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Well, one of the things that exacerbates decision fatigue is if you start every single day in what we call decision debt and you know that you have a lot of decision debt. If you have a hard time making decisions, if you feel like you constantly have open loops in your head, if you are consistently abdicating your decision making to other people and you can't make decisions without pulling a lot of people, you know who you are, you're like, oh, I got to go to the Facebook group, I got to go here, I've got to ask this person to make a move and some of that is fine. But at some point a lot of those decisions, if you are somebody who has a hard time tapping into that internal self leadership, you have a lot of decision debt happening in the background. Are you growing a business or creating the Most sought after MedSpa in your market? Welcome to the MedSpa CEO podcast where growth means better results, bigger profits and a schedule that actually gives you your life back. I'm Heather, strategist to the industry's most profitable aesthetic practices. From solo injectors to multi seven figure teams, I'm here to help visionary leaders like you package your brilliance, scale with clarity and build a business that feels as beautiful to run as the results you give your clients. It's time to set the standard, not blend into the industry noise. If you're ready to lead, to be seen and to grow a category of one brand, you're in the right place. Hey beautiful friend. If you're a longtime listener of the podcast who's been dying to work with me but hasn't pulled the trigger yet, I have an incredible opportunity to work with me for a fraction of the cost. If your estheticians can't explain your signature plans or your new injectors panic every time they have to sell a high ticket consultant, it's not their fault, it's the system or more specifically, your lack of one. 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Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It is almost Thanksgiving when this episode drops, so happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. I absolutely love this time of year. I was just talking with my daughters about how we were like what is our favorite time of year and it still is the traditional like Christmas holidays time, if you will, whether that's Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. And it wasn't because of like the gifts and the Santa and that part of it. It was just the magic of the year, rounding up and the prom, a fresh start and a new year and just how magical the season is. And it really does kick off with Thanksgiving. And I, just before I dive into today's episode, want to say how thankful and grateful I am to each and every one of you who is in my world. Whether you are one of my clients inside of any of our programs, any of our trainings inside of msa, ask Heather AI one of my private clients, or you are just an avid listener to the podcast. I just want you to know that I appreciate you being in my world and it's just an honor to have you here tuning in each and every week. The other thing we are gonna dive into today, so I have about five or six episodes that are coming out. This is the start of one of them that I definitely recommend that you subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already, but but that you definitely remember to come back and listen to these upcoming episodes because I think you're going to love them. They're all revolving around how I can really help you go into 2026 with purpose and a game plan and a roadmap for being incredibly successful no matter what happens in the world and the markets and what have you. So today's episode is I'm going to dive into the three mental frameworks that I really, really use and I've used for years when it comes to action, when it actually comes to planning out an upcoming year. And so we're going to dive into those frameworks, if you will. One is exercise I call reflection auditing. The second is three year vision planning and the third is the one hour CEO. And we're going to dive into each of these frameworks, how you can use them to really assess where you are at. But not only that, be able to think bigger, to plan bigger, and to ultimately feel like you have a game plan for marching into 2026 with the kind of energy and motivation and certainty and confidence that I want for each of you to have. But before we dive in those three frameworks, I want to talk about something that comes up with all of my clients and that really comes up for women especially. This comes up for men too. I've been talking in the theme with a lot of my clients, especially this time of year, as personal responsibilities for those of you who have kids, even for those of you who don't have kids, who just have extended families and immediate family members, where there's just more personal things that pop up during the holiday times where it feels like we are stretched in so many different directions. And I had multiple clients actually. So inside of msa, I also had a private client as well who brought this up, who were having a hard time with one of the mental frameworks, the three year vision planning that we're going to be talking about today. And I want to unpack some tools that you can use in order to be able to do any sort of game planning, vision planning, goal planning, whatever your druthers are. I'm going to suggest what I think is, you know, the best frameworks that I found in like 20 years of personal development and goal setting and all that jazz. But no matter what your game plan is for actually planning out for vision planning, whatever your cup of tea is, it won't happen effectively if you have a hard time making decisions. And so many of you are in overwhelm are feel like you start the week off with more on your plate than you know how to handle. You feel like your to do list, you have that to do list that's running in your head all the time that you don't actually ever get ahead on. And what is happening for many of you is that you have a lot of what is called decision debt. And decision debt happens for a variety of reasons. Women we know have it worse than men. Men have it too. But decision debt happens when you have lots and lots of decisions that end up piling up. So these are decisions that are open loops in your head. And the more of them that you have, the more you start off every single day in what we call decision fatigue. Because decision fatigue is the phenomenon where you only have your brain's mental capacity, your cognitive load every single day is limited. And as the day goes on. Your ability to make good, strong, effective decision actually deteriorates throughout the day. Well, one of the things that exacerbates decision fatigue is if you start every single day in what we call decision debt and you know that you have a lot of decision debt. If you have a hard time making decisions, if you feel like you constantly have open loops in your head, if you are consistently abdicating your decision making to other people and you can't make decisions without polling a lot of people, you know who you are, you're like, oh, I gotta go to the Facebook group, I gotta go here, I've gotta ask this person to make a move. And some of that is fine. But at some point a lot of those decisions, if you are somebody who has a hard time tapping into that internal self leadership, you have a lot of decision debt happening in the background. So one of the reasons why I am so bullish on the systems that we teach here at my company is because they are all built on the cognitive science behind the idea of one key ones is like cognitive overload theory, decision debt. We're going to be talking about some of the cognitive science behind what we do throughout the upcoming episodes that I mentioned. But on this episode in particular, why we even goal set, why we vision cast if you will. But if you don't have a process for quickly making decisions, if you are stuck in the weeds, in the river of misery of where you have so many decisions that have been left open ended, you will start every day feeling more tired than necessary. You will feel like every decision is a mountain and you will actually slow down the growth that you have personally and professionally. So I have something I call the CEO decision filter process that I'm going to share with you so that you can have a framework. Now part of decision making is just quickly making decisions and understanding that there are no right or wrong decisions. There's just the decision you decide to make, right? There is this belief, if you have this belief that there is right or wrong decisions, you will have so much decision debt because of the amount of research you feel like you have to do in order to figure out the answer to what the decision is. And nine times out of ten for many decisions that you have to make, you have to just take action. You gotta just make a decision, the best decision you think in the time, take the action, get the feedback and then course correct if that decision wasn't correct. Rather than what many of us do, which is actually research, research, research. Abdicate, abdicate, abdicate. Ask Other people, ask other people, ask other people and then not make swift decisions to actually get the feedback faster. So one quick thing is shifting your belief system from that there is a right or wrong decision. Now there are some things, bigger decisions, I mean, that's subjective in and of itself. But you know, let's say you are going to need to sign a five year lease on a new location, okay? That's a bigger decision. You probably want to use a CEO filter decision making process that I'm going to share with you to help with that. But there's a lot of daily decisions that you make. Every single day that you pause on that, you're like, oh, I need to think more about this. And I would consider that to be a thought error. What I mean by that is that thinking that you need to think about it more so that you can research it more. Many of the decisions you need to make, you actually just need to take action on, get feedback and then iterate over time and you will move faster, you will actually find out faster which decision is the better decision by just taking action on it. But just know that the reason that you don't take action, the reason that even though I tell you that intellectually you might understand that to be true, but your primal nature is to actually protect yourself from making wrong decisions. Because back in the day, if you made a incorrect decision, it actually meant death, right? Because you know, you were trying to keep yourself safe from lions and tigers and bears and the actual, you know, we evolved and it actually was a lot more dangerous to make a wrong decision. Nowadays, the worst thing that can happen to us if we make a wrong decision in many cases is that we're embarrassed, we might lose some money, we might have to admit that we were wrong. Those types of things that really aren't dangerous to our physical well being. But just know that behind the scenes, the reason why your nature is for your mind to keep you safe and to keep you, your mind would rather you just stay in the cave and not do anything because that creates safety, okay? That doesn't create a lot of personal growth, a lot of personal success, unfortunately. So know that innately you will want to research, think about it, actually seek out the right or wrong decision. Because historically, back in the day, you actually made a wrong decision. You might actually be in physical harm's way. And 99 times out of 100, that is not the case anymore. And so you will have to override that innate nature that you have and tell yourself, okay, making this decision now in order to Find out, stay in curiosity and just make the decision to actually get the feedback. Which means you might be making the decision that is not the more correct one in the moment, but you actually discover the correct decision. For those of you who are listening, I'm using air quotes here. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see the idea is that one correct decision, the reason why I'm using air quotes is like that is completely subjective anyways. But two, you can't actually discover what really is going to work without just moving forward with making the decision. So back to the CEO decision filter process. So I'm going to take you through this process so that when you have those decisions that actually have more opportunity for there to be a bigger negative outcome, like the example I'm using when you are needing to sign a five year lease, when you're contemplating investing in a multiple six figure device package, any of those sort of bigger decisions, here is a filtering process so that you can still make a decision. Having a process for making a decision rather quickly. So step number one, clarify what you already know to be true about the decision. So gather information about the decision you need to make and identify and write down the facts and circumstances related to that decision that you already know. Okay. That you already know to be true. Step two, eliminate the clear options that are just not suitable. So just look at the available choices and quickly discard those that do not align with your goals or vision. So the goal is to narrow down your options to a manageable selection really quickly. Okay, so that's step two. Step three, set a deadline for making the decision. The timeframe should be reasonable but not overly extended. And having a deadline creates a sense of urgency and prevents prolonged indecision. Most decisions, even the ones that are like bigger, you do not need. You're not going to know more months from now than you know within a week of really actually going through this process quickly. The immediate research that you find is, is typically the amount of research that you need. So making a deadline, and for most deadlines it should not be longer than a week, unless you've discovered in the research phase that there is some research that will take longer than that. And then number four, this is one of my favorite parts of the process is I want you to take a moment. Now that we've narrowed down what the options are, now that you have given yourself a deadline and you've done the research up until this point, I want you to imagine the best outcome for each remaining option, disregarding current limitations. So I want you to consider the best outcome for each of the possible options that you've narrowed down to. So I want you to imagine if both of these options ended up amazing, then which option would you choose? And then step number five is decide based on your vision and selected outcomes. So we're going to talk about the three year vision today and I'm going to talk to you about at high level so that you can have it. And so always tapping back in, this is why I recommend all of my clients I do this three year vision planning process once a year, every single year I have for the last seven years. And I actually met with Karen on my team, who I have been working with for 10 years, almost 10 years. In the spring it will be 10 years Karen and I have been working together. And so we've done this exercise together the last seven years. And the reason why I'm so bullish on it is because it helps me make decisions that are in alignment with what I'm actually wanting to achieve. It's like my North Star, it's that lighthouse that helps me make decisions faster as well. So after weighing the options and imagining the potential outcomes, you are ready to make the decision. The decision should be influenced by that three year North Star vision that I'm going to share with you the process of establishing high level parts of it today. So that is the process. I want you to save this episode. And when you find that you are struggling with making one of those what we perceive to be bigger decisions, come back to the CEO decision filtering process. I love the question that I think is missing from most decision making recommendations and advice. And it's that idea of like, if you could have the most amazing possible outcome from the options that you've narrowed it down to, right? So if you could have the most amazing option of whatever the decision is, what would you choose? If both scenarios happen to be the best outcome possible, this will help you actually intuitively discover what your true desire is too in some circumstances as well. Now that we have spent some time, let's dive in to the three different frameworks that I use at this time of the year, every single year, so that I can really equip myself to goal set, to tap into my vision and to also evaluate what is currently working in my business as well too. So the first framework is the reflection audit. And I know audit is like one of those words that has a negative connotation, but the goal with the reflection audit is to tap into all of the work that you've done this year and to reflect on what's working, what's not working and what you would do differently once you have your three year vision as well. So I'm going to give you some things to really actually sit down and audit and it's going to feel uncomfortable because it's going to take some time to actually do it. Now the final thing I'm going to share today is my third framework, which is the One Hour CEO. And part of the One Hour CEO is monthly evaluating. And if you monthly evaluate, it makes auditing the previous year so much easier because you've already been doing a mini audit of evaluating every single month. For those of you who are in msa, you have access to obviously the entire One Hour CEO method and all the things I'm describing here as well. And we actually put it on the calendar inside of msa, our monthly evaluation process and worksheet that you can do with your team. And one of my clients was recently telling me that she does this with her practice manager and it was just so eye opening because they hadn't really sat down and paused to take a look at the numbers in this way before. And data is so empowering. You know, there's that data, not drama, when it comes to leading your business. Well, if you don't have a system for actually taking a look at the numbers consistently, you're going to make a lot more decisions from drama unintentionally. So here are the sort of key areas that our reflection audit process looks at. So first you want to take a look at your entire offer suite and audit where the numbers have been coming from. This in 2025. So this is your services, treatments, procedures, products, what have you. Okay, so this might be your CSPs and BMOs and your packages as well too. So you're going to look at everything that you actually collect money for in 2025 and you are going to break down the dollar amount for each of those categories and the percentage of total revenue that each of those categories has. Now this is a question we actually ask in our intake and MSA as well too, because it's always so eye opening and it actually helps me see where the most opportunities are with when we're working with somebody because we work with them for a year. And it's so, for example, a lot of my clients will discover, just as an example, that 40, 50, 60% of their revenue comes from talks. Okay, this is just one example. And so uncovering that is especially enlightening because it helps us uncover. We want to look at these numbers through the prism of we want to help you with your lifetime customer value and your average visit value. Because Those are the 2, 2 key numbers that are going to help you have really profitable sustainable growth in your business. So that's the first thing that you are going to actually audit. So services, treatments, procedures, packages. Okay. The second thing is your products. For most of you it's skincare products. For some of you it might be supplements, it might be GLP1s. This is all products. And if you do this collectively together, it's fine if you've got number one and number two or you've got your services and your treatments and your products and there's crossover and what have you. You know, don't get lost in the details. The whole goal of this is just to get a really good look at where your money is coming from each year and what percentage of breakdown this is. Oftentimes, especially with skincare products, it's such a an easy lever to pull with most of you to help increase those profit margins. But I digress. That's not the point of today. So the third key area that you will want to audit is your appointment time windows. So you want to look at your appointment time windows and actually look at the different treatment time windows and then what dollar amounts were actually dollar amount and percentage of revenue for each of those treatment time windows. This is always so eye opening as well too. Doing an audit of the amount of time that you are allotting for things. And it's not just blanket like, oh, we're allotting too much time for things and we could be more efficient, which is almost always usually the case. But the other key areas, oh my gosh, we have like 12 different appointment time windows. Where can we actually narrow down the amount of time windows to make scheduling more simple and efficient as well too? So those are sort of the two key areas. So this is sort of a high level look. Didn't get into the weeds of the entire process that we have. But the whole idea is that I want you to set aside some time to actually reflect and look and at what you did in 2025. Because this helps inform what you will have available to do and where there is the most opportunity for you as well. Okay, so the next thing we're going to talk about is the three year vision. Okay. Now before I even sort of talk about some of the things that, that I have in the process, just to wet your whistle and get you thinking and dreaming and envisioning the three year vision, I want to actually unpack some of the neuroscience behind having a three year vision to begin with. Now I have done so many different terms of time when it comes to casting a vision. I've done 10 year and five year, done one year. Right. So why three years? I like three years. The three years thinking three years out. There's this theory, it's called psychological distance theory. Okay. And thinking three years out removes emotional immediacy and lets people think more strategically. So when you think like in a quarter out or a year out, it is still too emotionally immediate for you to actually dream bigger. We want it to be out far enough to where you can detach from your current limitations so you can imagine possibility instead of just reacting to the current block and tackling that you're doing right now in your business. So the other psychological and neuroscience behind having a three year vision is the default mode network. So the default mode network lights up when you're daydreaming or imagining the future. It's where visioning happens. So giving you space to intentionally think and dream and imagine activates a different part of your brain. And it activates, actually helps you shift out of the identity based thinking that you have that really limits how big you will actually dream and make the vision. So it's really hard to do this. And you know, I've had many clients actually even just struggle with this recently because they are so stuck in task mode problem solving that it makes it really hard for them to shift out and to dream bigger. Okay, so another thing, and there's another neuroscience thing that's happening in the background is what we call mental contrasting. This combines a big vision with present reality and known obstacles and it leads you to be more motivated to take action. So running a business, going through anything that involves a lot of consistent action over time, where you cannot just always rely on motivation and willpower, having a vision that is outside of what your immediate needs are, meaning if your family isn't going to starve by you taking the extra action you need to achieve the big vision, it is actually hard to actually take the action because you're, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, your needs are actually met. So a three year vision helps us tap into that why that is going to help us drive past going and doing the action items that are going to push us outside of having just our immediate needs met as well. Okay, so how do we actually vision plan? Okay, so having a vision, a couple things I want you to put on the docket before the end of the year I want you to actually give yourself some space and time to have time to dream and play. When you are stuck with the to do list at home, when you are stuck with the to do list at work, that's not when the magic is gonna happen when it comes to dreaming. And there's a whole book on it if you're interested. It's a great book, the Magic of Thinking Big. But this is gonna happen when you're on a hike, in your shower, maybe when you're driving and listening to 90s hip hop, right? This isn't going to happen when you are handling the immediate day to day to do's that you have. So you actually need to schedule some time to have the margin to dream and think big. So there's a bunch of questions in the three year Vision Planning which if you're in msa, set aside the time grab the three year Vision Planning worksheet to walk you through it. But some of the big questions I want you all to be thinking about is what is your dream business and life look like three years from now and what does it look like if you weren't limiting the scope of your imagination based on any of the current limitations that you have? Because if I ask you that question and you play small because of all of the current limitations that you have. Because you don't have. Let's say. Let's say you don't feel incredibly supported at home right now. So it feels like it would be impossible to dream big about the amount of free time that you have. Let's say you're wearing literally all the hats in your business right now. It might be hard for you to imagine where you're working way less in your business where you're able to take long vacations, where your work week is limited to only a certain amount of time in your practice or your med spa or what have you, that is really hard to do if you are thinking about the realistic nature of this dreaming based on your current limitations. So what would your business what would your life look like? Brene Brown has this story that she shares where she's talking to this really successful CEO who is the founder of like a multiple hundreds of millions of dollars multiple nine figure company and he shares with her that he while he has a super successful multiple nine figure company, he has been married multiple times. He's currently in the middle of a very nasty divorce from his current wife. He has no relationship with his adult children. And what Brene says is you just have to make sure when you are climbing the ladder that you actually have the ladder leaning against the correct building. And believe it or not, I have worked with clients who have been in business for 20 plus years and they have inadvertently have the ladder leaning against the incorrect building. So doing the three year vision planning is something that will help you make sure that you have the ladder leaning against the correct building and that you don't inadvertently create a business and a life that you don't want. You have to set aside the time to do it and many of you will have. It will feel frivolous in, in the actual moment of doing it. Like, I was talking to one of my clients and she was just like, I can't think about what my life is going to look like three years from now because I feel so overwhelmed with, with my current day to day life. And so what I challenged her was okay, what can she do immediately to feel more supported in her day to day life? And I was like, you have got to set aside the time because you think that by magic that your life is somehow eventually going to have more time, it's going to be less chaotic, it's not going to happen on its own. It only happens by design. So three year vision planning, asking yourself the question of not only what your business is going to look like, what your revenue is going to be like, what your lifestyle is going to be like, what impact you will have once you hit that three year revenue goal, who are the humans that you are going to be working with? Okay, like really unpacking and dreaming and mapping it out. Okay. What is your future team going to look like? What will your emotional experience be of your business then? What is the contrast of, you probably know right now what your emotional experience is that you currently have that you don't want to have three years from now as well too? Okay, the third and final framework I'm going to share with you all for crushing 2026, for using this time of the year to really actually make sure that you have a game plan in place for being the leader who knows how to captain the ship and take it wherever you want, is the One Hour CEO method. The One Hour CEO method is a method that I created so for busy small business owners to be able to run their business and their life like a CEO. And so it takes one hour a quarter, one hour a month and one hour a week. So one hour a quarter. And the first time you do this, it may take longer than an hour. But if you do each of these key these three hours consistently in How I describe it will become a one hour method. Okay, so one hour a quarter of goal setting. Now we just talked about three year vision planning. We actually, there's a lot of science behind you actually don't want to backend engineer the entire three year plan because that would be way too long. We actually want to establish goals in quarterly installments. I've talked about it before, but I like, oh my gosh, almost 10 years ago I did Todd Herman's 90 day year and he really talks about all of the neuroscience that backs up 90 day goals and how you can achieve so much more than annual goals. Now this doesn't mean you can't look at your three year vision and then have an annual 2026 revenue goal in mind. I think that can be useful. But you actually don't want to plan out and backend engineer your entire year because there's a lot of psychological research that shows that that is just too far out. You will actually drag out the results that you're able to create because that's too long of a goal setting time frame. So one hour a quarter of actually goal planning. So that is mapping out your quarterly goals. That's your numbers for the quarter. That is your entire roadmap for the quarter of what promos you are doing. What if you have an event that you were going to do, what is your marketing plan gonna be? Now we are gonna have more episodes coming up where I'm gonna unpack even more about marketing and your marketing ecosystem and making sure you have enough visibility and all of that jazz. But you will want to actually quarterly plan. Like how can you ensure that your quarterly goal is ultimately going to be a no brainer because of your quarterly plan. Then you want one hour a month of evaluation. Okay, this is the monthly evaluation I already alluded to. So at the beginning of every single month you will want to evaluate the previous month. If you're nmsa, we have this on your calendar already to do. And we have a monthly evaluation worksheet for you to work through with you and your team so that you can be looking at it. Now the audit process I already told you about, if you start doing monthly evaluations every single month, it makes makes your audit, the reflection audit at the end of the year a piece of cake because you've already been tapping into the data every single month. Then you want one hour a week of planning. Okay, you could do something like the Monday hour one, which is where you actually brain dump everything you need to do personally and work wise and Then you either calendar it, delete it, or if it needs to be scheduled for later, you schedule it for later. But this way you were actually unloading all the open loops you have in your brain, one hour a week and actually mapping out your schedule for that week. Now, one critical thing that people miss, that I just want to add in here, is that you will want to map out your free time first, Map out your family time, map out your workouts, map that out first for yourself or it will not happen. All right. Woo. That was a lot. So the three frameworks again that we have for rocking your 2026 number one is the reflection audit. Number two, three year vision planning so that you can absolutely dream big and tap into the true desires of your heart that you actually want. If you weren't limiting the scope of what you could dream because of any current limitations that you have. And then the one hour CEO to make it all a reality in 2026 as well. I hope that this helped you. And again, if you are having decision debt or any of the decision fatigue and baggage happening that's making you feel overwhelmed, I would put this episode on repeat so that you have an actual process for making decisions faster. That is what I have for you this week, my friend. I will see you next week. That's it for today on the MedSpa CEO podcast. If this show's been valuable to you, the best way to say thank you is to leave a quick rating and review. It means the absolute world to me. I read every single one and it helps more women like you find the support they need to grow something they're proud of. I'm so glad you're here.