Ep169 Transcript: Questions to Kick Start 2024

Andrea Vahl: Oh, happy new year. Yeehaw. 2024. All right. I don’t know about you, but I love planning out my year and setting goals and really reflecting on how my past year went and being super intentional about what I want the next year to look like. In today’s episode, I’m going to dive deep into what I do to brainstorm my goals for the next year. And I’m going to give you some tools and questions you can use to set your year up.

Hello, dreamers. Welcome to the late starters club, giving you the inspiration, mindset, and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

So one of the things I love to do is reflect on how the past year went. I prepare a one-page business plan that I have for each year. And I also pick three words that I am going to use as inspiration and intention for the year.

So what I’ll do is take out that plan from the last year, review, take a look at how things went and just reflect on the year. Now, if you haven’t set up anything quite as formal, you can use some of the questions I also like to look at and just reflect more extemporaneously.

Questions to Reflect on the Year

So some of the questions I review are:

• What were my successes this year?
• What did I accomplish?
• What went really well?
• What am I proud of doing?
• How did I celebrate my successes?

This last one is important because I definitely find that if you are not celebrating your successes, you’re telling yourself at a deep level that you just need to keep grinding. And you want to make sure that you’re honoring all the work that you have put into achieving your goals.

One of the things I got as a question from a friend of mine as something to reflect on as well is:

• What were my magic moments?
• What great memories do I have and what special times and memories did I create for others?

And some of these questions, like I said, are pretty common, but some have been curated throughout the years from other business people that I have worked with in Jeff Walker’s launch club or other places that I’ve done masterminds with.

Review Last Year’s Business Plan

I also like to just really be super specific around what goals did I achieve when I’m looking back at my one-page business plan? Did I hit some of the marks that I was trying to hit? Cause in my one-page business plan, I do get pretty specific about some numbers I want to achieve. And usually I’m putting those into things that I can control, such as how many blog posts do I want to do each week or each month, or how many videos am I going to create?

I do have reference to that one-page business plan that I do in my top tools guide for late starters. And I’ll have that link to the show notes and you can definitely grab that and learn how I put my one page business plan together.

So then the other thing I like to do is really reflect on what could have gone better. As I was reflecting about this year, I had some pretty big plans for my business and things didn’t go so well. So I’m looking back at why I was not doing the activities that I said I was going to do, which is the case. And I definitely see that when I’m not doing the activities that I see that have led to success in the past, if I drop those activities, then I’m not going to get the results that I’m looking for.

So I can reflect on why did that not happen? Why did I not get the blog posts out that I was committing to or saying that I was going to get out? And there were a variety of reasons and how can I prevent that from happening, next year if I do have that same type of goal. So I really look at what I could do differently.

And then I really examined what is the state of my business right now. And what do I want it to look like next year?

So those are a couple of things that I just really freeform around and just write down what the state is. A lot of times what I’m doing is gathering the data from years past and examining the trends.

I could see 2020 and 2021 were really good years for my business, but 2022 and 2023 were fairly down for me. So I can see some different cycles there and I can really, take some conclusions around why that activity happened, what was going on. I can really look at the marketplace and also where it is a little bit more on me for not achieving those results. So then I, I really dive into that. What do I want it to look like next year?

Reflecting on the Word(s) of the Year

And here’s where I’m picking my three words and I will pick three words that I’m really wanting to have an intention around and just bring in and just focus on for the year. And so my three words for 2023. We’re focus systems and gratitude.

And I definitely hit the gratitude. I have been super grateful all year for lots of different things that I’ve really come to appreciate how gratitude is affecting my happiness and how just being grateful for whatever is happening in my life, I can really just be joyful and really be thankful for all that I have.

I definitely put some systems in place around my podcast. I have my podcast manager Sarah Scott, who’s doing an incredible job at getting this podcast out regularly. Creating reels, we have a whole system for that.

The systems really broke down around my ads business. I was not doing the activities. They’re not getting my emails out. Not doing things fairly regularly there. So I’m going to look at that for 2024.

I do have systems around my comedy shows. I definitely have been booking more shows there. I’ve been putting together a framework around how I’m renting venues, how I’m booking the comedians and getting bigger and bigger venues and growing my list there. So the systems have come into place in some places, but not in others.

And then focus, I did end up dropping some activities. Crazy. I know I like to do all the things, but I did drop some activities this year.

I did bow out of my acting class and decided not to continue that even though I loved it. I knew that it was just too much. And as I was doing more activities and evening with my comedy, I knew that something had to give. So I did bow out of that. And I do realize that I got a little more focused around what I want to continue in 2024 and really making sure that I’m doing the things that really bring me joy.

Final Thoughts for 2023 / 2024 Planning

So that is how I reflect on my. On the state of my business, I look at some concrete numbers, but also look at some of the intentions and then I start to develop, what do I want it to look like next year? What do I want to do more of? What do I want to do less of, where can I think bigger? Where can I grow? Where do I see myself in five years? That crazy question, right?

I definitely feel like that’s hard to predict, but, we can set a path and a trajectory and we can dream really big. So I like to usually get a whiteboard or big, pieces of paper and start to really just sketch things out and think bigger and bigger and see what really is pulling me forward and what is giving me energy.

So those are things I really like to reflect on and brainstorm around as I start my 2024 and I love doing this.

I know that people have different methods or different questions they ask themselves. So I would love to hear if you have any questions or any methods of brainstorming for your 2024 or your year ahead.

What do you like to do? What has worked for you? Please share that those kinds of things in the comments or reply to an email or whatever it is. I’d love to hear. And here’s to a wonderful 2024 may it just be the most exciting year. And I look forward to being here with you on the podcast.

Hope that was helpful and make sure you grab the free guide top tools for late starters on the website at late starters club. com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.