There’s no better time than the beginning of a new year to plan your year. But even if you don’t start in January, it is never too late to plan and get more strategic about your personal and business goals. So don’t let the time of year hold you back.
I have studied the successful people that I admire because I wanted to know how they get big results. Here is how they get things done and how they plan and set their goals. Now, before you write down your goals, this is what they all agree that you should do first.
- Get very specific. Write down what worked the last 12 months. What did you enjoy doing? What did your customers love? What made you money? What didn’t work, and what were the failures? We all have them. What stopped you from moving forward? What should you stop doing in your business?
- What product, program or service do you already have? How can you make it better? Focus on getting it out there in a bigger way. And remember to build in some room for new content, new programs, products or services.
Now write down your goals. Keep it simple and concise. Here are some details from mine.
- Revenue. The first thing on my list is all of my revenue projections. How much money I’m going to make and where is that money coming from? The way I do this is to ask myself how much revenue I want to make with each of my streams of income. My 3 streams of income outside my 9-5 are; my course, Thrive, which I do twice a year in March and November, my Virtual Assistant Agency, and my one on one coaching.
- Contribution. I have a non-profit called Heroes Against Diabetes in Africa where my family and I support underprivileged children with diabetes supplies. This makes me work even harder at my income-producing projects so I can give to this cause that is near and dear to my heart.
- Customer support. This year I want to go above and beyond and reach out to my customers, in a way that will connect me with them and dive deep into how I can help them. I will be sending DMs to my customers asking how I can support them and thanking them for their support of my business. I like doing quick surveys with my customers because it helps me understand where they are and how I can support them. It helps me curate specific content to where they are.
- Podcasting. Starting a podcast is one of my big goals this year. I will be sharing my podcast with you as soon as I launch it. Look out for it soon.
- Weekly content. This year I plan on sending out an email to my subscribers every Thursday. It will be an email that has value. It will be a tip or a strategy for something that I can teach or something that I am promoting. One of the things that I struggled with last year was staying consistent with my content. This year I will batch my content in one sitting, which means that I will block out my calendar just for content creation. This means that I will need to make some tweaks in my schedule and work strategically around my 9-5. This might be waking up earlier to get things done. As I write this it’s 5 am, so I know I’ve got this. Think of the content you can create consistently once a week and block out time for creation, then schedule it to go out on your platform of choices such as your blog, Youtube or podcast.
So these are just my business goals but I also have goals in all areas (environments) of my life such as my spiritual environment, health, relationship etc.
Once I list down my goals, here’s what I do next
I break them down into mini goals that I can focus on quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily. A big goal can seem intimidating, leading to procrastination because we don’t know what the next steps are. So break it down into small tasks that you can achieve daily. Checking off your list of tasks will help you stay motivated and clear with the next steps.
If you want to dive deeper into how to create your goals and vision board, which is a visual representation of your goals for the next 12 months, grab the replay of my recent workshop “Vision Board and Goal Setting” here. It’s a step-by-step roadmap that will guide you to have a clear vision, align your goals with that vision, and elevate your mindset, so you can follow through on making your goals a reality.
Get the replay here