Episode 372: What lessons you'll take from this year into the next
In this episode of “My Daily Business” podcast, Fiona shares 5 key elements shaping success and growth. Listen in for insights into the reliability of intuition, time management, navigating conversations on values, prioritizing efficiency, and emphasizing the power of small, consistent actions. This episode serves as a comprehensive guide, offering practical tips and real-life experiences to empower your 2024 journey! Tune in.
You'll Learn How To:
Understand the reliability of intuition
Importance of Time Management
Navigating conversations on values and beliefs
Prioritizing efficiency and effectiveness
Emphasizing the power of small consistent actions
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Mentioned Links/Resources:
“Listen to your intuition. I know that sounds a little funny sometimes or a little fluffy, but I can honestly say hand on heart every time that I've listened to my intuition and I've got still, I've done some meditation, I've done some thinking, I've done some conversating with different friends and letting things sort of simmer and then come up that intuition has never been wrong.”
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Welcome to episode 372 of the My Daily Business podcast. It is officially the very last podcast for 2023 and I just want to say a massive thank you to every single person who reads this, shares it, sends us a DM, sends us an email and just repurposes it in some way on their social media. I'm just thankful for the audience that we have, the incredible connections that we've made with small business owners around the world and for you to be tuning into this week after week. If you're new here, then welcome and I hope that you find today's episode useful. Before we get stuck into that, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land where I live and I'll be spending this festive season and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
I have left this particular episode, the recording of it, to the very last minute and not because I didn't know what to say or I didn't have an idea of what to say. We do plan this stuff out well in advance. Today I want to talk about the key lessons that I've learned this year in terms of life and business. I wanted to wait until as far along in the year as possible to be able to record them because I wanted to reflect and think, “Are they the most important lessons?” I think what I've come up with are in my life and my life this particular year, the most important lessons. While I share them with you, I'd love for you to consider what are the lessons that you have learned and what will you be bringing with you into the new year.
For all of us, there'll be things that we want to leave behind and some of those we have control over, some of them we do not. There are always lessons and things that we learn and sometimes it's just a deepening of something. We've already learned something, sometimes it's completely new. There are these lessons that we bring with us into the next year. I think that needs to be a conscious decision where you sit and consider and think, “Is that something I want to bring with me?” If you are in the privileged position of having your own business and being somewhat in control of your time and your energy and where things go in your life, then you also have the agency to consider what are the traits and attributes and learnings that you bring with you year after year.
I'm going to go through some of the ones that came to the fore in 2023 for me and that I'll be bringing with me into the next year. These are in no particular order, but I just thought I'd share them today. I also want to say as I'm sharing them, I'm just appreciative of the audience that we have in this podcast. We get the most heartfelt, beautiful messages from people through email and DMS. When I've met people in real life and they're like, “I listen to your podcast and I feel like I know you,” and they're just such beautiful conversations that I've had with people all over the world. I just want to say a massive thank you. One of the lessons that I'll be bringing with me is to keep nurturing this audience and to connect with you in different ways when we go forward with this podcast in 2024 and beyond.
Let's get into these other lessons that I have learned. As I said before, sometimes when you're learning these lessons, it's just a deepening of something you already know and sometimes it's kind of new. I would say that most of these are a deepening of things that I've already known, but they're things that were kind of drummed into me this year. The first is to listen to your intuition. I know that sounds a little funny sometimes or a little fluffy, but I can honestly say hand on heart every time that I've listened to my intuition and I've got still, I've done some meditation, I've done some thinking, I've done some conversating with different friends and letting things sort of simmer and then come up that intuition has never been wrong. I know that sounds kind of like, “Well look at you. Isn't that great?” You should go and buy a T Auto ticket and your intuition is always spot on.
But in terms of big things that I've said no to this year, I feel that my intuition was spot on and that when I listen to it and when I take the time to think about what I want to do, whether that was this year asking for an extension with my book, which was something I had to overcome, I have worked as a journalist for a long time. I've worked on deadlines for a long time and I have this real wall up and this want to be perfect and to be seen in a certain light by my publisher that I didn't want to ask for an extension. I was slammed and I just sat with it and thought about it and I was like, “I'm going to ask for it, I'm sure nothing bad is going to happen.”
My husband was like, “They're not going to take away the book deal just because you're asking for an extension. They must ask, get asked all the time.” But small things, seemingly small things like that. But then other things like deciding to go and visit my aunt in Dublin, Ireland when I had less than 24 hours to do that. But I'm so happy that I did that because not only was I able to spend this incredible time with her and even though it was less than 24 hours, we just had these incredible chats and conversations and it was so intense that 24 hours that it'll stay with me forever. But shortly thereafter, she had a bit of an accident and went into hospital and she's getting older. That intuition of like, “Yes it's going to be a bit of a task to try and get these flights aligned to try and make sure that I could do all of this on sort of a work trip,” but I did it and I'm thankful that I listened to that voice inside that was like, “You need to do this.”
The same with going to see my uncle and making sure that I had enough time with him. I don't have any relatives in Australia outside of my siblings. We're not from Australia. I came here when I was almost four years old. My parents have passed away and a lot of my relatives are aging and they are in other countries all over the world. Just really sitting with it and thinking, “I've got this work trip, I've gotta get to London, I've gotta interview these different people,” but what else could I do whilst I'm there? There were many moments both personal and professional this year that forced me to take the time and think about what I want. Not just from a practical perspective like, “You have less than 24 hours, are you going to go to another country when you're already hitting up four or five countries in like a fortnight?”
I'm glad that I said yes to that. But also in work, I feel like there were so many instances this year where I said no to things that just didn't feel right even though financially they might've been a good decision or even from a brand awareness they may have been a good decision. I'm just glad that I said no to certain things. I said yes to other stuff and I do feel like your intuition and if you can tap into that can do wonders for you. The second lesson that was drummed into me this year, which kind of goes hand in hand with what I've just said, is to be realistic with your time. Now I think we all think sometimes that we have 45 hours in the day instead of maybe 20 to be awake, not even 20 like what is it, 16, 17, to be awake depending if you've got young children or not.
But I think that my whole life tried to cram more into my day than is always possible. I know you see that slogan, “We all have the same 24 hours as Beyonce.” But we don't have the same privilege as Beyonce. We don't have nannies and drivers and teams of people to work for us. A lot of people that read this podcast work by themselves. I know that many people have written in and said that they might be working in a studio and maybe they've got some remote people working for them, but they don't have these gigantic teams. I see it all the time with marketing where people come up with these huge big campaigns and that sounds awesome. Sometimes you can totally execute that, but often we come up with many ideas and then try to get that into a framework of what's possible with the time that I have.
Also not just the time I have for work, but the time that I have that I also want to spend with family or working on my health or doing something else creative that's not nothing to do with my business, that also has to come into the fore. This year one of the things was to reach out to my publisher and say, “I'm sorry but I'm not going to be able to get it done by that deadline.” How can we both come up with a solution here that is going to be great for them and great for me? I have to say the publisher and the whole team at Heidi Grant was receptive and they're like, “Okay, let's do this because we want you to submit something that you're proud of.” I had said to them, “I can submit something by that day, but it's going to be completely rushed and it's not going to be my best work.” I want to be proud of what I'm giving you and I want to be proud of the first manuscript.
Not like changing a million things later down the track when it gets into the editing stage. We had that talk, we had that discussion in my personal life. I also had to be realistic about what was possible. Now we moved house, everyone who knows when you move house, it's like up there with like the top five, I think most stressful situations in life. We not only moved house, but we sold a house as well. It was this kind of double whammy and you can sit in a house we did for eight years and you can go, “We'll get around to fixing that or we'll do that.” Suddenly we had to get this house ready in three weeks. It was like, “What is realistic? Also, who else do we need to help us and outsourcing?”
Now that was a big thing in my actual business as well. This year we outsourced more graphic design stuff, I wanted to update a bunch of the courses and I knew that I couldn't do all of that myself. We had a videographer onboard, Bianca Fusca who's amazing if anyone ever needs them. Graphic design. I also had somebody this year, Andrew Levine, who's amazing, he's a Squarespace developer in the US. He helped us get the website up and running in April. I'd given myself a deadline and I've built most of that website, but there were certain sections, particularly with the mobile optimization that I needed help with. I could have sat there trying to figure it all out myself, but I looked at the time that I had available and I was like, “I am not going to be able to figure this out myself and I am going to ask for help and pay for that help.”
Many things kind of came together this year to remind me of realistic time management and also not the idea that you have to shoulder everything and that you have to work yourself to the bone to get things done. I'm a big anti-hustle, but a big anti-hassle proud activist in that space and always have been. Even when I say work myself to the bone, it wasn't working myself to the bone. I did a couple of extra nights of work so that I could get the book done, but it wasn't 24/7. I wasn't working through weekends or in the evenings or getting up at 4:00 AM. But for me, it was extra on top of what I was normally doing. I had to get realistic with what is possible and where I have to sort of say, “I need help and I need help from other people. Asking for that help.”
If you're in that situation where you are feeling like, “How am I going to get all of this done?” Then I would sit and plan because that is always amazing. This is exactly what I did. I sat, I planned what needed to get done this year, when am I going to do it, and who was going to help me. Then even practical stuff with my assistant Yricka, we sat down and went through the next few months when I was writing this book and kind of went through the whole year of like, “I'm away here, we are launching this here, I've got to get this done here. How can we make things fit like a Tetris puzzle to be able to get this stuff done and get it done in a way that is realistic and also isn't going to burn anyone out, including myself.”
That was a huge lesson, in realistic time management. I went back to the tenants of time blocking. I also went back to really looking at what I could automate, delegate, and eliminate that whole rule. I delegated a lot and I also eliminated a lot. If anything wasn't necessary, it came out of my calendar. I also really tried to stick to my limits on social media. I have to say, sometimes they went out the window, particularly around sort of coverage of what's happening in the world at the moment. But most of the time I was able to stick to the limits that I had set up. If you want to learn about limits on your social media, on your iPhone, and how you can shut things down so you're not scrolling all hours, then we'll link to one of the previous episodes that we've done about how to set up the limitations on your phone.
I have them so that everything just shuts off and I can't usually get back into whatever the platform is and then I have another one at night that just shuts everything off. That helps with the time as well. I'm not wasting time on things that really may not be adding much to my life or my business. The third lesson that came up massively for me this year was to speak your truth and stand up for what you believe in. You don't need to even be told what's happening around the world because there's so much going on. We started with the war in Ukraine and here in Australia, we had the referendum earlier this year for the Voice to Parliament for Aboriginal and First Nations people. Now we are seeing many other wars, Yemen, Congo Palestine and what is happening around the world impacts all of us, obviously lots of people to greater or lesser degrees.
But I think this year was a year where I've always sort of stood up and said my truth, particularly to say family members or being able to say what I think. I'm very lucky that in my immediate family, like the Killackey family, I feel that we were all for good or bad, really told to speak our truth and to stand up for what we believe in, stand up for what's right, not shy away from confrontation. We all talked over each other at dinner. I have three other siblings and my mom and dad, and even at my mom's funeral, my brother kind of made a joke in his eulogy about, “If we were ever kind of coming up against you, it's your fault because you taught us to stand up for what we believe in and say what we think.” That has always been fine.
I think in the business world, I would feel pretty okay with the way that I speak up and support causes or say what I think and feel about certain things. But I think this year forced me to have difficult conversations sometimes with clients. I do not think that all of my clients need to think like me or have the same political leaning or anything like that. I work with people from all sorts of backgrounds and beliefs. But it was amazing to have these conversations with people and not shy away from it or think, “Okay, we're not going to go there.” We have this type of relationship, I'm not going to get into it. I have to also say, shout out to some of my clients who dared to say, “I don't agree with that and here's why I don't agree with it.”
I respect them for doing that. We were able to have these wonderful dialogues where I learnt they learnt and we were able to be two adults discussing things. Also, when it came to the referendum, I was able to have conversations, difficult conversations in some regard with family members, with elderly people, particularly in my world, and also with some clients and some friends. I think that speaking your truth has been drummed into me since I was a kid. However, I know like everyone else that it can feel uncomfortable and awkward, especially in a business setting to have those conversations. But I feel like this year I did not shy away from having them. One of my big values that guides this business is freedom. It doesn't just mean my freedom as a privileged white abled person in Australia, it means everyone's freedom.
We try to always celebrate multiple religious holidays when we give out our marketing calendar to people who go through the marketing. If you're a small business, of course, it has multiple things written in, not just Christian holidays. It has certain things that we really believe in that are there now people can do with that, what they like, but we do often get feedback that like you've included that. It's like, “Yes, we have because we think that's important from our perspective,” but I feel like a lot of people are doing their part and doing the work behind the scenes. I know lots of people who are not necessarily showing up on social media to support or recognize certain things, but they're doing a lot of work behind the scenes.
This lesson was just a big reminder and it came forward so much this year to just have those conversations and be open. You don't have to be slamming your opinion on everybody, but to have those conversations and create that safe space where people feel that they can honestly say how they're feeling. That has been amazing. I've also had just connected with many different people around the world through DMS about different topics and different things, even people who've listened to this podcast where I've mentioned the referendum and people on our email list who are not within Australia, who have emailed and be like, “I didn't know this was happening, and tell me more. I'd love to learn more about this.” I think the more we can all have these conversations, the better it is for the community at large. I'm talking to my kids about this stuff and one of them is 10, and in that very impressionable part of life, but also that part of life that is going to guide him and his actions as he gets older.
I think one of the biggest things about having a business is that you can help those in your community see a path forward that maybe they might not have seen if you weren't in their life. That could be your kids, it could be your friends, it could be your cousin's family, whoever, to be like, “It is possible to have a business that makes money and also aligns with your values and your belief system.” That was a massive one to speak your truth and stand up for what you believe in. The fourth, which is also massive, and I feel like I'm learning this every single year, but it just kind of gets stronger, is that optimization feels better sometimes than financial growth. My business has financially grown every single year. It has increased every year. I don't usually talk about my finances that much.
I mean, I do sometimes with my clients and people that ask, but I'm not a coach that goes out and is like, “I made $5 million and I can teach you tomorrow.” Because I don't think that money is the absolute reason that I'm in business. I'm in business for so much more than financial gain. The business works well financially, but really when you can optimize a business, I feel like that is where again, this value of freedom comes in because you get freedom of your time, you get freedom of who you work with. You get the freedom to say no because things are set up and they're optimized for financial gain, but also for time back, for being able to say, “I need a day off because this and this needs to get done for being able to say, I need to write my book.
Let's shift everything around.”
Now I know that not everyone is going to have exactly those sorts of things because of the type of business they run. I don't run a cafe that needs to be open seven days a week. I've worked in plenty of cafes, I got there at five 30 in the morning. I understand how that sort of business works. But there are lots of ways in business in which we can optimize to take time back or to take things back. I've had clients who are in retail who have decided to, instead of having a shop open for six days a week, have a show open for three days a week. What they've found is they've actually made just as much money, if not more, but they've had all of this time back and it's been massive in terms of their business, but also in terms of their personal life.
This year was another one where it was looking at what can we optimize, and what can work more efficiently, and more effectively. If you read my recent interview with the wonderful Paul Miners, who's a productivity expert, he is all about efficient and effective ways of working, not just efficient. It has to be effective. There's no reason for links to work faster if they're not the right things, or for you to be focusing on something that is not the right thing to be focusing on. I feel like this year is a big one to kind of pull away from the business and look at it from a bird's eye perspective and think about what is working well, and what's not working well. What do we want to keep, what do we want to get rid of? How can we automate all of these things?
Bringing in that optimization as a key metric in the business as opposed to just financial growth. Now we've never just had financial growth as a metric. It is one of three goals that we have for the year and the objectives that we work towards with a bunch of different sub-goals. But optimization is massive. In 2024, that is also what we're going to be working on. Even more with optimization, because I do believe that when you optimize things, you will either just by the nature of doing it, make more money or get more time back, or when you do both of them, that is brilliant. That's what we were able to do this year, make more money and get more time back. That is what I want to focus on next year. Next year is the last year that I'll have with my second son before he goes off to primary school.
I'm looking at, “How can I keep this business going at the rate that it's going and doing well?” I have all these exciting ideas of things that we're going to be bringing out next year. I'm looking forward to doing that in an optimized way so that I keep getting that time back. I have consistently worked three days a week, made good money, and also been able to work on my health. I go to Pilates class, I go to the physio, I go to an acupuncturist, I go for walks most mornings. I have a lot of time with my kids, I have time with my husband, I have time to be social, which was another thing that we, I feel like I optimized more this year as well, my social life and getting out there and chatting and seeing people in real life again.
I think that optimization feels better sometimes than financial growth is a really big lesson and one that I want to dive further into in 2024. Then finally number five, and it kind of goes with everything that I've just been talking about, but that consistency is key. Consistency is key. When I got to a point in writing my book, and I know I've used that a lot today, but it's a big part of this year, writing a book is a huge effort. To do on top of usual life and then add to that all the things that I've already mentioned, it's massive and I'm proud of myself for doing that. I'm not going to shy away from that. I am proud of myself, Go Killackey. But number five, when I say consistency is key, it's vital.
I got to a point in my book, and I did talk about this when I did the episode about how I wrote my book, and we'll link to that if you want to go through how to write a book for yourself. But one of the things I got to was a point where there were so many words left to right and there was not that much time, and this was before I'd asked for the extension, but even still, I was just like, okay. I talked to, I have a coach and he is amazing. I started working with him this year, he's in his mid-seventies and just fabulous. I love his perspective on things. He's just completely such a wise man. He said to me, “What are you going to do about this?” We sort of worked through this challenge that I had, and I was looking at it from a perspective of, “Okay, I've got this day and I've got this and I've got that.”
He was like, “Actually think a better way of working would just be to consistently work on this. Rather than give yourself these big amounts of words that need to get written in a certain day, what would happen if you just did X amount of hours every day for four days a week, every single day? What would happen?” We talked it all through and it worked. I'm now working on another kind of creative project and he and I have been working through that together as well. That will be another thing that I work on consistently for about 45 minutes every single day outside of weekends. I'm looking forward to that because I do think, and I say it all the time, that small steps add up. That consistency adds up rather than feeling like you have to do these huge bursts of work, this consistency.
For me, if I work for 45 minutes a day on this thing, five days a week for 365 days, the chances are that the project will be finished within the space of a year. Now this is a particular project that has taken me years to think about, consider, and dream about. I'm going to work on that consistently. Another thing that came up this year that is a testament to this whole lesson of consistency is key is I recently was driving past an oval, like an oval, a sports oval that I used to walk around this time like last year. Last year my back went out, and I had three herniated discs. I was told that I would not be able to recover without surgery except for my physio. My physio was the only person who said, “Nope. I think that if we just keep trying, it might take a year, but you will get there.”
Originally my physio was like, “You absolutely cannot go back to your walks,” which was my daily meditation. They're like, I just love them to start the day with. I pushed and eventually, he was like, “You can walk for 10 minutes at a time and only three times a week and you can walk, you have to walk on a flat surface.” The only flat near me near my house is an oval. I used to drive the car down, which was painful to sit in the car and drive. Sometimes my husband would drive me down and I would walk for 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes, and then I'd get back in the car and go home.
I try it again two days later. I was driving past that oval and I was like, “My god.” I remember how I felt just so upset, so deflated that I could only walk for 10 minutes at a time. That walk that I do, I do this walk multiple times a week. Now that's about an hour and 20 minutes. It is so hilly. I'm puffing and huffy, but it's good for my mental health. When I had that taken away, it was huge. It was really depleting and depressing. When I saw that oval the other day, I thought, “My God, look how far I've come,” from being sat in a neurosurgeon's office where he said repeatedly, “You are not going to get through this without surgery.” Having all these other people say that and not being able to drive, not being able to pick up my kids literally at one point, not feeling like I could even use the toilet too much information, I'm sure.
But I looked and thought, it's all compound. It's all small steps. It was all consistency of just doing the exercises, doing the stretches, going to physio, going to Pilates, doing everything that I was told to do consistently has now meant that I can walk and go up and down hills and I'm fine. I feel like my fitness is really good. That consistency is key. It comes up again and again and again in business. People have said to me, “Wow, how do you write your Sunday email every week?” It's like because it's been consistent. I've consistently written that for years. I have written things quickly for years. Even on this podcast, people are like, “How are you so consistent? How do you get it done? I want to start a podcast, but I'm thinking like once a month an episode,” you get it done because you stay consistent.
I think that consistency is key and has been absolutely vital for my work my business and my life this year as well. In terms of everything from health through to financial growth. That is the last lesson, consistency is key. That's something that I've known, but it just really came up again this year. I think next year even more so, I'll be looking at how else we stay consistent across all these different marketing channels, but also consistent in terms of some of our systems and processes and just making sure that that consistency is there. I know that sometimes consistency is seen as kind of boring or like that's so old school. I don't think it is. I think consistency is such a tenant of a great, strong, successful, and sustainable business. Those are the five lessons that came up for me.
First, listen to your intuition. Second, be realistic with your time. Third, speak your truth and stand up for what you believe in. The fourth optimization feels better sometimes than financial gain. The fifth, consistency is key. I would love to know what stood out for you among those lessons. Which ones did you resonate with? Which ones did you maybe not resonate with? What lessons have come to the fore for you? That you'll be taking into 2024 with you. Please don't be a stranger. You can email us hello@mydailybusiness.com. You can also send a DM on Instagram, It's @mydailybusiness_ . On TikTok, It's just mydailybusiness. I'd also just love to say again, a massive thank you for joining me this year on this podcast. I know many people message and say I love this podcast.
It's helped our business so much. If this podcast has helped you this year in any capacity, whatever episode it was, whether an interview, a tip or a coaching one as I've just done, I would love it. If you could leave a review, it helps this podcast get found by other people. It helps in terms of ranking, it helps in terms of many things that we're doing with the podcast. It would just mean the world to me. If you could leave a review either on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple, wherever you listen to it, or even just hit the stars, it helps. I know that this podcast helps people and I've heard it many times from people and I love hearing from people. I would also love it if there's any way that you want to give back you could do so by either subscribing or leaving a review or both. Thank you, I will see you in 2024. Bye for now.
