It’s that time of year again! The time when I review my business goals and see how my efforts stacked up to what I set out to achieve at the beginning of the year. I hope this is something you do in your own business too!

Are you ready to hear how things went? Let’s jump right in!

This past year I did something new! I actually published my business goals on one of my Instagram posts so that I could hold my self accountable to them. Up until last year, I’d always set “soft” goals for myself – you know the kind of goals that are more like wishes that you don’t actually write down. If you can believe it, that strategy (or lack thereof) didn’t work so great for me so that’s why I decided to switch things up this year.

My 2019 Business Goals

On January 7 this year here’s what I wrote down…

1. Pinterest Followers: 3500
2. IG Followers: 2500
3. Facebook Followers: 1000
4. Email Subscribers: 2000
5. Blogs: 125
6. Website Pageviews: 54,000

AND, here’s how things really went down this year as of December 18…

1. Pinterest Followers: 2958
2. IG Followers: 570
3. Facebook Followers: 483
4. Email Subscribers: 1809
5. Blogs: 108
6. Website Pageviews: 48,430

So, how did I do? OK – Let’s be real, while I did come close on some of them, I didn’t actually hit ANY of my goals – not a single one…except for the one goal that has the biggest impact on my business and that’s my revenue goal.

Hold onto your hats, because I blew my revenue goal out of the water in October! Say, what!!? Since then, I created a new goal and am working my butt off until the end of the year to make it happen.

So here’s the thing about goals: sometimes you meet your goals and other times you don’t. What’s the difference between those two different scenarios? Well, I can tell you from my experience this year, the reason, I came so close to meeting my Pinterest, Email, Website and Blog goals is because I had a plan in place for those things to grow. For my Facebook  and Instagram followers, I’ll admit I really didn’t have a plan.

I know for a fact the goals that I came close to reaching played a huge role in helping me achieve that revenue goal this year. Now imagine, if I slay each and every goal on my list in 2020, think of where I could be next year!

With this as a simple illustration, I think it’s safe to say that success and growth in your business aren’t going to happen by accident. You can make big lofty awesome and audacious goals all day long but if you don’t follow it up with an action plan, your goals might as well be sweet wishes in the wind.

Something else I like to do this time of year is look back at the content I wrote and review what resonated with my audience the most. This helps inspire me with new ideas of what to write about and also clues me into to what content I might want to go back and optimize or repurpose to make it go farther! So here’s a peek at my most successful blogs of the year:

1. Branding Your Small Business: A Starter Checklist (6,525)
2. How to Create a Moodboard (4,324)
3. Good Logo Design vs Bad Logo Design (3,926)
4. 20 Feminine Color Palette Ideas (1,723)
5. 10 Simple Rules for Writing Captivating Website Copy (1,500)

It’s good to note that my top 4 blogs all talk about some aspect of branding with specific actionable advice or examples as takeaways. I don’t know about you all, but I’m pretty excited about these numbers, especially the first one (I can’t believe how much love people gave this blog!).

This shows some major growth from 2018, plus these pieces of content are the main reason I was able to grow my email list as much as I did by including a freebie downloads on all of these posts. This stuff work, seriously. That’s why I’m off to get started on setting my 2020 goals. How about you?

How did you do this year? Did you meet your business goals or did you fall short? Tell me about it in the comments!

Kristin Pruis

I help female entrepreneurs and business owners create brands that command the spotlight. I love working with women to help them create beautiful, one-of-a-kind brands that give them the confidence to take their business to the next level and get them seriously noticed. I’ve worked with coaches, authors, influencers… you name it, and I bet I can help you too.