To hit the ground running in 2025, we can start by taking responsibility. Whenever we blame outside factors for things that go wrong, we immediately forget that there are things we can evaluate in ourselves to say, okay, well even if this is the case, even if this was just a terrible prospect, are there things that I could have done better and differently in this circumstance to create a better outcome? And almost inevitably, the answer is going to be yes. But in order for that to happen, we have to consider it. And we have to think, is this actually what I want to do? And if you do that, you're just going to feel better about yourself. You're going to feel better about your situation. Because you're allowing yourself some level of control in the situation rather than simply delegating the failure to outside factors and assume you're a victim and there's nothing you can do about it. David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to hit the ground running in the new year. Happy New Year, and welcome back Jay! Jay: Thank you, David. It's such a pleasure to be here. I think everybody has a desire, you know, at the beginning of the year, to say this year's going to be different, you know, we're going to make all these changes. It's going to be fantastic. But do they really have a way to translate that into action? I picture myself hitting the ground, you know, it's like the cartoon when they start to run, you know, their feet are moving, but they're not moving quite yet. I think a lot of us are in that place. How do we get from spinning to actually moving forward? David: Yeah, it's a great question. I know in the promotional products industry, we have trade shows that start at the beginning of the new year, the ASI Show in Orlando, the PPAI Expo in Las Vegas. And, There's one in Fort Worth as well, an ASI show in Fort Worth. So we got three trade shows in the industry that are really designed to help people get up and running and get started. But as we look at today, you know, this first week of the new year, even aside from that, whether or not you're attending a trade show, chances are you're probably pretty reasonably fired up. Okay, here we go. It's another new year. What are we going to do? This is exciting. And if we think about the types of prospects that we want to interact with this year, the types of clients that we would like to attract, the types of customers that we might want to let go this year, and really focus on building our businesses as proactively as possible. Building our client lists as proactively as possible can really help to improve our quality of life in a dramatic way. Jay: Yeah. I love that. in the restaurant business, there's something called a theoretical food cost and an actual food cost. Theoretical is, what would things be like if you ran perfectly? If there was no waste, everything was perfect. And then actual is where you're at. And the goal is to constantly be trying to close that gap. And so to me, I think about it in any business, what does your ideal look like? Your ideal client base, your ideal staff, your ideal sales? So if you can know what that is and then track a course to get to it, I think that's a great way to feel progress. Because that's what I tend to miss when I'm running a business is sometimes it's just a daily grind. And I don't feel like I made any progress today. And if you do that over and over again, it's hard to continue to press forward. David: It really is. And I think a lot of that goes to the fact that very often we're just tied up in the day. Whatever it is that's going on in the day, we're just facing whatever is happening to us moment by moment, day by day. And that can get very frustrating. I remember, I think it was Tony Robbins was talking in a seminar one time about the idea that in order to create our future, we need to envision it first. It's like if you are going to build a house, you don't just start nailing boards together, I think was the analogy he used. I thought it was a great one. You have to envision it first. You have to figure out, what do I want this thing to look like? Where is it going to be located? How many rooms are going to be in it? All that sort of thing. And at the beginning of a new year, it's really nice to start thinking about what do I want my life to look like this year? Who do I want to be surrounded by? Who do I want to interact with? Who do I no longer want to interact with? What types of customers do I want to work with? What types of customers have I decided I'm no longer really interested in pursuing anymore? Simple decisions like that can have an amazing impact on your life and your career. If you simply change the quality of the prospects that you're targeting. If you go from interacting with a whole lot of small dollar clients to interacting with a smaller group of high dollar clients, particularly if those high dollar clients are people that are actually enjoyable to work, everything changes. Because now you're not running around like a crazy person. You're able to focus more on a smaller group of people that you can serve to the best of your ability and all of that impacts everything you do going forward. Jay: Yeah. Quality of life, frame of mind, stress level, home life, all of those things can be impacted. You were talking about your Tony Robbins analogy. I'm a big sports fan, and in football, typically when a coach comes out, they have their first 15 plays planned. They know exactly what they're going to do. And the reason for that is so that they can kind of assess the skills and what the rest of the team is doing. And I kind of was thinking, you know, maybe that's a great way to kind of start the year. because you're not going to plan out every step of the whole year. because things change. And we've talked about pivoting. But if you've got a plan for your first 90 days, this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to go about it, then maybe that can set you up better for the rest of the year. David: Yes, and it makes us just feel better about ourselves because we've actually given it some thought. We at least have an idea of what we want to do and where we want to go. There's that great quote from wartime, which basically says, "no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy," right? So we know that even if we put everything together, we want to do things a certain way. We know that it's not necessarily going to happen that way. However, if we at least have some things in mind and we say, okay, I would like to do this and I'd like to do that, and I'd like to do this. You may not be able to do it immediately, in the order that you've chosen, but it gives you something to go back to after you're dealing with putting out the fires or whatever else you have to do. If you've got that basic plan laid out and say, okay, I was able to accomplish this first thing, then I got sidetracked, but let's go back to that second thing and then I got sidetracked again. But let's go back to that third thing and work through it systematically. It just allows you to probably live more the kind of life you want to live. Because you're deciding, in advance, what it is that you want to do, who you're going to be doing it with, where you're going to be doing it, when you're going to be doing it. And even though you will not be 100% successful in accomplishing that, if you get 70% of the way there, or 80% of the way there, or 86% of the way there, whatever your number is, you're going to be a whole lot better off than if you start out with a blank slate. Not knowing, not deciding where you're going to go or what you're going to do, then just taking it as it comes. Being reactive like that is okay for some people, but generally for business people, business owners, salespeople, reactivity is not a tremendous asset. Jay: Yeah, I agree. But I also think we have a tendency to look at losing in a negative way, because it's losing, right? But losing is learning, right? And that's one of the reasons why a coach runs those first sets of plays because they find out, will the run game work? Will the passing game work? Is their defense strong on this side of the line or that side of the line? So as you try things in business and you do lose, in some areas, it should be losing is learning, right? David: Mm-hmm. Jay: And then you can pivot and you can adjust. And the goal is to win more than you lose. But if you think you're always going to win, you're setting yourself up and that's going to be very hard for you. Or if you only focus on the losses and not learn to grow from them, that's also going to be difficult. So learning from losing I think is such an important part of starting a new year. David: I agree completely. And even the word lose or the idea of losing, I mean, if you think in a sports analogy, you can be losing in the second quarter, in the third quarter, and then you can end up winning at the end. And you haven't lost until the game is over, right? So Jay: yeah, David: in life and in business, we haven't lost until the game is over. We're still in it every single day. We are still in it. We're still in life, we're still in business. We still have opportunities. So, It's difficult to even say I've lost, because if you're still breathing, the game is still going and you haven't lost. You may feel like you're behind. You may feel like you need to change the plays, but you haven't lost yet, right? Jay: Yeah. You haven't lost yet. And one of the other things that I find to be valuable, maybe especially at the beginning of the new year, is to challenge some of the assumptions that kind of creep around your business. Like I've been somewhere and I'll say, what about this? And they'll say, oh, we've tried that. That doesn't work. Right?

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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