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Guests on our show have one thing in common: they have big goals and a clear roadmap for how to achieve them. And today’s episode will give you a roadmap for your own success! Day-to-day CFO & side hustle founder of The Growth Guide, Clint Murphy, sits down with Matt & Adam to think big and execute with the perfect action plan.

How should you approach your goals? What separates a good goal plan from a bad one? And what simple strategies will lead to massive success? This is a masterclass in goal planning for 2023 from a guy who definitely walks the walk. Level up!

What is the next step in goal setting in 2023?

So now you’ve determined your long term goal and you’ve broken it all the way down to your daily habits. But how do you make those habits stick? James Cleartalks about the four laws of behaviour change in his book, Atomic Habits:

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy to do
4. Make it satisfying to do.

Make it obvious: You can do this by priming your environment. You can put your running shoes by the end of your bed or have your fridge set up for a healthy breakfast. You want to eliminate willpower and make it obvious what your behaviour should be.

Make it attractive: Adopt behaviours that are rewarded in society. Going to the gym or drinking water would be good examples. Surround yourself with people who are already living the behaviour you want to adopt. If you want to have more money, surround yourself with people who have more money.

Make it easy to do: Start small. The first step of any habit should be the easiest and simplest step it can be. Then you increase it incrementally.

Don’t focus on the results. Focus on the process and let the results take care of themselves. Be relentless on the process and be patient on the results. 

Is it okay to miss a day with your habits?

It’s okay to miss occasionally. Just follow the Two Day Rule. It’s okay to miss occasionally, but don’t miss two days in a row. That’s how you ensure it’s a habit. If you skip the gym on Monday, make sure you get in there on Tuesday.

What if you don’t feel like doing it today?

Try the Two Minute Rule (a modification of the Five Minute Rule). The Two Minute Rule says whatever it is you want to do, even if you don’t feel like doing it, do it for two minutes. Because once you get started, you won’t want to stop. It’s very rare that you’ll get two minutes in and not want to finish.

What we reward, we continually do. What we punish, we stop doing. So how are you rewarding yourself for sticking to your goals? 

You recently tweeted about11 habits people should become addicted to that will make them unrecognizable by June. What are the most important habits everyone should adopt?

The first habit everyone should adopt is waking up earlier. When you wake up early, you’re waking up for a specific intention. More of our bad habits happen at night when we’re tired than when we wake up early for a specific purpose. Maybe you’ll wake up early and walk the dog, meditate, stretch, etc. Those probably aren’t things you’ll do at 8:00pm.

The second habit is investing in yourself. I didn’t start investing seriously until my mid 30’s. Until then, all of my investing was in myself – books, courses, learning. I’ve taken four or five courses about Twitter now so I can succeed on that platform. Instead of looking at the price tag of a course, look at the value you’ll get out of it.

The third habit is investing in your hobby or side hustle. It doesn’t have to be monetized but should potentially have that ability. That gives you optionality.

If you lose your job, what’s your option? What’s the skillset or hobby you can fall back on? The more you can recession-proof yourself, the better.

Another habit people should adopt is developing rare skills. It’s hard to become the top accountant but if you’re an accountant who also is a writer or public speaker, or a realtor who has a podcast, that changes things. Build rare skills that can feed into your side hustle and your learning.

For the next 6 Months,

Become Addicted to These 11 Habits,

And, You’ll be Unrecognizable by June 2023:

— Clint Murphy (@IAmClintMurphy) January 5, 2023

You have an impressive following onTwitter. How did you develop a plan to grow on Twitter and how do you find the motivation to keep going?

When I created my 5-10 year road map, I looked at each category of things I do (e.g. podcasting, writing, coaching, etc.) and asked myself three things:

• Where do I want to be?
• What will it take to get there?
• What is the skills gap I need to fill?

Every single category had social media as something I needed for success.

I started on Twitter about a year and a half ago. I decided to write every day for a year and see what would happen. I started 2022 with about 20,000 followers. I learned all of the big accounts were writing threads – a series of tweets linked together. So I took another course on how to write that type of longer form content on Twitter.

I love streaks so I committed to writing a thread every day for 75 days. Now, it’s easier for me to write a thread than a tweet.

Jim Collins talks about the flywheel effect. When you first start pushing on a flywheel, it doesn’t move. But once it starts spinning, it develops its own momentum. I realized that if I grow on Twitter, I could reach out to more influential guests for my podcast. That could fuel my podcast growth, which when I share episodes on Twitter, also fuels my Twitter growth. They feed each other.

As a kid who grew up in Mission with ADHD who never did well in school, I’ve always felt like a third line winger. So how do I keep up with the people who are smarter or more capable than me? I outwork them. I am willing to grind. 

During that time, I had a few threads that went really viral. There was one about Microsoft Excel that had 27 million views and helped us pick up 28,000 followers in one weekend. From there, you learn what to write and how to write.

There’s a concept called intermediate packets by Tiago Forte. The thread I just wrote on habits were all habits I have talked about before. So each habit is an intermediate packet. I can use the search box to figure out what I’ve said about that topic in the past, tighten it up and repurpose it. Don’t be surprised if you see that same thread six months from now!

Over December, I was able to share a lot of “best of” tweets and share a lot of content around the end of year and new year goals. It ended up being a great growth month for me on Twitter.

There were a lot of times in this journey when I was tired. I used to do it all myself and just tweet off the cuff at the end of a long day. These days, my wife is retired and has taken a lot off my plate.

We’re also building systems. I research what the most common questions are on financial literacyand independence and plan when I want to write about those topics. We bring in specific content systematically. That way the writing process is less stressful and the tweets perform better.

The 5 Wire: Getting to Know The Growth Guide’s Clint Murphy

One stand out book you’ve read recently and recommend?

I’m actually having this author on my podcast tomorrow, Brad Stulberg, who wrote The Practice of Groundedness. People who are driven to do hard things sometimes experience downsides. So what is this practice of groundedness to bring it back to a healthy pursuit?

Best Christmas gift?

The best gifts are the things that your kids get. Seeing them open up their Christmas gifts is pretty cool. My little guy got a pair of Jordans and he looked so fly. They both got basketball jerseys so seeing a photo of them both in all of their gear – they looked pretty cool!

What are you binge watching?

I have binge watched so much television over the last few months! I have it as background noise while I read, which maybe isn’t the best habit. White Lotus was a lot of fun. Emily in Paris is pretty fun too. I usually watch that one while my wife is watching.

Favourite band or music?

I almost can’t say this. I know he’s gone off the deep-end but when my 11 year old and I are in the car and heading to hockey practice, we listen to Jesus Walks by Kanye West. Shallow by Lady Gaga is also fire; we listen to that one too.

What is something you’ve purchased recently for under $1500 that has had a positive impact on your life?

It’s a toss up between one of our air fryers and this wax paper you use to wrap up your leftover cheese. It’s better than a Ziploc bag!

And yes, we do have multiple air fryers – I think we have three, though my wife may have sold one. My wife air fries everything for the boys. But one air fryer isn’t enough to cook a full meal for both of them, so we bought two.

This is also one of the first times our boys have cooked for themselves. My oldest will walk into the kitchen and make himself a pizza in the air fryer and a smoothie bowl in his new Ninja blender. The smoothie bowl is thanks to TikTok!