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My 2024 Goals
Last year, I didn’t set very many goals. I’ll get into more of why and what that looked like in this episode, but for 2024 I’m back to setting goals. So, as we ease into this new year together, I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes of my goals for this new year and how I plan to accomplish them.
But, before we begin – I just wanted to let you know that the quality in this week’s episode is not the quality you’re used to from the Chasing Simple podcast. In order to ensure my goals were as accurate as possible and really nailed down, I waited as long as possible to record, which means that my editing team is out of office for the holidays. I also had to record this on my phone instead of my typical mic (thanks to traveling for the holidays), so the quality just isn’t the same.
However, if you’d like to hear about my 2024 goals and some major life changes – I hope you’ll stick around anyways!
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content (because you’re batching it, right? 😉), the first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan. But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when. Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals? And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan? Grab your Chasing Simple Content Planner. The planner is my number one bestseller – And for good reason too, because this massive 130+ page planner was designed with strategy in mind. It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post, and when. Yes, that’s part of it. But first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find: Yearly planning pages Monthly prep work Monthly reflection questions Repurposing worksheets and so much more! If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just $27 at amandawarfield.com/planner/
- Determine Your Best Growth Strategies
- Learn More about Chasing Simple Marketing
- Goals with Laken Planner
- The Community
- Episode 193: My 2023 Income Report
- This week’s action step: Send me an email (hello@amandawarfield.com) and let me know what your 2024 goals are for your business!
- This week’s book recommendation: Mad Honey by Jodi Piccoult
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
Did you love this episode?
Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.
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
Last year, I didn’t set very many goals. I’ll get into more of why and what that looked like in this episode, but for 2024, I’m back to setting goals. So, as we ease into this new year together, I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes of my goals for this new year and how I plan to accomplish them.
But, before we begin, I just wanted to let you know that the quality in this week’s episode is not the quality you’re used to from the Chasing Simple podcast. In order to ensure that my goals were as accurate as possible and really nailed down, I wanted to wait as long as possible to record, which means that my editing team is out of office for the holidays.
I also had to record this on my phone instead of my typical mic due to traveling for the holidays, so the quality just isn’t the same. However, if you’d like to hear about my 2020 goals and some major life changes that are happening to us right now, I hope that you’ll stick around anyways. You’re listening to episode 194 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.
This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.
If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?
When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content, because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.
But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.
Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals, and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?
How can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.
It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.
If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. So, like I mentioned in the introduction, I didn’t really do goals for 2023. Um, I ended, if you’ve been listening for a while you may remember me talking about this on the podcast last year, but I ended 2022 in severe burnout.
Very, very severe burnout and I knew that for my mental health, I just needed to not try to improve myself or I spend a lot of time focused on goals in 2023, so I didn’t even purchase a goal planner for 2023, which I’ve been buying goal planners since 2018 now and have been very goal focused since 2018 and I didn’t buy one, I took a year off and I just didn’t set goals, I set zero personal goals for 2023 and then I had I had a revenue goal for the business and I had some projects that I wanted to work on.
And that was really it, which turned out to be the best thing I could have done for myself because 2023 was a whirlwind. Um, the The first five months of the year were great, I, nothing really even stands out in my mind. I was very much just recovering from burnout, trying to relax, you know, um, working on my book, things like that, but, it was simple.
Um, and then June came around, and I I started having some pretty severe health issues, um, including, I was at a conference with my youth group and I ended up collapsing due to my heart rate being so high. It was in the 170s, um, resting. And that was a whole thing which led to weeks and weeks of recovery in June and July, um, and just kind of.
I mean, just bare minimum, everything, for a long time. Um, and then, I got put on anxiety medicine, and that was life changing, honestly. Um, but it didn’t solve the heart issues, so there was a lot of back and forth with the heart doctor and things like that. And, um, then in July, we, traveled. We did a whole massive trip for my 30th birthday and we flew out to Washington to see friends and see Taylor Swift in concert which was incredible and then we went to Disneyland and the last day of our trip was my actual birthday and I woke up with COVID so that was fun so I’m You know, barely recovered from this hard stuff, and then I have COVID.
And the first time I had COVID, I was like asymptomatic. I had almost no symptoms, and this time it hit me really, really hard. And I was down for a while, and five days after my birthday, we lost my grandfather. Um, whom I was very close to, and that was hard because I didn’t get to say goodbye because I had COVID.
Um, and we just didn’t It was one of those things where it, it happened. It was surprising, but it wasn’t. Um, Anyways, so didn’t get to say goodbye. That was a whole emotional thing that rocked our world. And then in August, my husband lost his mother. And it, it was a lot. It was June, July, August were a lot, and in August I finally got diagnosed with, um, SVT, which is super, super ventricle tachycardia, um, or basically the, an upper chamber, and my heart beats too fast sometimes, um.
Not really anything that can be done at this point. But anyway, so there there was a lot going on and Around this time since we had gone back to Washington to visit in July Russell and I had been having talks about moving back and End of August early September. We finally decided. Okay, we’re gonna move back.
We’re gonna move back in June 2024 Because we wanted to, you know, save money and all of that stuff and just give ourselves time to transition. So, it’s a cross country move. It’s not a small thing. So in the midst of all of this life, uh, people, we’re making this decision and we, our plan was we’ll move back in June.
We will We’ll keep our house in South Carolina, we’ll rent it out, and then we will rent in Washington. Because we wanted flexibility, we wanted freedom, we wanted the ability to go, okay, this isn’t working, let’s move back. Um, well. One morning in September, my husband comes home and he goes, you know, I don’t think we should rent.
I think we need to buy. And I was like, what? Okay. Alright. So I hop on Zillow just to like, look. And. And. Immediately, first house I look at is the perfect house for us. It’s very, it’s in the exact area we want to be in. It’s very close to our friends out there. It’s a great layout for what we need and want.
And, um, yeah, we just, I immediately was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. And then when I showed him, he was all about it too, which surprised me because he’s not normally excited about things like that. And so then we start going, well, is it wild, is it crazy to buy a house in September if we’re not moving until June?
That seems weird. Um, and so then we’re going back and forth, and we decide, let’s go ahead and start the process. As we start the process, interest rates are spiking, so it’s a whole thing. And I was sitting there, and I was like, man, I wonder if I should reach out to the church. Uh, meaning the church that I went to and was planning to go back to, uh, when we lived there previously.
Which I guess, maybe, you may or may not know that we lived there, now that I’m saying all of this out loud. Um, from 2016 to 2019, we lived in Washington, and I started my business in 2018. While we were in Washington, but my business didn’t actually really take off until 2020. So Many of you many that are listening may not know that we actually lived in Washington previously So throwing that in there just to add to the confusion
So South Carolina is home it’s where we both grew up that’s where we moved back to at the end of 2019 But we’ve missed Washington ever since so we’re going back to the exact same place Well, I guess I should say we are back in the exact same place, surprise, that we were before. Um, so I had this thought of, maybe I should reach out to the church and just be like, Hey, if anything part time comes up, I might be interested.
Just because, again, interest rates were high and it was just, it’s a lot, um, a lot mentally as far as like, Is this the right move? This is a big decision. Moving across country again is not exactly cheap. Washington’s a more expensive area. Um, and minimum wage out there is like ten dollars higher an hour than in South Carolina.
So, um, I had had this thought and I was like, you know what? Maybe later. I’m not gonna do that right now, but As we get closer to June, maybe I’ll reach out and just see, depending on how things are going. The very next day, I got a text message asking if I wanted a job at the church. Um, and turns out the associate pastor and youth director that was there at the time had gotten an offer to be a head pastor at another church, and so he was leaving.
And they offered me a position for Youth Director and Community Outreach Director, which is a lot of marketing. Um, so it’s this part time job where I get to like blend two of my passions. Um, which is really cool because when Russ and I were talking about it, I was like, I mean, I’m, I was going to help with a youth group for free, so I might as well get paid to do it if they’re offering, you know.
Um, But, the current youth leader was leaving in November, and the church was perfectly willing to like hold the position for me until June, but I, the church I was going to, um, currently in South Carolina, the church I was going to, we were in the midst of that kind of transition, and it’s just, it’s hard for the kids, it’s hard for the church, and I was like, you know what?
Maybe I should go out now and start this job, we have, we’re getting, we’re in the midst of buying a house anyways, um. Maybe I’m supposed to be going out now. So, all of that being said, currently, I am living in Washington, again. I am now working part time at the church, and I’m also running my business still.
And um, yeah, we’re making that transition out there slowly and it’s Not something we’ve announced yet because we had to wait for everyone to be in the know, my husband to tell his job, all that fun stuff. So, this is the first time I’ve actually announced this out loud to the business world, which is kind of wild.
Anyways, all of that being said, that’s what our 2023 ended up looking like, where from June on, it was just a lot of chaos. And a lot of survival mode, um, because I moved in November and then spent November and the first few weeks of December getting acclimated. And then I went back to South Carolina for Christmas and so, it’s been non stop.
Life has been non stop since June. So, I am, all of that being said, that’s kind of our life update. And also, I’m really glad that I didn’t set goals for 2023. Bye! The goals ish that I did set, again, I had a revenue goal of 70, 000, and if you didn’t listen to last week’s episode about my income report, I got very close to it, which was thrilling.
Um, I never meet my revenue goal, I always set it too high, and that’s just the kind of person I am. So, getting close is It makes me plenty happy, um, which you can hear all about my 2023 numbers in last week’s episode if you didn’t already. But that was really the only goal I had, um, and then I had projects.
I had marketing projects and just regular projects. So marketing projects, I really wanted to try out JV Webinars as a marketing strategy. And then obviously the book was a massive marketing project that I worked on throughout the year. Which, if you haven’t grabbed a copy, go to Amazon, search for Chase and Simple Marketing, grab your copy.
But, JV webinars did not go as well as I hoped. I started kicking them off in June and that’s when life kind of got crazy and so I didn’t really get much, um, traction with that. I had some wonderful people willing to part with me, partner with me, and I did a couple of them and then life got crazy and I just had to back out.
for my mental health and for my actual health as well. So that marketing project didn’t go like I’d hoped. The book, however, went better than I hoped, so all’s fair in love and war and whatever. Happy with that. The other big projects I had on my plate were shop and funnel updates and then the membership switch up, which I talked about a lot in last week’s episode, but I did a complete overhaul of my membership to make it more affordable and just more of what people needed.
More accountability, more action time, um, and less education. It’s still education based, but it’s like quarterly education versus monthly education. And then we spend the quarter action on what we’ve learned versus just throwing education at people. So that was a massive overhaul that I did in order to make it more affordable and more feasible for people.
And that was a big project I had for the year. And then the other projects were just updating different items in my shop, different offers that I have updating funnels and testing out funnels behind the scenes. So those were. Again, I don’t want to call them goals, because they were more projects, so I really had a project based year versus a goal based year.
So, that’s what 2023 looked like, now that I’m however long into this episode. But, and that’s our life update, is just, everything is chaos, and it’s great, but in the best possible way. We’re thrilled to be back in Washington, um. I already miss the warm weather. We’ve gotten snow already, which I just, but it’s been really nice to be back.
So, um, that being said, my 2024 goals, let’s talk about them. Because I did set goals again this year. I snagged a goals with Lakin planner from, uh, Lakin strum. I think she might still go by Lakin Edwards professionally, but regardless plan with Lakin. If you know her. You know, if you don’t you should know.
Um, she has this incredible goal planner. It’s the best goal planner I have ever used. I am so thrilled. She’s been talking about doing this for a while and I’m thrilled that it’s finally out here because it just, man, the prep work is good. I was talking to her about it and, you know, I, I thought I had goals and then I did the prep work and I was like, whoa, now I actually have goals.
So that being said, I’m excited to share this with you. My first goal for this year is consistent 8, 000 revenue months. So instead of doing a yearly revenue goal. I am doing a monthly revenue goal because I, my husband is going to be in school, um, he’s getting another masters this time in cyber security, and um, I’m going to be the main provider while he’s in school this year.
And so instead of an overall yearly goal, I really need to hit monthly revenue numbers. So, what this goal means to me, though, is right now I’m hitting around 6, 000 revenue months and that’s plenty for what we need, but I would like a little wiggle room. I would like a little bit just more space, um, in what I actually have coming in.
And so I want to work my way up to 8, 000 a month. Revenue wise and I fully recognize that that means I may not hit that until the last quarter of the year But I’m gonna spend the year working towards that and the way I’m gonna do that is by really focusing in on my Um, repurposing content VIP days and promoting those and also increasing my shop sales and increasing my membership.
So those are the three ways that I hope to bring that number about and what I’m going to focus on to bring that about. But that number is the actual goal. So the goal and how I hope to do it. Now the second goal is similar and it is to have consistent 2, 000 months. Specifically from the community with a max of 15 VIP members and I got really specific with that because it would be easy to just accept a ton of VIP members and make that 2, 000 a month, but my VIP members are Get a lot of one on one attention the VIP members of the membership.
They get a quarterly one to one call They get the ability to submit content and copy every single week for feedback and review and it just takes more time And so I really wanted to put a max limit on that And so I came up with that what that number was Which is why that’s included because I just want to be able to always offer the best to those VIP members and I didn’t want to just be like well I can easily make that with Taking on 20 or 30 or whatever, VIP members, I wanted to be really strategic with that.
So, um, and that basically, as far as how I get there, that just looks like marketing, it promotions, improving my funnels, running ads, things like that so that I can hopefully increase my numbers so that I can increase how much I’m making from that each month. Which would also help with, like I said, increasing my membership as part of hitting that $8,000 overall revenue goal for the month.
Another part of increasing that revenue goal is my repurposing content VIP days where, again, I get sent long form content and I turn that into other content and so right now those are 500 total. That’s what the VIP day is. I want to raise that up to 750 by the end of the year and you might be thinking, Amanda, why don’t you just raise it then?
Just tweak the numbers. But I want to be really strategic about it because I would rather. And this is something where I’ve had to make, um, short term decisions versus long term decisions now as the main breadwinner. Um, I would rather, if I was making long term decisions, I would say, I’ll just raise it and I’d rather take less at 7.
50. And spend less time, but short term decision wise, I’d rather be able to book up at 500 because I know that’s a steal. And for the amount of content that you can, it’s basically a quarter’s worth of content. So, I know it’s a steal, and so I’d rather book up and spend the time to get the money at this point.
Just, like, again. Making short term decisions for now being the breadwinner. So I want to do it really strategically So my hope is to increase those bookings that I’m getting Eventually book out to be a quarter ahead booked out. That’s where I’d like to be before I raise the prices So that’s kind of the goal there and we’ll see I need to be booked out before I raise them.
So That’s how I plan to achieve that. I kind of got to step my way to it. Now, my other goals are less Actually, I have one more that’s really strategic as far as Getting to that 8, 000 a month and that is 815 new leads through my Community sales funnel throughout the year. I was able to take the funnel I created last year for the community that sales funnel and look at what it converts at and know that if I Want to hit X amount of people in the community and the funnel converts at X or Y I guess then I need 850 people to go through the funnel to convert that number to get that number.
So that was really fun to be able to get to do that. Um, I’m such a numbers nerd. I love. Getting to do the math on funnels and things like that to, to get to that. But anyways, all that being said, I knew, okay, I’ve got to get 815 new leads through that funnel. How do I do that? Um, podcasts is always a great one that always brings in new leads.
So doing more podcast pitching, I also want to play with ads this year and sponsoring as well. I’ve done a little tinkering with ads, but I haven’t actually really done a bunch with them. I don’t. I don’t feel confident in them. So that’s something I really want to set money aside for this year and be able to to do But then sponsoring that’s something I haven’t done before either, but i’ve seen so many people Doing that or at least offering it particularly for like summits or conferences and things like that podcast I would like to try dabbling in that this year at some point to see Whether or not that will bring in enough leads to that funnel.
So Anyways, all of that being said, um That is another goal I have. Now, two of my other goals for the business. I have a very business focused year this year, um, Are to one, become an S Corp or elect as an S Corp, I guess I should say, for tax purposes. I don’t know if I’m there yet. First step for that is finding a CPA, honestly.
because I want someone to be like, yes, that’s a good idea. Or no, it’s not. But I’m hoping by the end of the year to be able to do that. And then I also want to create an operating expenses budget. So up till this point, I’ve just used the profit first system, which I love. It’s great. Highly recommend that book if you haven’t read it, but the way it kind of works is you have these buckets and, or bank accounts and your operating expenses budget.
If the money’s there, You can afford to buy something, which works, but I want to get even more strategic with how I’m spending my money. I want to set up, you know, this much per year on marketing, this much per year on office supplies, this much per year on education. You know, I want to set it up so that I have a yearly budget for Um, so I’m going to be doing a lot of research for each of these different categories, so that, um, especially as I’m playing around with ads and sponsorships and things, I’m able to get strategic with it, and it’s not just if it’s there, it’s there, because that doesn’t mean it’ll always be there, with just You know, some months you make more, some months you make less, so I want to get even more strategic with that, but within the profit first system still, but just even more budgeted, and that’s the last business goal I have.
I have two personal goals, um, and they’re really more about just getting back to Routines I’ve had previously. So one is having a date night every week. We were really really really good about having date nights every single week up until the pandemic and the pandemic really just broke. Broke all of that and we haven’t gotten back into it since and so that’s something I want to get back into this year is Weekly date nights where we are just connected, phones are away, and we are spending time together.
And then the other thing I want to get back to is consistently working out five days a week. I had a great routine going until I started having the heart issues this year and that really just knocked it all out. So, those are my two personal goals. Um, I’m, I’m still trying to I want to minimize how much pressure I’m putting on myself this year as far as personal goals and improvements I’m trying to make in my life.
And I really just want to, I want to spend less time working and more, and get more strategic with it, which is what I feel like I’ve done with these goals for this year. Um, I know exactly what I need to do and it’s more so a focus on marketing this year versus new projects. I don’t have any I’m not creating new offers this year.
I’m not, I don’t have anything big on my plate. It’s just improving what I have and marketing what I have. So, I’m excited for 2024. That is it. A really deep dive into my goals for this year. If you’re still listening, thanks for sticking around. Um, your action step for this week is to send me an email. My email is hello at amandawarfield.
com and let me know what your 2024 goals are for your business. And this week’s book recommendation is Mad Honey by Jodi Pica. Man, I saw a TikTok where she was on TikTok saying how to say her last name and it was Not what I expected it to be at all. I was definitely, I’ve been saying Picolt and that’s not right and I can’t, is it Picole?
I don’t remember. I should have gone and watched the TikTok before I recorded this. Um, But Madhoney by Jodie Picole, she, I just love the way she makes you see other people’s point of view so well. I mean, it’s truly, her books are astounding, um, and she takes hard issues and tackles them head on and just kind of, she makes you think.
So I read that one in the 2022 maybe, beginning of 2023, so it’s been a while, I don’t fully remember what it was, but I remember ending it and being like, wow, that was a good one. So. That is your recommendation for this week. I will link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing a business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
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