Ep. 317 – Goals and Mission Statements Are a Waste of Time

“Goals and mission statements are not going to get me where we want to go. Action gets me where I want to go. Do they start overnight? Nope. Is it hard work? Yep. Are you going to get knocked down? Yep. You get to decide when you get knocked down. You get to decide if you’re going to get back up or if you’re going to sit there and cover your head. You get to decide that. On my watch, that’s not happening because it’s the people that matter. It’s not some arbitrary number of a goal. It’s not some stupid mission statement. I don’t have one. I don’t know that I need to. I feel like my team knows where I’m at because I’m pretty clear in my speaking.”

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. Let’s talk about a client meeting that I had with a client that was struggling and the topic of goals and a mission statement came up. And you are going to hear my thoughts on that. And some of you are going to agree and some of you are going to tell me I am full of BS. But hear me out.

So I was visiting with this client. She belongs to a paid group where this group gets together and they try to help one another in their growth of their farm and ranch. Okay. So she meets with me and says, Mary Jo, I don’t think the people within the group are understanding what I’m trying to do. They don’t understand cash value life insurance. And so I need some help. Well, if you are a client, this is like my favorite thing to do is talk about how to grow your business. If you are, I don’t care if it’s farming, ranching, welding, electrical, I don’t frankly care. I love to throw ideas out because I’m always paying attention to what things are doing, right? I love the marketing piece. I love all that stuff.

And so she wanted to pay off her notes at the bank to get rid of some debt. They’ve got some extra cash. I want to get rid of some debt. And I said, okay, so if you get rid of the debt though, let’s say you have a $20,000 loan. If you get rid of the $20,000, you now just gave the bank 20 grand. But you’re telling me that you’re going to do some sell-buy marketing and you’re actually figuring in a 25% rate of return on the buyback of those cattle. So we know you’re going to make 25% if you do it right. And she’s been doing it right and it’s all good. And so I said, so you’re going to give up $20,000 to pay off a note to feel warm and cozy when you know that you can make 25% on that $20,000. Why not go buy more cattle, feed them out, sell them, buy back and make a 25% return? Even if your loan rate is 8%, 9%, you’re making 25% on the other side. So you’re basically leveraging the bank’s dollar. And so why would you go pay that off if the bank’s not calling that note?

These guys are not in huge financial trouble. They’re not in any financial trouble. They are just, they’re doing, they’re trucking along. Everything is good, right? She just wants to feel warm and cozy inside that their debts paid off. I don’t care. As long as you can make the payment and we know how to make money on the other side of it, let’s leave that money liquid so that we can do that. So I’m like, how can we do that? Can we put the money back into the business they have? Can we put the money into the farm? Do we want to put the money into cattle? How many more cattle can your farm handle if we do sell-buy marketing? If you sell, can you buy back more with your profit? Do you have the capacity to handle that? And so we’re going through all these scenarios, all these scenarios.

And she’s telling me that in this group, she’s supposed to be writing down her missions and her goals and blah, blah, blah, blah. So that already tells you what I think of this. And I’m like, what? You’re meeting with this group. Like you’re paying to meet with this group of people that are telling you that the only way you can make more money is if you add acres. And you can only increase your herd if you add more acres. They’re telling you that you should be paying off your life insurance loans when, in fact, you can make payments on your life insurance loans because of what you took the loan for. Don’t need to pay those off. What? And then they’re focused on your missions and your goals? Really? That’s what we’re going to put our time and energy to in a conversation of how do I get ahead? How do I make more money? Your answer is to the only way you can do that is to buy more ground? Pay off more debt? What? We are paying to belong to this group. I said, what? You’re a client. You can call me for free at any time and we’ll run these strategies.

So I said, take your mission statement and your goals and shove it. Like, I don’t care. I don’t care what they say. Right now, the mindset that you have is blocked. Your mindset is we can’t go any further because this is what all these people are telling me. And we don’t have the means to do that. And I’m coming in and saying, how can we? We can because we have one pool of money. That money is going to be not used to pay off debt and feel all warm and cozy. That money is going to be used to market the business. That money is going to be used to do some sell-buy, buy some cattle, feed them out. They’ve got a feedlot operation and they’re not maximizing it. Because why? They want to go to the bank. They don’t want to go to the bank and borrow money to buy cattle. But yet they have the money to pay off the loan. Right?

The small thinking was just mind-blowing to me in a paid group. That’s the piece that makes me mad. That’s different if you’re just talking to some Joe Schmo and now everybody’s talking. Go find a group of people that are successful and align yourself with that group. I do not want to be the smartest person in the room. I would actually prefer to be the dumbest person in the room because I’m too stupid to not ask questions. Right? I’m like, oh, I’ll ask questions all day long. I don’t feel dumb for asking questions. I want to learn.

And I said, take your mission statement and your goals and throw them in the garbage and put on your wall. How can I? Because apparently her mission statements and her goals were hung on her wall. So on your wall, put into a piece of paper that says, how can I? I don’t care if you tattoo that on your arm. If our mindset is we can’t, that means we can’t. If our mindset is how can we, that means it’s going to be open to solutions and we’re going to find a solution. We will not find a solution in a closed mindset. And when everybody around us has a closed mindset, we, the same thing happens.

So I talked to this lovely person two years ago, two days ago. And today I got a text message and she said, Mary Jo, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you how much we appreciate you. And what a kick in the butt that I needed from that conversation. Because the last two days have been awesome, right? They’re figuring out how they’re going to do things. And she’s like, I don’t know that we’re going to go back to this group. Well, my suggestion is save the money from the group and start another life insurance policy. Because that’s more money in the bank, right? To start her banking system.

It is just crazy to me. How, if they need more money because they want to buy more land or they want to pay the debt off or whatever they want to do. How can we get it? If we pay the bank money, we can’t buy cattle, we can’t market the business. Like, are you marketing the business? Are you posting on Facebook with the business? Are you guys wearing a GoPro in the business so that you can post videos? What are you doing with the business? Like, yeah, you haven’t really had to advertise yet. But if you advertise and you grow the business, then what?

And let’s just, and her husband doesn’t want to work in this business forever. He wants to get out of the business and farm full time. Fantastic. Grow the business, hire somebody, train them so they can be in working the business while you’re farming. And then if you grow the business big enough, you can sell the business. Maybe you even sell the business to the hired guy that you brought on, right? You are a business owner. Put your business owner cap on and say, what are the possibilities of this business? In this group’s mindset, in my client’s mindset at the moment, it was a mere conversation of, how do I barely pay my bills to move forward? And I can only stay within this window to do that.

As you guys can see, I’m very passionate about these things. Because when we think like business owners and when we think like wealthy individuals, we do not quit, we do not go, well, I guess that’s all we got for you today. And we can’t do it. You’re just not going to be able to do it. It’s like saying you can’t start farming from scratch. No, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. Because I have all kinds of people that start from scratch. Do they start overnight? Nope. Is it hard work? Yep. Are you going to get knocked down? Yep. You get to decide when you get knocked down. You get to decide if you’re going to get back up or if you’re going to sit there and cover your head and just let it all go. You get to decide that. On my watch, that’s not happening. Because my little brain is constantly looking for ways for you to, how can I do it? How can I make more money?

And I talk about this a ton. I feel like I talk about this all the time on my podcasts. And I was just listening to the Wealthy Cowboy today. He was interviewing Doug Ferguson. And it was a great podcast. If you guys did not hear it, or if you don’t listen to Crockett’s podcast, Wealthy Cowboy, you should. He interviews amazing people in the industry, in any industry. Crockett’s not picky about who he has come on. And I’m not saying that just because he had me come on. I’m saying it because Crockett thinks the same. Doug Ferguson thinks the same, right? I think the same. If I talk to people, colleagues of mine that are successful, they think the same. Successful business owners that I have meetings with, we all think the same. Everything is just exciting. And there’s opportunity everywhere you go.

It’s not that there’s not a downside to some of those things. Absolutely there is. And yes, you have to be, you have to use discernment to figure out where that downside is. But at the end of the day, there’s opportunity. But we are not seeing opportunity if we’re surrounding ourselves with a group of people that are a bunch of Eeyores. And if you listen to the Without the Bank podcast, you’re going to hear me talk a little bit about this again when Tarisa and I were talking about it. Because cash flow is just that. How do we create more cash flow?

If I can use, if this client can use her money to market the business, to have a waiting list in the business, that now if there is a time where they need money, he can work five or six days a week instead of four days a week. He gets to determine how many days he wants to work in their business to make more money. They get to determine, do they want to build the business up to sell it? Could they owner finance it when they sell it? Oh my gosh, it is, it’s endless. The opportunities are endless. Could he still own the business, but he has somebody hired that’s managing the business? Because they have to be good at marketing, right?

Are you going to go sit in a sale barn? She loves cattle, loves them. Go sit in a sale barn all day. Be buying. I said, why do you not have the sale barn? Why don’t you have the sale on while you’re sitting in the Bobcat? If you’re outside doing stuff, why don’t you have your phone on with the sale barn, with the sale going? And be buying online. I have clients that do that. They will meet with me and they have a sale going on on their other monitor. Why would you not do that? I mean, we came up with all kinds of ideas. And we had to cut our meeting short because I only had an hour. We were on like an hour and 15. And then I had to go because I had another appointment.

And so it’s just, it put the words on your wall. How can I? Plaster them on your face. Tattoo them on your arm. I don’t care. Goals and mission statements are not going to get me where we want to go. Action gets me where I want to go. So let me get back on that train. So I have everything I want in my head. It’s up there. I don’t, where I want to go, it’s, it’s, that’s the vision. I don’t need to put it on paper. I don’t need to read it every day. I take actions every single day to move forward. What are those actions for that day? I don’t frankly know wherever the day takes me. Right? Whatever I can fit in. But I’m not wasting minutes sitting here doing nothing. Because guess what? I had a client council. So here I am doing a podcast for you. Because I could fit it in. I make time for those things that move me forward to where I want to go. I’m constantly thinking about those things.

And then let’s get to this mission statement. What’s my, you know, I don’t have a mission statement. You should be in business to do the right thing to help people. That’s what I do. That’s just what I live by. You do the right thing. If it’s not the right thing, you just don’t do it. Karma comes around, rewards those who do it right. And so if we’re going to, like, why do I have to write that down? Why do I have to write down how we run our business over here? How about I not write it down and I just do it and show people? How about that?

Like it, one time, one time I had a colleague that said, Mary Jo, you need to write down your goals. And I said, okay, yes, sir, I will do that. I said, I don’t like goals, but I’ll write them down for you. That lasted about two weeks. And every client that came in within that two-week period of time, if it lasted two weeks, it may not have even gone that long. Every client I talked to in that short period of time, I associated a number with them. And my brain went to how much commission am I going to make? I’m not going to sit here and lie to you guys. That is what happened. I immediately threw that goal away. What happens in my business just organically happens.

I never, ever want to associate a number with a client. When I have a client call, I will look at their notes or I will remember as soon as I see people, I will remember what we talked about, what maybe the family dynamics were, what the business was, whatever came up in that conversation. I will remember that, but I will never remember how much premium they did. Never. Not even my really big clients do I remember how much premium they did. I would have to go back and look. Because I don’t want to associate a number with a client. Those people are people. It’s about a relationship.

And so when we’re looking at, oh, what are Mary Jo’s, what’s her mission? My mission is to do the right thing to help people in this industry so we can save family farms. I don’t need to write that down. What a waste of time. What an absolute waste of time in my opinion. People that sit and focus on written goals every single day. I don’t understand why you need to. Because that is time you could have been using to do a TikTok, do a Facebook message, do a video for somebody, reach out to somebody. Maybe listen to a podcast and learn a strategy. Listen to something else and learn something else and apply something else. It is an absolute waste of time to me.

What I make at the end of the year, where my business is at the end of the year, it’s an absolute and utter surprise to me. I couldn’t even tell you today what my numbers are. How many clients we’ve written? I have no idea. None. My assistant tracks that stuff. So we have it for tracking if I ever ask. She gave me a number the other day and I was like, oh, didn’t know that. No idea. Because it’s the people that matter. It’s not some arbitrary number of a goal. It’s not some stupid mission statement. I don’t have one. I don’t know that I need to. I feel like my team knows where I’m at because I’m pretty clear in my speaking. I’m not mincing a whole lot of words to say, to be real wishy-washy about where I stand on subjects. Right? Pretty clear.

So if you’re not a good human and you’re working with me, that’s not going to work out real well. Okay? Because almost everybody that works with me as an agent or as an assistant, we are good people. We do what’s right. I don’t need to write it down and be like, oh, oh, I’m going to hire you. But can you, do you fit with our mission statement? I don’t care if you say yes or no. I want to see it. I want to see that you have the same belief system that we do. And that you have the same care about your clients that we do. If you don’t, you’re not going to fit. So there’s my two cents. There’s my two cents on that matter. Let me know. I’m sure plenty of people will let me know if they agree or not.

Not all of us are made to do things like everybody thinks we should. You read those books. Oh, you got to get up at four o’clock in the morning and you got to work out. Then you got to read your Bible. Then you got to do this. Then you got to do that. If you want to be successful, those are the things you need to do. You guys, I listen to a lot of successful people. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I read a lot of books. I watch a lot of people. Not everybody that’s successful does that. Some people sleep till 10 o’clock in the morning because they work till seven or eight o’clock at night. They’re still successful because rest is key. Right?

And so do you really need to get up at four o’clock in the morning? Let me tell you. If I woke up at four o’clock in the morning, five, I don’t know. I’d probably be okay. Four o’clock in the morning. If I woke up at four o’clock in the morning, I would be dragging butt all day. And then they say, well, you go to bed earlier. No, I can’t go to bed earlier. If I go to bed too early, our normal bedtime is 10 o’clock. Not that you guys need to know everything about my life, but here I am. Okay? And you’re listening. If I go to bed at 10 o’clock, I am going to get up at 6:30 and I’m done. I’m done sleeping. Okay? Maybe I can sleep till seven if I’m really tired.

If I go to bed at nine o’clock, because we’ve tried this, we’re like, oh, I want to get some sleep. I want to get a little extra sleep. We’re going to go to bed at nine. It’s winter, right? There’s nothing to do. I am up at two o’clock and it’s like I had a nap. And then I’m up and I’m up and I’m up and I’m up. And guess what? Then my mind kicks in because I’m not tired enough to go back to bed. And so now I didn’t get hardly any sleep because I tried to get more sleep. Doesn’t work that way for me.

And so I’m going to go to bed at 10. I’m going to get up about 6, 6:30, whatever, just depends. And I’m going to hit the floor running, man. I don’t sit and have coffee and do all these. No, I get ready. I come to my office. I read emails and I get moving on stuff that needs to be moved on. While I’m getting ready, that is my time to be listening to podcasts, to be looking up things, to be learning things, to be listening to audio books, whatever that is. That is my time to do that stuff. My feet are moving the second that my eyes are open. My brain is moving. I am not sitting. I’ve tried this meditation thing. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s for me either. I’m not going to diss on that like I do goals and mission statements. But man, I got shit to do.

I have one client that he also does not like exercise. I don’t like to exercise. Okay. It is a waste of time, in my opinion, a waste of time. And so he too doesn’t like to exercise because he gets really mad. It actually makes him mad because he’s not doing stuff. He’s not getting things done. And that’s exactly how I feel. I thought, oh my gosh, I’ve never met anyone else like this. I’m alone. So I’m not even going to say anything until he said something. And I’m like, yes, sir. Yes, sir. That’s exactly how I feel. Why am I on this treadmill? What a absolute waste of time.

And yes, if I’m on the treadmill or if I’m working out, I can be listening to a podcast. Yes, I understand that. I understand that. But I do that, but I can’t hear as well. And I don’t get as much out of it. And I might need to be writing stuff down. Yes, I know I can do that on the treadmill too, but I’m not doing that at a very fast speed. Okay, I need to be walking so that I can be doing all these other things because in my brain, there can be no other noise while I’m listening and concentrating to things. I can’t have a bunch bracket. No, I need to concentrate and quiet. Little insight to Mary Jo.

All right, guys, let me know your thoughts. maryjo@withoutthebank.com. Grab your book, schedule your appointment. John and I would be happy to help you with whatever it is that you need help with. And if we can’t help you, we’ll let you know because we are good people. All right, you guys have a fantastic rest of your day.

Thanks for listening to the Farming Without the Bank podcast. We hope today’s episode has inspired you to take control of your finances in new ways. Don’t forget to check out our website, farmingwithoutthebank.com, and engage with us on our Facebook page, Farming Without the Bank. Join us next week as we smash more financial myths and empower you to accomplish your financial goals.