Episode 318: Looking Ahead to 2024

What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design. Hey everyone. Well, happy New Year. This podcast is dropping on January 1st. We hope that you had an amazing 2023 and looking forward to 2024. When I think about looking forward to 2024, there's just a few specific things that I started doing a couple years ago that I thought I would share with all of you, and then one specific tool that may help you as well. So number one is, uh, picking a word of the year. I think I, I think I got this from John Gordon, um, and I look back on some of the years that, uh, I wish I'd had a word of the year. But I started this about 4 years, 5 years ago, and so 2024 will be my 6th year. And it's really helped me to kind of frame a lot of the things that I want to do, either both personally and professionally, of what I want that year to be about. So I thought I would share with all of you what my word of the year is for 2024, and that is focus. I really want to be able to focus both in my personal life and in my business life. I want to be very present whenever I'm with my family, with friends, and especially with my kids. I want to be able to focus. I want to be— and that looks like active listening, it looks like putting down my phone, it looks like being fully there when I'm with some, uh, with people, with my kids and my family, my friends, etc. It also means when I'm focusing that I'm being very intentional. I have clear outcomes. I know exactly what it is, how we're measuring success. I know exactly what I'm responsible for, and I'm gonna stay laser focused. This also goes in with the second thing I want to share with all of you, and that is what's the theme of the year for the business, and that is more, better. More, better. If I look back, and I didn't have a theme of the business in 2023 specifically, so this is something new, um, but I really can tell you that I kind of did have a theme for the year, and it was new. There was a lot of the new things in 2023. We relaunched the podcast as something new, from the Club Capital Leadership Podcast to Above the Business, a branded one of my companies. We started a lot of new initiatives in 2023, and specifically in the second half of the year, and those were all great things. But in 2024, I want it to be about us doing more of the things that work, and I want us to do the things that we do better. Specifically, I want this podcast, every episode that we— that I release whether it's a Monday interview or it's a Friday solo podcast, I want them to be better. And there's some specific things that we're doing to make that happen. With our Above the Business events, I want every event, every time we do an event, to get better every single time. Well, what are some of the things that we're doing to do that? Well, specifically, I'm looking— I'm upgrading our Zoom, not just our Zoom account, how much we're paying Zoom, but exactly what the experience actually looks like. We're going to be upgrading my audio. You're going to see tangible difference in the audio quality that's going to be coming in 2024 as well. And there's many more things that we're doing to do things simply better. We're having even better guests. I'm trying to ask better questions. What does it look like, uh, for this to have more transformation? And one of the things that that also looks like is giving you access to some of the tools and resources that we discuss, or I share, that may help you in your business as well. And one of the things that really helps me every year is to preload the year. And that means kind of looking at the year from getting above the business, looking at it from the 30,000-foot view and saying, okay, here it is. I've got 365 days. How am I going to allocate that time? And I will tell you, this is the first time that— not the first time I've used the preloaded year asset, but it's the first time that I've actually intentionally looked at how I'm investing my time. Where am I? How much time specifically am I spending across the different companies? And so for me, here's what that looks like. I'm down to 41 weeks of work, 1,500 hours across 3 companies. I'm going to spend 69% of my time, of my work, of that $1,500— $1,500— 1,500 hours is going to be allocated to one of the companies. The other company is going to get 13%. The other one's going to be 10%. Well, what am I going to be doing in the, in that time? Well, I'm working in the business, I'm working on the business, and I'm getting above the business. And so I have 9 pages of notes where I started to lay out what does that actually look like from a time allocation perspective, because I've got 1,500 hours to work with. That becomes 17% of my year. And I'm working 41 weeks. That's me. I'm taking off 11 weeks. Now, are those 11 weeks going to be probably full weeks? No, but that's where I'm shooting for, is to get to where I'm taking 41— I'm working 41 weeks, taking 11 weeks off. Actually, I want to get to where it's 40 and 12. And so from even our marketing campaigns perspective and things that we're doing, I'm dividing it by 41, not by 52. Because there's some of the weeks we're not going to be doing marketing campaigns, et cetera. We're not going to be doing any work, hopefully, on some of those. Now, is that going to be perfect? Not at all. Not in any way. I've never done that type of allocation of my time and kind of projecting what that's going to be moving forward. But it's directionally correct. In fact, it's more than directionally correct. I'm, I'm investing that time. I'm looking where I'm going to invest the time. Workwise. And what it's actually helped me to do is kind of realize, you know, there's a finite amount of time that we have left on this earth. But if Lord willing, I'm able to have all of 2024, where am I going to invest that time? What is that time actually going to look like? Where am I going to be spending that time that I have? And I want to make sure that I'm doing it on the things that are actually going to grow the business, because I have— I am more than just what the business is, um, and for all of us, you know, our, um, you know, who we see ourselves as a person is more than what we just do in our businesses. And so how am I going to allocate that time? So the tool that's been really helpful for me to look at this and kind of think about, all right, when are the times I'm going to take vacations with the family? What's that look like? Has been called the Preloaded Year. And if you'd like to get access to this simple one-page PDF, I encourage you, like, either print it off. I use it on the iPad. So I take, take that one-pager, get it into GoodNotes, which is the software I use on my iPad. And then I start to use different colors of what that's actually going to look like. And if those of you that may be kind of seeing us watching this on YouTube, then I'll give you kind of a glimpse as to what that actually looks like if you want to see that.

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It kind of lays out in quarters, but it's the entire year on one page. And you've got Sunday through Saturday, so you can get an idea of what days are going to fall on what, what date is going to follow what day. And it really helped to use different colors to kind of allocate, hey, this is a workshop, or this is an event that we're doing, or this is one of our retreats that we're hosting, or this is whenever I'm going to be taking time off, et cetera. So I have a company shared one, and then I have a personal one that starts to overlay all of the, you know, personal things, whether it's a golf trip that I'm going to try to take in 2024, or whether it's, you know, family vacations, things of that nature. So anyway, that tool is great. If you would like to get access to that tool, just go to my asset library, go to blueprintos.com/assets. That's blueprintos.com/assets, A-S-S-E-T-S, plural, assets. So go check that out. You can see a bunch of other tools that we use, but if you'd like access to that preloaded year, it has been really super helpful to me to kind of start looking at how much time am I going to take off. And you know, the analogy people use, big rocks, pebbles, sand, water. People can, you know, you put the big rocks in and then you, and then you put the small pebbles and then you put sand, then you put water in. You know, we all get that analogy, but I think it's what does that actually look like? What, what are the big things you put in first? Well, for me, it was, I put in, okay, time off, because if I didn't, I would just work 52 weeks out of the year. I'd work 7 days a week, um, all, all the time. So I got to put in time off. I got to time— what, what, uh, strategic coach Dan Sullivan calls it free days. So I put that in first. Secondly is personal development. What's that going to look like? If I can get an idea, is there some programs I'm going to go to? Is there groups I'm going to go to? What's my personal development going to look like? I'm also going to look at, um, start looking at other family activities that you may have. Uh, look at certainly some big holidays. So 4th of July, uh, President's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, et cetera. And you start to kind of put those in. And so what's happening to your year. Is it slowly starting, starting to take shape? And what that helps you to be able to do is kind of see the year at a glance and really kind of get above the business. And it helps you to see, how am I going to allocate my time? And where am I going to invest that time? I'm investing resources, cash, but the most important resource, the most finite resource that your business has is your time as the entrepreneur and the business owner. That's the most finite asset of that business, is your time. And so where are you going to be allocating your time? And how's the, the ebbs and flows of the year going to actually play out? Like, if I look at specifically for us, the last 3 weeks of March in Q1 get pretty nuts. I mean, they are super busy. We've got a retreat that we're taking our members to, um, uh, fourth— third week of March. Week before that is spring break. The week after that, we're running the quarterly and above the business event. That is a busy, busy 3 weeks. Well, naturally, the first couple weeks of April, we need to have kind of come off of that and give myself and the team a little bit of a break. And so we'll kind of build that ebb and flow into it. Come out of that, we have the Above the Business intensive in late April that we'll have. And so we'll start building back up towards leading up to that event. Well, what's your year look like? Your year, as much as we would like to think, oh, the year is going to be super consistent, we're going to perform at a high level every single day, all the time. That's just not reality. It's just not my opinion of what reality is. And so this tool really helps you to be able to do that. It's a one-page simple PDF. Print it off. I encourage you to use different colors if you print it off, or if you put it in your iPad, you can obviously use highlight different colors. And it's been really helpful to me. So I'd love to know what's your word of the year? What's your theme of the year? My word of the year is focus. My theme more, better. We're going to try not to do many new things in 2024. Tool that's helped me with this: Reload a Year. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.