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My Plans and Goals for 2025

New Year is the time when business owners everywhere are settling down to make plans and set goals for the next twelve months. Of course, this is something we should be doing on a regular basis — monthly at least, if not more frequently. Still, New Year is not only symbolically important, but also a time when we’re likely to have a bit of downtime.

Well, I started off like that, and then my schedule got disrupted — for the very good reason that I had loads of new work coming in. Which is why it’s late January, and I’m just getting around to writing this.

So what are my main plans and goals?

 

1. Increase My Monthly Income

Well, this is an obvious one, but it’s not just a vague aim to “get more money”. I started from the position of calculating my break-even point (the amount I need to make ends meet) and discovered that my regular income meets that, but doesn’t exceed it by nearly enough.

I then had to decide what I needed to earn if I was to be able to invest back into the business and enjoy some moderate luxuries on a personal level, and balance that with what I could reasonably aim at. What I decided on was that, by the mid-point of the year, I’d have increased my monthly income by £1,000.

It was no good just stating that aim, though. What am I going to need for this? So I established what kind of new jobs I’d need. For example, four new clients wanting two blogs a month would do it, or two average-sized websites a month. Or a combination of various services, of course.

It’s said that when you ask the universe, it gives. The day after I drew up this plan, I had a Zoom meeting that resulted in an extra £250 per month — so a quarter of my goal. Over the week or so following, I had two website requests and a brochure, which means I’m well on my way already.

 

2. Target for Contacts and Conversion

The new work so far has simply dropped in my lap. Of course, it’s actually the result of years of marketing and delivering excellent services, but it didn’t require me to do anything in the short term.

That’s not a long-term strategy, though. In order to get the new business I’m looking for, I need to go through the process of calculating my conversion rate and work out how many conversations I need each week.

Which I haven’t done yet. The intention was to follow up the initial planning with this straight away, but I’ve been so busy over the first few weeks of the year that I haven’t been able to do so yet. So that needs to be urgently scheduled over the next week or so, followed by a strategy for getting those conversations.

 

3. Strategy for Getting Public Sector Clients

My biggest client is the ED&I (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion) department of an NHS trust. This came about fairly randomly (the key person used to be a client when running a small business) but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Not just for the regular work, but also for the amount I’ve learnt in researching pieces, notably about neurodiversity.

It makes sense to have a strategy for finding similar clients, both NHS trusts and other public sector organisations. It would be ideal to write for their ED&I departments, but other parts of the organisation would also be welcome.

I don’t currently have the nuts and bolts of a strategy for this (something else that’s been the victim of January’s success) but broadly the initial approach will be to find the ED&I managers of a handful of NHS trusts and follow them on LinkedIn, commenting on their posts and generally becoming a familiar figure before approaching them directly.

Again, I’ll need to draw up a specific plan for this process — ideally within the next week.

 

4. Exhibit at a Business Expo

This was a goal for 2024, but it didn’t happen for various reasons — including budget. Achieving my income goal by the middle of the year, though, will solve that issue, and I’ll be targeting a small-to-medium expo in the second half of the year (no, not the London ExCel just yet).

Of course, it isn’t just a matter of booking the stand and turning up. I’ll have to work out what I need for the stall, what are appropriate giveaways (pads and pens seem ideal for a writer) and how to make the stall interactive. And, beyond that, I’ll need a strategy for what I aim to get out of the show and how I’m going to achieve it.

This one won’t be necessary to do in the coming weeks, but it’ll certainly need to be in place by the halfway point of the year. Then I’ll choose and target the appropriate expo.

 

Needless to say, this isn’t all I have to do for 2025. I’ll be looking at improving my social media strategies, constantly searching for new networking opportunities and working on improving my offers.

Not to mention making sure I can fulfil all these new projects I get. But that’s a different kind of planning.