January 8, 2019
It’s that time again, goal planning for a new year! We’ve shared our 2017 and our 2018 goals, so keeping with tradition we wanted to share with you our 2019 goals!
Before we dive into 2019, let’s review over 2018! For 2018, we choose the word “CULTIVATE” and it truly was a year of cultivating. You can read more about our business and personal recaps on the blog – they’re very long but oh so good! 2018 taught us a lot about ourselves, our limits, our dreams, and truly made us reflect on what is important.
Our 2018 goals consisted of:
- Blog & Newsletter: Educational Resources – we’re really proud of how much progress we’ve made with the blog! We’ve been, for the most part, consistent and producing in-depth content for business owners and brides! Our newsletter, on the other hand, has made slow progress, It’s an area of our business that we’re still unsure if it’s the right way for us to go!
- Weddings & Mini Sessions – Our 2018 wedding season was AMAZING. Clearly and utterly amazing! If you haven’t seen any of our weddings or session, check them out! On the other hand, mini-sessions were a bust. We might give them another try, but they didn’t do so well.
- Education for us (M&S) – we really dove into this head first and we’re thankful for the progress/education we did invest in! While we had to cancel a few memberships at the end of the year, the investment was still worth it. Education is always key for an entrepreneur.
- Podcast/Vlogging/Speaking – these things took a WAYYYY back seat to everything else. This goal was a big “what if” in the long run and nothing came from it because we didn’t really have the time to work on it. However, really thinking about these three things, we’ve found out what we really did or did not want to do.
- Networking – we’re proud of ourselves because, for the most part, we were successful in this goal. When wedding season hit 1000 mile-per-hour, that is when we slipped. However, there is grace in that. However, if you do or don’t include this, but we continued to see our Mastermind group and that has been so amazing.
- The bucket list of our travels: USA: Charleston, Chicago, Vermont, Big Sir California, Seattle Washington. Countries: Ireland/England/Scotland, Greece, and oh please back to Italy again! – whoa. 2018 was the year of travel to amazing new places and it was grand! While we didn’t hit all of those bucket lists places, we still hit a few and those trips were incredible! You can check the West Coast Trip or the Canada trip there!
So, what about our 2019? After sharing the good and challenging parts of 2018, where does this leave us for 2019? Well, as you can see, we went big for 2018. Our goals were heavy and thick, with lots of small progress points involved. We made a LOT of great progress, but we were (at times) overwhelmed. However, those times of being overwhelmed, it cultivated us. It helped us see a lot of things for 2019 we want to change…to refine.
For 2019, our word we’ve have chosen the word,
/rəˈfīn/ verb / definition: to become pure, to become more fine, elegant, or polished, to make fine distinctions in thought or language / related words: clarify, hone, cultivate, improve, process, sleek, temper, distill and filter.
We choose this because we truly wanted to refine the goals and dreams that we had cultivated the year prior. Our goals that follow from month to month will sit in one of three categories –
1. Life-Giving Home
2. Education
3. Wedding Photography & Business
Under each category, there are several sections and items that we want to refine (and cultivate)! That break down will follow as:
ONE: LIFE-GIVING HOME
When creating our 2019 goals, we knew we wanted to create a section for personal items only. A place to really reflect and create personal goals that gave us encouragement and was practical (no one likes an unpractical goal, right?). We knew our goals needed to be realistic and reachable, but also still a stretch from our current state. It’s a fine balance between striving but realistic! So we broke down this category into five different sections:
Spiritual
Truly making it a goal to focus on growing in Biblical knowledge, follow a new yearly reading plan (New Testament only for 2019), and (for Sara) continue writing in a prayer journal.
Finances
Be mindful of our personal finances and set a savings goal!
Health
Cook more at home with setting a realistic number on creating at home-meals, create a work-out goal/plan, and drink at least 60 ounces of water.
Marriage
Continue to make this a priority in our every day, communicate as clearly as you can, and focus on praying for the spouse.
Organized Home
Create a cleaning calendar in January to purge a “room” a month. Create a home that is life-giving to us and to others.
TWO: EDUCATION
This one is very simple, but the hardest for us to set. We have a lot of education, but not all of it we have finished. However, being good business women doesn’t mean we waste the money we spent on this education SO it’s time to take action! For our second 2019 goal, let’s tackle education. In all honest, this is prime engagement season and so it’s important for us to make sure everything in our market is spot on. For the month of Jan-March, we’re working through a Marketing course to cross our t’s.
During April-June, we will work through a wedding workflow course to refine our process for our amazing 2019-2020 clients!
Then we will tackle our educational PDF’s we have received and purge ones that aren’t relevant or needed.
As we said, this is really hard to set “solid” goals, but we’re trying!
THREE: WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY & BUSINESS
As a business that offers wedding photography services, this is our main priority to work on. However, the other two goals truly intertwine inside of giving us the heart and refinement our business needs. In this category, we’ve broken it down into separate sections again, like goal #1!
Marketing
Finishing up that marketing course to refine our current marketing is key! It goes back to #2, education, but that’s the good thing about goal setting! You see the dots that need to connect to make you a better whatever your title is!
Website
We’re giving the good old M&S website a little update with new photographs for galleries, updated pricing, fixing any small web issues we’ve noticed! It’s our top priority for the month of January!
Networking
Last year we made it a goal to do one networking event once a month, not including our Mastermind group, and we aim to do that again!!
Blogging
We really love blogging and we aim to continue blogging for once a week for (hopefully) fifty-two weeks!! We do want to revisit old posts to see what we can dig up, give a little lift to, and share again! Old/reshared content is great!
Podcast
As 2018 has ended and 2019 has begun, podcasting is still being pressed on our hearts and it’s something we are genuinely interested in doing! We’re currently in the research stage and will maybe make progress on this by the end of 2019!!
Wedding Workflow
Refine our workflow, give our clients truly what they need/what we want to provide, and get rid of anything that doesn’t really add!
As we begin 2019, we want to refine and bring refinement to our business and our lives, but we want to remember to give ourselves grace as well. Growing from day to day, month to month, and year to year is different. Season will come and go and we, as people, will focus or change. In those growing spaces or season, we want to give ourselves grace.
2019, we’re ready for you!
Are you a bride-to-be and looking for a wedding photographer to capture your day the way you’ve always wanted?? Let’s talk!! Send us an email today!!
+ COMMENTS
add a comment