Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Bafini, founder of America's largest business coaching company.

Here's a short classic cut from one of our all-time favorite episodes.

Well, the top of the morning, Tia, and we're still in the top of the year.

We've tried to get you off to a great start this year. Today, it's how to be a goal getter. We know about being a goal setter, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So this is really about transforming the goals that you've set into now being an achiever of those goals. And so I have three major points for you, as I always do. We're going to talk about the top traits of winners. We're going to talk about making your goals visual and then we're going to outline pleasure and the pain. So the top traits of winners. And you're going to hear me use that word a lot this year. Our coaching company, our programs are designed to help people win. And so we want you to win.

We want you to be a goal getter.

And I think it would be fair to say that people who set goals,

achieve goals and do it in a timely manner are the people who are winning.

And so I want to share with you right now the top traits of winners.

There's 10 of them all together.

Number one, winners don't make excuses.

One of the things in our culture today is it's easy to make an excuse, right? The fact of the matter is all excuses are bad. What inspires us is when we see a person who does the hard thing when all the odds are against them. Number two, they make the priority the priority. Jim Rhone said, if it's a priority, you'll find a way. If it isn't, you'll find an

excuse. So when it's a priority, it's really key that we pour our energy into our priorities. One of the reasons you can get off to a good start in your year is you're focused on the highest and best use of your time. The highest and best use of your time for your business, the highest and best use of your time for yourself.

And if you do that, you're off to a great start.

The next dynamic with winners is they don't waste time.

Now, it doesn't mean they're perfect. It doesn't mean that every hour of every day and every minute of every day. It doesn't mean they don't scroll Instagram or watch Netflix once in a while. It's just they don't waste a lot of it. And what they don't waste is the pivotal production hours. On a person level, it's that first hour of your day

from a standpoint of spiritually, physically, emotionally, health-wise, food-wise, that first

hour of the day, don't waste that. Don't start your day with the emails or scrolling or

distracting stuff. The first part of your day, if you're a small business owner, you've got to be in the focus of generating leads, right? I'm not going to waste my time. I got to get it going. Bruce Lee was a master and he said, if you love life, don't waste time. For time is what life is what life is what life is what life is what you're going. And the real key is don't waste the most productive hours of your day. The next thing is you've got to expect to win. That's another trait of winners. They expect to win. When they're losing, they know something's not right here. One of the things for me is getting in shape and losing weight. It's very easy to get comfortable but being heavy or out of shape, having to get the bigger size pants or shirt or dress, whatever the thing is. You're comfortable with it. No, you got to get uncomfortable with that and expect to win. Zig Ziglar said you were born to win. But to be a winner, you must plan to win. Prepare to win, expect to win. The next trait of winners is they appreciate feedback. Bill Gates said, we all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve.

One of the great dynamics of coaching, I just feel like I just walking through the coaching floor and

listen to the coaches of Pafinian company. They're able to give constructive feedback. They never tear down the

person. They're always able to find a way to help a person, hold them accountable in an encouraging

way. We need the feedback. Another trade of winners is they don't give up. Now, I'm going to give you a particular specificity on this because for almost 30 years we've been the largest coaching company in the country. And I can tell you about this because you go, hang on a second here, I must not be a winner because I've given up before. Well, so have I. There's a difference between giving up and stopping. Stopping is you set a goal, you had some momentum, you're achieving some things, and then something happened, either a major life event, a major business event. What happens is the habits stop. That's what happens with habits. It could be working out. It could be eating right. It could be doing the proactive lead generation tools and systems. It's very easy. And so we just kind of drift and we don't know it. So it's not that you give up on those things. You just get distracted. So the key is someone who gives up is someone who says it's not possible. I've set a goal to lose weight five times before and I'm not willing to try again. That's someone who's giving up. The person I'm interested in talking to is a good person who set the goals five times to lose the weight and set it again a sixth time. And what can I

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