Ep 12: How to Plan a Successful Year

Cindy Pham: This week’s fans shout out comes from Zambezi nyame nyame Zambezi says: Great simple practical advice for everyday living that all couples and business should be aware of from your life examples. it’s great look forward to future episodes. Thank you Zambezi for that. You’re awesome. Exactly!

Anf: Now if you who is listening right now want to leave a podcast review or you need to do is go to www.foundersconnect.co/review and there will be instructions there for you to leave a review and a rating on iTunes or Stitcher whichever app you’re using to listen to the show.

Cindy Pham: Oups we forgot what rating she gave us, she gave us a five star rating!

Anf: So we’re going to be doing these fan shout outs in upcoming episodes. So if you leave a review, there’s a good chance that we will give you a shout out as well.

Cindy Pham: Welcome to found this country podcasts. We help lifestyle entrepreneurs to grow their business online and create a happier marriage

Anf: Did you know that approximately 45% of marriages end up in divorce. And 65% of all startups fail Judah found a conflicts but we’re here to change that.

Cindy Pham: Each week we bring you an inspiring guests and practical tips to help you with business relationships and sustainable living.

Now let the fun begin.

Anf: Now let’s talk about today’s episode, which is how to plan your successful year.

Cindy Pham: So today’s episode is how to plan your successful 2019 year.

Anf: So we just spent a few days down in Wollongong, which is in the south of Sydney. For those who don’t know the area with a couple of our good friends Tam and Sarah. And we did a few processes together, activities that are all around this theme. We actually did this for the first time at a retreat couple of years ago that we ran with a group of people. And so it’s just been a really great way for us to really look at how far we’ve come in the past year, and then look forward and set some intentions and plans around what we want to be creating.

Cindy Pham: Yes, for next year and the future.

Anf: So Cindy, what are you tell us? What are the three different elements that we sort of went through, and that could be very helpful to planning a great year

Cindy Pham: number one is a Review. So basically, with this review of what we felt and what has happened in the last year. There’s a few questions that we focus on. And I think, but I’ll give you two just to ponder on. So the one thing that I thought was pretty deep or make it more meaningful for a review is what were the two or three major things that kept recurring.

Anf: So what were those for you.

Cindy Pham: So what I put down or what I discussed was my themes that I actually said purchase it, which was focus, but during the whole year relationship, and also money has appeared have occurred to show up as well.

Anf: Cool. Alright, so for me, the themes that came up were love, specifically, what does it mean to love how to be a better husband. And another thing that came up was the theme around family, which is really how to love support, respect my family, and also maintain my boundaries within that. And there were some really great experiences throughout the year, like reconnecting with my father in Laos, which Cindy really supported and courage which I’m really grateful for. And also just reconnecting with my cousin. Anita, a shout if you’re listening to this, Nate. Who we just had a long overdue conversation, like we’re talking about 10 years, and we were able to connect with her and also my nephew, because senior had been traveling for 18 months. And we’ve been away from our families,

Cindy Pham: and we missed them a lot.

Anf: Absolutely. And over the Christmas break. We also spent some time we’ve seen his family and siblings down south and we did a mini retreat. And that was great. And we actually went through this process or part of this process with them. And it was a great way for us to learn more about each other. So they were a couple of my things. Okay, so that’s the review. Okay, now number two, Cindy.

Number two is theme for 2019. So guess what? My team is more a no but team is abundance, abundance in energy, Money, nature anything that you can see.

All right, so you that your favorite to win it was focus and 2019 is abundance. How do you use that theme? And how do you come up with a theme

I reflect on last year because to what I needed or what I think I need to make the next year more happy, meaningful and more productive as well or not like I like to achieve something as a result kind of thing.

That’s a really, really great way to set I think, to remember about setting goals. But I think it’s a really great way to connect with what is it you really want to focus on in that year. For me, I first learned about this idea of setting a theme from Danielle Laporte because like her I spent many years because I come from the corporate world like Cindy, I’m sure many of you listening where you know, it’s all about setting goals. And you’re doing a SMART goal thing. And a lot of the times that can really sometimes it’s a case of we set these goals as actually a self sabotage mechanism. So we know we said is really because we don’t achieve and then we beat ourselves up because we didn’t set the right goal with the goal too big and like news resolutions, why they don’t work because it’s kind of like, let’s set a resolution. And then after five days, you don’t go to gym anymore. You don’t eat the right foods. So instead, we can do set a theme and be like, I want to focus on health. That’s my theme for the year. And so that way, it’s less about doing 100 pushups a week. It’s more about what’s one or two things that I can do that contribute to my health and mental health, physical health, emotional health, whatever health you want to focus on. Yes.

Narrator: You are listening to the founders Connect podcast, helping lifestyle entrepreneurs to grow their business online and create a happier marriage. Now back to the show.

Okay, so did you want to add something to that around themes?

Well, that’s how I see you. How did you do it in that regards? How was your process to get to your see, okay, so it is your thing.

Alright, so this is where the relationship between the review comes in. Because when you do the review, and I did a review, I can see one of the questions in the review is actually around what disappointments or regrets did you experience in that past year? Okay, and so we’re going to share a link to the 15 questions that we asked him to review. And you can go download those in the show notes. But when you identify where maybe you felt disappointment, or you thought it was a gap for those certain themes that come up for you in the previous year, that helps you define what you want to do, or what theme you want to focus on in the next year. Okay, so for me, my 2019 theme is ignite 2018 theme was expand. And I did do that I expanded my heart because a lot of us focus on our relationship and love and family there. Now, I feel it also, I did expand my profile my presence online, so more people sort of knew who I was. And I did a ton of work on LinkedIn as in the window. And then 2019 will be more around this idea of ignition or ignite, because we’ve got some really big goals we want to go after. And I want to ignite the passion within myself for creating great things and creating community and we’re moving to a new location, physically a new city, so just by doing that is a step towards ignition, right. Oh, igniting

the fire. So that’s a great way to put igniting, hey, yeah, so what is your theme for

share with us?

Absolutely. Alright, so the last one, number three, what’s that Cindy?

Cindy Pham: big box, small box and Sand equals the beach.

Absolutely. We love the data you don’t know already haven’t seen our Instagram photos. And this idea came from Stephen Covey, who was a leadership trainer and guru in the 80s. And the concept really is all about prioritizing. The things are important to you in life. Okay, so the big rocks are the things that are most important to you. So Cindy, what’s something that’s really important to you,

Cindy Pham: Family

okay, so family. So then if you identify a family is one thing, another thing might be your holidays, or time out to rest to recover, to chill out and not doing anything and get more creative. And that could be made a exactly could be your actual vacation time. It could be you want to go on holidays, because you love to travel and you want to have some adventure in your life. Or could be contribution. So that could be a big rock for you where you want to go and volunteer and exactly do things that so once you identify a big rocks, you list those are first and realistically, you know, probably have like three to five max big rocks in your life. Like you’re not going to have 20 big rocks, because that’s just ridiculous. So you list those. And then the next thing is small rocks, can you think of some examples of small rocks.

Cindy Pham: small rocks, basically, your goal was, I think, in that year or the next few years, Max

Absolutely. So those are things like maybe they could be on a monthly basis, calling up your mom, you know, or whatever it may be

that business goals that

too, okay, so you’re going to set your goals because you got to sort of think about what are the things I want to accomplish this year. And maybe the first process that I would recommend you do is actually sit down and just write out what are all your goals in your different areas of life that you want. And then from the identify, which are, those are the big ones which are those are the sort of smaller ones. And then we’ve got this other thing called sand. And sand is basically everything that everyone else wants you to do. Typically how we schedule Our time is we allow the sand to take a more about time, then the big rocks and that is a big problem. And the good thing about establishing what a big rocks are, your priorities are first and putting those in your calendar. So Cindy and I actually went through the process of doing that I’ve got big a three sheet of calendar, yes. And then just blocking out specific date for when we’re going on a holiday. It’s like we’re planning to go to Japan next year, or 2019 with our family. You know when that’s going to happen when me days are going to happen. When Date Day is going to happen today sort of things are prioritized

Cindy Pham: and important dates, like my birthday

and all the family birthday

and my whole family’s birthday and anniversary. That kind of stuff.

Anf: Yeah, absolutely. So you Simon that says especially because, you know, we work with a lot of couples and entrepreneurs. And if you’re someone who says that you do value your relationship with your loved ones. If you’re single and you want to meet someone call you need to actually create the space in your diary and your journal obviously your calendar to actually meet people go out and meet people and date and have your data is date night and things like that.

Exactly. And that will work isn’t it?

Yeah,

otherwise, it’s going to be a situation where we had we talked about this previously in season one where we really when we started Cindy and I started dating. We only saw each other in the love that

Cindy Pham: No, not at all. And I did raise the issue and did I change it is otherwise Bye bye.

Anf: Exactly. Okay, so that’s the process identify what your big rocks are. small rocks are and then Sam will share another link about this is actually good video on YouTube that demonstrate this concept a high cost you have look at that and then apply that to your planning.

Yes, I will put that link in the show notes. Is that

alright, so quick recap. Cindy, what are the three different ways to plan your successful year.

So one is review to set a theme for the year three, identify the big rocks, small walks and sane and then put those into a calendar. Exactly.

Narrator: You are listening to the founders Connect podcast, helping lifestyle entrepreneurs to grow their business online and create a happier marriage. Now back to the show.

Anf: And we got to do a quick analysis summit. And this is a new segment in season two which is called Community corner. All right. So what is community corner all about?

Cindy Pham: We basically wanted to do either a q amp a or an announcement for our community

just so we have had members of our community submit questions to us and you can if you have any questions about again business or relationship you know send them our way through our Facebook or Instagram or our website and email and then we will answer those up in upcoming community corners q amp a session otherwise we also will do community analysis like today’s announcement is actually what we promised in season one which is to announce the winner of season one giveaway which is our founders Connect podcast launch giveaway which was the epic entrepreneur growth tools yes okay so Cindy Will you do the honors and share of us who are the three winners

Cindy Pham: so drum Roll

first was goes to Ryan and he wins the gold package value at 3782 dollars and prize number 2 goes to Dora Niccolau, she wins the silver package valued at 1000 to $75 and third win the prize winner is st who good is that right?

Yes, that’s right.

Okay. And that bronze package value at $920. So congratulations winners.

And we have already contacted each winner to let them know how to claim their prizes and to enjoy those and we also want to thank our amazing partners who are part of this promotion so just quick rundown who they were repurpose.io, blame that I a ,book like a boss missinglettr office and I plan to brand and Colleen Keith design. Thank you so much for being involved in all of this. And we also want to thank everyone who entered the draw and participated. Exactly Alright, so coming up, we will be looking at doing other giveaways. So make sure you’re following us on Instagram and in facebook and join our free community there. And that way you can receive the announcements of when to participate in future giveaways. Alright, so that wraps up the community corner. Thank you for listening. And we’ll be back you know, next episode. But before that, we’re just going to final message we have put together a corporate Escape Plan checklist to help anyone listening who wants some help to go from corporate or a day job to launching their own business. Okay. And so something that comes up with that is some fears

Cindy Pham: lots of them

Anf: and some challenges that come up time and time again, whenever we’re working with people and we actually go through it ourselves as well. So we know the journey.

Cindy Pham: definitely. But it’s all worth it because you know what freedom is bliss!

Anf: right. So to help you with that we put together a corporate Escape Plan guide is a free guide which is on our website or you need to do is head over there to www.foundersconnect.co/escape and that’s where you can actually read that guide and get the checklist Okay, so make sure you go to founders connected to four slash escape to grab that awesome quiet and remember to live passionately, purposefully and confidently till next time.