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The Startup Ideas Podcast

Make 2026 the Best Year (Answer These 7 Questions)

·
Sahil Bloom

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Health & Wellness, Investing

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Mind Changes Framework: Open Google Calendar from January 2025, review activities and people from early year, identify what makes you cringe about that younger self—those cringe moments reveal your most significant mental shifts and growth areas throughout the year.
  • Energy Mapping Exercise: Categorize activities into professional, personal, and people buckets based on how you feel after (not during) them. Focus on earned privilege of eliminating drainers over time—even small changes like converting one Zoom to walking call compounds significantly.
  • Boat Anchors Identification: Use ChatGPT as truth-telling copilot to uncover mindsets, beliefs, and behaviors holding you back. Program it to be critically honest rather than supportive. Track areas where you consistently overthink or say you'll fix when things calm down—anchors hide there.
  • Founder-First Investing: Focus investment decisions on exceptional founders rather than initial business ideas, since pivots are common. One founder turned down for a disliked concept pivoted within sixty days to build a three billion dollar company, representing a thirty to sixty million dollar missed opportunity.

What It Covers

Sahil Bloom shares his seven-question Personal Annual Review framework for reflecting on 2025 to identify energy creators, boat anchors, and fears that prevent achievement, enabling founders to enter 2026 with clarity and actionable insights.

Key Questions Answered

  • Mind Changes Framework: Open Google Calendar from January 2025, review activities and people from early year, identify what makes you cringe about that younger self—those cringe moments reveal your most significant mental shifts and growth areas throughout the year.
  • Energy Mapping Exercise: Categorize activities into professional, personal, and people buckets based on how you feel after (not during) them. Focus on earned privilege of eliminating drainers over time—even small changes like converting one Zoom to walking call compounds significantly.
  • Boat Anchors Identification: Use ChatGPT as truth-telling copilot to uncover mindsets, beliefs, and behaviors holding you back. Program it to be critically honest rather than supportive. Track areas where you consistently overthink or say you'll fix when things calm down—anchors hide there.
  • Founder-First Investing: Focus investment decisions on exceptional founders rather than initial business ideas, since pivots are common. One founder turned down for a disliked concept pivoted within sixty days to build a three billion dollar company, representing a thirty to sixty million dollar missed opportunity.

Notable Moment

Bloom reveals his fear before his book launch centered on giving 100% effort and potentially failing, recognizing how people build in excuses by not going all-in to protect their ego from the pain of maximum-effort failure.

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Episode Transcript

Today's episode is why you're failing to achieve your goals and how we can fix it. I brought on my friend, Sajo Bloom, New York Times bestselling author, has invested in a 100 companies because 2026, the new year, is coming. And most people drift into a new year without any real clarity. So we're doing a different type of episode today. We're walking through seven simple questions that reset your direction, that clean up your priorities, and give you a clear plan that you can actually follow. This is the stuff that Sahil uses, I use, and the founders we work with use because they want a serious upgrade in their life and in their work. If you sit with these questions, the new year is gonna be a very different year. And get your pen and papers out because we are going to do the personal annual review together in this episode. Let's get started. I'm here with Sahil Bloom. Welcome to episode four seventy two of Where It Happens podcast. My co host, welcome back. What's going on? This is the throwback. Episode four what is it? $4.72? Some some crazy amount. I disappeared for through 440 of those, and you've you've gone and taken it to much higher heights. This is amazing. Well, welcome back for this, you know, special episode. You have a really interesting topic. You know, what do you, what do you wanna talk about today? And what will people get out of this by the end of the episode? I wanna talk about why we are all failing to achieve our goals. And what are we gonna get out of this? I, I hope it is the solution, the antidote to that, to really set us up for the biggest 2026 that we've all imagined, but, a clear structure for how to actually get there, how to look at 2025 so that you can take whatever learnings you need to and actually march into 2026 with those new insights, new perspectives to operate at full power. Okay. So if people stick to the end of the episode, they're gonna have your framework. You're gonna give away your framework for how you basically get the most out of the year. Because you've got a very special framework, and I haven't heard I I haven't seen this anywhere, and you're you're gonna let us in. You're gonna reveal it. And people could take out their pens, take out their papers. And while we're going through it, they can actually answer those questions. Right? Exactly right. We're gonna go through seven questions that are going to allow you to more meaningfully reflect on the year that was so that you can actually create a real structure for crushing the year ahead. Cool. Let's do it. Let's do it. First, just to set the stage very quickly, why is this important in the first place? There's a quote that I absolutely love, we do not learn …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

SignalCast may earn commission on purchases via these links.

Tools

  • ChatGPTRecommended

    by OpenAI

    Use ChatGPT as truth-telling copilot to uncover mindsets, beliefs, and behaviors holding you back. Program it to be critically honest rather than supportive.
  • Google CalendarRecommended

    by Google

    Open Google Calendar from January 2025, review activities and people from early year, identify what makes you cringe about that younger self—those cringe moments reveal your most significant mental shifts and growth areas throughout the year.

other

  • Sponsors: Offline Mode event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida January 23-24

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