Setting and achieving your goals in 2023

Happy New Year! If you’re anything like me, you had a lovely break, but you thought about all the things that you wanted to do in the next year. I seem to have the same goals each year. Mine is getting healthier and learning to do more art – but I promise this every year, and I am still at the same place, and I’m wondering if it’s the same for you? It might be that you want to start your own fashion business?

Today, I wanted to talk to you about what you can do to reach those goals. In fact, we’re doing this today in our 90-day planning session as part of our Fashion Label Launchpad program. So, I’m hoping that what we talk about today is going to help you reach your goals this year effectively. I have been doing this for years. In fact, the number one reason why I’m able to do so much in my week is that I have a goal that I can refer back to. At the moment, I have a little card in front of my keyboard on my desk with the task I need to do, keeping me on track and in line with my ultimate big goal.

Step One is to create your big goal. 

Some people call it a big hairy audacious goal. It’s really something that if you achieve it, it would be like, Wow! 

It might be that you earn a certain amount of turnover, it could be that you launch a label, or it could be that you reach a certain number of followers. It’s really something you know that’s going to take a bit of effort to reach, but if you reach it then it is going to blow your mind and you will have such a sense of achievement.

This one’s important because it’s one that you can put on your wall. You can create your dream board around it. You can really visualise it and know that the effort you’re putting in is going towards something.

Step Two is to write up your list of Projects that you need to do to achieve this goal. 

These are high-level things that you might still need to learn how to do, but you know they need to be done. Therefore, you will want to choose 3 projects to work on in the next 90 days.!

The plan is they need to relate to your bigger goal, but they also need to be something that’s achievable in the 90 days’ time frame.

For example, if it was to do with being healthy, you might put together a program of exercise you’re going to do, aiming to get up and go for a walk every morning to start the day, and it could be the foods that you’re going to eat.

At the moment, I use those little white cards we used once for filing things, and I write out the strategic objective for the next 90 days. The best thing about doing this is it’s on a small white card, so I can only squeeze about 6 or 7 items into it. But you should only really put three or four because then you know you’re going to achieve them. So, every time I sit at my desk, no matter what I feel like doing, I’m looking at that little card, and I’m reminding myself of what is going to help me achieve those goals.

Step Three is to write out the microtask. 

You need to know what the pathway is and what is involved. This is the hard thing for a lot of people because they don’t know exactly what’s involved in getting to that end goal. It is important that these tasks can be completed in 15min, this is so that even if you have a quick 30 min in the morning or you are sitting in the car waiting for someone, you can achieve 1 task off your list. 

Now, this is where business coaching, training or mentoring or education is going to come in as your key goal to reaching your overall goals. Because how do you know what you need to do if you don’t know how to do it? Sometimes this is about timelines, sometimes it’s about tasks, and sometimes it’s just about knowing what to do for a second and third task so that you are not wasting time. 

I think that’s the key thing to not waste time in this process, I’ve spoken to plenty of people who have gone down a pathway and spent years trying to start their fashion label, and it’s never really worked because they didn’t know precisely what they need to do and when.

You will need to find a place to keep these tasks so they can be found easily and more importantly can be crossed off the list (so satisfying). There are programs like Monday.com, Asana, Todoist and Excel, or if you are old school, you can use paper or a notebook.

I’ve used a lot of different methods for keeping track of my goals.

I have written out charts and put them as screensavers on my computer, so any moment I have 15 minutes, I can actually tackle one of those tasks.

Last of all, sort your list into the different energy or brain space that is needed.

Anyone who has a business will know how hard it is to be creative and mathematical straight after each other.

This is the biggest energy loss, to change your mind to a new task. My suggestion is to sort your tasks as Creative (design, research, colours), Mathematical/Technical (timelines, costing, production schedule), Social (emails, answering social media posts) and Admin (paying bills, sorting out website issues). This single change to the way you work will change your world.

So, how do we find out about these projects and task lists? 

Well, I’ve got something for you.

We are about to open up our Start Your Fashion Business workshop, and this is going to be a key first step to you working out what’s involved in starting your own business. You will start to see what those big objectives and strategic projects are, and those tasks that are standing in the way of achieving your goals.

In this workshop, we talk about what’s possible, the different ways that you can launch, the things that can go wrong and how to avoid them. We also give you the blueprint for what’s involved in designing, developing and manufacturing your own product through the launch. This free workshop will help you start your own fashion business.

Book your seat for this FREE Workshop starting on 6th February 2023. I really look forward to seeing you then.

We will be opening the doors to those on our waitlist this Monday, so join the waitlist to be the first to know.