Who remembers last new years resolution? Yeah, me neither!

And yet this is a perfect time to reflect on where we’ve been in the past 12 months to determine the direction that our life is going to be moving in the future.

Take some time today to reflect and take an honest stock of the last year BEFORE you determine your next year will better enable you to learn from your experiences and make sure your plan is in a good place.

Enjoy and good luck!

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Transcript

Adam Liette
What's going on out there smooth operators man, it's been some time since I recorded a solo episode. But that happens, man life gets in the way life takes you all sorts of places. And you know, this last sprint has been it's been an ordeal. But it's been good. And I think a lot of times we find ourselves in that kind of position this time of year, especially those of us in the marketing ecosphere, I kind of had a triple whammy this year, where as my, my own business was doing a couple of things, my clients were getting really ramped up for Black Friday. And in my other life, everyone's getting ramped up for the start of the year. So I kind of had the triple whammy all hitting me at once from the professional side. And then a couple of personal things played into effect that just took me off of my game of being able to work at regular record this podcast because I had to take care of business take care of the things right in front of me. And I think that's healthy.

Adam Liette
You know, when when we need to refocus, you know, knowing the things that are the first to drop off. Not say that the podcast is the first drop off, but it's not as high of a priority as serving my clients. As serving my people that pay me money each and every month for my services. And for my advice on calls, they come first. And I hope for you that's the same. If you have paying clients they are you are serving them at your highest level, you're doing everything you can to make sure that they are satisfied to a degree that's a whole nother discussion. But it's good. And I find myself looking at the calendar, looking at this date on the calendar going Holy crap. We're almost at the end of the year. And it's that time of the year I find even in myself where I'm either sprinting towards a proverbial finish, or already thinking man next year, that's going to be it that's something's going to happen. Something magical supposedly happens right then at the clock, and you know, the stroke of midnight, it's a new year, new year, new you kind of crap. And that's what we find ourselves trapped in this idea that there's this, like, there's this X on the calendar that we have to work towards and then work from. That being said, it's not necessarily a bad thing to look at this portion of the year in a very positive way to make sure that we're letting it serve us.

Adam Liette
Because often I find we're in such a hurry to get to the next thing. We don't take the time to appreciate and reflect on where we came in the past year. So as I reflect on that, I'm thinking to myself, like what are some of the things that I need to be considering as I start planning ahead, because I do, I do very loose annual planning, I do more quarterly planning. That's a whole episode into itself. And we will get to that in the coming weeks. So stay tuned over these coming weeks as you are going through your own holiday time. Hopefully that includes some time off, work some time to you know, catch up on podcasts. That's one of the things I'm going to be doing because I have a couple of things around the house to do. So I'll be catching up on some shows that I've missed. But before we jump ahead, to planning this next quarter, like let's take the moment just to reflect.

Adam Liette
Okay, so some of the things I'm asking myself is what worked well this past year? What are the specific things that I can point to and say that worked, that worked that worked. It can be campaigns that you've ran, marketing, promotions, it can be strategies that you started pursuing, it can be content marketing that you were doing, it can be your own team, different ways of approaching things, different ways of being in the world. Different ways of leading, but really take the time to take stock of that and write this stuff down. Do not type it down, get a piece of paper and a pen and write down what worked well this past year. Be specific. If it was a black friday campaign write that At, write the numbers if you can, if you add a team members, right that if you offloaded stuff that you didn't necessarily want to be doing anymore, and you had someone else on it, write these things down, take stock of them. They can even be your own clients successes, not necessarily yours. But those are. It's kind of a transferable thing. It's one of the things I've loved the most about being a coach, is that when my clients have success, so am I.

Adam Liette
So we now know what worked well and take all the time you need to do this. Now ask yourself, what didn't work well, this past year? What are the things that you look back and you lament or you wish could have gone better? You wish you would have done something different? What are those things? Those are usually the easy ones to pick out, we usually those are usually top of mind. To take the time to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And writing those down. The things that didn't work. And again, it can be marketing strategies, it can be a bad conversation that you had with someone that ended up going into the, you know, down this rabbit hole of stuff. We all know those kinds of things. Now, I want you to ask yourself for both of these, what worked well, what didn't work? Well. Who were you being that created these outcomes.

Adam Liette
Because make no mistake about it. We made a decision that resulted in each one of these outcomes good and bad. There was a decision that we made we have 100% responsibility for that decision that resulted in that outcome. It's a hard pill to swallow taking 100% accountability for that. You can choose to blame someone else, or you can choose to accept the reality of the situation. Yeah, I'm a big football fan. I think y'all know this by now. And there was this big moment on ESPN, it's been going crazy a Patrick mahomes just losing his mind. After a penalty was called, you know, with one minute to go on a football game and the penalty cost them the game will go back and watch the game again. There's multiple points in that game where the Chiefs could have won it. And when you're putting all your stock in those last couple of minutes, well? Are you going to take responsibility for that? For the places you missed your opportunities? Are you going to blame it all on an unforeseen, uncontrollable outside entity like the referee, it's fun to want to blame the referee, don't get me wrong, it's very, you know, allows you to avoid responsibility allows you to put that blame on someone else. Without going man, I should have converted that third down. In the second quarter, things would have been different. And it's easy to point out other people's lives and make these conscious or unconscious observations and then we have to look at our own life.

Adam Liette
And that's where the hard part comes. Have you had anything bad or anything good that happened? How were you responsible for that outcome? And what were you being that created that? Just two examples. If you had a marketing campaign that went really, really well, did you take extra time on the offer creation side of the house before going into creating your campaign? If you had a marketing campaign that went really, really poorly. Were you lacking in planning or doing any kind of data analysis before jumping straight in? Regardless, you made a decision that contributed to that. So take stock of that. Now I want to look inward. And this is something I do every day. But I want to do it from the broader perspective having just considered these previous three questions. The first question is, do you have support in your life? And this can be everything from within your work with your mental health, your family or whatever? Where do you have support in your life? Who is there to help you to be that foundation to be that rock that you're leaning upon? Who are they? And how do they support you?

Adam Liette
And after you consider that, consider where you still need support. Whereas something's still missing. Where could you use a little bit more accountability? Could you someone pushing you could use someone helping you? What are those areas that you still lack support? So all these questions put us in the right frame of mind to start really considering the New Year in a new light. Because we've taken the time to reflect and you could probably ask yourself a million other questions. It's an easy rabbit hole to go down. You know, I find these big five are really at the core of it. Because if I can learn to take responsibility, and I can learn to seek support, I can conquer just about anything. These are the two things that I think as human beings are the worst that doing. It's Yes, a being responsible and be saying, I need help. Especially a personality type, like me, I'm a super high D man. Like we don't do these things very well.

Adam Liette
But if you can learn to do them, there's literally no stopping you. Not literally, I hate when people use that. I don't know why I did that. But there's no stopping you. You can go as high as you want. You can go as far as you want, you can succeed or fail in whatever you choose to notice how I put those things in the same sentence. You can succeed or fail in anything that you choose to. But the bottom line is, you have a choice. So as we're looking to the coming year looking to start planning, remember, you have a choice, you have responsibility. And you need to learn to say help. We're going to go into some fun things over the next coming weeks, that I hope aren't too heavy, but are more introspective.

Adam Liette
As you start looking forward. start plotting out the next stages of your evolution, not only on the personal level, but what how's it going to impact your business? How is it going to impact your team? What are the things that you're going to be doing over these coming weeks, to make that a reality, to make that next stage of growth because make no mistake, it's there waiting for you. You simply have to go grab it, and do the right things to be in a position to do so. We're entering a fun year 2024 I have a feeling is going to be a bit topsy turvy. And it's gonna take some survival skills. Rob's gonna have to dig a little bit deeper. But you can do it. I can do it. And we'll do it together. Until next time, please join me at Adam liette.com. I do hope to be seeing you there. I'm going to be doing a couple of just live sessions over the coming weeks especially with some time off that I have coming up. And I hope to see you there. But until next time operators you know what to do. Lead the way.