Goal Planning and Strategizing for the New Year

Start 2025 on a High Note

With December almost over, it’s time to take a serious look at 2025 goals and planning. If you’ve been busy trying to survive a hectic Q4 and haven’t given the new year much thought, don’t panic. You’re not alone. While it’s never too late to hone in on your strategy, January is a great time to start the year with a clean slate, new goals, and a refreshed purpose in your brand’s mission. 

So how should you get started? We’ll go over the importance of a 2024 audit to reflect on your progress, various goal-setting strategies that can help you optimize your processes, and things you can do today to start 2025 on a high note and set the tone for a great year ahead. Let’s dive in. 

Looking back to look forward

With any great strategy, you can’t expect to succeed without first understanding your starting point and putting your ambitious goals within context. That’s why the first thing you should do, before sitting down to strategize for 2025, is to set aside time to audit your 2024 strategy and goals, especially taking a deep dive into both the highest and lowest points of your year as you try to better understand the position of your business. 

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to conducting an audit, it can be helpful to write down notes on each of your 2024 goals and recognize where you excelled and where you can improve. Taking the time to audit the wins and losses of the last year can help you shift your priorities and focus on what will help your business move forward and ultimately keep growing. Maybe something you thought would take off didn’t, and that’s okay! Failure is just one step closer to progress. 

Goal-setting strategies for a successful 2025

After you’ve completed your 2024 audit and have a clear idea of what to focus on for 2025, it’s time to set some goals. Goal setting comes in many forms, but here are three tried and true strategies for goal-setting that help you ensure your goals are specific, measurable, and achievable. 

• SMART: SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. It’s a great framework to apply to any goal because it does three important things: it helps keep your goals manageable, organized, and detailed. The more specific you can get on your goal the better. Ditch words like “grow” or “improve” and replace them with real numbers you can hold yourself accountable to. 

• OKRs: Objectives and key results help you break down goals into more approachable chunks by first stating an overall goal followed by how exactly you’ll track progress and success. OKRs are great because they set a big picture followed by steps on how to get there. 

• WOOP: WOOP stands for wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan. WOOP can be helpful in planning for unforeseen setbacks and setting you up with a plan on how to navigate those obstacles without getting off track. 

Different strategies work for different people, and depending on your work style and personal preferences, one might give you better results. Whether you try a little bit of all of them or focus on just one style, the important thing is that you are getting specific, thoughtful, and intentional with your goals to set yourself up for success in the new year. 

Start your goal process today 

Setting yearly goals doesn’t have to be an arduous process to slog through – with the right mindset it can be a fun way to envision success and find creative ways to work through future obstacles. If you’ve been procrastinating on your 2025 strategy brainstorm, try working slowly and in parts rather than dedicating an entire day or week to goal setting and overwhelming yourself.

Start with three things it would be a dream to accomplish for your brand in the next year, whether an influencer deal, more followers, an engaged community, or a collab with an industry leader. Once you have a bigger picture of where to start, get more specific on exactly how you’re going to get there and hold yourself accountable to use numbers, specific measurements, and as many details as possible. A good way to check if you’re setting goals that are specific enough is to see if asking yourself, “Did I accomplish this goal?” gives you a straight “yes” or “no” answer. If it’s up for debate, time to set some new goals. 

Conclusion

2025 is just around the corner and if you haven’t started setting those new year goals, it’s still not too late to get started! Before you set aside time to create your winning 2025 strategy, make sure to audit last year’s goals, noting any particular wins or losses, choose a goal-setting framework that works for you, and dream big while also holding yourself accountable and staying specific. Let’s crush this new year together!