[00:00] I’ve got a client who, he showed up to me as a multi-millionaire, a great father, an exemplary husband, a high performer in a fit, healthy, just crushing it. And he showed up and said, Jim, I want to make a bigger impact. I want to do more. I know there’s more in the tank. Well, here’s the deal. Mark, who was a multi millionaire already, Mark is earning even more money.

[00:28] Mark, who is a great husband and a great father already, is even better. Mark works 20 percent less than he worked before, earns more money, published a book, runs a non profit. is absolutely crushing it. And all of this takes one hour a month, literally one hour per month makes all of this possible. Welcome to another episode of success for the athletic minded man.

[00:57] Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business in life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about setting yourself up. For success in 2025. Now, I don’t know how 2024 went for you. Maybe you didn’t achieve all of your goals or maybe you achieved some of them and, you know, you feel like you could have done a little better.

[01:20] You feel like you could have been more consistent, more disciplined, more focused, or, or maybe, you know, Maybe you achieved a bunch of goals and you’re like, man, I want to go higher. I got more in the tank. Well, that’s what we’re going to be talking about in today’s episode. I’m going to break this down into a very specific process that you can follow and the ingredients that you need that I’ve coached hundreds of guys to do.

[01:42] I’ve talked to hundreds podcast over the last, gosh, we’re coming up on 10 years, which is crazy. Episode 500 is actually in sight now, which is crazy and bonkers to even think about, but I’ve gotten to talk to all these amazing people. Like I’m on the inside, you know, I don’t like to put myself on a pedestal because I’m just a dude.

[02:01] Like you’re a dude. I’m a dude. I’ve gotten to talk to all these amazing people. I’m on the inside. I get to peek back behind the curtain. Like I’m an expert at this stuff. Like I got to live it as a wrestler. I went from a average wrestler to one of the best in the country at what I did. And I went from, you know, That to a division one head wrestling coach, the youngest division one head wrestling coach in the country.

[02:22] I’ve gotten to talk to hundreds of these world class performers I’m friends with and have gotten to be around Olympians and Olympic gold medalists and a lot of other Olympic medalists who are just friends of mine. People I just get to see and Be around and I study this stuff. I read the books in it and through this podcast and through my coaching, I have to organize my thoughts and into systems and processes that I can transfer to you into my clients and yes, I’m an expert at this.

[02:48] And what I’m going to give you is everything that I know. And listen, I’m getting fired up already talking about this. I knew I was going to get fired up going into this episode because. I know that most of you listening to this aren’t going to take action, but maybe you, I’m talking to you, just the one person right now, the one person that is, I’m in your ear and you’re listening to me.

[03:08] You’re listening on the radio, in your car, as you travel to work or you’re, I’m in your earbud as you’re working out or, or wherever it is. Like I’m talking to you, just one person right now. I hope you do something with this because here’s the deal. I’ve got a client for example, who has bought into this.

[03:27] He showed up. To me, as a multi millionaire, a great father, an exemplary husband, a high performer, fit, healthy, just crushing it. And he showed up and said, Jim, I want to make a bigger impact. I want to do more. I know there’s more in the tank. And maybe that’s how you feel. I get so many people who like, who think like, yeah, I’m good.

[03:53] And yeah, I’m just going to listen to another podcast or, you know, I got, I should be able to do this on my own. I hear, here’s the, here’s something I hear, hear people say, I’ve got to hold myself accountable. That’s not even a thing. Holding yourself accountable isn’t even really a thing. If you were holding yourself accountable, you would be operating at that next level where I don’t care where you’re at.

[04:14] If you’re at Mark’s level, you would be operating at yet another level. And this guy, Mark, Wanted to be held accountable And operating at an even higher level. Well, here’s the deal mark Who was a multi millionaire already is earning even more money mark Who is a great husband and a great father already is even better mark Works 20 percent less than he worked before, earns more money, published a book, runs a non profit, and is absolutely crushing it.

[04:49] And all of this takes one hour a month. Literally one hour per month makes all of this possible. And it’s amazing. This is proof. It works. This, I don’t care if you’re at Mark’s level or you’re at the opposite end of the scale and you’re like, Jim, well, that’s not me, man. I just, I lost my job. I’m struggling in my marriage.

[05:09] I want to be a better father. I’m really unfit. If you’re like on the complete other end of the spectrum. Sure. You desperately need this. Then I got another client, Matt, similar boat who, you know, we walked years ago. He’s still with us now. And it’s, it’s, Years ago we walked him through getting an MBA, helped him decide if he wanted to go back for his MBA or not and he did.

[05:31] This guy is another guy, he’s already a multi millionaire and he Wanted to make sure that that was the right decision. And it was the right decision. We walked him through that for several years, going through getting his MBA at an Ivy at UPenn, and he’s now is crushing it. He’s got multiple side hustles in addition to his current job, which is a huge job, but he’s killing it there.

[05:53] And we’re always working through setting goals, be a better father, you know, the best father that he can be, and the best husband he can be, and to be healthy and fit, and to crush it in his job and crush it in his side hustles. Like. This is what it takes. Again, one hour a month. Everything I’m giving you, it’s a system and a process that you can achieve all of your goals and keep pushing to reach the next level and the next level and the next level in one hour a month.

[06:18] But listen, it doesn’t work unless you do it. So I’m imploring you to take action. At the end of this episode, I’m going to give you two ways to take action. One is totally free, just kind of on your own. Go do this by yourself. And another one’s paid, right? Two options. And the paid one’s affordable too, literally.

[06:36] Anybody who’s serious about this stuff. So I’m going to give you all the, I’m going to map this all out for you right now. And then I’m going to give you options to actually do something with it. Okay. So it starts with this, you know, when I was wrestling. I had an infrastructure around me. There was an infrastructure.

[06:51] There was a process that took me from a guy who never got on the podium at the high school state championships to going to college wrestling division one and actually being one of the best wrestlers in America. I got on the podium as an all American at the national championships, like three time ACC champion.

[07:08] This is not me putting myself on a pedestal. This is just going success leaves clues. And there was a process here that unlocked me. This wasn’t of my own doing. This was this infrastructure that I got inserted into that extracted my maximum potential from me. And I’m giving this to you, right? I’ve broken all this down.

[07:25] I’ve studied this for years. I’ve, you know, reverse engineered it in my own life and the lives of all these people. I’ve got an interview and all these amazing guys have gotten to coach over the years. And what was the process? The process is, you know, the, in terms of the infrastructure, like. I met with coaches every year and sat down and planned my goals.

[07:41] I had an environment of excellence. I was around all these other people doing hard things. And even in high school, when I was working really hard, I, I would break into, break into the wrestling room at the local, not my high school, but the different, different high school where my friend Teague Moore went to school.

[07:58] He and I used to break into the high school and get in and work out on Friday nights. Like. I had a crazy guy willing to do crazy things like literally break into the school and then we’d have to literally we’d go around door to door to door to door to door and we’d find one unlocked door. And then we go to try to get into the wrestling room door was locked and we literally, I lift him up and he’d be on my shoulder, like standing on my shoulders and he’d lift the ceiling tile out, climb up and over the concrete wall, the brick wall, separating us.

[08:26] You know, the hallway from the wrestling room, he’d climb over, remove the tile from the inside of the room, drop down onto the wrestling mat, and then he’d push the door open and I’d come in and we’d close it behind us and we’d put on like one light the whole way down the far end of the wrestling room so that the janitor wouldn’t come by and see the lights on in there and wonder what’s going on.

[08:44] We couldn’t put music on and we would have to be really quiet. We couldn’t, couldn’t yell or anything. We would just go in and we just like kick the crap out of each other. And, uh, this guy ended up going on to be a. An NCAA champion, and you know, one of the best wrestlers, even at the senior level, just an incredible wrestler.

[09:00] And this was kind of the environment of excellence. These are the people you want to be around. And then the other part of the infrastructure is I had accountability, right? There was a set schedule. Somebody else told me when to show up to practice. Somebody else told me when it was competition day.

[09:13] Somebody else told me, uh, when I had to meet with my academic advisor, there’s just this accountability, this structure, this schedule. Um, if you don’t have this. I don’t care who you are. You’re not operating at your highest level. You know, I’ll tell you about Mark and Matt. These guys were crushing it from the outside looking in.

[09:31] You’re like, man, like I want to be like those guys. Guess what? They wanted an even better infrastructure in their lives. That’s. What I’m giving you today. You’ve got to do something with this. So why is this necessary? Why is it necessary for you to do this, especially right now? Well, right now I’m recording this in December of 2024, but you might be listening to this in July of 2025.

[09:53] I don’t know. Why is it important for you to do this right now? Because you need it. Right now. That’s why you’re listening. That’s why you’ve listened this far into this episode, right? As I record this, it’s busy. It’s the holidays. You might be saying, yeah, well, my life’s busy right now because it’s summer vacation or it’s busy right now because I got a work trip coming up or whatever it might be, life is busy.

[10:14] Right. If you’re listening to this at the end of the year, beginning of 2025, you know, do you want to like trip and stumble into 2025? Or do you want to like roll in like Kramer from Seinfeld, you know, blasting into it and, and, uh, ready to rock, like ready to go. Like, I know what the answer is. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

[10:33] Yeah, but Jim, I’m busy. Listen to this episode, take action. I told you it takes one hour a month to maintain this. Once you get this system and infrastructure in place in your life, One hour a month. That’s it. That’s the productive pause that is required. And the process that I’m leading individuals through at the end of the month, you probably heard the promo at the beginning of this episode.

[10:55] If you’re listening to this around this time of year, when I’m recording this, that promo told you about the two hour goal setting work session. Um, and, and I’m going to coach you through how to do this on your own as well. But this is, this is where the action comes into place. If you really want change, what are you going to do about it?

[11:13] Oh, I’m going to listen to another podcast episode. No, that’s not, you know, the information’s out there. It’s in books. It’s in podcasts. If you, if you needed more information, then you’d already be there by now. I’m giving you a way to take action on this. All right. So number one is most people don’t know where to start.

[11:30] Listen, that’s not your fault. You’re like, okay, I kind of, I know how to set goals. Like you sit down, maybe you pull out a notebook or maybe you open up a Google doc or a notes app on your phone. But you don’t really know where to start. How do I, okay, how many goals do I set and how do I actually set the goal?

[11:45] Do I set a one year goal? Do I set a 10 year goal? Like, do I set it for, you know, like some people are like, okay, my goal is to, I’m going to set a goal to like, get, I’m going to get fit in 2025. I’m going to get fit. Okay. My goal is to sign up for the gym. No, no, no. That’s not a freaking goal. That’s an action item.

[12:03] We call this a micro goal. That’s something you can do like next week. If you do that next week, did you hit your goal? No, you didn’t hit your goal. Like you did the action. You did the small step. You hit the thing, the micro goal, so that you can move to the next step is to go to the gym, right? You’ve got to have a process, a structure.

[12:19] Most people, you just don’t know where to start and that’s okay. Nobody taught you this. Nobody, you know, you read the books and listen to the podcasts and the head coaches talk to you about this stuff over the years, but like nobody gave you an in, like an actual process to do this, I’m giving you that for free right now.

[12:37] I’m going to give you another free thing at the end of this to really start making the rubber meet the road. So you don’t know where to start. Not your fault. It is now because I’m giving it to you. All right, listen, I told you I’m a little fired up here. I’m sorry if that, uh, if it comes across wrong, but I’m not sorry because you got to move, you got to do something about this.

[12:56] All right. Number two is you need a system because like, guess what? Life is busy. If you’re like me, I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve got kids. I’ve I’m on the board of two nonprofits. I’m the president of one nonprofit, actually. So I’m not even on the board. I’m the president of it. And the other one, I’m the chair of the advisory council and I’m busy, right?

[13:14] I’ve got a ton of hobbies, more than I care to admit. I’m busy, married, and you know, you’re busy too. So how do you follow up on this? How do you make sure you follow up, execute, continue moving forward? When do you check in on your goals? You pull up this notes app. When do you check in on it? You know, how often?

[13:32] What do you do about it? In sports, there’s a system there. Again, I told you earlier, like there’s a schedule. Someone else is telling you when to show up. There’s games and matches and practices. There’s team lifts. There’s the infrastructure’s there. You need that. You need to have that infrastructure. All right.

[13:50] For us, for my clients, for Mark and Matt, for example, it’s one hour a month. One hour. Every month they’re meeting with the coach, walking through what worked, what didn’t work. Okay. What are my micro goals for the next month? Right? Very simple process. Easy to do. Guess what? It’s even easier not to do it.

[14:08] And that’s what you’re doing. Okay. You’ve got to take action on, you’ve got to have this infrastructure, but it leads me to the second point is like, okay, Jim, I’m going to do it. I’m going to hold myself accountable. No, you’re not. You’re going to get busy. You’re going to drift off course, unless you have a booked appointment on your calendar where you’re meeting with somebody.

[14:25] And maybe this is an accountability buddy or something like that stuff doesn’t tend to last very long because they’re not invested in you like a coach is, but you’ve got to have some kind of accountability built in, right? Again. In sports, it’s there. You got coaches telling you to be there. You got teammates, you got academic advisors, you know, I was on scholarship.

[14:45] So, uh, earned scholar was a non scholarship when I first got there. But as my, as the years went on, like, guess what? I, there’s money on the line now. There’s money on the line and the same for you. Let’s be honest. There’s money on the line, your job. You want to grow your business. You want to grow your career.

[15:00] Guess what? There’s money on the line and you may not see it. You may be like, ah, well, I can, you know, I’ll check on my goals. Yeah. I’m going to skip this month and go to next month. Right. I’ll check on him a little bit later. You know, when, when I have time, I’m going to check, I’m going to check back in on my goals.

[15:14] Guess what? You’re not going to do it. Period. Full stop. Next point. Tool. You got to have a tool to do it. We have it. It’s part of our program. That’s our goal setting tool. And it’s color coded. Uh, it’s a spreadsheet that that’s color coded. You get percentage scores, you know, always know exactly what’s where you’re at.

[15:33] What’s working, not working. Listen, project managers, they, they have a, they don’t just keep it in their head and go, yeah, I’ll check on things whenever I get around it. No, they track their progress. And it means it helps them maintain clarity on what is working in the project. What’s not working, who has to do what.

[15:51] When, whose responsibility is, is the next, you know, set of action items. Guess what? You need this too. You’ve got to have a tool. So I talked about knowing where to start. I’ve talked about having a system because you’re busy. I’ve talked about accountability because you’re not going to hold yourself accountable, not to the level that someone else will.

[16:13] You got to have a tool. Next thing is you got to have, you got to know why, like, why am I doing this? When you’re, when you’re in athletics, you know why it’s just inherent. Like it’s built in. If you’re motivated to do something like you may have not defined your why, and you really don’t need to when you’re young and you’re in high school or college, like, you know, a professional athlete, you don’t really don’t, if you’re, if you’re motivated and bought in, and maybe you weren’t, maybe you’re a guy like, yes, listen, Jim, I didn’t really have my why I wasn’t focused.

[16:41] I wasn’t disciplined. Didn’t get the most out of it. It’s because you didn’t have that. Some people have it. Some people don’t. And if you didn’t, then it’s built in. Now’s your chance. If you did awesome. Now’s your chance to duplicate that and get the most out of yourself in your business, in your career, in your family life, in your health and fitness.

[16:59] And like I said, in sports, it’s usually inherently there. And if it’s not, you got to put it there. You got to figure out what is the other thing? Maybe you shouldn’t have been doing sports. Maybe you should have been picked up an instrument or done something different. So, you know, if you find yourself being inconsistent, unfocused, start, stop, you know, on again, off again.

[17:19] Figure out why, figure out why you want to, why is that thing that you want, that life that you want? Like what’s behind that? Now I’m going to give you a free way to attack that right now. You can go to jimharshawjr.com/free. That link will be in the action plan. Um, if you’re already on my email list, you can, you’ll have that in your inbox right now.

[17:42] But, uh, you can get the 7 Days to Clarity free course. It’s a 7 day video course. It’s easy, step by step. It’s entertaining, like you can walk through it, you can listen to it. It’s me all fired up like this. And it’s where we start with our clients. And I give that part away for free. It’s incredible. I literally put all of my best stuff into that course.

[18:04] And you can, you can check that out jimharshawjr.com/free. So you’ve got to know your why. You’ve got to figure out like, what’s be like, what is your purpose? What are your core values? What’s the vision for your life? It’s not going to just happen. It’s not going to just, you know, it’s not going to happen just by being busy every day.

[18:21] Guaranteed. All right. Next thing you got to do. Productive pause. Productive. Pause. You’ve got to hit the pause button, carve out the time for this. For me personally, I block off four hours. Usually takes me about five hours to do my own productive pause around this, where I’m reviewing my prior year, looking at the year ahead, and this is what we’re doing in the goal setting work session.

[18:41] So a couple action items for you right now, even if you don’t attend that, you’ve got to look back on the year. You can, a great way to do it is to scroll back through your photos from the year. Scroll back, look through all the photos from January one until now. It’s a really fun thing to do and it reminds you of all the amazing things that happened in the past year.

[18:59] It puts you in a great state of gratitude and in gratefulness and thankfulness where you can go, Oh my gosh, look at all these amazing things that actually did happen. Actually, I was talking to one of my clients yesterday and he said, my goodness, Jim, this is so helpful to do this productive pause every month because He goes, I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, but every time we do this, I recognize the progress.

[19:21] And every time I look at my goal setting sheet where it’s coded, tracked, color coded, and in percentage scores every month, he goes, I can see that all the progress I’m making as opposed to feeling stuck. He goes, wait a second. I’m not actually stuck. I’m making progress here, man. I’m like climbing the mountain.

[19:37] It’s like, you can’t see your kids grow every day. But they do. My boys are both monsters. They’re six foot two and six foot five. They tower over me now, so I’ve never seen them grow. When we track it, when we measure it, we see the growth. And that’s what this goal setting work session provides to you. It provides you the ability to use this, to do this productive pause, to use the tool, to put all this stuff I’m talking about, all the ingredients I’ve given you so far, which are, again, figuring out where to start, Putting a system in place, accountability, having the tool and having your why.

[20:12] That goal setting work session puts all this in place. If you’re like Jim I missed it. I’m listening to this like three months later. Just go into our, you can go into our premium. Program. It’s 97 a month school. com slash R Y P that’s S K O O L. com slash R Y P. That’s the premium once 97 bucks a month.

[20:32] If you’re like, I don’t want to pay the 97 bucks. I just want to go in and steal the free stuff from you and bug out. You can do that. Go in and in like two weeks, if you’re like, I don’t like it, even if you’re lying to me, which I hope you don’t. But if you do, that’s cool too, because I don’t care. I I’m happy to help you just email me, DM me, be like, Hey, Jim.

[20:48] It’s not really my thing. I’ll just refund your money. Don’t really, uh, I’m not worried about that. But that will be available to you if you, you know, the recording of that will be available to you. So that’s it. You gotta take action here. Right? Um, you know, for me that that productive pause was every year at the beginning of the season.

[21:07] Uh, I, I sat down with my coaches and. We did a productive pause. We talked about, you know, what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are, you know, what weight class I’m wrestling this year. Usually knew that I already at that point, but you know, what are my goals for the year? You know, all that. Now, listen, I said, most of you won’t do anything.

[21:27] But you, that one person who I’m in your ear right now, I’m hoping you take action on this. I’m hoping you do something. I put all this stuff out there for free. Take advantage. I mean, people are paying me for this stuff. I’m bringing you the wisdom. Like, I hope you sense my passion in my voice. I can do this because I love it.

[21:43] I get to do this because I love it. I love helping people. I love seeing people succeed. I love people getting unstuck. And I want that for you. So take action on this. Go to school. com slash RYP. If you want to take advantage of the free program, school. com slash RYP free is my free program. All these links.

[22:06] Don’t worry about the links. They’ll be in the action plan. Just if you’re looking for like one place to go, jimharshawjr.com/action. Get the action plan from this and all of my other episodes, hundreds and hundreds of episodes. There’s also tools and links and great resources in there that will help you as well.

[22:22] All right. Thanks for sticking with me through this. I’m passionate about this. I want people to be lifted up. You know people who need this. Who do you know? Who do you know you can forward this episode to? Forward this to them. Tell them to check this out and give them the blessing of all this, this information, wisdom, ability to take action and, um, they’ll benefit and they’ll thank you for it.

[22:47] All right, let’s do it. Take action. I’ll see you on the other side.

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