A creator walks through Japanese markets and shrines to frame an end-of-year reflection exercise for entrepreneurs. List your biggest wins and failures, extract improvement goals, and align them with long-term vision like building a billion-dollar SaaS. Hard work creates the opportunities that make luck possible.
It's 4:30 AM and we're heading to the Tsukiji Fish Market. At 4:30, you can't get in, but the guy that I know is connected with guys there that have restaurants, so we're gonna go in there. So the deal is, you buy fish for ¥5,000, I can sell it for ¥20,000 after you make it into sushi, obviously. Mazu up here was saying that you can buy You can buy a giant one for like $20,000 and basically sell it for $80,000. Seems like a good deal to me. It's about 8:20 in the morning here and I'm heading to the— I think it's the Inari Shrine. So I got this at the station yesterday. This is the matcha KitKat. This is my pocket Wi-Fi. And then I'm breaking these in today. Probably not a good idea to be breaking in shoes. But it is a hike. Should probably bring some money too, and chapstick. And then I'm gonna bring my backpack because I might want to get up to the mountain and maybe write and read for a little bit. But yeah, it's a good day to be strategizing before the New Year. Really like using December to prepare ahead for the New Year. So we'll go over and see what the shrine looks like. It's pretty amazing. So get to the top and then Give you some wisdom after. Basically, when you look at the bottom, we first started, tons of people, right? I just went through like a gauntlet of stairs. We're almost there, but it's just again like consistency, right? And hard work too. Like, it sounds really general, but you see Japanese people like today, it's Saturday, going to school, right? I remember when I was younger, Went to school Saturday for Chinese school, right? And just keep going. And even here right now, it's like the people that make it to the top is the same thing as business. They end up sticking with it longer, which is the same thing with the other EO guy that I met. Stuck with his business for 24 years, other one about 20 years, right? So it's not like you have to be special or anything to succeed. You just gotta stick with it longer. It's like a relationship too. So yeah, we're almost there. See what I told you earlier? A shitload of people at the bottom, but when you get to the top, not that many people. Same thing as when you join like an entrepreneur's group. When you're an entrepreneur, there's not many people that are like you because it's just— it's not a normal thing to do. And the interesting thing is, when I was watching a video on YouTube about professional athletes, when they go through pain, they push even harder. And I think it was a venture capitalist talking about it, and that's what it is. It's the same deal here. Like, when you go through some pain, you push even harder. And you know you can translate it over into business or into into even just hiking, right? So yeah, that's the lesson. This is the Nishiki Market in Kyoto with snacks and a bunch of souvenirs. We're gonna go see some monkeys. And we're gonna talk about end-of-year planning because that's what's going on right now. It's December 2017. It's early morning here. We'll talk about how you can win before the new year hits and how it's important to just disconnect before the new year. Anyway, when it comes to end-of-year planning, I think first and foremost it's important to go on a break and then decide what you want to do, right? The agenda. And then what I like doing is writing down a list of just everything that went well. During the year, so it can be like a top 25 or whatever, even just a top 3. And then from there you can write like a list of things that just didn't go that well, right? But I like going through the things that just went amazing, and I like using the word amazing because then it just filters out the good stuff and then you have all the amazing stuff, right? And then you realize the year's actually been pretty good. And then the things that like you wanna improve on, you know, let's say you have like 25 bad things or things that you wanted to improve on, you can take those top 3 and say, okay, maybe these are goals to work on in the next year, and this is an exercise you can work on Maybe your team members as well. The other thing is, you know, making note of like my long-term vision. So let's say your vision is you want to build like a billion-dollar company or something like that, and just working backwards and figuring out what actions you need to take, what you've taken already, and then, and then going from there. So for example, one big issue is like, how do we get more sales for the new SaaS product that we're building right now? What needs to happen in 2018 to hit goals? You know, places to speak at, dinners to throw, who do you have? I'm thinking about doing more live events, things like that, right? So there's all this planning that needs to happen. That's important to look at too. Because this is the time where I have free time to really work on the business instead of having to, you know, be out there putting fires out every day. And it's important to take this time out just to block it out. When I'm here, like, I get so much perspective, right, on how people do things here. You can see my video on how I talk about efficiency with the Japanese. The big things, right, the things that are not important, not urgent, those are the things you need to tackle during this time in terms of end-of-year planning. And just relax too, because relaxing Coming to a place like this, again, you're gonna gain so much perspective. You know, my dad always talks about how other people are lucky, and I think it's good to talk about how you can get lucky. And it's really simple. Like, I think about, you know, the mentors that I've had, the opportunities that I've had, things like that. It all takes a lot of luck, right? But in order to get lucky, you have to be put into those positions. You just have to work really hard. So I find, you know, when you work hard Many opportunities pop up and then you capitalize on them. That's how you get lucky, right? So hopefully that helps. And, uh, if you enjoyed videos like this, just hit subscribe. We'll see you in the next one. Bye.
