End of Year Review - 2023

It's time for my review :/

Lets look back at how things have been going on the podcast so far. I reflect on some of the big topics that came up, and how it has changed how I do things. I also talk about some of what I hope to bring in the new year, and what changes we will be doing on the podcast. I'll be switching to bi-weekly releases. I also plan to start doing monthly live webcasts, starting a group in Facebook and Linked in to build a community and share resources, more live events such Zoom accountability meetings. 

Have a Happy Holidays y Próspero Año y Felicidad!

Transcript

Journey to Success

Speaker 1 0:04

This is Raul Lopez , and you're listening to . How Do you Say Success in Spanglish ? The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color . Many attempt to journey with little to no guidance . Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together we can learn how to say success in spanglish . What's giving me hinted ? It's your boy , raul . Welcome back .

Speaker 1 0:33

I hope you guys are having a great holiday season right now . I know that things are pretty busy . Same thing with me . I'm currently trying to wrap up this new year and get things going . Normally I would have had a regular episode release this week and I decided I was going to take a little hiatus during the holidays and start with some new things for the new year . I'll talk a little bit about that a little later .

Speaker 1 1:07

What I really wanted to do was take an opportunity to do an end of the year review . We do with a lot of jobs and all our jobs . Sometimes we do have to get a review and we have to do a self assessment and see how we've done and what we think we could improve on and what we need , what we liked . I'm going to do that right now for the podcast and for myself . Hopefully , I get the raise . What I'd like to start off with is I think I've gotten a lot of good support , got a lot of good feedback from people and got a lot of support as well . I'm really happy with the fact that people are that this shows resonating with people and they see the benefit and they like what they're hearing . So far , I know I'm still working on becoming a better host and working on how I ask my questions and how I speak on the mic and getting rid of my ums and ahs and ooze and so working on that , building on it , slowly making improvements each time , making sure I'm more prepared for my interviews so that it does run smoother . And I've you know I know I'm not perfect yet . This is my first time doing this , so I know I'll get there and I appreciate you guys sticking with me as I improve with this and hopefully make things better .

Speaker 1 2:41

Also , I think it's been crazy how I've been actually able to release things out on weekly basis , which is kind of wild . I've uh you guys don't understand sometimes how much time uh , this stuff takes . Um , I know some of you might know it because you're doing your own thing . But trying to fit that time in between work , uh , family time , soccer practice with my daughter , which takes a way too much time and money , but that's a whole different story . But it's a lot of late nights , a lot of two , three in the mornings , getting things edited , videos edited and posted , and , you know , going to bed and then waking up at seven to get ready for work . So , um , I'm kind of proud that I've been able to actually stay committed , uh , to be able to put out weekly . Even when we went to a vacation where I had to literally post out three weeks worth of episodes , uh , the night before I was able to get on a cruise . So it's been pretty hectic , and so , um , I'm very happy with the fact that I've been able to provide to you guys something all the time , you know , on time at least . And , um , I'll talk a little bit about how I want to do things next year a little later .

Speaker 1 4:05

Um , also , I think I personally have seen some growth in myself through advice and information and the stories resonating from my guests . On a personal level , I've seen myself being able to be more competent at work and advocate for myself a lot more and ask in demand for more , and I'm kind of hoping that some of you guys are feeling the same way . I hope that you're listening and seeing these stories and realizing I can do the same thing , I could be that way and I can go that way and taking these advice . You know , I think there's quite a few things that we've learned through this process so far , I think , one of the big ones being that we all are dealing with very similar issues . Man , we're all going through a lot of the same . It's kind of wild how much we're dealing with a lot of the same , and it's crazy to see how , every time a new guest comes up and it's like , you know , identity crisis is such a big one , impostors syndrome is such a big one we keep dealing with the same things that we .

Speaker 1 5:18

It's good to recognize it , it's good to understand that . No , we're not alone . A lot of us are feeling that way , even people who are more successful . You know , it's sometimes life feels like Facebook posts where you only see the glam , everything that's great the vacations , the money , the career but you don't see the difficulties that people are going through , and that's kind of one of the hopes that this podcast is providing is that you know we all stumble , we all fail sometimes . We all have to figure a way to pick ourselves back up and get overcome things . So you know , it's good that we get to see that and we get to see that we're vulnerable and that we can work on getting through that .

Speaker 1 6:01

And for some of us , we do get through it and can figure out who we are and what we want and demand it . You know , and that's another part of advocating for yourself I think that's a big thing that's come up . A lot too is just being able to come in there and say , hey , you know I deserve more . You know , take that leap of faith and demand more from people , don't just you know I've been repeating a lot lately as a demand the position you want . Don't let the position demand you . You know , don't just sit there and wait for the position and hope it comes to you . You know , if it's something you want , go to work , tell them . I want to be in this position . You know , and don't be afraid to give yourself an exit plan . You know , if you're not getting there , you know where can I get it . It's I spent too much on my life waiting and listening to other people . It's made me , like I said , I'm a lot more vocal at work . You know , there's plenty of stories and situations where you've seen other people who you know are nowhere near as talented as you or as the position they have , and they're still up there and you're like , how do they get this job ? I got an idiot , you know . So you know , don't be afraid to advocate

Taking Risks and Building Success

Speaker 1 7:17

for yourself .

Speaker 1 7:17

Man , and I was a risk , and I think that's another big thing is taking risks . People . You're never going to get anywhere if you don't try to take a risk here and there . It's not risk or scary , it's all kind of scary . For me it's kind of started with college . You know that was my first risk and I stumbled a lot through college . You know it was . It was , it was hard for me . And then , going through my career as well , I tried to be risk averse and , just , you know , work hard and keep going forward . And so now I'm , you know , the last probably five years , four years .

Speaker 1 7:51

I've taken a lot of risks that I normally wouldn't have and it's helped me a lot in my career and I'm continuing to do so and I hope that you guys can build the confidence to take more risks . You know you want to learn something new , go learn something new . You know they say a lot with . The road to success is not a straight line . You're going to have your ups , your downs , you're going to go backwards and hopefully in the end the progression is usually forward . So you know , don't be afraid to take risks , even if you fail , even if you mess up or even if it sets you back a little bit . You know I mean calculator risks . Hopefully , you know , don't just go out there and put all your money in an NFT and hope for the best . But you know calculator risk and you know , but sometimes those risk rewards have those risks have good rewards .

Speaker 1 8:42

So don't be afraid to take some risks , especially in your career . Don't be afraid to come to your boss and say , look , I want to become a manager . Or you know what do I got to do for that ? You know that's part of advocating for yourself and it takes a lot of guts to be able to come up there and say that . And I remember back in the day when I used to come and ask for the first few times , I asked and I said I want to promote it . You know I was shit and bricks , I was nervous and they could tell . And I think you know , the more you do it , the better you're going to get at it and eventually you poke the bear enough something . Something's going to happen and you're going to , you're going to get what you want .

Speaker 1 9:17

So you know , don't be afraid to take some risk , I think recognizing opportunities as well . You know a lot of us go through this alone with very little guidance . You know , I say that a lot like in the beginning of all maps . But there are resources out there Sometimes . We just need to be able to take them . And I think Dave planning said that one of the traits that he is proud of himself is not , you know , he can't take credit for the resources being available because those were there , but he can take credit for recognizing an opportunity and taking it , and I think that's something we need to work on , that's something we need to be able to say If it wasn't for upper bond , I don't know how successful I would have been with college or getting into the schools that I got into . And for a lot of us sometimes we got that pride where we're like I got it , I'll do it , I don't want to bother anybody and we , you know , ask for help sometimes because I'm going to look at my resume . Can someone put in a good word for me at work , go to networking events and meet other people . You know even the simple introduction like hey , this is so and so from this job and he works in this industry and that's maybe able to provide some help . So don't be afraid to ask for help , don't be afraid to take advantage of resources , other people and get that support you need . You know it's hard going through this alone . You know you don't have to , so don't be afraid to ask for help .

Speaker 1 10:47

And then I think another big thing that pops up a lot is taking care of yourself . You know , mentally , we , we talk a lot about therapy , big advocate of therapy and seeking and improving your mental health . I think that's a big one for a lot of us . We , you know a lot of our cultures tend to shy away from mental health . So , you know , take care of yourself . You know , go see a therapist , it's not going to hurt . I had one of the . A buddy of mine gave some great advice where he said I don't go to therapy to fix myself . You know , therapy is like an oil chain . You don't change your oil to fix your car . You change your oil to maintain it , so it keeps writing for as long as it can . So don't look , don't see therapy as something that's only there for when you need to get fixed . So hopefully , you know , improving mental health will will help a lot of us out , and I thought about that as well .

Speaker 1 11:46

Physical help you know I'm a big advocate on taking care of yourself . Physically . I've I've dealt with my own stuff . I have my own episode out there where I talk about it and you know if you can succeed if you're not here . So take care of yourself . Don't let yourself fall by the wayside . You know there's . If you have a job and you have insurance , please take advantage of it . It says you're wasting money by not going to the doctors and using up your , your insurance . So please take care of yourself . And you know there's nothing that's going to be better for you than being healthy . You'll be surprised how much better everything will get when you feel healthier and are healthier . And then another thing too is your work-life balance . That helps a little bit . Everything That'll help keep your physical and mental health .

Speaker 1 12:44

There's big push for hustle culture . Wake up at five in the morning , you work till seven If you don't hustle . And you don't do this , and while there are situations where you might have to put in extra hours and there are situations where you're working a lot of hours , sometimes there is a necessity to go back and say , hey , I need to take a little bit of time and balance my life and there are ways of becoming successful without having to deal and work that way and work too hard . And please don't get taken advantage . At work either . We're thinking , hey , I have to work 12 , 13 hours a day , five , six days a week to get the job I want for my promotion , because sometimes you'll just take advantage of that and you're doing that for 20 years . So sometimes you have to evaluate how much work you need to do . I mean , there's always going to be situations where you're going to have to work a little more . There's always , even as you succeed and you become more successful in your career , there's always going to be times where you might be playing work . You know jobs at like three in the morning , here and there . But you know , just trying to constantly make sure that you're having some sort of work-life balance is really important . So , you know , don't take that for granted .

Speaker 1 14:01

And then , obviously , success is relative . Everybody has their own idea of success . So please , you know , find what you want and what you your definition and how you say success and spanglish as your goals . Don't look at other people , don't go for what other people have . You know , there I know plenty of people that have shitty cars and aren't living the most lavish lifestyles , that have way more money than I ever have , you know . And then there's plenty of people that have no money living that lifestyle . So , you know , pick that level of success that you want . You know what is success for you . You know you don't have to go out there making half a million a year . You know , if you're happy at a certain level , that's your level of success . If you're happy with the fact that you are being a benefit in a nonprofit or in changing the world or providing a , you know a resource , or you know it doesn't matter if it's .

Speaker 1 15:09

The success is what you want it to be . And it's really just about identifying that and putting it out in the world and saying this is what I want to do and this is what I believe to be success . And once you have that , please , you know . Then it's about planning and figuring out what do I have to do to get there and what can I use to help myself get there . So you know , don't , don't compare yourself , don't keep up with the Joneses . Success is what you make it that comes up all the time . Everybody is different , everybody has different career paths , everybody has different things . So don't necessarily feel that you have to get a certain level to be successful . You pick that level when you're happy there , you're happy there . It's okay to say , hey , this is where I want to be , I don't need to go any further . That's perfectly acceptable as well . Just be honest with yourself .

Speaker 1 16:06

But I feel like I've learned a lot this year from everybody on my podcast , all my guests . I've resonated a lot with them and taking that and applied it in my life . I hope that I'm applying in my life and seeing some rewards for them . I hope some of you guys are there well , so , please , please . I hope that this is helping you guys out and please , let me know if it is . Let me know if there's something that has helped you or if there's something that you wish you could listen to . Oh , I'd love to hear your feedback , let me know what you think about things . So please take advantage . You can send me a message on Instagram , facebook , linkedin , twitter , threads wherever all my stuff is at . You can email me at Raul at successinspanenglishcom , but please reach out . I'm only happy to hear and listen to things , or , if you need some help with something or you need to be connected to someone you know . You know that's what we're here for . That's what I'm here for to try to help you guys out .

Speaker 1 17:15

With that being said , you know I'm hoping that for the new year , I can provide you with a lot more things . So I'm trying to do a lot more to improve the content of this podcast . I'm still going to have my guests . I have a lot of guests lined up . I'm going to take a couple of weeks off just to kind of prep and get things going for the new year , so I can start off with a bang . But I do have my list of guests and I'm building more and more , so it's got to be exciting the people I'm going to get in for next year as well .

Speaker 1 17:48

But , that being said , one of the big changes I'm going to be doing is switching out my episodes from weekly to biweekly . I feel like I'm providing a lot of content but not allowing my episodes to breathe , and I want to make sure that the reach and the impact of each episode sits for a little bit longer before the next one comes in overshadows it , so I want people to be able to listen to it . I hear a lot from yeah , I haven't had a chance to catch up on your episodes yet and I think it's just because I'm releasing so much . You know , by the time you might hear it next week . So I'm going to be doing biweekly so that we can do a little bit more time in between . That also helps me out with my work life balance , because I'm not stressing out

Building a Community and Providing Resources

Speaker 1 18:33

every week .

Speaker 1 18:33

Trying to get these episodes out so quickly and getting everything prepped so hopefully will allow me to do other things . That will provide more resources for you as well . So I'm hoping to take advantage of that extra week in between each episode to provide other resources for you . So the first thing with that is I hope to be building . Well , I plan to be building a couple groups , probably starting with Facebook and LinkedIn and then working from there . So I'm going to create these groups and I'll be sharing that information out soon that you guys can sign up for and on this group , I hope that we can start building a bit of a community where we can talk to each other , provide support for each other , reach out to guests that I've had , reach out to myself so I can communicate you with other people , spread information .

Speaker 1 19:24

I'd love to start kind of a book of the month club where we discuss different books that I think are helpful for people to improve on their lives and help them reach their success that they're looking for as well . Highlight information of things that might be helpful , like information regarding looking for new job , job interviews , fixing your LinkedIn resumes , things like that . So I'd like to build this community where we can communicate with each other and support ourselves and lift each other up , because I think that's going to be what really helps make a difference for all of us as a community , that we grow and we improve . On top of that , I'm also going to be doing some Monthly webcast , so I want to do some live webcasts . What I'd love to do is get Let it be more focused on topics , so my podcast episode is so going to be the journey , the people , the guests , what they went through and how they're going through stuff . But I will get our monthly webcast where we do and we talk about more topics . You know , we might talk about kind of like we did that one episode where I had Christian and Dave jump on and we talked about like kind of identity in the workplace . But you know , we'll talk about specific topics of things of people want interesting . I mean , the first ones are probably going to be stuff I just randomly pick but as we move along , hopefully I get some insight from you guys and you guys can tell me . Hey , I'd love to hear an episode about blah blah blah . I love to hear a conversation about blah blah blah and we'll talk about that . You know I want us to provide resources that are going to help you guys and give you the information you want . And another thing I want to do is start providing monthly kind of monthly Zoom meetings .

Speaker 1 21:12

My , the thing I'd love to do is call start doing accountability meetings . So I want to do accountability , accountability meetings and for those who don't know what accountability meetings are , so a big thing that you see a lot , especially when you start looking like self-improvement books is being accountable for what you do and don't do . So one of the things I remember reading about in one of our books is accountability meetings . So what accountability means essentially are is you have a meeting with someone generally someone either appear or someone more successful than you , you know , or something , someone you're looking to get to a level that they're at , and you you meet once a month and you meet with them , you talk with them , you catch up , you talk about what you were supposed to do for that month , what you might not have had time or been able to get accomplished , and kind of what your goals are for the following years , and then you know if there's any type of help that you need or insight , or you know I'm just brainstorming about things that I want someone to talk to . You know this is the moment to do that .

Speaker 1 22:17

So during these accountability meetings you're kind of coming in and be like hey , I'm Raul , I have this podcast , I did these things last month . I didn't get to do this thing and I'd like to get you know these things done for next month . I couldn't get this thing done last month because it was hard finding time for this and my time management was kind of bad , you know . Does anybody have any suggestions that might be able to help me fix my time management ? Also , I'm trying to build this thing . Does anybody have good resources on how I build blah , blah , blah , blah .

Speaker 1 22:46

And so you just meet once a month . It kind of one gives you an opportunity to talk about what you've accomplished , which kind of gives you a pat in the back and makes you feel good that you've accomplished stuff . That holds your accountable to . You know , you're going to be getting to like a week or two before you get to like , oh shit , I didn't finish the stuff I needed to get done and I don't want to go on this meeting and tell them I didn't get to do something . So you know you get . It holds your conval and it also provides you one-on-one communication with someone that will hopefully give you resources .

Speaker 1 23:18

So I'd like to start off by building a Zoom meetings that we do once a month for that to start off . I don't expect it to be huge right away , but I do hope that we have at least enough people to actually have a conversation and talk about stuff . So I hope that's a resource that's gonna be valuable for you guys . So I'm gonna be hosting that , and then I'm gonna . I wanna think of other things we can do as well to continue doing things like that that will help you guys out .

Speaker 1 23:46

So , you know , I really , really , really wanna provide more resources . I really wanna be able to give you guys things that are gonna help you . That being said , I also need your feedback . So please comment . You know , send me messages , let me know what you think . If you need to .

Speaker 1 24:02

You know you can go on and put a review for the podcast . I think Apple lets you do reviews . Maybe Spotify does too , I don't know . But you know , just go in there and tell me . Tell me what you think of the podcast . You know , tell me what you don't like , what you do like . Tell me things you'd like to get better . Feel free to reach out to me . I wanna know I wanna get better . I wanna do and give you what you need . I want this podcast to be a valuable asset to you . So don't be shy . Talk to me , let me know what you think . But yeah , I'm trying to give you guys more . I'm trying to give more things and provide more resources and hopefully , support you guys and support everyone . You know , I hope we all get more successful together . So thank you , you know , thank you so much for everyone listening in and thank you so much for the people that are constantly sending me messages and let me know things , and you know I really appreciate all the you know , the support . I can't do this without you guys , and so thank you so much and hopefully next time we'll start some stuff

Planning for a New Year Webcast

Speaker 1 25:07

off .

Speaker 1 25:07

In the new year I'm hoping to get , I think , my first webcast . I don't know the date yet , I have to still plan it out until . Expect something soon , but I'm gonna start our webcast in June with the theme of the new year and over you , so expect that to come out soon . I'm gonna plan on getting all this stuff and everything figured out and ironed out during the next few weeks , which is why I'm kind of taking a break from the podcast to get everything planned out so that we can start off with a bang in the new year . So thank you , rihanna , I really appreciate it . You know , like I said , I'm amazed at how much has been done in such a short time and I hope that we can continue to learn and stay successful in Spanish .