I WASTED the last five years of my life.

I’m going to be completely honest with you. I WASTED the last five years of my life.

I made one HUGE mistake that significantly hurt my progress and stagnated my business.

For the last five years, I’ve been doing many things all at once…

I accomplished a lot in 5 years, but it came at a huge cost because I was focused on too many directions.

I trained to run a 100-mile race about two years ago. I trained for an entire year to run this race. The plan was to run a 50-mile and then a 100-mile race. This was during COVID, so the official races got canceled, but I ran a solo 50-mile race, which was still quite an accomplishment. Still, I failed to complete the 100 miles.

I did too much while trying to train for this race. I was going out partying and picking up girls. I traveled everywhere, trying to run my business and lifting 3x weekly. My focus was so split that even though I did all my training, I didn’t get adequate recovery.

Not only did I not complete the race, but doing all this stuff at once caused my Bulldog Mindset revenue to stagnate and my video views to go down.

I realized something REALLY important:

I needed to focus on ONE goal at a time.

The Breakthrough

If you’ve been watching my videos for the last few years, you probably have seen that, at times, I’ve appeared to be somewhat depressed and unmotivated. Sometimes it might have felt like I was just churning out the videos simply because that is what I was supposed to do.

Well… you were RIGHT! That’s EXACTLY what has been happening. I had been just doing stuff to get it done because I’ve been doing ten things simultaneously with ten goals.

I had been fighting this battle for a long time, knowing I was doing too much but not wanting to give anything up because I’m John. I’m Bulldog Mindset.

I finally decided to throw in the towel. I felt depressed and wanted to give up and just quit Bulldog Mindset. I didn’t want to make videos anymore, answer emails, or coach people. I just wanted to go and live off in the woods somewhere.

I knew something was wrong and needed to change, so I took time off to reflect. I didn’t make a video on my regular schedule for the first time in forever.

I thought I needed a break, but when I returned to my desk and thought about everything I had to do, I broke down even more.

Then, I remembered what got me to where I am today.

The times I had been most successful and made the most progress had always been when I’d had as close as possible to a singular focus.

I made millions of dollars in real estate investing by having the singular focus of buying one property at a time and then, after buying that property, focusing on buying the next one.

I made millions of dollars creating online courses for a Software Developer learning company called Pluralsight by focusing on creating one course at a time until I created over 50 courses.

My best-selling books? Singular focus on each book until it was finished.

My physique? Focus on gaining as much muscle as possible, spending hours in the gym, and strictly controlling my diet.

All of the BIGGEST accomplishments I’ve had in life came from a SINGULAR FOCUS. Still, because I added too much to my plate and had all these plates spinning simultaneously, I lost that singular focus, and I stagnated for the last five years.

It was no surprise that the views on my YouTube channel had been decreasing over time. With about 300k subscribers, I should have averaged more than two to three thousand views per video.

It was frustrating because I had been doing YouTube for over ten years, and I had seen many other channels grow and surpass me.

My Goal

I made a super ambitious goal of getting over 100,000 views on a YouTube video.

Getting 100k views on a YouTube video is not a goal but rather what I call an aspiration because I do not have DIRECT control over it.

My plan was to create 10 SUPER high-quality videos. Each video was going to be completely scripted out. I hired a videographer to professionally film and edit the videos. I studied the previous videos I created and tried to improve each successive video. Finally, I studied and researched what other successful YouTubers were doing and incorporated that into my work.

I was sure that by creating ten videos using these principles, I would achieve at least one video with 100k views. More importantly, I would gain the skills to do it again, thus raising the bar for all my YouTube videos and significantly growing my business.

This is ALL I focused on until this goal was accomplished. I still had to do some basic things in the business, like answering emails, creating short-form videos, and coaching. But I refused to take on any other projects or focus on anything else.

To do this, I had to CUT many things out of my life.

I blocked out 4 hours each day to work exclusively on that goal.

Why am I doing this when I could pursue many other business goals? And why ONLY focus on this one goal?

There are two different ways I could approach a growing Bulldog Mindset.

I could use a top-down approach where I focus on the higher level activities and try to grow the business by improving in multiple areas simultaneously. If I took this approach, I could improve my email marketing, sales pages, and videos. I might create more products and more content. Perhaps, using this approach, I could expect around a 25% growth in the business.

I am doing more of a bottom-up approach, and I am focusing on just one really small detail of the business: the YouTube videos. Using this approach, if I can take my YouTube videos from an average of 3k views per video to 100k views per video, imagine what effect that will have on the overall growth of the business.

Let’s estimate that my leads go up by 10x. If my leads increase by 10x, it’s not a big stretch to imagine my sales could increase by 300%. That’s HUGE.

I could 3x my business by focusing on this one goal rather than on a bunch of smaller goals in the business. And the best part is IT’S SIMPLE.

But business growth is not the only reason I focused on this goal. I started to realize that the reason why I’m feeling so burnt out on Bulldog Mindset is that I’ve been in such a rush to produce content that I hadn’t focused on making content I enjoy making and making it at the standard that I could be proud of.

A huge part of why I started doing this—and why you also should pick one goal at a time—is because it’s FUN. Having just one goal and focusing all your efforts on it is fun.

After setting my sights on this one goal, my motivation to work drastically improved. I am excited to get up and get to my desk each day.

How to Set Your One Goal

First, you need to pick the goal or aspiration, basically, the ONE THING you want to accomplish next.

To do this, I like to ask two questions:

What do I want?

What do I want to become?

From those two lists, I make a list of possible goals that would get me the things on those lists, and then I think about which possible goal will be the most impactful and fun to accomplish next.

We don’t have time to go into details of this whole process in this email, but I have a coaching program called The Well That Never Runs Dry where I teach you how to use the GAP process to become financially free. We have weekly coaching calls where I personally work with you to set your goals and help you achieve them.

>> Click here if you are interested in the program (limited slots available) <<

Once you’ve picked the one thing you want to accomplish next, the next step is eliminating everything else and focusing on the most important tasks.

For the longest time, I kept saying I would focus on my main goal once I got everything else off my plate. But guess what? That never happened. Months would go by, and I would never be quite ready to focus on my goals. That’s why it’s important also to set aside focused time each day to work on the one important goal and eliminate as much other stuff as possible.

Finally, stop with the long-term planning. Don’t worry about your future goals. I know this might seem like heresy, but I’ve found it’s much more effective and liberating to plan goal to goal rather than planning out far ahead.

Just focus on figuring out your next big goal, and then when you complete it, you can reevaluate and see what next big goal makes sense. So much can change in your life once you complete a big goal. Your whole perspective can shift, and often when you complete a big goal, it has second-order effects that accomplish other goals or make them irrelevant altogether.

Setting GOOD Goals

I said that getting 100k views on a YouTube video was more of an aspiration than a goal.

Most people set goals the COMPLETELY wrong way.

I want to make 1 million dollars this year.

I want to lose 50 lbs.

I want to get 100,000 YouTube subscribers.

There are all BAD goals because you can’t directly control them. How exactly do you earn 1 million dollars? There is no point in setting a goal for something you don’t know how to do and can’t directly control. That’s why I call these things aspirations instead of goals. You aspire to them.

I got frustrated with many people setting stupid goals and attending seminars where people encouraged me to set stupid goals, so I developed a simple framework for making GOOD goals.

What makes a good goal?

SMART Right? Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Your goals should be SMART, but that’s not enough.

A real goal needs to be in your DIRECT control.

What is in your direct control?

Making 1 million dollars? No!

Making 1,000 sales calls? Yes!

Getting 100k YouTube subscribers? No!

Making two videos every day? Yes!

Here’s how I got my first 100k subscribers on YouTube. At the time, I had about 20,000 subscribers, and I wanted to get to 100k, so I could get that silver play button. So, I thought about how to guarantee I’d get at least 100k YouTube subscribers in the next two years.

I noticed that there were no YouTube channels I could find that had over 2,000 videos but less than 100k subscribers. I decided that I would create 2,000 videos (which was something I could control) in the next two years. I already had about 500 videos on my channel. I did that math, and to hit 2,000 videos in 2 years, I would need to do 15 videos a week.

It seemed like a crazy goal, but I decided to do it, and within less than a year, I had already surpassed 100k subscribers. I didn’t even need to get to 2,000 videos.

That is where this framework was born. It’s called Goal, Aspiration, Process (GAP).

How the GAP framework works

First, what do you aspire to? This is what most people call a goal.

1 million dollars? 100k subscribers? Lose 50 lbs?

Next, what goal can you create in your DIRECT control with a 99% chance of achieving the aspiration WHEN you complete it?

Make 1,000 sale calls? Write 100 blog posts? Make ten high-quality YouTube videos?

Those are all good goals because they are in your direct control. You can make 1,000 sales calls, write 100 blog posts or make ten high-quality YouTube videos.

Finally, what daily or weekly process ensures you reach your goal so that you can not possibly fail?

• Make ten sales calls per day.
• Write one blog post each week.
• Research, plan, script video, record, and professionally edit 1 video each month.

The beauty of this framework is that it makes it so you can not possibly fail! As long as you do what you are supposed to do each day or each week, you will achieve the goal, and if you achieve the goal, you will almost certainly achieve the aspiration.

I used financial freedom using this exact same framework.

My aspiration was to reach financial freedom, defined as $5,000 of passive income per month.

I set up a goal to acquire 15 rental properties because I assumed that if I had 15 properties and, on average, I could get $300 per month of cash flow on the properties over time, I would have about $5k per month.

My process was to acquire one property per year and to pay down the properties after I acquired 15 properties. I reached the goal on Sept 1st, 2015. I’m at around $16k per month.

If you want to become financially free, I have an even more efficient way of doing it than I did when I started out.?

I’ve got an entire program I created with direct coaching from me called The Well That Never Runs Dry, which shows you exactly how to become financially free no matter where you are in life right now.

>> Click here to book a free planning session, where I’ll tell you about my exact plan <<

Here are the key points to remember.

• Set ONE and only ONE goal at a time. The original meaning of the word priority meant the ONE most important thing. It was never meant to be pluralized into priorities.
• Focus on that one goal by eliminating everything else you can and setting up focused time or focus blocks on working on that one goal. I suggest 2-4 hours per day.
• Use the Goal, Aspiration, Process (GAP) framework to figure out EXACTLY what to do to achieve the big goal you are focusing on.
• Complete and then choose the next goal.

-John Sonmez

Founder, Bulldog Mindset

P.S. - If you are curious whether or not I achieved the aspiration of getting a YouTube video with 100k views on it. Check out the channel and see for yourself.