[00:00:00] Kristy: Tell me, who doesn't love a fresh start? The beginning of the new year is such an exciting time because you've just had a holiday. You're probably still on holiday even.

[00:00:12] You have the entire year ahead of you to achieve the goals that you are going to set for yourself, no doubt. Now, some of you set goals in the middle of the year for the financial year here in Australia, but for many business owners, the beginning of the new year marks the change of season and the readiness for the year ahead.

[00:00:34] And so I wanted to record a series, helping you to get clear on what is ahead of you for 2024. There are a few different dynamics and approaches that we're going to take over the next few episodes. So I hope that you don't just join me for today's episode, but also for the next few as well.

[00:00:51] For this episode, though, we are diving into getting clear on what it is you want your 2024 to be. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello boss and welcome back to the Run Your Business Like A Boss podcast and a very happy new year to you. I'm imagining that you are still in a little bit of a holiday bubble.

[00:01:45] It is the 2nd of January after all. So if you're keen for a little bit of a soft start into the year, then know that this episode is not hard-hitting. It really is just giving you some ideas on how to approach the goal [00:02:00] setting process without it being too rigid or, you know, getting lost in the weeds of what you think you should be doing in your business.

[00:02:08] So I see this episode as being a little bit inspiring. I'm curious to know, how was your break? Let me know. Send me a message on Instagram or post on your Instagram stories so I can take a look. I wanted to share with you a little story before we get into the nuts and bolts of the episode, So my daughter got started on the summer holidays by setting up a little entrepreneurial hobby business with her friend. And it was so cool to watch them dig into their first enterprise. They were creating and selling body scrubs, which anyone that has tween girls or even boys, actually twin kids or young teen kids, you'll know that cosmetics and lotions and potions and all the things are just the rage.

[00:03:00] I mean, you just have to walk into Mecca to basically see a sea of teenagers or preteens. Anyway, so her friend and my daughter set up this little enterprise and I was so impressed. This is actually a complete understatement of how I felt watching them get their business going. As they were starting to plan their business, plan their products, plan their launches.

[00:03:28] they were getting really curious around different things. So for example, my daughter's friend said, “Do you think we should pre-sell the products first? Or should we make an even quantity of each of the different, uh, flavours?” And I really thought that was such a great question because she was thinking about this from a demand perspective.

[00:03:50] She didn't want to have stock leftover of less popular flavours.. They're not flavours, but you know what I mean? in addition to that, when they were looking at their pricing [00:04:00] strategy, I helped them to understand that they needed to look at the cost per unit of each of the scrubs. And then also work out what their profit was bearing in mind that the profit had to be split between the two of them.

[00:04:14] And my daughter then piped up with, “Oh, and we also need to make sure we account for additional money to reinvest to buy more ingredients for the next range”. And I was so impressed by that when they did finally figure out the pricing, I did challenge them on that and asked them if they thought that that was enough and gave them some questions to consider around.

[00:04:37] Other products that were comparable to theirs and they did end up deciding to increase the price. But what I thought was so interesting was something that my daughter said. She said, “You know what, Mum, it's probably better that we don't charge less because then people will think that we didn't put in a lot of effort and they're not really good quality”, which by the way, I was so impressed with what they had created in terms of the quality of the product and just the interestingness of the

[00:05:04] scents, and also, uh, just the way that they constructed the body scrubs. I was so impressed that even at the age of 12, she would be soon to be 13, that these girls were really thinking deeply about, you know, their market and the way that the product's going to be perceived and how they're going to make money and how they should launch.

[00:05:25] And all the things, and it's really taught them about product development. It’s taught them about sales and marketing. Honestly, I think this was such a great way for them to kick off the summer and So many incredible lessons that they will be able to walk away from.

[00:05:39] So anyway, that's my little story for the day.

[00:05:43] Now, over the next few weeks, as I said, I'm going to be running a bit of a planning series for you here to help you get back into the swing of your business and get really focused on the year ahead, which of course is 2024. So most people get the goal setting [00:06:00] process all wrong. And the reason for this is they take too much influence from others, and what they think they should be doing or what they could be doing.

[00:06:10] They also look at their peers or other people in their industry and take cues from what they're doing as opposed to what they really want to dive into. Or they get bogged down in the influence of people around them, be it their business besties or their family or their friends. Honestly, we just get buried under the weight of shoulds and coulds when we, when it comes to goal setting and what ends up happening is you're no.

[00:06:39] attached to the goal and when you're not attached to the goal, or it doesn't have deeper meaning, or you're not driven by the goal, then you're less likely to take action. Now, there's many reasons why we don't achieve our goals. And I'm not talking about, you know, the business took a different direction or something happened that was out of your control.

[00:07:01] What I'm talking about is you had the bandwidth and you had the capacity to be able to dig into the goal, but you didn't do it. And most often than not, that is because you were not attached to the goal in the first place. Again, very often that's because you're not setting goals based on what you think is the right thing for your business, but rather this interpretation of what's happening in the industry or pressure from the internet or whatever that might be.

[00:07:28] So I wanted to preface that because I think it's really important for you to be aware of where is this goal coming from and challenge your thinking on it before you actually make that a goal. Because as I've mentioned on the podcast, so many times when we consistently.

[00:07:44] miss our goals or we consistently don't work towards our goals, we start to lose trust in ourselves. And to have that trust in yourself is one of the most important things that you can have as a human being, but more [00:08:00] specifically in this case, as a business owner, because then your belief system starts to anchor around I'm someone who doesn't achieve my goals and this is why so many people don't like setting goals because they don't trust themselves enough to be able to execute, to take action, to ultimately achieve your goal.

[00:08:21] So first things first, what I want you to really do is to not take action until you're feeling good in yourself when you're feeling energised. So if you are not there yet, you can obviously continue to listen, or you can pause it and come back to this episode at a later date, but you want to be feeling good.

[00:08:43] You want this to be a positive experience and also know that you're going to do things differently this year. So if you have been impacted in the past by not achieving your goals, not taking action on your goals, and you do have that sense of. I'm not one who achieves goals. I want you to be able to put that out of your mind and know that you're approaching your goal-setting process from a completely different perspective, which opens the door for you to achieve those goals.

[00:09:14] The first thing to do, is to go back and look at the vision of your business. If you haven't heard me speak about this before, or if you're new to the podcast, essentially the vision of your business is where your business is going to be in 10 to 15 years from now, this is your long-range goal.

[00:09:32] Where do you see your business heading? This should feel a big stretch from where you are now, because this isn't a goal. This is a vision for your business. And the idea here is that when you start to connect to what you're working towards, it helps you to then take steps back or reverse engineer that vision into your goal-setting process so tha.

[00:09:57] your goals are actually relevant [00:10:00] to what you're looking to achieve in your business. This is what is ultimately going to help you get those blinders on and block out all the noise of what's happening in your industry, what's happening with your business besties, what's happening online and all the things, right?

[00:10:15] So firstly, sit into your vision, think deeply about what it is you are trying to achieve with your business, where your business is going and Just even a little visualization around that or jot down some ideas, do a journal entry, whatever feels right for you and that you can connect to. I love dreaming.

[00:10:37] I love thinking about different scenarios of where things will be in the future. And then I love to take those scenarios that I've visualised and put them into a journal entry. So I do a bit of a combination of both. The next thing that I want you to do is to look at your life goals and priorities for the next one to three years.

[00:10:57] And the reason for this is because this will help you to identify, you know, what's going to be required on a personal capacity perspective for the year ahead. And why this is so important is because very often we're so busy thinking about the things that we want to achieve, but we're not actually taking into account what our time capacity might be in the business.

[00:11:19] So here's what I mean. You might be thinking, I'm going to have a baby in the next six to 12 months. And here you are loading up your goals with all these things that are, you know, going to require time for execution. But also time for you to, you know, roll that out and implement and do the work beyond execution.

[00:11:41] And then that doesn't actually align to you having a baby, for instance. Or it could be that you have a wedding to plan this year, or it could be that you've got your eldest child or your youngest child doing their HSC or ATAR or whatever that's called in your state.

[00:11:56] For me personally, I have my eldest [00:12:00] starting high school this year. So I, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking term one might need a little extra time, just helping her get settled in doing a little extra running around and just, you know, mental load of transitioning a child into a new school and getting them, you know, set up and confident and what have you.

[00:12:21] So think about what are your life priorities over the next one to three years, because. This is so important for you to understand what you're capable of delivering in your business. Another thing, actually, on life priorities, it could be that you want to take a three-month break in Europe over the European summer.

[00:12:39] In which case, you then need to think about, well, I only really have nine months to achieve my goals. Is this realistic for me to do so? That's the next step. So the first step is to revisit the vision, get connected to what it is that you're building in your business, what you're working towards in your business.

[00:12:56] Step number two is to get clear on any of your life priorities over the next year or three years so that you're accounting for building things for the future as well. here's what I want you to think about when it comes to your goals. Very often we're thinking about things, things that we need to do, things that we need to

[00:13:13] reach milestones and what have you. And very often we're only setting revenue targets, but we're not actually thinking about how we can meet those revenue targets. So what I want you to do instead is just take a minute to think about what will I have achieved

[00:13:28] By December 31 of this year. How I love to do this, and just because this is what I do doesn't mean this is what's going to work for you is to actually write a list of all the achievements that I've made for the year that's ahead. So it might be start a podcast, launch this new program.

[00:13:46] You basically want to be very clear on what it is that you're actually achieving. If you want to do a revenue goal, that's totally fine, but you need to know how you're going to achieve that revenue goal.

[00:13:59] And [00:14:00] even to the point of, you know, we're going to step into a little bit of planning here, but mapping out, at what point of the year you're going to achieve what revenue in order to get to that, that amount, there is so much out there, just about this six-figure or seven-figure.. And that doesn't really mean much if you don't have a means or a way of actually being able to reach that.

[00:14:21] Goal and being able to service that number of clients. So you've got to be thinking about what is my capacity? What is the price that I have? How many clients do I need to bring in to achieve that thing? And that's when you're going to have a realistic revenue goal, rather than just pulling out a six-figure number or a hundred K or 10K months, or whatever that might be.

[00:14:42] That just feels very topical. And that's how you're going to feel much more in control of achieving your goals. So this step is essentially writing out a list of all the things that you will have achieved this year. Then from that step, you want to turn. All of the things that you've achieved into tangible goals.

[00:15:05] So making sure that it's crystal clear of what it is that you're working towards. So let's say, let's take that five, clients, retainer clients, per month that, that you want to be working with, How are you actually going to enrol those clients? How are you actually going to have those clients work with you? That's where the goal needs to be. So how many discovery calls do you need to have? How are you going to get discovery calls? What are your marketing initiatives? All of those other things.

[00:15:34] Actually feeding to you, achieving that goal is what you need to be thinking about in terms of setting goals.

[00:15:41] This isn't about a full planning process, but to give you a bit of an idea about what the things are that you're trying to work towards, that you're trying to hit in order to be able to achieve those goals. I have two awesome podcast episodes

[00:15:59] [00:16:00] that you might be interested in. There is the vision board episode that I had recorded from last year. And also a why process. I mentioned earlier about the importance of setting goals tha. actually are meaningful to you that you feel connected to that aligns with where you're taking your business. And this why process really supports that.

[00:16:26] So I will tag those two episodes down in the show notes. If you want a little extra inspiration, please go over and take a listen because they're so good To listen to in this soft takeoff week.

[00:16:39] So a quick recap of the process. Firstly, getting to that really good headspace, be feeling good, feeling excited to cast out your vision for the year. the second step is to revisit your vision and get connected to what it is that you're building and creating in your business and that long-term goal of 10 to 15 years from now.

[00:17:01] The next step is to look at your life priorities and see what it is that you're trying to do and achieve and need to undertake specifically this year. But I do think that it's worthwhile looking at the next three years as well, followed by creating that list of all the things that you want to achieve by December 31.

[00:17:22] And then lastly, turning that list into tangible goals. In the future episode, I'll be diving into the actual planning process of how to break those goals down so that you do in fact achieve your goals and sit in trust of your abilities to be able to meet your own expectations.

[00:17:42] Boss, I hope that you've enjoyed this episode. Happy visioning, happy goal setting. Enjoy this process. This should be feeling good. It shouldn't be feeling heavy. It shouldn't be feeling like you've already failed before you've started getting to that good headspace.

[00:17:59] That's the [00:18:00] most important part of the process. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I hope that you have a fantastic week. Enjoy. Your holidays, if you're still on holiday or slow time if you're on slow time. And if you're on go time. I hope that you are feeling rested and ready to dive into 2024.

[00:18:22] Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. If this spoke to you, can I please ask that you send the link to a business friend who you think might benefit from this perspective of setting goals?