A brief conversation this fine day about personal accountability. Who's willing to share something that they are proud that they were able to continue all the way through the first 31 days? Is there anyone here who would like to be recognized by your peers for an accomplishment?

Yeah, I'll share one personal, one professional. So the personal one is I am doing a 75-day challenge.

And I have committed to that all of January. So two workouts a day, modified diet, a gallon of water, 10 pages of actual reading, not audiobooks. That's been awesome.

And I'm down 25 pounds, which feels good. No, that's great. That's a personal one.

And then alongside that, I've been really committed to sort of align with what Randy was sharing in terms of ideal clients. I've really shifted, as I've shared in this group, to more like a fractional coaching. And as I've been meeting with one-on-one clients, not falling into the trap of, okay, there's an opening, let me just lunge at this, but actually exploring, well, what are you really after? What would really benefit you most? And in keeping my commitment to that, ended up landing a fractional coaching client, which has a recurring monthly retainer.

And that's nice to create rather than the one-offs. Okay, great. Well, congratulations for that.

That's awesome. That's wonderful. Let's talk a little bit about the seven aspects.

Actually, my bad. There's 10 aspects of this, seven of which are particularly relevant to what we're talking about when it comes to personal accountability and building momentum. And so that you understand, it's never too late to start.

The biggest thing that I see with people is the turning of the page in the calendar. I see it January 1st, but I also see it a little bit July 1st, is other than those times people think I got to start on the first of the month. I got to start on a Monday.

I got to start on this day of the week. The best time to start is today, right? The second best time to start would have been yesterday, or you can flip that around if you want, right? So if you're thinking about building momentum for anything business related, you can start today. Today is a Monday, or you could have started on Thursday of last week.

It doesn't matter. Your goals, your weight loss, when you get on the scale, the scale doesn't care when you started. The scale, it doesn't matter, right? So for you to build momentum in your business, it doesn't matter when you start.

So step number one is have a clear outcome that you're looking to drive. The thing you need to focus on in order to drive that outcome are your daily habits, okay? If you're looking to drive an outcome in your business, the habits for your business are your standard operating procedures. So in your personal life, you hear me constantly focusing on your habits because your habits are what you can control today, right? So if you wanted to go from 199 pounds, if you weighed 199 pounds, you wanted to go down to 159, you wanted to lose 40 pounds, you can't do that in a day.

You can't do it in a week. You can't even do that in a month. But what you can control is what you put in your mouth right now, what you eat today.

You can control that. There you go, Phil. Good job.

You can control what you, the activity you undertake. You can control whether you take the elevator or the stairs. You can control whether you walk the dogs a mile or whether you walk the dogs 500 yards and just stand there and wait for them to do what they're going to do.

So you can control what happens in the moment and that will lead to the outcomes that you're looking to accomplish. So step number one is define what the outcome is. Step number two is what are the daily habits that will lead to that outcome.

So for your business, step number one is define the outcome for your business. Step number two, what are the standard operating procedures that must be followed in order for your business to produce the outcome? But we'll stick with you as the leader for now. What's the outcome you want? What are the daily habits? Now, what influences those two things is your perception of yourself.

Okay? Your perception of yourself is what influences the behavior that will lead to the outcomes. So if you view yourself as the CEO of a $250 million a year annual revenue business, you're going to behave differently than if you view yourself as a $10,000 a month lawyer. So you got to get straight in your mind who you are first and foremost.

You've heard me say it a million times. I'm the owner. I'm the leader of a $250 million a year business.

My financial statement may not say that. My business financial statement may not say that today, but I've done that. I've done that before.

So that's who I will always be. I will always be that guy. So I'm not going to behave like the guy who, you know, has to move the pallet jack around in the warehouse.

I'm the guy that hires people to move the pallets around in the warehouse. And that's my mentality. So my behavior is driven by who I am.

So the first thing you got to get straight in your head is whether you're the CEO of a $50 million business, $100 million business, or you're the $10,000 a month person who has to answer the phones, sharpen the pencils, deliver the baked goods. I mean, that's the first thing you've got to get straight in your head. And that will help you define the habits that you undertake on a daily basis that will lead to your goals.

And then step number three is creating external accountability. So those who are in the master's program have the external accountability. They have the unique pleasure of having me ride them.

And when I ride them, I don't ride them like your mother telling you to make your bed in the morning. I look at them and I say, Randy, you told me you wanted to do this by the end of this month. These are the five activities that we agreed you were going to do so that you could achieve that outcome.

Why didn't you do those five activities? And there are a million excuses, but not one single reason. And I'm going to say that again. There are a million excuses, but not one single reason.

If your life depended on you getting that done, 90% of you would get it done. The other 10% would die. And that's just the way it is.

And I hope to God you put yourself mentally in that picture in the 90%. So creating external accountability is just about somebody repeating back to you what you said you wanted at the outset of this. And then evaluation is step four.

The evaluation of your habits. Are those habits that we agreed you were going to do, are those actually leading to the outcomes that you wanted to drive? And then the next step in the process is to enhance the activity once you've built the momentum. So what happens generally, and there's no specific amount of time, but contrary to urban myth, all right, business legend, there's no 11 days, 21 days, 30 days to something becoming a habit.

Each of us is different, right? We're all individuals. So the neural pathways in our brain, the dopamine triggers, all that stuff is different for each of us, depending on who we are, what we do, and what motivates us. However, what you can be certain of is if you do something long enough, it will eventually become a habit, okay? And I can give you a number of examples.

One of the examples that I'll give you is my friend here, my business partner, Nikola. Going to the gym for her, working out for her, she doesn't go to the gym every day, but she works out every day. That's just something she does, like brushing her teeth.

It's part of who she is. She is not complete unless she has done something to enhance her wellness each day. Now, some days we travel, and we're traveling all day, and then we go to meetings or whatever.

She doesn't get to go to the gym, but you can be sure that her nutrition is on point for that day, and that's what she's done to enhance her wellness for the day, and it becomes self-reinforcing behavior, okay? So I'll tell you, for me, with weight loss, one of the things that was critically important for me was shopping for my own food. When my wife purchased my food, I would have to eat what she purchased because I didn't buy it myself, and the pain of listening to her when I didn't eat the food that she spent the time purchasing was far greater than me saying, No, I don't want that. I'll just eat this instead.

So then going out and buying my own food, making my own trip to the supermarket, having my own section in the refrigerator and in the pantry for the food that I made for myself, which was enabling for the weight loss, changed everything because that barrier was no longer there. So the friction was reduced. Making it easier to comply with what you're looking to do is the next step in the process.

So make it easy to do the things you want to do. Reduce the friction there and create more friction for the things that make it more difficult, okay? So for me, the removal of the snacks from the pantry was an element. It made it more difficult.

If I wanted potato chips, I would have to buy the potato chips, and I wasn't going to do that and reinforce the bad behavior for myself. Instead, I purchased for myself the food that was going to lead to this. So reducing friction for good things, increasing friction for bad things is the next step.

And then setting the environment up for success is the last element of this. If you want to make it so easy that you have to do the habits, setting up the environment is essential. Let me give you a business example.

So Nicola and I decided we were going to make sure we did weekly podcast interviews. I wanted to expand the reach of the show, so I wanted to do daily podcast shows, even if they were only 10 minutes. And I wanted to do it for a number of reasons which we could get into but are not relevant for this discussion.

So in order for me to make that happen, I have to do three things every day. I have to plan the night before for the show that I'm going to record the next day, which is done before I go to bed every day, sometime during the day. Or if I haven't done it, I do it before I leave the office.

I plan the show for the next day, write out the outline, make sure I know what I'm going to cover. Then everything is clear on my desk from the environment. The mic is set up.

The system is ready to go. So all I have to do is hit the record button, follow the outline and record the show. That is removing all the barriers, setting up the environment to be successful the next day.

And I do that every morning. And I am at least right now, I think I'm 10 days of shows ahead. I am at least a week ahead in my shows.

And I have also found ways to include other content in that process to buy me more time. And I've reduced the amount of friction in that so I can create content everywhere I go. There's I have, I always have a show outlined, ready to go in my notebook.

And I have the tools with me. I was on the road last week for three days. I recorded three shows from my hotel room during those three days in a friction free way.

And you won't even be able to tell which shows were recorded in a hotel room and which ones weren't. I recorded a show from the back of my truck outside of a volleyball tournament three weeks ago on Sunday. And nobody could tell that I was recording the show from the back of the truck outside of a volleyball tournament three weeks ago on Sunday.

Shows already come and gone. Actually, it's probably right now as we're talking, it's the most the most listened to show so far this year. That that'll tell you the consequences of of adjusting your behavior to make that happen.

I share this with you because you all have things you want to accomplish, but you're giving yourselves excuses for not accomplishing them. So holding yourself accountable, using this process, and I will be sending out this process so that you can listen to it over and over again, holding yourself accountable to this process, making it friction free is how you will get it done. Those of you who've accomplished things, does this resonate? Do you find yourself using some of these steps in the process of holding yourself accountable for making this happen? Yes or no? Thank you.

And you bring up a great point, getting started and the blank page. Okay. If you're doing anything content related, and I will tell you where all of my content comes from, it comes from you.

When you ask me a question, I write down the question. And if the answer to the question takes longer than five minutes for me to articulate to you, that's something I need to cover because other people have that question. So in one-on-one consulting sessions, if somebody tells me they're struggling with something, I know that somebody else in the community is struggling with that too.

I need to cover that. Your clients are going to be the best source of content for you. Anything your clients are talking about is content.

It should be content. If your clients are concerned, if your clients have questions, if there's something that people are experiencing together as a group and it's worthy of conversation, it's worthy of a blog post, it's worthy of an article. Okay.

Good stuff. Thank you all. I appreciate it.