If I had a gun to your head and your life depended on getting to 48k by the end of January, what would you be doing differently?

“What’s the fastest and easiest way for us to get to our goal of 48k take-home each by January 31st?”

Said another way…

“If I had a gun to your head and your life depended on us getting to 48k by the end of January, what would we as a company be doing differently?”

This was the question I posed to him.

I waited for his response…

“I don’t like this, Doug.,” he said with a tone of disgust.

He then went on to list out the things that would need to happen in order to hit the mark. One by one, the answers appeared before my eyes on a Google doc he had shared with me.

I could see why he was upset…

…he now had clarity and didn’t like what he saw.

What needed to be done were the things that he was avoiding.

He was focusing on systems, training the team, and visioning… and he was spending a lot of time on all of these. To his credit, he was doing a great job… but they weren’t the right things and he was burning himself out doing them – hoping for a better tomorrow. Hoping that these would help him hit his goals.

When he mapped out what it would take to hit the goal, although important, none of what he was working on made the list. Not one of them.

This is the power of clarity.

We tend to have a habit of doing those things we enjoy…

…even to the detriment of those things we want.

Take my workouts for example. I love to lift weights, so when I go to the gym, that’s my focus. What my body could really use is some mobility work… and I do it… sometimes. I never miss the weights. Never.

When I write down my workouts and take a consultative approach (ie. if I hired me to write my own workout), then mobility work is on that list multiple times. I follow it. I get the results I want.

This level of clarity is the power of a good coach or mentor. They don’t tell you what to do – they ask empowering questions so you can get clear on the next steps.

I have no doubt that my friend will hit his 48k mark by the end of January if he sticks to his plan. In fact, I think he’ll hit it much sooner than that…

… as long as he retains the clarity.

What can you do to get more clear?

1. Hire a coach, mentor, or join a mastermind group. A good one will allow you to see the forest from the trees. A great one will give you the power of optics so you can see the playing field unfold before the game begins. It’s the best investment I’ve made, and I continue to invest more in this area myself every year.

2. Pick a goal. I like business goals for this, but you can pick another goal that seems like a stretch goal. Often, I’ll ask people to give me their 1-year goal.

3. Ask yourself the questions on the first few lines. What would you do if your life depended on achieving that goal in just two months?

4. Is the work worth the reward? When setting any stretch goal, I believe it’s important to assess whether the risk is worth the reward. For example, when I built my first marketing firm, I did so while owning two other companies. This required me to sacrifice my free time, friend time, and miss out on a lot of fun. But, when I built my consulting business, I chose to allow it to take longer so I wouldn’t miss out on any of those. Both were right. The choice is yours.

What will you achieve? I’d love to know. Drop me a note.