Hal Elrod: Dude, you have no idea. Yes. The sound of your voice, the thought of you, the image of you is – Dude – I’ve got hope right now. My palms are in front of my face, and I’m imagining they’re on fire like in that really cool picture of you. So let’s do this.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, you can see why Hal is the number-three-ranked-ever episode on EOFire. But we’re going to get serious for a quick second here because Hal died at the age of 20. He was hit head-on by a drunk driver at 70 miles per hour. He died for six minutes. He suffered permanent brain damage and was told he would never walk again.

Not only did Hal walk again, he ran a 52-mile ultra-marathon, became a Hall of Fame business achiever, an international key-note speaker and is the number one, best-selling author of what is being called one of the most life-changing books ever written, The Miracle Morning. So Hal, welcome back to EOFire. Take a minute. Fill in a couple gaps from that intro. Give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Hal: My personal life is – I’m really grateful, and it’s similar to yours in that living the dream. I wake up every day, and I’m like, “I can’t believe this. This is really happening.” I think for anybody listening, whether you’re there, or for most of us it’s usually we’re on the journey there, I never – I had to battle so much fear and self-doubt, and all of that.

But now, to be most importantly living the life of my dreams with my wife, Ursula, who I am head-over-heels in love with, and my daughter, Sophie, who is six years old, who has drawn me four pictures since I’ve been in my office today and slid them under the door – it’s amazing – then my son, Halston, who is three years old. To do what I love, with the people I love more than anything in the world, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

John: Speaking of living the dream, I mean, Hal we just talked a little bit in the pre-interview about – you’re here in Southern California and there’s a lot of great things about SoCal. You’re in a great neck of the woods in the Temecula area. It’s gorgeous and it’s amazing, but there are some negatives as well.

Now for a lot of reasons, you’re moving and one of those reasons is because you’re leaving this brutal State-income-tax State of California, moving to zero percent of Texas. Give Fire Nation just real quick, what happened very recently that’s pretty awesome in living the dream?

Hal: Yes, it’s a little nerve-wracking. So the move is not for sure. I should say it’s not for sure. But here’s what happened. So we’ve been there entertaining this for six months. We’ve been thinking, “Should we move in five years, or next year? When should we move? No rush, let’s take our time.” We signed up – we found a realtor – signed up for alerts. My wife has never been to Texas. I’ve gone through the airport. We have never been there. We just hear it’s great. I have friends there.

We get these email alerts, and my wife emails me and said, “I love this house.” This was Saturday. I was in Toronto filming people for the Miracle Morning movie, and on the plane right there – I’m online and I get an email that says, “Hal, I love this house.” I look at it and I’m going, “Oh my gosh, this is everything we want.” So I emailed the realtor. I go, “Hey how do we – can we fly out there in the next week or two?”

He goes, “Dude, this house is gonna be gone if you wait.” I’m like, “So what do we do?” He’s like, “Well, if you want you can put an offer on the house, and then in Texas you have ten days to change your mind. If you can fly out here within the ten days and see if you like it.” I’m like, “Like a real offer? Like, we’re offering.” He said, “Yeah.”

So Dude, we’ve never been to this State. We just offered on a house that’s twice as much as our current house. Yeah, we placed an offer today. They countered. We just countered back and they’ll probably accept it in the morning. We’re flying out there on Monday to look at houses and see if we’d like to live there.

John: Insanity, and Fire Nation will definitely let you know what the update is on that because by the time this goes live, we will definitely know what Hal is going to be doing in the upcoming months and years.

This is Day Seven of the Freedom Journal Campaign. It’s a 33-day campaign. Hal, Fire Nation knows about it where we’re taking past guests, basically our top, and some our favorite past guests of EOFire. We’re bringing them back on, to talk specifically about goals for these 33 days.

Again, this is Day Seven of the 33 days. I’m really excited to bring you back on because you’re so powerful when it comes to rituals, and routines, and discipline. That all involves setting goals, and obviously accomplishing those goals. It’s really massive and important in a lot of ways. Can you take a minute and share with Fire Nation why goals are important to you?

Hal: Yeah, absolutely – I was very blessed at 19 years old. I really didn’t know what a goal was or how to set one until I was 19. I started in sales. I started selling Cutco Kitchen Knives. It’s a little bit of a story. But in my second day of training, we learned about all these different levels you could achieve.

If you sell a thousand dollars, you get a veggie pill. If you sell five thousand, right? All the way up. Then the highest level where if you break the company record, and you sell more than has ever been sold in 50 years, you win – you get to go sky-diving; you get a limo night to a five-star restaurant; you make $4,000.00; you get every knife we have – all this stuff.

I was real mediocre my whole life until that point. For some reason I thought, “You know what? I want to do this? Why not me? Why am I so…” I am lame my whole life. So I set my first goal to sell $12,000.00 in ten days, of these knives.

I had a mentor that guided me along the way. But the point is that I never would have accomplished that without a goal. Ever since then, everything I’ve ever accomplished has started with making it into a SMART Goal. That’s why I loved when I got your Freedom Journal. Dude – he did the SMART Formula. That’s right. That’s it.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. That is the most effective way. It’s why it’s been proven and taught and re-taught and published for decades. I don’t even know how long. But the point is, I mean, goals are everything and right now I’ve already set my top ten goals for 2016. They’re in my affirmations. I review them every day during my Miracle Morning. I update them. I enhance them. I put whys. I make plans. I mean you name it.

And of course, the Freedom Journal has given me this awesome platform or vehicle to make my goals, and really take that whole process – not only take it to another level – but what I like is it’s like, they say, “Genius is in simplicity.” It’s like, it takes your goal setting to the highest level by making it as simple as possible, and breaking it down in an effective way as I’ve ever seen.

John: Genius is in simplicity. I love that phrase. Hal, you know this because we’ve talked offline a lot. That was really the number one question that my listeners were asking me was, “John, I’m hearing the Hal Elrods of the world. How are they so successful?” Stepping back and just going for this simple view of it, I was saying, “It’s because they know how to set and accomplish goals.”

That’s what really led me to say, “I really want to really get this out, in a beautiful, physical product. I’m gonna start off with the SMART Goal, and really make sure that the people who have this in their hands know how to set a SMART Goal.” Even before they start going down that path of accomplishing that goal, you have to start SMART. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

So Hal, just pick one of those acronyms, one of those words that you utilize in, at some point maybe is in the one you just told with the Cutco story, maybe it’s another one. But just kind of choose one of those actual words within the SMART goal, and kind of break down why you think it’s especially important for Fire Nation to focus on that going forward?

Hal: Yeah, I think if I had to pick one – and they really all support each other and they’re really important. It’s kind of like a recipe – like, which ingredient’s the most important? Dude, it’s going to taste like crap if you leave out any of the ingredients, right? That’s kind of the case.

But I would say time bound, by far. If I had to pick one, I think that stands above the rest. The reason is, when I set that goal – the Cutco goal – I had ten days. The goal only existed for the most anyone had ever sold in their first ten days, right?

So there was no, “Well, if I don’t hit it this time, I’ll do it next time.” No, no, no – you only get one first-ten-days in that company – so the time bound aspect. Another example of that is my book, The Miracle Morning, which is arguably the most important goal I’ve ever accomplished on every level from the impact it has on other people, and then for me, and everything.

But … I didn’t have a timeline. I set the goal to write The Miracle Morning every year. So I kind of had a timeline, like 365 days. But there was no real timeline. It was only because there was an arbitrary, like, “Well, it’s a new year, so let’s set a new goal,” right?

But I didn’t break down – what I love about the Freedom Journal is, you break it down. It’s less than a year. It’s a hundred days, one percent each day toward the 100 percent of attaining the goal. But beyond that you break it into 10-day sprints, which is so powerful because science has proven that our brain – the longer time period we give ourselves to accomplish something, the more we’ll procrastinate to get it done.

When you have only ten days to hit that first benchmark, you have urgency, and urgency is the most important factor in an accomplishment. Most people wake up every day, they go, “Oh, there’s always tomorrow. There’s always next week. I’m gonna settle for mediocrity for the next few months until the year’s over.” No, no, no – you’ve got to make every day the most important day of your life. Your 10-day sprints are brilliant. Then the daily entries are brilliant.

But the point is, The Miracle Morning, when it was not a time-bound goal, I set the goal to write in – it’s been so many years – I think it was – 2009, and I didn’t write it. I wrote a few pages. 2010, it was another goal. Didn’t do it. 2011, another goal – didn’t do it. 2012, I hired an accountability coach and his only function was, I would commit a time – what I would do in the time frame from this week to the next week, this week to the next week.

A book that three years without being time bound didn’t get written – I mean it got less than ten pages in three years– four months after I made it a time-bound goal, it was not only written, it was edited; it was published, and it was a number one best seller on Amazon. That’s the power of making your goals time bound.

John: That’s so powerful and there’s a law that I always like to refer to, and you definitely talked about this, and it’s Parkinson’s Law.

Hal: That’s what it’s called. I knew it was something.

John: Tasks will expand to the time allotted. So when I break down into ten, 10-day, micro-goals, guess what? I’m allotting you ten days, Fire Nation, to accomplish that micro-goal that’s going to get you to that major goal over time. Just like where Hal sets that mini-goal, that micro-goal along the way. Then four months later, guess what? He had the book printed. He had the book published. He had a number one, best-selling book. That’s the power of actually doing that time bound. I love, love, love how you chose time bound. It’s been very interesting, Hal. Again, I’m interviewing 33 past guests, and I was wondering, “Was everybody going to choose the same one?”

Hal: I was wondering that too.

John: Who knows? Everybody’s been very different and there’s been obviously a lot of repeats because there’s only five and there’s 33 people. But it’s really cool, unique, where people actually choose different things for different reasons. But like you said, it’s the recipe that makes this work. All five of these – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound – are critical to your overall success, Fire Nation.

Hal, I want to kind of move forward because I know this was a big day for you. It was a pretty big day for me as well when I remembered the first day this happened in my world. But even much more so than you because you went through so much. You’ve had so much success. Tell us the day and share with us the story when you first received the very first publication, the first printed copy of The Miracle Morning in your hands. Tell us how that felt actually having achieved that and holding it in your arms.

Hal: It is hard to explain. You’re like, it’s so much work goes into it, and there’s even a lot of – we all have fear and we all have self-doubt. Sometimes you wonder, “Am I ever gonna get this done?” I doubted myself, like, “Is this a stupid idea?” Like, I didn’t invent waking up early. I didn’t invent any of this stuff. It’s like, “I don’t know if anybody’s gonna – am I wasting my time?”

Then when you have it in print, and it’s real, and all that hard work has paid off – I’ll tell you there’s a quote that I lived by. I think it was a general that said this, long time ago. But this is something that my mentor taught me when I was selling Cutco.

He said, “Hal, there’s gonna be days, in fact it might be every day,” he said, “Where you want to quit. You’re gonna want to give up. You’re gonna have days where you set a goal, like a 10-day sprint, a one-day sprint, whatever,” and it’s interesting, by the way, my fast start was 10 days. So it was a 10-day sprint. That was it, right? On was one 10-day sprint.

He said, “You’re gonna have days when you’ve set goals and you’re gonna go out there and optimistic, excited, fired-up in the morning, pumping your car stereo. You’ve got five appointments for the day. You’re trying to sell $2,000.00 and your first one’s not there, and your second one’s a – she hangs up on you. She doesn’t buy anything. Then your third one – right?” He goes, “You’re gonna end the day and sell nothing. You’re gonna go, ‘Wait a minute. I needed to be at this point. I needed to sell this amount to be on-track for my goal,’”

He goes, “It just doesn’t roll out that way, and you’re gonna feel discouraged. Some days you’re gonna wake up, be tired. Here’s the point: on the day of victory, no fatigue is felt.” He said, “Remember that. In those moments where you want to give up, or there’s moments where you’re tired, or those moments where you doubt yourself.”

He had me write that on my wall and put it on my binder that I did my presentations, and put it on the dash of my car. “On the day of victory, no fatigue is felt,” which means that the day you hold that Freedom Journal or The Miracle Morning in your hands, or whatever your goal is – when you get to the top of the mountain, or you cross the finish line of the marathon, or you get the papers in the mail that say your business is officially a corporation – whatever that is for you, right?

That day of victory, no fatigue is felt. The only fatigue is felt if you don’t do it, right? The pain of regret, right? That’s the only thing that can cause fatigue. But no matter how hard you work it’s always worth it. It’s never easy, but it is always worth it.

John: On the day of victory, no fatigue is felt, Fire Nation. Just remember that. Just keep that up there. Just realize that is in your future if you stay the course.

Something else that I love that you shared, Hal, is you didn’t invent waking up early. Guess what? You didn’t. Fire Nation, I hate to break it to you, but I didn’t invent interviewing entrepreneurs on a podcast. There have been people that have come before Hal, that have come before me, and have done those things.

Both Hal and myself, we are standing upon the shoulders of giants. We learn from those who come before us. Now we both drew a line in the sand and said, “This is how we are unique. This is how we are different. This is how we are going to serve the world in a very powerful way,” and we stuck to that. That’s what’s usually helped us stand above the crowd, and kind of move into that blue ocean as opposed to being stuck in that red ocean.

That’s critical to realize, but guess what? Hal did not invent waking up early. I didn’t invent interviewing entrepreneurs. These are things that existed. We’ve just put our spin on it. So don’t let it hold you back just because you haven’t quote unquote “invented that thing.” You’re not looking to make the next Coca-Cola or Ford Motor car. That’s just not it. Even those people were standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Fire Nation, we have so much coming up in the Freedom Round. But first we’re gonna take a minute to thank our sponsors. Hal, are you prepared for the Freedom Rounds?

Hal: Yes, do we get to ignite again?

John: Every day, baby. Why do you feel that most entrepreneurs fail to set SMART goals?

Hal: They don’t take the time to gain clarity, right? You have to schedule gaining clarity. The beauty of the Freedom Journal is it does it for you. It doesn’t do it for you, but it’s the next closest thing. It’s like, “Oh, I just fill in the blank, next to this prompt. I just answer this question. I write…” It literally is the closest thing to having a John Lee Dumas in your living room, right?

John: It has its pros and cons, let me promise you.

Hal: I’d don’t know what to think about that, yea. I just had a vision of you and me. But right, so it’s the closest thing to having a coach in your living room, to having John Lee Dumas say, “If you’re paying me.”

Now for John to come to your living room, or your office, and coach you for a day, I don’t know what your rates are, John, for a consul or if you’re even available. Remember we’re talking about, like, $10,000.00.

John: Actually it’s a 10K day.

Hal: 10K day, right – so it’s 10K, and if you were to sit down and go, “John, how do I accomplish my goals?” He would just ask you all the questions in the Freedom Journal. That’s what would happen. Now John, I’m sorry. Your consulting just – no one’s gonna hire you to consult again because there’s Fire Print up here. But that’s what they should do, right? That’s it, you know. So the fact that most entrepreneurs – I just realized I’m answering it very long – but they don’t gain clarity.

You got to time; you got to schedule time for clarity. You got to schedule time to ask yourself the right questions. What do you want? Why do you want it? What do you need to do to accomplish it? Who has done it before you that you can model – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Plan time to plan. So there you go.

John: Hal, since Fire Nation has the Freedom Journal, or they soon will, they know how to set a SMART goal. They’re going to go through it, set that SMART goal. Now what is the most important action after they’ve set that SMART goal?

Hal: After you set the SMART goal, it’s scheduling. I really believe that the most under-talked-about key to success is your schedule – how you spend your time. For me, I call it, “Create your foundational schedule,” which is like: what is every Monday going to look like, and every Tuesday, and every Wednesday, every Thursday, every Friday, every Saturday, every Sunday.

Now if you’re thinking, “But Hal, I have a different kind of job, right? I do this. I do that.” I travel. I speak all the time. I just got done – we were in Toronto for four days filming The Miracle Morning movie. So my schedule is all over the place, but my foundational schedule never changes, which means when I’m back in my environment, when I’m home, like tomorrow.

I woke up this morning, John, at 3:30 in the morning Eastern Time. So I’ve been up since midnight, our time, right? I’ve been up since 12:30 a.m. I’m gonna stay up until my normal time, 9:30 tonight. I don’t believe in time zones, by the way. That’s why. I believe time zones are a limiting belief.

But the point is you absolutely – creating a schedule where you are a master of your time, and you dictate what you’re going to do from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed. I think that is that untapped secret to take the Freedom Journal and then put the planning that you’re doing in the Journal – the clarity that you’re gaining – and put it into actionable, time bound, again, daily activities.

John: Hal, what’s one action that you take daily that brings you closer to your current goals?

Hal: You know what it is. It’s called The Miracle Morning. I wake up every morning and I dedicate the first hour to meditating, doing affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing the S.A.V.E.R.S., silence, affirmations. That’s the Miracle Morning. But that’s it. For me, I believe the essence is – it’s dedicate the first part of your day to becoming the person that you need to be to create everything you want for your life.

When I say becoming the person you need to be, the first hour is dedicated to personal development, so that you can develop the knowledge, the skills, the confidence, the belief, the habits, all of the above, that you need to achieve everything that you want for your life. In other words, become a better version of who you were when you went to bed the night before, by dedicating that time to your Miracle Morning every day.

John: Hal, you know where bud is? You know how to serve you up a soft ball, my man. Way to knock it out of the park, buddy.

Hal: That’s right.

John: So Hal, how important is accountability when setting goals?

Hal: I talk about this in The Miracle Morning. The reason – I’m not trying to plug The Miracle Morning. It just comes out naturally. The point is, I believe that accountability is what closes the gap for all of us between who we are and how we’re performing. I should say, how we’re showing up, what we’re doing or not doing, and our full potential. Accountability closes the gap.

The reason for that is that we will always settle for – we’ll always settle. I don’t care who you are. I consider myself really disciplined, but I still, if I don’t have accountability – ah, I’m gonna take today off. I’m gonna cut a corner. But if I gave my word to my coach or the Freedom Journal, if I’ve put it in writing, if I gave my word that today I would do this thing – see that’s a part of that time bound. With the Miracle Morning I mention that, right?

What was the difference maker? Three years, the book didn’t get written when I relied on myself. It wasn’t time bound. There was no accountability. What did I do? I hired a coach to help me create those time bounds; set the time, and then hold me accountable to follow through.

I really believe accountability is the single most – and think about this. CEOs, right? The single most determining factor in closing that gap because even CEOs – the average CEO is looked at as really successful – but I guarantee if they didn’t have stockholders holding them accountable, and their executive staff holding them accountable, and their secretary holding them accountable, and their business partners holding them accountable, they’d probably play Words with Friends a lot more during the day.

But they’re like, “Oh, crap, I’ve got that thing due. The Board meeting is in two hours.” Accountability is the difference maker in closing that gap between where you are, who you are, and that next level.

John: Well, Hal, if you’re not gonna plug The Miracle Morning, I will. Fire Nation, read The Miracle Morning. It is epic. Hal, besides The Miracle Morning and the Freedom Journal, do you have a book that you’ve read that would help Fire Nation in their journey of setting and accomplishing goals?

Hal: Dude, I’m so glad you asked me that because I actually told you about this recently. It’s the book that was written for the Freedom Journal. It just – they didn’t know. They didn’t know it. They’re like twins that are separated at birth, right? So it’s a book that’s called, Vision to Reality. It’s by Honoree Corder. It’s all about setting one-hundred-day goals.

I told Honoree about the Freedom Journal. She’s like, “Yeah, I know.” She’s like, “I got to connect with John. We’re so on the same page.” I mean, literally, if there’s any book to read after The Miracle Morning, but while you’re doing the Freedom Journal, it is, I believe, Vision to Reality by Honoree Corder is the closest aligned in terms of what it teaches, and I think they’ll really enhance each other.

John: Okay, Hal, here’s a challenge for you. This is the last question of the Freedom Rounds. It’s a doozy. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world that’s identical to Earth, but you knew no one. You still have all of the experience and knowledge that you do currently have. Your food and shelter is taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What goal would you set on day one, and what actions would you take over the next seven days to accomplish said goal?

Hal: Now I just want to make sure – there are other human beings on the planet?

John: Identical to Earth.

Hal: Okay, I got it, all right, cool. All right, so the number one goal that I would set – I mean I think that – God, there’s so many ways to answer this question.

John: I know. It’s a doozy. Really, it’s a doozy.

Hal: If I were to make it simple. This sounds like such bull, but if I were to make it simple – get the Freedom Journal. I’m serious because the reason is everything we want in our lives is born from clarity – all of it. Extraordinary results require extraordinary clarity. Yet most people maintain a mediocre level of clarity, and wonder why their life is mediocre, or they don’t have what they want.

The Freedom Journal provides you with clarity, extraordinary clarity, and then so much more – to set you up for success, create extraordinary results in your life. Literally, that’s what I would do. Rather than say I would get a piece of paper and I’d write this, this, this. I would get the Freedom Journal, and it has everything I need, and it would be like someone guiding me from start to finish to accomplish all of my goals.

John: Let’s just thrown something random out there. What’s a random goal which comes to the top of mind that you think you’d want to set to have accomplished in the next seven days?

Hal: Got it. For me I really believe one of the secrets of success is to add as much value to the lives of every other person that you can. So for me I would probably technologically-wise, I would go to the leadpages.com or the NewCo.co, or something. I would get an opt-in page.

I would then grab my iPhone, or if I don’t have an iPhone, right, you sit at a computer; you got the mike of the computer. Hopefully you’ve got a Mac. I would record an audio with my knowledge, and then I would put it for free download on that opt-in page.

The reason I say that is because that is how this all started for me. When I first – two months after I did my first Miracle Morning, someone had me on their show and they interviewed me about The Miracle Morning. It was new. I didn’t even know what the hell I was talking about. I was still learning it.

Someone said, “Hey, that was so good. You should put that up on an opt-in page, and set up people to email to download it.” That’s how I grew my email list from zero to 10,000 people was this free audio that I recorded, and put up the opt-in page that cost me like 50 bucks or something. So that’s would I would do.

John: Love it. Well, Hal, we started on fire. Let’s end on fire with you sharing a parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you, then we’ll say goodbye.

Hal: All right, I’m down. I’m all for it. I mentioned this earlier and I’ll close with this. The number one cause of mediocrity, of unfulfilled potential, of regret in our lives is never deciding that now is the most important time in our lives because it is. Now matters more than any other time because it’s the choices we make that determine who we’re becoming, which determine where we go, and where we end up in our lives.

So make today, decide today: today is the day that you will get clarity on exactly what you want, what your goals are, right? Put them on paper. Put them in the Freedom Journal, and commit. Commit to a hundred days.

If you do the Freedom Journal every day for 100 days, you will be a different person. You literally will be a different person. Your quality of life will be radically different, the direction that you’re headed, everything. You won’t recognize who you are and where you are 100 days from now.

If you want to get a hold of me, got to halelrod.com. Probably the best place to go, actually, is the Facebook Group the Miracle Morning Community. We have 26,000 people in 37 countries supporting each other in becoming the best version of themselves. Last but not least, if you want to get The Miracle Morning book, best place is Amazon. Get it on Kindle, audiobook, paperback. Or if you’re an Apple user, you can go to iBooks. John Lee Dumas, thank you so much for having me on, buddy.

John: Hal Elrod, you’re the man. Fire Nation, you know, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you’ve been hanging out with HE and JLD today, so keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com. Type, “Hal” in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything that he’s been talking about today, his website, links to his book, to his Facebook group.

Of course you can go back and listen to the number-three, ranked- and-rated episode of all time on EOFire. There’s over 1,200 episodes now that I’ve recorded, so that’s saying quite a lot. That’ll be popping right up when you type, “Hal,” in the search bar as well.

Of course go directly to Halelrod.com, search the Miracle Morning Community on Facebook, and get The Miracle Morning book. It is an absolutely no-brainer. It would be the best thing you’ll do in 2016, especially when you combine it with the Freedom Journal.

Hal, I want to thank you, brother, for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Hal: Love it.