HL December 25,12

This is a conversation about goal setting. The speaker shares 21 points on goal setting that were taught to him by Tom Hopkins. He emphasizes the importance of writing down goals and reviewing them daily. He also stresses the need for specific and believable goals, as well as goals that excite and challenge you. The speaker advises adjusting goals if they become unrealistic or too easy. Lack of basic capability is rarely the problem, but rather finding out what you want and being willing to sacrifice, change, and grow to achieve those goals. Hey, good day, everybody. Listen, I want to talk to you about setting, you know, means getting, which is setting goals. And this is something that Tom Hopkins shared with me a long time ago, and I wanted to relate it to you because it's really great. It's 21 points on goal setting. And now that we're starting a new year here, this, you know, as I'm doing this call, we're about to head into 2013, which is amazing. I just remember it was like, you know, when we went to the year 2000, it was just like the other day, and now it's 2013. It's just incredible how time flies. But, you know, what follows is some great advice to keep firmly in mind as you set and pursue the things that you most want to see transpire in your life. And I often say the things we keep foremost in our mind get our attention, and whatever gets our attention gets done. And so that's what's getting done in your life right now. Whatever's getting all your attention is getting done, so you've got to pay a lot of attention to what you're paying attention to. And so let's see if these things work for you. You know, the average human being has the ability to achieve almost anything. Lack of basic capability is rarely the problem, but rather finding out what you want and being able to sacrifice, change, and grow to satisfy that want. Let me say this again. The lack of basic capability is rarely, if ever, the problem, but rather finding out what you want is super critical. What you want, got to be clear about that, and being willing to sacrifice, to change, and to grow to satisfy that want. I don't know. Most people don't have that part down. He talks about it in the sales training seminars I conduct throughout the country. He teaches a 20-step. It's actually 21 steps, but here it is. Number one, if it's not in writing, it's not a goal. An unwritten want is a wish, a dream, and a never-happen. If it's in writing, it's a commitment, especially if you review it every day, multiple times a day. I'm going to keep repeating that, okay, because one of the things that I did, and I'm going to say this over and over throughout this little conversation we're having here. I wrote down all my goals right on three-by-five cards, and I posted them. I taped them on the mirror where I got up and brushed my teeth and shaved in the morning. I taped them to the refrigerator so every time I went in that fridge, I could see it. I taped them on the visor of my car so every time I got in my car, I looked at my goals. I put them in my planner inside so every time I opened my planner, they were in there. I put them in my presentation book that I had, right, so that every time I opened that, I looked at that. What I wanted to do is I wanted to see and look and focus on my goals and pay attention, right, because if you keep it foremost in your mind and it gets your attention, then it gets done, all right? So I wanted to see it over and over and over. I wanted to constantly be reminded because as I was reminded, it got me to do the right things. I knew that I need to make those calls or I need to follow up. I need to prepare for a meeting or whatever. It got me to do, you know, what it is I needed to do to keep moving in the direction of the goals and dreams that I had. And so you want to be paying attention to that all the time. What happens to people, why they lose their focus is they don't really know what they want, and they don't have their goals aren't clear, and they're not writing, and they don't see them, and they're not focused on it, right? They let every little distraction get to them. Number two, if it's not specific, it's not a goal. Broad desires and lofty aims have no effect. It must be concrete. So what you've got to do is you've got to be really specific about exactly what you want. It's got to be crystal clear. It can't be I want to be more successful. That's not clear. Or I want to make more money. That's not clear. You know, a clear goal would be I want to make $100,000 by, you know, December of 2013, December 31, 2013. That's a clear goal, all right, something like that. Or whatever it is, or I want to become a regional vice president by X date, you know, or whatever that is. Whatever the goal is, it's got to be crystal clear, right? If you wanted to buy a home, where exactly is that home? What neighborhood? What street? You know, what city? Whatever. It's got to be clear because your mind will get it done if it knows exactly what it is, you know, that you want done. But if it's not clear, it's not happening, okay? If it's not specific, it has no effect. Number three, goals must be believable. If you don't believe you can achieve a goal, you won't pay the price for it. Look, people will never attempt anything that they don't believe they can actually do. They won't attempt it. They just won't. One of the reasons that your people don't recruit more people and close more sales or why they're not, you know, on an RVP run, trying to become RVPs or get a promotion is they don't believe they can even do it. They know they're not trained well enough. They know their results are not good. They know they can't close. They know they're not good recruiters. They know their presentation skills are inept. They know all that stuff. They know they don't know the answers. They know that they don't know how to overcome the most common of issues. They know. They know all that. So then they know they can't do it, so why even bother? Why would you try to go RVP? Why would you try to set appointments? Why would you prospect if you knew that even if you recruited somebody, you didn't know what the heck to do with them. You didn't know how to train them. You didn't know how to, you know, how to answer even the most basic questions. Why would you bother doing something that you know would lead to pain and embarrassment? Why would you do that? You wouldn't. Most of your people, why they don't do anything is they don't know how to do it. Why don't they know? Because they've not been taught. Because there's too much motivation going on in that office and not enough how-to. Look, you've got to believe you're never going to attempt anything you... Look, one of the reasons I was able to have so much success so quickly is because I had already spent, you know, from 1979 to 1987, right? Actually, even until I got in the business. I got in business in 84, but I already spent four years preparing when I got here, all right? And I had a lot of experience recruiting and training salespeople in the former job I had. So when I got here, I had a pretty high level of belief I could do this thing. And because I had a belief I could do it, I didn't have any problem doing the work and putting the hours in. The only people that have a problem putting in the work is they don't believe they can do it. Why would you put in hours and work and sacrifice if you didn't believe you could do it? You won't. And they won't either. Your people won't either. That's why most of your people don't do anything. You think you don't do anything because you're just lazy and no counts. That's not what it is. It's they have no confidence. They have no belief in themselves and their ability to get results. That's the reason they don't do anything. Look, number four, an effective goal is an exciting challenge. It must demand your best and a bit more or it isn't going to change your ways and elevate your lifestyle. It has to be compelling to you. So a goal has to be like something that gets your juices flowing, that if you get it, you're going to be excited about it, okay? Whatever that happens to be, okay? Like when I was starting, when I really set these goals, and I used to go out to Palm Desert, the Palm Springs area, when I was not making any money, I'd go out there for a day or two and spend the night, and we'd go look at these beautiful country club homes on a golf course, professionally decorated, just gorgeous places, right? And the weather was awesome and stuff. Man, I knew exactly what I wanted. There was no ambiguity at all about where I wanted to be, what I wanted to have, what kind of home I wanted to have, where I wanted to hang my hat. I mean, I knew exactly, and I knew exactly the kind of lifestyle I wanted to. I knew exactly what I was trying to create, folks, and I did it, okay? But if I wasn't clear about what exactly I wanted, it doesn't move you to go do the work, right? I'd come home from spending the night in the desert and visiting these incredible places, and I'd come home, and I would be so damn excited about getting busy and recruiting and training and developing people because I knew that was what was going to allow me to have that lifestyle. I was like on fire about getting it done. Are you? I don't know. It depends if you've got compelling goals. I don't know what your goals are, but most people have just mediocre goals. You've got to think about changing your life and doing something great, something that moves you and gets you excited. Look, goals must be adjusted to new information. Adjust them down if they become unbelievable or if they're too easy. So if you have a goal, like for example, okay, let's say if you have a goal this month, you're going to have four personal recruits and you're going to close ten transactions, but after the first week, you're at zero by zero. You need to readjust that goal, okay? You need to say, okay, I had a bad week, but for sure now I'm going to do three by eight or something like that. You readjust the goal. It's okay. There's nothing wrong with readjusting. You're not a loser if you readjust your goals. You've got to be realistic at the same time, right? So if you have a goal to become RVP, and you still haven't developed enough people, but you had a goal to go by July of 2012, right? But by that time, you only had one person that was doing anything, and you need to really have three or four or five. Well, then you need to readjust your goal. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make you a loser. It just means that you need more time to get that done, okay? So you need to look at what your goals are. You set those goals, and sometimes they don't happen exactly like you'd like them to happen, but that's okay. You readjust them. I don't know. I've never really hit any goals in the time frame that I've wanted. I'll give you a perfect example. This is what happened to me my first five years. My first year in the business, my goal was to make $25,000, and I would say, I'm going to make $25,000. I'm going to make $25,000. Everybody I talked to, I'm going to make $25,000. I made $18,000, okay? So I didn't hit my goal in my first year. My second year, 1985, my goal was to make $50,000. I'm going to make $50,000 this year. I'm going to make $50,000 in Prime America. I'm going to make it. I told everybody I talked to, I'm going to make $50,000. I told my wife that over and over. I made $35,000. I didn't hit my goal. The next year, 1986, my goal was to make $100,000. I'm going to make $100,000. I'm going to make $100,000. Everybody I talked to, my wife, everybody, I'm going to make $100,000. I was confessing it left and right. I made $86,000. So I didn't hit my goal in 1986. 1987, I had things moving. I'm going to make a half a million. I'm going to make a half a million. I'm going to make a half a million. I'm going to make $500,000. I'm going to make $500,000. Everybody I talked to, I'm going to make $500,000. I was confessing it left and right. I made $409,000. I didn't hit my goal. In the next year, 1988, my goal was to make a million. I believe I could make a million. I'm going to make a million this year. No doubt I'm going to make a million. Everybody I talked to, I talked to my wife. I was confessing making a million dollars like crazy in 1988. I made $855,000 in 1988. The first five years, I never hit one income goal. But I started from zero, and five years later, I was at $855,000 without ever hitting a goal. So what? Sue me. I'm a loser, right? I'm a complete loser because I didn't hit my goal. No. The goals is what pushed me to get to that point. Your goals are going to push you to get where you want to go. If you don't hit a goal, then you readjust, okay? That's what you do. I've never hit a goal that I set in the time frame that I've allotted. Now, did I ever make a million? Yes, but it was later, right? That's how it works. Readjust if you need to, okay? Look, dynamic goals guide our choices. And I mean by dynamic goals, I mean goals that if you want it badly enough, you'll turn off the TV and get to it. Goals will show you the right way to go on most decisions. So that's why having your goals everywhere, they're going to affect your behavior because if you're looking at them and you're congruent with what you're saying, if your actions are congruent with what your goals are and what you say you want and what you're telling your spouse or your children what you're going to do, right, if they're everywhere, it's going to guide your actions. It's going to guide what you do. You'll turn off the TV. You'll instead read a book or you'll watch a video that will help you or you'll listen to an audio that's going to help you become more successful in your car instead of listening to the radio. You'll listen to something that will help you grow, right? Like a lot of you are hopefully listening to me right now in your car as you're driving along. I don't know. It's a good thing to do to turn your car. Some of these things you hear, you need to hear them over and over and over again so that you start getting your thinking right. You should be following me on Twitter, by the way, because on Twitter I'm sending out messages, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 messages every day about winning, about succeeding, about right thinking, about the way to think to be successful. My handle is HectorLamarque, okay? At HectorLamarque on Twitter. Follow, it's free. You don't even have to pay for it, right? You should look at those. Those, I promise you, I read incessantly looking for great quotes that I feel are appropriate for you that are wanting to be successful in your business life, okay? You should be focused on getting a Twitter account and doing that. I'm not the only one on Twitter that's putting out great stuff. There are a lot of other people in Prime America that are also doing that that you probably want to look at, okay? But I'm just telling you, I'm serious about the information I put on Twitter, okay? I put a lot of energy into finding the kind of material that I think will help you. Then you can go to HectorLamarque.com. Every talk I've done, well, not every, but pretty much every talk I've done is on my website at HectorLamarque.com. You can start listening to the kinds of things that you need right now, whatever that happens to be, okay? I'm not the only one. There's stuff at POL. They're everywhere, okay? I'm just saying, if you're serious about winning and getting your thinking right so that you can win, then the information's out there, okay? This call I put out every week, it's free. You can listen to it 24 hours a day, seven days a week from Tuesday to Tuesday. That you don't listen to it or that you don't get your people listening to these calls, to me is I just don't understand that thought process. It's crazy. What you want your people doing is growing, folks, and you want them thinking about the right things. I promise you on these calls, they're going to get the kind of things that I did to grow my business the way that I thought that I know led to the success that I've enjoyed, okay? So do it. Stop being proud. Stop being thickheaded. Do it. My goal is to help you become more successful. This is my contribution to Primerica. This call is every week. And I put a lot of time into this, okay? It's not like somebody just throw up. So don't set short-term goals for more than 90 days. If you set a short-term goal that takes more than 90 days, you may lose interest. Short-term goals should be like daily, weekly, monthly, okay? And make sure those goals are in daily really is the key. I mean what you do every day is what's going to actually what you do every hour is going to be the thing that really allows you to be, you know, blow by your competition and really start succeeding in a great way. When you start managing your time hour by hour, I'll talk more about that in a second, but it's really critical that you do that. Number eight, maintain a balance between long-term and short-term goals. Long-term goals tend to be hidden in a fog of the future, so you have some short-term goals. Like, you know, things you want. Like maybe you want a certain article of clothing or a car or a vacation or something to keep up your excitement, right? Or a great night out with your partner or your family if you hit some goals, right? They say, you know, like you live in Southern California, you know, if you hit a certain goal, you'll take your family to Disneyland or to a ball game or, you know, to a play. I don't know, anything. Have some goals where you start doing some fun things that if you hit them, you go have fun. You enjoy. So that you start relating getting results to joy, to enjoyment, to fun, to experiences, okay? That's one of the things I did. I always tied, you know, if I hit a goal, then we're going to do this. We're going to have some fun. We're going to go to the desert. We're going to go to dinner. We're going to take the kids to Disneyland. We're going to do something fun, okay? Number nine, include your loved ones in your goals. Include your kids if you have kids. Include your spouse, all right, if you have a spouse. Involve them, and they'll buck you up when you need encouragement. They'll kick you in the rear end, right? It's like, you know, you had a saying, you know, I tell all the partners that, you know, you have what you have. You tell the person that's actually doing the business, you know, when they get home that they either have a suitcase on the porch or a briefcase, okay? Choose one, right? Choose which one do you want. You're going to have to have a briefcase or a suitcase. Get your butt to work, right? But don't be sitting around doing nothing. If you tell me you're going to be an RVP, if you tell me you're going to be successful, if you tell me you want to do something great, I better not catch you watching ESPN or a soap opera or something stupid like that or doing something stupid like going bowling or playing softball or doing some goofy thing that has nothing to do with you accomplishing your goals. Set goals in all areas of your life. Look, you should have spiritual, physical, family, financial, business goals. You should have all kinds of goals, okay? And they should be clear as day. You don't have to have tons of them on each one, but, you know, when you put your little three-by-fives, have all those goals, but have them, you know, when you don't have a million of them, there's just two or three so you can focus, okay? Your goals must harmonize. Whenever you detect a conflict, set priorities that will eliminate the conflict, okay? So you have to have your goals have to be in harmony with your life and what you're trying to accomplish. Number 12, review your goals regularly. In my opinion, you should review them 10, 20 times a day. That's what I did. I was constantly looking at my goals, constantly reminding, constantly revising them too. As I accomplished things, I would revise them, right? I was always, he says regularly here. I mean like hourly. I mean all the time. Does that seem obsessive? It's not because whatever your mind is constantly focused on, that's what you'll accomplish. That's what will happen. That's what will become a physical reality in your life. So the more focused you are, anybody that accomplishes a significant goal in their life, I promise you they are obsessive compulsive about that goal. If they're an Olympic athlete, if they're an actor, if they're a business person, if they're, you know, a pastor of a church, I don't care. Everybody has to have goals and you've got to be thinking about it in an obsessive manner. The more obsessive you are in the focus on it, the faster it will happen. Because your mind, your subconscious will take over and create that situation in your life. It may sound metaphysical or whatever you want to call it, but all I know is it works. That's all I know. Set vivid goals. Define not only what you want but by when you want it and concentrate on it multiple times a day again. Those goals have to be vivid. You have to see in your mind's eye exactly how you see your life playing out, what you want, what you want for your family, what you want for yourself, where you want to live, you know, what kind of person you want to be. I mean you have to create a video, a movie in your mind of exactly how you want things to happen. Everybody who does anything in a significant way uses their imagination to create that thing before it becomes a physical reality. I mean even, think about this, the phone that you're listening to this message on or if you're listening to it on an audio, right? Whatever device you're listening to it, somebody thought about that device in their mind before they created it. The car you're driving, the home you live in, the building you work out of, it doesn't matter what it is, okay? The articles of clothing that you have on your body right now, okay? Someone visualized those things before they become a physical reality. You need to do the same thing with your life. You need to visualize exactly how you want it to play out. You need to have that and play it over and over and over in a loop in your mind. And the more you do, your mind, your subconscious mind will go to work and help you do the things, do the actions to create that thing and make it a reality. You've done this before with a lot of things in your life. You just haven't done it consciously. What I'm asking you to do now is to do it consciously, okay? Don't chisel your goal. Sometimes you have to change goals to conform to your growing and awareness of what's really important. So sometimes these goals are going to change all the time, okay? Goals are not in granite. They will change. They will grow. As you become more aware, you become better, especially if you accomplish some goals and you've got to change those goals and move them up. Let's say your goals make $100,000. Well, as soon as you hit $100,000, if you don't have a backup goal to go to $200,000, you're not going to go to $200,000. You're not going to go to $200,000 and plan to make that happen. So you've got to not chisel them in granite. They need to be flexible. Reach out into the future. Number 15, the idea of goal setting is to plan your life rather than taking it as it comes. Okay, so in other words, what I mean by that, you need a vision of how your life will play out. In the future, my goal, one of the really driving forces of my working like a crazy person early in my career, is I wanted to, you know, we know how many of you go on vacation. I talk about this all the time because I swear to God, this really, really is what moved me probably more than anything. You know, when you go on vacation, a really nice vacation where you're not broke, when you go on a nice vacation and when you're on vacation, what you do is you get up whenever you feel like it and then you do whatever you feel like doing, right? Like if you want to go play golf today, you go do that. Or if you want to go hiking or you want to go surfing or you want to go sailing or you want to go lie on the beach and read a book or I don't know, it doesn't matter what you want to do. When you're on vacation, you do whatever it is you want to do. You eat great food, right, because you're on vacation so you're going out to restaurants and you're eating great food and you're just doing whatever it is you want to do and you're relaxed and you're sharing time, great memories with your family or spouse or whatever. I mean, being on vacation is just awesome, right? When you're on a really good vacation, you know what I'm talking about. My goal was always to create a business and a cash flow and get financially independent so I could live every day as if I'm on vacation. Folks, at least 90% of my life resembles vacation. It just does. That's intentional. I saved millions of dollars and invested that wisely so that I have a lot of passive cash flow. I have built a business that puts off several million dollars a year cash. I don't have any debt whatsoever and I do whatever I want every day. Every day I do whatever I want. That's what I wanted to live like. That was my goal. You may say, oh, that's hedonistic or whatever. I don't care what you think about that. I enjoy the heck out of it. I love the fact that I live this way. My wife loves the fact that I live this way. My kids love the fact that I built a business that could help them and help our family to live that way. Folks, I'm telling you. I help people through the teachings I do. I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes every year so I do my share for the economy. I don't feel one bit guilty about that. I did that on purpose. All I'm telling you is I was crystal clear about what I wanted and you need to be crystal clear about what you want. Maybe that doesn't turn you on. It turned me on and I'm telling you it turns me on every day still. I think that you need to really plan your life rather than taking it as it comes. Either you're going to run your agenda and your goal sets and create that or you're going to work for somebody that has their own goals and you're going to help them accomplish their goals, one or the other. I don't know. I'd rather have my own. You've got to have long-term goals, guys. You've got to have those weekly and finally goals for tomorrow. I think you have to plan your day hour by hour. Every day before I went to bed, I've talked about this before but I'll repeat it because I think it was instrumental in the success that I've experienced. I would never go to bed at night without having an hour by hour plan for the following day in writing. At nighttime, I'd take 15, 20, 30 minutes and I would have my plan. Nine o'clock, make this phone call. Ten o'clock, you have a meeting with so-and-so. Eleven o'clock, I'm doing this. I had everything planned out, who I was going to call, their phone numbers written next to where I was going to call them or if I had to do some work on putting together a financial needs analysis type thing for somebody, I would have that in there. I'd have everything. When I got up in the morning, I had a plan for the day and then I got up running. I wasn't worried. I just knew if I followed that plan, I didn't have a phone that did that. Back then, I had a little Franklin planner. After I completed each thing, I would highlight that thing and that was done. Boom, boom, boom. What I wanted to see at the end of the day is from 9 a.m. I used to basically go from 9 to midnight. I'd have everything blocked out. Some of that in there was time with my kids or time with my family or whatever. They were all part of my day. It wasn't just working the whole time. I had everything planned though. I maxed out every bit of time I had. Then as I did it, I highlighted it out so I know I got it done. If I didn't get it done that day, then I moved it to the next day and I got it done the next day. The fact is that I had a plan hour by hour. Most of you, you might think that's obsessive, but I guarantee you, you start doing that, you start planning your days like that, and you start acting on those plans, you will start blowing by your competition like they're standing still because people don't have the self-discipline to do that. Most people don't. It's a simple thing to do, but even I'm telling you this, the vast majority won't do it. You're really not very bright if you don't do it, but I'm telling you, most of you won't do it. If you started doing it, you would start seeing amazing results in your life and in your business, and you'd get more productive. You wouldn't waste all that time that you waste right now. I guarantee you, if we could look back in a video of your week last week, you wasted a minimum of 20 hours, maybe more, that you just wasted. If you could have invested those in your business and growing yourself in something, personal development, I don't know, whatever, in 12 months, you would be so far ahead of the game, it would blow your mind. You would start blowing by your competition like they're standing still. That's what I did. That's what everybody should do that's serious about winning. I hope you take my advice here and do this. Have a set of goals for every day, and then review those results at night. Like I said, go over what the day, how did it go, does this happen, what would I have done differently, how could I do it better tomorrow, what skill sets do I need to improve on so that I get a better result than I got today. I don't know, whatever. You went to go close a sale, but it didn't close because you couldn't handle the objection correctly. Then shore up, fix it, get it done, know what you need to do, call your upline for help. I mean, whatever. 17, train yourself to create your goals. Visualize yourself possessing what you set your goals for. I've talked about that already. I'm just saying it again. Visualize what do you want. How to be emotional for you. You can't just wait until it happens, man. It just pumps you up so much you're willing to just prospect like a crazy person and make that happen. Develop yourself like a crazy person to make it happen. Prepare like crazy to make it happen. Number 18, set activity goals, not production goals. Activity will lead to production only, let me say this, this is a caveat, only if you become a closer. You must become a closer. If you set activity goals, not production goals, you should have a production goal. I want to do 10 transactions, whatever, but really the activity is the main thing. Activity is only good if you're a closer. You have the ability to say, yes, I want to do business with you. Yes, I want to join your business. Yes, I want to get field trained. Yes, I want to come to an op night. Yes, I want to come to a fast start school. Yes, you've got to be able to close. Activity by itself is no good unless you're a closer. Those of you hearing me, we need to learn how to close people. I have a CD called Overcoming Objections. You can get that. You've got to listen to it 100, 200 times and become a closer. When you become a closer and you have great activity goals, you're going to get great results. You're going to make money. You're going to build a business. You're going to be able to develop people. Number 19, expect good things to happen. They probably will if you're overprepared. When you're overprepared, you can expect good things to happen. I expect good things to happen in my business, in my life, because I prepare. If you're not prepared, you're going to be worried, doubtful, afraid, fearful. If you're prepared, you can expect with good conscience good things to happen. They probably will. Number 20, start now. Give goal setting two hours of concentrated effort today. Don't procrastinate on setting your goals and putting them in writing. It's too important to piss off. I'll get to it later. No, no, no, no, no, no. No putting off setting goals. This is something you need to do today or tomorrow. Get it done ASAP. No more procrastinating. You get it done now and you start focusing on it. Try this. Try this. Don't procrastinate. Stop being a procrastinator. I used to be one. I am a recovering procrastinator. I know what that is, but I learned to stop doing that in relation to my business. When I stopped procrastinating relative to my business, my business exploded. Stop procrastinating. Do it now. Get busy. Be different. Put them in writing. Don't be like anybody else. Talk to you later.