275: Cheers to 2024!

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. Every year Ceil DiGuglielmo and I sit down and chat about the prior year. We talk about the books we've read, some of the things that have happened in our lives, and how those experiences have shaped us to be the business owners that we are and that we are becoming. I am excited to, once again, invite you to listen in as Ceil and I discuss the year 2024.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Well, hello Michele, how are you?

Michele Williams: I am doing great, Ceil, how about you? I'm great.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: You and I both look forward to this every year and we've been told by our listeners that they look forward to it too. And it's our end-of-the-year wrap-up, which is just mind-boggling to me. This year has flown by for me, I don't know about you.

Michele Williams: Yeah, it really has flown by. It's funny, I, for some reason last year feels like such a clear year in my mind. We had a wedding, a trip to Alaska, those were separate events. We had a family wedding of our oldest son and then we had a trip to Alaska. And then we renovated some portion of our home, our kitchen area. And then this year we kicked the year off with renovating the family space and some other things. But this year because, I mean, we've had some exciting news, but we didn't have big events that we were trying to get to. It was more of a relaxed because we'd had, you know, multiple weddings and everything happening for a couple of years there and cancer and all the things this year just kind of felt like it was I'm not going to say coast because we didn't. It just felt more of just a relaxed year. And so now when I look back, it's almost like I cannot believe we're at the end of this year.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right. And I think it's an interesting dichotomy when you have a big event or things that you're working on in your life. It does kind of define the year differently because we just had a wedding, but it also takes up a lot of your time and takes your time differently. We had a wedding this year, and so I'm still kind of feeling like, oh, it's the. We're, we're recording this at the end of October, like, how is this possible that we're at the end of October already?

Michele Williams: I know.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: So, yeah, I feel like the year's pretty clear to me, but it did go by pretty quickly.

Michele Williams: Yeah, I would agree with that. I'm kind of ready for it to be done.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah, I am too.

Michele Williams: From a political standpoint, I'm ready for us to be done. By the time this comes out, hopefully things will be in a good place for our country. But right now, it just feels weighty and I'm just like, ready to be done with that.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: My husband and I were saying if it wasn't for DVR, we wouldn't watch any television at all because the commercials have just like overwhelmed us. And at a time, I watched a lot less television this year. It was actually literally one of my goals was to watch less. Not because I felt like I watched too much. It just distracted me. I would turn on the news in the morning while I was getting ready and doing things, and I realized, like, it took me longer to get ready because I kept stopping to watch television. And that having been said, I DVR'd a lot of things so that I could zip through it and go, yeah, I don't care about that. Yeah, I don't care about that. But I also feel like I've done, I've been very careful most of my life to say, I don't want to rush through this. I want to make sure we're still enjoying this. I want to make sure, you know, all of the above. And especially in preparing for my older daughter's wedding, I had you other friends who said, take the time to enjoy all of it. And we enjoyed the planning, and we enjoyed getting ready for it. My daughter and now son in law were just really agreeable. We had a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time together getting ready for their wedding. And the day of, I kept reminding myself, be in the moment, don't worry about that. That's a minor thing. That's not anything to get upset about. You and I already talked about this. There are many things that we could have spent our energy on. What we wanted to see was our families together and our daughter and son in law enjoying their first day of married life together. We succeeded in all of those things. There were no events that were catastrophic. There were all the things that we're already laughing about. And so that being in the moment, I think, was the focus of my year, was not trying to get past, get past, get past. But at the same time, now that it's the end of October, I'm ready for this year to be done.

Michele Williams: Yeah. You know, it's interesting that we had this is unscripted and we didn't write questions, and so, it's very interesting that you shared that view. And we all talk about being in the moment and being very present. I know that I said to Joel at one point, because this year didn't have any big events, it was just a year of just doing the same things every day. It started to feel stale to me. So that I said to him, you know, it's almost like I'm waiting to live my life when I'm done with this next thing.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: And I said, but the truth of the matter is my life is being where I am. I was talking to a young woman yesterday who owns a little boutique where I shop, in our small town. I think she said she was 35-36 years old, the owner of this little dress boutique. And she kind of shared the same sentiment. She's like, I found that I was getting up in the morning, getting dressed, and for the day, the same way, taking the same route to work every day. And so, we started talking about, you remember my words last year were soft, kind and curious. We started talking and I told her, I said, “You know, I'm almost 60 and I'm feeling the same things”. We started just chatting about what it would mean to be curious in our day. So that if I wonder where that road goes, instead of just driving by it every day and wondering, take the road. Go see where it goes. Like, put yourself in a position to be more curious even in our day to day. What would it be like if I changed my morning process just a little bit? What might it be like if I gave into that interest or, you know, I'm talking about in a healthy way.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: Sometimes we get in these ruts and so then our days, and our work become so performative.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: It's not life giving. It might be life giving for somebody else because we perform the duty, but it's not also feeding a part of us. So that's really been on my mind a lot this year. Especially in the last couple of months. Joel and I, we have exciting news. Now that all the weddings are done, we have, by the time we air this, we will have our first grandson. As you said, we are right now at the end of October, and he's due within the next few weeks.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I know. I'm so excited. Congratulations.

Michele Williams: We are stinking happy, just over the moon to be a grandmother and to watch my son and his wife become parents. There are no words for it. Like, if we were filming this in December, I'd probably be bubbling, you know, just overwhelmed, in tears right now. And I can let myself go there, but I'm super excited about that. And we actually have another grandchild coming in April from our other son and his wife that just got married last year. We don't know the sex of that child at the time of our taping. We will find out this weekend, but that's going to shift our life next year. So, my husband and I have started talking about things. They both live about. I'm going to just say, on average, 40 minutes from us, one to the east and one to the west. So, they're not in the same area. They're about an hour and a half from each other, but about 40 minutes. We're, like, right in the middle of the two of them.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Okay.

Michele Williams: And so, what do we want our life to look like? To be able to see our grandchildren. Because they're not going to be able to pack them up and bring them here all the time. And nor would I expect that. So, you know, we're not expecting them to come to us all the time. We know our lives and the rhythms of our life are going to shift, and we want to create time to be present with our grandchildren and with their families, knowing that this is ushering in that new era. Okay. At the same time, I kind of think I mentioned it last year, Joel's parents are inching towards 90, and my parents are inching towards 80. And so, they are now to the point that they need help with some of the things that, I mean, even some things that we can't help with, we have to take our younger sons with us because it's heavier. The heavier lifting, the younger crowd, we start pulling in. We live in Georgia, and they're all in South Carolina. We're finding ourselves going into South Carolina a little bit more or with intentionality, to just help with some of these bigger projects that they need and so our time is not just going to be our own in this next little bit, we recognize that. And so, our conversation has been in business and in life, how do we actually live it and do what? We talk about it all the time, but it's almost like when you're pushed against something, like, all right, now I'm really going to find out what is most important that I do. What is it that I do best? Like, I am narrowing my offerings next year down to how do I serve the masses with what I need to serve them with, and how do I serve, like, kind of that narrow group of individuals that I'm going to work with one to one. Because I can't do it all. So how do I lay that out so that I am doing the best of what I do for those people?

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: And I'm looking at how I live my life. What is the best of my time is we don't even watch TV, as far as general TV. Now we. I can binge some Netflix. Like, the good thing is I don't have any. You know, we've been watching the Last Kingdom, which is an older one about, you know, Europe, and we're just like, we're speeding them right through, Man. I get. I can get through five seasons like nobody's business.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: But we don't even go sit down until like, I don't know, 7:30 at night. But we go to bed a little after nine, so we're watching like, two. That's about the max, right?

Ceil DiGuglielmo: That's about the max.

Michele Williams: Then we're back to sleep on the 45 minutes. And no, you're just, like, zooming it. Right. But just finding those new rhythms.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: I feel like I am present. Not just in the big moments like the marriages and the present every single day. I'm curious in my environment every single day, not just about the work, but about the work and about the other things that are surrounding me. Curious about the path in the backyard, curious about what my neighbor is doing. Curious about where my best friends are right now or what my parents might need, or do I just want to call and talk to them because I've got the ability to. Slowing down enough to see and partake of those things.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah. So, it's interesting you mentioned in one of your recent podcasts about looking at next year and talking about making the time in your life to be sure that you can be present and be the grandmother that you want to be. You have a name picked out already, don't you?

Michele Williams: I do.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Do you want to share it?

Michele Williams: Yeah. I don't care. So, my family nickname since I've been a little girl has been Chele Belle. So, half of Michele, the Chele part with Belle on the end. Good Southern right at the end. Chele Belle. And so, we're going to go with Belle.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I love that. I love that.

Michele Williams: So, I'm just going to go with Belle, because that's generally what I'm called anyway. And my husband has chosen to go with Pop. The truth of the matter is, and as any good grandparent will tell you, your name will be whatever that child calls you. And I get it. But as a point, this is what's so interesting. Some have said, well, why don't you just let that child call you Chele Belle? Well, because I understand how children speak, and the ‘sh’ sound is not a first sound. The first sounds are b. hard sounds. I'm choosing a name with a hard sound because it'll be one of the first ones they can say.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.

Michele Williams: That's why I do that. Because my mother was going to be Grammy. Well, they can't get the GR out, so, she became Mimi because that's what they could handle.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: And so, I just cut the Chele part out because I knew they might be able to do that when they're older, but when they're younger, they are not going to be able to get to that. So, Belle is quick, it's fast, and I'll know it because I used to answering to it.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly. Have you seen the YouTube video where the grandmothers go shopping for their name?

Michele Williams: No.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Priceless. You'll have to look it up. If I find a link, I'll send it to you. But it's like they're at a jewelry counter, and the salesperson is opening boxes with necklaces, and they have either Nana or Grammy or whatever. And the woman is envisioning what that name connotates to her. And of course, one is an old lady with an Afghan, and she's knitting. She's like, no, no, that one's not for me. One of them is Glamma, and she's, you know, got the wind blowing through her hair. It's hilarious. And then a woman comes in. She's got a little box. She goes, I'd like to return this name. It doesn't fit me. It's so well done.

Michele Williams: I'll look at it. I'll look it up. Well, I've already bought myself a sweatshirt with Belle on it, established 2024. And for now, I'm going with Belle. That's what we're. That's what.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: There you go. Michele, it's interesting to me how often things come up and you talked about the waiting. And I know that for a lot of us it's I'll wait till I lose weight before I do this. I'll wait till my kids get out of school before I do this. And I think, especially as women, we spend a lot of time waiting because our job is to manage our families and our households and everything else.

Michele Williams: Life and success are out there.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: Right.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right. As opposed to being happy in this moment. And you and I were talking about the fact that I had gotten a lot of advice about taking the moments around my daughter's wedding to make sure that I was enjoying it. We unfortunately started our year on a terrible note. One of our nieces died very unexpectedly and very suddenly of pancreatitis. And she had five children. She and my nephew and the youngest is 11. And to watch them lose their mother, who was, she was one of those moms that I'm glad that she didn't have children when my children were little because she put me to shame. Just everything was about her kids, and she did everything for them. Watching them process their grief and watching them try to find what their new normal was and we just kept saying, we have Christmas Eve at our house and everyone in my sister in law's family was here. And we remembered to take a picture, which doesn't always happen. And just less than a week later, she was gone. And it was one of those reminders that had I been bustling off and not taking care of things, I might have not taken that moment to take that group picture. And let me tell you, we were all jammed onto our furniture. We don't fit on that furniture. People were on the floor, they were standing. And it's just such a precious gift to me to have that photograph that we're all in and a reminder that this is it, this moment, this time. You and I have talked about this many times on the podcast about moments like these, reminding us and getting a cancer diagnosis and saying, I don't know what the future is going to look like and why are we waiting? What are we waiting for? And so, I think that reminder about which path am I taking? I remember taking a walk with one of my girlfriends and she said, it's a park that we walk at frequently. She said, can we go in the other direction today? I said, that's a great idea. And it looked like a different park.

Michele Williams: Yeah. You know, it's funny, I go to Pilates. That's one of my outlets. And I make myself go to different reformers and different sides of the studio, because our studio has reformers on the left, because I found myself going to the same reformer all the time. We all do that because it felt very comfortable. And I realized that I actually responded to my environment differently, to the cues differently, to the work, differently when I put myself in a different place and position. And so now when I walk in every day, it's funny, I think I mentioned this last year to the Pilates instructor, one of my favorites. She always says, let's honor and work with the body that you walked in here with today. And so, in other words, I'm not forcing my body to do something that it's just not capable of doing today. But am I having a knee problem today or shoulder? How do I love myself and my body enough that I'm careful around those things? And so, when I walk into the studio every day, I ask myself, hm, what looks like a good reformer to work out on today? Do I want to be towards the front of the studio or towards the back of the studio? There are 12 reformers. I think that's right. Like six or eight on each side. Like, where do I. Where do I want to be here? And just that change in view has opened up so much for me. I'll tell you something else that I thought about when you mentioned the whole, you know, have I done all these things, am I getting it done? What does success look like? Part of the other kind of, I'm going to say, intentionality that has come to my attention over the last, I would say probably month has been not only that, how am I being present in the right now? How can I be curious? Like trying different reformers, going on a different path, trying something a little different. What if the process was changed? Like, this is life and business. Right. But the second reminder is that we are becoming who we want to become as people, as business owners, the business itself, based on the habits and the things that we're doing today.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: And so goes back to that book. I think I blew it up and talked about it so much in 2019, Atomic Habits.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes. You and I both are a big fan.

Michele Williams: Years ago, and it's that same concept that to become who we say we want to become or are in the process of becoming as a business, as a business Owner, as a human. You know, whatever that role or whatever might look like it is, it is accomplished based on the habits, the work that we're doing today. Those small steps. It's the compounding effect of all of the small things. And so, I've really been asking myself the question lately of, okay, what is the life that I want to have? How do I want to feel in that time and in that space? And what are the habits and the things that I should be doing today that will allow me to do that? I'll give it to you another way. So, when my boys and I've shared this on the podcast years ago, when they were both, around the ninth grade, eighth or ninth grade, and they were getting ready to enter all those high school years where everything, you know, some of the stuff shows up in eighth grade, but where it all starts to, or I'm going to put air quotes matter on the transcript, that's going to get them in college. We sat down and identified three or four schools that they wanted the opportunity to submit an application to go to. So, what are those schools? What is the minimum requirement to get in at those colleges? And then we built a poster, and we took the most rigorous requirements from each one of them, because if you missed one of the requirements, you couldn't go there. But they didn't all have the same rigorous requirements. Some had more language based, you know, things that needed. Some were more labs with science or whatever. Some level of math. But we took the most rigorous of the four and said, this is how we're going to build your high school schedule. So that if we build it like this, right, if these are the courses that you aim to take and you do well in, you will have the ability to apply to any of those colleges. But if we just chose one and only went after that one and gave ourselves no space and you missed it, or you are now three years in, want to go over here, but you can't get enough of the courses, you're stuck. So, it's that, what do you want to do? And then how do we stack our habits and build a strategy that gets us there? I've been pounding, pounding, pounding on strategy this year. I started a new offer CFO2Go. Well, it has been amazing. Like I've sold so many of them, which actually just means I've been able to impact so many businesses to help them fully understand their financials. And the results are amazing because people walk away going, oh, that's how I look at numbers to make decisions. Yes. That's how you do it. Okay. But what's been, I would say, kind of astounding to me is I bet you out of all the people that I've worked with,  maybe one had a strategic plan. Maybe. And I'm talking 30 people and maybe one had a strategic plan. That's a very, very, very low percentage. And so, what that tells me is that a lot of people are out here working, doing the day-to-day-to-day, and they haven't tied it to anything. That's the equivalent of going to college and just taking a bunch of courses for four years and then wondering why you didn't graduate.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Or sending out applications and wondering why you didn’t get accepted.

Michele Williams: Why did you not get accepted? Well, because you didn't do all the work that was necessary. We're not working towards something. We're just kind of showing up and that leads to the feeling of, and you know, and this has been for me too. I've got to update my strategic plan. I realized I'd accomplished everything in my plan. I haven't written the next version. So now I'm updating the next three to five years of my plan. But if people are coming to me or even just staying in their own business with no plan, think about this. If we have no plan for the future, then it's really hard to connect the importance of day-to-day activities. So now they start to feel monotonous and like they don't matter and like I'll live later. Like all the things that I was feeling all tied back to, I didn't have a goal or something that I was working towards tying it together, stacking my habits properly to get there. So, it was like I didn't even plan it in. So, I know that if I was having trouble like remembering the pieces and parts, other people struggled with it too. So that's what I kept seeing is we kind of have an epidemic of we're all doing our jobs, we're working, we're satisfying the client, but we don't have a guide or a path of where we want our business to go. We're just frustrated that we're not there.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right. Even though we don't know where there is.

Michele Williams: Even though we haven't defined there.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah, yeah. You recently did a circle time for the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library, and we talked about ending the year. Well, and that was part of it. The intentionality of, even if you didn't set a strategic plan for this Year, there's still a couple months left. And of course, by the time this airs those months will be gone. But that's another reminder that while we're waiting for something to happen, the time is going by. And I thought we did a really good job in that webinar of saying, like, okay, well, even if you didn't start this year with a plan, it's still October and you can do something about it. You can plan how you want the rest of this year to go. And you've talked about the book. Is it 12? The 12 Week Year? I don't know if I'm saying yes. Which I also read, and thought was well done. Well, isn't the word I'm looking for. I could relate to it and incorporate it.

Michele Williams: Yeah, it was easy to implement. It’s very similar to Traction. You know, the book Traction that everybody talks about. It came out, or at least I, it came into my life prior to Traction, but it's all the same stuff. What it's really doing is saying, tell me where you want to be at the end of the year. Tell me where you need to be at the end of quarter three to start quarter four for that to happen. So then where do we need to be at quarter two for quarter three? And what do we need to have done in quarter one so that we can do what we need to do in quarter two? Well then, the whole thing is tell me where you want to be in year three. All right, well then, what do we need to have done by year two? What do we need to have done? It's just thinking you want to graduate in four years. All right, how do we back that up? You want to get married on this date? All right, here are all the things that need to happen. How do we back that up? You know, you want to install these window treatments on this day. How do we back it up? You want to install an entire home of furniture and have the whole house built by this day. How do we back it up? We are doing this exercise all the time.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: We are getting ready to have another family wedding next weekend. And we are hosting some of Joel's family here at our house. And it's a week out and I  have already started asking who can eat what, who's going to be here when, what rooms need to be cleaned, how do I back up my timeline for the things that I need to do to have my home prepared for them to come in for this wedding. That same thing is the same type of thinking and work that we need to put into our businesses. And so many don't do it. They put their energy towards getting the business started or working on one little process or on one little thing. And I get it, there's a time for that really intense focus. But if we don't have this overarching idea of what we're doing and where we're going and how we're going to get there, then it can start to feel like even the daily work doesn't matter because it doesn't have something that it's hinged to. It's not tied to something. That's where purpose is kind of created and that it's tied to something.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah. So, it's interesting, Michele, because we've talked a little bit about, you know, the idea of setting these goals and reverse engineering and how do we get there? And at the beginning of this year, we were with some friends who are a little bit older than us, and they were talking about what they do to take care of themselves. And you have your friend Barbie, I have my friend Dawn. And Dawn's mom had said to me, she said it to the two of us many years ago, 10 years from now, you'll wish you looked like you do now. And I really took that to heart as instead of worrying about what I think is wrong with how I look or how I feel or what I weigh, like 10 years from now this is going to look pretty good. So, what am I doing, but what am I doing to take care of it? And Bill and I really made a commitment to exercising and taking better care of ourselves because we hope to have grandchildren someday, and we'd like to be able to get down on the floor and play with them and not be old grandparents. And then mobility, like you do Pilates. I'm doing several different things. I noticed that for me to start, I mean, I was a runner, but it was haphazard. Like, am I going to run today nah, run tomorrow? Now? I've made it so that I exercise almost every day, and if I don't, it's because something interfered that was literally more important. And it's not an hour every day. It's some time. And by making that part of my daily routine, it sets up the rest of the day for me. And I know a lot of people who are solopreneurs have joked around about, well, if I had a boss I might be a little bit more productive because there's nobody watching over us. If we don't get things done, there's tomorrow or if we don't get things done, no one is impacted but us. But you and I both run businesses where people are impacted. And actually, so does everybody who's listening to this because as you said, there are things we do in our businesses that we think about, we don't even think about. But yet in the planning of our businesses, we don't necessarily put them, those tasks, skills, and habits into effect. And I found that by making exercise and taking better care of myself part of my regular routine, it doesn't get stale because I do different things. I walk. We have a tonal that we use all of those things, but it's not boring because it's something different all the time. But it's a habit to take better care of ourselves.

Michele Williams: So yesterday in our Designers Inner Circle coaching group, we talked about habits. And years ago, I remember Janelle Dec talking about habit stacking and in Atomic Habits he talks about habit stacking. We were looking at how long it takes to form a habit. It can be anywhere from 18 days to like 600 days. It depends on the habit and based on the habit. But I challenged my group and myself to really think about what are the habits that the future you needs you to put in place so that you can attain the future you, you. Whether again, it's business or anything else, kind of what you're talking about. I'm going to look back and go, oh my gosh, how cute I was 10 years ago. Why am I worried about it? Right? Not that, but if I want to stay close to this, what is it that I need? What habits do I need to employ for that to happen? All right, so then I challenge them. Identify the habits that are necessary for you to put into practice now to become who you're trying to become again as a business, as a human, whatever. Then I asked them to identify a couple of things. I asked them to see if they calendared the time to do the habit. I asked them where they could have it stacked. Where could they put that habit with another habit? Like I have medicine that I now have to take at night. Well, I've put it in the bathroom next to my toothbrush because when I brush my teeth at night, I'm going to see it and know that I need to do it. If I had it in the kitchen, I would probably forget it because my habit is not to go into my kitchen after we've cooked dinner and cleaned it up. So, I'm trying to stack one habit with the second habit so that, because one's already kind of grounded, how do I add it to it? So, I asked them what it was, how to account for or calendar it, and how to build an accountability. Until it's truly a habit, how do you build an accountability, even if it's just for yourself or somebody else? And then I asked them what was in the way of making that habit become grounded.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Oh, that was a good question, Michele.

Michele Williams: Because sometimes we know what we want to do. We know that you know that it's something that's going to give us a payoff later, but there's something in the way of us doing it. So just identifying what are the things that could keep me from forming this habit, and then how do I clear them out of the way? How do I work around them? Because I've recognized it. Oh, that's it, Michele, you knew you were going to be tired at the end of the day, and you didn't want to go work out, and you've already admitted that that is a delay tactic, and that is a tactic that goes against where you want to be later. So, we're going to ignore that. We're going to work around that now because we recognize it. So just. Just being really clear on. Or maybe we've promised somebody else will work out with them, and then when that person doesn't work out, well, I'm not going to go either. No, that just means I might need to choose a different workout, not the one that I was going to do with a partner. And so, it's just putting yourself in the best position to be successful. And this is true. We used to do a similar analysis to this, a risk analysis when we were putting in, like, a new part of a project back in software. Like, okay, what could go wrong? How could it go wrong? What could stop us? How will it go right? What will be impacted? So that we knew kind of the weight, if you will, of the decisions that we were making, it's the same thing. How do we use it to our benefit? And so, when you think about all these things, the things that we do to create a strategy around our life or to create habits around our life just to keep us healthy, like you said, the personal working out, all of that feeds back into the business. I know we usually talk books at the end, but I've got two books that I'm going to tell you. I'm going to show them to you that. Okay, I read at the beginning of the year. I'll just get my whole stack, so I don't have to go back. These two, I read at the beginning of this year and actually journaled my way through them, and I thought they were really informative because they encourage you to do a lot of self, like, where am I? What's happening? But the first one is by Andrea Labross.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: And it's She Thinks Big. So, it's kind of that strategy, but really I even say before you get to strategy, it's more of the visionary. How do I vision what all of this could be so that I could create the strategy and the tactical moves to make it happen. But its really, really good. And then the second one that I thought was really good was Your Next Five Moves.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Ooh.

Michele Williams: By Patrick Bet David. And it is what are the next five moves that you need to take to get you where you want to go? And I thought. I just thought it was good. First was the dreaming book She Thinks Big. Here's where I think I want to go. What are the next five things I need to do to get there? And so just being able to journal that and write that out has brought more clear. I'm still working on it, to be honest. I think we all are always kind of working on it.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah, always.

Michele Williams: But it's been great and maybe that's been the beauty of this year because we didn't have some big events.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: That I could take the time for more discovery into. What do I want to do? So, one of the things that I'm doing next year is I'm taking off the month of July.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I think that's fabulous. You mentioned that to me. I think that's great.

Michele Williams: I have wanted to do that for years. And, you know, Mike Michalowicz has the book Clockwork out there. How do you get your business set up so that you can take a month off? Well, we for the past couple of years, I've been taking two months off or two weeks off in July, back to back, and then what was happening was I was trying to cram everything then into the other weeks. And then on top of that, I might have something where some of my clients just didn't even show up in July because they were on vacation or people Were canceling and rescheduling. And I just watched it for a couple of years. I'm like, nobody's doing a whole lot in July. Everybody's running from here to there and just in maintenance mode. There was a month to take off, that's the month to take off. Because their clients aren't even asking for a whole lot. Nobody's asking for a whole lot in July.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: So anyway, I've just built it into here's what I'm doing, and here's how I'm doing it. It will rejuvenate me so much for the second half of the year. So, I'm a little nervous a little scared, and a little excited. I don't really have any big July plans outside of we might go to Banff for a while. But yeah, I'm going to try to take a whole month off. But I'm building, I've been building for years to be able to do that.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Michele, I have no doubt that you can organize your life and your business to do that. I'm trying to picture the part where you're not actually working for a whole month. I'm not envisioning that very well.

Michele Williams: You and my children and my husband. Yeah. Well, I've started by doing small trips and not taking a computer.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Ooh.

Michele Williams: So, we went on our anniversary trip and another family wedding this past week. We left on a Wednesday and came back on a Sunday, and I did not take my computer. Now I do have email on my phone, and I was accessible if I needed to be called, but I had a couple of days. So, I'm easing into it. When I say I'm not going to work, I'm not saying I might not check emails or whatever might make me happy. But I'm not doing any coaching, I'm not doing any education. I'm not demanding of myself to continue showing up and giving that month to others. I'm going to give to myself that month.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I know that we've talked about self-care and taking care of yourself and being able to put your own mask on before you do it for others. I think that it's especially important for the people who are listening because of the type of services that they offer in their business as well as for business owners like yourself and me because we're always giving up ourselves, and if we don't take some time where we are not, then it does. It was interesting to me there was a period of time where I was always checking my email in the evening because a lot of members of the library, that is when they're using the library because they're fabricating or measuring or installing during the day. And there would be times when I would look at my email and then I'd be annoyed because somebody needed something. Well, if I didn't look at my email I wouldn't know. And so, I belong to a membership platform that talks about how to run memberships and one of the things I needed to do that I haven't quite implemented yet is setting up hours that the librarian is available. And just because someone takes the time to email me doesn't mean I need to email them at 10:00. I shouldn't be looking at my email at 10:00 at night. Sometimes people are like, well this is when I'm looking, this is when I have my question, and it's not a text, so it's email. I don't have to look at it.

Michele Williams: Right, absolutely. And you know, I also think that the beautiful thing with even just the freedom that we have to choose our hours is sometimes like when I was a young mom with little kids, I had to work nights because I was mom during the day. So, my day was laid out very differently than it is now. But that also meant that there were sections of my day when I wasn't working, and other people were. And so even now there are sometimes, like on Mondays, Mondays are late nights for us because we do our Metrique meetings after a full day of work on Monday because for most people it's a second job and so we don't encroach on their full-time business to do it. So, at night we are meeting and going through all of that. Well, I may not even finish work till 8 or 9 o'clock on a Monday. And so, what I've started doing is allowing myself, I've blocked off my Monday mornings to give myself ease into that day. Whereas prior to that I would start work at 8:00 and work till 8:00 and, and I was just spent. So, then Tuesday, I'm tired from Monday, trying to keep going through the week until Friday I crash. And so, I started adjusting. Oh, well then, I'm going to go to a Pilates class on Monday morning. I'm going to do the things that I would do on Monday afternoon or late Monday after work. I'm going to do those Monday morning, have a later start to my day, and, do it that way. So even having the freedom to recognize that and adjust and not always do more, but to do the right things less.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: But if you don't have that curiosity, as you said, Susan Woodcock and I have the workroom accountability and mentoring group. And when we meet, it is on Monday evening, same thing, 7:00 at night. And the last couple of meetings, I realized that's a long day for me and I need to start my Monday a little bit later those days and like you said, do something I want to do, even if it's go to Target and get the things I need to fill in in my pantry or whatever it is. I don't need to be in front of my computer or at my worktable that many hours in one day. And as you said, then I start Tuesday and I'm tired, so I'm not as productive on Tuesday. And so, what have I gained when I've done that?

Michele Williams: Nothing. Exhaustion, on the body, high cortisol levels, which I got to tell you, I'm here hearing so much of that from the women that I talk to, regardless of whether it's work room or design, just the high cortisol levels in their bodies, going, going, going, going all the time. And, you know, I think that just the idea of a healthy rhythm is exciting to me. That's what I'm looking for, is not just what do I want to put out into the world, but what is the rhythm that feels joyful each day? I get that. Look, I know that life can't be perfect, and I'm not looking for that. But it also can't be, go, go, go, hurry, hurry, hurry, do, do, do. I can build a task list like nobody else. Like, I can do it. But I need more than a task list. I want to only do what's most important and what makes the biggest difference. I don't want to just put busy work on my task because I feel like it needs to be done. And I want to give myself freedom and recognize that things take longer.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: And if they don't take that time, it's because I'm rushing, rushing, rushing. I mean, this is the same thing we tell our, you know, I tell my people all the time is it takes what it takes. Why are you only charging for six hours when it takes you 12? If it truly takes you 12 hours to design or to make or to do anything, we need to be charging for the 12 hours.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: So, when we recognize what things take, we can stretch our calendars out longer or bring in help and assistance if we need to get it done faster. But it's being honest about what things actually take.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: You talked about the books. I know we usually talk about that at the end, but I did not read many business books this year. I was trying to learn some of the platforms that my websites are on, trying to learn my email platform a little bit better. And I did not have the bandwidth to continue to read business books.

Michele Williams: But that's a lot of reading for each of those. Just going through the help guides and trying to understand it. And to be honest, reading a business book if you don't implement it is just a waste of time. Having a piece of tech that you don't implement is just a waste.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly.

Michele Williams: So, I would much rather somebody spend their time actively implementing a piece of tech so the reading and the understanding for the active implementation of what they're doing than to read a book that you go, oh, wow, that's some great ideas and put it on a shelf.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Or close my iPad and not look at it again.

Michele Williams: Yeah, yeah.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I as someone who loves to read, and I read a lot of novels and things this year because that's my escape and that's, you know, my downtime. But I realized that I was not going to beat myself up about it because learning those platforms was a priority for me. And knowing that there's only so much input I can take in a day, in a week, in a month, a year, just that had to be my priority. And, in the library, we finished up Donald Miller's How to Grow Your Small Business in our book club.

Michele Williams: I haven't read that one.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: That's an interesting book. There were some things that we were able to put into, each of us was able to put into place since it's a little harder to implement when you are a solopreneur. But he still had some ideas for that. But the other thing that I did was download the Blinkist app. It summarizes books and you can either read or listen to them. And sometimes when I'm walking, I'll listen to a Blinkist. I listen to Living the 8020 Way by Richard Koch. And I did listen to How to Grow Your Small Business by Donald Miller just as a refresh of some of the things. And then I'm in the process of reading Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson. I have 11 minutes left on that one, so I have to get it done.

Michele Williams: And then how does it work? I've not heard of that, but that sounds like an app that is right up my alley. Because sometimes I'm like, all right, I need to remember. And I look, you can see my books. All right. If you can see, I put tabs in them. I highlight and draw and mark up all over my books. Because I'm using them as a resource. I think we mentioned a long time ago, all of my fiction I get on my Kindle unless it's an author that I'm friends with and I get a signed copy.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: Not a signed copy, I'm getting it on my Kindle. But if it's a business book, I want it in hand because I'm going to mark it up and flag it. But tell me about Blinkist.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: So it's summarizes books.

Michele Williams: Okay. Do you pay for it?

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes. There is a free trial.

Michele Williams: Okay.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: But I listen to it and decide whether or not it's a book I want to get more information from. And with my time being more limited this year between trying to learn these platforms and planning a wedding, I just decided that I didn't need to buy every book that was suggested for me.

Michele Williams: That could save my life and my wallet. You know, that sounds like Cliff Notes.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's like Cliff Notes.

Michele Williams: I love it.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: There were a couple, like, I was sort of interested in. Then I listened to it, and I went, no, that isn't worth my time. And then there were one or two that I was like, yes, that is a book I would like to buy.

Michele Williams: So, I bought one. I'm not going to call the name out, but I bought a book, a business book, and I thought, oh, my gosh, this sounds so good. This sounds like a great process. I can't wait. I sat down at the kitchen table because I like to read in the morning before I start my day in the office. I sat down, I had my highlighters. I got my little get back to school with all my stuff sticky notes, and my highlighters, and I'm good to go. I open the book, and I look at the first chapter, and I'm like, umm. I turn to the second chapter, and I'm scanning it, and I'm like, yeah, nope, third chapter. And it was like the fourth or fifth chapter. And the only way that I could apply anything that the book said was by reading the summary notes at the end of the chapter. And I was like, I don't even want to read that book. I was so irritated because I was engaged with the subject, I was engaged with the theory that was put before me, but I couldn't get through the book to find the theory. And, I was like, it was just not written in a style that works for me. I thought, now I'm gonna have to put that book to the side. It's a brand-new book. It's not marked up, and I don't even want to read it. That doesn't happen to me very often, but it's kind of shocking to me.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I actually gave myself permission to not finish some of the novels I started. There were a couple that were just, I don't even know how to say. Just the family dynamics were so stressful reading them. I'm like, there's enough stress in life. I don't need to be like, I don't need to get involved in other people's.

Michele Williams: I got over that years ago. Business books as well. If I start reading it and they don't connect with me, and I can't get pulled in. If I get to the point where I think I've got a couple of extra minutes, but I don't even care what's happening or I don't even care where this book is going, that's my sign to not keep reading that book, to go find something else.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I think in the reading category this year, I probably stopped reading more books than I have in my entire life just because I went, yeah, this isn't really interesting to me. If I'm going to give up my time, I want to be either learning something or enjoying the process of reading. It has to be entertaining for me, and there were a couple that were like, yeah, this is too close to real life. This is not entertaining.

Michele Williams: This is not escaping. Let me ask you this. If you were to look back over this year, did you have any, outside of the wedding, but from a business perspective, what would you say your high was?

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I think it was managing the way the library operates and continuing to make it feel like it's a small community, when in fact it's not a small community. We have thousands of members. But it was always my goal to make sure people felt like they belonged there and that they were welcome there. I've been able to interact with people on a one-on-one basis without it taking up a whole lot of time. The forum has grown tremendously. And that's not just me, that's people inside the forum answering questions.

Michele Williams: Yes.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: So, it's a community-based thing and I shouldn't be the one answering all the questions. I've said this many times. I'm not the world's best fabricator. There are some really awesome fabricators and business owners in this library group, and they were answering the questions. So, the engagement there and the library has grown, even more in the past year, people have joined and made it part of their business support. And so, I think that part was intentional, and I worked on it for a reason. But it really, I think that's what has, been the highlight for me has been growing that. How about for you?

Michele Williams: Yeah. So, I think my highlight this year, I had a staff change at the end of last year, the beginning of this year. It's funny, Kelcee, who used to work with me now works, I would say, parallel to me. She's a bookkeeper now. So, I'm able to recommend her and send people to her, but we worked together for three years.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: And she came to me at the end of last year and she's like, I really feel like I want to take my business in a different direction. I was like, then I'll support you. Let’s do it.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah.

Michele Williams: But, you know, when you lose that right-hand person, it's jolting. And I was so blessed to find Courtney who's with me now. We've been together almost, well, I guess it'll be a year in January. To have her bring her skill set and to work with Kelcee and I at the beginning and then to work alongside me, she's very much a marketing brain, very strategic. And what do you say? How do you say it? How do you put yourself out there? She's like, I'm tired of you being the best-kept secret. And you know that Kelcee and I, marketing wasn't our favorite thing, at all. For Courtney, it very much is. But she has a skill set to balance mine and I have deep respect for her and have grown to just like adore her so quickly. It's been that to me has been a highlight to work with people that when you're no longer working with them, you're actually still really good friends and you can support them in the business that they're growing. I have found this year that there are many young women that I believe God has placed in my life. I've got two daughters in love that are both, you know, right around that 28 to 30-year mark. And then I have 1, 2, 3, 4 women that I work with in some capacity that are all in that same age range from like 28 to 34. And I mean when I tell you I'm covered up with women in that age range. Many of them all have their own independent businesses working together in collaboration. And to see that age group, this kind of group coming behind us, to see them owning their own businesses, working it out, figuring out what they want their life to look like, but being very intentional with their business moves and very collaborative with others, it so excites me, Ceil, because in my mind, mind when I'm looking at my last years in business and not that I'm going to retire tomorrow because I'm not. It could be five years; it could be 10 years. I don't know. I don't, I don't plan to run my business at the level that is at forever. It's a very high level. I don't plan to do that forever. But what I'm looking at is how do I impact the people walking behind me so that they have what I know and what I have to offer that I have thoroughly given all of that out before I decide to go do something else.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: I don't want to walk away or die or get pulled out of this without having an opportunity to give to the people that are primarily these young women who are walking a business path behind ours. I want to pull them up, I want to pull them ahead. This is what I wish I knew, like the access that they have, you were talking about the library when it used to be the CHF Forum. It saved my life in 2002, 2003 when I found it, I didn't even know that I was a workroom. I mean it saved me. It saved me so much that at one point we went in, and you know, helped the school survive so that we could keep everything moving and going. I put my own money into doing all that. And so, just knowing that that library exists in a new and updated form and people can get that information, I mean the archives over there, there is not a body of work anywhere like it, just nowhere like it. But the people walking in today have the access to all of that we were building all of that.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: You know what I mean? 20 years ago, we had no idea.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Where to find it. Yeah.

Michele Williams: We were building it 20 years ago because we couldn't find it. We were sitting at the Barnes and Noble scrolling through a book and so just that giving of information that is so where my heart is. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. Do it better than we did it. We didn't have it, and we figured it out. And there's nothing wrong with a school of hard knocks, but why are you making yourself get knocked around? If we can give it to you faster, let's give it to you. Let us give it to you. That's a high for me is seeing these young businesswomen, women in all walks of life saying, we want to know and understand. We are going to honor the path that the women ahead of us have taken and we want to learn from that and then add in the new. I just think it's a beautiful thing. It actually makes me more excited about retiring when I do because I'm seeing the torch carried behind me as opposed to being fearful that something hasn't been given out. If that makes sense.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: It's interesting because,  when I had the opportunity to interview Kitty Stein, who wrote Price Your Work With Confidence and who you obviously know. Well, she had moved on from this industry and was retired and enjoying herself, and had she loved what she did when she did it. She had a different life at that time. I remembered thinking, what we do is so all-encompassing all the time, it was hard for me to imagine wanting to do something different.

Michele Williams: Yes.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: And as you said, your life is going to change with two grandchildren, my husband and I have started talking about, all right, what is retirement going to look like for us? I don't plan to retire in the next year or two, but I’m a little bit older than you are, so, you know, my, my Beatles “Will you still need me, will you still feed me at 64” is now about to become pass.

Michele Williams: Yeah.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: And I'm pretty sure my Medicare card is in the mail. But I can't imagine not doing this to some degree. I like that I can do the library work from almost anywhere. I love that in seeing the newer, younger people coming in, they have a different mindset than some of us did when we got started.

Michele Williams: They know they can be a business. Many of us didn't know what and how.

Michele Williams: Now they had that. Yeah, they had. We were just looking for a cup, some grocery money, or yes, money. They're coming and going. I'm making this an entire career and it's different.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I loved seeing the new younger faces at CWC. When you look around you don't know who everyone is. Yeah, that's a great sign. And, and the with all due respect to women my age, age, it was lovely to see younger faces because it means that this, it's not dying out. Our industry is not dying out. That there's still people who know they can make a living from it. That there have been enough generous people who have the knowledge and are willing to share it, that we can pull those people up behind us. I think if there's a legacy to be had, something to look towards, like what can I leave behind that will make life easier for other people so they don't have to have those hard knocks?

Michele Williams: So, I'm going to say this. Making money is important. I mean I've absolutely. I will tell you; I think one of the things that made it easier for Kitty to walk away and to go have a different life was she had written that book that is still in our industry. You know, Price Your Work with Confidence. And then I know I actually sat down at Northfield and had a conversation with her. We were out in the little kind of back, little garden area and she said to me then at that point, of course, I didn't have Metrique, I was teaching.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: And she said to me, I feel comfortable with you carrying on the work of teaching pricing and profitability and the numbers. I feel good with that. You are carrying on the next part of it. And I feel good that she's written a book, and I've built software. And so, you know, it's kind of like, all right, so what's the person behind me going to do?

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right, right.

Michele Williams: Who loves this industry enough to stay focused on it. You know, Kitty sold the book to Ann Johnson. If somebody wants to come buy Metrique, give me a call. Everything's for sale at some point. But no, seriously, and think about how it could grow into the next thing? You see the progression, and what's so beautiful about that is we don't all have to do like each of us doesn't have to do the whole thing.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: It's almost like we're running this race and we're handed the baton to the next person and I'm looking for that person just like everybody else, who can I hand this baton to that's going to love the industry and who's going to love people? And I may not find them for 10 years. That's okay. But I'm keeping my eyes open to what could this be. I'm thinking more now. Like I said, money's important. We gotta have enough to run the business and be paid all day long. But now I am really focused on impact. What is the impact that I want? My work, my legacy? What is the impact that I want it to have? And I'm not saying I want my name in lights. That's not it. What is the impact to people who built their own business because they took Pricing Without Emotion, what is the impact to the business owner who took my strategy class in January, and then look what they've done with their company and how they've made changes. That's what I'm looking for. Some of it may never be written, and I am cool with that. Just, I want to make sure that there's that ripple effect that. I'll tell you; Addie Conti is a good one, a good example. We worked together, gosh, over 10 years ago. It was. It was probably 20, 15 maybe, and she was a young mom with little kids and was building a business. And I said to her one day, “You are going to knock it out of the park.”

Ceil DiGuglielmo: And she is.

Michele Williams: She is. And I said to her, we've talked about it multiple times. I was like, Addie, you know, you've got three kids, and this season, you need to be mom, and it's okay to do that. But now we have an opportunity, look at her now. Her kids are in college and high school, and she's got a, you know, a big workroom with a showroom. Like, she's killing it. But she gave herself time and worked her way through and, you know, did it her own way. It's just a beautiful story. But even having the impact of that many years ago, giving her some permission, even not that she needed it, but it's okay to build this business in the way that you want to build it. It's okay to slow it down or speed it up or whatever it needs to do for you, so I just. I love it. And then, you know, when they come back and they call you at every milestone and go, here's where I am now, and we have a talk, okay, where we're going next. But that is very strategically planned to get where they want to go. It's just. It's a beautiful thing to watch.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I'm watching, as you said, people are coming into this industry knowing that they can make a business out of it and they are being more strategic than many of us were and knowing that the resources that you're there for them, that they can learn how to do these things. It still amazes me how far we've come in this industry from when you and I were just finding out we were work rooms. Oh, is that what I'm called?

Michele Williams: Is that what I'm called? Well, I was going to tell you a couple more books real quick.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Please do.

Michele Williams: Yeah. That I've read this year. So, I told you about Your Next Five Moves and She Thinks Big. This is a good book that we talked about at my strategic event in September where I host my clients. It’s called The Recipe for Empowered Leadership by Doug Meyer Kuno, 25 ingredients for creating value and empowering others. It's really great if you have people on your team and you're trying to create a leadership mentality.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Actually, those of us who started our businesses by ourselves.

Michele Williams: That's right. And it keeps you from feeling like you're telling people what to do.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: If our prior careers didn't include that.

Michele Williams: That's right. And then this one that we did a book club on, this one at the beginning of the year. It’s Okay to Be the Boss.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Oh, interesting.

Michele Williams: Really good. It says, the step by step guide to becoming the manager your employees need. This one talks about. About we are so fearful of micromanaging that we actually undermanage, and then we wonder what's happening. Like we don't hold people truly accountable. Give them everything they need and then hold them accountable and then follow up when they're not doing what they're supposed to do or celebrating when they do. And so, he, you know, his premise is we've kind of taken our hands off the wheel and wondering. We've gotten so late lax or we're so afraid of everything we're going to say or do, so we do nothing. And then it's not the culture that we want to live in. This one was interesting. It is called Afformations instead of affirmations.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: What are we trying to form? So back to the habits. What are the habits that we're trying to form? Not just affirm. Because sometimes when you affirm, there doesn't have a feeling. I know you're supposed to affirm something that feels like you've got a really strong connection but that's not always what we do. And so, this one is what are we actually trying to form. Form habits or whatever, which I thought was an interesting way to look at that. And then this has probably been one of my most favorites, outside of the others that I shared with you at the beginning of the year, I did this one in the middle of your Trust and Inspire by Stephen Covey, and it goes back to that leadership. And how are we inspiring people like real leaders inspire? They're not leaders because they're telling you what to do. It's not positional, it's not an authority. It's their leading because they are inspiring you to follow them and to do what you need to do. And how do we become better leaders in our communities and our families and our work? So that's kind of been my focus for the last half of the year.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Okay, so, so we. I mentioned Blinkist. I will now look those books up, if they're on Blinkist, and they probably are. I'll listen to a recap of them and decide if it's something that I want to read going forward. That's, I've mentioned my friend Dawn before, she works on QVC as a guest host, and she always teases me about watching her when she's on. Because I always want to buy anything. I don't. I don't watch QVC. I am the ultimate consumer. When you tell me all the benefits, I feel compelled to buy things. So, when my friend Michele tells me how good a book is, I feel compelled to read it. But now I'm taking that time to say, okay, but does this apply to me right now? Is this a valuable use?

Michele Williams: Well, now you're compelled to listen to it on Blinkist.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes, exactly. And that's okay because it might only take 18 minutes. And then I decide if I'm going to go ahead and read the whole book. So, I love it.

Michele Williams: I love it. I'm going to go check that out. That's probably going to save me before I hit Amazon.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Exactly. So, I know that you have two grandchildren being born, but what are you looking forward to next year, Michele?

Michele Williams: Yeah, I am looking forward to a rhythm of ease, which sounds kind of crazy. I'm looking forward to a rhythm of ease, a rhythm of ease in our family life. How do we see our grandchildren and support our kids, who are now, of course, adults raising their own families? How do we go in and support our moms and dads, in another state? But I'm looking to create that with ease. So how do I work through that? How do I not cram my days so full that when those things come up that I have deemed are most important, I feel like I have the energy to direct them, not that I'm rolling into them exhausted from other things? So that's one of the reasons that I've chosen to take Friday off, and the month of July off. So, I've built my schedule. I will be pretty heavy. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But then my goal is to be able to be grandmother on Friday, or after work on those other days, but grandmother on Friday. I can help on Fridays. And then we'll have a month of July that I can rest and rejuvenate and maybe travel and whatever it is I want, slash, need to do there. So, I'm looking for rhythms of rest and rhythms of ease because I think if I can build that in, I can work longer at what I love to do. But if I don't build that in, I think I'm going to get exhausted again. And I've been exhausted, and I don't want to be there. And so, I'm just currently looking for that. What is a good, healthy rhythm for this stage in my life? I'm gonna, I'll share this with you. We normally think about it, at least the way I had thought about it. This could be a Michele problem, but I thought about you work and then you retire. And what I'm recognizing is I've worked. Retirement is right ahead. But what is the season in the middle?

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: Because I don't want to work like I've been working, but I don't want to retire. And so, what is the season in the middle? I've chosen to define this season. That's what my strategic plan is, that's what my rhythm of ease is. How do I define this season between now and ready to go do a, completely different thing, shut the chapter. Like, I don't even foresee that for a long time. My kids think I'll never shut that chapter.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: But I think they might be right.

Michele Williams: But how do I manage it? How do I reset my own expectations for success? The question you ask everybody. How do I reset or redefine what is successful in that season? Because it's different than that high working season, and it's different than a retirement season. So honestly, seeing it as a bridge season, what does that look like for me? That's what I'm trying to define. That's what I'm excited about for ‘25.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Okay. All right. So, I'm looking forward to not planning the next wedding, which even though there is a second wedding, my daughter and her fiancé have already decided it's going to be 2026. So, we have two, actually two full years to plan that one. And I have a little experience under my belt this time. What I'm looking forward to is I have joked a lot about my procrastination and how it affects me. I did not procrastinate on much in planning this wedding. I had a much better attitude of you know what, we're going to run out of time, I'm going to do this now while I can. And my daughter and son-in-law were very appreciative of any help we gave them. If my husband and I thought of something, we didn't just go ahead and do it. We said, hey, what about this? And let them give us some feedback. But some, some things that we designed on Canva and things like that. My son-in-law did some of that himself. I did some of it. But I really beat my procrastination in these last eight to 10 months.

Michele Williams: Look at you!

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I know, I know. It only took me how many years? I realized that I was getting all of that done and still getting most of what I needed to get done at work, but I was still allowing that procrastination to affect my work. And you and I talked about taking off Fridays a long time ago and my daughter texted me partway through the year. How's that taking Fridays off working for you, mom? Because it was a Friday, and I was working, I realized that I was not planning it well and I was allowing things to spill into Friday.

Michele Williams: Friday, yes. Let me say that's the same thing that I noticed that if I wasn't careful, Friday became an overflow day.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yes.

Michele Williams: So, what I've done, so here's what I've done for next year. I've taken a step even further back so that I'm holding Thursdays as my overflow day.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Oh, that's a good idea.

Michele Williams: So, then my work has to get done face-to-face with clients on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Because Thursday is an overflow so that I can have Friday. So, I had to shift the work and be super intentional about what goes on my calendar to be able to get that Friday, and for Friday to be off it was. I then would cram Monday through Thursday so full that I couldn't get everything done and had to do it. So now I'm only allowing Monday to Wednesday to be crammed so that Thursday can be overflow so I can be off on Friday. I had the same problem and that's how I've chosen to solve it.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah.

Michele Williams: Or to try to solve it. We'll see. I'll let you know at the end of next year,

Ceil DiGuglielmo: My husband takes off on Fridays in July and most of August. And so, I managed to do it for those two months because then we try to do things together on Fridays. So, the fact that I can manage to do it part of the year, but not the part of the year where it's on me to do it and I'm not being accountable to anybody else, I realized. And I've done pretty well in September and October, still a little bit of overflow, but I like that mindset. Thursday needs to be my overflow day. And I did a much better job of calendaring tasks so that they were done at a specific time. You know, I'm a big Gretchen Rubin fan and she says, tasks that can be done anytime are never done. And so, I create times when they have to.

Michele Williams: Yep. Schedule it.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yep. And that has worked much better for me. Still, a few things I procrastinate on, but much better than I used to be. So, for me, it's continuing to grow the library, marketing has not been my strong point, and so I'm working on that right now. I purchased the Learn to Choose Window Coverings course from Linda Earlham, and I did get that, new website up. It's easier to manage. And I've managed to connect it to the library so that people who purchase it can have a free year of the library where we have a forum and you can ask questions and get support. Linda, while she doesn't sell the course anymore, still answers questions within that forum. But yeah, focusing on those things. I got the website up, but I have not done much with marketing with that. So that's a big goal for me for next year. So, and start the planning of the next wedding, but not too much.

Michele Williams: Because not too much. I will say from a work perspective, one of the things that we're. We've done this year at the end of the year, but we're going to do it, all of next year is I've been offering some of my educational courses with live coaching. So, we just offered Pricing Without Emotion.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: I know, you did.

Michele Williams: It was so good. Had great attendance. Teaching that and being able to ask questions and having a small community group. We're going to do another one, in January and February on creating a strategic plan. So that strategy that I keep talking about, we're going to teach you how to create one and how to create objective and key results and key performance indicators, like how to create it and then how to manage it. So that we're doing in January, February. In March and April, I'm going to be teaching understanding your financials with live coaching, which is the one that comes behind pricing without understanding the balance sheet. What am I looking at on the profit and loss? What is the cash flow document? So that's going to be what does say March and April, and then May and June is going to be Master Your Profit. So that's profit first, understanding the strategy and how to implement it. And then in the fall, we'll go back and offer Pricing Without Emotion again next year. So those courses have been awesome, but, I mean, people can take them on their own, but when you take it with live coaching with other people, it's like a whole different experience.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: No comparison.

Michele Williams: Yeah. So, I'm, I'm excited because it's another way for me to do that without having to do the travel to every different state and get 10 people to get. You know, it's, it's. It's just so much easier. So, I'm excited about that.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: That's awesome. Yeah. I know that the group of people that you have for the pricing without emotion course, we're really excited about that. So, I'm real happy for them and for you that you can do it that way.

Michele Williams: Oh, I love teaching that class. It's so good.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Michele. This is always so fun for me. It does. There are times when I realize I'm just plugging along and when we're preparing for this, I kind of look back and go, okay, what did go on in my life this year?

Michele Williams: And so, it's nice to be able to stop. Yeah. Stop to look back because I think sometimes I'm just so busy, like we said, just doing or in the moment or just go forward. Go forward. It goes back to the book I mentioned last year, The Gap and The Gain.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Yeah.

Michele Williams: You know, really recognizing the gain from the end of last year to this year and then the gap. The difference between where I am and where I'm going.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Right.

Michele Williams: And holding those in equal tension so that you can celebrate the success but celebrate them moving forward. I think it's about taking the time to celebrate it. So, thank you for helping us celebrate the year.

Ceil DiGuglielmo: Absolutely. Thank you, Michele.

Michele Williams: Take care. Ceil, thank you so much for taking time to have this conversation. I love it. Every year it's like just sitting down to have coffee with a really great friend, but not just to talk about business, but to also understand how our lives are so impacted, and our businesses are impacted by our lives and that crossover area. I just really appreciate you being vulnerable and open to have that conversation. For those of you that are listening, I would love to encourage you to find that person, find that friend that you can sit down and have that same type of conversation with. You know, what are you learning? What are you reading? Where are you growing? It has been honestly just one of the biggest blessings of my life to have people like Ceil who I can have those conversations with and who hold me accountable for the things that I say that I'm going to do. My hope for you is that 2024 was amazing and that your 2025 will be as well.

If you're looking for a partner to help you build strategy and build out your financials and to understand how the pieces and parts go together, I would love to be able to do that with you. You can find out more by going to ScarletthreadConsulting.com. If you have a company and really want to track the financials and the benchmarks and the KPIs and all of those indicators that if you're moving forward in a healthy financial way. Check out metriquesolutions.com My team and I are here to support you and to help you, and to help just reinforce the idea that profit doesn't happen by accident.

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