In this episode, John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) reflect on their experiences over the past year, discussing the importance of setting goals, evaluating successes and failures, and learning from challenges. They emphasize the significance of writing down goals, the impact of unexpected surprises, and the growth that comes from both personal and professional milestones. As they look ahead to 2026, they share insights on building a stronger studio culture and the actionable steps they plan to take in the new year.
In this episode:
- Reflecting on the past year is crucial for growth.
- Writing down goals increases the likelihood of achieving them.
- Evaluating both successes and failures helps in future planning.
- Unexpected challenges can lead to personal growth.
- Actionable goals are more effective than vague aspirations.
- Building a strong studio culture requires intentional effort.
- Surprises can be both positive and negative in a business context.
- Learning from past experiences is essential for improvement.
- Setting measurable goals helps track progress effectively.
- Celebrating milestones can enhance motivation and morale.
Building a great music school and studio business happens by taking slow, deliberate actions. The new year is a great time to reflect on those small actions that resulted in long-term growth, and establish future actions. Happy New Year!
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Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.44)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki.
Mandy York (00:06.124)
and I’m Mandi York.
John Kozicki (00:08.374)
and it’s new year, new goal setting time, right Mandy? And reflecting on the past year.
Mandy York (00:12.994)
Yes, it’s that time of year. Yeah. Yep.
Mandy York (00:18.828)
Yep. We are in the thick of it right now. We’re, mean, as we’re recording this, it’s not quite Christmas yet. So.
John Kozicki (00:25.496)
Right. Yep. Still December, but we’re looking forward to 2026.
Mandy York (00:29.528)
Yes. And you know, it hits me every year, the busyness of the holidays, the anticipation of a break. You know, we’re taking a break, so getting excited for that coming off of a busy season. But then also knowing the new year is going to start. There’s no stopping time. Here we go. You know, we’re going to be off and running. And so it’s really important to take some time right now to…
John Kozicki (00:47.362)
Yeah.
Mandy York (00:56.738)
reflect on the last year and set some new goals. I think you’ve been thinking about this too, right?
John Kozicki (01:03.288)
Well, I have, but I’ll tell you what. You know, we we did a we did a New Year goal planning episode last year. So it was episode 23. It was about setting goals for the year. And I remember in that conversation, there was a lot of talk about how for me personally, if I don’t write down my goals, I just don’t hit them.
Mandy York (01:14.019)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (01:32.357)
And I think we even shared statistics in that episode about that’s like, that’s pretty common for a lot of people. And like, it’s something crazy, like you’re 40 % more likely to hit a goal if you write it down. But this year, I think I need personally, I need a little bit more of like, reflection on the past year. Because I felt like I was just in the thick of it for most of the year.
this year. So I think it’ll be good to just sort of reflect and, and instead of because I, my gut is telling me like, man, I was just, there was a lot of pressure this year. And I think if if I sit down and reflect on maybe some of the things that I did in 2025, I’ll feel a little bit better about it. Because I felt like I was kind of in survival mode.
Mandy York (02:01.838)
haha
Mandy York (02:25.197)
Yes.
John Kozicki (02:29.11)
So yeah, I’m ready to talk about like that kind of stuff as well as some planning.
Mandy York (02:35.512)
planning for the year to come. Yeah, for sure. As I’ve been thinking about the transition to 2026, I’ve been there too. I’ve been really thinking more about reflecting first. I think that it’s important to evaluate and process. It’s like forcing yourself to take some time and process everything that happened. Like you said, you were in the thick of it and time passes quickly.
John Kozicki (03:01.208)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (03:04.888)
Yeah.
Mandy York (03:05.806)
So, you know, before you know it, we’re going to be planning for our spring semester. So it’s time to reflect on what has happened. I, so in order to do that, I’ve kind of tried to organize myself here in what, what to consider as we reflect on the past year and then how to use that information going forward. These are some things that I’ve, I’ve come up with.
John Kozicki (03:28.995)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (03:35.855)
that I want to process, what, and I don’t mean to start on a negative note, but, but, know, like, what, what, what were my like most difficult moments and experiences throughout the year? Right. Of course that’s important to look at and learn from those experiences process. That’s the word I keep thinking of. need to process all of this information. So what were those?
John Kozicki (03:43.576)
No, well, I kind of did too.
John Kozicki (03:52.932)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (04:03.395)
Okay.
Mandy York (04:05.388)
those things, looking back throughout the year. What, and maybe this aligns with that, what goals from last year pulled those out, what goals did I not achieve? And or what things did I want to do in the year, but didn’t, wasn’t able to get done. And then flip that. What things were you most proud of throughout the year? Right?
John Kozicki (04:23.172)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (04:32.898)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (04:34.304)
looking at that list of goals from last year, what goals did you achieve? and then what surprises came up? Cause that always happens, right? What surprises came up? And those are not always negative. There’s like positive and negative surprises that happen throughout the year, right? Yeah. What do you think about that as far as reflecting? Can you think of any other points?
John Kozicki (04:43.971)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (04:51.012)
Yeah, yeah, I’ve both, yeah.
John Kozicki (05:02.392)
Well, I’m ready to reflect, I think. I’ll dig in. I’ll give you… Yeah, I do. So I’ll give you… It’s weird because I made this a goal. I wanted… So we have a… I think from last year, we talked about kind of this framework in the last year’s episode.
Mandy York (05:04.736)
Yeah. Okay. Let’s you want to jump in? Okay. Okay.
John Kozicki (05:28.164)
segmenting goals into four categories a student number or revenue goal a studio culture goal a giving back goal and a personal goal so my studio culture goal was to do more it’s funny it had to do with like internal it wasn’t it wasn’t students and families it was my staff
And my goal was to do more staff hangs. But I’ll tell you what, one thing that I feel like I failed on is I didn’t make it measurable. I didn’t say like, we’re going to plan like five or six or whatever. I didn’t put a number to it. So in that respect, I was like, that’s so basic of what I failed in that. But
Mandy York (06:23.935)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (06:26.518)
I we did we did more studio hangs like and when I say studio hangs I mean the staff in 2025 than we did the previous year. So I think I feel like I took steps to move the needle on that. So I felt pretty good about it but more I think more in this coming year and I’m going to write a number.
Mandy York (06:48.578)
Right. That’s a really good point. I’m writing that down because you can’t just say, I want this to be better. You want to say like, how do I want this to be better? Yes. Teachable moment. Good.
John Kozicki (06:53.568)
Yes.
Right, right. Yeah, for sure. But what we also did and like I don’t like to do all staff meetings. mean, like I’ve got, you know, I’ve got over a dozen people on my on my staff and they have all different schedules and it’s really hard to find a time to to get everyone together for a staff meeting. So I respect that, but
I really felt like in the interest of promoting that studio culture, yes, we’ll do those casual hangouts, but also let’s do some staff meetings. It was the tail end of the year that I kind of got back into implementing those in a regular routine, which I felt good about. And we’ve been using like better internal communication systems, too. So I felt like on my studio culture goal.
Even though I fumbled, I moved the needle. So I’m going to call that I’m going to call that a win. Yeah.
Mandy York (08:00.494)
That’s a win. Yeah, I would too. Yeah.
I had a goal to hire a teacher, another teacher, and I did not, I did not, I’m going to call it a fail. Well, I’m not going to call it a fail. I’m, we are, I’m actually meeting with someone next week to talk about a training schedule. So sure. My needles moved a little bit, but, that was, that was a goal of mine and it didn’t happen. I actually took on more teaching hours myself. but.
John Kozicki (08:11.076)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
John Kozicki (08:35.013)
huh.
Mandy York (08:37.474)
I guess this goes along with a surprise. I had a teacher that just went on maternity leave. that’s, you know, so surprise things happen. We rolled with it and I added more hours to my schedule and I have had more conversations. I think we’re going to talk about hiring again soon too. I won’t get into it too much, like I’m, I’m just learning a lot and I’m
John Kozicki (08:45.027)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (09:01.573)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (09:05.582)
I’m being really picky and anyway, slowly moving the needle forward, but no, I did not hire another teacher.
John Kozicki (09:12.677)
What do you think in retrospect? I mean, I know for that goal I mentioned, I was like, I didn’t write down a way to measure this. So that was clearly why I feel like I wasn’t as effective in that goal. do you, in hindsight, do you think you understand why you didn’t hit that goal?
Mandy York (09:22.328)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (09:37.081)
fear. Like basically, yes, I think that that’s why. Yeah. And so it’s a, yeah, that’s a real answer. and no, it was always on my, my goal list. I would always see it and I would brainstorm a little bit and I had some conversations, but to be totally honest, I don’t think I worked as hard as I should have on it.
John Kozicki (09:38.245)
Oh, yeah. That’s a real that’s a real thing.
John Kozicki (10:07.203)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (10:07.594)
because I’m, I was caught up in the tyranny of the urgent as we always are. And, and because I was, you know, kind of afraid it’s a, it’s a big heavy task, but
John Kozicki (10:16.291)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (10:24.324)
You know what this makes me think of a little bit? It makes me think of and we’ve talked, we talked just a little bit about this. And in fact, we said, I said I wasn’t really going to mention this, but the different types of goal planning, like there’s there, the really popular one, which is the SMART goal planning and people can look it up, but it’s an acronym. And then the other one that I was recently turned down to, which is PACT goal planning.
which PACT stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable. What your, you know, miss makes me think about is, it’s like the big difference between those two smart goals are really focused on outcomes, right? So like, it’s almost, I mean, it’s not this simple, but like you didn’t hit that goal, right? So the outcome is like, well, you didn’t do it.
Pact goal planning is more about output, meaning you’re saying, I am going to do these things. Right? So this is the action that I’m going to take and you’re less concerned with the outcome. Right? So when it comes to things like goals that we’re maybe afraid of, I definitely see this more in personal goals. Like, I mean, it’s a real general one, but like fitness goals, right? It’s
Mandy York (11:34.584)
guess.
John Kozicki (11:48.387)
Like we get so hyper fixated on like, I want to be ripped and I want to like weigh this amount and like whatever, or I want to lift these weights. But instead, like really, if you focus on just your output, like, okay, don’t think about the outcome. Think about I’m going to do this thing. Like I’m going to do 30 sit ups every night, five nights a week consistently.
Right? That’s you just focused on that, that output so that the outcome eventually happens.
Mandy York (12:25.88)
Mm-hmm. Yes, that’s good. Like the how, like those small manageable steps. How am I going to do this instead of just looking at that goal every day? Like me, this is what I have to do. Well, I guess I did have kind of a surprise though. We talked about like reflecting on surprises. I guess this is a surprise. So I was teaching a lot more and realized that I was
John Kozicki (12:27.652)
you
Right. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Mandy York (12:54.444)
I really realized how much of the kind of mundane tasks and menial menial tasks I was doing. And I thought, if I’m, if I’m teaching so much more, I need more help. And, I, you know, my admin is, is doing a lot, you know, she’s doing plenty and we discussed how to, like split up these tasks. And I ended up hiring a student, like an afterschool student.
John Kozicki (13:00.878)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (13:23.864)
Yeah.
Mandy York (13:23.96)
to stop in and do stuff. Yeah, that was a cool surprise. And I was like, this is great. we’ve talked about this before. I’m a technician. That’s the kind of business owner I am. I’m, you know, I like being in the classroom and all of that. I enjoy this teaching load, but that means I need to cut back elsewhere. And so that was kind of a cool, you know, surprise consequence of this mix up for me that I was able to do that.
John Kozicki (13:36.132)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (13:44.771)
Yeah.
Mandy York (13:53.825)
And then, you know, I did grow as a teacher this year. I really, you know, I think I got more creative and my, my older kids for me, older kids are kindergarten through second grade. Like that class for me, like is really grooving right now. So no, I didn’t hire. I have, you know, I’m, I’m taking some small steps. I really do think I’ll have somebody within the next two or three months, but other, other things came out of that.
John Kozicki (14:06.361)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (14:24.568)
the after school help, student help, yeah, improving my own teaching. So, yeah.
John Kozicki (14:31.598)
That’s cool. I did something similar. And this wasn’t even a goal. This was just like this nagging thing that I knew I needed to do, which was organize our systems and processes that are all documented. Organize them in a better way. Because so frequently what happens is we’ll implement something new or we’ll create a different way of doing things. And I’ll quickly open up a document. Here’s how we do it.
Mandy York (14:46.936)
yeah, yeah.
John Kozicki (15:01.596)
and then I don’t even think about where we’re going to file this. How does it relate to anything else? Right? So I, I did something very similar to what you said you did with hiring a student. I had a former instructor who had moved out of state. She was coming back into town for a couple of weeks and she let me know that she was available for whatever, right? Subbing office work. And I said, perfect.
Why don’t you come in for two weeks? Here are all the processes. Just go for it. Organize them. And she did it. And it was like the best, just like temp hire that I think I’ve ever made. Because similar to you, I’m busy. My admin’s busy with other things. Yes, this is related to administrative stuff, but it’s like it’s time consuming. So
Mandy York (15:47.533)
Yes.
John Kozicki (16:00.609)
Yeah, that was a nice, nice little surprise that came about for me.
Mandy York (16:05.304)
Awesome. Yeah, I love that. So cool. And I hadn’t thought about it before, you know, it just sweet. let’s see. What else? well, did you tell me what were your most difficult moments or experiences this year? Do you have anything there?
John Kozicki (16:10.634)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (16:25.091)
Well, yeah, I’ve got two. like I had a lot of personal ones that I’m not going to share. But studio wise, I there were two goals that I kind of one that I’ve failed on didn’t hit, which was a student number goal. And we lost a significant number of students in May.
Mandy York (16:30.349)
Okay.
John Kozicki (16:52.919)
like more than we’ve ever lost. Like we the last time we had a loss like this was it like COVID. And it kind of had me reeling for like most of the summer. And, you know, we’ve slowly been building back but that was kind of this unexpected like man, not only did am I not going to hit that student number goal. We’re in like we got to make up some
some ground here. But coincidentally, I believe I mentioned on the last episode about like one of the things I also look at is I look at that percentage number of our students who are in our groups or performance band programs. And my goal with that is always to be like 50 to 60%. So ironically, we even though we lost a bunch of students that
that percentage goal, we still maintained it. you know, give and take. So that was one of them that was, I didn’t hit and that was a challenge. Another one was my giving back goal. I have wanted to set up this scholarship program and
Mandy York (17:57.871)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (18:19.765)
I looked into how do you do this, right? Like what is the accounting involved and like all this other stuff. And so I decided like the best way for me to do this is to partner with a local nonprofit. And we had a few meetings and it was like, yeah, I think this is going to work out. And then the meetings were like there was friction there for me in like how things were going.
and I realized I can’t do this. And so I bailed out on that one. I mean, we still, we still did kind of the same charitable stuff that we typically would do. But yeah, that that project, that idea, I just bailed out. And so, yeah, didn’t hit that one either.
Mandy York (18:54.114)
Mm-hmm
Mandy York (19:08.718)
Mm-hmm. Yep. But that’s kind of a… That was a learning experience. you didn’t… You tried something new. You tried, right? And yeah, I would imagine, like you said, like the accounting rules and things like that, that can be tough. And is that something you want to take on? Or are there other things that you can do in lieu of?
John Kozicki (19:19.969)
Yeah, yeah, good point, good point.
John Kozicki (19:33.527)
Well, that was really it. That was really it. was like, OK, if I do this myself, I don’t want to take on the extra administrative stuff. If I partner with an organization that already has that stuff in place, then that takes that load off. But then I realized the trade off there was. I mean, like, I’m you know how I am. I like I want to do things my way.
Mandy York (19:59.567)
Like, yeah, you’re going to lose some of the control, right? Oh, gosh. Yeah, I would be the same way. Yep. Okay.
John Kozicki (20:03.587)
Yeah, yeah, so.
Yeah, yeah, so those are two that I kind of failed on or I shouldn’t say fail I just I didn’t hit them Yeah, yep
Mandy York (20:17.166)
Right. We’re reflecting. Yeah. We’re just having like honest conversations with ourselves about what actually happened this year. I did, one of my goals was to kind of analyze my, my giving because I, I’m just kind of a yes person a lot of the, a lot of the time, you know? And so I was like, okay, what am I really doing and giving? I,
John Kozicki (20:40.365)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (20:45.324)
looked at 2024 numbers last year when I was setting goals for 25, and looked at it and then came up with like a budget for myself. And then, you know, I, I said no a little bit more this year, which, that was, that was a win. It, it didn’t hurt me. You know, everything was okay. You can say no sometimes. but was able to,
John Kozicki (20:58.339)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (21:02.635)
Mmm, yeah.
Mandy York (21:15.66)
Sometimes if you say yes too much, it makes it harder to say yes. If you say yes to everyone, it makes it harder to say yes to those people or causes that you really want to support. And so this, I made sure that what I was doing and giving aligned with my studio and my personal interests. So that was a win. That was good. I wanted to take on my bookkeeping this year. Did I tell you that?
John Kozicki (21:38.083)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (21:45.442)
No.
Mandy York (21:46.094)
Did I tell you that? I wanted to take on my bookkeeping. So I have a tax accountant and a bookkeeper. And I think you do all your own bookkeeping,
John Kozicki (21:52.428)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (21:57.283)
I do bookkeeping, but I have an accountant.
Mandy York (22:01.166)
Okay. Right. So I have, I have a bookkeeper that does my, just like my monthly books. and it’s not a really difficult task, but I, I loved handing it over a few. Maybe she’s been with me five years. I don’t remember. but I want to take it on because like systems are in place, you know, it’s really easy. You know, she’s set me up.
John Kozicki (22:28.83)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.
Mandy York (22:31.59)
but I didn’t. And I suppose if I had hired another teacher, maybe I would have, along with, like my thinking with hiring this afterschool student help. It’s like, okay, that’s giving me extra hours every week. So maybe I’ll get a new teacher in place. I have, a student helper and maybe I’ll take off, take over my bookkeeping this year. That’s one of my goals. Yeah.
Yeah, dang. Okay, I need a little more positive maybe. Let me hear it.
John Kozicki (23:04.738)
Well, I’ll go positive. I’m going to talk about my personal goals, which ironically, I kind of didn’t hit the personal goal that I set for myself, but I hit a bunch of other personal goals that just sort of came up and I decided I’m going to pursue this. So one that I set for myself was to completely not work on
Mandy York (23:11.246)
Okay.
John Kozicki (23:34.189)
Fridays. And I felt like I didn’t, I still didn’t hit that. I don’t honestly, I don’t know if I’m ever gonna hit that one. Like the idea, the idea of it sounds so great. But I like, I just, I don’t know, I, the things that I tend to do on Friday, I actually enjoy. So I don’t know if I’m ever gonna hit that one, but I digress. So didn’t hit that one.
Mandy York (23:42.68)
That’s really hard.
John Kozicki (24:01.462)
but personal goals that I did hit. these are both, or these are all like, they’re kind of both personal, but also kind of business diversification goals. So number one, I finished the strumming book that I published this year, which was really cool. Yeah, so I was super happy about that. And that wasn’t even on my list, but that was just something that I’d kind of been working on ongoing.
Mandy York (24:20.642)
Yeah, that was big. Yeah.
John Kozicki (24:31.518)
I took on another project that I had been thinking about, like running this project around my head for literal years. can’t, I don’t want to go too much into detail about it yet because it’s not ready to be sprung on the world, but it is a, it’s a kind of a songwriting learning product thing that,
that I finally took on that project and it got legs and we’re close to the finish line with that. So I’m really happy with how that’s going. the speaking at NAMM in January, as I’ve mentioned already on the podcast, and that is a huge one for me. So I’m really excited about that one. And that wasn’t even on like, that wasn’t even on a list like, speak at NAMM someday, but.
super excited about that one. There’s, but there is like, there’s this other project that I’ve been working on for a couple of years that has to do with curriculum that we we do at the the Rock School. And that one’s just like it’s been there have been goals that we keep missing. And like, all year we missed a certain goal with that. It was on like the end of 2024 goal and we missed that. So I think
2026, we’re so close to the finish line with that one. So I’m excited about that.
Mandy York (26:06.19)
Yes. Yeah, you’ve got a lot in the works. It is exciting. Yeah, you’ve done good things. Cool.
John Kozicki (26:11.713)
Yeah, and that’s what keeps me fired up about, I think, everything that we do.
I love the rock school, you know, but we’ve got the systems so dialed in with how we run everything that like our concert schedule and our band program runs pretty smoothly at this point. So that does give me a little bit more freedom to get creative and look at other ways to kind of diversify and explore my own creativity with these other projects.
Mandy York (26:47.16)
Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s great.
what else is on my list? I had, so it was my 10 year anniversary this summer. And we did a number of like anniversary events. did kind of a series of events and, that fed into my goal of like strengthening our studio culture. And, and I thought it was a huge success. It was really cool. I do feel like, yeah, our families and.
John Kozicki (26:58.739)
yeah, yes.
John Kozicki (27:12.214)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (27:22.028)
are more connected and even the business within the community. just, was like, it was a good year for us. I loved it.
John Kozicki (27:28.417)
Yeah, and you did a lot for that like four events was it four
Mandy York (27:33.281)
Yeah, it was, it was four. Yeah. We partnered with the cinema. We did a picnic. We had our annual concert. and we did a grownups night only. Yeah. And, yeah, it was, it was a lot. It was a lot. And I, but I’m super glad we did it. And then we, you know, we met or exceeded our numbers, our goals, for each semester.
John Kozicki (27:42.433)
Yeah, yeah.
John Kozicki (27:59.618)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Great.
Mandy York (28:03.636)
I, because of the way I’m structured, I set goals kind of quarterly for registrations and we met or exceeded each goal. So that was really great. Yeah, it was a good year. I worked on, I think I talked about this and in one of our podcasts, maybe last year’s goal podcast about like more touches, you know, kind of individual and, which I think feeds into like the idea of building culture a little bit too.
John Kozicki (28:14.079)
Nice.
Mandy York (28:34.214)
And I did not have like, didn’t have anything to measure that by either. of like your earlier, you were talking about that, you know, how do I measure this? But I did have to order more stationary. So that’s, so I use my, yes. And I know I did. I was definitely more intentional about it and more conversations with.
John Kozicki (28:44.403)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (28:50.241)
So you probably sent more notes.
Mandy York (29:02.286)
caregivers and individual emails to caregivers about their kids. And I think that went along with my teaching too. I was more in, as far as those individual conversations, more in my parent ed routine with that, perfecting how I do that with the parents. So I’ll say that’s a win.
John Kozicki (29:31.298)
So as you’re reflecting now, you feeling good about the year? Are you feeling like, you know, we talked about, yeah, some of these goals we didn’t hit, but like in general, I mean, yeah, it’s important to those goals, but if we don’t hit those goals, how do we rebound?
Mandy York (29:33.484)
Yeah.
Mandy York (29:40.086)
I
Mandy York (29:55.156)
Right, I-
John Kozicki (29:55.394)
Cause if we’re down in the dumps, makes it really, really hard to get fired up about setting new goals or feeling good about what we’re doing. I don’t know, how are you feeling about it?
Mandy York (30:06.804)
I feel good. really do. And I think this is actually really fun having this conversation, like going back and forth. These exercises are typically something for personal self-reflection, but having a conversation like this, going back and forth, it’s exciting to talk about your past year. This is cool. Talking about what happened, sure, there were things that I didn’t do. And I’m sitting here with my…
John Kozicki (30:27.967)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (30:36.758)
my pad of paper and my list is really long. I have more, you know, positives and negatives. I mean, we always want to focus on the positive things and just learn from these things that didn’t, these goals that you didn’t accomplish, you know? What happened and how can I make the changes? I love what you said about the pact planning. I think
John Kozicki (30:39.787)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (31:03.851)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (31:06.488)
focusing on the how, set the goal, and then, okay, I did not hire a teacher this year, but how, like what are the things I’m going to do, very specifically, to make it happen within the first quarter next year.
John Kozicki (31:19.328)
Right.
Yeah, I know you’re a fan of atomic habits. And some of it’s that I think it’s, it’s like just putting in the work. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to share goals for 2026? Or are you not there yet?
Mandy York (31:26.211)
Mm hmm. Yes, that’s what the, packed fat reminds me of. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Mandy York (31:40.11)
I’m not quite there yet. I mean, I’m working on it. Hiring is my number one. Yeah, that is my number one.
John Kozicki (31:47.648)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (31:55.759)
Yeah, what, do you have goals that you wanna share? You’re not there yet. Yeah.
John Kozicki (31:58.377)
not there yet. I mean, I think these ongoing projects that I’m working on, like I see realistic timelines for when they’re going to be finished. So obviously those are goals, but yeah, I don’t know. I have to really, I’ve kind of really put some thought to it, I think. I’ve got a couple kicking around in my head, but I’ve not.
Mandy York (32:06.03)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (32:26.526)
I’ve not written anything down yet. And so I feel like for me to commit to them, when I write them down, that’s me committing. And I’m going to not make that mistake again about like not being able to measure some of these.
Mandy York (32:44.77)
Yes. Yeah, that’s really good advice. That’s a good lesson. Yeah. I’m still just in the reflection phase, which I have not spent this much time reflecting like on a previous year. Like I said, I’ve got my notepad and I’m, I’ve got a couple of pages here of reflections and ideas. So, this is a little bit different for me in as far as how I’ve done, goal planning. I like this.
John Kozicki (33:06.175)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (33:10.752)
I haven’t done this either. And honestly, I’m feeling pretty good now. If you had asked me before this conversation, like, how was your 2025? I probably would have focused on the, it was hard. It like, it was a struggle. It was kind of a slog. But thinking about these specifics now, I’m feeling way better.
Mandy York (33:28.417)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (33:40.288)
in spite of the challenges, there were some pretty good milestones in 2025, now that I look at it like this. So thank you. Thanks for initiating this one.
Mandy York (33:52.354)
Yeah, and thanks for talking through it with me. It was great. Cool.
John Kozicki (33:54.517)
Yeah, of course. So should we wrap it up? Cheers to 2026. Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll see you next time. Bye.
Mandy York (33:58.306)
Yeah, goals to come. Here we go.
Thanks, John. Bye.
