www.richhabits.net 1103 Westfield Ave, Rahway, NJ 07065" align=left width=125 height=1060 v:dpi="96" v:shapes="_x0000_s1026">GOALS!

Learn the powerful goal-setting techniques used by wealthy individuals.

By Thomas Corley

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 “Ninety-five percent of Americans struggle financially. They eke out a living. They live from one paycheck to the next. They are barely getting by. They are hanging on by a thread. And the saddest thing is that this reality perpetuates itself from one generation to the next. It's what I call the generational cycle of financial failure and I'm out to change that. This disenfranchised group, which makes up most of America, has never been taught by their parents or their schools how to be financially successful in life." By Thomas C. Corley, author Rich Habits – The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals  WWW.RICHHABITS.NET

According to the Internal Revenue Service, only 5% of all individuals who file an income tax return make $150,000 or more per year. That works out to approximately 7.5 million individual tax filers. This 5% group is responsible for paying the majority of the personal income tax the IRS receives each year. This is also the group that has adequate retirement savings, six months worth of monthly income savings for emergencies, little to no debt, college costs funded for their children and/or grandchildren, take nice vacations, have significant home equity in their modest to above average homes, good health insurance coverage and adequate life insurance in the event of death. It is this 5% that many in America call the rich. 

To most Americans, rich people keep getting richer. That is a factual truth. But put your petty emotions aside for a moment (jealousy/envy) and ask yourself this question: What is it that these rich families are doing that sets them apart from the rest of America? There is a reason why wealthy families bring up wealthy children and is the reason why this cycle of wealth continues from one generation to the next. And it's not about inheritance. Wealthy families live and pass along to their children something that I call Rich Habits. Rich Habits are the daily good habits of wealthy people. These Rich Habits are used to accumulate wealth and are taught to their children at a very young age fostering a pattern of daily living that they in turn pass along to the next generation.

Conversely, the reason 95% of Americans cannot break out of their cycle of failure is that this group of Americans also pass along generational habits to their children. The difference is that these habits are bad habits. Bad habits that perpetuate from one generation to the next thus, breeding into every subsequent generation a cycle of financial failure. Unfortunately, there is no course taught in our schools on How To Be Financially Successful in Life. Why? Because financial success has always been a secret. That is why they refer to it as the secret to financial success. How can we break this cycle of failure for our children?

I have spent five years researching the daily habits of wealthy people and I have uncovered the secret to financial success which I share in my book Rich Habits (www.richhabits.net). The purpose of this report is to share with you one of those secrets:

Rich Habit #2 – I will set goals for each day, for each month, for each year and for the long-term. I will focus on my goals each and every day.

The Anatomy of a Goal –A Wish is Not a Goal

Far too many individuals fail to achieve their goals. Many who fail to achieve their goals simply give up on goal setting altogether out of frustration or a loss of confidence in the goal-setting process. Why? Why do people fail to achieve their goals? At the heart of the problem is the fact that many who set what they think are goals are not setting goals at all. They are, instead, making a wish. Wishes are not goals. What sets a wish and a goal apart is action. Wishes are wishes because there is no action-based plan underpinning the wish. Goals are goals only when action steps are required to achieve the goal. For example, a typical goal setter may establish a goal of making $100,000 in income for the year. They may even list this "goal" on a goal sheet that they review periodically. As the year moves along they soon begin to realize that they will not get close to making $100,000. This usually occurs mid-year. At that point they often stop reviewing their goals for the year in an effort to avoid reminding themselves of their failure in achieving the goal. Feelings of inadequacy, poor work ethic, lack of focus begin to filter into their minds as a result of missing the goal. That's too bad. It's too bad because the failure in achieving the "goal" has little to do with work ethic or focus or competence. Instead, it has everything to do with misinterpreting a wish for a goal.

So how do we turn our wish of making $100,000 in income for the year into a goal? The first thing we need to do is to create an action plan. An action plan represents the specific steps that are required in order to help you reach your $100,000 earnings target. Let's use the example of a life insurance agent who desires to make $100,000 in commissions for the year. What specific action steps are required in order for a life insurance agent to make $100,000 in commissions for the year? In order to answer that question we need to work backwards and define the steps necessary to reach this financial benchmark.

Step #1     How many average life policies need to be written for the year in order to spin off $100,000 in commissions?
If the average life insurance case generates $2,000 in commissions this means that you will need to close 50 cases for the year. Is this possible? If the answer is yes then you move on to Step # 2.

Step #2    How many individual meetings will you need to have in order to have a shot at closing 50 cases for the year?
If it takes 5 meetings to create 1 closed case then you will need to meet with 250 people during the year. Is this possible? If the answer is yes then you move on to Step #3.
                     
Step # 3    How many phone calls will it take to create 250 meetings for the year?
If it takes 10 phone calls just to get 1 meeting, then the answer is 2,500 phone calls for the year. Is this possible? If the answer is yes then you move on to Step #4.

Step #4    How many phone calls will you have to make every week in order to reach your goal of 2,500 phone calls for the year? Assuming you take four weeks off for the year for various reasons (vacation, time off etc) then that leaves you with 48 weeks to work with. This will require you to make approximately 50 phone calls a week. Is this possible? If the answer is yes then you move on to Step #5.

Step #5    How many phone calls will it take each day to reach 50 calls per week?
Ok, that was an easy one. Ten per day. Is that possible? You bet it is. 10 additional phone calls per day in order to make an additional $100,000 per year in life insurance commissions. Now you have your goal, which is: Make 10 Additional Prospecting Calls Each Day.

You may notice that the above “wish” required a step-by-step analysis in order to turn the “wish” into a goal. The real goal is not to make $100,000 per year (that was the “wish”), but, instead, to make 10 phone calls per day. That action step of making an additional ten phone prospecting phone calls per day is your goal. Pursuing your goal will result in the realization of your wish. The byproduct of achieving your daily goal is that, by year-end, you make an additional $100,000 for the year in life insurance commissions. See how goal setting works? What you have done is taken a "wish" of making $100,000 per year in commissions and broken it down into steps in order to determine what your Real Goal needs to be. By going through this exercise, what you are really doing is creating a mini business plan for each wish, which involves defining the variables for each particular goal. Variables such as the number of policies that need to be written, the number of meetings that need to take place, the number of prospecting phone calls that are needed to create a meeting. Then you break these variable assumptions down into the daily activities required.

In summary, in order to turn a wish into a goal you will need to look at your wishes as the starting point for creating your goals. A wish becomes a goal only when you specifically define the action-based steps that must be accomplished in order for your wish to come true. These action-based steps become your goals.

No action = no goal = wishes don’t come true.  

Wealthy people set five types of goals.

1. Five-Year Goals - These are broad-based initiatives to be accomplished within a five year period and are sometimes referred to as long-term goals. Think of your long-term goals as your "wish list." Create a plan for accomplishing each goal and include the tasks needed to be accomplished.                                 Example- Long-Term Goal Number One: I will buy a house in five years. In order to reach this goal I will save one thousand dollars per month for the next five years. In order to save one thousand dollars per month I will reduce my expenses and deposit two hundred and fifty dollars each pay period into a separate saving account.  Think of five-year goals as the tip of the goal pyramid. This is where you want to be in five years.
2. Next-Year Goals - These are goals you set for next year. This set of goals gets you closer to achieving your long-term goals and, thus, the top of the pyramid. They represent lesser, broad-based goals or objectives that you need to accomplish in order to reach your five-year goals.
3. Current-Year Goals - These are goals you set at the beginning of the current year. They help move you closer to reaching your goals for next year and, thus, your five-year goals.
4. Monthly Goals -These are specific initiatives backed by action steps required in order to help you reach your annual goals. At the beginning of each month list monthly goals. These are goals with a realistic probability of being reached by the end of the month. Break down each goal into tasks or steps. The monthly goals could be the number of insurance policies to write that month, or the number of new clients you hope to gain, or a revenue target for the month. These goals might include a project to be completed or an article to be written.                                                                                                                                              Example – Monthly Goal Number One: I will write five life insurance policies this month. In order to achieve this goal I will need to meet with ten prospects each week for the next four weeks. In order for these meetings to occur, I will make fifty phone calls each week, which breaks down into ten calls each day.
5. Daily Goals - These are sometimes referred to as daily "to-do" lists or daily tasks. Daily goals represent the daily achievements wealthy people seek to attain every day in order to accomplish their broader monthly goals. They are daily activity goals. Wealthy people seek to reach 80% or more of their daily goals. Before you begin each and every day, compile a "to do" list. List only those things you believe you have a realistic probability (80% chance) of completing that day. Prioritize this list and set a specific time in which you will tackle each item. The lower priority items are those that have a low probability (bottom 20%) of being accomplished that day and can be accomplished the subsequent day. You do this in order to build flexibility into your "to do" list to avoid frustration in failing to accomplish the important tasks set for that day. During the day mark off each completed task and congratulate yourself in its accomplishment. At the end of the day evaluate your "to do" list.

Wealthy Individuals Write Down Their Goals

Wealthy individuals write down their goals and set a deadline for achieving their goals. These goals are reviewed frequently and are modified as the facts change in their lives. A little known secret I discovered in studying wealthy individuals is that the wealthy constantly revise their goals and their deadlines. Wealthy individuals understand life is not a fixed, static thing. Things within our lives change and our goals must change as well. Unless a goal is written down along with a specific accomplishment date, it will be forgotten or neglected. You must see your goals every single day.

Daily Affirmations –Wealthy Individuals Create Daily Affirmations Around Their Goals

I uncovered a very powerful technique the wealthy use in achieving their goals. Wealthy individuals utilize daily affirmations as a tool to help them reach their goals. The daily affirmations are constructed in such a way as to be directly related to a specific goal. For example, one wealthy individual used a daily affirmation to achieve his goal of adding solar installations to his company’s product and service offering. In order for this to happen the wealthy business owner needed he and his electrical engineer employees to secure a particular license to do Photovoltaic installations. To help, he created the following daily affirmation using the name of the license he and his group were working toward securing:

I am a limited renewable energy contractor

His goal for his company was to get into the solar cell installation business by the end of the year and he made each license applicant successfully use the above affirmation to motivate each one of them to obtain the license. They all did and his firm became even more profitable.

In order for the daily affirmations to work they need to be in the present tense: I am and they need to represent the future state or future you: a renewable energy contractor.  You can use daily affirmations to help you with your goals. If your goal for the year is to increase your sales productivity you can use the following daily affirmation: I make ten prospect phone calls today.

I make is the present tense and the future state is ten phone calls being made by the end of the day.

Daily affirmations only work if they are in the present tense, represent the future you (or future state)  and are tied to an action-based goal.

Vision Board –Wealthy Individuals Use Vision Boards to Help Them Achieve Their Long-Term Goals

A useful technique to assist in keeping long-term goals in sight is the use of a vision board. A vision board is an actual picture of long-term goals. This may be a picture of the house you desire to buy, a picture of the business you hope to own one day, or a picture of the type of place you hope to retire to one day. Before he rose to great fame, comedian Jim Carey wrote out a check to himself for twenty million dollars and kept that check in a place where he would see it every day. That check represented a vision board of a long-term goal he desired to achieve one day -- to be paid twenty million dollars for a movie. When the opportunity arose for a leading role in a movie, guess what Jim Carey's demand for compensation was? Twenty million dollars. And he got it!