Plan Your Year for Success in 2025: Tools, Strategies, and Career Insights

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcer (00:06):
And now the number one audio program that helps you
to hire, get hired and soarhigher in the Salesforce
ecosystem.
It's the Salesforce Career Showwith Josh Matthews and Vanessa
Grant Guys, thanks everybody forshowing up today.

Josh Matthews (00:23):
Again, it's kind of a funky, funky day to host a
live show, and I can't thank youguys enough for jumping in to
join me on a topic that I reallyenjoy, which is planning and
goal setting and how to do it,and I'm just going to preface
this by saying look, most peopleyou know, if you're 30 or over

(00:44):
and you're listening to the show, which is the vast majority of
our listeners you've gonethrough planning.
You've heard about goal setting.
You've probably done it once ortwice in your life with varying
degrees of success.
Some of you guys are absolutelyincredible at it and others
maybe not so much.
Some are great at planning,others are great at doing.

(01:05):
Not everybody's great at bothand, just so you know, I'd
rather be a doer than a plannerwho doesn't do right.
I mean, I hope that makes senseto everybody, but hopefully we
can share today some of thethings that we do ourselves to
really get into the mindset ofwanting to set a destination for
our career, for our life.

(01:26):
This includes life balance.
It could be anything right.
This show is not about NewYear's resolutions and all that
stuff.
Everybody knows that New Year'sresolutions don't work more
than 90% of the time and we'regoing to hopefully fix a little
bit of that and we're adding MrFred Cadena to the stage.

(01:47):
Welcome, fred, it's good to seeyou, my friend.
Thank you, happy New Year.
It's a rare occasion thatFred's not on an airplane, so
it's pretty dope to have him.
And Fred, just to catch you up,we're talking about planning
for the year.
How can you make it so that2025 is?
I mean, maybe if you have anincredible year, maybe it's a

(02:07):
duplicate of 24, but I think formost people they're going to
want something a little bit moreout of 25 than maybe they got
out of 2024.
And we're going to go into that.
But first, brought to you fromthe salesforcerecruitercom
Salesforce staffing LLC.
We do have a few jobs availableright now.
We just got very busy.
We have five openings currently.
One is for a lead consultantfor a nonprofit SI practice, a

(02:31):
group that we love.
We've staffed about a third ofthem.
Very close relationships withthe leadership there.
People who go there tend not toleave right.
It's one of those places and inthis role you'd have about
three or four people under youand you'd be working on NPSP and
nonprofit cloud projects.
We also have a couple differentroles.
Well, they're not different, acouple of the same roles Senior

(02:52):
consultant, slash solutionarchitect.
You don't have to be an SA toapply for this job, but it pays
quite well.
It's about $170 all in, so notbad, really good for someone
who's ready to be an SA.
I think this organization andit's a small SI practice, it's
fully remote they really likepeople who just have tons of

(03:13):
drive and the ability to learnright.
If you can demonstrate thosequalities then you'll get an
interview through me and maybeeven a brand new job with a
shiny new paycheck.
So, senior consultants, I needtwo of them.
I also have a solution architectopportunity for an SI practice
that focuses just on insurance,all kinds of insurance, right,

(03:34):
medical, health, life property,marine, all that stuff.
So if you've got at least ayear or two of experience in the
insurance industry and then youalso are very skilled at
architecting solutions forclients, then we want to hear
from you.
And then the last one is moreof a technical role for the same
nonprofit group I mentionedearlier.

(03:54):
I'm going to have more detailson that next year.
So make sure you visitthesalesforceretreatorcom
forward slash J-O-B and checkout some of these opportunities.
They're not all up, by the way,but a few of them are Okay.
Enough plugging, let's dive in.
I would love to find out, firstand foremost, tools.
I want to talk about tools.
These are often softwareproducts, but not always, and

(04:18):
I'm really interested in whatkind of tools the members of
this panel utilize to plan theirweek, their quarter, their
month, their year, or to stay ontrack with some of their goals.
Let's start with Josh.

Josh LeQuire (04:33):
Go ahead, josh, yeah sure I'm a huge fan.
I've been using Evernote foryears.
I kind of keep a running logevery day with a little checkbox
and some things I need to do tohelp me stay on top of things.
So Evernote is kind of mysecret sauce.
I always use my Google Calendarpretty heavily as well.
I actually look at my calendarand schedule time for myself,

(04:55):
even if it's not time I'mmeeting with clients or partners
or vendors or consultants justtime for myself.
So I kind of take a veryregimented approach of looking
at the eight or nine hours a dayI have and actually going hour
by hour, if not minute by minute, to schedule my time.
And I think just doing that ata minimum is super effective.
But a lot of it also comes downto looking at a board of all the
things I have going on.

(05:15):
We use GitHub projects in ourpractice to look at our client
projects, all kinds ofinitiatives.
So I like putting things almostlike it looks like a Trello
board where you can put cards upand track things.
So those are kind of the threethings I use really just to
manage my time, manage myschedule plan and look ahead.
But that's really good for theshort-term stuff, the long-term
stuff.

(05:36):
I kind of sit down and journaland think about this year,
especially with the new yearhappening.
Going through the exercise ofjournaling and thinking about
you know what really matters tome, what do I want to accomplish
, where do I want to focus iskind of the necessary precursor
to using all those tools andputting those things in place.
So that's, that's kind of mycombination of tools that I look
at and use.

I love it and I'll tell you, I'm a huge
Evernote junkie, you know, andI've been using it for, I think,
the year it came out, so it'slike 12 years, 10 years, 12
years and I can search for stuffon there and be like, oh my God
, this is like Lincoln YouthFootball Board of Directors
stuff from 2015 or somethinglike that.

(06:17):
It's crazy and it's fun becauseit's a little bit of a memory
lane there, but really useful.
It's practically free.
You can get a paid version.
That's going to open up a lotof opportunities.
One of the things I really likeabout Evernote is you can record
audio.
There are web clippers thatplug into your Chrome.
You can grab anything.
You can take photos of yourhandwritten notes, drop it in

(06:40):
there and it's going to read allof the I forget what you call
it blah, blah, blah, whateverword reading OCR, thank you.
And so it's super easy to findthings Every single person that
I interview and every singleclient that I talk to.
I'm not punching it into my CRM,I'm punching it into Evernote.
Then I'll transfer it after Iorganize it.

(07:00):
Drop some AI to clean it up alittle bit and then I'll pop it
in, but it makes it super easyand then you've got all of your
raw notes from any conversationthat you have, provided you take
those conversations.
Now I know that Fred and I, wetalk, along with Eric, a lot
about other tools that can beused to record conversations.
So AI summaries, zoom offers it.
There's probably 10 differentproducts that are pretty popular

(07:24):
, so maybe I'm a little bit oldschool there.
But with that, let's go to Fred.
What are the top tools thatyou're going to be using in 25
for your planning?

Fred Cadena (07:32):
I was hoping to be in listen mode here because I
want to hear what the new,latest and greatest tools are.
I'm a big Evernote user as well.
I tend to use Miro quite a bitfor project planning and Kanban
boards and that kind of stuff.
I don't have a real good.
I mean, I live out of calendar,right.
I've got a lot of appointments,I've got a, you know you

(07:53):
alluded to, I travel a lot, soobviously you know, sometimes I
probably let the calendar rulemy life too much.
But I don't have like a goodlike general task list type of a
tool, like, unless it's tied tosome bigger project or bigger
thing that I'm working onnothing.
That's really kind of stuck.

So are you on Mac or are you?
A PC guy.

I'm a Mac guy Mac and iOS.

Okay.
Well, I'm going to recommendwhat I use for my task
management system and it'scalled OmniFocus and it's just
for Mac.
It's not super cheap.
It's maybe 80 bucks, I think.
It might be like 70, 80 bucks ayear.
It is so powerful and I'll tellyou the way that I organize it.
I don't even know if I don'twant to show everybody

(08:41):
everything I got to do, know ifI don't want to show everybody
everything I got to do.
It's a long, it's a really longlist, but there's a.
I learned this from a coachmaybe seven years ago and it's.
You can use this for OmniFocus.
For those of you who are not Macusers, there's another highly
recommended product calledTodoist T-O-D-O-I-S-T.

(09:03):
If you haven't heard of thatbefore, now you have, and it's
not dissimilar from OmniFocus.
One of the things I love aboutOmniFocus is being able to short
key tasks.
So I can just hit my optioncommand space bar and then type
it in what I need to do and Ican tab over, flag it, drop in a
due date how much time I thinkit's going to take different

(09:26):
notes.
I can do tags on it too, andyou can even do location stuff
with OmniFocus, so you can plugin stuff like, okay, I need to
buy this, that, the other thing,three different things from
Home Depot.
Well, you're not going to evenget a notification on that until
it recognizes that yourgeolocation is near Home Depot.
And then it's going to pop upand be like guess what, fred,

(09:49):
don't forget to go buy thesethings, right.
So very powerful, and I thinkTodoist has a lot of that too.
But here's my trick withOmniFocus or any of these tools,
you're always able to createlike a file, right.
So on mine.
I'm going to open it real quick.
I'm probably not going to shareit.
So on mine.
When I look at my projects,they're called projects.
I have, for instance, sfsSalesforce staffing.

(10:12):
I have training andimplementation, productivity and
planning my websites, contentproduction, anything personal,
anything to do with the house,anything to do with finances,
but then under each of theseprojects, I create sub projects
and it looks like this week andthen queue, right, this week and
queue, and then once a week.

(10:32):
Every time you drop somethinginto the inbox, then once a day,
once a week, however you wantto do it, you drag and drop it
into the appropriate project.
And what I love about having aqueue is you can really just
like it's not going to get lost.
It's for this project.
You're going to get to itsometime, it's not priority.
So this way you can have a veryshort list by dragging and

(10:54):
dropping into the most criticalthings into this week's project
and then the queue is where yougo to populate next week or the
following weeks thereafter.
Does that make sense?
It's pretty dope.
I mean, I love it and I'm happyto share screenshots or
something like that.
Maybe in post-production we'lldrop some of that stuff in.

It sounds awesome.
I'm already looking at thewebsite.
I take it you've got thestandard.
There's a standard and a pro,pro, pro is about twice as much.
You have the pro.

I do pro man, I do pro on almost everything.
Just because it's actually notthat much Like when I try and
figure out proper planning couldearn me an extra $100,000 this
year.
It could earn me an extra$150,000 a year.
I know that's not the case formost admins out there, and fair
enough, but the opportunity togrow, gain, acquire, accomplish

(11:52):
is so critical.
It's so important.
I'm more than happy to spend ahundred bucks or 50 bucks extra,
30 bucks extra on the softwareso that I can actually use it in
a way that's not going to bedisruptive.
I'm going to get a little bitbetter flow.
It's a worthy investment, Ithink.

All right, well, I'm sold.
I'm signing up as we speak.

All right.
What about you, Vanessa?
What are some tools that youenjoy?
In the process.

Vanessa Grant (12:14):
Yeah, for me, 2025 is going to be figuring out
what tools work for me.
I have to get organized andI've recently started working
with a career coach.
She's great.
Her name's Erica Chestnut, ifanybody's interested in looking
her up.
But she's working with a careercoach.
She's great.
Her name's Erica Chestnut, ifanybody's interested in looking
her up, but she's working withme right now on what are all the
things that I'm committed tofiguring out over, like if I

(12:35):
split it out in per week howmuch time each of those takes,
and then also figuring out whatmy priorities are so that I can
better adjust my capacity.
I have long struggled as we'veaddressed several times on this
show, with overcommitting myselfand just being stressed out all
the time, so I'm really hopingto find some balance in 2025.

(12:56):
The things that I've usedunsuccessfully I can talk about.
I've used Notion let's not dothat.
Other people have used themsuccessfully.
I remember Stacey Whitaker cameon the show and talked to us
about Motion, which is reallycool if it works for you and I
think a lot of it is.
It's not that it's a toolthat's going to work for

(13:17):
everybody.
It's finding the tools thatwork for you.
So I know Notion works for alot of folks.
I know Motion works for a lotof folks.
Neither of those has worked forme, I think.
Probably I keep most of mystuff in Google Keep, but even
then I don't use it as much as Ishould.
My next step is going to betrying to create a Google
Calendar and trying to block offtime that way, but I'm still

(13:38):
sorting through it.

Well, I think that's worthy and I'm pretty
stoked to hear that you'regetting some outside help, which
is a very big deal.
Right?
Most of you have listened tothe podcast where we had Trevor
McAulder on.
Trevor's my Tony Robbinsexecutive coach.
We've worked together for threeyears.
He's taught me an awful lot.
He's a wonderful guy.
He keeps me on point, keeps meon track and, more importantly,

(14:09):
gets me to think about problemsolving in a slightly different
way.
And this is really whereplanning comes in and some of
the things that I'm hoping tocover during this little session
, because all the tools in theworld don't work.
If you don't use the tools, itdoesn't work.
And it's a mindset thing andwe'll get to that probably a
little bit closer to the end,but it's definitely about
mindset and, more importantly, alittle bit closer to the end,
but it's definitely aboutmindset and, more importantly,

(14:31):
it's about how do you determinewhat is actually worth your time
?
Why is it worth your time?
Who else is impacted, thingslike that.
So we'll go into that in alittle bit, mr McCool.
By the way, mike, we never dida full introduction on you.
Mike is super freaking smart,just like everybody else on this
panel.
He's a super smart guy.
Can you give us a quick10-second update on who you are?

Mike Mikula (14:49):
So yeah, my name is Mike McCullough, salesforce
architect, software engineer.
I've been working in the fieldfor over 10 years and was very
glad to meet Josh and getfeedback from him, so here, I am
All right, buddy, and are theresome tools that you like to use
for planning?
So, professionally, I'm a bigjira fan.
Like whenever I'm leading teams, I love to use jira um.

(15:10):
Or for like, for example, athome we use trello to manage all
of our home projects, uh, butlike for wedding planning, then
we're going to flip back tospreadsheets, so like we use
spreadsheets for everything inthere and financial planning, um
, but what's really interesting?

Peter Ganza (15:23):
this year.

Oh, thank you, Thank you very much.
That's exciting.
What's interesting, though, inthe last couple of months is I
kind of actually turned theprofessional side off of all
this super planning stuff andjust made time to play, and
that's actually caused me toreach my goals 10 times faster
than I ever have reached themjust by finding things that I

(15:46):
enjoy doing and giving myself tojust be curious about them,
like with AI.
Like I went from just hey, Ican take GPT and put an app
through app exchange, but fromscratch to I can have cursor,
build an entire full stack appin like a weekend.
Like just monumental shiftsfrom just saying I'm gonna play.
Or like Josh, when you gave mefeedback about my resume, I was

(16:06):
like cool, josh gave me anexample of my resume, like what
it could look like, and I wasable to just take cursor and
have it build an entire websitewith all your feedback and then
open source it.
Right, like it's just creatingtime to play like has been, for
me, the most interesting way tolike set goals that could be a
really fun session.

By the way, maybe we look at doing that just on
youtube one of these days.
I'd like that very cool.
Mr gans, are you still with us?

I am, but probably not on camera.
I've been having mad latencyissues.
My internet provider was kindenough six weeks ago to
introduce latency.
I was getting dropped calls.

That's okay.
Do you have a response to thequestion, buddy?

I'm definitely with Vanessa.
This is the year where I got tofigure my shit out.
I've been relying primarily onGoogle Calendar, to be honest,
just because I've got Calendlyand so I booked tons of my calls
in there.
Obviously, for that I'll gothrough the night before and
just use kind of old schoolnotes like built into Windows.
I haven't converted to Evernoteyet but I'm blocking out some

(17:14):
time just to get stuff done.
But I've also been finding thatthe new Slack feature they
introduced some task capability.
So with a bunch of my clientsI've got Slack, you know shared
Slack channels and I'm I hateany kind of you know major
project management systems likegetting down to the you know
tasks and details anddependencies and all that kind

(17:36):
of stuff.
I run away from that.
But I really actually like theway that they've implemented
some task stuff in Slack andI've been finding that that's
been actually quite useful.

Very good.
Well, thank you for sharing.
I'd like to share a couple ofmine that make a massive
difference from a productivitystandpoint, and I'm going to
lean into this a little bit andjust say where did I find out
all of this stuff?
Well, I found it atasianefficiencycom, and Asian

(18:07):
Efficiency is a group of peoplethat have a podcast.
They've got a podcast calledthe Productivity Show.
They share all sorts of tools,ways to be more efficient, ways
to be more focused.
They focus on something calleda T framework, which stands for
time, time, energy and attention, and in general, most of us are

(18:28):
pretty good with one of themand pretty bad with one of those
areas, and it's rare that wehave all three.
So some people have lots oftime but they struggle with
focus, and other people havelots of energy but they struggle
with time or they struggle withfocus as well.
Focus tends to be the biggestthing, plus time right.

(18:49):
And then there's the energythings like how do you have
enough energy to accomplisheverything that you want?
A year.
So I'm a lifelong member oftheirs.
I don't know what it costs now.
I joined about five years agofor like maybe seven 800 bucks,
and they have these little twominute, five minute, 10, 12
minute little training courses.
So I definitely recommend AsianEfficiency and it was there
that I learned about OmniFocusand I learned about Evernote and

(19:13):
I learned about one of myfavorite tools.
I've used it for years.
It's called TextExpander, andTextExpander is not for planning
, but it is an efficiency tooland if you want to get a couple
more hours out of your weeks,you would download it and buy it
and fill it out.
You got to spend a couple hourskind of populating it, but now
I can just short key Boom,there's my name.

(19:35):
Boom, there's my EIN number.
Boom, there's my signature.
Boom, there's my.
Okay, you're going to be aguest on the show.
Here's everything you need toknow.
It can be super long.
You can send three pagedocument and short key it.
My zoom links, you know it's.
You know semi colon M orsomething like that.
And I can, just as I'm workingon LinkedIn with emails and text
messaging messaging.

(19:56):
If I just switched to thatkeyboard on my phone, I can use
it, or it works with my regularkeyboard on my laptop as a
plugin.
So I strongly recommend TextExpander.
It will save you.
I think it'll save you at leasta hundred hours in the next
year, a hundred work hours.
More importantly, it will keepyour attention and you'll be how

(20:17):
do I put it?
You'll be less distracted, soyou can just fly through the
work a little bit faster andthat, just plain old, feels good
.
So I definitely recommendTextExpander.
Something else this is again notabout planning, but it's
helpful to use while you're inplanning mode, and that is
Pomodoro.
Pomodoro is a fancy name for atimer, a tomato timer, and most

(20:38):
people you know you can buy themat the store like a little egg
timer, but then you got tolisten to click and that's no
fun.
So I have one that's just builtinto my you know, it's just in
my operating system on myMacBook and I can just go up to
the shortcut bar and turn it on,and I generally have it set for
about 30 minutes and what itallows you to do is you turn it

(20:58):
on and that's it.
You're in focus mode and you'rejust going to do the one thing.
This is a big thing.
Asian efficiency talks about alot.
Just do one thing, one thing ata time.
Every time you switch to adifferent task, it can take up
to 10 minutes to get back in theflow.
If you do that twice an hour,that's 20 minutes of lost flow

(21:19):
and that means now you'reworking until eight, nine, 10
o'clock at night, instead offive or six, right?
So the idea is to get the mostout of your time, and I really
believe that the Pomodoro timeris great.
It plans for you your breaksand you can set it for whatever
you want.
Usually it's like 25 minutes,five minute break, four minute
break and after four sessionsyou get a 20 minute break and in

(21:45):
a way, you're kind of planningin a little bit of that fun.
Josh, right, like you can go,okay, I'm going to go take a
little walk around the block andget my blood moving again.
So I like all of those.
And then the last tool that Ireally like and I've got a
couple others I could probablyshare is called the New Year
Calendar, and I think it'sspelled N-E-U.
Let me double check that.
New Year, yeah, n-e-u, n-e-uYear Calendar.
Neu, neu year calendar.
This comes, it's a calendar.

(22:06):
You hang it on your wall.
There are a number of ways thatyou can hang it by string, by
tacks, all the clips, like allsorts of things, and it's big,
it's like four feet.
It's like four feet by threefeet or something like that.
It's very large and it's thewhole year at a glance.
No-transcript.

(22:51):
A lot of us major in minorthings.
A lot of us get 90% of fiveprojects done and never close
the loop.
I mean, nothing's going to feelcrappier than having five
projects and none of them aredone.
Right is going to feel crappierthan having five projects and
none of them are done.
So the idea here is you got aproject or a work task for the
day, just start it, do it, don'tstop until it's done, period.

(23:16):
This is very hard to do for somepeople.
I can tell you.
For someone who's moderatelydistractible, like I am I'm not
full-blown distractible, butmoderately it's super helpful
because you just look at thewall.
You just look at your wall andbe like why am I working on that
thing, which I know.
When I sat down to plan, I toldmyself that's not important,

(23:39):
it's just not, it's fun.
I'm going to get some dopaminehits off of this project.
Is it going to further thesuccess of my candidates, my
family, me, anything like that?
Well, hell, no, it's just not.
So I strongly recommend peopleinvestigate the new year
calendar.
All right, that's it forproducts.
Anything else that we want totalk about product-wise that can

(24:01):
help people with their planningbefore we move on?

I might offer just a little bit.
Vanessa, you said somethingearlier that I think was really
insightful.
That's probably good for folkswatching the show.
Yeah, a lot of times we justgot to try things out, you know,
just kind of see what works forus.
There's so many products outthere.
I think we're kind of seeingthis now In our world with the
proliferation of LLMs, co-pilotsand agents and so forth and
just the proliferation of appsyou can use that.

(24:26):
We've always had the SaaSrevolution and now the agent
revolution.
Sometimes you just got to say,hey, I don't need to sign up to
something, to commit to it forlife.
I just need to try it for aweek or two, see if it works,
and if it doesn't work, trysomething else.
So kind of getting mentality.
You know, try before you buy.
You know, kiss a few frogsbefore you find your friends, or
however you want to frame it.
It's probably a good way tofind the right tool set that

(24:47):
works best for you.

Yeah, I think you're right about that.

You know I'll share something, maybe slightly
on the personal side, but Ithink very relevant to this.
So I'm homeschooling sinceSeptember.
I have a son that's 11 withADHD and, besides leveraging
chat GPT for, like, I created myown GPT that has all the common
core standards, so to help meput together stuff.
He struggles with this focus.

(25:12):
So, yes, he you know he hassome medication that can help,
but I have a thing that is inhis folder that I give him with
all of his work that says thingsto try when you lose focus.
So one change of scenery move toanother room or outside in the
backyard to reset your focus.
Work outside.
Try to do your work in thefront or the backyard.
Fresh air can give your brain aboost.
Task switch when stuck.

(25:33):
Switch to a different task fora while and then return to the
original one, because sometimesI know even me like I will sit
in the same spot and trying towill myself to do something and
it's just not working sometimes.
Take a shower, do the Pomodorotimer we love the Pomodoro timer
here too.
Five minutes of exercising, sorun around the block, do some
jumping jacks, something likethat.
Body doubling I have anotherdesk right next to me.

(25:55):
Body doubling is actuallysomething I learned from Tracy
Green and certainly helpful.

What is that?

You just have somebody in the room with you.
That's also co-working.
You just have somebody in theroom with you.

That's also co-working.
Can I tell you something?
Sorry, it's a little bit of anaside I recently flew back from
Portland, florida, and I crackedopen the laptop and, just
sandwiched between these twopeople, I got so much work done.
I got so much in the middleseat.

(26:23):
I got so much work done.
It was incredible and it almostmade me think.
I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to set up a coworkingspace where people are smushed
together.
You know, get tiny little space.
They're smushed together.
You know, no one's talking toanybody, there's no talk, and
you're in a tiny little butcomfortable seat and you just
have to crank because your goalis to get the hell off out of

(26:45):
this place.
Just get it done.
You don't leave until it's done, right?
Anyway, sorry, keep going.

No body doubling and it's a thing you can look up
body doubling and that is a wayto focus, declutter your
workspace, clean up your deskfor a few minutes to create a
more focused environment, usesome headphones, take a walk.
And then the other one that Ithought was interesting, another
one that I thought wasinteresting, another one that I
learned from Tracy Green, who'slike been really helpful as far
as giving me ideas to support myADHD kiddo, is changing your

(27:14):
clothes, so putting on shoes ifyou're home.
And I think it's one of thosethings that happens when you're
working from home sometimes,that you can just be in that
home mindset.
Sometimes, putting on someshoes or some business clothes
or in my kid's case, you know,just you know, throwing on some
sneakers even can strangelyswitch your mindset a little bit
in, you know okay now I'm inwork mode because I have shoes
on.

Absolutely, I think those are all outstanding
recommendations.
I mean, there's a reason whythere are dress codes right in
offices often not always oftenthere's a reason why prep
schools have kids wear the sameuniforms, wear ties, wear
blazers and so on, because themore you kind of like dress for

(27:55):
the role that you're in, themore likely you're going to
behave that way.
And we don't have to behavethat way when we're sitting at
home and coding, necessarily,but a little shift to make sure
that like look, man, this is,you're not going from this seat
directly into the bathtub, youknow.
Or to your like little golfpractice mat out back.

(28:15):
You are working, so be in workmode.
Body doubling and shoes 100%.
Yes, anything else there?
Vanessa.

No, that's.
I think that's kind of about.
At least that's on the list.
I don't think that all thosethings are going to work all the
time, but it's a matter of likein general.
If you're stuck on something,try something.
Just keep trying stuff.
Don't give up, I think is themain thing and there's always
the one that I don't think willnecessarily help our audience

(28:43):
but is good for the kiddos Justif you're really stuck, ask mom
for help If you need help.

Ask mom for help.
Yeah, and really what we'retalking about here is focus,
right.
That's a big thing for anybodywho has ADD or is just even like
kind of a touch of it right,it's super helpful.
One other thing I forgot wealmost moved on before I
mentioned this there's a, thereis a website called brainfm.

(29:09):
But you don't have to go there,you don't have to pay for this
stuff.
The idea of listening tobinaural beats or binaural audio
.
That helps to stimulate theright kind of brain waves,
depending on what you're tryingto do.
So if you're trying to do likevery hardcore, independent focus
, it's one sound.
If you're trying to do creativework, it's another sound.

(29:31):
If you're trying to relax, it'sanother one.
If you're trying to get a boltof energy and I did for years
I'd wake up, pound my water, puton my headphones and play like
this 10 minute track.
What I use is called iDoserlittle I big D O-S-E-R.
It's an app that you can get onmost smartphones.
There's a little bit of cost toit.

(29:52):
You might spend a couple ofbucks.
I use it for sleep, I use itfor waking up, I use it for
getting focused, but probablymore often than not these days I
just type in focus into Spotify, find some cool playlist, put
it on, get my noise cancellationheadphones on and then like,
let's lock this thing in and,you know, get it done.

(30:12):
So I think that there's a lotto be said about these little
life hacks.
Right To get the most out ofyou.

I do the same thing, josh.
I've got my playlist on Spotify.
You have some that areelectronic, some that are old
school hip hop, some that arevery nasty.
It's background noise to get mefocused, so for me it's been a
good hack.
If I need to focus, I turn onthe tunes, got my AirPods in,
just go to town, get work done.
Excellent, hold on.

(30:46):
I'm curious about some of it'sreally nasty, like busting out
some Lil' Jon or 2 Live Crew.
What's going on over there?
I love old school hip hop soI've got all the well, I guess
it's not so old.
Well, maybe it is old school.
I say Snoop and Dre and Jay-Zand all that kind of stuff, yeah
, all the West Coast, east Coaststuff that I kind of grew up
with and still kind of, yeah,it's very nostalgic, but I've of
getting a little bit into.
You know new stuff lately.
You know some of the newerhip-hop artists which you know

(31:09):
kind of ranges across the wholespectrum of.
You know safe for work anddefinitely not safe for work,
which my son like vanessa wantsyou to share your playlists?

hey, for the productivity.

Spotify, be spotify friends.
I'll tell you my son, charlie,he and a couple of his friends
do some rap music.
They cut songs.
It is not for publicconsumption, it's definitely not
for the office.
I mean, I find it reallyawesome that they're doing it.
Sometimes I listen to it andI'm like that's worse than some

(31:41):
of the stuff that was coming outin 87.
Than some of the stuff that wascoming out in 87.
Like that is rough man, whoa,okay cool.
But it's fun, it's creative andit makes me smile.
So sometimes I'll throw that ontoo.

I'll make one recommendation, Vanessa, if you
want something that is safe forwork, that I can say on this
podcast and won't give metrouble, I kind of.
I love the roots of BlackThought.
He put out an album with DangerMouse in 2002 called Cheat
Codes and I've had that one onrepeat.
I mean that album is just, it'sa banger.
I mean it is a good one to turnon.

And he did 99 Problems, didn't he?
That was Jay-Z, that was Jay-Z,yeah, oh, I must be thinking.
I'm trying to remember an oldDanger Mouse song from back in
the day I used to run my collegeradio station back in 1991, 92.
Hey, I do love me some MilliVanilli.

Josh, we won't tell you what happened with
Milli Vanilli.
They're such good singers.

I just love it, whoever actually sang.

the song was pretty good yeah.

He's very good.
Good production, goodproduction guys.
Let's dive into how to actuallygo ahead and plan, and I think
there are a lot of things here.
I mean, like people takeyear-long courses on this stuff.
We don't have that much time,fair enough.
So we're gonna just kind ofdive right into it.
And I'd like to share somethingthat has been a massive,

(33:06):
massive help to me.
I'm going to encourage people tojump onto perplexityai or their
favorite, you know, ai, llm anddo a little bit more research
on this, but it's called the RPMsystem.
It's from Tony Robbins and itstands for rapid planning method
and the idea behind it is thatit's very results driven,

(33:30):
results oriented, it's purposedriven, and you create a massive
action plan.
I'm just going to kind of goover if I hope it's not.
I don't want to steal the floortoo long, but I do want to go
over this just a little bit,because I think it's something
that's going to be supervaluable to all of our listeners
.
The first one, and this mightbe a little bit of a different

(33:51):
tweak A lot of times people areplanning and they just kind of
come up with like, oh, I want tolose weight.
Okay, I want to get new, talia.
Thanks, I blame it on the rain.
Thanks, talia.
Sorry, I love that song.
So look at me, I've completelylost my place.
The idea here with the RPM is toapproach the goal from a

(34:13):
position of success and results.
Okay.
So a lot of times people mightsay, okay, I want to lose 10
pounds.
It's like, well, okay, why?
And why is weight themeasurement instead of heart
rate, blood pressure, how fastyou run a mile, like health?

(34:37):
Losing weight's not necessarilyhealth.
Does that make sense?
It's not the same thing.
I mean, there's a correlation,but it's not 100% correlated,
right?
And I know this for a factbecause I ran a marathon like 20
years ago and I was beaten by alot of people that were a lot
like, by a lot.
They didn't look like theycould run a block and they

(34:59):
crushed it.
You know they really did.
They crushed it.
So health and weight, it's notthe same thing.
This show is not about weightloss.
It's about goal planning.
But the idea here, as anexample, is why is that a goal
Like?
What's the purpose of it?
What do you hope to get?
Because if you don't have astrong reason, none of your
goals will be accomplished,period and you might want to do

(35:23):
a little exercise called thebrain dump.
Who here knows what a brain?

dump is no one Okay.

Kind of.
Yeah, it's very much stream ofconsciousness, although stream
of consciousness is more likeyou keep writing and typing.
This would be more like listmaking, right?
So stream of conscious listmaking, and the idea is to just
dump everything that you couldever hope to accomplish in a
year and be bold, be reallybrave.
The very first time I did thisI was, I think, about 28 years

(35:54):
old.
I had just bought some TonyRobbins tapes.
I think I only got through.
It was like a month of tapes.
I got through the first twoweeks and I and I got so much
done that year.
I know I've mentioned thisprobably a year or two ago, but
that year I went and what did Ido?
Bought a house, had a baby, gotmarried, started a band,

(36:16):
learned how to play drums,snowboarded for the first time,
got licensed scuba diving andran a marathon and quit smoking.
That was in one year and Idon't know if I've ever had
another year quite like that.
But the idea was you dump allof this stuff down onto paper
and then you go through it andyou decide which ones are really

(36:40):
the most important, the mostworthy.
You bold them, you star them,whatever you want to do put it
on a short list, and then you'regoing to take a little bit of
time and you're going to writedown the reasons why it's
important for you, and then thisis my favorite part, right here
you also write down who else isimpacted by this.
So many of us will not do kindthings for ourselves, but we

(37:06):
will do kind things forourselves if it has a positive
impact on our family, on ourcoworkers, on our employees, on
our children, on our friends, onour neighbors.
That is the reason that we needto actually have the motivation
to move forward.
Motivation's key for all of thisstuff.
But to have motivation, youhave to have reasons and to have

(37:27):
, once you have those goodreasons, you have to have some
accountability to it, and thatmeans sharing your goals with
other people.
We've talked about this alittle bit.
Right, accountability programs,accountability sessions with
other people.
This is a version of bodydoubling.
It's just next level, right,you're not physically
necessarily there, but you havetold someone hey, vanessa, my

(37:50):
goal this year, one of my goalsthis year, is to acquire my
admin certification, and thenyou're going to set a date.
Like you have to have adeadline.
These are smart goals.
If you're listening to this,you've never heard of smart
goals.
It's okay, but you're going towant to Google that S-M-A-R-T,
right, so you've got to havespecific, measurable,

(38:13):
action-oriented I forget whatthe other stuff is time-bound
things like that.
So check out smart goals, sofigure it out.
So let's try one just as anexample.
Mike, what's an example ofsomething that would be really
cool if you accomplished thisyear?

Right now I'm pretty stretched on.
My goal is basically to have AIproductionize an complete full
stack app and deliver it as aproduct that anyone can use.
And because right now I'm at aprototyping state, like I can
build a lot of really coolprototypes that look really fun
and flashy, but like buildingsomething that people could use
and it's production level and ifsomeone wrote it they would

(38:48):
look at it and say, yeah, thisis a good code.

Okay, why is that important to you?

Because I find it really interesting.
I'm very and I guess, taking astep back you talked about how
much stuff you were able toaccomplish that one year is
probably because you were verypassionate and you have a system
of how you figure out whatyou're passionate about, right,
right, and I think that'sinteresting in itself because
for me, and then just be superpassionate, super focused and

(39:28):
accomplish more than I everthought, so to have all of that
amount to a deliverable likesomething I fully shipped and
can repeat and share, that wouldbe very interesting.

I like it.
Anyone else want to offer up anexample of one of their goals
for this year and why it'simportant to them?
Who else is impacted by thatgoal?
Go ahead, Josh.

Yeah, I don't know , this might be a little more
confessional than, or maybesharing a little more than I
need to.
I shared earlier in the callthat I am going through a
separation and trying toestablish my life on my own
after 18 years of marriage withtwo kids, and one of the
consequences of this is Ihaven't really done the work I
need to do to develop a stable,steady pipeline of business and

(40:10):
I've always kind of relied on anetwork of referrals to build my
business.
I've worked with exceptionalconsultants.
I feel like I do pretty goodwork myself.
You know word of mouth has beengood, but I want to get to a
point where I step outside of mycomfort zone quite a bit and
start making new friends, makingnew connections, building new
business and doing more of thebusiness development side.
I've always felt comfortabledelivering projects, sitting

(40:30):
down and putting my hands on akeyboard and getting the work
done.
I want to kind of develop thatskill and for me one is going to
build stable business andfinancial security, which is
huge.
But the way it impacts others,as you say, is I can reliably
put food on the table, I can dothings with my children like
take them on trips, I can payfor their college.

(40:51):
It actually has real financialimpact, real household stability
impact.
So that's a huge goal for me isto step outside my comfort zone
, do a lot more.
If you look at my LinkedIn feed, I don't post a lot.
I don't publish a lot, but toget out more, connect more and
develop connections and build abigger, steadier pipeline for my
business.
That's a huge goal for me thisyear.

Thanks for sharing that, josh.
That is a perfect way todescribe.
It's a perfect example of whatwe're talking about here.
You start with what do I want,right?
And then and this is thequestion that a lot of people
kind of mess up on, which is whydo I want it?
Like, do you want to get a newcar?

(41:34):
Why?
Because a neighbor on the leftand a neighbor on the right both
showed up with shiny new sportscars or something, and now it's
just on brain, like or is itbecause you actually need a
vehicle?
Like that's important.
You don't have one, right?
Or you're spending too much onmaintenance every year for your
piece of shit.
I got one of those.
Don't ever buy an old.
Don't ever buy an old mercedes,don't ever buy an old mercedes.

(41:56):
It's a nightmare.
So you know you've got to haveyour reasons, your reasons why,
and then the then it is what doI need to do?
Right, and the what I need todo section is really fun.
That's where we create what'scalled a map.
It's your massive action plan,and when we're creating these
maps, what we want to do aswe're filling it out, is not

(42:19):
think about tasks.
Right, I need to get onLinkedIn and add 20 connections
a week.
I need to update this.
I need to do that.
It's like, okay, slow down,let's not start biting off all
sorts of activities.
This isn't really aboutactivities.
This is about although it getsto the activities, it's about

(42:40):
describing all the ways that youcould achieve that right,
because we're patternrecognition machines, these
brains of ours inside our skulls, and that's what they do, and
we create grooves of, and ourneurons basically have grooves

(43:01):
that like, when this happens,we're going to think this and
then we're going to do thatright, and so the idea is to
hopefully kind of challenge thata little bit as our own
personal coaches, like what do Ineed to do?
Okay, so for you, josh, youjust shared some of the things
that you believe you need to doin order to grow, improve your
marketing and to gain followers,but the main thing is, you need

(43:23):
to acquire.
You want to acquire newcustomers and solve more
problems for them, right, yeah,exactly.
So what you need to do ismessage out as much as possible
and convince as many people asmuch as possible One that they
have a challenge to that, thatsolving that challenge is going
to bring them all these otherthings, the purpose.
You know the things that theywant and that you are the who.

(43:46):
Right, they don't need to knowhow, they need to know who.
And if you're the who, you needto be able to articulate that
accurately in a compelling way.
And now you can start to figureout how do I get that message
across.
You see how it starts.
It's just kind of getting alittle bit closer to the roots
of the thing, before theplanting occurs.
I've done this so many times,whether it was like, okay, I

(44:08):
need to get my accounting inorder, what do I need to do?
Eventually, I got to the Idon't need to do anything.
It's who do I need to find?
Then it was okay, whatqualities do I need in the
person who's going to take careof my bookkeeping for me and I
start thinking about all thatstuff why is it important?
What am I willing to spend?
You know all this other stuff.
So I really appreciate themapping part of it, but the top

(44:33):
part is the brain dump that getsus clarity, and I'd like to
kind of shift just a little biton a little section that I feel
like I should have started with,because this is the most, I
think, when it comes to planning.
It's the most important part ofplanning and that's
understanding where are youright now?

(44:54):
Right, this is the as is to beof business analysis.
Right, what's the as is of yourlife right now?

What's the current state?

Yeah, what's current state?
Right, and I think it's best toget to current state by not
just looking at the moment rightnow, living in the moment,
feeling the moment right now,it's about looking back at the
past year.
Feeling the moment right now,it's about looking back at the
past year.
So what are some of the thingsthat you guys have done or plan

(45:28):
to do to dedicate enough time,an appropriate amount of time,
in self-reflection over the pastyear or so and it can be the
past three months, it can be thepast six months, past week, it
doesn't matter but what are somethings that you guys do to help
include some reflection?

There's a couple of things that I've started to
do this year I would say thathave been helpful.
Now, they're not particularlycomprehensive, but have kind of
helped me at least keep track ofstuff.
I created a YouTube playlist soevery time something of mine is
on YouTube, I just add it to mysaved playlist so that I don't
lose track of it, because atthis point, like I've just

(46:07):
gotten, I've got too much stuffgoing on at this point, so it's
a nice way to just have.
Oh, you want to know a littlebit about what the stuff I'm
doing.
Here's a playlist.
There you go, and it's a goodway for me to track.
I've also been bookmarkingTwitter posts or LinkedIn posts
for any particularaccomplishments or announcements

(46:27):
that I've made along my careerjourney.
So, for example, I just Iactually just got my first TDX
speaking submission accepted,and so, even though that was a
post that I made, I bookmarkedit.
So I can always kind of go backto my save bookmarks and see
all the big milestones in mypast career-wise.

I love it and I'm doing something.
Right now I'm typing intoPerplexity.
Give me three of the bestquotes from Salesforce Pro
Vanessa Grant, and let's seewhat this comes up with.
I did a little test on this theother day and it was pretty
darn awesome.
Here we go.
Number one business analysis isthe secret ingredient that goes
in moving from systems toactual, usable, viable solutions

(47:11):
.
Good ones, Good one.

I don't know that I've ever actually said that,
but it sounds like somethingthat I would imply.

But that's the thing, the reasonable
hallucination.
But that's the thing is areasonable hallucination.
I mean, I'm looking at thislist and it's got references to
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight oh my gosh 10
different, you know, interviews,linkedin posts, x posts, like
all sorts of different things.

(47:40):
You said that you didn't.
You don't remember, you don'tremember.
I don't remember almostanything that I ever said.
So it's kind of cool to do thata little bit, but if you are in
the public, if you're gettinginterviews, you can do that.
What about you, josh?
Or what about you, fred?
How do you look back on theyear and how do you measure a

(48:03):
year?

525,000.
I'll you know it's very similarto vanessa I.
This is not an area that I'vebeen particularly good at.
When I was in a more you knowkind of standard corporate, you
know climbing the career letterthing, I would have a word doc
or a excel file where I'd kindof things you know over the
course of the year, you knowkind of for performance review
time.
I don't have a good system.

(48:27):
You know this has been a reallygood session for me because it
focuses in on a lot of stuffthat I just don't do very well,
like I just don't you know forsomebody that you know and I'm
going to sound like an egotisthere operates at a fairly high
level.
I don't necessarily have greatsystems for these things, so but
I love Vanessa's ideas.

(48:49):
I do go back and look at publicstatements that I've made on
stuff.
I had a very if you guys saw meon LinkedIn, I made a post
yesterday.
I was shocked for somebodywho's as public as I am, at how
little I actually posted lastyear on the LinkedIn platform.
I was so shocked when I ran oneof those LinkedIn wrapped

(49:12):
things that I went back and Iactually counted my posts and
I'm like, no, yeah, they'reright.
For some reason I thought maybethe code was broken, but it
wasn't.

So, no, it's just something I need to get better
at, for sure.
Well, I thanks for sharing that, fred, and I think I can share
a technique that anyone can use,and this is something that I
use I'm in the process of.
I'm halfway through myreflections on 24 right now, and
it's very simple.
If you want to have a look,it'll help you right now, but
it'll really help you next yeartoo, or next quarter, and we've

(49:50):
talked about it on the showbefore.
I can't I can't underline thisenough of how helpful this is,
and it's having a failures andaccomplishments record.
Okay, you can do it once a week.
You can do it once a week.
You can do it once a month.
I generally these days I'mdoing it once a month because I
just want to like keep flying,you know.
But I'm able to because I colorcode my calendar.

(50:12):
I can look back and be like oh,I had X number because all my
client meetings are in red on mycalendar, all my interviews are
green and so on, so I can likequickly count up that stuff,
which is helpful, but it's trulysuch an incredible tool for
learning I know that we'vetalked about this before,
vanessa where it's like gosh,listing a bunch of failures that

(50:35):
might get us down.
Get over it.
This is about reality.
This is about taking stock, notliving in la-la land.
It's okay to dream in la-laland, but if you want to get to
la-la land, you got to live inreality.
You got to live in the present.
You got to know what's working,what's not.
Anyone who's unwilling to takea good look at that look.

(50:56):
If you're feeling fragile andyou don't want to do it, that's
fair enough.
Mental health is paramount here.
But if you feel like that'ssomething that you can do, I
definitely recommend you do it,and it should apply, I think, to
business and your personal life.
Right, I could have listened alittle bit better during this
one conversation with thisperson.

(51:17):
I could have followed up withthat client a little bit better.
I probably wouldn't have lostthem right.
I could have delivered up withthat client a little bit better.
I probably wouldn't have lostthem.
Right, I could have delivered asolution sooner on this one and
the result of it was lostrevenue of plus.
I didn't get to help thisperson that I was really hoping
to get in the job, like thatkind of a thing.
And then the successes and Ilove this stuff.

(51:38):
The successes are so helpfulbecause you actually get to be
like oh my God, I did do that, Iforgot.
If you're like me and youforget a lot of things, and you
can go back once a month or oncea quarter and then certainly by
the end of the year, and youjust grab all of your you know,
just use AI, take all yourfailures, drop it in.
Take all of your successes,drop it in, have it, count them

(52:01):
for you, have it, consolidate itfor you.
You're going to get a realstrong understanding.
And let's face it too if yourfailures list is outweighing
your successes list, my guess isthat you're probably not
failing more than you'resucceeding.
You're probably just being alittle bit harder on yourself or
not acknowledging some of thereally positive things that

(52:21):
you've done, even if it's justyou know what.
I helped my friend that onetime.
Right, it's okay to write thatdown.
So I definitely recommend,starting today, do a successes
and failure list once a week tostart.
Once you're comfortable, youcan move it to every two weeks
or once a month.
You're going to have anincredible record of your past
year if you do this and it'sgoing to really help you plan

(52:45):
and, more importantly, it'sgoing to help you learn.
It's going to help you learn.
I keep making these mistakes.
Maybe I want to make thatimportant right.
Get some accountability on that.

This is very akin to the retrospective that we
have in Agile.
When I'm working with a largerteam on a longer running project
.
It's by far my favoriteceremony in agile because every
increment, every sprint cycle,you know whether it's two weeks,
three weeks, one week, howeverlong you've tailored that for
your engagement, or if you workon a product development team,
that's truly long running is.

(53:16):
You know what went well, whatdidn't go well and how can we do
better.
But you actually take a chanceto reflect because I do think as
we look over the course of theyear, there are the things that
we have, goals that we set, thatyou know.
We start at the beginning ofthe new year with our
resolutions, right, and you knowby the middle of the year it's
like I don't even remember whatI resolved to do.
We don't do enough of checkingin and seeing.
You know what worked and whatdidn't work.

(53:38):
And, to your point as well,failure is stigmatized.
Failure is feedback.
Failure is learning.
If you're not failing, you'renot trying.
I tell my kids this all thetime.
You have to put yourself outthere.
Failure is the best thing.
In fact, in sales, as I'mlearning this by running my
business, I want to get a quickno instead of a prolonged no or

(53:59):
an eventual maybe.
I'd rather just fail and getthat no early and often.
So I think you know theretrospective kind of going back
to the point.
The retrospective activityneeds to be, scheduled, needs to
be.
It needs to be proactive, notreactive, right Like as we get
into our rhythms, our circadianrhythms, we get into our life
rhythms, we get into our workrhythms and we're putting out

(54:20):
fires.
We're kind of doing the tasksof the day.
It's easy for me as aconsultant to go back and see I
have clients who I did greatwith, who gave me great reviews
and have come back and done morework.
I have clients I failed, youknow, haven't heard from and
can't, you know, get atestimonial.
That's easy to see.
But you know your team at homewith your family and saying, hey

(54:46):
, what worked and what didn'twork, how can we do better?
And writing that down.
That exercise, in my opinion,is the most valuable learning
you can get in any applicationin life and business at work.

I agree, schedule, the one keyword that you said,
josh, that's one thing I need todo better at this year is
schedule that time right,whether it's just 30 minutes or
whatever, where you know youdecompress, do whatever the heck
you got to do and do thatretrospective, but it needs to
be something regular andscheduled.
That's what I found that I hada challenge with last year.

(55:15):
It was just kind of, you know,at a whim or something, right If
it happened here, there, no,this year I'm going to.
I at a whim or something rightIf it happened here, there, no,
this year I'm going to, I'mgoing to put it in the calendar
and actually get it done.
And Fred, by the way, I think Ispeak for the whole group we're
all proud of you for admittingthe problem exists.
That is the first step.

I've got all kinds of problems that I can admit
that, less than anybody else, Ihave everything figured out.
I will say this One of mychallenges and it's a challenge,
it's one of the things I'd loveto get some thoughts on this is
I spend a lot of time on theroad.
I just actually opened up myTripIt and I pulled up my 2024,
194 days on the road in 2024.

(55:57):
Holy cannoli and so one of thethings that you try to figure
out is how to adapt all of thesethings into a continuously
mobile schedule.
So, as you guys were talkingabout a lot of this stuff, I was
thinking about the success andfailures.
No matter how busy my days are,usually I've got time in the
Uber or time in the rental carback from a client dinner.

(56:19):
At the end of the night I couldalways open up a voice memo and
then drop it into like I don'tknow, like the Claude Project or
something, and have it,transcribe it and kind of keep
track of it over the course ofthe month.
But I'm trying to like figureout ways to do these things in a
way where you know I'mfrequently not in the same place
day over day.

(56:39):
So any thoughts or ideas peoplehave, I'd love to hear what
they are Frequently not in thesame place day over day.

So any thoughts or ideas people have, I'd love
to hear what they are.
Well, that's a great ask.
Let's open it up to the panelhere.
Any suggestions for Fred?
Okay, not off the bat, eric,we've got Eric.

Look, I mean, can you rephrase that again Can?

you rephrase that question?

one more time.
Well, just you know.

And again I'm certainly not saying like it's a
killer or anything like that,but I'm on the road a lot and so
I'm not necessarily doingthings in the same place.
My schedule is very differentday over day, so it makes it
difficult to do things likeschedule.
You know, a reflection at theend of the week, because at the
end of the week I might be likestuck in dallas, not on my way

(57:22):
home, or I might be, you know,someplace else.
So I think that with moderntechnology, you know, I can
leverage things like voice demosand AI to do a lot of this that
I would have typically donemore manually.
But if people have like off theshelf tools or systems or
anybody's tackling some of thosethings, I'd love to hear how
other people are tackling it oranybody's tackling some of those

(57:43):
things.

I'd love to hear how other people are tackling it
.
Yeah, I use OmniFocus.
Ever know an OmniFocus Workingtogether?
When you're on your laptop youcan create calendars, and for
calendars I use Fantastical.
Again, it's about 80 bucks ayear.
It's awesome, I mean it uses AI.

Josh is going to 80 bucks me a year into the poor
house.
I don't you know what yeah.
You got it.
I do have the Omni on my phonenow.

There you go.
Nice Death by a thousandsubscriptions.

So I think it's just two of your cigars, dude,
so I think you're going to befine.

And Fred, I don't want this to come across as
harsh and it's not intended tobe at all, but I hear this a lot
and I'm more talking to myselfthan anybody else on this panel
or out there in the wild.
If something's really importantto you, you have to make time
for it, right?
Like, if you want to improveyour health, if you want to
build your business, if you wantto kind of do it, you need to

(58:37):
make it a priority and you needto put it on your schedule.
I don't think it's a calendar,it's a tool, it's an intention,
right, like hey, this issomething that really matters
and is important to me and Imake it part of one of my
schedule, and that's.
I don't mean to oversimplify orassume anything that's going on
with your schedule, in your life, but that this is kind of a
general approach I take, youknow, with myself.
You know, when I say, you know,or maybe I won't go to class,

(58:59):
or maybe I won't do this thing,it's like, well, really matters,
I'm going to make it work, youknow, I'm going to put on the
counter, it's going to be apriority totally no, I, I mean,
I think that's definitely youknow, definitely great advice I
think too, you're going to findsome of these tools have a lot
of audio input.

So I can just hold down my suri key for my
phone and I can say createOmniFocus task, blah, blah, blah
, blah, blah.
I just talk into it and it'sdue on this date and it dumps it
right in.
I can say I can go intoFantastical and then hit the
voice button and say create acalendar invite for Mike McCoola

(59:37):
for 3 pm Eastern next Thursday,and make sure that it's you
know whatever, duplicate thatsecond Thursday of every month
for the.
You know and it knows, and boom, it's in and it populates with
the invite and you just clicksend.
So there's a lot of a lot ofthese tools.
And look on your show onbanking, on disruption, and
we're fortunate enough to haveEric with us today.

(59:59):
Who's the other person?
It's you, me and Eric.
On Thinking on Disruption,short Takes, which is often the
back half of your regular show.
I think we're recordingtomorrow, aren't we?
Fred?

Fred Cadena (01:00:09):
We are recording tomorrow our 2025 predictions
episode.

Josh Matthews (01:00:13):
Yeah, I mean Eric's going to be the tools guy
.
Eric, why don't you say helloand maybe share some thoughts on
this with us?
Yeah, click, unmute captain.
This guy went biking out on afrozen lake today.
I don't know, eric might bebroken.

I don't.
I don't know if you in yourtext messages, but he set the
map of the 16 mile frozen fatbike route that he took and he
may be out of energy to talk.

Eric Cook (01:00:39):
He might, I think well I'm never out of energy to
talk.
He might I think you are.
Well, I'm never out of energyto talk.
I was just sitting in theliving room with my wife, so I
had to excuse myself.

Oh, there you go.

Eric Cook (01:00:48):
So, yeah, I relocated to the dark bedroom in the back
of the house so I've beenlistening and snooping.
So I appreciate theconversation and echo a lot of
the feelings and thoughts thatyou guys have been sharing.
And echo a lot of the feelingsand thoughts that you guys have
been sharing.
I think the intent comment isone that I have been thinking a

(01:01:09):
lot about and probably for thelast six plus months I've been
really focused on the businessand that's one of the reasons
why I want to start the new yearwith just a crazy bicycle ride
and called one of my buddies andgot accountability and you know
he was going to meet me at thetrail at 2.30.

(01:01:30):
So my ass, better show up orhe's going to be mad and went
out and it was one of thosethings.
I could have stayed at thehouse, I could have worked, I
could have caught up on email, Icould have done more planning.
I've got billing that I got totake care of, but I'm trying to
make health and personal timeand stepping away.
That's one of the things we'lltalk about in one of the book

(01:01:53):
reviews that Fred and I aregoing to be doing here for the
Bankers Book Club, which isanother podcast that we're on.
Also recording tomorrow.

Josh LeQuire (01:02:01):
Yeah, exactly.

I don't read, so I wasn't invited.

Eric Cook (01:02:07):
Well, that's okay.
All of my books are audio booksanyway, so it's all good.
But the intentional,unstructured time of just
getting away from it all andallowing your brain just to
wander and meander and come upwith ideas.
And I'm amazed at, when I dothat, how often ideas will pop
into my head and I'll getinspiration for something.

(01:02:29):
And what I've done is I've gota Telegram app that I use for
communicating with the team.
But you can create a self memoand I will find things online
and send those to me in my selfmemo.
But if I'm out on a ride, I'llleave myself a voice memo on
telegram or I'll just transcribeit and talk into it.

(01:02:52):
And then when I get back, I knowthat it's there because, like
everybody I'm sure on the call,you have the brilliant idea and
you're like, oh, I'm going tototally do that as soon as I get
back to the truck.
And then you get back to thetruck and you're like, son of a,
b, what was it that I thoughtof at mile six?
Dang it, and you can't rememberit and it just doesn't happen.
And so making sure that it getsout of my brain into something

(01:03:16):
consistent and making sure thenyou can go back, and I may not
go back and look at that formaybe a couple of weeks, but
it's okay because I don't stressout, because I know that it's
there if I need it and thateases my stress load by just
dumping the ideas and the thingsinto that.
And I really like the idea of awin and a loss concept and

(01:03:40):
we're kind of doing the EOS planlight basically, and every
Monday we do our level tens andit's a version that we've kind
of modified.

I'm already I'm, so I'm lost.
I don't even know what that is.

Eric Cook (01:03:55):
Anybody familiar with the EOS entrepreneurial
organization system?
Yes, do you know WickmanEntrepreneurial Organization
System?
Yes, gina Wickman, it's astructured process to kind of
organize your business and oneof the things that is part of
that process is a level 10meeting that you have every week
with your team and it escapesme why it's specifically called

(01:04:18):
a level 10, but it's got astructured agenda that you run
through in order to getinformation out for your team
and you identify issues and yourrocks that you want to
accomplish.
And we're a small enough teamwhere a lot of the EOS stuff
doesn't really feel rightbecause I think is good for a

(01:04:39):
really large, maybe a largeorganization.
But I think going around theRobin really large, maybe a
large organization, but I thinkgoing around the robin and
saying, all right, give me onewin and one loss for last week
and if you want to talk about it.
That's the failure isaccomplishment thing, yeah
exactly Make accountability, soI think that's awesome Eric, so
that we can be here to help you.
And if you get a win, we allcelebrate and we should feel

(01:05:01):
good.

Thanks for being on the show here tonight.
I really appreciate it.
I'm looking forward to seeingyou tomorrow.
We've only got about 15 minutesor so left, and I want to make
sure that we're covering acouple of very critical things.
And one is something near anddear to Josh's heart, and that's
calendaring right as well aswell.
What are we actually going todo?
Because we haven't even reallytalked about that.
At the end of the day, this isthe career show, right?

(01:05:23):
And when you're planning outyour year, I would hope that
some of that has to do with yourcareer.
So maybe we can just kind of goaround the table here in the
Salesforce ecosystem.
What are some of the thingsthat we might want to do to
improve our career?
We'll start with Vanessa.

Vanessa Grant (01:05:39):
The top three things that I would like to do
career-wise this year is I wantto get a website up.
Well, actually maybe it's four.
I want to get a website up.
I want to figure out what myservice offerings are going to
be and approximately how much Iwant to charge for them.
I also want to start outlininga course or figure out what kind

(01:05:59):
of passive income I can create.
I think those are maybe the topthree things.

There you go.
Thanks for sharing that, and Ido think that's one of those
things like I want some sideincome, so I'm going to create a
course.
It's like well, hold on, mostcourses don't make a lot of
money, they just don't.
Now, if you can put it togetherin 20 hours or 40 hours and you
can make five grand on it andit doesn't require a lot of work

(01:06:26):
, well, you know, that's fine.
Now you're right in the 250K ayear income range.
If you did that once a week,right.
But if you really want passiveincome, it's like well, what
aren't you thinking about?
What are other ways to generatepassive income?
What are other ways to generatepassive income.
You got me thinking about that.

It's like maybe I need to RPM this and like I
just want to figure out a waywhere I am not the limit to the
resources that I have in orderto make money, exactly, exactly.

And when I think about how people can be planning
for their career, there are anumber of different things.
One is just like understandingdo I have a time problem, energy
problem or an attention problem?
And whatever the thing is thatyou're struggling with the most,
you focus on that.
That's got to be number one.
Typically, the energy thing hasto do with sleep, exercise and

(01:07:18):
nutrition right, that's what weknow in the land of science.
That's how you get energy.
Is good food, plenty of sleep,appropriate amounts of exercise,
right?
So if you've got an energyproblem, you might want to do
that.
I remember when I first startedon this stuff and it was in 2018
was the very first time I usedthis, and I was thinking about

(01:07:39):
time, energy and attention, andI had just launched this
business, just over six yearsago, and I was like I am going
to have to work a lot and I did12 hour days for years and I
knew that there was no way I wasgoing to accomplish any of this
stuff without the energy that Ineeded, right, and so that's
when I started using eye dosersso I could fall asleep faster.
I used eye dosers so I couldwake up a little bit better.
I changed my caffeine input.

(01:08:01):
I was on matcha.
What is it?
Matcha, maca, matcha, matcha.
Yeah, I was on matcha Insteadof like caffeine.
It's really acidic on yourstomach, so it lists acidity and
things like that.
Just in general, I felthealthier.
I stopped drinking regularly.
It's not that I ever had adrinking problem, but I liked a

(01:08:24):
whiskey at night and Irecognized that wasn't always
great for my sleep.
You know, it's not that I had ahangover, it's that I'd wake up
at two in the morning, wideawake, stuff's like coffee for
me three hours later.
So you got to figure out thesethings.
Is it energy?
Is it time?
Okay, if it's time.
There are so many tools liketext expander and planning.
I mean to Mike's point and toJosh's points earlier, it's like

(01:08:44):
getting things on the calendar.
Planning the fun time.
When you have planned fun time,you stop chipping away at work
time to have fun.
Right, this is a big thing.
If I don't plan like, okay,it's six o'clock, I'm going to
go play 20 minutes of drums, 20minutes of piano and go on a
walk with Casey or somethinglike that, if I don't have that

(01:09:05):
power hour booked or planned out.
It's much more likely that I'mgoing to be like oh it's 2.30.
I'm between meetings, I'm goingto go fuck around and go do
this thing here for a little bit.
Then maybe I get stuck.
You're like you've got thisthing to look forward to, right,
you know when it's going tohappen.
Again, a really good calendarsystem can help.

(01:09:27):
I love Fantastic Cal.
It is Mac only, so there areother calendar apps for PC users
out there that you can sayschedule a meeting for blah,
blah blah, block time for this.
And if you looked at mycalendar you would see that it's
all color coded with the kindof meetings Is it personal, Is
it self-improvement, is it aclient, is it a candidate or is
it just blocked work time?

(01:09:47):
And because I use a productcalled Once Hub it's similar to
Calendly where people can just Ican send the link out, they're
going to book a meeting I blocktime on my calendar so that
those times aren't interruptedcalendar so that those times
aren't interrupted.
So if you are in acustomer-oriented role, like
Vanessa is or Josh is or Fred is, and often Mike, definitely,

(01:10:09):
eric, definitely AppExchange,whisper, mr Peter Ganza then
you've got to be able to blockaround that time, because if
people are booking, if you get a15-minute conversation booked
once an hour, you're screwed.
You're not getting shit doneall week.
You have to have thesededicated blocks and I strongly
recommend that you do somethinglike Eric talked about, which is
this thinking time.

(01:10:30):
Right, I have thinking timescheduled for Fridays.
That's when you're working onthe business, not in the
business.
That's when you're trying tofigure out like, what can I do
better?
How can I, you know, what can Ilearn?
What video can I watch to learnsomething?
What can I implement today thatwill improve the overall
business?
Not let me make more clientcalls or look at more resumes
for me, right, that's for me.

(01:10:50):
For you, it's going to bewhatever it's going to be.
So I think, getting onto yourcalendar, strongly recommend a
Sunday night session.
You know like the weekendshould really be Friday at five
to you know, sunday at five andthen at five o'clock on Sunday,
as long as you're not, you know,getting stuck into some Sunday
night football or something.

(01:11:11):
I mean you use your bestjudgment.
Maybe it's Sunday morning.
You plan your week.
That means you populate yourcalendar with time blocks for
the projects that are on yournew year calendar, that are the
most important things, andyou're going to get the one
thing done.
Do the damn, do the one damnthing right and make sure that
you've got enough time blockedoff for that.
If you're at all like me, Ithink what's going to happen is

(01:11:33):
you're going to find that youreally overestimate how much
time things are going to takeand you really underestimate how
much time things are going totake.
Does anybody else deal withthat?
Okay, it's a podcast.
People can't hear your nods.
Yes, okay, absolutely All right.
So, one thing I found it's like,oh, I've got to do.

(01:11:55):
You know, look at 300 resumes,that's going to take me, you
know, three hours.
No, it's not.
I can fly through that stuff.
I'm very good at it.
I read fast so I can crank it.
And I found like, no, a goodhour will get me most of the way
through.
And then other things.
I'm like, oh, I just have topost that podcast.
That's going to take 10 minutes.

(01:12:16):
No, I've really got to get inthere.
I've got to do the transcriptupdating, editing.
I've got to come up with a goodtitle.
I've got to push it out.
I've got to create an ad.
I've got to push that toLinkedIn and all the other
social media channels.
No, it's an hour and you'regoing to start figuring this
stuff out.
And if you want an app that'sgoing to help you figure this
stuff out, you can get an appcalled RescueTime Rescue.

No, I haven't.
I'm just laughing, because ifyou don't have affiliate links
for all of these, you definitelyshould.

You're really missing out, Josh.
No one's going to watch this.
Who are you?

kidding, this is like a friend hangout.
Maybe someone will watch it.
But yeah, RescueTime is awesome.
I used it for about a year andI got really great value.
I don't use it anymore.
I don't feel like I need to,but what it will do is it will
automatically look at.
You use this app this manyminutes in the week, this many
hours.

(01:13:12):
These are the days that you'reusing it the most.
You're using this app, You'reusing that.
You're on Google.
You're looking at news channelsthis much.
You're looking at stupidYouTube videos this much.
You're looking at helpfulYouTube videos that much.
It gets into everything and soif you're in a little bit

(01:13:33):
security concerned, don't get it.
But I think it's solid and it'sreally just measuring not so
much all the content that you'reconsuming, but the.
You know if you're going to CNNor Fox news, it knows you're on
a news thing.
It doesn't know what articlesyou're spending time on or what
videos you're watching, forinstance, but you can start to
see like, wow, my Wednesdays arereally efficient.
Like, why is that?
Oh, that's because I exerciseThursday night and I sleep
really well and I wake uprefreshed.

(01:13:53):
So you can start to pulltogether some ideas here.
So I definitely recommend that.
I think that we should spend thelast couple of minutes really
talking about, and more broadly,what Vanessa shared.
Vanessa shared three of hergoals and thanks for doing that.
But when we're thinking aboutcareers here in the Salesforce
ecosystem, I'm thinking thatpeople are trying to take into

(01:14:17):
consideration like what's myincome?
How do I increase it?
How do I improve relationshipswith my coworkers and my boss?
How do I?
I'm interested in making aswitch this year, so how do I
actually get myself positionedwithin my current organization

(01:14:37):
so that I can maximize thatexperience for the next role
that I'm going to acquire?
Maybe you want a promotion,Maybe you want a raise, Maybe
you want to start presentingsessions at Dreamin' events and
things like this.
So you do your big brain dump.
Then you ask yourself why?
Right, but then you got toreally figure out what's the

(01:14:59):
focus for your career.
That's going to make thebiggest difference.
One of them could be I reallywant to improve my LinkedIn
presence.
Fred, you said you want to posta lot more on LinkedIn.
Great, and so how are you goingto do that?
Well, you could, in betweenflights, just randomly post
stuff, or you could get aproduct like Hootsuite or like

(01:15:20):
SmarterQ, and you can just spendan hour type up a bunch of
different stuff, share a bunchof different articles, drop it
into the posting calendar.
You spend 20 bucks a month, not80 a year.
20 bucks a month on it.
And then that's it.
You don't have to think aboutit.
You can actually take care oftwo weeks of your postings in
about 45 minutes every two weeks, or an hour and a half once a

(01:15:42):
month All these great tools forautomation which are out there.
But I'm kind of curious whatare some other things that
someone might want to set a goalfor regarding their career?
Let's hear some ideas.

I don't know how relatable mine are.
I'd share mine as well, the onethat is probably relatable to
people, and it ties in with whatVanessa put in the chat
comments.
I don't know that it wouldnecessarily be agent force, but
I've never been the mosttechnical person.
I'm definitely more on thebusiness and sales side.
That being said, I do have sometechnical chops that I like to

(01:16:17):
exercise them when I can, andit's probably been a good six to
nine months since I've tackledanything meaningful.
So I want to tackle some kindof a technical challenge.
I haven't identified what it isyet.
It probably won't be agentforce.
I don't know if there'sanything wrong with it.
It just might be something alittle bit different, maybe a
little bit more through, more ofa mainstream AI platform.

(01:16:42):
But that's definitely one ofmine.
My others are well, this isprobably relatable too, and it's
maybe not as directly tied intoa career objective.
But I just need to get dialedin on what I'll kind of call
health and wellness stuff.
You know a lot of the stuffthat you shared a minute ago,
Josh.
You know, ever since COVID camein, you know, I just have not

(01:17:04):
been dialed in from thatperspective, not really making
time to go to the gym, noteating the way I should be.

It's very hard 200 days on the road a year,
Fred, I mean that's difficult.

It is hard, but hard shouldn't be an excuse To
the other Josh's point when hewas chatting earlier, and I just
need to get that dialed in alittle bit more.
So that's the second one.
The other two probably not oneverybody's list, but I've been
talking about getting a bookpublished for the last couple of
years and I actually want toget that done.

(01:17:34):
I've set a deadline to myselfby July 1st to have that out.
And the other thing that I doquite a bit, that I am now
drawing a harder line that I'mnot going to do for free as much
or potentially at all, isspeaking gigs.
So yeah, I'd like to have fivepaid speaking gigs this year.
Again, it's hard for me to do alot more than that with the

(01:17:56):
rest of my schedule, but thoseare kind of my four top items
that I've identified.

Very good Thanks for sharing that, and I wonder
if anyone else wants tocontribute and share.
What are some general thingsthat people in the ecosystem
would probably want toaccomplish this year to improve
their career?

Yeah Well, go ahead, Mike.
I see you're coming off.
I've got a couple of things,but you go first.

Mike Mikula (01:18:17):
I'm just going to say I have one specific goal and
it's to find one thing that Ilove to do and I can do it for
the rest of my life.
Right, like, and that'd beawesome, but maybe it'll change,
right?
But, like, I've tried a lot ofdifferent things and like,
certainly right now, my passionis all about the AI stuff, and
so if, whether I land a roleworking with AI for my next job

(01:18:41):
or I build a company on it,either way, like, I just want to
find that one thing that I loveto do and I can do it for a
long time yeah, golf, dude golf,you can do till you're 90 like
just do that.

It's expensive and you'll hate it three
quarters of the time, but youcan do golf go ahead.

I want to echo um fred.
I think you know the one of thethings I would pull out of
yours is make what's mostimportant, identify what's most
important.
You make that priority numberone.
I think that supersedeseverything else on the list.
I think, mike, with your pointabout finding what you're
passionate about and diving intothat, I can't begin to tell you

(01:19:21):
.
I've been building after over 20years, been consulting for a
long time.
If you don't love it, findsomething else to do.
You're just wasting your time.
Every client I have knows ifyou're burned out or you don't
want to be there or you're justtrying to say the buzz words,
right.
So find what you love and diveinto it, and if it's not in this
ecosystem, that's okay.
Fine.
If you want to go out and be anurse, if you want to be a

(01:19:43):
lawyer, if you want to go backto med school.
I was talking with somebodylast night who was a
manufacturing plant manager andshe's like I want to go to law
school, but I'm 40 years old andI said the most interesting
people I know have secondcareers, have reinvented
themselves.
Like, just do it right.
You only live once, as all thekids were saying about 10 or 15

(01:20:03):
years ago and I get made fun offor saying that, but I think
those things are probably waymore important.
I was going to say I did wantto kind of get back to the
agents and all the AI hype.
There's a lot of marketingright now.
Salesforce is pushing agentforce hard, so it's driving all
of us in the ecosystem.
We're getting whipped by MarkBenioff to ride that train,

(01:20:24):
which I don't think is a badthing.
You know, agents autonomousagents is really the convergence
of the very best of LLM, ofco-pilots, of all AI
technologies today.
When you can actually build anagent that does something a
human being can do, there'smassive value there.
Now the trick to doing that ifyou're actually interested in
doing that and Mike willprobably speak much more
authoritatively than me on this,but I've taken a deep dive into

(01:20:45):
this past year myself as wellyou have to really be good at
understanding business process.
No agent will only be aseffective.
Every piece of technology youbuild will either augment and
make a great process much better, or it will take a bad process
and make it much worse.
Agents are just anotheraugmentation tool.
They're another catalyst toolsand if you want an agent to work

(01:21:07):
, you have to understand aprocess.
The second part of that, too, isif you want to get into agents,
you have to have that kind ofbusiness value, iterative, kind
of agile mentality.
Start with a pilot, iterate,iterate, iterate.
There's no.
I think that the days of thebig gold plated, you know,
multi-year, multi-month projectsare over.
Everything's aboutunderstanding what's most

(01:21:29):
valuable to your business,what's most valuable to your
clients.
So, as a consultant, as anindividual, as somebody in this
ecosystem, the career advicethere is understand business
process, geek out about businessprocess, and if you don't like
that, I'd say, find somethingelse to do.
So I'm giving you a little bitof a plug there, Vanessa.
The second part of that is getinto what is most valuable for

(01:21:51):
the business, where I can pilotand iterate and try things out.
Try before you buy.
You know, kind of do things ona small scale.
And as an individual, buildingyour resume, building your
portfolio, you want to writesomething down.
Write down where you addedvalue to your client or your
business.
And, Josh, I think we talkedabout this in your last podcast
If you're not adding value andyou're not tracking that, then

(01:22:12):
your head's on the choppingblock and this is a very
aggressive, tough environment toget hired and a lot of people
are getting fired and laid off.
So focus on delivering valueconstantly and that's not a
threat, it's not something toscare people.
You should be thinking aboutwhere am I making myself an
asset to my client, to mycompany, to my employer?
Absolutely, and I think that'sjust going to help you build the

(01:22:36):
right mentality, the rightfocus for doing your work, and
it's going to make you stand outand differentiate amongst the
herd.
You're going to be a verydifferent looking person.

Exceptional recommendations, josh.
Really great.
I love that.
You know there's.
I think you know I'm a big fanof a handful of books that have
really helped me tremendously.
You know Jordan Peterson iscertainly one of them.
I'm a huge fan.
He's one of my favorite peopleon the planet.
I've given one of his quotes.
I bet I've said it six times onthis show over the years but

(01:23:07):
I'm probably going to mess it up.
But the idea is in your role,look for where responsibility
has been abdicated and assumeresponsibility for it.
If you're listening and you are, whether you could be a leader
or not, you could be entry level.
It literally doesn't matter.

(01:23:28):
If you want to grow your careerat all, you must start with
growing within the organizationthat you're currently serving.
Right, this is not necessarilyhelpful for those of you who are
not working, but for those ofyou who are in the workforce in
a company, you must pay carefulattention what's not getting
done and then do it.

(01:23:49):
One of his quotes aroundabdication of responsibility is
that abdicated responsibility isturned into the power wielded
by tyrants or exerted by tyrants.
I mean it's just that wholeidea of like look, if you don't
do it, someone else is gonna andyou might not want those people
to do that thing that's reallyimportant to you.

(01:24:11):
So be very careful aboutshirking your responsibilities
one and be very careful aboutassuming some responsibilities
that have been abdicated byothers.
Don't be a tyrant, okay, but doit and do a good job, and when
you do that, you will advanceyour career.
You might advance your careerin the current organization
you're in.
If they don't appreciate it,another company might appreciate

(01:24:33):
it and you'll have a record ofaccomplishment.
So I strongly recommend that.
To begin with, right Anytime,like when people are thinking
about their career, they thinkabout so many things Okay, where
am I working?
Am I remote?
How much am I getting paid?
What are the benefits?
Who am I reporting to?
How supported am I?
Is my certification journey ormy desire to be a presenter and

(01:24:58):
do sessions at events?
Is that supported?
Do I feel like I can get thehelp that I need?
Do I feel like I'm compensatedfairly?
How do I know if I'mcompensated fairly?
How do I know if I'mcompensated fairly?
What research might I need todo?
How can I increase my income?
Or, in Vanessa's case, wherecan I identify some passive
sources of income?
And that's a big thing Peoplethink about their careers.

(01:25:21):
They often think about money,and why wouldn't they You're
paid to do the work often thinkabout money, and why wouldn't
they?
You're paid to do the work.
But there are so many peopleout there that struggle
financially and they reallythink that the way that they're
going to solve their problem isby getting a job that's going to
pay them more.
And for all of those highearners out there, you guys know
who you are.

(01:25:41):
You know that 100K that you'regetting over 300K, you're not
getting almost any of it right.
Like it's not a number to bewielded, it's about how you're
using that money.
I ran a little search onperplexity earlier in prep for
the show because I wanted toshare just a really good number
and the value of saving andpreparing for these downturns.

(01:26:05):
A lot of people listening tothis show lost their job in 24.
Some of those folks are goingto be fine.
Some of those folks won't befine.
Maybe you didn't lose your job,maybe you lost clients.
I lost clients in 24.
Still connected with them, butthey're not hiring the hiring
freezes.
So these sorts of things happen.
So I asked Perplexity.
I said take $100 and tell me,after accounting for all

(01:26:29):
inflation.
What is $100 investment in abasic, simple, like Dow index
fund, like the most basic kindof fund that you could invest in
?
What's $100 going to be worthin 10 years?
And what's the same $100 goingto be worth in 20 years?
And in 10 years that $100 willhave the buying power of $265.

(01:26:54):
And in 20 years that $100 willhave the buying power of $733.
I am not a financial advisor.
I'll just say that I probablywouldn't ever model a financial
success after Josh MatthewsProbably wouldn't do that.
It's not my biggest skillsetsaving money and things like
that but this is a reallypowerful thought.

(01:27:17):
So when you're thinking like,yeah, I'm just going to buy that
, I'm just going to get on, I'mjust going to do that, like just
pause and just think, okay, I'm40, when I'm 60, I will have
633 more dollars If I just don'ttouch this, if I just don't
spend this a hundred bucks rightnow.
Do you see what I mean?
And so, as you're going throughthis kind of career planning

(01:27:39):
how to get the most out of youryear, if it's about finances and
money, if that's a big thing,you know it's like.
You know, like got to pay forkids in college.
We've got three kids in collegeright now.
It's not the cheapest thing inthe world.
So when you're thinking aboutthat stuff, just think

(01:28:10):
aboutaderie and really awesomeprojects to work on and learning
opportunities, and they'llleave it for an extra $20,000.
And they'll adapt to thatincome so fast and they will
forego some of those positivesthat they had in their last role
.
So make mental health important.
Make, I think, clarity ofthought really important.

(01:28:31):
I loved what you said, eric,about that creative time to
think.
You know, and meditation is abig one.
I've had an accountabilitypartner in my friend, francisco
Valdivieso, for about six yearsnow and we talk every Tuesday
for 30 minutes.
He's an old friend, we've beenfriends for over 20 years.
Have an accountability partner,make big plans.

(01:28:53):
And the last thing I will saybefore we kind of say our
goodbyes here and this is aninspiration from my girlfriend,
casey A lot of you guys knowCasey and that is to dream big.
I mean, she's got thisincredible skill set of thinking
really big, no boundaries, andwhen you start, when you're

(01:29:14):
around someone like thatregularly, it can't be anything
but inspiring.
Whatever you think you want,ask yourself is this all I want?
Think you want ask yourself isthis all I want?
Why not more?
What if I had said 20% more?
What if I said 100% more ofthat?

(01:29:37):
Maybe you're thinking I want toincrease my income by 20%, why
not 100%?
Figure that out, start thinkingand problem solving big to solve
your small problems.
You might actually hit that bigstretch, what we call a stretch
goal.
You might hit that big stretchgoal or you might not, but the
further we reach, the more we'relikely to accomplish.
Does anybody agree with that?
Couldn't agree more 100%, lotsof nods, 100%, lots of nods here

(01:30:03):
.
Any final words?
I'll just, you know, to pipe upbefore we wrap up this January
1, how to plan your year andhave a kick-ass 2025.
I'd love some last words fromsome of you.

Mike Mikula (01:30:17):
So one thing I really want to say, josh, is the
accountability partner thing issomething that changed my life
more than anything else Havingsomeone weekly that I could talk
to about like finances or how Iwas feeling or everything else,
like sure, there were things Iworked on, but there were some
things like exercise.
For like years I knew it wassomething I needed to do, but I
didn't do it.
But then it compounded when Ifound something I was passionate

(01:30:40):
about and I was like I don'thave enough energy, like I want
to do more but my body's notletting me do more, and suddenly
I'm like how do I get to a gym?
And now I'm exercising for thelast two months to further fuel
the thing that I'm passionateabout.
So there's like a compoundeffect of solving both those
problems.

Yes, I love it, I'll tell you.
I think anyone listening tothis show those of you who are
listening, who don't haveregular exercise going on in
your life don't feel bad aboutit.
It happens, I go through.
I'm a sporadic exerciser, I'llgo hardcore for four months and
then take two months off, andbut the idea is, find something

(01:31:17):
that's physical, that's fun.
If you just did that right.
And it could be golf but walkthe course, or it could be fat
tire biking for 16 miles in thesnow, like Eric, it could be
anything.
Find a sport, individual orteam that will be exciting for

(01:31:37):
you.
Maybe you want to learn how tostand a paddleboard.
It's not the easiest thing tofigure out, but you can do it.
Do it given time.
The other thing is someonebrought up early on.
I think it was you, fred, youwere talking.
You know, do it given time.
And the other thing is tosomeone brought up early on I
think it was you, fred, you weretalking about.
Hey look, try out these tools.
Try it for a week.
If it doesn't work, get rid ofit, try something else.
But I'm also a big believer thatanything of value is going to

(01:31:58):
probably take a little bit moreenergy, effort and stick to
itiveness than your impulse isright.
You will have an impulse toquit and you don't.
Vanessa, we've talked aboutthis all the time.
My definition of a challenge isyou'll want to quit, but you
don't.
That's a challenge.
So how are you going to managethat?
I want to quit, but I don'tthing whether it's exercise

(01:32:22):
getting your resume done anddialed in, asking for additional
responsibility at work, likewhatever it is.
But you know, like you got todo it, you got to do it.
Okay, final words from anyoneelse.
Josh, I'll ask you a question.

Yeah, how do you organize a?

party in outer space.
I just tell my rabbit to do it.

I just put in my rabbit R1.
You have to plan it.
Yes, there do it.
I just put in my rabbit R1.
You have to plan it.

Yes, there you go , I'll be here all night.
Thank you, I feel like I justwalked into the.
How Do you Eat an Elephant?

Where's that stream , your rim shot button?
You need a soundboard.

I've got my drum kit right there, so I can do
some room shots later on.
Too funny.

I was just going to say happy new year everybody.
Good luck yeah.

Happy new year everybody.
I hope everybody does somethingreally kind for themselves.
This year In particular,developing a new habit.
I strongly recommend JamesClear's book Atomic Habits.
I've listened to it twice.
It's so helpful.
I'll give you a quick, smalllittle example of how powerful

(01:33:36):
this book is, and I think it wasthe first one or two chapters.
It just talks about yourenvironment and we talked about
this early on, right, likehaving a body double, or,
vanessa, you were talking aboutlike go outside, do some
studying outside, like somefresh air, things like that.
And he talks about proximity,like getting your physical space
set up so that it's easy to doall of the things that you want

(01:33:58):
to do.
My son, oliver, when he wasabout 15 years old, knew how to
play the drums.
I'd taught him when he wasquite young and he'd kind of
gotten through the parts thatreally make you want to cry
because it's not the easy.
It's not an easy thing to learna limb independence like that.
You know, at any age it's verydifficult, but he got through it
.
But he just wasn't practicingmuch and he said that he, I

(01:34:22):
remember he came to me and he'slike I feel like I'm not good at
a single thing Like the way mybrother is because Charlie does
art and he does this other stuff.
He's like I really wantsomething that's my own and I
was like, well, look, dude,you're first of all.
That's not true because you'rereally athletic and the fastest
kid in school and super smart,really funny, you got great
friends, all these other things.

(01:34:42):
But if you want to do that,let's figure out how to help you
drum more.
All we did is we took the drumkit and put it in his bedroom.
That's it Problem solved.
Twice a day he would jump onthat thing Within three months.
It was like, oh my God, who'sthat?
Well, it's Ollie, and that guycrushes now and he plays guitar
and he plays piano and he's doneall that in the last three

(01:35:02):
years.
He's very good at all of them,and so it's a proximity thing.
If you have the thing that youwant to work on close to you,
near you, and it's easy to use,then you're going to be really
set up for success.
That's like chapter one,chapter two and it's a whole
book.
So definitely check out JamesClear.
You can also subscribe to anewsletter.
You can get words of wisdomonce a week and a little email

(01:35:25):
message to you to keep youfocused and keep you on track.
I absolutely am so stoked about2025.
I can't wait.
I mean, it's here so I don'thave to wait anymore, which is
great.
I am so stoked about what 2025is going to bring to America, to
the world, to my business, toyour businesses, to all of these
wonderful listeners that wehave, and to my friends who join

(01:35:48):
Vanessa and I regularly on thisprogram.
I'm stoked for you guys.
I'm stoked for everybody.
Just make it count.
Don't let this year slip throughyour fingers.
Don't wake up and be like shit,what happened?
It's July.
Pick the best goals, get rid ofeverything else.
Focus on those right.
You will get momentum.

(01:36:09):
Just don't try to do too manythings, you know.
Be hyper selective, be veryparticular and know your reasons
, why it's important and reallyflex your muscles around how to
do it, cause it's not just oneway and it's definitely not just
how you think to make sure thatyou're sharing your goals with
your friends, too.
For anyone who's listening tothis podcast right now, either

(01:36:33):
live or afterwards, we wouldlove to hear some of your input
in a month or two about whetheror not you actually utilized
some of these things that wereshared.
I didn't write any of thisstuff.
I didn't create any of it.
I don't know if any of us did.
These are just our ownexperiences and how we've come.
You know things, tools,techniques, methodologies that

(01:36:54):
we've come across.
You know the real, you know thepeople who designed this really
deserve the credit.
We just want to be a loudspeaker for some of these great
techniques and methodologies.
So good luck to everybody andthanks so much for listening to
the Salesforce Career Show.
We'll be back on in two weeksat 5.30 Eastern, 2.30 Pacific on
LinkedIn Live and on YouTubeLive.

(01:37:15):
Everyone, happy new year.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Plan Your Year for Success in 2025: Tools, Strategies, and Career Insights

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

Plan Your Year for Success in 2025: Tools, Strategies, and Career Insights

On Purpose with Jay Shetty