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Glenn Mattson
Welcome back to the Building Blocks of Success. In these sessions, we're gonna be talking about the behavior side of the of the success triangle. Really, today is all about goals and dreams, and how to actually set up goals. Let's first talk about really, what is the difference between dreaming and goals? Look, we've all been there. We have daydreams in the middle of a meeting, and maybe you're driving down the street and you look at someone else's car, you look at a place that someone lives, maybe you're looking at someone happy or fit, or whatever it may be in life, but you see something that you would like, well, those are dreams, we think about things like that. And our brain is amazingly powerful, especially if you're visually based, and putting all these great pictures into our head, almost like a movie projector of what it would look like, of us being there. So, you know, goals or dreams in the back of your head are fantastic. That's really the little child inside of you that's saying, hey, man, wouldn't it be nice to have that? Wouldn't it be cool to own this? Wouldn't it be nice to feel this way? Right? Or have this happen again in my life. So dreams are fantastic. And dreams are needed. Dream is really the basis of all our goals. So dreaming is very important. We have to continue to dream. Think outside the box, if you can think it oh my God, you've heard all the one liners, right? If you can think it, you can achieve it. Right. Depending on your spirituality, some would say that if you have or somebody gave you the ability to think it, then they give you the ability to get it, right.
Glenn Mattson
So we don't have to go through all the cliches, but the end of the day, if you have a vision in your mind of what you would like to accomplish in life, then you can accomplish it. The question is, do you want to put in the hard work to get there? So dreams are really important right. Now we all have dreams as as young kids, and we have dreams now. Right? I had a dream. I remember way back when that early on and doesn't make a difference if it makes sense or doesn't. It's personal, right? So I remember when I was a kid. There's one person in our town that drove around in an S Class 560. He also had a two-seater. The big boy in the two-seater, and I said to myself, now that's it. Of course he was the wealthiest person in our town owned all the real estate. Super nice person. But when you saw him in town, show up at the sporting events, know all the great vacations they went on. It wasn't the car that I loved, although it is. It was also what the car represented. You drove around in my town in a Mercedes. First of all, you were doing great. But that one, was the best one of them all. And it was very black and white on what it meant, to me. So there I am as a young kid, looking at this car going, oh my God. Wouldn't that be nice? Then in high school, went on a lacrosse recruiting trip. One of the captains of the team, parents, car dealer, he had one at school. Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but stay with it. I remember going into the city, because where I was at school, the city was about an hour away. So we drove into New York City, maybe three or four times throughout my four years of college. This one time we're driving in and I can remember sitting in the backseat, legs fully extended and not hitting the seat in front of me, which meant it was a huge, enormously huge car. And I'm six, five. I have three big brothers also. And we grew up in smaller cars. So just sitting in a car that was that big was just monumental. And the feel of being in the car. Just impacted me. I've always wanted one.
Glenn Mattson
So here I am. In my 30s contemplating getting one, sure I can afford it. I've been busting my butt to get one. I've always wanted one. We have to have the ability to dream. But we also have to understand that dreams are not goals. Unless you put a plan together a dream is nothing more than a whisper in your mind. They come and go. So a dream is a hope. It's a wish. It's a desire.
Glenn Mattson
A goal is an objective. A goal is something you will achieve a goal is not a hope. A goal is not a 'wouldn't that be nice?' A goal is something that you're going to fight Heaven and Earth for to achieve. A goal has a plan that has a due date. It has checkpoints of proficiency, scorecards, if you want to call it that. Goals are something that you look at on a weekly basis. Goals are something that you would fight for. There is a massive difference between the two.
Glenn Mattson
So I want to connect the dots and how to convert your dreams, your thoughts, your wishes to actual objectives. So let's take the journey of actually how to set up goals. Let's go through this there is a about 11 to 12 steps that we're going to go through. So let's walk through these. I'm going to show you how we do this. We had a program every December, for my gosh, 20 years. We did a lot of live training. And it was called Dream Book and then Cut and Paste. It was some of the funnest sessions we've ever had.
Glenn Mattson
Dream book was the process I'm going to walk you through right now is how do you go from having all these dreams and thoughts in your head things you want to have in life to but to actually have an actionable plan. That's the Dream Book. But in the Cut and Paste part is that action now that you've had your dreams converted to goals. Let's put those goals onto a dream board. A goal board which is you actually go and cut and paste you open up magazines you cut out what you're going to be fighting for. You put it onto your board, vision board. You go talk to some people who have done vision boards. It's amazing. The success that they have. We used to have about 100 250 people in this room and we do it every December. And every one of our clients could bring friends and family members to the event. So imagine having 100 people there. We had literally 1000s of magazines all over the tables with all the markers and glue and people putting together vision boards after we spent three hours doing goal setting.
Glenn Mattson
Remember, Joe who was a general agent brought his son. And here's his 12-year-old son going through what his goals were was great. Now everyone brought family members and friends, but little Joey sticks out of my head. He put together his goals. And when I asked those that wanted to share their vision board, I was delighted to see that little Joey raised his hand. It was kind of ironic, because his dad would never raise his hand in public like that to share. But here's his son. First, one to raise his hand. He stands up and says, as everyone has to do, explain your vision board. Why are those pictures important to you? What does it mean for you? So here's a little Joey, he gets up and explains what his vision board was. And, you know, 25 years ago, I don't remember everything that was on there. But he walks through very important things that he wanted to do. Was kind of cute too, because he also put up another vision board that says, for me to achieve these, these are things I have to eat and these are the things I have to do. Was sleeping at night and you know, it was kind of cute. And he had a, an eating board, also, how to make sure he had vitality. But one of the things he had on his vision board was he wanted a cat, he wanted a kitten. He wanted to have a pet. And someone in the room, as he was talking said, is your dad here? So big Joey raised his hand, the woman in the back of the room says the picture, the third one from the right in the upper corner. Are you and your wife okay with that? And of course, that was the picture of a kitten. When the father said, absolutely, the woman stood up and said, I have kittens at home.
Glenn Mattson
And if you would like to have a kitten, you can come over my house and you can pick any one of them that you would like to have. And here's a young boy took a day out of school to be here with all of us to go through Dream Books and a vision board. And he had the courage to get up and share his vision with everybody. He shared it. While he shared it, he actually achieved it.
Glenn Mattson
Imagine being a 10-year-old learning how to convert goals, things in your head, dreams into goals, then putting a plan together and sharing it. And the second you share it, you achieve it. It was amazing. The kids started tearing up, the woman came up and gave him a hug. It was epic, and how young he was to learn that you can convert something you want in your head to a plan and achieve it. So let's take the journey of how to convert our goals into behaviors.
Glenn Mattson
First step is this. Remember, what I'm trying to share with you is not just business related. But more times than not we have to hit business goals to achieve personal goals. So let's look at this. Number one. Remember, there's gonna be a handful of steps number one. First thing you need to do is to get eight pieces of paper, eight. These pieces of paper need to be unlined. Just get it from your copier. It's best, when it's lined your mind is thinking very intellectually, I just want you to dream. So it's better to have no line paper. I want eight pieces of paper. Those eight pieces of paper are going to represent eight areas of your life. Each piece of paper is going to have a header on it and I want you to write these down on each piece of paper. And then we're going to get a step two.
Glenn Mattson
So, what I'd like you to do on the first one is write down the word personal. Take the next piece of paper on the top of that one write down the word business. Third piece of paper family. Fourth piece of paper health. Fifth piece of paper spiritual. Sixth piece of paper financial. Seventh and eighth are attitudinal and behavioral. With eight pieces of paper, a way to put all eight pieces of paper on your table with the headers on them.
Glenn Mattson
What I'd like you to do within each of these eight pieces of paper is now we're gonna go to start on level two. So the second step, after you've identified your eight pieces of paper, is to on each piece of paper, write down everything that you would love to have in that area of your life. So step one was just to jot down the titles for each one. Step two, as you pull, pick each one up one by one, and jot down all your, your dreams in that area. So when it comes to financial, write them down. Where do you want to be a year from now, two years from now, five years from now? How much you want to be saving? What do you want to retire at? So write down all your financial objectives. What about saving for the kids college? Paying off your own some of your own debts? What are your financial goals? So just jot them down. And every time you write it, write one of them down, if you can turn your piece of paper a little bit, and turn it a little bit. It does not have to be organized your list. It's a matter of fact, I like it if it was even all over the place a little bit. But write down everything that you want in that area. Now, this is really important as you're writing it down. Do not put limitations on yourself. Don't say things like well, yeah, that'd be nice to have, but I can't have that. That's the crap in between your ears. It's holding you back. So there are no limits when it comes to your dreams. There's none. So I want you to include the tangible and the intangible. Don't prejudge, jot them down. Whatever you think you want in life, plop it down. So now that you have eight areas, each piece of paper has all the things that you would love to accomplish on a piece of paper. Remember, you're jotting them down. No prejudgments, don't discount, no limits, there is no fence posts in your brain, the only ones that are created are by you. So this is limitless.
Glenn Mattson
Let's get down to number three. After you've taken a look at each page, and all the things that you would love to have, pull up each page and give me due dates. Now, when I say a due date, what I mean by that is either it has to be by a year, or a month in a year. So you could say I want to have that by December 2023. Or you could say I'd love to achieve that in 24. Due dates are critical without a due date, it is not a goal. So go through and do all your due dates. That's step number three.
Glenn Mattson
Step number four is now pick them up and ask yourself did what I wrote down is that a must to have or is it a nice to have? What I mean by that is for each of your pages, each of your eight areas identify the ones that on each page that you're willing to fight for, what are the ones that are yeah, it'd be nice to have but this is an absolute need. This is an absolute, I'm going to fight hell or high water to get this. So some that you write down or yeah, the kind of niceties their second or third levels, and there's going to be some that are absolute first levels. So step four is pick the ones that you're willing to fight for. The ones that are absolutely critical for you. Sitting in front of you on all eight pieces of paper. Now realize you may find out that one of the things that you have down in your eight areas, for instance, spiritual or health or family, you may find out that as you look through it, not none of what you have down jumps out at you as a must have right now, that is an absolute critical. So you're not going to have potentially a critical area in each of your eight areas. But you also may have two or three criticals in one area. Right? You may want to lose weight, have a better relationship with the kids, those type of things. So don't assume that each area is only going to have one must have. So after you've identified your must haves, those are typically ones that I circle, right so you write down all the things you want, put your due dates next to it go through and say hey man, hell or high water which ones are the ones that are your musts, your musts. And just circle those.
Glenn Mattson
Step five, take a look at everything that you circled and move it over to another document. Take a look at what you wrote down. And I need you to ask yourself two things. When you have each of these things written down, what I'd like you to do now is prioritize them. So what you've done is you have eight areas your life, jotted down all your dreams within each area put down due dates. Within each area you pick your musts. You took all the musts; you moved over to another document. You look at that you say, okay, let's prioritize it. Now, after you prioritize it, now we're going to step number six.
Glenn Mattson
Step number six is making sure there's no afterburn. So after you prioritize it, you got to ask yourself, do I have any conflicting goals here? And you have to be on the same page about that. So for instance, I had someone the other day that when I was going through their goals, they had down that they wanted to have dinner at home four nights a week during the workweek. Yeah, I looked at their business goals. And one of it had to do with getting a masters, which meant that for them, they would be out of the house three nights a week studying. They also had down a designation for work that they need to get done. And that's also at night. So by sitting there, I mentioned, well, to achieve those two business goals, you're not going to hit that personal goal. So which one's going to win? Let's do it now, before the goals start, because they're going to have competing goals. They're going to be competing for your time. So we can know right up front, it's not going to work out. That's called afterburn.
Glenn Mattson
All that means is they have to have a conversation with a significant other for this quarter. I'm going to be working a lot during the nighttime. But moving forward after that, then I'm going to go back to the personal goal for the family and the time. So realize there's going to be some alterations that you have to make to make sure there's no afterburn. So afterburn is competing goals that you don't realize are competing against each other, and usually about three or four months into your goals program you're confused because you're trying to achieve business goals and personal goals. Yet, if they're not aligned with others, you're gonna have competing goals without realizing it. That's when we have a lot of afterburn. So we want to make sure we eliminate that.
Glenn Mattson
Now, let's get to the fun part now. Now we have this master list of all these different areas that we want to go after. We prioritized it and we eliminated, or we reorder the prioritization, after we figured out afterburn. That leads us now to step number seven. Step number seven is about SMARTER goals. SMARTER goals is an acronym. SMARTER stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound, enjoyable, and rewarding. So specific, let's go through these in one second. So they should be kind of easy to understand. That's why they're an acronym. And so we look at it specific, you just can't say I want to earn more money, you have to be very specific on how much you want to earn. You want to grow a client base; you have to be very specific on what that client base growth is going to look like. No wishy-washy words when you come to goal setting. Wishy-washy word has multiple meanings, things like a lot or less. I want to eat less, no, you have to be very specific. We also have to have measurable; you can't track anything, you can't track your progress unless it's measurable. So if it's not measurable, it's useless. Then we have attainable. What I mean by that is yes, goals should be a stretch goal should not be something easy. But attainable also mean that you believe that you can get it. It ain't going to be easy but you can get there. We talked about wildly outrageous goals. If you have those you already believe in your brain that you can't get it. So therefore they are and they are documentably really demotivating. Wildly outrageous goals. So make sure they're attainable, but it also means that they're not easy. You're supposed to be nervous. You're supposed to have some doubt when you do your goals, but they have to be attainable.
Glenn Mattson
Next is they have to be relevant. You have to have goals that are relevant. You can't set goals that that don't make sense for you or your or that they interrelate or they compete against others. That's afterburn. So it has to be relevant. They have to be something that means something to you. So you're willing to fight for. Me a timebound. Timebound is that if you don't have timestamps on these things, then how are you going to know if you're achieving it or not? Right, you should have making sure that your timeframe is long term or short term. If it's long terms, awesome. If it's short term, understand it, understand your due dates. You gotta have timestamps.
Glenn Mattson
Next piece is enjoyable, doing things that aren't going to be enjoyable for you, the long-term rate of continuation is very low. Now realize enjoyable doesn't mean forever, there's going to be some things that you may have to do that are going to be unenjoyable for a short time period could be three A's, three months, a year, but long term, it will be enjoyable. So sometimes you have to go through stuff to get there. But understand your goals and results should be enjoyable. And lastly, it has to be rewardable. So when we look at these SMARTER goals, we have to go through the process of looking at what we want to achieve, and then putting the plan together.
Glenn Mattson
So after we've done the SMARTER goals, then we go to step eight, which is creating a timeline for each one. That is putting together a master of all the action steps, all the things that need to be done on a timeline so that you have a scorecard, every week and every month of all the things you need to be doing to get to where you want to be at the end of the quarter. Right? So think about it. If you have a personal goal, and it's x, all right, well, where do you have to be in six months? All right, where do you have to be in nine months in three months to accomplish your six months in your 12 months? When it hits your three months, where do you need to be in month one and two to get there? Well, to get to where you want to be in month one, what do you have to do in week one, two or three to get there? Remember, you have to break large goals down into bite sized pieces. That's the whole saying about you can't eat an elephant in one gulp, you have to bite them, right. So all things have to be broken down into bite sized pieces.
Glenn Mattson
To create your timeline number. That's number nine, right. Now let's get to from where we sit the next piece of what we created SMARTER goals, we got the timeline for each of them, then we're gonna go to step nine. Step nine is really share it with your friends. The more people you share it with, the more that are going to know it. The more that know it, the higher possibility of attaining it. Sharing with friends is amazing. Absolutely amazing. You're also going to find when you share it with friends, you may get some that are going to add value to it and or maybe even give you some insights.
Glenn Mattson
The last piece that you want to take a look at is number 10 is review regularly. Review on a weekly basis. I review mine every Saturday morning over my first cup of coffee to make any adjustments or pivots. It also makes me feel good when I'm hitting my benchmarks. It also makes me feel good when I'm outside my comfort zone to hit those benchmarks. But if I'm doing things that are not the results that I was expecting, I can make pivots the following week, so that we're never behind the eight ball.
Glenn Mattson
So always remember, when you're looking at creating goals, go from dreams, eight areas of your life, jot them all down, put on your due dates, pick the ones that are absolute must haves versus the nice. Prioritize those, make sure you have no afterburn with whatever you put down. Now it's time to make it SMARTER goals. Once you've done that, put your timeline together, share with as many people as possible and then make sure that you review it on a regular basis. Next class we're gonna be talking about how to make sure you live lifeline and drive execution to those plans put together.
Glenn Mattson
This has been the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
S1E8 with Glenn Mattson: Goals, Commitment and Accountability
S2E1 with Glenn Mattson: Basics of Behavior and Goal Setting