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Episode 091: Conversations Over Coffee – Goals Edition 2022

January 4, 2022

Chasing Simple Marketing

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A Look at My 2022 Goals

You’re listening to the Chasing Simple Podcast and I’m your host – Amanda Warfield. We’re kicking off the new year with another Conversations Over Coffee episode. If you’ve never tuned into one of these before, they’re a quarterly episode I do that takes you behind the scenes of my life and business. Today, on episode 091, I’m sharing all about my goals for 2022 – with a twist.

I LOVE to listen to other people’s goals for the year. Especially those that are in this online business space. However, I tend to subconsciously attach a person’s goals with their achievements even though I logically know those can often be vastly different things. So, in case you’re like me, I’m starting this episode off by re-sharing what my 2021 goals were and then walking through what I actually achieved and didn’t achieve. Then, I’ll share what my goals for 2022 are.

If you’ve been around Chasing Simple for awhile, you know that I value transparency – even, and especially, in the hard parts of entrepreneurship. This part of the year can be incredibly exciting, but it can also be incredibly frustrating when we let comparison creep in. I hope this episode reminds you that you only see a small part of anyone’s behind the scenes, and that goals take time to cultivate – nothing happens overnight.

And if you do love this episode, please find me on Instagram and let me know what your goals for 2022 are! I’d love to hear them! Now, let’s dive on in.


Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:


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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!


Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.

As, you know, if you listened to the intro, I’m not only sharing my goals for 2022 and what that’s going to look like, but I’m also going to pull back the curtain even farther and share how my goals for 2021 turned out. If you skip the intro, this is something that I find really important because I know how I am.

When I listen to other people’s goals, I tend to subconsciously of course, I tend to. Automatically affiliate someone’s goals with their success levels. So if their goal is a hundred thousand dollars for the year in my mind, that’s their success level. That’s where they’re going to hit it. Right. So I know because I do that, I wanted to just really pull back the curtain and first start off by sharing my 20, 21 goals and what those ended up looking like if you listen to these episodes throughout the course of the year, You kind of hear some of what my goals are and how things are going and what life is looking like behind the scenes.

But I just wanted to lay out what my goals were and how they ended up. So if you listened to episode 87, you know that I said four goals for my business each year. So first things first, the first goal for my business for 2021 revenue wise, initially I set a goal of six figures, um, about a week or two after setting that goal, though, I realized that.

While it may have been possible. It would have put a lot of strain and stress on me. And so I lowered that goal to $40,000. Now I did not hit that goal. Uh, my revenue. Was around 28,000. So I’m more than double my revenue from last year, but I still didn’t hit that goal. So that’s how that one turned out.

Now, my next goal, my behind the scenes goal for 2021 for my business pad may says, hello for 2200 for my business was to set up systems for. Growth and scaling. I wanted to set my business up with a foundation that I knew I could grow and scale. I wanted to really hone in on my funnel wise, get those set up and things like that.

And this is one of those things that will never really be done in business. I’m always going to be tweaking and changing and things like that, but I did make a lot of progress. And the irony is, is that I set this goal and then a few months later, That I needed to completely move from the systems that I was using in my business to an all in one system.

So previously I was using teachable to host all of my courses and downloads and things like that. I was using mailer Lite for my emails, for my email list, and I was using Zapier to connect. And that worked really well for awhile. And then in February or March, I did a launch and quite a few people fell through the cracks.

The for whatever reason, the zaps didn’t go all the way through. And there was some customer service issues. Now at that time, I was like, you know what? I sold, I think 31 seats. Inside of club content, batching at that launch. And I was already having issues with that. What happens when I did grow in scale, that was going to be a huge headache.

So I decided, okay, well, I’m going to move to an all in one. So I moved to Kartra, which does. All everything. My sales pages through there, my, uh, payment processor, my email marketing, it hosts all of my things. I hosted my entire summit through Kartra in fact, so it was a great move, but the irony is that I did not plan to have to make that move.

And it was a massive project this year. So I made a lot of progress with this goal. There are still things that I’m working on and I want to do within this year, as well as I continue to move forward, trying to grow and scale my business. Progress was made. Now my big dream goal for 2021 was to book an in-person speaking engagement.

And I work all year long week after week after, week on this and made no progress. I got to do some amazing guests trainings. I did a ton of podcast interviews, but I. Made no progress on actually booking an in-person speaking engagement. And you know, there’s a plethora of reasons for that, that I’m not necessarily going to go into right now because this episode will be hours long, but.

Finally at the very end of the year in November, like end of November, I’m talking, I got asked to speak at a conference for the next year. Uh, the recent conference at this point, we have announced it. So I can say that I got asked to speak at the reset conference for next year. I am so incredibly excited to head over to Lexington at Lexington, Kentucky.

This conference is for photographer. So if you’re a photographer and you’re listening and you want to check this out, I’m going to link to this in the show notes so that you can check it out. And I’ve also got a special code that you can save money on your ticket if you decided you’re into. So I’ll put all that in the show notes.

If you go to Amanda warfield.com forward slash 0 9 1 dash two, you’ll be able to find all of that. So go check that out. I’m so excited to be speaking there. Then the very next day, after getting asked to speak at this conference, I got asked to speak at an event locally and I already got to do that. So not only did I book.

And in-person speaking engagement, which was my goal, even though that’s not happening until next year, I also got to book and do an in-person speaking engagement this year after working towards it all year long and making no progress. So if you have a goal, keep, keep going. Just, I hope that that encourages you because I really was feeling so.

So upset with myself because it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening. It took 11 months, almost a full 12 months for that to happen. And it finally did. So keep going on your goals. And then my last goal, you know, that if you listen to episode 87, I set a revenue goal, a behind the scenes goal, a big dream goal.

And then I also set a goal around my main offer, which is club content bathroom. So I had a goal. 35 new members. I hit eight. So that one did not go as planned this year. Again, there are a plethora of reasons that I suspect that’s the case, and we’re just going to keep on moving forward. And it is what it is.

We all know if we were in business in 2021 that the second half of 2021, especially it was a, it was rough for our land business owners. So I’m trying not to let that discourage me too, too much. I always set lofty goals. So that is kind of a recap of my business goals for 2021, obviously. Halfway through the year.

I decided to start a second business, which I didn’t really set any goals for it, other than just getting it up and running. I did that. So those are my business goals. Now I want to talk about what my personal goals for 2021 were. So the first one I had was to get our Roth accounts set up and contribute the max to them this year.

And we did that. We. Spent the first, quite a few years of our marriage, just trying to get out of debt. Russell had student loan debt. We ended up having to buy a car like the week after we got married because Russell’s car broke down and quit on him right before he went to boot. My car died on us literally the week after we got married.

And so we didn’t have a car, we had to share a car and we ended up having to buy one and finance it. So we spent a long time in our marriage getting out of debt, but that meant that we put off actually investing in our retirement accounts for a lot longer than we would have liked to. So we finally got those up and running this year.

That was a huge. Weight off of our shoulders, but that was a big goal this year. The next goal I had was to lose 20 pounds and that definitely did not happen. In fact, I gained weight, but here’s the thing it’s really, I know everyone says this, but truly for me, it’s not about losing the weight, but everyone talks about one of you need to have a smart, measurable goal, whatever.

And so I put lose 20 pounds because that’s a measurable, but really, I just wanted to find some consistency and take care of myself and. I did do that. It took me until December, essentially to finally get in a rhythm with working out, but it, around July, I started, you know, actually working. On more than a once in a while basis.

And then throughout the next like six months, it took me some time to get to a place where I could finally commit to, okay, I’m going to work out three times a week, lifting weights with Russell. And so that’s where I am now, but it took six months of me just being like, I’m going to move my body. I’m going to move my body every day.

That, and that was just the goal. Move my body, whether it was a walk, riding my bike, whatever that was the goal for six hunts before I could get to a place where I was like, Three times a week in the gym, that’s the new goal. And so that’s where I’m at now. And I’ll talk about that more when I talk about my 20, 22 goals, but that’s why that goal didn’t exactly happen, but still I’m pretty okay with it because really the 20 pounds, wasn’t the thing I was working towards.

It was just the measurable thing I could write down. Next goal I had was to hire a painter for. Buy furniture, which if you’ve listened to the other conversations over coffee episodes, you know, that was a whole thing, but we finally got it done. Uh, we still have a long way to go with this house. Again, we haven’t been really allocating a lot of time or energy or money to.

Updating it and things like that, but we have made huge progress in the last year. There’s no more wallpaper in this house. All of the walls are nice, neutral gray, and there are no more empty rooms. So there’s still things that we want to buy and get an update, but we made a lot of progress last year. And I’m so glad to say we checked this goal.

Because that wallpaper was hideous. Another goal I had for 2021 for myself, was to get into a routine with my skincare. And this is still very much a work in progress. I have a long way to go and a lot to learn, but I have a routine. So that is something it’s not perfect. There’s a lot more I want to do with it, but I do finally have a routine of taking care of my skin.

Again, this is something I wish I had started when I was much, much younger. Um, The saving for retirement, but better, late than never. And I’m glad finally have some sort of routine and rhythm with that. And then the last goal that I had for 2021 was to go to Disney twice, which when I wrote this down, I had zero plans for Disney.

Really wanted to go to Disney. It had been so long. We had, again, moved back right before the pandemic started, moved back to South Carolina. And so we were in Washington. We did Disneyland a few times, or I did Disneyland a few times. Russell did it once and we moved back to South Carolina where we’re, again, there were like six to eight hours depending on traffic from Disney.

And when we first moved back, the pandemic hit. And so I hadn’t been able to go and I really, I wanted to get vaccinated and I wanted to go to Disney. But I had no idea how I was going to do that. And then things kind of just happened. My sister just initiated a trip for the two of us. She said she wanted to go, wanted me to plan it.

So I did. And then I also signed up for pixie Dustin profits live, which I will also link to in the show notes. If anyone else, I think there’s one seat left for 20, 22 highly recommend. If you love Disney and your business owner, to check this out, I will get and put that in the show notes. It is. So good best, best conference retreat I’ve been to as I’ve been the business owner.

And when they said time to sign up for the next one, I immediately put my credit card down. And that ended up allowing me to take that second trip. And then, because I was taking multiple trips back to back and I knew that Russell and I were planning to take it. Together in 2022, I was able to buy an annual bath, which was a huge little hive goal for me that I had no intention of getting to mark off of my bucket list.

And then I started as a travel company and there was a lot of Disney this year, which. Just when I opened up my power sheets to look back at what my goals had been for 2021, it just made me chuckle because when I wrote this down, none of that was in the cards. None of that was being planned. It just happened.

And so that was, that was just a really fun moment to look back on 2021. And it was a hard year, but that was a, how that felt good. So those were. My goal is both for my business and personally for 2021 and how they kind of evolved or came about and things like that. So now looking ahead to 2022, a lot of my goals are honestly, fairly similar to what they were last year.

There’s a lot of the same intentions, but my biggest intention for this year is to shift, which is my word of the year shift shift. My focus. Away from my businesses and my work being the priority, the forefront thing in my mind for the last I started my business in 2018. And so up until now, it really has been the priority.

It’s been the thing I think about all the time. It’s where I spend the most of my time. And well, I’ll still probably spend most of my time working because that’s just kind of how things shake out. I don’t want it to be. I don’t want it to continue to be where I placed my identity. That is something that I struggle with for sure.

If the business is doing well. I do, I feel good about myself. If it’s not doing well, I feel really bad about myself and frankly, they’re going to be up and down some business. You know, when we finally get going and we get momentum and things are working and we start trending upwards, there’s part of us that even a logically, we know that there are ups and downs.

Logically. We think that we’ll just have a continuous trend upwards and. Well, yes, that tends to be the case. Overall. My trends have all been upwards. It’s still hard in those down moments. It is really hard. And so I’m, I’m really wanting to be way more intentional about my business kind of being like a back burner thing for me.

And that’s not to say that I’m not going to show up for my clients and I’m not going to be involved in the business. It’s not what I mean at all, but I want other things to, to. A bigger focus in my life and this to take less of a focus. So that’s my word of the year. That’s my intention for the year.

Like this year is about myself and my relationships in a lot of different ways. So that’s kind of my intention as we move forward, talking about these goals. So the first goal I have for the year is being someone who takes care of themselves. Again, I want to continue to be consistent in the gym and working out and you know, right now my focus.

Three weight workouts, weightlifting workouts a week, and then just filling my rings in some other way, the rest of the week. So four days out of the week, you know, maybe that just means yoga or taking a walk or whatever, but three days, that means I’m getting in the gym and Russell and I are lifting weights together.

What that will evolve to. I don’t really know. I just don’t know, but I want to be someone who takes care of myself, so that also dealing with. I think I might’ve shared this in a past episode, but having issues with my B12 levels and having it’s just the whole thing. So wanting to get that taken care of, um, Finding a therapist, things like that.

Like I want to take care of me. So that’s my first goal for the year. Oh. And within that also continuing the skincare routine and building on that. That’s part of that as well. My second goal is to really focus on our marriage and quality time within our marriage. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in the past, but both Russell and I are very introverted and I love that about us, frankly, but I want to focus on the time we do spend together.

That makes it sound like we don’t spend any time together. That’s not the case, but I just, I want us to make sure that when we’re spending time together, it’s intentional and it’s quality. So getting back to weekly date nights, that really used to be something we were super intentional about. And then it kind of stopped during the pandemic.

So getting back to that, um, we can get a ways together when possible. And we also have all of our travel laid out for this coming year, but planning that and making sure that that. It goes smoothly because I’ve done a good job planning all of our travel. I also want to get back to being really intentional with other relationships in my life.

So with my friends and my family members, I’ve got a list of different routines that I want to get back into with various people in my life. For example, I grew up very close to my cousins. We all grew up in the same small town and not everyone lives in. In fact quite, I’d say it’s probably like half and half at this point.

Half of us live here, half of us live. Elsewhere, but all kinds of close to this moment. And I don’t think that’ll always be the case. So something that we started at the end of last year was a monthly cousin dinner. Not everyone can always make it just because, you know, some people are like two and a half hours away, which is too far for dinner, but those of us that are in the local area, we’ve been trying to do that.

So that’s one example of just intentional relationships that in routines, within relationships that I’m trying to cultivate, because those are important. And again, Kind of getting back into the safety zone a for vaccinated, we can do more together in a safe manner now. So that’s another thing that I have as a goal, intentional relationship routines.

My next goal has to do with my relationship with God. I left the church that I grew up in and was working at at the end of 2021. And now I have to go through the process of finding a new home church with. Admittedly I’ve been putting off for way too long. Now, again, it was something that I’ve been thinking about really, since I moved back and the pandemic hit and it really just throw off a lot of things and I tried to get involved anyways, it’s a whole thing, but that’s a goal I have for this year is trying out different churches in my town, in my area, and really trying to find the one that I feel called to as my home church.

My next goal has to do with finances and. Again, last year was all about making sure we were saving well for retirement. And this year it’s all about comfort, but not excess. I want to live in a place of comfort with our finances. I want us to be able to not 100% scrimp and save all the time like we have for most of our marriage, but I also want to be intentional about the money and steward our money well, and make sure that we’re not.

Buying all the things, because we want the things. And so Russell and I sat down the other day and had a very long conversation about our goals for this year, with our finances and how we were going to achieve those. And honestly, that goal is pretty much at this point. We just have to live out what we decided.

So that was. The hard part’s done, we’ve got a decision we’ve got to play and we just have to move forward with it. So that’s kind of exciting to already have a vast majority of that gold checked off. Now it’s just about making sure that we’re distributing the money into the correct places correctly and just being intentional with our purchases and a big part of this is that we want to do more with our house.

Again, build it into a home that we love be comfortable, but not have excess of super luxury. Yeah. There’s that middle ground. Um, one thing we plan to do this year is a renovation of our backyard. We have a really great backyard space, but it’s kind of got a weird flow to it. And so that’s something that we are trying to.

Improve. We also need things like a new fence because ours is wood and not been taken care of and falling apart, rotting away, essentially. So that’s, that’s a big goal we have is just continuing to do the things we were doing, saving for retirement and saving for the future, but also living in the here and now with our finances.

And then the last personal goal I have for myself is to make more time to rest. I struggle with resting. Happier when I’m productive and I feel better about it, which has led to me working so much and things like that. And so I want to, again, because I’m trying to shift my, my focus away from work. I’m trying to be very intentional this year about cultivating hobbies for myself, because I’ve noticed that even the things I do when I’m resting or kind of.

Goal oriented, which I guess by setting this as a goal, this is also goal goal oriented in a way. But you know, I’m constantly reading a lot of it is reading for pleasure and like fiction and things like that. But there’s also a part of me. That’s like, oh, gotta keep reading because I have this goal for the year to read this many books.

Another thing I really enjoy doing as a hobby is playing the Sims or animal crossing. But both in both of those games, the things I’m doing, I’m still achieving within the games. Making sure my Sims are set up for a great life and are moving forward in their own jobs and climbing the career ladder and an animal crossing.

Essentially. I’m always trying to be productive even within the things I’m doing to relax. Because I’m trying to cultivate hobbies. A couple of things I really want to do is wrestle Kamiyah piano a few years ago, or keyboard a few years ago for Christmas. And I’ve always wanted to learn how to play and I’ve never done it.

So that’s something that I’m going to try to put some time towards this year. A big part of this is setting work boundaries for myself, not working after four 30, not working on the weekends sometimes. Russell goes off to do his own thing. I work because it’s fun for me. And that’s, there’s a time and place for that.

I’m not shaming anyone if you do that, like, that’s not my intent here, but I personally need to set up some boundaries until I can get to a healthier place with things. So those are some boundaries that I’m trying to create. I also want to create essentially a yearbooks for each year for us. And I have been working on this goal for so long, and I really haven’t made a ton of progress.

I want to focus on that this year, going through my old phone. Deleting pictures. We don’t need transferring the pictures. I do want onto our hard drive and then going through year by year and creating just little yearbooks or scrapbooks that I can order from, I dunno, Shutterfly or Snapfish or something.

And I haven’t decided, but that’s a big project that I want to undertake as far as like a hobby this year, because I used to scrapbook scrapbook and it was so much fun, but it’s a really expensive hobby. And also the scrapbooks take up a ton of space. And there’s just too many barriers to entry. Getting the pictures, printed, things like that.

I think a digital yearbook type thing will be much more speed for both time, mental energy, but also monetarily in space-wise. So that’s a big thing. I also want to finally get us our two starter for the last probably year. I have been attempting to create a starter from scratch and. It’s a 14 day process.

And every single time, every single time it goes wrong. It ends up growing mold and I’ll stop and I’ll get frustrated and I’ll throw it out and I’ll stop for a month. And then I’ll be like, okay, now I’m going to do it again. And this has gone on so many. Two times ago, I promised myself it was the last time.

And then I did it two more times. The final of which been when I got sick over Christmas break, I was a couple of days in, and then I forgot about it because I was feeling so bad. So my father-in-law knows someone who has a sourdough starter they’re willing to share. So he’s going to get me one, and then I’m going to start doing some baking because that is really why.

I don’t want the starter is I can do more baking with sourdough and I’ve just been making it more complicated than I needed to. So yeah, those. A ton of really exciting hobbies, but there’s some things that I want to spend more time doing for myself personally. So that is my final personal goal for 2022.

Now looking at my business goals again, I now own two businesses. I’ve got this business that encompasses this podcast, my content marketing strategy business. And then I also have a Disney travel agency. So before. My content marketing strategy business. My four goals. My first one, my revenue is 50,000. Um, I didn’t hit the 40,000 last year, but I have been treating.

Since I started my business, I’ve doubled my revenue every single year. So 50,000 based on that trend is doable. We shall see my main offer goal, still club content matching is my main offering. I have one-to-one clients, but I only have one spot left for that at this point. So I’m feeling really, really happy with where that is.

And I, I’m not really going to set a goal to that. So club content matching my main goal. I would love to have a total of 21. Ongoing students. So it is a membership and I have over, I don’t remember the exact number. There’s over a hundred students inside of whole Conde batching, but quite a few of them got grandfathered in because they bought the course when it was a course.

And then it turned into a membership. So I’d love to have 20. Members inside. That’s my goal for that, for this year behind the scenes goal is to speaking opportunities per month. And whether that’s in-person a guest training, a summit podcast interviews, whatever that may be, I’d love to have two per month and just kind of keep that going so I can continue to get in front of new audiences and grow and scale my business.

And then my big dream. This is actually going to be a little interesting because it’s not really a big dream. Again, my intention this year is to shift my focus away from my business being my main focus. And so my big dream goal is. To not put anything new out there. No new offers, no new, huge projects. I just want to firm up my current offers and my current funnels and continue to promote myself through those speaking opportunities.

And that’s really, that’s my big goal for this year with this business. I’m really trying to take. Back and work more intentionally work smarter, but work less then for the travel agent. This is kind of where I want to spend more of my work focus. This year is getting this one set up and running because last year was all about just getting it up and running and going and having clients.

And I did that, but now my revenue goal is 26,000 for this one. I feel like that one, maybe a stretch. I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t really know what to expect with this business because. We’re only about six months in my goal is 48 clients, which is about four a month. And then my behind the scenes goal is to get my website and my very basic email funnel sign up.

So I’m talking like first opt in welcome sequence, monthly newsletter, very, very basic email funnel, getting that set up and also getting my. Set up so that I can start putting out blog posts and long form content and pulling people in through Pinterest and Google and marketing the business solely through that for right now that, and social media, like I’m not going to be doing.

Outside market and not going to be doing paid ads right now. I just want to focus on getting the basics of my content marketing up and running. And then my big dream for this one is to save for a property. We would really love to expand the travel agency, not only to planning for people’s Orlando vacations, but a big dream that we have for this business is to have Airbnb locations as well, near the Orlando area in the Orlando area for those clients.

And non-clients, I mean, anyone really, but when I have clients that don’t want to stay on site, we can direct them there. And it just be more of a, an all encompassing travel agency versus just, I’m going to plan Disney trips, which I love doing, but I can realistically only take on so many clients a year.

And so that is a very long-term goal, but just saving for that throughout the year and starting that process of looking towards. Buying our first property at some point through that business. So those are my goals for each, for those businesses, my personal goals. That’s what I’m hoping. 2022 will look like.

We shall see, uh, you know, that every quarter I put out a conversation’s over. Episode and we’ll update you on what I’m focusing on, how my goals are going and things like that. But for now, your action step for this week’s episode is to send me a message over on Instagram. And tell me what your number one goal for 2022 is.

I would love to know. I’m so curious. I love hearing other people’s goals and I really hope that. Enjoy this episode, you enjoyed this peak behind the curtains. Not only what my goals are for this year, but also what my goals were last year and what that looked like at the end of the year, how those either were achieved or not achieved.

And your book recommendation for this week is we should all be millionaires by Rachel Rogers. It was my final read of 2021. And wow. I think it’s going to have to be an every year. Kind of read. It was so good. And so encouraging. There’s a lot of really practical stuff in there. Like the whole book is incredibly practical, but the amount that that book helped with my money mindset as a business owner was huge.

I’ll just say this. I very much struggled between wanting to have a growth money mindset, but also. Wanting to live frugally. It’s a weird, I sit in this weird place and reading her book was really, it was good for me. He was very helpful in kind of walking that middle line. I will link that in the show notes.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you totally should. I highly recommend. And until next time I hope that you will go out and Uncomplicate your life in bed.


Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!

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