AntiFool Transcript: Crush Your Goals and Reduce Goal Competition with Austin Bollinger of Daily New Years

Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Austin Bollinger of Daily New Years!

Austin is a writer, podcaster, and founder of Daily New Years, and his mission is to help you ditch your new year’s resolutions and instead help you crush your goals every single day and all year long. Tired of postponing his self-improvement, he began writing his goals down, started consuming personal development content, and was building a daily routine around achieving his goals.

Three years into writing blog posts onto starting a podcast, and he launched his recent book, Crush Your Goals: Trade in your old time resolutions for an exciting goal setting strategy that gets results.

Ditching the standard SMART goals for the FOCUS framework. Tons of interesting thoughts centering around the purpose of goals in our lives. Myself and Austin had an amazing chat about this.

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Transcript

Norman Chella: [00:00:00] Austin Bolinger is the high achiever. The goal crusher focused on becoming better every day. He is the AntiFool.

Welcome to the AntiFool podcast. This is where we deconstruct the wisdom of people from all fields, backgrounds, and walks of life. My role is simple. I play the fool, I ask the questions and you get the answers.

Our guest is the AntiFool, the source of wisdom, who we will learn from today. I’m on a mission to create the antidote to foolishness so we can understand the world and ourselves better. Wonderful stuff. Right? So. Shall we?

Hello there, King of all fools norm here. Welcome to the show. Let’s start off with an interesting question. What goals do you have? Do you have many? Do you have one focused goal or do you not even have one to begin with? Is there a certain element of contentment in your life that you are okay just being where you are. That’s perfectly fine, but in the world of goal setting, we who want to achieve much more of ourselves can come across obstacles and problems that may stop us from achieving said goals and who better to tackle this problem with than Austin Bolinger.

Austin is a writer, podcaster, and founder of Daily New Years. And his mission is to help you ditch your new year’s resolutions and instead help you crush your goals every single day and all year long.

Tired of postponing his self improvement. He began writing his goals down, started consuming personal development content, and was building a daily routine around achieving his goals.

And on one fall morning in October, he was deadlifting weights and he came across the term Daily New Years. Three years into writing blog posts onto starting a podcast, and he launched his recent book, Crush Your Goals, trade in your old time resolutions for an exciting goal setting strategy that gets results.

Ditching the standard SMART goals for the FOCUS framework. Tons of interesting thoughts centering around the purpose of goals in our lives. Myself and Austin had an amazing chat about this.

We talked about Austin’s origin story and his obsession with goal setting. We talked about the meaning behind Daily New Years. Why do people fail to achieve their new year’s resolutions? Why do we always delay our goals and trying to improve ourselves? We talked about the book, Crush Your Goals and the FOCUSED Framework, the concept of it, and what it means to him, the meaning of goals in general, and how do we create goals for ourselves or redefine the goals that we have right now, but are lost in the midst of trying to achieve it.

We get pretty vulnerable in this conversation actually, a lot of fears, a lot of personal stories from both myself and Austin and his take on making the first steps to achieving a future version of himself that he would be proud of.

It was an amazing talk. So I’m quite happy to have this out there. Let’s play the fool and learn from the wise by diving into my chat with Austin Bolinger of Daily New Years.

All right. Mr. Austin. Bollinger welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Austin Bollinger: [00:03:26] I’m doing fantastic. Thanks so much for having me on this morning, or I guess this evening, respectively, relatively.

Norman Chella: [00:03:34] Different sides of the world, yet here we are willing to speak with each other because I know that you have a lot to say about our very topic right here today. The topic of goal setting, which I personally have lots of problems with in terms of setting my own goals or even achieving them. Austin, I know that you have an amazing blog named Daily New Year’s, but before Daily New Years was even made, we are going to have to take a deep dive into who you are.

I want to know. What is your origin story and why are you obsessed with goal setting?

Austin Bollinger: [00:04:05] Absolutely. Absolutely. So, right now I’m 32 years old, so Daily New Year’s is about three years old. I started it in 2017 but before that, I didn’t have a lot of clarity or focus on where I wanted my life to go. I thought I did.

I think a lot of people do. And in high school I had an affinity for Photoshop, graphics and so forth. So I didn’t even question that. I just went to college for graphic design. Halfway through. Found out, did not like that much at all. I got into video production instead and loved that, switched a few different jobs, few different careers, and in my latest job as COO at Element 74.

I started as a project manager, very entry level position. And seven years later, I was COO. I recently left that job, but, I grew rapidly through the ranks within the company, and it sparked this fire within me for leadership and helping other people obtain their goals more so than me and my own.

but I loved building the culture within that organization. I loved. just everything about leadership. And so I started the blog Daily New Years back in 2017 because I had this new found passion for helping people, right? And so more specifically, the way daily new year’s came to be is I was in the gym October of 2017 I was the only person in there.

which was kind of unusual because I had been working out there for a few years, but I started talking to a lot of people like, man, I’m the only person in the gym. And then a lot of people’s response was, yeah, I’m going to, I’m going to start focusing on my fitness next year. That’s going to be my resolution.

And I’m like, why? Why put that off? You know, it’s October, we’ve got several months that you’re kind of burning. And so I had this idea, what if every day we had the same passion and energy that we do on January 1st. And why can’t we just trick our minds into, you know what, tomorrow is just as good a day as any to start something new, to start over on something we’ve tried before to improve ourselves.

Why do we keep procrastinating, postponing our self improvements? So that’s how daily new year’s was born. That’s inevitably taking me out, taken me on this journey of. The new year’s resolution things, pretty, niche topic. And so I’d expanded that to goal setting, focus, clarity, prioritization. I still love talking about leadership and culture and mindset.

So that’s kinda what my blog and my podcast are all about.

Norman Chella: [00:06:39] Yeah. And all those elements are extremely interconnected, right? You have the initial niche of setting a user as a solution and potentially, shall we say, redefining its place in our lives. Because you’ve noticed this, a lot of people would set new year’s resolutions months before, and they’re just on standby waiting for the day where their future selves will, would finally, you know, take the first step into, say, going to the gym or doing something else that is part of a bigger goal maybe.

Well, let’s just dive right into the most complex question. Why do we wait till new years? What has been your, your observations until now?

Austin Bollinger: [00:07:20] Yeah, so I think it’s there’s several, several answers. The first one that I will touch on that it’s kind of a tricky one, and it’s a tough one to bring up with people, but I often say that if it’s something that you’re putting off for January 1st it’s most likely something that you don’t really want.

You know, I’m going to read 20 books next year. That’s going to be my resolution. Well, why did you, how many books did you read this year? Did you even read one? Maybe you just don’t like reading, you know, why set a goal? Just because it sounds prestigious, you know, like, Oh, I read 20 books. maybe the goal should be, I want to focus on self-improvement and reading books is an important, but maybe it’s reading blogs or are just as valuable as reading books.

Maybe it’s listening to audio books or podcasts. No, self improvement doesn’t have to come from reading a book. So what really is the goal? I think a lot of people just have arbitrary goals for, for resolutions that sound prestigious. You know, it sound like they’re, they’re ambitious. I think the biggest thing though is fear.

I think there’s a lot of different fears that hold us back and they come in all shapes and sizes, so there’s fear of failure. That’s probably the most common one, is it. If I say I’m going to do this and I don’t, and I fail this kind of stuff, you know? And so it’s easier to not start at all because you can’t fail if you don’t start.

I think that’s the most, a common misconception. I would argue that by not starting, you’ve already failed because you’re not even trying at all. And so to me, I’d rather try and fail than not try it all. I think this one is a little tricky too.

It’s the fear of success. How will my life change if I actually succeed? You know, at one point I wanted to be the CEO of element 74 of the company that I just left. It would have been easy to fear, okay, what’s my life gonna be like? I’ll be the person that’s in charge of making sure the business is successful for all the employees. That’s a lot of pressure, you know? So yeah.

I think a lot of times we shoot for a goal or we set a resolution, but we don’t really think about, okay, what’s that going to mean for my life? I think the fear of success is one that’s kind of camouflaged. There’s fear of the unknown. What is this going to mean for my life? Can I even handle this?

There’s a lot of different fears. Fear of discontent, I think is one too, where I’m just going to be happy with my life the way that it is. I don’t want to shoot for anything more. I just need to be grateful. So there’s several different fears, but I think that’s the biggest one is, is just, you know, fear.

We don’t set goals because we’re afraid.

Norman Chella: [00:10:00] When you were on your journey to reach this mindset of wanting to not only crush your goals, but basically top all the definition of a new year’s resolution, what was the large, out of the all those fears, what was the biggest fear that was haunting you?

Austin Bollinger: [00:10:16] Man. I think initially it was imposter syndrome for sure.

Okay. So I started the blog originally as a way to generate some passive income from my life. But I was like, what kind of topic would be something I would know about? And so I chose goal-setting cause it was hugely, it was a huge passion of mine. since then I’ve moved on from, I still want to generate passive income, but my primary focus is helping people.

But I think we all suffer from imposter syndrome in one way or the other. What do I have to say? Why am I the expert? Why would somebody listen to me? Why would somebody buy my book or subscribe to my newsletter? It was kind of the fear of failure though. Because the imposter syndrome is kind of a symptom of the fear of failure.

You know, I might do this, but because no one will want to listen to me cause I have nothing to say, then that’s going to be a failure. And so maybe I shouldn’t do this. I read a couple of books that really helped me through that, crush it by Gary Vaynerchuk, and he basically says that you don’t have to reach a million people if you reach a hundred people that no one else is reaching because of your sphere of influence because of your network.

Then you have a hundred people that you can, help, that you can change their lives. I read Start by John Acuff. I read, The Millionaire Messenger by Brendan Burchard, and they all kind of talked about that. As long as you have a few people that you’re, I don’t like to say ahead of, but you know, we’re all at different points in our lives.

Some are further along in their journey than others, and so I’ve been studying goal setting for four years. Maybe there’s a handful of people out there who are just now starting to set goals. Well, I know a little bit more than they do, and so I already have an audience to reach. And so all of those books kind of helped me get over that imposter syndrome as long as there’s a handful of people that like what I’m saying, but I’m cool.

Norman Chella: [00:12:08] Now that will be a really fascinating thing to relive seeing is how you could always self reflect on how you’re doing right now and how you were doing with the imposter syndrome from three years ago. Now I’m just curious. When you started the blog, you did your first post, or maybe your first few posts and you were telling people, Hey, I’m starting a blog.

I’m starting Daily New Year’s. It’s about goal setting. It’s about goals. Was there some kind of friction or a few barriers that came up maybe with the circle around you or as you were growing the website, was there anything that you thought, Oh, okay, this could be an obstacle to me in trying to grow this, but.

If you put it in the way, this could also be an opportunity to grow. Would there any examples of that?

Austin Bollinger: [00:12:54] That’s a complex question. I think the first few obstacles were putting myself out there, a blog and, and positioning yourself as an expert or an authority on any given topic. It’s going to put eyeballs on you.

And that freaked me out. So I worked on the blog for. Seven or eight months and it just was never perfect. I wanted it to be perfect before I stay at my name on it and put it out in the world. But as a, it’s a blog. It can never be done. It can never be perfect.

But finally I had a few people to say, just launched the thing already. You know, some friends in my circle, and there’s some of my greatest friends and supporters, and so I did, and when I hit that publish button and send out the email to my family members, my mom, my dad, bye Facebook friends. I, my heart was beating a billion miles an hour, and all I was doing was saying, Hey, I launched this thing.

Since then, the imposter syndrome has diminished over time. So every time I promote a post or do a podcast or anything, it’s just an exciting journey. And so as I’m growing this, to me it’s just been all about building connections and building friendships with people just like yourself, you know? So it’s, it’s less about me and what I’m doing.

I think the blog gives me the opportunity to reach people, to help people. so that’s a huge opportunity. I don’t know if it was necessarily an obstacle. I think the obstacle at first was the fear of being vulnerable and putting myself out in the world. I’m kind of an introvert. I’m not a, I don’t want to talk about myself necessarily, but now I’ve realized that building this network and talking about myself talking about goal setting and how I’m helping people, is a huge opportunity.

I hope that answered your question.

Norman Chella: [00:14:39] It does. It does. It does. Ah, especially, I really do agree on the point of, vulnerability being a fear. And it really does relate to goal setting in that your goals are quite personal, right? They have a certain element of, shall we say, a reflection of your character.

For example, my goals can be completely different from yours, but I have high reasons, if I were to want to dive into self-development and become a greater person, if we look at that empirically. Why do I want to do that? And the answer to that will be something. Am I willing to share that? I don’t know.

But as you starting this website and writing this post to try and help people, I guess you’d have to have moments of vulnerability in your writing where, you know, this worked, this doesn’t, my goals are this, I do that because this, this, this, I’m letting people know that I have gone through the steps of trying to achieve these goals, and I’m here to help you as the reader.

So I really do appreciate that you are doing your best to be vulnerable, three years in. Yeah. Three years. So that’s, that’s, that’s you getting strong. And on that note, you have a new goal that you have achieved. On top of Daily New Years, you have your book Crush Your Goals.

Could you tell me how did that happen? Cause I think he did. You mentioned to me that before that it took quite a while to get there.

Austin Bollinger: [00:16:00] Yeah. Yeah. So I started this blog and, you know, one thing that they tell you when you start a blog is to grow your, grow your email list. You know, that is. One thing you just have to do.

I didn’t really know how to do that. And so I started doing some research and it’s like, well, you need to give away some value added concept. You know, you need to come up with something to give away. And so I thought, you know what? I have enough blog posts strung together now to come up with an ebook, a lead magnet, an ethical, you know giveaway type thing.

I started pulling these blog posts together and in design started to lay out this ebook and it was surprisingly 80 pages on Michael shoe. This is way too big for a free book. Maybe there’s a whole book here and. I have read a lot of personal development books and I’ve always had one burning question in my head is, how does anybody write 250 or 300 pages about any given topic?

For me, writing a book was a three to five year goal. It was one of those things I wrote down in three to five years. I want to be a bestselling author of a real full length goal setting book, and last January when I started building this lead magnet, I thought maybe. I can do this. And I struggled with it for five, six months.

I think it was like June. I had, I was suffering from, I called goal competition. I had way too many goals competing against one another. I was, I was repeating, I was publishing a blog post and a podcast weekly. so that was a lot of content creation. And I didn’t have time to write my book, and that was burning up my weekends.

And then I had just moved into this house that I was renovating and I had renovation goals for that. I had fitness goals, I was training for my first ever half marathon. There wasn’t enough time in the day. And so last year, about June my mastermind group, I have seven guys I meet with weekly to talk about our goals, and they just basically helped me realize that my goals are competing.

So I put the blog and the podcast on hold. which is something, you know, as I started this thing, and I didn’t want people to think that I was another fly by night blog that was out for eight or nine months and expired and I quit. So that was a fear of mine. A fear of what, what are people going to think if I’m not producing content.

Granted my audience was so small, I don’t think it wouldn’t have mattered. but I, I, I did, I put the blog and the podcast on hold. I, I bought a subscription to self publishing school and from July 3rd of last year too. February of this year, 2020 I worked on nothing but that book. I put the blog and the podcast on hold and all of my other side hustle stuff, and I ended up writing a 315 page book about goal setting called crush your goals.

It also has 29 worksheets and self-assessments that really help you. Follow along with the book and get the most out of the teachings. It’s not a book that you should sit down and read on weekend. It’s very modular. It’s got four sections with four chapters each. And so I really recommend doing the first chapter and doing the worksheets, reading the second chapter during.

And so it was a three to five year goal that I ended up doing in one year. And so now the question is how many things in all of our lives do we think. Are going to take all this time. And so we don’t start them because we’re like, wow, I don’t want to start that. It’s kinda tight. Five years maybe if you really put all your effort into it, you can do it much more quickly if you stayed focused,

Norman Chella: [00:19:34] This is a great example of you staying focused, despite all the goals that you want to achieve, but I guess the element of prioritization, kicked in.

Which is great because you have your Mastermind group to really help you. but I really want to touch into the premise of crush your goals. I know it is 315 pages of amazing content, and you can’t do it. You can’t read all of it in one weekend. I’m pretty sure I can’t do that as well. especially with something as personal as goals because I feel that you do have to read it a little bit at a time to really take in.

The meaning of the goals that you will set according to the book. You did bring up something interesting in the book, or at least on the website, something called the FOCUSED framework. Yeah. I’m really interested in this and the reason why is that you compared it to the smart goals framework, and I personally use the smart goals framework.

And you said that you don’t like it or Oh yeah,

Austin Bollinger: [00:20:33] you think it’s crap.

Norman Chella: [00:20:34] Could you tell me why? And I want to play the fool, I’m going to be like. I’ve been doing smart goals for years. Why are you telling me that it’s crap?

Austin Bollinger: [00:20:43] Yeah. I don’t know if I would use the word crap. they, they’ve been kind of crappy for me, but I, you know, I’m sure they work for a lot of people, but for me, smart, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

That’s your smart goal. There’s no emotional connection there at all. There’s no why. Why are we doing this? Yeah. It might be a smart, measurable goal, but why are you doing it? Does it energize you? Are you enthusiastic about pursuing it? Does it lights your fire? You know, there’s all this emotion I think that makes, that’s what makes goals successful.

And frankly, some goals are just not measurable. No, you can’t. You know, Michael Hyatt had a good example of this. One of his goals is to grow closer to God, and he’s a Christian author. How do you measure that goal? You can’t. You can. You can. You can pray every day. You can read your Bible every day, but you can’t measure your relationship.

And so that’s a pretty spiritual example, but not all goals can be measurable. So my framework is called the focus framework. And yes, it’s just another acronym and it’s, it’s longer. and it does share some similarities. So the F stands for future focused. I think all goals should lead to a future that we want to have.

You know, why am I training for this half marathon? Because in the future I want to run a full marathon. I want to be healthy. I want to have good heart health. A smart goal is timely, you know, but future focused goals, it forces you to think about your future. Where am I going in my life and how does this goal help me get there?

O is for optimistic, which has two meanings. Are you optimistic that you can achieve this goal? Because I think if, if all your goals are achievable, you’re not setting them high enough, but you need to be optimistic that you can achieve it if you work hard enough and you also need to be optimistic.

You just need to be positive about the goal itself. If it’s a goal that’s dragging you down and you’re not optimistic about it, then you’re probably not going to work hard towards achieving it. C is for challenging, so like I said, we don’t want an a smart goal. It says attainable. Hmm. Well, if you know automatically they want, it’s attainable.

I don’t think you’re pushing yourself hard enough, frankly. so that’s why I think the goals should challenge you. It should stretch you. It shouldn’t be hard. Don’t make it so hard on yourself that you’re setting yourself up for failure, but don’t make it so easy that it’s not, I’m going to stretch you as a person.

You as for unforgettable. You know, I’ve set goals in the past that if it weren’t for writing them down, I would frankly just forget about them because I wasn’t really that interested in them. I wasn’t super jazzed about pursuing those goals. It’s like, Oh yeah. I said I was going to do this. Shoot. I need to work on that.

If you’re forgetting about the goal, it’s probably not something that you’re. Really passionate about pursuing S is for significant. The goal needs to have some significance to your life. It’s, it needs to have an impact on your life and the goal needs to be significant to you. Writing, crush your goals last year was significant to the platform I’m building because it’s the first brick in the wall for building my future speaking career, my online course. So it was significant to what I’m trying to do. It was also significant to my life because it was this three to five year goal. It was an aspiration I had for a long time, and I just wanted to achieve that.

E is for energizing. So I spring out of bed every day at 4:00 AM energized to pursue the goals that I have you know, and not all goals. Some goals are going to be hard work. There’s pieces of my goals that are less enjoyable than than others. But overall, I am so energized about the platform I’m building and the people that I hope to help someday. Yeah. Man, it just pulls me out of bed every morning. I’m so energized.

And finally D is for deadline driven. I think everything works best on a deadline. Those deadlines though don’t have to be concrete. I changed the published data, my book three or four times. I would set a deadline and I would work hard to achieve it and. The reason I kept moving my deadline is cause I just underestimated what writing a book took.

Frankly, all the things that go into it, I didn’t estimate properly, but I didn’t beat myself up. I just said, you know what? I missed my deadline. Let me recalibrate. I think it’s going to take eight more weeks. And so I reset the deadline. But marching towards that deadline would always keep me energized.

So it’s kind of a complex acronym focused. My worksheet guides you through it. It gives you every letter and what it means, and it has you write down your goal and then it says, is this goal future focus? Is this something that you know, helps you move towards the future you want? So the worksheet helps flush that out a little bit better, but I just think this framework helps you get more emotional about your goals.

I think that is going to drive and push you forward towards success.

Norman Chella: [00:25:45] And I take it that the greatest example of your success and using the FOCUSED framework is the fact that you wrote the book, like it’s physical evidence that the FOCUSED framework is possible and that you could write 315 pages of amazing content into one book.

In a year. Less than a year.

Austin Bollinger: [00:26:07] Yeah, actually, yeah, so when I started the lead magnet in January, and then I struggled with that until June. I was trying to put blog posts together into a book. So for the first six months, I wasn’t really making progress. But from July to February, what is that, seven or eight months?

that’s when I joined self publishing school. I threw out everything I had. And started over. So trying to adapt the blog post into an actual nonfiction book. The writing style is different. The outline is different. And so that was working against me, so, so yeah, I did it in less than a year. If you really start from where I decided, okay, this is my one goal that I’m going to pursue, but the focus framework was something I built.

Even before I had the idea of writing this book because smart goals just didn’t work for me. I could check the box on the smart goal and say, yes, specific, I want to publish one blog post a week. Yeah, it’s measurable. I can measure that. It’s, it’s attainable. Yeah. I know. I can do it.  I would set goals that way and I would still find myself not going after half my goals.

I’m like, well, it’s a smart goal. Why am I still failing at this? Well, frankly, it’s not a goal I really cared about. I just said it for some arbitrary reasons. Yeah,

Norman Chella: [00:27:26] it does make sense because I guess the emotional element was lacking. And as humans we do have the one half of logic and one half of emotion and you have now successfully created one that encompasses both.

I, I get that cause yeah, I’m sure it does make sense cause I’m, I’ll see if I can apply it to my own. Because I do have a few goals that I went to attain. But you brought up that term of goal competition and that struck a chord to me cause I, I’m going through that right now cause there are like a billion things I want to do.

But not, not even. Half of them are smart and not even half of them are not even focused or probably the exact opposite, which I will probably not say it on here, but it starts with F but. It’s, it’s moments like these are what I feel should share with a lot more people, who are a little bit lost in trying to not even articulate the goals that they have right now, but also trying to think of a goal that represents who they are.

I’m sure that your book will cover that, but I know that you’ve helped quite a few people in. not only trying to articulate the goals that they have in them, but to also refine their current goals. Maybe I’m going to play the fool all right. Could you tell me the difference between, say, how do you help someone who doesn’t have a goal yet but wants to create something for themselves.

And how do you help someone who has current goals but is stuck or is a bit lost in trying to articulate it, or is a bit unfocused rather? Are there any differences? Are there any observations that he can think of.

Austin Bollinger: [00:29:06] Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people out there don’t have goals because they don’t know what their goals should be.

Maybe they’re stuck in their life. They’re working a job that they’re content with, but not, you know, super in love with, but they just don’t know what’s possible. So for me, I didn’t know what was possible until I started following Jeff Rose on YouTube. He has a blog called good financial sense, and he talked about how he, over 10 years, built his blogging platform to a certain number of a certain revenue per month.

I’m like, wow, that I didn’t know that was possible and that. For me, it sparked this whole list of goals that I had and this journey that I went on. And so I really think if, if you don’t have a goal, you want to set a goal, but you don’t know what it should be. Really trying to explore your options. One thing that I think helps is go back to childhood.

What got you so excited that adulthood kind of snuffed out? Were you in love with art? Did you want to write poetry? Did you want to be a musician? But everyone told you you can’t make money as a musician. You need to get a real job. Go back to your childhood. What got you excited and can you set some goals around those things today?

Maybe it’s, you know, you wanted to be a musician as a childhood. And really in reality, you don’t want to be a rock star, but you want to learn how to play music. Set a goal to learn how to play music, pick an instrument, buy a course, get a coach. So don’t be afraid to kind of revisit all passions. You know from, from childhood.

That’s one way. Get vulnerable with yourself. I think a lot of people have dreams that they’re afraid to speak into the world because frankly, they think are impossible. And so instead of wanting something, getting your hope up. And then failing and having to realize, I got my hopes up and I failed. I think a lot of people just try not to want stuff.

It’s okay to want stuff. It’s okay to have big, huge dreams. I would rather have this big massive dream and get 80% of the way there and be okay with that. Then to stay where I am and never do anything. Goal setting to me too is we can’t be so concrete and rigid, but if we achieve something great, but we’re unhappy with it because it doesn’t meet the expectation that we had in our brain.

You know, if if you want to lose 50 pounds and you lose 47 that’s a massive win. Maybe it doesn’t look like it does in your head because you wanted to do 50 but that’s a huge win. A lot of times we set out to do something and it could still end up great. But it doesn’t look like it did in our head. And that’s what bumps this have.

So if you don’t know what kind of goals you should set, revisit your, your childhood. I think about what are those violent things that you’ve buried deep in your mind that you want for your life, but you’re afraid of failure. And so you don’t speak them into existence if you have goals, but you’re completely stuck with them, you’ve plateaued, you’ve hit a wall.

We really need to. Honestly do some coaching and some assessment. Have a conversation about what your struggles are. You know, for me, writing my book, the thing that got my way is all the other goals that I had, and I was kind of blind to that. I mean, I knew I didn’t have enough hours in the week. Okay. I was looking for how do I squeeze more in, which was impossible.

My mastermind group, these seven fantastic guys that I meet with every week helps me realize you have to let something go. Because you’re not going to achieve success in anything. Honestly, I was starting to resent my blog and my podcast last year because I started looking at looking at those as obstacles to the book, and those guys were like, Hey, if you’re starting to get frustrated with the blog and the podcast because you’re so passionate about writing the book, don’t.

Ended up hating your blog and just put it on hold and do the book instead. So it took some talking with other people. You know the old saying, you can’t see the forest for the trees. Yeah. It sometimes it takes talking to other people to take a step back and to see the situation for what it is. If you’re stuck on your goals, maybe they’re the wrong goals.

You’re not really passionate about achieving them, so you’re not putting them truly the effort that they’re going to take. Maybe there’s some gold competition at play. Maybe there’s too many things competing for your time or your energy. this is really hard for parents. Mothers who are trying to take care of kids, have a career, get it all in, and then they have this goal that they don’t have time for.

So trying to find a way, how can I incorporate this goal and to my life. A little more easily. How can, you know if it’s a fitness goal and you don’t have time to go to the gym because you’re getting the kids to soccer practice, you’re working your career, you’re trying to, you know, do all these things.

Maybe try to incorporate your fitness with your kids or with your family so you can mix family time and with fitness time. and that way you kind of. Join those things. So, you know, for somebody who’s stuck, there can be a lot of different reasons for that. And sometimes it’s just talking it through with other people.

It doesn’t have to be me. It could be your spouse, it could be a group of guy friends or girlfriends or, colleagues at work. Just getting open about your struggles. Like, guys, I’ve been trying to do this for six months and I’m just hitting a wall. And then them saying, well, what have you been doing? Well, I’ve been doing this, that, and the other.

Oh, well, maybe you should try it this way. Or maybe the thing that you’ve been doing is actually not working. Maybe you should do this. So sometimes just talking it out. Sorry, that was a long, long answer.

Norman Chella: [00:34:57] No, it’s, no, no, don’t apologize for that. That was great. Yeah. I say

I do. I really did resonate with that.

That is huge. I’ve had personal experiences, having not only a certain level of coaching, but also counseling or changing my perspective on my current situation. If I was trying to attain something and I can’t, but I’ve opened my eyes up because somebody else has seen that from outside the box. And I think there was something called a Johari window, which looks at how you can view yourself and how others can view the things that you possess except that you can’t see it.

Because like you said, he can’t see the forest for the trees. And also on where we are relative to our goals. I believe it was, Oh, what’s his name? Last name is Sullivan, I believe of strategic coach that talks about the gap and the gain where whenever we feel disappointed in the fact that we don’t reach our goals, that is us focusing on the gap between where we are and the goal that we are trying to achieve.

When we should be looking at the gain, which is what we have done. Right at that point in time, like if you’ve lost 50 pounds, if you’re trying to lose 50 pounds and you’ve lost 47, it’s not that you could not achieve three pounds less. It’s that you have lost 47 and you should be damn proud of yourself.

Or, you know, finish a book, finished writing a book. It reaching 315 despite the delays and release date. That’s fine. You’ve reached 315 pages. That is like a year plus of blood, sweat, and tears in your past self. Being able to develop yourself into that point. So yeah, I honestly do agree with a lot of that.

And on that note, what is the next FOCUSED goal that you have on your mind.

Austin Bollinger: [00:36:49] Yeah, absolutely. I’d love to answer that and I will in just a second, but I want to touch on one more thing that you just mentioned. The gap and the gain. I had never heard that, and I just pulled it up to Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach.

I’ve, I’ve heard of him, but not the gap and the gain. And even for somebody like me who is focused on goal setting, I’m trying to teach other people about goal setting. I’m not immune to these types of things. And so when I put my blog and podcasts on hold to pursue the book. I thought it would take three months originally because that’s honestly what self publishing school says.

It’s 90 days. It’s a 90 day course and you’re going to be published every month. That went past that three month window. I looked at, I’m losing audience. I’m losing time for the blog. I’m losing time for the podcast, but what I was gaining. Was an even better book. Every month that I spent on the book, he got better, and I had to realize that too.

Once I got into the fourth month, I was like, man, I gotta hurry up and get this done so I can get back to blogging. And I was like, no, you know what? You only right. This book one time. It needs to be everything. It can be. Just be patient with yourself. Look at what you’re gaining. So I love that. I love that the gap and the gain. That’s awesome.

The next FOCUSED goal that I have, so I am back to blogging. I’m back to podcasting, loving it. I’m promoting the book. But the next big thing that I have is an online course. So my book has, it’s a workbook counterpart, but I think there’s an opportunity, I think there’s an audience out there that he’s going to want more of a video training series on these types of things.

It’s funny, I’ve spoken to several different crowds about my book, and every time I mentioned goal competition, people light up like, Whoa, talk more about that. And that’s just. Six paragraphs in the book, you know, and it’s just a brief blip on a worksheet. But I would love to do a video, a video module about what goal competition is, how it can be avoided, how you can overcome it, how you can recognize it.

And so, yeah, actually, yeah. This weekend I’m going to start outlining what this video course can be. A year ago. Awesome. If I can do it in three or four months, even better. But that’s the next thing I’m focused on. Nice.

Norman Chella: [00:39:05] Nice. It’s always exciting to hear an online course and to making, cause you can go so many different avenues, reaching out to people, just asking them like, Oh, what do you need help with? And that can help to serve as like the first few bricks for, you know, the first few videos in your online course, so, okay. Okay. Good luck with that. I am rooting for you. Thank you. That’s pretty awesome.

Do you think that, I wouldn’t say easier, but do you think that it will be a different set of challenges as to when you were writing your book?

Austin Bollinger: [00:39:36] Yeah, so I think it’s going to be a huge different set of challenges. So, obviously writing is one thing, but. And you can edit, you can pay an editor to edit your copy. With a course I have a background in video production so I can feel myself, I can light myself, do my own audio, I can do all my own editing, and so that’s going to be a huge time investment and I know that I suffer from perfectionism overall, and so I’m a little worried that going into this, I’m going to spend way too much time on the video production piece.

Even though all of the articles I’ve read about creating an online course is don’t over invest in video quality just to get the lectures recorded. So I got to keep my guard up and make sure I protect myself against perfectionism. That’s one thing I know that I’m stacked up against. and, and it’s funny, once you do all this personal development, the more you learn about your stuff, the more you can recognize these things.

And the faster you can squash them, right? So I know that about myself. The other big thing is fear. So I’ve written the book, I’ve made my worksheets, and I can’t help but wonder, did I give everything I had to give to that. When I go to do the video course, it needs to go deeper in the book. It needs to go deeper than the worksheets because if people can just get the worksheets in the book and get the same thing, why would they.

Subscribe to my course. And so I’m a little bit worried, a little bit scared that I’m not going to be able to go deep enough to give people the value that they’re looking for, but I’m not going to not try. I’m going to keep going deeper. Like you said, I’m going to talk to people. What do you want from this course?

What could help you? and now I’m going to try to build content for them.

Norman Chella: [00:41:27] Really. People need. People have very different patterns in getting convinced of a point, and that’s why you have a lot of similar formats for nonfiction books. Like for example, if you have that book, I’m so good they can’t ignore you.

The point is in a title already, you just be so good that they can ignore you, but more than 80% of that book as examples because people cater to different numbers of examples before it can finally be convinced by narrative that they get a point. Even if you have people getting a book, going through your worksheets, setting up your focus framework goals, they may need a little bit more guidance, a little bit more handholding.

They might need a face to the system that you’ve created, right? They might need.Austin’s face on video, right on the FOCUSED framework. they might need your help, your voice in trying to direct them through goal competition because they’ve only just heard the term. How do they navigate through that?

Right? They need like what? Like what we were talking about before. They need someone outside the box to help them. And I think the online course is more than enough justification to go ahead with it. So. Honestly, you should notice a preview. You’ve read so many self development books, right? The first day.

The first step is bravery. The next step is progress, and the rest is history. That’s the only thing that you should know, right? Just start the course and you don’t have to start big, right? Don’t. Don’t like 30 videos. Just build it over time. I’ve seen some progressive. Online courses

Austin Bollinger: [00:42:56] If you get in, you get free lifetime access and still get an email.

It’s like, Hey, we just added five new modules to the course that you bought six years ago, or whatever it is. I know Michael Hyatt does that very, and Bruchard does that, and I love a self publishing school does that. I’m getting updates. Hey, we’ve added new content to the course, so you know, there’s always more to learn.

So I appreciate you saying that. That helps a tremendous amount, different learning styles. Some people are audible learners, some people are visual learners, some people are, they read, I don’t know what the different types are. But, and then some people, or more emotional learner learners, you know, if they’re just reading a book and they’re stuck with their own voice in their head, yeah.

You know, they might need somebody to inspire them to action. So I appreciate you saying that. That gives me a whole new, wind in my sails as I, you know. Go forward with this.

Norman Chella: [00:43:48] No worries. I’m excited to see the course coming again. So wait, if you have, if you have that online course as your next FOCUSED, and D is deadline, do you have a deadline for this online course?

Austin Bollinger: [00:44:00] Yeah. This is a dangerous one because with the book I grossly miss, I underestimated it and because I haven’t even outlined the course yet, I don’t have a feel for what kind of work it’s going to take. I would love to have it done by the end of the year.

Norman Chella: [00:44:17] all right.

Austin Bollinger: [00:44:18] Yeah, because, and that was my goal for the book as well.

And here’s why my platform, I won’t say I’m waging war on new year’s resolutions. But I do think that people set the bar way too high and new at new years, and because they set the bar way too high, they get excited, and then when they can’t follow through, it’s devastating. And so that for me is the perfect time to get out in front of my audience and give them valuable content to say, Hey, Nope, don’t set resolutions.

Those things suck. Let’s set meaningful goals that we know are going to take a long time to produce, but that’s okay because we’re excited and we’re enthusiastic about achieving these things. And so the end of the year, I was hoping to get my book out there, and I know a lot of people were going to be searching about resolution stuff.

I missed the Mark. My book didn’t come out till February 16th that’s okay. But I would love to try and get the course out there before new years. All

Norman Chella: [00:45:20] right. You are hearing it. Yeah. Right here on this episode, right? Austin’s online course will be up. By December. So if you are not focused enough, if you’re having a bad day, Austin, listen to this episode and listen to yourself setting your goals on this podcast.

So here is me rooting for you, past us, right? Rooting for a present you later on if you need some inspiration.

Austin Bollinger: [00:45:42] Now. I love it, man. I appreciate it. Seriously. That’s awesome.

Norman Chella: [00:45:47] Really, honestly, anything help you like, I’m your friend already, so don’t worry about it now too. End on a great note. I’ve got a couple more segments for you.

This one is called mementos. Do you have a personal memento that, or an object that represents who you are?

Austin Bollinger: [00:46:06] Wow, that represents who I am, or can it be like some aspect of my personality?

Norman Chella: [00:46:12] It can be some aspect of her personality because I, I guess it could, I could interpret it as the greatest representation of who you are, so yeah, go it.

Austin Bollinger: [00:46:22] That’s a tough one. I, I don’t know that I have that I’ve, Hmm. The first thing that springs to mind is I have a little metal dumbbell on my key chain that I’ve had since I was 15 or 16 it’s still on there. I’m 32 because I’ve always just loved weightlifting. I’ve always, it’s just, I don’t know what it is about it.

I always say like the gym is kind of my church when I’m working out. My head is clear. Daily, new years. That name jumped in my head while I was dead lifting. No idea why the gym is just kind of a cool place for me. I love working out. I got into it in high school. Oh yeah. Even today that dumbbells.

Norman Chella: [00:47:07] Fantastic. And two more. One is called walkaway wisdom, and I think you’ll like this one. So say that we walk away from this conversation, right? We have a great time and I meet somebody, I connect with them, I become intimate with them, and I share with them a part of my life and a part of my life is our conversation right now.

Is there a piece of wisdom that I can tell them that represents you.

Austin Bollinger: [00:47:30] Because I suffered from that imposter syndrome and getting my message out there. It’s, it’s kind of led me down this path of don’t listen to the voice inside your head that says you can’t do something because you can’t. If you want to badly enough, you can.

Norman Chella: [00:47:46] All right, and a different take on a classic question since you’re FOCUSED framework focuses on being future-driven, I wanted to ask you a very weird question. If you could meet your future self five years from now, what do you hope or wish future Austin would say to you?

Austin Bollinger: [00:48:10] What future Austin would say to me now? You’re on the right path.

Just keep going. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep trusting the process.

Norman Chella: [00:48:21] And that is exactly what you should be telling yourself right now because you are well on your way there. Crushing your goals, being focused, launching your online course and making sure that everybody is not doing new year’s resolutions, but rather a daily new year’s resolutions.

Austin, thank you so much for being on the show. Could you tell us where can we find you and how do we reach out to you? Any social media links or websites in particular?

Austin Bollinger: [00:48:48] Yeah. Yeah. Well, first, thanks for letting me come on your show. You’ve been, this has been fantastic. This has been my most enjoyable podcast interview to date.

I think your questions, incite, or they elicit a reflective nature, like your questions really make you go deep and think about the answer. Not very surface level, so I appreciate that. But the best place to get in touch with me is dailynewyears.com. That’s my main hub at this point. That’s the blog, the podcast.

All my social media is my name Austin J Bolinger. So I’m on Instagram, LinkedIn pretty heavily. Facebook. I’m on Twitter, but not very active. But yeah, LinkedIn and Facebook are probably great places, but you can start at  Dailynewyears.com and, and now it gets you to where you’re going.

Norman Chella: [00:49:36] And of course, links to the website and all of us social media will be right there below in the show notes.

Austin, thank you for coming on the show. I’ll talk to you soon.

Austin Bollinger: [00:49:46] The pleasure is all mine. Thank you.

Norman Chella: [00:49:49] And that is it. My chat with Austin Bullinger of daily new year’s all about goal setting, all about becoming vulnerable and being true to yourself in trying to achieve the goals that you want to attain because they are a reflection of yourself.

This is what we need to do. Tons of self-introspection tons of self development because we want to achieve something great and that inspires meaning in ourselves. And you can tell even in the conversation, Austin being a, an amazing writer and amazing blogger on his website and amazing podcaster interviewing tons of successful people.

He’s not bulletproof to these fears. He knows them firsthand, and that’s why he’s willing to share his thoughts. And of course, the links to everything will be in the description right below. If you need help with goals, you know who to find Austin on his website Daily New Years. I hope that you are spending every day making resolutions, taking first steps to your goals, making progress.

And if you are, then all is well and I’m sure you will get there. Stay focused, stay warm and stay lovely and I will see you in the next episode. Your foolish friend. Norm.

Thank you for listening to the show. AntiFool is hosted, produced, and edited by me, Norman Chella. You can find out more about the show at thatsthenorm.com/antifool. It’s where I host all my other podcasts shows and more. The music and sound effects come from zapsplat.com if you have any questions. Recommendations for guests and more hit me up on Twitter @normanchella or on LinkedIn as well. There is only one of me in the world. I’m sure you can find me there.

I love connecting with people and having warm, meaningful conversations. Don’t be foolish, alright? Cheers.