An Entrepreneur’s Cheat Sheet To A Better Year Than 2018
How did you fare in 2018?
Did you accomplish all the goals you set out for yourself or are you less than enthused by the results of this year?
How about 2019 — what are your resolutions and goals for the new year?
Whether you’re a strict goal setter or someone who takes things as it comes, it’s pretty intimidating to set New Year’s goals for yourself if you haven’t been able to articulate exactly what’s next for you.
If you’re not sure as to what’s on deck for your business in 2019, I’ve got you covered. This cheat sheet below details 3 things you can do in the new year to stimulate growth for your business, regardless of where you are right now —
Do 1 Scary Thing Every Quarter
What big step have you been avoiding that you know will improve the trajectory of your business? Or will at least be a worthy experiment?
This scary thing is usually tied to an event or task that you have a high probability of failing at or is a large financial investment where you’re shaky on the ROI. Whether you’re able to map out these scary things for every quarter of 2019, or able to start with just one for Q1, write that scary thing down and do it starting on January 1st.
Our level ups and next chapters are usually on the other side of our scary things list. As Jim Kwik eloquently phrases it: “The treasure you’re looking for is hidden in the work you’re avoiding.”
Commit To Shattering Your Mental Ceilings
We all have narratives of self-doubt and imposter syndrome in our heads that make different feats in our business incredibly challenging to overcome. We truly believe that we can’t do something, or that a particular milestone is not within our reach — not because someone told us that this is the truth, but because we believe it’s our truth.
We create these self-imposed mental ceilings for ourselves from what we’ve learned is and isn’t possible for us when we were kids, what society tells us is not achievable for someone like us, and on and on. Unraveling and getting over our mental ceilings is challenging to say the least, and if it were easy to do, there would be more than one Richard Branson and Oprah on this planet right now.
Getting out of your head requires a continuous commitment to being vulnerable, and putting yourself in front of situations and people that help you reveal and overthrow all of your insecurities. Once you do this though, your potential for advancement is limitless.
Whatever helps you best shatter your vulnerabilities and call you out on your crap — whether this is through planning a schedule of retreats and workshops with other entrepreneurs every quarter, hiring a coach, or joining a mastermind. Pick experiences and/or people that will help you confront your mental ceilings and commit to it for the whole year.
Reduce A Time-Sucking Activity By 25% And Reinvest It
In the US, people spend an average of 4 hours a day on their smartphones every day; almost half of this time is spent on social media platforms. 4 hours a day accrues to 60 days a year that we lose to our smartphones. If half of our 4 hour usage time is spent on social media, that means that we lose 30 days a year to social media platforms.
According to these numbers, if you spend 2019 reducing your time on social media platforms on your phone by 25%, you’ll gain back over 1 week of your life. With 1 week of your life back, reinvest it in the 1 thing that you want to do in 2019 to improve your business or personal life.
Commit to this 1 thing faithfully and don’t waver (fighting smartphone addiction is hard, I know) — if you want to read more books in the new year, carry around your book with your wherever you go so that if you have an impulse to check Instagram, you train yourself instead to open up your book and read.
(If you’re not addicted to your smartphone like the most of us, investigate a vice in your life that eats up a considerable amount of your time, and work on reducing it by 25%.)
If you integrate all of these and commit to them for the whole year, you’ll reap the benefits continuously for years to come. The 25% you reduced your smartphone usage by can easily turn into 50% and overcoming the things that scared you a year ago will give you the space to go after even bigger goals next year. All of these components have the ability to snowball into larger, positive changes that can permanently change your life for the better.
I hope you have an amazing start to 2019! Need more inspiration for the new year? Grab my Pitch Deck Checklist or my ‘Find Your Customers’ worksheet to kick off 2019 on a strong foot.
