← You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.
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Sarah Dolly Jarvis
Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the UCAN podcast, where we dive into strategies and stories to help you start, grow, and scale your business. I'm Sarah Dolly Jarvis. I'm your host, and today we're going to be talking around something that can feel both inspiring and overwhelming all at the same time, and that is yearly planning. So this year's yearly planning session for me didn't go quite as expected. Instead of clarity, I ended up with an awful lot more questions than answers. But you know what? That turned out to be a really good thing, and that's what I'm going to be talking around today. So let's talk about, first of all, why yearly planning is so important. Well, planning forces you to get real. It gets you to really think about what you want to achieve, how much time you've got to achieve it, and you know, what sort of time that achieving will. For me, this year's session is a real life eye opener. I realized I was trying to take on way too much. And honestly, that realization was invaluable. It saved me from trying to buy all those bits off all at once and to get partway through the year and realized that I hadn't made as much. As much ground as I'd hoped to. I hadn't made as much progress. And that's the thing here, is when you water yourself down too much, you end up feeling like, you know what? I'm not achieving anything because your. Your energies and your efforts are just diluted so much that you're not able to make a really strong impact. So instead of a neat. Instead of creating a neat list of goals and then calling it a date, that and feeling really chuffed with myself and as having a bit of lunch, I had to face that misalignment between my ambitions and the reality of the time that reality was going to take, that time those ambitions were going to take and how long I really had to work on these various projects. It wasn't just about making a road map for the year. It was about confronting what wasn't working. Uh, so a lot less clean, a lot, A lot less enjoyable. Um, but let's be clear, you know, planning doesn't mean everything will go smoothly. Um, it just means that you'll start that year with clarity, with that intention. Um, and that process will feel less messy. You'll have that, a better understanding of what's going to. What's going to go on. Uh, it does not mean there aren't going to be bumps in the way, and there's always unforeseen stuff. Whenever I look at my plans, there's always stuff that I never anticipated happening and priorities switch and change. I tend to get clients and I'll come on to this in a little bit, but I tend to get them to have two or three key projects that they're working on alongside their day to day within their business. Because at the end of the day your plan is about working on your business, not in it. And so the day to day carries on as normal and it's these extra bits that you put in to make things happen and to make those changes. So, you know, the surprising benefits facing those tough questions this year, actually taking the time to answer them meant that what would have been a one day session spilled in two weeks. Why? Because those questions that I had to wrestle with, that I had to get my head around, were much more bigger than usual. Much bigger than usual. I hate to say it, but these questions have probably been there before. If I was to sense check some of my plans and some of the things that I wanted to get done, I think that I regularly. I'm one of those people who thinks that like a task will take like 10 minutes and actually it takes four hours, which always infuriates Martin. But you know, you're ambitious, you want to do all these things, you have all these ideas. And I think this has always been there, but this is the first time that I thought, you know what, realistically I need to be more sensible here. And there's a number of reasons for that. My commitments outside of work are growing as my family get older and that have different demands on them. We've got quite a lot of neurodiversity within our family, which comes with its own struggles. It comes with some major plus points, but there are also struggles to, to fit around what goes on in normal education systems, et cetera. And so there's that going on as well that I've realized I cannot over commit. So those bigger questions that I had to wrestle with were around, you know, am I focusing on the right things? Which is really hard because for those of you running your own business or wanting to run your own business, you are so passionate around your business and what you do that you're like, I couldn't possibly, you know, it'd be like, I don't know, putting not quite one of your kids, but probably one of your pets up for adoption. You know, am I trying to do too much? Here is what I'm working on really aligned with my long term goals. And for me, that final question was the one that sort of grappled with me the most, you know, is that head and heart scenario where I love what I do, I love all the bits of what I do. I love supporting women in business. I love the projects that I've got on the side that I've been sort of in some cases waiting for some time to have some focus and tending to for others. You know, they've sort of been ticking along but have so much more potential. If you've ever spread yourself too thin or you've been worried about slow progress and why that's happening, or if you're unsure, you've been unsure over if you're heading in the right direction, then you know how important these questions are. Yes, they are really uncomfortable. But when you do dig that deep, then you do get clarity. After digging that deep, it has meant some pretty big changes for 2025 for me. I'll share more of those as we go along within the podcast. But for now just know that it's okay for your planning sessions not to end nice and cleanly on that one day you allocated to not be able to answer those questions straight away. I think I'm one of those people who people ask me a question, I feel like I should should just know it and sometimes just mulling it over, just having it in the back of and getting on with this other stuff is the way forwards. Sometimes answering those questions, focusing on those questions, grappling with them is the point of the whole thing. Over and above having a lovely nice printed out a four plan with all the bells and whistles. So I've talked a little bit about my yearly planning session, but how can you make your own yearly planning session effective? I base mine on a mix of ideas from two frameworks, which is best year yet and traction. And here's how you can get started using my framework as I talk you through it. If you want the resource for this, if you want the recordings from my workshops, they are things that I am making available now for free. So please do drop me an email sarahcan Online and I will send you a link to your a dashboard that will be set up in your name and you can access that those resources from there using our lovely Go high level platform. So how can you get started? First of all, first and foremost you have to reflect. You know, what has worked, what didn't work, what lessons can you take? How do you want to do things differently? Unfortunately, sometimes you do have to look backwards. I'm not a fan of looking back too much you definitely don't want to live in the past, but you do want to take that into consideration because it can teach you an awful lot and it can save you from making the same mistakes again. So, so reflecting on that past year or past years, okay, so you know what you want to take forwards. I regularly, when I used to run the workshops, I used to get people to note down two or three things that they wanted their future self to remember on a post it note. And then you can have it up in your, in your office or work area because at the end of the day we sometimes learn things and then we end up getting into the same habit and repeating the same thing. And then before you know it, you're in the same situation again. And so, you know, it's really good to remind yourself what not to do as well as what to do. The next step is to set clear priorities for the new year. So I tend to go with two to three goals. I think that that is sufficient. If you've got things around, sort of the same outcome but different elements of it. For example, you know, efficiencies within the business, which means a certain amount of revenue, then you could do up to five goals. But what you want to do is sort of actionable things that you are going to be working on and projects you're going to be working on. You don't want to overburden yourself. You don't want more than three of those per quarter, in my opinion. Okay, so you also want to be clear on what are your non negotiables. So for me, it's always been that I don't work on a Friday. I didn't care how much people told me that that was impacting my business. I did not want to work a Friday. And the thing is, is now reflecting on that, looking at where my business is at, looking at the direction that I'm going in. I am so pleased that I didn't listen to those people who said to me, you know what, you should just be working full time on this because you're never going to get those years back. And there's only so much money that one person can want and need over and above those experiences that you just can't pay for. So what are those non negotiables for you? Then break it down into quarters. Okay, so what milestones do you want to hit in quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four or thinking around? Okay, this is my long term goal. This is my goal, sorry for the end of the year and therefore the first Steps I need to make, and they are your quarter one steps. Yeah. What resources or support will you need in order to help you get there? So what milestones are you going to hit by the end of the quarter to get you closer to that goal? And then what resources or support will you need to get to get there or to start moving towards those? Okay. The other thing to think about is, unfortunately there are going to be roadblocks. Okay. Or there might not be, but there is likely to be, but we just don't know which ones yet. So what might you get stuck on and what's the plan if you do? Because even if it's just get help, if it's a particular roadblock, then you can feel more prepared. So sometimes we're most afraid of the unknown. So making those roadblocks known to us and having a bit of a plan, however loose, however vague, can really help us to feel confident as we step forwards and into that quarter. And then how will you course correct if things don't go as planned? Okay, so what's the plan if they get that roadblock? What's the plan for the road block? If you need to make tweaks and changes, then what are you open to? What are you not open to? Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's about creating a starting point and that's it. All these things are foundations. You have no idea. You know, like, if I'd have been talking to. If I was talking to me from a year ago. Now, so much has happened in the last year that you cannot predict. Some of which we knew was going to happen, but we had no idea of when. Some of which just came totally out of the blue, okay. And they impacted both businesses that we own and took our times, our efforts, our focus away from those things. We had no idea. But having a plan in place means that I can then look at these activities that I was doing and go, you know what? That one's not so important. This one I really have to stick to. But if you don't have that clarity, if you don't have that written down, then how are you going to. How are you going to do that assessment? And so, you know, what's the plan with the course correction? What are you willing to do? What are you not willing to do? This doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be a starting foundation. Okay. If you've never done a yearly plan before, as I said before, I've run workshops on this, and when I'm not hosting one this year I am more than happy to share recordings and resources for you from past sessions. Even if you're listening to this mid year way through, you can still be putting a plan in place either nice and tidily to the end of that, that year, that calendar year, or however it works for you. Some people still do their plans based on their financial years, so you know, do feel free to get in touch whenever it may be that you are listening to this. It's sarahcan Online and I'm more than happy to share those resources with you for free. So I want to leave you with this Yearly planning isn't just about setting the goals. It's about setting yourself up for success. Okay, that nice little document, if you file it away, if you do nothing with it, then it was a bit of a pointless exercise. It was a bit of a pointless use of your time. Even when it feels messy, even when it raises more questions than answers, the act of planning, it forces you to think intentionally about your time, your energy, your focus. And that is the key thing here. So if you're feeling overwhelmed or unsure about the year ahead, prioritize this process. Prioritize the process I've just gone through. It might just be the most important thing that you do for your business and your life this year. Let's make 2025 intentional, focused, and aligned. Thanks for tuning in to the UCAM podcast. If you found this episode helpful, I'd love it if you'd share it with friends or leave a review. And if you want those planning resources I mentioned, then head over to your email and email me at sarahcan Online sarahcan Online to grab them. So here's to a powerful and purposeful 2025. Until next time, take care and keep going because you can.