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Every year of biz has looked so different for me. They’ve all been a season on their own.

No matter what 2020 looks like for you, this episode is for me to share what I am doing moving forward in 2021, from a personal and business standpoint. If you missed it, check out episode 100. That is where I reviewed my 2020 year.

To make this easy, I am breaking my year into topics, or sections. I definitely encourage you, if you own a business, or have goals in different areas of your life, to separate those things from one another when you are planning.

Now, I have mentioned this before, but my favorite yearly and monthly journal/planner from a birds-eye view is Hillary Rushford’s goals journal. Ink and vault is the runner up to this from my experience.

I don’t use either of these on a daily basis. These would be, like I said, from a yearly, monthly, and weekly planning and reflection point.

Because of the ‘rona and the holidays, I have yet to receive my goals journal from Hillary. But I have at least had a chance to jot down some of my goals and visions for 2021.

Before we dive into those, something entrepreneurship in general has taught me; but 2020 really drove home for me, is the ability to plan and then adapt as needed. Or, completely pivot if needed. I believe I actually have some episodes on that very topic.

So I encourage you as you do your 2021 planning, to plan, and be willing to take action towards those things. But also be fluid, and willing to adapt or pivot when needed.

That is not something that comes easily to me. So perhaps that’s why it’s stuck out to me in 2020 and my planning for the new year.

All right, let’s get started with some of my topics heading into the new year.

From a personal standpoint, my 2021 topics are

• Lifting weights
• Financial
• Time management
• And of course to have our house built.

But truly I keep my expectations so low for that project. And as long as Nathanael and I are on the same page, honestly that’s my biggest concern.

If you don’t know, when we stopped our world travels in April 2020, we pushed forward with our post travel plan to purchase land and build a house. We succeeded in purchasing the land, we’ve learned a ton, and though we have our house plans complete, we still are waiting on so many things. Once we submit for building permits and apply for our all in one construction loan, we’re looking at probably three months before we can even break ground.

So honestly the goal around building our home is to just remain on the same page as my husband, and keep the rest of my life together in the meantime.

With traveling the world since May 2018, I have severely missed lifting weights consistently on so many levels.

I miss the way it feels to be strong, I miss almost that relationship with my body. When I don’t lift weights it feels like I don’t communicate with my body. And of course there are tons of other ways to get in tune with your body. It’s just that lifting weights is my preferred method of doing so.

I also miss the way that I feel and look in my body from a physical standpoint. I’m very neutral toward my body, but there’s more in my control and then I have taken credit for in the last 2 1/2 years.

So, Nate and I have invested in a squat rack with a pull up bar, two barbells, up to 250 pounds in bumper plates, a bench, and some bands so that my weightlifting is no longer limited by access to gyms, or gyms being open.

Knowing that we aren’t going to travel long-term, I am in the process of coming up with some body composition and performance goals. I have not completed those yet. But I will definitely be testing my body fat, and taking photos as well as testing my strength and range of motion before starting my program.

For me, lifting weights is kind of the first domino in many other areas of my life and health. So typically I don’t need to make goals around my nutrition or sleep, or water intake. Because those tend to fall into place for me if I am consistently lifting.

Next up is finances.

Really the next to our personal and professional mixed together.

So on the business side I have an annual revenue goal.

And on the business and personal, I’ve set my business up. Rather, I have hired an accountant to set Annie Miller Concepts up as an S Corp. So from the business side I am paying myself personally a monthly salary.

Truly the rest of Nathanael and my financial goals are looped into the house, and making decisions based around that.

Those involve different retirement plans, and investing. But again that is all very much so tied into what is needed for the house in the long term picture.

The last one here is time management.

I put this as personal and business because they are wildly intertwined.

Small tangent- I didn’t work for myself full-time until Nate and I started traveling the world in May 2018. So although we were home for six months in 2019, 2020 has been my first true long-term experience working for myself while home, and stationary.

I won’t even lie, I always thought I had a great time management. But truly, I’ve just always been super busy, and had a schedule imposed upon me. And I function quite well in that fashion.

So some thing that became very clear to me in December 2020, is that I need a pretty strict schedule to follow if I’m going to be home 24/7.

And that’s on me. No one is going to do that for me. So if I don’t change it, I can’t expect anything to change. Right?

Thus, one of my personal and business goals in 2021 is to create a schedule for work and working out, and coloring or doing something creative that is not linked to my work.

That is a very important distinction to make. Because often times I will stop “working” but then end up using that time to play around in Canva or design apparel, or work on my website, or do non-essential tasks that end up still feeling like work.

So within my schedule in 2021, I will have a time block to do whatever I want but it can’t be work. It needs to be playful, ideally.

Those are my main personal goals that I am comfortable sharing with all of you. You could have all sorts of personal goals. That’s one of my favorite things about Hillary‘s journal. Is that you look at how you are doing from a play standpoint, spiritual, joy, and emotional standpoint. Which I personally think is super important to be aware of as any human, but especially as an entrepreneur.

Moving onto business specific planning

And, note that for any of my entrepreneurs out there – I separate personal and business but they do need to be cohesive and work together. Your personal and business goals should ideally be on the same team.

As we enter into 2021 my main business goals outside of finance and time management are:

• Social media
• Projects
• Sales strategy

Social media

I am branching out on social media. For a long time I have been a fan of, and even preacher of, being on one main platform and going all in. This is because the goal is to build a loyal, engaged, and ready to purchase audience.

Because I am five years into business, it’s time that I start repurposing old content and making a single piece of content go further.

Meaning I create a reel for Instagram, I post that to Pinterest as a video, which links back to a longer form blog post on said topic.

And then all of that goes in my weekly email along with podcast episodes or any other need to know information.

Some people do this from the get-go. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. I think it’s more about your bandwidth and what is sustainable, and what you can do consistently. Just like health and fitness.

So I will be investing in (both time and money) Pinterest management. At this time I’m almost to 200,000 monthly viewers, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. There is a lot of potential there for me, and I enjoy that it works like a search engine.

Unlike Instagram, things can have a much longer lifespan on Pinterest. And each pin leads directly back to my website which is ultimately where I want people going anyway.

That brings me to my mailing list. Though email is not social media, what I’m doing with my email list was inspired by spending less time on social media.

In January, I will start a daily email newsletter. This is Annie’s Daily Dose. And it’s truly not an email. It’s more like a short message from me. My plan is to send action inspiring questions, thoughts, so on and so forth on a daily basis for an entire year. And that will cover topics of fitness, life, business and beyond.

Truly, when I send an email, it often reaches more people than when I post on Instagram. So I figure if I’m on Instagram every day, I might as well be serving the people who have a literally decided to get more information from me, on a daily basis if that’s possible. And that will be done through email. I wanted to do this since 2018, and now finally have the bandwidth and push to do so.

That about wraps it up for social media. Hone in on my expertise, stay in my lane, and be a content producing machine without spending copious amounts of time on the actual platforms. And, like I said make sure that my content is going as far as I can.

My next two are much shorter.

Projects & Sales Strategy

As for projects in 2021, there’s a lot up in the air.

I would love to finally create a certain course that I have wanted to make for almost 3 years now. And my ability to create said course greatly depends on how my new sales strategy for FitsPRO Foundations goes.

Which is why sales strategy is my last section for goals and visions in 2021.

I am getting away from live launches with FitsPRO Foundations. It is now an Evergreen course. And I will use a sales funnel in order to fill the course.

While that sounds great, it’s new to me. And it will take tracking, and there are just a lot of unknowns. It is not predictable for me. I am very very good at live launches, and they are both safe and predictable for me.

If the new strategy in 2021 goes well, then we look at using a similar strategy for some of my other programs.

This is why it’s largely up in the air. I will plan out the timing of my live launch is using email marketing. But also leave space for some unplanned projects if we decide to switch up my overall sales strategy.

So, maybe I create my course that is burning inside me. Or maybe my projects and sales strategy takes a whole new route in that fills my time.

There is no need to create new offers for my business. My offer suite is complete.

I hope that makes sense. So the focus is now optimizing those offers, sales, and systems.

Essentially, 2021 could go in a lot of directions from a projects and strategy standpoint for Annie Miller Concepts.

But you already know I am super duper stoked to have you all along for the ride.

2021 looks so much different than 2019 or 2020. And I suppose, in a sense, I love that.

Review of the week comes from 12:;;48876 and says,

“Annie delivers time and time again, whether she’s under a blanket or across the globe Annie always gives you the honest no holds barred truth that the fitness industry so desperately needs. Thank you Annie!! Keep cranking out the words of wisdom sprinkled with some sass!!”

Remember you need to check the show notes (here) to see if you were review-er of the week, and then keep an eye out to see if you were listener of the month as well. That will be in the show notes and Annie’s Weekly Wrap. You can subscribe to Annie’s Weekly Wrap here!

If you find value here, on The FitsPRO Podcast, then pretty please head over to iTunes, subscribe, rate and review the show. It means the world to me when you spread my message to more humans.

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