How to keep the New Year momentum rolling past January

Ange
Yeah, totally. The break was long overdue, so I’m sure a lot of you can relate and you are feeling pretty ready to tackle this new year, which is probably why you’re all listening to this episode. And because we’re kicking off season eight, I do wanna introduce ourselves to the new listeners who perhaps have actually just discovered us and this podcast over the Christmas holidays. So for all you newbies out there, I’m Ange and I’m joined by my husband and business partner who probably blew your eardrums out a few moments ago, Andy!

Andy
Ah, yes, I definitely probably did. So sorry about that. But everyone who already listens is probably used to my booming voice by now and probably listens on a very low volume for me.

Ange
I’d say so.

Andy
Ange and I started this podcast for tradies in business who wanna take their business to the next level. They are definitely ready to grow, scale up, and kick some serious business ass.

Ange
Exactly. And each week, Andy and I will be in your ears chatting about a different trade business topic. We’ll break it down and intertwine some successful tips and tricks that we’ve learned through running our own multi award-winning plumbing business for over 20 years.

Andy
Plus we source the best of the best guests who are experts in their field to give you even more insight into certain topics or strategies. If you haven’t checked out some of our podcasts, we suggest you do. We’ve had great conversations with the likes of Lane Beachley, seven times World Surfing Champion. What an absolute superstar she was.

Ange
We’ve also recently had a chat with Jim Penman, the face of Jim’s mowing group. He was amazing.

Andy
Wow. Yeah. An incredible story as well. And there’s so many to name, you just need to check them out. So now that you know you are in the right place, let’s get into today’s topic, which is all about Kick Starting the new year 2023 and keeping the momentum rolling.

Ange
Right, absolutely. Because the New Year’s motivation is real, but it’s actually hard to keep it going, right? So often we make these New Year’s resolutions, like we wanna, I don’t know, do more exercise or pick up a new hobby, but we literally only get sucked into this chaos of the new year. And then you never think about it again and never actually do anything about it. Uh, I’d say we’re all guilty of it, including myself.

Andy
Oh, listen, over the years, how many New Year’s resolutions, I’m gonna give up the grog for three months, I’m gonna do, I’m gonna get fit. I’m gonna have a six pack. New Year’s resolutions are all well and good, but it’s way too easy to be sucked into day-to-day life, as Ange mentioned. And just go through the motions. You know, we never actually are taking enough action, but this year is gonna be different. 2023. You are gonna set the goals for you, hopefully you have set your goals and we are gonna absolutely smash it outta the park and you are gonna make sure you stick with it this time and get the results in your business and your personal life that you are craving for.

Ange
Yeah. You know what I would say, uh, for a lot of trade business owners, and to be honest, most humans, it’s really common for us to get to the end of the year and stop and reflect back and say to yourself, oh my God. What happened and where did that year kind of go completely? Uh, and I think having, having, um, for those of you who have children, I think that’s the biggest reality check of a timeframe when you watch these children grow up in front of your eyes and literally every single year gets faster because they get taller.

Andy
I, I think you set these goals in place and everyone wants them, and you want them, and you talk to your partner and, and you’re going down that path, but then all of a sudden, roadblocks get set in the way and all of a sudden, you start thinking, oh, this is a bit hard. I can’t do this. Well, guess what? Life is hard. Business is hard, but if you wanna achieve goals, you’ve gotta push through that. And you know what? At the end of 2023, I want everyone to have changed that mindset of, oh my God, I’ve gotta do this. And it’s hard to say. I’ve put it in in 2023, I’m going into 2024, and I’m living the dream baby. I’m living the dream. I think we all wanna be saying that.

Ange
Well, we wanna ensure that once we set some goals, that you actually achieve them, right? This is all about living your best life, and we wanna achieve your goals and share these important milestones. So we wanna share with you today a few tips on how you can actually smash out 2023. It’s what Andy and I do, and it’s what we teach our Lifestyle Tradie members. It works for us, but feel free to make it your own. So the first thing we do is actually review both our life plan and our business plan, because these really help us prioritize. It gives us control over what’s getting done, and that gives us purpose. This is like the guiding light. It’s something to strive toward.

Andy
Yeah, this is a bit of a summary because these plans can take a while and can be really in-depth, but for a business plan, we look at what we’ve done for the past 12 months and then where we wanna be in the next three to five years.

Ange
So that being said, what do you consider when looking at the past 12 months?

Andy
Well, we look at the plan that we had set from the previous year to see if we’d achieved everything that we actually wanted, right? If we did or if we didn’t, we recap our wins and we go over our lessons. You know, this is a pretty detailed conversation just in itself, so we won’t get into it too deep right now. But what is important is that you reflect back and you are honest with yourself. You should be doing this every quarter because a lot of tradies that don’t look at what they’ve done and what they’ve achieved, which is great, but they sort of also don’t look at the lessons they’ve learned and they seem to make the same mistakes. Time and time again, which that’s just absolutely crazy.

Ange
Well, as we said before, as trade business owners, we, to be honest, always look to the future and we rarely look to the past and we certainly don’t take that moment to congratulate ourselves about what we’ve actually achieved. Cuz you know what? There’s no one out there patting us on the back about what you’ve done and saying, Hey, congratulations. Well done. So that being said, what then do we look at for the next three to five years?

Andy
Well, the best question to ask yourself is if you had a magic wand, what would your business look like in three to five years? Right? You know, think about types of customers, number of staff, turnover or profit, or are you gonna be working out of a factory? You know, what would your team look like and what would they be doing? And how many hours are you working in the business? That sort of kind of stuff.

Ange
Yeah. So that’s all really important conversations. This is gonna help us get to a point where we can actually write down what we call these smart goals for the next 12 months. We need to actually be quite realistic based on our current situation. So for those of you who don’t know what a smart goal is, it’s an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound, and it all comes together to literally spell smart, SMART.

Andy
Right. Although they say it’s important to set a realistic goal, I am a real believer of setting a goal that is actually out of your reach, or it’s something that you’ve really gotta strive for. Make it big. Make it really big. And I actually think it makes you think outside the box a little bit differently because you’re trying to work out how you’re gonna make this happen and what you need to do. And you know, the old saying, shoot for the stars, but if you hit the moon, it’s not too bad, is it? So I really like to go for these big, audacious plants.

Ange
Yeah, valid. And I think something else to keep in mind here is the fact that whilst you are striving to achieve these goals, Life happens, right? Things pop up here and there that literally might derail you, but what’s important is that you literally get back on track as soon as possible so that you can actually pick up this momentum.

Andy
Yeah. And there’s no use having goals, but you don’t tell anyone about these goals. Like if you don’t talk about these goals with the partner, or if you don’t talk about these goals with your mates, or if you don’t talk about the goals with your team, there’s no point because you need everyone to buy into what you wanna achieve, and also to help hold you accountable as well.

Ange
Yeah, valid. So I just wanna go back to the life plan for a second because I know you commented that you know, for the listeners they might go, oh my God, this is such a washy subject, why are we even talking about this? But it’s actually super important to ensure you and your partner are actually on the same page and that you want the same things out of life.

Andy
It’s one of those things that we’ve done every year for a good 15 years or so now, I’d say. And it’s amazing what we both want and how much we actually achieve when we sit back with a bottle of wine or champagne and actually go, wow, what a year! But most people just go down the path of, you know, they don’t even know what they want in a year. And you can’t hit targets if you don’t set them.

Ange
Yeah. Well, when I think about a life plan, and I think of couples, you know, I, you know, I, when I say that you could, if you’re a solo person, this is critically important that you do this anyway, right? Because the point here is, You were a single person before you ended up with your partner. So the life plan is all about you coming back to you first. Like I literally sit and think about my life plan away from Andy. We do this in Isolation every year, and I remove myself from him, from everyone. I make sure I’m outside. I get a, we get these new leather-bound journals every single year for Christmas and we, at this time of year, which is what we’ve actually just done. So we’ve had this conversation and actually we’ve put these plans and had these conversations now. So that 2023 is like an epic. But the point here is I need to work out what I want first for me, for how can I be better, how can what? What experiences or adventure or fund I wanna have, either by myself, with you, or with the family? Um, Then we had this opportunity to come together and talk about it. I know when we’ve done this with our Lifestyle Tradie members, because they’ve never done this and had these conversations. Sometimes we’ve highlighted that the “she” in the couple has gone, you know what? I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, and she’s decided that this is, she’s gonna go and do studies, or they’ve decided that they’re gonna move states.

Andy
Uh, there’s so many different things you can do, but I think you need your own space, to be honest. You know, you grow up, you’ve got a lot of space. You, you meet your partner. It’s amazing, you know, sparks fly as they say. And then, um, and, and then you got a family and business and you just get bogged down and you both get bogged down. You know, you, you got a business, which is taking 40, 50, 60 hours a week, you’ve got a family that’s taking 20, 30, 40 hours a week. Well, where’s YOU time? And I’m a real believer in getting that YOU time as well. But you know, when we go through this, like we’ve obviously done this, we’ve done all our holidays for 2023. We’re already starting to talk about the 2024 holidays. But you know, weekends away. You know, our current living situation, what we are doing, property wealth, like all these sort of things we put into this plan and what we want personally. You know, what hobbies do we wanna do? I’m gonna try and get back to golf. I’m absolutely rubbish at the moment. What a shit game. Like, oh my God, I used to play off 10 and now I feel like I play off a hundred. Like I just can’t hit it straight. It’s killing me.

Ange
Well, you’ve got some brand new clubs, so I suggest starting a brand using them.

Andy
Titleist and uh, I thought that’d be, do the trick, but I’m still rubbish. Absolute rubbish.

Ange
What a shocker.

Andy
Anyway,

Ange
So what’s cool about this is that we literally get this down to, so what are classes big rocks first? You know, holidays, our birthdays, what are we doing? Adventure with the kids. Fun or, or, you know, there is a bit of a structure to this. So, you know, this conversation is a bit of a rift to kind of give you an insight as to kind of the conversations that we end up having, but it does come down to what are you doing for yourself, as you mentioned. You know the best analogy I can give here is when you sit on an airplane and they have this little speech that none of us ever listened to, uh, sadly, and they show how the oxygen falls and they say to you, you’ve got to fit your own mask first before you help anybody else. And I truly believe this is the most meaningful metaphor for trade business owners because we forget about ourselves cuz business can swallow us up. Right? So you, your hobbies go by the wayside as you as responsibilities grow. Business gets busy. You’ve got a mortgage, children, whatever.

Andy
Yeah. Children, I mean children and kids sport. Oh my god. That’s a whole freaking job in itself, right? Like it, there’s so much. There, and I love kids’ sports and I think it’s really, really good to get them out and about and exercise, but you know, there’s so much to do in a day these days.

Ange
Yeah. It depends on how much you allow them to do. We actually just let them do a lot.

Andy
Yeah. Yes. We drive, I, I drive them to do a lot. Yes. And then we win that I, they do a lot.

Ange
Correct. You, you flip.

Andy
Yeah. And anyway.

Ange
So when Andy and I get even down to the granular. I wanna train three times a week. These are the days I wanna go. The cool part about this conversation is when it’s, when we take this information and I start literally with a paper calendar for 2023 and I block everything in, like I kid you not, I have every hair appointment every six weeks already booked in with the hairdresser so that I know that I’ve got my day, um, the, you know, the time of choice, all this kind of stuff, and now it’s on a calendar on paper first, so that we can do a bit of a stress test and we can have a chat about, is this truthfully gonna work in my life, like certain holidays, for instance, that we wanna go on or whatever. And then we can. This stress test makes us go, oh, hang on a minute. We’re kidding ourselves to say that that will work. And then you move the entire thing onto, we use iCloud. So now we can actually see the calendar, um, whilst we’re mobile. So we take it away from paper and put it somewhere where it’s very easy to follow.

Andy
Yeah and having iCloud and having a calendar on your phone that the whole family uses is so much better. Cause the old days, it used to be, if it’s on the, if it’s on the calendar, Um, behind the pantry, if, if it’s free, whoever writes down something first yeah, they win. Right. But the thing was, I was out of the tools, so by the time I came back, everything was filled up. Where now I can actually, we can race and, and fill it up, but it’s a great way to run our lives. Our family, um, as you know, Ange and I work very hard as well, and our kids can see exactly what we’re doing every day. Every one of our meetings so they can see where we are, what’s going on, what we’ve got planned on the weekends Friday night. So they know now. That could be a bit scary. Now they’re starting to get Hannah’s 16.

Ange
Starting to go out. And she knows that we’re out till late.

Andy
The party ass body into speedy’s.

Ange
Yeah, shocker. So one thing I will say about this is Andy and I are really planned, and for some of you, you might be going, oh my God, that sounds like the worst life ever. I don’t wanna be like that, but that’s how we roll. That’s how it works for us. I kid you not, I know that we get to the end of a year and the two of us look back and go, oh my God, I’m so stoked that we’ve created these memories with the kids and we had so much fun and adventure and although we are structured, if you saw our calendar, you’d probably freak out.

Andy
Most people do. Yes, most people do.

Ange
However, we do try and be spontaneous. You know, that, that still is in our life.

Andy
We try and be spontaneous as long as we plan it a month out. Uh, we are planners. Like one of my mates goes, I wouldn’t even know what I’m doing on the weekend. Let alone a month’s time. And I’m like, well, our whole 2023 is completely filled, and we gotta do that with the style of work we do and running live events and running around the country and fitting in holidays, like all of it, really makes sense. And um, we definitely are, we’ve always been massive planners though. Massive planners. And I think when you plan, what’s that saying?

Ange
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Andy
You plan to fail. That’s right. So anyone out there that doesn’t plan, you’re just riffing and you’re just not doing as much as you should be. There’s no doubt. No.

Ange
So the problem, the real problem is, if you don’t design and create the life you want in advance, say, imagine now we are walking into 2023. If you don’t stop and create the life you want, then life will create it for you. So what’s your choice? Right? I would much rather know that I, I already know in advance when the most important people in my life, when your birthdays are, and that I’ve already got things planned, or I’ve got my big rocks, my big holidays book.

Andy
Let’s talk about that. Tell them exactly you are the method that you use to scheduling over the year.

Ange
Okay, so there’s a theory. It’s not my theory. You can find this online. It’s quite easy. Big rocks, pebbles and sand analogy, right? If you Google this online, you’ll find it. So think about this theory centers around this glass jar, and let’s say you put a bunch of these big rocks in to fill the glass. Let me ask you, would you say the jar is full?

Andy
Well, obviously, You would, but I know the answer to all those questions, right?

Ange
So the answer is no. No, because there’s still gaps around the big rocks, right?

Andy
That’s right.

Ange
And that’s where we, the pebbles, come in. So you put a bunch of pebbles in the jar and they fall in around the big rocks filling the gaps. So is the jar full now?

Andy
No, it’s not. Well, yes, you know.

Ange
Again, it isn’t right, because you can still fit these tiny grounds of sand around the pebbles and the big rocks. So this now is why we are completely full.

Andy
I know some of you are listening right now going, oh, what a bunch of mumbo jumbo. You know, landscapers might be wondering if they can hire you as apprentice Ange. Could you know a bit about rocks, pebbles and sand and a bit of landscaping?

Ange
Yeah, right. Probably. Maybe I will work for a landscaper. Let me make some sense of this for you. All right. Rocks, pebbles, sand. Stay with me cuz I promise it will all come together. If you were to think of big rocks, think of personal life first. The most important thing is your health. So what is it that you need to ensure that you keep up to look after yourself first? So, what morning routine are you doing? What nutrition are you eating? What mental exercises are you, um, you know, participating in to ensure you are fit and healthy and you bring your A-game every single day, not just for your family, but for your business and then and for yourself. And, you know, things like your, um, milestone birthdays. So the most immediate family, when are all those birthdays? So imagine you’re writing all this stuff down on a calendar, right? You’re marking it out all on a paper calendar. And if you switch to business, What’s that? What are your big rocks in business? So for us with Lifestyle Tradie, we run three massive live R&R events, reignite and reunite events. They’re epic for members. Yeah, yeah. For our members. Everyone comes together. So they are super important. We run these six week cycles, so there are a couple of, um, execution things that drive the business, which all get locked in as well. So we have planning days, we have meetings, we have our Christmas party. All of these things get blocked at first. So now imagine you’ve put them all on the calendar. And then we flip the concept to pebbles. So pebbles are things like in your personal life, um, other people in your family, uh, like other birthdays, maybe your best friends, you know, family events like Sunday outings or maybe fortnightly dinners with your in-laws, maybe date nights with your partner that you wanna do. Activities, you know, maybe art or culture or sport, like maybe you’ve always said that I’m gonna go to every sporting event for my child or whatever or friends’ birthdays. And from a business perspective, these are like your toolbox meetings, your training. What quarterly team dinners are you doing? So this stuff does need to get blocked in. Because we all know that having social occasions even with your team is important. So if you do them every quarter, well why don’t you just book them in now so that way you know a hundred percent when they’re actually gonna happen? Cuz are you doing them on a weekend? Are you doing the midweek? Like, have a really good think about this stuff.

Andy
And it’s important to remember that sometimes things pop up sporadically and there’s not much you could do about it. Hopefully you can move things around.

Ange
Yeah, like maybe a friend is having their 50th birthday and you don’t know that when we are planning our calendar and they drop that on you in March and that’s fine. So let’s move to sand. So these are like tasks and activities that you fit in around. So like hobbies that you might wanna do with like, I don’t know. Dirt bike riding or surfing.

Andy
Snowboarding.

Ange
Yeah, snowboarding and like I mentioned before, the personal care stuff. Like if you wanna do, do your, um, hair appointments, nail appointments, um, contributions with charity events, that kind of stuff. These things are important in life, but it isn’t the end of the world if you actually have to just shuffle it around or perhaps reschedule it.

Andy
Exactly. Once all those bigger events are locked in, then we say to each other, all right, what can we be doing? Golfing with mates, heading for a surf. And because we do this, it does allow ourselves the time to actually get things done in both business and in life. You know, for the most part. And we ended up finishing the year in a great position, and we always sit back, as I mentioned earlier, look at our year and go, holy crap, we really achieved so much this year.

Ange
Yeah, we have. And we’re super proud because we’ve managed to create or strengthen relationships with friends and family. We’ve created memories and experience and new exciting things with our kids and we’ve grown personally and in our business.

Andy
You know, we’ve certainly got a lot done too. Right?

Ange
Yeah. And I love that.

Andy
And maybe that’s because we planned, because we smash out the year and you look back and go, whoa, what a year? Using this method has really helped us kick some really big goals over the years. So I would say that whilst having something like this helps You really need to stick with it and make sure you are doing the things you said you would do in your plan.

Ange
Yeah, right. Which is where the last thing I wanna bring up comes in, which is all about building habits you need to make following this agreement, this schedule, and doing the things you need to do to get the job done. Like daily habits, it might even look like you are ticking boxes off or getting the same stuff done each day, but if it works, it works.

Andy
And guess what, Andy? Yes. Andy has a good book recommendation for this as well.

Ange
Stop it. What?

Andy
Yes.

Ange
What is it?

Andy
Well, it’s actually a book you told me to read a while back and it’s taken me quite a bit of time to get through it, but it is relevant to what we’re talking about and it’s Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

Ange
Oh yeah. I actually really loved that book. It’s all about how to get the best to make a behavioral shift or to make a habit of going small, which is literally the book title, right? Tiny habits. So making tiny habits are so effective because they’re quick and easy, they’re not really risky, and you don’t even have to think about it to get it done. Like drinking a glass of water in the morning when you wake up. That’s the trigger. But all the tiny habits in your day when you combine them all can cause major changes in your behavior in a more, what I class is perhaps a neutral way than completely switching up your life.

Andy
Exactly. It’s all about overall habits rather than each one individually and the science behind how we do that as human beings, which I found quite interesting. Um, I recommend you check it out for sure, and if you wanna keep up the New Year Momentum rolling along, then this is the book for you.

Ange
Well, in saying that, I’ve actually got another book that I wanna recommend. You’ll never guess, but it’s my book. So if you haven’t read it, Tradie Wife: Why Winging It Isn’t Working and Breaking Old Habits Will Help. We actually worked with this fabulous contributor, a habit scientist by the name of Dr. Gina Cleo, and she shares her knowledge about how new habits are the only way to achieve sustained behavior change, or achieve goals. And I’m really excited actually because for the month of January we are going to be giving away a physical copy of it bundled with our first book, which is called Startup Scale Up Sell Up, and we are going to send it free delivered to your door.

Andy
Hold up a second. Myself and the listeners are wondering if we’ve heard this right. Two free hard copy books delivered to their door?

Ange
But I do wanna confirm it’s only for the month of January, 2023, so you’re better getting quick before time runs out. So how do you do that? You may ask, well head to lifestyletradie.com.au/podcast-bundle, and in there you can get your free copies and I’ll also pop the link in the show notes.

Andy
Amazing Ange, you should all jump on this offer ASAP. If you don’t have these books, you definitely should. We’ve been getting raving reviews, so all in awe if you’re feeling pumped and super motivated for the new year and you’re already feeling good about what you’ve done so far, we’re actually saying slow down a little. Take some deep breaths and make sure you’ve got a plan for the rest of the year. Because without some sort of longer term plan, the motivation is gonna stop at some point because you start to lose track of where you’re going and what you are working towards.

Ange
Exactly. It pays to slow the momentum down in order to keep it rolling for the entire year. So what we wanna do is end the year or the beginning of the next. You can look back and you can two, be so proud of how much you’ve achieved and how many wonderful memories you’ve made, rather than just burning yourself out, not really getting anywhere.

Andy
Yeah, and let’s face it, a lot of us tradies have definitely at times hit the wall and burnout is definitely not good. Actually, some of you might need some help to work out exactly how to plan and hit some of these epic goals in your business and your personal life as well. So for those of you who think that’s them, I’d love to have a chat and let’s help you smash it outta the park this year.

Ange
Yeah. Hey, I’ll drop a link in the show notes, or you can head to lifestyletradie.com.au and book a strategy call with Andy where you guys can chat about where your business is now and where you wanna take this for the new year, and how exactly we can help you get there. Because guess what? This is your year.

Andy
Youuuu! It sure is. We look forward to hearing from you, and in the meantime, start thinking about what you want your 2023 to look like. We can make it happen together. And we’ll catch you soon.

Ange
See you next week.

Andy
Hell yeah.