Today we are talking all about your end of year action planning and mapping! We are quickly approaching 2022! With that being said we are about to enter a period of New Year’s resolutions, goals, planning both professionally + personally! So, disclaimer! This process can be used for personal goals as well!

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE NOW:

Listen & subscribe on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Amazon

Why Our New Year’s Goals + Resolutions Fail:

Two of the biggest reasons we fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions are because:

They’re not specific enough
They are goals that we don’t actually want

We are in a space where we are constantly connected to and exposed to what everyone else is doing. So then we start allowing people’s lives determine what we want our lives to look like. And we start setting goals for ourselves just because we saw someone else doing it.

So we are going to walk you through how to dive into your end of year action planning so you can achieve goals that are rooted in your “why” and your wants!

Step 1: 2021 Year In Review

First, we want to review what went well and what didn’t go so well in 2021.

What Went Well (answer each of these questions for EVERY quarter):

*If you caught my Quarterly Planning podcast episode + you have started to implement quarterly meetings, you can reference your quarterly meeting notes to help ya out!

What personal strengths helped you do your job or meet your quarterly goals effectively?
What skills do you have that you believe you could use more effectively?
What kind of work came easiest to you?

What Didn’t Go So Well (answer each of these questions for EVERY quarter):

What goals/deliverables were you least proud of? Why? How will you do those differently in the future?
What 2-3 things will you focus on in the next quarter to help you grow and develop?
What could you do to help yourself better meet your goals?

After you answer these questions for each quarter in 2021, then take action with what went well + what didn’t go well!

Step 2: Vision Planning

When it comes to your end of year action planning, vision planning is an important piece that can be easily overlooked.

I’m going to be honest, when I first heard of vision planning, I did not want to do it. I thought it was going to be fluffy. So I had to find a way to strategically break it down into actionable steps that made sense for me.

A Vision Plan Should Be:

Super clear
Specific to your business and describe a specific outcome that only you can provide
Simple enough that internal and external individuals would be able to understand it
Ambitious but also attainable
Align with your business values + mission

So, questions to ask yourself to create your vision plan:

What is your most important overarching goal for 2021?
How would your responsibilities or tasks change to reflect that?
What growth opportunities would you like to explore in order to get there?
What is one area you are wanting to expand to that’s realistic for you and your biz?

Every decision you make in your biz must filter through your vision. If the decision doesn’t directly support your vision, it should be a no.

As business owners, we get caught up in saying yes to everyone for a number of reasons. But, this only ends in overwhelm and doesn’t allow you to move the needle forward.

Step 3: Set Your Overarching Big Goal

After you’ve created your vision, it’s time to set your big goals to support your vision!

Your goal must be rooted in a very strong WHY. You have to know exactly why you’re putting in the effort to achieve this goal and how it is going to benefit your biz. You also want to make sure that your goal has a clear endpoint so that you can measure your progress along the way!

A couple of examples to get you started are:

My goal is to get more exposure to my online business and earn $50,000/year by December, 2022, so that I can hire my first team member and stop being the “doer” in my biz!
My goal is to grow my business by $30k/year so that I can leave my 9-5 and save $10k by December 2022

So go ahead and set 2-3 big goals for your biz or your personal life and then move on to step 4!

Step 4: Reverse Engineer Your Goals Into Milestones

So now that you have a strong goal to work towards, it’s time to break it down and look at the “how”.

The example we will use to break this down is “my goal is to get more exposure to my online business and earn $50,000/year by December 2022, so that I can hire my first team member and stop being the “doer” in my biz!”.

So we want to break that goal down into 3-5 milestones. For example, the milestones might be:

Gain More Exposure
Build Out Product Suite
Marketing Strategy for Product Suite
Plan for Profit

Step 5: Breakdown Your Milestones Into Projects

Each milestone we just talked about can be broken down into projects to complete that milestone.

For example, if your milestone is to “gain more exposure”, a few projects you could break that into are to start a podcast, create a YouTube channel, or start a blog.

Start by breaking each of your milestones into 3-5 projects you could do. If you have more than 5 ideas, write them down! We will prioritize your projects next!

To prioritize your projects, check out this free download of our prioritization matrix!

Step 6: Break Down Your Action Plan

After you’ve established your projects, it’s time to break them down even further.

So the steps we are going to take are:

Choose Your Yearly Goal (These are your projects! Ex. Start A Blog)
Choose 3-5 quarterly goals to accomplish your yearly goals
Choose 2-3 monthly projects to accomplish your quarterly goals
Build your 3 weekly focuses to accomplish monthly projects
Build out all daily tasks to accomplish your weekly focuses

*It’s helpful to think of this like a funnel where at the top we have your yearly goals and then we funnel down into your daily tasks!

For example, if your yearly goal is to start a blog, your funnel might look like this:

Yearly Goal: Start a blog
Quarterly Goals:
- Develop blog name + main theme
- Create blog website
- Grow blog subscribers
Monthly Projects:
- Design blog page on the website
- Batch out a list of first 10 blog posts
- Create a promo calendar
Weekly Focuses:
- Survey your audience to see what they would like to learn
- Repurpose blog posts into other social media content
- Schedule weekly posts for your newly created content
Daily Tasks:
- Engage with your audience
- Comment on other’s blog posts
- Help others in your niche to build connections

Step 7: Managing + Staying On Top Of Your Quarterly Goals

Now that you’ve built out your plan, you need to stay on top of your goals!

We recommend scheduling and hosting quarterly meetings with yourself (if you’re a solopreneur) or with your team if you have one! If you haven’t checked out my quarterly planning podcast episode yet, go check that out to see how I suggest you evaluate your goals on a quarterly basis!

Taking time for your end-of-year action planning can be a lot less stressful when you break it down into actionable steps. Remember that your plan is allowed to (and should) change as you go through the year! It’s okay to shift your goals and your vision as you grow and scale your biz!

We know that planning your year can seem overwhelming so if you have any questions or need support, come join us in our Free SystemsUp Society!