As the final curtain falls on 2023

This is my last message to you in 2023.? I hope you are getting some rest on this last day of 2023. I know that many of you have experienced more events in recent years than in your entire life. I am among these people. Some were very painful, and some very joyful.? I really want you to succeed. I want you to achieve the goals you set for yourself, and even the goals that you don’t yet know are possible for you. And these goals can be achieved if you don’t stop trying. Apart from typical wishes for 2024, I also have a special wish for you and me: ?

I want to wish you and me great self-discipline in 2024.?

What got me to where I am now, and what will get me to a much higher level of impact, is self-discipline. The fact that I am willing to work smarter, harder, longer, and more creatively than almost everyone I know.? I remember during my school years, when most other people would have fun with friends, I would be working. When I entered the corporate world, when other people would go to wine clubs, play golf, play poker, ride horses, go to bars, have girls night out or boys night out, and go on vacations, I would be working.? This not only set me apart in the eyes of clients and employers, but... ?

It made me respect myself more.

Discipline and loyalty are some of the key qualities I demand of myself.?Even when I was a young child, when all my classmates went home to do homework and have fun for the rest of the day, I rushed home to leave one heavy bag, pick up another heavy bag, and take multiple buses to get to music school on another side of the city (about 1.5h one way), often in freezing weather where you can’t even feel your feet. Sometimes, I ended up in the wrong parts of town because the buses were full and people would not let me come out at the right bus stop.

While everyone was doing their own thing, I was doing what others were not doing. This maybe wasn’t the smartest investment of my time. That was at the time when my parents were making decisions for me. But way above-average discipline was there. Being a pianist and musician at the beginning of my career helped me think in a very different way from other people for the rest of my life.

And when you are self-disciplined, and you are proud of all your choices, results come. But they are an important bonus rather than the only reason to be disciplined. Because you have this level of self-respect and quiet confidence that is not based on being entitled or arrogant, but on self-respect and confidence in your ability to figure things out.

And this kind of confidence and self-respect can only be gained through discipline. That confidence and self-respect are magnetic to people (including clients and employers, and even potential life partners??), and very few people have this type of confidence and self-respect. So it gives you a competitive edge.

I am happy to know that I am different. I am different not because of being born with some special abilities but because of being disciplined. Because of my own choices.

Using my time wisely. Investing almost all my time, every single day, in:

1) acquiring knowledge

2) connecting the dots and thinking differently

3) transfer of knowledge to our clients and members

4) other projects that subsidize some of the transfer of knowledge we do within the FIRMSconsulting and StrategyTraining.com

And results are not the only thing that matters. As long as I know that I am using my time wisely I am moving in the right direction.

As long as I know at the end of the year that I:

- grew significantly as a professional and as a person.

- helped people in a meaningful way.

- made smart choices, which I am proud of.

I have no idea what the results will be next year. But if I know that I am doing my best, and doing it with the intention of doing great things for the world, the results will eventually come.

I have a desire for myself to maintain and enhance my self-discipline in 2024. And I have the same wish for you.

When you can be proud of your choices.

You can be grateful for your talents. But you can only be proud of your choices.

And everything I do, I want to be proud of my choices next year. And that will come from:

1. focus on investing my energy and other resources only into things that create value for the world. I have a note in my office where I wrote, “What else can I do for the world?”

2. And it will also come from self-discipline.

Thank you to those of you who are our members and clients. Thank you to all of you who were reading the Strategy Insights newsletter this year.

And I hope that you will read it even more in 2024. Because this newsletter, and overall StrategyTraining.com, is our priority. If you noticed, our other projects take a back seat to the StrategyTrianing.com projects.

Many people ask us, “Your other projects are more lucrative. You even subsidize some of the StrategyTraining.com related projects. Why do you focus so much on less lucrative business?”

And I say that I can't help it. It is my mission to add value to the world by creating the type of resources that can lift someone up, help get someone out of their orbit a few times in their lifetime (which will then, as a chain of events, also lift their children, grandchildren, the legacy goes on).

Breaking out of one's orbit is something that most people can’t do on their own even once. I got myself out of my orbit a few times in my life. Michael did so, too. Our other mentors, like Bill Matassoni, did so as well. He grew up in a coal mine town. His father was a coal miner. And he ended up the first worldwide head of marketing for McKinsey, and made a partner at McKinsey after just 2 years. Not counting his senior partner role at BCG and other significant things he had done to move the world forward. By the way, new training with Bill is coming for Insiders and Legacy members soon. But the point is, most of you are starting at a better point than me, Michael, or Bill.

I know how to break out of an orbit. And I know how to get into a mind space of believing you can do it.

And this is what StrategyTraining.com and FIRMSconsulting is about. Helping you break out of your orbit, and in the process, adding well above average value to the world and being the kind of person who moves the world (and yourself and your family) forward.

The world will go backward if people who have a will, and desire to create capacity and acquire capability do not step up and focus on creating something for this world to take it forward, to make it better, kinder, happier, and more advanced. To reduce the amount of suffering, loneliness, averageness, and degradation.

It is up to you and me to step up.

Therefore, the number one priority is you.

I want each of you to find the happiness you want to have. You and I are all very different. Everyone has their own story, and their own heart. And somehow, we all connected with each other in this space. So there is some meaning in this. We help you be more successful, help you think differently, and see things you may have missed. We learn from you. We are reflected in your eyes. But we are definitely united by the fact that we all want to be happy and help people we love to be happy. And many of us also want to make happy a much larger group of people than we personally will ever know.

I wish you a lot of luck in the coming year. I wish you fulfillment and achievement of even bigger goals than you set for yourself. And if we can help you in this, this is a double portion of happiness for me. Thank you for being with me this year. Thank you for your attention, for your time. Thank you for writing, for watching our programs, remaining members and clients.

Happy Holidays, dear friends and members of the StrategyTraining.com and FIRMSconsulting community.

See you in 2024.

Happy New Year!

Kris Safarova