Yearly Planning: How To Set Goals, Find Clarity & Stay Focused.

Hello and welcome to the You Can Podcast, where we dive into strategies and stories to help you start, grow and scale your business. I'm Sarah Jolly 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 um instead of clarity i ended up with an awful lot more questions than answers um 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 gets you to really think about what you want to achieve how much time you've got to achieve it um and you know what sort of time that achieving will that 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 part of the way through the year and realise that I hadn't made 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 energies and your efforts are just diluted so much, that you're not able to make a really strong impact. So instead of creating a neat list of goals and then calling it a day like 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 roadmap for the year, it was about confronting what wasn't working. So a lot less clean, a lot less enjoyable, but let's be clear, you know, planning doesn't mean everything will go smoothly.
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 gonna what's gonna 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 um happening and priorities switch and change i tend to get clients and i'll come into 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 of 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 um 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 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 i have different demands on them um 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 fit around um what goes on in normal education systems etc 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 um 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 it's 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 um waiting for some time to have some focus and tending to um 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 um it has meant some pretty big changes for 2025 for me um i'll share more of those um as we go along with within the podcast but for now um just know that it's okay for your planning sessions not to end nice and cleanly um on the on that one day you allocated um 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 your mind and getting on with this other stuff is the way forwards um 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 a4 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 um 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 sarah at youonline, and I will send you a link to a dashboard that will be set up in your name and you can access 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 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 reflecting on that past year or past years okay so you know what you want to take forwards i regularly when i run 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 um 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 um i think that that is 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. 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 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 um 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 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 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 you know 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 it's 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 um 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 the blue okay and they impacted both businesses that we own um and took our times our efforts our focus away 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 and 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 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 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 while 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 um you can still be putting a plan in place either nice and tidily to the end of that that year that calendar year um 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 sarah at youcan.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, 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 you can 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 sarah at youcan.online s-a-r-a-h at youcan.online to grab them so here's

to a powerful and purposeful 2025 until next time take care and keep going because you can