The Family Goal Board - Mike McCarthy | Ep 1

Mike McCarthy  0:00  

The fifth or sixth year, we started adding goals that were personal, spiritual and physical, the fun one, which, you know, she'll murder me for this, but she's not gonna listen to your podcast. So we're good is that I put a number up on the up on the board. And because I didn't want to write it out, right and, and we have people over all the time, and the number was representing.

Caleb Roth  0:25  

We all want to improve our lives. But sometimes, it's hard to know where to start. Join us each week on the Stacking Habits podcast with your hosts, David, Matthew, and tailor. As we uncover life changing habits from inspiring people want to know the best part, you can then apply those habits to enrich your own life, and move closer to your goal. Well, welcome to episode one of the Stacking Habits podcast, I'm thrilled to have our very first guest here, our guinea pig, Mike McCarthy, welcome to the show.

Mike McCarthy  0:55  

Thank you. I'm glad to be part of the band getting back together as an auxiliary member.

Caleb Roth  1:00  

Indeed, well, you can be the drummer, I feel like every band kicks their drummer out at some point, right? No one knows who the drummer is. Yeah, you can be the you can be the welcome first guest. So I'm one of your hosts, Caleb and I'm joined by David and Matthew. And we are excited to be back together. So Mike, you got an interesting story, we'll we'll have just kind of a precursor on the intro just to kind of welcome people to who you are. But before we dig into some of your habits that really sets you apart. A couple things that I know about you. So we met in church several years ago, when I first moved to Colorado, I now miss being in Colorado. And I feel like in the book industry, for whatever reason, we all like just were miserable. And so we have to pull people into our misery. So you've been amazing. We've done a number of trips together, closing down some colleges, jumping in dumpsters sleeping in Holiday Inns. We've been on

Mike McCarthy  1:52  

holiday and would have been nice, based on some of the places we stayed to qualify, fed

Caleb Roth  1:56  

in some small towns and seen a lot. So thank you for always being an adventure buddy. With me, you have a lot of energy. You're a father of two husband to one. Yeah. So flip that around, right? Yeah, you are, you're very intentional person. So I love being around you. I love seeing how you live your life, it always seems like you're doing four or five or six different gigs at any given time. I don't know how you juggle all those balls. So we'll kind of talk talk through that in terms of your habits. But you're you're you live life on purpose. I don't know anybody else that tries to get to know their neighbors as well as you do, you're very likely just to be hanging out with your neighbors drinking margaritas. I barely know my neighbors. So the fact that you can do that, I really look up to that. So we'll we'll dig into that on today's show as we get into it. But before we do that, let's bounce back a little bit because you have some crazy times in your past. I don't want to get into too many stories. But walk us through what was Mike like, just after college?

Mike McCarthy  2:51  

Oh, geez, a hot mess in a short number of words. Probably, I would say super amped up to be successful. And high drive. I'll use it to describe one of my children. Right. And those of you have kids, if you have to, you'll definitely understand. I've got one that is all thrust, no vector, right? 100 miles an hour in every different direction. And I've got one that is all vector no thrust, like he's got all the talent in the world. But you know, we need to get going a little bit. So I would say I'm more like my my all thrust no Victor in my 20s I'm going to take on the world. I'm going to rise to the top. I'm going to accomplish this accomplish this accomplished. And then I did, but in the in doing that. I didn't do it. Well, I could have done it way more efficiently for sure. I wouldn't say I burned the bridges. But I figured out all the wrong ways to do things. Before I got to the the most efficient or proper way to find that level of success in my 20s

Caleb Roth  3:57  

Did you have like a come to Jesus Wake Up Call at some point like what what changed from high performer high thrust, as you call it to the point where like now you're very intentional. You still have the energy?

Mike McCarthy  4:08  

I think. I mean, I was in finance. Right? And the SEC showed up? That was an interesting story. No, yes. Like took our hard drives and everything else like Oh, basically like right at the play. That's correct. Right. So that was fun. And then I went back to you know, short story went back to my college job, which was parking cars, and valet like like valet, because I could make cash and I was like I had my serious happened when I was 20. And before I could drink which was awesome when you go out with everybody. You're the sober driver, because you're also the fng. But the but I went back to this other company, and I was early on in that company. So I made partner really really quickly. With them. We're kind of company managed services for healthcare, hospitality and commercial real estate for parking type of deal and it's where I got my first day Because out of it, but all that to say is you figure out a lot of stuff when you're young, hungry, and serving two masters. So the come to Jesus meeting was after I had, I had won like NBA MVP a couple times always hit my numbers, all these things. And my CEO goes, your client doesn't like you. Why? Because he thinks you're arrogant. And I was like, Well, I am guilty. Yeah. And he goes, You know what the difference between confidence and arrogance is? And I said, No, what? And I'll clean it up a bit, but he goes, having your crap together. Right? You can, if you have your crap together, 100% of the time. Cool. But once you don't, they're gonna remember that hold on. I was like, Man, my client doesn't like me. And I'm not a people pleaser. By nature. I'm married one. So I know what that looks like. Like from the healthy and unhealthy version of it all. But I was like, if he doesn't like me, come contract renewal. I'm out a significant amount of money. So that was kind of the let me take an inventory of how I'm interacting, and am I being intentional with my client, the way they wanted me to be intentional with them. And kind of woke me up a little bit, and started putting things into practice that developed into habits later on in life.

Caleb Roth  6:19  

Love it. So you grew up on the East Coast, Maryland? That's correct. And then how'd you end up out here in beautiful Denver, so

Mike McCarthy  6:25  

that that same company that I went back for it, you know, you're in your 20s, you're not married or anything, they just sent me around the country to fix things, right? I call it the wolf call it the, you know, getting stuff done, or whatever it was, but like, Hey, we gotta fire this guy and make this right, or fix this problem or increase revenue here or those sorts of things. So I was in Indiana, where you're from, I've been in Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, all that to say, I came out here for a six month assignment, and met my wife at the property that I was working at. And I'm like, Wow, I like it here. And that six month turning just one of yours. mazing. Yeah, I'm almost at that point where I've lived in Colorado longer than Maryland. And then you're like, Whoo, yeah. Like, where are you from?

Matthew Osborn  7:09  

Did you like the travel lifestyle when you were younger? Yeah, it

Mike McCarthy  7:13  

was great. I mean, what wasn't great was paying like $2,000 a month for rent that I never stayed in. But you know, that's DC rent at that time? So it's probably

Matthew Osborn  7:21  

four or five grand. Crazy now.

Caleb Roth  7:24  

That's insane. Yeah. So there's a number of habits I like about you one, we're in the pre call, we kind of talked about it. I guess for lack of a better term, we can call it many touches. But one thing you do really well is just out of the blue, you'll send me a text. And you remember that I like to play wake me up when September ends on September 1. That's and you can just pick up the phone call me on my birthday, or hey, I saw this thing. It reminded me of you. And you just there's no agenda, there's not an angle. It's not hey, can you also do this? It's literally just I thought of you, I care about you. So walk us through that. Is that always something you've done? Or like has that something that you've, you've sort of built over time,

Mike McCarthy  8:01  

I'd say, built over time, because, you know, I'm in my 40s. But it was modeled to me Well, unintentionally, by my dad and his friends. And you know, I'm in my 40s, I was a late adopter of a cell phone. So when I grew up, people would swing by your house, just to say, hey, right, hey, what you got going on, you know, that type of deal. So whether it was my dad shot for doing that exactly right to stand your ground, right, you know, or whatever. But the, but it was not weird for someone to come by and say, Hey, without needing anything. So that's the earliest memory of having it. And then as I matured through business through everything else, we've heard the cliche, your relationship, or your network is your, your net worth, well, I don't look at people as dollar signs. I look at them as friends, for the most part. And I never want to get too far removed from somebody that it would be a surprise that I would call them and need something because you never know when you're going to need something. You know, I've traveled the states. I've traveled the world. I call some of my best friends in South America, Europe, because if I'm going to get stuck somewhere and if anything that we learned during the last couple of years is that governments can change the rules and you might need a place to stay in a third world country right? That's a good thing to have. So part of it might have a little bit of fear base but also the habit allows me to be the one friend that people know that will call them without an agenda or out needing anything so my my rhythm typically when I'm commuting or out on a walk during lunch or anything is I call three people a day. Wow, three randos a day ran late. Great. I've got several 100 People in my phone. So it's like there's gonna be some repeats obviously.

Caleb Roth  9:52  

Do you systematize that No, I haven't. Yeah, there's no software no anything that I've

Mike McCarthy  9:56  

ever I'm certainly not using it. It's just like, hey, it's September 1, Kala posts wake me up when September and my birthday is in September. And I'm like, Man, why you're such a rain cloud on my birthday, you know, but, but I also love Green Day. I love Caleb. And you know, it makes me think of you or I'll see. I'll go buy a field where I played Ultimate Frisbee with a couple of guys. And I haven't seen them since they moved to the other side of town. Let me give them a shout. Or I'll think of something you know, like, David, I don't think I've seen you since the nuggets game. And I'm sitting here going, man, we got to go to the nuggets game and they want a championship. How cool was that? And believe it or not, you're sitting below a yoke. Which picture? Yeah, he

Caleb Roth  10:33  

hit a three pointer at the buzzer to win. Right? Yeah, no, it

Matthew Osborn  10:36  

was a perfect game. It was amazing. Yeah.

Mike McCarthy  10:38  

So just random thoughts will come in and my message and look, most people send me to voicemail. Right? Because they're busy. Like, I assume they have nothing going on. And they're on walks, right.

Caleb Roth  10:47  

Well, if somebody calls me anymore, it I almost am like, are they in trouble? Right? Like my heart rate goes up because no one calls Yeah, it's always a tech.

Matthew Osborn  10:54  

I feel like people feel it's awkward sometimes to call without an agenda. It just feels like you'd need to call me when you have an agenda. Otherwise it feels kind of awkward to randomly call something Mike does I don't

Mike McCarthy  11:03  

know when you're doing well. Yeah, yeah. So my my my voicemails typically Hey, it's McCarthy because you know, my name is Mike and everybody whose name is Mike has to go by their last name. That's just one of the things that you to deal with in life. Like no need to call me back Saul blank thought of you hope you're doing well love to catch up in the next two to three weeks if it works out. And 90% of the time I get the call back or a text God, man, I'm slammed at work. Thanks for thinking of me. Hope you in the family are well, now that's done selflessly. Right? But selfishly, should I ever need to reach out to Caleb like Caleb, I, I'm in a pinch, I need help with x. Right? That's not the first time that you're hearing from me. Exactly. Right. There's still a relationship. And again, I don't I don't use it for monetary gain or anything else like that. But people call me all the time whether it's friggin lift a refrigerator or gun safe or financial advice or habit stacking podcasts or book flipping. But yeah, it's like, so, to your point, Matthew, most people have an agenda. And I tried to be not that person.

David Chung  12:06  

And that's like, the worst feeling in the world. At least for me, it's like, I'm sure you guys each know, like one or two or a handful of people. I got a couple signs you like, you only hear from them when they need something. And it's like it's a dread. Whenever they show up, you're like, oh, shoot, what am I gonna move this time? You know, right?

Caleb Roth  12:23  

Well, and you can tell to when they call and they're going through the pleasantries, and you can just already feel the angle. What are we here for? Yeah.

David, you're you're incredibly intentional as well, you, anybody I pick up a phone, I try and be like, Mike, I guess it'd be like, it could be like, Mike, I try and be like him. And I'll pick up the phone and call someone that I haven't talked to in six months. And they're like, Yeah, David was just down here. So you do a really good job. Do you structure that out? Or how do you decide you

Matthew Osborn  12:50  

travel to people? You don't you? He does one better? He shows up on there?

David Chung  12:55  

Yeah, well, so like, one of the things that was resonating with me, was what you were saying is like you you sort of fall into these rhythms of life, like every September you think of Caleb, and for me, too, it's like, depending on the season, like if it's kind of gloomy out, certain people just come to mind. And so now it's not like

Caleb Roth  13:17  

it's really dark and gloomy.

David Chung  13:21  

But like, you know, you fall into these rhythms of life, you pass by you drive by certain areas that remind you of people and like, for me, like, I feel fortunate because it feels very much like second nature where I'm just like, like you said, it's just like, once every six months, or once every year, you just fall into this habit of being like, Oh, hey, this reminded me of this person, I should reach out to them. And so if you look at my text messages, it's like random who I talked to, but it's literally because, oh, hey, I drove by the this flower shop and like, Hey, how's everything going? So like, for me, it's it's not so forced. I'm sure it's the same for you. But it's more so like, kind of getting into a routine and just like, through the patterns of life, like, it almost feels natural,

Mike McCarthy  14:14  

for sure. And we're built to be in community. And the easiest way to stay in community is to stay in contact with people without it being transactional. And I think that that intentionality allows us to remain honest, transparent, as opposed to transactional nature. We do enough transactions with everything else. So you know, also, I have this this stupid fear. You ever see the movie big fish? Oh, yeah. Right. Like, I want my funeral to be like that. Oh, right. We're like there's a billion people at my funeral because then my kids will go man, my dad was loved by a lot of people. And like, I would hate to be you know, like four people show up and sign the book type of deal. And

Caleb Roth  14:56  

I want to be the guy that was in like a bike gang that nobody knew about. And so I show Well, straight laced guy and all these like guys and leather jacket. Tasks are like that's what was

David Chung  15:06  

right. Yeah. Like, I'm kind of shifting the subject like, do you feel that this habit of like intentional touches without an agenda doesn't have to be natural or it could you like almost like put in the calendar Hey, on this day reach out system systemize it where it's a little bit more like an I guess not natural but like you implement it. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely,

Mike McCarthy  15:33  

I think you could, because there's lots of bad sale, I lead sales organizations now. Put both contract in full time. And there are lots of bad salespeople that can do the activity. Okay, as I mean, Salesforce, you know, if they want to give you money, that'd be awesome for your podcast. But Salesforce has the logo, right, your reminders for that? I'm sure they can do that to a degree does does it work, though, is that effective? staying relevant is effective, right in all sorts of sales. But again, I just do that. Not from a standpoint of trying to sell something Sure. I just do it for network because to Caleb with Kayla mentioned earlier, I typically have four or five things going on, if my sole focus is people in this particular vertical, right, then I'm going to really limit my ability to be successful. If I get bored and want to change things. I think

Caleb Roth  16:27  

one thing that really stands out and maybe to your point, what you could do to shorten that feedback loop from the thought, I think most of us have thoughts of Oh, I remember having dinner at the binary with, you know, the whole team or whatever. And when you have those moments where you think of your team, instead of just letting that moment pass by just tech pick up the phone call, just act on it. Exactly. So I think most of us have things pop into our heads and you actually do the work to put it into practice.

Mike McCarthy  16:52  

Yeah, the the other adage that someone I can't remember who said this, maybe it's someone famous. Intent always outpaces execution. So like I intend to call them but I never actually execute and do it. So I try to try to balance that out

Caleb Roth  17:06  

a little bit. Book a James maybe be doers of the word not here recently could be that I just read a book. I've been reading a lot of books on sabbatical on the break here. And I am so guilty of that, where I take all these notes, and I've got all these ideas, and I have all these great intentions. And I don't put it into practice. So I read a book on breath, gave it to my buddy Shane, he read the same book. And the next time we were training for triathlon, we go out and we're running. And he's talking about how he's like taking sips of air and putting all these things into practice. And I'm like, what? So I read the book, I gave it to him, like helped his life. But he's better than me, because he actually put it into practice. So if you don't do anything, or act on it, who cares? You can have all the intentions in the world. That's correct. Yeah. So you've done a number of things in your life. Do you want to just coloring a few pieces of that? I know you've worked in the printing industry, real estate industry, youth for Christ's you're doing some parking software now? Yep. So walk us through just, you know, maybe the last six to eight things you've done? Because it's probably been in the last year consulting

Mike McCarthy  18:07  

books, sales, leadership of different verticals. I mean, people are people, right, like, the Yeah, I mean, like, I think he named Most of them in the last deal. The parking has been awesome, because it's AI technology. And I think that's super scary, and super interesting, and a vertical that people are gonna figure out in the next five to seven years, but we have a pretty good head start. So I like the product that we have with the camera technology. And, oh, look, I got a tinfoil hat on. But the amount of data that circulating about the four of us in this room right now is incredible. And that kind of blew my mind. So I'm trying to trying to learn more about that one, the traveling the world for with Youth for Christ International, fantastic, the perfect season of life, before my kids got to old where we could go around and see the rest of the world really just understand how to be the hands and feet, but also give like, not just financially but like, give some of the resources that we've learned, be it leadership management, how to build a small business, how to how to meet people of different socio economical backgrounds. Like that was super cool. And the printing company was awesome. I fell into that that was just dumb luck. And was really really cool. My opinion no offense printing people it's boring. It's out that's not my gift. I mean, makes good money. We

Caleb Roth  19:35  

talked about this at dinner last night. The The trick is like it's fun to do a podcast and do you know the exciting things, but I think the money is in the boring businesses I know. And it's stuff that people it's not sexy. It's not glamorous, but if you can do it well, right you can

Matthew Osborn  19:50  

in the office, but paper can be pretty fun. That's that's exactly what

Mike McCarthy  19:54  

I was gonna say. It's like the office where it's like the same five people. They all have their personalities in the machine. Things are running. And it's rinse and repeat. And that's not my personality type. But I mean, look, paid the bills, right? I'm not upset with that at all, and still have a small interest there. And then when we changed the way real estate was done, and you start to get cease and desist letters from big flip big places, that's how you know you're really doing something well, like red fin like, hey, you need to stop doing this, like, What are you talking about? We invented this pound sand, right and then spend more money in legal and profit. But

Caleb Roth  20:25  

you want to share just a 32nd overview there we so curious, we were able to scale

Mike McCarthy  20:28  

the real estate transaction to 13 states 13 different marks. So traditional

Caleb Roth  20:33  

real estate is take, you know, two and a half 3% per side, you guys flip that around? Yeah,

Mike McCarthy  20:38  

we were the the largest flat fee provider, where that we didn't compromise. This wasn't a do it yourself type of deal. So we sold about 4000 houses a year. And then, to the point about data, we were collecting a ton of data, like we knew you're gonna sell your house before you did. Right. And so we were just able to close, close, close, close. I think that's

Caleb Roth  20:59  

Amazon's do they know when you're pregnant before? You are? Absolutely just I know, based on all these trends and histories. And I don't know how they do it. But they they know us. Yeah. So

Mike McCarthy  21:07  

all that. I mean, all that together has given me more experienced than I'm ever gonna get in college more experienced, I'm never gonna get reading a book. And I mentioned early on in the podcast that I figured out a lot of wrong ways to do things that that doesn't go away magically, when you go into another business, you got to fail forward every single day. And through those ventures, right, I would say that all of them were successful, maybe not to the level of, you know, billion dollar unicorn status. But we didn't go broke. And we learned a ton. You know, I ran a real estate company. And I've had the short sale a property. Right. And that short sale was it probably cost me at the time $25,000 Or something like that. That was the best education I ever got in real estate. And it was just timing, I had to go through the process. But once you go through it, you have that stuff, and you can survive a $25,000 mistake.

Caleb Roth  22:04  

Yeah, they say it's best to learn from other people's mistakes, but there's nothing like your own. If you really want to learn and internalize the lesson, go make the dangerous thing.

Mike McCarthy  22:12  

I mean, I'd be happy for you to write that check. Right?

Caleb Roth  22:16  

Exactly. So with all the things you do, one thing we talked about in the pre call is that you crush mornings, your words, so not Orange Crush the soda. But what does that mean? And how is that habit helps you do? Like you've essentially live four or five different lives with all the careers you've had, how and you do Iron Man's on top of that. So how do you find time to be a father husband, a good neighbor, a good business person? How do you juggle all of those. So

Mike McCarthy  22:40  

if you want it, this is my my opinion, only some people that are listening are probably got a different household situation. But for me, if I'm going to stay married, and I want to accomplish all of this, I cannot sacrifice family time, or kids stuff. So it's going to come down to two things. It's either my work, which puts a roof over our head, or my sleep, right? And a couple of things that set me up for success is getting up super early.

Caleb Roth  23:10  

How early are we talking? Like Matthew arrived, now

Mike McCarthy  23:12  

i Five, five is regular. For me, if I sleep in it six, like that, man, what happened? Right, and that's part of that has to do with living back in the DC area and commuting into DC that if you were on the road at 530, you'd make it there by 630. If you're on the road at 545, you're getting in at eight, right? You know, just because of traffic. So I've always been an early riser, and I don't stay up super late type of deal. But when I say crush mornings, when I was training for Ironman, my wife's like you can do this, but you still got to pick up the kids, right? And we're still going to have dinner as a family. And by the end of the day, you're too tired to go swim a mile, or go run five, or go ride for 30 Whatever it was. So it'd be like, Alright, 5am Let's get after it. And then between five and 630, everyone's asleep anyway, so that my family was not missing out. And the same went into business where I cover four time zones, right with my sales team right now. That's the entire United States with continental anyway. And if I'm up early, I can get more work done in two hours. And but you all know this you're nodding because you've experienced it right? You know, come nine o'clock when everybody else starts bugging you and the automated emails that are going out for different pitches start hitting you and everything, like the world just gets real busy at 9am for whatever reason, and then it leaks into the evenings you know, 637 o'clock. So I try to pre plan the day and get as all of my outbound stuff done super early or any of my long range planning done super early, so that by 910 o'clock in the morning, I'm now catching flyballs and setting myself up says plus I like being done by about two or three o'clock in the afternoon. And that allows me to me My neighbor's to go on walks to have fun with my, my kids to coach soccer, you know, those sorts of things. And really just focus on what matters to me. So that's the that's the morning routine. It's not special. It's not like I brush my teeth, just get up early and get after it and recognize that you don't have to work a nine to five. You know if I want to go on a date night with my wife, right, right now, it's really tough. I've got a daughter and cheerleading a son and soccer plus school. But you know, what isn't tough date lunches, right. So it's like, oh, that's not the same day, spending an hour and a half, right together with each other focused phone's off spinning that time. So just switching a little bit. So rather than start the day at nine, I start the day it as soon as I finish work it out, or whatever it looks like before everybody wakes up, and then just get after it.

Matthew Osborn  25:48  

Are there times in your past where you've gotten off in the mornings, you've maybe slept in more often you've gotten out of that morning routine? Have you had long stretches of kind of getting off of it? Are you pretty good at getting right back into it? If you sleep in one day, or it's just more difficult at some point in time? Or have you been long stretches in your past where you haven't done that?

Mike McCarthy  26:04  

I have definitely fallen off the wagon, so to speak, and, and it is hard to get back into routine. The it's like think it was Jon Acuff, he's a pretty smart guy. He said, day two is the hardest of everything. Because day one, you have the excitement, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna train for a triathlon. And then that excitement is over. You told everybody and then day two, it gets really, really hard. You know, like, oh, you know, I'm on like, day 15 of the hard 75 If y'all are familiar with that tricky thing right now, because right now you weren't. Yeah, so I'm one of those guys that has to have something otherwise. I'm not motivated. I'll go through the motions of

David Chung  26:45  

sales. But I feel like this is a super hard 75 Most people start at the beginning of the year. And so you kind of have like other people keeping you accountable. Is it just you doing the no, my

Mike McCarthy  26:54  

wife's along with me? We have two other friends. One of them who inspired me to do it. Turns out he actually didn't do it. And I was basing the

Matthew Osborn  27:01  

day too was too hard for him gives you a book, but they haven't like implemented come by now. Right?

Mike McCarthy  27:06  

Yeah. But it's like, like, I'm at the point right now, where I'm not even over the halfway point. I'm like, if I just start over, it's going to be like, Wait, easy. Right? Wait, he's going to quit right now. But yeah, I fall off. It's hard to get back into it, and you got to push through. And then it's like, Man, I will be happier when this is done. It'll be worth it when it's done. So it's not easy. Right? Protect get sick. Travel Jacks at

Caleb Roth  27:29  

all. Oh, travel with or all your hands off. Yeah. I what I like about your morning routine, even though it's not routine is that you're playing offense. It's way too easy to play defense. So many times with Scout IQ, we end up playing defense and you know, waiting for someone else to move and then trying to figure out what to do with it and react instead of being proactive. And if you can just do even two hours of being proactive sets you up for success. Yeah,

Mike McCarthy  27:52  

it's kind of like if you've ever gotten smoked. And by that, I mean, yelled at by somebody. They say I'm looking for progress reports, not status reports. So don't come to me with a status report. Like I can figure that out by running a report in you know, insert database here. I want to know what the progress is. And the answer can't be no progress. Right. So it's, that's the, the deep seated mentality, I guess you could say is like, let's make progress every day. And it's probably going to lead us to where you're heading with this. Like, there's no metrics for life. Right? We're like, I can rank myself in sales. I can rank myself in business. We know what our KPIs are, okay? Ours, etc. But to you for you to verbalize that I've never really thought about it, like I'm playing offense. And that takes me to, you know, well, how are we ranking offense? How are we doing with that? But there's, there's, I mean, the only real metric you have in life is like your age, I guess, like, how old are you? And what are you doing with it? Yeah, and else's cursor,

Caleb Roth  28:54  

it's what you want to do. I came up with the primary idea from reading the one thing by real estate, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. But their whole thing was be, you know, be intentional and block off four hours a day to do the one thing you should be doing. If you're an author, it's writing your book, if it's, you know, we talked to Avery a lot about building software. And he's doing a number of things just like you, but the most important thing he can do right now is build a software. So when you block out and you're intentional, and you turn your phone off or set it to do not disturb and make sure your emails aren't popping up, that allows you to go just put your head down and do that work. And I found that when I did that, I would get way more done in four hours than I would in an entire day. Yeah. And then the rest of it's just gravy. You want to feel you know, call random people you want to feel emails. Cool. Have at it. You've already been successful that day.

Mike McCarthy  29:40  

Absolutely. You mentioned offense, and there's very small things that I do that are intentional. And I can't remember if it was you, or you Matthew or another guy when we got together on Zoom via COVID The number one thing that got me motivated to go Work downstairs in my basement, which was brand new for me was putting a belt on. Because if I put a belt on, right, that meant I got dressed for work, as opposed to just putting athletic shorts on if it was you put your

Caleb Roth  30:12  

athletic shorts on with a belt.

Mike McCarthy  30:16  

But it's like I put like, like I put pants on right now it's time to go to work as opposed to just athleisure wear, or anything else like that, that changed my mindset completely.

Matthew Osborn  30:26  

It's weird what you wear, it really does change your mindset. Like just your more, I noticed that too, like more productive actually get dressed and think was at my desk versus just sitting in my workout clothes, workout with,

David Chung  30:36  

I think there are all sorts of different like actions that trigger like, a different state of mind. Like for me, it's haircuts. So if I'm like, having a horrible day, or horrible week where nothing's going my way, I'll go in for a haircut, I'll feel like all that weight is just shut off. I feel like I'm a new person. And it's kind of like, one trick that I have in my tool belt that will just like, reset my mentality. And so it sounds like kind of the belt was the same thing for you. Absolutely.

Mike McCarthy  31:03  

I mean, I wish I had your hair and I could get faded up like the

Caleb Roth  31:06  

belt was good. So forget all the other habits wear a belt get thanks for coming to the pod. All right, we're gonna switch gears here the I think the most unique habit and that's why I wanted to have you on the show. I've I've had the privilege of staying in your guest suites many times. So thank you for for hosting me. And no matter how well we do in business, I think I'm always still one cheap. And it's nice to have a spot to lay my head. But it's also great to have that intentionality. And we always go down and take our morning walk down to the coffee shop. And it's just kind of our ritual that when I come to Colorado, I see Mike and so that's really nice. One thing that stands out to me and I know it's been very instrumental in your family's history and the success in the intentionality. You've got a board, maybe two feet by three feet.

Mike McCarthy  31:53  

No, it's not that it's really small. Yeah, it's, uh, you talked about the goal board. Yeah. So for context, and you're my doors never locked, right. Well, that's not true.

Caleb Roth  32:03  

Well, I'll share the address after the party.

Mike McCarthy  32:07  

So many people come to my house, and what we have in my dining room on this weird wall where there used to be a landline, that I what? Yeah, right.

Caleb Roth  32:22  

How old are you? Right? How

Mike McCarthy  32:23  

was the house? Is this chalkboard? And it's a gold board? It's probably 18 inches by 24 inches somewhere?

Caleb Roth  32:32  

Yep. So nothing fancy, just a chalkboard?

Mike McCarthy  32:34  

Yep, just a chalkboard and my wife went all, you know, a hobby lobby on it. And you know, got the nice pins and everything in the trim around it. So it looks like it's meant to be there. It's there's probably 4 billion better things out there. But I haven't figured out a way to mass produce it for her because everyone asked about it. And what's on it now is the four of our names. Our theme for the year, a family theme, family theme, whether it's whether it's a word, or a goal, or anything of this year's theme, this year's theme is dwell, right? We just kind of want to like, slow down a little bit. Really, it's gratitude, right and just dwell in the space. And you can use that in so many different contexts, you can do it in the Christian context of dwelling with the Lord, you can use it in the context of I just want to be grateful that I have this dwelling. Right, lots of different words out there. But that took some thought. And there's usually three goals under each one of our names. It's our family metric. It's our family KPI. And the ritual of it that you alluded to in earlier episode is that that's our New Year's Eve party. So when you work in the hospitality, and healthcare world, there's two things that rarely close hospitals and hotels in New Year's I didn't have new years for 15 years, so and I never like bought into the excitement, or got really excited about it. So it was just another night for me. But we've used that as a night that we do family goals, and what do we want to accomplish next year that we didn't. And through that process? We've done some amazing things. But it wasn't like always, hey, one day we're going to do family goals. And I told this story to Caleb, I know I've talked to Matthew, David, you get to hear all right. So my wife and I, when we were early in married, we're broke. And like, like, everyone's been broke at some point in their life, I imagine. And I remember coming home, I wasn't making a lot of money. I was getting destroyed at work. We had a kid and I saw like three target bags. And I'm like, What the hell did you buy a target? Right? Like, we don't need that. You know, we're a single income family. I'm stressed out of my gourd. And she goes, Yes, we do need that I'm here you don't know. Blah, blah, blah. Big fight right? And I'm like, Do you know how much it costs to be us every year? Because I do. And it doesn't include random trips to target where you think you're going to spend $5. And, you know, we're going to get $50 worth of stuff, because that's what happens when you go shopping and hear me loud and clear the listeners. I'm the guy that goes to Costco for three items, forgets two of them and comes home with a TV, some chops, you know, a coat and everything else that I don't need guilty, right? So. So anyway, we had to work through this, this fight. And working through it. What we figured out was the best way for us to handle money wasn't to focus on what we were spending. So we changed the paradigm. And I said, I want to save $25,000 This year, I think that's was the number, which seems like a huge stretch, right? Like, because especially if you're making money, because I'm not making anything. Yeah, right. I want to save 25,000 That was my goal. So you took what could be

Caleb Roth  36:03  

a very complex process, there's 1000 ways to budget right? Every every Instagram influencer has their specific budget, there's the 5030 20, whatever, you boil that down to one metric, it's almost a Profit First mentality, right? Where you said, instead of we have this much money on food, or clothes, or entertainment, or whatever, you just said, I don't care what we do. I just want to save 15 grand.

Mike McCarthy  36:25  

Yeah. 50 forget what it whatever it was. It wasn't now that I'm thinking when I was making that year, and it definitely wasn't 25,000. But it might have been, let's call it 10 argument, which was a huge lift. I mean, we got kids in diapers, we got to eat, I've got a mortgage, right? I'm not I'm fiscally responsible. This is like 25,000 cash, or like 25 or, you know, 10,000, whatever equity or like in my bank account, okay, so his cash, we made a conscious decision that we were going to be a single income family, because when you factor in what it costs for childcare, where we were living, it would be like we make six grand a year net, for her having a full time job when you factor in childcare and logistics, right? It's like, alright, let's just figure out a way to make another 6k. Right. That was that was the original conversation, and then have somebody else raised rather let her let her raise our kids. And that was the right decision for us. I qualify that. But some people can't do that. Anywho. So yeah, we flipped it. I didn't want to care what she was spending. You didn't want to nitpick. I didn't know I didn't like fighting with her over whether or not she was buying chips that I would ultimately eat. Right? Because they're in their house that we didn't need. Honey, I didn't need those. Okay, fine. What I cared about was the sense of security I got from looking at our bank account going up. And that changed things dramatically. Okay, you're not allowed to say a word, right? But if we hit that 10 grand number, we feel like we're successful for this year. We hit that number in like seven months. Wow. Right. And part of it was her doing side hustle stuff, right? But also, we looked at our spending. And we were actually saving enough, I was just getting angry about stuff that really didn't matter. So we established a goal that we were both happy with. And it went on the goal board. And it was out there and people are like, what's that number? What's that? What's that? 10,000? So how much you want to save this year? Like you can save $10,000 I'm sure it's I'm gonna try

Caleb Roth  38:19  

it. So was this part of her target purchase that you have? Uh,

Mike McCarthy  38:22  

no, it wasn't. Yeah, this

Caleb Roth  38:23  

was like commenti or something? Yeah, I

Mike McCarthy  38:26  

think we had it. She taught for a while. So she had like classroom supplies and all this other stuff. And so but that was the first goal that went on the board.

Caleb Roth  38:34  

So you hung this on your wall, hung it on the wall and just wrote the number 10,000.

Mike McCarthy  38:37  

Right. And when you're broke, you don't go out for dates. So I you invite people over, right? What can I bring? It's ideal. And so people would ask us about this, like, what is this? And this is this is a goal. Why do you want to do this? And I tell the same story there that we just told everybody here is like, I didn't want to fight over how much my spouse was spending like she's a grown woman. She can do math. She knows everything like I was I was devaluing or if I'm honest, right? Like, I thought that I was smarter than that. And that wasn't fair to her at all. It was just a completely wrong read on my part. But it was my own fear and insecurity of our bank account. And that metric that I cared more about than what whether or not she was making the right decision for me, and I've since apologized. It's been 15 years since and everything else. She still remembers, right. So we're good there. But that then we added other goals to that goal.

Caleb Roth  39:23  

So this was 15 years ago. That was goal number one. Correct. And I love it because what gets what gets measured gets managed. Yep. And so if that's front and center every day, even just like out of the corner of your eye, you're eating breakfast and you're like, Oh, you have 10,000 That's that's what we're working on to pack

Mike McCarthy  39:36  

my lunch. Yeah, things like that. And what it does is so year one, we hit that goal. We didn't just stop saving money. We keep saving we developed a habit that has created us to be in a financial position that allows us to do other things right. Give more money away. Travel, right. Play extracurricular activities, you know different things out out there. And it's not all about money. But that was a habit that started from that story that like, you just don't forget how to how to do good things, right? They stay with you didn't forget how to walk or ride a bike, right. But once you get the thought process shifted in there and focus on it, it kind of stays with you.

Caleb Roth  40:17  

And there's a natural feedback loop there as you continue to get closer to that goal. And then even as you exceed it, you're used to doing that that's become a habit. You know, you're Stacking Benjamins, not habits, right. I love that story. And I love how you simplify something that can be complex, and leads to a lot of arguments that just said, Hey, I don't care where the money goes, as long as we have this much left at the end,

Mike McCarthy  40:38  

right? We're not looking at opportunity cost in our in our household, right? Well, I can tell you that we increase the number, right, inflation gets higher things go up, like we have to look at things differently, which also forced me to take different roles that we talked about a little bit when you go, Hmm, if I maintain just what I make here, and I get a 3% cost of living raise every year, it but insurance goes up 5%. Right, we're going to be negative here pretty soon. So you got to focus on things like that, but but knowing what was important to us, like you got it. You got to grow, you got to grow your career, you gotta grow your personal p&l, you know, I know how much it costs to be me. And most of my friends, don't.

Caleb Roth  41:20  

I love that phrase. You snuck it in earlier, I was just gonna allude back to it. And I talked about this on our past podcast last night, too. Yeah. And I steal this all the time. So credit to where credit's due is Mike McCarthy, but it's the question is, what does it cost to be me? And most people don't know the answer to that. And if you don't know the answer to that, how do you set goals? How do you build habits around personal finance? So I love that question. I asked it to a lot of people and I usually get blank stares going on? I don't know.

Mike McCarthy  41:47  

Yeah. And I know, I know what our baseline is. I know what it looks like if we're going to go somewhere for two weeks. And we're going to spend an additional 10k. Because that's about what it cost to go anywhere for two weeks anymore. Unless we're staying in some of the places we stayed in the early, early last. But that's, that's an important thing to me. And I don't have a spreadsheet. I don't track everything. I just know, right? Like, because you're in tune with your income, you're in tune with your expenses, you're in tune with your spouse. But I know what that number is. So that I know what I need to earn that year. I mean, if you're in sales, and that's that's my lean for sure. Right? You know what your commission numbers are going to be better than your boss does. Right? You know what your pipeline looks like? You know what it's going to take that whether you're going to be on a plan, or you're going to be in bonus territory. And it's not that big of a leap to go from the business world to your personal p&l. So yeah, we rarely throw anything financial on the board anymore. It's more like what do we want to accomplish this year? I had a birthday recently. And my wife said, What is one thing you want to do this year? That now that you're this age that you haven't done before? I have no idea,

Caleb Roth  43:05  

the great question like, like,

Mike McCarthy  43:07  

we, we pretty much do what we want. And we don't. I mean, you reach a certain age for Christmas, where you have no idea what you want people to get you because if you need it, you have it. And if you want it, you'll just go by it. And I think that's as the same amount of life. But one thing that's on the goal board, that I'm kind of geeking out a little bit talking about reading a lot of books, and not doing anything with it yet is I want to learn how to sail, sail sail, like so. Yeah, the I just have this, I would love to be on the ocean, and have to deal with nature, and figure it out. And, uh, but I would like to have a knowledge base. So that's like a huge goal of mine. Now we're in Colorado, I was gonna say,

Caleb Roth  43:54  

you gotta go. But there's some reservoirs. You can

Mike McCarthy  43:56  

you can go there. But that's a commitment. Yeah. Right. And so I'm at jeopardy of not, I'm in jeopardy of not hitting that goal this year. Because how I originally planned it was, I'm going to read all these books. And I had a plan in my head. I'm going to read these books. I'm going to take four classes here. And then I'm gonna go down to the Gulf and work a boat for two weeks and and read some of the books didn't take any the classes still have the trip down to the golf planned, right? And we're getting into q4 of the year. And I'm like crazy. I need to get some classes under my belt. Otherwise this is like that belt on. Right? It's going to be a problem. But that stares me in the face every day. So when I go grab my coffee, and I look and go hmm. My son scored three goals. He hit his goal. He read 15 books he hit his goal. My daughter nailed a backhand spring that was a goal for hers. That was a stretch goal for her. Right She practiced her Spanish every single day. You know, and my wife goes, you know, and hits her goals, whatever they are, and I'm going, Man, I don't want to be the one person who doesn't perform in my family. And I really don't want to like, because I'm leading our household. Like, I want to set an example, if you want something, you have to work for it. So when is it? When am I going to read those books and take those classes? Well, the answer is when they're available. But I'm going to have to move other things around, which goes into the morning habit, habit stacking. So if I can't be at work, per se, from four to 6pm, because I'm taking classes over at Chatfield, I'm going to have to move that around somewhere, I'm gonna have to go to the morning, go, what else can I do today, so that I can free up four to six and not compromise what I have going on in this space.

David Chung  45:46  

It's the same concept like you with your sales background, it's the same concept of like, a leaderboard, having a public leaderboard. And it's like, you're used to, you know, being top five, and then you drop down to like, you know, top 10. And maybe you're like, 1011 12, you're like, oh, man, I need to get my act together. So I can get back on top. And it's just like, like, the family goals and how you run your family. It's really interesting, because like, these are concepts that I'm sure all of us have, has experienced in business where, you know, it's like, if you have a team under you, and you don't tell them what the objective is, if there's no communication, no accountability, nothing's gonna get done. Right. And I think so many people like, like, think that, hey, you know what, it only works in business. But the reality is, like these concepts work, whenever there are humans, you know, and a home is one of the, you know, one of those. Absolutely.

Matthew Osborn  46:45  

So it was the two questions were what, how young? Were your kids, when you started having them participate in this goal board? And then do you just let them pick what they want? Or do you kind of help guide and steer their goals? They pick each year?

Mike McCarthy  46:56  

Yeah, great question. Um, I don't remember the age. But it had, it was probably within the last four years. So that would say the youngest would have been six. Okay, great. And it had to be something that it was their goal, and anyone that has set goals for other people realizes that that's not effective. So I'm like, maybe you're gonna learn Spanish? Right? You know, like, No, I'm not right, you know, that's not going to happen. So it was it was that now, where I push them a little bit, is if it's, you know, the natural inclination is to, to take something that's achievable. Yeah, it's not a goal, right? Like, you know, I'm gonna score three goals. Well, you, you're gonna play for three seasons this year, right? If you don't score three goals, we're picking up a new sport. So that type of deal, so we want to make sure that we're setting that accordingly for them. And then they understand this as the process. The other thing that goes into the goal setting with them, which is a fascinating question, to ask a 12 and 10 year old respectively. Why? Why do you want to do that? Oh, no. Right? Okay, well, why? And then they get really angry. And then you get a bit, but we do it ourselves. Like, why do I care about hitting my target? Why do I care about sailing? Right? What I can tell you that when you train for a triathlon, and Caleb, you just went through this and you know my why, for doing an Ironman, is not Caleb's. But it was deeply personal. And it was enough of a motivator to get me to go ride my bike in two layers of pants, when it was minus 10. out, it was so important to me that I would get up at 430 in the morning to make the 5am swim time, you know, when I didn't want to, to run when you're hurting, hurting, and to eat lots of carbs, right? In deal with it all because that was such an important goal to me. And my y had something to do with watching it on Wide World of Sports back when I was a kid and not catching the finish, because I had to go serve at mass at the time. And it was the epic one where the person falls down and you saw the Gatorade commercials and all that other stuff was like, man, like that person was the Kool Aid. They were Iron Man, you know, and like, that's driving me like no one's gonna call you almost Iron Man. Right? They're gonna call you, you know, an Iron Man If you finish, right. And so anyway, teaching them the why question, which really, I think is something they probably should teach in schools more, understand why you're doing what you're doing and why it's important to you.

Caleb Roth  49:38  

That's a huge question. So walk us through the evolution from year one, just a simple, not dollar value on the board to what would you do your two? Was it another dollar value? How did that evolve and into where it is today?

Mike McCarthy  49:50  

Yeah. So I don't remember the specific goals. I remember. I think it was I wanted to learn Spanish and I'd had Ferriss his book. So I picked up Duolingo. Right? So we went from $1 value to an increased dollar value and then something else, right? And so it's like I want to learn Spanish. So I'm going to practice five times a week on Duolingo. And, or something like that. And I speak pretty decent Spanish. Please don't quiz me right now. My accent is garbage. But my kids speak fluently did ScanSpeak floods from Duolingo I sent him to the language school, but they correct me all the time. But, so it went from one goal to two. And then somewhere around, I want to say like the fifth or sixth year, we started adding goals that were personal, spiritual, and physical. Like so personal growth, and maybe business business and personal might be mixing it up. But like sales up sailings a personal goal, losing 5% body fat is a physical goal. Caches financial, like so we would break them out into different areas. The fun one, which you know, she'll murder me for this, but she's not gonna listen, your podcast. So we're good is that I put a number up on the up on the board. And because I didn't want to write it out. All right, and and we have people over all the time. And the number was representing number of intimacy nights that I was hoping to accomplish. What was the number I have? 400? And

Caleb Roth  51:29  

that's adjusted for inflation. Yeah, right.

Mike McCarthy  51:31  

So but we're busy family, right? Sometimes you got to plan that stuff out, man. Like you gotta plan date nights. You gotta like figure that out. It's not just not when the mood hitch and I'm not saying our lives are regimented by that. But that was a goal. It didn't hit right.

Caleb Roth  51:48  

But you certainly strove for it. But you know, what's funny

Mike McCarthy  51:50  

is the conversations in the disarming that happened when people would come over to dinner and be like, what's that number? Right? And then, and then she turned red. And I'd explain it. And they're like, people go, we need to do that. Right. And like, it's, it was halfway joking. But halfway, like, what I wanted to do was have intentional romance with my wife and dates, and intimacy,

David Chung  52:17  

or intentionality doesn't happen by accident. Sure, by definition, it's intentional. Like one of the things that my girlfriend now fiance and I got into the habit of doing few months ago now is every Sunday morning doing a family meeting, and you know, talking about what was working, what was not working the last week, but then looking forward and the week and like, planning out date nights, planning out walk planning out time that we have together, and it's like, if you don't do that, you're gonna find other crap to fill in that time. But once you block it off, I mean, she and I are both like, crazy about our calendars. Like we schedule everything. And so it's like, if it's on our calendar, we're not going to, you know, double booked ourselves, we're going to like, block off that time. It's like, Hey, this is time for us. And that intentionality goes a long way.

Mike McCarthy  53:12  

Absolutely. Yeah. And then, so it matured from there. I mean, it's a funny anecdote where, you know, again, we missed a goal, but I wasn't expecting that one to be realized would have been cool. I guess.

Caleb Roth  53:23  

Along those lines real quick, do you set up incentives, if you get all your goals done, or their rewards, or their

Mike McCarthy  53:28  

goal itself is its incentive. And the to David's point, I knew, I know that I'm in the bottom of the leaderboard. This year, my youngest knows that he didn't read 15 books, and he tried to paperclip it at the end of the year, one year and books reading is always one of them. Like we have to do do that. Because I want you mentioned doing the books you read. And he's like, Oh, I read, you know, to 10 page graphic novels, that doesn't count

Unknown Speaker  53:54  

for the kids book, right?

Mike McCarthy  53:56  

Little Engine That Could. So I mean, so it has to just shame. new skills is how we're managing that I didn't really think about, I just know, and it doesn't feel good. What feels good, though, even in the record recognition on December 31. Like we make it an event now. So it's evolved into an event. I think last year we did lobster and steak, right for New Year's or shrimp or something like that. And it was a thing, like we're gonna sit down and you know about it before it's coming in my household, you know that, hey, the 31st is coming between Christmas and now we need to think about what we want to do next year, which is really the dumbest thing because it's not lighting the world gives us a reset on the first of the year, but you could like you could start a yearly goal board. October one, it's a school schedule, you could sync it with whatever you you could make it on the 14th if you want to it just it's a ritual for us. So we you know, we get a nice dinner we go crazy with dessert. We were talking about sweets before the show. I mean It's we get we get crazy talk

David Chung  55:01  

to me about desserts, right? Yeah, like,

Mike McCarthy  55:05  

and it's fun. And the kids are bought into it. And then we're done. And then we watch the ball drop, and we have a good time. And then the next morning, we wake up, you have a decision to make, do I want to get after my goal today? Or not? And you know it because it's staring at you right there on there. And that's, that's the history of the goal board. I've tried to figure out how not really tried, it hasn't been a goal of mine to figure out how to mass produce school boards, and sell them and create a different revenue stream because it's to me at random, I do watch a printing and I was like, let someone else do is just too easy. Would you

Matthew Osborn  55:34  

be willing to take a picture of it? Let us put it on the show notes for this episode. So you can see the outline and kind of how you guys structure this. They want to make their own style of goal for their family. Yeah, absolutely.

David Chung  55:44  

We can blur out the number in the corner and number.

Mike McCarthy  55:47  

We develop habits through that process. Know the number in the corner is not up there. But yeah, I'll take care of it for you. Yeah, love

Caleb Roth  55:54  

it. Yeah, the the goal board is incredible. And it can be just as simple as you know, chalkboard whiteboard piece of paper, it doesn't really matter. It's it's just the practice of it.

Mike McCarthy  56:03  

Yeah, one of my favorite books out there is four disciplines of execution. It's by Covey actually is by Chris McChesney, who came out of the school of thought of coffee. And it's kind of like measure what matters. It's kind of like one thing to a degree. But he talks about the scoreboard. And to your point, it can be anything, right? I don't believe in vision boards, because I need numbers associated with it. And goal needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, you know, timeline, all this other stuff. So we have the timeline, because it's our annual goal board. But in the in the 40 Expo book, he gives the example of a football game. And you can look at a scoreboard really, really quickly and know if someone is winning, or losing or tied in that scoreboard. Now, there's 5000 other metrics. That I mean, definitely in baseball that people focus on, but to use the football analogy, right, you know, based on points, are you winning or losing, you don't care about third down, you're not seeing third down conversion on the scoreboard. Right, you're seeing what down it is, what's the score, how many timeouts they have. And so as long as you have a scoreboard that is visible, to the 100,000 people watching to the people watching at home, or whoever your audience is, you're going to focus on it, it does not need to be so detailed, with irrelevant statistics that you get caught up in it two years ago, I think we were talking about one of the goals it was I wanted to do yoga four times a week, you want to take a guess on how many times I did yoga. A week before I realized that this was not what I needed to do. It was zero, right? I just didn't do it. Because I was training was quite literally a stretch goal. Yeah. You're funny. But it was one of those going, Man, if I don't do this, I'm not gonna get the flexibility. And so, you know, I think it was January, like fifth. And these goals are not hard and fast, right? Like, people change, like, I tried to keep mine consistent. But there has been an evolution where I've changed them. It's like, I want to improve my flexibility, and health. And by that I want to measure it going, I want to be able to touch my heel to my butt. Right. And I want to be able to touch my toes. And I'm not a very flexible person, physically when it comes to those things. So I incorporated stretching, I got the goal that I wanted, were as opposed to subbing out workouts for yoga and stuff like that. So there has been some evolution where we hit the majority of our goals. We don't always hit them the way we think we're gonna hit them. And I've had to do some revisions because I'm just like, man, that didn't work out this year. I'm past that revision stage for my sailing goal. I still think I'm gonna be able to get it done. There's going to be some hurt feelings come November when I don't want to travel somewhere else for Thanksgiving. But I want to get this goal done. And it's that important to me because I don't know what next year is gonna look like. In the hurt feelings are going to be like, you know, family members. They don't want to go see anyway for holidays, but

Caleb Roth  59:11  

hopefully they're not watching either. Well, when you ninja call me, I will think to ask you how the sailing, yeah, quest is going.

Mike McCarthy  59:18  

You'll see this. You're gonna come over tonight, I think and you're gonna see the book sailing for dummies. That was the first. Which if you're a dummy, you shouldn't sail. Right. So it's like parenting for dummies. I

Caleb Roth  59:28  

don't have self driving.

David Chung  59:30  

Now, you're going down to Mexico to sail or Gulf of Mexico to go to Mexico. Okay, so is it in Spanish or English?

Mike McCarthy  59:37  

That'll be fun to figure out. Yeah. I was gonna say either way. I'll be good, but I think it's gonna be English. You can work a boat down you say port and starboard, say, switch those around. scarica is left. Yeah, right. Right. Right. direto was right. So yeah, I think we're good there. But the but you can work it's it's PVR right. So it's it's not it's not deep, deep Mexico by name.

Caleb Roth  1:00:02  

It'll be dodging whales in the in the Gulf. Gosh, I hope so that'd be easy. readable. I'd

Mike McCarthy  1:00:06  

you die got hit by a whale learning to sail. Right That rhymes too.

Caleb Roth  1:00:09  

I know it'd be a good kids book. Don't be like Mike.

Mike McCarthy  1:00:13  

Well, a whale learning to sail dodging, we'll learn a 47 year olds guide to living your dream.

Caleb Roth  1:00:18  

Right? Well, this is this has been awesome. Thanks for walking us through some of those habits. So two questions, kind of as we wrap things up, one would be who is this for? If someone's listening to this going, Man, I want to implement a goal board. Who should do this? That's That's part one.

Mike McCarthy  1:00:35  

Yeah, I would say, if you're serious enough to write it down, that's when it becomes real. Otherwise, it's just kind of a kind of a dream, right? Like, the best business plans in the world are written down. So if you actually want to take action, you got to write it down, man, like, it's not going to happen. There's so many good ideas, I've got a million great bad ideas out there that I'll talk offline about. And guess what I'm happy yesterday. I haven't written it down yet. But if you're, if you're serious about it, write it down. If you're really serious about it, put it up. Right. And you will be amazed at how it just changed. It's the belt.

David Chung  1:01:10  

I love that. If you're serious about it, write it down. If you're really serious about it, put it up, you now

Mike McCarthy  1:01:17  

have a personal accountability. It's from you back everybody that comes to your house and make it look good. So like, like you don't don't laminate a pink poster board and put that on. Just like that would be what chicken scratch all over, your daughter would totally, totally did a great science project. Right? You know, it's like you want it to look good. It's a great conversation piece, but put it up? Because then you're and I'm not scared? I'm confident I'm going to hit it. Love the second question. Right.

Caleb Roth  1:01:44  

So that's part one, maybe a silly question. But the anti question to that is, who is this not for? So who should you know, that's listening? And it's like, this does not apply to them?

Mike McCarthy  1:01:53  

I think we were talking earlier about people, right. And I have often say people are the most volatile product product in the world. Right? Like, they can just change on a dime. This is not for people who stress over success or failure in an unhealthy way, right? If this is going to add too much pressure to your life, and it's not your goal. Don't do it. Right. Like you're not a quitter, right. It's just like, I've got friends who have more anxious minds than I do. This would not suit them well, because they they're going to live in a cycle of thinking that they are less than, because they didn't do what they said they were going to do. Because intent outpaces execution, right. And that's a big stone for them to jump over. So if if, if it's not going to be healthy for you, don't do it. If it's if you're I guarantee you this if you are married, and your spouse is not bought into the goals that you are setting for yourself, and it affects them. Don't do it until they're badass. Right? Like nice, like, you run an Ironman or any triathlon, no one's helping you, you got to do the work yourself, you have to carry the work yourself. So you know, all that trading you're doing by yourself, but it is directly affecting them. So you got to be on the same page. Same page,

David Chung  1:03:30  

you have to have buy in from all parties of interest.

Mike McCarthy  1:03:33  

Yeah, like the Circle of Influence circle of concern, right. And, you know, I'd say just be selective and don't go too big. Right? If it's if you've never done goal setting exercises, from a personal standpoint. And I'm going deeper, I mean, we've gone way deeper than just the SMART acronym. You know, like, find something that's a stretch, but it's not a be hag big, hairy, audacious goal.

Caleb Roth  1:04:00  

Keep it simple. Your first goal board was literally one number,

Mike McCarthy  1:04:03  

right? Yeah, it's like, I want to be a billionaire. Okay, good luck, right. Me too. Right. Am I willing to do the work to be a billionaire? Maybe. Right. Am I willing to do it in the next 365 days? Probably not. Right.

David Chung  1:04:15  

If you mean by buying lotto tickets? Yes. Yeah, I'll do.

Mike McCarthy  1:04:20  

Yeah. So that would be like, like the who it's not for if it's going to college, if it's going to ruin your life. Don't do it. And I think you know that, but there are people out there that that wouldn't even ask themselves that question. They just be like, Oh, my gosh, I have read this amazing book, I need to do this. And then they get a bunch of books. And if you've ever worked for anybody you've have, you've experienced the manager who came back from a conference, or it's like all new ideas. This is guess what we're gonna implement immediately, right?

David Chung  1:04:50  

I'm embarrassed cuz I'm that man. I read a book and I'm like, guys, all hands.

Matthew Osborn  1:04:58  

I remember growing up we hated it first. Are mom reading a new parenting book? Or like, Oh no, there's gonna be new structures a goal,

Mike McCarthy  1:05:05  

right? And then you're gonna hold you're gonna like hold the line for 30 days because it's going to be something else. So if you know you're that personality don't do that.

Caleb Roth  1:05:11  

I love it. Yeah. several interesting people I follow Nathan berry with ConvertKit. James clear, wrote atomic habits, he'd be a great guest to have on at some point, but they do urine reviews. And so it's a way for them to document what did I learn this year? What are some cool trips we did have the business do have the family do just kind of occurred to me with the, you know, 1415 years that you have with gold boards be really interesting. If you could go back, hopefully you have photos or remember them, it'd be cool to just put your family's word of the year and just see how your family's developed every single year.

Mike McCarthy  1:05:41  

Yeah, I, I'm confident we have some of it. I don't know that we have all of it by fun to piece together. But during that during that dinner, if you will. And part of this is you know, just who we are as a family. Like when you ask how your day was, will go. What was what was the highlight of the year. And with kids, it's usually like the most recent 30 days, right? It's like, Oh, I really liked when you know, my teacher was nice to me yesterday, or something silly like that. But their answers have gotten better, where they go, I really enjoyed our vague, I really enjoyed learning how to surf in Hawaii. Right? That was a big deal for them. I really enjoyed this. But we'll also say, what what did we not enjoy? What was the worst part of the year and it could be a family member passing you know, something tragic? It could be it didn't hit my goal or this and then like, where did we grow the most this year? And we do help our kids and our and my spouse really going? Look, I think at the beginning of the year, you were worried about this, this this and you've really grown in this area. And I think this has to go like so sometimes it ties directly into the goals. Sometimes it does, but we do ask hard questions at that a year in review.

Caleb Roth  1:06:54  

That's great. Well, Mike, thanks for being our guinea pig. Thanks for coming on. I learned a ton. And I'm sure our audience will as well. If anybody is an expert in saline or wants to kind of check in and

Mike McCarthy  1:07:05  

that you would like to teach me to Ceylon. I will fly to you. So we're good. Perfect.

Caleb Roth  1:07:09  

How can people find you if they want to?

Mike McCarthy  1:07:12  

I am I am this sidebar. I don't even know you know this. I am locked out of all of my social media with the exception of LinkedIn. I had my identity taken about a year and a half ago, and they changed my password. So I tried to take 70k Oh boy. Yeah, it was it was just a really bad, bad deal. But I was a cash family. That was fun.

Caleb Roth  1:07:29  

Well, his front door is unlocked. So

Mike McCarthy  1:07:32  

but anyway, just find me on LinkedIn. Right. Perfect. Mike, Michael J or M. J. McCarthy is what I'm under there.

Caleb Roth  1:07:39  

Cool. Well, we'll link to that in the show notes as well. Well, with that, that's the first podcast so thanks so much for coming on. And we appreciate it.

Mike McCarthy  1:07:46  

Guys. I appreciate I'm excited for this and I hope your community learns a lot from it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai