Set Yourself Up for A Transformative New Year, Reflecting on Our Biggest Wins and Challenges of 2024

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It is the end of the year. We made it.

We made it.

We did it. To all of you listening, you did it. You made it. This is like the last one we are recording in this calendar year.

Yeah. That's crazy.

That's incredible. Or wait, do we record one more for New Year's? Maybe. I don't know. I don't even want to look at a calendar. I reached that point. So I woke up this morning and I was giddy. I had such a week. It's like everybody wanted their, their very last appointment or their last coaching call or their last meeting or their last whatever. It's like everybody wanted it in this week. And so I had one of the craziest weeks ever. I bet a lot of people listening, business owners, feel you the end of your stuff, right? And so I woke up today, I was like, oh, my God, it's here. The holidays. And I've been in full holiday mode. I mean, I'm a holiday geek, so I'm always in full holiday mode. But it was different this morning. It was like, oh, my God, I get a stretch a bunch of days where I don't have to take a call or be in a meeting or do anything. I just get to be. And it was the best feeling ever. I've been giddy.

That is the best. I know when you woke up this morning, you were, it was almost like you, you didn't realize that you had the day off. Your body was still just in like Drive mode.

Yeah, totally. It's funny. And you and I were just talking before. I'm like, oh, this is weird. I have the day off. Like, I don't know what to do with this open space. It's so weird how you become programmed, isn't it?

It's crazy. I was watching him and he was like, maybe I should go do the stairs. Maybe I should go do a workout. Maybe I should go do this. Do you want to watch the show? I was like, oh, my gosh. You just need to let yourself come down right now because you're so wired and your body doesn't know it's holiday time yet.

I'm a weirdo, man. I'm a weirdo. I wonder if there's any weirdos like me out there.

I'm sure plenty.

You know what? That's what the mastermind is for. You find your fellow weirdos so that you become normalized. You're like, wait, I'm not too driven. There's other people like me. Wait, my goals aren't too big. There's other people like me. Wait, I don't work too much. There's other people like me. And you realize, like, oh, there's a certain breed of ambitious, dreaming doers in the world that just have to find each other. And that's. That's literally what the mastermind is. By the way, quick shout out to those of you who I have interviewed for the 2025 class. You guys are awesome. You guys are awesome. I love who has joined so far. I love who's applying. I've got a whole bunch more calls right after the holidays lined up. So, guys, we're getting down to the wire. If you want to be a part of our 2025 Elite Entrepreneur mastermind class, there's a couple things you got to know. Number one, this is the first year ever that this beautiful woman right next to me is joining me, right, running it. So that's not just me running anymore. It's now Chris and Lori's Elite Entrepreneur Mastermind.

So much fun.

It's going to be awesome. Like a whole nother level of awesome. The other thing you need to know is that it's for anybody who's earning more than $500,000 a year in their business. So this is our elite level mastermind. Almost everybody in there is a seven or eight figure earner, but don't let that count you out. As long as you're making over $500,000 in 2025, then you can apply. And we don't choose on business size, we choose on personality type and right fit for the room vibe type and how cool and exciting is the business that you're building type. So don't count yourself out. As long as you're making more than $500,000 in 2025, you can apply. And here's what else people don't know. You literally get to text me when you're a member directly, Monday through Friday, 10 to 5, any business questions that you have. And this is one of the things I'm most proud of is there's a lot of people running masterminds out there and listen, teach their own for sure. But there's a lot of people running masterminds out there where they're not accessible unless it happens to be one of the in person meetings or they're not accessible unless it happens to be their monthly call. And of course we love our in person meetings that we have, I think the best out there and we love the monthly call where we solve each other's problems. But what happens in the gaps in between that when you really need a connection, you really need an answer, you really need like an idea, you really need someone to kick you back in the game. That's why you get to text me directly Monday through Friday for the whole year while you're a member. So listen, we've got this thing dialed in 8th year doing it. It's the best one out there. If you're gonna make over $500,000 this year, if you want that kind of access and if you wanna be around people that are like I was just describing, so driven that you're like, wait, am I the oddball? Nope, I found my people. Then all you gotta do is hit pause right now, real quick and get your application in freaking asap. I'm not kidding. Right now, hit pause and go to Chrisharder Me Mastermind. Click Apply. Get your application in you and I'll jump on zoom to see if it's a perfect fit for you or not. Literally right now hit pause and go to Chrisharder Me Mastermind. That's Chrishard Me Mastermind. And click apply. All right. Because it's the end of the year, I wanted to keep this fun, I wanted to keep this light. And one of the things that we probably don't do the best, best job at is celebrating or reflecting on our wins. I know we do it as part of our New Year's tradition, but I mean, just in general, you and I kind of forget sometimes. That's why We've invented the Power 9. You know, three things we're grateful for, three things that we're excited about, three things we're manifesting. You and I have to put these little things in place so that we actually take the time out, say, oh, wow, we did that. Oh wow, we did that. So I wanted to do something similar to that with you real quick. I wanted to know what you are most proud of this year and I wanted to know what you are most excited about going into next year and then I'll do the same thing. So why don't we just start with proud? Each of us will start with proud. You want to go first?

Sure. There's actually so much I'm proud of, and I'm just acknowledging that because it's the hardest years that I feel like you feel the most proud. So, you know, because you just have gone through so much and you're so proud of the fact that you've made it through. But I'm proud of a lot of things. I'll start with one that is just obvious for me right away. I'm proud of how I have put friendships first in my life. I've really, really made sure that they come first, that I'm intentional with them, that I have time in the calendar with the people that I really, really love and I schedule around it. Like even right now, I'm scheduling some things for 2025 with some girlfriends to make sure that it's in there so that I can deepen those relationships and have those relationships for the rest of my life. And I know that without that time that I'm not going to have that. So I'm really, really proud of the fact that it was not easy to get people together and go back into those text threads and remind them we haven't answered on dates yet and where can we all meet up and all of those things and trying to work out a bunch of different schedules. And I'm so glad that, you know, I stayed on top of it and that, you know, a lot of other people in the group stayed on top of it too. I'm just really proud of the relationships that I'm creating in my life. There was a long time where I did not have that. I would say another thing I'm really proud of is all of the help that I am getting and getting team in place for the things I really want to grow the most. And you know, my personal brand is a really big goal of mine this next year, to really grow that much larger than it already is. Meaning my Email list, my social engagement, social following, if that's what comes with it, my podcast. And so getting teams in place to really help me grow that personal brand. Because when I grow the personal brand, that's when Glossy grows as well. Because majority of sales for Glossy are coming through organic, personal right now.

I love that.

I love that.

I just want to comment. The first thing you're proud of is the way that you've really harnessed and taken to the next level, your relationships with your girlfriends. I've watched you do it and I've watched the benefit to all of you listening. Guys, get your groups of homies together. Ladies, get your girlfriends together. Make it a priority. It is way better for you, number one, and for your marriage, number two, because you're not relying on your partner to be the end all, be all. You actually have a separate life and other people you can go to when you got challenges or problems or, you know, just need different sounding boards. And I've watched you benefit from that so much and I just love watching you thrive with your girlfriends right now. So here's my proud of this year. I'm proud of how I showed up and I'm proud of how I got through one of the worst years ever for me. Like, look at everything that happened. Most of you probably never zoom out and look at a timetable, but in the beginning of summer, we had spent almost $3 million and two years building our peer to peer lending platform for Frello. And just weeks from launching it, the cfpb, the consumer financial protection group, which that is not what they are at all. But I won't get into that right now. They sued the only other company doing peer to peer lending in the way that we were going to do it and we sued them back to the stone ages by making something up. And the end result was overnight, all of a sudden we didn't have a business like, oh my God, worst thing ever. I started my summer with thinking I'm about to launch one of the biggest fintech platforms ever. And overnight we didn't have a business. And that began the struggle of trying to find the pivot. What are we going to turn this into? How are we going to salvage all the tech that we built, you know, all this money we put into it, time that we put into it, all of that stuff. And that was hard. That was the worst. That led to the stroke I had this year in the beginning of September, that led to me being 50% blind in my right eye forever. Now, probably then our personal brands went backwards In a way, because the dinner series was way tougher to do and way more expensive than we ever anticipated. At the same time as Frelo being so busy and your company Gloce taken off, we weren't able to do any of the other personal brand stuff that we typically do, meaning roundtables and other events and that kind of thing. So it was just a really tough year for me, just on all fronts. And I not only got through it well, but got through it with a great demeanor and got through it with a pretty damn great attitude. And I just feel so optimistic. I'm optimistic by nature, but I feel so optimistic and so excited. I feel like I come out of this year with a brand new set of armor that I didn't have going into it, and that's a pretty cool thing.

All right, so our next one is.

What are you excited about for 2025? Like, what's going to happen in your world?

Oh, my gosh. Well, I think what I just shared that I'm proud of and getting that team together and, you know, these relationships that I've deepened, that makes you excited for what's ahead because you feel really supported and you feel closer connections to people, and you have this team that could really grow what you want to do, and that means a lot of exciting things ahead. So I'm excited for, you know, doing the mastermind with you and who's going to come into that. I'm really excited to spend that year with those people that such just a. An emotional investment into, like, each other that you really get to grow with those people. So I'm very excited about that. I'm excited about our other program that we've been talking about launching for 500k and below, which we're going to tell you about later. So I'm excited about launching that. I'm excited about growing the personal brand and of course, growing Glossy. I just am so obsessed with my team and this product and talking about what Glocee is going to be and future products for Glosi and what that all looks like. So I just. I feel solid. I feel really good. This is the first year that I feel really solid going into it because of all of the team that I'm getting set up in place.

Oh, I love that. I'm most excited because we're finally going to launch Frello. But our Pivot. And our Pivot. I know a lot of you might have heard the podcast where we explained the Pivot. Oh, my God. It's gotten even better since, like, you know, on my arm, it literally says, live as though the universe conspires in your favor. And you have to believe that. And even when you can't see it, my God, if you trust it, it turns out better. And this is turning out better. I can't explain all the nuances yet, but holy crap, somebody has served something right up on a silver platter for us. That is an absolute dream come true because of the platform that we built. And so nothing's ever wasted. You just have to have to have enough time for it to unfold in your favor. And now this is like, oh my God. Just. I'm not going to say what I want to say other than I'm 100 times more excited than the original idea in the original direction that we were originally going with it. So I'm excited. Most excited this year that Frello will be launching finally. It'll look different and it's a different product, but we are going to rock the fintech space. And I just can't freaking wait.

I'm so excited for you. And, you know, I hope that if you guys have followed along with our podcast, especially this last year or year before, for me, me that you are so aware that it is, man, it's about resilience, it's about a backbone, it's about thinking on your feet. It's about supporting yourself to make sure that you can come out of these things. Because no business is untouched from the cycles that are natural, the ups and the downs, the ideas that are changing so quickly in this time right now. And you just can't get stuck in, you know, poor me or why is this happening to me? There's literally no time for that. There's a five minute timer that you get to set, feel bad for yourself, and then get back to figuring it out. And that's what business is. It's just you're choosing your own problems that you get to solve.

I love that. And you don't have to solve them alone. Guys, you heard us. Open this thing. Talking about the elite mastermind. Let's close with this. One of the most valuable things you can do for yourself this year is to put yourself in a room with like minded, equally driven individuals and share shortcuts and share ideas and kick each other back in the game. And if you want to add to that a one on one strategy session with me to kick off and plan your year one on one and then have the two, three and a half day retreats in person with Lori and I in the group, and have the monthly calls where we, you know, challenge and problem solve each other's challenges as a group and have the Monday through Friday texting access to me where I'll solve any problem that you have or at least be a sounding board for you or point you in the right direction or connect you to the right resource. My God, the time to delay and the time to be like, oh, I'll get to that later, is over. Because the number of applications I've poured in, the number of interviews I've had, the number of people have said yes, we're all sudden getting down to the nitty gritty here. So if you want to be a part of our group this year and you're going to make over 500 grand, this is your moment. Go to Chrisharder me, mastermind, click apply and I'll see you on Zoom.

We're so grateful for you guys. Happy New Year. Happy holidays. Truly. It's been such a gift to be able to come on here every single week and chat with you and get to know you and then see you in our different trips or groups or dinner series or Mastermind. And we hope we get to meet even more of you this year.

I'm so grateful that we got to do this year with you guys. We love you. We appreciate you, every single one of you. Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, happy New Year, all the things.

Until next time. We will see you next week. Bye, everyone.

Sam.