Plan Your Best Year on Your Timeline

So as we roll into a new year, you have the opportunity to leverage this New Year energy. If that feels good for you, set those intentions and take actions that align with your personal and professional goals. Or you can just choose to maintain your status quo. And if that is what intention looks like for you right now, staying steady, you already know what works. That's great.

This is the Entrepreneur School podcast, where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO, while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair, and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under three. I'm a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out on this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to entrepreneur school.

Happy New Year, my friend, I am recording this podcast in real time because I didn't want to presume how I was going to feel rolling into 2025, and so I wanted to give myself the space to actually be able to share that with you as or hasn't happened. And just like everything else. I feel like this new year came way too quickly, not ready to start it yet, and I'm actually not really going to, so I want to explain what that means. But basically, I just want to say from the outset of this that this is a do it your way kind of style, conversation about goal, planning, reflection and how to set yourself up for the best version of the year for you. And just like everything that I say, everything is very subjective, I think it's so important that you, you know, don't look at all of the ads that you're seeing right now that are telling you that you need to do this with your body, and this with your diet, and this with your clothing, and get a new wardrobe and change yourself entirely and make sure your goals are set. I don't even have a new planner yet. I haven't changed my calendar over. I feel behind, but I'm only saying that because I know that I'm not really behind because you are in the driver's seat of your own journey, right? Like this is your timeline. Just because a new calendar year rolled over doesn't mean anything changes overnight. Okay? I think we just need that context to back and honestly, I am heading on vacation tomorrow. I'm just rocking into the new year with a an extra week off, and I am so excited about that. I am husband and I are going to Mexico, just the two of us. We're doing an adults only resort, which I'm so excited about, because I love my kids, and I love traveling with them, and we did so much in 2024 we did a lot of travel and adventure travel year. So we did Disneyland with the kids, and we did the UK with the kids, and I think we probably put on 20 to 30,000 steps a day during both of those vacations. And I just want to sit on a beach now and just chill and let that space and that clarity come from the quiet that's going to happen in the next week.

So actually, I'm really glad that it landed at this time of the year we ended up. Because you know, when you have kids, two kids, two dogs, school for them, starting next week, hockey, gymnastics, all the things they have to do. It's a big ask to get those things taken care of, so it just worked out best for our family to have that start right now and not, you know, in February, which is actually when we wanted to go because we're celebrating our 15th anniversary this year, my husband and I, which is wild, 15 years married, we've been together for 20 years. I officially feel old. Anyways, so just I want to share just a bit about like reflecting and goal setting, how I do it, why I haven't done it yet, and why it's okay if you haven't either, and if you have, maybe you want to. You know, let's stack this on to what you've already done, because what I have learned in the last seven years of being an entrepreneur is that flexibility is really important when you're planning. I'm a big fan of planning, but like I shared in my last episode, and go back and listen, if. You haven't the whole idea of set a plan, do the plan at all costs, make sure that it happens. Doesn't always work out the best. Yes, you learn things and yes, it's like, well, if I don't try to do something, nothing's going to happen. But that's for me, how I realized I was doing all the wrong things. So more flexibility is definitely the theme for me. So I have just been too busy to get to this. I decided to say yes to a lot of things that came up for me in q4 of 2024 which I'm glad for. I don't regret this at all. It just did make my last quarter extremely busy with deadlines for work, projects and clients that I took on, as well as the madness of December and all the extra school things and holiday concerts and blah, blah blah with the kids and like making Christmas happen and trying to make fun memories and all of that stuff. It was so much, and I just I didn't even have time to sit and think about how the year went and all this stuff. Because normally, I actually host a workshop for planning and reflection, and I always do it in December, because I think it's quite important to reflect on your year in December before, if you are taking time off before you eat all the Christmas cookies and drink all the wine and forget everything that happened, which is kind of how we feel that like we were going back to work, if you went had a corporate job or whatever before, and you're like, what was my password? Again? How do I log into this computer? That's how your brain kind of is after you shut it off and go into sloth mode for a week. So anyways, that's not to say that it's not possible to reflect and etc. Now, just because January happened like nothing changed. It's just like two more days since December, is the reality of it.

So I will say that it's really important when you're going through the process of reflecting, to give yourself some space. One of the main things that I find works well is to actually get out of your normal space, like, don't do this in your office, do this somewhere else. I had, historically, for a few years, taken myself on a little business retreat where I would like book a cabin in the woods for two nights and just take all my sticky notes and all my dreams and get really excited, and just like, order great takeout, take a bottle of wine, and just like, have the best kick off to the new year doing that, and that's something that I've loved to do in the past. I'm not doing that this year. While I'm going to Mexico, my husband's coming, and I'll probably spend a little bit of time doing this kind of thing, but it's not going to be an intense, structured process like it may have been in the past. Because really, I think what you need in order to reflect into set goals is some quiet space. So moving yourself out of your normal situation can be really helpful for that. Another couple of questions to ask yourself when it comes to reflecting on the year is what brought you the most joy. So this is actually in my workbook that goes along with my workshop that I've done, what brought you the most joy. And make sure you're always thinking about your business and your personal life, because you're building a business around your life. It's like life first business not what was that fun work thing that I did? Sometimes it is that for me, I'm not going to ever stop talking about that. I went to national and I spoke at a conference, so awesome, so cool, and I got to travel, and traveling is one thing that I super love doing, and that's the lifestyle that I want to create. So what is the business that I need that creates that for me? So what brought you the most joy? What are you most proud of? What were the biggest money makers? This is something you do have to actually look at. If you have goals to increase your revenue, you need to look at what was actually working for your last year and what did not work so that we don't spend time doing things that maybe didn't do. You know, have the ROI for you, even if they were kind of fun. So sometimes we have to let go of things. And then what generated the most leads? Because this is always something you need to be constantly doing for your business, is creating leads like visibility comes in here, right?

So the process doesn't have to be overwhelming. It can just be, if you actually take the time to ask yourself these four questions, and that's all you do, you're going to see a lot. You'll see patterns, you'll start going down rabbit holes. You just need to give yourself space to do it, like time space, not like. I have 60 minutes go like, try and carve out a day or a block, a half a day at the end of the day, and just allow yourself to to go down the rabbit holes if you want to. Another thing that I love about New Years is having a word of the year. And this is something for me that's I always do, but it just tends to come organically, so I kind of let it percolate for however long it needs to percolate for until my gut tells me this is the right word. So there's absolutely nothing structured about that process. It is very, very much just trying to get in tune with my own intuition and hearing what I need to hear for myself. And so last year, my word was allow, which to me, meant I was just allowing opportunities to come. I was allowing myself to explore new things, changes, anything that was different, and also allowing things to happen in their own time, which is a huge challenge for me, because I like to be in control of everything. So that was my word before. One year was intention. One year it was passion or purpose. I think those are the kinds of words that guide my year. And I have not come up with my 2025 one yet, because I haven't had a minute to think about it. So I will, I will update you. So make sure you're following on Instagram, because I'll probably share it there.

So really, as we roll into a new year, you have the opportunity to leverage this New Year energy, if that feels good for you, set those intentions and take actions that align with your personal and professional goals, or you can just choose to maintain your status quo, and if that is what intention looks like for you right now, staying steady. You already know what works. That's great. You don't have to shake things up just because a new year happened. You're seeing a pattern here to what I'm saying, right? Both of these approaches are totally appropriate and can be just as effective. It's a matter of knowing what you need right now and again, just taking the time to give yourself the space for the clarity, for that to come to you. So I'm excited that I have this week ahead of me to be in a totally different space, literally, no children, no cleaning up, no cooking, like no makeup, nothing. I can just do what I want and go with the flow, because that's where I really tap into my own intuition. One of the things I can't wait to share with you on the podcast this year is my friend Mia Polson, who is a human design expert, among so many other things. And this is something that in 2024 has made a huge difference for me, is really getting in touch with my human design is. And if you don't know what that is, human design is essentially your personalized blueprint for how you operate the best in the world, for what you need to give and receive, and how you can check in with your own intuition and all those things. And I am a generator. That's my human design energy type. And that has been really interesting to reflect on what that means. And one of the things that I mean is that my my decision making center is like my sacral so that means my gut. I have to learn how to trust my gut more and not be too much in my head on things. And so getting into a state of flow, in being able to just follow what I want to do, like, what do I want to eat? When do I want to get up? Do I want to work out now? And having a whole week of that ahead of me I know is going to create amazing, an amazing environment for me to be able to to do this kind of reflection and planning that I want to do, and what comes out of it I am. I'm not holding that to any particular standard. So it doesn't have to look like, you know, a spreadsheet or a big calendar that says that I'm launching things at certain times. I'm just looking to create one big, cohesive vision for what I want in 2025 and to think about the pieces that support that happening.

So of course, when your vision is, I don't know, I can't even think of an example, but there's multiple elements to this. And part of when I'm doing planning and guiding through the workshop that I teach, it's about your personal goals. I break it up into three sections, personal goals, self goals and business goals. Personal is like all of the you. Uh, like your relationship stuff, things that you want to do. I want to travel. I want to do things with my kids. Want to make sure that I'm seeing my friends regularly. Like those kinds of things, because if you're like me, it has to be on the list. It has to be written down as a goal in order for you to actually prioritize it, and if all we do is just put down business goals, then we're only going to think about our business and the rest of the stuff will fall by the wayside. And I'm not okay with that for me, so just think about whether you need to make that intention as well. The self goals are like self care health goals. I like to get my nails done every month. I want to make sure that I use all my benefits from my husband's company to get massages and all that kind of stuff. Maybe I like to get a facial every now and then try new things, like I wouldn't got my eyelashes lifted and tinted the other day. So if you're watching this on video, I don't have any makeup on, but it kind of looks like I still have some, which is kind of cool. I don't know. It's just something I wanted to try. So like allowing myself to do that. And then the business goals, of course, are money making activities, things you want to do, and what that looks like. And so one cohesive vision, breaking it down into those sort of three parts, and thinking about how those all come together to to give you like to kick you on that path. So it's a moving target, but you have to have one, right? So it is frustrating to go into a year or to just be completely unclear about what you're working towards, like, if you don't have a goal at all, or a vision, let's just broaden it to vision, then you may feel very disjointed, you may feel unclear, that may create frustration. So this is why it's so valuable to actually go through a process like this and to set some sort of a target for yourself for the time frame ahead, whatever that is, whether that's a year, five years, if you're big picture, 10 years, looking out, I'm starting to think, like, next 10 to 15 years I might want to retire, which is crazy. I haven't actually thought about the act of doing that ever. It's like, yeah, we put money away to save for this, whatever retirement looks like. But maybe that's a thing that's actually in my mind now, and I can think about what that might look like. So anyhow, I hope you've enjoyed this live rambling of how to plan and strategize, but also just give yourself some grace and space to have the clarity to create the vision for the year that you want on your own timeline, however you want to do it, that's the best way that's going to work for you.

And if you want some support with this, please just send me a message, because I do have a recording of my workshop and the workbook and everything available, and I can hook you up with that. So let me know. Happy New Year. I hope that 2025, brings you everything that you want it to and more in all of the good ways.