I did my first deal over twenty years ago; since then, I’ve done dozens of deals and advised on hundreds more. My goal is around buying and selling businesses—specifically buying companies without using cash upfront or without borrowing lots of money from financial institutions. I have helped many people with my Harbor Club training program, which teaches our members how to navigate the buying and selling process.
I am so passionate about teaching and helping others along their journey. I am always a bit hesitant to kind of crossover into speaking on areas of personal development. However, I think it’s an important topic for me to touch on because you need to be armed with the basic skills of personal development to set yourself up for success. I’ve spoken before about accountability and its’ importance in creating habits and achieving goals. It surprises me that I’ve talked to quite a few people who are hesitant about the idea of goal setting. I have observed that the people who don’t set themselves clear goals tend to get lost in drama and politics. They end up creating their own soap opera within their life.
The Power of The Mind
The average person has 48.6 thoughts per minute, which equates to about 70,000 thoughts per day. When you go through life without passion, vision, or goals, all those thoughts become disorganized, and the nonsense that’s going on in your head starts to control your actions. This can manifest into people who become keyboard warriors on Twitter or on various social platforms who get terribly upset about what’s happening thousands of miles away. These people also let politics and current affairs dominate all their all of their time. Without an avenue to channel their thoughts, they can easily become obsessed with their own little microcosm, like going absolutely enraged because their neighbor’s tree dropped some leaves on your garden.
This happens when people have absolutely nothing to worry about, no goals to work toward, and no plan to follow. Their mind creates things to worry about, and so they end up producing their own soap opera. This is the result of the human brain trying to keep you motivated and passionate about something. Suppose you have nothing that you’ve self-designated yourself to be passionate about. In that case, you start to go off on these tangents, and seemingly pointless things become incredibly important to you suddenly!
Re-evaluate Where You Focus Your Attention
Getting sucked into your own living soap opera will derail you and get you nowhere. Take a moment and think about the type of conversations you’re engaging in on social media. Think about your daily to-do list and decide if they are getting you closer to your goals. You need to be careful about getting consumed by Emails and messaging platforms as well. For me, 90% of my business operates through Email, Zoom, and WhatsApp. Someone once told me that Email is a to-do list that anyone can add to. People can ping you with email and text messages whenever they want something.
Be the Guardian of Your Time
There are ways for you to moderate how you use certain mediums to help you achieve your goals and not hinder your progress. You don’t want your to-do list to be full of things you need to do for other people and nothing for yourself. I removed Email from my phone to help regulate how much access people have to me daily so that I can be in charge of what I put my energy toward. I try to get tons of things done before I even touch my Email, I don’t check it often, and I don’t look at Email at all on the weekends. I still use WhatsApp for business, but I designate myself a period of time to send the messages that I need to send, and then perhaps later in the day, when I’ve got a bit of spare headspace, I’ll go through and reply to the other 30 messages that need a response.
Setting goals for yourself is vital. Human beings crave purpose, and your brain needs something beneficial to focus on. Otherwise, you can dangerously slip into creating your own soap opera and be the producer of your own drama. The deeper you get, the harder it will be to pull yourself out. Start with small goals because, eventually, they will add up to big accomplishments.
