Get Intentional and Energized for 2024!
Mark Kinsley, host of The Sleep Summit Show, goes solo in this week’s episode shares some incredibly valuable insights to help you get intentional and energized as you wrap up 2023 and look ahead to the new year.
So where do you start?
First, break down your business planning into three key buckets: goals, strategies, and tactics. Clearly define your quantifiable goals for 2024, determine the strategies and resources needed to achieve those goals and finally, outline the specific tactics and assets required to execute your strategies. This goal-strategy-tactic framework provides a clear roadmap.
Second, create a one-sheet with your major initiatives for 2024. Refer back to this anchor document throughout the year to stay focused on key priorities amidst the swirl of business demands. Kinsley utilizes a “big ass calendar” to map out his year at a glance, scheduling personal adventures and other “big rocks” before filling in obligations and commitments.
Finally, emphasize the importance of balance across key areas like career, health, relationships, and recreation. As you plan your business goals for next year, be sure to also invest in yourself. Intentionally carve out time for fun, family, and self-care.
The new year presents a valuable opportunity to get clear and get energized. Use Kinsley’s advice to create an intentional, balanced plan for 2024 success! Let his insights guide you in wrapping up this year strong.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Right now is an incredibly critical time of year for me and for your business. As you head into 2024, I’m going to tell you how I am rounding out the year and where I’m putting my focus right now in hopes of inspiring you to do something that works for you and for your business. The sleep summit show begins right now.
Hey fam, it’s Mark Kinsley. So excited to be here rolling solo today, but I wanted to get you up to speed on what is happening with me as I round out my year. Once I get out of October and into November and hopefully leading up to Thanksgiving and maybe a little bit the first couple of weeks of December, I get really intentional about what I’m going to do to get set up for a proper 2024.
Give myself the best chance to go on into 2024 and I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions because I think that your habits are the compounding effect of where you put your time, talent, and attention and money and your acumen each and every day. It’s not about that one moment. It’s about what you do each and every day.
So one of the things that I do from a structure standpoint, and I wrote about this in the book, um, come back to bed is whenever I look at planning for my business for 2024, I break things down into three very simple buckets that I think are incredibly valuable. And it’s going to seem maybe a little, little academic in a way.
But think about this because it helps you separate things and get them in the right order. So you’re moving things in the right direction at the right time. And what I mean specifically is I break down everything I’m going to do in my business into goals, strategies. And what I mean by that is your goals are going to be, you know, smart goals, you know, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time based, um, and they’re going to usually have some, something with a revenue amount attached to it.
That’s typically how I do it, but you want it to be quantifiable and you want to know at the end of that goal, did I achieve it or did I not achieve it? So it needs to be very specific. So for example, maybe your goal in your business could be, I want to have, um, you know, 5 million in revenue for, for our mattress retailer this year.
Um, you know, you’re going to look at that and think to yourself and maybe even put together some of the math and be like, how are we actually going to get there? And that’s where your strategies come into place. The analogy that I’ve used in the past is, and I think it still fits here. Especially on the heels of a sleep summit is you think about your year as a mountain.
Okay. And this mountain, you know, let’s say that it’s never been climbed. So you know that your goal is to get to the top of that mountain. So you decided I’m going to get to the top of that mountain. Let’s say it’s 15, 000 feet. That’s your goal. So now when you look at the landscape of your business, you’re going to say, how do I get there?
How am I going to get to 15, 000 feet? And all of a sudden you start looking around, you’re like, oh, I’ve got a helicopter right there. I’m just gonna take the helicopter up to the 15,000 feet. Easy peasy. Well, what if you don’t have a helicopter? Then you gotta start looking at like, okay, maybe there is a donkey that’s gonna carry things part of the way, and then I’m gonna have to have some climbing equipment and ropes.
And then of course I’m going to have to have warm, uh, warm and colder weather clothing because it’s going to get really chilly when I get up there. So the how is really going to map to the resources that you have available for your business. Because, you know, if I’m trying to get to the top of the mountain and I have a helicopter, like, why would you waste time?
Just take your helicopter. But most people aren’t going to have that helicopter to short circuit that process and get up there very quickly. And so that’s when you say, okay, great. What are the resources I do have and how are we going to get there? So maybe you decide, okay, the how on Guinea, the top of this mountain is.
We’re going to take this donkey up to this certain section and then we’re also going to need, you know, to, we’re going to climb this other piece and then we’re going to scramble through the scree field and then we’re going to summit. So now, you know, along those 3 different sections of getting up the mountain, you’re going to have to have different tools.
You’re going to have to have different equipment and that’s your tactics. So we went from goal, get to the top of the mountain strategies. How are you going to get there? It’s your tactics, which are your actual assets. You’re going to create the things that you need in order to make this come true. So, okay, bring it back home to, to, to my business, for example.
So at Englander, we’re doing our 2024 strategy, budget, and planning. And as we set out our goals, you know, we know once you get down past the strategic piece of like, how are we going to get there? We’re going to start looking at, okay, what are all the things we need to create in order to get there? So let’s take it from a marketing perspective.
That’s pretty easy one. Um, when you look at, Hey, we’re going to elevate our brand. And that’s one of the strategies and one of the tactics could be, we’re going to do it in social media and digital. And so now you need, you know, Hey, we have to have our social channels set up. We have to have, um, assets and imagery and copy and all the videos and all the things that you have to create in order to populate those channels.
So now when you look at your plan, you’re going to have your goals, your strategies, and that big to do list, and you can start chopping it up. And given it to the right people. So I know I’m breezing through this pretty quickly just to give you a high level on it, but it’s an incredibly valuable process and it gives you a road roadmap for the year.
And in addition to that, I like to create a one sheeter with my major initiatives for the entire year on it. So I can pull that thing out on a piece of paper and look at it and think to myself, what do I need to nudge forward today? That’s maybe a little bit further out or how are we doing on some of the initiatives that are in place and it’s all on one piece of paper.
It’s incredibly valuable because I think when the, um, the year and the responsibilities and the employee, uh, demands and the demands of your family and your time and your attention and holidays. Start to swirl. Sometimes you need that anchor that you can bring back into your field of view to remind yourself of where do I need to put my time and my focus today as I go after my big, hairy, audacious goals.
The other thing I did was I ordered what’s called the big ass calendar. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of a guy named Jesse Itzler. He is a part owner of the Atlanta Hawks. He’s married to Sarah Blakely who invented Spanx. He had a private jet company that he built and sold and he’s entrepreneur and he’s had a guy live with him.
That was a Navy seal and done all these crazy adventures. Well, he has something that he just launched called the big ass calendar. And I love putting my year at a glance, but a wall anyway. And so if you’re watching on the YouTube channel, there is the big ass calendar. And as you can see, it is a year at a glance.
So how it works, I’m going to put this over here real quickly. So then you bet. So how it works is you fill in your big rocks for the year. And what Jesse coaches people on is he has somebody calls it the Masoji. So it’s a Japanese tradition. They’ve kind of co opted. Where you put one thing on the calendar for the following year that will influence the other 364 days a year.
So it could be, you know, something that’s like a big adventure, like him and a crew of people rode their bikes across the United States of America last year. Um, maybe it’s climbing a mountain. Maybe it’s something that’s, that’s not physical, but it’s intellectual. They say what you should do is try to choose something that you only have a 50 50 shot of succeeding at.
And then once you fill that in and you know, it’s going to inform the other 364 days a year. Then he says every other month he chooses some mini adventures so that, uh, every six months he’s doing something that he normally wouldn’t do. And doing it with friends is even better. Then from there you put your travel schedule on, you put your anniversary, your key dates, and you start building out the year at a glance.
So you’re being intentional with your time as opposed to being reactive with your time. And I think whenever I feel the most. Energized is whenever I have clarity, clarity creates energy. And, you know, part of that clarity, I think for me personally is making sure that I’m living a life that’s in balance.
So as part of the mattress mentorship mastermind group that we launched, uh, back in October, really right at sleep summit, we’ve been working behind the scenes with, um, some different tools that are really. Uh, having a huge impact on people. And one of the tools was an activity where we basically did what’s called a pulse check.
So in the pulse check, you have different areas of your life and you rate them on a scale of one to 10, let’s say 10 is the top and one is the least, but everything from. Career to money, health, family and friends, significant other, personal and intellectual growth, fun and recreation, and physical environment.
And so you rate all these different areas, and it gives you a sense of where you are doing great and feeling good about your life, and where there are areas that are lacking. And what typically happens for me personally in the past was, If I felt like something needed to be fixed, I would try to fix it through business.
I’m like, Hey, I’m pretty good at this stuff. I’m going to use my talents at business and whenever I achieve this goal, then everything is going to feel like it’s in order and all as well. Well, in the process of doing that, like I would sacrifice fun and recreation. I would maybe sacrifice family and friends.
Um, my physical environment would get into chaos and then all of a sudden I would achieve that, that goal in business and it would still feel as though everything was out of whack. And that’s because it’s just not one area of life. It’s not one slice that’s going to produce all the results. And so this has been an incredibly eyeopening exercise, the pulse check to find out where I am now, where do I want to go?
Why do I want to do this? How am I going to get there? And a lot of that is going to be represented on this big ass calendar. And so I just wanted to record this quick episode to encourage you to understand that for most of us clarity does create energy, whether that’s for yourself or for your team or for your business.
And so as we head into the holidays, I know that things can get a little bit crazy for everybody, but use this time to get intentional, map out all of your year. If you can, with your big ass calendar, start with your big rocks. And then you can fill it in with pebbles and then you can put in the sand, but the big rocks are the things that they’re going to be on the calendar.
Those are your non negotiables, then the pebbles start filling around that. Maybe that’s stuff that’s a little more of an obligation, but definitely something you’re going to do. Maybe it’s like industry conferences, definitely put dream camp on there, put sleep summit on there. We want you to see once you see you there.
Um, but then you start getting into the sand, which is the sand can move around a bit in your year. Um, and then also give yourself a pulse check and look at those different areas of your life to make sure that whenever you start filling in your year, it is in balance in a way, because otherwise you end up looking around six months into it thinking, yeah, I’m achieving all these great business goals or company’s doing fantastic.
But, you know, I’m the prize racehorse of my company and I’m treating my prize racehorse.
Like an old nag. It’s not good. You got to make sure you’re investing in yourself and keeping that, that balance so that you can be the best person for your family.
For your friends, for yourself, for your loved ones, and of course, for your employees in your company. So best of luck as you get started here on 2024, I’m always happy to answer any questions I can. So feel free to reach out to me easy to get in touch with me on LinkedIn. And I’m happy to fill in any of the gaps or answer any questions as you get prepared, because I’m so passionate about making sure that you have that good foundation heading into the new year.
And you make it an amazing one. Uh, be sure to like subscribe, leave a comment if you’re catching this on social media and thanks as always for tuning into the show. You are always part of the fam.
