Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Never Peak Project Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Ranger, Mindset Coach Speaker, and the guy who walked across the entire country with little more than a backpack and a whole lot of grit. This podcast is about what it takes to build a life worth remembering and how to keep climbing even when you feel like giving up. So if you ever felt like the goals you care about are just too far away or too big
to start, this episode is for you. What if the mountain you're trying to climb isn't as overwhelming as it seems? What if it's not about doing something massive, but doing something small, consistently over time? That's what we're diving into today. How to stay consistent with goals, even when they feel far away, even when you don't feel motivated, and even when the results aren't showing up. I want to take you back to Fort Smith, Arkansas.
I was a few months into my walk across the country, and honestly, I hadn't been paying as close attention to the numbers as I should have been. One of my buddies made an Excel sheet for me. He's an engineer, so very number, big number guy. And I was putting in my numbers every single day of how many miles I walked, how many steps I took, what time I started and stopped. But I hadn't been keeping track of the main number. I had it on a separate page so I wouldn't get
too bogged down in it. So I was logging my miles. Some days were 20, some 25. There was a couple tens. There were some highs. There were some brutal lows. But I just kept walking and logging. And one day I was doing a site tour of Hopesbridge Inc., which is a sober living home with one of my walk friends, Austin Coates. who you might remember from season one of the podcast. He was on an earlier episode. That show will be linked
down in the description. But Austin was giving me a tour and the local news crew was there and they were asking some of the usual questions like, why are you doing this? What have you learned? When are you going to finish? Et cetera, et cetera. Then they asked me how many miles I'd walked. I opened up my tracker and I was just past 1 ,000 miles. And I stood there a little bit stunned, not because I didn't believe that I could do it, but because that number had snuck up on me.
Now, there wasn't a big confetti pop. I didn't get a reward for walking a thousand miles, but it was there and it was done. And the other thing is I hadn't crossed a thousand miles walking across the country in one day. It wasn't one massive sprint. It wasn't all at once. It wasn't some grand gesture. I got there by going one step at a time. 20 miles here, 30 miles there, 5 to 10 on the rough days. And that's when it really hit me. Big goals are built from small
repeated actions over time. The mountain is made of pebbles. So nowadays we live in a culture that glorifies fast success. You see overnight successes everywhere on TikTok, Instagram, etc. How I built this in 16 days, how I made millions overnight. And I get it. I used to think the same way. I thought that success just is a thing that happens. There's like the success fairy that comes, shows up one day and knocks you over the head. And after college, I figured that I
would graduate. I'd get my fancy degree. And right out the gate, get a six -figure job. I thought that good old Ranger Keelak, after barely scraping by in college, getting a managerial economics degree from UC Davis, would walk out and employers would be banging down my door to give me over $100 ,000. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, oh, I know where this is going. And you may be right. Because what happened instead is I worked minimum wage. at a pet store for
six months. And it felt like I had failed. Like I hadn't been living up to my potential, that this was just another string, another notch in the bedpost of things gone wrong. But the truth was, I wasn't behind. I just hadn't learned the value of actual consistent effort over time. I was trying to leap over a mountain that could only be crossed one step at a time. It was like I was trying to get the outcome without putting in the inputs and waiting the appropriate amount
of time. Nowadays, when I coach clients who feel like they're stuck or like they're not doing enough, I remind them you're not behind. You're just in the middle. It's easy to compare your snapshot to someone else's highlight reel without realizing you're just at different parts of the movie. It's not about being perfect. It's not about doing everything. It's about showing up again and again and again and again. And again. There's that old homage, that old saying, Rome
wasn't built in a day. And I feel like that is something that is so cliche now that we forget about it. But it's true. Let's break it down to more so instead of an entire ancient city, just what it looks like today in the real world. It's writing 200 words a day, not a novel. It's making the uncomfortable phone call. It's drinking water instead of another cup of coffee. Calling myself out there. Saying no to something that drains you. It's showing up to your coaching
calls. It's asking for help. None of these things are going to change your life in one day. But when done consistently, they stack, they build momentum, and they shape your character and create the life that you end up living. It's win, win, win, win, win, win, any way that you possibly can every single day. And one day, you'll look up and realize, that you've come a lot further
than you ever thought possible. So to really wrap up what we've just discussed, today we've talked about what it really means to stay consistent with your goals. We've let go of the idea that success has to come fast. We've reframed big ideas as connections of small actions. And we learned that mountains, no matter how tall, are made of pebbles. So if you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, Just remember, you don't need a giant breakthrough. You just need a repeatable
rhythm. Now, if you're sitting on a dream that feels far away, a business relationship, a sense of self, and you're not sure how to move forward, let's talk. I offer free 15 -minute coaching calls, no pressure, just a real conversation. And together, we'll help you identify your mountain, name your next pebble, and find a way to move forward. without burning out. If you're interested, just hit the Calendly link in the show notes
to book your call. And if you want to hear more about the story in Fort Smith or get inspired by Austin Coates' own journey of sobriety, check out our episode together. I'll link that for you down in the show notes. Now remember that the best is yet to come as long as you are willing to make the decision every single day to never settle, never quit, and never peak. I'll see you guys in the next one.