[00:00:00] Every year we get to this point and we think, where did the year go? ? I don't know about you, but 2022 went by in a heartbeat and I just am so excited for holidays and it's been a big year, a fast year, but a big year. So in today's conversation, I am going to share with you my end of year wrap up, so a little overview of what's happened for me this year, both personally and in the business, as well as a few reflection prompts to have you pondering the year that was, are you ready?

[00:00:41] Let's go.

Hello boss and welcome back to the Run Your Business Like A Boss podcast. And thank you for joining me for today's very special conversation, which of course is the final “original” and I say original in air quotes because this is the last original content for the year. I do have three episodes that will be replayed in December.

[00:01:42] These are past episodes that I know are going to support you throughout the remainder of the year, but I am taking a nice little break from the show and I'll be resuming back at the first week of January. But today's episode, as I shared in the intro, is a little bit of an overview of [00:02:00] my year, both personally and also in the business, as well as some reflection pieces to support you.

[00:02:07] I have shared on the podcast before how much I love going behind the scenes on other people's businesses, and that's why I wanted to share a little overview of what my year in review has been. So we've got a lot to cover today. So without further ado, let's get into it. On the business side, what you will have noticed is the biggest shift this year for Kristy Robinson Consulting has been the introduction of my small group coaching program.

[00:02:35] We've run two cohorts of the Run Your Business Like a Boss Academy, and this is something that had been brewing for a while and I had to overcome some of my own personal mindset blocks around having a group program, around launching and all the things, and I've spoken about that a few times here on the podcast. But I am so glad that I committed to that goal and that we have that program out in the world with two cohorts under our belt

[00:03:03] I have been able to see the transformation of the business owners who have been through the program and knowing that they have such great clarity and a clear strategy on their business model and on the direction of their business in this season. I think often in the messy middle, we think, oh yes, you know, I've been doing this a long time and I know what I'm doing, but what really needs to happen for many business owners

[00:03:31] is a reset. A real shift in what is it that I want my business to be and how do I create a business model that supports that? And that is exactly what this program provides. So, so excited to have that out in the world and of course, we'll be opening the doors for cohort number three in February of next year.

[00:03:50] This is a small group coaching program, so the numbers are limited. If you've been thinking, yep, I think I'm gonna join that in February, make sure you join the wait list [00:04:00] and be the first to hear, because once we reach capacity, doors will close. And I'm privately launching to that wait list first of all. So really excited to have the academy out in the world.

[00:04:12] And it's funny, you know, I had it something that was brewing for a year before probably and I definitely believe the timing was right for it to be 2022. Having had a number of years of private coaching, I deeply understand who I work with, their pain points and how I could best support them through this transition in their business.

[00:04:36] So I think having that deep knowledge in the one-on-one capacity has absolutely informed how I built the Academy to best support business owners. So that's been probably the biggest excitement this year. Other things to notice about 2022 for me and my business is that I doubled down on the podcast.

[00:04:58] You know I love to keep things simple, and by doubling down on the podcast, that meant that I've pulled back on Instagram. and I really wanted to just focus on this space. I knew that I could support you in a deep and big way with the content that I share here, rather than having Instagram as well. And quite frankly, when you only have a certain number of hours in the work week, then you almost have to make these choices.

[00:05:24] And I'm gonna share more about what's been going on for me personally and why I've had to be very clear about the triaging of activities in my own business. I've really pulled back from Instagram, however, in 2023, things are going to look different again. I have hired a social media manager to support me with Instagram, so that's going to be beautifully congruent and complimentary to the podcast, as well as additional other cool content that's going to keep you inspired in that space as well.

[00:05:55] So watch this space. We've already started rolling out some of those changes already. [00:06:00] You may have already noticed that I am showing up a little bit more on Instagram with the support of my social media manager. And the last thing that I wanted to touch on when it comes to the business, although there are many other things, but these are the big things that I wanted to pull out to share with you today, is that I am taking six weeks off over the summer to spend time with my family.

[00:06:22] I walk the walk. And for me having a sustainable business looks like having a successful life as well. And I really wanted to take the summer off with the kids. In addition to, we're going overseas for three weeks. We're going to Vancouver and we're going to Whistler. Yes, we're going skiing. And we're also hitting LA as well for, you know, all the theme parks and all the things, right?

[00:06:46] So we've got three weeks away and I wanted to have three weeks just enjoying the house. We've had a big year with the renovations and whatnot, so taking that six weeks off has taken planning. Right? So how I've been able to do that is that I have a very predictable revenue stream in my business, and that means that I pay myself a salary the same amount every single month.

[00:07:08] I have direct debits set up, but that also has meant that I have been able to accumulate enough money while my business is paused over the summer that I am able to pay myself. And I wanted to share with you because this is possible for you too with planning with intention, that you can also take a break in your business.

[00:07:30] But it does take that planning piece as I said. So that's really exciting. I'm really looking forward to taking some downtime, having a little break from the podcast, and also just being present without any distractions for my family. Okay, so onto the personal side, one of the biggest things that has happened this year, of course, has been the renovation.

[00:07:55] And no matter how much you plan for a renovation, there's always going to [00:08:00] be bumps along the way. Decisions that need to be made, changes that need to be discussed and agreed. And in addition to all of that, obviously having people here at the house has you know, had a huge impact on me personally because I work from home so we've been at this renovation since the middle of the year.

[00:08:21] We started with the internals, and then obviously most of our work has been outside expanding our outdoor living space. So having people on the property has also meant that, you know, I can't record the podcast at certain times. This might seem like trivial stuff, but it has required some shifts and changes from me.

[00:08:39] That's been a big thing however, despite how difficult the whole process has been, I don't want to ever begrudge it because I had on my vision board this renovation process, I had all these little reminders throughout my calendar that I am a renovator and all the things that have kept this present in my mind.

[00:08:56] And I am very grateful that we've finally, after all these years, been able to renovate the house and turn it into our forever home. But that has obviously been a huge part of our year this year. The other thing that has been a huge thing for us personally is, is that we've had some challenges going on with one of our children, and going through this process has also really reinforced to me why I do what I do.

[00:09:24] I am so passionate about helping other business owners to build a business that not only is sustainable inside of the business, but also that supports your lifestyle. And that lifestyle can be wonderful in the sense that it can create time freedom and all the things that you desire in your life, but also creating space for the important things, and not everything is sunshine and lollipops, and sometimes you need to create space for important problems that you're trying to solve and being available for the people that you love.

[00:09:57] And that's really where things have come into its [00:10:00] own for me this year, is that I have had to spend time and a whole lot of personal energy on this situation, and never more than ever have I been so grateful for building a business, designing a business that works for my family. The reason why I share this is for a couple of reasons, is one that importance of building a business model that works for you.

[00:10:25] And the second thing is to reinforce that message that sometimes you can look at people on the internet or listen to them on a podcast or whatever it might be, and think, oh, you know, they've got things so easy and so figured out and all the things, but everyone has things going on, myself included. The other thing actually, and there was a third point to this, is

[00:10:42] knowing that everybody has things going on is to have that graciousness of acceptance of what might be going on behind closed doors for either your clients or your friends or your family, or whatever it might be. For me personally, how this has looked, obviously my business has been set up for sustainability and to support my lifestyle, but for me personally, I've had to instate a lot of personal boundaries. I've always been very involved things for the kids, and I've had to pull back on a lot of that to be able to create that energy for

[00:11:12] the other things that have gone on in my life. So I share this with context of those three things. The final thing I wanted to share with you on the personal side of things is my decision to live a life alcohol free. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while now, this may not come as a surprise or maybe it will, but this has been a four year journey for me.

[00:11:33] So yeah, a bit of a slow burn. But yeah, we are finally at the decision that I made to ditch alcohol in my life, and I wanted to share this with you because I think there's a lot of misconceptions about people who choose to not drink. First and foremost, I don't have a problem with alcohol. Well, maybe everybody has a problem to a certain extent, but I didn't have what most people perceive as a big problem with alcohol.

[00:11:59] In fact, [00:12:00] this year I probably drunk less than I ever have, and I'll circle back to that in a moment. But you can make a decision to not drink even if you haven't hit that point of, you know, rock bottom or whatever that might be. This all started about four years ago when I took my first alcohol free break in the January of 2018.

[00:12:21] And yeah, I took a break and I really liked how I felt when I didn't drink. And so I have been doing that ever since. Taking extended periods of time of not drinking. But I've done that with the knowing that I will drink again, right? Whereas this is what's different about this experience is that I've actually finally made the decision to not have alcohol in my life.

[00:12:44] For me personally, I don't mind what anyone, my husband, anyone else does, but for me personally, I've just made the decision that it's not good for me. I find that when I drink and you may have this experience too, I don't know, but I get a cortisol crash at around three o'clock in the morning. I wake up, I feel anxious, I feel unhappy that I've even drunk at all, and it just didn't feel aligned to me anymore.

[00:13:09] And so I mentioned before that I've probably drunk less than I ever have in this year. I've taken extended breaks like I usually do, but also in between my extended breaks. I've been super intentional about not drinking too frequently. I would say frequently I would probably drink about what the average person drinks normally.

[00:13:27] But this year I've been very intentional about not drinking Monday to Friday, not drinking, you know, both nights on the weekend and whatever, whatever, whatever. But the thing is, is that what's happened is that I've created all these rules around when I can and can't drink. And then that's taken so much thought, power and decision making and restraint and all of those things because you know like many people, I would like to come home, not come home cause I work from home, but you know, at the end of the day, have a glass of wine, have a chat with my husband, et cetera, et cetera.[00:14:00]

[00:14:01] I didn't wanna do that during the week. So I had all these rules and then I started to discover, a few months ago I discovered about gray area drinking and gray area drinking, I would've assumed is just about drinking too much. But how I fitted into the gray area drinking category is that I would white knuckle it.

[00:14:19] I would have all these rules in place to stop me from drinking too much. That's the only reason why I didn't drink during the week was cuz I had rules around it. I had this moment where I was thinking, what am I doing? Why don't I just not drink anymore? Why don't I just make the decision not to drink?

[00:14:34] Why don't I do that? And I didn't really have a logical reason for not, so I was reading a book and the very first word in that book was what I call an angel sign. I'll go into that in an episode next year, but a sign to me to say, you've gotta pay attention to this. It happens a lot for me personally and

[00:14:55] I was like, there it is. There's that sign that I repeatedly see in times when I need to pay attention to something. And then I was like, that's it. The decision's been made. And the funny thing is, the funny thing about this whole thing is that by making one decision, it's actually stopped me from making multiple decisions a day or multiple decisions a week.

[00:15:17] And it feels so liberating and I just feel good about my decision to not drink alcohol anymore and that you can actually socialise and have a wonderful life without having alcohol in it. So I share this story just for context and because I think that often we assume when someone doesn't drink is that they've hit rock bottom or something traumatic has happened, and I assure you that none of that has been the case for me.

[00:15:40] It's been I've chosen the decision or I've made the decision once, and I feel like that has prevented me from making frequent decisions in a week and also coming to the point where I just realized that I don't need to have alcohol in my life. So there you have it. Big decisions for me and feel really good about that.

[00:15:59] But [00:16:00] one thing I will say is that if you are thinking about not having alcohol in your life, double back over an episode that I have with Carolina Judd Alsko, which was earlier this year. I'll tag that down in the show notes as something to tune into. , There's a lot of really great information that she shares in that book, and she also has a really awesome book that might be a nice starting point for opening awareness around alcohol in your life.

[00:16:23] So that is really an overview of my year so far. And yeah, it's been a big year. Lots of trials and tribulations, but also some really solid highlights. And as with all years with my business, I've had steady growth in revenue. I don't talk a lot about my own personal revenue and things like that. That's not really my vibe for this space of business coaching, but that's what I also want for my clients, is to have that nice steady growth in their own revenue.

[00:16:53] So that's why I mentioned that here. Um, Okay, so as I promised, there to be a few little prompts for you to reflect on as you are rounding out the year. Now, if you want to go deep into your reflection piece as well as your planning piece, then head down into the show notes and grab that plan with purpose workbook.

[00:17:15] It is awesome. I ran that as a challenge a few years ago. Had so many people DM me and save that content. I've removed it from Instagram now, but say how valuable they found it. So I packaged it all up into a free downloadable workbook. So if you want to plan with purpose in 2023, then head down and grab that as well.

[00:17:35] But here's a few additional reflection prompts for you to consider that I don't mention in the book. So the first one is, what stories do you need to rewrite to achieve your goals? This is something that I think is really common and it links back a little bit to a recent episode where I talk about self-trust and when you don't achieve your goals, the stories that you tell [00:18:00] yourself, and the fact that you stop trusting yourself to achieve your goals.

[00:18:02] So, Really thinking about what does that actually mean? What stories do you need to rewrite or what do you need to stop telling yourself about who you are as a person? Be it either how you set goals or you're not good at setting goals or you're not someone who achieves goals. So going within and really thinking about what that actually means for you.

[00:18:23] The second one is, who have I loved working with and why? And this is really important. I truly believe that at this stage of business, in the messy middle, you often need to redefine who your niche is or who your ideal client is. And part of that is really understanding. Who it is that you enjoy working with and in fact who you don't enjoy working with.

[00:18:45] And as you're rounding out the year really thinking about who that might be and not to make things confusing, but I do also have an ideal client avatar workbook. So if you are planning on thinking about that over the summer months, then grab that from the link as well. Cause it's a really great workbook that will uncover questions that I think you may not have considered about who your ideal client might actually be.

[00:19:10] The next prompt is, what didn't I achieve this year that I had in my goals? And reflect on why. Okay. Now there's a multiple number of reasons for why you might not have achieved your goals. Some in your control and some outside of your control. But I think sometimes we create stories around our goals.

[00:19:33] And those stories aren't actually embedded in truth, and so it might be that you set a goal and you did nothing with it, right. That's not that you are someone who doesn't achieve goals. It's someone who didn't make a plan maybe, or maybe it's that you started working towards it and you got derailed by something in your life or in your business, or maybe it's something that you deprioritized.

[00:19:56] I think we sometimes forget that we make these choices and we're [00:20:00] triaging different activities in our business. Week on week, month on month, and maybe you decided to triage that out of your year. I've done that before with the group program. I mentioned I triage that out of my year, the year before. I've done it with the podcast, but I got there in the end.

[00:20:16] And having clarity around why you didn't achieve it in that year may give you some insight into what needs to be addressed, the following year. The next thing is to list out everything, and I'm talking all the little nitty gritty of what you have achieved this year. Unless you've been keeping a good, solid record of it, you might be.

[00:20:35] But go down, have a journal entry and purge on all the beautiful things. The wonderful things, big and small that you have achieved this year. It's so powerful when you do that because if, let's say, for example, referencing the previous point that there was something that you didn't achieve, you can get stuck on that.

[00:20:53] You can think, oh, the whole thing's terrible. I didn't do this thing, or I didn't achieve this dollar figure. I've spoken about that before as well, and you disregard all of the incredible milestones that you've made along the way that is contributing to the momentum that you've built in your business. And the last one is, What impact did I create this year?

[00:21:15] And that can be impact for your family, it can be impact for a client or a few clients, or lots of clients. And I touched on this in last week's episode, is that you are able to make such an incredible impact with your business. But sometimes we're so fixated on the big things that we forget about the daily, weekly, monthly impact that we make for our clients, for ourselves, for our loved ones.

[00:21:41] So really think about what impact was made possible through you and your business this year. So there's a few little prompts. Actually, they're not little. There's a few of them, but they're very powerful. Those in conjunction with the Plan With Purpose Workbook is [00:22:00] really gonna help you to round up this year and set up next year with intention.

[00:22:05] So make sure you grab that download today as well as the ICA workbook. If you are thinking about reworking your need for the coming year, grab that as well. Both of those resources are awesome. Okay, so that is a wrap on today's episode, but if you loved this conversation, I think there's a few episodes you're gonna wanna queue up right after this one last week's episode, episode 80.

[00:22:30] Add power to your Purpose, A Why process you've never heard before. If you really wanna be fueled by purpose next year or powered by purpose next year. Then go and listen to that episode. Another awesome episode that you might wanna listen to at this time of year is episode number 76.

[00:22:49] Cultivate Self-trust to grow your business. And episode number 73. The one thing not to do in your business, this is, that episode is so important. So make sure if you haven't had a chance to listen to it, or even if you have that, you go and listen to that conversation because I think you're gonna get a lot of value from that.

[00:23:14] And lastly, as I mentioned, episode number 39, questioning the role of alcohol in your life and for online business with Carolina Judd Kovolksa. That is an awesome conversation for the sober curious. Boss, thank you so much for joining me, not only for today's conversation, but for all the conversations this year.

[00:23:35] It has been my absolute honor to support you in this capacity, and I will be continuing to do so well into 2023 and beyond. I absolutely love producing this podcast for you, and my wish for you is for you to have a fabulous holiday, whether you are in the Northern Hemisphere and it's a winter holiday, which I get to have a little snippet of as well.

[00:23:59] Or if [00:24:00] you are here in Australia and you are having that beautiful long summer holiday to, regardless of where you are in this world. I wish you the happiest of holidays. I hope you take a little piece of time to reflect, to plan, to think about what is possible for you in 2023.

[00:24:19] Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I look forward to chatting with you next year.