Angela Vassallo (00:03.432)
Hello and welcome to Harmony in the Hustle. I am your host, Angela Vassallo and I'm so excited to be here. This is my first episode back in 2025 and I know it's going to be an awesome year ahead. I have so many amazing women that are coming onto this podcast, these amazing episodes that we've got coming up and I know you're all gonna benefit from it and be inspired and educated and motivated and so many awesome things that are gonna happen this year.
So I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's and it was just fabulous. I had a beautiful time with my family and my friends. We went to Vietnam. I went on a trip with my husband and it was just fabulous. Just time to relax. And I loved every minute of it. Like even when we had Christmas and we had this really long table with our extended family, I've spoken before that we share our Christmases with my husband's ex-wife and my stepkids and her family as well and my family.
and we just had the best time. then we also had an amazing years. had, we hosted friends from New York, some of my best friends and it was just awesome to have everybody here in one place. I loved hosting and enjoying and sharing our home and just having time with friends and just relaxing. So, so glad to be back into business as well. I started back a couple of weeks ago and I've just, you know, inspired and ready to go for 2025. So,
What I want to talk about today, this is part one of a two part series and it's all about creating a six month success plan. And I want to talk about why I decided to talk on six months because I have just come out of last year, a six month program that I was part of called the Queen's Table. And it was,
run by a woman called Erica Kramer, the queen of confidence. I'm sure you've all heard about her. She's just launched her book yesterday, which is called Becoming Magnetic. She really is one of the most magnetic women I have ever met in my life. She's taught me a great deal and I love following her and learning from her. And I was part of her group called The Queen's Table and it was a six month program. And in that, right at the beginning, she spoke about
Angela Vassallo (02:19.432)
calling it the Olympics. Like it was very, very intense. It was gonna be a lot of training, a lot of focus, a lot of, you know, accountability. And I was hoping that, you know, I'd get great results from it. Obviously, whenever you invest into something, you give it everything you've got. I'm someone who always does that. However, it exceeded my expectations. And I wanna talk a little bit about why I believed a six month success plan.
is the way to go. And inside that six month success plan, you create your goals and you get really clear on them and you focus on them every single day. And I believe the reason why this six month plan works so well for me and why I wanted to share my experience and I want to go through a few of the points of why I believe that it did.
You know, I believe one, obviously it made me accountable. You know, I was accountable to Erica and to the girls in the group, into the Queen's table, and we would meet regularly, like once a week. And in that time, what I believed happened was the fact that I was not able to procrastinate. I didn't waste time overthinking things. I don't know about you, but I've been somebody that will overthink things. Should I do that? Should I say that? Should I do this? What am I doing here?
And you know, I've spoken many times about the fact that last year I sold my restaurant. So the middle of last year I left, you know, running restaurants and staff and constructing restaurants and all this other world that I was living in. And I decided that I wanted to create a business that would help women in business become more successful. I knew I wanted to speak on being resilient, being resourceful, helping women to stack the odds in their favor. Because what I found was I would meet so many women or I'd see so many women in business, but
So many people were kind of doing the same thing out there and they would struggle to try and succeed, to try and make money in their business. And I kept thinking, it's just about finding your edge. It's about finding your advantage. It's about finding a way where you can start to stack the odds in your favor so you can start to succeed. And that's what I do. And I'm starting to build my business and brand around all of that. And that's what these last six months I've been working on has helped me to do.
Angela Vassallo (04:30.194)
Not only that, I'm doing keynote speaking and running these events for women now and one-on-one coaching to help them create these, you know, this success, more success and be more resilient, be more resourceful and start to stack the odds. So I know that what it did was help me achieve great results in that six months because I had deadlines. So when you have a deadline, you don't seem to procrastinate as much. You don't waste the time.
You don't overthink and that's what I needed. And these are some of the biggest takeaways that I believe have set me up in the six month plan for my success that we're going to move into for this year. So I want you to remember this. What you don't change, you choose.
So I want you to remember this quote, what you don't change, you choose. So let that sink in.
I want you to remember this, what you don't change, you choose. So let that sink in for a minute. So if you're, if there's something in your life that you want to change and you're not changing it, you're choosing it. So this year, 2025, what if you made this year all about change? And change doesn't need to be this massive thing. It can be small, consistent daily actions.
that can help you in the next six months to change everything. So I ask you this question, think about how do you want your life to look in the next six months from now? So imagine six months from now down the track, how do you see your life? Where do you wanna be? What do you want to change? How much money do you want to make?
Angela Vassallo (06:22.994)
How do you wanna look and feel? What are the things that you're wanting to achieve in that six months? Because success leaves clues. You may have heard that before, but you must get clear on what you want. So most people will happily tell you what they don't want. And they will be very specific and clear about what they don't want. But if you were to ask them, what do you really want? A lot of people struggle with that.
They have a challenge in figuring out exactly what they want. They can't seem to articulate it or figure out what they want. So clarity has power. The clearer the picture, the fewer the choices, the bigger the results. So I'm going to say that again. Clarity has power. The clearer the picture, the fewer the choices, the bigger the results. So you want to be writing down your goals.
in the next six months what you want to achieve, but in detail, write down exactly what you want. And over this break, I've been doing a fair bit of reading. One of the books I read again was The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday. And he has many books that he's written and it's all about stoicism. And I have loved reading so much about it. And wow, this book, just dives.
deep into Stoicism and the philosophies around Stoicism. And it blows my mind to think that these ideas that were created 2000 years ago in ancient times, they are so relevant, probably even more today. So one of the biggest takeaways I got from this book that I want to share is action is the answer. So what matters most is what you do next. So don't worry about what happened in 2024.
I want you to focus on what do you want to achieve this year? What do I want to change this year? What am I not prepared to have happen again this year? So what really matters is what you do next. So from today onwards. So we don't want to freeze when things get tough. We want to take the small steps towards, we want to focus on the progress over the perfection.
Angela Vassallo (08:35.43)
Like people will say, I'm not gonna start anything unless all my ducks are in a row, unless it's perfect and there's no perfect timing and there's no such thing as ducks in a row. You have to keep moving forward every single day. But look, life will throw obstacles at you. The minute you decide you're gonna go after something, you set some goals, you create this six month success plan. What will happen is that obstacles will pop up, struggles will happen.
but it's how you respond to these that will make all the difference. This is what the Stoics talked about. It's about focusing on what you can control. And the Stoicism teach us to see the challenges, not as roadblocks, but as the way forward. So the obstacle is the way, which was the name of the book. Your obstacle actually becomes the way. So don't run away from the obstacle or the roadblock. Understand you need to move through that because that is the way.
Okay, success is not something that we pursue. is success is the person that you become along the way. So don't wish it to be easier. Just know that you want to be able to whatever happens, whatever you're doing, all the challenge that you're going through, you're becoming the person that you're needing to become to be able to have success. Okay, you can't just have it all. It doesn't work like that. You can't just have the success just pop out of the sky. One day I wake up and I want this happen. It doesn't.
everybody that has some level of success in their life or they've achieved a great goal, they have worked at it consistently every day. It didn't just wake up one day and that happened. So know that there will be struggles, but you are strong enough to be able to get through it and the fact that the obstacle is the way. So you must be consistent and apply small daily action steps every day. Okay. So let me give you an example. So if you're say reading 10 pages from a book per day,
over six months, that's going to be over 1500 pages per day. Okay, it's actually equivalent to about six or seven books. So how far ahead would you be if you just read 10 pages a day? Not hard, hey? All of us could do that, 10 pages of a day of a specific book, okay? A book that's actually going to get you somewhere and you're going to learn something from. So I've just finished reading Maha's book, which is the seven rules of self-reliance.
Angela Vassallo (10:56.296)
fabulous book. I'm about to start reading my mentor's book, Erica Kramer. She's just brought out a book, Being Magnetic. I'm about to read that book. I've been also reading The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday. It's all about whatever I'm reading is helping me achieve great things. It's helping me to grow. I'm learning something from it. It's personal development. So what about if you exercise for at least 30 minutes per day? Not too bad. Even if you're just moving your body and you're going for a walk, okay? But
doing something daily will help you move closer to your goal and it will help you achieve where you want to go. However, what's easy is also easy not to do. So what's easy to do is also easy not to do. It's easy not to read the pages of 10 pages per day. It's easy not to get up every day and do 30 minutes of exercise. It's easy not to follow our goals and dreams or read them every day. We know that the easy things are also easy not to do.
So we want to get around people that inspire you, that keep you accountable. So that's one of the biggest things I learned over that six months that I was accountable to. I could easily say, you know, I'll leave it till tomorrow, leave it till next week. But when you're accountable to someone and you have to turn up and you have to have got that thing done, that's the best thing you can have happen to you is become accountable to someone. So six month plan, accountability, made such a big difference for me. And
If you get around people that inspire you, really encourage you to find the people that inspire you that are in your arena, that are doing what you want to do, that have the success that you're wanting to have. Follow them on Instagram, listen to their podcast, subscribe to everything that they're doing, know, their newsletters, their content, you know, follow them on YouTube, download their free content, their free information. It's so much time and wisdom has been poured into these documents.
to be able to help you, give you the answers, to give you the steps forward. So follow them, but also buy into their, if they've got courses, buy into their courses, buy into what they're doing, invest in yourself and that will help set you apart. Remember, if this is a year that you want to change things, if you don't change them, you're choosing them. What are you prepared to do to change this year? So think about that.
Angela Vassallo (13:20.504)
And look, the people that you meet along the way on your road to success will either inspire you or tire you. Be very careful of who you choose to hang around this year. Be very careful of who you choose to listen to. They will either inspire you or tire you. If they tire you, my advice is move away from them as much as you can.
or limit your time with them and more on the time of the people that inspire you. So I really hope that helps. That's part one of why a six month plan, a success plan is so important. In my next episode, I'm gonna go into a little bit more detail about how you can actually start to create that six month plan. So I really hope that that has helped you too. And if you feel that this is inspiring and somebody else you know would learn so much from this, I really encourage you to share it as well this episode.
And I will look forward to hearing you and speaking to you in the next episode.
So if you know anyone who would love to be able to hear from me and listen to this podcast and be inspired by it, I really encourage you to share it. That would be amazing. I'm so grateful if you do. And also I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye for now.