2021 Goals Review
2021 Goals Review
Last year’s goal planning and executing was cut short for me. Perhaps yours was too? My hope is you had a stellar year of course, but if things were not quite as you’d hoped, know that you are not alone. I pray you can have the courage to continue as little steps add up to so much, especially when we look back from the other side.
Here’s a quick recap of last year for me. January was spent unpacking from our recent move to Minnesota, setting up the schoolroom, and getting started with school again after the holidays. February was spent on the couch fighting and recovering (mostly) from COVID.
March was spent setting up new doctors and getting long-overdue appointments scheduled and completed. In April, I had two biopsies that thankfully both came back benign and one minor surgery that required more recovery time than anticipated.
May brought the decision for Ben to return to the Grand Union Hotel as Executive Chef which meant preparing to move back to Montana. The rest of the month was spent packing. June brought the move and a bit of unpacking as well as a much-needed and very hot extended family camping trip in Idaho for the kids and I.
In July, the kids and I spent a week in C-Town visiting family and connecting with an old friend. We spent the rest of the time unpacking and spending as much time in the sun or at the pool as possible; and reconnecting with friends in Fort Benton. August brought homeschool planning and starting the school year.
September gave our kids their first opportunity to participate in soccer and their first organized sport. I also started working part-time at the Grand Union with my husband to fill in gaps in the front of house after several staff returned to college. In addition, throughout the month we had several visits from family.
October brought our fall school break and the first snow. Despite these hints of the coming winter, we snuck away to Glacier for a chilly weekend with Ben’s sister and her family. We missed driving on the “Going to the Sun Road” by a few hours as it just closed due to snow.
The following day, after taking the southern route to the West entrance instead, we made the hike to Avalanche Lake and back which was quite the accomplishment as any over-tired parent of a toddler can attest. It was amazing and we got to see a pair of mountain goats, as well as the many wild and bold chipmunks. Thankfully no grizzlies!
November was filled with work including several special events, school, and more family visits. December was much the same work with special events, some school, and family for the holidays.
All this to say our year was quite full—just in different ways than I originally anticipated—as is often the case. I did however write out some ambitious business goals for 2021.
I got so far as to put them into Asana and also broke them down into quarterly goals. Based on the year we had, I only accomplished a few of them. One great benefit—my goals will mostly carry over to this year and are already pre-written!
So what were they? Here’s a list of my 2021 Business Goals. I chose the following nine areas to focus on last year. I’ll show go over them in more detail below.
1 | Financial:
$30k by building 9 paid client sites + 3 volunteer sites
2 | Systems:
Add & Learn Dubsado workflows, Asana, Canva Pro, Flowdesk, Notion, Markup, Toggl
3 | Marketing:
SM-Post consistently to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Linked In
Email- Build list to 500, Consistently email newsletters and 1x emails
Authority- Get Featured 6x
4 | Products:
Design 6 SS-Templates for sale
5 | Courses:
Create 1 Mini-Course + 3 Day Challenge
6 | Track:
Business Metrics Weekly
7 | Squarespace:
Become an Expert=Confidence
8 | Community:
Start FB Community? leads to Circle Membership
9 | Personal Development:
Read 6 Business Books
So here’s how my goals played out, beginning at the top.
1 | Financial:
My financial goal, although not reached in full, marked the first money-making milestone as I landed my first paid website project and successfully launched it in May. I am very proud of this project as it was a much bigger undertaking than I thought I’d have as my first paid project and the client has been very encouraged especially with the number of inquiries for weddings which was one of our main goals.
I also had the opportunity to consult on a volunteer website for several months. This was an amazing experience and I got to collaborate with a number of amazing people.
Although I didn’t hit the income goal I set for myself from my design business, I nearly did when I combined it with my part-time work at the Grand Union.
After arriving in Montana, I wasn’t able to register my business name as I’d hoped, so I went back to the drawing board and rebranded my business as Sisu Site Shop.
This rebrand took longer than I’d hoped as many of the hours after school were spent serving at the GU. I finally launched just before the new year and am getting back into the full swing of my weekly business routine.
2 | Systems:
For systems, I had decided early in the year to add Dubsado on as my CRM. I accomplished a great deal of the setup with my web design project in April-May.
This fall I revisited the training info to start on building out workflows and had the opportunity to have a go at becoming a Certified Dubsado Expert. I decided to go for it and spent the majority of December and January going through all of their training and passing the exam earlier this month.
I incorporated the rest of the systems I hoped for including Asana, Canva Pro, Flowdesk, Notion, Markup, Toggl. I will continue to learn and optimize them for my business further this year.
3 | Marketing:
My marketing goals included posting to social media regularly and getting started on Pinterest. I did both pretty well, up to my move, and still have a bit of traffic coming to my old and new website because of these efforts.
I did only start to figure out Flodesk and just sent out a handful of newsletters. I got my list from 0 to 20+ with minimal effort and no lead magnet. So I am excited to tackle this more this year and see if I can make it all the way to 500.
I did not make any attempts to get featured last year but will revisit this goal in Q2 this year.
4 | Products:
I managed to get one Squarespace template ready to sell and now am working out the process for marketing it and the sales workflow. I did not make any progress on my mini-course or challenge yet.
5 | Tacking:
I spent a good deal of time tracking my metrics for my website, email marketing, and social media. I saw steady results but I’m considering only looking at the monthly results as I think it will give me the same information with hours less work.
7 | Squarespace:
I continued to increase my skill, efficiency, and confidence with Squarespace this year. I’m looking forward to much-continued growth in this area in 2022.
8 | Community:
I played around with ideas for communities but nothing set yet so will revisit this also in Q2.
9 | Personal Development:
I did read a number of business books and took several courses last year. My favorite was Profit First by Mike Michalowicz and Help First by Chris Cooper. Both gave me insight into how I’d like my business priorities to look going forward. I also purchased a few more that I didn’t get to yet so my book stack is all ready to go for this year.
In our previous blog post: How to Set Goals for Life & Business, We’ve explored my top 5 reasons for setting goals for your life and your business. We dove into the details about why we should set goals in the first place. I explain why looking into the future and dreaming helps to inspire you to get started taking action this week and this year.
Another reason to set goals is it helps to narrow the path and from your narrowed path defines your first and next steps forward. A final reason why to set goals is it provides a framework to evaluate how effective your plan and action step are. Once you have goals in place you will know if you are on track to reach them by your target date. If not, you can quickly and decisively make choices to change your strategy to ensure you achieve your goals.
I am excited for the steps forward I had this year and continue to learn to forgive myself and others quickly, extend grace, continue taking steps forward, and making time to celebrate milestones along the journey! I really like what I said in my 1st year of business overview from last April:
No matter how small they seem at the time, all these small steps added up to a viable business, lots of new skills, increased confidence, and the ability to help others in a really meaningful way.
Next up, we’ll be talking all about our 2022 Life and Business Goals.
Setting Goals Series Posts:
How to Set Goals for Your Life & Business
2021 Goals Review
2022 Life Goals
2022 Business Goals
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