In this episode, we talk about the concept of goal setting which is the last stage of the Think Up phase. We look at goals differently to
fuel, energize and electrify them, bringing them to life.

We know SMART goals = Specific, Measurable, Specific, Relevant and Time-driven.

There are a couple of elements missing with SMART Goals and I change it to “A Smart Goal” where A denotes Aligned.

• Aligned:
  Goals need to be aligned with your higher mission, vision and purpose.
• Specific:
  The goal that you’re creating should be specific and linked with your strategic plans.
• Measurable:
  We need to make sure that goals are measurable because if we can measure it, we can manage it.
• Attainable:
  It needs to be reachable and realistic.
• Relevant:
  The goals need to be relevant to our outcome and the tasks that we are doing.
• Time-driven:
  Goals need to have a deadline to draw us forward.

All these are left-brain stuff that lack energy, movement and emotions. If there’s no energy, electricity and vibrancy attached to them, they become
stagnant goals and don’t really drive us anywhere.

Ladder of Achievement Process

This process is used to connect goals to the emotional side of your brain with your heart, soul and energy elements that will drive you forward.

This process is focused on primarily three things:

1. Personal growth: The innate and emotional desire to move forward; a commitment to strive to grow.

2. Perseverance: Every entrepreneur needs determination and focus. With perseverance come these elements:

• Concept of Purpose:
  Your emotionally compelling why.
• Concept of Passion:
  This is the fuel that drives you forward.
• Concept of Patience:
  We need to know that we can’t control everything and in time, things will come into place.

3. Practice: Your discipline of action and execution. There are these elements to it:

• The Plan:
  Taking the long journey and breaking them down to manageable chunks.
• The People:
  Success isn’t a solitary pursuit and we should have people that we can turn to for mentoring.
• The Positivity:
  Negativity can brainwash us, so find the positive response and learnings.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a
business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

Welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution Show and in this episode we’re going to talk about the last stage of the Think Up
phase of the three phases of building a business or building a product or launching a product.

And so, in this segment we’re going to talk about goals and now I know you’re probably all going, “Oh, my god another one of those SMART goals”. Yeah … no
it’s not going to be your SMART goals. We aren’t going to touch on SMART goals but this is really about

How do you take an infused electricity and energy and vibrancy into those goals to give them life and have them come to a reality?

So, that’s really what this is really about. We’re using what I call my Ladder of Achievement Process to do that. So, when we come back
after this short introduction, we’re going to get into the ladder of achievement, we’re going to talk about your goals, we’re going to infuse them
with electricity and we’re going to see them come to life.

And by the way, if you’re not by your computer and you want to make sure that you get the guidebook to take you through this process, the free downloadable
guidebook go ahead and text MYLEGACY , one word no spaces M-Y-L-E-G-A-C-Y to 38470. I’ll see you soon.

Hey there I’m Mel Abraham and welcome back. I’m the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy and welcome back
to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution. And in this episode, we’re going to take a moment to start to go into some things that you probably heard
over and over again—this concept of goal setting and everything.

But I want to give you a different way to look at it and I want to give you a way that will fuel them; that will energize them, electrify them and bring
them to life. And so what we’re still dealing with is this whole concept of the three phases of business life or product life and we’re in the Think Up phase and so remember, there’s the Think Up phase, there’s the Get Up phase and there’s the Reach Up phase.

We’re in stage 1—the last part of stage 1—in the think up phase. We’re talking about the decisions that we need to make. And remember that all of
everything we are doing is overshadowed and in the shadow of the customer promise, the brand promise that you’re making first. Then, we build everything on
top of that. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to finish up stage 1—Decide and then we’ll move on to Ideation in the upcoming
episodes.

So, let’s just talk about this whole concept of where we’ve been. In decide,

• We talked about Why,
• We talked about What,
• We talked about your core strengths, and

· How to use your core strengths as a means of distinguishing yourself and creating distinction in the marketplace?

We hit on and touched on a number of the obstacles and challenges that you might butt up against, and how to navigate through that and the challenges about
that. We then dealt with the element of what is your elegant solution. How do you create an elegant solution in that process?

And then we’re going to talk about in this session all about the goals but my process called the ladder of achievement process that’s going to
infuse them with energy.

So, let’s touch on this concept of goals and I know that many of you heart it and “Oh, alright! SMART goals, SMART goals, SMART goals” and you know the
concept of SMART being Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant or results-oriented or Time-framed. And so, there is a tremendous amount of truth to
doing things that way.

The challenge that I find with this concept of smart goals, first there’s one element that I think is missing there. Well, there’s a couple of elements
that I think is missing there but one in particular, I kind of change it and say, “It’s not SMART goals, it’s A SMART goal”.

So SMART still being Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-driven but I put an A in front of it because the goals in my estimation, my
belief; the goals need to have alignment. They need to be aligned with:

• Your higher mission,
• Your higher vision,
• Your higher purpose.

They need to be goals that are the needle movers towards that outcome. And many times we set goals that aren’t driving us to where we want to go. There
just goals and yeah we accomplished them but did they move the needle for us?

So, when I look at goals, one of the first things that I ask myself,

· “Is this in alignment with the higher purpose, my higher vision, the greater mission of what I want to do?”

· “If I achieve this goal, does it move me down the path at a fast rate?”

· “Does it move me closer and in the direction that I want to go?”

So, again alignment is first, I believe, in dealing this. Then, we deal with this concept of Specific, making sure that whatever goal
you’re creating is specific—it’s linked to your strategic plans. This answers the questions of “Who?” and “What?” the elements are.

And then it needs to be Measurable. If we can’t measure it, we can’t manage it. So, we need to make sure that’s measurable and so, the
question then is “How?” This answers the question of:

• How we’re going to get there?
• How we’re going to measure it?
• How are we going to manage it?

It then needs to be Attainable which we talk about in saying it needs to be reachable, attainable and realistic.

Then Relevant: It needs to be relevant to our outcome, the tasks that we’re doing.

And it needs to be Time-driven: There needs to be a deadline to it. There needs to be something attached to it, to start to draw us
forward. Most of the time people will not operate without a deadline. So, that’s the kind of concept of SMART goals or in my world we call them “A SMART
goal”.

The challenge that I find with this is—this is a lot of left brain stuff. So:

• It lacks and energy,
• It lacks movement,
• It lacks the emotions

… that come about with trying to really drive yourself forward because we can put these up on a chart, we can put these up on the wall and look at your
goals everyday like people say and journal about them. But if there’s no emotion attached to them, if there’s no energy, electricity, vibrancy attached to
those goals; there’s not going to be any movement.

So they become stagnant goals, they don’t really drive you anywhere and so what I found is that I needed to attach a process to these goals that allowed me
to start to move them forward which is what I call the ladder of achievement process. It’s something that I use and that when I move my goals—if
you think of it as a—almost like a wheels that are starting to spin and you’re pushing your goals to and accelerate the goals, that’s what this does. It
starts to allow you to move forward through the goals and when you look at the framework for the process, you’ll understand why and what it is.

What we’re really doing is connecting threads from the left brain side of your and the logical side of your brain to the emotional side on the right
side—to your heart, to your soul, to the energy elements that are going to really start to drive you forward.

So, when you look at this process really it’s focused on a couple of different things that is:

• Personal growth,
• Perseverance, and
• Practice, primarily.

And perseverance and practice we break down and I’m going to break them down for you here.

What I want you to do is, I invite you to look at this in the context of a checklist to a process that you go through and you continually go through when
you’re setting goals and looking at goals because you’re going to find—as you get used to this, they get infused with energy and you start to move towards
them because you are emotionally connected to them.

So, let’s start with the first element which is really this concept of personal growth
and I think the concept of personal growth is the foundation for goal achievement. It’s the foundation of everything because if we don’t have the desire,
the innate desire, the emotional desire, to move forward. If we can’t bring that up, we’re not going to do anything. You can set a hundred goals. You can
set all kinds of inspirational goals but if they don’t move you and you don’t have this innate desire to move forward then you’re not going to do what’s
necessary to really bring it to life.

So, I need to look at it and say, “I need to be committed to this concept of personal growth” because trust me as an entrepreneur, as a business owner
you’re going to have obstacles when you set goals. In fact, the higher your goals are, the more obstacles you have but you got to think of that resistance
as if you’re building a muscle and allows you to go stronger as you continue to do so. So, focus on it from that perspective.

So, I need to have a desire to be more in this process and to have that foundation of personal growth, the desire to be more and then make the commitment
to strive to grow. And I think that the foundational elements of human nature, is to grow, to become more. And what society does—we train it out of
ourselves as kids, as children.

If you ask a child what they want to do when they grow up, they’ll give you a laundry list. They’ll tell you they want to be an astronaut, a policeman, a
doctor, a fireman. They want to be an author, they want to be an actor, and they give you this whole list as if they’re going to do all in their life which
is so amazing and it’s such an amazing energy for a child to have this vast imagination and this energy put behind it.

And then for some reason as they grow and as we grow, society says,

• “Well, get your head out of the clouds.”
• “May be quit dreaming.”
• “That could be really hard.”

Then what society does is that it educates and trains all of that inspiration, that vibrancy, that energy, that vast vision out of us, out of many of us
and we have to bring it back into our lives—to realize that possibility is a wide expanse. It’s limitless other than what we put in our own heads and this
concept of personal growth becomes really, really important. It eliminates, when we focus on personal growth, it eliminates our tendency to rationalize
why.

• Why we missed the mark?
• Why did we didn’t get this done?
• Why we didn’t move forward?
• Why? Why? Why?

– Because of the economy,

– Because I was born on this side of the railroad tracks,

– Because of what ever.

I think that we can see numerous examples of people that are on the wrong side of the tracks and made a success of themselves. People that were handed
nothing and had to battle the whole time, and made success of themselves.

And on the other side we find people that were handed everything and couldn’t make a success out of anything. So, I don’t think that our circumstances, our
conditions, our current conditions set our, the level that we’re going to rise to.

Our desire, our commitment to strive, our desire for it to be more and personal growth is what allows us to do that.

So, one of the questions and one of the things that I typically do in this section of this—the ladder of achievement—is I set some very specific growth
commitments with myself. Now, it may simply be, it can be something of personal nature like—I want to learn the piano, and I want to learn it and to learn
to play a certain types of songs or pieces in the next 12 months.

So, I do make it time driven and I put some specific growth goals in-place that are going to allow me to be better at the end of that journey and will then
resets the goals and resets the goals; and we continue to review them on a regular basis. But this is about your growth.

So, I invite you at this stage to look at some of the things that are skills that you want, that are emotionally compelling, that really drive you forward
and list them out. And as you list them out also list out when you want to achieve them and then what is the very first step you need to take to move
towards that goal, and then take it. That’s the first level.

Now, we move to this next level which is called perseverance
and it’s concept of perseverance is freely about your “stick-to-it-ness”. I don’t even know if that’s a word but it’s your determination and your focus.
It’s something that, in my belief, every entrepreneur needs. It’s a must have characteristic in our personality—this concept of perseverance. That’s the
bad news. The good news is that it can be learned, it can be developed and it can be nurtured.

So, when talk about perseverance, I think there is three elements that go into perseverance. It’s the concept of purpose and the concept of passion which, you know a lot of people talk about purpose and passion—we’ll touch on that.

And then, there’s the concept of patience which I think actually for entrepreneurs—that might actually be one of the hardest things for us
to nurture, to grow, to learn, to do. So, purpose is really your emotionally compelling why.

Why am I doing this?

If it is truly just for the money, I can assure you this is not enough because that’s, in some senses, that’s greed driven and when you reach it, all of a
sudden it’s an empty success. I know a lot of entrepreneurs that went down that road until they realized it’s not sustainable because it’s not energizing,
it’s not emotionally compelling. Sure, suffering comfort because you got some finances but bottom line is how do we create fulfillment?

There’s a difference in life from being rich and being enriched and that’s what we’re going to need to focus on in this concept of enrichment and what does
it take?

And so

• What are you passionate about?
• What is your purpose as you start to build?

· What is that why that isn’t some logical perspective, left-brain concept but something that’s emotionally stirring on that right brain side?

Figure out what that is and then write that down. Write a couple of them down. The more you have that stir the energy in you, that stir the emotion in you;
the more likely you’re going to light a fire under these goals and under the goals to move forward.

The second part of perseverance—I think that in order to have perseverance, we have to have purpose, we have to have passion. This is what
drives you forward, this is the fuel, this is what’s going to get you to say, “I got to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning” and you’re not going to sit
back and go “Oh my god, it’s 4 o’clock in the morning”.

You’re actually going to look at it and go, “Man, I’m excited to get the day started. I’m excited to get up early or stay late and work through this
because this is my passion” and time seems to just warp. All of a sudden you look up and five hours, six hours, eight hours have gone by because you were
deep in flow, in passion as you move forward. So, what is it?

When you talk about it:

• Is this goal really creates passion?
• What’s the passion from?

And I’d rank them. I’d actually rate it and say on a scale of 1 to 10 when I think about this, how passionate am I?

And if you’re finding that passion rating is, I would say, below an 8; anything below an 8 – need to rethink it because it’s not enough to sustain you when
the challenges and the obstacles and the things get in the way to push through it, to put that head down and say, “I can make it, I can make it. I can go
through and I know that you have that in you”. So look at it, rate it and then start to re-evaluate it.

And then, the last piece on perseverance is I think is this concept of patience.

Let’s be real. We don’t have the ability to control everything that’s going to come our way

• Whether it’s in life,
• Whether it’s in health,
• Whether it’s in profession,
• Whether it’s in relationships.

We don’t have the ability to control everything and things will come into place in their own time and space sometimes and so we need to find patience.

Now, I’m not the person necessarily to teach you about patience. I remember when I was in Japan training in the martial arts with my teacher years ago and
I sat with him and I said, “Oh, sensei, sensei. I’m having problems getting this technique, problems getting this technique.”

And he looks at me and says, “Oh, just have patience”. And frustrating what this Zen like answer but then it got even more Zen when I said, “But sensei,
what if I don’t have patience?”

And he looks at me and he says, “Oh, pretend you already do”.

It just frustrated the hell out of me even more but the fact is that we need to cultivate, we need to learn how to be patient—to realize that we can’t
force things, we can’t control everything and so the real key is to sit back and say, “How do I cultivate the patience and the fortitude and the
flexibility to continue forward?”

And one of the ways that I found to do this is to create a list of alternative paths. Not destinations but alternative ways to get to get there. So, if one
path gets blocked for some reason, “I’ve got an alternative. I’m not trying to create something in the moment. I’ve already thought it through and so I
have the fortitude, I have the flexibility and I start to build the patience in that process.”

And so we start with personal growth and then we create perseverance through purpose, passion and patience; and now we then go to this concept of practice. And the concept of practice is really

• Your discipline of action.
• It’s the discipline of execution.

· It’s the steps you take and the joy that you make in the process.

And there’s three elements to practice also. I call it

1. The plan,

2. The people, and

3. The positivity.

So, the plan is really taking this long journey and some businesses will set 10 years, 15 year goals and then will break them down. And
breaking down into bite sized chunks, things that:

1. Are digestible, manageable and foreseeable, and

2. Chunks that we can do what I call micro successes.

I want to break things down where I can have micro successes.

One of the biggest things that I see in society today is that, we’re really good; whether it’s in the media and the press or even at school at times, or at
the workplace. We’re really good at criticizing. We’re really good at pointing out:

• What went wrong
• What you did wrong
• What you could have done better

We’re really good at that. What we’re really bad at is celebrating the successes. So, what I want to do is load the process with what I call micro
successes. With embedded successes in so every step along the way it’s a high-five.

It’s like that relay race where they’re handing the baton and every micro success, you’re handing the baton and you get rejuvenated to take the next leg of
the race. And that is so important to continue, to move you forward.

So, here’s what I do typically in this place is, when I figure out the goal and I figure out the path, I then break it down into micro successes and little
milestones that are micro successes. And then with each of those micro successes, I then state next to it:

• How I’m going to celebrate that success?
• Who I’m going to celebrate it with?

So, I invite you again to sit back and take those goals and say,

· “What are the micro successes along the way?” And

· “How are you going to celebrate those successes as you move down the path? And

· “Who you are going to celebrate them with?”

Which brings me to the next piece of practice which is the concept of people: No success in my belief is a solitary achievement, a
solitary pursuit. It is … my success, for instance, I look at my success; it’s on the soldiers and the arms of a lot of blessed people:

• That have come into my life,
• That have supported me,
• That have friended me,
• That have helped me,
• That have mentored me,
• That have nurtured me in the process.

And I don’t lose sight of that. Many of you that are watching me here are those people that have driven me forward:

• To be better,
• To do more,
• To build on my own personal development,
• To continue to grow,
• To continue to serve.

And so I think it’s important for us to be intentional about the people that are in our lives. To look for the mentors that will really move the needle for
us, the people that understand it; that may be have done the journey. And I know that there’s coaches and mentors and many of you have heard me talk about
this. I differentiate between a coach and a mentor.

A coach may not necessarily have travelled the path but they understand how to draw the information out of you, so you can travel the path. But a mentor, a
mentor’s travelled the path. They’ve skinned the knees, they’ve got the bloody nose and the broken toes in the process—they understand it. They’ve been
down the road before so now they can say, “Common down the road and I can tell you where the potholes are, and what to do to avoid them”.

So, I want to look at and list out who are the mentors that I need to move this needle forward the fastest. List out whether it’s in tactical, skills types
of training; if it’s in marketing or personal development. Who are the mentors that you think really move you forward? List them out.

Then ask yourself who knows them? Who might know them? And list those out.

And then ask when are you going to contact them and start the process of connection? And begin the process the process now.

May be it takes a while before you get a chance to really connect with your mentor. And when there are people that may want to serve you. And others it’ll
be instantaneous.

But when you go to these folks, serve them first. Help them achieve what they want to achieve. Work with them, support their mission, understand them.
Don’t just go to them and say, “I need, I need, I need”. Some are willing to do that but others are not.

So, serve them first; come from a place of service but find someone and/or some people, because I have got multiple mentors and people in my life. And some
of them are personal. My own beautiful wife is a mentor of sorts. She’s my partner, we have a dialogue, we have conversations about things and we grow
together in the process.

There’s others that are business mentors that have been down the road already that I can rely on their expertise and their vision of what It looks like.
So, understand who the people are and then this last piece is this concept of positivity.

I want to live life with something that I call positive expectancy … Positive Expectancy.

It’s been said and you’ve seen many studies and in the personal development space, how we think about life is how we become in life. And so, if we’re
constantly filling ourself with negative thoughts, negative thoughts, negative thoughts; all of a sudden at some point it brainwashes us into a negative
place.

• A place of lack,
• A place of inability,
• A place of lack of self-worth,

o Lack of self-determination,

o Lack of belief in ourself.

So, this positive expectancy, this positivity about your though process and I’m not talking about just Mantras and things that you say to yourself per say
but I’m talking about really how you view life. We have the ability to look at things that are bad that happen and really look at just the negatives, and
say, “Well it was me. Well it was me. ”

Problem is that, that doesn’t solve anything. Tendency is then when we say, “Well it was me” we start to blame and when we put things outside of ourselves,
we relinquish responsibility and the ability to do anything about it.

So, I’m inviting you to find the positive, the find the positive response, the positive learnings and then create in a sense two to three emotionally
compelling statements. Those things that you know viscerally are really you. And really build on that.

So, when things tough and when things get challenging and you find yourself in this negative space; these things will snap you out of it and anchor you
back to where you need to be.

And here’ s the other key to it, is that the mentors and the people that you brought into your lives in the people part of this, have at least one or two
of them that you can call up and say, “I need a kick in the rear end. So let’s talk this through” because that’s the other thing that they do.

There’s plenty of times in my life where I doubted myself and I wasn’t sure and I was confused and I’ll call some friends up, I’ll call some of my mentors
up and they are certainly more than happy to take the two by four to my attitude and start to knock it out.

So, I hope that this give you an understanding of what I call the ladder of achievement process. This is how I take those smart goals or in my
case the A smart goals with the alignment piece and I fill them with energy, I fill them with electricity, I fill them with a vibrancy so there’s movement
in them and they’re just some logical list of things that I’m going to achieve. But rather they turn into something with movement and action associated
with it.

And so, I invite you to take this. I invite you to actually download the workbook, the guidebook associated with this. You can get the download if you go
to the guide. You can get it at MelAbraham.com/session013 and you’ll be able to get a link to get the
download.

And if you’re not at your computer and you’re not, you’re out running or you’re driving and you can’t write down the link, then just text. Go ahead and
text MYLEGACY one word no spaces, M-Y-L-E-G-A-C-Y to 38470 that’s 38470 and that’ll send you a link to a download page to get the downloads.

If you, I hope this helped and I hope it shifted the way you look at goal-setting and everything and I hope that you go through the process and I invite
you to go through the process in details, emotionally invested in the outcome because as we start to move down the rest of the three phases in this
business life, in this product life; you’re going to see that this is what’s going to drive you forward.

So, if you have questions for me on this or other business issues, or entrepreneurial issues, or success issues please reach out to me. That’s why I’m
here. I’m here to be your entrepreneurial mentor, your business coach, if you will.

So, reach out to me by going to www.AskMelNow.com,that’s AskMelNow.com and leave me a message. You’ll be able to
leave me a voicemail there with your comments, your questions and we’ll make sure that I get to them on one of the upcoming episodes, so I can be there to
support you in your journey, to support you to continue to grow.

And if you haven’t already, go ahead and subscribe to this channel, subscribe to the show. So, you’ll get notified every time I put out a new episode, new
training, new tools, new tactics and new strategies.

And why not while you’re at it, tell a friend. Send this off to a friend. Let’s give them the gift of possibility and let’s take their dreams out of the
darkness again. Let’s shake them out and let’s give them light.

So, in the next episode when we come back we’re going to start talking Stage 2 Phase 1. We’re going to talk about the ideation stage. How do you
create your ideas?

So, I hope you found this valuable, I hope you found this insightful and helpful, and I look forward to supporting you and being with you in the next
episode but until then,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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