Annual Planning: Q&A

Welcome back to Building Billions. It's a cool day today. I am officially kicking off annual planning for 2025. I get really anxious before these meetings. There's not a lot of things these days that I get nervous about. I feel like I've spoken on stages. I've shown up to events by myself. Like I. I don't get nervous, to

be honest. I get excited about most things. But every year, the night before and the morning before annual planning, I get anxious because our team has put a lot of work into this, and I just I believe it matters. It really matters. And so I just went live prior to our annual planning kickoff that I'm about to rush over to right now. And this live was pretty cool because I was able to talk a little bit more

about how I've gained my confidence. And if you are in a place where you don't have a lot of self-confidence, what exactly you should do in order to get that self-confidence? So enjoy this Q&;A. Good morning, good morning. Hello. Drop your questions in the chat. I will get to them and we're gonna have some fun. How do you stay in shape while working stressful jobs? First of all, I never tell myself that my job is stressful. Even when people try to tell me that my job is stressful.

You know, people who are well intentioned in your life will oftentimes tell you things like that. Oh, you seem so stressed. So first of all, I never tell myself that I have a stressful job. I have my dream job. I have the job of a lifetime. I have the opportunity every single day to show up, to work, to make an impact on people. So never tell yourself you have a stressful job. First and foremost. Secondly, how do I stay in shape despite having a job that is

quite demanding? I would say my job is demanding, so I have to work out first thing in the morning. Like I literally just finished working out. I'm still in my workout clothes, um, which is just a non-negotiable for me. If I don't do it in the morning, I'm not doing it in the evening. Even when I try to, like, walk during the day, it's just hard for me. I forget there's other things going on if I wait for for doing it till the end of the day, I'm not doing it. And the way that I look and

the way that I feel, they matter to me. It's important to me. I want to look good. I want to feel good. So I have to get the workout in in the morning, and I just remove as much friction as possible from getting to my bed, getting from my bed to my gym. So I just make it a priority. I put it in my calendar, I have workout blocks in my calendar, I lift weights, I lift weights four days a week and then do Pilates and or some other form of like abs or cardio at

least one day. So that's five workouts and you just make time for it. Like you put it on your schedule. You make time for it. I recognize that when I do take a week or two off from doing that, I don't feel as good. I'm not as productive. So I think of working out as honestly part of what makes me really good at my job. And if I stop working out. My performance at work also does not maintain and I don't feel as good about it. Sometimes I might work out, uh, or stop working out and prioritize.

Work like that really would be the only reason that I've stopped working out is there's, like, ridiculous travel going on and other demands on my time. So I might be getting more done, but I don't feel good. I don't feel good about myself. I don't feel good about the decision. So make it a priority. Uh, okay. How do you know what aspects of your business you have to focus on first when you have multiple ideas for

one project? Great question. Funny enough, today is actually day one of an annual planning offsite, so I've spent the last couple of weeks working to figure out what are the priorities for our business over the next year because as you can imagine, we get countless opportunities and great ideas thrown our way. So I think you first have to figure out this is my process for it. Like

what is actually going to move the needle? For instance, you might have a product that then you're you're thinking of all these different extensions that you could make to the product. Let's say you own a gym and you're like, well, I could also do supplements, and I could also sell workout equipment, and I could also do online training. Like, you start thinking of all the different ways you could serve your customer until you make $1 million servicing the

first customer with the first product. Do not give any attention to the additional ideas that you have because it's a waste of your time. You haven't even figured out how to scale the first thing, and now you're prioritizing all these other things. So that million dollar mark is such a huge milestone of discipline for business owners that once you get there, you've demonstrated that you have the competencies to understand your customer, acquire that customer service, that customer,

give them a product that they like. And ideally that million dollars is broken down depending on what the business is. Ideally, is at least 40% of your revenue, 40 to 60% of your revenue is repeat business. So it's not just new customers and you're churning out your clients on the back end. But if you're doing less than $1 million in one product to one customer, highly recommend that you don't have multiple ideas for one product. You execute, execute,

execute on the first one. And. A little crazy with that. And then you go from there. Do you drink coffee? I am a sporadic coffee drinker. I technically have a cup a day, but sometimes I only drink a sip of it. It's more like habitual than anything. I drink other types of drinks, like water with electrolytes. I love our solid electrolytes. I have some actually right here. Just put it in this bottle. Love love love our electrolytes. If you've not tried these, they are fantastic. They are amazing.

They're my favorite. We have lemon, lime and crusher. Wave Crusher ten out of ten. I'm just not a lemon lime, girl. But if you like lemon lime, people love that product as well. Best advice for new CEO. Get clear on your targets. You will fail or succeed based off of your clarity on what your targets are. If you're clear what your targets are, you will then be able to provide clarity to your team members about the targets, but

you will never provide clarity like I could. I literally could not do what we're doing today with annual planning. If I wasn't first clear on the target where we're going, what we're doing, what we want to create. It always starts with you having the clarity. So if you don't have the clarity, it's going to be really difficult to lead other people. It's going to be really difficult to find your customer that you're looking for because you don't

know where you're taking them. You don't know what you're doing. So target selection first thing. Second thing. Start every meeting with what is the target? What is the target for this meeting? What is the target for this initiative? You should be saying this multiple times a day. I learned this from Grant every single time I talk to Grant. It doesn't matter what the initiative is. His is first question is always hey guys, what's the target? Hey guys,

what's the target? Hey guys, what's the target? It's so easy to get lost in the freaking minutia. That's actually the challenge that I'm going to overcome today. I'm not going to have this challenge because I'm going to overcome

this challenge. But when you bring 25 people, 25 leaders into a room that all have different perspectives on what's working, what's not working based on their department needs, and you have fixed resources in an organization, how do you get people to focus on the macro, get aligned on the big picture, and then create a space for them to be able to. Solve the problems they need to solve for their departments. But it's never it's never in a

group setting. The group setting is for the target and the clarity and the target and the alignment around the target, where everything is going and what the challenges are across the whole group so that they can then go be responsible every single day for alleviating those challenges and really understanding the challenges that other people that their department creates

for other people if they don't solve these problems. So that starts with you, though, because if I went in today with a PowerPoint presentation that didn't have clear targets for every single department, and I didn't know what I wanted, we would be going a million different directions. We still will go. We'll go a thousand different directions because people have perspectives, but we will not go a million different directions because ultimately the direction has already been set. The

direction is not a group activity. The direction is a leader activity. The direction is a CEO activity. This is where we're going and then the how and when the specific coordinates. That's a team activity. I'm trying to get better. My makeup is not really know how well that initiative is going. It's fun getting better at something that you've been doing every single day for your whole life that you just don't really want to. I don't know, I forget to do it better. Uh. Love you. Thank you

for your leadership. Uh, favorite memory of Chris? What's up? Mom? Uh, it's my brother's birthday today. And my favorite memory with Chris. Oh, my gosh, I have so many great memories with my brother. First things first, guys, if you can figure out a way to incorporate your family into your business. Single greatest gift in my life. I adore working with my brother, and I also get to work with my husband's brother. And I'm not saying that it's not difficult and challenging.

It doesn't have its own set of things you have to navigate in a business, but man, it is so rewarding. It is just honestly one of the one of the things I think I will look back on this time frame in my life and be so appreciative for. Uh. So, uh, favorite memory with him? Probably going to Disney World two years ago. We were just like little two little kids going to Disney Drive in there together listening to Morgan Wallen.

Sometimes it's the littler things, but it was just the two of us and we just got to be, I don't know, it felt like we were 12 years old. We're grown ass adults, but we were acting like we're 12 years old. Uh, how do I get accepted to luxury affiliate? Do you promote luxury? If I were to look at your Instagram page, do you look like, act like, Promote in a way that is. Attractive to a luxury client.

Because if you're posting things that aren't a luxury, a luxury affiliate isn't interested in having you represent them because you're going to degrade their brand. I think one of the easiest ways to collaborate with people, affiliates, or just people that you want to meet online, it's this idea of like user generated content and matching the brand and the aesthetic that you're looking to have represent you. But I use that because I don't generally like that's not

my business. Becoming an affiliate for somebody else. But I do want to attract people like I think of like Elena Cardone, when I wanted to put Elena Cardone in my life and get her attention and have her repost my content because she liked it. I would post things that made her look good. Like you post things that make the other person look good. You don't post things to make you look good. They don't care about you.

They care about them. So even when people like tag me in posts, if I don't look good in the picture, I'm not reposting it. If I don't sound smart in the clip or if I'm. It's like a weird like stage shot where I'm like, eh, I'm not reposting it, but they think like, oh, Natalie Dawson. Like I'm tagging, you know, post it in my brand. Post it in a way. Don't use your fonts, use my fonts if you want me to repost it. Now, if you don't, and you're just sharing with your friends that you're at

some cool event or you're you've bought some cool product. Okay, that's great. But if you're really trying to meet people and collaborate, like really collaborate, the best question you can be asking yourself is what's in it for them? How do I make it so interesting for them? How do I make them look good? How do I just really highlight them and make them look successful and make them look bigger than they are? Because I'm advocating for them?

There is nothing like the power of somebody else saying things about your business, you, your brand in a way that makes it so that you don't even have to say it. That actually is the power of a real brand. Like a hold on. I've got to finish this. There we go. That's the power of like, a, a powerhouse brand. So. That's how I become a luxury affiliate. I would be promoting.

I'd be very targeted as to which brands I want to be a luxury affiliate for, because Prada's aesthetic is different than Brunello Cucinelli aesthetic, which is different than the Hermes aesthetic. So you pick which part of luxury. You're looking to be represented by become an affiliate for. And then how do you ingratiate them? Ingratiate, ingratiate, ingratiate. Make them look good. Create content and offerings in your social profile that really highlight the strength of that brand, and

they'll be interested in using affiliate. How do you have energy of two people? Ask this how do you navigate when you don't feel the energy to do your tasks? I just do it anyway. I remind myself that people are counting on me. Even if people aren't counting on me, I'm like, wait, I'm counting on me. I don't want to be the person that doesn't do what I say I'm going to do. I remind myself of our core values. Oh, shoot. If if we say that we're disciplined here, that's the

fallacy with core values. People think core values are like the, like, easy things for the founders. No they're not. Where's how they choose to continue to show up. It is not easy being disciplined. I loathe doing the things that I say I'm going to do. I would much rather not do what we're about to do today and sit here, clean my closet. Oh, I could come up with a thousand things I'd rather be doing than what I'm about

to do today. But I'm doing what I'm going to do because I know that it's the right thing in a business. I don't feel like it. I don't want to. So if I don't feel the energy, I just do it anyway. And I make up stories that I tell myself about why it matters. Because you just have to make your life be important. If you don't think your life is important, no one's going to think your life is important for you. So I'm going to make it important. Hey,

who's who's going to be really let down? If I don't do this, who's going to who's going to be negatively impacted if I don't do this, what's going to get? Stopped. Or, uh, who would believe in me less if I didn't do this? Like, I just pulled these different levers that I know work for myself. One of them would be imagining that somebody that I really respect is in the room with me. Like, okay, if Elon Musk was in the room with me, would I be talking about how I don't have energy? No,

we freaking lame. That'd be ridiculous. So therefore, if I thought about Elon Musk being there, how would I show up differently if Elon Musk was there? Okay, great. I now know what I'd show up like, so I'm just going to act like he's there. I also imagine writing a book one day and writing two books, but I imagine if I'm going through like a really challenging time where I don't want to act the way that I should act, or I'd rather just like, hide or retreat or.

Watch television and just, like, escape from whatever it is that I'm trying to not do. Uh, I imagine I'm writing a book one day and I'm like, and then this person was attacking me and they said all of these things, and none of them were true. And so I decided to watch Netflix. Like, that is a shit book. That's a terrible book. I cried. I ate starbursts and went to town on Selling Sunset. No one wants to read that book. That book versus I got back to work.

I still showed up for my team. I didn't attack those people. I had integrity, I was honest, I didn't go the low route like, I want to be able to tell that story. And so I use these different levers to make my self do whatever it is I should be doing, despite not feeling like I want to do that thing. Have you ever struggled with social anxiety?

If so, what things did you do to overcome it? Um. I think I have struggled with social anxiety, and I struggled with it because I wasn't confident in myself in what I brought to the table. So. I remember I used to get really nervous to go out to dinner with, like, business people in my early 20s because I didn't want to say anything stupid. But I also didn't want to sit there and not say anything for four hours. So. I honestly would like I don't know that in the moment.

I handled things super well. I don't know what strategies I would have. That's actually a really good question. I've never, ever thought about this before. How would I have to handle social anxiety? I tried to just stay as present as possible and realize that no one is looking at me. Nobody cares. Everybody is in their own head. So, like,

what am I worth? Like, really that worried about? That's how it would make me feel better in the moment of just remembering that people are super self-centered and no one actually is going to remember that I was in this room. Um, and then for me, I would actually the most successful thing that I do from a mindset standpoint, especially in social situations like that, there we go. The most successful thing that I do is I harness how uncomfortable I am in that moment. Like, I really am,

like I feel the discomfort that I have. And that is so motivating and useful to me the next day when I don't want to wake up early, to go work on a project, or to go work out, or to do whatever, the thing is that I don't feel

good about myself. And I just, like, remind myself of, like, what is it going to be like in a year from now when you show up to that same dinner or you meet those people again, or you have that conference and it's the 2025 version of it, and you're different and you feel confident and you show up in that room, you're like, this is what I've created. This is who I am. This is what I do. Maybe

you're a bad public speaker. For me, that was something I would get a lot of anxiety around the public speaking. So I would use like the discomfort that I had instead of shying away from it to really think about, okay, how am I going to get better at public speaking so that next time I don't have the same nervousness? We're going to try to do lashes today, guys. I

just don't know if I'm feeling it. Uh, so in the moment, you know, it's not like you can make yourself super impressive as soon as you feel social anxiety. But for me, my social anxiety actually came from not being very impressive and knowing that I wasn't very impressive. And so I used it to encourage myself, motivate myself, and really ask myself deeper questions about why do I feel this? And social anxiety. Do you think, like Ariana Grande when she shows up to her room feels social anxiety?

Probably not. She's freaking Ariana Grande. She spent her whole career doing really cool shit that she's known for. Taylor Swift probably doesn't feel so social. Anxiety. Why? She's Taylor freakin Swift. So how do you become Chelsea Wilson? It's like, oh, this woman has created all of this amazing impact and the real estate space. And I think that, at least for me, is what actually created the social anxiety was not having not feeling like I'm Natalie freaking Dawson. Whereas today.

I don't again, I just don't struggle with it as much. As they don't need it, I feel like I glued it onto my eyelashes though, instead of my actual frickin lid. Your advice has helped me out. Thank you. Keep going. Keep. Keep doing it. Keep implementing. I am a palm reader. Don't really believe in that, to be honest with you. It's not my thing. Oh, there's a fake Natalie Dawson on here. Listen, fake Natalie Dawson, Natalie Dawson, 736. Hope

you're still on here right now. Disgusting. You are disgusting. You need to stop. Stop scamming people. Stop being an unethical person in this world. You do not need to drag my reputation in the mud because you're trying to make a buck. There are so many other ways for you to make money, so you should be disgusted with yourself right now. You should stop it. It's ridiculous. It's gross. You do not have to make money like this and go do something that actually allows you to feel good

about the work that you're putting in. Like go find any other career than scamming people. It's gross. Stop. You don't have to be gross forever. I bet you have a lot of social anxiety. People who do unethical shit have social anxiety. Don't be unethical. Guys, this is like freaking life lesson when you feel like shit about yourself because you are unethical and you're scamming people, or you're telling somebody that you do something that you don't actually do.

Whatever level of unethical like whoever is pretending to be me on Instagram is scamming people for forex. Like pretty freaking unethical. But whatever your version of unethical is, maybe you tell people that in your business you do something, you're a personal trainer, and you say that you should be walking 10,000 steps a day and you haven't walked for two years. I don't know, whatever your version of ethics being unethical is. That's why you retreat from people.

That's why that's. That's why you have this, like, nervousness. It's not actually because you're a bad person. It's because you're doing something that's not ethical and you actually are a good person. So you retreat and you want to protect other people. So just like, cut the shit. Stop doing that stuff. Natalie Dawson 764. It's ridiculous just to go do something else. Go make money in a different way. Oh, I think a filter just came on. We don't know

how I did that. No clue how I did that. Natalie, what do you suggest you do when people wish to improve their self-image? What helped you, uh, to improve your self-image? I would highly recommend that you start working out. That's honestly what helped me. I had to confront why I was uncomfortable speaking on stage. And it was because I didn't feel comfortable in my body. I gained like £15 and I really was like, clothes. Oh gosh, I hate this filter. There we go. Um.

single thing at once. I started by fixing one thing, and then I was like, oh, I can trust myself. And then I started fixing another thing. And all of a sudden, when you realize that you do all these things that you don't like, but that you can actually fix all of these things that you don't like, you feel so much more. You just feel better about yourself. You feel like you can change and you can do

life differently. All because. You look to something that you didn't like and you're like, ah, I don't like that. I don't like how I talk to that person. I don't like how I feel when I am around those people. I don't like that I am not able to stick up for people and I just talk shit, even though I really like those people. Like, whatever it is in your life that you don't feel good about, as soon as you start to realize that you can change those things,

then you just. For me, I just feel like I've been on this quest to change all of these things that I don't like about myself or my character or my integrity. And it's been a six year process. Just looking at things, understanding that I don't like certain things. Okay, now I'm going to fix those things. And then all of a sudden your self-image is like, wow, I'm a I'm an ethical person. People should trust me. People should listen to me because I do the right thing. I

don't hurt people. I actually help people. I make the right decisions. I don't lie to people. I have to have hard conversations with myself than I do things that make me feel really uncomfortable. All right, party people, I gotta run. It is quarterly team meeting or annual planning day.