Review the Simple Ways To Create and Plan For 2018

How to review your year:

When you first start to review your year, you’ll want to ask yourself certain questions. You can’t move forward without looking at where you came from, so it’s important to spend time reviewing 2017 in its entirety.

Here is a list of questions to ask yourself:

• What products/services did you create in 2017?
• What do you want to do more of?
• What do you want to do less of?
• What worked?
• What didn’t work?
• What were you happiest doing?
• What were your finances?
• What stressed you out the most?
• How do you feel about the last year overall?

These answers don’t have to necessarily be all business based. Maybe you want more freedom and you want to spend less time working. Maybe you want fewer clients so you can spend more time with your family.

There are no “right” answers to these questions, but you need to answer them honestly.

Create short-term and long-term goals

Now that you’ve reviewed your year, it’s time to start creating some short and long-term goals.

Start by creating your biggest goal first, because it will keep you accountable and give you something to strive for.

(For example, this year my long-term goal was to rebrand my website, so I signed up for a Beta Test and learned all about how to use the Divi Builder to create my new site.)

So, start with your long-term goal first. Then, break it down into short-term goals, doing it step by step. This will help you to achieve your long-term goal without the unnecessary stress.

Try doing it by each quarter as this might make more sense to you.

Your short and long-term goals may look different than others in your business circle. Remember that these are your goals, not your coaches, your partner or anyone else. The point is to think about the business you want to create and make sure your goals are in line with that.

Plan for next year

Planning for next year needs to happen in addition to creating an action plan, which I’ll discuss more about below.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you’re dreaming up what your 2018 could look like:

• What are your financial goals for your business?
• What new products/services do you want to launch (if any)?
• How will you reach your financial goals?
• What can you do in the first 90 days to get closer to your goals?
• How will you grow your audience in 2018 (blogging, YouTube, Facebook Lives, etc.)?
• What marketing strategies will you focus on to promote your products/services?

Answering these questions is critical to your success as a business owner. As the saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail.”

If you need some extra help, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’d be more than happy to help you review your business with you and suggest some goals you might like to try.

Create an action plan for how you’ll achieve those goals

Now, this is where the magic happens. Nailing down your goals is a crucial step to reviewing your year, but if you don’t create an action plan for how you’ll achieve those goals then you won’t get very far.

If you want more Time Freedom in your life, you’re going to need to set up systems and processes for your business to run without you being attached to it. This is the simplest way to become successful.

This may mean investing in programs that help automate tasks. This could also mean you need to outsource some tasks so you can focus on what you do best.

Try to plan out your short-term goals in 90-day chunks. From there, create an action plan for each of those goals and what you need to do each week to move forward.

Creating an action plan will help you recognize the people and systems you’ll need to invest in to achieve your goals. Click To Tweet

If the people and systems you need to invest in gets to be too pricey for you, you may need to reconsider some of your goals you have.

Identify how you’ll measure the progress of these goals

What measurements will you use to check in on your progress for your short and long-term goals? Throughout the year, revisit your goals and see if you’re on track.

Sometimes you can make long-term goals and then realize halfway through the year that you need to change directions.

That’s completely alright! Really!

But, you need a process in place for you to continuously be revisiting your goals, checking in on your numbers, and revising what works and what doesn’t work so you can continue to move forward.

Planning for downtime

This is so necessary but often a step that’s overlooked when planning for the next year.

Please, leave downtime in your schedule

This means don’t overdo creating so many new product ideas in the first 90 days of the year that you collapse from exhaustion. Really, some people actually do this!

Give yourself a chance to breathe and not be doing, creating, giving, sharing every week of the year. You can increase your business without sacrificing your time and energy. Smart planning is critical to your health also.

Because life will happen. And some project will get pushed back or delayed for reasons out of your control. Or your kids will get sick. Or you’ll get sick. Again, because life will happen. There’s no escaping it, ya know?

You’ll appreciate the downtime in the future, so you can either catch up on work that was missed or take some time to relax and focus on refreshing your mind/body.

And…that’s WHY you need someone to help you with all the many things on your to-do list. Allow me to offer you some Time Freedom in YOUR Business!

Contact me here – I would love to help you – every step of the way!