How December Shapes a Resilient New Year with Paul Zelizer

Hi. This is Paul Zoelloser, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, It helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, your guest is me, Paul Zellizer, the founder of Awarepreneur's podcast and a social entrepreneur coach.

And it's time for our regular monthly solo episode. Our topic is how December shapes a resilient new year, vision and goals in your 2024 Impact business. And I'd like to start off with a story today. So through the summer and this fall, I've had the honor of being the business coach for the SBA Thrive cohort. It's an accelerator program run by the small business administration of the US, and there are cohorts all over the country, but I am the business coach for the Albuquerque cohort. We have 21 cohort members and As part of the program, we meet as a group. We actually are having our final meeting, our 8th meeting, this upcoming Wednesday, and we're drawing a close to this awesome 6 month long accelerator program. There's 21 cohort members, and as part of the program, I meet with people twice.

Once about in the middle of the program and once towards the end to work on something called their growth plan, and we are very much involved in that process now. So lots of individual sessions, and the Thrive program is awesome if you're in the US and you're business that has at least 1 employee beside yourself, been in business for at least 2 years, highly recommended. It's an awesome accelerator program, particularly focused on those who don't have formal business training like an MBA. So I've been really deep involved in these wonderful, really kind of gritty and granular folks in terms of their subject matter expert, whether it's a construction business or there's a couple hair salons and there's an awesome bookstore in the program. There's an incredible local brewery and food using local ingredients, all these awesome humans doing all kinds of great things. But as folks who don't, like myself, don't have formal business training, I don't have an MBA. I have awesome mentoring and great coaching training and lots of experience around things like emotional intelligence and leadership, but I don't have formal business training in terms of forecasting and projections and creating spreadsheets and things like that. These are things that I've had to learn as best I can, but they are my strong points, certainly from an academic perspective, and these are things that, you know, came a little awkward to me, honestly, and to a lot of my clients.

There's a kind of push pull relationships. We want each new year to be a good year in terms of our goals and our impact goals and new revenue streams, but like sitting down and actually spending time looking ahead and thinking about, you know, different numbers of customers we have in our businesses or what a new revenue stream might mean in terms terms of our yearly profitability. These are things that, you know, come more natural to somebody who has formal business training in finance or in business administration in my experience. So today, I just wanted to think a little bit together about how can we create a resilient new year? I'm doing a session later today actually where the business owner who also is really good in her content area, but revenue goes up and down like many businesses, and that creates a lot of stress. How can we have resiliency and ease and really feel good at the end of next year 2024 about the impact you're having, so your quality of life while you're having it. So today, I wanna give you 5 tips, and the top level before we get into the tips. I wanna share with you a frame that I think might be helpful. In the school of psychology known as behavioral science, there's a frame called a choice point and I really like it's very simple, but I think it's very powerful.

A choice point is a moment in time When you choose behavior that is either gonna be consistent with your values or inconsistent with your values. Let me say that again. A choice point is a moment when you choose behavior that is either in alignment with your values or not in alignment with your values, and my experiences and a lot of my coaching colleagues have found that when we choose, when we make decisions in alignment with our values, certain things tend to happen. It tends to set the stage for some of our preferred outcomes. And when we make choices that are less consistent with our values, it tends to lead towards things that's more likely, not a 100%, but more likely to lead towards things that are less preferred outcomes, things we don't want. Now as this year 2023 is drawing to a close, I believe we have the opportunity to set the stage for resiliency and a lot of positive impact that we're really wanting as social entrepreneurs in our businesses. But There's a lot going on this time of year personally. We just finished Thanksgiving here in the US.

We're headed into the winter holidays. I'll be headed off soon to go spend time with my family. I'm Jewish and we're Jewish, and Hanukkah is coming up rapidly. The winter holidays are here, so there's the personal and familial things this time of year, and there's also what's happening in the world. A war that is very distressing and polarizing that a lot of us are Trying to metabolize. Lot of energy in aspects of my network where people are really, you know, rightly so, concerned and putting a lot of time and energy. With all that kind of that's just one example. With all those kind of things going on, it's easy for social entrepreneurs to let this opportunity to be intentional slip by.

But, again, my experience is that when we take time for reflection and setting intentions based on our values. We're more likely to see the kind of outcomes we want, so thus, this episode. So I'm gonna give you 5 strategies that can maybe help make this process enjoyable, relatively full of ease, and would allow you to have that, you know, that choice point, that moment where you're really intentionally branching into a new year, creating resiliency, increasing your impact, increasing your revenue and profits without it feeling like some overly scripted, overly academic or something you're supposed to do as opposed to something that is really about self care and having positive impact. So the 5 tips are I'm gonna tell you what they are and then we're gonna dive into each one. First one is reflect and learn. The second one is set clear goals and priorities. The third one is develop a robust action plan, and the 4th one is foster strategic partnerships, and the last one is invest in self care and team well-being. And I'm not sure why that's 5th.

These are in no particular order. So let's dive into those a little bit and a couple suggestions and maybe some ideas to make this, again, feel like it's working for you as opposed to something you're supposed to do, another thing that feels like heavy on a long list of to dos. So the first one again is reflect and learn, and this is, I do think, in many ways, the most important one, so I'm not upset that this one's first. December is such a naturally introspective time, at least if you live in the northern hemisphere and, you know, cold here in Albuquerque today. I have a sweater on. It's gray. It's we've been having our 1st freezes in the garden. We had snow the other day.

Right? This time of year in many wisdom traditions, like this is the time to go inward and nature goes inward. Like, you know, my garden is I'm still getting some things. It's awesome. But they're very cold, hardy plants, and I'm not sure how much more long they're gonna last. You know, the fruit trees have dropped their leaves. We've been raking them up putting him in the compost pile like this growing season has come to an end in most ways. And now it's time to, like, take stock and gather up materials for making compost in the garden and get ready internally, for the new year, and what wisdom teachers tell us before we just, like, rush into a new year, time to reflect. Like, what was 2023 like? And what were some of your challenges in 2023? What what was hard? Where were the gears ground? Where did things not go the way you want them, and can you really just let yourself acknowledge some of those places where it didn't go well? And as business owners, We all have that.

And then likewise, can you acknowledge your successes? What went well? What can you improve upon and build upon? Where was there something that you tried an experiment? You're like, oh, that seemed like that could be really interesting to lean into a little more. So just a, you know, bit of a process. To give you an example, we have an impact, podcast accelerator at Awarepreneurs, and our group. We spent an hour where we went through some of these questions. I led the members through this, and people are like, at the end of the hour, they felt like really complete in many ways, at least on the idea level, they were gonna flush them out a little bit more, but they were surprised how easy it was. And it was because we started with selection rather than a intellectual process. We started with this question in a very reflective, inner awareness kind of a way. Where were there some things where it was like, yeah, that really worked, or I'm curious, or my intuition is saying lean in more there, and where were there some ouch or this was not a good use of my time and energy.

I didn't get the returns that I was hoping were it worked for me in the past, but it didn't work as well for me in 2023. Letting that be intuitive, letting that be a inner process and just a noticing an awareness process as opposed to, like, trying to force something with the power of the left brain alone. So the 2nd suggestion I have is to set clear goals and priorities, but to really let that reflection process lead. So if you paid attention, if you made some space, like I said, even an hour, or in my case, like, I like to go into the mountains or go to the woods and go for a walk. But it's a not how many miles can I do kind of walk, but more reflective walk where I'm asking and inquiring about these questions of what worked well, where am I being drawn to, like, let's do a little more here, or what kind of tweaks, or where might I wanna, like, prune just like you do in the garden? A mentor of mine says, the 80 20 world. What's the bottom 20% in terms of where you've been investing and you haven't been getting turns. That's a good place to look at. Can you prune there, do less in that 20% where you're putting energy, but you're not getting back or just comes with a lot of hassle.

So let that guide your priorities for 2024. Please don't make it super complex unless you're a really significant business and you have that training. I'm thinking of, you know, somebody I interviewed this year as a 1000 employees and 2 cofounders, and both of them have formal business training. They have MBAs. Okay. They're gonna have a fairly sophisticated planning process in terms of their goals and priorities. But for most of our listeners, you know, if you're most of our listeners are 20, person companies or less. Many are micro businesses of 1 or 2 or 5 people.

Right? So your goals don't have to be complicated. Just make sure that you are specific and you sync them up with your mission and values. And again, it can be as easy as This is really working. I wanna lean a little bit more. This is not working. I wanna prune some here and make some of the resources, time, energy, talent. I wanna reinvest that into something that I think is gonna have better returns for my goals, including your revenue goals, your impact goals, your quality of life goals. So number 2 is set clear goals and priorities and really try to make them as specific as possible.

The 3rd suggestion I have just continues to build on that. Once you have those goals, then really develop a robust action plan. And for me, I make things super simple. I'm a minimalist. So for me, this is literally time blocking. In other words, get it on your calendar. All the goals, all the intentions in the world don't lead to good results or the same kind of results if we don't make it actionable. So in a time blocking mentality, what it looks like is, okay, I have a goal.

For instance, I'm gonna be doing something that I'll tell you about soon. I'm launching it in January. I'll give you a little hint. It's gardening and sustainability related. Right? So I've been chunking down time in my calendar to do the things to launch this thing. And again, I wish I could be more specific, but I'm not quite ready. But what I can tell you is in my calendar for this new initiative, this new project, deck, which I'm super excited about. One of the ways I make sure things that I'm excited about happen is I put time in my calendar on a regular basis.

So each week. You know, I have time on Mondays to, like, this podcast to get edited and the marketing assets to get the word out about it. So when it comes out on Tuesday, it all goes smoothly. Right? So there's things I do throughout the week. But for example, having a good block of time of every Monday to ensure that things are coming together. I have what I need so that Tuesday, I'm not scrambling around. That would be an example of time blocking. So just get it on your calendar and set completion dates.

Right, put a pin in the map so that this new initiative's gonna learn launch in early January. The podcast's gonna happen every Tuesday unless I'm on vacation. That's the kind of, simple action plan that I want to invite you to create. Again, If you're a larger business with a lot of employees, that's gonna be more moving parts. So, yeah, you might syndicated ways of what that action plan might look like. But if you're on the smaller end, like most of our listeners, then what I'm really asking you to do is to have specific goals and then get time frames and completion dates on your calendar and time to you know, reverse engineer so you're working on these things so they happen in the time frames that fit your goals. So I've got 2 more tips for you, but before I give you those, I just wanna take a quick break and give you a heads up about an exciting opportunity. So if you would like some help to develop your goals and come up with a process of getting it into an action plan where you actually follow through in a time efficient way with support.

I have something I'd like to offer you. I don't offer these often, but through our podcast accelerator, through Awarepreneurs, we have a monthly low cost, it's $2.50 a month, opportunity to work with me 1 on 1. And usually when I work 1 on 1 with people, it's quite a bit more expensive. This is a hour long meeting every month, and the ability to also take part in our community of helping get your content out there, creating good content. So it's got community support plus 1 on 1. You don't have to be a podcaster. It's basically for impact content getting out in the world in a way that furthers your goals. We have YouTubers.

We have people who do podcast casting, and we do have the majority people who are podcasters. But through that, framework, I'm able to work with people 1 on 1 for $250 a month in a comprehensive that way that includes both individual support and community. And this would be a great time if you're looking for some support, but you'd like it to be on the more affordable side. I have 3 spots open. Several people have no need to pause due to life events. Somebody else had made really good progress on their goals, and they said, Paul, I might circle back around later. But anyway, 3 opportunities to work together. If you're interested, I will put a link below and reach out to me and let's see if this opportunity of working together might be a good fit.

So we've got 2 more tips for you about how you can shape a resilient new year, and let's dive into number 4, fostering strategic partnerships. So once you have a sense of your values and what you're trying to move the needle on, One of my favorite strategies and something I'm much better at these days, 16 years into my business compared to when I got started, is finding values aligned partnerships, and then helping to cultivate them through time. Whether that is reinforcing or deepening a partnership or relationship that you already have, and as well as the possibility of finding new partnerships as you have new initiatives like this gardening one that I'm talking about. That's gonna be slightly it's gonna want different strategic partners for it to thrive and for it to go, you know, well without me having to do a lot of muscle in something that's online, but a little bit different than the things I've been doing. Right? So you can get a sense. It's a goal of mine. This is something I'm really excited about. I'm really passionate about.

I've been a gardener for decades, but it's not something I've ever kinda tried to sync up with both my impact goals publicly and to see about incorporating into what I do to generate revenue. So all that's in the works and you can see when you have new goals or you pivot or you're working on new initiatives or you're trying to grow something, finding partners who already have networks and resources, whether those resources are, time, treasure, or talent. I've heard a call. Time being like, somebody might be able to help you as a volunteer or as an intern. Right? Maybe they don't have a lot of money or vice versa. They don't have a lot of time, but they'd be happy to explore win win ways of allocating financial resources that they might have if it might be aligned with their goals. We're talent, somebody who's done something really significant in the space that you're trying to have more impact and grow your business. Right? So strategic partnerships, they help you amplify your reach.

They can help you diversify your offerings, and they help you create innovative solutions to the kinds of problems that the people that listen to the show care about in a much more time effective and have more impact type of manner. Lastly, but it's not last, is invest in self care and your team well-being. So it is a really challenging time in the world. I know in the impact space, you know, a lot of folks are talking about feeling fatigue of just, like, there's so many issues to try to tend to, and we've seen some things headed in not moving in the directions we were hoping, whether that's racial justice or on climate solutions or democracy around the world is, you know, being undermined in so many different ways. So, you know, it's really important for us to take care of ourselves. And as you're going into a new year, it's, I think, a really opportune time to take stock. What are you doing in the realm of your own wellness and also for your team, whether You have full time employees, and you have 20 full time employees, or you're mostly a solopreneur, but you, you know, have collaborators. I have a mastermind buddy I've been meeting with coming up on 9 years.

Right? So I'm not just thinking about my own well-being. I'm thinking about his well-being and our well-being and staying connected in, you know, who we are now, not who we were 9 years ago, people you contract with. So think about what kinds of things help you keep communication, open, help you promote work, life balance again for yourself and these other folks in your ecosystem. What are things that help boost morale and have a sense of positive emotional well-being as well as physical wellness. Right? What are you doing in terms of moving your body and the food that goes in your mouth? Again, what's also happening for those around you. So these 5 tips, let's go back through them again, reflect and learn this time of year. Number 2, set clear goals and priorities. Number 3, develop a robust action plan.

Number 4, foster strategic partnerships number 5, invest in self care and well-being also including your team, whether they're full time or contract, and really harness the energy of December by tuning into this natural, you know, time of year. So many wisdom traditions encourage us to reflect and go inward and be intentional, whether that's lighting a candle or gathering in certain ways, purposeful growth and positive change come from this inner work that is, supported and we're invited to do in so many traditions. So I hope that these kinds of steps can help you lay the groundwork for a wonderful 2024 and an impactful one, and may we each embrace December's potential to shape a new year that embodies your vision for a better world. Again, if you can use some help, take a look at those monthly support sessions through the Impact Podcast Accelerator, and thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Please take really good care air in these intense times, and thanks for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.