Podcast episode (#189) by Kate McKibbin (Dec 26, 2023) presenting a simple five-step end-of-year ritual to help listeners reflect, celebrate wins, surface lessons, identify improvements and set three meaningful goals for the coming year. The episode is conversational and practical, encouraging listeners to do the exercise away from their desks, record wins (big and small), list lessons learned, note improvements achieved, name areas to improve, then pick three motivating goals to carry into the new year. It finishes with a CTA to share results on social and holiday well-wishes.
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Hello, guys, and welcome back to the Doing it online podcast. I'm your host, Kate McCubin from HelloFunnels today. We are here to help you wrap up the year. Yes, there's only a few days left in the year, which is bananas. And I know for a lot of people this has been a year of a lot of ups and downs. And I think regardless of whether you've had the best year ever, a sort of a somewhere in the middle or just a completely catastrophic year, I think it is really important to spend a little bit of time sitting down and just tying things up with a bow for the year. So over the years, I've experimented with a few different ways of doing this and I've now got a really simple little ritual that I like to do at the end of the year that, you know, just helps as I just helps put a little bow on the year. So basically, it's like shutting the door going, this year is done. This is great. And now I'm ready to bring it for the next year. And, you know, of course, hopefully there's a little bit of downtime, a couple of cocktails, maybe a holiday in between to get you rejuvenated and revived and then you can dive into the new year, start planning out the new year with that fresh energy. So that's another little caveat is that I normally, I know some people have already done their planning for next year and that's great. And I kind of do rough planning for next year, but I like to do my planning for the new year actually in the new year with that new year energy, like after some rest, after some distance. Because normally I find when I do jump in back in, in January and we get back into the office that I look at everything, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. Everything's completely changed. We'll have some planning episodes coming up in Jan for you, for those of you who do love to do their planning with that new year energy as well. So let's dive into today's topic. As I said, today is about the rituals for tying up your year. It's something I recommend that you get into a different space. I would recommend going sitting in a park, sitting in a cafe, pouring yourself a glass of wine, you know, going sitting in your favourite part of the house, whatever it is, get away from your desk, get out of your office, and then go through each of these things and just let it flow. There's no particular format that it has to be there's. No number that you have to do for each one. It's just let it all out and you're gonna feel so much better and so ready for the next year once you've done this. So let's start with what these prompts are. As I said, there's just five of them, so go grab a pen so you can write them down. So the very first thing that I want you to do, always kick off with positive vibes, is to think about all your wins. And I want you to think about literally every single little win. Even it could be like, oh, someone that you follow followed you back on Instagram. Amazing. Or you wrote this email that you were just really freaking proud of. Just all of them. Big ones, too, obviously. You know, maybe you launched a new program, maybe you got some great testimonials, maybe some of your clients are really kicking ass. Just all of the wins. Once you think you're done, take a breath, take a sip of your wine, see what else comes. Just really like, this is just like a love fest of all the stuff that went well. Because even if you had a crappy year, so some stuff did go well. So let's not let that get forgotten. Next we're going to look at lessons. So what were the things that you learned this year? And actually, the more values you had, probably the more lessons that you learned. And again, these can be big and can be small. It could be like, hey, I figured out how to do this thing in ChatGPT this year. Amazing. That's a lesson. Or it could be like, I figured out how to have a tough conversation with a team member if I need to. I figured out, you know, what my boundaries need to need to be with my clients. I figured out how to write a subject line that actually gets opened. Lessons can be big. They can be small, they can be sort of theoretical, you know, bigger picture, or they can be really, really, like, practical, doable things. These are all lessons. These are all new skills, new things that have, like, upgraded you and therefore are going to upgrade your business going forward. So the next one is improvements. So I want you to think about, like all the things you are now better at or that you improved in your business or up leveled in your business. So maybe you did a site redesign. Amazing. Maybe you added a system to make it so much faster for you to do your content. Amazing. You went and did an online course and you learned a new skill or a new strategy. So I mean, lessons and improvements. There might be a little double up here, but. But that's fine. Again, don't stress. You want to put things on two lists, Go for it. I said no censorship. There's no wrong way of doing this. Next. Now you've done all that you should be feeling pretty, hopefully you should be feeling pretty good. Is to now I want you to think about what were some areas that you want to improve. So you come to the end of the year and you're like, you know what, I'm just not amazing at this. I would really like to fix this or, you know, this thing in my business or this system that we have, it's just not working. And I would like to improve that. Or maybe it's like, I would really like to get some team or support this year. So think about something. The things you're wanting to improve in the next 12 months or so, write those all down. And then the final thing is now you kind of looked at all of this for this piece. I want you to think of this as this question, as like, it's your first draft. This is almost like the basis of the things that you can then take forward into whatever type of new year planning you do. But the final thing is I want you to think of three goals for the new year. And they don't all have to be business goals, but big goals, goals you're excited about. Goals that if you sit back the same time next year and you reread over these things, which I recommend that you do, that you would be so stoked to have achieved. So, I mean, with goals, everyone likes to do them differently. I like goals that feel exciting but doable. You know, maybe if it's your first year in business, of course you'd be like, oh, I want to make $3 million. It could be possible. It definitely is with some people's businesses. But you know, it's got to feel like something that you believe can happen, but something that is, you know, a bit so much of a stretch that it's exciting. But again, no censorship here. And you can refine those goals, particularly the business based ones. If they're sort of like anything about like numbers or sales or whatever, you can refine them through your planning process going forward, but just sit them down, go. Just three things, Three things that if you achieve them next year, could be bringing on amazing team member. It could be, you know, launching a new program, it could be having a launch over a certain number, it could be getting a certain number of new clients. Like, there's so many things that you could set goals around. But what are three that are really, really meaningful to you. Write those down, take a deep breath, have a read over it or even leave it for 24 hours and then read over it and then just feel like, yep, okay, I'm done. Like it sort of almost has to be like this little decision inside and then you can shut the laptop, close the notebook, you know, put your out of office on, it's holiday time, go away, don't think about any of this stuff until the end of the holidays and then come back excited for the new year. So if you are going to do this guys, snap a selfie or whatever and tag us and let us know you're doing your end of year ritual. We'd love, love, love to see it. And yeah, forward to sharing more doable marketing goodness with you in the new year. So have an amazing holiday season everybody. Whatever you celebrate, I hope you get to spend time with your family. I hope you get some time off. Or for those of you hustling through the holidays, I hope you are hella productive and get a lot of stuff done. But either way, have an amazing end of year guys and I'll see you in 2024. Bye.
