In this episode of Tactical Empire, Jeff Smith discusses the common misconception that successful people are extraordinary. He emphasizes that success is rooted in consistency and the ability to track and evaluate habits. By focusing on what serves you and optimizing your schedule, you can achieve your goals. Honest self-assessment is crucial for personal development, and with consistent effort, anyone can change their life significantly in a few years. Jeff encourages listeners to take action towards their major goals and to trust in their ability to create the life they desire.
In this solo episode of the Tactical Empire podcast, host Jeff Smith discusses the often misunderstood concept that successful people are not extraordinary, but rather individuals who have mastered the power of consistency. Jeff shares practical strategies for implementing small, consistent changes across the four pillars of fitness, family, freedom, and finances to build a life of abundance, discipline, and high achievement. He emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, tracking habits, and making incremental adjustments to optimize performance and achieve significant transformations. Jeff encourages listeners to take risks, commit to their goals, and push towards major accomplishments in the coming years.
00:00 Introduction to Tactical Empire
00:42 Debunking the Myth of Extraordinary Success
01:53 Harnessing the Power of Consistency
02:28 Tracking Habits for Success
03:41 Evaluating and Adjusting Your Habits
06:16 Optimizing Your Daily Routine
14:19 Financial Tracking and Optimization
18:43 The Importance of Consistency in Leadership
20:14 Conclusion and Call to Action
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Jeff Smith: [00:00:00] How do you find the will to fight back against a world that wants to keep you sedated, averaging, stuck in place? Join us for the tool and strategies you need to create a life of abundance, discipline, and high achievement. This is the Tactical Empire, with Jeff Smith.
Welcome to another episode of the Tactical Empire. I'm Jeff Smith and I am here to drop some knowledge on you today. I'm alone. Sean's not here today. So it is just going to be a quick hitter. I want to talk to you guys about something that I think people get confused about. Uh, successful people are not extraordinary people.
Okay, this is a common misconception. People have a perception of themselves being [00:01:00] less than or like they are not up to snuff on The abilities of other people who have produced, built, and executed on great things, right? We all know our neighbors or whatever that have better houses, better cars, better stuff, right?
And your perception of them is like, what are they doing differently? And the answer is generally very nuanced and it's very minute in the fact that no one, I mean, there's degrees of differences between people, certainly. When it comes to knowledge, physical ability, like all of it, right? The gamut is a scale on where your skills are at, but there's not a person listening to this that is not highly skilled in some area, right?
These people that are ahead of you, that are more successful than you, that have what you desire, they have harnessed the [00:02:00] power of consistency. They have chosen to do these small things that work and produce results over consistently. Over a very long period of time, right? Like you guys have heard me talk a million times about the app streaks.
I've used it for five years, actually seven years at this point. Um, it, six years at this point, maybe six or seven. Uh, needless to say, it's an app that I use to track my like daily habits, right? What are the habits that I have implemented in my life that are game changers for me? And this is what everyone should be doing.
This is where the extraordinary people that you view that are different than you have identified what works with them. And this is what we teach and preach in the tactical empire. [00:03:00] It's a level of awareness on what is serving you, what is working in your life. We use the four pillars of fitness, family, freedom, and finances, and we build our habits off of those because we want to be well rounded men that are pushing the limits on our capabilities in every area.
And so the way to do that is evaluate where you are with regards to what's important to you. Every man in the group wants to collectively be a great husband, be a great father, and make a lot of money. And that's what brings them to us, right? That's why we support each other in that journey. And that's what we push each other on.
So ultimately when you're evaluating where you're at, where am I falling short and being honest with yourself and telling yourself that story, you're able to identify those areas where you may be lacking. So then what do we do? Okay. We say we're not having, we're not great in our relationship [00:04:00] right now with our wife, whatever, or our husband.
And, uh, and so you say, what is one thing I can do to potentially turn that ship because we're trying to turn a big ship. Right? But for us, we're agile because we're just human beings. We're small. We're not running billion dollar corporations. We're running businesses that we can make high impact.
Differences in or were a W two producer that you can also make change, but what we're looking for is these consistent things that we can change. Is it a daily communication? Is it a weekly date night? Is it something that you want to implement in your system that is going to change things for you? And you cannot.
evaluate the change without tracking the consistency of how often you're doing it. I mean, a [00:05:00] simple example that we use all the time is like, everybody says that they're super consistent with, you name it, your diet or your alcohol intake or your exercise and you say you do it every day. And then you start tracking it seven days a week, 365 days a year.
And your numbers come back and show a different story. Because if you're at monday through thursday What are you at like 56% of the week or something like that? I don't know the exact numbers off my head. Off the top of my head, but they're low, right? If you say, I do that every day, even if you're Monday through Friday, what's that number?
Like 73%. So when you commit to these things, you don't commit to them forever. You just say, I'm gonna implement this portion into that pillar, right? I want to do a one on one with one kid every week or whatever, right? So [00:06:00] you track that you do it for a month, you do it for a quarter, right? 12 iterations into that.
How frequently have you done it? And then what are the overall results of it? That's what raising your awareness is kind of all about. That's just a simple example, but like, let's say doing cardio five days a week. Okay, you track it for a period of time and then you evaluate your results. Did you actually do four days a week or five days a week?
Excuse me. Um, because most people will just like arbitrarily not keep track of it. They just say they're going to do that in January and then they end up doing one or two days a week and by March, they're like, man, I didn't get any results for doing this from doing this. I shouldn't be doing cardio five days a week.
Well, you've never done it five days a week. And so going back to the main topic, successful people identify these things. And then what we talk [00:07:00] about constantly in Tactical Empire is like, is it serving you? Is it not serving you? And then you stop it, start it, or remove it from your, your list of habits.
And you can't do these things, and you can't build a huge Rolodex of habits that you do on day one. You implement this. Incrementally over time. So you do one thing and you do it for 30 days. You do it for 60 days, you do it for 90 days. You evaluate the results. This is really serving me on a high level. I enjoy how it makes me feel.
My mental acuity is way up. Um, my production is way up. I'm going to leave that as part of my thing. I'm going to commit it to it. Right. But then maybe you've been doing it for six years and as you do it, like you slot things in. On a quarterly basis or a monthly basis. I don't feel like I'm getting the results I want now that my oldest daughter's [00:08:00] almost a teenager.
How should I, how should I respond to that? What can I implement? Maybe it's. Walk and talks daily. So I encourage her to go walk with me. I want to do that three times a week and I track it. Can I get her outside for 15 minutes to have a conversation with just her dad? And, and then what are the results from that?
Full transparency. I haven't implemented that, but that's just an idea that I'm thinking about because it's top of mind. Um, and so in your life. What are just incremental changes you can make? So if you don't work out at all, then like maybe walking for 20 minutes, three times a week is a start. Then you take what you've got, the results, are they serving you?
Yes or no? Is it stressful to you? We talk about friction all the time. Friction is what you want to identify. Like this is where people get hung up in like the grind culture or whatever the fuck your [00:09:00] Recent coach is telling you you need to be doing if you're adding stress on your plate You're not optimizing your production And so like that's why I say don't go out of the gate with 12 of these habits that you're trying to Add to your plate I promise you that will be overwhelming to keep track of if you go from zero habits to 12 habits You're gonna fuck up Nine of them.
Okay, so like just bring them into your system one at a time, track the results, track the consistency, then evaluate the results, and then decide if they're serving you or not serving you. I mean, there's, there's a lot of things that, that you can do to evaluate this. Like, is it causing stress in your relationship because you're trying to do this?
Like a simple example is like most people try to get in shape or whatever. They try to go to the gym for an exorbitant amount of time. We've done this in our [00:10:00] lives as well. Like I try to work out in the afternoon, maybe for a period of time. And what it's doing is it's conflicting with our afternoon schedule because like my kids are there during that period of time So what do I need to do is the actual workout?
This is like the mental questions that I go through to determine my awareness, right? Is it serving me probably yes, like i'm in better shape. I feel more physically fit I'm stronger i'm faster and i'm gonna live longer because likely because i'm doing this. Okay, do I need an hour and a half? Or am I jacking around, wasting time?
No, I could probably get it done in 45 minutes. Moving every day is better than moving three times a week for twice the amount of time. There's a lot of data that says that. Supports it, right? So, like, these are conversations you want to have. But, is it causing, like, your wife and you to butt heads because you're trying to work out in the afternoon?
in the evening when you get home from work or something. It's [00:11:00] taking away from your overall family time, which, whether it's not causing friction with your wife or not, it's probably pulling at your subconscious, uh, on, like, I'm missing time with my family while everyone's awake. This is just things that I think about.
And so what do I need to do? If it's important to me, I will make time for it and I will figure out how to slot it into my schedule where it doesn't interfere with my other things. This is something that I've done like maniacally is moving around my schedule to maximize performance. So like working out is something I'm going to do on a regular basis, but like, when do I need to do it?
I've worked out as early as four o'clock in the morning. Up until two o'clock in the afternoon. I don't work out at night because I've already had this conversation about like, first of all, I don't like pack gyms. If I'm going to work out even on my own, I don't want to miss five o'clock to seven o'clock with my family because my [00:12:00] kids are an age where that's where a lot of things happen.
Good or bad for your parents out there. You know what I'm talking about, but like that's the time that everyone's together. Everyone's wide awake for the most part. And like those experiences happen during that period of time. I also have the flexibility to run my own businesses and I work out during the day.
I also like to work out mid morning, usually because I work in the morning. On all my critical tasks, and I'm a little brain dead and by 10 or 11 in the morning, so I prefer to work out in the mid morning so that I can go get recharged and energized to either work all afternoon or spend time with My loved ones and do what I want to do the rest of the afternoon.
That's kind of what I have found works for me. So when you think about these things from an awareness standpoint, like a lot of people fail in that they're like, Oh, I shouldn't do that because it's interfering with [00:13:00] X, Y, and Z. But. Is it really serving you? Like the workout example is a good example. It could be anything though, right?
It could be sales calls. It could be when you're doing heads down writing for your business, copy work, copywriting work, social media planning, whatever it is. Um, but is it just a timing thing or is it truly that it's not serving you? Like sometimes, like counting macros is not my thing. I don't, I don't do it.
Never have done it. And, I mean, I've done it for a short amount of times if I'm on a challenge or something like that. But I will not do it from a lifestyle standpoint because it's not my thing. My wife can do it because she can just look at it loosely and put it together and then track it. It doesn't stress her out.
It overwhelms me. It makes my days too hard. I will go days without eating because if I have to plan it and it gets that structured, my answer is like, nevermind. Forget it. I will just not eat because it's a certain amount of [00:14:00] food you've got to get together in a certain, certain quantity, certain quality of food you've got to get together to meet those needs.
And it's just too complicated for me with everything else I've got going on, so I don't do that. Um, but what you want to find is what works for you and continue to tweak it to optimize your performance. Okay, so whether it's finances. Whether it's tracking your finances on a weekly basis. I'm doing this year.
I'm doing financial Fridays. I'm committing to sitting down and doing one hour minimum two hours, hopefully of desk work on finances Fridays every Friday for one hour I'm going to spend time organizing my finances, getting everything tracked, dumping everything into the spreadsheets so that I don't get behind and have to spend six hours, three months later, trying to bring everything together.
I'm going to spend a shorter amount of time [00:15:00] to determine if I can keep a handle on everything that's going on at a better rate. So we're trying to optimize what we're doing. Does that make sense? I hope so. Guys, there is no difference. And if you start implementing this system into your life, you can do any category, right?
Where are you lacking? Do you want, do you, should you be tracking your daily finances? Should you be tracking your personal finances? Don't overwhelm yourself with it. Just eat the elephant one bite at a time. So you want to add these things to you to, and, and over time, you're going to grow and turn into a different person and evolve.
And some of these things are going to become second nature. Maybe they don't need to be tracked anymore. So like there, there's a point where that could happen as well. So that goes back to awareness. What's serving you? What do you need held accountable to? What do you want to track? [00:16:00] And year over year, you should be tracking this data to give you the best experience in life.
If you're still pursuing massive goals and massive visions, which you should be, otherwise, what the fuck are you doing here? There's no purpose in being here if you're not trying to expand your human experience and, and you should be, you owe it to your family, you owe it to yourself and wherever you're at today, you can completely change that in 90 days of consistent behavior and consistent changes and showing up in a certain way.
You can certainly change it in three years. You can change your entire life in a few short years of implementing systems like this, tracking them, checking your consistency, and being brutally honest with how you're showing up. Okay? So if, if you're trying to work out five [00:17:00] days a week and you fall short on that, you don't need to beat yourself up.
You need to ask yourself why? What's interfering with that? Is it a behavioral thing? Is it a partying too much? Is it? You don't have time in the evenings like we talked about. Are you pulled in too many directions? So you have to ask yourself why you didn't meet that standard that you set for yourself.
And then what were the feelings associated with that? Did it cause too much friction? It caused too much stress. It caused too much strife in the family. Like, or you were being lazy and you let yourself down because you didn't follow through on the commitments that you made. So, like, that's a growing opportunity for you.
And because if you're not committed to the things, I mean, that's where we all fall short. A hundred percent. If you can't be honest to yourself first and foremost, you can't be honest to the exterior world because you're waking up [00:18:00] telling yourself stories and lying. I'll wake up at five o'clock in the morning.
You don't do it. You've already told yourself a story. So subconsciously it's embedded in you that you don't follow through with what you've said you're going to do. So there's a snowball effect to that. So when you make these commitments, sure as shit, try to hold to them. Because it's important. It's important on your development.
The greatest thing you can do is just tell the truth and be honest with yourself at every turn. So when you evaluate these things, if they're serving you, if they're not serving you, if they're helping your relationships with your kids, your family, your wife, like, or your physical body, your finances, like, or your businesses.
If you're, if you're seeking more freedom, like, why are you hiring someone? And are you supporting them in a leadership role? This is a huge one that I personally have dealt with a ton. Like you have people that you're feeling that are falling short on your team. [00:19:00] Why are they falling short? And then bring in that level of consistency.
Should you meet with them every Tuesday? Did you meet with them every Tuesday or did you not prioritize that meeting? And you showed them within the first three weeks after you skipped two of the first three meetings that this was not an important, so they are playing off of your behavior. They're interpreting the level of importance based on how you show up.
So there's a business example on how to do it. Are you leading the way that you should be in your life, in your business, in your home, because if you're not showing up the way you should be, you need to tell yourself an honest assessment of how you're showing up and, and this is how you can clean it up.
So going back to the original topic, successful people that you look up to are not extraordinary in any way. They are going through this checklist. of consistency, of results, [00:20:00] of emotions associated with it. And they are constantly tweaking and looking to optimize their lives through small incremental changes and the results that are pursues produced by those.
Hope this was helpful, guys. Have a great day. Have a kick ass week. And let's push forward on 2025. I want you guys going all in on yourselves. I want you pushing towards major goals so that we can make some major changes this year. I think we have a unique opportunity in front of us for the next two years.
I think you guys should sell out and burn the boats on every single thing you want to be doing. If you want to grow massive wealth, if you want to grow a great family, if you want to take that leap from your W2 job and trust in yourself, like, be tactical about it, be practical about it, but now's the time, now's the time guys, you, the, the world is your oyster, you can have everything you want in this life if you're willing to take this, [00:21:00] these risks and you're willing to create the discipline within yourself to show up for yourself and lead the people around you.
Have a great week. Follow us on social media, like us and subscribe to the YouTube channel. That's super helpful. Share this podcast with anybody that may benefit from it. I appreciate you guys. You guys are always listening and I really can't tell you how much I appreciate it. If you want to be part of the tactical empire, reach out to us.
We've got some new offerings this year that are really helpful to people, but you can DM Sean or I, uh, RealJeffSmith at Instagram. It's the best way to get ahold of me, and I'm happy to help anybody else. Have a kick ass week. Let me know what you need.