#79. Making the Most of the Final Stretch: A Fresh Take on Year End Planning

Ready to kick back and coast through the end of the year?

Yikes. Don't do that....

Instead, ditch that conventional year-end thinking and make the most of this vibrant time of year.  We're not wrapping things up just yet; there are plenty of opportunities still on the horizon, so let's seize them!

In this episode, I’ll share 3 powerful steps to take to keep the wins rolling in. 

• The one step you really should take FIRST in order to keep your vibrations high and ride the energy all the way to the end of the year. 
• The one goal you should probably drop - and with glee. :) 
• What to do with the time that’s left… 

As you’ll hear in the episode, I’ve had some of my biggest wins at the end of the year. Don’t make the mistake you may see other practice owners make. Don’t underestimate the power of your practice in these last 2 months.

Here’s to your over-the-top breakthrough to success...🥂

~Wendy
  xoxo

P.S. Shoot me a DM on Facebook and tell me what you did with your homework in this episode! 

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THIS WEEK’S JOURNAL PROMPT: 

Listen to the episode for 3 very specific steps I encourage you to take as part of your end of the year reflection, renewal and recommitment! You’re not done yet! ;)

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MENTIONED:

How to Keep It Steady in Your Private Practice When Life Gets Crazy

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FREE RESOURCE: The IP360 SCORECARD

As a coach of mine used to say, running a business is a full contact sport. There are SO many different parts of it to keep up with, manage, think about, and create - at every step of the way. How do you know what to work on first or where to focus your energy? How do you tell where your weaknesses are and where you're solid?

Well I’ve got you covered! The IP360 Scorecard, based on the 7 Pillars of an Ideal Practice, is designed to give you a practical, actionable, big-picture review of your practice as it stands. And you can complete it in less than 10 minutes.

Click on the link below to get your free copy today!
https://www.wendypittsreeves.com/360

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to ideal practice, episode number 79. And this week, guys, I want to share with you one of the most common mistakes that I see business owners, private practice owners make this time of year every year, and I'm going to try really hard not to make that mistake this year myself, and I don't want you to make it either. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit centered, but people forward. This is the ideal practice podcast. Hey guys, and welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of ideal practice. This is Wendy, your host, and I am excited about what's coming up.

Speaker 1: 1:19

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the next few months. I got a lot of things cooking I can't wait to share with you. I don't remember if I mentioned this and I don't think I did, but I, just a week or two ago, I spent some time at Edisto Beach. For those of you who are not from the Southeast. Edisto Beach is a really sweet little community just south of Charleston, south Carolina. I first discovered it oh I don't know 10 or 15 years ago when a friend of mine here in town was talking about it and I actually ended up. I don't remember when I used to do secret adventures for courageous women. Well, I took a whole group of women there for a week long retreat and adventure back in the day and found a perfect house for that, and that house has become a bit of a centering place for me. I actually am not the kind of person that likes to go back to the same place over and over. That's a big world. There's way too many things out there I haven't seen yet. But I love Edisto in a way that I have never felt about any any kind of beach community. I'm not too much into the high rises, guys and hotels and all the things that you see at a typical beach. But Edisto is a different kind of place and that particular house, which is just so sweet, looks out on a bay, faces south or southwest, actually into a bay, where the Atlantic is off to my left and incredible marshes are off to my right and I can see dolphins literally right out in front of me. I have now been back to that same place several times. I think this was like my seventh or eighth trip to that particular house over the years and it feels a little bit like coming home and I'm always with a group of friends different people each time and it was really lovely.

Speaker 1: 3:04

And I don't know about you, but I really needed some downtime. If you heard episode 77, I talked a little bit about what's been going on in my own life and it's been pretty intense and it was really nice to have a week to do as little as I possibly could, and I did. But what that also means is I had time to think and, not surprisingly, when you give yourself space and time to think in your day, in your life, new ideas come, or old ideas with a new look or, you know, new clarity comes, and this was certainly no exception. So I don't know about you guys, but I thought it might be a really good time to talk about some of that stuff and and to encourage you to join me, actually, in a little bit of reflection. So I want to tell you I mentioned this here, I think from time to time. It's certainly a story I share with my clients quite a bit.

Speaker 1: 4:00

There was a time several years ago when I realized about halfway through the year that if things kept going the way they were, they seemed to be going. They seemed to be going. I was on track to have what would have been my first six figure year, and for a social worker who never expected to do much in that way in my life and who never went into this with any of that as a goal, that was a really big deal that. I still remember where I was sitting, when I was looking at my numbers and all of a sudden it dawned on me that that's how things were going. Well, mindset being what it is and our psyches being what they are, I had not yet grown into a level of being comfortable with that level of success. Now, if you'd ask me, I would have told you, of course I was. I was fine with that, absolutely. Why would I not be?

Speaker 1: 4:54

But the truth is, energetically and unconsciously, I clearly wasn't, because pretty much the minute I began to realize that things really slowed down in my business, it turned out to be a really kind of a crappy kind of fall, like nothing much happened. There was nothing I could point my finger to to explain what was happening. But as I was sharing with folks in my evolved mastermind, just the other day, the my business like the numbers just sort of fell off a cliff after I had been doing really great for half a year. Well, I got some coaching and I was really challenged by the coach that I had at the time to get my head back in gear and get myself back into the game and to reengage with my business. I'll tell you in a minute about how that turned out.

Speaker 1: 5:50

But the reason I wanted to share this with you is because one of the mistakes as I said in the intro, one of the mistakes that I see people making all the time at this time of year and I was making that year is that as the fall continues, we tend to think nothing much happens. You get to Halloween, you make it through all that candy, you get the makeup off or the kids put to bed with their sugar high and we are like full on into the holidays, are we not? It's kind of crazy how quickly that happens and how we just zoom right on in through all the major holidays and assume the year is basically over, but, as a business owner, we not only tend to think that way for ourselves, but we tend to think that way for our clients and customers as well, and one of the mistakes that I see people make is they let their momentum just completely go. We stop making a, we stop doing things, we stop taking action on the goals that we set, we stop some of the habits and practices that have carried you through the year. Things have a way of sort of falling apart if you're not careful, once you get to November and December for sure, and I have learned over time that that's actually not a really good thing to do because, although the conventional wisdom is, everybody's head is in the holidays and there's not really anything else to do. And what does it matter anyway? Just have a good time, kick back, don't worry about it next year, it's just around the corner. Well, next year is right around the corner, that's true, and we will certainly be talking about that, but I don't want you to let go of 2023 yet y'all, we still have a couple of months and I don't want you to miss out on opportunities to lead your community, to expand your impact and to grow your income all the way to the end of the year.

Speaker 1: 7:52

So I wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts about what I think is a really good thing to do right now, like right now, right here at the beginning of November, as you begin to look at the last couple of months of the year. I don't know about you. I have actually spent the last few days really digging into this for myself. If you could see my desk right now, you would see that I have actually three different calendars out. I have my purpose statement out in front. It's a statement that I teach people to write in my evolved master mind. I have my own in front of me. I'm reconnecting with that make sure that's still accurate and I am looking at some of the intentions and goals that I set for myself this year.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Here's what I want to invite you to do. First of all, don't blow off this time of year. Second of all, take some time to really get clear about how to make the best use of this time, and what I would suggest that you do is to go back and, depending upon what your system is or how you like to do things, you might want to go back and look at your journal. If you keep a journal. What were you writing about back in December of 22, january of 23, january, february, march? What were you writing about back then? Who were you working with in terms of your clients and customers? Who were you working with in terms of a coach or any programs that you were in? What was on your calendar back then and where did you write down your goals for 2023? If you did, did you write down like a central intention for the year, anything that you wanted to do for yourself personally, in relationships, in your home, in your practice with your clients? What were some of those? And I want you to do something very specific.

Speaker 1: 9:52

I've got a couple of things I want to walk you through here. The first one is well, just go find that first of all, and you know what. I'll tell you what I have. Actually. I just thought about this today. I actually have in front of me a sheet of paper that I typed up back at the beginning of the year, where I wrote out my primary intention of the year, and I wrote it out for my work, I wrote it out for my home and I wrote it out for myself, with a combination of the more abstract goals, like who I wanted to be and how I wanted to show up for myself through the year, but also some very tangible goals I set for the year, including the numbers I wanted to reach in each one.

Speaker 1: 10:34

I have had that piece of paper laying in front of me on my desk all year long and as I was preparing to record this for you, I pulled it out and I started looking at it, and if you haven't done this, I'm just going to recommend this is a great idea like have your stuff where you can find it, in the front of your planner, in the front of like, maybe as some kind of a primary entry in whatever online systems you use. Maybe it's an index card you carry in your wallet, I don't know. But if you don't already do this, I encourage you to keep your goals and intentions for the year or, for that matter, just for the quarter somewhere where you can see them and check into them quickly and easily. So the first thing I want you to do is go find that. What did you say mattered to you this year? What did you say was important? Don't wait to January to do this. Don't wait to the holidays to December to do this. Do this now. And here's the first thing I want you to do, and it's not what you expect. The first thing I want you to do is go back and look at all that and choose or notice the one or the ones plural that you can celebrate already.

Speaker 1: 11:48

I guarantee you there's something that you planned this year that you did. Maybe it was something that you did back in the spring, maybe it's something you just did. Maybe it's something you've been working on all year long. Whatever it is, you have done something. I'll tell you like one of my personal goals for this year I'd forgotten about this, but I had it written down on this little sheet Was I wanted to do 30 days of yoga with Adrienne. Y'all know 30,. Y'all know yoga with Adrienne right On YouTube those of you who follow her. I have done that with her every January for several years, but I never like do it all on time as she's doing it, and I had set a goal to actually do that every day with her while it was live, and I did actually do that back in January, which turned out to be a solidifying of a habit I had already developed. I now do yoga pretty much every day actually, but I totally credit Adrienne with that Adrienne who's online but that was one of my goals, one of my personal goals early back in the year I another person, a work related goal that I set for this year there were two.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Y'all know that I have two sides to my business. I have work that I might. I still have an active counseling practice. It is small on purpose because my life is fairly full, but I wanted to get more targeted and more focused about the work that I did and who I wanted to serve, and I did actually do that. I made some changes in the way I talk about my practice in various places and, by golly, that has been such a delight because, as small as my practice is, it is full of people that I absolutely adore and I just like I still pinch myself. Actually, even though I teach this stuff and even though I know this stuff inside and out, I still sometimes, even in the last few weeks, have had days where I'm like, golly, what a great day. I'm just seeing such awesome people and my practice is certainly going well and I love that. And that was one of my goals was to sort of shift or retarget who I wanted to serve, and I've successfully have done that quite well.

Speaker 1: 14:02

The other thing I wanted to do this year that I did not realize at the very beginning of the year but pretty quickly after the start of the year became a primary intention, and that was I wanted to launch a group coaching program, a mastermind, for therapists and other healers in private practice, and indeed I stumbled around around that for a little bit at the beginning of the year but by golly we did indeed get that going, launched. That ran a six. It was a six month mastermind that turned into an eight month by the time I was done. We just wrapped that up just last week and it was a delightful experience. I had so much fun. That was something I totally am celebrating.

Speaker 1: 14:44

What is something that you told yourself you were going to do this year that you can celebrate, personal, professional, whatever. Figure that out. Give yourself the gift of recognizing, owning and celebrating what you have already done already. Now the second thing I want you to do I'm going to guess might also not be something that you're expecting and that is when you go back and look at these lists, these intentions, these goals there's also going to be one or two or more in there where you're going to be like, oh yeah, I never did that. Hmm, yep, I hadn't gotten to that one yet. Oh, I forgot, I said I was going to do that. Now, one or two of those guys probably don't even make sense anymore for you at this point, or maybe they do, but you're just not going to do it. You're not going to do it. Maybe ever. Maybe it's something you're going to do but you're going to hand off to a team member. Maybe it's something that no longer actually fits where you want to go. What is that? What is the one primary goal you had for this year, a primary intention you had for this year that you can just let go of? Yeah, it's not happening. It's not happening this year, don't know about. After this I'll tell you.

Speaker 1: 16:00

For me, when I got to looking at my notes here, it was that I'd forgotten that I had set a goal back in February that I was going to try to reach out to 100 former clients and customers and key contacts of mine, and that was part of as I was working on setting up that mastermind. I thought I'm going to reach out to a hundred people and tell them what an awesome opportunity I've got coming. Did I do that? Nope, I didn't. I did not. I did reach out to a lot. I reached out to very specific people that I really thought that that particular program would be a good fit for, but I did not list, I did not reach out to my what I call my hot 100 lists. You should have a hot 100 list of your key contacts and clients that you want to stay in touch with. I didn't do that and I'm probably not gonna do that in 2023.

Speaker 1: 16:50

So how about you? What's something that you can just let go? Let yourself off the hook, go yeah, not happening, and I'm fine with that. No guilt, no judgment, just toss it. That feels good.

Speaker 1: 17:06

And then that brings me to the third thing, and this one you may very well be expecting. That is, I don't want you to lose these last couple of months, so I want you to choose, as you review your goals and key intentions for the year, choose the one you are totally leaning into as you wind this year down. There is one there's something that you said you wanted out of this year. It may be something that you haven't even started on. It may be something that you, by golly, have been working on all year long but still needs some work. It may be something that you've done, tried, launched, but now you're ready for a redo, ready to revise, revamp and revisit it. That's fine. I don't know what it is, maybe something that you are well on your way to, but you just haven't quite gotten over the top yet. Whatever the top is for you Like I was that year that I thought I was gonna reach six figures for the first time what is one important goal, achievement, intention, accomplishment that you really wanted to nail this year, that you can totally lean into for these last two months.

Speaker 1: 18:26

What is that? Let's claim that, let's own that, let's revisit that. I'll tell you from me what that's looking like is. Not only do I not want to lose these last two months, but instead I want to find even better, richer, deeper, more actionable ways of serving you. And golly, I got some ideas, not just ideas, actually. I have very solid intentions and I will share at least one of those with you next week. I've got several things in mind. I'll tell you in my next episode about an opportunity that's gonna be coming up. I am here for you all the way, and I encourage you to be here for your clients and customers all the way and don't underestimate what you can do, even in November and December, even while you're still there for your family and there for yourself, and even while you're singing Christmas carols or practicing whatever traditions are yours. As this time goes, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1: 19:40

When I think back over the last several years of my work as a private practice coach, I got the more I started thinking about this, the more I remembered oh yeah, that happened, and then that happened, and then that happened. I can actually think of several times when some of my biggest wins happened in the last couple of months of the year. I had a $20,000 December a few years ago the year that I'm talking about when everything sort of fell apart in the second half of the year. What happened that year was my coach at the time wouldn't let me hide from that and essentially challenged me to step back in and then, some pretty specific ways, gave me some homework to work on, and I did what she asked me to do because that's what I was paying her for, right? I'm paying you to help me, so if I don't do what you suggest, then I'm not gonna get anywhere. I did what she suggested and one thing led to another led to another.

Speaker 1: 20:38

I won't go into the whole story now, but I will say that that was the year that I launched my. It wasn't my first, but one of my most successful online courses to date. I did before the end of that year, which led to lots of other things, and by the end of January, I had made like another $20,000. And, as crazy as it was and I couldn't even see it when I was in the middle of it I did actually, in fact, cross the six figure mark for the first time that year, after months of a drought in my practice. So I share all this with you to say I'm a social worker, guys, I'm an LCSW. If I can do this, you can too.

Speaker 1: 21:21

What goal did you set for yourself personally, professionally or as a business owner for this year that you can totally lean into for these last couple of months? If you want a little accountability, or if you just want to celebrate, or you just want to practice getting clear, I would love it. If you want to send this to me, share this with me, just shoot me a DM on Facebook. You can find me there easily. I'd love to hear from you and tell me what's the one thing that you can celebrate that by golly you did do this year, have already done.

Speaker 1: 21:51

What's the one thing you're gonna let go of Not gonna happen, letting yourself off the hook with grace and with joy. What's the one thing you can totally lean into in the two months you've got left and enjoy doing it. Enjoy doing it. This isn't about drudgery, this is about joy. Your ideal practice should be fun. Even when it's uncomfortable, even if you get a little squirmy, even if you're not always sure exactly what to do. It should be fun. So figure that out for yourself and tell me about it, because I'd love to hear. Well, that's what I got for you today and with that I hope you guys will totally take action on what I'm suggesting here so that you don't miss out on these last couple of months and you don't make the mistake that I see so many people make at this time of year. Have a great week, everybody, and I will see you next time right here on the Ideal Practice Podcast. Bye now. Screen and quiet music.