#97. Unlocking Success: A Simple Journaling Exercise for Planning Your Next Quarter

Can you believe we’re already at the end of March?

Yet here we are, at the end of Q1, already a full 25% of the way through the year.

Man - that went fast. 😳

But that’s okay. Most of us can only handle about a quarter’s worth of planning at a time anyway - so this is fine. And tending to our business with a quarterly review is how we stay on track with the big picture, with our biggest goals for the year.

That’s how we keep moving our practice forward. This is how success stays on track.

In this episode, I’ll share 4 simple questions you can use to guide your thinking as you reflect on your progress over the past 90 days. Then, we’ll use that reflection to revisit your intentions and map out your plan for the next 90 days too.

All those big plans you had back in January? They still count. The key to making them real, though, is this kind of process.

You have to check in with yourself, and your business on a regular basis.

So, today, I’ll guide you through a simple, 4-part journal exercise that will give you a simple framework you can use to do exactly that.

Hey I get it. It’s easy to lose sight of our long term goals, and sometimes - we’re tempted to give up on them entirely.

Because - life happens, right?

Maybe - but not today.

Today, you’re the one driving the bus, and your business follows your lead. 😎

So give this a listen. Then, set aside some time to sit with this process, so you can stay on track towards your biggest wins for the year.

Let me know what you think. :)

~Wendy
  Xoxo

P.S. If you’re the type who likes to go deeper, be sure to check out the free resource I’ve got for you below. The Quarterly Success Checker is perfect for those who like a more comprehensive process for strategic planning. :)

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FREE RESOURCE: The QUARTERLY SUCCESS CHECKER

If you’re like me and you love taking a deep dive into the planning process for your practice, then you might want a little more than the 4 questions I’ve outlined in today’s episode. Try those as a place to start. And, then, try this.

For you, I’ve got something else. Click on the link below to get your no-cost copy of the Quarterly Success Checker. This free tool is much more comprehensive, and will give you an even deeper sense of where your progress is, and where you want to go next.

Here’s the link:  WendyPittsReeves.com/quarter

Transcript

Wendy: 0:00

You're listening to Ideal Practice, episode Number 97. Hey guys, I am looking at the calendar and we are at the end of quarter one and you know what that means. Right Time to plan for Q2. But if you are anything at all like a lot of my clients and like I have been, you're probably not used to thinking this way. I really want you to be more intentional and on purpose about how you are tending to your vision, your big picture goals and your intentions for the year. So it's time to check in with those intentions and course correct as needed. Today, we're gonna talk about a really easy way to do exactly that. 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 the ideal practice podcast. I'm your host, wendy, wendy Pitts Reeves, and I am so excited about having you guys here with me today.

Wendy: 1:39

This is an exciting week for me because literally the day after this comes out, I am heading back to one of my favorite places in the country. I'm going up with a couple of friends to visit Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Have any of you guys ever been there? If you've been with me for a while, you might have heard me talk about that. I have a friend who has a place to stay up there, which has turned out to be really handy because I have, after only being having been a couple of times in my whole life, over the last few years I've been able to go several times, which is really cool because I feel like I'm getting to know the place so much better. And if I can just have a nerd moment, I read was it Don Meacham's book about Thomas Jefferson. In the time since I was there last, it was a pretty massive book. I feel like I know everything there is to know about Thomas Jefferson. Just saying and I think I've heard he's gonna be there, so I'm looking forward to having a chance to ask him a few questions. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do.

Wendy: 2:40

Well, let's talk about today's topic, my word of the year. This year, guys, I didn't do an episode on it, but I'm just gonna tell you my word of the year is easy, not easier, not ease. I want everything that I can possibly make easy to be easy. So I actually have a pretty comprehensive process for doing a really good deep dive review of your quarter as part of your planning process. I'll tell you a little bit about that in a minute, but for today I wanna give you just a real quick and easy way to take this whole quarterly planning process and just kind of drop it into a couple of journal notes. That will help you take stock in a perfectly fine way. I am at because we're at this point in the quarter. I'm doing this with several of my clients. I've got people who have been asking me for some of the tools that I use. I've been having some calls with clients where we are doing this kind of a deep dive review of their plan and it's always always helpful, always helpful.

Wendy: 3:42

And I think sometimes my clients sort of surprise themselves because whatever goals and intentions you set off with at the beginning of the year, those may stay 100% true all the year long. They may change completely along the way. Often what I find is the theme might shift or the energy might shift. Those goals stay in place, but how you're approaching them or their relevance to the rest of your overall progress, your overall growth, might shift a little bit. Oftentimes what I see is that my clients are sort of surprised at the growth that they are experiencing personally, much less strategically or in their business, because how we think as we manage our business is in itself a process that we have to constantly be learning about, tuning into, adapting and all those kinds of things. So this is part of that as well.

Wendy: 4:39

The problem with this kind of thing for a lot of folks. We all tend to start the year off with All kinds of great ideas, don't we? I mean, I love the last month or two of the year, first month of the. You know, when you're doing all the like. All right, what did I do this year? What am I doing next year? All those big ideas, big dreams, big goals. In fact, some of you may have attended the workshop that I did in December, called on purpose 2024, mark your calendars. I'm going to be doing the same thing again this December for next year. I'm definitely going to do that again. Um, but that I mean that was a really great like um. I think we met for two or three hours to really just do some kind of a deep dive, kind of um vision work, and I love that.

Wendy: 5:23

But all of that intention means nothing. All of that goal setting is useless If you aren't tracking it along the way, tuning into it along the way, revisiting it along the way, making sure that you are staying on track towards those things. Finding ways to stay on track, finding ways to stay in alignment with your goals and your intentions is a that's a really important key to making genuine progress over the year rather than just talking about it. It's kind of funny how often I will ask people so do you have your annual plan in front of you? Do you have the work that we did back in January about where you're going to go? And sometimes they're like, yep, got it right here, it's in my little coaching notebook, or it's in my journal, or it's in my planner. Other times it's like, oh, I don't know what did I even do with that document? Did I even do that? Don't feel bad if that's you, because I have been there myself lots of times, that's for sure.

Wendy: 6:16

But here's the thing Jim's aren't the only place, the only place that sees a pretty big drop off. By the time we get to March each year, far too many business owners get mired down in the weeds of what it takes just to get the work done, just to stay on top of what you got to do from one day to the next, and it's pretty easy to quickly lose touch with your vision. That happens to a lot of people and that is why some folks find that they are just spinning their wheels year after year where nothing ever really changes. Well now, for those of you who really love kind of diving into this in a bigger way, I do want to give you access to the tool that I share with my clients. It's called the quarterly success checker. You can get it for free on my website. Just go to windy pits Reevescom forward Forward slash quarter windy pits Reevescom forward slash quarter and you'll find a little place right there, really quick and easy, where you can download that yourself. If you like having a more robust planning process, by all means go do that, print it out. Take yourself to a coffee shop, give yourself an hour or so to sit down and really, really, really think through where you are as we transition from the first 90 days of the year to the second. But If you want to do something quick that you don't really have time to do that, then what I'm going to do with you today is going to be helpful. See, there are lots of ways to plan for the next quarter.

Wendy: 7:49

My accountability partner, michelle, and I often will do like a two hour zoom call right around this time of the quarter where we go through our own little process for this, and every time we do this, I revisit this whole question of like, well, how do I want to go through this? What is the process I want to use? The tool I just mentioned is one way to do it, but I've got others because there's lots of ways to reflect on your business. There's no one way, and you will probably over time, figure out a way that works best for you For what I'm sharing with you today. I want you to just think about this almost like a journaling exercise. I'm going to share with you some questions, and actually I got this from Michelle Michelle Knox and I don't actually remember where she got it. She picked it up from somebody she was following. If I remembered who it was, I would give them credit. I'm so sorry I don't, but it was four simple questions, four simple points to consider that I'm going to share with you, and you could literally just sit down in your journal and just do some noodling on each one of these and see where it takes you, but do give yourself plenty of uninterrupted time to sit with these ideas. You might even want to do it a little bit over time, so you come back to it over the course of, say, two or three days or over a weekend, because you will find yourself thinking about things you'd forgotten as you sort of sit with this. So the first thing I want you to think about are just and we're literally all we're looking at just 90 days at a time, because that's about all any of us can really hold in our heads. So I'm recording this in late March. I want you to think of January, february, march 2024.

Wendy: 9:32

What have been some of your biggest wins from the past quarter, for example? This doesn't sound like a win, but I'm going to tell you. I had a big launch planned in February and many of you know I've had some real tough things going on with my family. My father has been quite ill. My had some challenges dealing with all that and because of that I could not tend to that launch the way I wanted to. The win here is not that the launch happened, because it really kind of didn't. The win here is that I did not beat myself up about it. Instead, I made some notes, I talked to my team, I revised my plans and I'm going to be coming back to it in a little bit later in the year and I would not normally do that. My tendency is to beat myself up and go, oh well, that didn't work. Can you relate to that? But I'm not going to do that this time. I'm just going to give myself some grace it's been a pretty tough quarter and know that things are going to get better and I will get back to it when I, when I can and I will.

Wendy: 10:37

One of the wins that I've seen one of my clients do I've got a client who has just put together a really major offer for a new audience for her, for a particular contact that she has, and it's been kind of a big deal. It's a little scary, but good scary. It's required a fair amount of thought on her part, creativity, intentionality, and she is in the middle of that, but she is making real progress with it and she has put that offer out there. I'm very excited about that for her, regardless of how it goes, because I've already seen the process she's gone through to get to this point and that's a huge win for this first quarter. Well, what about you? Is there anything you've accomplished? And it could be something little. Maybe you designed your first free tool you wanna share with your clients. Maybe you recorded your first podcast. Maybe you raised your rates even a little bit on some new clients. Maybe you just finally got your digital house in order.

Wendy: 11:40

A lot of people, a lot of you, have told me you really appreciated the episode I did on that a while back. Whatever it is and y'all, there's usually more than one. I'm giving you one example or two, but I like to see how many I can come up with. If you can come up with 10 or 15 things you've done over the past three months that you're feeling good about, do it. The bigger the list, the better you're gonna feel, and little things count just as much as big ones. So that's the first question I want you to ponder what are my wins, what are my celebrations, what are my accomplishments, what do I feel good about For the past three months, personally and professionally, because it all counts.

Wendy: 12:20

The second question I want you to sit with there's four is what have been the misses? What did you not do? What didn't quite work? What did you say you were gonna get to, but you never did? Well, I could almost use the same example for myself. Yeah, I could use that, and in fact, you know what I could do here. For, as an example of this, I just talked to you about the launch. That didn't quite happen, so I could address that here. I could say that didn't work for very good reason and it's all okay. The win for that could still be that, instead of maybe I don't say that maybe the win is that I added a new member to my team who has turned out to be a brilliant fit, and things are beginning to gel behind the scenes in our processes that are really exciting to me. I'll make that my win.

Wendy: 13:11

My miss could be that the launch, that didn't quite work. Okay, that's where we are. What about you? What did you say you were gonna do this quarter? That you didn't do? Or you just couldn't get to, or you tried, but it didn't work. It might be that you were going to send out five referral letters to your key contacts maybe physicians that are in your network or allied professionals that you could probably share referrals with. You're gonna send out some emails to them, or actually a real live written letter, and you just never quite got around to it. Maybe that's it. Maybe you were going to take yourself to an important networking luncheon. Maybe there was a charity or a nonprofit that was hosting a big event and at the last minute, you talked yourself out of going because you were a little nervous about it. Okay, those are misses. Maybe you said you were gonna raise your rates across the board, but you just couldn't bring yourself to say it to your older clients or your long standing clients. Okay, this is the no judgment zone. All right, we are just observing facts, the status of your, the goals that you said at the beginning of the year, the things that you said you were gonna do in these first three months. Have you done them? Have you not? What are the misses, then?

Wendy: 14:29

The third question I want you to explore is what insight can you gain from that? What, when you look at what you have been able to do and what you're feeling good about. And you look at the things that fell off the radar that you never got around to. Maybe you avoided for some reason, maybe you tried and just couldn't figure it out. Who knows, maybe, like me, life just was a little bit much and you just couldn't get there. Whatever, again, no judgment. What can you learn from this? What insight can you draw as you look at this? For example, I mentioned to you a minute ago that the big insight for me was that it was okay not to be able to sometimes do things because because I need to extend some grace to myself, but it doesn't mean I'm off the hook. It's a pause, not a stop. That's an important insight for me to realize that I have that option as well, that all is like I'm still in the game. It's just, it was just a timeout, right. That's an important one For my client who has submitted this pretty major proposal. She's already talking about how much she's learning just from going through this process and that all the work she has done to craft this really beautiful special offer she can totally turn around and use again with the next person that she wants to work with. So the insight is even regardless of whether a particular process goes to the outcome I want, I can let go of the outcome. I can release my attachment to that outcome and enjoy the process and appreciate the growth that I'm experiencing along the way, because that matters too. That's an insight.

Wendy: 16:28

One of your insights might be just sort of reconnecting with how you feel about that goal or that intention. Is it that it's a perfectly fine goal and, yes, by God, you still mean it? But perhaps you were biting off a little bit more than you could chew for just the first three months? Maybe the insight is that this is gonna take you all year to do, not just the first quarter or two. Maybe the insight is you need to back up and revisit that goal and break it down into much, much smaller, bite-sized pieces. Maybe the insight is huh, okay, no, what was I thinking? I could get that done in three months? All right, what can I actually get done? Quarter one, quarter two, quarter three and quarter four? So by the time I get to the end of the year, I'm there. I don't know what it's gonna be for you, but I want you to sit with this and really study it. What are you learning about yourself.

Wendy: 17:28

Another example it could be that you are learning that I've got some real fear around this particular action step. I find myself putting it off over and over and over again. I need to study that, I need to figure out what that's about and I need to find a way through it. What does that mean? Does it mean I shouldn't do it? Does it mean I need help? Does it mean I need an accountability partner? Does it mean I need coaching? Does it mean there's a problem here? I just really need to dive into and learn it? What does it mean? I don't know, but it means something.

Wendy: 18:01

So look at your patterns, look at the wins and the misses and see what you conclusions or ideas or possibilities you can draw from that, that you can learn from. And then the fourth question or area or concept I want you to sit with is what are your intentions now as a result of this reflection process? So, based on your wins by golly I did that. You know what I'm feeling good about it Based on your misses, ah yeah, but I'm still, you know, not quite there on that one. Tying all that together into your insight. From that I am learning that here's what I need. Here's what I know about myself that I didn't know before. Here's what I understand that I didn't understand before. Here's what I see that I didn't want to see before, or I just couldn't see before, or I wasn't able to see before. And here is where I want to go next. What are your intentions now for the next quarter, for Q2?

Wendy: 19:11

Again, always tying this into your full plan for the year, your biggest, like what you're really, who you want to be this year, my friends, how you're wanting to show up. What can you do in April, what can you do in May and what can you do in June? And I'm just going to tell you whatever you're thinking, make it a little bit smaller. Now, you don't hear me say that very much to you. Usually I'm telling you just to step up in a bigger way, but in this case, our ideas get ahead sometime of our calendars or our energy. I'd rather you have something a little smaller that you can actually do. That is steadily moving you towards the bigger thing. All right, so that's what I want you to do. I want you to review your wins, your misses, I want you to draw some insight and then I want you to set or revisit or refresh your intentions for quarter two, as we are moving into April. Guys, I don't know if you know this, but we are moving into a Mercury retrograde period and in fact, this week I think we are in the shadow aspect of that.

Wendy: 20:19

A lot of people sort of freak out those who follow this kind of thing, and we'll go oh no, oh no, and it is true that the tech stuff can get a little messy. I'm already running into that. But just a little side tip here anything that starts with the word or the syllable re, revisit, renew, refresh, reclaim, right, reflect, all of those, any activities that involves those kinds of things, is fine and actually a really good thing to do during this time. So here, the late March, early April, I invite you to engage in this reflective process I've just laid out for you and tell me where you're going to go next.

Wendy: 21:02

What my one of my clients that I was thinking about as I was starting this episode, who I just did like a. I think we did like a two hour session where we were just really we're doing this at a deeper way with her, one of her big ahas. This is somebody different, something. One of her big ahas was that she really wants to tap into the spiritual side of her practice and bring that to the fore in a much more conscious way. And what that means is very different for her than it might be for somebody else, but it was deep and real and good and every bit as important as all the strategy stuff that we talk about all the time.

Wendy: 21:35

So my call to action for you, my homework for you, my request of you is set some time aside, my friends, sit down with a pen and answer those four questions. And again, if you kind of love this kind of idea and you're like, when do I? I love this and I'm, this is a great place to start and I want to, I want to think about it even more than by all means, go grab my little tool. My little tool is called the, the quarterly success checker. It will walk you through a full process of how to evaluate all of this, and I think you might like that wendipittsreevescom forward slash quarter and you can find that. Well, that's what I got for you today. We're going to keep it short today. I hope you all have a wonderful week. Enjoy this beautiful spring weather. Lord knows I am and I am off to meet Mr Jefferson. Have a great week, everybody, and I will see you next time right here on the ideal practice podcast. Bye now, hey y'all.

Wendy: 22:40

If this program has become important to you, if ideal practice matters, it would mean so much to me If you'd be willing to take just a minute to do one or two of the following things. First of all, would you follow or subscribe to the show here at ideal practice? Following me helps you because you'll never miss an episode, but it helps me as well for all kinds of reasons. To do that, all you have to do is go to the show page for ideal practice on Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts there. Just click on the plus sign that you'll usually find in the top right hand corner, or click on the word follow that you're going to find somewhere there on that page. Of all the things, this really is the most important thing you can do for the podcast itself While you're there.

Wendy: 23:35

It would be extra special if you would be willing to give me a five star rating and, even better than that, a review with your own words. Your words matter, and when you write what you feel, what you think you uplift and encourage others and I love that. If you want to go a step further than that, take your favorite episode or two, one of the ones that has meant a lot to you, and share it with a friend. Could you do one or two of those things for me? I promise I will love you forever. You guys matter to me and I value your support more than I can possibly say. Thank you, sweet friend, for anything you can do to help me out and support the show. I'll see you again soon.