People: Personal Planning

Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business Podcast. I'm your host and Gazelle's business coach, Bill Gallagher. With me on the show today is a special show. This will be on both itunes, on the podcast and on video is Eliot Lachansky with insync in Seattle. Elliot is one of our clients. He's an entrepreneur and head of a company that does application and desktop hosting of everything. So if you're sick of running your own server and managing your own it, their whole purpose is freeing you up to do what you love, taking over the IT challenges so that you can work from anywhere in the way that you choose with anyone, get it all in the cloud and stop managing your QuickBooks and whatever the heck else you run there in your business. That's their whole world. And it's been my pleasure to be working with Elliot and his team there. And we're going to talk about today about how do you engage and help all of your people on a really personal level to connect what they care about personally, like that stuff and what they're dealing with in their life in the long term and down in the short term, Then how do you connect it to their job and. And then how do we as leaders in the business reconcile our personal and our business and then have a balanced life that works well together and that everything is taking. So welcome to the show, Elliot.

Great to be here, Bill. Really appreciate you having me on.

All right, so. And thanks for doing this live with us. I know, you know, most of our coaching kinds of conversations are not live and shared with people. We're doing a little bit more of this to give really a wider audience of what. And then hopefully this video is helpful to your folks as well and the people with our client companies as well as our general audience. So I'm going to talk to you today about the one page personal planner. How do we bring personal planning? And I think it's a great topic this time of year. In particular, the time that I personally do this every single year is between Christmas and New Year's. So that time where business shuts down or gets very quiet for most of us and that we begin to reflect on the last year and the year ahead is the time that I do this. So I want to talk to you about this. And we're going to use a form today, so let me go ahead and share that now so that everybody can see it. And then hopefully we'll have us in the conversation as well. So you can see waved hi to everybody, Elliot. It's probably the first time that you're on video for the folks on our podcast video version. So that, by the way, the video version of this will be@YouTube.com billgallagher so if you just go to Bill Gallagher at YouTube, you can go and subscribe there and we'll actually be putting more and more of our video content on there in the next little bit, so. And then of course, we're on itunes. Scaling Up Business is the podcast. And our website, scalingupbusiness.com is where you go to see more of these series and the other episodes. So this is the one page personal plan, right. And like I said, this is what I'd like you to do and your leaders and then even perhaps anybody all the way down through the organization as far as you want to take it. It's a really useful thing to do between Christmas and New Year's in that time of reflection, to do it first personally, then to share it with your spouse, significant other, like whoever sort of matters in your life that you're connected with and reconcile that. I always find there's a little. There's some work to do in reconciling that and then to bring it to the other people you work with. So your business partners, your leadership team, inviting them to share with you and back and forth the work that you do here. The key thing to remember here, though, is that you got to create some safety around this. So let people do full, complete personal work. Don't ask them to show you their personal form or they'll do it in a kind of a safe way. That doesn't make the same difference for people. However, if you say share with me whatever you want to, whatever is relevant, what you'd like me to know about your goals, plans for the year, the things that you're doing and how the job relates so that we can start to integrate the two. Then a couple things happen. One is people experience being related. Like you care and you know about them. Like they had a chance to share the things that they're comfortable sharing and you do actually know them. So as you're working with them on whatever they're dealing with, you have an opportunity to kind of interact and connect. You know, their motivation. Yeah. Makes sense.

Absolutely.

What do you do you do anything like this already?

You know, I. Not recently, but I've tried to do some things generally like this in the past, you know, kind of exercises or along the lines of picturing. You're on your deathbed, for lack of a better term, and you're Looking back at your life and it was a phenomenal life, that whole kind of exercise I've done. And I think it's very valuable.

Yeah, I use that one or a version of it for people who find that a little too morbid. I'll talk about. Well, some people do, right? I did it with a farm group once and one of the guys is like, holy crap, I can't do that. So I said, just think about your retirement party, right? Just way out your chair. And it's really helpful for thinking about life purpose. This is a little bit back from that. And a week ago we did a conversation about purpose with Mike Birtzel. So you can go find that about personal purpose, life purpose connected with business purpose. How do you connect the two? How do you discover them? How do you articulate them? So we did that just recently and this is actually back a little bit from that. So we're looking at something in the 10 to 25 year time frame. So here's how I like to use this. The first thing is creating a little room, a little freedom, a little space to do it. So the way to do that is not on this form here, but is. So it's not on this form. But to begin this exercise, it's useful to sort of take stock of the last year, consider. So most of our awareness, our thoughts and feelings revolve around a very sort of narrow range, like the last couple months or couple weeks. In this conversation, it's useful to actually sort of open the calendar and look at a bigger period, right? So what is the last. What is for you, the whole last year? So look back, flip through the calendar, consider the events that happened, and then think about all the different areas of your life. If you have a spouse or a life partner, romantic partner, your family and friends, children, parents, siblings, the whole world of that, your old buddies, whatever it is, your best girlfriends. And then in your health, in your fitness, in your professional life, considering any spiritual practices or purpose, sort of centered things, your own traditions and rituals, your hobbies, your financial wealth or security, like all of that world of different areas. And some of you may have. When you think about areas of life, you may think about different kinds of things, but these touch on many of the broad ones. It's fine to add any others that are important to you. Like we don't have listed in here communities that might show up in many of these, but you may be member of different communities. You may want to think of those as well. And so I reflect back in the last year and in particular for me, flipping through the calendar and noticing, oh yeah, I did that. Oh yeah, I did that very often. For me, it all just sort of blends. And then things that happen this year, I think is having happened a much longer time period ago, like, oh, that must have been a couple years ago. And then other kinds of things that feel like they were yesterday. Right. And this is probably a sign of my age, this point, but where things are starting to blend together. So doing some reflection back on it. So what was awesome? What sucked? Things you're proud of, things you're grateful for, and then the things that you regret, things that you are sorry for, things that you feel bad about, like the whole world of it. So just kind of getting it all, getting your thoughts, feelings, emotions, like sort of getting it all out there. This is the first part. It's just kind of clearing some space. That's also useful to do with a spouse or partner if you have that to do. That kind of reflecting and actually sort of reviewing it. But then actually speaking it out with another person makes a difference for most of us. If you're not comfortable doing that, writing it down can be a similar kind of a thing. So it's sort of getting it out of you, not just swirling around in your head. And at some point, Dan, and whether it be a few minutes or a few hours of that, you can say, you know what? That's it. That's my year. That was last year. I'm starting to move into the new year. So that's the first part of the process. Not even on the form that we're talking about here, but that's the first part of the process. Questions about that.

Not about that specifically. I've got a running list here, I think that probably will fit in bigger in our conversation here.

So the last thing to sort of note about this foundational piece is that if you look around you in the world, in the media and your churches, and you'll find variations on this sort of reflection. It helps us to demark a period. Right. The period's arbitrary. Our trip around the sun, and this is where we mark that time for many of us as we start the new calendar year. So that reflection just is useful. And as you see those things going on in the media, on television and so on, you'll start to think of your own life as well in that context. Right. Okay. So that takes us to. Then this. So this is the one page personal plan. There's room to write your name here. There's room to write the Date of this. This is useful as you look back on it in the future and reflect on it. So this plan follows, and this approach follows what we are and frequently think about. Let me turn on a little highlighter here. Great. So when we think about our work, we often look out 10, 25 years. When we talk about the BHAG in the business world, the big hairy audacious goal, we're looking at something quantifiable and specific out 10, 25 years in the future. I have a 10 year BHAG. I have a 30 year BHAG for my business. Then what is it that I want for my family and like that. And then this form then starts here and this is where we're going to begin. Then it goes to one year and 90 days. You may have also followed or read about. We had a previous podcast on doing a painted picture. Some people know painted picture. Other people have heard us talk about vivid vision. There are two different sorts of versions of things that come from a couple of business partners, Brian Scudamore and Cameron Herald, that talk in particular about this personal planning. This is in that world of it, but in a slightly different way. So I look out, I pick a range here. So 10 or 25 years. Your younger people, younger members of your team may want to think about a 10 year timeframe. That may be all they can think about. And then as people get on a little bit, sometimes they may find 20 or even 25 years is an interesting thing to think about. So I ended up my BHAG for my business I did a couple years ago when I was 50. And so thinking about 80 was a natural thing for me. I did this when I did it at 50, this personal exercise. I did 75 because I like that, like that longer view. But this year when I began this, I'll do a 10 year, which is what I recommend. Most people just look at 10 years. So first of all, pick your time range. Right. What time will you do, Elliot?

I think I'll probably do. I'd like to probably match it up with. With our company's bhag. You know, not that that's sounds like it's necessary, but ours is 2 1/2 million users by 2025, so I guess we're looking at.

Well, okay, so so you'll pick 2025, right? Yeah, almost 10 years in the future. So your. It's interesting choice and totally fine. What you want to do then is first imagine some of the details that are not on this. So how old will you be in 20, 25.

I will be about 43.

Okay, great. So you're 43. And then. And how old will your spouse be?

My spouse will be 40, 41.

That's great. Okay, and parents, siblings, things like that. How old will they be?

Brother will be 41, and parents will be 73 and 76.

Okay, so 73 and 76 will be your parents. Right. And then. And your wife's parents, are they similar ages?

No, they'll be. They're. I guess they'll be 58 and 59.

Okay, so they'll be younger. Right. But with the 70, 76, you may be dealing with some things at that point. Right. And then what do you think your family will look like at 10 years in the 2025?

Probably, you know, two to four kids.

Okay.

One on the way right now, so. Yeah, yeah, it'll be bigger.

You'll be dealing with two to four kids between the ages of seven and one.

Yeah.

And you'll have parents who are 70.

And I'm immediately rethinking that whole.

Yeah. So this is really good. Perfect. So just imagine you'll be dealing with two to four kids from one to seven, and you'll be dealing with parents who are seven. 75. 75, 76. Right. And you'll be 43. Yeah. Great. So see why this is really useful because it creates a rich picture. Right? Now you want to imagine. Right. And I'm not going to have you do all of this live with me, but you want to imagine what is your key relationship like? Right. Your primary partner relationship. What is that like? Yep. Right. And then what are you dealing with? With family? What about your friends? Do you have a core group of old buddies that you get together with every now and then?

I do.

All right, what will you guys be doing? Will you still be doing whatever you normally do? Right. We don't need to know all that, but. But you want to start to think about that. So imagine that. How would you design it in the future? Now, some things are pretty inevitable, right? We either make it to 70, 75, 76, or we don't. We just don't know how long we have in life and the quality of life and all that. But that time count will be that age, Right. Or will be remembered. And then what does your health look like? What would you design it out 10 years in the future at 43? What kind of a 43 would you like to be? What would you like your career to look like? What would you like your day to look like at 43? Out in the future there. Right. So we're looking for all of that kind of thing. And then when you consider any spiritual or religious or sort of purpose centric things, fulfillment kinds of things, what would you like those things to be? Your regular hobbies, your sports, the rituals, the family traditions, that kind of thing. So sometimes I note some things in family and friends, like we see each other around key holidays and like that. But then other times there are certain things that show up in rituals or when I think about my hobbies. Right. So what do you imagine yourself doing for fun at this point in the future? Do you do more or less? So this is your opportunity. At 10 or more years in the future we can really wish for design and create things and you're not as hindered by the current circumstances. Right. And then what kinds of security do you have? I like to think of people dealing with money last. Now it's fine to deal with it first. Some people are particularly empowered that way. But for most of us it's tied to an expression of something. It's not a direct thing that we focus on. Unless you really just love playing the game of it, that's fine to think of it either way, but many times then it's useful. So if we have all these other things, do we need a certain level of income and security to manage that? Wealth and security? You could say income and security, you could just say money. But it's useful to think about it from a couple of standpoints. When we think about security, we think about what gives us peace of mind and we think about income or our current level of wealth. We're often thinking more about paying for our current lifestyle. Right. So those are some of the areas. Any thoughts or questions? Anything missing there for you?

No, I mean, I think it's a pretty holistic view of life.

So beautiful. All right. And then do you anticipate any challenges or concerns in looking at all that stuff?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we're. We have a, you know, a high growth sort of high beta business and there's a lot of things that could go right. A lot, a lot of things that could go wrong. You know, it's possible that we don't exist, but I'd like to think it's way more likely that we're.

Yeah. You're not going to wish for that right there?

Yeah, no, certainly not going to wish for that.

Certainly there are many plateaus and challenges and valleys of death along the path of growth. And things happen, things that are unforeseen. What we're doing here is really inventing and creating it the way that we want. And then life comes at you with whatever life comes at you with, right? And then you'll deal with that, but you'll deal with it against the frame and you'll find that you get a lot more of what you want if you actually take the time to wish for it. Right. And this is kind of in the world of wishing for things, this is what we would design and go to work on. Now the only problem that I have with wishing is that it can suggest or imply a certain powerlessness. So I'm not thinking just about going out and wishing on a star. I'm interested in actually saying what we want and then going to work on it, which is why we then go into the one year. So if I just think about next year from the standpoint of where I am today, I get very different results than if I start here with this future vision 10 or more years in the future. So now that I've got this vision 10 or more years in the future, then I look at next year. So what kinds of activities and accomplishments do I want to be doing in each of these areas in the next year? Where do I see myself a year from now? Some people will talk about creating a postcard to yourself or a picture of the future or from the future. I've seen different people do versions of that. But now I'm going to take what I created in the 10 year plus horizon and I'm just going to say, great. Where do I want to be at this point next year in these areas? And as you consider that there may be some things that are time to begin to deal with. So right now I have a 17 and 19 year old of my own. And then I've been helping my brother kind of get his family back together and taking care of them for the last couple of years. So I kind of see some beginning of transition. I see being largely empty nested in another year. So my son, 19, is already out in the world and my daughter's kind of heading out in the next year and I see my brother having his own place. Right. So that then has me think about, well, what do I want my relationship with my wife to look like in the next year? And I can picture all that stuff happening with family and friends. I also have a mom who's getting older and getting more challenging and I've been trying to think about how do I organize it so it's easier to see her. So one of the Things I'm putting in place is ways that I could see her more naturally, easily, with my work and my life in the coming year and not make it so difficult to get there. And I assume I'll be dealing with more of the issues of her aging in the next little bit. Right. And then I've got my wife's family to think about. Right. What do I want to be doing? How does my work life want to be different a year from now? There are definitely some things that I'm working on in expanding our service offering, the way we work and who we work with and so on. Right. My life's purpose is making a difference for people. So I'm looking at in each realm, what would I like to be doing in the next year? Are there areas that I'm not paying attention to? There definitely are this year, the things that I've sort of deferred that I want to get into the new year. So that's kind of the challenge then is to think about that and some of the things that I want to do professionally. Right. In the 10, 20 year, it's time to start them this year I need to get them going and I want to end the year having put some of those things into action. Right. And they're pretty long term, 10, 20 year kinds of things. But this is the year that I've got to begin some of those things. Right. And then finally, like what kind of cash do I want to have? What do I want my regular income income to look like, practices do I want in that area make sense?

Sure.

So as you do the big one, then you start to see things differently. Now I haven't done mine for this year, but even as we're talking about it, I can start to see some things just kind of conceptually, but I'll go through the whole flow of actually doing the exercise starting this weekend. So thoughts, Questions about this one year thing?

No, I think it's pretty straightforward, pretty clear.

Yeah. Great. Okay. So here's the last piece that I think is a little different for people, and that is we're looking in the first quarter in the next 90 days. So once you've kind of done this and then you've reconciled it and edited it with the. The key people in your life. So for me, when I did this last year, I didn't explicitly mention or talk about my marriage and my wife in my plan. Oh, yeah. And you know, there was no. I didn't mean anything by it, but I assumed a lot of it. And when I shared it with my wife, she's like, where am I in all this? And I'm like, wow. And I said, well, I assumed it. And she's like, well, I don't want to be an assumption, right? So that was a good thing. So I quickly went to work and cleaned it up and actually put my intentions in this area, my wishes and my desires, my plans around that. And then we finished reconciling our different views of things like that. So that's really helpful. And we had different thoughts about where we lived and where we traveled and how we spent our free time and that kind of thing. And I think this year will be interesting too as we do that. Now I go to the 90 days. So the first quarter now this is really critical. We start with all of these things and we're now mapping back to one year. When we get to 90 days, what we're looking at is creating new regular actions. So small changes maintained over time make the big difference. So instead of like trying to lose all that weight, now I'm looking at maybe eating a little bit better or moving more and finding ways to integrate that into our lives. So we all lead busy lives, especially the kind of people we work, really busy lives. We want to figure out how to begin to integrate these things. So what are you going to start in the next 90 days? And how well can you design that to feed the things, the outcomes for one year? And what sorts of things might you stop doing? And that one's challenging too, when we think about all of our bad habits and ill considered, automatic, thoughtless kinds of things. There are things we need to actually stop doing in some of these areas and that's pretty powerful too. In the stops it's useful sometimes to go and clean things up and say, listen, I'm stopping doing this. I'd love your support in that with key people in our lives. So what is it that you want to begin to retire doing? What is it that you want to start doing? Design matters a lot here. How and where you start to mesh in new activities and how you're going to retire existing actions. So this is all about the actions and especially the recurring actions that you're going to do. How well do we design them and then how well can you set up reminders for them so that you're reminded to do new things or stop doing old things at the key times that you need to do them and in a way that reminds you of what inspires you. So as an example for this, I had a reminder in my thing to prepare my clothing and stuff for my morning workout. For a long time, it was something like water bottles and clothes for tomorrow morning's workout was like a little reminder. And a few minutes, like 10 minutes in my calendar in the evening. The problem was is that it became automatic background rote and whatever, and it didn't remind me of the inspiration. Right. So what I changed it to that made all the difference is I changed it my reminder in there to what's the next workout? It was just a question. So now in the evening, as I'm finishing up dinner or whatever, I see this reminder that comes up that says, what's the next workout? It really helps me. It more engages action. Now at some point that'll become tired, whatever. But one of my starts was to be more consistent and do more of my workouts in the morning than in the middle or the end of the day. So I wanted to create something the night before that would cause me to do it. But you get that now I'm designing and changing actions. And the key focus in the first quarter is on actions here. Make sense?

Absolutely.

Right on. All right. So your job with things like this is to do it yourself, to fully engage it, embrace it yourself, and then come back and share with some of your leadership team and in your case, your core business partner. There's what you do and what you're seeing after you've done this work, and then what are the implications for your work? How are you going to change your work habits and approach? How are you going to develop yourself as a leader in the coming year? And what things are you starting and stopping? And then let your people share with you what they've got. So your job is now to take this form, download it. So we'll have a link to this in the notes for both the show and the YouTube. And of course, I'm sending you right now. And then it'll be in the show notes as well here. And this will all be@scalingupbusiness.com so. Pretty clear. Yeah. Simple, powerful.

One question, I guess is, as far as the 90 days, is that something that should be updated every quarter, or.

Is it just from a personal plan standpoint? I think that I like to see it mostly done on the annual and then start to deal with it just ongoingly. In the business, we do quarterly reviews, and I think you're more powerful, well developed, like people with good muscle and personal planning and these rhythms that would be ideal to do that every quarter. I think in the beginning, not everyone would, but when you do like a quarterly review with your direct reports and they with theirs you could reference this. So how does this fit to your thing? And if you get people to develop themselves and their in the process of developing their work role and you sync those two things up, your conversations with them about their professional development will be a lot more meaningful.

Makes sense.

Alrighty. Alright, so that's the work there is to do. I've already sort of told everybody else where to go and where to get more information on this. Of course the form itself has our web address and our phone number if you need help with any of this stuff. So I want to thank you again for, for doing this live with me today so we could share it with some other folks. And I'll go ahead and end this and and sign off from the thing but hope to see you next time on and have you listening to the podcast and on our YouTube channel, scalingupbusiness.com so thanks again for, for joining us and for being on the show.

Absolutely.

Thanks Elliot.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

All.