In a 1979 Harvard survey of MBA students, they were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”
Here’s what the study revealed:
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3% in the class had written goals and plans
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13% had unwritten goals
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84% had no goals at all
Ten years later 3% of the individuals with written goals had a higher net worth than the other 97% combined! To be exact, the 13% with unwritten goals earned twice as much as the 84% with no goals.
Even more incredible, the 3% with written goals and plans earned ten times as much as all the others put together.
It’s a fact. People who have clear, strong goals, especially written ones, are far more likely to succeed than those who overlook the importance of goal setting and intention management.
This is why a goal setting circle like a mastermind that provides goal-setting frameworks and accountability is key to be involved with. A mastermind is composed of like-minded individuals with clear, concise, written down goals. The group motivates each other and holds each other accountable.
Don’t you want to be in the 3%?
It’s not anything supernatural as to how that earning power of the Harvard Business School MBA class came into reality. Results in business come from clear action plans, strong intentions, and an unwavering definiteness of purpose.
Once you have committed your long-term goals to pen and paper, and you keep those well-documented goals at the forefront of the mind, they will dramatically increase their probability of coming into reality. It’s just the law, you will always get more of what you focus on. The Harvard study is a study in commitment. If you don’t know what you want you won’t get it. You need a target to aim for. You have to commit.
Wealth rarely drops into people’s laps. It’s a formula. It’s the result of a clear and consistent focus on wildly important goals that can materially move your bottom line and your life into a better existence. If all the wealth were redistributed to everyone equally, the same small group of people would have the majority of it again in 10 years because only a small subset of the population stays focused on evergreen financial principles and engages in long-term goal setting thinking.
Compensation = Quality of Service X Quantity of Service.
The equation for compensation is evergreen. It will be the same tomorrow as it is today.
What skills can you hone, then systematize, and then scale?
Success, just like real estate, is a team sport.
When is the last time you closed a deal by yourself in real estate? Whether you are an industry insider or an end homebuyer. No one person is a land surveyor, an architect, a developer, a builder, a materials supplier, a marketer, a broker, an investor, a lender, a recorder of deeds, and a real estate attorney all wrapped into one. No such unicorn that touches every layer of the real estate supply chain exists.
There is too much specialized knowledge and physical labor in each of those specific areas to be an expert at every single domain inside real estate. A closed real estate transaction is the result of many different industry experts putting forward their best work into the market.
Success, just like a development project, takes a village.
Surrounding yourself with like-minded people will keep your mindset and momentum moving in the right direction.
If you can keep an open mind and learn proven approaches of other industry leaders you are guaranteed to make it further and faster.
Business has always been about asymmetric information advantages.
If your sales process, for example, is more adapted to the industry or the market you are serving than you will be able to handle more customers more efficiently AND with higher conversions than your competitors.
Maybe you pay your sales people their commissions the same-day they close rather than 2 weeks to 2 months out.
It could be anything that makes your team run better in a more motivated fashion. Learning from these proven approaches will help you scale cleaner and faster.
Have wildly important metric-based goals.
At the Level Up Mastermind, we have adopted the 4DX goal-setting system. It keeps our focus on the 4 disciplines of execution so that we know our overarching goals for the quarter, as well as the weekly and daily metrics to keep moving the ball forward.
Chunking out the macro goals into actionable micro-steps is enabling it’s members to reach their wildly important goals “WIGs” – these are goals that would have NEVER been achieved without extra focus and the 4DX system.
Completing a wildly important goal can mean massive improvements in customer service, revenue, and ultimately the trajectory of your life. Technically speaking, once you achieve a wildly important goal, you will never be the same.
What’s a wildly important goal?
Think big enough to the point where it scares you. That’s a WIG. What is that next level of your life that you think about while you daydream or meditate? Perhaps just simply thinking about it gives you a mixture of butterflies and anxiety.
Having the butterflies is the inspirational side of the coin and anxiety is the fear of failure side of the coin. Think of a goal that charges your nerves that much, a goal that gives you a mixture of wonder and fear..
Take that goal and apply it to the 4DX system. The system can be applied to goals of the largest magnitude so they have a larger probability of being attained in this lifetime instead of never.
It’s not easy to sit alone with large goals that feel personal and uniquely equipped to your skillset without having a team and proven approaches to help you.
Surround yourself with specialized knowledge.
In Napoleon Hill’s world-renowned success book, “Think and Grow Rich” what sits alongside definiteness of purpose, also known as commitment, is your willingness to access specialized knowledge and your desire to implement it.
Specialized knowledge and specialized approaches are your shortcuts to achieving your goals. There aren’t many shortcuts, but learning from industry experts is one of the only valid shortcuts. You can do that by networking with industry experts, joining masterminds, or by reading books written by the greats in your industry.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel or invent a better mousetrap.
In the course of business, all you need to know is the right approach to build your product or deliver your service to the market efficiently and then you take action. Ideas are cheap, execution is everything. That’s why having accountability around you so you take the right actions at the right pace is vital.
You don’t need to outsmart your competition, but you do need to out-execute. That doesn’t take a genius to understand, it just takes the right blueprint from others in your industry, in other words, the social capital around you, supporting for you, and rooting for your success.