Goal Setting, Big Picture Plans and How to Get on back on Track

Episode 2 Introductions and Things I wish I knew Starting my Photography Business

Hey, Happy Sunday loves! I hope you have had a great week. I am here today sharing another episode from The Ambitious & Inspired podcast! Wow, honestly the feedback I had after the first episode was AMAZING and I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to listening and for your support. 

I love planning, strategizing, making plans of plans and lists from lists. But setting clear intentions and goals around your business, that are business focused, planned and executed will be gamechanging!

This year has thrown all sorts of curve balls and I just want to say first off if you haven’t achieved any of the goals or things you wanted to tick off your list that you wrote at the start of this year….that is totally okay! 2020 has been mental and if you haven’t had the space, energy, motivation to do it, that is okay. We still have some time to make an impact on our businesses this year and revisit the plan. 

LETS GET INTO IT

Ware going to be having a quick, but deep dive into goalsetting, planning and if you may be feeling in a bit of a funk at the moment I’m not too sure what to work on on a day-to-day basis or how you can reconnect with your goals. Maybe you have no clue and you’re not even sure how to work out with what your big picture plan is. 

I want to help you get on track. 

I thought I could share some some insight on that because sometimes you can feel a bit lost not too sure where to turn to and we can end up staring at a blank piece of paper and just not really sure what to focus on. 

When I was working in my corporate job up in London I was working in insurance complaints and I had this dream I just really really wanted to run my own business as a wedding photographer. that really kept me going and I kept saying to myself all next year I’ll go full time next year I’ll go full time I leave my job then and I didn’t really have a clear direction plan .

I didn’t know what I need to do to achieve that to leave my full-time job to replace my income, and also to be able to leave my job and feel comfortable and safe love sleeping your full-time job to pursue your self-employed passion is a risk in itself anyway. But I knew I really want to make sure that I knew what I need to do to comfortably leave my corporate job and know that I could be a starting of a good fit and not setting myself up for failure or finacial stress. so for me then I’ve got to point where I just kept saying this same old story to myself and I was getting fed up of saying all next year I’ll go full-time, next year I’ll go full time and I’ll leave. 

I really sat down and worked at exactly what I need to achieve to be able to do that so for you it might be that you’re you want to get a certain my clients and then you’ll be comfortable to leave your full-time day job to pursue your business, could be that you need to save a set amount of money in the bank to cover- maybe say 6 months worth of expenses. You might want to match your income of your current job before you consider leaving. It really depends on your own circumstances and the current situation, there is no one size fits all, you have to do what is right for you. 

YOU HAVE TO MAKE A PLAN

It is really good to reevaluate where you are at and what you need to do to be able to make this a possibility. That you know you are on the right path and what you are working towards.

So for me I want to have a set a number of clients booked in the diary and I wanted to have X amount of money saved in the bank so I could comfortably leave my corporate job, knowing that if I didn’t earn a penny for 6 months I was totally okay. 

I planned to move back to Dorset away from London, again a financial and lifestyle choice to help reach my goal.  I knew where I wanted to be I want to live in the sea I want to have that kind of lifestyle, reduce my outgoings. So this is different for everyone like I say, you need to work out what you need and want. Everyone is Individual and everyone’s got their own personal goals and achievements and they want to do reach. 

What happened once I had reached my goal of leaving my job, it was the most amazing feeling, I remember that day so clearly walking out of the office for the last day. I never thought that that would’ve been able to achieve that  as quickly as I did. I would be going it solo, be running my own business, I think everyone thought I was mad. But then, what I want to share with you, was once I had basically got what I wanted and worked so hard for, I was then stuck! Day one if you like of working for me, my business – so the Monday after I left my corporate job, I was like……urrrrrrr what do I do now. I’ve got it, I have achieved the BIG GOAL, no what? 

I got so stuck and I was for about 6 months. I really know what to work on so I think it’s always really good to have checkups really with our overall goal for me at the centre I want to hit a certain income point with my business now. 

Now I have 5K months, I can bring in a great income throughout the entire year, I don’t have fluctuations as much anymore as my work is primarily seasonal. I’ve got a consistent clients and booking. And now I’m also focusing on extra businesses and other passive streams. But for me it got to a point where I had that limbo maybe about six months I don’t know what I need to work on next.

I started to loose momentum, inspiration, and business just felt really hard. It took me to the following March to really sit down, pen to paper, dreaming big, getting clarity, deep diving into my business and plans and future vision if you like, to help me re-evaluate my goals and then move forward. I set a new income goal I wanted to achieve for that coming year for my photography business. From that I could make a plan on what service or offers I could create and at what price point, and reverse engineer the daily, monthly, quarterly tasks I needed to do.  I find once I get to a point where I’m really happy with the level it is at and I keep maintaining it that’s when I can move on and I’m working on some new projects which are part of my next goal 

RE-EVALUATE YOUR GOALS AND PLAN

Now some people aren’t the sort of people who will go out and nail a game plan with their goals clearly lined out for the next 10 years  – I am definitely not one of these people. For me things change so so much, and I like to have a lot more flexibility with my overall plan. For me and my husband I know I never envisioned our five year plan when I was 20 that we would move to London I’ll be working corporate insurance and then I will be in a position to leave to work and run my own business full time. that was never part of our plan.  I knew that I wanted have my own business at some point. 

Sometimes you it’s beneficial to get a bit more specific so you might just say like you were I’m not really sure what I want, you kind of have a rough idea of a 10 year plan but you want to be a bit more specific and maybe focus on the next five years, or if that feels a little too far for you, how about how about the next 18 months – having an overall vision of where you want to be at that end point, and the goals you want to have acheieved, helps you come up with the daily, weekly and monthly tasks you need to work on to help get you closer to that end goal. 

Then from there you can break it down even further into what you need to focus on.

So at the time of this recording we are approaching the end of the year, I will soon be going through and working out my 2021 plans, but I really want to be focusing on between now and the end of the year. What impact can I make in my business. So at the moment, that is working on Branding Photography shoots as weddings are being heavily impacted at the moment with COVID, so I am having to slightly pivot until weddings are back into full swing. . When planning your quarterly goals, my advice would be to overlooking my big picture goal and work on your quarterly tasks against the overall plan to be able to map out and reverse engineer the tasks and projects and goals you need to do. 

If you are thinking, hold up Char, I haven’t got a clue what I should be working on or what y goals are, if you feel like you’re a bit unsure of where you need to be or what you need to be working on then my advice to you would be, take the afternoon off, mood board, dream, go on Pinterest, read your favourite book, listen to some music, go for a walk and dream, think what do you want?