How to Accomplish Your Biggest Goal by Learning from My Past Mistakes
I always believed that I’d accomplish my goals and live my dream life.
Working for myself, doing what I want, when I want.
Only it didn’t happen. And I almost gave up on myself, succumbing to a lifetime of 9-to-5.
But there’s one thing I’ve noticed in life:
When you think you’ve failed and don’t believe you can accomplish your mission, you’re closer to success than you realize.
Remembering this, I decided that quitting isn’t an option.
This year, I’m determined to make big strides toward my goals. I’m going to show you my exact plan because I’ve learned a lot from my past mistakes, even though I’m still sorting through them.
My Intro to Online Business
In 2015, I was fired up to succeed online.
I took Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch course where he teaches people how to start their own online course businesses. It injected motivation and excitement straight into my veins.
With the blueprint to success in my hand, I came up with a business idea to teach people how to make new friends and started writing content.
I wrote guest posts, landed features in publications like Business Insider and Life Hack, got minor virality on Quora, and increased my SEO traffic.
I wrote engagement emails, learned how to write sales copy, and sold the beta version of my first online product to exactly one person.
After fleshing out my product, I then sold it to six more people. I created two more products and sold some coaching as well.
By December 2019, after all of this time and effort, I made roughly three thousand dollars.
Not exactly something to write home about.
It was exhausting. I was burnt out—and still am. I haven’t written content for The Social Winner since.
But I didn’t let this break me. I reviewed my situation, studied my miscalculations, and created a game plan to accelerate my dreams.
My Former Miscues and Future Game Plan
I recently created a new project for myself: uncover my past misjudgments and figure out how to succeed with robriker.com.
A lot to ask, I know.
But after some major reflection, I found critical areas that need improvement and good topics to explore further.
- Setting clear goals and creating a detailed game plan
- Ensuring I have a burning desire to conquer these objectives
- Removing distractions and strictly focusing on my most important duties
With these subjects in mind, I chose some quality resources to research:
- The book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It focuses heavily on goal-setting, planning, and developing your own self-confidence.
- The book Start with Why by Simon Sinek. When it comes to goal-setting, it’s vital to lead with your ideals, which this book explains in detail.
- The book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. I chose this book to learn more about focus.
- This interview with Ramit Sethi and Noah Kagan. I remember Noah providing interesting advice about having only one goal, so I wanted to rewatch this and see if it could help.
The last part of my game plan involved deep self-reflection, brainstorming, and planning because some answers can only come from me.
After creating my blueprint, I used my reading and note-taking habit to learn and document everything I thought would help me succeed.
What the Research Taught Me About My Past Mistakes
I’m not bothered by my failed venture at all. It hurt my ego at times, but it didn’t touch my self-worth.
Building a solo business forced me to learn. I got my hands dirty and developed problem-solving skills I didn’t have before.
But I need to improve the three mindsets and habits previously discussed if I want to succeed with this next venture.
First, I’ll discuss the lessons I learned. Then, I’ll show you what I’m doing (and what you can do too) to prosper from this advice.
1. Clarify Your Goals and Create a Solid Game Plan
“You can’t hit a target if you don’t know what it is.”
—Tony Robbins
Even with the guidance of Zero to Launch, I had no idea what my goal was. So, of course, I didn’t know what I needed to do to accomplish that goal.
Should I focus on gaining email subscribers? What about Twitter? Should I create ebooks or video courses? How should I price them?
I had a case of Shiny Object Syndrome and wanted to try it all. As I’ll show you soon, that’s a recipe for disaster.
J. K. Rowling didn’t write the best-selling book series of all time by chance. She planned the general narrative to all seven Harry Potter books before she finished the first.
Napoleon Hill says that goal-setting and detailed planning are the basis for every achievement, and I’m going to take this seriously.
2. Instill a Burning Desire to Accomplish Your Goal
Thomas Edison failed over 1,000 times trying to create the light bulb. There’s no way in hell he would have succeeded had he not immensely cared to find a solution.
When I started my quest to make money online, I also craved success.
But I didn’t have a burning desire to accomplish one particular goal. My ambition had no substance.
As Simon Sinek would say, I didn’t have my why. I knew what I wanted to do—help people make new friends—but I didn’t tie it to an emotional purpose that people could connect with.
This time, I need to develop a hunger for something very specific. I need to want it more than anything I’ve ever desired. And it needs to evoke pride, joy, or an exciting new way to live.
Napoleon Hill makes it clear: once you know your purpose and create a plan, your thoughts can be transformed into reality if they’re vivid and you constantly review them.
3. Focus Intensely
Bruce Lee says it best:
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
My lack of clarity also hindered my attention. I expended energy in too many directions.
I tried to grow. I tried to make money. I tried to coach. I tried selling products. I tried writing content. I tried promoting myself.
Testing ideas isn’t bad.
Not focusing on a distinct outcome is.
“You’d think focus means saying yes, but it actually means to say no.”
When he returned to Apple, he cut their product lineup from 350 to just 10. I don’t even need to tell you whether that decision worked well for them.
But having a lofty goal set out ten years in the future can be hard to focus on. That’s why Noah Kagan, who grew sumo.com to over a million subscribers, says it’s best to create a singular one-year goal.
Therefore, I decided to create a high-level long-term goal and a one-year goal to keep my attention focused.
Beautiful Harmony
These three changes have exquisite synergy.
When your goals are strikingly detailed and meaningful, you yearn to see them come to fruition.
And it’s much easier to focus on that one single objective.
Putting This Knowledge into Practice
Here’s how I adopted these principles. You can follow the same framework to achieve your goals too.
Set My Long-term Goal
First, I did some brainstorming and deep thinking to figure out what I really wanted in life.
It wasn’t hard for me to figure out that I want freedom—freedom to not have to do something if I don’t want to, and freedom to say yes to anything I want.
I want the same for my wife. I want her to have the ability to quit working if she wants. I want her to have the opportunity to do whatever is most important to her, whenever she wants.
I came up with my ideal solution. Obtain enough money so that the interest on that money provides more than enough cash to live, thrive, and continue growing.
$250,000 a year would be enough to give us a good life, so I doubled it to $500,000 per year. Assuming I can make 5 percent interest on my money, I’d need $10,000,000.
So that’s my long-term goal:
I want to have $10,000,000 by the time I’m 45 years old (11 years from now).
Create My Detailed Plan for Accomplishing My Long-term Goal
Without a strategy for completing your goal, it becomes a wish. I’m not going to hope for success—I’m going to design the roadmap and take consistent action.
My plan is to obtain a large and loyal audience by writing helpful content on five platforms—robriker.com, Medium, Quora, Twitter, and email.
It may seem like this spreads my attention thinly by not focusing on one, but these platforms are symbiotic. I’ll be able to repurpose my articles so I can produce more content with a wider reach at a faster pace.
Once I have a sizable following, I will monetize by selling low-end info products like ebooks, using affiliate links, and making money from Medium’s partner program.
As I find success with certain low-end info products, I will flesh out my best ideas into courses and coaching to increase my income.
Finally, once this business model is providing me a healthy income, I will start looking for other business opportunities and partnerships that can start on the back of my audience.
How I’ll Make This Happen
The best marketing tactic is to create good content. None of this will work if people don’t connect with what I write.
That’s one reason why I created a daily writing habit—to make sure I’m constantly improving.
In the near future, I’ll also create a way to deliberately practice and enhance my writing as well.
Here’s what my schedule will look like:
- Read and write every day (doesn’t matter how much, I just want a daily habit for each)
- Publish one article every Friday on robriker.com
- Republish my articles on Medium and Quora
- Write 10 tweets per day
- Send one email per week
If I do this, I think I can hit my new one-year goal, which we’ll go through now.
Attacking My One-year Goal
After rewatching Noah Kagan’s interview with Ramit Sethi, I agreed that creating a singular one-year goal is an excellent idea.
It will allow me to ask the question, “Will this decision or action help me accomplish my one-year goal?” at any time, helping me stay on track.
So, after going through my long-term goal and thinking about what could help me get there, I decided this would be my one-year goal:
By June 30, 2021, I want 10,000 combined followers on Twitter, Medium, and my email list.
Creating this goal is a vital step. It helps sharpen my focus and remove distractions.
I won’t consider creating products. I won’t mess around creating an Instagram account. I’m just going to write, publish, and interact with followers.
Determine My WHY
Next, I wanted to figure out why this project—robriker.com—would be my conduit for success.
I thought long and hard and came up with this:
I want to help people realize they don’t have to give up on achieving their dream life.
People are capable of so much more than they know. Unfortunately, too many fail to achieve their goals and settle for a life that doesn’t fulfill them.
It destroys their confidence, shrinks their self-worth, a leaves a permanent pit in their stomach.
I hate this and want to empower people to chase what they deserve because I know the feeling too well.
I’ve wanted to work for myself for more than 10 years now and recently felt like a failure for still working my 9-to-5. I know what it’s like to wonder if I should just give up and concede to the life I’m living.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t enjoy my life. But I’d be lying if I said I’m living my dream life.
And so many people out there are in the same boat. They had dreams of living a life they love but settled down because they thought they failed, even though they still yearn for that life.
They’ve lost hope and given up. Just like I considered doing.
If that’s you, I feel for you. It’s a tough place.
Over the next year, I’m going to show you that you should believe in yourself and that you can rise from the ashes and conquer your most daunting goals, even when your think it’s too late, by doing it myself.
Tactical Tips for Staying On Track
It’s easy to write down a goal. It’s not always easy to complete.
The exercise above is helpful and necessary, but it won’t bring my goals to fruition by itself.
I need to apply a few more tactics to ensure success:
Review my Goals, Game Plan, and WHY Twice Daily
Napolean Hill explains the importance of reviewing your goals and game plan regularly.
It helps you keep your eye on the prize. Every time you read them, you reinforce their importance in your mind.
The more you do it, the more you’ll believe in your goal and process because you’ll understand them and the reasons behind them more clearly.
When visualizing your game plan, focus on the process, not the result. For example, I need to visualize myself sitting at my computer, writing, and publishing. I don’t want to envision my article going viral.
A study compared outcome vs. process-based visualizations and found that people performed better after visualizing themselves performing their daily practice as opposed to seeing themselves succeed. If you focus on a successful result but don’t achieve it (e.g. my article doesn’t go viral), you get discouraged and stop believing that your game plan will work.
I wrote my goals, game plan, and WHY on a Mac sticky-note and keep it in the top right corner of my desktop. Then, I also created another sticky that reads, “10M” and “10K” to represent the ten million dollars I want by 45 and my one year-goal of ten thousand followers.
I also have the “10M” and “10K” as my phone wallpaper.
My plan is to review everything twice daily, do a quick visualization of what my process should look like, and constantly remind myself of my goals every time I see the “10M” and “10K”.
Create Daily Habits
I already have my daily reading and writing habits which are still going strong.
The “L” and “W” on the left stand for “learning” and “writing”. If I spend any time reading or taking notes,, I put an “X” on that day in the “L” row. If I write, an “X” goes in the “W” row.
I haven’t missed any writing days yet since I started tracking, and I’ve only missed a few learning days. It’s not a huge deal if I miss one day, but I try to never miss two in a row.
I have also kept to my robriker.com Friday publishing schedule.
But I still need to create habits for tweeting regularly, sending weekly emails, and republishing my content.
Once I do that, I will be in the full swing of my publishing goals.
Practice Deliberately
Even though I believe my writing will improve simply by writing every day, I want it to get a lot better. Therefore, I’m going to create a project to figure out how to deliberately improve it.
I watched a lot of videos from Niklas Göke’s Write Like a Pro course and he teaches you how to deliberately practice your writing.
So, in the near future, I plan on going through that and deciding if I need to go anywhere else to learn more.
The High-level Takeaway
If you want to accomplish your biggest goals, you want to:
- Clarify your goals
- Create a game plan
- Have a burning desire to achieve these goals
- Focus intently
Accomplish this by:
- Developing your most important, long-term goal
- Creating your game plan for accomplishing it
- Developing your one-year goal
- Saying no to anything goal related that doesn’t help you achieve your one-year goal (you can still work out, socialize, etc. because they pertain to different goals/areas of your life)
- Finding your WHY—why are you doing THIS to accomplish your goal? Is this a cause that other people can get behind?
Then, reinforce your goals and game plan by reviewing them daily and keeping reminders with you wherever you go. Visualize yourself doing the work that will get you to the finish line.
Lastly, develop daily habits for the individual components of your process. If you want to get in shape, create a daily habit of exercising. If you want to make new friends, make it a habit to meet and interact with new people.
I can’t guarantee this will work though, because:
- I haven’t accomplished my goal yet
- You still have to put in the work
But I do expect it to help tremendously. And you can see for yourself by following my journey.
I created robriker.com to improve my life and this project is just one more piece of the puzzle.
If you want to see my progress, or better yet, join me on the path to a better life, follow me and conquer your biggest dreams right alongside me.
Originally published at https://robriker.com on May 29, 2020.
