Why your goals are always just out of reach

You're not making more money because you're trying to make more money. By the end of this episode, we're going to show you how simply making more money just takes not trying to do it any longer. You're just laughing at me over there.

Inside jokes all around.

Welcome to the Useful Not Famous family. I'm Amara.

I'm Jeff.

And this is the show where we teach you how being useful helps build your brand and a better business.

Okay. Yep. So.

So today we have three 5 on the clock. We have three segments. The show is 15 minutes long and it's never only 15 minutes, but…

But we need to adhere to it because we got to go.

Yeah, it's why, what, and how. So first, why. So why are you being held back by trying to get more money?

That's where we're going to start. And it's very counterintuitive, so we all have goals, we all have objectives, we all have things that we want to achieve. But the problem with them and why we're here to tell you today that you need to throw them out the window.

Throw them out the out of the window? That sentence felt weird.

Sure.

But like we're here today to tell you why you need to get rid of all of your objectives, get rid of your goals, because that's holding you back. So, if everything that you do is measured through getting closer to your goal, the problem is you're not actually exploring anymore. And exploration is where everything great comes from.

So think about a room, like you're in like a room like we're in right now, and you're trying to get to a pot of gold.

Hell yeah.

You know where that pot of gold is. It is on the other side of the wall that's directly in front of you.

Got it.

So you can keep pushing on that wall, because that gets you closer to the pot of gold. You know the pot of gold is right there. It's on the other side, just beyond your grasp, so you could keep pushing forever.

Your objective is to get there. But this, in life, everything is a stepping stone, everything we do. And when we're pushing merely on this objective, "We I want to make more money," so I'm going to push and push and push to try to get that money that's right there.

Most of the time, there's a stepping stone to your right, left, maybe behind you, that actually gets you around that wall. It might be a few stepping stones past that first one, but continuing to run into that wall is never going to be a good idea.

I think that's very important to keep in mind, is like, yes, it might appear that it's actually you're going in sort of the quote-unquote "wrong direction", but that little, I guess, break in what you're doing is hugely beneficial. We've experienced this. We actually just recently experienced this, where we got sort of caught up in that objective or that goal that basically everybody gets caught up in, which is, "How can I make more money?" And that's probably the worst thing that you can ever ask yourself because, not only just us, but so many people get stuck in that.

And they're stuck pushing against this wall and you just you can't get through it and it's like, "Why is this happening?" And that was something that, I think it was about May or so this year, where we were just like, "Okay, we just need to like stop and then regroup and think about what we're doing because we were both not super happy, also." And we were just continuously doing the same exact thing.

Getting a little burnt out because we're doing the same thing and we're pushing as hard and harder…

Yes.

…on the same thing. And the only issue I just wanted to like add to that was we were measuring up against the objective that we had, and the logical thing to do is, "This is our objective, it's right in front of us, push harder."

. 'Cause yeah, realistically, like we all need to make money, because we need to be able to afford goods and services and things. But that shouldn't be the only reason why you're doing something.

You need to Oh, go ahead.

I was only going to say, "I want to make more money", that's an objective. "I need to make money", that's a constraint. Those are two very different things.

We're not saying, "Hey, you don't need money anymore, just whatever, man!" Like…

Yeah, that's completely unrealistic.

Money is a constraint that everyone of us have, but if money is the objective, that's what we're positing here, that becomes the problem.

Yes. So, work within your constraints and then allow yourself to explore within that. Obviously, again, this is don't be stupid, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

So, yeah, just Oh, go ahead.

Well, yeah. Like we are from anywhere we are in time and space, we are a step away from whatever direction we're heading. So, we're looking at, okay, your next step that you take, just make sure that step isn't just the one you've always taken, because that seems to get you closer to the thing that it's never gotten you closer to.

. I mean, even with this podcast, like typically I try to have something ready to go that could almost be like a clippable moment, but then A, I'm not making clips right now, but then B, it also is getting in the way of actually having a conversation…

Time!

…because I'm trying to say something where it's like one complete thought, but that's also not how conversation works. Like it meanders, you find your way, and then eventually you get to some sort of an outcome or an objective, but yeah.

Eventually your 15-minute episode turns into 32 minutes as it always does. But should we actually follow the rules this time and jump to the what?

Sure.

All right, so this middle section. So hopefully that gives you a good run- a brief rundown of why we are saying you should get rid of your goals and con- and objectives and keep your constraints. So, what?

So what have we been up to? Why does this apply to us? I mean, this really just You mentioned May is sort of when we realized, but in the last couple months is when we've really been like, "Okay."

Yeah, that was our first time where we just stepped back, and I mean we were traveling. Last year, I looked through my photos, literally yesterday, 'cause I was like, "What did we even do last October?" We weren't home a single day in October last year, because like, thankfully, our vis- our business is like booming and doing very well, but that means that we travel basically every single week.

Now, we've stepped back a little bit, which has been hugely beneficial for us, but last year it was just chaos, to be fully honest.

And I just wanted to say, if you're new here and don't even know who we are, we have whatismaven.com where we travel all over the country and film with realtors in their market. But that's one of many things we do. And basically the this segment, we just sort of wanted to talk about how much every single piece of opportunity we've ever had and the ones we currently have came from exploration.

Exactly.

From seeking novelty, seeking what's interesting one step from where we currently are.

Yeah, just things that we inherently have found interesting, or maybe we know nothing about and then we're just like, "I wonder how that would work" or "I wonder how that would function." so, just for an example, one of the latest things that we've been working on is a local content platform in our town where we live. It's been very, very fun just to make for me because I just felt not connected to our community anymore.

I mean, not that we have a ton of friends, but I just because we were traveling so much last year, we lost sort of that connection and it was something where we make hyper-local content with all of our clients, well a lot of our clients who are primarily realtors. And it was like, "Well, why We should just do that in our own town, because that's something we do for people and I actually very much enjoy it.

And we have sort of the blueprint of what works and what doesn't work, so let's just do it."

Yeah, not even sort of.

Yeah.

The We've

We have the We're working on the blueprint, also.

Yeah, we've we've constantly developed. And again, saying a blueprint sounds like an objective, but the blueprint is the constraint that we follow to then create something new all the time. And that's why the running joke when whenever you reach out to one of our top bananas of people we film with, it's like, "Oh, it's time to get the next filming session on the on the calendar." And, "Ha, things have changed again," because they're always changing, because they're within a blueprint, but the blueprint is it's our overarching strategy.

We don't have one tactic that we just beat into the ground until it doesn't work and we hate everything we do.

Yeah, and that's very beneficial is to always have that step back and be like, "Okay, is this actually A, something that I enjoy? And then B, is it actually helping me get further, not to my goal, but just is this moving me forward in a direction where I want to go?" 'Cause like it's not bad to have goals. I think we should also preface that, and it's not bad to have objectives, but that can't be the only reason why you're doing certain things, 'cause that's just madness.

You can't Yeah, you can't make your decisions based on objectives and goals. That becomes the challenge. Is it's like we can have the goal of growing and doing great things, but as long as everything isn't measured against it where making a little pivot, like doing our local content is not a step towards more top bananas for MAVEN, until it is.

Yeah, unintentionally. So this past week, we had what, three or four different meetings?

That made like a weird face. I was like, "I know."

If you're listening to this, you should get to minute whatever it is and then just look at Jeff's face. It was wonderful. My favorite face.

But, we had about three or four meetings just this past week alone with people in our area who were like so I have a brand closer, which we've talked about on many other episodes, but it tells you who I am and what I offer and then why you should stick around. And if you're not using that for a template, I highly suggest it at the end of your videos, but mine is talking about how we make video marketing easy for small businesses.

So we had multiple small businesses reach out and be like, "Okay, how can you help me? Like what is this all about? How does this work?" Just general curiosity all the way to like, "Can you just do this for me?" And that's an unintentional, I almost like consequence, but that's an unintentional outcome, 'cause…

It's a stepping stone. It's That became the first stepping stone was making the local content.

And now suddenly we have all new stepping stones surrounding us. And this week it was three, like you said, three or four. We had what, three meetings?

I can't even remember how many calls we had.

Well, because we had like yeah like five or six calls all week, but three of them were warm leads, like people asking about filming together who are within either in our town or within 20 minutes of our town.

Yeah.

Which is wild, because we've never tried to actually…

Choose.

…we've never tried to actually build our business in our area. We've always traveled. That's just sort of what we do.

-huh.

But, so real quick, just to sort of really highlight all of this, so because of our local content, we have now warm leads, and one that is basically a guarantee for a brand new business that is so cool.

Yeah, which I'm very excited for.

Like, literally brand new. Like the building is down to the studs.

Yeah, and but a historic building and like all these things.

And a very cool idea. I'm really excited.

Yeah, and all these things that just check a lot of boxes for us, which is important because we only work with so many people. And she's awesome, what she's building is very cool, so we are very excited about that. But just to sort of stick a pin in the exploration, we can we've talked about this, I don't know on the podcast, but together, how there's like the whole butterfly effect where you can go back infinitely to how you and I are here right now.

But if we chose just purely right before we met, I was, ironically enough, 10 years ago going around with our documentary Minimalism. We were at a specific event with the film, and stopped at an amazing local coffee shop. It was so just it just scratched an itch in me, like that just made me so happy that then when we got back, I started going to our local coffee shop with my computer to get my work done.

Sometimes I've said to work at a coffee shop, I never worked at a coffee shop, but…

But I did, and that's how we met!

And that's the funny part. Is we would've never met, again, the butterfly effect, but instead of butterfly effect, let's look at stepping stones, because everything is a decision. Like we met because of these specific decisions, the stepping stones that led you to the coffee shop.

But everything else, that documentary that I said 10 years ago, I just saw a photo that it was 10 years ago today that for that documentary I was in Vermont at the first film festival where we showed that film. That film went on to be the number one independent documentary of 2016. It was trending on Netflix for around a month in the top 10.

It was picked up by Netflix for 5 years after that. And then finally we released it on YouTube, and it has over 13 million views now, absolutely ad free, 100% free on YouTube.

10 million are from me.

Yeah, oh I know. But, all of those things sort of cascade down to the point that we are right now, which we are in the midst of finalizing a documentary that'll be announced in, from when this episode comes out, 1 week.

That's very exciting.

Isn't that crazy? But like, we none of these things just happen. They're all stepping stones.

The stuff that we're working on, we built MAVEN, stepping stone from reaching out to one realtor and saying, "Do you want to film together?" And then it cascades down or however you want to look at it, but it's just step by step by step by step. We have Hiveway that you're working on right now, that's going to be very soon, which is going to help realtors…

It's coming out this week.

Or at least it's going to…

It's it's launching this week.

Yeah. Am I Keep your dates down, but…

Hey, I like deadlines.

But we have that because we filmed over 12,000 videos with realtors doing hyper-local content. So now we're helping the DIY person through Hiveway, myhiveway.com, you can get on a list and not miss it. That is a stepping stone, but then there are so many other stepping stones that are in progress right now for us that wouldn't have happened, that weren't happening 2 months ago.

Let me put it that way. There are things that are in the works that weren't happening 2 months ago because we were stuck pushing and measuring against our objective.

Yeah. Just stuck on that one thing instead of just being like, "Okay. What can just be a fun thing to try to do?" And like so for Helm Hurst, or whoop, there's the name!

But like I love making content, and especially local content, like I do very much enjoy it. I do have a little bit of camera shyness, but when I can get over that, I genuinely love it. And that's what people have said is like, "Do you want to be the face of my business?

Like I don't want to be on camera."

Well, that's what's funny is, again, stepping stone.

-huh.

Potentially we could have started a reverse influencer type platform where you don't come to…

You rent out my likeness.

…for your platform instead of the other way around where you get a post on our platform. It's a very interesting model that suddenly it's like, "Huh, we didn't think about that. We didn't We weren't doing this to create that, but maybe we just did."

I feel like this could actually be the future of something. Like how crazy is that? Like spokesperson, essentially.

I'm the Jared of Subways. Anyway, I digress. But I forgot where I was going with that, but it's just interesting as all.

It's just trying these things, which will lead into our next section, so the how.

Oh yeah, so we have Yeah, our final section, the how. Throw 5 minutes on a little ticker here, and…

So this one's going to be a little bit more nebulous as a how. Typically, I like to give very hard and fast, "Here's how you do things," but this is a little bit more Your objective is subjective. This is more subjective, meaning this is going to be a little bit more personalized to you because it depends sort of what you want to do, where you want to go.

Yeah, and I just want to set the stage real quick that, like, how to do this, how to actually pursue interesting, pursue novelty. We were talking about this before. If you If you are a realtor, that doesn't mean tear up your license, turn around, run down the street, and, I don't know, work at the pool!

I mean, if you want to, you can.

However, that's not a stepping stone away. That's so many steps because you made a decision here. You did this, you did that, you did that for this one specific outcome you chose.

Yes.

We're talking about what are these What are the stepping stones that are in your view? Imagine a mist. There's a mist just beyond your reach.

You can only see the stepping stones right around you. Those are the ones we're talking about here.

Yeah, so for example, this is such a silly example, but this is sort of the amount of weight that should be applied to it, where tonight if you go out Well, it's a Saturday night. But, tonight if you typically…

No, it's Monday.

I mean, it's a Monday night.

Of course. We record this live on Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. Central.

Oh, yeah. Sorry, that's why I'm so chipper. So, if you typically on Monday nights if you go out and you get I know this isn't a Monday night thing, but if you get pizza from your favorite local pizza place, switch it up.

Don't get pizza tonight, or get it from somewhere else, or go out for burgers, make food in. Like that's sort of the stakes, I guess. Oh, or steaks.

That's sort of the amount of weight that you should put into this stepping stone. It doesn't have to be anything Yeah, it shouldn't be like, "Well, I'm going to go out and buy a Bentley," which if you can, bravo, I don't know what you're listening to us…

Well, no, but that could be one step away. Some So…

Well, yeah. See, that's why it's so subjective.

Well, that's what I want to say. We know We know Warren Buffett is one of our biggest fans…

Yeah, he told us.

…and he still drives that 1997 like Buick LeSabre.

He is one stepping stone away from a Bentley.

Yeah, which I need to respond to his text.

Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, he's probably tuned in live right now. Let me just go to the chat.

We'll leave the chat for later.

Yeah, we'll save that.

But, but that's the thing.

Don't put Buffy on blast.

Stepping stones are all relative to where you are in your life.

Yes.

So, the stepping stones around us are very different than the stepping stones around you.

Really, I'm just like, "What do you want for dinner?"

No, no, no, but like us, like where we are right now, what is one step away is very different than every other person on the planet because we're all very uniquely in our own spot right now. But the big thing is take a second, take the time to look around and see what seems interesting to you. So a constraint is you have to make money.

Now, if you're in real estate, that constraint sort of extends to you have to make content. Like if you're not making video content or some sort of content for your local market, you're not satisfying some of the constraints of being a realtor in 2025.

Yes.

So, okay, now knowing those constraints, how can we operate within them, but seek what's interesting? Like maybe this week it's like, okay, I need to make content. I will make one piece of content.

Like we would say a video, but maybe that's too big of a of a leap for you. Maybe you've never posted anything except awful Canva graphics.

Yes.

So, like, today take the step into a photo of you, a photo of your dog, or whatever that one step is away. That's what you really should be doing this week. Like start there, start small.

Yeah, and that's a starting point. Eventually you'll progress and we'll we'll get you to like content, but that is just purely a way to like just start, like get something going, 'cause you have to have that action before then you can have more opportunities and things, 'cause that's what you talk about. And I was like I see the word, it's not it's stuck there on your tongue.

Oh, I was trying to think it's so you have the triangle, which is what we call it for right now, but it's the action yields experience, experience yields opportunity, which leads or necessitates more action.

So, it's a self-fulfilling little recycling emblem.

Time!

And each part feeds into itself, so it almost is like self-cannibalizing, but in a positive way, like in a good way, because you need to have all of those steps to actually get something.

Yeah, it's a it's like a force function. It wouldn't be cannibalizing. It forces you to the next one.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that works. So,

Yeah, just look, so take a moment to actually sit and think and just feel like, okay, where am I? What have I been doing?

Do I have this objective or goal that I am just burying into the ground and it's not working? Like I am just pushing so hard on this thing and it is not working. And if that's true, which it is for I think all of us in some aspect of our life…

Yeah, I think at some point it hits everybody and that can look like burnout and just maybe lack of motivation or inspiration to do something. And I think that's a really helpful point to be like, "Okay, something's not clicking right now, taking that step back." Like don't stop what you're doing because, like I said, most for most people it is making more money, so like you need to still have a livelihood.

But just take sort of a step back and just be like, "Okay, what can I even just integrate right now that would make me feel a little bit more curious or excited? Or what do I want to explore?" Like just something so simple. And if you do already make content, that could just be something as simple as, "Well, I've never made a video at this place before" or "I've never been to this place." Like yeah, it's a little like scary to go because I've never been there before, but that's also exciting because you don't know what's going to happen.

So just taking those little those little baby steps.

Yeah, so just seek interesting, seek novelty. That's sort of our whole our whole approach to how we've personally attained everything good that we've ever attained. None of it has been a set path, it's all been serendipity, but serendipity is just another stepping stone along your journey.

Exactly, and I've had goals and specific things in mind, but most of them haven't come true, but I think that's for the better. Like that's what I was setting out with, but then obviously I took different stepping stones and here we are, and I think it's for the best.

So, go find your little stepping stones.

Yeah, I think with that we'll wrap.

"That's all, folks!" Thanks, Porky Pig.

Perfect. And we'll see you next week.

Bye!

Bye.