Episode Five - SHOW NOTES
Episode 5 - Self-Motivation
D and Heather open this show in a new podcast space!
Heather discusses how when she was skiing in Vermont, she veered off a bridge into a frozen river. She is proud of herself for still being adventurous and not being scared to live her life. She mentions how sometimes when people get older, they tend to play it safe.
D says Heather’s motto is “Rules are meant to be broken.” Heather also continuously says “It’s going to be fine.”
D’s favorite phrases are “Get ‘er done” and “Makes sense?”
D discusses her family’s experience at a family-friendly restaurant over the weekend, where people kept staring at them to the point where D felt like she had to shush her children. She hopes for everyone to know that staring doesn’t help.
D and Heather also discuss looking at properties in their favorite places and looking forward to the episode where they announce they’ve purchased new properties!
In opening the discussion of self-motivation, D & Heather comment on the weather in the Boston area and how gloomy it’s been, which can make it hard to get motivated.
January is meant for housekeeping, and they have been doing their dedicated annual planning.
D says, “We know we have to close the door on the previous year, but most importantly, we have to look forward to what’s to come.”
It’s important to take time to celebrate what went well and what you had to overcome the previous year.
When planning your year, you should ask yourself:
What do you want to accomplish?
What do you want to be known for?
How do you get there?
Heather explains that she is not a New Year’s resolution type of person and never really believed in the power of vision boards until D made her do one.
They actually still have their first vision board they made! They note that so many items from their vision board have happened or they are super close to accomplishing. One example they mention is having the Channel 5 logo on one of their boards and then they were featured in Chronicle that year!
They also had a Bronco on a vision board for a business vehicle to drive to their client’s homes and they have that as well!
Heather says one way they’ve achieved these things is by making clear goals. To get clear about your goals, their practice is:
1. Write down what you want to accomplish in the next year.
2. Go back and edit your list and choose the one thing that would make the most impact in your life/business.
3. Take that one thing and create a list of action steps on how to get there.
4. Do one step a day.
D feels like they do an amazing job with goals for the business, but she feels like she loses sight of herself. Heather reminds her that every month you should be doing something for you, and mentions sometimes you can get lost and separate yourself from your community. D says that her friendships are the first thing to get put on the back burner because she prioritizes others over herself.
This leads to D bringing up how it’s easy to set goals for how to be a better leader and business owner, but she also wants to figure out the goals she wants for herself. D & Heather agree that they can hold each other accountable for their personal goals.
When discussing time management for goal-setting, one big question is:
What are we doing to support our goals?
They talk about how they work with their team on time tracking to see how they spend their time. When you’re doing anything, you can ask yourself:
Is what you’re doing supporting your goal? If not, why are you doing it?
They bring up the A1 philosophy they learned from Dave Ramsey.
D explains the philosophy of how personal opportunity lives with time management and prioritization.
Here’s how it works:
- Grab a piece of paper and write down everything that’s on your to-do list (every day).
- Anything you have to do today that can’t wait until tomorrow, write an ‘A’ next to it.
- Anything that would be nice if it was done today, but it can wait 48-72 hours gets a ‘B.’
- Anything that is not urgent is ‘C.’
- Sort the items into their letter categories and rank them from most important to least important.
- The first item in your ‘A’s’ is your A1 and is your highest priority.
Heather pulls it back to being self-motivated, because more times than not, we don’t feel like doing what we need to do. If you’re bringing it back to the action items that align with your goal, even small steps help with the overwhelm of a large to-do list.
They discuss how in creating and achieving their goals, D & Heather keep each other balanced with dreamer and realist mentalities.
D mentions that even though it’s not fun at first to work towards your goals, you have to think about what is the work I need to put in today to make my life easier in the long run.
Heather goes back to how taking small steps allows you to put blinders on so you don’t have to hear all the noise. You can get a lot of criticism in the beginning and throughout your business about how you’re doing things. D considers them pretty lucky with the people they have around them, but when the noise gets loud, they go back to the list to take action steps. Sometimes you need to do the little things to make life easier in the long run. And whatever you do, don’t let negativity in.
No Questions Off Limits
This week’s question is: If you had to choose one business tool, what would you pick and why?
D immediately knew that she would choose Google Sheets. You can do everything you need to do as a business owner for free.
Heather chose Canva because they would not be able to make visually appealing marketing without it.
An honorable mention is D’s favorite new electronic called reMarkable*, which she claims is better than an iPad because of how it writes like paper and everything goes into the cloud.
Check back soon for links for the annual planning and time management tools!
See you next week!
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