ep 237 : How To Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet

Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, nextlevelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. Hello, and welcome to a special edition of the NextLevel Income show and Happy New Year. Today I'm going to be talking about how to make 2025 your best year yet. And I'm going to walk you through the same formula that I've been using really, since I was a teenager for success. I started off using a very detailed plan to be successful in my cycling career, and I've adapted it over the years and I've used this as well with input from my coach, Craig Ballantyne. And if you're interested, the email that went out this past weekend talks about how you can get a copy of Craig's book, the Perfect Week Formula. If you want a copy, if you email coachingextlevelincome.com and say, I would like to get a copy of Craig Valentine's book. And please make sure in that email you include your mailing address. And in my opinion, success comes from one, having the right information, two, having a plan, and three, having accountability. And if you're interested, our coaching can help you have that accountability. So at the end of today's episode, if you're interested in learning more, there is a link in the show notes where you can learn more about our coaching and get a. A special discount that we only are offering at the beginning of this year. So before we get started with planning for 2025, I want you to ask yourself a question. How was your 2024? Are you happy with what you achieved in 2024? I can tell you that, personally, I feel like I could have definitely achieved more in 2024. It was very challenging for me. At the end of the year, from August to December, we went from dropping my son off at boarding school to losing my sister tragically in a car accident to getting hit here in Asheville, North Carolina by Helene. And we suffered substantial, not only emotional challenges with those things, but also financially. We've, we've had a lot of setbacks here in the last several months. In addition, my stepfather moved in with us because he's had some. Some health challenges as well recently. So I Am looking forward to a reset as we go into 20. And actually as I record this and as, as you listen to this, I'm going to be flying to meet my coach here this week to go through my plan for 2025 to get back on track. So what I work through with my coaching clients, number one, is building a three year vision. Typically we overestimate what we can achieve in a single year and we underestimate what we can do over the course of five years. And in three years you can totally change your life, you can totally change your body. So what I want you to do is you can pause this or you can write this down and you can do it later. But I want you to paint out a vivid three year vision and this is going to encompass four areas. Number one, your health. Now a lot of you may assume, hey, we're going to talk about financial stuff today, Chris. But health is number one. If you have health, if you have energy, then you can work more, you can spend more time with your family, doing things that you love. And even coming from the wealth perspective, the longer you live, the longer you can work, the longer you can compound that well. So health is very important, not just in your personal life, but also in your financial life. I want you to write down what your ideal schedule is. What do you do each day? What are you achieving in your career and business? So transitioning towards the financial side. This is category number two, wealth. What is your net worth? How much do you make every year? How much is your active income? How much is your passive income? These are very important. Do you have a passive income plan? If not, maybe you should jump into our coaching program and learn how to develop more streams of passive income. The third category. So first we have health. Second we have wealth. The third category is going to be your social self. This is going to include your personal relationships. This can be your romantic relationships with your partner, your spouse. It can be your direct family, your children can be your friends. Who do you spend time with? I've talked before about the circle exercise that I use to focus on spending more time with those people that give you energy and eliminating those toxic people that are in your life. Life. Where do you travel? I love including travel with my family in my plan every year. Are you a high income business owner or professional earning 2, 300,000 or even more a year but still feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck? Are you comfortable working until you're 65 or 70 to retire or do you want to achieve financial independence and live life on your own terms. You could join myself and Matt4 and learn how we both became financially independent in our early 30s. We will teach you how to make, keep and grow your money, teaching you strategies to maximize your earnings, keep your income that you've earned through tax strategy and legal structures, and ultimately teach you how to grow it by determining your personal investing strategy as well as teach you how to analyze investments so you can grow your passive income to the point to live life on your own terms. Our coaching clients reliably do this in seven years or less. To learn more, check out our coaching program@nextlevel income.com forward slash coaching. That's nextlevelincome.com forward slash coaching. And then the last category. So we've gone through health, wealth, social, self and the last one's going to be personal enrichment. And this can include things like what are you doing from a personal development perspective? How many books are you going to read? I typically try to read 24 books a year. We are in the first week of January 2025. I just finished my first book of the year is a 600 page book on Elon Musk. It was very interesting, really enjoyed that. It's a good book if you want to put one on your list for your reading list. What about things like what do you, do you want a new car? Do you want to build a new house? Is there, is there something you want to treat yourself to with the, the things that you've done? I also include travel and trips in, in this area as well. That's kind of how we reward ourselves. And my family is with, with travel. So again you have now put these four big categories for your three year vision. And what I like to do is spend a time away from work, family, my own home. And I like to write this out. And this should be a visual, vivid picture of what your life looks like three years from now. It should make your skin stand up on your arms. I can tell you I just had a coaching client reach out to me last month. He said, chris, I can't thank you enough for what you did while we worked together in your coaching program. This is everything I've achieved. We're worth eight figures. I'm earning seven figures a year in income. My family is, is happy. My wife is thrilled with, with everything that we're doing and I couldn't have done it without you because you pushed me to put my three year vision in place. And what's amazing, Chris, is everything that's happened was in my three year vision. Now once you have that three year vision, you can step down to your 2025 goals. I like to have one big goal for health, wealth, social, self and personal enrichment for each year. And then for each of these, I break them down from my 2025 goals to my quarterly goals. So we have Q1 2025 and you should have three action items. So let's say you want to weigh 175 pounds with single digit body fat. What are you going to do? Three strength workouts, 60 to 90 minutes a week, two cardiovascular workouts, maybe like for me I like to ride my bike. Two, two cycling workouts a week, a massage every two weeks and then I'm going to wake up at 5am every day. Those are three specific things that I can do and I can actually give those action items to somebody and they could do those same things. Your action items should be both easy to understand and also easy to accomplish if you were able to give them to somebody that has the same essential skill sets as you do. So as you're kind of looking at this, you see that we're planning out from three years to a year, to our quarters. And then every week what I want you to do is sit down at the beginning of the week. I like to do this on Sunday mornings when the family's still in bed. I read my three year vision, I go through my annual goals, I go through my quarterly goals and then I map my week out on my calendar, which I have right here on its own screen. And the important thing is how do you fill your calendar up? I want you to think about this like filling up a jar with, with rocks, pebbles, sand, if sand is all the stuff that's, that's urgent, maybe not super important. It's going to be coming into your life day by day by day and taking up your time. What are your big rocks that you're going to put in that jar first that are going to move those things that are going to help you achieve your three year vision and your 2025 goals. These big rocks, these are typically non urgent but important items that you need to do. Maybe this is like tax strategy. That's something that you, you could do that might not be urgent, but it's super important. That could save you five, six figures this year alone. So that, that's an example of a big one. So I want you to plan those out. I put my sleep down, I put my workouts down. My son has a basketball game tonight that goes on my calendar. My workouts go on my calendar. All of those things, my time with the family, my time taking care of my health and my big wealth goals that are going to help me move that needle going first. Then my calendar can get filled up after that. If you work 9 to 5, you may have to make time at the beginning of each day. Maybe you get up an extra hour earlier. If you go on to our resources page on the website NextLevelIncome.com go to the blog. You'll find a blog titled how to make 20 to 40 hours more a week to help you achieve your goals. That's a great article if you want to learn some tips and tricks. So now that you have this strategy mapped out, go ahead, pause this. Listen to it again if you need to write this down. But I can tell you if you follow this game plan, it can help you have your best year yet in 2025. And if you want to see this in writing, we just included this in the email that went out this past weekend. And again, you can also email us at coaching@next level.com coachingextlevelincome.com to learn more about our coaching program if you want some accountability to help you achieve your goals. Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.