Kevin Hogan

You watch a football game. The offense is facing 4th down and 2 yards to go. The punting unit comes on the field and they punt.  The coach hasn’t paid attention to the math of football which is called “analytics.” He simply doesn’t want to gamble his job on an unknown “technology” so instead of throwing the ball he punts. Imagine you are the quarterback for a coach who likes to “play it safe.” (Even the phrase is wrong…) He will not ever be as effective as a quarterback whose coach calls plays with the best chance of winning the game.

You are different.

You are BOTH coach AND quarterback!

You have to call your plays AND execute them!

And this is a big reason why people with average “coaches” which is almost 2/3 of all coaches (mathematically) fall into that average territory. About 15% fall into the very good or 2% into the excellent categories and the other 17% fall into the below average or poor category.

The same is true for quarterbacks and everyone else in life.

Question: How do YOU fall into the excellent category?

You are your coach and your quarterback in life. You are a two for the price of one.

You need both aspects performing to be great.

I don’t like the word “goals.” I’ve said this for a long, long time. Goals are something that people say they want and hope they get it.

And then they don’t.

I’m interested in what people do to succeed. BUT the idea that MODELING ONE PERSON’s SUCCESS without FACTORING IN ALL THE MODELS FOR FAILURE is DESTINED FOR FAILURE.

What I do and share with those I mentor has an approach that ONLY deals with the facts of what actually works in setting outcomes and achieving them. It begins with studying failure and finding out what caused failure…finding out what makes everyone get a failure result when they “aimed” at the success target.

Then I move to the fact that successful people do a lot of the same things that people who fail do, but there are DIFFERENCES and almost no one one finds those differences. And that means the chances of achievement are remote. Period.

The Millionaire Mind

I want to share with you some information that is not in any basic goal-setting program you own. What makes The Millionaire Mind unique is that it has nothing to do with my opinion. One of the biggest problems I encountered in getting results in life was meticulously following the FAULTY ADVICE of people who didn’t know a thing about goal setting. They knew how to say the words. They could utter a philosophy that seemed to make sense. It SOUNDED easy. It sounded FOOLPROOF. It led to failure after failure…and I found out over a decade it wasn’t just me but EVERYONE who used these “strategies” for goal setting that failed.

The advice was poorly conceived almost always based on the experience of a few people.

Goal Setting That Doesn’t Work

Almost all goal setting advice was based upon looking at the lives of a few successful people and then distilling that into a common sense approach to goal setting.

That sounds in theory like a good idea…except one thing…it works for almost no one.

What is the theory?

What is that theory?

What happens is this: I tell 100 people to run as fast as they can when they start the marathon. Run and don’t look back. See yourself crossing the finish line and the crowd going wild. And guess what? It WORKS for ONE PERSON. Then people who teach goal setting say, “what did he do?”

Then they say, “OH! That makes sense. I’ll tell everyone else to do that.

Problem is 99 people used the same strategy and failed.

But when you interview the ONE, he tells you what he did and it’s convincing. It’s persuasive. It’s even COMPELLING. And for the most part, it’s the wrong strategy for most people.

You and I have set THOUSANDS of goals. We followed the advice to the T. We did what we were supposed to do and THOUSANDS of times we didn’t get what we wanted.

Once again, THE SYSTEM WAS FAULTY, but it LOOKED GOOD, because “every winner” did it. And so did the 99% who lost. In other words, it simply didn’t have value. This kind of information is called Observational Bias. Someone TELLS YOU what they did, they won (you saw it), and then you believe what they attributed their success to.

Today, some years after the “great aha,” I continue to approach goal setting for results very differently from other guru’s.

KEY POINT: To be sure, I’m interested in what people do to succeed. I’m interested in hereditary factors, the environment, specific differences between how people prepare, what the real process of improvement from event to event is.  BUT the idea that MODELING ONE PERSON’s SUCCESS without FACTORING IN THE MODELS FOR FAILURE is DESTINED FOR FAILURE.

I’ve learned to do my homework…all of it.

You probably remember from previous programs and articles I’ve written that goal setting that works has a number of factors that are counter intuitive.

The DIFFERENT strategies that successes and failures use are DIFFICULT to tease out from each other. Both successes and failures use the “old model” of goal setting. The one’s who succeed make the paper and tell the strategy that all 100 (or 1000) of the failures used as well. I hate those odds……

Keys to Successful Goal Setting

First: Short-term goals are far more motivating and are FAR more likely to be met than long-term goals.

This is so important. PLEASE don’t just read past this. Almost every self proclaimed expert purports that you need a long term goal, a life plan, a mission statement.

Fact: When people adhere to ideas that SOUND good (like visualization) but don’t understand CAUSATION they become demoralized and begin to fail. Then this vast majority of competitive successful  The guilt and embarrassment of failure of the people in the audience…because they did THE SAME THING AND FAILED.

What’s next?

Second: Many long-term goals are FAR TOO BIG. At first it sounds good. Think: Yacht, beaches, travel, wealth, wine, women (or men, take your pick), happiness. And what happens in most cases?

Devastation

This kind of thinking erodes away at the individual and CAUSES long-term failure and hopelessness.

Now, with JUST those TWO facts in mind, here is some pretty amazing new information that I think will help you make 2006 the best year you have ever had.

What Works in Goal Setting?

First let’s go to the part that is necessary for success that the gurus get right.

Among surveyed independent salespeople, six in 10 do not set outcomes or goals at all! This is very sad because this group of people earns the least among all sales people. Three in 10 set general earnings goals, and they earn twice as much as those setting no goals. Just less than one in 10 set specific goals and they earn THREE times as much as those who set no goals at all.

So the first thing we have done is validate the gurus. The facts bear out that specific goals matter….

…when they are short term…less than six months, preferably shorter than three months and best if they are even shorter than ONE MONTH.

Now, let’s just pause here. I invest a little more than 15 minutes per week in Outcome Based Thinking. You read about it in Psychology of Persuasion. It’s a simple but incredibly potent for getting what you want. That’s it. 15 minutes.

15 minutes in determining what outcomes will happen this week, what to do in case of unexpected obstacles and the plan that will get you past those obstacles so the outcomes happen with no further goal setting required.

When there are lots of projects on the plate (recording CDs, writing the new book, taxes, preparing for seminars and seeing clients) I invest perhaps as much as 20 minutes per week in outcome based writing and thinking. (Yes. Everything goes on paper, in a specific planner in a unique way that allows me to get everything I start completed.)

Because I do this, I will earn approximately 10 fold what someone who is doing everything I do without predetermining the outcomes in advance along with the other 7 stesp. (Remember, 15-20 minutes…) Just this ONE activity that becomes part of the Sunday routine like eating breakfast increases income geometrically. Take your income and play with the numbers for a second….

Most people set their “goals” (I don’t actually like this word because it is so poorly defined as a “dream with a deadline.”) once per year…Guarantee: This will fail.

When are outcomes achieved?

When Outcomes are Achieved

Outcomes (what you want to be the result of your effort) are going to happen when you continually alter them daily and achieve those bite-size pieces every single day.

The daily alteration process? About one minute. I wish I could tell you it was a long arduous task. And thre are days it requires two minutes but I can’t recall a time recently that it required more than that.

What is it about “goal-setting” that successful salespeople (and people in general who predetermine outcomes in ALL areas of life) know that others don’t? Or DO THEY know? Are they simply the one’s who went out there, spun the same wheel and theirs happened to come up right?

1. First, setting challenging and reachable SHORT TERM (today through this week) outcomes BUILDS SELF-CONFIDENCE. When you write it down, it becomes part of the reality of the external world. While it is running around your brain, it’s just getting tired and will eventually stop running and quit. Thinking goals is a disaster.
2. Second, setting SHORT TERM (today through this week) challenging and reachable outcomes encourages PERSONAL COMPETITIVENESS. You and I have evolved to compete with ourselves to constantly better ourselves…to constantly learn, be happier and reach for those things that seem out of reach.
3. Finally, setting challenging and reachable outcomes encourages INTERPERSONAL COMPETITIVENESS. Here you set yourself side-by-side with others who are doing the same thing that you are and use them as a yardstick as well. Not only do you excel when you compete with your own standards, you compete even more effectively and achieve outcomes when there is competition. This competition can be agreed upon (like a sprint or football game) or it can be in your own score keeping system in your mind.

These are the three areas that top performers are attentive to every day, and you CAN easily be in the top 10% if you aren’t already.

BUT there is a problem. Something is missing. What?

The Missing Ingredient

You can’t begin achieving without self-confidence. Just how do you build self-confidence in yourself and others?

It’s not necessarily easy, but the outline is fairly simple:

1. First, you cannot be confident if you don’t understand or play the game well. Whatever you want to be confident at doing, you MUST have a complete breadth and depth understanding of the field.
2. Second, knowledge alone is the foundation but the actual ACHIEVING process is crucial. Actually DOING something UNTIL it is done and experiencing the pleasure of COMPLETION teaches your unconscious mind to be successful when you do it often enough.
3. Finally, you come to a point when these two factors carry you ONLY so far…then you must study what it is that causes the failures who are using almost IDENTICAL METHODS are doing wrong. You MUST tease out those fine points because they are the DIFFERENCE.Then, and only then, find the best people in your field and get inside their thinking, behavior and their ACTIVITIES.

I know this is just the beginning. I’ve only scratched the surface…But I’m tired of seeing people feel guilty or ashamed or embarrassed because of crummy input from the gurus.

But if you do just what I’ve shared with you today, 2006 will be the best year of your life!