In this solo podcast episode (Episode 31), host Steve Lichtman opens by explaining his recent absence, detailing the launch of a new "Selling with Trust" app developed with Ari Galper and mentioning a forthcoming web‑copy evaluation tool. He then pivots to the episode’s central thesis: people mistake a lack of motivation for a lack of results, when the real issue is direction. Lichtman argues that motivation is merely fuel; without a clear, specific destination the fuel is wasted. He stresses that clarity—knowing exactly what you will accomplish in the next 30 days—is the strategic engine that turns motivation into productive momentum. He challenges listeners to define a single, concrete 30‑day business goal, write it down, and break it into short sprints, using his RISE framework (Reset, Identify the gap, Strategize, Execute). He contrasts highly motivated but unfocused individuals with quietly focused entrepreneurs who achieve results. The episode concludes with a motivational riff: “Clarity is a strategy. Confusion is a choice,” and his sign‑off “Unfiltered and Unshakeable.”
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All right. Welcome back everybody. Episode 31, man, it has been, it's been a couple of weeks. I'm not going to lie. I got really busy. We launched an app. So if you're somebody who does trust-based selling or is into the mindset of trust-based selling and Ari Galper, somebody who I've worked with for the last decade, we dropped an app in the beginning of the year and I have been insanely busy. It's been a year-plus long project. It's been something that's been a lot of work, a lot of long nights, a lot of long days, and more importantly, an amazing product that's now available. You can go on any app store and download it just by typing in Selling with Trust, or you can go to members.oregalper.com and sign up there. And that's that. So now you know where I've been. Why has Steve been MIA for 6 weeks? Well, you know, I'm still here. I'm still going nuts. I'm still me. But at the end of the day, I was so laser focused on what I had to get done. That I just had no time for any distractions, including my own personal ones. Although I have been secretly building things kind of in my laboratory, as you will, it's stuff that will be coming out probably in the, in the next few weeks. I'm finishing up a project, a second project right now, unrelated. That's a great tool that people will be able to use for their websites and their social medias to kind of judge how well off they sound and how they come off to people when they're on the internet. And if you're hitting those checkmarks, right, that get people to convert on your page. Everybody talks about SEO. Everybody talks about building websites, but, uh, people don't talk about the real nitty gritty of when that person hits my website, are they reading something that they connect to? Or is it just more high-end bullshit marketing page copy like everybody else, like everybody else selling something with a 7 and all that other good stuff. So yeah, we'll get into that. Down the road. Right now, welcome back, episode 31. And I'm just going to rip this one open right now. We're just, we're going to go out of the gate per se, even though the gate was a little bit delayed, letting you know what's been going on. Because this is something that I've, I always hear this, even when I'm super busy, I hear people telling me this just out and about. And it's always the same line. It's, it's quote unquote, I just need to get motivated again. You've heard it. You've probably had friends that say it. Maybe you said it yourself. I just need to get motivated again. Once I get my mojo back, I'll be good to go, man. It's that type of mindset of, I just need something. I need to get motivated again. But the truth is this, you don't. You absolutely don't. Motivation isn't the engine. It's your direction. Your direction's the engine in all of this. Motivation turns into being the fuel, the gasoline, right? And. If you've got a full tank of gas but you don't know where you're going, you're just burning that gasoline and all your fuel in the parking lot. You're just doing donuts, man. You're not getting anywhere. You're sitting there with all the piss and vinegar in the world saying, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. But if you then look around and go, but what am I doing? Well, there's the underlying problem, right? That's really the biggest thing. And I've been watching people stay, quote unquote, motivated for years. Without making any single meaningful move. Like, these are amazingly smart people that are always high energy, always highly motivated, but they just don't get shit done. But why? Why is somebody that's really smart, really talented, great at what they do, you know, puppy dog energy motivation, why you get nothing done? It's because they got the energy, right? They've all energized. They're ready to rock and roll, but there's no direction. There's no aim. There's no focus. Is no clarity, right? It always comes back to clarity as the ultimate strategy, because when you have clarity in your mind of what you wanna do, roadblocks like the roadblock I've had for the last 6 weeks, it won't stop me. I was just all in on something else, but I'm all in on everything every day. So it's, it's just a matter of, you know, you run out of time sometimes, but at least there's direction and it was purpose and it was knocking goals down and building things at a breakneck pace, right? So at least there, while maybe my clarity spread thin, I still had clarity in everything I did. So my, my highly motivated puppy dog energy was able to sustain everything and just keep the machine rocking and rolling forward, right? That's a big part of all this. So the business owners who actually break through, who are they? They're not always the people that are the most fired up. They're not always the people jumping up and down going, hoorah, hoorah. Sometimes they're quiet as hell, but they're the most directed. They are laser focused. They know exactly what they're doing next. Maybe not a year from now, just next, right? And that clarity, that's gonna create momentum that the motivation alone never would have. It would've been great if motivation alone could create clarity, but it can't. The clarity you have to create separately, and then that turns your motivation into that big old tank of gas that's gonna just let you crash through your goals. So here's the question. I want you to sit with today, especially since we're getting back into things, right? We're getting back, get back up. And by the way, listen to the other 30 episodes that we've done so far. Um, I'm gonna get way better at this as we go. Obviously I'm a one-man band, so every once in a while we get overwhelmed and we just have to do what we do. Did you know, or do you actually know what you are building towards in the next 30 days? Like, what are your 30-day goals? Do you know those? Like, do you have those written down somewhere? Do you have those in your head? Do you have those mapped out? Are they in a Notion file? Are they sitting on your OneDrive or your OneNote? Are they in your Apple Notes? Like, what's your next 30 days look like? What are you building for your business over the next 30 days? It could be anything. Think about it for a minute. Not your 5-year vision. I don't care about what you're doing 5 years from now. Like, I, I've never understood that when people say, what's your 5-year vision? I could be dead in 2. I could get hit by a bus. Why am I gonna worry so much about the 5-year vision? I'll put a little bit of time into that just to say where I'd like to be in 5 years, but I'm not gonna obsessively plan my 5-year vision and do nothing today. That seems a little, you know, batshit crazy as they say. Not your brand purpose statement either, right? Not, I do this to solve this for that. Not that type of stuff either. It's, it's not like my brand exists because no, no, no. Just what's the next thing that you're doing right now moving forward? What are you doing in the month, the end of rest of March and into April? What are your next 30 days between now and, and April, mid-April? What's the goal? Like, what are you getting done? That's important. If you don't know that and you don't have that concrete saying, I'm going to do this, this, and this over the next 30 days and do each one in a 10-day sprint, or I'm gonna focus on this swath of things about my business. Maybe it's organization. Maybe, maybe you've got an office somewhere and the papers have just been for years stacked up. And you just need to clean. It could be anything, but what are you planning on doing to better your business in the next 30 days? If you can't answer that clearly in one sentence, or if you can actually answer it in one sentence, then your direction's, you know, it's okay. You've got direction if you can do it in one sentence. If you can't, well, it's not the motivation that you're lacking, right? That's the identify problem. You haven't identified what you need to do, and that's where we gotta go to work then for the next 30 days. So even going back to the RISE framework, you know, you're gonna reset your state, identify the real gap, which for today is the direction, right? It's the direction of what we're doing over the next 30 days. That's the number one focus on this one. So this is really an identification, you know, post more than anything, identification podcast, um, more than anything. So simplify to one target and then execute one move towards it. That's it. I'm not asking you to do a thousand things. I'm not asking you to, to rebuild the wall. I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm asking you to pick one thing that next 30 days you need to do to improve your business and just get your ass in gear and start working towards it. Stop waiting to feel motivated and get clear on where you're going. 'Cause the motivation, you'll catch the motivation, man. The motivation will hit you like a fever, like when Will Ferrell had a fever for more cowbell. That motivation will be your cowbell. You will hear that over and over again in your head. Once you feel that groove going, when you feel it and you're grooving into what you're doing for your business, and you're really leaning in on your superpowers and directing it in a way for your business that makes sense, your motivation just infinitely arrives and you'll feel like a crazy person that wonders where that superpower came from. If you fight for motivation every day, well then you're never directed. So work on the direction, get excited about it as you're getting direction, and then let that fester itself and become the motivation that will just give that gasoline for you to drive right to the finish line. So we're good today. Listen, here's gonna be the riff of the day or the riff of the episode. Clarity is a strategy. Confusion is a choice. Wish you guys the best. Thank you for coming back and listening once again. I appreciate you all. And this is Steve Lichtman, and you have been Unfiltered and Unshakeable. I should probably make a jingle for that.
