Dec 21, 2024
Imagine achieving anything you ever wanted.
Without having to push yourself to the brink of exhaustion.
If you're anything like me (or 7 billion other people), you want to:
Make more money
Save more time
Do something meaningful
Yet, for some reason, we leave it all up to chance.
I used to struggle with these things until I figured out how to make it happen.
And we got it all wrong.
You must understand some things about setting goals, working, and even reality itself.
Why? Because only 9% of people who set a New Year's resolution achieve their goals.
Even worse? 88% abandon them within the first 2 weeks.
These statistics are horrible and show just how faulty our society's current mindset is.
It's like we're programmed to fail from the start.
"Oh well, you know 9/10 businesses fail anyway so... insert excuse."
This should really concern you if your goal is to build a business that works (one that makes you money).
The good news? You don't have to become one of these statistics.
People just approach this business thing entirely backward – that's why they fail.
What if I told you there's a guaranteed way of achieving your goals?
To build a business and actually make it work?
This is exactly what I used to quit my job as an engineer and make it online.
Back then, I had limited time working 9-5.
I also had a newborn to care for, so I had even less time and energy than most people.
But it worked! I achieved my goals and made an income online!
This system is what I rely on today, even with an entire day of freedom at my hands.
Because if I don't use it, nothing happens, and I fall off track.
I promise you that by the time you finish reading this, you'll know exactly:
Why this happens to you
What you can do instead
Because we're here to make more money, progress, and achieve our goals.
Why Goals Don't Work
"You don't have a business problem - you have life problems that affect your business."
Here's another statistic to illustrate the point about relying on goals (if it's not apparent yet):
45% of businesses fail within the first 5 years.
Think about it – it's almost like a coin toss. Heads or tails.
Despite this, the vast majority of beginners I talk to rely on:
Goals
Motivation
Hope
They might not think they do, but they say it out loud. I'm keen on picking these things up – I'm very observant with the language and words we use.
What you say and repeat in your head influences the actions you take. The actions you take shape the life you get.
If you've ever said something out loud like:
"I hope this works"
"I hope someone buys"
"I hope my content ranks"
The approach is already wrong.
You can think, wish, and hope all you want, but reality stays the same.
What we do every day isn't always driven by goals or conscious decisions.
It's driven by automatic behaviors.
You've probably felt it while driving to work—sometimes, you blank out and don't even remember how you got there.
So does this mean we're forever destined to fail and can never change our lives?
Far from it! But you must understand why goals don't work and their mechanics.
Don't skip this part—it will give you a deeper understanding of what makes us tick as human beings.
We Forget Our Goals
Sounds stupid, I know – but it's true.
As humans, we're exceptional in many ways:
We can think critically
We have a vivid imagination
The problem? Our memory isn't the best. We tend to forget things.
Think about this: What did you eat between 2:42 and 5:12 pm exactly 144 hours ago?
You probably have no idea!
Yet it was only 6 days ago... I'm not even talking about years. It's just a few days.
To make it worse, the constant bombardment of distractions forces our brains to become fractured.
No wonder it's so hard to focus on what we're doing at any given moment, let alone remember things.
The exact same thing applies to goals.
Goals are simply projections of what you want in the future that are set in the past.
So you might set a goal or have a desire, but how often are you reminding yourself of them?
If the last time was around New Year's Eve, and it's February now... well, there's your answer.
And this is a problem for taking action.
We Don't Have A Plan To Get There
Goals are important for direction and desired outcomes, but they're meaningless without a plan to make them happen.
James Clear talks about having a strategy, but what he really means is having a system.
Goals don't go far without putting them in the right systems to make them real.
So, what is a system?
In simple terms, a system is a process of steps that feed into each other.
Think about it like this: You wake up every day, take a bathroom break, and brush your teeth. That's a human system – it happens no matter how you feel or think.
Systems are great because they let us remove ourselves from the process a tiny bit.
Some systems don't even need you! Like AI automations and email outreach – they just work on their own.
Creating business and life systems allows us to reach our goals predictably.
Are you starting to understand why this makes achieving anything you want a guarantee?
It's thanks to having a system and a process in place that made it possible for me to:
Quit my job
Stay in shape
Never worry about dieting
Become a full-time entrepreneur
Automate parts of my online business
The system IS the plan.
Every time you execute the system, you execute the plan that takes you closer to your goal.
We Don't Do The Work (Consistently)
Doing boring stuff you don't like drains you of motivation and energy, two limited–supply resources.
Yet the boring stuff IS what you need to get to your goals.
So, we have to think about creating a supportive environment to do the necessary hard work.
But why does it even have to be hard?
Because anything in life that's worth having is valuable and hard to get.
Think of it like this: Value means it's something that not everyone has.
A simple law of supply and demand.
So if something is valuable and in high demand, then it's also difficult to obtain.
Difficulty always stands between you and your goal.
But what trips most people up is that difficulty comes in many shapes and sizes:
Pain
Burnout
Boredom
Overwhelm
Lack of progress
Disorganized workflow
Wasted time and energy
I used to have these problems, and it's no fun at all. It feels like you're in a sinking boat with only a spoon to bail out the water.
So, we default to relying on willpower, motivation, and energy while working ourselves to the ground.
You need a supportive environment to get the hard things done.
And we do this by building systems to make it effortless.
And yes, you can build systems for literally anything and fix all the issues above.
On the flip side, it's funny how people make it unnecessarily complex.
You see this all the time with entrepreneurs having this complicated morning routine that takes 3 hours every day just because everyone else is doing it.
They do all kinds of crazy stuff like:
Jumping into ice baths
Meditating
Working out
Eating specific foods
Running
Reading a book
Journaling
And that's only the beginning.
Where's the actual work?
If we want to reach our goals, no matter what they are, I believe that it needs to be simple and effortless to do. That's the proper environment to make it work.
Because let's face it, working a 9-5 takes a toll on you both physically and mentally.
And if you're a business owner, you additionally have to deal with:
Employees
Taxes
Marketing
Sales
Product development
Social media growth
And more
Systems have to be easy to do, easy to manage, and easy to implement. And a supporting environment allows habits, processes, and systems to stick.
We create these environments by making them operate effortlessly.
How To Achieve Anything You Want (Without Even Trying)
Instead of focusing on the goal, shift your focus to:
WHAT you are doing
HOW you do it
Systems executed daily make reaching a goal inevitable.
It's the concept of marginal gains and tiny wins.
Many great minds, from James Clear to Jeff Olson, have discussed this. They show how being 1% better every day and the tiny decisions we make over time greatly affect the outcome.
In other words, we should focus our attention on the inputs instead of the goal.
It also has the added bonus of being scalable and consistent.
Here's how to build a simple system that makes taking action, setting habits, building a business, or achieving any goal as effortless as possible.
It's a simple 5-step process with a set of questions based on fundamentals.
I've laid out the steps as questions because it makes your brain look for solutions.
Don't let the simplicity fool you, though.
This process is extremely powerful and works the same for any business or any habit.
1. What Do I Want?
First, become extremely clear on what you want to achieve:
Is it more revenue in your business?
How much?
Why?
What does it allow you to do?
So what?
Simple questions take you far in building up the direction of your system.
The more you define what you're trying to achieve, the clearer it becomes.
Remember the memory part?
You have to remind yourself of this goal every single day.
So your first "system" will be to make it effortless to be REMINDED of your goal.
Don't keep it in your head.
Make it blatantly impossible not to remind yourself of it.
I'm not going to tell you how – that's what your imagination is there for.
2. What Are The Key Levers To Get There?
Look at what you're doing right now.
This might be:
Using a method
Running your business
Following a daily workflow
Following an existing course
Question what's necessary specifically for YOU to achieve your goals:
Does it make sense?
Is it aligned with what I want?
Will it get me where I want to go in the WAY I want to?
We're doing this to find the key levers that move the needle.
The few things that matter.
If you haven't heard of the Pareto Principle, it states that 80% of results usually result from 20% of the actions.
This is observable in nature and applies to most things.
For example, wealth distribution in the world shows that 20% of people hold 80% of global wealth.
So what are the 20% of things you do (or should do) to get to your goal?
We do this to find the key levers to pull on.
But as you know, a lot of people are doing unnecessary things.
So, we must first tear it down to its core before building it back up.
This is what marketers call an MVP - or Minimum Viable Product.
The concept is the same for anything:
Find the key levers that matter to get to the goal
Delete anything else that's unnecessary
Refine and optimize what's left so the system still works
Now, you have a bare-bones system stripped completely of fluff.
This brings a lot of clarity to the process.
And now you know what to FOCUS your attention on to get results and save time.
This is what Elon Musk did the day he took over Twitter.
He walked in there and fired 80% of the employees because they were the "fluff" in the system.
Turns out, the company operated better and made more money after this process.
If you already have a business, you'll recover lost revenue without adding anything to the operations.
Most of this simply comes down to questioning what's necessary.
And keep reminding yourself of them.
3. Is It Working?
Use the MVP for at least 30 days and review it:
What's working?
What isn't?
What's missing?
You're looking for feedback from the market and testing it in real life.
This is why you don't build out a full online course or build a product before launching it.
Instead:
Launch it first in an MVP state
Verify if it's working (people buy it)
THEN spend time, money, and resources on building it out
If it's not working, then you haven't found the key levers that bring in the results.
One quote that stuck with me since the day I heard it is:
"If it doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense."
If you've tried for months or years to get to your goal but never seem to get there, then question if it makes sense for you to do it at all.
If that's the case, I would:
Go back to step 2
Find a new system
Look at what moves the needle there
Create a new MVP
You might be able to reuse parts of the old system if it makes sense to keep it.
4. How Can I Make It Effortless?
Once you've completed steps 2 and 3 a few times, you should have a verified system.
It gave you a result aligned with your goal.
Now, we can start building it up again.
You'll do it differently this time around by speeding up the 20% that brings 80% of the results.
WITHOUT losing quality.
There are many ways to do this, but it's about automating as much as possible to remove bottlenecks.
In most cases, the bottleneck is the human.
Ask yourself:
What can you automate with AI?
What is required to guarantee quality?
What tasks can you do the same way every time?
This is where we create a supportive environment to get results as easily as possible.
Work on this step until the process becomes as easy as breathing air.
This is the step that makes habits stick as well.
For example, I eat pretty much the same way every day:
2 meals throughout the day
The first meal front-loads all my nutrition
The second meal is meat and veggie-based
A simple system that keeps me ripped.
How I make it effortless is the setup and the preparation of consuming it.
It's about making the steps easy to do every day.
And if something is easy to do daily without needing motivation, willpower, or any of that...
Well, you get to your goal.
5. How Can I Improve It?
This last step is something people tend to forget.
Even if you create a system to follow, and it gets you results now, things change.
Everything is changing all the time:
You are changing as you grow older
New technology emerges every day
The world around you is changing rapidly
If everything is constantly changing but your system is static, it's natural for it to fall behind.
So looking at how you could improve it is a good idea.
I believe the saying "don't fix what's not broken" is BS.
It's the reason why Blockbuster disappeared – a movie giant who was on top of the world.
Until Netflix destroyed them.
Blockbuster simply refused to improve as the world changed around them, which led to its downfall.
A system is not complete without feedback.
Look at:
The market
The feedback
How the environment is reacting
And adjust your system to stay up-to-date.
Simple questions to ask yourself in this step:
Are we on the right track?
What can we improve?
What do people need?
What can be faster?
What did we learn?
It goes back to questioning everything until you have a lean and mean machine that exponentially gets you closer to your goals.
The Only Thing You Need To Start
I understand if this was too much information at once.
You might even think "bro I'm not a systems guy, this is over my head".
Relax, this is not about becoming a nerd or needing engineering skills.
I've set it up in a way so you only have to ask yourself a few questions.
Let your curiosity and your mind look for the answers.
Start questioning if what you're doing right now is contributing to achieving your goals.
And start building a simple process to support it.
If you need help with this, get in touch.
Hope this was helpful!
- Chris