Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
265: New Year’s Resolutions: Setting and Achieving Your 2025 Marketing Goals with Host Kendra Corman
This week, Kendra reflects on the importance of setting achievable goals as we prepare to welcome 2025. In this special New Year’s Eve episode, she shares practical tips on creating a balance between business and personal goals, ensuring focus, productivity, and a fulfilling life.
Key Highlights:
- Why limiting your goals to five business and two personal ones is the key to success.
- Brainstorming techniques to identify impactful goals for the new year.
- Creative approaches to align your goals with your business and personality.
- How personal goals contribute to long-term success and happiness.
Resources:
Connect with Kendra on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendracorman/
Subscribe to Kendra’s YouTube Channel
https://youtube.com/@KendraCorman
Join Kendra every Tuesday and Thursday as she discusses how to make progress and grow through Imperfect Marketing.
Let’s crush 2025 together! Have a fantastic New Year!
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Hey, welcome back to the Imperfect Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, kendra Korman, and we are wrapping up 2024 with a special New Year's Eve episode. We're talking about something that's on everyone's mind as the clock ticks towards midnight right, new Year's resolutions. We're not just talking about any resolutions and we're really not talking about resolutions we're going to forget by February. We're focusing on setting and achieving your goals for 2025. Marketing goals, kendra? Shouldn't we be talking about business goals? Yes, you are right. What we're discussing today is a mix of business goals with a dash of some personal goals thrown in for good measure, because, let's face it, if you want balance in your life and, trust me, you do you need a little bit of both. So let's grab your favorite New Year's Eve beverage, settle in and chat about how you're going to crush it in 2025. Because this is how I'm planning to crush it in 2025.
Speaker 1:First things first, we need to talk about the number of goals you're setting. I'm a big believer in the power of focus, which is why I recommend limiting yourself to no more than seven goals. Okay, in my experience, two personal goals and five business goals is the perfect sweet spot to setting a reasonable number that you can handle. Why seven? It's not because seven's a lucky number, though. If it helps you remember it, go for it. It's because when we set too many goals, we spread ourselves too thin. You're trying to juggle while riding a unicycle. Sure, it looks impressive and you could probably get a job with the circus, but you're probably going to fall flat on your face. So I want you to think about it If you set 20 goals, how many of them you're actually going to achieve? Because how many of them are you actually going to be able to do? Probably not many. They start to feel overwhelming, like that giant mountain you have to climb. And seven? Seven is a little bit more manageable, right. It feels like you can actually make progress. It's less than two per quarter, and we're aiming for quality over quantity. It's better to fully achieve five meaningful goals than to half achieve or not even attempt to achieve 20 mediocre ones, right? So let's talk about how to set those five business goals.
Speaker 1:The key here to think about where you want your business to be next year. Do you want to hire a VA? Do you want to bring on a new staff member? Five new staff members? Do you want to add a certain number of clients, whatever it is. I want you to start with that end goal in mind. Okay, visualize that and work backwards. Ask yourself what do I need to do to make that happen? So let me share a personal example for me from earlier this year. I set a goal to grow my email list, because I know that my leads primarily come from people on my email list. So I got disciplined. Which fun fact was the word of my word of the year for 2024. Stay tuned for my word of the year 2025 in our first 2025 episode of the year. So I held six dedicated list building weeks where I was 100% focused on growing my list. The result five new strategy clients. That's the power of setting focused, outcome driven goals.
Speaker 1:Now here's another example. I have a friend who runs a web development company. He realized that his best work and clients come from other marketing firms and agencies. So where does he focus most of his efforts? Building relationships with referral partners. He's not going after clients directly. He's building the relationships that will bring him the clients that he wants and the people who have the clients he wants.
Speaker 1:The takeaway understand your business, know where you want to be and set goals that are going to get you there. Okay, that's important. Now I can almost hear you saying but Kendra, I don't know what my goals are going to get me there, right? So I've got you covered with some brainstorming techniques that I do. My favorite method set a timer for 10 minutes and just start writing what's going to get you to your goal. Write down everything that comes to mind, no matter how crazy it might seem. The key here is not to censor yourself. Sure, a lot of what you write might be junk, but you might surprise yourself with some really brilliant ideas.
Speaker 1:And if you're struggling with this, another approach is to create an AI brainstorming partner. Seriously, right. Set up a chat with AI, give it this prompt. You are a business coach with 20 plus years of experience helping entrepreneurs in fill in your business here, grow their business. You don't give answers, but you do help them brainstorm, ask questions until you have all of the information that you need to help them create a marketing plan and goals for their business in 2025. Then let the AI ask you questions. It's going to push you to think about all of your different possibilities, right, it's going to consider angles you might not have thought of on your own, and it learned off the entire internet. So it's pretty good.
Speaker 1:The goal of brainstorming is to generate ideas, not to judge them. So you can sort through all that later and find the jumps. But if you need somebody to help you, ai is the secret there. So now let's go ahead and talk about some goal setting approaches. That might not be what you typically hear about in the new year new you articles, right and posts. Remember my friend who I was talking about who focuses on referral partners. That's a great example of an unconventional approach. It's not about setting a goal for a specific number of new clients. It's about building the relationships that will naturally lead to those clients.
Speaker 1:Another example from my own playbook every year I set a goal to reduce my non-revenue generating expenses by 10% by the end of the first or second quarter, depending on what it is. Now you might be thinking, kendra, that doesn't sound very exciting. Or, kendra, if you do that every year once you get down to zero? Yeah, no, trust me, awesome. Why do I do this every year? Because I know myself I have a little bit of shiny object syndrome when it comes to new tools and software. This goal forces me to question every system I pay for. When it comes to renew, do I still need it? Is it still providing value? This is a great way to keep my business lean and focused and has increased my profitability year over year.
Speaker 1:The key here isn't that these approaches are wildly out of the box. Right is that they're tailored to the specific needs, and we'll call it a quirk of the business or the business owner right now. That's what makes it so powerful. Okay, so let's talk about those two personal goals that I mentioned. Why include personal goals in your business planning? Well, work-life integration or work-life balance, or whatever you want to call it. It's not just a buzzword. It's essential for your long-term success and happiness. I was one of those people who didn't ever set those, and setting them and adding them in has totally changed my life.
Speaker 1:Your personal goals could be anything that's important to you. Maybe it's having a date night every week. Maybe it's not having meetings on school holidays or after 4 pm. Maybe it's finally learning to play that dusty guitar in the corner of your office. Whatever it happens to be, I want you to make sure it's something that matters to you. These goals are about making sure that while you're building your business, you're also building a life you enjoy, and that is probably the most important thing. Remember that success comes from a feeling of fulfillment, both in and out of work. And again, being busy is not about. It's not about being busy equals productive, right, you want to be productive, and setting these goals are really going to help you. Okay, and again, it's not just about your bank account balance. It's about creating that life that's fulfilling, that you enjoy.
Speaker 1:So let's recap what we covered. All right, limit yourself to five, seven goals five for business, two for personal. Align your business goals with where you want to be in 12 months. Use brainstorming techniques to generate ideas, either like a timed writing brainstorm or an AI partner that you create. Consider unconventional approaches that fit your specific business and personality. And don't forget to include the personal goals for that work-life balance or work-life integration, because I really don't believe that there's anything in balance.
Speaker 1:Now. Here's your homework as we head into the new year. Set aside some time in the next few days to go through this goal setting process. Use the brainstorming techniques that I shared with you and think about where you want your business and your life to be at the end of 2025. Remember, goal setting isn't a one and done process. You need to revisit your goals regularly throughout the year and adjust them as needed. Celebrate your progress and learn from setbacks. That's it for 2024, right, and this episode. So thank you so much for tuning into the Imperfect Marketing Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, why not share your goal or goal setting process on social media? Tag me, I'd love to cheer you on. You can find me at KendraPormancom forward slash LinkedIn. Or on YouTube, youtubecom forward slash at Kendra Porman. And if you're listening to this as the clock ticks towards midnight, raise a glass with me. Here's to a fantastic 2025 filled with achieved goals and business growth. Happy new year, everyone. We'll see you in 2025 for more imperfect marketing.
