The One-Goal Method: How to Win 2026 by Doing Less

Eric Moeller | Freewyld 

Hey, hey, what's up people. Eric Moeller here and welcome back to the Get Paid For Your Pad podcast. I'm very excited about today. This is actually my first solo podcast on Get Paid For Your Pad, and we're going to be diving into something that's very close to my heart: a practice that I have been implementing, fine-tuning, and teaching over the last 10 to 12 years. It is all about goal setting and, most importantly, how to actually achieve the goals that you set in your business and in your personal life.

I was introduced to goal setting at a very early age when I was 18 years old and I started getting into entrepreneurship, reading all the books like Rich Dad Poor Dad, and going to different seminars. One thing that I recognized and one thing I was taught was that every successful person, regardless if it's in business, career, life, family, or sports, doesn't really matter, anyone who is great and accomplishes great things has a vision for what they want to accomplish. They all really focus on setting goals. Everyone has their own approach to developing goals, but the most important thing here is to recognize that we need goals. If we're going to accomplish anything in life, whether it's weight loss, building a business, starting a business, or selling a business, we have to develop goals in a way that we're actually going to stick to them and accomplish them.

So today's podcast is all about that. We're titling this: Mastering the Art of Single Focus Goals: How to Win Your Year by Doing Less Better. The reason why I built that subtitle in here is because for many years when I set goals, I fell into that trap. You know that famous saying: "You overestimate what you can do in a year, but underestimate what you can do in 10 years." That's completely true, and I lived that saying for many years. At the end of the year, I would start mapping out the new year and I would set all these massive goals. I would have the excitement and I would feel myself accomplishing these goals.

Then the work starts. The monotony kicks in, the distractions kick in, laziness, new interests, and new challenges pop up and deter me from my goals. I had this pattern where, while planning for the new year, I set all these massive goals, but I didn't take into consideration the energy that goes into each one of them. At the end of the year, when I was recapping, typically what happened was I had a bunch of different goals that I put on the board. A lot of them I started heading towards, but really, at the end of the year, I had only accomplished a couple of major goals.

I started realizing that it's not necessarily about setting a ton of different things and going after everything at once. I started studying what I call "the greats" in the world. If you think of people who have accomplished great things, from sports to business and life, the Michael Jordans, the Elon Musks, the individuals that come to mind when you think of a certain topic. I recognized that these greats don't set a million different goals. They set one goal: to be great at what they're doing, and anything else in their life supports that one vision and supports that one goal.

If you look at Michael Jordan during his career, he wasn't exploring different sports or different businesses. He wasn't exploring anything other than being the absolute best at basketball. If you read books about him or watch the Netflix series, you see he had this obsession with just being the absolute best. Arguably, he is still the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) in basketball. Later in his career, of course, he started tapping into other things, he played baseball for a season and now he's obsessed with golf, but during his early stages, he was completely focused and single-minded on being the greatest at basketball.

I started realizing that, first off, if you're a person who doesn't set goals for your business and personal life, just getting anything on the board and sticking to it until the end of the year is a major win. However, if you have been setting goals for years and missing them, hopefully this approach will give you a new perspective. I just read a notification today from an app called Strava, a fitness app that tracks biking and running. They have millions of users, and today, January 10th, is officially the day that 80% of people quit their New Year's resolutions. 80% of people who set goals and resolutions quit just 10 days in. That blew my mind.

I'm hoping that we, as a collective, whoever's listening to this podcast, are inspired to do great things, build great businesses, and build a great life for ourselves. This is what myself, Jasper, and the rest of the team really stand for and what we're actively working on. Accomplishing those things takes focus and discipline. It takes working at something every single day until you accomplish it. And then, even when you accomplish it, you're still pushing. My hope here is that I can give you a perspective so you're not part of that 80% that quits 10 days in. If you are part of that group, hopefully this is something that on day 11 or day 12 can re-motivate and re-inspire you to develop that discipline to get back after it.

Back in the day, all the way up to last year, I would set many different goals. I would set my top five business goals, top five personal goals, adventure goals, fitness goals, and relationship goals. Although it came from a place of inspiration, you tend to overestimate what you can do in that year and underestimate what you can do in five or ten years. I noticed a pattern where every single year I would accomplish one or two major goals and get some traction on others, but I wouldn't fully accomplish them. If you know me, that drives me crazy.

So, I decided to completely strip away this mindset that I need multiple goals to go after. There's this really amazing and simple book called The ONE Thing. I’ve read it multiple times, but even so, I haven't lived up to that mindset of choosing the one thing that, if accomplished, will make everything else easier to achieve. I'm implementing that this year. The way I’m approaching my goal setting now is developing the number one goal in business and the number one goal in my personal life. If I accomplish those two goals, it makes everything else I want throughout the year attainable.

Let me back up a little bit. I mentioned this earlier, but I really learned this in 2025: when you're setting goals, you have to take into consideration the energy that goes into accomplishing them. Energy spent on one goal can be energy taken away from another. For example, on the personal side, I set a goal to be in the best shape of my life by the end of 2025. I hired a personal trainer, set a body fat percentage target, and a strength measurement goal. I worked with this trainer two to three times a week, really dialing it in.

But I also set a goal to become a blue belt in Jiu-Jitsu. If anyone does Jiu-Jitsu, you know being a white belt is insanely difficult. It's challenging on an ego level, a physical level, and a mental level. I did not take into consideration the energy that goes into accomplishing either one of those goals. Once I committed to Jiu-Jitsu, it started taking away from my strength goals at the gym because Jiu-Jitsu is a brutal sport. I didn't take into consideration the recovery process or the learning process. If you’ve recently committed to learning something brand new, you know the learning process sucks, and you have to fall in love with it.

As I was going through this, I realized my goal for Jiu-Jitsu was taking away from my fitness goal. Then these two goals together made me so exhausted at the end of the day, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that it actually took away from my business goals because I wasn't showing up with the energy I needed. Then I started getting injuries, which I also didn't consider. Towards the end of the year, I missed both of those goals. I made accomplishments, but I fell short of the targets, and that drove me crazy. I realized it's all about the energy. Where can you put your energy to accomplish your goals? Once you have momentum, you can start building off of those goals.

The last part to this is making your goals connect and feed each other. I realized my three business goals last year did not feed each other. Scaling our revenue management service (RPM) did not support building an acquisition team for a new hotel, which did not support a development team for new cabins in Idyllwild. So we're switching all of this up. What I want you guys to focus on is: what if you could put all your effort, energy, excitement, and resources into accomplishing one thing in your business that makes everything else easier?

We are creating goals for personal and business life, but I also realize we have interests and additional experiences we want to go after. For example, I’ve been playing the guitar for a few years but never really committed to understanding the fretboard or scales. I want to learn how to write songs, but I know if I set a "top 5" goal to learn guitar and I don't fully commit, I’m going to miss it and lose momentum. So, this year we have our number one business goal and number one personal goal, and then we have "experiences" on the board. Learning guitar is an experience. I’ve set some accountability, playing half an hour a day, but it’s not one of my top goals that would take away momentum if not perfectly checked off.

Now, let's talk about the four elements that go into achieving any massive goal: Vision, Plan, Transparency, and Accountability.

1. Vision: This is a clear finish line with a specific date and emotional weight. For example, I'm going to be 40 years old in just over a year. My birthday is February 2nd. When I was a kid, I remember when my father and uncles turned 40; they treated it like the end of their lives, giving each other canes and "over the hill" shirts. I thought life ended at 40. Now, coming up on it, I feel like life is just getting started. I want to redefine what that means for me and my family. My theme for the year is "Fit 40." This means being in the absolute best shape of my life physically and financially. I can see exactly what's going to happen on my 40th birthday. I can feel it.
2. Plan: Once you have that finish line, you need a plan. You break that down quarterly: what do you need to accomplish to stay on track? Then you break it down monthly and weekly, focusing just on this week and the next. I’ve dialed in the macros I need to track, how many times I need to work out, and how much I need to rest. If I follow the plan, I will accomplish the goal.
3. Transparency: You have to understand the data. The only way to know if the plan is working is to track it. For me, that’s tracking data in MyFitnessPal, weekly weigh-ins, and weekly photos. It's about ensuring the actions I take every day are getting me closer to the goal.
4. Accountability: Left to my own devices, I might not go to the gym, or I won’t push as hard as I can. So, I invest in a personal trainer. I moved my expenses around so I can afford to work with him four days a week. But there’s a second set of accountability I learned 10 years ago: setting a "pain point" and a "reward."

I created a contract on ChatGPT, and I have witnesses, my wife and my personal trainer, who signed it. The contract states a dollar amount that will be deducted from my account and donated to a place that completely misaligns with my values if I miss my goal. I have a friend who did this; his pain point was donating to a politician he disagreed with. It was so painful that on the days he lacked discipline, he looked at that pain point and took action.

My trainer also added a clause: if I miss my goal, I have to show up to the gym for the entire month of February 2027 working out in a dress. I do not have the body for a dress, so that is motivating me! The reward side is just as important. I’ve always wanted to sit ringside at a UFC championship fight, but the tickets are expensive and I could never justify it. Now, if I hit my goal, the reward is those ringside tickets. It makes the process fun and gives me something to look forward to.

To wrap this up, I want to help everyone listening:

1. Set goals. You have to set targets in your personal life and business. That never ends. I have a friend who sold his company for $2 billion last year, and he is still setting goals for his family, wealth, and fitness.
2. Follow the four elements. Compelling vision, measurable plan, transparency in tracking, and accountability with pain and rewards.

A few resources:

• The ONE Thing: Highly recommend reading it to understand why you should focus on one thing.
• Traction (EOS System): If your business is around a million dollars or less, read this to learn about KPIs and cadences.
• Scaling Up: If you’re at $5 million and above, this is the elevated version of Traction.
• Essentialism: This book helps you understand what is actually essential in a world of constant distractions.
• The Big Ass Calendar (Jesse Itzler): I just finished mapping out my entire year on this. It helps you see everything, travel, goals, energy, at once.

Final announcements: We are hiring at Freewyld Foundry. If you are a talented revenue manager in the STR or hotel space, email me at eric@freewyld.com. If you are an STR operator with $1 million or more in revenue, we have room for new clients in our RPM service. Go to freewyldfoundry.com to apply.

Thank you for listening. Set your goals, find your community, and seek accountability. Hit me up on LinkedIn if you want to share your goals. I’ll see you soon.