Are you wrapping up 2019 and preparing for 2020? This is how I am doing it.
Matt Henderson:
What’s happening everyone? Are you prepping for the new year and wrapping up everything from 2019? Everyone. It’s Matt from The Business Mind Podcast. I am going to talk to you today about wrapping up your current year and prepping for your new year. I hope being that it is now December 12th today we are creeping towards the end of the year. For those of you who are like me, I’m sure most of you are, if you’re listening to the podcast, you’re probably pushing to try and complete as many of your goals as you can for this year, which is awesome and amazing and exactly where you should be.
…I know it’s a lot of work and we’re all struggling, not struggling, but we’re all pushing this time of year because you’ve got the holiday season here and you just finished up with Thanksgiving and stuff and you have family in and out. I guess other countries, if you guys are listening, you might not have had your Thanksgiving, but I’m sure you have your own holidays that just come and go. It takes so much of your time between traveling and everything else and having family over, which is so important to spend some time with your family and really see where everybody is at the end of the year and just catch, jump and have that good quality time with everyone.
But, at the end of the year, you have to prepare for next year too. I say this because we want to get ahead and I’m not trying to deter anybody from continuing to push through the end of this year because it’s very important to see how many of your goals you can get accomplished, but starting out next year with a proper preparation is going to be a key to your success. I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about what I’m doing at the end of my year and how I’m setting myself up for success next year.
For me, it all starts with the fact that I have an amazing wife who is so understanding and I’ll say accommodating because she actually allows me to have a really oversized, it could be more ridiculous, but for the sake of my marriage and everything else, I have a very good sized whiteboard in my kitchen. Yep, I’ve got them in my office. I’ve got them in my kitchen and honestly, anywhere else that I can put them because I’m constantly making notes. I love to go back and I use my whiteboards. It’s become my crutch. She allows me to have a big whiteboard in the kitchen and, for the end of the year, I have written on the board 2020, our 2020 family meeting that I want to have. Yes, I even have meetings with my wife but it’s for our 2020 and I want to set us up for success.
On my big whiteboard, I have listed out the top three things that I want us to really focus on and understand so that we know where we’re going with them in the new year. For me, the number one thing was “What’s our number one overall goal for 2020?” Overall, in its entirety. If we were to look at… We’re going to teleport into the future and in 12 months from today, where do we want to see ourselves living? What do we want to see ourselves doing? And overall how much are we looking to have in our pockets? What are we looking to make? That’s my number one overall goal.
I go a little bit crazy and I break those things down into much smaller, more attainable goals or not even smaller goals, but just breaking them down so that I know what to focus on and where I’m going. I start there, I just want to create the overall feel of where we’re headed so that we both have the vision and the vision’s the same. Now my number two goal, or my number two thing that I like to focus on in the family meeting, is what do we see for our relationship for 2020? That sounds, I guess, fairly obvious, we’re a married couple, but I can tell you by the divorce rate in this country and the couples that I see around here, where I am at least, I don’t know what it’s like, where you guys live, but when I see people interacting with each other and I don’t know, it’s pretty sad and kind of disappointing.
We were at dinner the other night and… No, we weren’t even out to dinner, we stopped at the mall for something, oh, we went to a movie. We stopped in at the mall and it was funny because, I guess this time of year, the malls are obviously a lot more crowded because it’s the holiday season so there’s a lot of people out shopping and everything. I saw a family of three sitting at a table and it was just mom, what appeared to be daughter and son. I could just be making that up, it appeared like that’s who was there. Mom, daughter, and son, the three of them are sitting at the table having a snack in between shopping or something, it was like around lunchtime.
It was crazy because mom’s sitting there by herself, but mom’s sitting with the two… I’m not talking about young children, we’re talking north of 20 years old and both of the kids are on their phone, staring at them while they’re shoveling food into their mouth and mom is just sitting there staring into space. I felt bad for her. One part of me… Actually, that’s a lie. My wife felt bad for her. I then, being the driving person that I am, said, “Well, I don’t feel bad because mom has made this acceptable.” To me,
that’s something that needed to be focused on and something that needed to be taken into account. That’s why my wife and I are looking at… I wanted to put relationship as one of our top three things to discuss for the new year, because I can’t fathom having relationships like that, where you go out with somebody and I don’t care if it’s your mom, your siblings, your significant other, it doesn’t matter to me, but when you’re sitting there and staring at your phone the whole time, it blew my mind.
That’s why I want to get into a relationship because relationships are so super important. It seems really obvious that that should be a focus, but for so many of us out there, it’s not. That’s my second thing that I’d love for us to really lock down.
My third thing, certainly these are not in any order of importance by any stretch of the imagination, but my third thing was, I’d really like to know exactly where we see our wealth and our income next year, this time. That’s super, super important because, the reason I have these top three things that I want to discuss in my family meeting is because, what you focus on grows.
If you’re focused on your money then you can figure out where you want your money to be and you can see your money grow. If you’re focused on your relationship, on your overall well being, your family goals, your life goals, then you’re going to see them change. You’re going to see them grow. You’re going to know what you need to push for and where you need to be. That’s just a look at how I do it with my family and how I decide where I see us being and how I get us all on the same page.
I’m going to highly, highly, highly suggest it for everyone. First, if you don’t have a whiteboard, you should go get one. Honestly, whiteboards are awesome and extremely helpful in your overall daily planning. You don’t have to go out and spend a fortune on one of these. I know if you go to Amazon and stuff like that, you can see whiteboards that are outrageously expensive.
You could just go to Home Depot and it’s called melamine and you can buy an eight foot by four foot sheet of it from Home Depot and they’ll even slice it at Home Depot for you. You can cut it down and put them up all over the place if you want. That’s what I did in my office, got one for everybody basically. I love having it. I was just getting a whiteboard, not that it’s the answer to this whole thing, but it does help having everything written out in front of you. What I would suggest is writing out all of your goals and your tasks and what you want to accomplish for the new year. Maybe making your top three things. They don’t have to be the same as mine and then discuss them with your significant other and your family and really figure out where you guys see yourself going.
All right, it is the end of the year. Let’s get focused. Let’s reign it in. Let’s accomplish all of our goals throughout the end of the year and go into the new year strong and with a plan of action.
If you guys are enjoying what you hear, if you like this podcast, I would really appreciate [inaudible 00:11:07] listen on iTunes. Please go leave me a review. Tell me what you think. Share this episode, tell all your friends, your family, anyone you can, please, please, please, how great you think it is and work. Write me a review and tell me how much you want me to do something else, that’s fine too, let me know.
If you guys need any assistance in your businesses, feel free to reach out. It’s [email protected]. I’ll be glad to give you guys a hand and get some… Help you out with your businesses. I hope you guys have an awesome day and you go out, you accomplish all your goals and you’re excited for the holiday season. All right, let’s get everything buttoned up for the end of the year and start the new year by crushing our goals. Matt from The Business Mind Podcast. I’ll talk to you guys again soon.