Let’s review 2021 & do some goal setting!! Wow, the end of 2021. I can’t believe we’re here already.
I can’t believe that we’ve made it to the end of 2021. This year, WOW! It flew by, it seems like it was the quickest year, but I think it’s because 2020 seemed like a year that was never going to end!
So, here we are sitting on the edge of 2022. It’s incredible.
I am so thankful to be here with you.
I am so giddy and so excited to bring this end of the year, goal setting + end of year review blog to you!
This is a 2-part blog post, all in one! Get ready, let’s plan for 2022!
Grab your planner, your calendar, grab a pen, pencil & a notebook + the data from your photography business (revenue, marketing, etc.) and LET’S. DIVE. IN.
Business Reflection
We need to take the time to reflect and look back. First input the data, not just our feelings of how we think the year went; we need to see the numbers, we need the truth, we need everything laid out in front of us so that we can see what actually happened + what we feel like happened, but don’t lean on your feelings, they will lead you astray. What I like to do is get everything out in front of me:
What was the photography revenue for the year?
- every dollar that came into my business
- every dollar that went out of my business
Business Expenses:
What did the expenses look like? Where was I investing my money, I literally will peel through the expenses.
Look at those decisions, were they good decisions? Or were they decisions that don’t need to be repeated into the new year.
- Where did you spend your money?
- Did you pay yourself?
- What was your take home salary from your photography business this year?
Newsflash, in the first few years, it’s not always pretty. For those of you that have mastered it, and you are able to bring home that paycheck that matched a previous career, or you’re hitting your goals. That is amazing & I am so happy for you.
I don’t want anyone being too scared to look at their numbers, and then feeling bad or guilty and depressed. Don’t feel like your business isn’t making you money. I want to remind you guys, if you’ve been in business five years or less, it is actually normal for you to have a loss. It’s okay to not be totally happy with where things went, this exercise is not meant to discourage you, it is to fuel you to make even better decisions and hit bigger goals moving into 2022.
Business Revenue:
Now, look at the revenue, the take home pay.
- What was my actual net income?
- What were my expenses?
The next piece of data that I want to look into is:
- How many sessions did you take for the year?
- Number of clients you had.
- How many repeat clients did you have?
The reason for this is to determine how many of your clients were new clients in 2021. How many clients were repeat clients from the year prior? And how many clients came to see you more than once in a single calendar year?
These are all great numbers to have because this is going to show you where you stand.
Are you doing a great job? Do people trust you? Do people want to use you as their photographer?
Now if you want to add in something else, and go a little bit deeper, you can go through your questionnaires where you asked people or maybe this is on your lead form, and figure out what was the number one place people found out about your business? Where did the referrals come from? Did people find you through Google? Facebook or Instagram? Did they find you through word of mouth?
This is important for you to know because this is going to show you where you need to continue to pour your efforts into going into 2022. That’s how you maximize your marketing potential.
The next step here is to look at the types of sessions you offered; I want you to rank them. What is your number one session package? What packages weren’t popular or chosen at all in 2021?
That’s really important to look because when you start casting your vision for 2022, it’s going to be really important for you to know, do you want to continue with the same packages, the same services, the same offerings? Or do you want to eliminate something?
Your business as a whole
When it comes to your end of the year review & goal setting for 2022, I want you to look at your business as a whole. Were there goals that you set for yourself in 2021? Did you accomplish them? Or if you missed those goals, how close did you get? How can you make that a goal for 2022? Can you exceed it?
This last step is really important. I want you to find five things that you can celebrate about your business. I’m going to throw out some examples. Number one, did you get a repeat client? Officially launch your business? Make five figures or more in your business this year? Did you pay yourself at least once this year in your photography business? How about starting a client closet, did you do that? Did you purchase or rent a studio? Sell out any of your sessions? Did you ever get completely booked on your calendar even if it was just one month out of the year? There are so many things that you can celebrate. I want you to choose FIVE!
Here’s the thing, if you can’t celebrate your business right here, right now…you’ll never learn to celebrate bigger things later on. I want you to be proud of yourself. I’m proud of you!!
Life Reflection
I’d be doing you a disservice to have you only reflect on business.
I want you to take a solid look at your priorities. I want you to reflect on some of these areas, think about it.
If you want to rank all of these areas from one to five, one feeling like it’s nonexistent, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done up to a five where you feel really solid about the effort and the way that you are prioritizing this in your life, you can rank it if you want to, you could just write out a couple of words, some feelings, or whatever you need to do here.
I’m going to walk you through some of the categories & from there, I want you to simply do that reflection, and a little bit of journaling on each thing before we dive into some deeper journaling questions.
The first priority is marriage. The next one is motherhood. From there, your career, health, finances, relationships, spiritual growth, etc.
Remember, perfection is not the goal here. We are not called to live out perfect lives, we are called to live lives that are honoring to God. So, realizing your life is not going to be perfect & that you’re never going to feel like you’re a 10 out of a 10 in all of these areas at once is important. This is not meant to make you feel bad about yourself in any kind of way. Be honest because there will be one or two of these areas that immediately will kind of hit you in the gut, and you’ll know that’s the one that has to be my focus in 2022.
Journal prompts for additional reflection
I want to walk you through a couple of questions that I would love for you to take some time to reflect & journal on. Again, this is all about reflecting on your life as a whole of 2021.
- What went well?
- Was there anything that didn’t go well?
- What are you letting go of? This is a big one. This is one that I answer every year, sometimes every season, there’s always something that we need to let go of. Sometimes it’s something that’s not easy to say goodbye to like a friendship, but sometimes it’s also necessary.
- What are you wanting in the new year, what do you want more of?
- What are you praying or hoping for?
Part 2: Goal Setting
The fun stuff! We’re going to look ahead & do some goal setting! We’ve done the end of year review & the reflection, we can see the data, we know where we stand, we know what went well, what didn’t go well, we see some things we want to eliminate, we see some things we want to double down on.
So, now we kind of have a baseline for moving into part two, which is all about looking ahead.
The very first thing that I want you to do is I want you to go back to that priority category. I want you to really dig in there. Look at how you rated yourself in each area, the areas that need the most work, or that triggered you, I need you to list those out in this part two section, and just write them down. From there, I want you to sit on it.
I want you to write two ways for each category that needs the most work, and then write two ways that you are going to be able to do better to get to the goal you’re looking for.
For example, if you feel like your marriage, went on the backburner this past year, first of all, you’re okay. You’re not alone, been there done that. And if you did put your marriage on the backburner, and you feel like it’s suffering, or it’s not where you want it to be, and it needs the work, I want you to think about two ways that you’re going to be able to pour into your marriage to bring it as close to a five as you can possibly get it. So, one of those ways would be more frequent one on one time with your spouse, some people call these date nights, but I really don’t think it has to be this big event for you to reconnect with your spouse. This could literally be an hour together after the kids go to bed to communicate & reconnect.
Do this in each category based on where you ranked them for yourself.
Prioritize your life and then your business
Now, I want you to pull out your calendar, your planner, whatever, and I want you to go through it. I want you to mark out all of your personal obligations; vacation, trips, any time off, personal holidays, kid birthdays, your birthday, anniversary, all of those things. I want you to mark them on your calendar right now.
This is going to help you not crossover and plan sessions and plan photography workshops and all these other things when your business has no place on those days, your business doesn’t get to be the priority on those days, or those weeks or those seasons.
So, go through your calendar and do it now before you plan for your business.
Putting it all together!
We’re now ready to put our lives with our business and bring it all together and focus on our photography businesses. So here’s the fun part. Now we get to dream, we get to do the goal setting, we get to have fun with our businesses.
I love, love, love this exercise.
The first thing that I want you to do is write down three bold dreams that you have for the year ahead.
These are three things that you want to do, they do not all have to be business related.
I do want at least one of them to be business related.
So, you decide what that is. This could be how many clients you want to serve, do you want to travel, do you want to book a speaking engagement, maybe you want to book 25 weddings for the year, whatever your goal is, I want you to write that down.
For some of you, it might be a life goal. For some of you, your goal simply could be that you want to get a completely organized and systemized home together, that could be a big goal that you have, one of your goals could be that you get to leave your nine to five job. That’s amazing if you want that!
Choose three big bold dreams that you want to accomplish in 2022.
From here, I want you to break each of these down. Again, I want you to write out two or three action steps you can take to get there.
When it comes to business, are you going to go in a new direction, maybe you’re going to raise your prices or you’re going to switch up your business model, there are so many things that you can do.
I simply want you to create that vision for your business. Nobody can create this vision except to you.
Challenge yourself to paint the picture of what you want your business to look like, and then get nitty gritty with it and write out the action steps.
Goal setting & accountability
We all need accountability. We all need a support system of people that are going to keep us on track.
Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s my program, From Broke to Booked Blueprint. Awesome. We would love to have you inside. Maybe it’s not me and it’s someone else. That’s fine, too.
It’s up to you, you have to decide what’s right for you. Who’s right for you. How are you going to get there? What does accountability look like for you?
The first step though, you have to dream it, you have to envision it. Second, you have to take action & then comes the accountability piece, whatever that looks like for you.
Once you do all of this, you start mapping out your offerings, and when your sessions would be happening on your calendar. Pull out that 2022 calendar, now that you have the goals and you have the data and you know what you need to be booking, you want to physically lay that out in your 2022 calendar. And start marketing yourself and making this stuff happen.
You have to get it out of your head. You’ve got it out of your heart. It’s now on paper or in a Google Doc, you can see the roadmap where you’re headed, and now you need to, again, give yourself the accountability. You need to partner this up with some strategy and get to taking steps every single day in your business.
And by the time we meet to talk about 2023 I hope that when you’re looking back at 2022, you will see how much of this you actually were able to accomplish. I hope that this was helpful. I’m wishing you a Happy New Year and I’ll see you in 2022!
Want to walk through these exercises step-by-step with me?
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