Megan Hyatt Miller:
There really are so many things that are within your control. You don’t need everything to be within your control to design a life that you love and really to have a meaningful, significant year that you can feel great about in 2022.

Michael Hyatt:
Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is Lead to Win our weekly podcast designed to help you win at work and succeed at life. This week, we’re going to be talking about five items you need to pack for 2022. We’re going to kind of pick up the metaphor of this being a journey. As we begin this journey through 2022 and what you need to have in your suitcase, as you start this journey.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I’m so excited about this episode, partly because I haven’t packed a real suitcase in quite some time. This is as close as I’m going to come anytime soon. But seriously, I really am excited about this because I love the beginning of the year. I love-

Michael Hyatt:
Me too.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Empowering myself than other people with a few things that are really tried and true to do things differently in the new year, maybe to get better results in the ones you had in 2021 or at least in a way that you like better. I’m pumped about this episode. Let’s do it.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Let me start with this story. About seven years ago, Gail and I, Gail my wife, Megan’s mother, we went to Europe for 30 days. We flew into Vienna, spent a couple of days there and then we rented a car and then we began to drive West across Europe, but through the Alps. We went from Austria to Switzerland, to Germany, to France, and then back to Amsterdam where we originally flew into and then we flew out and came back home, but 30 days. Now that’s not that unique. I’m not just bragging. It was cool, but here’s the thing, we decided before we left that we were going to each only take one carry on bag, no computer bags, no secondary bags, but one bag because this was going to be a planes, trains, and automobiles kind of vacation and we didn’t want to be packed with a lot of heavy stuff that we weren’t going to need.

Michael Hyatt:
That was hard. It forced us to boil things down to the essentials, but we did it and it was actually one of the best vacations we’ve ever taken because we didn’t have all this luggage that we were, schlepping around and making it difficult. So I got to thinking about that and I thought, okay, well, if this were that kind of journey and you could only take one carry on through this year, what would be sort of the essential things that you’d want to start with? And if you don’t have these things in place right now, that’s okay. It’s still early in the year. You can still get packed with these things before you embark upon this journey. And I would highly recommend that you do. So five items you need for this journey that we’re calling 2022.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. I think it’s important to say folks that y’all are getting kind of a sneak peek into our coaching program, business accelerator, which is designed for business owners who are scaling their businesses. This is really content that you developed for a private phone call that you do, not phone call, Zoom call that you do every Monday morning with those business owners. This is one of the great aspects of this coaching program. And normally you guys don’t get to hear this content because it’s exclusive, but we thought that this was so relevant, because it’s the beginning of the new year that when we were having lunch dad this week, we talked about this and decided, let’s share this on Lead to Win because I think our leader, business owner listeners here are really going to enjoy hearing the kind of stuff that you’re sharing with our business accelerator clients on this topic in particular

Michael Hyatt:
Item number one, and this is going to be counterintuitive. You think of all the items that you could pack as you begin this journey, why would you choose this one? Well, the first one is time off. And here’s what I mean by that. As you think about going the distance into 2022, 12 months is sometimes it feels longer than you think and sometimes shorter than you think, but this is a marathon race. So to get to the other side, we’ve got to build in time for rest and rejuvenation. And if there’s one thing I have learnt in my many, many decades of being alive, it’s that you just can’t burn the candle at both ends. You can’t constantly be go, go going without stopping to kind of refuel and make sure that you’ve got what you need to go the distance.

Michael Hyatt:
So when I say time off, I’m talking about literally right now, if you haven’t done it and I did this at last fall, because we try to get ahead of it, is I claimed to my calendar and this is one of those things that I would consider what Steven Covey calls, the big rocks put the big rocks in first and if you’ve never watched that, that video before, we’ll try to put a link into it, they keep changing it. But there’s a YouTube video of Dr. Steven Covey back in the eighties, talking about put the big rocks in first. But one of the biggest of the big rocks is rest time, rejuvenation time. So get those vacations on your calendar. Do those first, because if you say I’m going to wait until things slow down, then don’t take a vacation. You’re not going to take any vacations. So get to vacations on the calendar. If you’re planning on doing as sabbatical this year, get that on the calendar, holidays on the calendar.

Michael Hyatt:
You’re going to need that time. Kind of like a waste station. If you were running a long distance race, you got to know where the water stations are because you’re going to need water. You’re going to need additional fuel to be able to make it. And that’s really what this first item is all about.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. I love this one because it is counterintuitive and especially if you’re inside an organization, you probably end up at the end of every year with PTO that you get and you don’t use all of and maybe it gets to carry over to the next year. Maybe that doesn’t even matter because you’re not going to use it next year either. And I think the way you get ahead of that is you plan your time off for the year. Now, it’s really important to do that in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the business and the business cycles.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
One of the things that I heard that was just a really great way of thinking about this from one of our friends and former coaches, Dan Sullivan was the idea of resting in advance of big moments of performance. So if you know that the fourth quarter is going to be the biggest quarter of the year for you rather than waiting until the first quarter to take your vacation or Christmas is the first time you’re going to take off, plan a vacation in the third quarter so that when you get to the moment that you need to perform at your highest level, and you’ve got to really deliver significant results, show up rested, like you’re an athlete. Think about this as a performance strategy. It’s not disconnected from results. It’s actually making the results you’re responsible for possible. Obviously the same is true if you’re a business owner or an executive, you want to think about this as a performance strategy.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
How can you time your vacations or your time off throughout the year? So that one, it’s not all in one part of the year and then it oftentimes even precedes moments when you know are going to be intense or you’re going to have to perform at an unusually high level what really matters. And I just love that strategy. I think it’s great.

Michael Hyatt:
Well, here’s another thing as you were talking about that, I was thinking about sort of the biblical worldview, where in the book of Genesis, it says that evening and morning were the first day that kind of seems backwards, right? I mean, you would think that morning and evening were the first day, but it says evening and morning. So the day began with rest.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
And the Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday night and that begins a Sabbath, not when you wake up the next morning, but that night. As we’re recording this last week, you and I did the live version of Your Best Year Ever. And it was amazing. That’s our goal achievement course, if you guys are interested, we still have that on sale@bestyearever.me, but it’s a goal achievement course, but we were going to be talking for a full day presenting to a live audience all virtual this year because of the pandemic, but it was a live audience. And so we were going to be at our feet presenting.

Michael Hyatt:
I said to Gail, the day before I said, “Honey, I want to get to bed tonight at eight o’clock because I want to make sure that I get a solid nine hour sleep before I present.” Now, why? Because I wanted to be at my best. I wanted to make sure that I was focused, that I was productive, that I was articulate, that I was fully present. And the best way to do that is get the rest I need. And the same is true for those of you listening. If you want to be able to perform at your best, every athlete does this, it’s a world class athlete, they pay particular attention to their rest.

Michael Hyatt:
Tom Brady, one of his hacks, one of the things he does in order to perform at his best and I think we’d all have to acknowledge that he has had a remarkable career for, especially for his age, but he gets nine hours sleep a night and that’s one of his basic kind of rubrics for life. He builds that rest in so that he can be a peak performer and I think there rest of us need to do that as well.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Love that. Okay. So the first item is time off what’s the second one?

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. The second item you want to pack is your 2022 goals. Now I just kind of gave it away. We have a goal achievement course called, Your Best Year Ever. I’ve written a book on that topic as well, but this is important. Goals are important because they act as a rudder on your ship. And as I’ve said before on this program and other programs that I’ve done, that there’s basically only two alternatives to the future. One is you can drift into it where you’re rudderless and just hope you end up at a destination that you would’ve chosen. The problem is you don’t usually do that. You usually end up at a destination you would not have chosen. The alternative to that is to design the future. And by that, I mean, getting clearer on what you want. This is the hardest part about planning is deciding what you want.

Michael Hyatt:
And as I coach, business owners and other leaders through our coaching program, this is one of the things I often find is they understand the mechanics of goal setting. They understand the mechanics of vision scripting. The biggest challenge is for them to come up with what they actually want, but you got to get clarity on that. What do you want in 2022? If you were to frame it up as a set of goals, what would those goals look like? And maybe you’re thinking, well, I didn’t set goals this year. I got a handful of new year’s resolutions and that’s going to have to do and I just want to say no, take the time. Even if you don’t have goals, it’s not too late, but go ahead and put these into the format that represents well structured goal so that you have the clarity and so that you give yourself the best chance of achieving them.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Absolutely. If you’re thinking to yourself that maybe a lot of things didn’t work out like you wanted in 2021 or maybe even 2020, I think a lot of people feel like that, a lot of people have felt sort of disoriented and then sort of that malaise in 2021 and maybe have felt put off at the idea of setting goals. But I just want to tell you, it is so critical, especially in times where maybe you feel like you haven’t had the agency that you would’ve liked to have and so many things were outside of your control to regain control of the things that you do have agency over. And as it turns out, and this is the encouraging part, there really are so many things that are within your control.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
You don’t need everything to be within your control to design a life that you love and really to have a meaningful, significant year that you can feel great about in 2022, you just have to do it on purpose and part of what I love, and this is not intended to be a plug for our, Your Best Year Ever course, but in our process, we actually walk you through processing the challenges and the disappointments of the last year, which I think is really necessary for a lot out of us on the backside of a couple of tough years and maybe again, if you’ve not really thought about this much in the last couple years, now is the time to get the things that you want in the future off the shelf and reconnect to them. But having a process can really be helpful, but regardless of what process you use and how you do it and whatever, we just want you to have a set of written goals as you go into this New Year.

Michael Hyatt:
One of the things I was thinking about as you were talking about agency and about the power that we have is I think sometimes we have the perception that we don’t have a lot of power, that we don’t have a lot of control.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
And it’s because we’re focused again, to quote Steven Covey on our circle of concern, those things that are outside of our ability to influence. And I promise you, the more you have a steady diet of the news and of social media, the more out of control you’ll feel. You’ll feel like, what’s the use everything’s chaotic, everything’s confusing and it’ll keep you from taking control of what you can take control over which Dr. Covey calls, is your circle of influence and the truth is if you focus on your circle of influence, there’s plenty of things that if you can’t absolutely control and you can’t control everything, you could at least influence the outcome in a way that delivers the results that you’d be happy with, but as long as you’re focused on that circle of concern, you get to that place where you’re kind of like the deer caught in headlights where you’re just sitting there passively not doing anything and again, you’re adrift and nobody’s going to drift to a destination they would’ve chosen.

Michael Hyatt:
You don’t want to get to the end of 2022 and be in the midst of a health crisis or a marriage crisis or some other kind of crisis because you didn’t plan and didn’t take initiative and didn’t create a different outcome.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. Item number one is to schedule your time off. Item number two is to get a written set of goals. What is item number three?

Michael Hyatt:
Item number three is going to be of particular importantance to leaders and it’s your 2022 budget. What? Yes. Your budget. Now, here’s why I’m saying that. I was talking to some business owners recently that are in our program and they thankfully admitted to me, but they admitted that they didn’t, they weren’t operating in 2021 with a budget. Now, sometimes I encounter this for really small businesses. They’re just kind of getting up and running. They’re not quite sure how to forecast revenue. Everything’s experimental. They don’t know what’s going to happen. So they operate without a budget, but usually by the time people get to the end of their first year, they’re going to set a budget for the next year because it’s again a way of taking control, it’s a way of managing expenses, it’s a way of guaranteeing that you’re going to have profit because if it doesn’t work on paper, it’s never going to work in reality. In other words, profit’s not something that just typically happens. It’s something that’s caused. It’s something you have to plan for and a budget is the tool to do that.

Michael Hyatt:
Dave Ramsey says, give every dollar a name and that’s what happens in a budget. You give every dollar a name. Now, these guys that I was talking to, they had a multimillion dollar business. They’d been in business for a number of years and they still didn’t have a budget. And I was just like dumbfounded. I tried not to shame them or make them feel bad about it. But they also admitted to me that they were constantly experiencing financial surprises, revenue shortfalls, unexpected expenses, less profit than they would like. And so I said, guys, it’s like trying to build a house and not starting with a blueprint and just having home Depot or your favorite lumber supply drive up and start dumping lumber on your front lawn and then a bunch of people without a plan start putting together a house. I promise you, you are not going to be happy with the result.

Michael Hyatt:
The same thing is true with the budget. And so it’s not too late and it’s not that hard. If this is something you don’t like to do, if this is something you don’t have any experience doing; ask your bookkeeper, ask your CFO, ask somebody, but get a budget. Don’t get any further into January or into 2022 without having a budget that clearly articulates what a win looks like for you financially this year.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. So I’m going to piggyback on this for a second because not everybody we’re talking to today is a business owner. Y’all are not all business owners. Totally fine, but all of us spend money every month. Right? All of us have money coming in, hopefully and all of us have money going out. And I would say that get a budget for 2022 is certainly true for our businesses, like an absolute non-negotiable, but it’s equally non-negotiable in our personal lives. And this is one of those areas where many of us are just flying by the seat of our pants. We don’t actually have a profit objective for our lives, which is kind of the whole point of our jobs or our businesses, I mean, ultimately it’s a means to an end in at least in some ways to make a living, right. But if we don’t know what the point financially is of that input into our lives financially, then we’re going to have a problem.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
So thinking about how much money do I want to save this year? How much debt do I want to pay off? And then, in other words, what’s the outcome that I want financially? And then how can I design a budget that makes that possible? And most importantly, it’s like, just like in business, how am I going to track my expenses and the revenue coming in, if that’s variable for you so that you’re actually doing what you set out to do.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I mean, this is something that I completed a few weeks ago and I just put it all I do it in a spreadsheet and then I just put it into Quicken, which is what I use to manage our personal finances and track all the transactions and put them where they need to go and all that. But it is critically important one of the things, Joel and I are going to be doing this year, normally I kind of just manage most of that and then we talk about it as needed is that we’re going to be instituting on Sunday nights, a weekly preview for us as a couple where we do our full focus planner, a weekly preview but then another part of that is that we’re going to review our finances together. And we’re going to look at how are we doing? How much left do we have in this category? What choices do we need to make or not make in order to stay on track?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
It’s so easy to let those things kind of get away for of you and this is a critical part of accomplishing the vision that you have for your life over the long haul, little choices every day just like every other part of our life.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s really good. Another thing that goes along with that for individuals is deciding what you’re going to save first or if you’re a business owner, you decide on what the profit’s going to be first and then you back into expenses and revenue. And I think that most business owners for sure, profit for them is what’s left over after they pay their expenses and sometimes there’s nothing left over, right? They’re in a deficit situation. The better way to do it. First of all, let me encourage you guys to read if you haven’t read before a book called, Profit First and it’s by Mike Michalowicz and you can look that up on Amazon or we’ll have a note in the show notes about it but it’s a phenomenal book, but he makes the point that you need to pay yourself first and if you’re going to get ahead, that’s what you’ve got to do.

Michael Hyatt:
I started doing this about eight years ago when I got a new financial advisor and he challenged me to do that, so that I had an automatic deposit that came from my personal checking, actually came from the company. So it never actually hit my personal checking account, but it automatically went into my investment account and so I’ve learned to not even see that money. I don’t even, I don’t live on that money. I don’t spend a gas that money because it never hits my account. I have to think about it, to think that I even have that. So it doesn’t have to be a lot either, but it adds up and this is the power of compound interest is that when you save a little bit and you do it faithfully month after month, year after year before logging starts really adding up.

Michael Hyatt:
I looked at my investment account this morning because I’m still doing some planning for this year. And I was amazed. I just kind of shook my head and said that would’ve never happened if I hadn’t started. And if I hadn’t started small, you just got to start where you can.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. So item number one is to schedule your time off. Item number two is to get a set of 2022 goals. Item number three is to get a budget for the year, both for your business if that’s relevant and definitely in your personal life. So what is item number four?

Michael Hyatt:
Okay, item number four. And I’m not sure there’s going to be an application as much for individuals though. You may think of one Megan, but is a 16-week rolling cash flow forecast. This is a game changer. And again, I originally gave this content a few days ago when I was talking to our business accelerator coaching clients. And this is one of the tools that we teach inside of the program. But I want to describe it for you. There’s nothing worse as a business owner and frankly, probably as an individual than a negative financial surprise and the positive financial surprises are few and far between, right? When the boss walks in unexpectedly and gives you a bonus check or somebody calls up and says you’ll never believe this, but you won the lottery. I’ve never had that phone call probably never will, but there are always negative financial surprises. That thing that cost more than you expected or that thing that you forgot about and now it just kind of like crashes your personal finances.

Michael Hyatt:
As a business owner it’s mission critical because there’s nothing more traumatic as a business owner. Then you’re getting ready to call in the payroll on Tuesday evening for a Friday payout and you suddenly discover you don’t have enough money in your checking account to meet payroll. And now you’re scrambling, trying to come up with it and I have been there before and I got really tired of it. About almost 20 years ago, I developed this tool where I basically put in all the income I was expecting, the revenue I was expecting, cash receipts to use the accounting terminology week by week for the next 16 weeks, then all the expenses week by week for the next 16 weeks and I started this by the way in my personal life, before I did this at a corporate level.

Michael Hyatt:
And so then I could see what the bottom line was, the net surplus or the net deficit. And here’s the thing about most financial problems. They can be solved long before you encounter them if you have enough visibility and enough runway. So if it’s Tuesday and you’re about to call in the payroll, you realize you don’t have enough money in your checking account.

Michael Hyatt:
That’s a challenging problem to solve because you don’t have much runway between here and Friday. But if you can see that you’ve got a cash deficit that’s going to hit in week 10, then you’ve got quite a few weeks to solve the problem. And that’s one of the things that we’ve disciplined ourselves to do at Michael Hyatt and company, is to do that rolling 16-week financial or cashflow forecast. And we meet on that. It used to be back when I was the CEO, Megan, you and I, and our CFO would meet now for the most part, it’s you and our CFO who are meeting on that and informing me if there’s a big variation. I don’t have the same kind of operating responsibility that I did previously, but this has kept us out of trouble. Occasionally, there’ll be surprises. There’ll be promotions that not quite turning out the way that we hoped or an expense that was more than we anticipated, but because we subjected ourselves to the discipline of this cashflow forecast, we’ve got time to fix it before it becomes a real problem.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, gosh, I love this tool. And I think the application on the personal side is you can do this for yourself personally. You have your starting balance at the beginning of the month and your ending balance at the bottom and the income you expect and the expenses, and then you have your new starting balance, et cetera, et cetera. And I’ve done that forever. Just really modeled after the one that we’ve done in the business. And I love that tool, I think that’s so, so helpful, but in terms of the business, it has absolutely kept us out of trouble.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
In fact, last year, not last year, I’m forgetting now we’re in 2022, in 2020, we ran a bunch of scenarios in this because we didn’t know how things were going to turn out. If you kind of go all the way back to like, mid-March 2020, we weren’t sure what was going to happen, how hard we were going to be hit by COVID. And so we went through an exercise with our CFO of kind of like, okay, here’s our worst case scenario, what’s our tolerance? Here’s our kind of what we think might happen, what’s our tolerance? Here’s our best case scenario and we just really got a sense of, okay, what would this look like and then what choices we need to make if those were to play out and that’s a more dramatic version of what we’re really talking about, maintaining on a routine basis. But those are the choices you get to make when you see things coming, which is so helpful.

Michael Hyatt:
It is and it will really help you sleep better. If you’re a business owner it’s going to help you sleep better to know that everything is taken care of and there are no problems on the horizon. It doesn’t mean that they won’t happen but for in terms of what you know, nothing is on the horizon that’s going to be devastating. As an individual the same thing is true. I got a note from Rob our CFO this morning and he was just telling me what the cash balance was today. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. So that’s you check that off and I don’t need to worry about that and that’s a great feeling because I want to worry about things other than the financial parts of the business.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
I want to worry about creating content or delivering content or any of the things that I’m responsible for, but I don’t want to be trying to solve problems that would’ve otherwise been avoidable with a little planning and that’s why I really believe in financial modeling. That’s why the more you can try to get it into a spreadsheet and model the future, the more you’ll stay out of trouble, the better you’ll sleep and the better it’ll be for your business.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well and one of the things that we have learned over the years, all these years that we’ve used that tool is that it’s important to be kind of conservative. This is not, I mean, you might play around with it because it’s a model, Ooh, what would happen if X happened? But this is not where you want to be aggressive in terms of your revenue. You want to be conservative by pulling the revenue down to what you’re really, really confident in. And then this is where you want to make the expenses kind of worst case scenario or on the higher end because you’re really looking for tolerances. You’re not really, the goal of this is not to feel great about yourself. The goal of this is to spot potential problems. It’s really risk management, is what it is.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. We’ve only got one left.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay.

Michael Hyatt:
We’ve got four items in our suitcase. We only have one suitcase. Here’s the fifth one. And that’s to have an annual kickoff meeting.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. There’s something that we talk about in Your Best Year Ever called the fresh-start effect. And it’s basically an effect that all of us feel whenever the calendar rolls over, whether it’s a new week or it’s a new season or it’s a New Year and that is we’re motivated, we’re pumped, and we’re excited. So don’t miss the opportunity to use this, to cast vision for your team. So if you’re leading a team, a department, a division, entire company, whatever it is, use this as an opportunity to stand up in front of your team and say, look, first of all and this is kind of how we do it. We’re about to do it here in a couple of weeks, but you want to look back and then you want to look forward.

Michael Hyatt:
You want to look back over this past year and you want to catalog the wins. What were the things that you accomplished? And whether you hit your budget or not, whether you were profitable or not, you probably had some wins, so go ahead and catalog those what they were. It’s easy to forget them and as a leader if you’re not careful, it’s you easy to focus on all the things that went wrong and forget all the things that miraculously went right and all the good that you did. So catalog the wins. Be honest with the disappointments too, no problem with that, but look back and take stock and kind of do it after action review. We don’t have time to go into that today, but that’s another tool that we use, but what do you want to keep doing that you got from last year? What do you want to improve? What do you want to stop? What do you want to start? You can remember that via a KISS, that acronym keep doing, improve, stop and start.

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Then turn the corner, pivot and begin to talk about this next year. As the leader of whatever you’re leading again, whether it’s the department division or the company, what is your vision for this next year? What do you see on the horizon? Where do you want to be by December the 31st if your fiscal year follows the calendar year? Where do you want to be by December the 31st, 2022? What are the new products that you’re going to introduce? What are the service offerings that you’re going to make? If you’re in a nonprofit, what are the new campaigns? What are the new programs you’re going to put into place?

Michael Hyatt:
But give people a preview of coming attractions and get them excited because you want the team motivated. You want them excited. You want to bring closure to the past, but you also want to get them excited about the journey ahead. As we’re recording this next weekend, we’re going to be going to Disney with some of the grandkids and this is something that we may roll out to all the grandkids eventually, may become a tradition, we’ll see. But half the fun is the anticipation. It’s one thing when you get there, but it’s another thing to just talk about the trip and to build the anticipation. That’s frankly as good as the trip. So do that for your team.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I have really seen that with this Disney trip. In fact, I had my niece, Libby, your granddaughter over babysitting for us today and she had Naomi, our two-and-a-half-year-old down there with Minnie mouse ears on, we’re not the ones that are going to Disney. It’s her family, but she’s so excited about it. She’s got Naomi run around the house in her Minnie ears thinking about Disney. And I think that’s we want our people running around in their Mickey mouse ears so to speak. For some of you, maybe literally, in our case not literally, we want people to be connected and most importantly, we want them to be able to draw a through line from the three-year vision that we have for the company to the annual initiatives and goals that we’re going to be pursuing in the coming year to the work that they’re doing on an individual daily basis, because we want their work to have meaning and purpose and connection back to something bigger.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
We talked about this recently in an episode about how important it is for people to be connected to something bigger than themselves and feel like they get to make a contribution and feel excited and proud about what they’re doing, what they’re investing their time in everyday on your behalf, through your company.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
All right. So we’re setting off on a journey into 2022 and we’re going to end up in a place that we’re really excited about when it comes to be December 31st, 2022. But what we know is that we got to a small suitcase with not a lot of room and some really important items that need to be packed in there. And they are, number one; your time off, right? You got to get your time off scheduled so that you have the rejuvenation you need to perform at your best. This is an important year. Also number two, you’ve got to have a set of goals for 2022. So you need your 2022 goals. The next item you need is your 2022 budget. Now this can be for your business, for sure can also be for your personal life, best case scenario it’s both right. Then you’re going to need a 16-week cashflow forecast. This is so you can eliminate the surprises and make sure you’re prepared for whatever’s coming while there’s still time on the clock to make decisions about it.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Then the last item you’re going to put in your suitcase is an annual kickoff meeting with your team. Now, if you’re not the CEO of your organization or the business owner, you can do this on your individual team that you lead inside an organization. The point is you want to get people excited about the coming year, the plans you have for it, and most importantly their part in it. All right. So dad, any final thoughts here on 2022 and what we’re packing?

Michael Hyatt:
Yes, I was thinking, one of the reasons that we’re doing all these things is so that we have alignment.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
And a lot of this stuff is about vision. Your vision for your time off, your vision for your goals, your vision for the budget and cash flow and the kickoff off meeting is an opportunity to create alignment around that vision. And when you have vision and alignment, you can really drive execution.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
There’s less sideways energy. Everybody’s rowing in the same direction. You can be way more efficient. So I think this is foundational to making 2022 an amazing year, dare I say, Your Best Year Ever.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Dare you say and yes you may and yes you should. Well, guys, we hope that 2022 will be Your Best Year Ever and we look forward to continuing to talk about that and so many other things in the weeks to come until then, Lead to Win.