PART 1 – 23 lessons from 2023

Transcript

2023 has been a huge year for me. I released my first book, which became a bestseller. I’ve traveled a lot both domestically and internationally, and I’ve done a lot of personal growth work throughout the year. So in today’s episode of the podcast, I wanted to share with you 23 lessons that I learned in the year 2023.

Health is wealth

The first lesson that I want to share with you is that health is wealth. As you may or may not know, last year I was in a major car accident. My car was rear-ended by a semi-trailer truck, and as a result, I incurred a really severe whiplash injury. I had no idea how much this accident would affect me, but it’s been causing recurring neck back issues ever since then. And one of the things that I learned through the rehabilitation process is really how important your health is. I know that sounds cliche, but if you’ve been through an experience where you’ve had a chronic illness or injury, you will know what I’m talking about. You don’t realize how lucky you are until something is taken away from you, until your health or your ability to do things as you had before is taken away from you.

 So one of the big lessons that I learned this year is that if something is going on for you health-wise, you have to invest the time and money into getting it sorted out. If I compare where I was last year, I was completely unable to work, do basic things around the household, and I know that I will have a chronic pain condition. However, I really think about how different my life could look now if I hadn’t invested the time and financial resources into recovering. There’s also been other health issues that I’ve had this year, which is really unlike me. I’m usually quite a healthy person, but I’ve also had recently some really bad migraines, headaches going on, which is also a result of the neck injury. I’ve also had some female issues going on, some really heavy periods that I’ve gone and had an operation to help improve to sort that issue out.

And it’s funny how often we just put up with things we think I don’t have time or we don’t actually take the time to actually go and improve our health. But getting yourself sorted out physically is absolutely imperative to have a happy and full life. And also to be successful in business, your health really is your wealth.

Investing in your business to uplevel

Number two, sometimes investing in your business in itself creates an up level. Now, bear with me on this. I recently hired my coach. She was actually a coach of mine from a couple of years ago and I hired her again this year. And it’s funny, at the time I was going through a bit of a cashflow strain, cash was tight and I was a bit like, oh, is this the right time to be leaning in? Before my coach and I had even had a single session, my business had a big up level, and I swear there is something so powerful just about the energetics of making the decision to invest that in turn has a knock on effect to your actual performance in business.

Sometimes an up level can happen just from the process of saying, I am ready to uplevel, I’m ready to invest. Sounds a bit unusual if this is new to you, but perhaps you can resonate. Maybe there’s been an example where you’ve done the same thing, you’ve made a decision and before you’ve even done any of the work, before you’ve even hired that person, things to start to flow. Things just start to click. Well, that certainly was a big learning for me in 2023.

Track your finances

The next learning or lesson from 2023 for me is always keep an eye on your finances. Now, you might think, hang on, Clare, you’re an accountant. You’re the numbers girl who’s always telling us about this, and this year was an example of why this work is so important. So in 2023, I launched my book and as part of that process, I wanted to do a book tour. I wanted to go and host events right across the country. Now, the process of running live events, and I’m going to talk about this in one of my separate lessons, but it was a big financial investment and the book itself had a lot of financial outlays for me and I truthfully at times, cash was really tight for me through 2023 at various stages. So the power of staying right across your cashflow forecast right across your profit and loss is absolutely imperative. I was keeping an eye on my cashflow. I was having these meetings and it really was what supported me to get through the year, particularly as there were a lot of investments with having a strong handle on cashflow and on profit.

The power of being still (and having holidays)

The next big lesson for the year number four is the power of being still the power of having holidays. If like me, you are someone who’s a bit of an energizer bunny, you like to just go, go, go. You might think I don’t need to have quiet time, but something I’ve learned in my nearly eight years in business now is that often your best ideas, your biggest breakthroughs come not when you are go, go going being really busy, but actually when you slow down, chill out and stop. There is a lot of power in taking a break and if there’s something I want to encourage you to do into 2024, scheduling those holidays and also just take the time for calm, particularly during the busy times, that is where the magic happens when you slow down, when you stop.

Things can take longer than you hope

The next lesson from 2023 is that sometimes things take longer to happen than you’d hoped. Now if you are a regular listener of the podcast, you’ll know about my waterfront home, how we manifested this house living by the beach, but we haven’t quite got the dream house yet. We are living in our cute little beach shack right on the water. And something that I’ve learned in life is that sometimes things take a little bit longer to happen, a little bit longer to manifest than we’d originally hoped. I’m looking back, we are coming up to two years living in this house now, and I really thought by now that we would’ve been able to build our dream home. Sometimes things take a little bit longer than you’d hoped, and that’s okay. As I shared in, I think it was a recent episode of the podcast, when you look back on things in the big scheme of life, he realized it doesn’t matter if something took a little bit longer than you’d hoped. I shared the story about how when I was waiting for my engagement ring, it felt like it was taking forever, and now that I’ve been with my hubby coming up 10 years in 2024, it’s like, would it have mattered if it was an extra year or two? Of course not in the big scheme of life. So sometimes the things that you want take a little bit longer than you’d hoped.

Things can also happen quickly and you need to be ready

The next lesson is almost a complete paradox or flip of that one, which is sometimes things happen really quickly. The flip side of that is that sometimes something that might’ve seemed like a goal, it’s a really long way away, can happen really, really quickly. I know this year I had a big income uplevel. I’d been kind of stuck in my income for a while, and then I was able to elevate my income back to where it had been. I was talking about cashflow that happened literally when I made the decision to invest to work with my coach. Again, I had an income up level. I’ve also had experiences this year where suddenly like opportunities were just flooding to me. I put on the vision board that I wanted to be doing paid speaking in 2023, and all of these opportunities just seem to come in, boom, boom, boom really quickly. While sometimes your goals may take ages to come to fruition, sometimes big up levels, big shifts, big changes can happen really quickly.

Start small and keep increasing (from small things big things grow)

The next lesson that I wanted to share with you from 2023 is from little things, big things grow. The small things really do add up, and there’s so many examples that I can share here, but I’m going to share one particular example that’s actually not business related, and it’s about building a share portfolio. So not that I have an enormous portfolio by any stretch of the imagination, but I made a commitment that I really wanted to be able to hold money to not spend it all, to have money that’s just there that just we’re growing as an investment. And one of the ways that we did that is through shares, and we started off really small. I just was putting $20 a week into this account and now I go in and have a look and I’m like, whoa, it’s really cool and crazy how quickly that the share portfolio that I do have has been able to grow. And the reason that I want to share this with you is that in business, in life, health, relationships, all different areas of your life, it is the little things that matter. You start small and then you increase it, increase it, then suddenly you’re like, whoa, I am leaps ahead of where I was from. Little things, big things grew.

The years do fly past so take time to be present

The next lesson, lesson number eight that I wanted to share with you is that the years really do fly. Past life is short. We have one precious short period of time on this planet and the years really do disappear. I am really starting to notice at the moment, every time I look at my kids, I swear they are taller and they’re talking and having conversations with us and developing their own little personalities, and you really do realize how precious life is and how quickly the time does fly past. You really do have to make the most of this life.

Sometimes goals manifest is weird ways

The next lesson that I wanted to share from 2023 is that sometimes things manifest. Sometimes your goals come to fruition in really freaking weird ways. We sort of sometimes set an intention about how something will happen and sometimes the universe has other ideas. So let me share a couple of examples.

I shared earlier about how in 2023 I was in a car accident, the start in 2022, at the start of 2022, I’d said that I wanted to upgrade my car. We had A BMW at the time, but it was a bit of an older BMW, and I’m like, I’m ready for a newer model. I’m ready to upgrade to the next version of this car. And well, it kind of happened in a different way than I thought that it might’ve because our car got written off, so we had to buy a new car. At the start of this year, I wrote down that I wanted a Tesla, not really sure why or whether we’re thinking we’d have a two car family or something, but I just think Tesla’s are cool and I’d wanted to get one. I love how good they are for the environment. And so I’d put that down on my vision board for the year, but at the time I was kind of like, this doesn’t even really make any sense. We don’t really need two cars in our family. We can ride to a lot of places by the beach. We actually rarely don’t really use our car that much, but I’ve written it down anyway because I’m a big believer if there’s something that’s on your heart, if there’s something you desire, put it out there.

Anyway, long story short, the BMW that we got after my car got written off and we bought the more modern BMW, we got sold a lemon. So even though it was this beautiful car, really nice leather interior, big sun, really cool, it actually mechanically is a lemon. There’s a whole other story behind, but basically major engine damage. We need to get new brakes. There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on, and we got to the point where we’ve realized it is not a sound investment to pay any more money to get this car fixed and we need to replace it. So I’ve now bought a Tesla, not the way that I thought this would come about. Not ideal, but guess what? It’s happened. And sometimes the things that we want do come to us in unusual ways, so just be open to that.

Live events are a vibe (do more!)

The next learning we are up to number 10, my gosh is that live events are a vibe I love in-person events. I love hosting events. And this year I’ve hosted my series of the profit parties, my book launch events right across the country, and I also recently hosted a planning retreat, a one day workshop far out. Every time I run a live event, I get to the end of it and I’m like, that was so flip and fun. It was so cool. The level of connection both from me to the attendees but also amongst the attendees at the event is just second to none. I love, love live events, and I’m going to be planning to do more of them in 2024. Speaking of which, put the ninth to the 10th of March, 2024 in your diary because I’m going to be hosting a retreat at the Gold Coast here in Queensland, Australia. It’s locked in venues, locked in. There are only a limited number of spots, so there’s only eight places available. It’s going to be a very small, intimate group. So if you want to be there, mark the diaries and make sure you keep an ear out on this podcast. Keep an eye on my socials so that you find out about it when I do a launcher.

Live events have can easily run at a loss

Now following on from talking about live events, the next learning that I’ve had is that live events require a hell of a lot more effort than you think if you want to run them, and they can be low or even run at a loss.

So my profit party events that I hosted all ran at a loss. You might think, why would you run events running at a loss? And it was a bit frustrating, I guess, because a couple of people were like, I can’t believe you’re selling tickets to these events. And I’m like, firstly, it’s an epic networking event. You get a copy of my book, but I’m losing thousands of dollars on every single one of these that I host. People thinking that I’m making a killing on these. I was losing money on all of them. So it’s been a big learning lesson for me. Having done that. I knew that I’d be running them at a loss because obviously I’m a spreadsheet. I do a budget before any of these things. So that was part of the plan. But something that I’ve learned is that coming into the new year, I want to be running my events, my live things in a way that creates profit so that I can keep running them in a sustainable way.

It’s never too late to make a change

And the next lesson that I want to share with you is that it’s never too late to make a change. One particular goal that I’ve achieved in 2023 is losing some weight. So after I had my second son, after I had my first son, I shrunk back down to the same weight that I was before I had him. And after my second son, I just have not been able to lose the weight, and he’s now six years old. And I’d kind of got to the point where I’m like, maybe I’m just at this age and stage of my life where it’s not going to happen. And this year I’ve been able to lose not a ton of weight, but I’ve lost weight and I feel great. I feel healthier, I feel really good about myself. Now, the reason I share this, this is not about weight. This is about saying it’s never too late to make a change because like I said, I kind of got to the point where I’m like, maybe this is just the way that it is now. And this year showed me that you can make a change at any time. The irony is that the time when it actually came to manifestation was almost when I let go of it. I did a lot of work about falling in love with me. Again, I’ll link to the episode in the show notes before today’s episode, but really getting comfortable with my body and being like, do you know what? I’m going to love my body the way that it is. And that’s kind of the year when actually, ironically, it all kind of clicked into place.

The reason why I want to share this is that if you think it’s too late to start the business, it’s too late to uplevel my income. It’s too late to work on my relationship or make new friends. It’s never too late to make a change. I’m going to stop this episode here and make this a two-parter because as you can hear, there’s a lot of lessons that I want to share with you from the year 2023. So make sure you tune into next week’s episode of the podcast where I’ll share the last group of lessons that I’ve had from this year. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll chat to you soon.

I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a podcast. So I’d be very grateful if you could take the time to hit subscribe, write me a review and share any of your favorite episodes with your audience on social media. The more people that we can reach, the more people we can empower to earn more in their business because you can and should be earning more money.