Goal Setting Workshop: Set Your Top 2023 Goals & Create a Master Plan to Achieve them! NYC

So, hi, I'm Rich Bellows, COO of Blue Ridge Capital. I'm also the CEO of a route firm that I founded a few years back that specializes in peak performance for leaders. So, as you may know, the hedge fund industry attracts some of the best, brightest and most competitive achievers in the world. They compete not so much with each other, but with themselves. And I've been extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from some of the best over the years. I always had an insatiable curiosity about how to unlock my own potential and as well as those of my colleagues and clients. Now, born from this curiosity and experience with some of the greatest investors of our time, various peak performance specialists and various peak performance strategies have come my way, some of which I'm really excited to share with you today. Now, I recognize that you're all various stages of your life and your careers. I've been there. I'm just like you. Over the years, in order to accelerate my progress, I've hired coaches and advisors of all kinds. Life coaches, executive coaches, health coaches, career coaches, you name it. Now, when I needed to uplevel my game on a particular technical issue, I'd hire an expert advisor in that field to teach me. And I still do that today. So early on in my career, I was fortunate enough to discover that coaching bridged the gap between acquiring knowledge and then applying that knowledge. These are two very different skill sets. So I've made coaching advising on peak performance strategies my career. We've built a firm around that one principle, how to acquire and how to apply knowledge for peak performance. Now I'm sharing these strategies with others. I've dedicated my life to this. This is more than a job for me or business and our firm, it's our mission. Now, some general housekeeping things I'm excited to share. Our new goal setting app. Everyone should have this. You should have an account set up for it and the Route web app, please download it now. As we'll be diving in very shortly to the app. We recommend you work on your goals from your laptop or your tablet to have the best experience. But it also does work on your iPhone or Android. So the process for the event today is that there are 10 steps and each step comes with an exercise to complete. That's why it's called a workshop. I'm going to lecture a little bit about the topic, then we're going to periodically move into the workshop mode. You'll have a few minutes to complete the exercise. Now, here are the outcomes that I have for us Today. First, one, identify our mission. What are we working towards in our lives and in our businesses? This will empower us to eliminate all of the unnecessary distractions that take us off course. Second, identifying our mission allows us to get the clarity on the ambitious goals necessary to accomplish it. Third, we're going to create an action plan for each of these goals. Fourth, at the end, you're going to see this will all come together, giving you your master plan. The which is your blueprint or your map for the new year, leading you to accomplish your mission in the journey you chose. Accomplishing your mission is true fulfillment. It's a championship win. I'm going to challenge you to apply what you've learned. In other words, how best to execute the master plan you create today. Be sure to stick around to the end. You have a reward for all those who persevere. But you'll need to accept the challenge in order to reap the reward. Now, finally, we're going to celebrate. Creating these plans takes hard work, but the result is so special that you're going to want to celebrate now. I love this quote. This quote is what a root is all about. Unleashing your potential. People have problems identifying with us. You guys have probably seen this before. This quote, by the way, I think it's Marianne Williamson. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Your playing small does not serve the world. We are meant to shine. It's not just in some of us. It's in all of us. In everyone. Now, many of my sessions with my coaches would leave me feeling so empowered, like I could accomplish gigantic goals. And I did. A little help from my friends, some of whom are here today. Now, I wondered why I felt so inspired after being with my coaches. And one day, I realized why. You see, I had no idea how much potential I truly had and how much of it was locked away deep inside of me. My coaches seemingly had the key to unlock my potential. I embarked on a mission to figure out how to unlock the maximum amount of it, not just for myself, but for others as well. And that's why I created Rooftop. I understood the power that coaching can unleash. Don't play small here tonight. Set really big goals. Now, when you registered, you selected a particular topic or journey to focus on. Today, we found that it's best to focus on one journey at a time. Now, we define journeys here as the domains or dimensions of your personal and professional lives. We break the journeys down into two broad categories, business and Personal on the business side, along the top, we've got alternative investment funds, family offices and service providers on the personal side, along the bottom we have life, health and career. Everything we discuss here today is applicable to one of these six journeys. Now, I found that the key to long term success is always process. I'm going to take you through a process here today. It's guaranteed to lead you to success in any endeavor you choose if you follow the process. So why are processes so important? Well, an effective process ensures high quality, brings consistent results, creates efficiencies, allows for effective delegation. It minimize risk, and ensures completeness. So here is the process we follow at a rooftop. We call it the success formula, which you can download on our website for free. You can use it to achieve any result. So here's the formula right here in a nutshell. First, we create a mission statement. Second, we create goals to achieve these missions. Third, we prioritize our goals. Fourth, we design plans to achieve our goals. Fifth, we schedule in the prioritized actions from within our plans. Six, we execute on our actions. Seventh, we have an accountability strategy to ensure execution. Eighth, we measure the progress on our plans, which is are we executing the plans themselves? And we also measure the progress on our goals. Are we getting closer to the goal or maybe getting further away from it? And then we revise our plans if we're not on track. Ninth, we persevere. It gets harder the closer you get to the finish line. You need to persevere when you get close. And tenth, we celebrate success. Achievers often forget to celebrate. They just move on to the next goal. Hey, celebrate. You worked hard for that. Sounds easy. And common sense? Well, it's both. For some reason, common sense is really usually very uncommon. Most people don't follow this formula, even though it's pretty clear they would agree it's a winning formula. So for our workshop today, we've broken down the route success formula down into the MVP workshop formula. We've taken the key MVP elements from the 10 step success formula and we have three stages of our process. First, mission, then goals, and then planning. Now, within each of these stages are the 10 MVP steps. You can see here on the right side of the. On the right side of the slide, the 10 steps. We're going to work through these 10 steps now to create your master plan. This will be your blueprint for success in the journey you have selected. So now let me ask you a question, rhetorical question. What do all successful people and businesses have in common? I tell you what, they're clear on their mission. Their mission is their purpose. It's their guiding light. It's their North Star. They have a blueprint for getting there. The blueprint is the master plan we're going to create today. All big decisions that a person or business makes must be aligned with the mission. The mission is the first stage of our success formula. And I've simplified the stage into a two step process. First, area category combinations, and second, we're going to prioritize those area category combinations. Those area priority category combinations that have the most significant impact on the overall mission will obviously get prioritized first. So let's get started on that now. So stage one is the mission statement stage. The start of our process entails building the foundation of our mission. The foundation is based on a hierarchy. That hierarchy starts with choosing one of the six journeys, also known as the mission. Now, we've already done that. Each journey is made up of 10 functional areas, which are merely subsets of the mission. Then within each area are 10 categories. The exception is the Alternative Investments journey, which has two subjourneys for the investment team and the operational team. Now our first step is to choose the highest priority areas associated with your journey. Then we're going to choose the highest priority categories within those areas. These area category combinations are the foundation of your mission. So Here are the 10 areas that you may choose from for each journey. By the way, you can also choose your own area. That said, we found that a goal setting process is greatly enhanced by the user having a series of options to choose from. You'll see that the areas for your journey in the top left panel in step one of the app. We'll see that in the next section. So as an example, Here are the 10 investment areas of alternative investment funds that you may choose from. You'll see these areas in a dropdown box in step one of the app. On the left panel where it says Area description. You'll click the area and you can see how we describe each of these areas. Like sleep, which is an area within the health journey. Now, within each of the 10 areas, you're going to see 10 categories to choose from. Note that you'll need to scroll down the box to see all 10, or you can enter your own like you could with the areas in this example, you can see that the first that they have selected is the area of portfolio management. Within this area are 10 categories, construction, weighting, targets, et cetera. You will choose the category within the area that you feel is the most important foundational block for Your particular journey. Here, this person Selecting targets within the area of portfolio management. Now we're almost ready for the first workshop portion of the presentation. Here's what you're going to do. Try to pick at least 10 of the area category combinations that you want to focus on improving next year. The nine subsequent exercises will be based on the combinations that you choose. Here. We found that if you give people too much time to do this, it leads to paralysis by analysis. Trust your brain. Usually your first choice is right. Then there's also Parkinson's law. Studies show that when people are given extra time to complete a task, they will generally take advantage of that time, even if they don't need it, and even if it doesn't lead to better performance on the task. So now remember, this is a two step process. Select the area first on the left and then go to the right and select the category within that area. Then move on to the next area category combination. I don't choose all the areas first. Now remember, you can also choose your own area or category. You can choose an area more than once if you like. Now it's your turn to do it. Remember, pick up to 10 area category combinations from the dropdown box. It's a two step process. First select the area on the left, then go to the right and select the category within that area. And remember, you can also choose your own area or category. Then importantly, click on the orange box in the top right where you where it says add more to add another blank area category combination row. Then choose the next area category within that area. So you can go horizontally, not vertically. A lot of people get this wrong. Oh, by the way, here's an example of what it should look like when you're done. So remember, you can choose an area as many times as you want. Hopefully you have at least 10 great area category combinations as the foundational basis of your mission for the coming year. The next step of our MVP process is prioritization. Let's chat a little bit about this before you begin. Think of time as a resource. In fact, time is the most most precious resource that any of us has. Once you've figured out where to invest your precious time, only then should you focus on other resources like human capital or technology or even money. Keep in mind that once time is gone, you can't recover it. Unlike money, which you can make back now, in order to spend our time wisely, we need to prioritize what we work on. It's the same principle as investing. You want to invest in those stocks and bonds, where you get the highest return. You also want to invest your time where you get the highest return. The highest priorities should be worked on first and most. Now, most people understand this when you explain it to them, but few people actually do it. You have 168 hours in a week. Decide in advance where you're going to spend that. You get to decide what the return is, and it depends on your journey. For instance, in the life journey, my return is defined as fulfillment, right? Am I spending my time on those areas where I reap the highest return on my fulfillment for a business journey? The return will likely be net income. Yeah, money. Now, some of you may know Warren Buffett is a pretty successful guy, at least financially. His pilot asked him one day, hey, Warren, what's the secret to your success? And Warren said, oh, you really want to know? He's like, yeah, yeah, I want to know. So take out a piece of paper, and on their left side, write down your top five goals. Pilot did this and said, okay, what's next? Warren said, okay, now on the right side, make a list of the next 20 goals. The pilot did this, and then Warren asked him. He's like, all right, what'd you learn? And the pilot said, well, I'm going to work on those five goals, right? Get them done as I'm working on them. Also going to work on the 20 and find time to work on the 20. Warren said, no, that is not what you do. The 20 goals, those 20 goals on the right side of your list are the enemy of getting the five goals done. This is another way of expressing the importance of prioritization. Now, prioritization is the cornerstone of our coaching and advisory practice. Our coaches and advisors hold our clients accountable to investing their time on their highest priorities. It's the bedrock of all of our processes and software at a rooftop. Now that you know which areas category combinations you want to focus on, you're going to prioritize them. You should not give equal weighting to all of your priorities. You have limited resources to spend on them. Why would you give equal weighting to them? The most important resource is time. Prioritize each area category combination you decide upon. Rather than go through these instructions. Now we're going to go through an example of how to prioritize a list. By the way, this is how to prioritize any less. So let's take a look at. Let's take a look at this. So here's the. Here's. Here's a list that we want to prioritize okay, now how are we going to do it? Well, first of all, we're going to go to nutrition. So this is the first item and all this is what you guys should have. We're going to take a look at nutrition. We're going to take a look at nutrition and compare it to self care. Right? Compare it to self care and say, wait, nutrition is more important than self care. So that stays the first and last. Then we're going to compare it to sleep and say, wait, nutrition or sleep more important. You know what? Having trouble getting sleep. Sleep is more important. We're going to move sleep up to the top. Isn't that cool? Move sleep up the top. Now we're going to compare sleep to nutrition. Sleep still at the top. Obviously. We're going to compare it to self care. Still at the top. To fitness, hydration. This is where you're good at, not whether fitness is good. Hydration. I get enough water. Detox, I'm good. Stress management, I'm good. Environment. I'm good. Hearing Aura, prevention. Nutrition is my first priority in my list. Now I'm going to lock it in. You press that little button there and we see it in blue. Now we're going to go to the next one. Next one. We're going to compare nutrition to self care, fitness, hydration, talk, detox, nutrition. Number two just happens to be number two. Boom. You lock it in. Let's take a look at self care. Nails. Is that a really important one? Is that more important than fitness? No. Let's move fitness up now. So move fitness into that third spot. Now we got to compare. Are we done with fitness? No. So to compare it to the other Self care, hydration, detox, stress management, environment, hearing, prevention, fitness. It's a winner. That's number three. Now you're just going to keep going on like that. Hopefully you guys get the picture. And if you can't figure that out, it's only 10 items. You can just put them in priority order. Now, defining the area category combinations and then prioritizing them is the foundational basis for our mission, otherwise known as our journey. That was stage one. This prepared us for stage two. And that's. That's setting our goals. Right? That's what you're here for. But first, what are goals and why are they important? It's always good to get back to the basics. Goals are simply subsets of your mission, and your mission is just a global goal. The principle here is that you've chosen those goals that have the highest impact on your mission and Then invest your precious time and resources on achieving these goals. You'll reap the highest return on your investment of those resources. So measurement is the third step in our MVP formula. The key to this step is to understand whether we are making sufficient progress on our goals and therefore on our mission. The only way that we can decipher whether we're doing that is by measuring. You can't effectively manage what you don't measure. The appropriate measurement can tell us we're using our resources efficiently and effectively. Measurement also helps us to hold ourselves and the people we manage accountable for achieving our goals. Think performance reviews now. Measurement also helps us to keep us focused on achieving the goal. Nothing like losing to get a competitive achiever to bear down and focus. Now, there are two methods of measurement you'll need to choose from. One is quantitative. The other is qualitative. Deciding which method to use can be tricky, is dependent on the type of goal being set. A quantitative measurement should be used for goals that can more easily be measured numerically. An example of a quantitative measure can be time or distance. A qualitative measurement can be used for goals that are more difficult to measure numerically, such as teamwork. How do you measure that? So an example of a qualitative measure can be on a 1 to 10 scale. Now, when measuring goals, a quantitative measure is strongly preferred. Why? We want to be as specific as possible. See what our actual progress is. Remember, smart goals are specific and measurable. That's the S and the M. Once you've decided quantitative or qualitative, you'll then need to decide the system of measurement you should use and then the associated units of measurement within that system. So, for example, a system of measurement could be something like time. And the units of measurement could be minutes. The system could be weight. Units could be pounds. System could be distance, and the units would be miles. System could be money, and then units would be dollars. I think you get the picture. It's also essential that we measure our goals on a timely basis. So if we're off track, we can catch it. Get back on track as soon as possible. Therefore, it's important that we decide upon the frequency of the measurement of any given goal. In other words, how often are we going to measure our progress on this goal? Frequency is a measurement of time. So it can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. Now, habits also, you want to measure them. You want to decide on the frequency of how you're going to do that. Habit. Okay, so now it's time to decide how we're going to measure our goals. The goals you came up with. The first step is decide which method we're going to use, quantitative or qualitative. Remember, we should use a quantitative measure for goals that can be measured numerically. We'd only want to use a qualitative measurement for those goals that are difficult to measure, like teamwork. Choose which method you're going to use and then pick the actual measurement. This means deciding upon a system of measurement, such as time or. Or a scale. If it's qualitative, like 1 to 10. Remember, in general, it's always better to choose a quantitative measurement. Right. It's more specific. And then you need to choose the frequency. How often are you going to measure your progress on your goal? Or how often are you going to do that goal? If it's a habit, you're only going to write two things in the measurement column for each area. Category, Combination, units, and frequency. Just two. You don't need to write down the system or the quantitative or qualitative. You just need to put two things down. So an example would be the units, dollars, and quarterly the frequency. So this is what the app looks like for step three. Measurement. Fill in only the units and the frequency in this column. For instance, sleep and duration for that combination, units would be hours. Frequency would be daily. You're going to sleep daily, and you're going to measure it daily. And you sleep for so many hours. All right, now it's your turn. As we can see here in the example, we have the units of measurement and the frequency filled in for each one of them. Now, as I said before, this can be challenging. Coming up with units of measurement. Don't worry so much about that. It's really in the goals. That's the sweet spot of what we're doing here. Setting the goals. That's what we want to be focused on, and that's what we'll be doing right now. Goals. Right. So now it's time to actually set some goals. That's why you're here. You can see on my slide the definition of a goal. I like to call it a goal statement. You want to make a commitment to this goal. A goal statement is a specific declaration. Yeah. Declare it. Of an intention to accomplish something within a specific time frame that is relevant towards achieving a mission. Goals are merely subsets of your mission. Now, in setting goals, keep in mind the smart goal principles. First, be very specific so that anybody who sees this goal will understand exactly what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Clarity is power. Next, make it Measurable. We handled this in the last step, but in the goal statement you're going to restate specifically how much of that measurement you you wish to achieve and how frequently you're going to measure your progress. Be sure your goals are attainable, but don't get carried away here. Make them challenging. Not too easy. You'll get bored. But also not too hard. You won't do it. The Goldilocks principle Just right. So be sure your goals are relevant. In other words, be sure your goal relates to your mission. We've already done this by assuring it's in an area and category that you chose for your mission. Now, your goal should also be time bound. I'm going to set a start line and deadline later, so there's no need to worry about that for this particular exercise. So now it's your turn to set some goals. Remember, you want to make it specific. Clarity is power. Next is measurement. Restate the amount and the frequency you intend to measure it and then do it. Make them attainable. Don't get carried away. Make them challenging, but possible. Not too easy, not too hard. Ensure that they're relevant. Make sure your goal relates to your mission. Now, this is already handled because your goal relates to the prioritized area category combinations that you put together in the first step of your process. So they will be relevant. And don't worry about time bound. We'll do that in another step. We'll set start lines and deadlines. So this is MVP step four in the app. Just going to enter your goal statement in the app one by one. Here's the example. This is what it should look like when you're done. Hire and onboard the highest scoring CIO within the next three months to set some great goal statements. Now, a crucial ingredient for any goal setting process is to be sure that you have a strong reason why you must achieve your goal. This is known as your purpose. You need a strong why to inspire you to take the massive action necessary to achieve the goal. Now the reason for this is that goals take what effort. If you don't have a good reason or purpose or why you should expend the effort, you won't do it. So especially important when you encounter obstacles. Having a strong purpose gives you the incentive to overcome any obstacle. What happens when you set a goal? Enemies show up. So having a strong purpose is also a great procrastination buster. It helps you to just get started. It also helps you to eliminate distractions. So you get down to the business of focusing on achieving your goal. Now, the key to a strong purpose statement is to elicit the twin motivators of pain and and pleasure. We're literally biologically wired to avoid pain and to seek pleasure. We need to hack our system and use these motivating forces of pain and pleasure to empower us to achieve our most challenging goals. By the way, another way to refer to pain and pleasure, especially in the business world, is by using the terms rewards and consequences. But the idea is the same and emotions are the more powerful motivators. So I prefer the terminology pain and pleasure. Tell it like it is. So our next exercise to create a powerful purpose statement for each of our goals. In order to do that, we'll need to dig deep and stir up some emotions. Remember, emotions are the driving force, the driving force behind why we do anything. The stronger the emotion, the more we're capable of. We need to hack these twin emotional forces, namely pleasure and pain. Then we need to employ them to get what we want, which is to achieve our goals. Now, to create powerful purpose statements, you can ask the following four questions. What would happen if I achieved this goal? What rewards and pleasure will I get from achieving it? What would happen if I don't achieve it? What consequences and pain would have to endure if I don't achieve this goal? Now, by the way, anybody who's watched the World cup recently and maybe saw that Brazilian player miss a kick, I forget who they're playing. Miss a kick to lose the game in front of his entire country could literally see the pain he had to endure because he didn't score. I didn't achieve his goal. That's pain, right? He did not score the goal. We don't want to be there. So this is step five. You'll create a purpose statement by filling in the two boxes underneath your goals, one for rewards and one for consequences. In other words, known as pleasure and pain. Remember to ask the four questions to inspire you to write this purpose statement. What would happen if I achieve this goal? Yay. What rewards and pleasure will I get from achieving it? The positive emotions. And what would happen if I don't achieve it? What pain would I have to endure if I don't achieve this goal? So here's some examples of some purpose statements for alternative investments. Write some things. What would be great if I achieve this goal? Well, it suck if I didn't. Now we're going to move on to our third and final stage of our MVP formula. Planning got clear in our mission. In stage one, it set some impactful goals in stage two. Now we need to focus on achieving them. And that's where the planning stage comes in. There's going to be five steps for this stage. Let's take a look at some of the benefits of creating a written plan. First of all, a written plan increases the probability of achieving a goal exponentially. Take a look at the statistics. A plan encourages proactive behavior. By listing out our specific actions, we know exactly what we need to do to achieve our goal. A plan releases our creativity. Brainstorming should be the first part of any planning process. A plan forced us to focus on achieving our goal. Because we follow the plan, we we don't succumb to distractions. A plan inspires teamwork and collaboration. As the team rallies around a plan. A plan also empowers us to decide how to allocate and efficiently use our precious resources. As Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin's quote says it all. By failing to plan, you're planning to fail. So now it's time to create our plan. The goal is the what, the purpose is the why, and the actions are the how. So creating actions is the sixth MVP step of our process. Without taking action, nothing gets done. So first is a brainstorming process. We want to propose various impactful actions that we can potentially take to achieve our goals. We likely won't need all of these actions. Brainstormed actions are where you start, but more on that in our next step. Okay, so here's the process. First, brainstorm. Write down as many action items related to the goal you can think of. Remember that here, quantity is more important than quality. This is just a brainstorming exercise. In the next step, we'll pick out the best of these actions. Now, I've always found that thinking about the resources that you can use that can help you achieve your goal are a good source of ideas for action items. In other words, ask who or what can help me achieve this goal, like a coach or some technology. Now, for inspiration, you can check in with your goals purpose statement. We're going to create at least two actions for each goal, but try to limit them to no more than 10. Okay, so now it's time to brainstorm as many actions. You can click on the Add item orange button at the bottom of your screens. You can also click on that bottom button a few times. You just want to crank out some blank actions. That's okay. So you can choose from those here. Once you're out of ideas or you've committed 10, then move on to the next plan and click on the button at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the next goal, and so on. This is the most difficult exercise, by the way. You really need to focus in on this and then it's all downhill from here. You should all now have a nice series of actions to take to achieve your highest priority goals. Well done. We're well on our way now on step seven of the 10 step MVP process. Now we're back to prioritizing. Over this time, we're prioritizing the actions that will lead us to achieving our goal in the most efficient and effective manner. Now, when prioritizing here, you're going to think about two things. First sequence which of our actions do we need to do first? In other words, which. Which action we need to do first in order for the other actions to take place. For example, while setting your alarm may not seem like a big deal, if you don't set your alarm, that 5am early morning meeting probably is not going to happen. Then think about the impact. Which of our actions will have the greatest impact on achieving our goal? Which action will provide us with the highest return on our time? The return here being defined as the percent impact on achieving our goal. Now, some of you may have heard the 80:20 rule, which is also known as the Pareto Principle. The Pareto principle asserts that 80% of a goal's outcome derives from 20% of the actions from any given plan. So you only need to focus on the 20%. This means for a plan with a list of 10 actions, you only need to focus on the top two to get you 80% of the way to your goal. Often that's enough because you can use the rest of the time to focus on your other high priority goals. It depends on how important that goal is. Now, I once had my team check out check this principle out for Blue Ridge's profits to see where they came from. And indeed, it turned out that 80% of our firm's profits came from only 20% of our limited partners. It was actually 79, 21, but it was close enough. So now we're going to prioritize the list of actions from the previous exercise, MVP step six. However, here we're only looking for the top two. So once you figure those out, move to the next plan by selecting the button at the bottom of the page. So feel free by the way, to use the same methodology use for prioritizing the area category combinations and compare the first to the second, etc. All right, so you know the drill. Start prioritizing. Please compare the first to the second and third, and so on. So now you've got a plan with the two highest priority high impact actions for each goal. We can move on to MVP step eight. Here we're going to focus on setting a deadline at the goal level and also for your actions. This is a step that is usually missed by most people. And then they wonder why their highest priority goals are aren't achieved, their businesses aren't thriving and their lives are unfulfilled. They don't set deadlines. In my view, this is where the value of coaching really becomes clear. Our coaches and advisors know how extremely important deadlines are. They hold you accountable to set them and they hold you accountable to meet them. So just why are deadlines important? Well, first of all, deadlines give you a sense of urgency. Oh my God. The webinar, the seminars. Tomorrow I got to finish the PowerPoint. Deadlines prompt you to schedule whatever actions do next to get prioritized on your schedule. Deadlines keep you accountable. It's true. Especially if the deadline impacts other people. You've got no choice but to act or face public humiliation. Which, by the way, is my favorite accountability strategy. When I really want to do something, I set myself up up for public humiliation. Then I'll get it done. Deadlines help prioritize. You have multiple priorities. The ones with the next deadline usually comes first. Now the key with deadlines is not in setting them. Most people don't do that. That's the easy part though. The key is deciding what the consequences are if you miss the deadline. That's the hard part and that's what our coaches and advisors focus in on. What happens if you set a deadline but there are no consequences of missing it? What's going to happen? I guarantee you'll be missed 95% of the time. There's no consequence. Who cares if I miss it? This is where accountability comes into play and we'll speak about that a little later. Accountability is where coaching and advisory pays for itself multiple times over. Now, now, people think about deadlines, they think about procrastination. I do a whole seminar on procrastination. It's a fan favorite because most people can really relate to it. But I'll give you the really short MVP version of that seminar right here. Why do people procrastinate? Let's take a look at the chart here in the slide. So point A is the assignment date. Let's say this is the date that you invite everybody you know to a goal setting webinar. Point B is the actual start line. This is when you actually start working on the seminar. Point C is the deadline. This is the day of the webinar. In other words, today. Now why not start at point A as soon as you set the deadline? I'll tell you why. It's a very simple equation. From point A until point B, the pleasure of delay is greater than the pain of procrastination. So what do I mean by that? The pleasure of delay is all of the immediate gratification. Things that can be doing instead of preparing for the webinar, like seeing what's in the refrigerator every five minutes or surfing the web for the latest sports news. Whereas the pain of procrastination is the stress of missing the deadline. Public humiliation. We are literally biologically programmed for immediate gratification to choose pleasure every time until the pain, the stress gets unbearable. Now this equation reverses itself at point B when the fear of missing the deadline, in other words, the stress sets in and you start panicking. Oh my God, you missed the deadline. This is when you start at point B. Because the pain of missing the deadline, the stress is greater than the pleasure of the immediate gratification. Things that could be doing, going to the refrigerator, checking out sports or politics, whatever it is, surfing the web. The really interesting thing is that whether you start at point A or point B, the effort required is the same. However, if you start at point A, there's no stress. If you start at point B, you get all the stress. The amount of stress increases with delay. No delay, no stress. The high price you pay for procrastination is stress. Now that said, most successful people, including moi, are procrastinators. There's another type of procrastination. Procrastinating on those important things that don't have parent deadlines. This is the most important topic of the presentation. I'd be willing to bet the most important thing you may ever learn it was when I learned it. I remember exactly when I learned it. So stay tuned for that one. We're going to tackle this one at the end. It just fits in better there. And now we're going to talk about setting deadlines. I'm going to do it at two levels. First we're going to set it at the goal level. Then we set it at the action item level. Only those two action items that you prioritize as the two most important action items. It's also good time to start thinking about the consequences, right? Accountability for not meeting your deadlines. So be helpful one for when we create accountability strategies so you can see Here, where to set the deadlines at the goal level and then at the action item level. And here's an example. So take a look at this. Now you're actually going to go back, take a look at your calendar. Take a look, just have some general idea. When do I want to get this goal done and and maybe when I want to take these actions. We all kind of know that deadlines are important even if we tend not to set them. But what's even more important is what start line. This basically means to schedule it in. We all know the hardest part of anything is to just start. You can see this in exercise, right? You might dread it once you start, get some momentum, it's off to the races especially listen to some good music or maybe my enrichment podcast. Why is starting or scheduling important? Right? Well, key to busting procrastination. First of all key is just start. My coach used to tell me all the time, rich, it's not real, meaning it's not going to happen unless you schedule it in. Habits and procedures to schedule them in. Putting something on your schedule commits you to doing it. It's accountability. Our coaching and advisory process is a built in weekly scheduling process. At the end of each week we identify our priorities the following week and then we schedule them in. We do that for route to all. Every single client, consultant, employee does that. Now we're locked in for the next week to handle our highest priorities. So let's make it real for our goals. To do that we need to set a date for when we plan to start from here you schedule it in very similar to the deadline process. Oh by the way, we did the deadline first because you want to start with a deadline. See when you need to start right, we can work backwards. So remember, we're only doing this at the goal and the action item levels. First we're going to set a start line for each of our goals and then if you get to that, if you can finish that and set a start line for our goals and start line for our action items. We are now clear on the areas and categories of our mission and on our highest priority goals. We have strong purpose for achieving our goals. We know how we intend to measure our progress. We also have high impact prioritized actions to achieve our goals. We know when we intend to start and finish them by wouldn't it great for them all to just be done on their own? That would be incredible. But it's not reality. We have to execute on them to make it happen. But if we do execute it'll be amazing. We reap all the rewards, all of that accompanying emotional fulfillment of our efforts. And that's the key word though. Effort. Unfortunately, we are literally wired to be lazy. What a cruel hoax. The gist is that we're programmed to conserve energy. It's embedded in our survival instincts. We're programmed to be lazy. We're programmed to save our energy for seeking food when we have to run from a creature trying to get at us to trying to eat us. And we're anyways, lots of reasons why I want to save our energy. I won't get the last one. So in order to execute, we need a push from somewhere. This push will be in some form of accountability strategy. Now there are two general types of accountability strategies. The first strategy is to use internal force. This means we need to rely on ourselves to hold ourselves accountable. This is called willpower or discipline. Good luck with that. The second strategy is to use an external force. This means we utilize outside forces to hold us accountable. There are many different methods here. My personal favorites, as you probably know, are hiring a coach or an advisor. But I also use various other strategies such as web apps to hold myself accountable. It's time to choose an accountability strategy. You can choose from the drop down box and accountability strategy at the goal and action level. So here's some examples below. You can take a quick look at these. Health coaching. Of course, we've got coaching, team, coaching, advisors, best practice, regulator. That's a great way to hold yourself accountable. Clients. Clients are a great way to hold you accountable. Competition. That's a great way, right? Competition will hold you accountable. Playing the enemy. Boston's coming to town. Want to get them right. That'll hold you accountable to practicing. Get you at your best game. So same drill here. Just going to pick out some accountability strategies at the goal and action level. One for a goal and once for each of the two prioritized actions. First one's executive coach for the goal. Right? A wise choice. We can see that. Executive coach, wise choice and then advisor and career coach. I believe I have two advisors here. This person's really smart, they catch on quickly. So we're going to pick out an accountability strategy for your goal. We're going to do it for the two prioritized actions to be really quick. Just pick out coach, coach, coach for each one of them and you'll be all set. Alright, so now click on the blue button in the bottom right corner that says master plan. And here it is. This is your blueprint for achieving your highest impact goals. And in 2023, this is your master plan. I know you put in a lot of hard work to do this, to get it done in a short period of time. There's something really important that I want to talk to you about right now. So we'd love to work with you guys and your plans. But remember, there's two different types of procrastination when we set goals. The first are goals with real deadlines. That's April 15th. Everybody knows what that one is. It's a real deadline. Or when a term paper is due. Right? These are goals. When a term paper is due. These are things that will get done. What's the deal? What's the problem if you miss a deadline? Big problem. So you're not going to miss it. You might procrastinate on it. So there's no big problem. You're actually going to do it. Now, the other type of goals are those goals that don't have a hard and fast deadline. Like going to the gym. You don't have to do it. Doesn't have a hard and fast deadline. Or does it? Spending time with a loved one. Writing the book you've always wanted to write. Your bucket list. These goals and their lack of a hard and fast deadline can be deadly. Literally. Goals without apparent deadlines are the ones you don't take seriously enough, even though they may in fact be the most important of all. So those without an apparent deadline usually won't get done without some type of external force pushing you to get it done. By the way, there is a deadline for these. That's why I say apparent deadlines. But there usually is an actual deadline. You just don't know when it will be or. But when it comes, it's usually very painful and it's usually too late. The SEC mock exam you never got to. You didn't practice for it. And then the SEC comes and knocks at your door. The dream career you never transitioned to and that's too late. Started. The giant perfect client you intended to approach, but you never did. Then they went with a competitor. The child or parent that you're in an argument with and never made up with. And then something happens and it's too late. Or maybe the exercise regime you never started. The health coach you never hired because you didn't take care of your health. You end up in the icu. Or worse, you meant to quit smoking that vape. And then the doctor tells you it's too late, you only got three months to live. The book you never wrote. Then you End up in your deathbed with a book left still inside of you. And then you have a story for that. My uncle actually wanted to write a book. And then, yeah, he got the notice that he only had. He had a month live. And he always went, it's like, I always want to write that book. Now. He's very lucky that he had a life coach as his nephew because we got that book done in three weeks, Tears streaming down. He God's like, this is why, you know, this was my moment. Got it done. He died. He died a week later. But most people don't get that chance. These are all kinds of habits around this list. Both instilling the good habits, eradicating the bad ones. There's a very long list of goals for many people. There's usually a tremendous amount of pain, pain and suffering, even depression that people deal with because of this insidious form of procrastination. It's not that they don't realize their dreams. They never even are able to start. They're too paralyzed by procrastination. Now, when I first heard about this concept and I remember the exact moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew I loved my coaches so much, but I could never quite figure out why. I just love them. They inspired me. And I realized they wouldn't let me get away with not focusing on those crucially important things in my life that didn't have actual deadlines. They kept me on track for achieving the goals without deadlines. It's precisely why I went into this business, to give this gift back and to be surrounded by outstanding coaches, many of which are here today. So, like I said, I love my coaches, my advisors, why I went into the business. I want to be surrounded by them. I want to give back to the clients the gift that I was given. So what's so powerful about coaching? Clarity. Right? As we try to get to you today, we try to get you so clear on your missions and your goals. It's hard to do that in such a short period of time. But I'll bet people made real leaps if they worked at these exercises. They get you really clear on your mission and your goal. Super specific. Anything you want to accomplish. Remember, accomplishing a mission is the ultimate fulfillment. Then they help you with the strategy, the plan to actually creating a winning strategy to get you to get that goal achieved. They teach you that prioritizing is the most important thing. Accountability. Great coaches do whatever it takes to hold you accountable. They inspire you to persevere on your execution of your plan on your habits until you achieve success. My coach told her I was working on my sleep, texting me every night. I was like, hey, how you doing? Aha. You're not asleep. She's like, you better respond. If you're still awake, you better respond. So you do coaches, great coaches do whatever it takes for you to achieve your goal. That's a great coach. It's coach that cares about you. So these are the types of coaching that we have. You have executive coaching, career coaching, life coaching, health coaching. Now, let me just give you a quick example. Somebody wants to set this up. They can actually do a coaching session with one of our coaches just to test it out, see what it's like. But here's a coaching session with portfolio manager trying to raise money or anybody who's trying to raise money for their business. So you can see here, the person comes in and they come to the coach and they're like, I want to raise capital for my fund, but I don't know how much to raise. I can see there. There's the obstacles. They don't know much to raise. I know I should do it. It's important, but I'm just not inspired about it for some reason. I. I also keep putting it off. I know that I'm not good at marketing, so I'm kind of dreading doing it. I also know that I don't know exactly where to start. And I've started a few times, but I tend to give up now. Coaches are trained to be great listeners. They're listening for these obstacles, for these enemies, for your goals. I need to handle them one at a time. First, I don't know how much money I want to raise. That's the first way I don't know how much money I raise. This is a classic clarity problem. Coach will immediately identify the issue as a lack of clarity. We have tools at a route that can help you with this. And one of the benefits of a route is we have a lot of technology that you goes along with our coaching. The best tool for this one would be our decision matrix. So get this person really clear on how much money to raise. Second challenge. I'm not feeling inspired enough to act. Coach will identify this as a lack of a strong purpose and work on getting the client to identify the pain with not achieving the goal and then the pleasure reward from achieving the call. This person needs to be inspired. They need a purpose. They'll go through it so you don't achieve the goal. What's going to happen? One Year. You don't achieve that goal in five years. You can write your book in five years. Ten years. Right? Pain. What happens when you achieve that goal? Pleasure. Third object I want to get to, but I keep putting it off. What's that one? Classic procrastination challenge that coaches are trained to handle. They will empower this client by reviewing their priorities. Hey, this is your number one priority. You're really not going to get to that one. This is your priority. You want to get to this one, get to this one. Schedule it in. They'll say, schedule, I've met my coach. Like, yeah, I'll schedule it. No, no, schedule it right now. Fourth. Ah, I suck at marketing. I'm not good at marketing. A classic limiting belief challenge. Coach is going to work with this client to transform this limiting belief into an empowering belief. Or they'll say, you know what? You're not good at it. Delegate to somebody who is. Bottom line is results. They want to get results. Fifth, I don't know when, I don't know where to start. Challenge here is lack of a plan. Coach will work the client to develop a plan to achieve the goal. Then that client will know exactly where to start. You got a plan, you got a planning tool also much more sophisticated one than this. Finally, I have trouble following through. This is an accountability issue. Coaches have various tools in their arsenal, hold their clients accountable. You've got a habit tracker, for instance, so that'll be a tool that's personally. Hey, practice every day at marketing. Practice your pitch. Practice your pitch. Practice your pitch. Put it on your accountability strategy. Or for this one, I think we said sign up for a panel at a corporate cap intro event. They've set that. Sign them up for that accountability strategy there. Public humiliation. They're going to be on a panel in front of all their potential clients. They'll do a good job. They'll practice for that one. That's what a coach will do. That's what it looks like. Enormous value, by the way, in anybody's book. This one coaching session for this client can pay for lifetimes of the cost of coaching. The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. The second best investment you can make now. If we're talking about business, there's investment in your employees. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful 2023. Achieve your goals, please. Whether you get a coach from us or somebody else, get a coach, achieve your goals, please.