The Year-End Wrap-Up
By Janet Barclay.
Although December is the busiest month in the retail industry, as a career professional, you may find that business is slow, as clients are busy with holiday shopping, parties, and preparations. Why not take advantage of this downtime to review your activities and achievements over the past year?
If you have a formal business plan, hopefully you’ve been following it throughout the year, but if it’s just been sitting in a file, take it out and dust it off. Even if you started the year with just a few goals or ideas scribbled on a piece of paper, dig them out, or at least try to remember what they were. Because each business and each individual is unique, there is no single standard of measurement of success, and the only way to assess your accomplishments during the year is to look at where you are now in comparison with where you had aspired to be at this time.
Even if you didn’t make any formal goals for the year, you can ask yourself the following questions.
What have I achieved this year?
Did you reach or surpass your goals? Did you accomplish something you didn’t expect?
What worked well?
Who were your most profitable clients? How did they find you – or how did you find them? This information will help you determine where to focus your marketing efforts.
What didn’t work? What can be improved?
If you fell short of your goals in certain areas, see if you can determine why. Was the goal unrealistic? Were there unforeseen circumstances? What would have had to be different for things to have gone the way you planned?
What do I want to achieve by the end of next year?
What is important to you? More clients? More speaking opportunities? More income? More free time?
If you’re a long-range thinker, this exercise may be easy, but even if you’re not, I strongly encourage you to take a pen and paper and write down your thoughts. According to the Law of Attraction, the simple act of writing down your goals actually sets things in motion. I’ve experienced this myself!
One time when I was doing this exercise, I discovered that many of the things I’d been looking forward to at the beginning of the year had come about, even though I didn’t consciously try to make them happen. How much more could you accomplish if you really set your mind to it?
What do I need to help me reach my goals for next year?
Do you have the skills and resources you need? Would it help you to work with a business coach? Would partnering with a virtual assistant free up time for activities that will bring you closer to achieving your goals?
Now that you can complete the Career Development Practitioner (CDP) program online through CPC, it’s easier than ever to reach your professional development goals!
By taking time to complete this review before the end of the year, you will arm yourself with a plan and the motivation to carry it through, and increase your potential for success in the new year.