Crafting Your Masterplan: End-of-Year Strategies for a Spectacular 2024

Discover the transformative secrets of my end-of-year planning ritual, a proven strategy to engineer a remarkable 2024. Through the Focus Planner method, I share how to harness the post-Christmas calm to reflect on your financial journey, declutter your mind with a thorough brain dump, and translate your myriad of thoughts into a powerful, actionable blueprint. It's not merely about setting goals; it's about crafting a financial roadmap with precision and purpose, utilizing tools that resonate with your personal style—whether you're a digital devotee or a paper planner enthusiast.

Join me, Karalee, as we navigate the steps to align your personal and professional milestones for the months ahead. Insights into the FOCUS framework are invaluable—helping you chart a course that considers your unique rhythms of success. We also delve into the practicality of project management systems like ClickUp, to keep your strategy on track and your mind at ease. If you're eager to transform your planning from a chore into a strategic triumph, this episode is your blueprint for success. And remember, if those goals feel just out of reach, I'm here to lend a personalized touch to guide you through.

Grab your own copies of the FOCUS Planner, both the yearly and monthly and dive into your master plan for the year and keep it going with the monthly FOCUS Planner.
theproductivityimpact.com/focus-planner

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

Hello, hello, amazing humans, welcome back to Narrow Divergent Bites. I am your host, cara Lee, and today I want to talk about planning for the next year. We are in December, or more than halfway through December. Christmas is right around the corner, and that means the new year is right around the corner too. Things might be crazy. Things might be just feeling kind of unsure. Maybe you're not liking what 2023 looked like for you. Maybe you're loving what it looked like, but today I want to talk about what I do personally throughout the year, but then, especially at the end of the year, to get prepared for the next year, what I really do, and so this is going to be full of action steps. So if you aren't driving or you're in a place where you can grab a notebook, I absolutely encourage you to do so and take some notes. Okay, so if you have ever been in one of my past programs it was called the Hyper Focus Treehouse we actually use the Focus Planner every single month to plan out our month, okay, and so I actually modify that approach when we talk about planning for the whole year, but we still take into account the exact same aspects. And so the Focus Planner, what we do in the Focus Planner is we spell out focus and the F stands for financial plan.

Speaker 1: 2:15

So what I want you to do when it comes to planning for 2024, I want you to look back on your 2023 as far as financially. What did it look like? Were there good months? Was there good offers? Like, start reflecting on what the past has given you to work with, what things have taught you right. What have you learned about yourself, your offers, your services, your clients in a financial way? Okay, are they paying in full? Are they asking for payment plans? Like, what does it look like? What was your biggest fight financial month? Like when did you bring in the most revenue? Where did you bring in the least revenue? See if there's any trends. And then that allows us to have a foundation to look at for 2024. So now, taking what you've learned about your financial plan that happened in 2023, now we're going to look at, can we create any sort of plan for 2024? Even if it's okay, I want to make X amount in revenue, now how am I going to get myself there? And the rest of the Focus Plan is going to be able to walk you through how to get there, but we have to have a basis, and in business, we have to bring in money right, which means we have to have a plan for our money right? And so the F stands for financial plan. If you want to go ahead and jot that down, or you can head to the show notes and I will also have that written out for you there too, all right.

Speaker 1: 3:44

So the O in Focus stands for organize your thoughts, okay. So there are 5 million things going on in your brain. There are ideas for services, ideas for social media, there's ideas for courses and all of those things. Right, you might even have an idea, right? Some thoughts of what you want to do with your money. What do you need to purchase for your business? Things like that.

Speaker 1: 4:08

I want you to take all of those thoughts that are swirling around in your brain, probably driving you insane, and I want you to brain dump them. Brain dumping them means that you grab a piece of paper and you just start or typing, whichever you prefer. But writing actually has a better appeal, like your brain processes things different when you're actually writing them down, and so I encourage you to write it down and just jot down all of your thoughts. Nothing has to be organized. This is a messy list. Now, if you can manage to put it in like little sections to help you organize, that's totally fine, but later on in this focus plan method that we are going to organize it, okay. So, don't worry, it's not going to stay a clustered mess. If that's how you are writing things down, I got you. So we're just taking all of the thoughts that are in our brain and we're putting them down onto paper. Okay. So the F stands stood for financial plan, the O stands for organize thoughts. Okay, so now we're on to C in the word focus and the C stands for create goals.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Okay, so now we have our financial plan. Like, right, if you're going through this in real time or if you're going to do this afterward, right after listening to this, you have your financial plan. So now you know where you started, what 2023 looked like. You made a little bit of a plan. You know, like, depending on what you found from 2023, looking into 2024. And then you took all of those swirling thoughts that were in your brain and you put them down onto paper. All right, now we're going to actually look at all of those thoughts.

Speaker 1: 5:37

All right, kind of categorize them a little bit, if you can, like what is a financial thing, what is a offer thing, you know, create sections and you can, like I, what I've done is I've taken, I've taken post-it notes and I've written on the top like what, what the category was essentially, and then I started writing underneath them what it was. You could take a big poster board if you wanted to. You could use multiple posts for each thought if you wanted to. There's so many ways to do this, depending on how your brain works, okay, but we want to be able to Categorize it. So where we have. So when we're zeroed in on one thing, we kind of know what's all going on in that one thing. Okay, you could even do this for, like, each page in your book notebook has a category at the top. So you're taking your messy one and then you're putting it into a page and you're actually writing it down and crossing it off, your messy one as you do it. Okay, there are so many ways to do this.

Speaker 1: 6:33

So pick one, roll with it and get those thoughts organized and then, after those are actually organized, that's what we were able to create, those goals, like, maybe you find out that you have got like a really long list of things for your offers or services or whatever you do For your business. Maybe you like have a lot of thoughts on that. Let's really like like zero in on that. What are things that you can do right now that will? That will help you be able to like really focus on that, right? So we're gonna create a goal around that now.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Ordinarily, when we do this, for Each month, we create a goal one that's business related, right revenue generating, one that is relationship building or networking right, and then one that is personal, and so I actually still move this into our yearly, and so you create one big business goal, right. What is one business goal that is income producing that you're like I really want to go all in on this one. Like that's gonna be my focus for the year now. This can change down the road, but we're getting a foundation in place to go into 2024. All right, nothing is set in stone. It's never set in stone, right? We're the business owner. We can do what we truly feel in alignment with, and we can pivot at any point, All right. So what is that? Big income producing red for you, new generating, whatever word you want to use, their goal that you want to create for 2024, given the information that you know at this time.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Okay, then you have the goal number two, right? A relationship building or networking Goal, right? Maybe it's to, you know, be in, you know, go to more networking events, maybe it's, you know, setting up more coffee chats, something like that. What is it that you feel comfortable with? That feels an alignment and integrity right now that you could put into place there for your relationship building or networking goal. Okay, so that's goal number two for your year.

Speaker 1: 8:33

Like I said, these can change. We go back to these quarterly at minimum usually, and then even we also review these every month when we do our plan, okay, our focus planner, we fill it out, all right. So then the last one is a personal goal, because a personal goal is always, like, our business and personal life is always together, right? So it's always going to be needing to be together, like we're merging them together, because when we do something in our personal life, we feel very accomplished. That also helps our business, and so we also want to have a personal goal, and it might and it's probably gonna feel an alignment with your other two goals as well your financial and your, or your income and your Relationship, one right.

Speaker 1: 9:17

So what is something personally that you're like? I really want to set this as a goal for 2024. And it could be something like I'm gonna read for fun Okay, that's one of that's gonna be probably my goal for 2024, after I do this exercise myself this year and Like just really reading for fun. I'm an avid reader but I haven't prioritized the time to do it, but it has given me so much life in the last couple of weeks when I've really prioritized it. So I'm like, oh my gosh, it'd be a great Goal to revisit every single month and be like and remind myself like this is what you want to do in your 2024. So let's go ahead and we can do it right. Or it could be something like you want to finish renovating your house or something. Or you have this project that you want to do in 2024. You have this vacation or trip that you really want to do, and then we're able to like, revisit and map things out.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Alright, so those are your three goals to create. So we have gone through F, which is our financial plan. Oh, which is organize your thoughts, see, which is create goals. Alright, so now we're on to you in focus here. We have understand your year. Okay, now the focus plan is understand your month, but we're are adapting this to your year, right.

Speaker 1: 10:34

So, understanding your year, can you map out what you want to do in each month? It could just literally be like I want to launch something this month. Right, you're taking into account everything that is already on your schedule for 2024. Do you have any vacations? Do you have any events? Do you have any family things Like? Do you have, like, what do you have on there? Take a look at it, right.

Speaker 1: 10:58

And then you're not gonna plan something huge like. You're not gonna have, like this big launch during a month that you're on vacation. Right, that's probably not gonna be your best bet. See what. What months are more heavy? And you can also go back to your financial plan what months in 2023 really had some great revenue, producing things in it and reflect on what you did there and see if we could duplicate it or Adapt it to 2024 as well. So you're understanding what is going into each month. You can literally map it out on A post, it on a notebook paper, write down each month and see what can fit into each month and there could be some months that are slower, where you're like I'm sure there's gonna be other things that pop up. I want to leave this month, kind of like because by March of 2024 you might have some like those slower months that maybe you put down in later in the year because you're like that's just too far away for me to know what's there. You're now gonna be able to fill it because there's things that you're gonna be doing During those first couple of months of 2024 that are going to propel you later on into the year.

Speaker 1: 11:58

So, really figuring out what is your starting point, like I said earlier, you can pivot, you can change things, but we have to start from something and we, when we're starting from this, we're literally looking at it in, in, like a very pointed, intentional way, to where we're really being able to reflect on it right In a good, clear mind. All right, so we have F, which is our financial plan. Oh, which was organized thoughts. See, which was create goals. You Understand your year.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And then s is streamline your tasks. Okay, so this is the most important. Well, it's not the most important one. They build on each other. It's in that order Very pointedly. Ironically, it ended up being able to figure out focus here. My friend, rebecca was able to help me with this, in naming it and coming up with this, so she's like brilliant with that. So shout out to your Becca I know you listen to the podcast and streamline your tasks. That's the final thing in focus for Organizing your year, like planning out your year, all right.

Speaker 1: 13:05

So when you what I'm talking about streamlining your tasks, I'm talking like you have a system in place to keep your thoughts and all of these things that I've been talking about organized. All right, this could be in a paper planner. If you've been around here for a hot minute, you know I suggest click up, but any other task management system or project management system, something to keep it organized and Streamline. When I say streamline, that means that it's super efficient for you to be able to go to and be able to know exactly what you need to work on or what's on the agenda, and then just take action instead of having to like, think about it, like, what do I need to do today? Like we need to have it streamlined. So, essentially, you can start putting all of these ideas and all of these tasks, all these projects, all these things. You're basically organizing the first part of your focus, right, for your whole year, so you could put in dates, you could put in projects and then you could put in reminders to actually break these projects down.

Speaker 1: 14:03

If you don't have the time to do it right now, right, a project that you're thinking about doing in August of 2024 doesn't necessarily need to be planned out in December of 2023. Right, we want to spend time with our families, but we do need to still make a plan, like in January, let's say in January. You're like I want to kind of start putting together these projects, at least like the frame, the outline. What do I need to do? Create, start creating these plans and you can actually put this all in click up, because click up is how I set. Click up up is it's a central hub for business period. Right, everything goes into click up, which means everything gets linked in there, put in there reminders, all the things, because it Streamlines everything when everything's in one spot.

Speaker 1: 14:44

If I tell a lot of clients, I'm like you literally just go to click up and it tells you what you need to do, as long as you're putting it in there and I have a whole system around setting it up, but also like remembering to use it, because a lot of people are like, yeah, it's there, great set up, I can't remember to use it. More than likely it's because you don't have it set up in a way that makes you like Rely on it, like you're like I need this thing, okay, so there's a little Sidebar here. If you want to know more about click up or how to get started with it, there's options. There's my YouTube channel has some tutorials on how to get started and there's also a click up set up that we could do, or VIP day or VIP week All right. So there's ways that you can have my one-on-one support to be able to implement this as well, or any other system. There are also options for any other system, okay.

Speaker 1: 15:30

So, again, over our focus, right, we have F for financial plan. Oh is for organize your thoughts, see, create goals. You understand your year and S streamline tasks Okay, and so this is how we are able to really get things figured out for your year, okay, and to have a good starting foundation going into 2024. All right, and if you want to get ahold of the Focus Planner it is literally a print, you know it's a small fee and you can print it out every single month for your own use, be available in the show notes so you can go ahead and grab that as well. But it literally walks you through those steps that I just said, but for each month. Okay, it's specific to each month and we're able to get our month planned out in the same way we do our year, but very pointed for that month. All right, so it will be available in the future as like we could like purchase it on Amazon like an actual version of it, but at this point it is not. But it will be in the future. If you are wanting that, totally let me know, because I'm working on that, but I haven't gotten there yet. So my goal for the 2020-24 goal is to have this Focus Planner streamlined for you to be able to have each month to use for your planning. So it has.

Speaker 1: 16:59

This has been an amazing episode. I am super stoked about planning because we need something to start with. I used to go through well, I used to be a huge planner. Now I say strict planner, turn spontaneous. I don't remember what I called myself, but it was funny in one of the episodes previously. I love love of planning things out to where it can be flexible and you can pivot, but we have to start from a foundation and that's what we do in the Focus Plan, right? We we start with a foundation and we get it started, right.

Speaker 1: 17:32

So if you have any questions, go ahead and head to the show notes. I wrote out Focus and what it stands for and then any other resources available to you, including that print out if you would like to have access to that as well for you to start getting started. There is one specifically for planning your year and then there is one specifically for month to month. They're very similar but there are some differences depending on what you, what you need, okay, but you can use this. You pay for it one time and then it's a digital download from there.

Speaker 1: 18:01

I hope this was beneficial to you. I hope you're sitting down and you're actually getting to this plan if you haven't done so already, and you know, checking out those planners those pronounced because those can be super helpful as a frame. It's essentially a template for your planning and, all right, if you have any questions about planning your year, go ahead and send me a DM. I'd be happy to see how I can support you and go ahead and check out the show notes for any other fun goodies and links and things like it. So I'm going to wish you a merry Christmas.

Speaker 1: 18:30

I know this is airing the day after Christmas, which is totally cool, and so that means that this there's not quite as many crazy things going on and so you're able to kind of focus. You've gotten that part out and then you're able to have this week, hopefully, to really plan out 2024 and be able to really start your year strong. Okay, yeah, I'm so excited for you, like I'm seriously so excited. This makes me so happy because when you have a firm foundation in your planning and you have a way to like keep track of all of your projects and tasks, like the possibilities are endless. It opens up so many things for you when it comes to your time, like your capacity and your energy, things like that. So have an amazing day. Like I said, merry Christmas, happy new year, all the fun things. Just I hope you've had an amazing time. Okay, thanks again.