Setting SMART Goals

In honor of my upcoming 66 Days of Bold Action Challenge, that starts on July 15th, I want to revisit a topic that we’ve talked about a lot here, and that’s goal setting. 

When you set goals, you establish direction in your intentions, your actions, and your thoughts. It’s’ like setting a destination in your GPS—you decide where you’re going and you take the necessary steps to get there.

Believe it or not, there’s a science to setting goals effectively and putting yourself in the best possible position to actually achieve those goals. Of course, when we set goals, we want to succeed at accomplishing them and not just set them for the sake of setting them.

So let’s revisit how to effectively set goals, and crush them.

First, a little history. In 1981, a guy named George Doran wrote a paper that appeared in Management Review called, There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives. In it, he used...

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How Do You Define Success?

You are no stranger to hard work. You’ve been busting your ass, making it happen every day for your business, for your family, and for your own personal growth. 

One of your biggest goals in life is to succeed. But have you ever taken the time to stop and think about what success means to you?

Do you consider yourself successful now? You’ve probably already overcome ridiculous odds and accomplished things you never imagined you would be able to accomplish.

For ambitious people, like you and me, we can sometimes feel like we’re chasing a moving target. That’s why it’s really important to sit down and come up with a definition of what success means to you.

This definition should be the core of what you value most, and your “I need to accomplish this in life and everything else is just a bonus”. So what is that for you?

Is it Family?

Maybe your success is defined by how you treat your family and what you’re able to provide for them....

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5 Reasons Accountability Matters to Your Success

Have you ever thought to yourself that if you had someone holding you accountable, you’d be much more successful? You know, as students—from Kindergarten all the way through college—we (or most of us) did our homework because we would be held accountable by our teachers, sometimes our classmates, and definitely our parents, if we didn’t. 

As adults, things are a lot different. If you set out to accomplish something, it’s up to you whether that happens or not. And many times, no one would ever even know you failed to achieve that goal unless you told them. That makes it super easy to just give up whenever you want to.

This is precisely why accountability matters to your success, and having an accountability partner could completely change the game for you. Here are 5 reasons why.

  1. You’re much more likely to succeed. According to Entrepreneur.com, your likelihood of success skyrockets when you have an accountability partner. In fact,...
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Don't Allow Love Lost to Keep You From Your Dreams

Years ago, I had a friend that I would have described then as a player. He was always looking for women to talk to, hang out with, and date. He really seemed to want to spend every waking moment of his time with women. 

In my less mature years, I thought it was pretty cool that he spent so much time chasing women. I can’t say I wanted to do the same thing—not every single minute of life—but I didn’t see anything wrong with how he lived. I had also never given his actions much thought beyond the surface, “guys doing what guys do”.

As years passed, we would talk when he was going through painful times in his life. There seemed to be a common denominator in those moments. His low points always seemed to be related to women leaving him and him being single.

I witnessed him in relationship after relationship, at low point after low point, and I eventually realized that I had been wrong all those years. My friend wasn’t a player at all. He...

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The Ability to Achieve Success - Born With It or Nah?

You’re probably reading this article because you’re interested in self-improvement or because you are on your own personal mission to achieve some sort of success. As I’ve stated many times in previous articles and on my podcast, Master Your Mission, mindset is—in my opinion—the most important factor to your success.

But will you ever actually be able to achieve success? What you believe about your own ability to succeed may be your answer.

Enter Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.

In her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she wrote that people are on a continuum based on their beliefs about where their ability to succeed comes from. Some people believe that success is innate. Those people have what she called a fixed mindset. Other people believe that success is based on hard work, learning, and their persistence. According to Dweck, those people have a growth mindset.

She concluded that, although people may...

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Does Success Require Passion?

To grow my Instagram following without having to spend money on ads, I try to engage, as much as possible, with other pages. I ask questions on my page, I reply to comments and I regularly peruse through hashtags to comment and like posts from people I’m not following. 

Recently, as I was perusing hashtags, I came across a post from someone that said something like this…

I don’t like basketball, but I want to own a team in the NBA.
I hate watching Big Brother on CBS, but I would like to own the show.
I don’t like coffee but I want to buy a Starbucks.
The #1 rule to business is profitability. People make the mistake of thinking they have to love the business. Make the money first, then fund your hobby.

If that’s not the dumbest shit I’ve read all week! Does this fool not watch Sharktank?

First of all, if you have enough money to buy any of those businesses, then I would hope you would be smart enough to know not to buy a business you hate....

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You're Never Too Smart to Learn Something New

Have you ever met someone who acts like they know everything under the sun? You know, those people you really can’t tell anything without them getting offended because they already know way more than you ever will. There are those people in the world who are never open to learning more, because they think they already know it all. 

We call them know-it-alls, fancy pants, and maybe sometimes assholes. Don’t be those people. 

I can’t think of one instance in which a person could know so much about a subject that they could never learn something new about that subject. It’s even possible for the most expert of experts to learn something from a novice.

Many successful people claim that they never stop learning. Learning means that you’re growing and progressing from where you are to a place of better understanding.

In your business, you may find it hard to find time to fit learning something new into your schedule, but it’s actually a lot...

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Mistaking a Fantasy for Your Dream Can Cause You to Fail Endlessly

We all have dreams—hopefully very big dreams—and some of us are out here chasing them. I encourage those of you who aren’t to get on it and start chasing yours, but since you’re here, this message may help you too.

As you pursue your dreams, you should be writing big goals, breaking those big goals down into smaller goals, and tracking them all. If you’re experiencing failure quite often, it’s important to look at the goals you are setting and be sure that the actual act of setting goals is not where you’re failing.

As I’ve discussed on my podcast—Master Your Mission—in the past, you should set goals using the SMART method of goal setting. Your goals should be:

Specific—Choose a specific thing you’d like to achieve.

Measurable—You must be able to measure your progress toward accomplishing it.

Attainable—Your goal should be practical. It should be something that pushes you but is within your real...

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Your Mindset is as Important to Your Business as Your Business Plan

When you think about starting a business and what’s required, you usually think of things like coming up with a product, writing a business plan, obtaining financing, finding a location, marketing, sales, and customer service. Most people jump right in by planning what they’ll do and how they’ll do it. You spend countless hours researching, creating marketing material, building a website, and all that fun, exciting stuff. 

In your planning, you may even consider all the reasons you’ve been told that most businesses fail—the lack of proper planning, insufficient funding, poor location, the owners not understanding their customers, or a whole litany of reasons. The one reason you never hear mentioned is that many businesses fail because so many entrepreneurs never bother to do the proper work building the right mindset.

According to SCORE, cashflow (or lack thereof) is the #1 reason businesses fail, but I don’t believe that. I believe that a...

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Michael Jordan's 1997 Flu Game - A Winner's Credo

 

On June 11, 1997 sports history was made. One of the greatest performances ever was made by a flu-stricken Michael Jordan in game 5 of the NBA finals against the Utah Jazz. If you’re a sports fan, you know that particular game well, and you can probably remember where you were as you watched it just like any other major event in your lifetime. 

Michael Jordan was visibly sick throughout this game. He looked weary and wasn’t himself, but somehow he pushed his way through the entire game. The series was tied 2–2 and Utah was in the lead as the clock ticked down to under a minute to play. With less than 30 seconds left on the clock, His Airness drained a game changing 3-pointer that gave the Bulls the lead and helped them win the game. They went on to win the Championship in the very next game, and Jordan’s performance, even while sick, will live on forever as a pivotal moment in basketball history. 

Jordan beasted out 38 points and 7...

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