125: Starting the Year Strong: Part One Of My Planning Routine

Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. Here, I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests, will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories, because we’re willing to go there.

If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, we’re here for you. The shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight. Welcome

back to the shoot it straight podcast. My friends, it’s a new year. Happy 2025. I am so excited to share this episode with you to kick off the new year because Man, I love new year energy, like the clean slate, the fresh start. It’s so exciting and so energizing to me. And I just, I love this time of year.

And second to this time of year is the back to school energy because it’s the same kind of fresh slate, clean start. I just, I love that time so much. Whether or not you feel the same way, I, cause I do realize that not everybody has the same energy. Not everybody loves the new year. A lot of people feel stress and anxiety and pressure around the clean slate and the goal setting and all that.

No matter what camp you’re in, whether or not you love the energy, the goal setting, and all of that, I’m hoping that by the end of this episode, you will at least be motivated to plan an intentional year for yourself and your business. And My, my plan for today is to start the process. We’re going to start the discussion.

This is a part one of how I kick off a new year, what my planning routine is. And then in next week’s episode is going to be the part two. Uh, this is kind of a long topic and I don’t want you to have, you know, a two and a half hour podcast episode. So we’re breaking this up. And today I am just kind of starting with the very beginning, what I start with when I.

And beginning a new year, how I make plans for my personal life, for my personal growth, um, for my business, what I want the year to look like. I have always been very intentional in this process, but about five years ago, I took that intentionality to a whole new level, started a new way of starting my year.

And that’s right around the same time that I started to see an explosion in growth, both in my own personal development and in my business. And my friends, I don’t think that those are unrelated. I really do believe in the power of intentionality and I think, you know, January is as good a time to start to any.

So here we go. We’re going to dive into this episode. I, I want to just say, whether you’re listening to this in real time, or maybe you’re, you find the podcast six months from now and you stumble across this episode, you can do this process at Any time. It does not have to be January. It does not have to be the beginning of the school year.

It can be literally any time where you feel like, okay, I am recommitting, I am making a fresh start. I am really going to do this. You can do this at any time. Okay. Similarly to that, if it’s, you know, you are listening to this in real time and it’s early January and you’re like, you know what’s Freena, I’m not there yet.

I’m just mentally not there yet. The kids aren’t back in school yet, or we still have family visiting, or we’re traveling, or I mentally need to put down Christmas before I can start a new year. I feel you. I totally feel you. Again, Push, pause on this, put a little reminder to go listen to this when you are ready because you can do this process at any time of the year.

Okay? So the very first thing that I do when I am creating an intentional plan forward is I look back. If you’ve listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know that reflection is a huge part of what I do. It’s a huge part of what I coach. And it is so, so important because when you are creating a road map to a destination, you cannot figure out what the directions are to get there without a starting point.

You have to reflect first so that you know what your starting point is so that you can create a map to your destination to your goals. So I always start with reflection. I look back over the past year. I look back over what went really well, what worked, what felt good, what felt easy, what felt like it was optimized, and then also what didn’t feel good.

What did I not enjoy doing? What did I stumble with? What did I struggle with? What problems did I have? Did certain days of the week feel harder than others or certain months of the year harder than others? I really try and do a deep dive into the good and the bad. You want to be able to take what went well and optimize it even further when you move forward and you obviously want to take what did not work well and fix the problems so that you don’t struggle with them anymore.

So reflection is always the first part. And I do that both qualitatively and quantitatively. So I am definitely as a business owner, spending time in a spreadsheet, looking at how many sessions did I book? How many inquiries did I have? How much money did I make? What was my profit margin? All, all of those things, right?

I’m looking at all of the numbers. And then I also want to know, how did I feel? What felt hard? What felt good? All of those things. Okay. So it’s both qualitative and quantitative measurements. And then while I’m doing that, I also take a moment to celebrate my wins. You know, we so often just skip right over that.

We skip right over our successes and celebrating ourselves and move right on to the next thing. And my friend, you wouldn’t do that to your best friend. You wouldn’t do that to your partner. You certainly wouldn’t do that with your kids. It’s important to celebrate your successes, whether they are small or massive or somewhere in between.

And I guarantee you, no matter what last year looked like for you, no matter if you increased your revenue or decreased your revenue, whether you just started your business or whether it was your 10th year in business, no matter if the year felt hard or felt awesome, there were Successes. There were wins.

There were things that are worth celebrating, and I want you to spend some time doing that. Celebrate what went really well. Okay. Highlight your successes. And again, let those successes inform your goals for the new year. Looking at what went well, let’s see if we can recreate those things or make them even better in the night, in the new year.

Reflection is always the first thing that I do when I’m preparing for a new year. Take care. Right? I’m always reflecting on the lessons I can learn, the things I want to take with me into the new year, the things I want to leave behind. What am I learning from my challenges? Just all of that, right?

Reflection is so important. It is how you create the true starting point. It is how you inform your point a on the map so that you know the directions moving forward for your goals. After that is when I start to think about my vision for the new year. Who do I want to be? What does she need to be doing?

Where do I want my business to go? How can I possibly get there? Right? I’m asking myself these really big vision goals. Okay. And I am looking at both my personal life and my business. Okay. I’m creating a very clear distinction between my goals and my vision. What’s financial, what’s personal, what feels creative, what’s for my business, right?

They’re all fitting into kind of a bucket, right? Different buckets of different, different ways I want to grow and change in the new year. And when I’m looking at these goals. I really am starting with the vision. Like I said, where do I want to be at the end of the year? And then I’m working backwards. So I’m not looking at the immediate, you know, I want to start hitting 10, 000 steps a day, or I want to have a 10, 000 a month.

I’m looking bigger than that. And then I’m working backwards. And I do that by again, starting with the full year, the end goal in mind. And then I’m, I’m backing into, okay, what does that mean for my quarterly goals? What does that mean for monthly goals? What does that mean for weekly goals, et cetera. And I’m, I’m really breaking them down from there.

The primary tool I use for this part of the process is called the cultivate planner power sheets. I will link these in the show notes. I’ve used them for the past five years. They have been an absolute game changer. Now, there is the word planner in the name, Cultivate Planner PowerSheets. It is not a planner like you’re thinking.

This is not what I’m using for my monthly calendar and my appointments. It’s not what I’m planning sessions in. It’s not where I’m putting our travel and all of that. It is truly a goal setting mapping planning tool. So you would purchase this if you decide to, and you would use it alongside of your other, you know, calendar planner type tools.

It is so magic because of the promise. Laura Casey was the woman who created the, these and just the whole process is, is really incredible. You literally, you get this planner and you start going through it. And I will say the homework, the prep work to getting it set up and rocking and rolling is really, really intense.

I always set aside at least a day, maybe a couple of half days to work through it because it is asking you a lot of reflection questions and then a lot of visionary questions and the process works. That’s why that it has a such a cult following. It’s why these power sheets have been so wildly popular for years now because.

It is an incredible process and the questions really pull out of you. What matters most to you? What, what are you dreaming of? How do you get there? It’s just, I can’t describe it, but it’s pages and pages and pages of prep work before you even get to the part of actually writing out your goals. These power sheets walks you through all of this prep work, and then it does this breakdown that I was just saying, it takes your big annual goals and it breaks them into quarterly goals and monthly goals and weekly goals, and then daily habits, if, if there are some of those needed to support your goals.

I have just loved using these, so I’m going to have it linked in the show notes. Uh, it is a really, really big part of how I set goals for my life. Again, I put business and personal in there. In next week’s episode, I’m going to break down even further the specifics to how I work on my business goals specifically.

That’s where I’m getting into spreadsheets and marketing planning and all of that. So I’ll share more about that next week. But one more thing I want to say about goals, and this is something that I teach on every year. I teach goal setting in my membership. I teach it in my mastermind. I talk about it with my one to one clients.

It is absolutely crucial that you do not set too many big goals at one time. I know that the new year energy is so dang tempting to like, revamp your whole life, right? You’re going to recommit to losing a bunch of weight and decluttering your entire house and, you know, hitting 10, 000 steps and walking your dogs every day and saving all this money and hitting these revenue goals, right?

It’s so tempting to like do everything at once. And I will tell you as someone who I really do feel like a little bit of a goal setting expert at this point. But if you set too many goals, your efforts are diluted and nothing is going to get the best of you. Friend. I want to take a quick second to tell you about a new freebie I have that I’m super Super excited about whether you are hoping to launch a new offer this year, or maybe you’re just burned out and looking for some creative inspiration.

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When you go through portfolio on purpose, you will walk away with the knowledge of what the benefits of model calls are, how they can support your business creativity and growth, how to create one that pulls in the right people, how to keep it organized. Including a step by step workflow at the end of this freebie, you will feel inspired to take action and have the steps and tools necessary to successfully put the model call out, find the right models and most importantly, get the images you are looking for.

If you’re hoping to run a model call or maybe a few this year, head over to Sabrina Gebhardt. com backslash model dash freebie to get yours today. Okay, back to the show. I really do recommend focusing on two, maybe three at a time, and that’s it. Because if you think about it, if you can decide to go all in, On one goal at a time.

Let’s, let’s drill it down to the most simple example. I’m going to focus on one goal at a time. And it is all you think about in your spare time. It’s what you devote. You know, you’ve got work time to it. You are putting it on your calendar. You’re thinking about it every morning. When you wake up, you’re thinking about it during the day.

You’re putting all of your effort and energy on this one thing until you go all in. You are going to hit that goal so much faster just because that is where your energy and focus is going. It’s not being pulled between 100 different things. Okay. And what happens when you hit that one goal much faster than you thought?

You get to move on to the next goal and go all in, and then you get to move on to the next goal and go all in. I really prefer doing goals that way. I feel like when you go all in on one at a time, you can achieve more in the span of a year than if you go in on ten at a time. And dilute your efforts and then maybe by the end of the year, you hit a couple or you got halfway to all of them, but you never really hit any of them.

Do you see how that works? So when you’re thinking about your goals and you’re thinking about what you want to work on first, I say, if there’s not an obvious goal that has to come before others, then pick the thing you’re most excited about in that moment. Okay. Because you’re more likely to work towards the thing that you’re really jazzed for, right?

I do want to back up and give an example. So when I said if there’s not an obvious goal that has to come first before the others, what do I mean by that? If you look at what your goals are for the year, and there’s, there’s an, there’s an obvious like, well, let’s say your goal is that you want to branch out into a new niche of photography.

Okay. You’ve always been a wedding photographer, but now you’re ready to start photographing families. Part of that process is going to be updating your website so that you’ve got a page for families and a portfolio for families and all of your copywriting speaks to both weddings and families and you’ve got your SEO adjustments and all of that, right?

There’s big changes that have to happen on your website. Before you can say that you have added another niche to your business and you’re selling that actively. So it would make more sense to have your website updates be something you focus on in January. Okay. Before announcing that you’ve added family photography as a niche.

Does that make sense? Okay. So some of them have to come first. Sometimes there’s an order of operations and things, and in that case, you need to work in a logical order. But if they’re all created the same and they’re not really in a logical order, focus on the one that you’re most excited about first and let yourself go all in on that one goal before you add in something else.

Okay. That’s, that’s my hot tip for you. I want to kind of end this episode talking about routines and rituals. Another part of starting your year strong and planning for intentional growth in your personal life and in your business is by considering your routines and rituals because oftentimes Again, whether we’re talking business or personal, you actually need to build in these routines, these rituals that are daily or multiple times a day to support the growth that you are looking for.

Okay. So if for your business, you want to get into like, you want to grow your social media following. Let’s say you want to start really showing up on social media consistently. You want to have a really strong brand on social media. You want to start gaining email, grow email list growth from your social media.

You want to start having like really popular DMS and comments and things like. Maybe your account has gone stale, right? And you are recommitting to making that better in the new year. A routine or a ritual might be that every day at noon, when you are having lunch in your dining room, you’re going to set a timer for 15 minutes, hop on Instagram, share something to your stories, and then comment and respond to DMs and engage with accounts.

Right. Maybe that is part of building in this consistency is a routine around when can you show up consistently without getting sucked in or personally, maybe you, you know, want to start taking care of your health and part of that looks like you’re going to wake up 30 minutes early every day and you’re going to commit to drinking water before coffee and you’re going to go for a walk after lunch every day for 30 minutes.

It’s building in the habits, the routines, the rituals, which will support hitting your goals. So often we need to build in these routines. It’s, it’s crucial. That’s been quote unquote, like the missing part. If you’ve ever had goals that you’ve tried to work towards in the past and you haven’t been successful, you haven’t met them or you feel like you failed, oftentimes this is the missing link.

There was a, you know, you’re missing the opportunity to build a habit, to build a new routine, to make it a part of a ritual. So thinking through how can you set yourself up consistently on a daily or weekly basis. to help support these goals that you have. And other things that I think support this process is, uh, your mindset.

It really is. Again, this new year energy, it’s exciting and it feels really fresh. But what I hear so often is that that newness, that freshness, that excitement, that buzz of the new start kind of starts to fade after the first 10 days, couple of weeks. And what happens when that starts to fade, but it’s too soon and you haven’t started to see results or payoffs of your hard work and your efforts yet.

You fizzle out. You feel like a failure. You feel like everything you try doesn’t work. So why bother? And very quickly the switch gets flipped from, I’m feeling good. I’m feeling committed. I’m feeling excited. It’s going to be great. And all of a sudden you’re on the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m a failure.

It doesn’t work. Nothing I do is. does anything, why bother poor me, you know, waving the white flag. And so it can really hurt your mindset right off the bat. And so telling yourself, I’m committing to this process, even though I know it’s going to take a long time. I’m committing to this process because in my efforts to reach this goal, I am bettering myself even if I don’t reach the goal, telling yourself that it is about the journey of growth and not necessarily the achievement of crossing the finish line that matters.

telling yourself to stay focused on the consistency and that the consistency of showing up for yourself and bettering yourself intentionally is the success. That is the part that actually matters. There’s so many parts of mindset that you can, you know, you can write out affirmations for yourself. You can listen to podcasts, you can just keep thinking these thoughts, but reminding yourself that this is a long road.

There’s most likely not going to be really quick wins. This is a long process, but you are committed to getting better. You are committed to doing better. You are committed to learning and growing. So making sure that your mindset is really, really strong. And then again, with the setting yourself up for success with goals and a new year and intentionality is, do you need to set any boundaries to protect your time and energy?

Do you need to set any boundaries to protect your time and energy? And the reason I’m asking that. And spoiler alert, the answer is yes. I don’t care who you are, what kind of schedule you have. The answer is yes. Here’s the thing. When you are leaning into intentional growth, again, I don’t care if we’re talking personal growth, professional growth, or both.

It doesn’t matter which lane you’re in committing to growth, committing to consistency. It requires time. It requires time that you likely may not have on your calendar. You may not have every single day. You may not have, you know, hour to hour. And it’s, it’s about figuring out when am I going to work on this?

When am I going to fit this in? How am I going to get my daily walk after lunch? How am I going to make sure that I actually get up 30 minutes early like I’ve promised? How am I going to make sure that I take two hours once a week to work on writing this book that I want to write or building this program that I want to build?

Where are you finding the time for it? And then how can you set boundaries to protect the time? How can you set boundaries to support you actually using that time for what you said you’re going to use it for? How can you set boundaries to make sure that other people’s needs don’t squeeze into the time that you’ve carved out to work on the thing?

So having boundaries to support these routines, these habits, these goals, your time. That’s all I have for today. I know that was kind of a ramble. I hope that you came along for the ride and that you’re following and that you’re tracking and that you’re all good. That’s how I start my planning for the new year.

Right. I’m starting with the reflection. I’m looking back, celebrating wins. I’m making note of challenges and lessons learned. Then I’m moving into the vision for my year. Who do I want to become? What do I want my business to become? What are those goals look like? Then I’m breaking them down from the big year goals and I’m backing into quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, daily goals.

And then I am going even farther to look at what kind of routines, rituals, habits do I need to create to support the growth I want. I am making sure my mindset is really strong and set up for success and understanding that this is not going to be quick. It is not going to be easy, but I’m here for it anyways.

And then I’m creating boundaries to protect my time so that I can stay focused on the goals at hand. Right. And then the tool that I use to support this goal setting process is the cultivate planner power sheets. Again, I’m going to have those linked in the show notes in case you’re interested in grabbing one for yourself.

And that’s it for this week. Next week, we are taking it a step further. I’m going to break down the two really key steps that I take after I’ve done what we talked about today. And that’s where I’m really diving deep into planning for my business for the year. This is how I’m creating a very clear plan of action for hitting the target.

my business goals for what my business is going to look like month to month throughout the year. I’m really excited to share, uh, all of that process with you in the next week. So make sure to join me back here for part two. We’ll see you then. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast.

You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at Sabrina Gebhardt. com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhardt photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review until next time, my friends shoot it straight.