EP 120 & 121: Goal Setting & Motivation Strategies with Lyssa Scott

Lyssa. Welcome to the Think Happy Podcast. I am so happy to be here with you. I just feel like we should tell the listeners what we were talking about before we started recording and that is the outfits that we're wearing. So, so how did you describe yours again?

I said, I look like I just walked out of Dick's sporting goods today in my athleisure. I hate that term, but it's true athlete.

Like when did that even become a popular term like two years ago?

Longer than in the last 18 months?

I feel like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we started talking about this because I informed Lyssa that my feet were starting to sweat in my, my fuzzy socks, you know, I mean, my feet are sweating.

I'm, like, still filling up my Stanley cup. Another thing from dick sporting goods. Right. And, yeah, I mean, they had to come up with a word for people who wear gym clothes and don't work out. So I guess athleisure, I mean, I do work out, but not today. Today I look like I work out. Yeah.

So I need a term for, you know, when it's like three o'clock PM and you're still in the clothes that you worked out in from six o'clock AM. Like, what is that called?

Because I resonate with that style a lot on the way to the gym just came from the gym might be going to the gym. Yeah, you never really know.

I'm definitely, I just came from the gym, but like five hours ago I just came from the gym and I still haven't showered.

Like I just came from the gym.

Time lapse, time lapse. Yeah. So we already, we've already gotten into it. But let me back up, tell us a little bit about you, Lisa. Who are you? Introduce yourself to us.

Gosh. Ok. Well, I, I've recently started calling myself Half Sunflower, Half Savage and I really feel like that's actually true. My dad was a biker. My mom is like this hippie water coloring, cooking, let's just be together type of human. And yeah, I'm an entrepreneur. I have three companies and maximum potency is the prominent one that you'll hear me talk about on the show today, which is my business coaching for online coaches. 

We really teach people to create and scale and sell their offers in a heart centered way. I always say that your business and your life need to be like peanut butter and jelly. So you need a business that fits your life, not a life that you have to squeeze into your business. And so really all about living at maximum potency getting super intentional.

And my slogan is Rip On Life and it's really just about grabbing life by the horns. So I feel like that's a good, like 30 second intro. And we'll get, we'll get deeper into it as we talk before.

That is a fabulous elevator pitch if I tell myself. So, OK, so we're here to talk about, you know, bridging the gap between your point A and your point B aka bridging the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. So for the listeners, this can be for a routine that you want to implement a habit that you want to start a goal that you're setting that you plan on accomplishing. 

But before we get into that, I, I just kind of want to start even though we've kind of already started with you just sharing your story with us, right? So one of the reasons why I love podcasting is for the relationships and just learning more about the girls that I get to chat with and I had so much fun talking with you a couple weeks ago on our precord-meeting. So, yeah. What, what's your story? How did you get to where you are right now?

Gosh. do you want the business lens or the life lens on this?

I just wanna make sure. Give us like a healthy combo.

Ok. Cool. So I graduated college, we'll just start there. We won't go through the whole origin story, graduated college with a integrative media degree. And that's a fancy way of saying graphic design, photo, video, web, all rolled into one, right? Multimedia design. And I liked it, but I didn't love it. I was really good at it. It was very easy to me.

It was a natural gift and I liked the work I was doing and I hated the structure in which I was doing it. So I loved the actual projects, but I did not like sitting in an office under fluorescent lights, eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. And so I started to really hate my life about six months after I graduated school. I was like three months into my corporate job and I realized, oh, this is like, not really what I wanted.

This is like, this is very much what I signed up for. This is what I said yes to and what I said yes to and what I wanted are two totally different things. You know, I started to have this inner dissonance with myself where I didn't feel like I was living the life that I really wanted to live and I wasn't being the person I really wanted to be. And so I started to kind of map out this exit plan and dream about it.

And it was driving to work one day and I heard a podcast with Rick Alexander. He wrote the book Burn Your Couch. Go read it. If you're relating with the story at all, go read it. It talks about living a life of intention. And he said, what if you don't? And that, what if you don't stop me in my tracks, made me ball my eyes out. I had to pull my car over on the way to work and I was like, something's really wrong if a question like this is rattling me this deeply.

And so I started to binge Amanda Bucci's podcast at my corporate job. She was an online fitness coach and I just like, was interested in her presence. I was interested in what she was doing. And I eventually quit my corporate job with nothing lined up. I pulled the plug. I had three months rent saved and I just said, we're gonna fifo figure it the F out and it was ugly.

I thought I was gonna travel for three months. I traveled for three weeks, the guy that I was traveling with and I had some difficulties. We also had some difficulties with his truck. And so we ended up back in our hometown after just three weeks after we just told everybody we're shipping out. We'll see you in April. It was January 1st, like January 21st, we're home.

So on the ground and they were like, what happened like, well, everything happened, we might not stay together. The truck isn't working, you know, it was kind of the beginning of the end. And there was this like, purging effect happening in my life where I had to get rid of all the things that weren't working before I could even touch some of the things that were that year.

I waitressed, I had seven side hustles. like waitressing being the main one and I was at the crossfit gym maybe three hours a day, not working out three hours a day. I was just there. Ok. So I was working out for an hour doing accessory work for an hour, doing empty barbell work for an hour, socializing, helping people. And this girl comes up to me and she says to me, Lissa, you should be a crossfit coach and I'm like, they don't make any money and she's like, you don't make any money.

And I was like, oh, thank you. I knew that. So I went and I decided I'm going to get my crossfit. L one so I can coach crossfit. Why not? Because I thought I was going to make a lot of money. It just felt right. It was like one thing that I was like, well, this is working in my life when nothing else is so I might as well follow the hunch and into it. Yeah.

Yeah. So I got that cert, and I actually was on a, a snowboarding trip that winter. So this is now like a full winter after coming home from the truck breaking down. This is like 2018, the truck broke down in 2019 in January. I'm like studying for the crossfit L one. I just floundered for a year and I just let myself flounder. What are you doing? I have no idea.

Yeah. What, what are you doing? Anything that makes sense? Like lifting hiking, trail running, waitressing just like getting by for a year. I just kind of like gave myself time where I was making money. I was hanging out with friends. It was kind of like college 2.0 to be honest, I was just chilling. And then I couldn't put the manual down for the crossfit L one. 

I was on a plane to Colorado with six friends and we're getting ready to go party our butts off and snowboard for the week and I like going on and on about the oxidative pathway and the analytic pathway and this and that and they're like, you need to put the manual down. We're here to get messed up. We're here to drink. We're like, stop. And I'm like, no, but you, you guys don't understand how exciting this is and I'm like lighting up, right?

So something in me, I remember not being able to put my highlighter and paper away on that plane to Colorado when I should have had every reason to be in party mode. I'm like almost three years sober now. But that was like very much my life at the time. That was very telling. And so go to Colorado, come home, take the test, get the coaching job, call some friends that I had met twice in friends of friends circles.

And they're like, yeah, we want you to coach in our gym. So I got a job kind of by accident. Didn't fill out a resume, didn't make didn't go to a job interview. I just called and they were like, yeah, sure, you know, just like came together and started coaching crossfit, started to build this online fitness and nutrition brand because I didn't want to own a gym because I didn't want to be location bound because I love to travel.

And then one thing led another and that brand slowly became my whole life and those seven side hustles slowly fell off, right? And then I was personal training and coaching and as I was coaching, I sort of gave creative birth to this maximum potency brand that is now my entire life. because I stopped coaching just fitness and nutrition. And I added in habits and intention and, and eight out of the 11 clients that I had in summer 2020 all looked at me and said, I wanna build a business like you did. 

I was like, well, I know how to build a website and a brand and did the graphics and the marketing and yeah, we could do that. And so I started coaching business and now I've just stacked on top of that over and over and over, you know, more skills about sales and funnels and online customer acquisition and all the things. But it was really truly a process of surrender of like this isn't meant to be, this isn't working, get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it.

And this theme of not having to get, go to a job interview, not having to fill, fill out your resume, not having to earn your place at the table. But people just seeing me in my real life and going, I think I want your help with this. Can we talk about that? And really just getting into conversations and networking is how it's grown.

And these other two businesses that we're working on in the background right now, it's, I haven't filled out a single resume or a single interview or application that's the word I'm looking for. It's all been like, OK, you over here and me over there and just collaboration and I just, anybody listening, who's not happy with what they're doing for work, like start networking, stop scrolling. Indeed. Your dream job, in my opinion is probably not on Indeed. 

It's probably in a room in a conversation. It never made it to a job listing the cool jobs never do because people know people. And so anyway, that's what's really a lie for me to is the power of not sending an application, the power of having a conversation.

Oh my gosh. And also like something that stands out to me about that story that you said a couple of times is how you like had to let go of stuff kind just to make room for the things that were working. And I resonate with that so deeply. It's something that I actually talk about on my platforms a lot. And it's this notion of sometimes having to say no to good things so that we have the bandwidth, the capacity, the energy to say yes to great things.

And sometimes it's really hard to be able to figure out what is just good versus what is truly great for us. And what makes it tricky is that difference can change with different seasons of life that we're in. But similarly to you Think Happy came to be because I, I liked the work that I was doing. I wasn't so totally in love with the work that I was doing. 

And what really was the turning point for me was once I had kids I realized, you know, well, if I'm going to be spending this much of this much time away from them, you know, it has to be something that's more than just paying the bills. It has to be something that I love so much and I had to create that for myself, a career that was something that I loved so much.

If you cant find it, build it exactly like it's cheesy. But like, it's kind of freaking true.

It's very true. It's very true and it's only cheesy if you allow it to be right. It's not cheesy in application. And so one of the things that I'm realizing lately is like, we really need to ask ourselves not about our net worth, but about our net fulfillment, which is exactly what you're speaking about right now. And it's like, where is that fulfillment coming from?

Where I can also be of service and serve at the highest level and use all my gifts, right? Like when we have gifts, we're not using, they're laying dormant. We feel really icky when we know we could be doing better and we're not doing better, we're just doing ok instead of great, like we feel icky. Right? And so getting into that state where you're like giving up the good to make room for the amazing. 

It's, it's not hard to identify if it's just good because you're constantly daydreaming about all the ways that it could be better. It's this or something better. Right. But if you're already thinking about the something better and you're not choosing it, that's because you're refusing to change something. And so it's just, it's interesting when you think about what you're not changing you're choosing is another cliche that's really powerful. It's like, oh yeah, I am. So I love that you actually did something about it.

Yeah. And you too. I know. OK, so let's get to the meat and potatoes for lack of a better phrase. Let's start talking or let's transition here to, you know, getting from a point A to a point B you know, it's something that I know that you work with your clients on a lot. Something I work with my clients on a lot. And essentially what we're here to talk about is breaking down a goal or breaking down any desired and result, right?

So I'm just gonna ask like the million dollar question right here. How do you usually go about guiding clients, guiding peers, friends, whoever it might be through the process of having an end goal and then breaking it down so that it can be achieved?

Yeah, I love this question deeply. First thing is your goal, a burning desire or is it just something that would be nice. So it's not a burning desire, it's not gonna work. So, for me, yeah, I'm actually going through this right now where I, like, think I know what I want in this area. And I'm like, yeah, like I want it, I want it like, strongly, but it's not a burning desire.

And so that means I actually want more than what I'm allowing myself to admit. Right? Is typically the burning desire evokes emotion. So let's make sure that our goal for something that emo evokes emotions strongly, you should weep when you think about this thing actually coming true. And if crying is not your style, you should run around the house and bang on pots and pans.

If it doesn't elicit excitement or deep emotion, we're not there yet. It doesn't mean we're not on the way, it just means we're not there yet. And that's how I felt when I thought about becoming an art director someday. If I had stayed corporate, I was like, oh yeah, it'd be like cool. It wouldn't give me up in the morning, right? It wouldn't make me go dance around my house.

And so I want a life where I'm dancing with God every single day, like literally creating with God spirit universe Gus as my friend, Stacey calls it like, I want to be so like elated by my life experience and captivated that the burning desire has to be first once we have like this is the thing, like I'm going full send, this is, you know, I would, I would do any thing for this.

I would work an 80 hour week if it meant that like, this would work in a year, right? You have that like, drive behind you, we can start to channel the drive. So it's not just like a scribble, but it's like a, a pointed line, right on a paper. And so we're actually developing momentum toward the goal. And so there's not ever gonna be momentum if the goal isn't polarizing or captivating.

And so I'm gonna get very businessy for a second here. And if anybody is listening to this who's super business minded, you're going to love me and the people who are like not math and numbers, people are gonna hate me. I promise I'm gonna bring it back down to earth, but this is how I break down goals with clients. So we look at the actual goal and then we start to attach numbers to the goal.

So, oh, I want to be full time in my business. That's the goal. OK, cool. Well, how many clients or dollars in sales? Do you actually need to be full time in the business? Oh, you want to be fit? Ok. Well, what are the metrics that go with fitness? Is it a resting heart rate? Is it a meta metabolic flexibility? Is it a body fat percentage? Is it a time on your mile, what's the data that drives this goal?

Right. So in business, we usually look at sales and we look at sales from an objective numbers perspective. And then we start to pair that with feeling, how do I want to feel to do $20,000 in sales because there's $20,000 in burnout or $20,000 in ease. And we can start to look at some of those less quantifiable KPIs as well. KPI is key performance indicator.

So in business, we're going to set a numbers related goal and we're gonna start to break it down to every step before that. So with clients we say, ok, well, we want to do 20 K in sales for example. Ok. Well, in order to do 20 K in sales, what are our packages or our units that could make up the 20 K, it could happen this way or this way or this way? For simplicity's sake, let's just say we need to get four clients paying $5000 each for their packages.

Cool. Ok. If you need four clients, how many sales calls do you need to get on? Do you close? One and 2 in 3 in four, let's say you close one in four, we need four clients. We need 16 sales calls because 16 sales calls gives us four closes. Ok, here's where people stop though like cool. I need 16 sales calls. How do you get the 16 sales calls. We're going even deeper, right?

What proceeds preceeds, not proceeds precedes a sales call, a conversation. Ok. Where are the conversations happen? They happen in the DMS. Ok. How many people do you have to talk to before you book one sales call? What's that number for you? Ok. Take it back a level further. How many back and forth conversations do you need to generate off of general messages first?

Just because I message you doesn't mean you're a lead, right? So face is contacted to call booking links, dropped to calls, booked to calls closed to clients, right? We just took a five step process. It's no longer. I want to go full time in my business. It's I want to talk to 500 people a month. I wanna get 30 of them on calls. I want to pitch to 14 or 16 of them and I want four to close.

Oh, now we have actions that are aligned, actions toward our goal, right? That's a business example. Let's pretend that we wanna run a five K. That's a good example for your audience. That's perfect. Well, I wanna run a five K and right now I can't run a mile. Ok. Well, that's a problem because we need to run three, right? So we're just gonna use 3.0.

I know it's 3.16 or something like that girl. Yeah, 3.0 miles. We're gonna pretend it's that. Ok. What are some ways that we could reverse engineer? That the first one is probably what everybody thinks of first, which is like, well, I'll just run a half a mile, then I'll run three quarters of a mile and then I'll run a mile. Right. And they build it up.

That's only one way to reverse engineer it. What if you had to run three miles in a day? But they didn't have to be back to back. What if you ran a morning mile in an evening mile? Right? What if you and that, that could be extrapolated further. If you can't run a mile? Can you run 400 m? Four times a day? Well, yeah, you probably can run for a quarter mile.

It's only about 2 to 3 minutes, right? And so there's a million different ways. You have to decide what's your method for success? What is the way you want to break down that goal? So, what I would start to do is actually map out some different ways. Start to study some different people who have run really successful miles. See what you can learn from them.

Right. Again, the podcast go to Youtube University, start looking around so that you can be smart with your approach, not say, oh, I tried to run five K, it didn't work, it didn't work or your approach didn't work because there was a million ways you could have done that. And then the other thing is hire a coach. You want the easy button, hire a coach who specializes in getting people to run their first five Ks.

There's a coach for everything. Yeah. Right. So, reverse engineering, the KPI for a five K, let's talk about that. Well, if we're going to run three miles, we gotta be able to run one. If we're gonna be able to run one, we gotta be able to run half, we're gonna be able to run half mile. We gonna be a quarter mile. Quarter mile is the slowest or the, the lowest increment we're gonna do.

Right. You're not gonna go out for a 100m jog. It makes no sense, doesn't it during that? So we'll go, we'll go down to 400 m one lap on a track. Well, could you go do a mile today where you run one lap and you walk three probably right. And so starting to build our capacity in different ways. Like, if I look at a training plan, it might be one day where I do the quarter mile with three laps of walking.

Might be another day where I do four quarter mile runs throughout the day. It's inconvenient. It might have to be a Saturday or a Sunday. Right? And then maybe I start to do a mixed modality day like, oh, you know what I'm going to bike today because if I get better at biking, I'm actually getting better at running. That's crossfit, the whole thing, go get, get a bunch of other stuff. It supports the thing you actually do.

Right. And so just like constantly varying. And I know it sounds like maybe a little bit abstract the business to the five K example, but it's like chunking it down one of the things that's similar, no matter what goal is always chunking it down into increments and figuring out how many different ways could I piece those increments together?

I don't think it sounds abstract at all. It's actually freakishly similar to the method to the beginning of when I'm working with a client on building something new. You have just used different terminology for it, but literally, you could have taken words right out of my mouth. So like you, the first thing you said is your goal of burning desire for, for me.

I say, you know, what's the why behind your goal? The why are the, is the feeling that you have behind that goal? And like you have to be so connected to that. Why? Because you know, that's what's gonna get you out of bed in the morning. That's what's gonna help you, you know, stick with these, stick with the baby steps that you have to take to quote unquote cross that finish line when it's not new and shiny anymore.

You know, when your adrenaline has dropped a little bit and you know, it doesn't feel fun anymore and it's just kind of the grind, you know. So why behind your what then the second is breaking things down into bite size pieces into baby steps that ultimately still lead you toward whatever your guiding light is toward whatever the why behind your what is.

But what it does is, you know, it, it's what's that phrase? Like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Like it's like that sort of approach, right? You use baby steps to get there and that is literally what you just said.

It's making it as incremental as possible. Being obsessed with the result and not obsessed with the method. So you may think that the baby steps that add up to the goal are one thing and they may be different, which is why I'm saying we might need to run 400 m four times a day and that might sound super cute right now until it's raining until you have a birthday party to go to on a Saturday afternoon until right? 

And it's like, well, are you married to the goal? If you are, you'll figure out a way to still run your 4 400 m. Exactly. Because you know that's what it's gonna take.

Yeah, 1000%. oh my gosh, Lyssa, I keep getting blown away because we are so insanely aligned. So another aspect that I teach when it comes to this is being specific yet flexible. And I as deep inside of me, as I possibly could feel this is like in order to sustain something in order to actually achieve what we're working toward, we have to have a layer of flexibility built in because the one thing that we can always expect to happen is something unexpected, right?

Like it is going to be raining one day when you are on going out and like doing one of those 400 m runs or whatever it might be. You have to have a plan for the unexpected. You have to have some flexibility built in or else like it's just, there's no more fun and chances are you aren't going to get to cross this metaphorical finish line or literal finish line if that's what your goal is.

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like also having those, if, if this, then that sort of trips lined up already, like if it's pouring down rain, let's say it's a hurricane outside. You're like, I literally can't go run right now. You better have that spin bike in your garage ready to go because you know, it's going to rain one day like you said. And so there's also pro tip, there's a piece of equipment called the versa climber.

Have you ever heard of the versa climber? I have not. Yeah, you put your feet in like it looks like bike pedals and your hands on handles and you're standing up and you pump your legs and your arms, like you're climbing a rock climbing wall, all I've seen them but I did not know that.

That's what it was called.

Yeah, you'll get in really good shape and they don't take up a lot of room. So if you are training for an endurance event, go get a versa climber, that's your backup plan. Right. And so it's like, also getting, and this is where I get a little tactical and a little bit, savage, right? Half savage has. Sunflower is like savage side of me says, well, what is my competition do?

My competition goes running to get better at running. My competition just runs ads to book more sales calls. What is the competition not willing to do? My competition probably isn't on the versa climber. My competition probably isn't at Pilates. My competition probably isn't getting an IV drip. My competition probably isn't measuring all their food or whatever it is, right?

Whatever edge you want to create. The more of those uncommon stack, undeniable proof that you're uncommon, the more of the uncommon things that you can do and stack together, the more insane your results are going to be because you start to live your life with who the hell would do that type of mentality and who, who would love like that?

Who would care like that? Who would show up like that when you do that? The goal just happens. Like you actually stop obsessing over the incremental steps. And you're just like, yeah, I'm coming at this with a ferocious attack of love for my future self and goals and like, nothing stopping me. Yeah.

You know. Ah, yes. Get it, girl. Oh my gosh. Yes, we're serving our future selves. Right? Current you is either doing something positive for future, you keeping future, you stagnant or taking a step back with future you like, wouldn't you so much rather be doing something that is serving future you? Yes. To me, that seems like such a silly question. Yes, of course. But sometimes that's not the case. Sometimes we aren't so connected to.

Sometimes that goal is not a burning desire and sometimes we're not connected to the why behind whatever it is. That's OK. All that means is that you get to go back to the drawing board, right? That doesn't mean it's not a good goal. It just might mean there's something that needs to be tweaked so that you feel more aligned or connected or that you're able to resonate with it more so that you do get it to the point where it is a burning desire.

Yeah, I mean, like look at when I was in corporate, I literally had to ask myself what if I don't do, do this differently? Like is this path actually leading to a place I want to go? The answer was no. And the result was complete lack of alignment, anxiety, uncomfortability in my body daily because I wasn't doing anything that added up to what I actually wanted.

Right. And then the other thing too is I, I see constantly people say they want the goal and they have an aversion to the baby step. Right? And it's like, well, you're not connecting the baby step as something that's a baby step to your goal. You're thinking of it as an annoyance. So I wanna actually go in here a little if you're down and talk about this.

So I hate making my bed. I make my bed probably five out of seven days a week. I do it most of the time. Ok? I also hate looking at my financials. I'm a business owner though. Ok. Is there a science that says if I don't make my bed, I'm not gonna be a successful business owner. No, there's not, there are lots of quotes, but there's no science that says if you don't make your bed, then you're gonna have a sucky business, right?

It doesn't, it doesn't exist. Yeah, same thing with if I don't manage my checking account. Is there a law, a scientific law that says I'm gonna run out of money? No, there's a chance that I could never check my ATM balance and not run out of money. There is a chance, not a good chance, but there's a chance when I start to think about the life experience that I wish to have.

This is how I got myself to do the things I don't wanna do. I started to say what kind of house do you wanna live in? I wanna live in a clean house. I don't know about you. I feel better when things are clean. Ok? I don't want to clean. I want to live in a clean house. I am choosing to clean because I value a clean house. Ok. This is a values conversation.

Let's take this a step further. I hate going into every dollar. My finance software and tracking every dollar. It's not a fun thing. I dread it. Ok. What kind of bank account do I want to live in? I want to live in an abundant bank account. I want to look at my bank account balance and be like, oh yeah, that sounds about right and have peace because I value financial peace.

I'll do the software. Ok. Last one. What kind of body do I want to live in? When I look in the mirror every day and when I feel my human experience, my feet walking on the earth every day. How do I want to look and feel healthy, glowing, muscular, strong. Do I love going to the gym and doing bent over dumbbell rows? Yes, I do. Do. I love going to the gym and running on the treadmill. Hate it. 

Ok. Two things there we can get in shape. A different way. We can change the method without changing the goal or we can connect the fact that that dumbbell row and that treadmill sprint are actually going to give me what I want. And so I think for a lot of people, there's a lack of connection or a lack of belief that what they're doing will actually produce the fruit that they want because they haven't been entitled under tension enough with the labor to get to the fruit in the past. 

Yeah, they sort of gone after the five K or they've sort of gone after the business. It's like, no, what if you did every step? What if you knew that every step was playing directly into the thing that you wanted, you would approach the step differently.

It's so true. And you know, I think that that's why taking these baby steps building or, or, or creating an environment of sustainability for yourself when you're breaking goals down. I think that's why it's so important because we, I believe this is a belief, this is not a fact. I believe that as humans, we are used to not accomplishing our goals. Therefore, we have learned that we are not capa capable of accomplishing our goals, right?

So therefore, feel unmotivated, feel, feel unmotivated.

And therefore you haven't been in a situation where you have learned that if you trust the process, if you trust the baby steps, if you trust that, that sprint with the dumbbell rose is actually going to get you to your end result. You know, if you had accomplished it before the proof is in the pudding, you, you know, that, that, that, that gets you to your end goal because you've lived it.

But if you haven't lived it before, you know, you don't have that to lean back on and to trust on. And so that is why if you don't have the proof that the baby steps lead you to your end goal to your end desire. And even if it's like the same end desire or not, if you don't have any proof that taking the small steps leads you to the big outcome, you have to build in that layer of sustainability, right?

You have to set yourself up for success or else nothing is going to change. You're going to start off on that goal and fall off again and continue with this narrative that like, I can't do it, I can't accomplish goals. I can't, I can't lose the weight. I can't wake up for a morning routine. I can't start the business, you know? Wow.

Yeah. And, and this is where having the coach really comes in. And I'm not just trying to like make a podcast about like why you need a coach. I don't care what coach you hire. I'm not saying to hire us. I'm just saying if you have a coach with a proven process, keyword, the coach has to have a proven process. It's just that it's a proven process and you get to not question the steps.

If you're more of a rebel type, you might actually like to not inherit someone's process and you might come out your, with a little attitude of, let's just see if I can, what would happen if I started running 400 m, four times a day, like you can do, you can prove your own process if you want. But that takes a special personality, right? And if you know, you don't have that personality to sustainably say, let's just see if I can, you need a coach, you need somebody holding you accountable saying this is the method. 

Don't question my method. This is Mr Miyagi, right? You're doing it this way and you're like, oh shoot, we're doing it. Ok? Cool. Well, basically I'm gonna get the result. Cool. You're outsourcing your trust to this coach and it's freaking amazing.

I would not have a business if I didn't do that just saying.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no way, not at all. Not at all. And I will say, again, this is like not a podcast episode about hiring coaches. But hi, the first time I hired a coach, I was so insanely outside of my comfort zone. But, you know, great things aren't born in your comfort zone. You gotta take steps out and I think then this pretty great great thing was born/

Ok. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there's this thing too where we have our comfort zone, our challenge zone or our growth zone, people call it. And then, like, our panic zone, it's like I need you to be uncomfortable. I need this to be a beting. Not a third degree burn. Right. so, like, is it stinging or is it decapitating because I need you to be able to sleep at night or you're not gonna be able to be creative, you're not gonna be able to advance.

And so it's just interesting to find that sort of goldilocks fit where you find a coach that investment wise is uncomfortable but achievable. So that you're not like stressed out of your eyeballs, I'm trying to add that. Yeah, I'm actually coach.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, I hate that.

It worked out, it worked out fine. Don't be sorry.

It did work out great for you. Ok. So as we start wrapping up, do you have any suggestions or tips for a listener who maybe has a goal or knows what their ideal outcome is? But just feels stuck with where they are now. They, they feel like they cannot leave their point a yet.

Yeah, absolutely. Once you're clear on your goal, crystal clear on your goal and once you are clear on at least a list of actions that you should do more of maybe you don't have the quantities down. But you have like, I should run, I should walk, I should cycle, I should burst a climber. I should go to Pilates once a week. I should get on sales calls.

I should dm people you have at least the actions listed out, even if they're out of order or they don't have numbers next to them, right? Make a visual tracker. Start doing everything that, you know, to do every single day and color coding it. So this could be as simple as this. There is a product on Amazon called Large Monthly Planner. What it's called has no dates on it.

It just says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday at the top and then there's a grid and every month you can flip over a new page but you don't, you do not need to wait for the first to start. You do not need to wait for Monday to start. You can literally just say day one. Here it is boom. And I have four colored highlighters and there's a little legend and yellow means I sent my DMS orange means I pitched a call.

Green means I got on a sales call. Blue means I sign a client. OK. And I started to track the actions that I needed to take to do that. Did I make a post? Make that another color? Did I leave 10 comments, make that another color, right? And you start to see these dots pop up on your calendar. So, if you're a runner, did you run? Did you stretch? Did you eat properly? Did you sleep? Those are your four habits, right? 

Improve those four things. Your running is gonna improve even if you don't have the exact science, if you're a business owner, did you talk to someone do new? Did you make a piece of content? Did you get on a sales call and pitch? Did you show up and work that day? Did you sign a client? Right. So like all those things can be tracked if it's trackable, start tracking it, the more you put it in, the more you're gonna get out. Visual trackers. That's one style a calendar with the legend with a lot of that.

Yeah. Yeah.

You also could develop something more like a 75 hardt where if you don't do everything that day you start over, right? You can make your own version of 75 hard. That's another way. There's also like the thermometer charts and I don't like these as much. And here's why I don't like them by themselves. I like them in conjunction with the habit trackers.

But the thermometer chart where you like color in how much money you save for your vacation. What happens if you didn't say anything that day? You're subconsciously programming like, oh I'm not progressing toward my goal. Oh, I'm stuck and you're actually reinforcing the fact that you're stuck. So I actually don't like count ups. I only like count downs.

And so even when I have like the goal of signing, like we have the goal of signing 24 more clients for maximum potency by January 1st. There's a 24 on my board every time my subconscious looks at that, it says we have 24 more clients on the way. It doesn't say one or two or three. It's not counting up, it's counting down. So when we sign a client that gets erased and it goes down to 23.

Yeah, 23 to go instead of two out of 24. Achieved. Does that make sense? We're constantly reprogramming to say this is already happening. It's already in progress. It's already on the way rather than I'm struggling to count up on my thermometer chart. So that's one thing I would say, don't do visually track and make it go down or stack your habits up.

Don't stack the mile time or the Yeah. So like miles run, if you say you have a race and you wanna run 500 miles between now and your race, put 500 start counting down rather than up, right? So it's just like something to that for me writing down your goals in past tense, putting them all over your house, right? Recording a voice memo to yourself in past tense that says dear Lyssa and I did this. It's July 1st 2024. It's not, it was July 1st 2023.

And I told myself what was gonna happen and 80% of that stuff will happen, it will because I told myself it's going to, I listen to that every single day. Some of it's already happened. And so I'm nodding and I'm reinforcing the fact that it's already here. Right? Those personal statements said in past tense for the next 12 months. Record one and tell me your goals aren't, won't start happening.

It's insane, man. I love that. I love that one. I feel like that actually. OK, so you have kind of set yourself up for this last question that I'm gonna ask. That is one that I ask every guest that comes on the show and that is, do you have a life or happiness hacker tip that you use in your own life that the listeners might want to try out in their own?

Yeah. So I love that. I love the personal statement. I also love to write Manifestos. So whichever one manifesto is like 32 rules for life and you start writing rules, right? That's the one that's getting super intentional, but like day to day happiness, get into gratitude. I know it's basic, but I say God for five minutes every morning and just tell them about what I'm grateful for in the past 24 hours. And that's the key.

What happened in the past 24 hours that you're grateful for. So not. I'm grateful for my health and I'm grateful for my family. But I'm grateful for my little sister's sister's giggle on our phone call last night and I'm grateful that my feet took me on a walk this morning. You're pulling it into the present moment. and you can't be in gratitude and lack at the same time. So it's just, yeah.

Oh my God. This conversation has like lit me up. Good maximum potency, baby. OK. Where can we find you? Where can we connect, hang out with you?

Yeah. So @maximumpotency on Instagram, as well as the Maximum Potency Podcast. That is the business I was speaking about today. We're also starting something called Spiritually Fit Collective, which is gonna be wellness coaching. And we also have something called American Vagabond, which is about to be retreats, apparel and new tropics launching as well.

So I'll send you all of those Instagram profiles. Things are happening behind the scenes right now and life is very exciting. My DMS are always open if you wanna connect. Maximum Potency is the place.

Amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time for really, truly pouring into us and I just appreciate you and our new friendship so much.

We do, we do, I'm stoked and thanks for making the time.

Ok?

I'll talk to you later see you Rip Out Life.