Enjoy my interview with Val Low on her Focus and Freedom Podcast. Recorded late in 2020, we reflect on the year that was while discussing the way you can think about your 2021. I share my process for both reviewing the previous year and planning your next year. Gain clarity around what you want in your business, life, and for yourself. Here are the links to my podcast interview with Val Low:
On Apple iTunes: Click Here
On Stitcher: Click Here
On Val’s Blog: Click Here
Transcript
Val Low:
In this episode, David Greer and I reflect on 2020. Speculate about 2021. And looking after the most important asset in your business. You. Stay tuned. Welcome to Focus and Freedom with Val Low. I’m Val. The podcast for entrepreneurs who want to make an impact in their world. And where we aim to help you clear the business clutter and create business bliss because we believe a clear mind and a clear desk means more time, more money and freedom. Hello entrepreneurs, it’s Val Low here again in the Focus and Freedom Podcast. I have a very special guest today, David Greer. And thank you, David, for joining me again.
David Greer:
You’re really welcome. I’m so happy to be here.
Val Low:
Yeah. And David is an entrepreneurial coach, author professional speaker, and he’s the catalyst who gets you to fully live your dreams now. And we’re going to get into a little bit about David. And it’s this an exciting episode. Just a little background on this. Earlier this year, David was so gracious to be a guest for me on this podcast. We did the recording, and about a week later, everything went sideways with the pandemic and all that was going on, and we thought, well, this doesn’t really fit anymore. And so we did a whole new one. A whole new podcast. I think it was keep your head above water. And so we talked about that. Now it’s been months. So here we are, beginning of a new year. What’s going to happen in the new year. We’ve got some ideas of our own. David’s got some experiences from this year that I’m hoping he’ll share some with us with… So, David is just great to have you here again. Let’s just hop in, and maybe you got a little story want to start with.
David Greer:
Well, I liked your mentioning let’s keep your head above water because I think literally for a lot of us this year, that’s what it’s been like for some. My experience… now let’s talk about this year and then into next year. My experience with clients that I work with is some clients had short-term changes to their plans in individual quarters. None of my clients changed their three-year to six-year plans. They all… where they were aiming… I mean, some of this is the process I use to help them really see out farther than where you’re going. And so when you were looking forward into your 2021. I’d encourage listeners to think about 2022 and 2023 and where do you want to end up and know that there are certain challenges in the road and maybe new ones because the pandemic.
David Greer:
Having clarity of where you’re trying to end up and where you’re trying to go in the longer term, I think, makes it much easier to make the right decisions in the short term and whatever. I think it makes it a lot easier to when you’re throwing curveballs, so to speak, or unexpected events to cope with them because you can kind of lift your head up and remind yourself, “Oh, I’m going for a bigger goal, a bigger place.” Then it doesn’t feel quite so much like just treading water and keep it might in a given day or week, but hopefully not in a month or quarter. And that’s certainly been the case for my clients this year.
Val Low:
Yeah. That’s a good point. When you do have that little bit forward-focused, a little bit longer-term planning, then those things that come along and go, “Oh, okay, well, we’ll deal with this. But we still got this other that we’re going for.” That’s the thing that’s really good to keep our head down and keep our head above water.
David Greer:
As you mentioned in the intro, I am an entrepreneurial coach, so that is what I do. And for coaches in general, we’re getting to that time of the year, where, with clients, we often are going to ask them to do some kind of exercise, and there’s a whole variety of frameworks or questions you could ask around that. And it comes in generally two parts, which is one reflective. What was the year like? And what were some of the biggest things you did achieve? What were your biggest disappointments? What was especially challenging? And that reflective piece is important because it helps kind of set the stage, I think, for where you want to go ahead in 2021. So I think it’s a two-part process where you reflect on where you’ve been this year. Looking at the whole year too, not just the current month or the current thing that is happening that maybe you didn’t want to happen.
David Greer:
For listeners, we’re here in British Columbia, and we’re under not total lockdown, but near. We can only visit with people in our household. And for me, with children and then the grandchild, this is… this has been really hard. But I wouldn’t want to evaluate my whole year based on this week or last week. I’d like to step back and look at it in the context of the whole year. And then, looking forward is, what do you want to achieve next year? And I recommend to people they look in three areas. One is their career or finances. The second is in their relationships or their life with others. And then a part that most high performing people kind of forget about is yourself.
Val Low:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Greer:
What do you need to do next year to refill your bucket? And for this year, I… for the last three or four years, I’ve done big offshore sailing adventures. Sailing is a big way that I renew myself. My wife doesn’t want to go offshore sailing. Totally the opposite. I didn’t get to do that this year. My wife and I charted a boat for two weeks and took our daughter and son-in-law and our grandson for the first time overnight away for the August long weekend on the boat.
Val Low:
Nice.
David Greer:
We had another… an opportunity to do something different.
Val Low:
Yeah. And for those of you listening, David’s done quite a bit of sailing. He took his family… if I got this right again, I can’t remember exactly, but you took your family on a Mediterranean cruise.
David Greer:
On a sailing trip. No one would call it a cruise.
Val Low:
On a sailboat.
David Greer:
Yes. For two years, and home schooled all three of those kids. And now they’re 31, 29, and 25, and they still talk to us.
Val Low:
Oh gosh, what an experience. I’m just so elated that you did that. And yes. So yeah, keeping our head above water and keeping forward-focused. This is going to be an interesting year 2021. I mean, I think we’re going to just continue on through what we have right now. Like you mentioned, we’re kind of in lockdown right now. It’s going to be like that for a little while. But moving into 2021, we just talked briefly about timeframes. What we’re looking at towards maybe getting back to some of our goals a little bit faster pace.
David Greer:
Yeah. So first, for my mental models. I plan for the worst hope for the best. For example, my wife and I are just assuming that no international travel, no travel outside of Canada for all of 2021. And very minimal travel even in Canada, probably, that we’ll want to do. That’s kind of the mental model I already have. And even though all of us are very hopeful about all the announcements with vaccines and for them arriving in Canada, just as the time we’re recording this podcast.
David Greer:
I think that my mental model is for the time it’s going to be, quote, safe for us to resume more normal, what we were used to in 2019. That’s probably the end of the third quarter, even the end of the year. So my planning and what I want to do in the year is overlayed by those assumptions in my plan because I think it’s a lot better to plan that we can’t really socialize a lot and do things until the end of the year, rather than thinking, “Oh, the vaccines are here, and we can do it at the beginning of April.”
Val Low:
Yeah.
David Greer:
Because I think that just does kind of set us up for disappointment. Now, if miracles happen, and three-quarters of Canadians get vaccinated by the beginning of April, I will be thrilled, and I would love for it to go that way. But I just… I don’t want to make it the assumption in my plan for 2021. So just keep me right-sized and to set my priorities accordingly.
Val Low:
Yeah. And so, and I know this is really maybe a hot thing to get into, to suggest. But once we get to that stage, I think it’s going to be a little bit different world than what we were back in 2019. When we get into 2021, and some of those things start to get sorted out. Do you have any thoughts? I mean, with the people that you work with and what you’ve been seeing around.
David Greer:
If we want to talk about kind of the trends. I think a lot more of us are going to wear a mask, and there are other parts of the world, like a lot of parts of Asia, where everybody just wears a mask all the time. That’s what they do. Will we do that? I don’t know. But that could be one of the things that is different. I think the shakeout of working at home will be interesting. I think it can work for some. I’ve spent much of my career working from home and managing remote teams, but it’s not the same as managing people in the office. There’s a lot of interactions that happen when people are in an office that you don’t really realize. And their connection points, social points that help build trust and deeper relationships, which then, actually lets you do more in your… in the business.
David Greer:
And I think the part for this, for me, is that what we’re missing from this, it’s too soon for us to notice or really feel… I think some people do. Some people certainly feel that, felt it emotionally. But I think from an organizational performance point of view, what we’ve lost in this won’t show up for another year or so.
Val Low:
Yeah.
David Greer:
So that… everyone might stay hot with this work from home. And I hope it works out for everyone that chooses to, and we may find that there is… I mean, there’s a lot of businesses, high-tech businesses in the US who’ve tried work at home, who’ve given up on it, and [I’ve forgotten] the names of them. I’ve seen them sometime this year. But it’s a lot harder than it looks, I think, to sustain over the long period.
David Greer:
And I also… I heard an interview early in the pandemic by someone who had retired, and retired in 2019. And then they were talking about what it was like in 2020, and relating back to people having to work from home. And this individual said they loved their work, and they really enjoyed their work and liked going to the office. But after they retired, what they realized was they really miss the social interaction.
Val Low:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Greer:
And that that was a… one of the prime drivers of him wanting to work. And he hadn’t totally realized it until afterwards. So a lot of interesting stuff still to be figured out. And even our daughter is mostly… was on maternity leave and then went back to work in May. But of course, she went back to work by working at home with a one-month-old baby who she does take to daycare.
David Greer:
But she has one alternate day that she can either work or not. And he’s now taking long enough naps that while he naps, she’ll try and get three hours of work done. But it’s very challenging. Our youngest two… our youngest son and his girlfriend share an apartment, but they both need to be on the phone a fair amount. And so sometimes one has to go into the bedroom because the desk space, they each have a desk, but it’s in their living room. Our middle son and his girlfriend… our middle son works for Lululemon Corporate, and his fiancé is studying to be a nurse. So her working and her studying in their one-bedroom apartment and online with lectures and Kevin’s job is mostly interacting with people. In an eight hour day, he’ll spend seven, seven and a half hours on the phone. For them, it’s been really challenging. And what we actually arranged after mid-summer was that Kevin actually commutes to our house, and we have a spare bedroom that he’s using as an office because it just was so hard for them.
Val Low:
It’s been quite a challenge for everyone.
David Greer:
As we move forward, all of these things will… that we’ve adjusted to, will then adjust to something else, and we’ll need time and energy to do the new adjustment. So we probably want to budget a little bit in our thinking, at least when we plan 2021. But probably things are going to keep changing.
Val Low:
Get used to it. And I just had a thought about once we get through all of this, then the social interaction [is] going to have a great, big, huge party everywhere?
David Greer:
I don’t know. Can we all… can we fit the whole province in BC Place?
Val Low:
I was thinking too BC Place is a big stadium here. Yeah.
David Greer:
Yeah. But I mean, it’s 60,000 people, and there’s 5 million people that live at BC, so we still have to do it in shifts.
Val Low:
Yeah. So it could be… it’ll be interesting regardless. And like you say, things are probably just going to keep changing, and if we’re preparing ourselves now for that, then it makes things a lot easier. David, you and I started out talking about some of the challenges that have gone on or continue to go on throughout this last few months. And I just wondering if you would like to just go down that path with me and share a little bit of…
David Greer:
Sure.
Val Low:
… some of those challenges.
David Greer:
I have a mental health issue, which is, I’m an alcoholic, which very thankfully I’ve been in recovery now for quite a few years. I mean alcoholism, is officially a diagnosed mental disease. And there’s no question that with the pandemic, mental health has taken a big hit. And mental health is still… no one has trouble admitting they have a broken leg and that they need to go to the doctor. And that they need to have help. And they need to have recovery time. But for mental health issues, whether that’s depression, whether it’s addiction or alcoholism, or whether mental health issues show up for you in different ways, it’s still very taboo, I guess, is one word. It’s not acceptable to kind of talk about it in public company, the way it is that physical diseases are.
Val Low:
Yeah.
David Greer:
And this is… mental health is as important or maybe even more important than physical health.
David Greer:
And so that’s something… depression is up. I believe the suicide rate is up during the pandemic. These are real consequences to us having to isolate. To us having to cope with all of these changes. I encourage all your listeners that if you are struggling at all with any kind of mental health issue, talk to someone, get some help. In fact, I recently have started to focus my entrepreneurial coaching practice on entrepreneurs who are alcoholics. Or who were recovering alcoholics and decided to come out in a big way and talk about it, which before, I wasn’t ready to break my anonymity around this. But I think I just made a decision. It was too important. And also I am in a unique position of being a successful entrepreneur, using alcohol for a very long time as a coping mechanism.
David Greer:
And then having made a decision with the help of others to seek help and to go into recovery. And I don’t know a lot of coaches who are specializing in that area. Although I think there is a massive need and it is very, very common. And of course, alcohol is our one socially acceptable and legal drug. Of course, in Canada, cannabis is as well. But a lot of social and business situations, drinking a lot of alcohol is considered normal. It’s very normalized. It makes it in some ways easier to be an alcoholic. It also makes it harder to admit that you have a problem. I really encourage anyone who is struggling to reach out. There are a lot… there are resources to help, and you’re not alone. And most of us isolate and feel very, very alone when we’re dealing with a mental health issue. That certainly was my experience.
Val Low:
Yeah. And as entrepreneurs, a lot of us are kind of alone isolated as well. And that can just be exasperated by that. But even just challenges, maybe not in addictions or deep mental issues that you’re talking about. Even just going through this time has been stressful for some of us just to keep ourselves positive. Keep our head above water, like what we’re talking about it.
David Greer:
I don’t think any… I would be extremely surprised if there was a person who hadn’t found stressors around everything that has happened and is going on and the changes we’ve had to deal with. I can’t… we probably talked about in our… some… we talked about in the first podcast I did with you. Some of the fundamentals are just become even more fundamental and important, like eating well, working on doing your best to have good sleep, which really means at least good sleep habits when you go to bed, and putting away a phone for half an hour before you go to bed. And for example, I don’t sleep with any screen next to me in my bed. There are a floor away plugged in in my office, and our bedroom happens to be one floor up on the second floor.
David Greer:
And just to make it harder for me to wake up and reach for a device. And I try and get one to two hours of sleep before midnight, but it’s what works for me. You find what works for you. But again, the sleep rhythm, getting good sleep, eating well, and some form of physical activity.
Val Low:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
David Greer:
Whether that’s getting out and walking every single day. I mean, I’ve managed to shift some of my… I normally exercise five or six times a week, and that’s been a real challenge for me to find new rhythms. I’m not going to our local recreational center. It is open, but it’s not open at the time I usually exercise. I’m not a hundred percent certain how much I want to exercise there. Even though there is a lot of safety and it’s an indoor place, we’re all breathing heavily. And so it’s been a real struggle for me to really maintain that exercise rhythm. Although when I really work out and get back into that rhythm and maintain it, I feel better. I have more resiliency. I’m more able to deal with stress. I sleep better. I know it’s just motherhood and apple pie, but it works.
David Greer:
So that… and if you’re setting your goals for 2021, and you’ve kind of slipped on some of those, I really recommend that you consider putting down your own. Again, back to that relationships and career, but in the middle is yourself. What are you going to do to really fill your bucket? Look after yourself. So I would really make sure that some of these things get down. And even that you enlist someone’s help too as an accountability person, who I’ll just suggest spouses can be, but you probably want to choose someone else. That just checks in. Did you exercise today? Did you properly today, right? Or you can be accountability partners for… to each other and just have… and then if you book a five-minute phone call every day and you have it, then you’re socializing with someone else, and you’re not isolating as much. Again, some of these things are super hard to get started, but once you get in the rhythm of them, it’s like, “How did I ever live my life without this?”
Val Low:
Exactly, exactly. And if you’re accountability partner with someone, you’re actually encouraging them. You’re making their day much better just by doing that. Yeah. I have an accountability partner that… we’ve been meeting Monday mornings for years, and I’ve had coffee with him, lunch with him twice in that whole time. But I’m getting so that I really, really, really appreciate that we keep connected on those Monday mornings because it’s something that just helps me to keep going throughout the week, and we’d come back on Monday, and just say, “Hey, what happened?” And we encourage each other. We help support each other. And it’s just so important to do that.
David Greer:
And I’m guessing it’s something that you look forward to.
Val Low:
Totally. Oh yeah. Like I said, if I miss a week, I go, Oh my goodness, my week has… it’s shifted. I don’t really like that.
David Greer:
And as our world has kind of closed in on us due to what we’ve had to do to protect ourselves and each other. Then I think one of the big things I would normally be looking forward to is international travel because my wife and I love to travel. I like to go on adventures. When I don’t have that, it’s like, what can I replace that with?
Val Low:
Yes.
David Greer:
What… and it might… I might have to scale it back, or it’s not going to be quite like it used to. And yes, that’s been hard for me to get… adjust to, but at least I make sure there’s stuff in the calendar and things to look forward to.
Val Low:
Yeah. That’s important. So I hope entrepreneurs are listening that you need to do those things just to keep healthy. The three things you mentioned, career and finances, I think you’ve mentioned it.
David Greer:
Yeah. Career/finances.
Val Low:
Yeah.
David Greer:
If you manage your finances well, then you don’t often need to make as much money in your career. So those two often…
Val Low:
Right. Right.
David Greer:
… kind of go together. So I kind of managing your finances, what you spend. You have more control of what you spend then over what you earn in most cases.
Val Low:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s right.
David Greer:
So…
Val Low:
That’s right.
David Greer:
Right. So… but we often don’t have the discipline to do that.
Val Low:
Yeah.
David Greer:
So a plan. What is your plan for the year for your finances? Sorry. I knew you were trying to summarize.
Val Low:
Just go ahead. You’re doing better than I would. So go ahead.
David Greer:
Yeah. So career finances. Life/relationships. So the relationships you have. Do you want some new ones? Which ones maybe feeling neglected that you want to put more energy into? And then this middle piece, which is yourself. What do you want to do that’s just for you. And as… what I’ve noticed is for most high-performing people are super, super family people. They’re very focused on their kids. They put tons of energy into it. They’re massively focused on their business and growing their business. And so all this energy goes out in these two areas, and they actually get squeezed out in the middle until such time as they get sick or they use other unhealthy coping mechanism. I think you need to bring very conscious thought to that middle piece because otherwise, I think you’re sitting in a pendulum kind of getting swung from one side without that middle piece of actually looking after yourself.
Val Low:
Yeah. And when you fill yourself up. And you’re full or close to it. You’re so much better with your relationships. You’re so much better with your work, and it just… it’s so important. Yes. It’s okay to think.
David Greer:
It’s counterintuitive for most of us high performers because we’ve got “What do you mean I have to look after myself? What do you mean I got to do something that’s just fun for me?”
Val Low:
Yeah. And that thing about it’s okay to be… it’s not egotistical, but it’s okay to think about yourself. It’s okay to put yourself first.
David Greer:
It is. Absolutely.
Val Low:
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Oh gosh. David, I’m so happy that you came to share the beginning of the new year with us. We started out a little rocky in our first podcast, and here we are, and I’m sure that we’re going to be meeting again for the next shift exchange that happens.
David Greer:
Thanks so much, Val, it’s been great to be here, and everyone, I hope that you have an amazing 2021. I think there are many things that a lot of us can be thankful for. And I hope that’s true for you as well. And I hope that some amazing things happen for you in 2021.
Val Low:
Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. Thank you for that, David. I’ve got… there’ll be some information in the show notes about David. Do you want to get connected with him? Please do. He’s got a great program. He’s a great leader in our country. And I just appreciate him for that. So David, thank you again for coming and sharing. It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you.
David Greer:
Thanks so much, Val.
Val Low:
And entrepreneurs until next time. Enjoy your journey. Thank you for tuning into the Focus and Freedom Podcast. If you’re interested in all things entrepreneurial and finding your business bliss, check out vallow.me. Head over to iTunes. Like, subscribe, and review. Until next time. Keep your head clean and your desk clear.
