Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2719 Why You Haven't Hit Your Goals About this episode You're probably thinking about goals at this time of year. The ones you set, the ones you hit and yes, the ones you missed too. And sure, you want to hit those goals just as much as the next person, but some seem to slip through your fingers - no matter how much you want them. It's time to break the cycle of setting big targets and watching them fade as the year goes on! In this episode, Omar's going to share the real reasons behind missed goals and what you can actually do about it. He lays out step-by-step why most people miss their goals, and how easy it is to turn things around. No hype or empty motivation required. Ready to make goals you can actually hit? That play button at the top of the page is where it's at. Let Omar walk you through the blueprint to consistent success. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Today's episode is supported by Cash App. When it comes to Bitcoin, you may be surprised to learn that it was invented way back in 2008. But you still haven't made the jump to Bitcoin yet? Cash App makes it easy. When you buy Bitcoin on Cash App, they hold real Bitcoin for you, one to one, and you can withdraw it anytime. It works more like real money and less like something locked in an account. No extra steps, no restrictions, just access and control when you need it. With Cash App, you can actually do that. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code BITCOIN10 when you sign up. And, don't forget this part: send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank.
0:45 Speaker 00 Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Incorporated brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is a payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works.
1:28 Speaker 00 If you didn't hit your goals this year, it's not because you suck. Nothing's wrong with you. It's because you're setting goals in a way that almost guarantees that you're gonna fail. And the crazy part is, it's actually easy to fix. Most of the advice out there is just a bunch of hype, a bunch of motivation, a bunch of "you gotta want it more." What a bunch of nonsense. Today, I'm gonna teach you the real reason you haven't hit your goals, and how to fix it in a way that actually works in your real life.
2:04 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.
2:17 Speaker 00 If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast, so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much.
2:39 Speaker 00 The first reason why you haven't hit your goals is simple. You're not setting goals. You're setting wishes, like you have some sort of lamp and a genie's gonna pop out and grant you your wishes. And often, this sounds like, "I want to make more money. I want to get in shape. I want to grow my business." These are wishes. They're not outcomes. A real goal includes inputs, the things you actually can control every single day, every single week. And a real business goal looks a lot like this: 10 hours a week of deep work. Publish one piece of long-form content. One sales action every day. Review progress every Sunday night. Those are goals. They create results. If you can't measure the
3:24 Speaker 00 actions you take, you can't achieve the outcome. It's that simple. I'm gonna say it again. If you can't measure the actions, you can't achieve the outcome. The second silent killer of goals is that people try to overhaul their whole life overnight. This does not work. I'm the first to say that I don't recognize the person I was 10 years ago, but it didn't happen from one day to the next. It just happened because I made small changes every single day that compounded, and then 10 to years later, I'm like, "Wow, my life is totally different. I'm a different person." If you try to set goals for your finances, your business, your health, your relationships, your routines,
4:03 Speaker 00 your hobbies, all at the same time, you are asking for failure. No one can do that. You need to focus on... Just a couple at a time. I'm giving you the truth that not you, not me, not the most disciplined person in the world can pull that off. Momentum comes from focus and consistent focus. Focus comes from doing less, actually, not more. And one good way to do this is to have one major goal per quarter. Everything else is supporting habits. Now, listen, you're going to get better at this year after year, and you're going to be able to do more than one goal a quarter. But at the start, just do one and see it through
4:45 Speaker 00 so that you can get a win under your belt and see this actually work, see the fruits of your labor. And I'm saying this knowing I'm speaking to people with jobs, with responsibilities, with businesses they're trying to run, family, life, all kinds of stuff. So I want to share with you things that actually create change, and that is just focusing on one thing at a time. And one quarter, three months, is a good amount of time for you to make meaningful change. The third reason why you haven't hit your goals is that you have no real system. And a lot of people think they're not hitting their goals because they lack motivation. But really, what you need is structure. And a lack of structure is a recipe for disaster. You don't have endless willpower,
5:30 Speaker 00 and structure allows you to stay on course. Listen, if you're relying on emotion, that is unreliable. Emotion is unreliable. You can't count on feeling like doing things all the time. The beauty of systems is that they work even when you don't feel like it. Systems don't care if you're tired. Systems don't care about your mood. You don't hit goals by being inspired. This is what I've learned. You hit goals by building a life where it's harder to fail than to succeed. You see what I'm saying here? You've got to build a structure that makes it easy for you to not fail. That's the difference between building a business and thinking about building a business,
6:12 Speaker 00 is that you're actually building the system that allows the business to thrive. Reason number four: You never review anything. This is the simplest fix and the one that almost no one does. A lot of people, they have no scorecard. They have no scoreboard to see if they're winning. They don't track progress. They don't review their week. They don't analyze anything if it's working or not. So every week feels the same and your results stay the same because you are not actually checking if you're making progress. A 15-minute weekly review changes everything for you. You could do it at the end of the week or the start of the week, but do it. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself.
6:56 Speaker 00 It's just four questions. Question number one, what did I actually do last week? What did I actually get done? Where did I slip? That's question number two. Where did I slip up? Where do I make mistakes? Where did I kind of fall behind? Question number three, what needs adjusting in next week's plan? And then lastly, what's next week's plan? What am I going to do the same? What am I going to do different? It's very simple and you may want to rewind that just so you can write it down. But you don't need to overcomplicate this. Those four questions will help you stay on track and give you the structure you need to make progress, to hold yourself accountable. Reason number five, you're not hitting your goal is your life is not designed for your goal.
7:40 Speaker 00 This one is brutal, but honest. You're trying to hit a goal with a lifestyle designed for the opposite outcome. If you set big goals while living a life that can't support them, you are asking for failure. If you're exhausted after work, if you have no dedicated work block times to work on your side hustle or work on your business, if you sleep badly, if your environment distracts you, your physical and your mental environment distracts you, if your calendar is full of obligations for everyone else except yourself, you are asking for trouble. Your lifestyle is producing exactly the results it's designed to produce. So whatever results you're getting right now, it's because of the lifestyle you have. So if you want different results, you need to change the way you're living your life.
8:25 Speaker 00 It's just that simple. And until that changes, nothing will change.
8:30 Speaker 00 Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone because it's helping me learn Italian faster than I can ever imagine. Why do I want to learn Italian? Well, who doesn't love Italy? But of course, Nicole's family is Italian and I love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom. And Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade. One of the coolest features is chat missions, which turns conversation practice into a game. With chat missions, you're put in interactive scenarios and given three objectives. A mission to accomplish, like asking how much something costs, ordering a cold brew coffee, or getting a Wi-Fi password. Along the way, you get real-time corrections and feedback to help you sound more natural and confident.
9:15 Speaker 00 It's a supportive way to build confidence before putting your language skills to use in real life. I've been using Rosetta Stone for over two years and I actually can have some small Italian conversations with Nicole's mom now. Just the other day, she asked me, "When are you traveling?" And I said, "Dopo domani mattina," which means "after tomorrow morning." She was incredibly impressed I was able to answer in Italian. How could you put a price tag on a happy mother-in-law? If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. The $100 rate show listeners can get 20% off the Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone Sapphire in 25 languages. Support for today's episode comes from Square. You probably know Square is the thing you tap your card on at your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, salon, or local store.
10:01 Speaker 00 But for the person running that business, Square is a whole lot more than a way to get paid. Square brings the tools you need to run and grow your business together in one system. From payments on appointments, to staff, inventory, sales, and customer relationships. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, running a restaurant, or starting something new. Square keeps your business tools working together so you can focus less on managing the moving parts and more on what's next. And right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/mba. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash go slash M-B-A. Visit Square to get started because running a business is complicated enough. Your tools don't have to be.
10:45 Speaker 00 When I was teaching full-time, I was a teacher. That was my job for over 10 years before I was a full-time entrepreneur. I was building my first business on the side. And I missed my goals year after year after year. And I was really frustrated. I was really down on myself and I was really beating myself up, honestly. And I wasn't hitting my goals, not because I wasn't putting in any effort. I was putting time after work and the weekends and even my summer breaks. I was working constantly, actually. But my effort had no structure. I didn't have dedicated hours. I just kind of did it whenever I could, instead of when I told myself I had to. I had to realize that I needed deep work blocks, where I do deep work. I didn't have a weekly review. I didn't have a simple plan.
11:28 Speaker 00 I didn't ask myself those questions and hold myself accountable. I had ambition. I wanted it, but I had no foundation or system. So what I'm sharing with you today is out of experience. I've been through the frustration you're going through and probably a bit more, too. So I'm sharing with you what has worked for me in hopes that you can apply it and see how it works out for you. Because the moment I built a system, I had fixed weekly work sessions, minimal distractions, I had a scorecard. Everything changed. Like, literally, within months, the business took off. My side hustle started to make more and more money. And I was actually shocked. I was like, "Oh, I was just kind of doing this haphazardly, thinking that I was going to get a result."
12:13 Speaker 00 It's only because I leveled myself and I said, "Hey, I gotta figure out a better way to do this because I can't compete with people that are doing business full-time. I'm on a full-time job doing this half-time, you know, doing this part-time as a side hustle. How am I going to compete with them if I have no structure? I'm actually shooting myself in the foot and making it more difficult than it needs to be." And the biggest takeaway of all this is that I started to do better, not because I suddenly became more disciplined. It's because I finally built a life that supported the person I was trying to become. Here's a trap that keeps people stuck. They think they need more discipline. They need more motivation. They need more willpower. They don't. You don't. You need clarity, you need structure, you need boundaries around your time.
12:58 Speaker 00 You need your environment to match the goals. Most people fail because they expect their lives to stay the same while the results magically change. It doesn't work like that. Think about it for a moment. Think about when you went to a conference or some sort of event where they had a structured day and they had sessions and lunch and networking, right? Why did you all of a sudden you started to feel more creative and you had all these ideas? And you felt inspired and you felt good about business? It's because you put yourself in the environment to feel that way. The structure was there for that to manifest. Heck, well, last time you went on holiday. Why did you feel so energetic and adventurous and a sense of wonderment? Because you created a structure for that.
13:38 Speaker 00 You have a hotel and you have breakfast and you set out an itinerary and you have, you know, excursions and you're learning and you're going to museums and you're feeling cultured. The structure, the environment creates who you are. Like they say, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. If your system is random, your results will be random at best. Now, if your systems are structured, your results will be structured. Consistency isn't a personality trait, it's designed through the environment you create. So I want to put you on action. I want to give you a four-step goal system that's going to help you achieve what you want in 2026.
14:19 Speaker 00 Let me give you a system I personally use and what I teach inside of our program, the $100 MBA. Step one, choose one 90-day goal. One target, one outcome. Everything else becomes secondary. Step two, pick the three non-negotiables. Three weekly behaviors that guarantee movement and progress. For a business school, for example, this might be 10 hours of deep work, publishing one long-form piece of content, like a long video or a podcast episode. Or maybe it's three smaller pieces of content. One sales action per day. These are clear things you can do to achieve the business goals you want. Align the action to the goal that you have picked for that.
15:04 Speaker 00 90 day goal. If it's a health goal, three workouts a week, 10K steps a day, a protein target. These are things you are in your control that you can do that will lead you to the results you're looking for. Notice, I'm giving you actions as examples. Your actions are the goals because they're going to lead you to the outcomes you want, whether you like it or not. That's the point. The actions will lead you to what you want. Step three, put them in your calendar. Don't say, "I will do this. Hopefully, I'll get around to it when I find time." No, schedule it and protect it. These things are sacred to you because it's what's going to lead to what you want out of life. It's going to change your life. So, give it the respect it deserves.
15:49 Speaker 00 Step four, weekly review. Take 15 minutes every Sunday night or Monday morning, whatever works for you, and ask yourself those questions I gave you. And adjust, refine, reset. This is how adults actually hit goals, is that they look at what they've done and they evaluate. Should I do more of that, less of that? Do I do something different so that I can continue to grow? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? Course correct. One of the things I learned from playing basketball for years, I've been playing basketball for over, what, 35, 40 years? One of the things you learn about basketball is about how to refine, how to adjust. Every time I shoot a shot in basketball, what do I think about? Well, the first thing I think about is too long, too short,
16:34 Speaker 00 too right, too left. That's it. That's all basketball is when you're shooting a shot. So, I mentally quickly adjust. Next time I take a shot, I need to go a little bit higher. Or next time I take a shot, I need to make sure that my elbow's tucked in so it's straight and lined up with the rim. It's not going left or right. I'm telling you, in life, in business, it's that simple. If you do those things, you'll be golden. And you'll not only hit your goals, you will build the muscle of knowing how to achieve things. It's an empowering feeling. You're like, "Wow, I can actually pull things off because I'm building a system around the things I want." So, what else can I do? What else can I accomplish? What else can I get out of life? It's pretty exciting. If you found this episode helpful in any way,
17:18 Speaker 00 go ahead and share it with somebody that you know, somebody you think that would benefit from this episode. Send them a message or tell them in person when you see them next. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You're not behind, you're not broken, and you're not unmotivated. You just haven't built the structure that you need, that is required to achieve your goals. But here's the key. In order for you to reach the goals that you want, the things you want to get out of life, out of your business, it's going to require you to change. Now, change means changing what you do. And what you do every day makes you a different person, which is a great thing, which means you're growing. That means you're becoming something that is worthy of the things that you want out of life,
18:02 Speaker 00 the things that you want to achieve. Those things are waiting for you, but they require you to become somebody new to get there. And you can do that with that structure, with the practices I shared with you today.
18:19 Speaker 00 If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
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