Episode 100: Celebrating Milestones and Mastering the Art of Planning for Success

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself. We're here to challenge fear and, shattered out, let's dive in. What's up everybody? Welcome back to Never Stop Building. I'm your host, sam Kaufman. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.

Speaker 1: 0:27

This should be the second week in January 2024. This is also our 100th episode. I'm super proud of that. This is a huge deal.

Speaker 1: 0:38

I don't know if you guys know like, statistically speaking, the majority of podcasts don't make it past three or four episodes. 25 was a big milestone for me, 50 was a big milestone and then I kind of like 100 was the next milestone and you know like I had a goal for 2023, because I really launched this in 22. But I was really inconsistent. It just wasn't like priority. I felt like I'm underprepared and I really like this is such a passion project for me. This is not like a lead gen thing. There's no like money to be had with this. I'm not interested in advertisement and stuff like that and so, like this is such a passion project for me and it's funny how, like the stuff that really like hits the hardest in the heart sometimes is the hardest to be consistent with. Sometimes, like, the stuff that really means the most to us is the thing we overthink the most, it's the thing we're the most scared of failing at, it's the thing we want to be perfect for the people who are watching, listening a part of, etc. Etc. And so when I got over myself at the end of 2022, I got consistent. I got consistent like halfway through 2022, but my but I didn't release an episode every single week and so 23,. I was like I'm doing it every single week and I did some weeks, multiple episodes. I'm really grateful, like I hit that initiative and now it's great. It's great that that is now a habit and a scheduling item and no longer something releasing episodes no longer A challenge. This is just a lot of fun and I just wanted to say, like I appreciate all of you so much.

Speaker 1: 2:31

100 episodes who knows if this would have happened if a few of you weren't listening. You know, I'd love to say that it would have. I'd love to say I would have done this. No matter what I'd love to say, I would have kept going. 100. You know this is 120 to 60 minute talks. This is a hundred moments of recording, editing, uploading, posting, sharing, copying this. You know dozens of guests, scheduling, management. There's actually a lot of work. Having a podcast, it's actually a lot of work, but I love this and I thank you Again. I'd love to say like, if not one person cared, listened I do I would have made it to 100.

Speaker 1: 3:08

But I don't know. I don't know if I would have, I think, a lot of the fuel that that happens on the days. I don't feel like recording the days. I don't feel like popping the computer open the late nights like there are many late nights of uploading into Buzzsprout to get this thing posted on time for release day and I just thank you. I get DMs, I get DMs.

Speaker 1: 3:33

I'm humbled by the amount of positive impact this has seemed to make in people's lives and all it takes is one. You know, if something that you're doing positively impacts one person, it's worth it, it's worth the effort, it's worth the energy, it's worth the investment. So yeah, so I'm a little, I'm a little emotional this morning. To be quite honest with you, what's interesting about recording this is I'm actually recording this at a more unplanned time because I had another call move off and it just hit me. It just hit me that this will be the 100th episode. That's got me a little emotional, you know. So, all right, hey, so.

Speaker 1: 4:19

So, in honor of the 100th episode, in honor of what? Of a new year, in honor of what I just shared with you about having to make a commitment and make a plan to hit my episode every week goal for 2023. We're going to talk about planning. This episode is going to be about planning. It is not too late to plan for 2024. It is not too late to set your initiatives, and so we're going to talk about what planning looks like for me, how I do it at my company and then how I do it with my wife at home, with the kids, and how I set all that up. And my hope is that you will take some bits and pieces of this, or the whole thing, and you will go if you have not already, and you will implement a planning session for your life and or your business After you're done listening to this, because what I will tell you is that planning properly makes execution so much easier.

Speaker 1: 5:19

We all struggle to be accountable to the goals that we set for ourselves. We all struggle to show up and do the hard things every day, and it's really easy to follow people, influencers, online personalities, where all you see is the post of them doing something hard, talking about how hard it is and how good it is to do hard things, but very few of them really openly talk about the battle, the challenge, the demons that present themselves 90% of the time when we're doing something hard, like I can't tell you how often I still have to talk myself into doing my cardio. I've been doing cardio for years. I know a lot of you have followed the fitness journey for the last 12 months, which is like the best shape I've ever gotten in. It was super. It was more dedicated than I've ever been. It was also like I learned how to do it in a way that really worked with my life better than I ever have been, but like I've been on this journey since January 2019. I've done two a days. I've done 75 hard multiple times. I've done phases like this isn't my first go around with physical fitness discipline.

Speaker 1: 6:30

My point being is like going on five years, this month later, and I still have to convince myself to get on the elliptical or the bike or the treadmill or take that walk. I still have to convince myself sometimes to really fight with myself not to eat that extra food, that dessert, that thing. I'll stare at it, I'll stare at it and so, like the demons don't go away because we committed to doing something hard. What happens is we become stronger as we do the hard things and we become mentally tougher as we make good decisions in the face of the challenge, in the face of not wanting to, in the face of, and so, like I really want to share with you, before we get into the planning side of things is like your goals should scare you. They shouldn't be so unrealistic that they're completely unattainable, but they should scare you because some of your goals should touch on things that really have been bothering you, things that you really want to change, things that you really want to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 7:35

And what's going to bother you and this is the trigger that I've noticed that really works for me is, if I'm scared of the goal, not because I'm afraid I won't reach it, but because I'm afraid of the work that is required to get there. It is a goal that I need to undertake because I get scared of the work required to get there, and for me that's a trigger, that that's a thing that's going to take me to the next level. And so if I set a goal and I'm like man, I can attain that, like that's realistic, and I become anxious about the work. Like I'm going to have to wake up earlier, I'm not going to be able to eat that as much. I'm really going to have to budget my money better to hit that, I start to become anxious about the work required. It means it's a goal I really should undertake, something I've been avoiding, something that I've been ignoring, something that my ego has taken over. I haven't been as humble as I should be, as I want to be, as I could be. There's things that obviously this now has to become a priority, and so like I started to learn that trigger and like there's a fine line between excitement and anxiety, right. So like the goal should excite me, the work should scare me, and to me that's a perfect combination, for I'm about to grow if I stick to this, in a big, big way.

Speaker 1: 8:55

Personally, I'm very excited about 2024 because the goals that I have I'm actually looking at them. They're on Post-it notes on my wall behind my desk here, right in front of me, and then to my right is I am reading the New Testament. And so I have all the chapters of the New Testament on Post-it notes and as I read a chapter I'm gonna pull a Post-it off the wall and I'm gonna stick it. I'm either gonna do like a Mason jar and just kind of like put all the Post-its of Bible verses I read in the Mason jar and then at the end of the quarter or the year I'm gonna like pull them out and it's gonna be cool. But I haven't fully formulated that. But I have them all posted up right on my right here. But I have all my goals hanging behind my desk on Post-it notes, color coded by category. So I'm gonna start with the personal goal setting and planning, because this is gonna apply to everybody.

Speaker 1: 9:45

And so we planned one, two, three, four, five, six pillars, and those pillars are home and family. And home and family is like our kids, our dogs, our home if there's any, like home projects or like fun stuff, or even like like if you're doing like a renovation or something like that, like upgrades or cleaning or is this anything special for the home. And then family is obviously like that's kids, that's dogs, cats, like all the other stuff, but it is not our marriage, so that's our it's own category. And that category is called love and that's our marriage category. So we do home and family, we do love. We have a physical category. That's body, right, that's like mind, body kind of stuff. That's Physical goals if it's weight loss or weight gain or if you have a health thing going on. Then we have spiritual. That's its own category.

Speaker 1: 10:45

So we're believers in the Kauffman household and so we have initiatives revolving around our spiritual goals, what that looks like for us to get closer to Jesus this year, how we're gonna do that, both individually and as a married couple. You know we've run, for example, like we've led small groups, faith-based married small groups for a few years now. We recently moved to a new city and so like we're very anxious and excited To do that again and so like that's on the goal list to plan or to lead if possible, join at a bare minimum lead if the new church will let us a growth group for the church, so like that's an example of like spiritual goal. And then we have career. So this is the businesses, this is the job, this is Whatever you're doing for your career. So we have we have a few businesses kind of in the house. Right now I'm operating in a A couple of roles one primarily the one for win rate as director of revenue, and one-on-one executive business coach, the man of primarily as GM CEO of our renovation company, and we got a couple other things. So all the career goals go in there for the year.

Speaker 1: 12:00

And then we have finance. It's your finance goals, so like our personal income goal, what we want to do with our budget this year. We have a really cool goal up there this year. I'm not gonna share all of my goals with you because they're not all. Honestly, they're just not all anybody's business. I'm not really one for like Flashing everything, but this one's really cool.

Speaker 1: 12:21

This was Amanda's idea. She said bless one random person per month With a gift card. So like we're gonna go to the store, we're gonna buy a year's worth of gift cards, like visa gift cards or whatever, and as it comes to our hearts, as God speaks to us, as we're out and about throughout the year, we're gonna bless one person a month at minimum with one of those gift cards with a few hundred dollars on it, really excited about even gives me children just saying it, and so like we have a tithing goal of donations, like, etc. So, like, everything that we want to do is Clearly laid out in yearly goals on these post-it notes. So what we do for our planning and we got this from we got the outline from Mike and Tiffany, mike, claudio and his wife. We kind of fine-tuned it a little bit for, like, what works for us.

Speaker 1: 13:11

So basically, like, our planning session starts with a review of the previous year. So you sit down, do a review of the previous year and, first and foremost, we go over memorable moments. So we took out a sticky note pad and we went through our phone photos and we both started going through the photos from 2023 and writing down every memorable thing we did. There's so much more than you think and, like I'm gonna be honest with you, like we have been in, it's been a challenging Three-month season for us in Q4 as a family professionally, financially. It's been expensive. There's been a lot that would easily convince people. We could have easily been convinced that there wasn't a lot of winning this year because really we have 90-day attention spans and so, like, if you have a hard quarter, you start to believe your whole year sucked. You start to believe the whole month sucked. You start to believe everything sucked. So this practice was really healthy, where we sat down and we went through our photos and we started writing down every photo.

Speaker 1: 14:06

That was a memorable moment trips, funny family times, fun things that happened with the animals, events that we did, small groups, that there was so many, there were so many that we were just like it just kind of like kept going and going. There were dozens and dozens and dozens, and so it's funny like there were definitely like over 50 that we found and we were just sitting there and it's just funny how it's you can go through the day-to-day kind of feeling like man, this was a hard year and and look, 2023 was a hard year for a lot of people. I mean, there was a lot of hard parts of the year for me as well. But we'll go through all those memorable moments and you realize, like man, I have like I have three or four what I would call like bigger losses from 2023, but I have 50 plus memorable moments with loved ones, like I'm winning, like I'm winning at a high level if I have 50 plus memorable moments with people I love and care about and I have like four losses for really hard thing for. And there's no actual gravity difference between the three losses and the 50 memorable moments. You just oftentimes we just equate pain to being a bigger thing than joy. So when I really took a step back, it was like, dude, 50 to 3, 50 to 5, even. Okay, all right, it was a good year. It was a good year Even with the chat, like it was a good year.

Speaker 1: 15:25

So we start off with memorable moments. You take that post to go through your photos right out of the memorable moments and then we do a. Then we did a previous year initiative review. So we did the planning session the year prior and we went through and we looked at our initiatives and it was really really, really the coolest thing. Like, not how many did we complete? Didn't we complete? Because we didn't complete them all. Like we aborted some. We completely neglected some like absolute, like it's just there's no perfection in initiatives, especially for a whole year when you have dozens and dozens and dozens of initiatives.

Speaker 1: 15:58

What was really interesting to me was that the parts of our, the parts of my life, that were the most challenging right now were also the pillars that were the most neglected in the initiative for 2023. And so that was super eye-opening to me that like this is something that you'd super like. Take this away Like what you focus on will improve. What you positively focus on and what you really attack will improve. Not maybe not if will. It won't happen overnight, but it literally is guaranteed to improve If you turn your attention, your focus, your spirit to it. What you neglect will decay the pillars of your. If you neglect the physical pillar, it will declare. If you neglect the finance pillar, it will decay. If you neglect the love pillar, it will decay. If you neglect home and family, it will decay. There is no actual like, there's no way around that.

Speaker 1: 16:56

And so this is where, like people talk about like balance. I don't believe that I that balance is really a thing. Well, so that's not entirely true. It's like balance is partially biblical. It's in there what I really like from like a definition standpoint, because I think the Greek definition of where the English translation says balance, I believe what we're really referring to in scripture often is more closely related to harmony than it is balance, because life is unbalanced and like even if you look through scripture a ton like all the most of the stories in scripture are unbalanced. Jesus's life was unbalanced, like it was very heavy in teaching and healing and loving, and then it was very heavy three days of retreating and prayer and rest. So like that's not balanced right. It's like harmonizing understanding. That being said, where we can find what could seem like balance, what was harmony, that is helpful and healthy, is, instead of neglecting any given pillar for any long period of time, absolutely understanding that all these pillars come in seasons seasons of heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy saving. And then there's always a season of spending, not like, not like irresponsibly, but a season of spending, investing, growth, etc. Season of career, career, career, career. But then there has to be a season of family, kids, like you can't neglect without decay over a long period of time. So I want you to take that takeaway.

Speaker 1: 18:27

So we do the previous year review and we count up what initiatives were completed, what initiatives were aborted or failed. Quick discussion as to why. Then we went into our words for the year and we both took some time to tell the other person. My wife and I tell the other person what our word for the year is and why. What are the intentions behind it. You speak the intentions out loud. This is very important. Speak the intentions out loud. So like for me, like I'm really glad that we do that because, like I start, I cried while I was telling a man about the intentions for my word. My word for the year is obedience. You'll all eventually see what the result of that is. I'm not going to make a big speech about it, but it's going to be very impactful for me personally.

Speaker 1: 19:13

But as I was explaining my intentions why I got to that word, why I believe God put that on my heart, why I'm picking that for the year, what the focus is, it was so emotional for me. It was so emotional. I was a combination of so excited about what it's going to do for me and my life and my family and my career, and I was also so humbled by where I had been lacking in it. That had brought me a lot of pain, and so it was very emotional, but it was very powerful and it was really vulnerable for my man and I and she got to see that and like that's really good right, that vulnerability and like a lot of marriages really miss the vulnerability and like tears are okay and like a lot of marriages are really good at like fighting and really bad at like loving and crying and connecting and like acting and like I needed that you know. And so, anyway.

Speaker 1: 20:03

So we like, did the intentions, for then we took a break and we took a break and what we did was we went, we got some food, we laughed, we did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We took a break and then we, we dove right into initiatives for this year, same pillars. You know, first and foremost, is anything that was aborted from last year need to move to this year. If anything does it moves. Then we just went through one pillar at a time, one pillar at a time. We started laying out initiatives, initiatives, initiatives. What do I want to do? What does she want to do? What do we want to do together in each pillar? And then we came to like a completion of the initiative list. And then we took another break, because the initiative creation is kind of time consuming. It's very mentally taxed a lot of decisions, a lot of tax, a lot of decisions, a lot of discussion. Then we took another break. Now we this is going to be a one day, the way I'm laying this out for you next year we're going to do a two day, because it was a lot for one day. But we took a break after the initiative creation.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Then the next thing that gets done is mapping of the calendar. So we have this big physical calendar this year super exciting. I love calendars, as you probably know, from time management, energy management, speeches and all the things. We mapped out the calendar. We took our initiatives. So in one of our initiatives we have how many family vacations we want to take for the year. So we took our calendar. We mapped what weeks we were going to do that through the year. We mapped all the work events that we have, all the date nights that we want for Q1. So we hyper mapped Q1, and we 60% mapped Q2, q3, and Q4.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Because we're going to meet again In March, we're going to review how Q1 went for our initiatives. We're going to review Q2's goals and we're going to map the quarter. Last year we mapped the whole year and it was not that it was too much, but it's like so much flexes by the end of a quarter so and it was just like a lot to keep up with the constant flexing versus rigidity of having a whole year fully baked. So we're going to try something different this year. So we fully baked Q1. So, like Q1 is basically non-negotiable, like it is what it is, barring an emergency or a hyper priority event, and then we're going to meet in Q2. We're going to map Q2 as a family first, date nights, events and then work stuff, and you know, repeat the process quarter over quarter. But, like most of the most of the big stuff's in already vacations, win rate events, travel dates that I'm aware of, for work, company event stuff, all that stuff's in there and we use the initiatives to do that.

Speaker 1: 22:41

So we reviewed the initiatives while mapping the calendar, which also gave us an opportunity to review. Because once you create initiatives like I'm a firm believer like sit on them, let them resonate, let them sink in, and then, like we deleted a couple or like combined a couple while we were doing the calendar, so like there was something really powerful there of just like sitting on it, re-reviewing it and then being like that doesn't even make sense, like we don't even want that deleted, and then it's like you know, these two are kind of the same, let's just put them in together in one, and then the calendar was done. We hung the calendar up in our bedroom, I took a few post-it notes, I put our words up on post-its in our bedroom and then I put just a few phrases that were important to me. Then I took some post-it notes and I put on the left side of my mirror in the bathroom I put important words or like statements and on the right side I put the initiative that matched the statements. Just a few, not all of them, just some core. There was like four core things for 2024 that I want to look at every single day, the things, four things that really are going to drive the most progress. If I didn't do anything else this year but I nailed those four, massive progress would be made. So that's the planning session.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Then, like the back-end accountability. So like I use a sauna and I took all our initiatives and I uploaded them all into an asana board for Amanda and I to share. So they're all laid out by pillar. They're all going to have their sub tasks for their individual quarterly, their initiatives, their reverse engineered. So you take the initiative and then you work it backwards. So like, if I want to lose 50 pounds this year which I don't think I do, I don't think I have 50 pounds to lose I would reverse engineer that Like I want to lose three pounds in January. I want to lose five pounds in February, five pounds in March. You know I want to lose, or I want to lose six pounds. I want to lose more weight leading up to May, so I look good for the summer.

Speaker 1: 24:39

So, like you do, reverse engineer the goal savings goal, budgeting goal, career goals. You want to reverse engineer everything at least into quarterly initiatives and then, if you can, into monthly so you can set up some weekly tasks for yourself to get these things taken care of. This is how you hold yourself accountable. You have to take the goal, the initiative, and reverse engineer it into a tackable monthly, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily to-do items. And then this becomes really, really simple, because then all you have to do is follow the pre-laid out plan. You don't have to think, you don't really have to try, you just have to show up, which is actually the hardest thing, but it is also the least complex and most simple part of the equation is just showing up.

Speaker 1: 25:25

So everything goes into Asana, that's a software for task management. And then I went and everything went into Google Calendar, or not Google? Well, like the calendar, like the digital calendar, so the big physical calendar. I sat down. I put everything uploaded and invited necessary invites and uploaded into the calendar, and that's the planning session. Truthfully, that's the big day, and so, instead of giving an entire another spiel on the business planning session, you could do the same thing literally for your company. I would just include a SWOT analysis and I would include some issue processing, but I'm gonna save that for another episode.

Speaker 1: 26:18

It's so early in January that for anybody that doesn't have the personal stuff planned and initiative, this is the primary importance for you right now. If you can take the framework I just gave you and commit to what is necessary that day, then all the follow-up activity, your whole life, will look different in 12 months. I have zero doubt about that. So I wanna kick this year off with some accountability for you. I wanna kick this year off with some inspiration for you. I wanna kick this year off with some strategy for you and I want you to take this and I want you to implement it. And look for those of you thinking I would love to do that, but my wife's not bought in, but my husband doesn't want to. But listen to me Too many of you expect your spouse to become somebody they aren't overnight.

Speaker 1: 27:11

Then too many of you try to become somebody you aren't overnight. And if you've never done this before and today you've decided I'm doing this now and your spouse has never heard of this, done this, is not interested in this. This is a lot. It's overwhelming. It can be scary. Don't have unrealistic expectations that they're just gonna be like super on board because you decided you wanted to do this. If they don't wanna do this, do it yourself for the first year. Prove it works. Show the results. Give your spouse something to think six months from now. Wow, that made a huge impact. Like I should have been there. Show it, build trust and momentum. If your spouse is willing to do it with you but doesn't seem super excited or bought in, good, just be appreciative that they are willing to show up for you. They don't have to be super excited and bought in on year one or two or three. Show that it works. Build the trust. Build the rapport. Try it. Stick to it.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Too many people expect too much from their spouse when they start to wanna change. I'm gonna change my life and now I need you to be somebody different. That is arrogant, brash and unreasonable. Give them time to catch up. Give them time to buy in. Give them time to see that what you're doing actually does something and isn't a waste of time. I know that if you do this it's going to work, because it worked in my life. But how would I know that if I hadn't done it and it hadn't worked in my life? I saw somebody I trust have results from it and then I wanted to do it, and so that's what you need to do too Be somebody they trust, have results from it and then bring them with you on the journey.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Don't fight, don't get angry. Manage your expectations, be a grownup, have emotional maturity and if you have to do it alone the first time, welcome to the party. We all have to do it alone the first time. Be a trailblazer in your home, set the standard, be the example and do what's necessary to change your life forever. Happy New Year, happy 100th episode. If any of you actually implement this message me, tell me what it is, share some goals with me. I'd love to help hold you accountable. You can help hold me accountable. We can have a really great 2024 and kick off with the bank. Thank you guys. Appreciate y'all so much, and I'll talk to you on episode 101.