Planning for the New Year

David and Blair each share some goals that they have for their clients and themselves for the upcoming year, which turns into somewhat of a therapy session.

Transcript

BLAIR ENNS: David, how was your Christmas?

DAVID C. BAKER: My Christmas was great. I always add up how much I gave and how much I got. 

BLAIR: We're recording this before Christmas so you have no idea that your Christmas was great.

DAVID: You just made an assumption that I wanted to get more than I gave. I could tell by the way you laughed. That is not necessarily true.

BLAIR: No, I know you. You're a very generous person. I know it would be important to you to give more than you get.

DAVID: Yeah, and you're the guy that I gave you a great gift not too long ago, I think it was for last Christmas and I see you next time, and you're not wearing it, an Apple watch, and what did you do with it?

BLAIR: I gave it to my dad and he loves it, and he loves you for it. Thank you very much.

DAVID: I didn't give it to your dad, I gave it to you. 

BLAIR: You gave it to me and said, "Hey, I don't know if you're interested in this. I got you one." This is a few years ago now. You said, if you're not a watch wearer, you don't want it, then give it to somebody who would appreciate it. 

DAVID: I remember none of that.

BLAIR: I wore it for a day but I gave up wearing a watch year ago. I gave up wearing a watch after reading Marshall McLuhan's book, Understanding Media. I haven't gone back and that's got to be 20 years ago. I put it on for a day to try it on, I thought, oh this is pretty cool, my dad is going to love it. And, he does. 

DAVID: Okay, you're not getting anything else from me this Christmas, just I'm going to make that clear.

BLAIR: Okay.

DAVID: A bad experience gifting you things.

BLAIR: Fair enough. This is something Marcus told us never to do, which is a timely podcast. This is going to air near the end of the year. It's a great time to talk about goals, most of us are, this time of year, are in kind of goal planning, or goal setting mode for the next year. I really wanted to talk about the goals that we have not for ourselves, but goals that we have for our clients in the coming year. How does that sound?

DAVID: That sounds great. The topic sounds great, plus doing something that our producer doesn't want us to do also sounds great. There's just a little bit of power there, right?

BLAIR: It's kind of turning into the entire motivation for the podcast isn't it? When Marcus tells us don't do something, we do it. I hope you've learned your lesson Marcus.

DAVID: Yeah, do things he doesn't want us to do. But, we record something on a summer day, and we can't talk about the weather, because we don't know when it will be published. So, this one's kind of fun. We know this one's gonna come out before the next year, and you and I have been thinking about it. You did a webinar recently about this, and talked a lot about it.

BLAIR: Yeah.

DAVID: You had 600 some people come to it, right? That's crazy.

BLAIR: Well, we had 666 people register, and we were using new webinar technology, and didn't realize that we'd bought a version that only allowed 100 people in. So, we fielded a lot of emails about, I can't get into the ... Including you, I think. You were locked out, too.

DAVID: Yeah. When I didn't have many people come to a webinar I did, I blamed it on the technology platform, as well. So, I do understand why you are.

BLAIR: It was clearly a human error. All right, let's move on. Do you wanna just, off the top, do you wanna give me 2, 3, 4 goals, or kind of areas of goals that you have for your clients, and then I'll share mine, and then we'll dive into the overlapping ones, perhaps?

DAVID: Sure. So, I mean, the easy one is obviously financial performance, right? And, we know about that. We don't look too much at the numbers until kind of the end of the year, and then we might have a different idea. Another area might be how you manage people, another might be your own personal health. I don't mean just physical, but also mental, and how much time you take off. Another might be how you're serving clients. How the firm services are packaged, or how you think about all that. So those are the big categories I'm usually thinking about. Is that how you think, as well? Or, do you add some other ones?

BLAIR: No, I'm actually kind of looking at the categories differently. Maybe I'm getting a little bit more specific. So, I'll just share the specifics, and there are more specifics underneath, but the first one is just the idea of do less. I think we go into a new year, making lists of things that we're going to do, and I learned a few years ago, that that doesn't work unless you start committing to the things that you will no longer do. I've got a bunch of different categories under there, that I think our clients should think about. The next one is, set a clear vision for the next 3-5 years. I remain surprised at how many principals of greater firms, do not see themselves moving very steadily towards a concrete vision of what their firm is going to be and be like with all kind of details 3-5 years out.

I want to talk a little bit about New Year's resolutions, the proper way to do New Year's resolutions. And then, another very specific thing is, it falls out of positioning, but it effects content marketing, and that's a point of view I think I would like my clients to work on their point of view. The lens through which they look at their subject matter when they're creating content. I think a lot of those things would overlap- would plug in to the categories that you identified.

Are you okay if we start?

DAVID: Sure.

BLAIR: Of the ones that you listed, I thought, oh, that's the most interesting one. This is a podcast on creative entrepreneurship, so you can't talk about your business, without talking about your life as well. What did you mean by personal health?

DAVID: Yeah. You and I exchanged a set of text messages this week that I initiated, and I said, I really need help, meditation. I don't know even how to go about it. And, I knew you'd been doing that. So I sent you a text message about it, and asked for any ideas that you might have, like, point me in the right direction and so on. One of the things that you said, and by the way, it was very helpful, I printed that list out, of I think, 4 ideas you had for me. 

One of those ideas struck me, and it's something that I had thought about quite a bit over the years, but it had just slipped off the radar, and that was gratitude. What you suggested was that, I get one of these little books, that I think Mark at Newfangled had suggested to you, and every day, you write down some things that you're grateful for. I remember years ago, gratitude used to be so important to me, and for some reason it just hasn't ... I am still incredibly grateful, because I feel like I see myself in so many situations where I'm not in those, but I could see myself in those so easily, and yet I'm very grateful that I have what I have, and it feels like a combination of luck and discipline, and being in the right place at the right time, and so on. But this idea of gratitude really struck me about mental health, and I would be interested in hearing more from you, specifically, because all we really did was exchange a text message there. 

So, the gratitude thing is one, another one is just how much time we take off, and we need to talk about that. Although, we have done a podcast episode about that. Another one is, just thinking about how strange principals are. We are so hard on ourselves, and we're constantly reaching for more, rather than stepping back and saying ... And I was thinking about this this morning. It's like, do you realize that the people listening to us, they have met another 26 payrolls successfully, and they've made some compromises along the way, but they have navigated another year. There are not many people who can say that they've done that successfully. That is just amazing. And, principals, there's something about personality types of principals. They don't celebrate successes all that well. So, when I think about the mental health side, and I guess there's some physical health in there, too, those are the things that I think about.

BLAIR: Wow, this could be our whole podcast.

DAVID: Yeah, for sure. I mean, can you talk a little bit more about the gratitude side, and what's gotten you to thinking about that, and maybe some of the things that you write down? I'm just curious about the practice of gratitude. The daily practice of gratitude.

BLAIR: Yeah. I heard a great line the other day, and I don't remember it, so it wasn't that great. It was gratitude is, I think it's either appreciation, or love, with surprise. 

DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

BLAIR: But, I think gratitude, especially early in the morning, and before you go to bed at night, it's a muscle that you exercise. I think a lot of people have said that happiness is wanting what you have, and gratitude is just an exercise in keeping you in the present moment, and appreciating what you have. And, not at the expense of wanting more. I think the ideas of gratitude and wanting, are intertwined, and I personally don't believe that you should just be happy with what you have, and not want more. I think that as I'm talking through these, I realize how influenced I am on all these subjects, by Dan Sullivan, who is the founder of Strategic Coach, and I was in that program for 3 years, and I'll be back in it probably before next year is out. I'm taking a little time off.

So, a lot of these things I've learned from his works, and his program. But, wanting is a really important muscle to flex. The idea that it's okay to want things, it's okay to strive towards things that you don't need to justify, but at the same time, wanting can take you out of the present, and keep you unnecessarily focused on the future, if you are not reflective and appreciative of what it is that you have now. So, what you have, and what you're grateful for can be anything. It can be material things, it can be relationships. I would like to say I'm diligent about using this 5 minute journal to chronicle what it is that I'm grateful for, and what it is that I want, and I'm not. I get into daily routines, and then I get knocked off of it when I travel.

I know Mark at Newfangled, he's pretty good at this. My wife is pretty good at an equivalent. She's got a great morning routine that includes morning pages. A shared client of ours, I won't name him, but he's been doing morning pages every day for 25 years, which I think it's 5 minutes of stream of consciousness of dumping things on a page. It's not specifically gratitude. But, there's a lot of gratitude that comes out when you're unloading your thoughts early in the morning. So, I think gratitude is just this exercise of bringing us to the present, and having us appreciate how fortunate we are, and having us want what we have.

And then, adding wants. What you want for yourself that day, on top of it. I think that's the next level, and you'll find that that's one of the daily exercises in this 5 minute journal.

DAVID: So, it's not a zero sum game, by being more grateful for what you have, it doesn't mean that you're being less ambitious, or something like that? That's a key component there. Really fascinating.

BLAIR: So, that's gratitude. You mentioned time off. You wrote an article recently, I think it came out in the last couple of days, and we're recording this early in December, where you had a specific target for time off that you thought principals should take. How much time off should a principal schedule for next year?

DAVID: Well, they should take off more than they did this year. That'd be the simple answer, right? 

BLAIR: Yeah.

DAVID: People think of this differently. There's certainly I know you've noticed, I've noticed that the way people think about time off is different in the US, than it is in other countries. So, it's very common to take a month off every year, maybe another 2 weeks on top of that. In the US, we tend to take time off in 1 or 2 week increments, and my feeling is, that you should take 8-12 weeks off. The problem seems to be that life just crowds that out of your schedule. So you may have really specific intentions about wanting to take, let's say 8 weeks off a year. But, then something comes up, so what I've found, one way to get around it is, a baby step, is to take long weekends.

Then maybe you take off Wednesday night, so you're gone Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you come back Monday night. That's more acceptable to you, it's really other people don't care, it's just in your head. So, you schedule those in advance, and now that you've already gotten over this hurdle, you've already told people you're doing it, they already know you're lazy, that's how you're thinking, even though it's not true.

BLAIR: Yep.

DAVID: They already know you're lazy, then it's easy just to go ahead and do it. Okay, I've already faced the music here. Then, the next step would be to schedule longer periods of time away. Your firm will love not having you around. I mean, some of the big level stuff doesn't happen, but that's okay. It doesn't need to happen every week, and things like IP development, maybe adjusting your positioning, maybe looking at the big financial picture, but, your firm is going to thrive without you, and it's a great example of planning for that, just to be away for longer periods of time. We could even extend this further, and talk about a sabbatical. I'm such a big believer in sabbaticals, and the timing for that. From a mental health standpoint, gratitude we've talked about, taking time off. I want you to set it on the calendar now, because your business is pretty predictable. If you look at the patterns that have occurred during the years, you know pretty much when you're busy, or maybe your work is pretty level across every month. Whatever it is, you've got that figured out.

Then, other people can plan their vacations around you. You're not the person who fits around everybody else. Your mental health is more important that anybody else's mental health in the firm. That's not a selfish thing to say, it's just putting on your own oxygen mask before you help the other people around you. That's just a smart things to do. So, that's what I would love to see people do.

BLAIR: You're advocating that people, before the year begins, pull out your calendar, and block off when you're gonna take time?

DAVID: Yep.

BLAIR: You seemed to evade the very specific question of how much time do you think people should take. Do you have a target number? If there was an ideal that you think you could generalize, what would it be?

DAVID: 8-12 weeks off a year.

BLAIR: 8-12 weeks off. Do you hear that, people? 8-12 weeks off.

DAVID: I never take less than that.

BLAIR: Oh, come on. There have been times when you've worked all the time. I know you're doing a better job than that these days.

DAVID: I work really hard when I'm working, for sure, and I work longer hours that I should, but I guess we have to define what we mean by taking time off, right? For me, taking time off is going to another country on a photography venture, or going to the cabin and working on a book. I guess that's work. I don't think of it as work. 

BLAIR: Okay.

So we talked about gratitude, we talked about time off under the subject of personal health. You brought up meditation, we were trading some texts on that, and it's again, something that I try to do daily. I've had periods of routine, and then periods when I'm knocked out of it. Usually it's because of extensive travel. I remember coming to the realization a few years ago, that it dawned on me, when I was starting to take the idea of meditation seriously, I wasn't meditating regularly, I was playing with it. But, it dawned on me, that I think most successful CEO's probably meditate. I kept reading more and more stories of CEO's of large companies, or successful people, like Jerry Seinfeld, has meditated 20 minutes a day, every day, for well over 25 years. Maybe it's going on 40 years.

I've just encountered so many people. Famous, successful people, who have just made daily meditation a ritual, and I know when I get into it, and do it in the morning, it just really sets the tone. I can find situations where I would get myself worked into a tizzy, it's easy to actually center myself, and go back to- maybe not that exact place, but to kind of override the emotions, or just detach from the emotions, and let them kind of float away from you. I think we could almost do a whole podcast, maybe not on the subject of meditation, but these things that a lot of agency principals, and other successful entrepreneurs are doing out there in the realm of work life balance, like meditation, that I think probably needs a bigger venue. We need to talk about this more, because some people are afraid of the topic. Some people are trying it on, and don't really want to talk about it publicly, but I think those in that category would be surprised at how many successful agency principals out there, have a daily ritual or either yoga, or gratitude, or meditation.

DAVID: Yeah, and I was gonna add yoga to that as well, because I think that would be something that we should include.

BLAIR: Yeah.

DAVID: I've got one more thing about the mental health thing, and that's to work with a therapist at some point. I've worn 3 out, and I don't think I'll ever go to another one, because I keep hearing the same kinds of things, the same kinds of exercises, and I feel like I'm not really learning all that much more about myself. But, it doesn't have to be therapy, it could just be working with a ... Almost a communication coach. This would be a really valuable thing for maybe a third of the principals out there. They aren't that aware of how they're coming across to the folks that are in their care, and I would love them to get some objective outside perspective, on how they're coming across from a management standpoint, so that they're more self aware.

Maybe this is the year to do that. It has to be your choice, you can't go because somebody else is sending you, and so on. It has to be your choice, it has to be something you enjoy. You might do it with your key team, where somebody's listening, and reading between the lines, and helping you interpret what you're really saying. Helping you be less passive aggressive, and a little bit clearer, without any angles that you're trying to get across in an underlying sort of way. 

It's very, very valuable, these communication skill kinds of things. I think it falls into the category of mental health.

BLAIR: Hmm. So, a communication coach. I like that. We have so much to cover, we're not going to get to, not even a quarter of this list. Can we pick up on my first point, which is the idea of do less?

DAVID: Sure.

BLAIR: Have you noticed that the planning cycle sees people get all excited about the things they're going to do next year, in addition to the things that they've been doing at this point? But, next year's going to be different, I'm really going to actually execute on this 12 page lead generation plan.

DAVID: Right. Yeah, for sure. I am a huge believer in what you just said, about simplifying. The way I like to approach it is, I suggest to people, don't start something without also having an end date in mind. Because, what happens is, you start things, and it's glorious to start things, but it feels like failure to stop them. We've got to figure out a way, so that stopping something doesn't feel like a failure. So, we start something, but only if we have some idea of how long we're going to do it.

I'm not gonna get a gym membership and go every week, I'm gonna get a 1 month pass, and I'm going to go 3 times a week, and then maybe nothing happens, that's okay. Then the idea of simplifying ... You've talked a lot about this recently. I've heard you talk about it more than ever before, and that's to ... Don't have 7 elements of your lead generation plan, just pick maybe 1 or 2, and just kill those. Just do really great work.

I think of this in the category of putting down a dear family dog. To me, and we have a 17 year old dog that's gonna be in that category pretty soon, it's very, very sad to think about. But, giving up on some of your goals, is a lot like that. It's emotionally difficult. You hate to go through it, but, unless you're going to do a good job at the few things, then if you want to do a good job with the few things, you're gonna have to quit doing some of these other things. And, I agree completely. I don't know how to go about that, but I agree that we need to simplify.

BLAIR: The metaphor of growth, and the need for pruning, struck me a few years ago. The idea that, when you get to a mature plant, there is no new growth, without vigorous pruning. So, you need to create the space that you're going to grow into. I think that metaphor works. And, I think it's in the nature of probably most entrepreneurs, but it's in the nature of a creative personality, who is drawn to variety, the bright shiny thing, the problem that hasn't been solved before, to keep adding more and more things on their to-do list. And, I know so many agency principals, who are just overwhelmed with all of their commitments. Then, from the outside, looking in on their business, it's pretty easy to say, well, why don't you just quit doing "x?"

Probably at the top of the list, and I feel like I may have talked about this in a recent podcast, maybe it was somewhere else, is the idea that somebody has to be the CEO. And, I've seen, there's so many firms of ... I don't know what the size threshold is, maybe you can tell me. But, somewhere around 10-12 people. When you get above that size, and you've got a CEO who is somebody with a hyphenated title. It's something, and CEO, it's creative director-CEO, head of strategy, and CEO, or CEO and head of strategy. Client services partner/CEO.

I understand the need to have the hyphenated role when you're under a certain size, but you get over a certain size, and again, I'm going to ask you what that size is, you really need to keep taking off these hats, and we talked about this in a recent podcast. The only hat that you have left, is the CEO hat. I see so many principals, who really should let go of that day to day account management, or creative direction, or strategy, or whatever it is, and focus on being a CEO, because I look into these firms now, and I think, who's running the place?

DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

BLAIR: I realize from my own business, 8 people in my business, I am now just a CEO, I'm now freed up of all other things, but it sure took me a long time, and it was painful. But, I look at it, and I think, man the CEO job, is a full time job. How did I do a CEO, and build curriculum? And, I still own building curriculum, I'm just not building any new curriculum for a year.

DAVID: Right.

BLAIR: The big question is, how did I do it, and still coach? Still have this day to day responsibility for clients? I have 7 people I'm responsible for. So, yeah. I'm just struck by the size of that job, being a CEO, which is in charge of culture, in charge of your people, in charge of where the business is going. How do you do that, and still do another job at the same time?

DAVID: Yeah. Everything you just mentioned, your positioning, the culture, the people, and also, financial performance, monitoring that of the firm. That's generally going to take up about 60-80% of your time, regardless of the size of the firm, so what else can you do with that 20-30% of your time? Usually, you're either going get deeper into new business, you don't have somebody else that can help you with that, or you're gonna do strategy for clients.

BLAIR: Yeah.

DAVID: It's really those two choices, typically. But, that's not why people get into this business, right? They get into this business for every reason except that, so it takes a long time for them to get comfortable with that different role that they have to have. So, hypothetically, how many things will be on that list that somebody's developing? The big things. I just looked at my list. Major initiatives, I called it, for 2017. There's 7 on here. I got 2 of them done.

BLAIR: Wow. So that was for this year, just finishing. You had 7 major initiatives, you got 2 done. How are you feeling about that? Are you feeling like it was a good year, or are you looking at the 5 that you didn't get done?

DAVID: I feel like it's a good year, but that's because I've trained my mind a little bit, and I'm not so constantly disgusted with myself, at not getting everything done. You've been influential that way in my life, thinking about that. Helping me concentrate on things I have gotten done, not the things I haven't gotten done. But, I also have taken this approach, that I'm gonna try to be a little bit more honest about what I need to get done today. Not what I want to get done today, so when I look at what's on my to-do list today, there are 4 things. 4 smaller things. I will get all of those things done, and then if I have to keep moving things, then obviously, they're just things I wanna do, not things I'm actually going to get done.

I would like to toy with this notion myself. I haven't had the courage to do it yet, and that's to get rid of all to-do lists. Thinking that if it's that important, I will remember it. And, this whole to-do list thing, is a plague for me. It's almost like seeing an inbox full of emails that must be answered. I haven't figured out exactly how to manage that, but I feel like I'm making much better progress. I'm doing better at this than I ever have, but there's still a lot more to learn. 

BLAIR: There's a big part of me that just loves that idea of making the to-do list obsolete. I know there's kind of a modern theme out there, that you should replace goals with direction. So, you should be direction oriented, rather than goal oriented, because when you set specific goals, and you don't reach them, or it feels like you're not going to reach them, it's so deflating, whereas just acknowledging that you're going to go in this direction, and leaving off the details, allows you to feel like you're making progress, when otherwise you wouldn't be, if you'd set these certain milestones. That leads me to, I think we've got time for one last thing.

DAVID: Speaking of to-do's we were gonna get through all these things, right? And we've gotten through about 25%. On a podcast about meeting your goals, we've gotten through about a fourth of our goals. This is really great.

BLAIR: Yeah. Well, we're doing less, right? I wanted to ask you, do you believe in the idea of New Year's resolutions? What are your thoughts on the idea of New Year's resolutions, and then the follow up is, do you set them?

DAVID: I used to believe in them, then I quit believing in them, and then about 3 years ago, I started believing in them again. So, I do set them, yes.

BLAIR: What changed?

DAVID: What changed, is that I was just trying to be contrarian, I think. And, everybody set them, and I just wanted to be different, which is sort of a silly plan, but it's how I've run most of my life.

BLAIR: Yeah. Yeah.

DAVID: Then what changed is, I just realized there is so much emotional energy, there's so much time off, there's so much time to think. I love new beginnings. I just love ...

BLAIR: Me, too.

DAVID: Going to bed at night. I love going to bed at night. No matter what's happened during the day, and then I wake up the next day, and it's like ... It just feels great. I wish we could swap the holidays though. I wish the gift giving thing were sort of in November in the US, and then the Thanksgiving one were in December, because I love that holiday so much more. We sort of unhinge it from the commercial side of things, and it's about thanksgiving, it's about new beginnings. We're with family, my fiscal year ends. God, I love setting new goals.

BLAIR: So, do you have a New Year's resolution for the coming year that you want to share?

DAVID: Yes. It's all mental for me. I want to be less hard on myself, mainly. It's not a greediness, wanting more, it's more about conquering new things, not so much for myself, but just because I'm very ambitious, and I like accomplishing things. I just want to live a little bit more in the moment. That's a pretty amorphous one, you know like it's not-

BLAIR: That's interesting, because there's two things that I want to speak to on that. The first is that years ago now, I've always liked New Year's resolutions, but I decided to change them to a theme, what I would now call a direction. So, it's never a specific goal, it's just something that I want to work on. So this year coming to an end, my theme was fight confirmation bias. So there's no specific milestone, but just remind me to keep getting information, input from sources that are beyond what I usually pay attention to. So, if I'm getting a lot of input from one angle on a topic, that I would go seek out other contrary voices. Ones that maybe I don't agree with, but just trying to broaden my mind. So that was the theme for the year coming to an end. My theme for next year is simply, be present.

DAVID: Oh. 

BLAIR: You've essentially said that you've set the same theme for the year.

DAVID: Yeah. Maybe we could be present together, but separately in the same room. We don't have to talk, but ...

BLAIR: Kind of like we are now. The subject of time has become one of my hobbies over the last few years. Trying to understand time. I realize I spent very little time in the past, in fact, I'm fond of saying I'm not sure the past is real. And, I say that mostly because it's a provocative statement. But, I spent very little time in the past, I always have, and one of my goals is to spend less time in the future, as well, and just spend more time in the present.

DAVID: Oh, I like that.

BLAIR: So, that means, more meditation, it means being with somebody when I'm with them. Not checking my phone as much, just enjoying the moment. There are other things for me. It means being outside more, being in situations where it's easy for you to be more present about the moment. But, there's no specific goal, like I think the wrong thing for me would be to say, I'm going to meditate every day.

DAVID: Right.

BLAIR: Because, you're not going to hit that goal, right?

DAVID: Right. Meditate more though, maybe that's okay.

BLAIR: Yeah. And, people who buy gym memberships, if you go to a gym, I mean, if you're a regular gym goer, you know not to go for the first 2 weeks of January, because all the New Year's resolution people are there, but they're gone after 2-3 weeks.

DAVID: They're trying to figure out how to use the machines and everything. They're not wiping them down when they're done.

BLAIR: So, a better resolution, it's not daily exercise. It's the theme of fitness. So, if you take a few days off, you miss a couple of days, that's okay. Your theme is still fitness, your theme is still being present. Maybe the theme is financial performance, right? And that's it. So you can set some specific goals, but maybe it's just financial performance.

DAVID: Yeah. That's a great idea. Somehow we have to get people to share ... We need some hashtag. We'll figure that out. Get people to share a little bit more what that theme is for them, what that direction is for them. Speaking of being in the present, the day before yesterday, I had to get up at 4:00. I had to fly to LA, a 5 hour flight, then fight the wildfires, because a lot of the roads were closed, and it was really rough to see the way people were suffering. I worked with a client for 6 hours, 2 hours of traffic to get back, then fly all the way back to Nashville, and then go straight to the Ryman Auditorium to see Vince Gill in concert last night.

BLAIR: Wow. 

DAVID: I wasn't in the mood for it. I was really tired, I was grumpy, I was short and impatient with Julie. And, then I just thought, you know what? I just need to be in the moment here. And, I got so lost in the moment. It was such a blessing to me, just to enjoy that, and it was a long, 3+ hour concert as well. I got home, and I just felt so revived. It was 11:00pm, which is 2 hours past when I usually go to bed, but just being present in that moment, and not checking my phone. What you just said about not checking phones, too, is like so key. The difference when you're talking with somebody that you're close to, or maybe just casually acquainted with, and they keep checking their phone during the conversation, it just rips the heart out of you, right?

BLAIR: Yeah.

DAVID: I just don't want to do that with people. I want to be totally present with them.

BLAIR: Well, we started out with the goal of this podcast, was to set goals for our clients, but once again, we ended up talking about ourselves, and this was therapy disguised as a podcast, so thank you very much for the therapy, David. Happy New Year's, my friend.

DAVID: Thank you, thank you, my friend. I enjoyed talking with you.