How to Achieve Your Goals – Brad Partridge | Podcast Ep. 069

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Interview Transcription

Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today I’m speaking to Brad Partridge and we’re talking about how you can achieve your goals especially your professional goals but also how achieving your goals transforms you and changes you as a person. Brad, thank you so much for coming in today, especially during the hurricane right.

Brad: Oh thank, thank you for having me and that’s why I’m in the kitchen because we have a hurricane here in Florida.

Morris: Please stay safe and I hope we don’t lose connection.

Brad: Thank you. I hope so too.

Morris: Brad I started reading your book, The New Year’s Resolutions Playbook, and I loved your story. The story of how you achieved a major goal as a young man. How it change you and which inspired you to be the coach that you are today, can you share with us that story please?

Brad: Absolutely so at a young age, I guess my folks, I don’t know if you guys have Amway over there but my folks went to a party and Amway used to pretend they would have parties and they wouldn’t tell people what it was about and then they would announce that it was an Amway party and would you like to be a part of this multi-level marketing thing. Well, my parents went. They came back and they were shaking their heads that they got coming to do that but they had some tapes.

And I listened to the tapes and I was just, it was all about that you have the ability to change your life. That you can actually dictate, it’s not about your parents, it’s not about your financial situation, that you have the ability to change things and so that really captured me at a young age. So I also at a young age, when the teachers used to read to the classroom, I had a teacher read a book I don’t know what it was but it was about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and I was in an age that I didn’t even know what Australia was or what a great barrier reef was but then she talked about these animals and she showed pictures and I was like “oh my gosh one day I’m gonna go there” and that was just like this profound desire to actually go see this.

And so another thing happened when I was a little bit older is that I was a remedial reader and so what that means is that I couldn’t read very well and back in those days they used to just stick you in the back of the room and everybody else would read and you would do something else. And so the teacher came back and there were four of us and she said you’re going to write this story about you know, you’re going to write this story about whatever you’d like to do but about the peanut comics because her friend was Charles Schultz who did the Peanut Comics.

So we wrote this story and she came back and she said great. Is everybody done we said yes and she said great you’re going to read it to the class. Now, we couldn’t read and she wanted us to read it in front of our peers and she told us we were writing it for Charles Schulz. So the whole thing didn’t make any sense so I fought but anyway, she ended up putting me in the front of the class, putting the page in front of me against my will and I ended up balling in front of the class and that instilled a phobia of public speaking and it was just horrid. So I went back to my desk that day and ever since then I mean still to this day to get on stage or talk in front of people just freaks me out.

So I share that with you because I had gotten a little older. I was in my 20s and I decided to make a New Year’s resolution because somebody told me that if you have a desire, if you have a bucket list thing that you want to do, it’s better to do it at a younger age because most people think that they’re going to retire and have extra time but what happens is typically you don’t have the health or you don’t have the money and you never get to do it. So that really set well with me and I was like you know what I’m going to do this in my 20s.

So I think it was 25 and I told everybody I’m going to go to Australia and that became I’m going to dive the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. I didn’t even know how to dive and so I told all my friends anybody that had two years I said you know I’m doing this and they were looking at me and they would shake their heads. It’s like well dude you could barely pay rent and you know how are you going to get the time off of work? And you said you’re going to go for five or six weeks? How are you going to do that? You can’t do that.

And so it was you know hitting all those roadblocks and I didn’t even know how to dive. So we had to take diving lessons. A friend of mine agreed to go and I ended up leaving my job. I resigned to go on this adventure and I started my own little company. So I had the flexibility to take six weeks off and as you read, I went to Australia and it was just a whole different story. It was amazing and you know meeting the different people and different experiences because I was willing to talk to people and it just, I came back and I had experienced this amazing experience but where the real lesson was or where the gift was, I call it the goalen gift is that when I got back, I went to a chamber meeting and I was in the back of the room.

I always sat in the back of the room because if anybody was gonna get me to stand and talk or whatever, I was out the back right and so with my phobia and so the guy at the podium, there were about 200 people. The guy at the podium, looked out he saw me said “Hey Brad, hey you’re back from Australia ah come on up and tell us about it”. And I didn’t really know what to do. I thought about just running out the back. I didn’t know what to do but I was so proud of what I accomplished. What we had accomplished that I stood up and I walked up to that Podium and I stood in front of about 200 people and I told the story.

And got you know claps at the end and for pulling that off and what it gave to me was just this understanding about it’s not about the goal you know achieving the money or diving the great barrier reef, it’s who you become in the process. So it really got me hooked on goal setting and goal achievement and and helping people achieve what they want to do because there’s a lot more to just getting it. It’s who you become in the process and so it became a passion of mine. And that turned into coaching to help people do that.

Morris: I love your story so much. It’s inspiring me for all the reasons that you’ve just shared. It’s nice so coincidentally I also want to go to Australia and not necessarily for diving. I love diving but just I want to go to Australia so not only do I resonate with you on that level but really how you described in the book when you realize that you are now a different person.

Before the trip, you had this phobia and actually you still do as you said but you were afraid of public speaking. When you came back you could stand in front of 200 people and share the story and that just hit me so much and that’s why I’m glad that I get to talk to you about it here today. Over the years, Brad, what have you learned about goal setting?

Brad: So when I got motivated and I became a different person. I was just like okay what is it with goals and how do you achieve them and how can I help other people? So I love to learn and so anybody that was talking about goal setting or you know achievement, I was studying this stuff and so I started putting it together in kind of a framework and trying to figure it out. Okay, if somebody wants something, what are the processes that they need to go through to achieve it? You got one you know instructor or coach will say this and another and I was like, what is the best of the best? How can I put this together? I happened to be with a friend at a bar and he was saying that he wanted to achieve something. Of course, I perked up and I was like oh I can help you with that and he was saying well okay so what would you do?

And so I got a napkin and I started sketching it out with what he should do first and the different stages that I had learned and gave it to him. So he this is really cool. So I talked to him maybe I don’t know, a month later I lived in a different town and he said hey everybody really likes your strategy for goal setting and I said well what are you talking about. He goes well yeah you know you wrote it out for me, I’ve been following it and people see it and they and I said I wrote it on a napkin he goes yeah I taped it to my desk. So he taped this I guess you call it a framework for goal achievement to his desk and I was just blown away.

And I was just like wow okay so that’s what really kind of started the process and that’s why I was like okay this framework, I will amend it. I will keep learning more but I need to start with something that I have and I ended up calling it The Goaling Method. The company I wanted to start was called Goaling Places. Everything that I do, I use the verb goaling and so it became the Goaling Method right?

Morris: I’ve seen many kinds of lead magnets. This is the first time I heard of a lead magnet that’s a napkin. That’s so good! Can you summarize your framework that you wrote down that day on the napkin? Do you remember?

Brad: Yeah you know first of all, there’s kind of a basis that you have to have kind of a platform and you know if you’re going to achieve something it’s really look at the timing. Is the timing good? Okay because a lot of times it’s not and so you’d be better off just postponing for that particular goal if not and then you know a lot of times people don’t take into consideration their health, their energy and who they are as a person before they attack this goal. Then the third thing would be focus. I mean, do people have the time to really put the focus into it? You know that a lot of that this stuff when I share this, when I talk about New Year’s resolutions, we all know that only about 8% of the people that say they’re going to do it actually do it.

Because they don’t think of all these things. They just say I want to do this and they don’t realize hey it’s bad timing or whatever. The fourth thing would be the environment, the the people that you’re around, the environment that you have at home whatever, that’s got to support what you really want. And the last thing which is the most important thing is in all this goal setting, they say about 20% of achieving a goal is the actual strategy and it’s 80% is the mindset. So that is a big piece so that’s kind of in my framework.

That is kind of the platform that you work off of so we have to go through all those things just to make sure where are you with that and where does it stand and if you’re behind on one of those, let’s bring it into play or postpone the goal. But once you get through that and once you know it, then it’s in the goal now. This is where I use my goaling so goaling selection how are you going to achieve the goal and the process to do that? Goaling to grow is what I put in there because of the growth piece that this could do for you as a person. The Goaling Plan actually figuring out what the plan is.

Most people they strive for the outcome, they don’t realize it actually has to do with the goaling system. Which is the system of habits and routines that you put together to actually get the goal and then it’s what gets going so that you’re actually doing the action and that’s what the goaling got. So what are you getting? Look at that make some changes and then go back and so it’s managing that system but that’s pretty much the framework that I use.

Morris: We need to find that napkin and frame it.

Brad: I actually have a piece of paper that I wrote when I got back from him and I was like oh I really should write that down and I do have that it’s kind of cool.

Morris: When was that?

Brad: It was probably 10, 15 years ago.

Morris: Amazing! It’s historical. At this point, I love the story so much. So in your framework, if I understand correctly, what you’re saying is first of all we got to in the broadest sense figure out if this is the right goal and if now and if it’s the right goal now. And then if it is, instead of jumping in and right working or running towards the goal, what you’re saying is we got to first build systems and routines that allow us to achieve the goal and then focus on repeating those systems and routines and then almost a as a sideeffect or as a consequence we’ll achieve the goal, is that how it works?

Brad: Absolutely! You nailed it.

Morris: What is it that made you write the book on New Year’s Resolutions? With everything you know about goals, why did you pick New Year’s resolutions?

Brad: Well you know part of it is diving the Great Barrier Reefwas my New Year’s resolution but when I actually achieved it and I saw the benefits and I got into the goal setting process and how to own it and make it mine, one of the things I noticed is that you know again I mentioned that media and everybody make fun of New Year’s resolutions because most everybody doesn’t achieve them. But when I did some studying about it, it’s just like 45% of the population in the United States and this is throughout the world.

Just for the United States, I know it’s about 45% of the population. That’s about 150 million people decide that they’re going to do something or not do something at about the same time of year and so I was just fascinated by the fact that if I’m into helping people set goals and achieve them and there’s 150 million people that at that moment, think that they’re going to change their life. Is there something that I could do as a human and make an impact and give them the resources because you know most of the people you know my friends could care less about goal setting.

They don’t even want to call it that or self-development. They just kind of do you do their thing and so when you step in, you try to talk about goal setting, they want nothing to do that. But when you talk about New Year’s resolutions, everybody’s in because they don’t even consider it as a goal and everybody else fails. So if they fail, they’re fine and so I just thought it was kind of a really cool point of entry for me to really kind of concentrate on that and see what kind of impact I can make.

Morris: So you believe in New Year’s resolutions? You think they’re a good thing because I’ve heard a lot of people also say you know don’t do New Year’s resolutions. If you want to achieve something, do it now.

Brad: Yes yes but I think whether it be the beginning of a week or beginning of a month or the beginning of a year, there is something that we humans think that it’s a pivotal point. So the bigger it is, the year versus the week or the day the more impact it has or I guess the more desire. People look at the past year and say wow I kind of let myself go I’ve gained 20 pounds and maybe it’s time to get rid of that. So that seems to be the way that we all act and react and so that’s been my focus but my goal is that I take that and I apply it to just goal setting in general so throughout the year.

When I’m working with people who are doing New Year’s resolutions, I call them resolvers. And when I’m working with people that just want to achieve a goal, I call them goalers and so me and my goaling and my goalers and my resolvers. But it’s fun play on words just to make it fun. But yeah I think you could do it any time of the year and I just kind of focused on that time because it’s a time where people don’t necessarily think of it as a goal. Because of that maybe they don’t use or think through some of these resources to make it work.

Morris: Yeah you’re right that it’s more commonly accepted and also what I like about New Year’s resolutions is that you feel like you’re part of almost like a human movement right? I think even if people don’t say it out loud, a lot of people I would guess, you know just a hunch it’s more than 45% maybe they don’t share it but somehow almost everyone has something inside of them that they want to change or stop doing or improve in the New Year even if they don’t say it out loud right?

Brad: Yeah you know I mentioned the media so the media kind of focus in on it you know leading up to the New Year and then they kind of make fun of it. So I had at one point in time I thought you know maybe this is a stupid idea you know nobody does New Year but nobody achieves them everybody makes fun of it and so I was kind of on the verge of just saying you know maybe this is silly. And that morning, a radio station said oh we’re going to talk about New Year’s resolution and I kind of rolled my eyes I like you know what I need to listen to this I got myself a cup of coffee and I sat down and I listened to it.

I was really kind of blown away because there was a lady that got on and she shared that she had lost 100 pounds because of a New Year resolution and then there was a guy that said you know I really wanted to get married to this wonderful girl, his girlfriend and so he said it was a New Year’s resolution that he made the decision to go ahead and ask her to marry him and there was just like five or six things just like that. And it just kind of got me to the soul and I was just like wow okay yes there are a lot of people that do not achieve but there are people that actually do and make a difference in their life and I want to be a part of that.

Morris: Yeah those stories are powerful and just shows that almost everything is another tool and if we use the tool right then we get the benefit out of it. If we don’t take the tool seriously or you know we don’t even apply it at all, then we don’t. So it’s not the tool’s fault, it’s who uses the tool, that’s the issue, right?

Brad: Well and what’s driving this? Why do they want what they say they want? And really getting connected to that and so when things get a little tough, they can move past it. I think people don’t get connected for that why and so when they have some hiccups, they just quit.

Morris: Yeah I have received a lot of training in coaching and you’ve chosen to specialize in helping people achieve their professional goals. Goal coaching, career coaching so tell us a bit about what you do today with your clients because that is way more than what you wrote In the book about New Year’s resolutions.

Brad: Yeah thank you so you know it was interesting so I had my napkin and I had the framework and I started working on that and I was helping people you know achieve their goals and what I found out was that method. The six-step method was great. People loved it. They would start it but what was really interesting was it was really some of the mental issues that they were having you know why didn’t they do step two? They got through step one but why didn’t do step two? So what I figured out was there was more to this than just a napkin.

And so I decided to get my certification in life Mastery and life coaching and you know when you hear life coaching it’s was like what does that mean and so I wanted to understand the background, the psychology. How could I help a client more than just giving a strategy? I’ve had clients that you are in their 60s and still dealing with childhood trauma. Now I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist and I don’t have the credentials to help them through that but it is messing up them trying to get what they want. And so when that occurs, I you know I make recommendations for them to see somebody about it. Or at least I understand what’s happening.

So as I was creating all this and really saying okay can I really start relating to people? And then I actually, one of my jobs was VP at sales marketing for a couple of job boards, online boards to change your job or get a new job. And so here in Orlando and then for the insurance industry and so I was very heavily involved with people, in their careers and making career choices and changes and a lot of people were afraid to make a change. I mean they didn’t know what would be on the other end so that became kind of a focal point of how do I take all this and how do I fine-tune it rather being a life coach. What do I do and who do I specialize with?

And most of my clients have had something to do with either being an entrepreneur and how I help coach them through that process and some of the things that they need to know. They have an idea. They’re excited about it but they don’t know the business background to make it happen. Or they’re been in a career but they’re unhappy. How do they change their job and so helping them with my background about careers and how to change jobs? So that’s been the focal point of my coaching career.

Morris: Yeah I’ve met a lot of people who struggle with that. That they’re not happy in their professional place right now. They know they want something else but the thought of the unknown or the insecurities come with it are so daunting that they rather stay where they are even if it’s not what they want or what they enjoy. How do you help someone through that?

Brad: I have done a few things as a coach so when I came into the coaching business, little side story. So I have gone into homes in the past and actually fixed all their plants and they say oh my gosh you have a green thumb and I was like no I don’t. But they said well a month two months ago, we came in and all these plants were like struggling and now you’ve been taking care of them and they’re like all flourishing and I was just like well you can’t treat all these plants the same. If you look it up on Google this one needs to be watered every 3 weeks, this one needs to be watered every week, this needs to be dipped for a half hour every two weeks. You know it’s pretty easy you just need to know what they’re doing.

So you know where I was getting these green thumb accolades I was just like no this is really understanding what the plant needs. So I took that I said okay coaching. If you’ve got somebody in a career or in as an entrepreneur and you’re trying to figure out how to help them, the first thing I do is assessments. So we have the six human needs which is an Anthony Robbins assessment, the DISC assessment, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic assessment, how are you taking in information?

So when I take on a client, I have them go through these free assessments and then that helps me just like the plants understand what they need and how to go about it and what is the approach. And so during that process, I kind of get a feel for the human so I don’t have to take wants to get a feel for who they are what they’re all about and then we can say okay where are you as far as your career and your comfort zone. And most of them aren’t happy but they don’t know what’s on the other side and they don’t want to risk it. So it’s really getting them to understand their why. If you continue to live like this every day for the next 10 years, what does that look like versus making some effort right now to make a change?

Morris: So they start to see the risk by not making a change. That it seems safe to not make a change until we discover. It’s even a bigger risk to not make a change than it is a risk to make a change.

Brad: Well I think when you can customize it rather than just a boilerplate idea of oh okay you should do this. It’s like no, based on you, this is what you know you’re telling me and this is where I think we should go. And then you know it’s worked out really well I’ve been excited about it.

Morris: You have so many good stories, Brad. I love that.

Brad: Thank you.

Morris: So how often do you find that people are even afraid to have a goal? Is it just that people don’t want to share it or that are they really afraid of setting a goal?

Brad: Good question and you know again it depends on the individual. I think people don’t want to fail. So if they don’t set a goal and if they do and they don’t tell anybody. Then if it doesn’t work out then nobody knows whereas you know we’re told hey you need to tell everybody you need to make yourself accountable all that and everybody’s like I don’t want to go through that. So I think that’s a big piece of it is not wanting to fail and we all know as if you’ve studied this stuff is that’s a part of the game. You’ve got to have what we would call failure to actually learn so you grow and I think years ago, you couldn’t fail. I think now it’s like we understand that’s a part of the process.

Morris: You’re saying it’s a cultural shift?

Brad: I think so. When I grew up you know I’m a bit older. When I grew up you know you had to win or come in and top three and then there was a phase where everybody got a trophy. The philosophies of goal setting and goal achievement has evolved and I think now it’s a real understanding that if you’re not out there taking action and failing and then you know rethinking things and retaking different action, then you’re not going to succeed.

Morris: Yeah somebody listening to this, if they want to talk to you about their goals, where can I send them to?

Brad: Probably email me at brad@goalingplaces.com or I have a website goalingplaces.com.

Morris: Okay very good and where can they get your book?

Brad: It’s not been released. I actually am working with a company we’re going to do a launch for this year. So I’m not sure yet but check the website.

Morris: If want to know when the book’s available, also send an email to Brad. Let him know you’re interested in the book, it’s the New Year’s Resolutions Playbook. I’m reading it right now. I love it as you heard from Brad he has so many great stories and his framework is really simple to follow Brad, thank you so much for being here today.

Brad: Thank you thoroughly enjoyed it.

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