Looking for inspiration with the New Year and annual biz planning, I wondered what other women and female entrepreneurs are doing for their 2021 Small Business Goals.
According to Pinterest, New Year seasonal searches spiked between October and January in 2018, and June to December 2019. Primarily people searched for outfit ideas, quotes, food and resolutions.
My takeaway from this is that women, for the most part, think about goals all year long…
–because we are not thinking about our New Year outfit in June unless we are planning a huge trip.
Lyrical Host’s 2021 Goals – Balance
I asked Jenni Brown, Co-Founder of Lyrical Host, what their business goals were for 2021. Lyrical Host has always maintained a modern business model and evolved ethics, which I’m hoping some day becomes the new textbook for business.
I think her answer provides a great paradigm to help small business owners better define where they want to be in the future.
“We try to set business goals in a few different areas for balance, so we’ll have a revenue goal, a culture goal, an advancement goal and a donation goal.
The revenue goal is as straightforward as you’d expect, and the donation goal is tied to that because we support a number of charities and non-profits throughout the year. The culture goal refers to the team behind the business, so for 2021 we’re focusing more on team building activities and finishing up decorating our new office. The advancement goal relates to expanding on the products and services we offer, which for 2021 will include new courses and bespoke one-to-one services, plus more resources!
Our primary focus for 2021 is carefully growing our culture. As our team expands, we want to make sure we’re delivering the same consistent service and ensuring our customers are happy and comfortable that we’re still the same and our culture and ethos is still the same.
The thing we’re most excited about for 2021 is working on new products and services! They’ve been things we’ve wanted to do for a long time but there were a lot of interim steps and phases to go through – not least a pandemic – so it will be great to start work on something fresh.”
Jenni Brown – Cofounder of Lyrical Host
I love that she has several departments for goals that include growth, but also the team and the social responsibilities to the world. It really balances out the juggling act small business owners often face in their annual biz planning.
As a very happy customer, I too am excited about the new products and services.
Christine N. Boyle’s Advice for Goals during the Pandemic – Staying Focused
The pandemic of 2020 really has made it difficult on small businesses forcing many to create a new business model just to stay open. As a result, a lot of female entrepreneurs have learned from 2020 to focus on the things they can control.
When asked about her 2021 focus, Christine N. Boyle had the following advice
“This pandemic reminds me to keep “the big picture” (my vision), my one word (for 2021), & my “non-negotiable(s)” on the forefront of my mind. I find that prayerfully greeting the day ahead with these things on my mind helps me to stay focused on goals, rather than on circumstances & whatever is happening.” Christine N. Boyle.
First of all, the non-negotiables? I like that. That’s a little more specific and personal than “urgent and important.” What small business goals are non-negotiable for you?
Second, I like the idea of greeting the day ahead with some kind of morning prayer or pep-talk to help you stay focused. My father used to wake up about 5AM and pray every morning, and I think that was a huge part of his success at work (as well as home-life stability – I had a very stable childhood).
But more than just staying focused on the goals, she also silences out the circumstances. It’s really easy to get lost in the desperation of the world falling apart at our feet one crumb at a time. It’s really hard not to have an existential crisis reading several facebook statuses about yet another death requesting prayers, articles and statistics, and then turn to your wordpress and try to explain the best google strategy for SEO.
Some early morning focus strategies might make it a bit easier to let go of the desperation and crises and focus on your goals which happen to also be happy thoughts.
Annual Biz Planning Trends
In reading Facebook Comments in private groups for female entrepreneurs, and we are talking about 300 comments… It seemed annual biz planning for the most part was very catered to each woman’s unique personality and style as well as their niche, industry, and where they are at in their business cycle.
Many also made a clear distinction between small business resolutions and small business goals. Instead of focusing on “being” something, most seem to prefer to focus on “doing” something.
Vision Board
Some do a vision board, by itself, and some alongside more formal goal planning. The glory of the vision board is you hang it up somewhere where you can look at it all year long and remember what you were trying to do in the first place.
There are no rules to a vision board. For the most part, it’s like a mood board of your vision, small business goals, and everything you want to aim to achieve. You can make it with glue and paper, or in Canva. It can be collage style, or tiles.
“If you can’t have everything you think you deserve at that moment, you would do well to surround yourself with symbols of your ideals. In that small office, I surrounded myself with touches of the good life, the lovely and intricately tapestried life of my imagination, an imagination that has always been, I’m proud to say, large enough to admit any possibility.” Estee Lauder
Word of the Year
In the past, I always did this on a personal level, like a spirit word for the year. One year it was “forgiveness,” where I work on forgiving people. Another year, it was “truth,” where I attempt to seek it beyond just making sense of things. That really works for the spirit because that’s such an abstract thing, and I think our businesses have a spirit in a very abstract sense where the word of the year kind of helps align your annual biz planning to the primary mission and brand.
Think in terms of Quarters
Annual biz planning can start off with some big picture ideas for the year, and then you can break that down by quarter, and then break it down monthly…
While you can easily create a list of big picture goals and then approach ideas to help achieve those goals at the beginning of every quarter, it still might help you have a good starting point at the beginning of each quarter to have your big picture spread into a 4 step process that you planned at the beginning of the year.
KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators
According to Klipfolio, “A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.”
In today’s world of internet where we can accurately measure a multitude of things, it makes sense that more women today are harnessing very specific objectives that are super measurable, and can be seen from a dashboard on a regular basis.
Types of KPI’s you can create and measure include:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Social Media
- SaaS
- SEO
- Financial
- Customer Service
- Human Resources
- Industry Specific (healthcare, call center, insurance)
But the KPI is usually a very focused objective that should stem from bigger picture goals. Cascade has a really great model for strategic annual biz planning. In their model, you have a vision, several values, several focus areas, and then for each focus area, you create several objectives, and for each objective, you create KPIs to help you measure the success, and projects that spell out the specific steps to accomplish the objective.
SMART Small Business Goals
Let’s take a minute to recap the textbook explanation for business goals and objectives. Biz goals should be SMART…
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Realistic & Relevant
- Timebound
And you can be SMARTER by adding
- Evaluate
- Re-evaluate
There we go. Minute over.
Conclusion Paragraph
Trending annual biz planning and 2021 Small Business Goals for women business owners seem to hone in on the action and productivity.
The vision board and word of the year are gentle reminders not to forget your goals, and focusing on what you can do, and ways to measure the success of that, also helps ascertain completion.
2021 is about getting shit done.
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