I have three daughters, and over the years, they’ve passed down a t-shirt from the oldest to the middle and now to the youngest. When the youngest outgrows it, I’ll probably frame it and put it up in my office. Not because it’s been in the family for years, but because the message on it is perfect:
“Dream it, believe it, achieve it.”
Although it’s so simple, why is it so difficult for us to get beyond “dreaming” to actually achieving our goals? Creating something out of nothing is a powerful thing and not to be understated.
I did it with Buy Then Build, which went on to become a Wall Street Journal bestseller, then I later did it again with the Acquisition Lab.
Some people achieve what they set out to do, while others don’t. Why is that? I personally believe it’s because the vision you hold acts as a magnet that brings the universe to you.
On Becoming a Scuba Diver
One day, out of the blue, my 10-year-old daughter decided she wanted to become a scuba diver. Now, a lot of kids have fleeting dreams and declarations that they say one minute and forget the next, but this wasn’t the case with my daughter. She took action.
Completely on her own, she did the research to figure out where to get training and convinced my wife to drive her to the place to learn more. When she went to the diving facility, that’s when she found out there was a written exam she needed to pass.
She then studied for the exam, all by herself, took it online, and passed. Remember, this isn’t an adult friend I’m talking about – my daughter’s only 10. In fact, she may have been nine at the time.
But she didn’t stop there. She somehow persuaded us to sign her up for a two-day weekend course, where she spent hours in a swimming pool training with a group of adults – mostly men, with maybe one woman.
Then, for the final part of her certification, she went to a lake about five hours away from home for the entire weekend. By the end of it, my daughter came back as a fully certified scuba diver.
To celebrate, we planned a trip to Florida, where she did her first real underwater dive.
With as many adults as I talk to who have goals but never follow through, how does a 10-year-old pull this off?
This reminds me of those stories where entrepreneurs who don’t know the ins and outs of an industry can come up with the most innovative ideas. It’s typically because they approach it with fresh eyes and aren’t constrained by the usual ways of thinking. Even though there are disadvantages to not understanding an industry before you operate a business in it, it can also help you break the mold.
I also find that these entrepreneurs, even if sometimes naive, have an unwavering focus on what they want to achieve. Let’s dive into what exactly that looks like.
3 Steps to Accelerating in Business & Life
1. Dream It
Before you set out to do anything, the most important step of the process is “dream it” or, in other words, vision.
Let’s say you’re taking a road trip to the Smoky Mountains, and you’ve never been there before. What would you do? You’d plug the address into your maps before you started driving. You wouldn’t start driving and simply hope for the best.
Also, if you were taking this road trip, you wouldn’t tell your maps app that you want to drive to the state of Tennessee. You’d give it a specific location – the address to a particular spot in the Smoky Mountains.
There are certain aspects that make a goal more effective than others.
Personally, I’m a fan of Michael Hyatt’s version of the traditional SMART goals – SMARTER goals – where your vision isn’t just specific and realistic, but it’s even a little risky. Here are the elements of what a good goal looks like:
Source: Full Focus
Hyatt takes it another step further and emphasizes the importance of writing down your goals. Research has shown that simply writing your goals can make you 42% more effective in achieving them than if you don’t.
I’m also a big fan of Jim Collins. If you’ve ever read Good to Great, you’ll know he talks about how the most successful companies have a BHAG – a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. They conducted research over years and learned that more of the visionary companies had some type of powerful and bold goal in comparison to the companies that did not achieve the same heights of success.
“Like the moon mission, a true BHAG is clear and compelling and serves as a unifying focal point of effort—often creating immense team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines. A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People “get it” right away; it takes little or no explanation.”
You can see it’s not enough to say, “I want to be successful.” You need to define exactly what success looks like for you.
Source: Concurate
When I was starting out, my goal was to make a million dollars as fast as I could. It took time, but I was laser-focused on achieving it, and eventually, I got there when I sold my first business.
But I didn’t stop there. I immediately set a new goal – $5 million – and even got a license plate that read “PL4N5M” as a daily reminder of my vision. Every time I saw that plate, I was reminded of what I was working toward. And after I hit that goal, I set another.
That said, your goals don’t always have to be money-driven. For instance, when I created Acquisition Lab, my vision was to make it the Harvard or the Y Combinator for teaching people how to acquire their first business. There was no acquisition mastermind or accelerator like it when we started.
Because there were no accelerators that already existed, people have asked me why I wanted to create the best accelerator out there, versus simply creating one, which would have been successful simply due to being the only one around. However, I knew that the acquisition entrepreneurship space would grow and that others would create educational programs of their own.
My vision was not just to create something new but to build something exceptional that would deliver extraordinary results for those who joined, whether there was one program or 100 in the market. That’s what we did with the Acquisition Lab.
2. Believe It
The next step to accelerating success in business and life is “believe it.”
Once you’ve set your BHAG, it might seem so huge that you have no idea how you’re going to achieve it. And that’s okay. The key is to hold onto that vision, even if the path to getting there isn’t clear right now.
In Buddhism, there’s this idea that reaching complete spiritual enlightenment might take several lifetimes to achieve. For people who believe this, the end goal of enlightenment is their North Star – a guiding light, even if they know they won’t reach their goal in this lifetime. Although I’m not saying it will take you multiple lifetimes to achieve your vision, I do want to emphasize the importance of believing your vision is achievable and working toward that North Star, even if it seems out of reach.
In Hal Elrod’s book The Miracle Equation, Elrod shares that simple equation to making your goals an inevitability:
Unwavering Faith + Extraordinary Effort = Miracles
He describes unwavering faith as the confidence that you have what it takes to conquer any challenges you’ll encounter along the way to achieving your goals.
According to Elrod, the world’s best basketball players persevered when lesser players would give up because “they have unwavering faith that they can make every shot that they take.”
When Elrod was diagnosed with cancer and given a 30% chance to live, he said,
“I had unwavering faith that I was going to beat cancer. Even though there’s never a guarantee. We’re so centered around certainty and comfort that that’s what keeps people stuck in the life that they’re living.
If you want to create the extraordinary life that you really want, you have to step out on the faith that you can do something that you’ve probably never done in your life.”
3. Achieve It
Finally, it’s time to achieve. This is where you focus on maintaining 100% belief in yourself and your goals while you’re carrying out the daily habits required to achieve your goals.
As James Clear, expert on setting habits to achieve your goals, states, “Building habits in the present helps you to do more of what you want in the future.”
In his book Atomic Habits, where he outlines how to change your habits to get 1% better every day, he says that goals are helpful, but your system is the collection of daily habits that you follow. If there’s a disparity between the two, your daily habits will always win out – for better or for worse. When we want our results to change, what needs to change is our habits – not our goals.
For me personally, I know I’m doing the right habits to achieve my goal when I hit a flow state.
I used to race bikes, and I would experience this state often. You’ve probably experienced this too, whether on stage, in a sales meeting, or in any situation where you’re operating at your peak performance. You’re focused, you’re in the zone, and everything just clicks.
It’s a state that comes when you’re actively chasing a goal that is somewhere between “boring” and “anxiety-provoking.”
Source: A State of Flow
When you’re in a state of flow, you have total concentration on the task at hand and you are absolutely clear on what needs to get done and for what end. This is when the magic happens. It’s like a magnetic force pulling you toward what you want to achieve.
These are the eight things you’ll experience when you’re in a flow state:
- Complete concentration on the task
- Clarity of goals, reward in mind, and immediate feedback
- Transformation of time (speeds up or down)
- The experience is intrinsically rewarding
- Effortlessness and ease
- Balance between challenge and skills
- Lose self-conscious rumination
- Sense of control over the task
Doubt will inevitably creep in along the way, but the key is to adopt what I call a relentless solution focus. This means constantly asking yourself, “What’s the next step I need to take to move closer to my vision?”
If you’re on the journey to acquiring a business, this approach is a necessity. You’ll encounter challenges, but with relentless solution focus, you’ll identify what you need to overcome them. Maybe you realize you lack confidence in a certain area – so you seek out the education to fill that gap. Or perhaps you’ve learned the basics, but now you need a specific tool or resource to progress further.
It’s also important to recognize when you need a team. Whether it’s someone with deal experience, a mentor, or a cohort of like-minded individuals, surrounding yourself with the right people can accelerate your journey. A strong, supportive community can make all the difference.
The Acquisition Lab Can Help You Achieve It
This is exactly what we’ve created at the Acquisition Lab – a comprehensive environment designed to help you achieve your acquisition goals.
If you’re planning to buy a business in the next month to 24 months, the Acquisition Lab was built for exactly that purpose. We’ve put together world-class education, essential tools, and a top-rated supplier network to help you build your acquisition team. With 14 coaches on staff and nearly daily meetings, we provide the support you need every step of the way.
Our cohort is carefully vetted, making it the single largest group of active, backed business buyers in the world – yet it’s not overwhelmingly large. That’s because we’re selective about who we invite into the program, ensuring the community remains strong and focused.
Here’s what comes with a membership to the Acquisition Lab:
- One month Intensive Workshop Series
- Access to Acquisition Entrepreneur Office Hours (175+ hours/year)
- Lifetime access to vetted, virtual AE community
- IBIS World Premium w/ Industry Wizard
- 24+ Search Forums per year to help you with your specific deal (48+ hours)
- Buyer Branding Packet (assessment, profile, etc.)
- Buy Then Build Masterclass
- Highly vetted service provider directory
If you’re ready to acquire a business in the next 12 months, the Acquisition Lab is your first stop. Reach out to us today and get on the fast track to becoming an acquisition entrepreneur.
