Why NOW is the perfect time to be planning for 2024

Transcript

Here’s the thing. Most people don’t actually take the time to invest in a proper planning process. And if they do, they usually wait until the new year before they start doing that. Well in today’s episode, I am telling you why now is the perfect time to be planning for 2024 and why you want to be getting onto this straight away.  

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast. This is your weekly dose of all things money to help you intentionally create a profitable business and a life you love. I have the difficult conversations about money, so you can make more money with ease. Each week I share how you can use mindset and the practical foundations of finance to elevate your earnings without sacrificing the things that are important to you because you can and should be making more money.  

Today’s episode of the podcast is brought to you by my one day 2024 planning retreat. I am running this retreat with one of my best friends Steph Taylor, who is a 7 figure entrepreneur with a global business. And she knows a thing or two about how to build a successful business. We created this planning workshop because we wanted to empower business owners to get ahead with their goals and planning for the New Year. The retreat is an iIn person event where you’ll be getting really clear about your goals and plans for 2024, both business and life goals and mapping out how you are going to get there. 

I’m going to be conducting the goal setting vision boarding sessions and I’m also going to be taking you through how to do your 2024 budget and Steph will be leading a session about marketing and content creation. She’s going to show you the skills of how to have a 12 month plan for your content and marketing. I’m so excited for Steph’s session, and I know mine will be awesome too. S 

So there are only 20 spots available for this intimate in person event. It’s being held in Brisbane on the 24th of November and several of the spots are already taken. So if this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, I encourage you to grab your ticket, sooner rather than later. It’s a full day immersive experience and we will even take you out for a bougie in person networking dinner that night at a fancy restaurant with all of the other successful people in the room. I honestly believe that even that dinner alone is worth the cost of the ticket. If this feels like an opportunity, you don’t want to miss, go and click on the link in the show notes for today’s episode.  

Why you shouldn’t leave your planning until next year?   

So let’s talk a little bit about planning for 2024. You might be wondering why can’t I leave it until next year? Well, from experience, this time of year starts to get crazy. Even though it’s only the start of November, at the time that I’m recording this episode, my calendar is already nearly full to the end of the year, and I know that a lot of people are the same. We’re entering silly season where there’s Christmas parties, lots of events happening and if you have kids, it’ll be school holidays before we know it. And what I find with a lot of entrepreneurs is that by the time we hit the end of the year, there’s a bit of a quiet period over Christmas, the New Year, and often this extends right through to the end of January.  

Now, the reason why this is very important is that by the time people start thinking about what I want for 2024, they’re already in February, which means that you’ve lost a good chunk of the year. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. I personally have my planning process well underway and it’s super exciting because I’m shaking things up in a big way. In 2024 in the way that I do business and in life. And now that I’ve got that clarity around that I can be excited about the new year and what’s coming. So don’t leave it until the new year. Don’t forget to DO a plan at all, because we all know that doesn’t create the best results. Carve out the time and undertake your planning process for 2024 now.  

The BEST way to do a planning process (and HOW to do it) 

So what’s the best way to do a planning process?  

A lot of times people who do plan, do it in a bit of a slap together way. Like doing a little bit of vision boarding here, doing a little bit of this over here. My favorite way to do a planning process is to have a fully immersive offsite process where it is done and dusted.  

Most years my hubby and I do our planning process together and we go and check into our hotel, we grab some pens and paper and we make it a really fun, fully immersive experience. I found that trying to do bits and pieces here and there means that that the planning process doesn’t get done end to end.  

Now, I can’t help but give a subtle plug again to my one day planning retreat that I’m hosting with Steph, but again, that’s why we decided to have it as a full day fully immersive experience. Where you don’t have the distractions of the office, family, kids, all of the things you can be fully present in the planning process and have the process from start to finish done and dusted in a day.  

Now, what sort of things should you cover in a planning process for the new year? 

I always do my business and my life planning sessions together. So first of all, I go through and map out my goals, get really excited and clear about what they look like, having a look at finances, business, strategy, marketing and content, which, let’s face it, are the engine room of your business success. Once I’m really clear about what that looks like I then pull together a budget. A budget is literally your how to framework of materialising the goals that you set for yourself. I love to do the budgeting process and I think that it is such an essential part of mapping out your plan both for your business and your life.  

Why do a business and personal life planning session at the same time   

So why do a business and life planning session at the same time? To me, the two are very intertwined. When you think about it, your business and your personal life can’t be totally separated. You already know if you’ve got things going on in your personal life with your relationships or your health, it has such an effect on your business. The two, of course, have to be interwoven with each other. If you are someone who likes to travel like I do, your holidays have an effect on your ability to show up for your business and again from experience, a lot of business owners aren’t great at planning out their holidays. But yet we all know that we need downtime to refresh, to relax, and also to get creative. It’s also really important if you want to modify the way that you’re doing things in your business to create more freedom in your life. For example, you might want to mix up the hours that you work. Definitely something I’m looking to do next year. So this is why it’s really important that you were thinking about the two in parallel with each other and why I love to combine the planning processes for the two together?  

Regardless of whether you want to come along for the one day planning day or not, I really encourage you to carve out the time in particular to go off site is ideal to carve out the time and do a full day planning session, but if you want to make the process really easy, I’d love to invite you to come along and attend the one day planning retreat with Steph and I.  

In the day we’ll be going through goal setting, vision boarding, planning out your year, we’ll create a budget for your business and Steph will take you through a content and marketing strategy for the year and she is one of the smartest marketing minds in the online world. As I mentioned in the intro, we’ll also be going out for a beautiful dinner after the planning day and having some networking and fun to wind down after our impactful day. 

I understand that investing both time and money can feel scary, but it also blows my mind how people won’t take the time to step back and plan, and we’ll just keep repeating the same thing again and again and get frustrated. Why they aren’t creating different outcomes in their life, one of the best ways to create really big change is to stop, step back and get strategic. And now is the right time to be doing that for 2024.  

Well, I hope today has inspired you to get your new year planning underway and whether you do it with Steph and I or not, I wish you all the best in this process and I hope that you have a lot of fun doing it because I know I always have so much fun going through this process.  

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