Episode 44 Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You’ve got to take the time to look after yourself. You’ve got to take the time to take out the lessons, the time to be grateful and thankful and fill yourself up. It all comes from this stop and reflect sort of moment. So in this day and age where everyone’s seeking to be busy and like you said, that curse of more and more and busier and busier speeding things up, this is really the opposite of that. It’s slowing down and taking the time to consciously reflect on all the things that have been and all the things that are yet to come.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hi everyone Rob Kropp here from Pravar Group and welcome back to another episode of The Trade Den. Welcome back, Dan. How’s things?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Thank you Rob. Good as always. Excited to be here. We are on the home stretch, so really excited for our last couple of episodes for the year and looking forward to doing a little bit around reflecting.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, Christmas is like under a week away. Are you ready?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
I love it when we try and get all excited about it, you know, and I are both heads down ready for next year. We’ve been busy doing our planning and doing what we said a couple of episodes ago, so excited for Christmas. Looking forward to a great break and feeling good about what we’ve got in place for next year as well.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, I love the new year’s time. It’s just a really great opportunity just to step out of the day-to-day busyness that is the normal life. It’s just a really great opportunity to stop, reflect, assess how you’d went, celebrate and just resolve to do better. It’s just a really great opportunity just to reflect on the year that’s been and celebrate the good times and carry the lessons forward. I love it. I love this time of year.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, it is. That’s what I like about it too. I think it’s that ability to, no matter where you’re at, you can set yourself with a positive intention, a positive charge, and you either draw a line under what’s been and you set a fresh course or you get excited about what’s to come based on building on what you’ve done already. So it’s a really cool time.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
In this episode, what we’re going to do is discuss the secret to sustainable success, and in particular what we’re going to do is talk you through our two-step process to round out and reflect on your year. So there’s going to be two parts today and yeah, really looking forward to unpacking them with you.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, doing this process is going to ensure that you actually stop and that’s one of the big things we want to do at this time of year. We, we’ve talked about that. So making sure we do stop and give ourselves a chance to acknowledge all the positive stuff, the progression that’s been made as well. This is really a gateway for more growth and improvement in business and life is what we’re talking about today. It’s about building what we like to call that win or learn mindset. There’s no such thing as failure it we either win or we learn and one of the best ways to learn is by doing reflection. So doing this really well, giving yourself the opportunity to build your self-belief, your self-confidence, and set yourself up for an even bigger, better 2025. So we’ve talked about already the positive vibes you get out of this time, and I think everyone understands that the reflection in this time of year is a really a good opportunity.
(03:08):
I think also though, this is really, and this is the first topic I wanted just to jump into today, it’s really the secret of sustainable success is your ability to reflect and do it well. So really this episode, yes, we’re using this time of year, but you can do this regularly. We’re going to talk about that later in the episode. I think I learned the power of this. I was fortunate enough once to interview a guy called Mark Gallagher who is, or was I should say now was the head commercial director for Jaguar F1, and that later became Red Bull F1 racing, and he talked about the power of debriefing and was so big on it at the time. I remember listening to him being sort of curious about it, but as he explained it, he said the biggest thing in F1, it’s not even the race at that point in a sport where they’re trying to get to hundred thousandth of a second, the only way to do that is not so much focus on what went wrong, what we did in the past or trying to come up with something brand new.
(04:05):
It was these micro moments and these consistent ability to reflect and debrief on what had happened in a race. So that’s why it was always the most exciting time for a weekend for him where all the breakthroughs happened in the team, all came out of the debriefing session and that’s looking for those micro moments and no matter what was going on, that was their most critical period of a race weekend was the debrief after sessions and after the race. So it was a really stuck with me and at the time he was talking about David Kutar and he said he lived for feedback and debriefing. That’s all he gave a shit about. The rest of it was almost like autopilot, the driving and all that sort of stuff. It was like that was the easy bit, but the work they put into debriefing and learning how to do that as a real art form was really important. So I think today’s today’s episode, learning the steps that we talk about in the context of the new year and reflecting on your 2024, it’s going to be really important that you take these steps out and really learn to do this not just at the end of the year, but anytime you think it’s relevant.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, I think it’s the curse of a high achiever. It’s that thing that’s the curse of always wanting more. The high achiever, they’re always looking for, they have a win, they’re looking for more or they’re always striving to achieve more and more and more and more and more. It’s the curse of more, and I think it’s really dangerous in whatever field that you’ve chosen, and obviously we deal with business owners is it is really important to stop and reflect. The secret to achieving more is stopping, reflecting on what you’ve done, who you’ve become, what you’ve achieved, what you haven’t achieved, and making sure you give yourself the space to give yourself credit for the progression that you have made. And linking back to your story is so important, not just in the sporting world, but as business owners we have to carve out that time, don’t we? It’s not going to happen automatically. We’ve got to carve out that time like you were talking about at the end of each Formula one race, they stop and reflect as business owners, we’ve got to carve this time out to stop and reflect at certain moments don’t we?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
We do. It’s that same thing of sharpening your saw. You’ve got to take the time to look after yourself, you’ve got to take the time to take out the lessons, the time to be grateful and thankful and fill yourself up. It all comes from this stop and reflect sort of moment. So yeah, really underappreciated I think. And in this day and age where everyone’s seeking to be busy and like you said, that curse of more and more and busier and busier speeding things up, this is really the opposite of that. It’s slowing down and taking the time to consciously reflect on all the things that have been and all the things that are yet to come.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And what psychology tells us is that it’s the gateway to developing your self-belief, your self-confidence, your self-worth, and those things are the things that enable you to be able to progress and move forward and achieve greater things, not only in business in life because the things that we do achieve a reflection of who we are and how we feel about ourselves. So really when we’re stopping and reflecting, we’re really taking time out to pat ourselves on the back and go, Hey Rob, well done. You did an awesome job there. And some people feel funny about giving themselves a pat on the back, but we’ve got to remember that business is a bit of a thankless game. Not many people turn around and go, Hey, thanks so much for the awesome work. They’re too busy picking you up or what you have or haven’t done, rather than thank you for the work that you have done. And so as a business owner, you’ve got to carve out your own time to sit yourself down and force yourself to look for the good. When we live in a world that’s focused on the bad, and that’s the hardest part of this journey is to looking for all the good things and giving yourself credit for the great things that have gone on.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
It is, and it’s about creating that moment, sitting down and actually carving out, like you said, carve out the time, create that gap from all the noise, create that gap from the torrent of news, that information and social chatter, which is all geared towards the negative or the scandal or the what’s wrong with the world. There’s so much of that. And until we do it ourselves and we do it even like you just said, then as a business owner, people will say, Hey, thank you. It’s great to have the opportunity, but you’ve got to internalise that. You’ve really got to sit down and reflect and make that your own and be comfortable with that. You’re not going to feel worthy because someone tells you that. You’ve got to really believe it, you’ve got to feel it and you’ve got to get that sense of, and that only comes from times like reflection. I think there’s the quote from Oprah, I think you’ve got that you talked about when we did the prep for this episode. I really like what you said there.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah. Oprah says, the more you celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. And I just love that quote because it just reminds us that gratitude is so important in life. It just is. And you’re right around the whole self-worth thing. Someone can say, Hey Dan, awesome job. Hey Dan, you did a great job. Hey Dan, you did awesome here. But if your shield is up and you block those words of affirmation or the positive reinforcement that someone’s saying to you, you won’t believe it. You’ve got to, like you said, you’ve got to celebrate your own life and go, Hey Rob, awesome job mate. You did a cracking job there. You did an awesome year and you did some great work this year and you did this and you did that and you achieved here and you won here and you succeeded here. You’ve got to feel it in your own bones and not, yes, it’s good when people say positive and nice things to you, but like you said, the creation of your own self-confidence and self-worth and self beliefs comes from sitting down and acknowledging the things that you’ve done. You’ve put in the work and you’ve done it. You’ve got to acknowledge it yourself. And when you feel it and emotionalize it and it rattles around in your bones, that’s the development that gets from done from inside and out, isn’t it?
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, I think you’re right there. The idea of progress, like we talked about, the praise and the compliments and the stuff we’re talking about here from other people doesn’t build progress necessarily. It feels good, but it doesn’t develop the progress, which is what you’re saying when we do it ourselves, we internalise it, like I said, but we get progress from it. And that’s the missing piece when it’s external. And I’ve seen clients do this in the past, it’s held them back for a long, long time where they get hooked on the external, they don’t know. We call it pumping up your own tyres and being able to really reflect and build those strengths. And when clients get stuck on external praise, everything rings hollow and there’s no real follow through and progress gets absolutely stunted. So you’ve got to be able to do this and do it right.
(11:08):
So that’s why today we’re going to take you through this two-step process, and we talk about this all the time. We build this process that we use as the two-step process we’ve called it today. We use this at all kinds of intervals throughout the year. We do it at the end of the calendar year. We do it at the end of a financial year. Obviously we do it at the end of quarters religiously. We do not miss an end of quarter reflection, and we also do it weekly through our Monday morning momentum process. So the idea that the better, the more you can do this, it’s almost like getting into the mental gym again and having this ritual or process that the really does help you.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And it’s so important that we do this regularly throughout the year and we’ve got to be able to do this exercise regardless of what’s going on in the world around us. And because it’s easy to be able to celebrate the good times when things are going really, really well. But the hardest time to do this is when you’re faced with challenge. Because when you’re faced with challenge, you’re looking through the lens of negativity, whether it’s pipeline not where you need to be, you’re down on a couple of team members, you’ve got cashflow problems, maybe you didn’t have the year profitability wise that you wanted, and you’ve got to be careful that you don’t allow those moments in time to cloud what has probably been a cracking year. And I remember that time that we did this with launch a couple of quarters ago with Matt, one of our clients.
(12:31):
He’s like, oh, I didn’t have a great quarter and it’s been a rubbish quarter, haven’t achieved anything. And that’s because he was sitting in that space of not doing so well. I’m like, mate, are you serious? You’ve done this and you’ve done this and you’ve done this and you’ve done this. I’m like, mate, you’ve had a cracking quarter. You’ve had your best quarter ever. You put on a CA, you’ve got jobs in the pipeline, you’ve done this, you’ve done that, you’ve done this on the family front. I’m like, mate, you’ve had a cracking corner. He goes, oh yeah, when you look back, I actually have. And it wasn’t. And that’s because he was looking through his negative lens or as objectively I was able to look at it from afar. And that’s the challenge of this exercise isn’t it?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It really is. And so many times we’ve heard that, or you do that one where a client, you go, give me one. I’m not going to accept the fact that you’ve got none. Even when a client thinks their whole world’s burning down, give me one thing that was good, and before you know it, they’ve rattled off four, five or six because they’ve now focused on that one positive. They’ve turned their thinking to another spot. So it’s really, really powerful and it works in almost every instance, which is great. So there’s two steps to round out and reflect on your year. We talked about the two step process. The steps aren’t necessarily earth shattering, but the two steps you’re going to undertake to do this exercise first one is last year in review we’re calling it. And then the second piece is carry forward lessons. So those are the two steps.
(13:57):
Do your last year in review and carry forward lessons. We’re going to break these down for you in a minute, but this is going to help you round out the year that’s been and set you up for an even bigger year ahead. So let’s get started on last year in review. So step one, let’s do our last year in review. Now I’m going to read these out as questions, Rob, and I want you to come back with sort of the context for this or any tips or hints. You’ve done this probably more than anyone, certainly in the Pravar world. Let’s go through it and give your thoughts on these questions, why we’ve included them and anything else you want to throw at it. But listen to these questions as we go. And as you do this, pause the podcast and answer the questions or make sure you come back and answer them fully to give yourself the benefit of this first step. So question one is what were your wins, achievements and learnings, and why were they a success?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
This one’s an important one because what you’re looking for is the wins and achievements, but the most important part in this question is the why was it an important part for you? And because what you’re actually doing there is emotionalizing the win. That’s what you’re trying to do where it’s like, oh, I reduce my hours worked per week from 65 down to 45, that’s my win. Or I went from $1.5 million a year to $2.1 and we improved our net profit by X, Y, Z. And sometimes when you’re looking at the wins and you do them hard and fast, they become quite transactional and robotic and it’s like, oh yeah, I had a good win here and I hired this team member and I grew my revenue and I reduced my hours.
(15:41):
And you can almost be a little bit monotone around it like I am doing here on purpose. And the reason why that question around, well, why it was a win for you or why was it a success? Because what you’re trying to do is emotionalize that achievement to be able to go, well, why? And if you can get that, that’s when it invokes the emotion to be able to go, oh, I reduce my hours by 20, and that enabled me to be able to drop my kids off in the morning or pick ’em up and I cut my nights back, which meant I spent quality time with my kids at nighttime and I got my weekends back, which meant I was able to do this and do kids’ sport and I could do this and this and this and this and this. All the other things or the wins, the 20 hours a week actually probably wasn’t the win. It was all the other things that the 20 hours a week gave you. And that’s why that question around why it contextualises it for you, but it enables you to go to depth and to get to the real win for you, not just the surface level win of I’ve got 20 hours a week back. And that’s why that question is so important.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And then you can come back to it too. And when you think about what you did last year or you reflect on any of those moments, again, if you’ve anchored it correctly, you’ll get that same emotional charge every time you think about that action or that win, which is really, really powerful.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
When you hear something inspiring or a motive, whether it be a song or something like that, when you get that tingling feeling on your arm or your hairs start to stand up or the feeling on the back of your neck, it’s like when the goosebumps moment, that’s what you’re looking for. That’s when you’ve gone to the right level. When it’s either a little tear of gratitude or the hair stand up on your arm or whatever it is, that’s when you know that you’ve done enough to be able to go, yeah, I feel that. What an awesome achievement that was. And when you get to that place of calm and acceptance and yeah, that’s really cool when you feel that that’s when you’ve gone deep enough to be able to go, yeah, that is an awesome thing that happened this year.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, I love it. Absolutely. Absolutely Brilliant. Love that. Next question, what challenges did you face and what did you learn as a result?
Speaker 2 (17:59):
I love this question because you don’t just want to be able to look at all the great, because what happens is you puff yourself up, stick your chest out. I know the listeners can’t see me doing it, but I am. You kind of peacock a little bit and you just look at all the positive things in the world. And psychology tells us that you’ve got to be balanced in your equation when you’re going through life. And there’s a saying that says, keep your highs low and your lows high. And if you can keep that level of equilibrium in your life, that’s where you go through life as a balanced being. So this second question, what it helps you do is balance the other side of the equation. What were the challenges? Why was it a challenge for you? What was the learning and how can you carry it forward?
(18:50):
That as a great lesson into the new year, and I love this question because success blunts you. It is that thing where the more successful you become that success blunts, blunts who you are as a person. And I know that the greatest moments of personal growth and business growth and leadership growth in my life have come from my biggest challenges. And so it’s being your willingness to stare that challenge in the face and go, I’m so thankful that happened because this is what I learned from it and how I grew from it. So asking that question allows you to drag out all those moments in your world where you had opportunities for growth in this calendar year. So that’s why it’s so important.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, I love that. So I think after these first two questions, what we’re really doing is encapsulating that Ava principle of face the facts is really what we’re doing. This is facing the facts, Pravar style in detail, what were our wins? Why were they a success? And then what challenges do we face and what did we learn as a lesson? It’s a really good way to face the facts, which is really, really cool.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, you’re looking for the good, the bad and the ugly, and you just get to look back and go, what a year? Let’s acknowledge the cool shit and face the facts around the hard shit. And going back to the Jocko analogy, the story that we had a number of weeks ago on the podcast, good. It was just good, good. We had good shit and good, we had hard shit. It’s been a good year.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, absolutely. And then let’s go to the next logical thing. If you’ve had a good year, it’s easy to celebrate. I think everyone knows how to celebrate good times and enjoys those moments, but the next question is really geared, and I really want you to focus on this and spend time on it, especially if you’re not used to doing reflections. This is where some gold is as well. If you didn’t achieve what you wanted to, what held you back, and then I’ll ask the follow-up questions in a moment. Let’s deal with that first one at the moment, if you didn’t achieve what you wanted to, what held you back?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
This question is written in a specific way that asks what held me back. Because so many people are so quick to blame external factors. It’s my family, the economy, the government, the blah blah, blah, blah, my team, the marketplace, the wars overseas, the US election. Come on, give me a break if there’s ever a thing that you can blame, let’s just create a list of all the things that we can blame. But the question is written in a way going, what held you back? What did you allow to get in the way? Because what you can start doing is taking responsibility for your life and the results that you get in life. That’s why the question is written that way. So you can take extreme ownership around what went well, but what didn’t go well, and you can start taking responsibility for that. It’s really, really important. This one.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, I think that responsibility piece is huge. It almost puts you back in the driver’s seat. It almost feels if you didn’t achieve what you wanted to, the year got away from you for whatever reason it was. But at some point you’ve got to put your hands back on the steering wheel and take control and these questions, the way they’re written that what held you back and what did you allow to get in the way that puts you back in the driver’s seat, which I really love. The last piece of this little section in our third sort of series of questions is what are you committed to doing differently next year?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, this is a big one because what you are now doing is setting your intentions to be able to go, well, what’s your commitment? And no one’s going to build your business and life for you. No one’s going to do it. You have to take some ownership for your own business and your own results in life. And so now this is asking, the question is what are you committing to doing when it’s like that saying that says, when you’re interested, you do what’s convenient. When you’re committed, you do whatever it takes. So this question is asking you, what are you committing to do? What are you willing to do? Whatever it takes to be able to achieve in the next up and coming year. And you make that commitment to yourself, to your family, to the important people around you to actually get off your ass and do the work and quit the blame game, quit the excuses and quit the justification and commit to doing the work and just taking responsibility for your own life. That’s what the question’s trying to get you to do.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, absolutely. Then we round the corner and we get into our last series of questions or our last question, I should say, who are the people, situations and events that I’m most grateful for in the last 12 months? Why have we got that one in there?
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It enables you to look outside your own world for the moment and acknowledge the people around you who have helped you in your journey. You didn’t get here alone, you didn’t achieve what you achieved in this calendar year in the last year, doing everything by yourself. There’s your family, there’s your friends, there’s the community that you belong in. It’s for our guys in coaching, it’s their coaching group and the friendships and their mates that picked them up in the hard times and celebrated in the good times. There’s your team, there’s your clients, there’s your customers. There’s so many people who have touched your life this year and had a contribution to achieving what you’ve achieved this year. So it’s so important to take a step back and show some appreciation and be grateful for those people and those situations and those events, the good, the bad, and the ugly that have helped create the results that you’ve got this year. So it’s so important to acknowledge the good and also demonstrate some gratitude as well.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, I like it. And I think what you said there about sharing that with them, if you’ve got that list of people that you’re grateful for, tell them. Because the benefit of that is you get to feel that experience. Everyone likes to feel that feeling. Grateful is a great feeling. I love it. I probably don’t do it enough myself, but at the same time when I share that gratitude with others and actually thank them for their contribution, like you said, you get to feel that not only again, but you feel the result of watching their face light up or them being thankful for what it is, and it’s just a great way to build some positive energy as well. So I think that last question’s a really good one and it’s one that you can follow up on as well.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
The two key question, the two parts in there is not just the people, but it’s also the situation and an event because what you are looking for are those moments where you may have had a really hard year, or you may have had a really good year, there might’ve been a bit of a mixed bag, but there might’ve been a really specific situation throughout the year that you found really challenging. This is your opportunity to go back in there and go, how has that situation helped me grow this year? And it’s your ability to be able to look back on that. And I remember a number of years ago, we had some challenges within our team and it was the reflection exercise that helped me get through that process where, and this is when you first came on board, Dan, we were going through some crazy, crazy times, but I had the ability to stop and reflect and go, how is this situation serving me right now and what’s the good that’s going to come out of this?
(26:19):
So I created hindsight in the moment and I just went, great, we can do this, do that, change this, change that, get these new people in, improve this and prove that. And I got to the point I’m like, fuck, this is a hard situation, but I’m so glad it happened because look at all the good things that are now going to come from this. And that’s the power of this exercise because you’ve got the ability to turn a really challenging situation or event that you may have experienced this year into one of the most positive, productive, best things that can ever happen for you, and that’s why this process is so powerful. You can create a negative into a really good positive event going forward.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, transforming challenges into gifts is a real, it’s a skill and if you get good at it, it’s amazing what can come up or what can present itself in opportunities, like you said. I love that.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And you miss that opportunity if you don’t do this exercise.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
You carry things around like baggage in life. You get three or four years down the line and you see some people weigh down with they’ve got the world on their shoulders. That’s because they haven’t transformed that bad thing into a positive, isn’t it?
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, absolutely. It’s always available to be transformed. You’ve just got to know the secret, the questions to ask, and these questions are really powerful, which is why we’re saying yes, this is our, what was your year like in 2024, but also then how do you use these questions all throughout the year to help transform your challenges that are inevitably going to come up throughout the year at various times, which is why we do it almost as a cleansing exercise all the time or as often as we can with clients. Really powerful. Let’s get into part two, carry forward lessons. Now, this is the second part, so once you’ve got your questions answered and you’ve gone through that exercise, we want to really consciously, again still in our pause mode, in that gap, that time we’ve carved out, ask ourselves what are the lessons or reminders, commitments, the things that you don’t want to forget from this exercise. Really commit them and commit them to memory either by writing them down, doing a voice memo, whatever it is, but whatever you want to take into the new year, what are those things that have come out of this exercise? Crystallise them out of all the moments and challenges and wins and situations, all of those things, which are the ones that you really want to, we use that word before anchor, which are the ones you want to be able to come back to and not forget. So really important that.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, some of the, having one good year doesn’t impress me. When I see clients have stack the key word there year on year, on year on year, that’s what impresses me and the clients who do that have the ability to carry forward the lessons to be able to go, because success leaves clues. It’s like, well, let’s do more of this, and also we learn here, so let’s not do some of that and more of that. And the more that you can stack these years on top of each other by carrying forward the wins and the lessons that you’ve gained throughout this year, that’s what enables you to stack year on year on year on year of progression, because carrying forward this stuff into the new year, because you reflect on it. If you don’t reflect on it, you’ve missed the trick to be able to acknowledge that thing throughout the year. You’ve missed that gift that this exercise is going to give you. So don’t skip phase two of this process and give yourself that opportunity to carry things forward because then you can carry forward always gifts into the new year and set yourself up for an even better year in the new year. It, it’s really important.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
It is, and I think this is why we said at the very beginning, it might’ve been a bit cryptic, but that’s why this is the secret to sustainable success because we can keep going back to that well, as often as we need to. It’s almost like self perpetuating progress and growth. It comes from doing these reflections, transforming challenges into gifts, everything we’ve said. So hopefully as you listen to this, it’s starting to lock in way more than just, geez, this is a nice way to round out the year. It’s way more than that. Really important. We’d love to see you guys get on into The Trade Den and share what your wins were. Let’s celebrate them together because I think there’s a huge benefit from that community declaration. We know this. This is how all of our programmes are set up in Pravar we leverage the community to share those wins and spread the lessons that we’ve learned and those sort of things, and also use it to hold us accountable when we need to. So really do join in on The Trade Den. Let’s really celebrate the year together and send it through on Instagram or over at The Trade Den community, and let’s start to share these wins lessons and commitments that we’re making as a result of our end of year reflections.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And we want to see them, and this is your opportunity to brag and be a little bit proud of what you’ve done. Tell us the awesome shit that you’ve done. Be bloody proud of it because we’ve got this environment in The Trade Den where it’s exclusive to trades and construction businessmen in this space, and we don’t let people into The Trade Den community unless they actually run a business or they’re mail and they run a trades and construction business, the community, that’s the environment that we’ve got in there. And so it’s why we ask the qualifying questions on the way through. And so we’ve got a no dickhead policy in there, and we want to make sure we create this environment where you’ve got the ability to be proud around what you’ve done and who you’ve become and what you’ve achieved. So gloat a bit. Tell us the awesome things you’ve done. This is your opportunity to share without judgement , because if you’re in an environment where people put you down because you have a cracking ear, I’d be suggesting you to leave that environment very, very quickly. This is your opportunity to surround yourself with good people who want to see you succeed just as much as hopefully you want to see other people succeed as well.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, it’s pretty special when it locks in, and we’re blessed to have that in every programme that we do. So let’s get that happening in The Trade Den as soon as we can. Rob, as we round this out, I know this is a really, it’s an important topic for you. I’ve heard you, I should say, talk about how this exercise and reflection and doing this has been a big part of you transforming your life and creating the life that you had for Jacqui and the kids and your family. But any sort of words that you want to leave us with, just sort of, I’m just going to hand the mic over basically and maybe share some of what that’s meant and some of those things that you think about when you do this exercise. And then next week maybe we’ll come back and do our own reflection as an episode and share with everyone what our big reflections and lessons were for 2024.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, I think it’s important to remember that every day you don’t commit yourself to your vision. You’re just falling asleep. You’re allowing yourself to succumb to mediocrity. And that’s the biggest trap that so many people can find themselves in is settling for mediocrity. And we’re so exposed to people in today’s environment who they don’t care about being different, trying harder or aiming higher. It’s just so rife through society that people are just happy to be average. They’re happy to settle for what they’ve currently got. So it’s important to remember that for high achievers and for our listeners out there, it’s about celebrating the year that’s been. It’s about acknowledging the great things that you’ve done, who you’ve become, and showing some appreciation for the great things that you do have in life, despite the challenges that you have faced. But as you embark on a new year, remind yourself to quit the excuses.
(34:07):
Quit the blame game, quit feeling sorry for yourself and take personal responsibility for your life. It’s your ability to think big and dream big and just take massive actions towards the life of your dreams. And then over time, what you’re going to be able to experience is watching those dreams come to life and you’ll look back and go, man, I did it. Look what I’ve done. Look at the business, look at the life, look at the family we’ve got, and you’ll look back and go, yeah, I did this. I created that. I’ve achieved this. And so it’s so important to remember that you can achieve anything in life. You just got to put your mind to it and put in the work and enjoy the journey because it’s such a wonderful ride. But you’ve got to take time to stop and smell and reflect and enjoy the moments along the way, which makes it extra special, I think.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I love it. Absolutely. I’m not going to add anything to that. I think we’ve reached the end of our reflection episode. As we said, please go back and answer those questions in earnest. Have a quiet moment. If you’re out in the car, maybe grab lunch and go out and take your car out somewhere and park and really do the exercise and get the benefit from it, because it can be life-changing if you get these skills right, if you learn it, you have the experience once, I guarantee you’ll come back to it over and over again. So really get into it. We’re looking forward to coming back next week. If you like this episode, please share it with whoever you need to share it with your teams, talk to people about it. Do what you need to get the word out there and together. This is really what the podcast stands for, is expanding the ripples of what we do in our groups and our programmes at Pravar beyond that. So help us share that. Give us a subscribe to the show and also join us for our next episode where we will, I think, Rob, let’s put our heads together and come up with our reflections and really go through this exercise as a living, breathing example of what we’ve experienced this year as well. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah. We’ve had one hell of a year here on The Trade Den Podcast, and we’re looking forward to coming to you next week with our highlights from the show and all the episodes that we’ve done in 2024, and can’t wait to talk through what have been our favourite moments here on The Trade Den Podcast. It’s going to be an absolute blast, isn’t it?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
It really will be. Really looking forward to it. It’ll be good.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Alright, have a great week. Enjoy the last week leading into Christmas, and make sure you rip in and get this exercise done over the Christmas break and looking forward to hearing your achievements and what you’ve been able to do. Stay safe and look forward to talking to you soon.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Catch you on the next one.