Welcome to 2012!!!!
I hope you all had a fabulous festive season. I know I did. I was on the trip of a lifetime with my 6 yr old daughter. We did 8 days in New York, 8 days in LA and 7 days in Hawaii. How did I manage that as a single mum running her own business. Easy, I practise what I preach and work Smart Not Hard!!!
You see travel is a very important part of my life, and I want to do a lot more of it. One of the first things I did when we got back was mark out all the holidays this year in my diary. Now I’m not at a point in my business where I can have everyday or every holiday off, but I can have some. So next holiday (over Easter) is a ‘Staycation’ at my daughters request. It’s very cute – she wants to turn my bedroom into Business Class and do menus etc. Then we will probably have a long weekend skiing and after Christmas we want to have a campervan holiday in either NZ or Tasmania. I also want a ‘grown up’ weekend this year, so I need to schedule that in (thinking about George Michael in the Hunter Valley).
Now to make the work happen so I can do all of the above with ease. The trip we just had was very hard on me financially as last year didn’t go to plan with my fathers death and my mothers illnesses. I wasn’t going to cancel though – it just means working a little smarter now to make up for it.
So how can we start the year out smart? Set aside a couple of hours (a day if you can) to work on planning your year. Then do the following:
- Mark out all the holidays and important dates.
- Create a vision board of what you want to accomplish (and have) this year.
- Write a goal for each of those things.
- Write out the steps you need to reach each goal, and diarise actions / tasks / appointments for them.
- With your holidays, work out how much each one will cost and make sure you can increase your earnings enough to set aside the money needed.
For example if you have a cleaning business and you know that to have the holiday to Fiji you will need an extra $8,000. What does that mean? $8,000 / 50 weeks is $160 a week. Can you put that aside? Will you need to get say 2 extra clients a week at $150 each – less expenses, gst etc to cover it? Then what steps do you need to take to get those extra clients? Could you set aside 10min a day for the next week to get on the phone and do some sales calls? Then put that in your diary and get cracking!!!!
My daughter is going to be doing a vision board this weekend with me. I’ve been a bit backwards this year. I’ve done the goals, steps and diary before the board – because I wanted to do one with her. She wants to have pictures of a new house on her board, business class, ice skates, Annie, campervan and I’m not sure what else yet. It’s a great habit to start with kids as it can really give them something to work towards during the year.