Jim Edwards and Stew Smith discuss the year 2020 goals and outcomes. What is the differences between your goals or your outcomes. Check out this podcast and see how Jim makes definitions of these classic actions. Treat GOALS like a verb. They are ACTIONS. The outcome is the result of your actions / goals.
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Jim Edwards: Hey guys welcome back to another episode of the Sales Copywriting Content Marketing Podcast…
I’m your host Jim Edwards, along with…
Stew Smith: Stew Smith.
Jim Edwards: And we are here with episode 51…
Stew Smith: 52!
Jim Edwards: Oh, 52, sorry!
Stew Smith: 51 was last week, so I’m trying to think, have we done this for over a year now, or did we get 52 in less than a year?
Jim Edwards: I think we got 52 in less than a year…
Stew Smith: I like that…
So better than once a week…
That’s some good content creation…
Jim Edwards: That is absolutely better than we were doing a year ago with no podcast.
Stew Smith: That is correct.
Jim Edwards: So that’s a great thing, and it just goes to show that we’re going to lead right into the topic today because a lot of people will say, okay, my goal is to have a podcast…
Stew Smith: Yeah, that was ours last year…
Jim Edwards: That’s right…
No, it wasn’t our goal.
Stew Smith: Yeah, ours was an outcome.
Jim Edwards: Two years ago…
The goal was to have a podcast, and a year after that, I had no podcasts.
So then I said, okay, enough of this screwing around, here’s the outcome…
The outcome is I want to have a podcast where we are posting at least once a week, and so then the goal became doing a podcast every week, so the outcome was a successful podcast.
The goal is an action that we can control.
We can’t control whether people listen to it, we can’t control whether people will act on it.
We can’t control whether people will even have any interest.
Okay, we can influence all that stuff.
We can do things that will influence people to maybe like it influenced people to maybe listen to it influence people to maybe take action on it.
But the one thing we can control is that at the end of the week we either have done a podcast or we have not done the podcast and by saying doing the podcast, I mean we’ve recorded it, we’ve edited it, which we don’t really edit and then.
Stew Smith: Yeah, we posted it.
Jim Edwards: We have posted it with…
Stew Smith: Written description on it…
Jim Edwards: Right?
All those things that as soon as you start breaking it down too far, then people like “Oh my God that sound like a ton of work!”
But if the goal is a podcast done in post it every single week, and in this case, it’s usually posted by Wednesday or Thursday…
Then when we boiled it down to that, it actually happened, and it happened to the equivalent of averaging out to once a week for a year.
And so that’s really the biggest reason why people never accomplish their goals is because they don’t understand the difference between a goal and an outcome…
An outcome is what you want in the end.
An outcome is something like, I’m living at my ideal weight of 190 pounds.
I can do 30 pull-ups in a row.
I have a successful podcast or a podcast that meets these criteria.
I have written a book and am promoting it on a regular basis that those are outcomes.
Goals are actions that you can control.
A goal is an is or is not.
And it’s something that’s fully within your control.
Stew Smith: So you’re saying a goal is not a noun.
Jim Edwards: A goal is not a noun…
Stew Smith: It’s a verb…
Jim Edwards: A goal is a verb…
Stew Smith: Okay…
Jim Edwards: When it comes to, when you’re writing down stuff, if you look at your planning sheet every day, like I got my planning sheet right here, of all the stuff I’m going to do…
I look at these as goals, they’re either done, or they’re not you, you either make a goal, or you don’t make a goal.
It’s like Yoda said, “There is either do or do not there is no try”.
So I either created the episode, or I did and either wrote the article or I didn’t…
I either did my workout, or I didn’t…
I either ate like a pig at the trough, or I watched my calories and stuck to my diet…
I either watched 15 hours of television, or I read a book for 30 minutes…
These are actions.
These are concrete things that are causes set in motion.
Just like not taking an action as a concrete cause set in motion.
So as soon as you start living your life from the standpoint of the things that you can control and letting the things that you can’t control, that you can influence them, but then letting everything else go…
I can’t control what the president does…
I can’t control what the media does…
I can’t control what Democrats say…
I can’t control what Republicans think.
I can’t control the tide and the moon and the stars and traffic and all this other stuff.
I can influence some of it, but ultimately, all I can control are the thoughts that I hold consistently in my head and the actions that I take as a result of those thoughts.
Now you’ll have thoughts that pop into your mind all the time.
You can’t control that, but what you can control are the thoughts that you hold consistently and that you focus on.
And so that’s it.
So you figure out what you want to have and then you think about it, and you act on it from a plan predefined.
And that’s how you make cool stuff in your life happen.
As opposed to sitting around on a beanbag chair, eating Cheetos, watching comedy central, and wondering why you don’t have any money…
Terrible relationships.
Ugly children and dogs that pee and poop on the floor.
Stew Smith: Mm yeah…
That’s a snowball there, man…
You did go to a big one!
Jim Edwards: It’s going down the wrong path…
Stew Smith: Wow…
Yeah…
Huh…
Well, it’s going to go, what I want to do in 2020?
I want to say seeing 2020 as much as I can…
Jim Edwards: You want what?
Stew Smith: I am seeing 2020.
Right…
Got perfect vision.
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: No, just joking.
I liked that…
I liked the idea of goal being a verb…
Jim Edwards: I mean, okay, let’s look at it…
Stew Smith: Too many people think of it as just a noun…
Jim Edwards: Yeah, a goal is a verb…
Stew Smith: Is a verb.
Yeah.
I like that.
Jim Edwards: An outcome is what you’re after, but the goals are what gets you there.
So let me ask you a question from your field of expertise.
Stew Smith: Okay.
Jim Edwards: How many people have ever come up to you and said, “Hey, I think I want to be a Navy Seal.”
Stew Smith: I don’t know, I have no idea.
A lot.
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Like thousands?
Stew Smith: Yes…
Jim Edwards: Okay…
How many do you know that you’ve actually helped have actually made it through and become a Navy seal?
Stew Smith: Yes, much less than that…
Jim Edwards: Like what percentage?
Stew Smith: Oh, maybe 10% okay.
Yeah…
Jim Edwards: What is the difference between the 10% that become a Navy Seal and the 90% who said, “Hey, I want to be a Navy seal”.
What’s the difference?
Stew Smith: Most of it is strengths and weaknesses.
Right?
Jim Edwards: Okay.
Stew Smith: They had a weakness.
They made it a strength.
How they maintain their strength by having a schedule of working on that weakness day after day after day.
And being patient with it, but working at it and doing something every single day on that weakness.
So it is no longer a weakness because I tell them this all the time, your weakness will be exposed in about your first 30 minutes of training.
Jim Edwards: When you say weakness though, meaning not a good runner, not going to pushups, not a good swimmer, not good dips…
Not good at keeping my shit together when someone’s yelling at me.
Stew Smith: Yeah. It can be any of the above.
Jim Edwards: Okay, so the key of what I’m hearing you though is that these people identified the outcome.
I want to be a Navy Seal.
Then they figured out what it was going to take to get there and then they started taking action on a daily basis.
In this case, most of that action at this point was physical training.
Stew Smith: Oh yeah.
Jim Edwards: Every single day.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: Like not three days a week at the gym…
Stew Smith: Right…
And non-fun stuff that you like…
I mean it’s a weakness for a reason.
Because you probably neglect it.
So now you can’t neglect the things that you are no longer bad at doing.
You have to address them.
You have to have some maturity and say, all right, this is where I’m weak.
This is where I need my help…
This is how I need to work on it…
Whether I get people to help you with that, outsource that assistance, or you do it yourself, doesn’t really matter.
I’m trying to start paralleling this too regular other businesses.
Jim Edwards: But that’s that we don’t have to do that yet…
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: Point is that somebody says they want something that’s fine.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: But where whether they’re going to get it or not is whether they’re showing up and taking action at six o’clock in the morning, Monday through Friday…
Stew Smith: Yes…
They have to show up.
Jim Edwards: And take action.
Stew Smith: Yes…
Jim Edwards: Because unlike planet fitness where they literally have pizza Monday, and you can sit in there in some kind of weird chair and sit there and act like you’re doing something and you’re at planet fitness that’s not how the real world works.
It basically comes down to known exactly what you want to have and be willing to take the actions in order to make that happen…
Now for some people taking that action, they can’t be based on past performance, based on physical condition, based on knowledge, based on experience, based on education, based on maturity, based on other factors…
They could be ready to go to BUD/S in 12 weeks…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: Or they could be ready to go to buds in four years…
Stew Smith: Right.
It may take them a significant amount of time..
Jim Edwards: Right.
But in the end, the ones who make it are the ones with a clearly defined outcome and a plan of daily action for them to get where they want to go…
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: And now we will draw that to the world of business or finance or spirituality or family.
My ability to get results in any of those areas is very different than it was 30 years ago when I was 22 and thought that I was Bulletproof and just was cocky as hell and just.
I would have punched me in the face back then.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: So the point is all of us are starting from different levels, but we can all achieve the same outcome if we’re willing to put in the actions and the time to make it happen.
For some of us, it’ll take longer than others.
That’s why you don’t compare yourself to others.
The only thing you should be comparing yourself to is, am I better than I was yesterday?
And the only way to become better than you were yesterday is to take action today.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: That’s it.
You can’t do it through osmosis.
You cannot become better through osmosis.
Stew Smith: Yup.
Jim Edwards: You don’t put a book under your pillow and learn from it.
If that was true, I would have been sleeping with books under my head since I was five.
You have to take action, and that’s so you can make distinctions that’s so you can figure out what’s working, what’s not working for you, and even if you’re headed in a hundred percent the wrong direction, a car that’s moving can be turned around really easily.
A car that is sitting still in the middle of the highway, no matter how much you yank on the wheel, you will never make forward progress, and you can never turn in a different direction.
So the biggest thing I want everybody to pull away from this is that no matter what you want to accomplish, you have to define the outcome and then set daily goals of actions that you’re going to take because it’s the only way you’re going to get it.
You can’t just do like they talk this crap in that book, the secret or this law of attraction and all this other crap where basically I just decide that I want it and I know you’ve got to.
Stew Smith: Tell the universe.
Jim Edwards: Yup, and it’ll show up.
That’s BS.
If you want to look at it in that BS thing.
Then what you need to do is look at your actions as the money that you’re putting in the vending machine that you hope will eventually give you what you want…
Seriously, the actions that you take are the coins that you put in the vending machine until there’s finally enough money in there that you can hit the button and you get the magic Coca-Cola that you want or those cool vending machines from best buy where you can get like a fricking PlayStation 4 out of the thing.
You don’t just put in a dollar and get out of PlayStation 4.
So the other thing that I would say when it comes to this is if you’re one of those people that sets 10 or 15 or 20 goals, you might as well just go slam your head in a car door just to kind of hit the reset button.
Cause that’s not going to happen…
You need to set outcomes that bring a whole lot of other things along with them at the same time…
So for example, the podcast thing, if you really wanted to sit down as well I want to, I got to do this, and I gotta do this, and I gotta do this, and I gotta do this, and I gotta do this.
And you list off like 20 things, and then you’re just focusing on those 20 things and making them bigger and bigger and bigger, then you’re never going to get anything done.
But like we said, the outcome was successful podcasts…
The action that we’re going to take is to create a podcast episode and posted every single week.
And then in order to do that, we gotta record it.
We got to write up a description, and we got to post it using Podomatic, and we got to get an image.
All of a sudden, we’ve reduced it down to these four goals of what it takes to actually get the thing done…
Is there other stuff?
Sure…
We got to plan the episode…
Good…
We’ll plan the episode for about 10 minutes right before we just settle into a pattern of activity.
And the activity is what makes shit happen.
If you don’t engage in activity, then you’re just sitting around doing what most people do, which is contemplating their navel.
And as you’re doing the activity, you get better and better and better.
And it goes from kind of knowledge…
And I mean it goes from knowing about it to knowhow.
Knowing how to do it and you just bust it out…
Stew Smith: It has been a good year…
It’s been a good year for podcast development…
Jim Edwards: Sure…
Stew Smith: I think we’ve learned a lot about it…
Still learning more about it because technology evolves.
There’s always a new place to put your podcast, so you have to stay on top of some of that…
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: It’s been, it’s been a good journey…
Jim Edwards: The other thing to look at it this way again to keep things simple and that goal, let’s say you want to maintain or you want to reach your ideal weight, whatever that is not, I want to lose 50 pounds.
Cause if you think about I want to lose 50 pounds, I got to get rid of this 50 pounds.
I can’t seem to get rid of this 50 pounds…
Why can’t I get rid of this last 50 pounds?
If you focus on the 50 pounds, all you’re going to get is more 50 pounds.
You have to phrase it in such a way that your mind knows exactly what it’s moving towards.
So your outcome is, I live every day at my ideal weight of 190 pounds.
I live every day at my ideal weight at 190 pounds and reduce all the stuff that people want to obsess over down to a single daily goal.
I work out every morning at 7:30 from 7:30 to 8:45 or 7:30 to 8:30 or 7:30 to 8:15 or 7:30 to 9:00 depending on what it is…
That’s the goal…
What the exercise is you can buy Stew’s books turn to page, and he’ll tell you exactly what to do…
I mean that you don’t even have to think about it…
You can join his coaching program, and he’ll send you workouts that you do every single day…
You don’t have to think about, the only goal is to work out at 7:30 in the morning and do everything that’s on that list.
That’s Stew gives me, that’s my whole workout.
That’s it.
That’s my goal to start working at 7:30 now.
It’s changed from when it used to be 5 in the morning, and I’ve, I’ve shuffled things around.
But the bottom line is that the only goal every day is to do exactly what Stew tells me to do at 7:30 in the morning until I’m done.
That’s all I gotta do.
And so if you can make a lot of goals or a lot of outcomes, kinda come with that in the slipstream of the goal or the outcome rather.
See, I even switched back and forth.
I got to remind myself.
But if I’m living at my ideal weight of 190 pounds, if I do what student tells me to do every day at 7:30 and what comes along with that outcome wise?
Well, better health.
I mean all these things.
Everybody wants to list off 20 things.
I know I’m gonna have more health.
I know I’m gonna have a lot less stress.
I know that I’m going to feel better and look better on a consistent basis.
I get to wear the cool kid clothes, not like the old fat man sweat pants.
I mean, I get to wear cool tee shirts that they make in cool sizes.
My self-confidence goes through the roof.
See how all of these things by reducing it down and making it simple, all these things that everybody’s got this giant mind map of goals and resolutions and all these other things just automatically follow through.
The slipstream of my outcome is I live every day at my ideal weight of 190 pounds.
And my goal is to do the workout that Stew gives me every single day at 7:30 without fail.
Stew Smith: Yup.
And then another big thing is your discipline.
Your discipline gets so good because you’ve learned to create a habit.
Jim Edwards: Yes.
Stew Smith: That you put it in the schedule, it gets done because it’s not in the schedule, it doesn’t get done.
It doesn’t exist.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: That ability goes throughout everything else.
Jim Edwards: Right?
Stew Smith: I mean, you can apply it through the rest of your life.
Not just fitness.
Jim Edwards: You’re absolutely right.
And developing that habit to the point where it feels wrong not to do it.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: So every morning, I didn’t do it this morning because holiday and other stuff, but most mornings, Monday through Friday, I go outside, I let the chickens out, and I do a video letting the chickens out with Jim.
Stew Smith: Great habit…
Jim Edwards: How, what does that bring along with it?
Well, I’ve got all these outcomes of I want to create content every single day, and I want to be able to repurpose it, and I want to be able to hit all these different channels so I could sit there and go, okay, well I got to do this, and I got to do this, and I gotta do this, and I gotta do this, and all of a sudden it turns into a 3-hour thing, or I go make a video, I have it transcribed, it gets edited into an article, and then it gets posted.
All these different places.
But all of that starts from making the video, letting the chickens out with Jim.
And I’ve learned to pay attention to the reaction that I get to those videos…
And when I see one that hits, especially, then we go through the roof with it.
So that’s the how-to type thing.
Like one of the ones that I did, which is the same topic as the topic of this podcast, I posted it on Facebook and got within 24 hours, like 428 reactions to it.
I posted it as an article, and I don’t remember how many comments and stuff, but I was like, “Okay, so what does that tell me?”
I need to send this as a standalone email…
I need this to be in my newsletter…
I need this to go everywhere on all my social media, all these things that all come along in the slipstream of making a video every morning around 7:15 when I go out to let the chickens out.
Stew Smith: I like it.
Jim Edwards: So the big takeaway for me, at least on this, is to understand the difference between an outcome and a goal…
An outcome is the effect you want created in your life.
And the goals are actions which you have a hundred percent control over.
They’re not dependent on anyone else.
They’re not dependent on anything else.
They are 100% within your ability to control.
Now, if Facebook were to go out of business or some shit like that, I mean, I can’t control that, but I can’t control whether I post posted chickens with gym video on Facebook every morning…
There’s extreme examples, but the bottom line, it’s 100% within your ability to control…
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: That’s how you want a structure, your life, and your business because it puts you in the driver’s seat and at this time of year when people are really kind of tuned in to this if you set your goals the wrong way, it just leads to another year of frustration and giving up and feeling bad as opposed to actually finally getting the kinds of results that you’re looking for and that you want to get…
Stew Smith: Yeah.
I liked the words, goals, and outcomes a lot versus resolutions.
Because if you notice, we don’t even use the word resolution anymore after maybe two weeks after.
Jim Edwards: I was going to say January 3rd, yeah.
Stew Smith: Well, it’s like it’s when you quit saying happy new year to people.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: Like people are still saying, “Oh happy new year”…
Right?
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: Probably by next week it’s done…
People will stop saying happy new year…
Jim Edwards: Unless they want people to think they’re weird and…
Stew Smith: Yes, it is new year.
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Thank you, weirdo.
Stew Smith: But anyway, yeah, resolutions are are tough and I love goals.
I love sub-goals…
Thinking of the outcome primarily is the great concept.
Jim Edwards: Absolutely.
Cool.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: So any final thoughts Stew?
No, you know this is a great time of the year to do that.
Like Jim says, everybody’s kind of in tune with the process of let’s try to be better.
But to be honest with you, you can do this any day…
It doesn’t have to be January 1 it could be April 1 it could be June 1 whatever that is from 12 months from that moment, if you get on a new path, build a new habit, whether that’s fitness, it’s business, it’s a podcast, it’s making content, whatever that is, a year from that date.
If you were consistent with it, you will see some change that could be really beneficial to you, depending on what that is.
Jim Edwards: And that brings up one last thing I want to share, which is a lot of people overestimate what they are going to get done once they get all hopped up on the new year’s resolution juices, and they hit it hard and heavy, and within 2 days they’re totally burned out mentally and physically and just kind of fall back into the pattern of years previous.
You got to pace yourself.
You’re just like with fitness, just that’s why fitness is the perfect metaphor for business.
Stew Smith: It is pretty good parallels, definitely.
Jim Edwards: You’re not going to be able to do physically now what you will be capable of doing 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months from now…
Absolutely, and if you try, you’re going to hurt yourself, and then you’ll give up.
You’ll say, okay, this isn’t going to work for me, so you’ve got to pace yourself.
This is one of those things…
This is a marathon.
It’s not a sprint.
You will have parts of it where you will have to go faster and harder, but you have to balance that out because where you get burned out is getting out of balance.
You’re working 16 hours a day, you’re not taking care of your health…
You’re neglecting your family, you’re just not in balance.
That’s the thing, when I have seen the past, when I’ve been doing the best is when I have been the most balanced in my physical activity, in my sleep, in my nutrition, in hanging out with my family and taking a nap in the afternoon in getting quality work done, communicating with my team…
Just when everything’s in balance, that’s when the great stuff happens…
And when things get thrown out of balance, either by me or something else, if I keep it out of balance for too long…
Something has to give…
And usually, it’s in the area of health.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: Or relationships or money.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: Those are the three areas that it will fall down in.
Usually, health…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
I’ll say this, that I think one of the reasons why I train is so when life does get stressful when I have to pull late nights and early days consecutively in a row, that I have some amount of energy level that I can pull from along with some mental discipline to be able to do it as well.
But you’re right, you can’t work at this level, day after day after day after day without just really fallen apart.
So it’s okay to kind of go up in these little sine waves of activity like that.
But you’re right, everything kind of has to come back to balance.
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: Otherwise, you do break.
Jim Edwards: Yup…
Something will give…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Maybe that’s another show…
We’ll do that.
Jim Edwards: Okay, cool…
All right, guys…
Well, if you’re not a member of the Sales, Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast, you should be, if you don’t have a copy of Copywriting Secrets, you should have one head on over to copywriting secrets.com and grab a copy…
It’s been called a modern-day classic, and over 15,000 people have one of these hot little numbers in their hands…
That’s pretty cool…
Don’t you think, Stew?
Stew Smith: I would say that’s great!
Thousand copies in like…
Stew Smith: Less than six months…
Jim Edwards: No less than three months…
Stew Smith: Three months…
Jim Edwards: Right at three months…
That’s pretty good…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
So you’ve been, burning the candle at both ends for a few months?
Jim Edwards: I have, and I’ve suffered from it…
Stew Smith: Yeah, it’s hard…
It’s hard…
I mean, we all go through it, but this is when we have relied on some resilience reserves and then take a little break…
Jim Edwards: Take a nap…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: Cool…
All right, everybody…
Have a great day, and we’ll talk to you next time…
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