Goal Setting to Take Your Practice to the NEXT LEVEL with Chris Tuff

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpq6OsZiMhc

Peter Boulden
0:00:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to an episode of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast. I am here with our wonderful MC slash energy curator slash all the things. If you've been to a summit, you've seen him on stage. If you've been to a summit, if you've seen him in person, you've seen his magical yellow glasses, which I am trying to convince him right now that he has to wrap his new Bronco. Chris was the lucky recipient of one of the first Broncos. And I'm just gonna throw it out on the gauntlet, Chris, that it is incumbent upon you to keep going because now you're on, you're gonna be cover of the second book you've done.

Chris Tuff
0:00:47
You know what, Pete? What I've noticed with myself is that unless I make it a goal, it doesn't really happen, which is a perfect segue into today's discussion. So maybe I just now need to say it is a goal of mine to get a matte black, volt yellow Bronco. And from there, I can work my way forward.

Peter Boulden
0:01:09
I was thinking the whole thing would just be volt yellow. We could just wrap it in like a matte vault yellow, which is your trademark. So look, like you've always told me, like buy when, give me a buy when, when's this shit gonna happen, and like play full out. Give me six weeks, give me six weeks. All right, perfect. So this is a perfect segue for what we're gonna talk about today, because you, and we're gonna go into this, but you are a good accountability partner for me. And some people think like, oh, you get all these things done and look at all these things. Like, everyone has a coach. Everyone has a partner. No one gets through this journey in life alone. Tiger Woods has a coach. LeBron James has a coach.

Peter Boulden
0:01:46
Everyone has coaches.

Peter Boulden
0:01:47
And so where I'm going with this is what we've been talking about recently is getting real crystallized with your goal setting, the vision of where you want to go with your practice, personally and professionally, and then identifying something fun. And a lot of people call it the BHAG, goal like that, which Chris, I guess, stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. That's right, yeah. And we, in our own mastermind, we have a mastermind with Chris and I personally in Atlanta with some other business leaders and entrepreneurs that we meet on, and we've been talking about things like that, and how you really have to, life can't be a series of goals without kind of a reward to you, meaning it can't just be like, I want to get to $2 million in revenues. Okay, well, why? And what's that going to do? What's the feature to your life that that's going to create? Because I think that makes it much more tangible than sticking down facts on a page.

Peter Boulden
0:02:39
Agreed?

Chris Tuff
0:02:40
Yeah, and you know, one thing I've noticed with a lot of the dentists, you know, we even heard it on the Mastermind intro call on Monday, which is that so many people are feeling burnt out. And I am personally, like this is just my own thing, like I'm not a big fan of long-term goals because I find that things shift, right? So my passion shift, my priorities shift. And so I can't tell you where I'm going to be in three years. I can tell you it's going to be somewhere around my evolving passions, but that's about it. And I think one of my own issues with being so goal-oriented, let's just say that big goal that we hear a lot is, I want to break through that $3 million threshold for my practice, or the $2 million threshold, or it might even be a profit distribution, whatever it is. And I've seen a lot of the by-product of that, a lot of times can be burnout or, you know, once again, kind of going after that next big thing that kind of, all right, I'm gonna conquer this mountain and then I'm gonna conquer one bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And you lose sight as to what it is that you're, why you're doing this.

Chris Tuff
0:04:03
Right?

Chris Tuff
0:04:04
So.

Peter Boulden
0:04:05
That, and that's something, I don't know if this is the right reference, but Craig always talks about the hedonic treadmill and it's kind of a more and more and more scenario, right? And those of us, and if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably growth minded, you're probably an overachiever dentist, and we sometimes fall victim to stopping and patting ourselves on the back, right? Chris, we get to that goal, we check it off, and we say, okay, what's next? And that's what's next. So it's a series of what next? And I, recovering addict from that sort of thing. That was my dopamine, that was my endorphin, that was what got me through. And even kind of as we look on, we're going through culture index, which we're gonna start unpacking for the mastermind, I'm sorry, mastermind and podcast and just bulletproof going forward. But like, that is kind of the way I was designed to be, is just, I'm gonna get it done, see that brick wall, I'll run through it kind of thing. But it's not always healthy. I know I just kind of went on a tangent there.

Chris Tuff
0:04:58
No, I love it. I love, I mean, but here's one of my, goals can also serve a purpose of doing, making your life more complete. And Pete, this is something I learned from you. I was actually talking, I had a business lunch that I just came from, and I was talking about it and how much I love your goal of 20% of your income is dedicated to experiences. Because I was kind of sharing my past summer and this epic trip I took at the super exclusive, ridiculously expensive ranch. I said, I don't regret any of the money. Actually, it's the opposite. I see, when else in my life am I gonna be able to create a memory for my children and family where we all reconnected that we will remember for the rest of our lives? But remember when you were going through that, right?

Peter Boulden
0:05:45
And like, do I pull the trigger, do I not? And just like one of the members in our, you know, our business mastermind in Atlanta, same kind of scenario with a boat that they rented for his family. Now he was questioning, should I do it? This is a lot of money, then did it and saw the translation of the money, the fuel of money into the translation of the smiles and the memories and the things for his family, and he's like, I booked five more. I'm like, wait a second, you were questioning one, and now you booked five more? And for you, the same thing, you went to probably the most, even when you told me my jaw dropped, I was like, how much for that experience you did? But you're like, I'm doing it again 100% because. And a cool thing, that's where I've gotten, I think where age has kind of taught me something, Chris, is better than I made myself dedicated to the experience, like the benefit, I keep stressing, what is the benefit of that goal? It can't just be that you checked off the goal, there has to be a reward. It's almost like a Pavlov response saying like, cool, I did X, therefore I should get Y, kind of thing. And maybe that reward isn't something like buying a new car or buying a vacation or something, but it needs to be memorialized in some capacity. And so that's what we were actually talking about the other night. And so there's a famous radio personality that's in our mastermind. And I was saying, and he was talking about ad income and maybe Chris, you can explain it a little bit better since you, yeah, why don't you explain that scenario? And I said, why don't you tie the next tranche to something that really lights you up? Because he was feeling somewhat stale. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we even, you know, the dentist we hear it from as well, where it's, you know, you keep kind of rising to that next goal, right, or to that next level, but it's not necessarily translating into an enhanced life experience. But it's like, okay, it's just checking a goal off. And we've seen this with some of our other friends. And one of my favorite things that came out of that for me in that discussion was the fact that we've got to be able to marry some of these very tangible goals that are usually monetary and numbers in representation to something that benefits us as human beings. Totally. Right? And I think the point in this discussion is that as we talk about the importance of goal setting for your practice, it's just as important to marry some of those other things that will make you a happier person. And so that feeling, you know, we were talking about it earlier today, Pete, right? That feeling where you don't necessarily have to worry about those student loans for the first time ever, right?

Chris Tuff
0:08:29
Like think about what, like how much that is worth.

Peter Boulden
0:08:32
Wait, don't steal my, don't I steal any thunder. I'm gonna do a separate pod on this.

Chris Tuff
0:08:35
I'm not, okay.

Peter Boulden
0:08:36
You were like, you're like, dude, you've got to do that. You got to tell everyone about this. Anyway, so keep going.

Chris Tuff
0:08:41
No, but I mean, it's just, it's, I think we've got to spend a little bit more time looking a little bit inward to what it is that is driving us as humans, why we became dentists in the first place, and then how can we benefit from that?

Peter Boulden
0:08:57
You know, like that's not selfish.

Chris Tuff
0:08:58
All right, new for 2021, we want to invite everyone listening

Peter Boulden
0:09:01
to join us on our private network. It's free to join. Join the conversation at bulletproof.dental. You can even download it in the App Store. Just look for the Mighty Network app and you can download it there. But just point your browser to bulletproof.dental and join and sign up and start collaborating on some of the ideas we discussed on the podcast. There's content there to download and it's all designed to help grow and stimulate us together. Hope everyone has a great day.

Chris Tuff
0:09:37
The one thing I see people struggle with, and I've done the same,

Peter Boulden
0:09:40
is conflating kind of a vision of where you wanna go with your goals. I even heard it the other night on kind of some of our inaugural mastermind, is that like, and I'm not saying that they're independent of each other, they don't live in silos, but a vision is like, the way, the best I can describe it, and you're much better at this, Chris, so I'm gonna kind of be the other entity, is I just think of the vision as being kind of more of the North Star. When shit gets rocky, it's the why you're doing things, it's the what you're creating, you think about the benefits to your family, why the purpose, it's more of your purpose, and maybe it's interweaved with some of your goals. But like, I have goals that go back that I've written down for the past 20 years. And I look back at them, but then goals are very, I want to do this, buy this, and here's how I'm going to do it, right? And there's a number of them. So it's quite different than my vision of what I want, either from my practice personally and professionally. So can you kind of unpack that a little bit from the delineation and then also how they kind of tie together? Yeah, I mean, I think goals, right? I think goals come very naturally to dentists. Because, I mean, you guys are engineers, right? So you have your three bullets. These are the things that we're going to be achieving, right? And one of those goals is it's usually breaking through some sort of financial goal, right? You know, the second one might be to open your second practice or third practice. And then the third one might be diversification into real estate. I'm just making that up, right? Those would be a very probably good example of someone that is an overachieving dentist. And I know there are a lot of you out there. Now, that's very- Well, that listened to this pod, that's for sure.

Chris Tuff
0:11:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But I mean, that's very different than, to me, the vision is, is as you fast forward into that feeling, that place, that experience, what does that look like for you? What is your perfect, I talk about a lot when passion, purpose, and profession all overlap.

Peter Boulden
0:11:55
It is the most beautiful thing you could ever give yourself. PPP, passion.

Chris Tuff
0:11:59
Passion, purpose, and profession. Because the best thing about it is you don't know when you're working. Pete, you and I did a five mile hike with my dog earlier and we worked the whole time. We had no idea we were even one, working out, two, or getting work done talking about Bulletproof, but we did both of those things because we are in that sweet spot where passion, purpose, and profession all overlap. And to me, what a good vision is is when that starts to come to life with something tangible. And I mean, I'll put my stake in the ground out there and tell everyone listening, for me, it's like this vision of me coming back from an epic kiteboarding session, probably in Turks or somewhere with aqua water. And I come in and I go, and my family's kind of scurrying around. I go, maybe start the grill. I hop on another work call and I get some more work done and then I go and hang out with the family, maybe go for another kiteboarding session and then I have an amazing meal and I look around, I'm like, this is my life. Like, how crazy is it that this is my work, right? And it's interspersed with my family and friends and the things I love so much and why I use that as my vision is it's one of the best for me, tangible representations of where I am my happiest, but also what it is that I'm working towards. And some would almost argue that I'm there, right? They're like, Christy, you kind of already do that. I'm like, oh, wow, yeah, kind of right, I guess, but-

Peter Boulden
0:13:27
Yeah, but you take inventory, meaning that you're very cognizant of saying, guys, isn't this awesome? Or probably in your head, I mean, if you're saying that out loud, I can only imagine how much inventory you're taking in your own head like this was amazing right like this was an amazing day And and but honestly Chris you you you didn't get there by mistake So I always tell people like look at successful people around you they didn't just get lucky right you you navigated your way You gold your way you visioned your way to get to that place And you know and there's a you know Tony Robbins always say you know life happens happens for you doesn't happen you know it doesn't happen against you kind of thing. And if you really kind of,

Chris Tuff
0:14:05
he says it better than that, obviously.

Peter Boulden
0:14:06
I'm not a very good, would re-quote her, as we can tell. But the point is, I mean, look, it's there for the taking. And it just takes you kind of learning, having the aptitude. Having big goals isn't an impediment to you getting those big goals. But kind of reverse engineering, and I am a big fan of the steps, as Craig always makes fun of, the steps of one, two, three. But I can apply that unfortunately in something ethereal like goals, because I think that you can't just wish your way into your goals. Sometimes people put goals down, people put visions down. And sometimes, Chris, I always say that becomes like a hopium standpoint, where you're writing things down and then you don't visit them again. So that wasn't a goal, that wasn't a vision, that was a wish. It was a wish and nothing more. But until you kind of revisit that and put your psychology to work and your subconscious and you're reading that vision every day until it becomes something almost like the Oprah, the secret, like that, the whole thing was the secret is just kind of like, ooh, putting in your subconscious or having the world, you know, fill in your needs kind of thing. It's not the world, it's your subconscious. And you're putting your powerful mind to work all the time. And it's that reticular deactivating system that Craig talks about, right? It's when your wife is pregnant, all you see is pregnant women. When you drive a yellow car, which you're about to have to have, all you will see is yellow cars.

Chris Tuff
0:15:24
Yeah, yeah, no, 100%.

Peter Boulden
0:15:25
Like reverse engineering your goals, like, you know, and your visions. And if you're not there and you're not making progress, revisit it. No different than you would revisit your diet if you're not losing weight. No visit that you would revisit your fitness if you're not losing, right?

Chris Tuff
0:15:38
Like you have to, what got you here will not get you there. Yeah, and we see it all around us, especially in the self-help and everyone being a life coach world that we live in. If I see one more inspirational post from an Instagram influencer that is a coach, whatever, right, like everyone is purporting this stuff, right? And you hear so much about purpose and these purpose courses. And like, to me, people will tell me their purpose. I'm like, you just read three paragraphs, right? Like your vision, your vision is a represent, at the core of your vision is your purpose. And your purpose can change. But the most important thing that everyone can do listening is go put a stake in the ground. My purpose is to inspire and connect. Everything I do, my vision, the companies that I get involved with like Bulletproof, everything that I do in Bulletproof follows my purpose of to inspire and connect. And I think so many people, especially dentists, because a lot of you are perfectionists, are scared to put a purpose on paper because they think it needs to be perfect. You can move that stake and don't make it, it can't be more than, if you can't say it, not only if you can't see it, if your whole team doesn't know your purpose, then you're flying blind. Yeah.

Chris Tuff
0:17:01
Like there's no way you're gonna be able to get more.

Peter Boulden
0:17:02
I love how you said that, it can change. Meaning sometimes people think like, okay, I got it done, and they think it goes on a stone tablet, right? And it doesn't. Exactly. It's going to change and ebb and flow. I cannot tell you how many times I thought I was, this is what I'm gonna do, this is where I'm going. And then 12 months later, it's a totally different vision. But I wouldn't have known that until I had to look at it and read it and audit it and then say, and then know thyself and saying, this is not feeling authentic anymore because of what I want. And that is cool. And I think that is when you audit that vision on a continual because you're kind of putting that psychology to work like I'm saying, and then it doesn't feel authentic, maybe it's time to tweak that lever. Add this, tweak that, remove that, change it. Maybe make that, maybe you laid up with your goal or you have something in there that was just an easy layup. Maybe you're like, shit, that was too easy.

Chris Tuff
0:17:51
What am I doing?

Chris Tuff
0:17:51
Let me go bigger.

Peter Boulden
0:17:53
Let me go a little bigger.

Chris Tuff
0:17:55
Totally. And I mean, if you were to break it down for the, I know how at this point, dentist's brain. So what are the things that you need to be doing right now? What are all those things? Well, first, you need to understand your purpose. That is your guiding light. That's where your boat is steering, right? You've got to understand your vision. What is it that you're working towards, right? And then you've got to have the goals that other people, both within your practice and around you, will hold you accountable to. And then also on a yearly basis, I think it's also important to have a BHAG, which is your big, hairy, audacious goal that should kind of push you a little bit outside of, you know, to hit X revenue. It's outside of that. You know, so for me, I'm about to publish a new book. My big, hairy, audacious goal is to impact 1 million lives directly, right? And that is aggressive and big. And that's also gonna act as my metric of success. Was this book a success? Well, did I hit my BHAG? And so I think a lot of people mistake BHAGs for more of those just ongoing goals, like whether that be quarterly or annual goals. This is different than that. Your BHAG needs to be a little bit bigger and overarching than that. And it's interesting, because the Bulletproof masterminders are working on this as their homework right now. And I'm really interested to see what they come back with

Peter Boulden
0:19:22
for their BHAGs because- I am too. I am too. And we kind of spent all the first call, the launch call, talking about it. And, you know, sometimes people like me get like, you get a little over it from a woo-woo, okay, I get it. But when you really sit down and make yourself go through the exercise, that's why we kind of do this in the beginning of the summit, Chris. We don't go through and do the vision at the beginning of the summit, but we are doing it as an activity and an action, and we're spending copious amounts of time on it in the beginning, because what we found, interestingly enough, is that even in the last mastermind class, what sometimes, meaning what Craig launched the other night saying is that Pete's really good at telling you the how. You figure out what you want to do, and then Pete'll get you 12 steps to get there kind of thing. And I am, I'm a great step-by-step reverse engineer. But what we found is that some people were going right to me and saying like, I want multiple locations or I want a partner or I wanna onboard this specialist or I want this marketing hack, right? And then we went through about six months and then Craig kind of got his special sauce of there and found out that they were not living, they were kind of copying and pasting someone else's vision and life goals. And they were just doing it because they thought that's what they needed to do and they were not feeling fulfilled, they were not feeling motivated, they were not feeling energetic, they were really not happy in where they were. And it wasn't until Craig got involved and got them and said, wait a second, forget all of Pete's dumb one through 12s, okay? What we need to do is go back to the beginning and re-architect this and make it authentic to you, make it resonate with you. And then he did that. And it was like this, you know, a magician kind of fixing someone, so to speak. Not a magician, but it was definitely like therapeutic to go back in and kind of say, let's reset this and try it again with the lens of what we're doing from a visionary standpoint. So the reason we spend so much time on this, Chris, and we give the tools and the PDFs and the documents and the field manual at the summit and we give all these things, and not everyone's gonna be the same, we're not saying go through our method, but it is so important to sit some time with yourself, creatively, you get one ticket in life, I always say. So sit down, be creative, write things down, start writing what feels good, just as a catalyst to start doing this.

Chris Tuff
0:21:40
And auditing, and it's not gonna be perfect,

Peter Boulden
0:21:42
and it may not be the best verbiage, and it may not make sense to anyone but you. But guess what? You're starting to curate that process, and it's gonna start resonating with you, like, yep, this is it. Especially, I recommend people, if you're feeling unfulfilled, you know, and you're just a listener of the podcast, I would recommend just doing this. And you can Google, like, how to set a vision, or how to create goals online. But do this process and don't make the mistake like me and be like, oh, this is too touchy-feely, I don't need this shit. I need a one through 12, bullshit.

Chris Tuff
0:22:14
Well, I think one thing that's also really important with that process, Pete, which you've done, I think, a good job of evolving as a human and how you go about this stuff, but it's being honest with yourself. And it was actually on Mighty Networks that I brought up life being a ruthless pursuit of passions and Dwight Pecora quickly was like, you know what, Chris, like, I don't know if I totally, you know, as dentists, that's a hard thing for us to really implement. And then this discussion started happening around this, I forgot, I wish I could call her out. I'll give credit to it when I do end up talking about this more, but it was someone in Mighty Networks that said, Fongku is the thing that gets in the way of people being able to be honest with themselves and their goals as well as their passions. I said, what's Fongku? And it's the fear of not keeping up. And we live in a society that is- The fear of not keeping up. The fear of not keeping up. Keeping up with the Joneses. And so yeah, you see everyone around you setting these goals, that they're goals and visions that you probably were like, yeah, that looks pretty good,

Peter Boulden
0:23:21
like two million or whatever it is. So it's Fonku and FOMO that are directed by social media, right? Yeah, and that's what gets in the way of us truly being able to look in the mirror and say, what do I really want, right? Like, what is it that I really want to achieve? I mean, I love Brady as a good example of this with who I met at the summit for the first time, who's amazing, right?

Chris Tuff
0:23:45
And Brady with his Halo network and what he's trying to build there. I'm like, see, that is something I can get behind. You know, truly bringing dentistry to the people that need it most. How can I help you?

Peter Boulden
0:23:57
Like, he's such a good example. Someone's hurting their arm. Yeah, Brady Smith, he has a podcast, Chris, has been mentioned on Joe Rogan. That's his mission. He literally wants to make money so he can help other people get dentistry. How cool. For charitable reasons, right? So he's a special human. I dig him too. I really got to spend time with him. He's just a badass. And his halo thing. So I appreciate you.

Chris Tuff
0:24:19
And that is the product of someone being truly honest and looking in the mirror and saying, what do I really want to do? Like, what is it that I truly wanna do? And so I do find, as someone that thrives on extroversion, sometimes you do truly have to slow down to speed up in these types of scenarios and put something on paper and have someone hold you accountable to it. Just saying it out loud to a couple people will go way above and beyond what you've probably done up until now. Yep, I love that you brought that up.

Peter Boulden
0:24:53
You know, it's two things I always say. I say write it down and that's when shit gets real. But I think you can extend that, Chris, and like tell someone else and tell someone to hold you accountable to the success of that. And that's when shit really gets real. So Pete, so I mean, let's put this in an application.

Chris Tuff
0:25:08
Pete's like, Chris, I want you to hold me accountable

Chris Tuff
0:25:10
to working out.

Chris Tuff
0:25:11
And all of a sudden he started sharing his Apple Watch data with me. And so anytime he achieves his goal of the day, I get a notification on my Apple Watch saying that he's done it. So I will actually reach out to Pete at like four o'clock. I'm like, I haven't seen much action today. Like what's happening with that? Like that's true accountability.

Peter Boulden
0:25:33
It is true.

Chris Tuff
0:25:33
And that is what-

Peter Boulden
0:25:34
Well, I needed some accountability. I was getting COVID skinny fat guy just sitting around like being like I'll work out when when COVID's up like it made no sense. I was just an excuse. So yes, I needed some I needed I know how to work out Right it right, but I needed an accountability person to say what are you doing? What are you doing good? And like it's so much better because I don't want to like, you know It's okay for me to let me down like I've done that several times But as yours all don't want to let you down, right? So that's where the accountability comes in. It's like the trainer aspect. All right, Chris, I want to mention, you mentioned something. If you're not a member of our Mighty Network, as Chris said, some of you might not know it as Mighty Network, but it's bulletproof.dental.join. I was literally looking at the site yesterday, and I was like, I can't believe this is free for people. Because there's so much shit going on and so much this and so much, oh, here's this form and here's this sharing. If you're not a member and collaborating there,

Peter Boulden
0:26:33
like, I don't know what to tell you.

Peter Boulden
0:26:36
It was awesome collaborating with you. I feel like I've had a lot of Chris time today because of that five and a half mile hike run. But it's all good stuff. Thanks for your input, buddy. And anything, any closing remarks? No, I mean, I think the worst thing that you do is nothing at all. Like put a stake in the ground, go take this on. You'll figure if you do not understand, know what your purpose is, you better find out because otherwise you are flying blind.

Chris Tuff
0:27:04
So, yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:27:04
Get no GPS, right?

Chris Tuff
0:27:06
Get it done.

Peter Boulden
0:27:07
Hi brother, we'll see you soon. Thanks guys. Thanks guys.

Chris Tuff
0:27:09
See you.

Transcribed with Cockatoo