Planning for 2023: The Salad Bar Approach

Welcome to uncomplicated business. I'm so happy you're here, happy 2023 Welcome to the new year. Today, we're going to talk about planning for 2023.

Maybe you've done a lot at this point, maybe you have done none. That depends on you. And it's totally okay. But what we're going to talk about today is what I have been thinking of as the salad bar approach to planning for a new year or planning for anything, quite honestly, the key the reason I'm thinking about this as a salad bar approach, and I am fully aware that salad bars are very pre COVID are so 2019, as one of my kids said recently, like, I get that we don't share germs that way anymore, but you have been to a salad bar, you get how it works, you get to decide, you know, you go to the lettuce, section one, you pick the different kinds of greens you want in your salad, and then you go to the veggie section and the different kinds of veggies. And then you go to the like, good stuff section with the cheese and the nuts in the salad dressing and all the delicious bits. And you decide how much of those to get. But the key to the salad bar is you are the owner of the salad that you are making get to put whatever the heck you like best in it, and you get to not put anything in it you don't like, like for me, that would be peppers, and olives, and eggs, I don't understand eggs and salad at all. So the salad bar approach is really about picking the things out of planning for the new year, that actually work for you that create the plan that you actually like, that actually will serve you versus doing all of the planning all of the ways all of the people say, even me, because not all of those pieces are things that you actively need or want.

So the first caveat, I want to lay on this after the one that's like, get the pieces you need and want do whatever exactly whatever you want with this totally fine. That's the whole point is that you don't have to have planned for 2023. Yet, you do that. Whatever the hell you want. Here's the thing, planning works when it works. If you don't plan for 2023 until March, no one will die. Like you will be fine. If you don't plan for 2023, ever, whatever. If you just carry on and know what's important, that's fine. But here's the reason I encourage it. So so often I have people come to me and say, you know, I always feel like I'm reacting and I'm never in charge. I feel like my calendar and my business are running me, I feel like I am behind, I feel like I'm always playing catch up, or I was putting out fires. If this is you, you're in sort of reaction mode, planning for the new year as part of what gets us into a more proactive mode planning in general, even if it's for a day is part of what gets us into a more proactive ahead, using time intentionally all of these kinds of things kind of mode.

So if you're like, well, I don't have time to make a plan for 2023, that's fine. But also know that part of you getting time to do anything in 2023 is because you plan for it. So there is a little bit of a chicken and an exit. And at some point, you sort of have to make the break and say like, I'm going to take a little bit of time and plan. Most of the time. For me, this is planning I do in pieces, it's never in one sitting, I don't have that kind of attention span. Or you know, I might do a half hour here a half hour there half hour there. And then eventually it comes together. But I don't take a day and go sit and think I would theoretically like to but it never actually works like that. And so, you know, thinking that way just sets me up to fail, honestly. So if you're like well, but I have to have a clear day to think and you know, it's never coming well then let's not do it that way. Doesn't have to be like you can do it in three half hour segments like I do, whatever. So whatever way you get what you need is the point, right? If you want to get out of reactive mode, this sort of salad bar planning is kind of my favorite new thing. So here's how it works. You are going to choose out of three buckets. There are three buckets of things that are like the greens, the vegetables and the good stuff, right. And in a salad generally speaking, unless you're just having cheese and that's not a salad that's a cheese plate. Far be it  for me to ding that, but we are making salad here. You are going to do three kinds of things. The first bucket we're going to think of like the greens for your salad, I like spinach. I can't help it. I like arugula. I like all the weird greens in my salad. My husband's always like, just give me romaine, thank you move on with your day.

The first bucket is reflection. So reflection, is it is really helpful. It's sort of the base of our 2023 planning, just like lettuce is the base of your salad, right? When you do the reflection, reflection is positively tinted. Right? It is not about the ways you did it wrong. This is not the point where you like self flagellating, you beat yourself up over things, this isn't it. That's not what it's for. So, in reflection, you're thinking about things like what worked, what you're proud of things that were successful things that you tried risks you took, you can quantify things, if that's how your brain works, if you're like new, I would encourage you, at least you a little bit of it, because there's actually more quantities and things than you realize. And sometimes those numbers give our brain proof that we've been doing a lot more than we think we have. So, in this first bucket, you're going to do some reflection, that is the base of yourself, sit back, think a little bit about your prior year, use your calendar, use your journal, use your notebook, do what you got to do. Spend the time that you think it takes. So give yourself a half hour at the end of the half hour be like, do I need more time on this. And if you do schedule another half hour, it's okay. It's not probably more than like 90 minutes at the max. For me, it's generally to 30 minute chunks. But it really depends on how you do this and what you're trying to collect. I do some data and I do some about successes. And what I'm proud of that's really what I focus on. And never I don't have 90 minutes worth of stuff. So it doesn't usually take me that long.

Then we move on to the veggie section, the toppings as it were, in the veggie section, we pick some things related to mindset. So this is mindset leaning forward. This is mindset in terms of what you want to feel in particular in the new year, how you want to think about yourself and what you're capable of in the new year. And yeah, you might feel like you're just making all of this up. You are. This is called planning ahead. That's really what plans are, are they they're like us making things up and then trying to do them. So it's going to feel a little weird. Like sometimes you're like, No, I don't know if that's a thing. It's not a thing until you do it. So don't like ding yourself. Because you don't know if it's really at that's the whole idea. But when you think in bucket number two, when we think in this mindset section, you're thinking about how you want to feel the New Year, like I'm thinking a lot about ease, but also fun. Like I am at a point in my business where I'm ready for it to be. It is fun, but I'm ready to like, figure out how to really enjoy it. I enjoy my people, I enjoy the things but I want to, like really infuse it with joy, which I find fascinating. So I'm like, it's a whole that's probably a whole nother podcast episode or five. But how do you want to feel? And if you're feeling that feeling, if joy is, you know, we're going to use mine? What I'm feeling when I do my work in 2023? What does that look like? What are the things I do? How do I go out into the world? How do people respond? What does it look like? What does it sound like? Right? What are the things I don't do? What do I like go? Right, I probably let go of some of the things that I do that I don't like, I don't have many of those left. But I also you know, I let go of guilt. I let go of trying to make my brain work in ways that doesn't, you know, the things that bring joy are not fighting yourself. So it's an interesting thing to think about. And then, you know, how do you want to trust? How do you want to deepen your sense of value? And like how you believe in yourself? How do you want to think about your own capability? How do you want to think about your presence? How do you want your presence, in physical world, in a virtual world in your business, to be felt by you and other people, these are all the vegetables and you like you can just like cucumbers and tomatoes and carrots like me or you can be adventurous. But we need some sense of mindset and how we want to feel in function. Before we move on to the fun bucket which is strategy. Right? We all like to pick the actions that's like, I think of it like the cheese, dried fruit and salad dressing portion of the salad bar. We can't just make a salad out of that stuff, but we can't really enjoy what we put in.

So you're going to start with that first bucket, the reflection, you're going to use that to build sort of your second bucket which is mindset. And you're going to build on to that even further which is strategy. So this is the section where you're like alright, my goal for 2023 is notice I did not say goals. There's no plural here. There is one overarching thing. Generally, what I find when I talk to people about this is it's $1 amount or a number of people served or connected to or touched in some way, right number of sales. So that might be dollars might be people related number of sales to number of humans, right. But it's one or the other almost all the time. I can't think of any instances. And I do a lot of this kind of planning with people, I can't think of any instances where it's been neither. Right? So it's always one or the other. So think about is it about people or is about income, and neither is wrong, I normally have an income goal this year, it's a people, and that's fine. It's gonna work. They they both through the same thing. 

In the end, they create money and influence and impact, right? So from there, once you know your goal, it's like, okay, what are the actions I can take that are in my control, and in my control is the key to this. They're there again, it's like the cheese on your salad. It's delicious. What are the actions I can take that are in my control? You know, that that I want to focus on in this new year? Is it making one on one connections and building relationships? Is it networking? In going to meetings? Is it making presentations and speaking and giving workshops? Is it how you make offers and invitations is, you know, which buckets Do you want to focus in? And why? And how do they help you forward your goal, because if your goal is a people goal, you want to serve a certain number of people, you have to meet people somewhere, right? If your goal is a number goal, you have to make invitations and you also have to meet people, if your goal is something different, we have to talk about it because I'm not sure what it is. 

So it is what you want to do to create connection and visibility, what you want to do to, to take the presence and the feeling that you have in the second bucket and the veggie section, and forwarded it out to the rest of the world and grow your business from it. It is who you are learning to become this is my favorite way of looking at it right now. Like who do you want to learn to become in the new year? And what does she do? Right? She does all sorts of interesting things like what? What does she focus on? How does she focus? How does she move forward? And here's the thing. In this sort of salad bar approach, it's not complicated. Basically, it's like do some reflection. Think about how you want to feel in a new year. And think about the things you want to do to create that doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It can be very, very simple. Can you do more for sure. If you want to do more than that you kind of want a more in depth version in December, I did a planning a three day planning event in my Facebook group. My Facebook group is the same name as this podcast. 

It's called UNcomplicated Business for Teachers, Helpers and Givers. And in the Facebook group, there's three days of lives that are pinned to the top that you can go watch, but they're also in the file section of the Facebook group worksheets. And you can go grab those worksheets and work right through them. They do follow these three buckets. But there are more in depth questions, there's more to think about. And it might take you a little longer. But here's the thing, just like any worksheet, if there's a question that you're like, I don't want to do that, skip it, it's fine. Don't do the part you don't want to do. The other thing I would say, though, is when you hit a part you don't want to do we got to check ourselves, right? Is it I don't want to do it because that's not the way I think about things or is it I don't want to do it because I'm scared. Because sometimes we avoid planning so that we can avoid failing. And if you're avoiding planning so that you can avoid failing, you're creating failure, right there is no, there's no faster way to fail, than to not plan. So if you're trying to skip it, because if you make a goal and you don't hit it, it's going to mean that you're a terrible person. That's this is we just don't have to make it mean that there's other ways to do this. Like just because you didn't hit the goal doesn't mean you did it wrong. There's all kinds of wins underneath there and way more nuanced. So make sure when there are pieces you don't want to do that there is you have an understanding about why you don't want to do them. And you're checking in with yourself. Okay, and that's planning. Like it really is that simple. Before we go, there are a couple of ways that I want to make sure you know, you can work with me in this new year, if you need help with this planning and not being so reactive and being more proactive and really being ahead rather than behind. If you want it to be simpler instead of complicated. If you want it to be fun. 

Like a couple of my clients this year, they want to hit the same kind of financial goals they made last year which have been you know, for a couple of them, you know, double as much business but they want this year to now create that same kind of money with way more ease. And that's such a fun way to do business, right? You're going to like Do the work, hit the big goal and then figure out how to do it more easily. Like that's the magic, right? So if you want to work with me in the new year, and I would love to be a part of your world, I love all of the people in the connection, that's the best part of my business. I have three ways to work with me, you can work with me one on one we meet weekly or bi weekly. That really is dependent on you and me and what we agreed to, I have a another round of small group coaching, launching in February, at the time this podcast airs, I may or may not have spots in it, there's only three left, we're going to start I think the second, the first full week in February. And small group coaching is all about getting in the end of visualize tension, you need to move your actual business forward, but in a collaborative setting. So if you're curious about group coaching, if you really want coaching, but you're not in love with the idea of one on one, group coaching is magical, and it is the thing for you, please come play. And then if both of those are like, No, thank you, or you're just really curious, I'm gonna run a class in March, it's called selling by giving. 

So if you feel like the trick in your business that you cannot figure out how to do is selling this class is for you, it is going to be all about making selling simple, and fun and less icky, like less, way less icky, you're gonna get so much good, we're going to run it live, it'll be 15 weeks, it's going to be amazing, and I can't wait. So if you're interested in any of those things, please just go to my website, it's torpeycoaching.com. Or send me an email at sara@torpeycoaching.com or Facebook message or whatever, come join the group. Come see me on LinkedIn, do whatever you need to do, but reach out because the first step to getting what you need is asking, and like you're never going to come to have a meeting with me where I force you to do anything. So unless we're working together, in which case I might strongly suggest some homework. But at that point you've agreed to let me give you homework so it is what it is. But I'm never gonna force you like no Is it okay answer and I'm happy to help you no matter which way it's sliced. So please come let's talk and until then, I'll see you next week.