Choosing Your Hard: How Uncommon Leaders Set SMAHT Goals

What if the comfortable goals you've been setting are actually holding you back from your greatest achievements? In this inaugural episode of The After Show, I challenge the conventional wisdom of SMART goal-setting by proposing a powerful shift: replacing "Realistic" with "Hard" to create SMAHT goals (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Hard (or Heaven must help!), Time-based).

When we set merely realistic goals, we stay in our comfort zones. But hard goals—those that make us squirm a little in our seats, that require new skills and outside help—these are the goals that transform us and the world around us. Consider Jesus commissioning his disciples to reach "all nations," not just a few—an impossibly hard goal at the time, yet one that changed history.

I share my own struggle with perfectionism in launching this very podcast, waiting too long for everything to be "just right" before pushing record. As Chris Tucker's character in Rush Hour might say, sometimes you just need to "push the damn button" and get started. Hard goals require us to overcome these mental barriers and move forward despite imperfection.

The path to achieving hard goals isn't mysterious. Write them down (increasing your chances of success by 80%), create a scorecard to track progress, and share your goals with someone who'll hold you accountable. I'm applying these principles to my own ambitious goal of reaching one million podcast downloads by the decade's end—not for personal glory, but because of the impact those million connections could create.

Ready to choose your hard? As the poem says, "Life will never be easy. It will always be hard, but we can choose our hard." What impossible goal will you set today?

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to The After Show
• 1:32 Reflections on Chris Widener Interview
• 2:30 Overcoming Perfection in Goal Setting
• 4:51 From SMART to SMOT Goals
• 8:37 Three Tips for Goal Success
• 9:54 My Million Downloads Goal
• 11:04 Choose Your Hard Quote

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey, common Leaders, welcome back. Well, I've hit the record button. It's the first episode of the After Show, a show designed to summarize a little bit about a recent podcast episode that I have but also add some of my own insights. I talk about it in the trailer episode that really it is about Monday morning quarterbacking just a little bit and that it's an opportunity for us to kind of sit down, work together and just enjoy our cup of coffee and learn a little bit more and dive deeper into some of those things that were there.

Speaker 1: 0:29

I recently had a conversation with Chris Widener on the Uncommon Leader podcast and it was a fantastic episode. When I had a chance to chat with Chris, I was humbling. No doubt he's a Hall of Fame speaker. He's a two-time best-selling author, he is also a ghostwriter for John Maxwell, one of the authors that I love to read myself, and he was a Seattle Supersonics ball boy when he was a kid as well, so the story that impacted him when he was a child as a leader today was pretty cool. If you get a chance, you ought to take a listen back to that episode. We actually had a chance to even reminisce a little bit about some of the players on that team, jack Sigma, and a specific story that he had in there about DJ Dennis Johnson, who became a favorite of mine when he went to the Boston Celtics. I've been a longtime Boston Celtics fan, but take a look back at that episode coachjohngallaghercom forward slash podcast and you can find that interview that I had with Chris Widener.

Speaker 1: 1:31

What I really appreciated about my conversation with Chris was, uh, an upcoming event that he was planning and heading up. It's called revive 25. And ultimately, as he defined it as a massive revival, the opportunity to bring 15,000 or more Christians together in one place and millions more online, really to think about how we can have a bigger impact as Christians in our communities, in our country and in our world today. I'm pretty jazzed up about what's possible, and he said that's going to be out in the next 90 days. They were just getting the website launched up. If you get a chance, go to revive25.org and take a look at that. I think it's going to be a phenomenal event.

Speaker 1: 2:15

But for me, as I kind of sat back and reflected on that a little bit, it reminded me a little bit of goal setting, and that's what I want to talk to you a little bit about today, something I think will have an impact on you and how we sometimes get goal setting wrong, and maybe some tips on how we could get it right. For me, one of the goal setting problems, if you will, that I often run into is perfection. I think there are other things like fear of setting goals, that I might not get it right and I might be ridiculed for it, or the accountability that comes along with setting goals that I might not get it right and I might be ridiculed for it, or the accountability that comes along with setting goals and having someone really hold me accountable makes me uncomfortable as well. But ultimately, I think that idea behind perfection is one of the things that keeps me from setting and achieving goals at times. Very specific is the reason for this podcast. Right here, I've been working with my strategist at Brand Builders Group on improving the performance of the Uncommon Leader podcast, and one of the goals that I had for 2025 was to double the number of episodes that I recorded in 2024. Now it's a weekly podcast. That means I was going to have to do two a week.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Here we are really early March and I'm hitting the record button for the first time, the perfection that sat in my mind was that I wanted things perfect before I hit that record button. I wanted the name of it to be perfected and I wanted the content to be perfected and I wanted to know, should I have it be an interview format or some other, when really what I needed to do was just to hit the button and get started. It reminds me when I think about that, hit the button, hit that record button. It reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from the movie Rush Hour, where Chris Tucker was there and soon Lee was the girl who had a bomb strapped to her chest and the villain was in the same room, about 15 miles away with a button to explode that bomb that was on the jacket that she was wearing and Chris Tucker Trish Tucker in the show. He brought her close to her, the villain, and said go ahead, push the button. And then, even soon, lee got into it and said, yeah, push the damn button. Well, that's something that keeps in my mind when I get things started like that. And even my coach said John, just push the daggone button, push record and get started. Don't worry about perfection, just keep practicing and you'll get there. So here we are today, ultimately, and we got started. But that was a little bit of digression there in terms of talking about the movie. Let's talk about goal setting just a little bit.

Speaker 1: 4:51

I know that you've heard many of the listeners of the Uncommon Leader podcast have heard this acronym SMART specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-based. But I'm here to suggest to you just a little bit of a modification to that acronym. My Boston friends will appreciate this just a little bit, but imagine if they were saying SMART. It comes out as SMOT wicked SMOT is how they start to talk about it, and I'm suggesting that's how we spell the SMART acronym. Going forward, it's still specific, it's still measurable, it's still action-oriented and time-based, but we're going to replace the R with an H and that H, rather than being realistic, that H, is going to be hard. We're going to choose something hard or we're ultimately going to say something to the effect of heaven. We're going to need your help to get that done. We're called to be uncommon leaders. We're not called to set realistic goals. Realistic is not what it is that changed the world. It's hard that changes the world and sometimes that requires intervention, if you will, with some of the goals that we set.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Look, I think about this and I think about a book I just read, just finished up, by Craig Groeschel Bold Prayers and he asked a question. Inside of that book he said if all the prayers that you prayed over the last week were to be answered, how would the world be different? And I just thought that was a great challenging question. I want to use a question like that just in terms of your goal setting. If all of the goals that you've set have come to fruition for you, how would your world be a different place? Would it be something that is better? Would it be something that's just better for you? We're really looking to make an impact on the world and not just a realistic impact. So I want to challenge you to really change that up to the letter H when you think about that. How would things look different if you were to achieve a hard goal?

Speaker 1: 6:51

Some of the things I think about is even when we're setting those goals. Imagine, if you will let's go back to a fitness goal setting a goal of losing weight. A realistic goal for losing weight might be to lose three pounds in four months. A hard goal might be to lose 15 pounds in four months, if you don't achieve that goal of 15 pounds, you only get to 12. Did you really lose? I don't think so. That's the way to look at this in terms of understanding those hard goals. Even when you don't get there, you'd normally get farther than you would if you just set a realistic goal. So what is it about those hard goals?

Speaker 1: 7:25

Look, if I bring a scriptural reference and it was something that was in my daily reading today was Matthew 28, 19, the great commission. Ultimately, when Jesus called the disciples, he said we are to go and make disciples of all nations. He didn't say a few nations, he didn't say some nations. He didn't say your city, he said all nations. That's a hard goal. There were 12 of them, ultimately that were set out to make that happen. It was not going to be an easy goal whatsoever. So you need to be a little bit uncomfortable in your chair.

Speaker 1: 8:02

I think about this in a standpoint of when you set a realistic goal. You're like, yeah, I could achieve that, no problem, we'll get that thing done anytime. But when I set a hard goal, I got to sit forward and pay attention. I got to step outside my comfort zone and get into my learning zone. I have to learn a new skill. I have to look and get a coach to get something like that done. I have to make a change that I wouldn't have to make necessarily if I were just setting a realistic goal.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So, just to summarize that SMOT goal specific, measurable, action-oriented, hard and time-based. Those are the things that you're looking for. Hey, once you've set those goals, how are you going to make sure that you get to success? I'm here to tell you I got three tips for you there as well to make sure you get there. First of all, let's write them down. Okay, those who write down their goals are 80% more likely, based on a study, to achieve their goals. I think that's a powerful statement. Just to write them down and see them on a regular basis. Second thing I suggest is a scorecard. I'm competitive, just like the after show was kind of named after my favorite sport of football. When they have the college football countdown or whatever it is after the show that goes over the highlights and talks about the great plays of the day. You need to set a scoreboard to see if you're winning or not and can tell how you need to make adjustments if you're not winning at the time. And then the third tip share it with somebody else. That's going to help you to hold accountable. Don't keep those goals inside yourself, but share them, and for me, that's something that I want to talk about here right now.

Speaker 1: 9:34

With this podcast, I'm going to need your help. I've been talking about one of the things I want to do is double the number of episodes, and that's really about impact. And for me to do that, what I'm really looking to do is have more listeners, more viewers of this podcast to make it happen. So I'm here to state a goal today that I'm going to shoot for it's 1 million downloads and views by the turn of the decade. It's specific, it's measurable, it's action oriented. It's going to require me to do a lot of different things. It's going to require me to grow and grow my skills as a podcaster. It's time-based, it's way out there, no doubt about it, but it's a huge, it's a hard, it's a goal that's going to require intervention to get that done, and that intervention, a lot of times, is you.

Speaker 1: 10:17

If you enjoy the Uncommon Leader podcast, I encourage you to share it, I encourage you to subscribe to it and I encourage you to take just a couple minutes to go out and write a review. A five-star review is very helpful. All these things help us to get it in the hands of more listeners and more viewers. And look, it's really not about me and about the million downloads. That's going to be the most important topic. It's about the impact that that million downloads is going to have. A million listeners are going to be impacted by some of the messages that come out of the interviews that I have with uncommon leaders like yourself, and also that come out some of the tips that I share, that I often share with my clients. I know that's going to be a big part of it, so I hope you've enjoyed the first after show. I hope you get a chance to share. Please do. It's something I think is going to be really cool in the future.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Oftentimes I'll finish up with a quote or a scriptural verse that might leave you inspired. And, in light of the setting hard goals this week, I want to share from a poem that is attributed to Devin Bro, and I think I'm saying his name right. I'm not even really sure, but I think it's something that really is cool. It says starts off marriage is hard, divorce is hard. Choose your heart. Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your heart. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your heart. Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Choose your hard. Life will never be easy. It will always be hard, but we can choose our hard. Pick wisely. Hey Uncommon Leaders, thanks for spending a little bit of time with me today. Now let's go out and make it happen.