The Two Questions You Have to Answer Before You Set Any Goal

I was watching a clip of Alex Hormozi the other day.

He was reacting to a video of MrBeast, a guy whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson and who, as of 2026, is worth an estimated two and a half billion dollars.

I did not know who MrBeast was before I saw the clip.

I am not exactly the target demographic for a social media influencer.

But the numbers got my attention, and then the words got my attention in a different way.

In the clip, MrBeast says something that lands like a punch you did not see coming.

Then he adds a line he tells himself when things get dark.

Hormozi jumps in afterward and adds his own version.

Whenever I get to a low point where I think, why do I even bother, I just remind myself:

I sat with that clip for a while.

Not because I want to be MrBeast. I do not.

Not because I want to build a five-billion-dollar conglomerate. I do not.

But because it forces two questions that most people never ask themselves honestly.

How far are you willing to push yourself to get what you want?

And before you answer that, ask yourself a harder question:

Is what you want actually worth it?

The Guy Who Already Won

By most reasonable measures, I have escaped the rat race.​

I am sixty years old, about to turn sixty-one.

I stopped working for a paycheck over five years.

I have a seven-figure nest egg.

My bills are paid.

I get to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu three or four times a week.

I travel with my wife.

I am in fairly good health.

If I never earned another dollar, I would be fine.

I am not building a business because I need the money.

I live a pretty simple life. I do not have expensive tastes.

I do not need much, and I have enough.

So why am I building a business at sixty?

Why am I reaching out to gyms every day, getting crickets ninety percent of the time, taking rejection from people who do not know me and do not care?

Why am I learning skills I have never needed before at an age when most men are settling into the version of themselves they have already become?

For connection.

For engagement.

For the chance to be more deeply embedded in the martial arts community that has given me more than I can ever give back.

That is my tribe. Those are my people.

I love being around martial artists and nerding out about techniques, strategies, and philosophy.

I love the culture of the gym.

I love the ritual of stepping on the mat and bowing and leaving everything outside the door.

I think it will be deeply satisfying to add business, marketing, systems, customer engagement, and retention to the conversation mix.

To help gym owners build things that outlast them.

To be useful to the community in a way that goes beyond showing up to class.

But that does not answer the two questions.

It only sets them up.

The Conservative Dreamer

I was never a big dreamer.

I did not shoot for the moon.

I'm not a "go big or go home" kind of guy.

I went medium and stayed put.

Part of that was coping mechanisms from childhood.

I grew up in a scarcity household where the message was clear: do not get your hopes up, do not count on anything until it is in your hands, and for God’s sake do not risk what you have for something you might never get.

Those lessons burrow deep.

They become the architecture of how you see the world

You do not dream big because dreaming big feels like setting yourself up for disappointment.

You do not swing for the fences because striking out feels worse than never stepping up to the plate.

So I built a life around being careful.

Good career. Steady income.

Live below your means.

Save for a rainy day.

Do not try to keep up with the Joneses because the Joneses are leveraged to their eyeballs and one missed paycheck from losing the house.

Know when enough is good enough.

That philosophy served me.

It got me to sixty with a comfortable lifestyle and money in the bank and the freedom to do what I want with my time.

Most people never get there.

The boring, repetitive, long-term approach worked exactly the way it was supposed to.

But there is something stirring now that was not there before.

A deeper ambition.

Not for money.

For impact.

For legacy.

For the satisfaction of building something that matters to people I care about.

My business plan is to build The Leader’s Dojo to a level where it generates half a million dollars a year.

That is the number.

Not because I need half a million dollars.

Because that number represents a certain scale of impact.

A certain number of gym owners I have helped.

A certain number of students whose experience improved because their instructor learned how to build a better business.

I am following advice that Michael Port gave me over ten years ago.

Whatever you charge, make sure you deliver five to ten times that in measurable value.

If I am charging a gym owner a certain amount, they need to be able to look at their numbers before working with me and after working with me and see a 5x-10x return in revenue they would not have had otherwise.

That is the math.

That is the goal.

That is what makes the goal worth pursuing.

The Two Questions

Which brings me back to MrBeast and the two questions.

How far am I willing to push myself to hit that half-million-dollar-a-year target at sixty years old?

• Am I willing to work the hours?
• Take the rejection?
• Learn the skills?

Do the daily outreach when nobody is responding and nobody is watching and the only thing keeping me going is the belief that the reps will eventually compound?

MrBeast said that his mental health is not a priority.

That the life he lives is not a life anyone else wants.

That the reason he is where he is is because he was willing to suffer in ways other people are not.

I am not willing to sacrifice my mental health.

I am not willing to sacrifice my marriage, my training, my travel, or my peace of mind.

Those things are non-negotiable.

They are the reason I built the life I built. They are the foundation. If the business costs me those things, the business is not worth it.

But I am willing to sacrifice comfort.

I am willing to do the work when I do not feel like doing the work.

I am willing to be bad at something in public until I get good at it in private.

I am willing to send the twentieth email after nineteen went unanswered.

I am willing to study the craft of business the same way I have studied the craft of martial arts, with patience and humility and the understanding that the belt changes color when the reps are done and not a day before.

The second question matters more.

Is what I want actually worth it?

The answer depends on why you want it.

If the goal is money, the money will not feel as good as you think it will.

If the goal is status, the status will feel hollow once you have it.

If the goal is to prove something to someone who is not even paying attention, you will hit the target and feel nothing.

But if the goal is to be more deeply connected to your tribe?

To use your skills and experience to help people you genuinely care about?

To leave something behind that continues to serve people after you are gone?

That is worth getting up for.

That is worth the rejection.

That is worth the grind.

At least to me, it is.

I chose the martial arts community because it chose me first.

It gave me discipline when I was young and angry.

It gave me confidence when I was scared.

It gave me friends when I was lonely.

It gave me a wife when I was thirty-five and had given up on finding one.

The least I can do is give something back.

The most I can do is build something that outlasts me.

The Exit Plan

There is a question that does not get asked enough in goal-setting conversations.

What is your exit plan?

Not your exit plan if you fail.

Everyone talks about that.

The fallback. The safety net. The plan B.

That is the easy part to think about because it is fear-based and fear is a motivator that never takes a day off.

I mean your exit plan if you succeed.

What happens when you hit the goal?

• Do you set a new one?
• Do you sell?
• Do you coast?
• Do you hand it off to someone else and walk away?
• Do you let it consume you for another decade because you never thought about what comes after?

And what happens if the goal turns out to be the wrong goal?

What if you get halfway there and realize you do not want what you thought you wanted?

Do you have permission to change your mind?

Do you have a way to pivot without burning everything down behind you?

Most people never answer these questions because they never set goals big enough to require them.

They set goals that are extensions of what they are already doing.

• Make a little more.
• Get a little better.
• Lose a little weight.

Those are not goals.

Those are adjustments.

They do not require an exit plan because they do not change anything fundamental about how you live.

A real goal changes you.

It changes your schedule.

It changes your relationships.

It changes what you say no to.

It changes who you become.

And if you do not have an exit plan, you can end up trapped inside the life you built to achieve the goal, wondering why you do not feel free even though you got what you said you wanted.

For me, the exit plan is built into the goal itself.

The business is not the point. The business is a vehicle.

When it reaches the level where it is generating enough to fund the philanthropy I want to do and the lifestyle I want to live, I will let it run and spend more time on the things the business was designed to support.

More training. More travel. More time with my wife. More writing. More time on the mat.

If it does not reach that level, I still get to train. I still get to travel. I still get to wake up next to my wife every morning.

The goal is upside. The baseline is already good.

That is the advantage of setting a big goal from a position of already having enough.

The goal does not have to save you.

It only has to stretch you.

The Four Questions

So here is where I land.

If you are setting a goal, especially a BHAG, a big hairy audacious goal that will require years of your life to achieve, ask yourself four questions.

What is the goal, exactly?

Not a feeling.

Not a direction.

A number. A timeframe.

Something you can measure and know when you have hit it.

Why do you want it?

If the answer is money or status or proving something to someone, dig deeper.

Those motivations burn out fast.

Find the reason that will still be there when the work gets hard and nobody is clapping.

What are you willing to give up for it?

Not what are you willing to do. Everyone is willing to do things.

What are you willing to sacrifice?

• Sleep?
• Weekends?
• Comfort?
• Certainty?
• Time with people you love?

Be honest.

The cost is real.

Pretending it is not is how you end up resenting the goal you set.

What is your exit plan if it succeeds or does not?

If you hit the goal, what then?

If you miss the goal, what then?

If you change your mind halfway through, what then?

You need answers to all three.

Most people skip the last question entirely.

Then they either hit the goal and feel lost, or miss the goal and feel like a failure, or change their mind and feel like a quitter.

All three outcomes are avoidable.

All three come from the same mistake: treating the goal as the destination instead of as one chapter in a longer story.

Your Life, Your Terms

Here is the thing about personal leadership I keep coming back to.

It is your life.

You are the one who has to live it.

Not the people you are trying to impress.

Not the people who told you to dream bigger or smaller or differently.

Not the algorithm.

Not the culture.

You.

If you want to build a five-billion-dollar empire, build it.

Just know what you are trading for it.

MrBeast knows. He told you in the clip.

His mental health is not the priority.

He made that trade consciously.

Most people trade the same things without ever realizing they are making a trade at all.

If you want to build a small, quiet life that nobody writes articles about, build it.

That is a perfectly valid goal.

The trap is not aiming low.

The trap is aiming at nothing and pretending you aimed.

If you want to be like me, a sixty-year-old man starting over as a white belt in a new arena, building a business not because he needs the money but because he wants to be useful to people he loves, do that.

Just know that it will be hard in ways you do not expect and rewarding in ways you cannot predict.

The goal is not the point.

The point is the person you become in pursuit of the goal.

The discipline.

The resilience.

The capacity to delay gratification.

The ability to take rejection without taking it personally.

The willingness to show up on the days when showing up is the only thing you have left.

Those are the real prizes.

The goal is just the excuse to chase them.

• So ask yourself the four questions.
• Answer them honestly.
• Then get to work.

Not because someone on YouTube told you to.

Because you decided your life was worth building something meaningful inside of, and you are the only one who gets to decide what meaningful looks like.

At the end of the day, you will not be judged by whether you hit the goal.

You will be judged by whether you lived a life you respected.

That is the only metric that matters.

Everything else is just data.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Failure Reframe

Write down your last failure.

Then answer:

• What did I learn?
• How does this make me stronger?

📚 Leader’s Library

Book I recommend this week:

​The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle​

Why?

Because even a science fiction book can teach important lessons, such as appearances can be deceiving and that some battles there will never have a winner so they are not worth fighting in the first place.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck