they had sessions and lunch and networking. Why did all of a sudden you started to feel more creative and you had all these ideas and you felt inspired and you felt good about business. Is because you put yourself in the environment to feel that way. The structure was there for that to manifest. Heck, last time you went on holiday, why did you feel so energetic and adventurous and a sense of wonderment because you created a structure for that. You have a hotel and you have breakfast and you set out an itinerary and you have, you know, excursions and you're learning and you're going to museums and you're feeling cultured. The structure of the environment creates who you are. Like they say, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. If your system is random, your results will be random at best. Now if your systems are structured, your results will be structured. Consistency isn't a personality trait, is designed through the environment you create. So I want to put you on action. I want to give you a four step goal system that's going to help you achieve what you want in 2026. Let me give you a system I personally use and what I teach inside of our program, the $100 MBA. Step one. Choose one 90 day goal, one target, one outcome. Everything else becomes secondary. Step two. Pick the three non negotiables. Three weekly behaviors that guarantee movement and progress. For a business school, for example, this might be 10 hours of deep work publishing one long form piece of content like a long video or a podcast episode. Or maybe it's three smaller pieces of content. One sales action per day. These are clear things you can do to achieve the business goals you want. Align the action to the goal that you have picked for that 90 day goal. If it's a health goal, three workouts a week, 10k steps a day, a protein target. Right. These are things in your control that you can do that that will lead you to the results you're looking for. Notice I'm giving you actions as examples. Your actions are the goals because they're going to lead you to the outcomes you want, whether you like it or not. That's the point. The actions will lead you to what you want. Step three, Put them in your calendar. Don't say I will do this. Hopefully I'll get around to it when I find time. No, schedule it and protect it. These things are, are sacred to you because it's what's going to lead to what you want out of life. It's going to change your life. So give it the respect it deserves. STEP 4 Weekly review. Take 15 minutes every Sunday night or Monday morning, whatever works for you. And ask yourself those questions I gave you and adjust, refine, reset. Okay? This is how adults actually hit goals is that they look at what they've done and, and they evaluate should I do more of that, less of that? Do I do something different so that I can continue to grow. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? Course correct. One of the things I learned from playing basketball for years. I've been playing basketball for over, what, 35, 40 years. One of the things you learn about basketball is about how to refine, how to adjust. Every time I shoot a shot in basketball, what do I think about? Well, the first thing I think about is too long, too short, too right, too left. That's it. That's all basketball is when you're shooting a shot right. So I mentally quickly adjust. Next time I take a shot, I need to go a little bit higher. Or next time I take a shot, I need to make sure that my elbow's tucked in so it's straight and lined up with the rim. It's not going left or right. I'm telling you, in life, in business, it's that simple. If you do those things, you'll be golden. And you'll not only hit your goals, you will build the muscle of knowing how to achieve things. It's an empowering feeling. You're like, wow, I can actually pull things off because I'm building a system around the things I want. So what else can I do? What else can I accomplish? What else can I get out of life? It's pretty exciting. If you found this episode helpful in any way, go ahead and share it with somebody that you know, somebody you think that would benefit from this episode. Send them a message or tell them in person when you see them next. And if you want to continue to learn from me, go ahead and sign up to our newsletter our three things newsletter where I share with you insights every single week. It takes 5 minutes to consume. It's super simple, but it's my way to be able to coach you from afar via email. So just go to 100mba.net newsletter to sign up Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You're not behind, you're not broken, and you're not unmotivated. You just haven't built the structure that you need that is required to achieve your goals. But here's the key. In order for you to reach the goals that you want, the things you want to get out of life, out of your business, it's going to require you to change. Now. Change means changing what you do. And what you do every day makes you a different person, which is a great thing. Which means you're growing. That means you're becoming something that is worthy of, of the things that you want out of life. The things that you want to achieve. Those things are waiting for you, but they require you to become somebody new to get there. And you can do that with that structure, with the practices I shared with you today. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode.