Well, happy new year 2025.

Welcome to the Inside BS show.

This is your daily dose of Dave on

the Inside BS channel, and today is the

first day of 2025, and I'm glad that

you're with me.

Thanks for joining me.

We're actually on a walk with my big

dog Andy right now, and the reason that

you're with me on a walk with my

big dog is because I've made a commitment

to 2025.

Well, actually, the commitment is to myself.

It's not to the year, but the commitment

is that I'm going to create content on

this channel every day in 2025, and the

reason that I'm doing that is because my

mission is to add as much value to

the lives of entrepreneurs as possible.

That means that I want you to have

the best entrepreneurial journey you possibly can.

For some of you, that means creating wealth.

For some of you, that means developing a

business that enables your lifestyle.

For some of you, that means taking your

business that you currently have that's already financially

successful and making it an investment that can

run without you that you can pass on

to family and friends or that you could

sell for a windfall that will create generational

wealth for you and those that come after

you.

This show is always going to be about

Nicola, Nikki G, and I helping you take

your business, take your life to the next

level.

Every Wednesday on the show will be the

Inside BS show with The Godfather and Nikki

G, and all the other days will be

content like this where I'm helping you start

your day efficiently and effectively.

You'll get a show like this every single

day, 6 a.m. East Coast time, so

you can start your day with me.

Sometimes the shows will be 15 minutes.

Sometimes the shows will be longer.

Sometimes I'll bring on a guest to talk

to them.

Sometimes it'll just be you and me walking

my dog like it is right now with

a giant school bus picking up a kid

next to us.

Today, I want to talk to you about

how to get your year off to the

best start possible.

I want to talk to you about how

to get your year off to the fastest

start possible.

This is based on what I've learned, of

course, over my 35 years of business experience,

over my 56 years on planet earth, but

it's also based on some habits that I've

created that have made me more successful just

in the last 12 months.

That's the theme of today's show.

If you want to make 2025, if you

want to make the next 365 days the

best 365 days of your life, the best

habits that produce results that compound so that

your success is put on autopilot.

I'll be candid with you because that's what

this show is all about, me sharing a

conversation with you every day.

I'll be candid with you and I'll tell

you that I just rediscovered this and it

just clicked for me in the last 12

months.

My journey the last year, my journey in

2024 is one that has shown me how

I can have more success in 12 months

than I've had in 25 years.

And it's all about creating habits and in

business systems and processes that enable success.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

In 2025, I decided that I wanted to

make permanent changes to my health.

I was on a blood pressure medication because

my blood pressure had been high ever since

the first time that I had COVID.

But honestly, it wasn't COVID.

COVID was a contributing factor.

It was being overweight that had caused my

blood pressure to be consistently elevated.

Also, I had been on a statin cholesterol

medication for years and my cholesterol, even on

the cholesterol medication, was always pushing the upper

limits.

It was within the normal range, but it

was always pushing the upper limits.

So I had measurable outcomes that I could

look at and I could set goals based

upon.

So I wanted to normalize my blood pressure

below 120 over 80.

And I wanted to normalize my cholesterol and

reduce the medication that I was taking.

The other thing that I wanted to do

is I wanted to improve my productivity.

I wanted to get more done on a

daily basis.

I don't believe in measuring productivity over the

course of months or years.

I believe in measuring productivity over the course

of days.

So I set for myself three things that

I want to accomplish every day.

And at the end of the day, I

look and I say, did I accomplish the

three things I set out to do this

morning?

At the end of the week, I have

21 things I want to accomplish over the

course of the week.

And I look at my notebook where I

track things and I say at the end

of the week, did I get the 21

things done that I had set out to

do this week?

And for me, more often than not, I

was getting 15 things of the 21 in

a good week.

I wasn't getting the full 21 things done

in the course of the week.

So I wanted to figure out how I

could improve my productivity on a weekly basis.

So those were two things that I wanted

to do.

And by the time we had gotten to

May of 2024, I was frustrated because my

health outcomes weren't improving and my productivity was

actually getting worse because I was distracted.

I was scattered.

I was putting out fires left and right.

So I wanted to figure out what was

wrong.

And I looked at all different types of

productivity systems.

And I looked at change management.

I took online courses.

And what I started to realize was that

I was looking at the picture from too

far out.

I was looking at the picture from 30

,000 feet when I should have been looking

at the picture from six inches away.

And what that means is the choices we

make from minute to minute during the course

of each day have an impact on the

overall outcome of that day.

Or even more importantly, the choices we make

for each minute have an impact on the

outcome of that hour.

And the outcome of that hour has an

impact on the overall day.

What does that mean?

Well, let's take productivity, for example.

If you sleep eight hours, or for the

average adult, between seven and nine hours, if

you sleep between seven and nine hours each

night, you're going to be able to think

more clearly.

You're going to be able to accomplish more

during the course of the day.

We think, oh, well, I'll cheat myself on

sleep.

I'll sleep four or five hours and I'll

get more done during the course of the

day.

And that's actually not true.

It actually hurts your productivity when you do

that.

So I said to myself, what choice can

I make in the moment that will impact

my sleep?

And you would think, okay, I'll get up

later is the choice you make.

But we can't control that.

You stop sleeping when you stop sleeping.

What you can control is when you go

to bed.

So the first choice that I made was

I made a commitment to myself that 10

o'clock every night, seven days a week,

I would be in bed with my head

on the pillow trying to sleep.

Now, for the first, I don't know, seven

to ten days, if you're used to going

to bed at midnight, it's a stretch.

You're laying in bed awake and not able

to sleep.

But eventually you adjust and you've developed a

habit now of going to bed at 10

p.m. every night.

And if you go to bed at 10,

you can wake up at five or six

and be fully refreshed and ready to go

the next morning.

So the choice, the habit of going to

bed at a consistent time every night reprogrammed

my entire sleep cycle, which made me more

productive.

And that led to me thinking, what other

changes can I make that will improve my

outcomes that I'm looking to drive?

On Father's Day, 2024, I made the decision

that I was no longer going to drink

alcohol.

And my rationale for that was productivity.

For whatever reason, I am not a two

glass of wine guy.

I'm more like a two bottle of wine

guy.

And so the choice to drink alcohol was

one that would kill my productivity the next

day.

So my focus had to be on stopping

that behavior.

Now, there was some concerns that I had

with this.

What will people's perception of me be?

Will I be able to interact in a

social situation without the reduced inhibition that alcohol

provides?

Is this going to be something that I

can keep doing for the long term?

So in order to make this happen, I

knew that I had to change my thinking

from what I was going to be missing

out on to what I was going to

gain by making this change.

And the way to do that is to

use the modern tools that are available to

all of us.

So what I did was I started Googling

what happens to your brain six weeks after

you stop drinking alcohol?

What happens to your brain six months after

you stop drinking alcohol?

What happens to your blood pressure six days

after you stop drinking alcohol?

What happens to your blood pressure six weeks,

six months after you stop drinking alcohol?

And I started doing research that confirmed what

I thought, what I suspected would be true

all along, that there is no benefit from

a health and productivity standpoint to drinking.

There's only detriment.

And the benefits come.

The better outcomes come when you stop this

behavior.

So rationally, in my mind, it made complete

sense.

And once I made that decision, I never

turned back.

And before I went to social situations, at

least in the first three or four months,

and now occasionally I still do this, before

I go into social situations, I will watch

those videos about the benefits of not drinking.

And I will make a list on paper

with a pen of the reasons why I've

decided not to do this behavior.

I review the list, and I have no

desire to drink.

So once I've started with these two habits,

going to bed at a consistent time, giving

up drinking alcohol, I thought to myself, how

else can I improve my health outcomes?

And I thought, eating.

My eating habits have to change.

So I did some research on foods and

groups of foods and types of foods.

I consulted with my doctor.

I actually have a friend who's a nutritionist.

I checked with her.

And I began making lists of foods that

I liked that would contribute to the outcomes

I was looking to achieve.

High fiber foods were the result.

A reduction in red meat.

A reduction in calories.

And I created an eating plan with enough

variety to keep me satisfied.

So my idea of variety may be different

than yours, but I created an eating plan

that followed that pattern with a specific amount

of calories every day that I knew I

could burn that would result in the loss

of about a pound a week.

And I thought to myself, hey, if I

lose 20, 25 pounds, my health outcomes will

be better.

And a pound a week doesn't seem like

that much.

And I began on this journey.

And I purposely began shopping for my own

food.

And this is a critical habit that I

have to tell you made all the difference

to me.

I make the choice of what to buy

in the supermarket.

I make the choice of how to prepare

it.

And I make the choice of putting it

in my mouth.

I own those choices.

And when you realize that you own all

of those choices all along the way, you

realize that you can have an impact on

the outcome.

So for me, those habits, shopping in the

supermarket myself three to four days a week.

And by the way, the frequency of going

to the supermarket is an important part of

the habit.

Shopping in the supermarket three or four days

a week for the food, doing the work

that was going to make me healthier, preparing

the food, doing the work that was going

to make me healthier, those habits at the

same time every day, that contributed to the

weight loss of 40 pounds in six months,

blood work that is completely and totally within

normal guidelines, unmedicated.

I was able to go off blood pressure

medication.

I was able to cut my statin in

half.

And we're going to attempt to eliminate it

completely.

And then the final piece of this puzzle

from a health perspective was exercise.

And I know you're thinking, oh, Dave, you

know, just make time to go to the

gym every day.

Well, you know, my life is busy, but

I don't have time.

And I thought I don't have time to

go to the gym.

But I do have time to walk my

dogs every day.

Each of my dogs, I walk them separately.

I walk every day.

And I thought to myself, okay, here's what

I'm going to do.

I'm going to incorporate the dog walking into

a routine where I walk the dogs each

a mile in the morning.

So that's two miles in the morning, each

a mile in the evening.

That's two miles in the evening.

And to incorporate it into my schedule, my

phone calls that need to be, that I

need to take, I will take some of

those phone calls while I'm walking the dog.

This is what I'm doing today.

I'm recording this podcast with you right now

with a ridiculous goofy looking headset as I

walk around my neighborhood with my dogs.

But I'm getting the habit done.

I promised you and I promised myself that

I would do a podcast show every day

today because of my schedule.

The way I will fit it in is

by recording this episode while walking my dog

around my neighborhood.

It is more important to me to reinforce

the habit than it is to have fantastically

clean audio quality on the show.

So striving for progress and not perfection is

another lesson here.

So the point to take away as we

go into 2025 is that your habits will

determine your outcomes in this year and every

year that follows.

So I want you to make a list

today of your outcomes, five outcomes that you

want for 2025.

And then I want you to reverse engineer

those outcomes.

And your mission for the next 365 days

is to think about the habits that will

lead to those outcomes.

And here's the thing about habits.

If your current habits aren't working for you,

you change the habits.

And you can change during the course of

the year at any point.

My weight loss journey is a great example.

When I first started, my weight loss journey

on my list were protein bars and chicken

breast.

And what I found is that chicken breast

takes a longer time to prepare than, say,

salmon or eating sardines out of a can.

So there are days when I don't have

time to prepare the chicken breast.

So what I do is I just eat

salmon out of the can.

It takes no preparation time.

I pull the lid off.

I'm sorry, sardines out of the can, not

salmon.

I pull the lid off the sardines and

I eat them and I've achieved my protein

goal for the day.

I like the taste of them.

Some people don't, but I do.

I achieve my protein goal for the day.

I get my essential oils and my vitamin

D through the sardines.

And it's all done in about 10 minutes

rather than half hour that I don't have

to prepare the chicken.

So you adjust your habits if you're not

getting the outcomes that you want.

Am I going to record a podcast on

my walk with my dog every day?

Most likely no.

Will it happen one day a week if

that's what fits into my schedule?

Sure, absolutely.

Will I be recording these shows from an

airport?

Absolutely.

I'm probably going to have to record some

of these from an airport.

It's just where I'm going to be when

I'm going to do it.

And if I'm going to get an episode

out every day, if I'm going to be

able to create this content every day, it

has to fit into my schedule.

It has to fit into my work life.

Is this content less valuable for you because

I'm creating it while I'm walking my dog?

No, but I'm not creating it for you.

I am creating it for you, but I'm

also creating it for myself.

So the fact that I'm going to be

able to look back on this in 365

days and say, man, when I started this,

it was really profound that I was able

to work it into my routine.

I'm willing to bet that in six months,

I have a time schedule every day to

do this.

And I have a time schedule to produce

it with better quality.

And this is the final point on this

subject.

The first 30 days of doing anything always

suck.

The first 30 days of doing anything are

always the hardest.

The first 30 days are when you're developing

the habits.

And it's not only about the physical execution

of the habits.

It's about creating the neural pathways in your

brain that make it a habit in the

first place.

Walking the dog and recording a podcast is

the beginning of creating a neural pathway that

will result in content that is valuable and

impactful for you and a habit that is

valuable and impactful for me.

This is The Daily Dose of Dave here

on the InsideBS channel.

I thank you for joining me today.

We'll talk to you tomorrow.

Take care.