Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Here's a question I get asked all the time: What's the single biggest misconception holding salespeople back? That question came from a room full of college students at BYU-Idaho, ages 19 to 24, all exploring sales careers. And my answer is the same whether you're just starting out or you've been in the game for decades. The biggest lie about selling is this: Good salespeople have the gift of gab. You know the stereotype. The smooth talker. The fast-talking closer. The person who can talk their way into or out of anything. We've all seen it in movies, TV shows, and plays like Death of a Salesman. It's been around for a century, and it's completely wrong. The Truth Top Performers Know Here's what the best salespeople actually do: They listen. The greatest salespeople aren't the best talkers. They're the best listeners. They're individuals who know how to ask the right questions and know how to ask questions in a way that create these aha moments for prospects and customers. They understand something fundamental that average performers miss: Closing happens in the discovery process, not at some magical point where you lay the hammer down and ask for a sale. Think about that for a second. The deal isn't won when you deliver your polished presentation. It's not won when you overcome the final objection. It's won in those early conversations when you're asking questions, uncovering pain, and building relationships. Why the Stereotype Persists The negative stereotype of salespeople has been pervasive in society for generations. Part of it's because no one really likes to be sold. And there are salespeople who are bad. They talk at people instead of actually taking the time to listen. But here's the reality: Lots of professions have negative stereotypes. Lawyers. Politicians. Salespeople aren't the worst of them. And here's the good side of that negative stereotype: Nobody wants to be in sales. So if you're in sales, you're making a whole lot more money than anybody else. That's a good thing. The people who look at the profession of selling and say "I could never do that" or "I could never interrupt people or take that type of rejection" are the same people who will never experience the income, freedom, and impact that comes with being great at sales. The Power of Questions When you shift your mindset from talking to listening, everything changes. Instead of thinking about what you're going to say next, you're focused on what your prospect is telling you. You're asking questions like: What's driving this decision right now? What happens if you don't solve this problem? Who else is involved in this decision? What does success look like for you? These aren't manipulative tricks. They're genuine attempts to understand your prospect's world, their challenges, and their goals. And when you do that well, you create trust. You build relationships. You position yourself as a partner, not a vendor. The discovery questions you ask matter more than any pitch you could ever deliver. Handling objections starts with asking the right questions early in the process. Who's Really in Control Here's the truth: The person in control of the conversation is rarely the talker. In fact, it's almost always the listener. If you want to move deals, stop performing and start discovering. Build your calls around three things: smart opening questions, deep follow-ups, and crisp advances to the next step. You'll gain insights, not just air time. And insights are what close deals. Success in sales isn't about being the loudest voice in the room. It's about being the most curious, the most engaged, and the most intentional about moving the sale forward. What You Need to Unlearn Right Now If you've been operating under the assumption that you need to be a great talker to succeed in sales, unlearn that immediately. Replace it with this truth: You need to be a great asker and an even better listener. Your job isn't to convince people. Your job is to help people convince themselves by asking questions that lead them to their own conclusions. When prospects discover the solution themselves through your questioning, they own it. They believe it. And they buy. That's the relationship you build through asking questions. That matters the most. The Bottom Line Stop trying to out-talk your prospects. Stop preparing 47-slide presentations. Stop thinking that your job is to educate and inform. Your job is to discover. To listen. To understand. To ask the questions that help your prospects see clearly what they need to do next. The best salespeople aren't the smooth talkers. They're the smart listeners who know that the power of the sale is in the questions they ask, not the words they say. If you master this one fundamental truth, you'll close more deals than all the gift-of-gab salespeople combined. And you'll build a career based on relationships, trust, and value instead of pressure, manipulation, and empty talk. That's how you win in sales. That's how you build lasting customer relationships. And that's how you separate yourself from everyone else who's still chasing the lie. Ready to Master the Art of Prospecting? Join us at Sales Gravy Live: Fanatical Prospecting Bootcamp in Atlanta, GA on March 10-11th. Two days of intensive training where you'll learn the proven systems and techniques that top performers use to fill their pipelines and crush their quotas. Stop guessing. Start prospecting like a pro. Register now at salesgravy.com/live.

You declined another prospecting block today, didn't you? That internal meeting popped up. Someone needed "just five minutes." Your CRM screamed for attention. Before you knew it, another day passed without a single cold call, without one new connection request, without moving the needle on your pipeline. But hey, at least your calendar looked impressively full. Here's what nobody wants to admit: your jam-packed calendar isn't proof that you're too busy to prospect. It's proof you've made prospecting optional. And optional activities don't close deals or pay commissions. The Meeting Excuse Is Killing Your Pipeline Sales professionals love to point at their calendars as evidence of why they can't prospect. Look at all these internal meetings. See how packed my schedule is. How could I possibly find time for outbound activity? The real question is: when did you last decline an internal meeting to protect your prospecting time? Most salespeople never have. They treat every meeting invitation as a welcome escape from the discomfort of cold outreach. It's the perfect alibi when your manager asks about pipeline activity. But your calendar tells the truth about your priorities. If time blocking for prospecting isn't on it, prospecting isn't actually a priority. And if prospecting isn't a priority, why exactly are you in sales? You Don't Need Hours—You Need 15 Minutes The biggest lie salespeople tell themselves is that prospecting requires massive blocks of uninterrupted time. Two hours minimum. Otherwise, why bother starting? This is the same mental trap that keeps people from reading, exercising, or learning new skills. They convince themselves that 15 minutes isn't enough to matter, so they do nothing instead. Consider this: reading for 15 minutes daily gets you through 20-25 books per year. Walking for 15 minutes adds nearly a mile to your day. Fifteen minutes of focused prospecting can generate six to ten cold calls, dozens of personalized connection requests, or several high-impact video messages to ghosting prospects. The power isn't in the duration, but in consistent, focused execution of time blocking for sales activities. The 15-Minute Power Block Rules These 3 rules are requirements if you want your time blocking strategy to actually work. Rule 1: Single-task only.  Your 15-minute prospecting block is for prospecting. Not prospecting while monitoring email. Not prospecting between Slack messages. Just prospecting. If you spend three minutes calling and twelve minutes scrolling Instagram, you didn't prospect for 15 minutes. Rule 2: Everything else can wait. Yes, that includes your boss. You will not lose a customer or your job because you ignored email for 15 minutes. Responding at the end of your block is still professional. Think about it—if you were sitting face-to-face with your top client, would you stop mid-conversation to check email? Treat your power blocks with the same respect. Rule 3: Protect the block like your commission depends on it. Because it does. Top performers don't ask permission to prospect. They schedule it, block it, and defend it against every interruption. The coworker who needs "just a minute" can wait sixteen minutes. What Actually Happens in 15 Minutes Specificity kills procrastination. You're more likely to execute when you know exactly what you're doing during your time blocking windows. Eight to fifteen cold calls fit comfortably in 15 minutes. That's enough to connect with two or three decision-makers if you're efficient. Send ten to fifteen LinkedIn connection requests to stakeholders outside your network. Write and mail three handwritten notes to accounts you closed this month. Record personalized video messages for three prospects who've gone dark. None of these activities requires elaborate preparation or perfect conditions. They require you to show up for 15 minutes and do the work. That's it. Schedule Your Priorities or Someone Else Will Stephen Covey said the key isn't prioritizing your schedule, but scheduling your priorities. Most salespeople do the opposite—they let their calendars fill with whatever lands there first, then wonder why revenue-generating work never happens. Your calendar should reflect your income goals. If hitting quota requires consistent prospecting, your calendar should show consistent prospecting blocks. If building relationships with key accounts matters, those touchpoints should be scheduled. When you schedule your sales priorities first, everything else fits around them. When you don't, everything else crowds them out entirely. Look at your calendar right now. How many prospecting blocks do you see this week? If the answer is zero, you've just identified why your pipeline feels thin. How to Apply Time Blocking Starting Now Open your calendar and block three 15-minute windows for prospecting tomorrow. Morning, midday, and late afternoon. Label them "Prospecting Power Block" and set them as busy. Before each block, decide on one specific activity: cold calls, LinkedIn outreach, video messages, or handwritten notes. Don't try to do multiple things. Pick one and execute for the full 15 minutes. Close your email, silence your phone. For 15 minutes, nothing else exists except the activity you committed to. When the timer ends, return to everything else. Track your blocks for one week. Count how many you actually protected versus how many got sacrificed to "urgent" requests. This data will reveal whether you're serious about prospecting or just pretending to be. Make Time or Make Excuses—You Can't Do Both Top performers don't wait for the perfect time to prospect. They don't need two-hour windows or complete silence or ideal conditions. They make the time, even when it's just 15 minutes. Especially when it's just 15 minutes. That 15-minute window you're dismissing as too small? It could be the first conversation with your biggest account next quarter. It could be the connection that leads to your highest commission check. It could be the breakthrough that turns a struggling month into a record-breaker. But only if you actually protect it. Only if you treat time blocking for prospecting as non-negotiable. Only if you stop letting your calendar lie to you about why you're not doing the work. Your pipeline doesn't care how busy you looked today. It cares about the calls you made, the emails you sent, and the relationships you built. Fifteen focused minutes at a time. Stop letting busy work crowd out revenue-generating activities. Download our free Time Audit Log to identify exactly where your selling time is going and reclaim hours each week for actual prospecting. Track your activities for just three days and discover what's really eating your calendar.

Are your fitness goals realistic for the life of a busy sales professional? "I find that a lot of sales leaders I work with are operating at about 110% capacity. So when we're talking about tackling health and fitness, we have to really understand what is going to be the few habits that are really easy to do and have the biggest bang for buck." That's Josh Hulsebosch, a fitness coach who specializes in working with sales professionals, speaking on the Sales Gravy podcast. His observation cuts straight to the real reason most January fitness resolutions fail: they're trying to add more to an already overflowing plate. The typical sales professional is already drowning in competing priorities while operating at maximum capacity. When New Year’s hits, the instinct is to overhaul everything at once. New diet. New workout plan. New morning routine. That approach might work for people with open calendars and low pressure. For salespeople pushing through Q1 kickoffs, territory planning, and quota pressure, it is a fast track to burnout. The All-or-Nothing Trap Meet Steve. He's an individual contributor who decided January 1st would mark his transformation. No more coffee. Five-mile runs every morning. Intermittent fasting. Four hours of cold calling daily because he just finished reading Fanatical Prospecting. Ten days in, Steve slept through his alarm, missed his workout, and ordered a triple-shot latte on the way to work. That emotional crash bled into his work. His prospecting activity dropped. His confidence dipped. His motivation evaporated under the weight of his own perfectionism. Steve's mistake wasn't lack of commitment. He turned ambitious goals into self-sabotage by refusing to acknowledge a simple truth: sustainable change requires starting where you are, not where you wish you were. Most sales professionals approach fitness goals like they approach pipeline building—more activity equals better results. But health doesn't work like prospecting. You can't brute force your way into better sleep or lower stress. The body requires a different strategy. The 110% Capacity Problem Sales is a cognitively demanding profession. You're the quarterback of the business. Every day requires strategic thinking, relationship management, objection handling, and staying mentally sharp through rejection. When you're already operating at 110% capacity, adding extreme fitness commitments creates another obligation you can't meet, another source of stress, another thing to feel guilty about when you inevitably miss a workout or eat fast food between calls. The sales professionals who successfully improve their health identify which habits will support their performance, then build them into their existing routine. They do not chase trends. They focus on fundamentals. The Four Pillars of Health for Sales Professionals Fitness and health goals for sales professionals need to be realistic for people working at maximum capacity. You can't afford to waste energy on complicated protocols or fitness fads. You need the fundamentals: exercise, nutrition, sleep, and stress management. When these four pillars are strong, everything else becomes easier. Pillar One: Exercise The fitness industry wants you to believe you need intense workouts, complicated programs, and hours at the gym. For sales professionals, the single most effective exercise habit is walking 8,000 steps daily. This number is achievable for most people regardless of fitness level. It builds momentum without requiring a complete schedule overhaul. When you consistently hit 8,000 steps, you prove to yourself that you can follow through on a commitment without sacrificing your work performance. Movement improves cognitive function, reduces stress hormones, and helps with sleep quality—all critical for sales performance. Make it automatic. Take calls while walking. Park farther away from the office. Walk to get coffee instead of ordering delivery. Use a standing desk and pace during internal meetings. Build movement into what you are already doing rather than treating it as another task. Once 8,000 steps become effortless, you can layer in strength training or other activities. But walking is the foundation. It's the one exercise habit that compounds without breaking you. Pillar Two: Nutrition Sales professionals tend to fall into two nutrition traps. The first is eating like garbage because they're too busy to care. The second is attempting some extreme diet overhaul that lasts nine days before they're back to their old patterns. The solution isn't meal plans or macro tracking or cutting entire food groups. It's having a system that works when you're slammed. Start here: don't skip meals. When you're running between meetings and surviving on coffee, your blood sugar crashes. That kills your cognitive performance and drives you toward quick fixes that leave you feeling worse an hour later. Keep protein-rich foods accessible. Greek yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, protein bars that aren't candy in disguise, rotisserie chicken, nuts. These don't require cooking or planning. They stabilize your energy and keep you sharp during long stretches between meals. Meal prep doesn't need to be complicated. Pick one day, cook a large batch of something simple—grilled chicken, ground turkey, rice, roasted vegetables—and portion it out. Now you have real food available when your schedule gets chaotic. Hydration matters more than most people realize. Dehydration mimics fatigue. Keep water at your desk. Drink it between calls. If you're consuming coffee all day, match it with water. You'll notice the difference in your afternoon energy levels. Pillar Three: Sleep Sleep deprivation destroys sales performance. You get paid to think. When you run on five or six hours of sleep, decision-making suffers. Decision-making suffers. Emotional regulation weakens. Your ability to read prospects and handle objections declines. You can't always control how many hours you sleep, especially during high-pressure periods. But you can improve sleep quality. Start with a simple nighttime routine that signals to your body it's time to wind down. Turn off screens thirty minutes before bed. Keep your bedroom cool. If your mind races when you lie down, acknowledge the thoughts without engaging with them. Notice they're there, then redirect your focus to your breathing. If you wake up in the middle of the night with work thoughts, write them down or set a reminder for the next day. This closes the mental loop and allows your brain to let go. Pillar Four: Stress Management Sales is a pressure environment. Constant decision-making. Emotional labor. Rejection. Urgency. You move from call to meeting to fire drill to another call with almost no downtime. Over time, your nervous system stays stuck in high alert. That chronic stress does not just affect your mood. It impacts your sleep, your focus, your patience with prospects, and your ability to think clearly in complex conversations. If you do not manage it, it will manage you. Controlled breathing is one of the fastest ways to regulate your nervous system. Inhale for four seconds. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Hold for four. This is box breathing. You can do it between calls. Before a tough conversation. While waiting for a prospect to answer. It does not draw attention. It just brings your system back into balance. When stress is regulated, sleep improves. When sleep improves, thinking becomes clearer. Clearer thinking leads to better sales performance. It is a small habit. The impact compounds. Building Fitness Goals That Actually Stick If you're surviving on five hours of sleep, start there. If you're skipping meals and running on caffeine, fix your nutrition first. If you haven't moved your body in weeks, commit to 8,000 steps. Don't try to overhaul all four pillars simultaneously. That's the all-or-nothing trap that killed Steve's momentum in ten days. When you take care of your physical and mental health, you show up sharper for your prospects, your team, and your numbers. Your body is the vehicle for your career. You can't hit quota consistently if you're running on empty. Start with one pillar. Build one habit. Give it time to take root before you add the next one. That's how you win in Q1 and beyond. If you are serious about building fitness habits that actually fit the realities of sales, go deeper with Josh Hulsebosch’s performance-focused courses on Sales Gravy University. His programs are built specifically for sales professionals who are operating at full capacity and still want to win on health, energy, and longevity.

Here's a question that keeps salespeople up at night: How do you build a powerful personal brand without stepping on your company's toes? That's the question Taylor Deadrick asked me during a recent live event. Taylor works for Insperity (a fantastic company that handles all our HR and payroll at Sales Gravy, by the way), and she wanted to know how to establish her own brand while staying aligned with her employer. If you've ever felt this tension, you're not alone. The fear of conflicting with your company's brand holds too many salespeople back from building the authority they need to win more deals. Let me show you how to build a personal brand that actually amplifies your company's message instead of competing with it. The Only Real Conflict You Need to Worry About Here's the brutal truth: The only way you'll conflict with your company's brand is if you assert that your own opinion is that of your employer, or what you're posting, saying, or writing conflicts with their core values, their marketing message, or the way they go to market. That's it. That's the line. If you start trying to speak for your company or post things that contradict their values, you've got a problem. But if everything you do supports those core values, you're going to be just fine. Think about it this way: Your company hired you because you aligned with their mission. Now your job is to amplify that mission through your own authentic voice and expertise. The mistake most salespeople make is thinking their personal brand needs to be separate from or independent of their company. Wrong. Your personal brand should be the human face of your company's value proposition. Your Personal Brand Is Bigger Than Your Logo Your personal brand isn't just what you post on LinkedIn. It's not your profile picture or your witty headline. Your personal brand is the confidence you show when you hop on a microphone and ask a tough question. It's your smile and the way you treat people. It's whether you're kind, whether you invest in yourself, whether you show up with expertise that actually helps people solve problems. Your personal brand is the human being who walks into businesses every day and shows up for those businesses. That's the most important part of your brand, and that's the part that builds trust and causes people to buy you. Everything else (your LinkedIn posts, your content, your online presence) is just an extension of that core identity. Authority: The Secret Weapon of Personal Branding When I think about building a personal brand, I think about one word: authority. Authority is your expertise. It's what you know that helps other people win. And here's the beautiful thing: When you build authority in your space, you're not competing with your company's brand. You're reinforcing it. Let's use Taylor's situation as an example. She works with small and medium-sized businesses, helping them grow by taking HR and payroll off their plate so they can focus on what matters. That's exactly why we came to Insperity in the first place. If Taylor builds her authority around understanding the problems small business owners face, if she becomes known for helping companies break through growth barriers, if she consistently shares insights about the challenges her buyers deal with every single day, that authority doesn't conflict with Insperity. It amplifies everything they stand for. When you focus on your expertise and how you help people, your personal brand becomes a magnet. You create leads. When prospects research you before a meeting, they see someone they actually want to talk to. You're building trust before you ever shake hands. The Five S Framework for Building Authority In my book The LinkedIn Edge, I walk through what I call the Five S's for building your personal brand, especially on LinkedIn. This framework keeps you aligned with your company while establishing your unique authority. The key is sending the right message to the marketplace about the expertise you bring, your authority in solving specific problems, and how you can help people win. When you focus there, everything else falls into place. Your content should showcase the patterns you're seeing with your buyers, the problems you solve consistently, and simple frameworks they can use right away. That's what creates familiarity. That's what warms up the room before you ever make a call. Think of LinkedIn as your familiarity engine. When you show up consistently with practical insights, every outreach gets easier and every conversation becomes more productive. Know Your Company's Social Media Policy Inside and Out Before you post a single piece of content, take a hard look at your company's social media policy. Understand what they allow you to say and what they don't. Know those boundaries cold. This isn't about limiting yourself. It's about operating with confidence. When you know exactly where the guardrails are, you can create boldly within them. Most companies have pretty straightforward policies: Don't share confidential information, don't speak on behalf of the company without authorization, and stay aligned with core values. Follow those rules, and you'll be fine. The salespeople who get in trouble are the ones who never bothered to read the policy in the first place. Your Brand Is What You Do, Not Just What You Post Here's what too many people forget: Your personal brand is built in the trenches, not just on social media. It's built in every discovery call where you ask better questions than your competitors. It's built in every proposal where you demonstrate that you truly understand your buyer's world. It's built in every follow-up where you add value instead of just checking in. The online stuff matters, but it only works if it's backed up by real expertise and genuine care for your customers. You can't fake authority. You earn it by doing the work, studying your industry, understanding your buyers, and your content. When you combine that real-world expertise with a consistent online presence, you become unstoppable. You're not just another rep. You're the person buyers want to work with. The Bottom Line Stop worrying about conflicting with your company's brand. Instead, focus on amplifying it through your unique voice and expertise. Your personal brand should make your company look good. It should attract the right buyers. It should build trust before you ever pick up the phone. Stay aligned with your company's core values. Know their social media policy. Focus your content on your specific expertise and the problems you solve. Show up consistently, both online and in person. That's how you build a personal brand that becomes a magnet. That's how you make every conversation easier and every deal more likely to close. And that's how you become the salesperson everyone wants to buy from. Your brand is your authority. Now go build it. Want to learn the complete system for building authority on LinkedIn? Check out Jeb's latest book, The LinkedIn Edge, where he breaks down the Five S framework and shows you exactly how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead-generating machine.

This Money Monday Sales Gravy podcast episode is special because it kicks off our 20th season! It’s hard to believe that we’ve been producing the Sales Gravy continuously for 20 years. Over the last 20 years, thanks to you—our incredible audience—we’ve consistently ranked as the #1 most listened to sales podcast in markets all over the world. I remember my first podcast episode all those years ago, produced with a microphone I bought at Guitar Center and recorded under a blanket for sound suppression. Today, we produce our podcast in professional studios at Sales Gravy and have a full production team on staff to ensure we are giving you the highest quality sound possible.  What hasn’t changed is my unwavering focus on making the complex simple by cutting through the noise, eliminating the fluff, and giving you the basics and fundamentals that actually work in the real world. We’ve got a ton of new episodes and bonus content coming your way, so be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and listen every week.  Sales Professionals Must Have Goals to be Successful Your personal goals are the aspirations that drive you, inspire you, and push you through the tough days. These goals are essential to helping you maintain sales discipline throughout your sales year. When developing personal goals, I break them down into three buckets: To-Have Goals These are the things you want to acquire or buy. Whether it’s a house, a new car, or building up your savings, to-have goals are about acquiring something that enhances your life. To-Be Goals These are about evolving into the person you want to become. Maybe you want to be a sales manager, or if you’re a manager, you want to be a director or VP of sales. You might want to go back to school for a degree or an MBA. Or you want to be a better spouse, a better leader, or a better peer. Maybe you want to be a President’s club winner or be recognized as an expert in your industry—whatever it is, to-be goals help you level up as a person and a professional. To-Do Goals These are experience goals. Think about experiences that create lifelong memories—maybe you want to travel somewhere special or take on a meaningful project or hobby you’ve always dreamed about. Four Reasons Why Goals Matter in Sales Number one, goals massively increase the likelihood that you’ll actually achieve the things you want. Speaking your goal out loud, writing it down, and being intentional about it has a powerful psychological effect. Number two, goals make life meaningful. It’s unbelievably fulfilling to look back and see what you accomplished—how far you’ve come over the course of a year, five years, or a decade. Number three, we work in a tough, competitive profession, and it’s just plain satisfying to put your commission checks, bonuses, and hard-won earnings toward something that improves your life or the lives of the people you love. But the biggest reason to set goals—especially in sales—is that the sales profession is hard work and it can be brutal.  It’s loaded with rejection. At every turn, we face potential “nos,” whether it’s prospecting calls, asking for next steps, pushing to level up to a decision-maker, or closing the deal. We even face internal rejection when we try to sell a complex deal internally to our own company or get approval for special pricing. Rejection is everywhere, and the fear of rejection—or avoiding it—is the number one reason salespeople fail to perform. Add to that the grind: making call after call, stuffing data into the CRM, pushing through proposals, handling endless follow-ups, and selling becomes tedious, hard, rejection-dense work. For this reason, it requires discipline to stay on track and keep grinding day after day and month after month over the course of the sales year. But here’s the rub: discipline can wane, especially if we’re not hyper-focused on a bigger prize. Goals Give You the Discipline to Do the Hard Things I want you to pay attention to this next part because understanding the real definition of discipline is critical.  Discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. Human nature wants easy. We’d rather that customers call us than have to chase them. We’d rather deals close themselves than invest hours into multi-step follow-ups. We don’t want to face that “no.” But success in sales is paid for in advance, with facing rejection and hard work. Therefore, if you don’t have a clear, compelling reason—something you want most—it’s easy to cave in and take the easy route instead of doing what really needs to be done. This is the reason why having a strong set of personal goals is crucial for sales professionals. You need that powerful “why” to keep grinding when the going gets tough. When the pipeline’s not as full as you’d like or you’re hitting roadblocks, you need something more important than convenience to drag you back into the fight. A Tactical System for Setting Winning Goals Let’s jump into the tactics for actually doing this. If you’ve gone through any kind of SMART goal-setting course, some of this may sound familiar. But these basics are timeless and indispensable. To set effective goals, you need to ask and answer five basic questions: What Do You Want? Sounds simple, but for a lot of us, it’s not. We’re so busy scrolling through social media, bingeing on TikTok, or juggling daily distractions that we never pause to ask, “What do I really want from my life?” So step one is to get specific. Define it. When Do You Want It? Because we’re talking about next year’s personal goals, let’s keep them within a 12-month horizon. But any truly effective goal requires a deadline or target date—otherwise, it’s just a pipe dream. When you have a hard date, it creates urgency and focus. Is It Attainable? Be honest with yourself. If all your goals are ridiculously ambitious, you’ll burn out or give up once it’s clear you’re not making meaningful progress. Stretch goals are great—big, hairy, audacious goals will push you—but balance those with goals you can realistically achieve. How Bad Do You Want It? This is the ultimate question. If your goal doesn’t fire you up, if it’s not something you’d move mountains to achieve, you won’t push through the tough days. Remember, discipline means sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. If the desire isn’t there, the sacrifices won’t be made. How Are You Going to Get There? These are your steps to success—your system, your process, your roadmap. As James Clear says in Atomic Habits, you don’t rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. The idea is simple: if you have a crystal-clear process for what you need to do daily, weekly, and monthly, you’ll keep moving toward the goal—even when life gets hectic. This is where your personal business plan and your personal goals intersect. For instance, if your to-do or to-have goal requires additional income—maybe you need a bigger commission check to afford that new pool or a bucket-list vacation—then you have to hit your sales targets. This means building a discipline system that ensures you’re prospecting enough, qualifying enough opportunities, following up diligently, and negotiating effectively. Without a system and personal business plan, you are more likely to get random results. Stop Now and Build Your Goal Sheet Sit in silence. Turn off the noise, get away from distractions, and grab a notebook and pen. Write down what you want, when you want it, if it’s attainable, how bad you want it, and how you plan to get there. Sketch it all out—just let the ideas flow. Once you’ve got it all down, build a formal goal sheet. Yes, I’m talking about physically writing it out. There’s tremendous power in seeing your goals in black and white, or printing them out and pinning them above your desk. Countless studies show that written goals are far more likely to be realized than goals that just bounce around in your head. This goal sheet is your personal roadmap—put it into your personal business plan so everything stays in one place. Learn how to set winning goals and build your personal Goal Sheet in Jeb Blount’s comprehensive course: The Essentials of Setting Winning Goals