Design your Life in 2026 : Introduction

Let's do this. Welcome in, everybody. Wow, we got a lot of people today. All right, let's go. Okay, so no time like the present. We have an exciting, exciting, uh, afternoon planned for you. And what I'm really excited about is giving you literally the play-by-play of how I end every year. And I do it right around now, a couple weeks to the end of the year. You know, like, as much as I want to, there's only so much I can do, right, in the next, you know, 15 days to end the year strong. So, but how do I set myself up for success as we move into 2026? And so this is the philosophy, the plan. Now, if you are a part of our AI Leadership Institute, if you are a member of our new AI Leadership Essentials program, which kicks off the first week in January, we actually will have a 4-hour deep dive to reverse engineer the plan I'm going to encourage you to make today. Now here's the best part, I think, is that this plan does not require any special skills. It does not require a special notebook, though I like notebooks. Um, it does not require you to do, you know, go out and get any specific book. Literally, I think the best way is just grab a piece of paper, grab an iPad with a whatever Apple Pen, right? Get, uh, some way to document what we're going to do over the next hour., and then your job is to go back. And if you choose to on your own, you could just— it's called DIY, right? Do it yourself. I'm gonna give you the framework and you can do what I did, which is I sat down at my desk and I reverse engineered based on the framework I'm gonna provide you today. But today my hope is that, you know, in the next hour I will give you the framework and then of course you'll have a chance to ask some questions. What's up, Tara? Bonjour, my friends. Joyeux Noël. Um, so nice to see you all. Welcome and Happy Christmas. Canada is in the house. So nice to see you all. Delray Beach, that's not far. Nice to see you. Of course, DC's in the house. Got lots of friends from DC. Fort Worth. Uh-oh, we're gonna have to get Florida people together. Wilmington, Charlotte, Atlanta. Nice to see you all. What's up? So if you are seeing this on LinkedIn, I will not, I'm not looking at LinkedIn. I'm in a Zoom call with all of my friends who registered for this session. Um, but you will have an opportunity. I will be going back and looking through all those comments. So comment away. If you are listening to this, not if you're in the Zoom, but if you happen to be listening to this through a social media channel, just write hashtag live so I can give you some special attention. If you were here live, I wanna let you know, I see you. I hear you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Now, the first thing I'm going to tell you that is critical to my success every year is that I make a commitment. I, in my mind, in my heart, soul, I make a commitment to being better than I was the year before. And that alone will shift the trajectory of who you're gonna be in 2026. It's just making a commitment to learn from the lessons of 2025. And let's face it, some of us had a tough 2025, but learn from the lessons of 2025 and identify ways that we can make 2026 better. And that is what— that's the first thing though, is committing to being a better you. And that means Now, the reason I like the idea of, you know, making this commitment is because oftentimes what's gonna happen, as it always does, right? We're gonna make this grandiose plan and then life will happen. Something will shift us. We'll spend time on something we didn't intend to. We'll have to attend to someone we didn't know we would have to throughout the year. And I learned this from a good friend of mine, and she said this to me and it didn't make— I didn't really resonate with it at first until I experienced it. But it's just the best gift you can give to yourself is the ability to recommit. And that means that the commitment you're making right now, as soon as you get off track, as soon as you're like, oh yeah, I was going to do this by January and now that's not going to happen. What most people do is that in that moment they're like, well, I'm not going to do that, so I might as well just not do it. I mean, imagine, you know, all of us who commit to eating better January 1st, right? And then by January 3rd we're like, oh well, and then we just never kind of like— we're like, oh well, we blew that one, I guess we'll just not do that. One of the best things you can do is realize that the second you notice, the moment that you notice that you're not doing things in alignment with what you want to do and the direction you want to move in, you recommit to your plan. And you recommit in that moment. You don't say, okay, I'll recommit tomorrow, or I'll start again on Monday. My dad does this all the time. He's like I mean, granted, he's 80, uh, but I'll tell him like, okay, Dad, that was a bad choice. We should make a different choice. And he's like, I'll start that choice tomorrow. And I'm like, or we start it right now. So I'm going to encourage you that when life happens, when things happen and you don't— I mean, today, my goodness, I got on my own call. I ended up like, uh, getting in on a red-eye this morning, and my husband, so sweet, let me sleep. And I'm like, I can't sleep. What are you doing closing the blinds? I need this, uh, anyway. And so I ended up being late to my own call, and I I was like, but I had to recommit that moment. I can, I always say, feel the feels, you know, I'm a little disappointed in myself. I'm like, dang it, I didn't do what I wanted. Like, that's not how I wanted to show up today. But I instantly recommit, okay, here's who I'm gonna be, here's, and I do it today, right now. Like, could I have just blown, you know, let this morning become my story, not of today, but for the rest of the year? Many of us do that. We let something that, you know, kind of takes us off track. It could be a negative experience, it could be betrayal, and we just kind of go, well, you know, just forget it. And we let, we let like the whole day, the whole week, the whole month, the whole year turn into a wash. And so I'm going to ask you to like, whatever you got to do, write it down, get a sticker, get a hoodie, um, that says like recommit. Like give yourself the gift of recommitting the second you notice you're off the mark. It's any— it immediately changes your behavior. Like me today, Right. That happened. I was a little sad. I felt the feels in front of my community. Y'all were so nice to me, by the way. But then I was like, all right, we got to go. We got another thing to do. I make a plan for how I'm going to get back on track. And I think that that's really, really important. Y'all are amazing. Yay. Right. Yes. We've already started our AI Leadership Essentials program. I'm accidentally drawing on the screen with my, with my back, so I'll have to be careful here. Let me undo my draft. There we go. All right. So today we're going to focus on who we want to be in 2026. Now, I think we have a really— so commitment is first. Make a commitment to be different. And that means you're going to do something now that you didn't do last year in December. Some of you maybe are the planner and you set out your plan. I'm going to encourage you, if you did not get the outcome that you wanted in 2026, do whatever you did last year, but a little bit different. So I'm going to present with you my ideas. Granted, I do this session every year. You can find the history of them on my YouTube channel. Um, I do them every year, but this year I thought I would break it up because every year I kind of do a middle ground between an intro DIY version and a deep dive, but we never actually get to do the deep dive together cuz it's a lot of time to ask. But I was like, oh, we're launching a new program. So I'm doing the deep dive for people who are members of my program, but I wanted to give you the DIY version today. So commitment is number one, make a commitment. The next thing is like, some of you might be thinking already, well, what am I committing to, right? Some of us, when we hear the word commitment, we're like, what does that mean? What am I gonna have to do? Like, what is the commitment that we're talking about? So the very next question is purpose. Is your purpose— and I, I always like this concept, um, of purpose because it's different for all of us, and we find out what our purpose is at different stages of our lives. My purpose became very, very clear to me when I had my first child. Now I've had 6, you know, I've had 4 babies and adopted 1 and 1 through marriage. So I've got like a bunch of kiddos, but I like being a mom is a huge part of my identity, but also what world I'm going to leave them with and what I can do to make their lives better, especially my son Max, who has Down syndrome. And the fact that I have an opportunity to myself make an impact on his future. And part of that is financial. Like, part of that is how do I make sure he never worries about money, right? How do I make sure he always has the healthcare, the financial care, right? The mental care, like everything that he needs, whether I'm around or not. Like, that is a huge mission for me to be on. Um, and so that started the day he was born. But I wanted to read to you the definition of purpose. I think understanding The definition of words is important. Uh, I learned this from Jeff Bezos. He wrote 14 leadership principles for Amazon, and he was meticulous about word choice, um, and, and very, very specific. So when you go look up the words that he used, you're like, oh, that means way more than I thought it meant. There's so much richness in that. And so I wanted to share with you, number one, uh, the definition of purpose: the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. And so I always like— it gives me goosebumps just thinking about like, why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Look at my— I was, uh, one of my favorite Peloton instructors. And if you haven't joined our Peloton crew, we have a team on Peloton, um, called I Love AI. Uh, but in— when I— I'm a big Peloton fan, have been for years, uh, and since COVID actually. Uh, and Renee— or Renee, uh, Robin Arzone is one of my favorite, um, people. And Robin always says at the beginning of some of her rides, like, look at you right now. You are here and you have survived 100% of your bad days. And these are the things that make up who we are. And I'm not going to ask you to go dig deep, but some of us have had really bad days, like earth-shattering, no one needs to know the details kind of bad days. Some of you know some of the horrific days that I've had in my life. But they make up who I am and they give me a reason for living, a reason for doing what I do, a reason to get up early and stay up late, a reason to take a red-eye so that I can be in meetings all day, right? Um, yes, Peloton, what? Um, and so that's the first definition: a reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. It's also a person's sense of resolve or determination. What are you determined to do? This is, you know, like, I think sometimes we hear the word purpose and we're like, this grandiose, mat— like, huge thing. Not necessarily, and certainly not at first. As I started to discover what my purpose was over time, I mean, now I feel like my purpose has evolved from helping my son, which is always how it works when you're trying to drive accessibility and access and awareness, is that I do it for him, but then everybody benefits. Right? I have 6 kids. I have 5 still in my house. And what I did for my son, teaching him sign language, all this early intervention that I did, like the beauty of that is that I did that for all my kids that are typically developing. They all benefit. They all learned sign language. They all had different— and as a result, they're all cognitively better. And so, but it started with this determination to make my first child's life easier. And then the last one, to have one's intention or objective, to just set an objective. Your purpose is the objective you set for the year or your life. So I'm going to encourage you that while you might self-claim that you don't know what your purpose is or you haven't figured that out, I'm going to give you permission to set a purpose for 2026. Set an objective. What do you want to be? Who do you want to be? I don't know if I have it. Oh my gosh, I think I do. I'm gonna try and find it. But these— this is a stack of stuff I found in a box in my garage. You know the gold that's in boxes in the garage, y'all know. And, uh, somewhere in here, I'm gonna see if I can find it. I ended up uncovering— I'm about to make a big old mess— uh, a paper that I wrote like, and this is how I used to be. It was super fun. We'll see if I can find it. I can't find it. I'll find it and share it to you later. But I put it in here for exactly this moment. But it was a paper that I had jotted down. I always like using— ah, there it is! So cool! I always like using color. And, and this is like ripped out. It's got, you know, when paper gets old, it's got this like discoloration. And I just want to, like, I— there's so many cool things I want to share with you, but, uh, I'm just going to read to you some of the things that I put on this paper. And these— this was me setting an intention. This is in 2000 and 2012. Um, oh my gosh, it's so cool. Okay, save the day. That's what I put. Save the day. Support others. Affect change. Be cheerful. Be motivating. Be a role model. This is when I did not feel like I was one. Like, I'm like I'm setting an intention, right? Go-to girl. I could cry. Like, this is crazy. Passionate, sensitive, achiever, go-get-'em, organized. I'm still working on that one. Helpful, enthusiastic. Like, this is how I would describe myself today. But when I wrote this, I did not feel like that. I mean, if you go back— none of you knew me back then, but I was not this person. I wanted to be this person. But by setting the intention, writing it down, putting little hearts and putting like colors, um, I mean, it was really cool. I then also— and I'm not gonna read you these, but this was who the relationship I wanted to have. Maybe I could read you a couple, right? Love, support, compassion, feeling love, feeling supported, um, hugs and kisses. Like, all right, that's enough of that, uh, right? But, but I put like who I wanted, and I was not in a relationship at that time. And some of you know, I married Warren. Uh, we are high school sweethearts. Um, we dated, uh, and thought we would get married, but I went on to do other things and he stayed in Homestead, Florida. Um, and then our lives kept like coming back together. Every 10 years we'd run into each other. And then during COVID we were— he ended up instant messaging me and— or no, sending me a message on Instagram. And I was like, oh my gosh, it's you. And, uh, I happened to be in town for a conference and we met up. And anyway, We ended up, of course, being like, "It was always you." Oh. And then we got married a couple years later, and now we've been married for 3 years, but it feels like all the time. But like, literally, I look at these words that I wrote, you know, like long before that happened, and I was like, "Oh my gosh." Like, that is my life now. So that is the power of setting intention. When I look at where, you know, the definition of purpose, The definition I like the most is just having one's intention, setting an intention for the year. And that's what I did. I just wrote words of who I wanted to be, uh, how I wanted to act. Now I'm going to give you a little bit— invisible strings, right? Yes, 100%. So I'm going to encourage you to spend some time, not today, but as part of your DIY work when you go and take this framework, I'm gonna encourage you to actually spend some— oh my gosh, what is happening? It's way too big. There we go. Spend some time setting an intention. Oh my gosh, I might go too far. Let's see. All right, there we go. Um, setting an intention for the year. So that's number 1. Goes without saying maybe, but you have to set an intention for 2026. Now I'm going to, I'm going to be sharing with, uh, the members of the AI Leadership Institute, our, uh, Essentials program, I'll be sharing with you what I came up with for my life, but for you all, I don't want to like lead the witness. I'm not going to give you the details, um, of what I'm going to do, but I am going to, um, share with you the exact process that I went through. All right, so that is the first thing. Now, the reason that we do this is that purpose gives us clarity, right? It allows us to have this home base to come back to. These words, like back in the day— I mean, there's a reason that it's ripped out and in like a bunch of stacks of paper, because this was like hung up. Like, I ripped it out of my notebook and hung it up in my office at that time and would look at it every day. And I'm going to encourage you to do the same thing. But as we move forward towards the blueprint of our life in 2026, it has to start with some— I call it a target— somewhere you want to go, somewhere you want to be. Now, the way that I've done this is I first identify my intention or my purpose And then I break that down into what I call core values. Some of you— oops, I'm going to make this a little higher. Oh my gosh. Um, oh goodness. Core values, right? What are my core values? Who am I? Like, what are the parts of me that make this purpose or this intention possible? Not what can I do, what skills can I learn, but like like you saw on this page, right? I threw it on the floor. But like creative and supporting and motivating, like these are, these are personality traits, right? Integrity, safety. Like, who do I want to be as a human in order to achieve my goals? And what that means is these are what, uh, a mentor of mine is, David, uh, Meltzer. I was just on his SiriusXM radio show. I'm gonna be on his Instagram Live next week. Um, but what he says is he's like, establish your non-negotiables. I love that word. These are your non-negotiables. These are the core values that as you start getting opportunity to do crazy cool things, what are your non-negotiables? What are the core values that are going to keep you grounded in achieving what you want in a way that you'll be proud of, in a way that won't haunt you at night? I know so many millionaires. I know billionaires that get to their level of success and look around and go, I, I thought this was it. I thought this was what I was striving for. And they're still left completely unfulfilled. And I feel like this correlation is extremely important to that process. And it's why, like, a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, you know, you've got all this success and you seem so, like, normal. And I'm like, yeah, because I, like, I guess normalness is tied to my core values. Like, I want to be present. I want to be a friend. I wanna be a good spouse and a good daughter. And I, you know, like all of those are part of who I wanna be at my core so that when I achieve, when I get opportunity, I don't sacrifice who I am in order to get to a place I think I wanna be, only to find out like these billionaires, like, whoa, that is not all it's cracked up to be. So this seems small, but it's really a huge part of activating the plan where we're gonna build through. So. Write it down. So the first thing you're going to do is write down your intention for 2026. The more you can dive into that, the better. I always want— I always try to think, what could I write down? Like, what purpose could I put on a piece of paper that when I read it, I was like extremely excited? In other words, there wasn't much that could keep me from achieving that goal. And that's why, like, my son is huge, uh, huge motivator for me. Now, in case you are unfamiliar with the concept of core values, I also wanted to give you this definition. Um, fundamental beliefs that dictate your behavior, that can help people understand the difference between right and wrong. And this is really for me, and I love this because again, no matter what you think about Mr. Bezos, Mr. Bezos taught me— Jeff Bezos, he taught me, he was like, when you go to make a decision at work— and now his core beliefs were idolized in these like 14 leadership principles, But what he would say is, whenever you make a decision, you look at these leadership principles, and if they are in violation of these principles, don't do it. Even if it's going to generate more revenue, even if it's going to close a customer, we don't violate who we are to get what we want because it never strategically works out. And I feel like that was just huge. What? Let's build a Netflix movie. Oh my gosh, that Netflix movie would be a tearjerker. Oh. You all, you know, I don't even know. Echu Hollywood story. Um, anyway, so, so that's something else I want you to do is write down the characteristics, the, the leadership principles, the core values of who you are that will guardrail you from making decisions that seem awesome but actually violate trust in yourself. And that's a little tricky, but it's necessary. All right. Oh goodness. All right, so now One of the things when you start, uh, documenting your core values, one of the things that I personally do is I write down various— and I'm just going through like my, my notebook at— because I did this exercise already, and I wrote down very specific, um, behaviors that I would not tolerate in myself or in others. And the way that I thought about this was like You're, you know, I'm building an empire, I'm building a company. Who do I want working with me? What are the characteristics of the people that are near me? Like, do I want— for example, me, I don't smoke, I don't drink, uh, I don't do drugs, so I want people that model that behavior. Um, you know, I don't, I don't know if you know this, but like, I, I go to a lot of events with a lot of men who are not with their wives and they exhibit just bad behavior. And I'm always like, I'm the wife, right? So I'm like, ew, like, I don't want any of y'all anywhere near me. I don't wanna work with your businesses. Like, I literally have a no-fly list of companies that I've exhibited people that work there. And I'm like, I will never work with you. And so I think it's important to have those, that idea of maybe I'll focus a little on who, I mean, I wrote a whole list. Like, these are who I do not wanna work with. Again, the lens upon which I will look at my strategic relationships that I will look at people who I partner with. Like, you can make these choices. Most of us never consider it. We're just like, oh my gosh, I can partner with that person, they have 2 million followers, it could be amazing, not realizing what, what compromise that makes to your own integrity and your own purpose. So I write these things down when it comes to core values. Um, now the next thing is how are you going to get there, right? So you've got a purpose, Let's just say my purpose is I wanna, you know, grow my company from where it is now to $10 million in revenue. That's like, and by doing that, actually like support and contribute to the benefit of a billion people. I want a billion people to understand artificial intelligence and use it to generate value and wealth in their life. And I'll share with you in a second the wealth dis— uh, definition. Um, So what I often will do is think about what are the products and services— now, granted, I'm an entrepreneur— but what are the products and services I can create that would be in line with my purpose, my core values, and help serve the world? Some of you are employees, and so maybe it's, you know, what, what characteristics or what value will you bring to the companies that you work for? What are the, the types of skills that you want to hone in 2026 so that you can be the person that you want to be? Um, and so I always say, like, I just like to list out every year, like, what do I do right now? Remember, 2025 is kind of the, the, the floor, right? I'm now building the ceiling of my next year. I document everything I did in 2020, like, in 2025. What products did I create? What webinars did I do? Document all of it so that I now know, okay, I did this. And you'd be surprised, many of us, when we document what we did, we're like, Well, um, there's an author, I don't remember, forgive my language. I also have on my list that you don't cuss, but it's a book and it's like called— I can't even say it, but anyway, it's like Bad Donkey. Um, but it's like this bad, like this cool list of things you've done during the year. And when you read it, you kind of feel like, wow, I am a rock star, that's pretty cool, I can't believe I did all that. And most of us do these things like sporadically over the years, so we don't even feel that cool. Like, we're like Eh, yeah, I went to South by Southwest. And then the other day someone was like, didn't you go to Australia and then China and then Portugal? And then, and I was like, that's pretty cool, right? But you don't, we don't see it unless we put it in front of ourselves. So I'm gonna encourage you to document what you did. Go through your calendar, ask AI to go through your calendar. But like, look at what you've accomplished in 2025 and set that as the floor meaning the base of what you're going to do in 2026, right? Now you know you can do that. What can you do on top of that? Better than that, evolved from that. Again, something that most people don't do. Now, once I understand my purpose and my core values, the next thing that I always do every year is I write my mission. And again, you can Google how to write a mission statement. There's LinkedIn classes on how to write a mission statement, but ultimately it is a single statement that embodies my intention and my values. So, but I want to have like a nice quick way for me to have it like written as a Post-it on my board, have it in my wallet, right? Have a— maybe paint it on a canvas and put it on my wall. Like, this mission statement is when you say it, you're like, yes, that's me. Yes, that's what I want. Yes, that's what we're going to do. And it should inspire you. That's the whole point, right? Some people Also include a vision statement. I don't do that because I visualize stuff all the time, but you could do that if it's helpful to you, right? Who are you going to be? What is the future of your organization? What is the vision? In many cases, organizations, as they build, they never draft the vision of their company. Without a vision, it's very hard to be successful, right? Um, but building a mission statement that is a formal declaration of your intention, of the aims of you as a company or you as a person, is extremely valuable. All right, so this is kind of like the— what my husband would call the ushy-gushy part, right? Like where you're like thinking about who you want to be and writing it down. I will say though, when I run this workshop for entrepreneurs, they very rarely have done these things. So now What I'm gonna do is shift us a little bit to an exercise that I use, and I do this with the whole family. I actually have a version from last year. I do it with the whole family, but it has— and I'm going to encourage you, just take out a piece of paper and you're going to do this with me. Um, it has 4— or sorry, 3 different sections. One is— oopsie. Oh my gosh, what's happening? Isn't my sweatshirt— I think Right, everything you want to have. This is like materialistic stuff. Don't be shy, no one's watching. If you want a Gulfstream private jet so you don't spend time in TSA, like, put it down. Um, everything you want to do. This is like experiences. Um, so for me, for example, my husband wants an Escalade IQ. Who doesn't, uh, right? Uh, I'm not at the point where I want to like invest in that, but I get it. So there are certain materialistic things, right? We have a house we have our eyes on, it's $3 million. Again, I'm right now investing in real estate, I'm buying property. I don't want to buy a house, but we'll get there, right? $3 million house, we already know which one we want, we look at it all the time. Right, so there's things that we want to have, like materialistic things, you know, $10 million in revenue, right? Oh goodness, let me make it a little smaller, right? This is like, have like ARR, right? I want to have, uh, 15 partnerships. So these are like the materialistic things. So this is what I encourage you to do. Now my list is very, very long. Like, it includes all the things. I always say a closed mouth doesn't get fed. This is my chance to say to the world, hey, I'm gonna— I'm going after this this year. I did not want— I mean, this did not exist last year, so these are all new asks of the universe, right? Then in the do column, it's experiences. What do you want to do? I mean, for me, I tend to look at who I was in 2025, and I want to do better. I want to do more. So is there a country I haven't visited? Is there a, you know, last year building a community was on my list and we did that. Yay. But I didn't have really, you know, I had this kind of this I Love AI community, but we really hadn't built out kind of serious players in the AI, responsible AI world that could go and make change in companies. That's what I wanted. And we ended up evolving to build that. So what do you wanna do? This could be like the, It could be similar to, you know, I want to be a CEO, I want to get promoted, right? I want to be a better mom, I want to be a, you know, a good wife, I want to be a better daughter. Like, what do I want to do? Um, and these, like, what usually it's activity-driven, right? Um, so that you would say I did that. I also like this from the perspective of having a little check mark that you can check off. Right? I want to go to— we have yet to go to Greece. I actually haven't been to Hawaii either. Now that— oh gosh, Hawaii. Anyway, um, right? But when I do it at the end of the year, I want to be like, check, check. My do is kind of my check column. I can just check that stuff off. Have as well, but do is more experiential, right? I want to take my kids on a Disney cruise. I want to, you know, like These are all like, what do I want to do in my life? Now, the benefit of having and doing and getting this idea— and of course this should be driven based on our purpose and what we're trying to do in the world, right? Once I have this have and do column, the next level of assessment is who do you need to be to have and do these things? And this is cool because I used to do this backwards. I used to say, who do I want to be? And then not even correlated, I would be like, and I want to have and do this stuff. But I didn't realize there's a direct correlation to the stuff you want to have, the things you want to do, and— oh my gosh, what just happened— and who you want to be. So the next column is, is actually a question. Who are you going to be? Like, who do you have to be to be able to make a $10 million business? Well, I probably have to be some of the words on my page. Organized, inspiring, a good team leader, leadership-driven, right? Act with integrity, revenue-generating, good salesperson, right? So this is the question you will answer once you've documented. And it's important to do it in this order because you don't— I mean, there's lots of things we might want to be, right? Like me, for doing, I want to learn the cello this year. In 2026, right? So I'm going to put that on my do column. But who do I need to be to learn the cello? I need to be persistent, consistent. I need to do the work, right? So these are all who— what are the characteristics? And the difference between— what I like about this is that when you drop down the be column, you can start being that right now, today. You could start being it right now. Like, if, if who I need to be to learn the cello is consistent every single day, I can start practicing, right? Either the cello, which I don't have yet, um, but I can start doing things on a daily basis. Habit tracking. I can start building habits that are conducive to a lifestyle that gets these types of things. Oh my gosh, of course. Yes, Pam. Um, I mean, we now have Vibe Coding. So I— some of us are going to have some fun with this, right? We create a Vibe Coding platform. It allows us to track. We actually have a product that the Leadership, um, Institute Essentials program members that you all are going to get. It's called Massive Action Tracker, and you're going to put in all these things and you're going to track the actions that it takes to get there. And that's where we're going to go next, right? So once you have this, this is like the core of what you're going to do next year. It's your brainstormed list of who you're going to be and what, as a result of being those things, what you're going to achieve, what you're going to attain, what you're going to buy, right? Yeah. Oh my gosh, awesome. Okay, so have, do, be. But it's not— I mean, this exercise is done like on the internet. If you Google this, people teach it in very different ways. What I found to be most effective is figure out What are my dreams? What are my goals? And who do I have to be right now? What personality traits, what leadership traits, what skill sets do I need to acquire today to be someone who does this? One of them for me is like accounting, business accounting. Like, I've always for my whole life been like, I'm not an accountant, I hate accounting, I failed accounting in high school. That's what I would say to people. I can't have that mindset if I'm going to build a $10 million business. Like, I have to own that. Um, yes, I know you can, Natalie. That— we're friends. I know. That's it. Ecosystem. I know. Absolutely. Or you can build a company that I can hire to do it. One of those things. Um, but yes. So who do I need to be to get the things I want, and how can I start applying that right now? So The next— so I encourage you to create a bit of a matrix that lists this out, right? In my— I have an Excel spreadsheet. But with my kids, everyone got a different color pen. And we all came in. So mine's black. My kids would come in. My daughter would be pink. My other daughter would be purple. My son would be blue. My other son would be green. And they'd write in what do they want to have? What do they want to do? But then they'd also think, who do they need to be? Oh, I need to go to school on time. Oh, I need to do my homework. Oh, I need to do this. Who do you need to become in order to get the things that you want? And being comes first. Being comes first. Like, you can't get the things you want without being that person first. So it's such a critical mindset shift that most people just don't get when they plan out their year. All right, so let's move on to the blueprint. So I have a blueprint that I use every single year, and I'm going to share with you, um, a PDF, but I don't encourage you to like print the PDF. I just, I think this style is so much more freeing. It allows my mind to kind of fill in the pieces organically, but it's up to you. Some of you are like, but my mind needs a PDF, so I will give you a PDF. But a blueprint is basically a set of proposals that shows how you're expected to get your results. That's the blueprint, right? Like for a house, like it's a, it's a draft of how you're going to get to the end, which is a beautiful, well-formed house that's you know, safe. Same idea here. Our next step is to build a blueprint to get to these things. So it's very much a step-by-step process. You can't build the blueprint until you know what you want to have, what you want to do, and who you need to become, right? So the blueprint is where we start reverse engineering our success. And what I do— I'm going to give you a couple questions that I ask myself. One is What do you want to achieve personally, professionally, and financially? This is called— and I do this with my employees, or I used to do it when I worked at a company and owned, had a team. I would ask them— oh my gosh, my sweatshirt is driving me crazy, sorry— PPF, personal, professional, financial. Every— if you are a hiring manager or you become one, Everybody you work with should know, should tell you. This is what I did in my 100 days at NPR. What is your personal goal? Like, what are you trying to do in your life? What are your professional goals? How do I help you get there? And what are your financial goals? Like, are you making the money you need to make? Because honestly, if I'm— if someone's working for me and they're not making enough, I want to know so that like, I'm not surprised if they're like, bye, I got to go make some more money. Right? And then that puts like an interest in me in helping them make their financial goals. So personal and then professional and then financial. So you should have a picture of this for yourself. Have a document that identifies, here's my personal goals, my professional goals, and my financial goals. The benefit of that is, you know, like as part of the have, do, and be, I usually will make sure that there are things that I want to have that are personal. Playing the cello, things that I want to do that are, are personal, um, things that I want— like on that list I should see a reflection of each of these. You'll notice, right, when I— I mean, this is not my exhaustive list, it was just an example, but there are some personal, professional, and financial goals on here. So this is the lens. You go back to your list and then you start equaling it out, because some of us are going to be very professionally focused, someone who can be going to be very personally focused. This is where We have an opportunity to revisit our list and make sure that it's rounded out across personal, professional, and financial. And this is, again, if you have a team, I, I make sure that everyone I'm working with, that we all know each other's goals. We all know what we're trying to do together because it helps us like, you know, leverage each other in the highest and best way. So mapping out those goals as it comes to, you know, having and doing, right? What, what is I also like to have a very specific number. You'll notice I did that almost accidentally, right? But I didn't just say I want to have a profitable business or I want to have a 7-figure business. Like, I put a number on it, right? I want a $3 million house. Now, the Escalate IQ, that's a specific model, right? It's very, very specific, um, and that's intentional because if you make it generic, there's nothing I can hold on to, and there's certainly no checkbox I can check right? When I get there. I mean, AI works the same way, right? We have to provide a very specific, tangible metric that we can use to measure the attainment of these goals as we knock them out in 2026. So spend some time, and I would even take what you did in the have, do, and be and draft out a narrative, a personal, professional, and financial narrative of what you want to accomplish. I absolutely, Padmini, update the goals as I go along, because here's the cool thing: when you set an intention, you're going to knock these out sooner than you've ever knocked them out before, because it's called the reticular activation system. When you do this work, you're going to write down and reverse engineer your year down to the day. And when you do that, all of a sudden you're going to be looking at your goals not once a year at the beginning of the year, not once a quarter when you do performance reviews, or one— you know, you're going to look at it every single day. And if you're like gangster, you might look at it twice a day, when you wake up and before you go to bed. That's what I do. That means that I'm always thinking about what my goals are, and I'm always— I write them down twice a day. And that means that when an opportunity comes, like this opportunity to work with David Meltzer, like, I see that through the lens of my goals. I also investigated him and was like, are you my people? Are you, like, based on my, my thing, are you, are you who I want to work with? And he's got some really amazing, humble stories to tell. I won't tell them, you can go find out, but I was like, you are my people. I wanna work with you. I think we could do great things together. Um, so, so this is, uh, a really important part. But yeah, you'll absolutely, you're gonna knock these goals out faster than you've ever done before. And then you make new goals. And so you recalibrate, if you will, to a new version of you. And then you'll move faster and faster and faster. So the things I ended up finishing 2025 with were not the goals I started with cuz I finished my goals in like April. And I was like, oh, now this— like, these are like big, hairy, audacious goals. Like, I'm not sure I want to pay $150 grand for a car, but it's a goal. It's a family goal, so we're going after it. All right, um, let's see. Okay, so once you've identified these— the narrative of these goals, go back to that concept of being. Who do you have to be to achieve those goals, right? Like, if you're building a $10 million business Who do you have to be? You have to be likely— and I'm just gonna say, if any of you have this goal, you're gonna have to get on some stages. You're gonna have to build your brand. You're gonna have to be someone who is outwardly focused, communicating to customers and clients, right? Like, who— what does a $10 million business owner look like? And likely I say $10 million, but obviously my, my real goal is like, I don't know, a trillion, like, right? Who does, who does that look like? Like, what does Satya do on a daily basis? These are the kinds of things that I ask myself and write down. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I love mentalists though, Pam. They're so fun. Now the next question. So the first question, I don't know if I was clear about that, but the first question is, once you've got these, is going back to being. Who do you need to be to achieve the goals that you're writing down? The next question is what resources do you need to achieve your goals? Who— like, maybe that's people, maybe that's products, maybe that's, uh, classes or skills. But looking at your goals through the lens of what am I missing— here's a fun fact: many times I go into my, you know, what I want to do and what I want to be in, and then I look at the resources, I'm like, I actually have everything I need right now. Why haven't I done this before? Right? So that's kind of the, the examination, um, that I encourage you to go through. Like, what would you need to help you get there from a resources perspective? And then my favorite part, we build the plan of attack. Now, is Renee here? Because she sent me— it was so funny, she told me, uh, I showed something earlier, but I have a Post-it notepad called Plan of Attack. It's a mini version, but in the gift she sent me, she sent me a page from her Plan of Attack book, and I was like, where— that's it, that's so cool! Hey, what's up, Renee? Um, yeah, so Plan of Attack, this is how I think, and I do this plan of attack at multiple levels. One, I have it at the yearly— yearly— oh gosh, yearly level. I have it at the quarterly level. I have it at the monthly level, weekly, and you can probably guess, daily. Like, I have my plan of attack. It starts with my plan for the year, kind of a holistic approach to how I'm going to get this done. And this is like a thought exercise, journaling, writing, thinking. You can even use ChatGPT, though I encourage you to try it on your own first. The danger of using AI at this stage is that right now you're pulling on who you are, and you might not have talked to this part of yourself in a long time. And when you ask ChatGPT, hey, help me, you know, craft who I want to be, it's going to fill fill the page with stuff that sounds good. Like, you're gonna be like, yeah, I actually do maybe want to be that, that sounds cool. But it didn't come from you, it came from everyone else on the planet. So I'm going to encourage you that you can use AI to help you build tools for managing this, but I would call it for old time's sake, pull out a pen and paper and actually write this stuff down. You, like, let the synaptic effect of your own neural network inside your skull help you get to these answers before you enlist in AI to help you polish it up. So the plan of attack, as I mentioned, I create a year-long statement. So this is that, um, this is like a statement of purpose for the year. Maybe that's my mission statement, my vision statement, right? What do I want to do? This is the highest level. Some of you know this term, OKRs. Oopsie. Oh gosh. Anyone heard that before? Yeah. Yeah. The OG neural network, your brain. 100%. So OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. It— John Doerr, uh, wrote a book on it. Uh, it took the world by storm, uh, from an, uh, executive perspective. But objectives is what you're trying to do. And key results are how you're measuring it, right? So they're the little things you do that lead to the overall achievement of that objective. So it's kind of sequential, right? So similarly here, the year— at the year level, I am identifying my objective for the year, and the rest of it, I'm identifying key results that will show me on a quarterly basis that I'm on track. So I will break it down. So this is 4 quarters, right? So I will say, okay, if my objective for the year is to make $10 million, what does that mean I need to do on a quarterly basis? I'm just going to, again, for the thought process, say I need to make $250 million a quarter, right? This is an easy one because it's financial. It's a little harder when it's not, but just to give you an example, right? So I break out my year into 4 quarters. I then take each of those 4 quarters and break them into for 3-month increments. But every single month I want to know if it's March, how am I tracking? This is where AI can be super helpful, right? I can vibe code my way to a dashboard that's personalized to my growth. But I do it, and now I have every single month. So you'll end up having month 1 through 12 documented, but they are going to be correlated to your quarterly goals, which are correlated to your yearly objective. Right, and then weekly. Okay, so now I know, uh, in January, right, I have 4 weeks. So every week, what do I need to do to ensure that I hit my monthly goal that aligns with my quarterly goal that is in alignment with my yearly goal? And I do this like every day. Now what I do every day is not like build out this plan. I build this plan out once and then I revisit it on a quarterly basis. What I do every day is I revisit my days. So that's the next one, is that every day, right? Every day I'm going to go in and say, okay, for these 4 weeks on Monday, what do I need to do today to make sure that at the end of the week I've met my weekly goal and that that week is going to meet my monthly goal and that that month is going to meet my quarterly goal, right? You see it? It's, it's called engineering. You're going to engineer your own success. And I know some of you are like, oh my gosh, What? It seems like a lot of work. And it just— I always say, if you say that and you actually mean it, your why isn't big enough. Because when I say I'm going to, you know, change the world for my son, I'm gonna help, you know, 1 billion people do something, when I get up every day, I'm like, okay, what do I need to do today to get there? And here's the thing that is so sad, is that when you don't do things on a daily basis in connection this way. Actually, let me back up a second. One of the things I think is so interesting— let me make sure— um, is that when you build out this plan, and literally in my book, uh, I don't know if I have it handy. Oh, I do. Hold on, hold on one second. Uh, it's almost handy, right? I, I mean, this is a good reason to buy a new Moleskine notebook. So I did. Um, so this is my Moleskine notebook, and right, this is my plan, right? There's my Be, Do, Have as it started. Um, here's my blueprint for 2026, right? Mapping out my goals. So when I mapped out my goals, I didn't share them with you, but I want to do that really quickly, is that I created goals in a bunch of different areas. One personal, which I told you already, right? Personal, professional, financial. Um, maybe I'll just call it PPF. You know those already. But these are the other areas that I also documented my goals. I encourage you, if you've never done this before, just start here. Just start with PPF and build out your year based on that. But I have done this a lot, and now I have lots of nuances of what I want to accelerate success in. So the next one I have is lifestyle. Like, what does my lifestyle look like? You know, I like nice shoes. Some of you know, um, I like nice, you know, I like the nice things. What does my lifestyle look like? Who am I hanging out with, right? My inner circle is another thing. And some of— I mean, you all don't even know, but like, you're my inner— some of you are my inner circle, my people. Like, I, I created that. I wanted people who I could rely on, people that I could trust, that I could talk to about my business, about my profession. Um, so who is that? What do they look like? How do I attract the right people into my inner circle? Of course, my income, which falls under financial relationships. And this is broken up into a couple different areas too, right? But like, my relationship with my husband, of course, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with my dad, with my brother, with my vendors, with my partners. With my customers, my clients. Um, and then, which these are not in order of like importance, but health and fitness, right? Oh gosh, my handwriting. Uh, but also spirituality, right? So this is, rather than be a list, it's actually a circle. Have you heard of the Wheel of Life, right? So you can go look for that if you want. Wheel of life. It's like 10 characteristics, and that's what wealth looks like, right? I feel wealthy if I have done all of these things, and finance is just one component, but these are the lenses upon which I look. But here is— again, y'all are going to be like, that's crazy. Um, so I have, you know, pages upon pages of month— like month and week breakdowns of the activities I need to do in all of these areas. So it took up half the book. Um, so when we talk about like doing this work, just— I don't know, I like— I got a new notebook for 2026. I'm writing out all of my goals across all of these aspects of who I want to be. And then for every month, I'm looking at, do I have all of these 10 like things? Do I have them all represented in what I want to do? And here's what I uncovered last— like over the last few years. Many of you know I wrote a book over the last— like in 2 years ago I started a book, it published last year. A lifelong dream, like, of what I wanted to be. I always wanted to be a best-selling author, and I did it, and it was amazing. But what I noticed about myself a year before is every time— every year I have be a best-selling author, it's always been a goal. But when I looked at the daily activity, I hated writing. I never wrote, ever. And I had to be honest with myself and look at what am I doing on a daily basis in alignment with all the things— oopsie, I got super excited— um, in alignment with all the things. Am I doing things every day to move in the direction of my goal? Now, I don't have to do all the things every day, but certainly on a weekly basis. That's why my husband and I have date night. My husband and I go on business trips together. Like, there— I have to figure out a way to get to check all the boxes, right? To get every part of who I want to be served. And it is possible, but you have to engineer it. And that's what this is all about, is that when you build out a plan of attack that addresses your year, your quarter, your month— and again, I'm going to give you a PDF so you can see how I frame this, and it's basically all the blank pages of my plan of attack, so you can just fill it in if you want to use that framework. But you can design your own framework. You could put this into ChatGPT and have it build you a framework. I just encourage you to let your own mind, your own personality, actually build the components of this. Like, what is a good lifestyle should not be given to you by ChatGPT. It should come from what you actually want. And many of us have— I say this to— I said this last night, but I say it to clients on stage, like, we have long forgotten the ability to dream about things that now with the help of AI, we can actually build a business that generates enough revenue to make our dreams come true. Do we even remember what it's like to dream about things like that? That's what the Have, Do, and Be allows me to do. I can dream about what do I wanna have? If I could have anything, what would it be? And the first few years I did this, my list was like 3 things. I couldn't even get there. And so, you know, it's practice. It's practice like unlocking your brain and your mind and your creativity. Um, and it's also being willing to share, as I'm sharing with you, right? It's a little bit transparent of like what I'm doing and who I, you know, who I want to be. And my hope is that we see that unlock. But one thing I always say, I put a disclaimer for myself on all of my plans that I have the right to evolve my thinking. That's what I say. I always tell myself like when I'm doing this, I have the right to evolve my thinking because right now I think the most important thing I can do is generate financial wealth for my family. So I am sacrificing time with my family to build a massive amount of money for them. I have the right to evolve my thinking where one day, heaven forbid, something happens and I'm going to be like, money doesn't even matter. My time with my family matters more than anything, right? Like, I'm not— that's not where I'm at right now. But at any time, I have the right to evolve my thinking to say, no, this isn't important anymore. I didn't know better. And it's all very individualized. No one can come into me and be like, oh, you just don't know, you haven't had this experience yet. Like, that's not what this is. It's very much an evolution of self. But the best way to evolve at an accelerated rate, which I think is totally fine, is to actually document what you want and then craft a plan of attack down to the daily level and then write it every day. Every day write your goals, and every day write your targets. So I think I have my book over here that I use. Oh my gosh, here it is. I think this is it. Oh gosh, hold on. Wait for it. Oh goodness, that's not it. Oh goodness. Alright, it's this one. I actually think I should go over there. Oh my gosh. Oopsie. Let me see. I have another one over here. Hold on. Wait one second. Yeah. So I have some in plastic because I use these all the time. These are called 10X Planners. Um, but the reason I like them is because on the page every day it says, what are your goals? Not today, like, what are your goals? And I fill this up. I like 2 lines per thing, and I'm like, I want to be a bestselling author. I want to be in the best shape of my life. I want to make this much money. I want to do this thing. Have and do. I fill it every day. So I'm looking at my top 5 things I want to have and do so that I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. Then most importantly, it says, what are your targets? What are the numbers you're going to hit today to hit those things? Are you going to spend 25 minutes with your kids? Are you gonna— right, like, are you gonna take them to the movies? Like, depending on your goal, your action will be different, but there's a way to measure it. And the benefit of doing that day after day is that you'll see what's important. Like, you'll go back and go, oh my gosh, I never hit that target. Me writing, I never hit the writing target ever. Oh no, why? Because I didn't like it. But if I don't like it, then I need to be honest with myself. Do I want to be a bestselling author or don't I? And if I do, then do the work. And if I don't, then let it go. But the daily activity is what tells you how that works. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going now. Um, um, oh my gosh, I'm 2 minutes late. All right, so I gotta go. We're going to head over if you are ready— click on that link! Head on over. You might have to register. I don't know. It shouldn't take too long. I'm gonna join them right now. They're going to be like, "Noelle!" But we got there. Like, we got there. We got to the end. So I will be sending you my PDF if you registered for this event which is how you got here. If you're online, you'll have to register but if you register for the event, I will be sending a thank-you email for registering. If you enjoyed today's session Found it Enlightening? Um, it's only the beginning, right? This is like The Plan. In January, for those of you who join us in the AI Leadership Essentials program, uh, we'll put the link out there. We'll send it in the thank you message if you wanna see what that looks like. We are doing a reverse engineering 4-hour session where we actually build out every single page together, meaning we're stopping and writing, stopping and writing. It's very good. Um, it might even change your life. So thanks everybody. Uh, amazing to see you here today. I hope you enjoyed the session. I'm gonna go to this other call where we're gonna monetize 2026. It's my second favorite thing to talk about. Um, so other than what we do here in the AI Leadership Institute. So let's go learn how to make some money. All right, I'll talk to y'all later. Thank you all, talk to you soon. Bye. All right, I'm saving the chat first so I don't lose all your comments and stuff. Um, but thank you so much. All right, bye everybody. Thank you. See you over there.