MBA1868 Guest Teacher – Hanneke Antonelli – How to Cultivate a Strategic Mindset to Accomplish Anything
2 Feb 2026 · 22 min
Podcast episode of The $100 MBA Show (host Omar Zenhom) featuring guest teacher Hanneke Antonelli teaching how to cultivate a strategic mindset using her "Up Level Formula": beliefs + thoughts + language + feelings + actions = results. The episode includes evidence citations claimed (ScienceDaily, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) supporting that strategic mindset predicts success, practical guidance (e.g., recognize that not all thoughts are true, use positive inquiry on feelings, be impeccable with language, act as if already achieved), promotion of Antonelli's book The Up Level Project, and multiple sponsor ad reads (Intuit QuickBooks, Dell, ClickUp, USAA, Geico).
Chapters
Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling.
Payments and wondering how this became my life.
But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel.
Core Ultra processors will help you do.
More faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.
Hey all. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Powerful business lessons delivered to you every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Hanukkah Antonelli and she'll be teaching you how to cultivate a strategic mindset to accomplish pretty much anything. Any successful entrepreneur you look up to that has accomplished any level of success will have a strategic mindset. One of the things I learned as an entrepreneur through the years is there is so much going on in our head as entrepreneurs. We're always in our head. We have thoughts, we have feelings, we have emotions, we have gut feelings. And we never really evaluate these things.
And often it affects our outcomes.
Today, Hanukkah is here to help us out to sort all of that out. How to come to terms with the things that we believe, with the things that we think and the things that we say so that we can accomplish what we want. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
ClickUp just solved AI's biggest problem and it's saving 4 million teams from productivity loss every day. Unlike ChatGPT and other AI tools, ClickUp converges all your work into one platform so your AI super agents have full context to prioritize tasks, execute workflows, and draft documents instantly. Teams using ClickUp finish work 30% faster and cut meetings in half. Try ClickUp for free today and get 15% off AI upgrades at ClickUp.com podcast that's C-L-C-KashUp.com podcast today's guest teacher, Hanneka.
Antonelli was born in South Africa and has become an accomplished author and award winning life coach. With her 16 years of experience, she's been helping people up level their lives. So much so she launched a new book called the Up Level Project. But guess what? She's here today to teach you how to change your mindset, how to think more strategically so that you can cut through the fluff and the fog in your head and actually accomplish the things you set out to do. I'm going to pass that on to Hanukkah, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episodes and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away Hanukkah.
Hi there everyone. I am Hanukkah and thank you so much for joining me today. I am going to be teaching you how to cultivate a strategic mindset to achieve success and accomplish anything you want. And I'm going to be doing that today by teaching you and scientifically backed formula that will help you to step into a more strategic mindset. So let's get down to business. So first off, you may be going to yourself. Okay, so why is it so important for me to step into a strategic mindset? Well, the science now proves, according to articles that were published on ScienceDaily.com and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the reason why successful people are so successful is because they are more strategic. These sources also go on to mention that it's possible for anyone to shift into a strategic mindset. And I know this to be true through my work in my business coaching practice where I work with multiple six to seven figure entrepreneurs to help them to step into that strategic mindset. And so now you're going to go okay, so how do you do that Hanukk? And the way I do that is by helping entrepreneurs to understand how their mind works. So I do that through my easy formula called the Up Level Formula that I've deduced from the combined sciences of cbt, also called the ABC model and the three principles. So just a quick recap on the CBT model. According to BICS Institute, cognitive behavioral therapy is based on cognitive theory of psychopathology. The cognitive model describes how people's perceptions of or spontaneous thoughts about situations influence their emotional, behavioral and often psychological reactions. Individuals perceptions are often distorted, distorted and dysfunctional. When they are distressed, they can learn to identify and evaluate their automatic thoughts, spontaneously occurring verbal or imaginal cognitions and to correct their thinking so that it more closely resembles reality. When they do so, their distress usually decreases. They are able to behave more functionally and especially in anxiety cases. They are psychological aroused abates. That's quite a mouthful. But that is what cognitive behavior therapy is all about. And then the three principles is work that I first discovered through Dr. Pransky who is a trainer and practitioner of the three principles. He's also an author. And the three principles refer to the universal mind, consciousness and three thought and how these three things work together to create everyone's unique reality out of which they then think, feel and act. So good news is that I, through my research and through my work over the years have deduced all of this in a simple and easy formula for you called the up level Formula. And in my book, the Up Level Project, I go way deep on this formula and how it not only helped me to overcome depression, but also helped me to build two award winning businesses in under five years. And today I now use this formula with my clients that helps them then to expand their business vision and scale their companies to give them more freedom and higher profits. So what is this formula? So basically the formula real quick is that your beliefs plus thoughts plus language plus feelings plus actions will equal your results. So let's look at this real quick. So the way your brain works is something will happen outside of you and then it will come through this filter. And I call that filter your belief system. And your belief system is basically your background, your past experiences, the principles and values you were raised with, cultural nuances, and then also the thoughts that you think over and over and over again. So as the experience comes through that you will then have certain thoughts about a specific topic. And the fun fact about thoughts is that something like 90% of the thoughts that you have per day are either the same as yesterday or negative. So this is going to be huge if you think about it, because in order for you to get the results that you want, you're going to have to start thinking differently. And so becoming aware of the thoughts that you're having and changing them to align to the results that you want is super important. Now the other thing to remember about thoughts that not all of us are aware of is that not all thoughts are aware are true. And when I first learned about this, and this was through Dr. Jack Pransky's book, someone should have told us, I was like, oh my word, of course not every single little thing that you think is true. And therefore you don't have to attach value to every little thing that you think or act on every little thing that you think. Okay? Now based on your beliefs and your thoughts, you're also going to have some things to say about, about that. So your language is going to show us what you think and what you feel and what you believe. And this is a big part of what I do with people. I can always say like, you know, I can listen to you for five minutes and I will be able to tell so much about your life based on what you are saying. So our language really matters and what you say greatly impacts what you'll achieve. And so are you using definitive and confident words like I am going to I know, I understand, I will, or are you stuck in non committal words that kind of give you an out and sort of tells us that you're not really sure? And those words are I, I'll try, I guess maybe I will. So these words are all words that suggest that you're not 100% committed to do what you have to to in order to achieve what you want. And so if you continue to use those non committal words, your result, it will definitely impact your results and they will perpetuate your uncertainty as well. Okay, so the next step in our equation, the up level formula equation which is beliefs plus thoughts plus language plus feelings. So our feelings are such powerful things and we can approach our feelings from two sides. So number one, you can think about how you would feel if you have already achieved the result that you want. And when you lean into that and you go, I would feel confident, I would be relaxed, I would be excited, it would be. Or it would feel expansive, I would feel abundant. Then that is going to help you to identify, okay, so what do you have to believe and think and say in order to feel that way? So that really helps you then also to further go a little deeper on the equation so you can really use your feelings to inform you. And it's important here to also note that we're not pushing our feelings away here. We are using positive inquiry so they can Inform us of what's going on and where we have to adjust our thinking and our beliefs. And like I said in my book, the Up Level Project, I go way deeper on this. But we only have a certain amount of time today, so I'm going to move on to the next thing in our equation and that is your actions. So your actions are going to greatly be influenced by your beliefs, your thoughts, your language and your feelings. And how you show up and tackle your to do list then means that you really have to align everything in this equation so that you can act with confidence. The other thing is that your beliefs, your thoughts, your language and your feelings are also going to be able to help you to identify the steps that need to be taken or the way you have to act in order to get the results that you want. So are you acting like someone who has already achieved the results that you want or what actions would you take if you knew you couldn't fail? Those are two ways just to help you to up level your actions. Okay, so that is this formula in a nutshell. And the more you can identify where you're out of alignment, the better it will be and the more it will help you to then shift and into a more strategic mindset. So let's do a quick recap, shall we? Number one, the science says that successful people are more strategic. Secondly, everyone can cultivate a strategic mindset. Thirdly, how do you cultivate a strategic mindset? Well, you practice the up level formula. And the up level formula basically is beliefs plus thoughts, language plus feelings plus your actions are going to give you your results. And so where do you have to bring things into alignment with the results that you want? And that means that we have to step back, take a breath and take stock of what is going on and be aware of what we're thinking. What are we believing, what are we saying, how are we feeling and how are we acting? Okay then number four, remember that not all thoughts are true. Number five, use positive inquiry when it comes to your feelings to see what they're trying to tell you and where your thoughts, beliefs, your language, your feelings are off. And then sixth, be impeccable with your language. And then finally show up and act like it's already done. Okay, my friends, and that's it. That is how to cultivate a strategic mindset to achieve success and accomplish anything you want. Now, if you want to dive deeper on this formula and build even more awareness about how you can become even more strategic, then absolutely come and check out the uplevelprojectbook.com and and that my friends, is how you can cultivate a strategic mindset to achieve absolutely anything you want and drastically up level your results at the same time. So this was Hanukkah. If you want to continue learning about the Up Level formula and do a deeper dive on it and get other strategies that will help you to increase your profits and create more freedom, then be sure to visit the up level projectbook.com again. That's theuplevelprojectbook.com where you can grab a copy of the Up Level project. Thank you again so much for joining me today. Okay, now back to Omar USAA knows.
Dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply.
Really loved this lesson by Hanukkah Antonelli. If you want to learn more on this topic and dive deeper, check out her book the up level project over at hanukkahantonelli.com book one of my favorite things about her lesson today was that like mind blowing idea that she talked about. Not all your thoughts are true. They're just thoughts. Often they're just worries. They're things that haven't really manifested. Things that we imagined could happen and they could be totally false based on no reality. This is why it's often important for you to question what goes on in your head. The things you think of, the things that you focus on. This is why when they say to live in the moment, to live in the present means live with what you know. The idea of first principle thinking. This allows you to really focus on solving the problem at hand. It also allows you to work with what you know for sure and make a better decision. It also allows you to live with less stress. I found that to be important in my day to day life and in fact when I journal every day I write an affirmation and often the affirmation revolves around this theme of my reality is not my thoughts or I am only sure about what is happening right now. Okay. As entrepreneurs we always look forward. We always look what's next. We look how far are we from our goals. And that's natural. But we also have to realize we can't always live in the future. We have to understand the future's there, we're working towards it. But we have to realize we have only control of what's happening right now in front of us and to enjoy the moment. This is life as we know it. The past is gone. The future is unknown. The present is what we know. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love it, you hear hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. Many people have asked me, what does a typical work week look like for me? What do I spend my time on? How do I allocate my time? How do I incorporate exercise or breaks or mental health in my week? Well, in tomorrow's episode, I'll be sharing all that, what my typical week looks like. And I want to do typical week and not typical day because not every day is the same in my work week. More about that tomorrow. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Hanukkah talked about the language we use when we talk about what we're doing, how we're doing it, how committed we are to our goals. Language is incredibly important. What we tell ourselves is what we believe. We're not going to allow ourselves to be liars. This is human nature. We're only going to say things that that seem true to us. So if you are not 100% committed to something, why do it? Change your language so you can change your commitment. Sometimes you could just do it the other way around. So if you're thinking about starting a YouTube channel, don't think, don't say, I might start a YouTube channel. Say I'm starting a YouTube channel that feels totally different and makes you commit to it because you don't want to back down from it. You don't want to be a liar. And this gets your mind thinking, okay, what are the next steps? Since I'm doing this now, it's just like saying, I'm going on a trip. I'm going to the south coast. If you say that, you're going to start thinking, what's the next step? How do I get there? What do I need? Do I need to make a reservation? Your mind will start moving in the direction of where you want to go. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
Of.
We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.
Do you think this one's still good?
Free milk oh, mate, that expired in 1993.
Dang it.
Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.
Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.
Now, you should try a bit of spring cleaning.
It feels good to save big.
It feels good to Geico.
