The Truth About How Big Goals Change You

It was 3:08 in the morning.

May of last year.

I was in my office already a lofty 8 minutes into my day.

Headphones on, speaking (uh, reading) into a microphone… and yelling at ducks.

Yes, ducks.

As I tried to record a passage for The Zebra Code audiobook, those feathered freeloaders on my backyard lake quacked like it was their job.

I must’ve sounded like a lunatic, hollering “Come on! I need 75 quiet minutes!”

But here’s the truth…

I wasn’t just recording an audiobook.

I was chasing a big goal that was important to me.

Writing a book is one thing.

Giving voice to it, putting myself on record, was something else entirely.

Big goals aren’t really about the thing you achieve.

They’re about who you become in the pursuit. (In this case, hopefully, not a total lunatic. 🤣)

They stretch your patience, your creativity, your confidence, and yes… even your relationships with ducks.

This week’s video is all about this truth.

What really happens to you when you work toward a massive goal (and why the transformation almost never looks the way you expect)?

If you’ve ever set an ambitious goal, whether career-related, personal, or financial, you’ll see yourself in this.

And if you haven’t yet?

It might just give you the push to start.

If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:

1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.

2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.

3. Grab any of my four books related to career development, interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.

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5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!

--Andy

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It was 3:08 in the morning. It was May 2024 and it was the fourth session of my audio book. So,
I wasn't writing. I was reading the book for the audio version that came out with the with
the hard cover. I'm sitting right here at this desk 308. It is jet jet black. The only lights

(00:25):
in the entire neighborhood are the ones in my office. And I'm sitting here. There's two mugs
uh right here just to my right. One of them was an Iron Man mug filled with coffee. And I use the
Iron Man mug because I I like the reminder that when I look at it, it it it helps me remember that
I can endure any level of pain. And right next to it was a uh a mug with throat coat tea in it,

(00:53):
herbal tea. And next to that was a green apple. so that as I was about to record um this was the
fourth day of the audio book, I would drink the tea, bite the apple, so that nothing was coming
out of this throat except pure purified words and no lip smacking and no none of that stuff. And so

(01:15):
I couldn't have any papers on the desk. I had to have the ebook on the computer. This microphone
was in a swivel boom arm for heaven forbid I would actually touch the desk and there would be a
sound. And you might be wondering, well, what the hell you doing at 3:08 in the morning? Why would
you be up doing it at that time? Well, you need to know that at 4:30 in the morning, the well,

(01:36):
the four dachshunds and the entire posi that I had at that time would be screaming down the stairs.
Harley would start sneezing in the bedroom that is the farthest in my house from this location.
And it didn't matter because this microphone would pick that up as well as Mrs. Lassa flushing the
toilet. So I had basically about 75 minutes to get done what I needed to get done. Uh and and

(02:00):
but but the ducks that that are on my pond, they don't get the memo. So I get up because I hear
them quacking. I go through the sun room, through the kitchen, through the glass doors, out onto
the deck, and I'm standing there leaning over the railing, screaming at the top of my lungs, telling
them to shut up, knowing full well that the neighbors got to be hearing this because I mean,

(02:24):
I was really broadcasting the signal, if you know what I mean. And you might be wondering, well, why
you telling me this? Because I want you to know that if you are ever going to take on something
that is going to truly transform this world, not to mention more importantly yourself, you are

(02:45):
going to do some things where you're going to look in the mirror and you're not going to recognize
that person. You're going to wonder what kind of lunatic is screaming at 3:09 in the morning at
the ducks on his on his pond in his yard. Right? what the things that I would go through and the
lengths that I would go to and the things that I would think and the things that I would do,

(03:08):
you wouldn't even recognize me. And I want you to know that if you've ever gone through this,
you are on the right track because to do anything epic, you are going to get to a strange place that
is unrecognizable. That's what transformation is all about. And so if no one gets you,
it's okay. they're not supposed to because you're not doing something that normal people do. And so

(03:33):
when I hold this book in my hand, I'm not kidding you, when I anytime I hold the book, I can think
about that and all the stories that that accompany what it took to get this thing out living and
breathing. You read it, you turn the pages, and I hope that you get some great instruction. And

(03:54):
some of you know me well enough where you're going to hear me talking right through the words. And I
love that. And and it's it's it's really hard to describe. And so if you want to change the world,
even if it's your own world, it is worth it. Now, I will also tell you in all honesty that
I will never ever again take on a challenge like this. Uh and you might be wondering,

(04:20):
well, what do you mean? You're not going to write another book? No, I actually just agreed
with the publisher on Tuesday, in fact two days ago, to officially what the next book will be,
what it's going to be called, what it's going to be about. So, it isn't that I won't take on an
assignment where I'll write another book, because I will. We're targeting January 2027 for that book
to be out. But this book, um, when I had to think about what to write about and what I wanted to

(04:47):
bring to the world, you might notice this. You might you might notice this in your own work or
you might notice this in the books you read. You probably favor books that are relatively simple
that address meaning the scope of what the book is is very narrow. Uh you know how to build a habit,
right? How to be more organized, whatever it might be. And the more narrow the scope of the

(05:10):
book and the easier the problem is to solve, the more people will enjoy it, the more it will likely
sell. And that's okay. And I knew full well that when I was writing this book that I wasn't writing
it for the top 1%. I was writing this for probably one in a 100,000. Meaning if you actually show
hands, I don't know who has this book, but if you bought this book, that's a great step. You took a

(05:35):
step that a lot of people won't. Meaning meaning that you are taking a step to better yourself. and
better yourself for your career. You don't even need to be better, right? You can punch the clock.
You can collect the paycheck. And the person who bought this book is is is rare. The person
who read the book is rarer still. The person who read the book and actually built a career plan,

(06:02):
actually read this thing cover to cover and built a career plan, that's got to be one in a thousand.
But the person who actually got the book, read the book, built the plan, marked it up, marked
up the book, read the lessons, did the challenges, and tunes it over months and years, that person's
one in a million. Now, I don't know what you are, and even if you didn't buy the book, that doesn't

(06:27):
make you a bad person. And even if you bought the book and read it and enjoyed it, that makes
me happy. Or even if you said, "Hey, I need help with communication. I need help with networking. I
need help delegating, coaching, coming up with ideas, mentoring people. I need help building
trust. I need help with my focus. I need help with building habits. Whatever it is, and you flip back

(06:49):
to a chapter, that's going to make me happy. But I want you to know when I set out to do this,
I knew full well that it would only fly with so few. But I didn't want to rob those few nor myself
of of organizing a problem that is so difficult and and mysterious and needed demystifying which

(07:10):
is how do I build a career development plan that I could use so that I know what skills to to build
and I know when to build them and I know how to build them and that's really really hard problem
to solve because you not only need to know that you not only need to have the sequence you not
only need to have the method methods, but you also need to know the howto's and how to do that. All

(07:32):
of that is poured into this. So, it's not the hundred days in a row of a thousand words a
day that it took me to write this. It's the 35 or six or seven odd years it took me to learn
the lessons and then engineer the methodology, put it in a book, and then do all the writing,
do all the recording, do all the marketing, do all the touch-ups, the agony over the cover,

(07:53):
the agony over the book club, all of that stuff was totally worth it. But I know now it's done.
And so any subsequent publications from me are going to be addressing some of the individual
very very specific very very narrow troubles or problems that people have like communication or

(08:14):
something like that. So I want you to know that if you have this book and you read it, you are really
really rare. And if you do the exercises, you're rare still. But if you actually built this plan,
I I would I invite you to email me and and send it to me and I will look at it because I'm sure

(08:34):
that my inbox is not going to be too filled with those. But if it's you, I'll look at