2024 Architecture your life

For today's short yet punchy blog post, I would love to help you do a bit of a 2024 work-life reset.

To do that, I'm going to first direct you to a podcast that I recorded for my betterinbusiness.global platform called the 2023 Work-Life Reset – it's really short and quick, but it's going to give you some great ideas to set you up for success in 2024.

And then to shake things up a little bit, I'm giving you this blog as something new to add on to that. So, listen to the 2023 Work-Life Reset first, okay? It's fast, it's 20 minutes, and I used the formula that I talk about in there to impact my life for 2023, and it was really cool, and I know other people that it impacted really, really quickly.

Now, diving into the heart of this post, I want to encourage you to architecture your life for 2024, which is something that I talk to my clients and my friends about a fair bit.

My business buddies, my entrepreneurial friends, my clients, when they come to me and they say, oh, this is happening for me and I think I need to fix this, and I think I need to do this, and I talk to them about their businesses, whether that is in a formal setting as a business coach or an informal setting, I always find myself saying to them, look, what are you doing it all for?

And then, I ask them to go away and architecture their life. I did this with some clients recently and they were so excited. It's seriously the end game.

We can talk about the mechanics of business all we want, however,

we need to always be coming back to why we're doing it all.

Now, as entrepreneurs, our businesses should give us a lot of purpose. If you don't love your business, you need to make changes in order to love your business, or, you get out of it. If I meet an entrepreneur that tells me that they hate their business, either I help them change that very quickly, or I exit plan with them, okay? You don't stay in a business you hate. This blog is not really to tell you how to fix your business, or how to exit plan, but if you want a hand with that, just reach out to me anytime.

Onto architecturing your life – what do I mean by that? And how are you going to do it?

Most of the entrepreneurs I work with tend to be moms and dads. But even if you're not a mom or a dad, all the same. I want you to just think about what you want your day-to-day life to look like in the short term, in the medium term, in the long term.

And, this usually relates to a few things. First of all, there is your mental, spiritual, and physical health – how are you going in terms of these three?

So physically, are you getting the time to keep yourself physically fit?

Are you moving enough? Are you eating enough?

How's your mental health? How's your spiritual health?

And to give myself as an example, absolutely, in my life, I come first.

I believe everybody should put themselves first.

That is how we show up for those we love and serve as our best selves.

I believe that we should all prioritise our own physical, mental, spiritual health first. That's what I do. Now, as an entrepreneur, it's a bit of a rollercoaster and so sometimes, I have to sacrifice a little bit of the things that I want to do, in an effort to maybe kick some goals.

An example is when I was rolling out my passion project in about mid this year, I didn't get to go to my favourite Latin dance events. I had to skip Latin school sometimes. And dancing is actually my spiritual health. I mean, it probably keeps me a bit fit, but it is my spiritual health. So when I skip that, I say to myself, it's okay to do that a few times, but it can't continue, because, in terms of architecturing of my life, that needs to happen.

And then for my physical health, there's certain movement activities I like to do. I love to cook, beautiful, nourishing food. And if any of that is suffering, I take stock of that. In terms of my mental health, I invest on personal growth activities, journaling, and things like that.

So, how do these things look for you right now?

Are you pretty much most of the time getting all those things on point?

Are you putting yourself first?

Because if you're not, and if you're a mom... Because mom's often laugh and go, that's hilarious, Jeannie, we can't come first. We have to put our kids first. — No, you don't. That's not true. You'll show up for your children as your best self if you learn to put yourself first, okay? If you don't know my story, I have talked about it a lot, but I had to learn the hard way to put myself first. So absolutely, take stock of where you are right now as you architecture your life.

What do you want to get in terms of your physical, mental, and spiritual health?

Where are you now? Where do you want to be?

You need to make your plan.

What does 10 out of 10 putting yourself first, physical, mental, and spiritual health look like for you, for your spouse, for your children, et cetera?

And then, that links through to time-money equation, or the income and lifestyle equation.

How much money do you need to make, save, and invest for your own point of satisfaction?

Now, point of satisfaction in terms of money is a phrase that came out of the mouth of Angela Savage, my amazing cousin. She's an author, she's represented Australia at the Geneva Conference, and she's one of those humans that you're in a room with them, they open their mouth and your jaw just drops.

And I remember, she once said to my father who is a massively successful entrepreneur, I think everybody needs to just consider their own point of satisfaction when it comes to money. And that has simply stayed with me forever.

So, it's not for me to determine your point of satisfaction.

It is for you to architecture your life.

I've been asked over the years why I don't work more, why I take so much time off, and it does make me laugh. I think, oh my goodness, time wealth – I want to be super rich in time. I want my point of satisfaction in terms of money, but I want to be super time rich so I can prioritise my mental, spiritual, and physical health, so that I can do all the amazing things that I want to do in this life.

And to quote Hunter S. Thompson:

I love that quote so much.

So hey, time wealth. I'm actually hoping to be heading to Cuba early next year. I will dance in Cuba day and night, enjoy my life. I could work 10 times more than I am now and make 10 times more money, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to have me arrive at the gates of heaven having done everything I wanted to do. So architecture in our life, it's about time and money.

When it comes to money wealth, I just want you to think, what do you need to earn?

And of that, what are the investments that I want to make in terms of setting myself up for retirement, et cetera? And then, how much time do I want?

So you need to do a bit of a What's happening now? Where do I want to be?

How much time do I want for myself to spend on mental, physical, spiritual health?

Are there hobbies and dreams you've got?

Do you want to take up another hobby?

Basically, I want you to think about the time equation.

How much time are you spending with your kids? I think we never get enough time with our kids. With my son, he's at home, he's not in school. And when I've got a week where I feel like I don't have as much on, I've said to him, we're going to do a detox from tech and we're going to spend a week where I'm really passionate about the absence of toxic vegetable oils in our diet. And, it's almost impossible to do, but I do it.

But to do that, I want to make sure my son doesn't miss out. So whatever he wants to eat, I'm going to go to the supermarket with him, buy all the ingredients, and make absolutely anything and everything without vegetable oil, and only using beautiful fats. So yeah, that is going to consume our entire week like crazy. Now, that to me sounds amazing, but that is the gift of time.

So I want you to ask yourself, what does your time wealth look like right now? 

Where do you want it to be?

What does your money wealth look like right now in terms of cash to live on, and then your assets?

Because in terms of investing in building wealth, realistically, I call it the five-point plan. There's earn money, save money, borrow money, invest, and then leverage, and then repeat, right? Or definitely you go invest, leverage, repeat, because you just need to be leveraging and buying more assets. It's actually not rocket science.

If you just want to invest in real estate and you're fairly smart about it, you can't go too wrong. A girlfriend of mine, she's in her mid-thirties, she's got 4 million in real estate and 2 million of it is leveraged, meaning she has 2 million in loans across 4 million in real estate. She just has a regular job. So she saved her money. She then borrowed money, she bought property, she leveraged the equity and the property to borrow more money, and then she kept buying more property.

In terms of architecturing your life, it's the time and money equation.

If you have a spouse, you need to do this with your spouse, or get them to read this blog, okay? Then, together, you want to absolutely sit and digest this concept of putting yourself first. Really lean into this absolute truth that every psychologist, every sufi, every master will tell you: putting yourself first is key to how you will show up your best self for those you love and serve.

Go to a whiteboard, get a pen and paper out. Write down "My top three priorities are: First, myself – my mental, spiritual, physical health. Then my second priority is... whatever you decide it is. My third priority is, whatever you decide it is, but I want you to come up with three priorities, and I want priority one to be yourself.

That's your first action step, and then your second action step, I want you to sit down and write down "income, lifestyle". And under that, I want you to write "money, time"– because that's what these are about. And then, I want you to do a bit of a now-future analysis. In terms of income, money, I want you to put, okay, I'm earning this now I'm saving this now. If it's nothing, that's fine. It's just awareness. Awareness, acceptance, actions. That's how change happens, okay? The three A's. So what is your income? How much are you saving? What do your assets look like right now?

And then in the future, whether that's tomorrow, a year, whatever, you might be unhappy with that income or I want to be earning more, and then, I want to be saving X amount, and I want to be investing this. And actually, within the next amount of years, I want to have this many assets, even if these assets have borrowings on them. So I want you to think and write about those things. Architecture your life.

And then in terms of your income as an entrepreneur, I want you to think about, this is the income I need and want to achieve those savings and investment goals and my point of satisfaction.

And then in your business, rather than working, working, working,

really understand what you're working for.

Rather than hustling and working hard, I want you to work smart.

Do the same or less work for more reward.

And reward, that is impact on yourself, and to those you serve.

Working smarter rather than harder is the key to the income and lifestyle.

Really dig into, what is my revenue right now? What is my profit right now? What would I need to do to move the needle on my net profit in order to achieve what I want in life?

Drill down into that, okay? Because sometimes, you might be able to identify, actually I just need this many clients. Actually, I just need my current clients to be doing something else. Too often, we just move ahead, growing, growing, growing our business, without really focusing on the net profit we need, and taking a bottom-up approach. That means, always looking at the net profit first, and then going up the profit and loss, not down the profit and loss. And if you want any help with these things, you know where to find me, okay?

In terms of your income on this sheet that you are writing down on, I want you to think of those things, and I want to give you an example of people who are getting it really right, because success leaves clues.

So I have a client who's been with me for so long and him and I caught up recently in my booking practice. We did our annual planning and strategy session, and I found out exactly what's happening in his business and in his life right now. And, he is one of the smartest business operators I have ever met. Let me tell you what he's really good at – he's really good at not growing his business, which in turn stabilises and grows his net profit.

He actually looks at his business very analytically. He makes a decision not to do a whole lot of work. He micro niches, which is a great idea all the time, and he architectures his business and his net profit by deliberately doing things to impact revenue, growth, profit, and net profit. And that means that he does not say yes to a whole lot of business. That means that he only has a small but mighty team.

A really healthy profit for an entrepreneur and a small business owner usually comes from a small but mighty business that has the ability to

regulate capacity with price, work smarter not harder,

have a brilliant pricing system, and more.

If you're thinking, oh my goodness, I feel like I'm not doing these things and I don't know how to do them, just reach out to me, okay? And I will have a conversation with you, and connect you with the right people, the right resources. My point here is, when you are writing down those income items and you're thinking about that point of satisfaction in the income, the last thing I want you to do is grow your business. I don't want you thinking about that.

I want you to grow your net profit, and you can grow your net profit without growing your revenue at all. But, we also need you to grow your time wealth, okay? You can make great money, but you need to make sure that you are getting all the things out of life that the money is intended to do, including that your asset base is where you want it to go. If you need help with any of this, just drop me a line and like I said, I'll have a chat to you, and point you in the right direction.

Here's to the new year, and I hope that you move into 2024 excited about the opportunities to come.