2021 business and personal goals
You might have seen me tease this image on Instagram, it's the Elise Joy habit tracker, a free download when you subscribe to her newsletter. I've used for 2 years in a row now, both times for tracking my alcohol-free days and in 2020 for the additional habit of 120 days of exercise.
The eagle eyed amongst you might be able to see the results in the bottom left of that curled, tatty piece of paper. It sits on our fridge and gets progressively more worn as the months go by. But ultimately, it's a tool, not a piece of art. It's there to help me make positive, healthy choices that overall will lead to a positive, healthy life. You can see my 5 pointers to help guide me when I'm feeling anxious and every circle that holds a colour is a day I achieved one of my goals.
In 2020 my 2 goals were 180 alcohol free days and 120 days of exercise. I managed 197 alcohol free days (a genuine miracle given the shitshow that was 2020) but fell short with the exercise, coming in at 87 days of exercise. Thats 72.5% though, which is still a pretty good mark by most standards.
Ultimately, I'm not beating myself up by not achieving my exercise goal, I worked out considerably more than I would have done without the tracker, which is the overall aim. I'm rolling that one over into 2021 and I know I'm already falling short, I've exercised twice in January according to my Nike + app. And that's OK. Running is something I do as much for my mental health as my physical and whilst I have a vague goal to run a half marathon by the time I'm 40, I also don't want to push myself to run when I don't feel it, that's the way you develop negative feelings towards an activity or injure youself. Everything is a season and I'm sure I'll feel more like running when the evenings are lighter, the weather is less icy and dreich and we're back to our normal routines.
I've been pondering my 2021 business goals ever since we were talking about it last month and after some deliberation, this is where I've settled:
Increase sales by 50%. This is a biggie, 50% is quite a bold jump from where I am at the moment. Ultimately though, I would like to work more for myself and less for other people in 3-5yrs time and without a major uptick in sales, that ain't happenin'. To support this goal I'll be continuing to grow the following on Instagram, continuing to increase the number of lovely newsletter subscribers (that's you folks!) by promoting the newsletter on social media, start a weekly email specifically for promoting the fabric (this is out there already and you can subscribe or unsubscribe using the link in the signature below) and continuing with regular weekly shop updates.
Grow the newsletter community by an additional 100 subscribers, an increase of 50%. This is another big, bold goal and I'm not gonna lie, there's a strong possibility that either of these goals will fail. But by trying and potentially failing, the business will still grow further and faster than if I'd set smaller, more manageable goals. My plan for supporting this goal is cross promotion of the newsletter on Instagram and...drumroll please...start a YouTube channel! You heard it here first, I'm starting a vlog. I've not put anything on Instagram yet and I don't plan to until it's confirmed and my first video is live, but you're my special newsletter people and it feels like we're pals so I wanted to share with you first. I would love it if you could pop over to YouTube and subscribe to my channel so when my first videos go live (I've got an intro and January episode filmed and ready to edit!), you'll be the first to see them. The aim is for them to be up by 5th February so watch this space...
Grow the Instagram community by 75%. This means going from 2000 followers to 3500. Again, this is a large jump and I'm worried about not managing it <insert grimace face here>. Last year I set myself very manageable goals and whilst I was pleased to have achieved them, I also felt I'd let myself down slightly by not aiming higher (albeit in the year that was 2020, it was no bad thing to have aims that were small and achievable). I've got some plans in the pipeline to help promote this aim - blogger collaborations, regular posting schedule, engaging content etc so hopefully you'll see this come to fruition over the coming months.
