The Remote CEO Life Podcast

S213: 24 Things I Learned In Life and Business in 2024

• Sophie Biggerstaff • Season 2 • Episode 13

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24 Things I Learned In 2024

Let’s not beat around the bush - 2024 was a difficult and transformative year in so many ways in both my personal and professional life, but if there’s one thing for certain, out of challenging times, comes lessons.

In this episode I’m sharing the 25 things I learned in 2024 - reflecting on the year,  emphasizing the importance of acceptance, control, and resilience as my biggest lessons from 2024 are to accept the things that you can not control, and live more in the present moment to find optimal peace and happiness in life.

I hope this inspires you to reflect on your own personal experiences this year and see what you want to leave behind and take in to the new year.

Happy New Year - I’m excited to share more online business tips with you as we go into 2025. 🎇

#LessonsLearnedInLife #2024Recap #2024Highlights #2024Analysis #2024Review #LessonsLearnedIn2024

About The Remote CEO Podcast:

This podcast is for freedom-seeking online entrepreneurs, offering practical, actionable advice to help you step up in to your new role as CEO of your own online business.

👆Want to start an online business? Take my quiz to help you get started:

👆Growing your online business? Get my best business tips and advice in my bi-weekly newsletter:

👍 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share to hear more conversations about starting and growing an online business.

🔗 Stay Connected:

📸 Follow me on Instagram

🎥 Follow me on TikTok

🗣️ Connect on LinkedIn

💻 Work with me

About The Remote CEO Podcast:

This podcast is for freedom-seeking online entrepreneurs, offering practical, actionable advice to help you step up into your new role as CEO by building an online business that works for you - not one you work for.

Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, an online business mentor, e-commerce founder, mental health advocate, and full-time digital nomad. 🙋‍♀️

👆Want to start an online business? Take my quiz to help you get started

👆 Want to achieve more freedom in your life? Find out how you can make it happen in my free masterclass.

👆Need online business advice? Get my best business tips directly in your inbox by signing up to my newsletter

👍 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share to hear more conversations about starting and growing an online business.

🔗 Stay Connected:

📸 Follow me on Instagram

🎥 Follow me on TikTok

🗣️ Connect on LinkedIn

...

Sophie (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to the Commerce Club podcast. We are at the end of the year, the year 2024. So I thought for today's episode I would do a little recap slash lessons, 24 lessons that I've learned in 2024.

I did one of these episodes, I think I did it in 2022, 22 lessons that I did in 2022. I really enjoyed it. It got quite a lot of great feedback, great reactions, and it's a really good time to just sit, reflect, and understand, process what's gone on and what's happened in the year, and anything that we've learned in that time, because ultimately business is essentially just going through lesson after lesson after lesson and learning from those lessons and improving after the

of those lessons and I actually just had a conversation with somebody about

Looking at business as if we're going through like a computer game, we are just trying to make it to the next level, trying to make it the next level, collect all the gold stars as we go along and then just keep reaping the rewards and there's an ultimately there's no end level, like we're just trying to evolve consistently. And I feel like that applies in life, it applies in business, it applies in relationships, whatever area of our life that we're kind of venturing into. And this year for me has been

full of lessons let me tell you I've not made any secret that this year has been quite challenging for me like personally, professionally

Every single thing that could have been thrown at me was kind of thrown at me this year and yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot from that. I'm not necessarily sat here thinking, that was a terrible year. Although I had a lot of difficult, difficult situations that I went through. I'm not necessarily sat there reflecting being like, well, what a crap year. Actually, I've kind of got to a point where I'm quite at peace with quite a lot of the things that have happened.

can see the reasons why they happened. I can see what needed to happen off the back of those things happening. And I can also see the lessons that I've learned in those times. So I just wanted to share with you some of those lessons. So I'm gonna talk you through what they are, have been for me, and maybe like a little bit of context as to why those lessons came about, just so you get a bit of an understanding. And maybe that then prompts you to start thinking about if you have had a crap year this year, or it feels like you've had a crap year,

can

you take away from this year into next year, learn the lesson from and then essentially as we learn we grow right so next year will be a full year of growth because you've learned lots of lessons this year or even if you've had a great year this year what did you learn what can you take into next year and keep doing what can you drop like what opportunities can you jump on it's essentially a bit like a yearly analysis that I like to do.

just to understand what I've been going through and how I need to show up next year to achieve the goals that I've got. So lesson number one is that life simply sucks sometimes and that is okay. And I think I...

will tell you that in 2018 I had a full mental breakdown. My life kind of crumbled around me. I couldn't really deal with the things that were going on because I wasn't really in the right headspace and I didn't have any tools to deal with the hard things that were happening. And I just sat and I dwelled and I...

Gotting myself into like a really dark negative place and really struggled to pull myself back out of it. And a lot of that I realized was because of I didn't accept the fact that things were sucking. I was constantly trying to find a solution for the things that were going wrong or that I didn't like about life. And that's okay. Like you want to try and naturally find solutions for all human being. We always want to improve our circumstances. But ultimately what I've learned to realize this year is that, you know, shit happens.

And a lot of it is out of our control. A lot of it is something that we have no way of

dealing with at that moment in time we just kind of have to accept it for what it is and saying that you know life sucks it's okay it's just me kind of accepting that actually there's peaks and troughs like the past couple of years i've had like the best years of my life this year was one of the hardest and that's fine like that's how life is like life isn't all roses like not all the time are we going to be super happy not all the time we're going to be super sad like it's okay to exist with the idea that

not everything is perfect all the time, it doesn't need to be, it's not meant to be, we can just sit in discomfort sometimes and that's okay. So I feel like I've had to learn how to surrender this year a lot and just be okay with not being okay because there's been things that have been out of my control that I haven't been able to rectify or amend for various different reasons and yeah.

Acceptance basically is the lesson, like how to accept when things suck because sometimes they do.

And moving on to number two is that you actually have no control over anything except your reaction to the situation that you're in. And I've been reading the book, The Power of Now, and it talks a lot about like presence and the fact that we don't actually own anything other than the moment that we're currently in. We can't control what's happening in the future. We can't change what happened in the past. So really understanding and accepting situations for what they are and only really understanding that we can.

We only can change our reaction to the circumstances. We can't do anything about the situation. Again, it's just a matter of acceptance. So I think so often we're miserable because we're trying to control something. We're trying to change things. Like I said, going back to my time in 2018 where I was really struggling, I was trying to control situations. I wouldn't let go of the situation. Whereas when you learn to just accept it and that you can only control your reaction to the situation,

it leads to a much happier life. So yeah, I think sometimes when we try and over control, it isn't in our best interest. So just trying to release the control situations is going to be the way to move forward basically.

Lesson number three, having expectations of how something should be or should turn out is only ever going to let you down. You just need to let things happen and be open to the how. especially when we have goals, like manifestations, goals, things that we want to achieve in our life, so often we're so focused on like what that goal is going to look like and how the outcome is going to present that we kind of forget that.

we should be enjoying the process, enjoying the journey to get to that goal and that the goal itself, it's okay if it changes. Like for example, if you are wanting to get to a certain income number in your business and you're so fixed on how you get to that number being a certain way, looking a certain way, you're focusing on the process really heavily rather than the goal and letting it materialize and unfold itself, in which case you're probably forcing things to happen.

not naturally letting things happen in flow. So if we can just release control again of the way that we get to that goal, we're way more likely to find different routes that we may not have explored to actually achieve it way quicker than we would if we were just trying to do the process that we've mapped out. I think part of life, part of business is allowing ourselves to bench down paths that

maybe we didn't necessarily think we were going to walk down, but actually they lead us to the same end result or something better. And trying to release the expectation of, have to follow this ABCD step process to achieve this one thing. No, there is no ABCD. It is literally like a maze. We can go through seven different routes and get to the end outcome. So just trying to like release any expectations you have of the journey.

will get you way quicker and closer to the goal that you have at the end.

Number four, going back to what I was saying about like being in the now, being in the present moment, ultimately the only thing we have is the present moment. So being present is truly the only way to actually enjoy the things that you're doing. If you're constantly thinking about the future or worrying about what happened in the past, you're not in the moment. You can't focus on the things that you are right ahead in front of you. And I listened to a podcast yesterday and it was talking about present moment and how to

an exercise that you can do in the present moment to bring yourself back into like your body, bringing yourself back into awareness and it was like look for blue, yellow, red in the next session.

part of your life kind of thing. So for example, it's like, right, look for something blue. If I look over there, there's a blue bag. Look for something red. If I look down here, there's a car max with a little red thing. If I look for something yellow, the same car max is yellow. So if you're always going to find blue, yellow, red in your peripheral vision, if you look for it, and that could be any color, but if you try and look for something.

that helps you bring back to your present awareness and I thought that was a really good exercise because I started noticing so many things that I wouldn't have noticed as I was walking through the streets yesterday if I hadn't have like been aware of me being in the now being in the present moment I could have walked down the street thinking what am gonna have for dinner later or I didn't really like my breakfast this morning but actually I was thinking about like what where I was at that moment in time I was looking around me I was noticing new things like your perspective opens up if you are

sitting within the now and your perspective allows you to like live really presently in this current moment in time and enjoy the things that you're going through. And that's ultimately the only moment in time that we have. So being really present is the only way to truly live and enjoy the things that you're going through. Number five lesson.

Energy flows by your attention guys. Staying focused on one thing at a time is the key to success. And again, I listen to a lot of podcasts. If you go onto my Spotify, perhaps the number one thing I was listening to was podcasts. I think I listened to about three days worth of podcasts this year, which is quite a lot of podcasts. And I...

listened to one yesterday and it was talking about like how the richest people in the world don't have a million things going on, right? Like they stay on one thing, they stay focused, they hone in on their messaging, they rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, keep talking about the same thing over and over and over again until they've nailed it. Then maybe they move on to the next thing. But ultimately what I have realized is that let's say in my past four years in business coming up to five years next year, I have focused on so many different things. And whilst I

achieved a lot in that time I haven't necessarily achieved the things that I wanted to achieve because

my focus has been all over the place. So one goal that I have for myself for next year is to really hone in on my focus because I know that when I put full attention on one thing, I put all my energy into one thing, that is the thing that does really well. So ultimately if you're running a business, you're managing all of the different hats, you're trying to do all of the same things, which is normal, but ultimately you need to know that the more you dilute your attention, the less gets done. Ultimately when

you're

trying to do everything you do nothing right and like I think that really applies in business and I've definitely learned that lesson the hard way. So if you can focus your attention and energy on one thing and really getting good at that one thing that is going to really help you basically succeed in the goals that you've got because you're gonna be all in on that rather than you're getting distracted by left right and centre and people that run businesses.

generally very creative people, it's very easy to get distracted. Many entrepreneurs have ADHD so their focus is all over the place, like my focus is definitely all over the place and I'm actually going to be getting a coach next year that helps me focus better and stay on track to one specific goal and holds me accountable to one specific goal because at the moment I try and work on like 10 different things at once and then I never really get to the end goal that I wanted to achieve because my attention is so divided. So if you can think about

that one thing that you want to achieve and go all in after that, that is going to be really beneficial for you. Lesson number six is that you can control and retrain your mind. It's not easy but it is doable. So one thing I've learned through my whole kind of mental health journey and if you've been following me for a while you'll understand that I've gone through this whole mental health healing journey. I've even created a business out of it which is called Tina, Time Is Not Healer.

where you know I used to struggle with anxiety. I've been in really heavily depressive episodes previously. Prior to those episodes I didn't have the toolkit to help me understand that I could actually change my mind. I didn't even know that that was possible. I didn't know that I could be any other way than I was which was quite an unconscious. Making decisions out of fear.

a bit sporadic, a bit eccentric, like couldn't really train, didn't really understand that I could train my mind to do what I wanted it to do. So I just allowed myself to be anxious. I just thought that was okay, but normal. And actually now I have done so much mindset work. I've done so much work on my mental health. I've realized that your brain's a muscle.

and you can train it to think and be however you want it to be and I understand that it's not everybody.

has the same chemical makeup in their brain so obviously I understand that there are some people that don't have that full control however for people that have like low level anxiety for example and they want to make a change in their life or they have like low self-worth and they want to like love themselves a little bit more there are definitely exercises and practices that you can do that are going to change and shape your brain and your mind and it's not easy like you're going to have to stay really consistent and you're to have to go through quite a lot of pain and you're going to have to release

lot of emotions and be really open to being vulnerable and putting yourself into a new dynamic But it is possible. I definitely can say that I have retrained my brain in so many different ways Like I never if you'd have told me that I could sit and meditate for an hour six years ago I would have literally laughed in your face. I never thought meditation was possible for me I couldn't sit still for more than five minutes. I definitely wouldn't been able to sit with myself Now I can sit and meditate for an hour long at a time

probably more if I wanted to. No qualms, no problems whatsoever. I can get really deep into it. I love it. I really enjoy it. I love how it makes me feel. And that has been a training process that didn't just happen. I didn't go from hating meditation to loving meditation overnight. That's been a process that I've had to approach in different ways to get myself to train to understand and be able to do that. But it is a process. It is doable. You can do it.

So just know that if there's something that you feel like is holding you back right now and it comes from a place of your mind, you can change it. It is possible to change these things and it just takes a little bit of willpower, dedication and consistency. Number seven.

Healthy morning and evening routine set you up for the best day ahead. Now, I used to rebel against routine because I worked in such a structured corporate environment for such a long time. I absolutely hated that my time was being controlled by other people. Hence why I live the life that I do now, so much freedom. But within that freedom, there still does need to be routine. And I've learned again that the hard way.

particularly morning and evening routines, because if you can set yourself up in the morning to have a really great day ahead, and then you can set yourself up in the evening to have a really great sleep that then wakes you up to have a great day ahead the next day, you are going to be in such a better mindset and state to be able to live your life in the way that you want to live your life. So I've worked really hard over the past year to incorporate healthy morning routines into my life. I will say that I am not the best with evening

routines that my brain comes alive at like 11 p.m. at night it's really annoying that's just the way I am and I'm trying to train it in a different way so

Morning routines, I've nailed it. can tell you step by step morning routine, can be as long as you have the time to do. I like to have really slow mornings, at least the first hour, 90 minutes of my day, I spend doing my morning routine, which usually consists of me waking up, brushing my teeth, doing a morning meditation, doing a little bit of brain dump journaling, maybe reading my book for 10, 15 minutes, and then sometimes pulling out some tarot cards and then doing a workout. So my first hour, 90 minutes of my day,

are full of that local routine. If you've only got 10 minutes in your day, you can make whatever version it is. the idea of that morning routine is that it's something you do consistently every single morning to help set you up for the day. The things that really bring you joy, the things that really put your nervous system back into a neutral place, they're the things that you want to focus on doing in the morning because then that's going to... It's basically... Jay Shetty once said, it's like putting your armor on for the day ahead and you're going to go into that day in a much stronger position than you were if you were going on to the bathroom.

battlefield

naked for example. So essentially your morning routine is your armour.

can look like whatever you want it to look like, whatever brings you joy, whatever brings your nervous system to a state of calm. And it can be whatever timeline you want it to be. Same going to sleep. Like if you don't have enough sleep in the evening for your body type, you're always going to wake up feeling a bit crap. So sleep is really something that you should be prioritizing if you want to feel like on top form. And the best way to go into a really good sleep is to have an evening routine. As I said, I don't think I can contribute to this, this

part of the conversation because my evening routine hasn't been the best. I know what it should be but I'm not always the best with the willpower to switch off my laptop at a certain time and go through this evening routine so quite often I do like a half-arsed evening routine. I'm getting better, I'm learning, I'm not perfect but I feel like if you can nail both of those you are in for success. Lesson number eight, businesses will and should change. Staying the same is like sitting in stagnant water.

I feel like this year for me in business has been a whirlwind rollercoaster, but at the same time it's just been stuck. I felt stuck, I felt trapped, I felt a bit lost with it all. I didn't really know what I was doing. I'm almost five years into running my own businesses. This past year I've been setting up a second business, which has been so fun and so exciting, but it meant that my first business obviously struggled because as we're going back to one of the other points, my focus was divided by two different things. So...

what I've come to understand and realize is that, you know, businesses go through ebbs and flows, businesses go through different iterations. No business should stay the same. Ultimately, my personal business of the e-commerce consultancy wasn't serving me anymore. I had to make a change. So if you've had my announcements recently, I am moving that in towards a different direction and going towards focusing more on like generalized online business and helping people live a more freedom focused life.

through setting up their own online business. And that feels so much more aligned to me on where I'm at in my business and my life right now.

four years ago, eCommerce consultancy was where I was at. made more sense for me to do that. So businesses need to change. If they don't change, ultimately you're just resisting something that should be happening. Ultimately, you change as a founder. So you should be changing with your business and your business should be changing with you. It's like a bit of a dance between the two. If you're just staying the same the whole time, you are literally just staying stagnant. There is no room for growth. There's no opportunity for growth. There's no room for you to venture down different paths and try new things. So really recommend if you're feeling a

a

bit stuck, a bit stagnant, look at what needs to change. Don't be scared to change it because ultimately growth comes from stepping outside your comfort zone and nothing changes unless nothing changes. So, worth looking into. Talking about growth, lesson number nine is growth is painful but it's worth it in the end. I stand by that like.

I saw someone's TikTok recently that said like, growth, everyone says growth should be painful, but my growth has been so easy. And I'm like, if you delve into that, like I'm not saying that growth is always hard. That's not necessarily the case, but generally growth comes from a place of discomfort because if you're just doing the same thing, same thing, same thing, same thing, you'll never really taking the leap to venture into something new, in which case you're never really going to grow.

You

can't really grow from doing the same thing day in and day out. You can get better at the things that you're doing day in and day out for sure and you can grow in that way. But if you want, if you are doing the same things day in and day out and you're finding yourself not happy with the results, that's because the things that you're doing are not working, in which case you need to change, in which case then you start to grow. Growth comes from change. Change is uncomfortable. Humans resist change because discomfort is not a nice place to sit in. But ultimately for me,

personally and I know many other people, growth comes through going for a bit of pain. As discomforting as that might sound and I'm trying to be realistic right? Like I have never grown.

when I just sit when everything's hunky-dory everything's roses like everything's growing really well and that's not to say you can't grow when everything's doing really well because there are ways that you can navigate that but I do feel like the biggest growths in life are generally a little bit painful but then they come out of it way better in the long run and then you're able to deal with that discomfort in a better way in which case that every time you do further grow your discomfort is a little bit less which is great that's what we want.

But ultimately you have to make some changes in my opinion to go through the growth. Change is uncomfortable basically is why I say it like that. Lesson number 10, patience is a skill. My God, I feel like I've had to be so patient this year for so many different reasons. I feel like I've spent a year kind of waiting for things to happen because there was a lot of things that happened to me this year that were out of my control that I had no...

no input in. couldn't do anything about it. It was happening to me, for me, however you want to describe it, but I had to just sit back, wait patiently and let it happen. There was nothing I could do. I could do slight small things to make changes. For example, if we're talking about the situation where I was selling my property.

I couldn't do anything about that. That was in the control of the buyer, it was in the control of the stage, it was in the control of the lawyer. All I could do was put it on the market and do all of my bits that I needed to do as quickly as possible. But actually, ultimately, I just had to sit and wait for a really long period of time for things to happen. I couldn't do anything. It was completely out of my control as much as I wanted to, and that was really hard to accept. But patience, I learnt how to be patient and...

wait for things to happen, even though it's a little bit painful growing again, growth is painful, but patience is a skill, patience is a virtue. And if you can nail patience, I feel like you can nail most things in life because patience is hard.

Lesson number 11, letting go of things is hard, but often the hardest thing to do is the most essential thing to do. Again, like sometimes things come to an end naturally. That could be a relationship, that could be a business venture. Like my business, for example, has naturally come to the end of its course when it comes to the e-commerce consultancy. That's been a really hard thing for me to accept because it's something that I've built for four years and was like really proud of, really passionate about, but it just doesn't serve me anymore. It doesn't work for me.

had to learn how to let it go but knowing that actually it's what I needed to do because holding on to it was way more painful and hard and difficult and didn't feel like I was in flow with life than it would be if I was moving into something that I more resonate with. So the more that you can learn to let go of things when they're not working for you, know that when you let go something bad comes along and it's usually the best thing that you could possibly do.

Lesson number 12, trust your gut always. I feel like this is on my lesson list like every year. But honestly, your gut knows everything. Even if you have that slight intuition that something isn't right for you, it's not right for you. If you have the thought, it's generally because there's something behind that thought. So I just feel like we don't listen to our bodies enough, we don't listen to our gut enough, and it's so important to listen to your gut and take into consideration what your body is trying to tell you, like our intuition.

knows everything and I've ignored my intuition so many times this year on so many different things and occasions and it has never worked out in my favour. So much of my challenges this year have come from the fact that I haven't listened to what my body is trying to tell me so please listen to intuition, listen to your gut. It's always right.

Fact. Lesson 13, ask all the questions even if they're stupid or it's uncomfortable. If a question comes to your mind and you have resistance to asking that question, I think you really need to understand and ask yourself why you're having that resistance. Is it that you don't feel comfortable in that scenario to ask the question? Is it something that's like holding you back from asking that question? Like what is it? Are you scared of the answer? But I just think...

I have been in situations so much in the past year where I've not asked the questions and then it's really not gone well for me in my favour in the long run because I've needed those answers to be able to progress into something else that I was doing. So even if it's uncomfortable, even if it terrifies you,

Even if you're scared of the answer, ask the bloody questions because it is better to know the answer now than it would be to know the answer in six months time because ultimately you're just delaying something by six months that could happen today. And I just think, yeah.

it's better off knowing the answer to something than not knowing and trying to figure it out as you go along because ultimately there's no wrong answer to any question it's just a case of perception and how you choose to handle that question. Number 14 don't play small think bigger. I feel like I've kept myself quite small in the past year by not staying true to the things that I wanted and

I was limiting myself by not expanding myself into situations of the things that I wanted to do, which meant I couldn't see it be possible for myself. And one thing I've learned over the past few years is that expansion is absolutely key. For everything that you do, you have to understand.

that it is possible that it exists out there. If you can't see it to be true, it doesn't exist in your reality. So I feel like I needed to do in so many situations this year, think in bigger ways, basically. I've held myself back by playing it small and I'm not doing that next year. I'm gonna think big. I'm gonna go after all the big things. Lesson 15, it's okay to take the easy route. Not everything has to be as complicated as you think.

As humans, I feel like we love to take the long-winded route around all the houses to get to the end destination, and that's okay because that often brings a lot of lessons, lot of growth, as I've mentioned a few times in this podcast episode. But sometimes you just need the easy route. You just need to go down the easy path, the walked path, and that's fine. As somebody that's an explorer, as somebody that loves freedom, as somebody that's very entrepreneurial, I love taking the complicated path because I'm like, but what's down there? Let me go on this

little adventure let me go and see what what's possible to achieve and that's great I love that about myself but at the same time sometimes I just need to take learn how to take the easy route and just be like you know what it is but it is I'm just gonna walk down this one just for this one time just to make my life simple and that's okay it's okay if things are easy not everything has to be complicated number 16 lighting your space properly could make all the difference to your productivity I

always knew the lighting and moonlighting impacted me because I've always struggled with like sad syndrome in the winters, that's why I generally avoid winters in the UK for example because we don't get a lot of daylight and I'm really impacted by light and natural light in particular. I'm not a little plant, I need as much natural light as possible. But what I've realised is that if you don't have that option, you can create it and I've really focused on like staying and living in places recently that

allow me to have good lighting setups for different reasons. One, I film video podcasts now, so I kind of want good lighting. But two, I feel like when I'm in a place of good lighting, it makes me feel so differently. lighting can really impact your environment and the space that you're in. So if you can nail the lighting in your environment, I feel like it could make you super productive. Number 17, it's okay to ask for help when you need it. There's been a few situations this year where

I've needed help in different ways, mentally, financially, physically, and for years and years and years I've always resisted asking for help because I felt like asking for help was a sign of weakness or that I wasn't in control or that I...

Yeah, I didn't have my shit together basically and actually it's not a sign of weakness, asking for help is fine. Sometimes you need to ask for help and you need to be able to drop your ego to be able to ask for that help and actually an ego death is something that everyone needs to go through to evolve into the next.

stage of life. So I've asked for help a lot this year. I won't lie, I've asked for money, I've asked for support, I've asked for therapy, I've asked for all of the things that I could possibly ask for because I've needed a lot of support this year in various different ways. And that's okay, I'm not always going to need help.

But yeah, I think it's okay to ask for help when you need it. Don't be scared to ask for help. We resist it so often, but actually it's a natural part of life. We're all human beings, we're not all perfect. We don't always have it together. We go for pigs and troughs. You would help a friend, just like how they would want to help you, and people actually generally want to help. So please know that it's okay to ask for help when you need it. Number 18.

Finances are everything without your business. Without finances and understanding finances and having financial acumen, your business doesn't work. Simple as that. Like, you don't have a business if you don't have a cash flow in that business. Or understand the cash flow in your business, understand your profits, understand your losses. Eventually, if you don't have money in a business...

business runs to shit basically and I've learned again I've learned that the hard way so I would say that next year one of my biggest goals is to really get on top of my finances in my business in my personal life I've always been okay with finances in both elements I've always understood it but this year I made some bad decisions that allowed me to get myself into some challenging financial situations so yeah I think what

Again, lesson growth moment for me is understanding that and nailing that and having a process for it is everything without that understanding of your cash flow, understanding of your money. It is going to be very hard to do all the things that you want to do. Money doesn't necessarily buy happiness, but it does buy convenience. does buy ability to grow. So I feel like, yeah, finances get on top of the super important. And number 19, I've just said this, but

Money isn't the source of happiness, however being smart with it helps. I don't need to explain that anymore, but like you don't need a lot of money in life to be happy, but you do need to be smart and understand how you're spending that money because if you don't have it, if you don't have a strategic plan for it, it can just disintegrate like there's no tomorrow and then you're stuck. So would recommend finances and money being at the forefront of everyone's minds, particularly if you're running a business.

Number 20, allowing yourself to receive instead of always giving is actually really nice. So again, going back to that, asking for help when you would need it, a big part of my resistance to asking for help was my ability to receive the help. And I don't think I had the capacity sometimes to receive that support, receive the feedback, receive the...

Yeah, the help that I was getting and maybe it's not even help Maybe it's just someone's trying to do something nice for me and I'd always be a bit like why? Why are you trying to do something nice for me? I don't understand it and Actually receiving is fun. If you can allow yourself to receive If someone wants to give take it allow yourself to take the compliment. Don't just be like, yeah, but da da da da da Someone says something nice to you be like, thank you. I appreciate your compliment

end of story, that's all you need to do. That's not you being big headed, that's not you being kind of stuck up, that is literally just someone's trying to be nice, take it. And enjoy it, why not? If someone wants to give, take it. Being selective over the people you let into your life, personal and business is so important to protect your energy, lesson number 21. I have filtered out a lot of people in my life over the past couple of years and...

in personal and business because I feel like personal you need to surround yourself with people that are very like-minded to be able to achieve things that you want to achieve in life because ultimately you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with right. So you have to be around people that are your cheerleaders that are going to help you grow and they're on the same path or trajectory as you.

Business, if you have people in your business that are not in alignment with your business or you're working with people that are not in alignment with your values as a business owner.

It sucks the absolute life out of you and it's not worth it. Money isn't worth it to have your energy sucked, honestly. So particularly in business, I have been so particular around the people that I work with, that I allow into my space, that I work within my business and yeah, I can't share any more lessons on that. Like it's literally just so important to surround yourself with the right people and as soon as you start filtering them out,

start knowing who was draining your energy and who was giving it to you. So stop having vampires in your life. Only have people that give you positive energy.

Lesson number 22, sit still for a while. It's not a sign of failure. It's a sign of growth. So I've always had this real resistance to just sit and still and accepted things for what it is. And I'm always on the go. If you see my lifestyle, I'm always doing something. always, onto the next thing, onto the next goal, onto the next project, onto the next location, onto the next thing.

And actually I've been forced, as I said this year, like through various different reasons to just sit, patient and wait for things to happen. And at first I was like, my God, this is a sign that I'm not doing well. I'm literally falling behind. I'm failing. And I've had to learn that actually that was the best thing that I could possibly have done. I spent four months this year in the UK. I haven't been in the UK that long for a long time. and at first I was like, I failed my mission's over. Like I wanted this life of freedom.

gonna live in the UK, blah blah blah. But actually, I needed that time to reflect and really learn to appreciate all of the other things that I've got going on in life, to see the areas that I needed to improve and the things that needed to focus on. actually sitting still is growth, it's not failure. So if you are in a moment of reflection, peace, just sitting still for a second, don't look at it as you failed at life, you haven't, things are still moving around you, they're still moving with you for you.

just a case of you need that moment of time to sit and reflect and get clear and quiet to understand what your next moves are. Lesson number 23 is resilience builds every time you work through something hard. The more resilient you are, the more you can accomplish. So I was saying this at the time, like the number one thing I think you need as a business owner is resilience. And if you don't have that resilience, then I think you're going to really struggle to.

develop in your business because ultimately business is hard, life is hard, but business is harder and making a business work is hard. So if you don't have the resilience to go through all the failures that you are inevitably going to go through, and I say that as a fact because there is not one business owner that I know that has had a smooth sailing ride of it. Obviously you learn and you make less mistakes as you go along, but ultimately as you grow, you're going to come up against new challenges because you've never faced those things before. If you want to get to the next level, you've never seen that path.

before you're gonna have to take a new path and that's difficult. But every time you go for a failure, you build resilience. And I think the more resilient you can become and the more failures you go through, the more that you actually end up accomplishing in the end because you've learned all the lessons. You can look back and be like, I don't want to do it like that. Next time I'm do it like this. I figured it out that this wasn't the right thing to do. This is the way that I need to go. This is the path that I need to take. So the more resilience, the more failures you go through, the better things are gonna be in the long run for you.

Final lesson, number 24 is perspective is absolutely everything. The way you look at something makes all the difference because I could sit here and be like, I had to spend four months in the UK this year because I couldn't sell my flat. I didn't have a lot of money. I wasn't in a very good place mentally. I was struggling to figure out like where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. I felt a bit lost in life and I could sit and be like, I'm a failure. I'm dwelling on that.

But if I change my perspective on that and I say, do you know what? I needed my flat knot to go through in that timeline because I needed a minute to sit and reflect and calm my nervous system down because I wasn't doing very well mentally. And if I look at that in the sense of I needed to save a bit of money in that period of time, because ultimately I've just started my second business. My first business, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it. I needed a moment to sit and reflect and be okay with being not okay.

My perspective has completely shifted. I'm no longer in that victim mindset. I'm no longer in that mentality of like, everything sucks. That's how I've been able to come out the back end of this year to say, this year was hard. No question about it. But do you know what? I've learned a lot. I needed some of those things to happen to me. I know that all of those things I'm going to take into next year and look at them as a lesson and growth moments. I've grown a lot this year. So I've been able to shift my perspective into...

a different light, a different attitude, again, that's how I can know that I have grown because if you'd have asked me six years ago, would I be able to overcome these hard times and come out a bit stronger? I'd be like, no, the hard time's the end of the world. So my perspective has just shifted and I'm really proud of that.

about myself. anyone else that's been able to overcome a really difficult year this year, I'm proud of you. I hope you're proud of yourself. I hope you've been able to get the perspective and the clarity that you need to move things forward into next year and hopefully have a better year if you've struggled or an even better year if you've had a great year this year.

Like I said, life's hard, that's okay. Business is hard, that's also okay. Everything, we're building resilience, we're growing, we're learning, we're evolving. If we weren't doing any of those things, honestly, you're just stagnant and you're stuck and maybe you're happy in that stagnancy, that's totally great. Like stay there, perfect, as long as you're happy. But if you're not happy, change is what's gonna make you get to a place of happiness. So really encourage you to use this time at the end of the year to look back at the lessons that you've learned, look at the ways

you've grown, look at the ways that you're gonna, things that you're gonna take forward into next year and the things that you want to achieve next year and what you need to do to get there. Yeah, I feel like, you know, this year didn't go the way that I thought it was gonna go, definitely not, but.

I'm hoping to go into next year with a brand new outlook on different things I want to achieve. I've got a new sense of like excitement about the things I'm going into due next year. So yeah, I wish you all a happy holidays and have a great new year. And I'm excited to hear about your goals that you're achieving next year in your businesses. And I'll be there to support you along the way, particularly as I'm now venturing more into like online business world, helping you create a life that you

through a freedom-based online business so stay tuned because there's lots coming for me on that next year. But yeah, wishing you a happy new year and I will see you in 2025.