Welcome to another episode of teacher is in business. So this week, we're going to talk about planning for 2021, you might have started a plan for your business in the new year you might be hiding from it. But whatever your approach is going to be, I have a particular approach that I use in my business and that I teach all my clients and I wanted to share it with you this week. Because I find it to be a really productive way to approach thinking about the new year. So what I think of this ads is like the one goal approach, it's a focus on really rolling everything you're going to do up to one goal. And so for me, the reason that I choose to approach business this way, started really, as a necessity. Because I run a small business, I run a coaching business. But I also have a business that I run on a digital education space. I have classes that I teach to college kids, I have family, I have another role that I play for my uncle who runs a cemetery, I handle his social media. So I do a lot of things. And the idea, to me of having five or six goals, for any one of those things, let alone all of them makes my brain melt out of my ears. So a couple of years ago, I decided that I was only ever going to get one goal, I was going to allow myself one goal per thing at a time. And what I realized is this is a really effective way for me to approach business in particular, because it allows me to really effectively focus and prioritize. So for me, and my coaching business for you and your business, I get one goal. And when I think about a goal, I tend to sense numerical ones, I tend to set them by $1 amount. And I would encourage you to do something similar because it makes it very clinical almost, it makes it very black and white. And I know that there's a lot of talk around like, oh, but if I set a numerical goal, and I don't hit it, listen, we're not there. When you're planning for the new year, this is not. This is not when you stop and go, like nothing's ever gonna work. I've never had a goal before, you're setting a goal as if it's all going to work, at least to start. The other thing to think about when I set a goal is for me, I feel like a goal is a lot like how you set your pricing. It should be like, Oh, that's possible. But it kind of makes me want to puke. Like it should make you feel a little ill. Your goal. Like my goal for 2021 is ridiculous, I think. I mean, it's possible, I guess. But I felt the same way in 2020. And I'm already there in December. So I think that your goal should be bigger than you think. And it's okay. If it makes you slightly ill and you think I don't know how I'm going to do that. That's okay. You don't need to know how exactly right this minute, we have a whole year to figure that out. And it's going to change over the course of the year. So the first step in this approach is to set one goal, you might think about what you made in your business this year. That's part of what I did. And you might think about what went really well in your business this year. You might think about what do you need to make for next year? Like, are you getting by enough? You know, is it sufficient for life to lead how you know depends on your situation and your income and all of those things. So set your number for me my number next year is $165,000. Which is like makes me even a little ill to say out loud to you. Um, it is wildly bigger than my goal was for the year. And it feels insane. But I know that the worst case scenario is that I only get partway there. Great. If I get halfway there are three quarters the way they're like begun. Great. So choose your goal. be ambitious. It was okay to be ambitious. Ambitious is good for us. Ambitious is good for the universe. Ambitious is good for your family and your friends and for the people you are the model for it is okay to set something big. But you also don't want it to be so big that like never gonna happen. Like, I'm not setting a million dollar goal this year, because that's out of my reach, I don't want to be ridiculous. It's like when you teach something to kids, you give them when you're teaching algebra, you give them a problem, that's three steps after two steps, and the three step is a little bit of a stretch. You don't give them you know, a calc formula to figure out, it's too far down the path. It's a challenge, a stretch goal versus impossible. And so think about what that means to you. Are you stretching? Or are you like, you know, shooting for a billion dollars, because we're not quite there yet. The next thing to think about what I think about is why this goal, like what about it matters to me. For me, my goal in 2021 gets me the ability to read your front porch, it gets me the ability to put away more money for college for my kids. It gives me the ability to be more flexible with my teaching schedule. If I want to be and I haven't decided if I want to be yet, it gives me the ability to sort of prove to myself and that's another good reason. But it's still one of my reasons to prove to myself in the world, my husband, that this is the real deal, like I'm not screwing around. But it also gets me that much closer to really contributing in my household. And for us getting closer and closer to a point where my husband gets to choose what he does for work versus continue where he is. When he doesn't may or may not want to. The next question after you know why this goal is how do you feel about it right now? Like how do you really feel about it right now? Do you feel like it's bananas? Do you feel like it's possible? Like lay it all out on the table? It's okay, there's no wrong answer to how do you feel about it? Right, the second you write it down like mine, I think the one I wrote down my goal for last year, the next words I wrote were laughable. Like I thought it was bananas, I thought it was out of my league. But then I tried to make it real for myself. So think about how you feel about it in this moment right now. And then after that, think about how you want to feel about it. Like do you want to continue to feel that way about it? Or would you like to feel connected to it, that's the word I tend to use. I want to feel capable in relation to my goal, I want to feel ready. And I am I'm ready to like, blow that goal out of the park. I'm ready. That's the feeling you want to channel around it. Now, I'm afraid it's not going to work. You know, like, you might feel all those things, and you're going to all your long, I'm fully prepared to feel like shit all year. But I want to feel like it's possible. I want to feel open to it, I want to feel inspired by it. Because if I make $165,000, I have touched and helped a lot of people from the teaching world become really solid business owners to start to make more money and change the world by using their teacher brains in a different way. Like that's a big deal to me. And my like long many, many moons stretch goal is to help 10,000 teachers make million dollar businesses. So $165,000 gets me more of those people touched and reached. So now here's the question, that wasn't the easiest one for you to answer, probably. What are all the ways that this is not going to work that's going to go wrong? This is the stupidest goal ever, like you have all kinds of thoughts about what's wrong with it. Let's do out, write them down. Throw them out of your brain. Get them all on paper, like why is this absolutely ridiculous? Truly, list them all back out? And then take a few minutes and think like, Okay, how many of these are actually likely true or like actual real issues? Because often when I make a list like this about all the ways that will go wrong, some of them are so ridiculous. That you know, you're like, oh, gosh, that's really like the likelihood of that is no one. It's not going to happen like that. So you look back at the reasons and some of them are going to feel more likely or true than others. And then you think like okay, so do I really believe this is the way that it's going to go? Or do I have options, and you look at your options and work your way through them. It's just nice to have it all on the table. Like all the things you think are gonna go wrong out. So that you can sort of stop playing the circle of devil's advocate in your brain and just like let them out there and be like, Oh, you know what the monster under the bed was just a dustpan. not a huge deal. Okay, so now you're partway your brain is like, by the way, no, no how yet? It's fine. Your goals that quantity. It's a result right? Now let's talk actions. What are all the actions you want to take to meet your goal in 2021? So like I have a client the other day that said, You know, I want to be on 20 podcasts, I want to give 40 presentation speaking engagements, those are all those kinds of things for me, I want to add 300 people to my Facebook group, I want to do 40 podcast episodes, I want to, I don't know, meet 150 new people one on one, I want to attend. I don't know the number yet X number of networking meetings. I want to sign 40 clients, I want to run more small group masterminds like the one I'm going to run in January, I want to, you know, what are all the different actions you want to take big and small, continue to grow my social media presence, continue to post regularly and participate in my group continue to participate and other groups continue to really connect to people on LinkedIn. Those are all my actions, what are yours for me, it's to continue to be coached to continue to participate in the programs where I get coached, and stay connected to peers who I find to really get what I'm doing, I get what they're doing. And we can help each other to keep those connections strong. And just to be better and better about how I express what I do and why it matters, and to really refine all that. So you can list out all the actions all the house, you won't have them all, because in March, some new idea will occur to you. But this is a place to start to list it all. From there, what I find really useful is to break my goal up into quarters. So like financially, q1, q2, q3 q4, What's your goal in quarter one, it could be that you take your say your numbers $100,000, it could be that you take your $100,000, you break it in for even pieces. It could also be that you do like 15,000 25,020 30,000 40,000. And you sort of make it progressive, because as you pick up steam over the course of the year, you'll make more money. You get to decide how you break it up. It doesn't have there's no rule. So you do what you want. I tend to break mine up more evenly. But I know the reality of my business and I make more in the second half of the year. So what's your goal in quarter one? In which actions? Will you actually take quarter one? How many of those podcasts you want to be on? How many new people do you want to meet? How many podcast episodes Do you want to do, how many presentations, webinars, all that kind of stuff, quantify your actions for the quarter. And then do that for each of the four quarters. And it could be that even underneath there you go month to month for me, I find that that's like draws me too far into the weeds of like day to day like obsessing over numbers, which I tend to, if it really helps you to break it down further do that. I have some clients that break it down into months after that. And some that even go into weeks from there. I don't just because I try to stay out of the weeds a little bit there for my brain, I know that I can get really literal really fast. And so that's me, knowing it week to week just makes me crazy. But for some people, it's it's helpful. But it's the same thing as like when I was having babies, we never found out what we were having ahead of time. Because it made it too real for me, where like I had friends that had to know, you have to do the version that suits your brain. And then now you really have an action plan. So the last step in this planning process for me is to sit back for a second look at the whole thing. And imagine that today is no, I'm December 31 2021. And you've hit your 2021 goal. You're there. It's like done, you're having the party. What's the one most important piece of advice about reaching that goal you'd give yourself today? And I'll let you think about that for a little while. So once you get all through this, it might be more than one piece of advice for me. The piece of advice I'm giving currently from future self all the time is just let it be simple. Let it be easy. Don't make it overwhelming. What you did I like to overcomplicate things, I like to think about them a lot. But I can I get more done, I make more progress if I allow things to be simple. So that's my advice to myself, let it be easy. Yours might be different. So this is the process I used to plan. It's what I do with clients. It's what I do in my group with my teachers in business Facebook group, and there are worksheets for this. If you want the worksheets, you can send me an email and it's Sarah Sa ra, at Torpey coaching to RP y coaching comm or you can get them in my Facebook group, you can come on and join in there in the file section. The Facebook group, again, is teachers in business, if you are struggling your way through this planning process, and you just are like, ah, how do I do this? I don't know how to get out of my own way here. Coaching might be the right thing for you in 2021. We set these goals together, we work through the action plans, we make it realistic and doable and practical, while still being hugely transformational. That's what we do together in coaching. So if you start to do this and you're like holy God, I need help. Let's talk about it, send an email, or go to my website which is also Torpey coaching comm and book yourself a time to talk together about what coaching could look like for you. Happy planning, good luck with your 2021 goal. Come on into the Facebook group. Tell us about it. I'd love to hear it or send me an email and tell me what it is. I'd love to know. And happy almost new year we're getting ready to welcome 2021 it can't come soon enough. Bye.