(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Lea Woodford,
And welcome to Between The Lines.
And with me today is Jake Ballentine,
author of Your Number One Goal.
Welcome to this show Jake.
- Thanks so much, Lea.
- Oh, Jake, this book was not what I expected.
Can we talk about it?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- The book was really, really very, very personal.
I thought this was gonna be a business book,
and yet it was, but you got really deep.
And can we talk about that?
- Yeah, it's interesting you say that
I thought it was a business book.
I mean it's for any goals.
It doesn't matter what it is,
the same principles apply across the board.
But people get so stuck in,
here's my business life,
and then here's my other life,
and here's my fitness life,
and then here, we compartmentalize everything.
But in the reality,
the reason why someone's not reaching their goals
in their business has very little to do with
not knowing what to do.
It has stuff to do with what's going on internally?
What's going on inside their mind?
What's going on inside their heart?
And so I decided, the principles that I shared in this book
are very much about my personal life
because at the end of the day,
that's what gets us to do things.
What gets us to do things is
do we have a why, that's stronger
than any excuse that we have?
- Now let's back that up.
Your why?
Let's talk about your why.
That was, I was blown away when I read that.
Let's talk about your why,
because people are wondering,
what's your why? - We already talked about.
So my wife and I were told that
we would never be able to have children.
That was, we were told that by the doctors,
and basically they said there's nothing we can do about it.
There's nothing that could be done.
And for a while I didn't really want to talk about this,
but hey, I wrote it in a book.
So now it's open and out there.
And I was the reason for that,
and that was really hard for me to deal with.
And so we were married seven years
and still, just thinking there's no possibility,
I guess it was a little before that six years at that point.
And I said, okay, the doctors say there's nothing we can do.
Well at the time I was 60 pounds heavier
than I am right now.
And I said, okay.
So the doctor said, "This won't change anything."
But at the end of the day I feel like
I wanna do everything that I can.
I wanna do everything that I can to be able to fix this.
And to be able to have a family
that we've always dreamed of.
And even though I asked the doctor,
"Will this change?"
And he said, "Probably not."
But I wanted to be able to say,
okay, you know what, I've done everything I can,
and at this point it's not in my hands.
I've done everything that I possibly can.
And so I had a why that was so strong,
where before when I wanted to reach this goal,
where I wanted to lose weight,
or wanted to get better physical condition,
yeah, I wanted it.
But I also wanted convenience more than wanted that goal.
I also wanted to do this fun thing
more than I wanted that goal.
Now when it was compared to,
okay, am I gonna go out of my way to find healthy food?
when I just landed and it's 11 o'clock at night.
I just want to go to my hotel,
and I just want to go through a fast food place.
At that those times, that's when your why matters
because at that time, okay, do I want?
Do I want to go through the inconvenience
more than I want to look better?
No, I don't.
Do I wanna go through that inconvenience
more than I wanna have a child?
You know what, I'm willing to go through that inconvenience
because I wanna have that family.
And now, I'm very happy to say
that we have a two year old in our lives.
- And he's beautiful.
- He's beautiful, he's amazing,
and we're so happy to have him.
But in this book I talk about
this principle applying to any goal,
any goal of any size, whether it's personal, financial,
physical, business it does not matter.
When it comes down to it,
it's a very simple formula.
If your reason is stronger than your excuse,
you can do anything.
If your excuse is stronger than your reason,
you don't stand a chance.
- I've seen you speak.
For those of you who don't know,
Jake is a professional speaker,
an entertainer because you also play a mini guitar.
- Well, thank you.
- And sing.
what was your biggest challenge writing this book?
Because it's really personal.
- You know what?
Because of being a speaker, I'd shared all these stories.
I talked about everything.
For me the hardest part of writing a book
was sitting down and writing.
Because I'm not a writer,
I'm a speaker, I'm a communicator.
I'm not a reader.
I listen to books constantly.
I listen to two books a month.
I don't actually like sitting down and reading a book,
and I honestly don't read very well.
I get a lot more comprehension out of listening to a book.
And so I wanted to write this book.
I don't enjoy writing.
It's not something that comes easy to me.
So the hardest part was struggling through,
okay, how am I going to do this?
How am I actually going to do this because I want to?
And so I took a different approach
where I wrote it like my day long workshop.
And so for me that means writing an outline,
and then I just spoke it.
I spoke it into my phone,
and I send it off to a website that transcribes it.
Then I had it professionally edited and did all that.
So for me it wasn't getting personal side
because that's something that I do.
I'm pretty comfortable with it.
I'm pretty comfortable with it
because I speak in front of thousands of people,
and yesterday I told some pretty personal stories,
because I'm starting up. - I know you do.
- And it's just, I don't mind doing that
because I feel like the one thing
that everyone has in common
is everyone's going through something challenging right now.
Every one of you right now
is going through something challenging at this moment.
I believe that we should treat all people
like they're hurting because they are,
not because they might,
not because maybe something's going on,
but every single person is going through something.
And if we keep things surface level,
they feel like they're alone.
And when I come on stage, just because I'm on stage,
they assume that I'm something special.
They assume that, well, this guy is on the stage,
so something, there's some reason he's on this age,
and if I can talk about challenges I've gone through,
then the people watch and go,
"Oh wow, maybe I'm not broken.
"Maybe it's okay.
"Maybe it's okay that I'm going through this."
And the problem that people have
is not that they're going through challenges,
it's that they think
they shouldn't be going through challenges,
and they feel shame for going through challenges.
They feel like there's something wrong with them
for going through these challenges.
And that's life.
We all go through challenges,
this is how to deal with them.
So I have become very comfortable
over the last couple of years
talking about challenges because I feel like
people need to understand that they're not alone.
And in our world of superficial,
people broadcasting their life,
and curating their life, it looks so perfect.
I think that people were more connected than ever,
but yet people feel more lonely now.
- So disconnected.
What would you say to your 21 year old self?
Now that you're, what 30?
(chuckles) - 33.
- Yeah, 33. - Yeah.
- If you could go back in time,
what would you say to yourself?
- I would say that, I'll just say, you can do it.
Believe in yourself.
You can do it.
I struggled with that.
I've struggled with that belief.
As soon as I believe that I can do something, I do it.
I honestly, everything I've ever put my mind to
really put my mind to, I've been able to accomplish.
And that is because I get to that point,
once I have that switch go in my head
where I truly believe that I can, then I'm able to do it.
And I probably said the same thing to myself
to my 33 year old version when I'm 43,
but what I would say to that 21 year old self,
is dude, you can do this.
You've got this.
Believe that you can, you're better than you think you are,
and you can do so much more than you think you can.
That's what I'd say.
- Now, how do you think,
let's just talk about these things.
- Yeah.
- You know we're talking, your book is about focus.
Don't you think these are major distractors?
- Absolutely.
With me, I don't have any notifications on my phone.
- Really?
- Nope, I don't do notifications on my phone.
No notifications for Facebook, for Messenger, for email.
The only way I get a notification is a text message,
phone call, nothing else.
None of my apps have notifications on
because I don't want my life ran by every little beep.
I don't want that.
So someone messages me,
I'm gonna get back to them on my time.
And if someone emails me,
I'm gonna get back to them on my time.
They don't have the right to be able to take my time,
and I'm gonna put some on myself and even would watch.
You are giving your life away to other people,
when you allow those notifications
to take you away from that focus.
I stay very focused.
The reason why this book is called Your Number One Goal
is because we try to catch two rabbits,
you'll catch none.
You're going after two different things at the same time.
You are not going to get the success that you think you are.
People go after 10 things at the same time,
not because, what they say is, I want to do so many things.
I think that's rarely true.
I think what's usually true is they have a belief that,
I don't know if this is gonna work
so I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket,
and so they say, well, if I do this, this, this, and this,
throw everything into a wall.
Maybe one of them is going to work.
And so I think that it takes real confidence
to go all in on one thing, really it does,
but you look at the highest achievers,
they go all in on one thing and they become great at it.
You look at anything anyone's ever achieved
during that period of time, they were focused.
And so I do, I take lots of conscious effort
to not allow myself to be distracted
because it's easy for me to be distracted.
That's something I know about myself.
I know that if I get that notification from mlb.com
saying that the (mumbles) has just scored run,
I'm going to look at it and I'm going to look at-
- Priorities.
- Well, but that's the point.
And I know that about myself
and everyone has those things, whether it's a game,
whether it's whatever, whatever it is,
a game, some kind of app,
whatever it is that you enjoy looking at,
and spend your time at,
you know that's escapism.
And I think that so often
the reason we're not reaching our goals,
and to this day for many people
is they're allowing themselves to be distracted
by things they don't really care about.
If you were to say,
okay, would you rather know the moment that
this thing happens in sports or the moment you're whatever,
whatever game it is, you just, you know, I don't know,
whatever game it is.
Would you rather know those things the moment it happened
every single hour of the day?
Or would you rather reach this goal?
Everyone's gonna say, I'd rather reach that goal,
but they don't plan for that.
They don't plan for it.
They don't think about it strategically.
I think awesome it feels a few minutes here,
a few minutes there, start paying attention to it.
Start logging some time you realize, oh my goodness,
I was on my phone doing nothing
for two hours a day or whatever it is.
I do a lot of work on my phone.
Most of my work is on my phone,
but I hear a lot of people saying they're working
when they're on their phone,
and they're not working all that time.
They're not.
You have to understand what that is.
Define what is your work?
And stick to that.
- And I see a lot of people on their phones,
but they're confusing also activity with productivity.
- Totally.
It's like what are you doing?
Are you scrolling?
Or are you connecting with people
who could be your clients?
Are you just looking at things?
Or are you connecting with people
who could open doors for you?
That's what it really comes down to.
What are you doing?
Are using this as a tool?
or are you allowing it to use you?
And I would rather use things as a tool.
So when you talk about distractions,
I've put some things in place
so that I can't be distracted, unless I choose to.
I need to go there and check it.
I do not have anything that will take my time,
that will take me away from the moment I'm in,
just because I know that about myself.
- You know, it's so funny
since the world of cell phones came around,
nobody is in the moment anymore.
Have you noticed that?
- Absolutely, a lot of times that's,
and I find myself doing that often where
great things happening in front of me, and I go,
oh, I better do a video that I can (mumbles).
I can watch somebody else's video.
I can watch somebody else's video,
I can just watch this.
Like I just experienced it.
I can just be in that moment.
- I think that people are really missing out on life
because when you're behind the lens,
you're not really experiencing.
- Yeah, yeah.
I completely agree with you.
But at the end of the day, it comes down to this,
like, I just said this earlier,
but are you using your phone as a tool,
or is the tool using you?
And 'cause everything on this phone.
This is a business here,
and every app wants you to be on there.
The most apps run with advertising.
That's how most apps make their money.
They want you to be on there as often as possible.
That's why the notifications happen.
That's why all that happens.
You don't understand that you are being used
in their machine.
Now, are you being used?
Or are you using it to your advantage?
And that's what we need to be aware of.
So I don't think there's any right or wrong
because sometimes I'm at a place and I am doing videos,
I am doing that kind of thing,
and I'm doing that because I want to connect
with my community.
I wanna connect with my community,
I wanna show them here this is what's going on.
And a lot of it is I'm using it as a tool.
But when you start to get in that spot where you go,
oh, I need half this, I better do this.
I better make this video.
I better do this.
Or if someone watching isn't even in business.
If you're not even in business,
if it's not fun, don't do it.
You don't have to do anything. - Right.
- Sometimes in business or sometimes in any goal,
it's not always going to be fun.
There's going to be things that are fun.
And when, so I've here some people say,
"Well, you should just do things that you love,
"and nothing else."
And I go, okay, well show me how successful
you're gonna be at that
because some mornings I don't want to go to the gym,
but I know that my coach is gonna text me
if I don't text him.
If I do not text him by 6:25 saying,
I'm on my way to the gym, he's going to text me.
I don't want to go every morning.
I don't want to do it.
- But you just led me to my next question.
How important is it to have an accountability partner
win your goals?
- Essential.
It's essential.
You have to have accountability outside of yourself.
You have to have someone that you trust,
whether it's someone in your personal life,
or it's someone that you hire.
Either way, you have to have someone
who can keep you accountable.
I'm a firm believer in having a coach,
someone who can guide you through this process
because we get lost,
and we start going on all sorts of crazy paths,
and start convincing ourselves that,
you know what, I actually didn't want that,
now I'm gonna do this instead.
And you need someone to say,
"No, you're just moving on because you're bored.
"You're just moving on because it's not fun anymore."
And so you got to push through those things.
And I've found the most effective way to do that
is to bring someone on your team, someone who can coach you,
somebody who can help you,
and somebody accountable to reach those goals.
- Thank you, Jake, for being here.
- You're welcome, my pleasure.
- This was amazing.
And I love the book.
This has been Leo Woodford with Between The Lines.
Thanks for watching.