The Only Way to Succeed Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 444)

Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy

As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one way to succeed next year. And, truth be told, it goes beyond success just in your business.

I don’t mean to say that business success isn’t important. Of course it is. But, business success often follows from success throughout your life. Most successful people seem like they’re accomplished in many areas… because they are. They’re not focused solely on being their best selves only at work or only at a given hobby.

It’s the idea of being your best self that’s at the heart of this conversation I want to have this time around. What does “being your best self” look like in practice? What can you do to achieve it? And how does it apply not only in business, but across many areas of your life? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

The Only Way to Succeed Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 444) — Headlines and Show Notes

Show Notes and Links

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Wikipedia
• 8 Traits of Flow According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443)
• wheel of life – Google Search
• Navigating Life’s Spheres: Your Guide to the Balance Wheel | Love Light & Inspiration
• The Vor Game – Wikipedia
• "Touch Grass" (Thinks Out Loud Episode 358)
• Revisiting "What Are We Doing Here?"
• How Are You Holding Up? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 316)
• Lessons Learned: The TPA Anniversary Show (Thinks Out Loud Episode 420)
• Recapping 2023 Part 2 — Personal Lessons Learned (Thinks Out Loud Episode 407)

You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

Free Downloads

We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here:

• A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you.
• Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it. The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including:
  • Customer Focus
  • Strategy
  • Technology
  • Operations
  • Culture
  • Data

Best of Thinks Out Loud

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Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud

Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac.

Running time: 26m 05s

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Transcript: The Only Way to Succeed Next Year

Well hello again everybody and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud, your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter, this is episode 444 of the Big Show, and I think we’ve got a really cool episode for you today.

Most of what I’m going to talk about in this episode, on the surface, has little to do with marketing or digital or business strategy, the topics we typically talk about here. I don’t have any big predictions for 2025 yet, or any major recap of 2024, you know, those are coming. And if you only care about those topics, you might want to skip to your other favorite podcast right now and then check our future episodes for that content.

I’d recommend against that though, because what’s also true is that what I plan to talk about today has everything to do with marketing and digital and business strategy. I suspect it will be obvious why shortly, but I’ll explicitly call out the reason at the end for you.

The thing is, as we come up on the end of the year, I have a problem with the conventional wisdom that almost everybody spouts off about almost every holiday season. You know, you’ll hear people say that it’s time to look back at the year you just experienced and what went well and what didn’t go well and what did you learn from those experiences. They’ll tell you to look ahead at what you hope to accomplish, and your goals for the new year, and what you’re going to do more of, and what you’re going to do better. Most people, many people, will tell you to spend time with family and reconnect with old friends. People will say, “You really need to make the most of this time. You never know how much longer you’ll have with grandma or grandpa, or your parents, or whomever.”

I hate this advice.

Now don’t misunderstand, I don’t want to challenge the conventional wisdom around what you do for the next two weeks. You should look back. You should look ahead to what you want to accomplish, and you absolutely should spend time with the people you love, and reconnect with old friends, and enjoy this time with your family.

My problem isn’t “Why aren’t you doing this during the holidays? “My problem is, “Why aren’t you doing this every single day and week and month throughout the year?” Seriously.

Yes, we should all use every opportunity. To look back at what we learned, we should use every opportunity to look forward to what we hope to accomplish. And we all should spend more time with family and friends and the people we love. If I wanted to be funny, I would say, “Notice how I listed friends, family, and the people you love into three separate categories?”

You know, in truth though, if they’re not the people you love, maybe the problem isn’t that, it’s that you maybe shouldn’t categorize them as family or friends. Maybe the reason they’re not the people you love is something you need to work on, and more on this in a bit. The reality though is don’t spend too much time with toxic people. And if everyone you know is toxic, Then I suspect they’re not the problem, and I will have much more on that a little later, too.

At any rate, when we’re talking about how you use this time, I think you really need to set yourself up for success every week and every month all year long. And I mean success in a broader way than just what you do in your business.

You may remember that I talked about a balance wheel or a wheel of life in last week’s episode. I’m not going to recap the whole process for you, but the idea is that this provides you a great time and a great tool to take stock of where you are in every area of your life that matters to you. Work? Sure. But also family and friends and your mental and physical and financial well being.

The great thing about an exercise like this is that you get to decide which of those areas are important to you. You also get to decide how satisfied you are in each of those areas, and you get to decide, once you’ve taken a look at that wheel, which ones you want to work on, and the order you’ll do that work.

That’s something you can do all year long, and that’s how you succeed next year. This isn’t about New Year’s resolutions, either, and it certainly isn’t about, you know, hustle culture, just “doing more.”

Don’t get me wrong, hustle culture can be useful, to a point, but it’s usually focused solely on your work. It usually thinks solely in terms of, what are you going to turn out today from a work perspective? Success in work is up to you and obviously important. It’s something I talk about on this show all the time. Work often is a huge contributor to the meaning in our lives. It’s also not the only thing that gives our lives meaning. In fact, I would go so far to say it shouldn’t be the only thing that matters to give your life meaning.

Instead, I’m talking about being the best version of yourself in all of the areas of your life that matter to you and that give your life meaning. And there’s a way that you can do this to drive improvement throughout your life, all year long, where New Year’s resolutions fail.

New Year’s resolutions don’t tend to work for two reasons, for at least two reasons. I mean, one of the big ones is that they often aren’t necessarily seen as fun. But the two big reasons are, one, that there’s no consequence, really, if you break them. You might feel bad about it for a couple of days, but eventually it’s just something that happened and you move on with life.

And the second is you have to wait an entire year for them to come back around again. If you didn’t accomplish this year’s New Year’s resolutions by, you know, if you haven’t made progress by the end of January, oh well, I guess it’s over. No big deal.

We’re drawn to New Year’s resolutions because the first day of the year is symbolically important. And that symbolism has a certain power, one that our brains latch on to. It’s really important to our minds, that date, because it’s imbued with so much culture and tradition. There’s research that backs this up, by the way, that our minds just get wrapped around specific dates. Days like New Year’s Day or the first of the year as being hugely important.

There’s also research that backs up what I’m about to share that’s just kind of crazy. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who to credit for this one. So while there will be links in the show notes for many of the things I’m talking about, there won’t be for this one. A Google search wasn’t helping me out. I will certainly update the links later if I can find it.

In any case, the further we get away from January 1st, the less power it holds over us. Its symbolism dwindles. Here’s the funny thing about that research, though. It showed that January 1st, isn’t the only symbolically important date in our lives. Other dates have meaning, too.

For instance, your birthday is a pretty big day. We give it a certain power in our minds. If you’re married, your wedding anniversary is another one of those days. If you have children, your kids birthdays have a certain power. And any of those can be used as days where you start something new or reassess or have the drive to start again, to renew yourself. Each of these are opportunities to reinvigorate and renew your focus on the things that matter to you.

But brace yourself, because the research found something even stranger. It turns out almost any day can hold that same symbolic power, as long as that date matters to you. Which is crazy, because it really means that almost any day is an opportunity to reinvigorate yourself and renew your focus on the things that matter to you. That’s incredible when you think about it, because now we’re not talking about New Year’s resolutions. We’re talking about where am I starting from today.

Now the funny thing is, if you find that too abstract a concept to get your head around, in terms of how you would execute that, there are two days that almost everyone recognizes as powerful And those are the first day of the month and the first day of the week, which means you don’t have to have New Year’s resolutions. You can have new month resolutions and new week resolutions. You can renew and reinvigorate every month and every week. You don’t have to think about what matters to you and what you want to change next year. Just think about what you want to change in January, and then again in February, and again in March.

You can do the same every Sunday or Monday too, depending on what you consider the first day of the week. It could be the first day of the week, it could be the first day of your work week. You, all you have to do is take a few minutes and make a short list of what you’re going to work on from your balance wheel this week. Then do it again the following week, and the following, and so on.

There’s this great hidden benefit to it, compared with New Year’s resolutions, by the way, that if a single week doesn’t go as planned, it doesn’t throw you off for the whole month or the whole year. You just reset on the following week, focus on what matters to you that week, and work towards becoming more completely yourself.

And the great thing is, whether you do this 12 times a year, or 52, or some number in between those, I mean, we can all have a week that gets away from us, you will end up growing as a person.

Over the course of those 52 weeks, you’ll end up building better relationships with the people who matter to you. Those outcomes, that focus, is what I mean when I’m talking about the only way to succeed next year. In this case, success isn’t just a business concept, it’s a life concept. It’s how you grow as a person.

Now the funny thing is, that growth has other benefits beyond just the obvious. And that’s where this does have something to do with marketing or digital or business strategy. In fact, it has everything to do with marketing and digital and business strategy.

Why?

Because the greatest successes in marketing and digital and business strategy, and pretty much anything else in life, occur when you’re your whole self, when you feel good about yourself, when you’re able to bring your entire being to the moment and to the thing that you’re working on.

I met somebody new and a client the other day whose approach just absolutely thrilled me, filled me with joy. He was so thoughtful and so present and so clear minded about his work and his life and what was important to him. He was so clear about what he thought he could do well and what he thought he couldn’t. He set appropriate boundaries with the people in the room without any argument or any drama. He simply wanted to focus on doing his very best work and supporting the team as a whole in the best way that he could. He is, already I’m finding out, just a delight to have met and work with. At least from what I can see on the surface, everything is going right for him. And I think it’s because he’s true to what matters to him.

If you look at the people who constantly gripe that nothing ever goes right, they’re almost always at least a little bit at fault.

Now, hang with me for a second. Because this is the internet, let me say right away, of course there are exceptions. Unfortunately, far too many cases exist where people are discriminated against or find themselves in abusive situations or have serious health issues. On a personal level, I’ve lost multiple family members and dear friends to things like cancer. I know people who struggle with mental illnesses and other very real problems in their lives.

Situations like that absolutely suck. There’s no two ways about it. And I offer anybody going through anything like that nothing but peace and comfort and good fortune every day going forward, starting today. I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the people who you encounter from time to time — we all do — who really don’t have any major issues in their lives in any real terms and still find ways to bitch about everything in the world every day, right?

In high school, by the way, one of my teachers, a priest as it happens, once told me the difference between bitching and complaining. It’s pretty big. Complaining is when you talk about your problems to someone who can do something about them, who can help you improve the situation. Bitching is when you talk about your problems to everybody else.*

You know, and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with bitching every now and again if it helps you move past something that’s bugging you. I bitch to my wife regularly about whatever things that are going on, whether trivial or significant, that has drawn my attention on any given day or in any given week. We all do. That’s normal. If you’re doing it all the time though, you know, maybe the problem isn’t with what’s going on in the world. Maybe it’s how you’re reacting to it.

So with all I’m that out of the the way and speaking only about those who bitch about quote-unquote, “everything” — as well as those of you who simply want to find new ways to succeed — the simple fact is you can change your outcomes by changing your outlook.

And I know that might sound trite. But it’s true, the groundbreaking work around flow, that is the state of operating at peak performance, you know, fully in the zone, identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, depends on three factors. And those three factors are, you’re working towards a single clear goal.

That goal matters to you, it’s meaningful in your life, and the work challenges you without overwhelming you. It, it causes you to push yourself. When you’re working with flow, you feel energized across many areas of your, areas of your life. You’re happier as a person, you’re more fully yourself. In other words, working towards your goals will make you feel better in pretty much all the other areas of your life.

So even if you don’t love where you are in your career, or maybe your company is struggling and you’re not in a position at the moment to do a lot about it. But if you imagine you’re spending time each week and each month learning from what you’d accomplished in the prior week or month, that would move you towards a meaningful goal of self improvement.

Imagine if you were truly present for your family and friends and the people you love, that would move you towards the meaningful goal of building stronger and healthier relationships. Even when you can’t find flow at work, you can find flow in the other areas of your life, Which are areas that are going to continue to exist even as you change jobs and careers over the course of your working life.

Working in this way on yourself helps you become a more fully realized version of yourself, which actually helps you become more focused and thoughtful at work. And quite possibly help you move forward as a digital marketer and strategist. And if not, you’ll still be fulfilled outside of work. You know, that’s really a great thing.

It reminds me of a quote I love about strategy from the Lois McMaster Bujold book, “The Vor Game,” which you should totally check out. A character in the book says, “The key to strategy. Is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to victory.” Now, in fairness, she follows that up by saying, “ideally,” acknowledging that it’s not always easy to have all paths lead to victory every single time. Still, it’s worth choosing as many as you can that help.

So, if you’re not necessarily having the best place at work, working on yourself is something you can control. Working on your relationships is something you can control.

And that goes the other way, too. If you’re doing well in work, it allows you to say, “Okay, maybe I can’t control what’s happening with my relationships or a specific relationship, because the other person is not being everybody. They can’t control it. You would like them to be, but you can work on yourself and you can work on your work.”

So ultimately, it’s working towards all paths helping you to succeed. If your success matters to you next year though, you need to think beyond just business and just marketing and just digital. You need to think about the kind of person you want to be in every area of your life. You need to think about the kinds of relationships you want to have, the people you want to spend your time with outside of business as well as within it.

And then do the work in those areas to improve your relationships with the people that matter to you. Make sure you focus as much as you can on the areas and people that give your life meaning. Working towards improving in those areas helps you find flow in your activities, which will help you feel more fulfilled overall.

And finding greater fulfillment overall helps you persevere during the tougher times of your days and weeks and months that undoubtedly will happen. Remember that you don’t have to think about New Year’s resolutions or wait for January 1st to roll around to make changes. You get to reset your objectives and renew your focus every month and every week.

So the point I want to leave you with today is that your ability to be the person you want to be is entirely in your hands. And becoming the person you truly want to be is, in my book, The only real way to succeed next year, and every year after that. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. I hope you get to spend it with people you love, and that everything next year goes really well for you. Just remember, a lot of that is within your hands, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. Before I get into the credits, for the show, a quick programming note. We’ll be posting some of the best of Thinks Out Loud over the next couple of weeks during Christmas and the New Year’s Day holidays. I hope you’ll enjoy those. And we’ll be back with entirely new episodes for you the week of January 6.

In the meantime, I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast. Just look for episode 444.

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Show Outro

Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week.

So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business.

So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. I hope you have a happy New Year and we’ll talk with you soon!

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