Happy New Year PBC readers! :)
We hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and time with your favorite people doing whatever it is you love most to wrap up the end of 2017. Now that the New Year has come, we're excited to share our steps on how we're planning for the year ahead and setting goals for our own business in hopes that it can help you in your journey.
picture credit: We The Light Photography
So, where's the best place to start when goal setting?
1. Get a meeting on the books. Here at PBC, meetings are our 'thing'. We set monthly meetings for our short-term goals, and one yearly meeting dedicated to our long-term goals (though we check back on them at each of our monthly meetings too!) If you co-own your business like we do, get something on the books with your business partner(s) ASAP for January, or if you are a solo-owner, schedule a meeting with yourself, as silly as that may sound. Plan a time where you can sit down and really reflect on the past year(s) and plan for the one ahead, IN WRITING! (see step two :) )
2. Write things down. At each meeting Becca and I have together, we write everything down. Writing things down affords you a physical space to keep track of your goals and return to them later. Ask yourself questions and write down your answers. What have you accomplished already? Don't be afraid to give yourself a pat on the back, in fact, we encourage writing down all of your best moments - maybe it was simply starting your business, maybe it was a financial goal you hit or reaching a certain number of projects or clients - write down what you did so that you know what you need to do to exceed your previous goal!
3. Track your numbers. This goes hand-in-hand with writing things down. At each meeting, we track our profitability, our expenses, and the number of projects we've completed. This is especially helpful in thinking about future plans for our business. Expenses can certainly creep up on you and we've found that looking at them closely each month has helped us keep our costs low and profitability right. Additionally, knowing if we are lower on project numbers than say a previous month, is helpful in indicating that we may need to market differently. These are all things that would go unnoticed if we weren't tracking them as often as we do.
4. Get specific and have fun! We set a monetary goal for what we want to do for the year (be realistic but dream big!) plus additional, non-monetary goals... like how many clients or people we want to impact, a trip we want to take or conference we want to attend. This helps us in staying business-minded, but still planning for fun and adventure! Divide your goals into monetary and non monetary and try to set at least 2-3 of each. One of Becca's "fun" goals for the year is to master her watercoloring skills while mine is to turn my handwriting into a workable font.
These are the four simple ways that assist us in goal setting and goal accomplishing. We'd love to hear what your tips and tricks are for building your brand and bringing your business to the next level. Share with us in the comment section below if you feel up for it :)
Wishing you a prosperous and adventure-filled 2018!
Cheers!
Jenna