I hope that as the end of the year is approaching, you’re sitting with the twinkle lights and magic to dream bigger for yourself and your business this year than you ever have before.
But I also want you to take a few moments to think about how you’re going to start turning those dreams into reality once January 1 rolls around.
Because, while it might feel good and exciting and important to put those big goals on your vision board — double my income, retire my partner, take a trip around the world — those are visions, not roadmaps. And without a clear roadmap, you could be running as fast as you can, but still going in circles and never reach your goal.
If you’re still working on solidifying that big vision for next year, click here to download my 12 Months From Now Vision Worksheet. It’s a fantastic tool to help you start considering your big visions from a holistic perspective.
Then, read on for my best advice on how to turn those visions into reality.
Get specific
Have you ever been hanging out with a group of friends, trying to decide what to do or where to go next? What do you want to do? I don’t know, do you want to go dancing? I’m kinda hungry, but I don’t know what I want. Do we want to go out or stay in…? Before you know it, you’ve used up a big chunk of your time together just figuring out what the plan is.
It’s hard to get somewhere when you’re not really sure where you want to go!
If you’ve got big visions for the next 12 months, then you need to take advantage of every day you have and start strong. That means getting extremely clear about what it’s going to take to make your vision a reality.
A lot of big dreams are going to have a number attached to them — 10,000 followers so you can pitch your book to a publisher with a strong audience; double your revenue; the amount of savings you need to be able to take a month off; the cost of a trip round the world…
Do you need some help figuring out what that number might be? Ask yourself what kind of lifestyle you want to live. Our 12 Months From Now Vision worksheet can help you out with that. Do a little Googling to find out how much flights cost, how much it will cost to work with that coach or service provider you’ve been eyeing — even how much your dream handbag or pair of shoes costs!
Now you have a very specific goal that you can use to figure out your roadmap.
Create the strategy to reach the goal
That number goal is your destination, and so now you can plan your roadmap to get there.
Now you can break your goal down into actionable steps. I recommend starting with four big goals for the year — one for each quarter. Those big goals might look like launching a new product, a sales or revenue goal to hit, hiring someone in your business, or something else entirely, but now you can see your goal broken down into four big steps.
From there, each quarterly goal can be broken down into smaller goals, maybe one per month or even one per week. Even your weekly goals can get broken down into individual action steps that go on a daily to do list.
There’s no need to break your entire year down that far right now! But even just by planning out your quarterly goals, you can start to see how the roadmap is going to unfold. We’ve put together an entire step-by-step system for goal setting this way inside the Goal Achievement Planner Destination Guide in Business Class.
Breaking down your goals is vital
According to researchers, women are less likely to get specific with their goals and attach a number to them. We might set a goal that we want to grow our business next year and pay ourselves more — but that’s too ambiguous. It’s more useful to put numbers to it; say you want to grow your business revenue to $250,000 and give yourself a 20% raise, for example.
Setting goals increases your motivation, but it really only works with specific goals. Research has shown that giving people specific goals to achieve — instead of just telling them to do their best — increases motivation. And feeling motivated and on target to hit those goals is a great way to spend your next 12 months!
In addition, setting goals increases your success rate and your achievement. Hundreds of studies show that just setting good goals increases success rates! So even just downloading your 12 Months From Now Vision Worksheet and filling it out is a great step in the right direction.
I’d love to hear what your big goals for the new year are — share on social and tag me @melanieduncan77!
