359 - My 5 Step Annual Goal Setting Framework

Now , if you're like me , you tend to get into this mode the last couple of weeks of December or the first couple of weeks of the new year . Some people plan a lot sooner than that . I like to kind of start the new year in planning mode and vision mode .

So what I'm going to do with you in this episode here is I'm actually going to share with you an entire lesson from my business course . If you didn't know , I have a web design business course . It's my flagship course . It's a big one .

It covers everything from start to finish , client experience , from onboarding to project management proposals , invoicing , contracts , and we start with you , as in goal setting and planning and building up your business . So this lesson covers my five-step framework for planning and goal setting based off and building up your business .

So this lesson covers my five-step framework for planning and goal setting based off of your goals , which could be revenue , but it could also be time . It could be what you want your schedule to look like this year , in 2025 and beyond , so I'm really excited to see how this helps you .

I would love to hear from you on how this helps you plan and set goals for this year to help you have a successful 2025 and whatever that looks like for you . The show notes for this episode are going to be over at joshhallco slash 359 .

And if you like this lesson , you're going to love the entire business course which is now inside of my community web designer pro . So , if you have not heard of this , we have just recently introduced tiers to web designer pro . So , if you have not heard of this , we have just recently introduced tiers to Web Designer Pro .

So if you just want the business course and my entire suite of courses , you can now get that in the courses tier of Web Designer Pro , which is currently , at the time of this video , subject to change . It's only 49 bucks a month .

You can join the community tier , which has all the courses and all the community aspects , and you'll find me in the forums and can tag me and interact with me in the community . Or , if you would like , coaching directly with me and get the full pro experience . We have the coaching tier at $199 right now .

Now one thing you get is if you join the community tier or above . We also have our pro training library and we did a presentation a guest expert training that really ties into this episode before we dive in presentation a guest expert training that really ties into this episode .

Before we dive in , chris Badgett , who is the CEO of Lifter LMS awesome colleague of mine , who I really have learned to view as almost a business coach . He did a training on an annual planning system and I have to admit I ripped off a lot of what he taught in this for this lesson and for this episode .

So just another aspect of pro when you dive in that's going to be a great value add for you is Chris Badgett's annual planning system via a great additional step off of this lesson here that we're going to dive into for goal setting and planning for your web design business to make 2025 freaking awesome . Happy new year , friends .

I hope you had a great Christmas . Happy holidays everybody , and I'm real excited to I don't know about you , but I'm excited to start to turn the calendar year and start 2025 . So let's start it off strong , shall we ? Here we go .

My simple goal setting framework is this it's really a five-step framework that starts with having a revenue goal and again , depending if you're just starting out or if you're refining your business and reevaluating your plans and goals , either way , it's a good idea to have some sort of revenue goal .

Now , what's interesting and I'm sure when you think about goals , just like me , you think , all right , I got to have a money goal . But the reality is , even if you're not in it for the money , necessarily you adjust your time and your freedom and your lifestyle about what your business is bringing in .

Unless you're fortunate to have other income streams , or even if your business is a side hustle or you're a very lucky person who's on a trust fund situation like you're going to have to align your life around your revenue goals and what you're taking in .

So that's why it's so important to have some sort of goal that , again , is reasonable and attainable but also gets you outside your comfort zone . So for those of you who are thinking I'd like to hit 25,000 , I would encourage you let's bump that up to 35 or 40,000 or , more than likely , 50 .

And if you're thinking 75,000 , then I'm thinking well , we might as well go for six figures . If you can make 75 , you can 100% make six figures with just a few tweaks . And same thing if you're thinking 100,000 , then let's go 150 .

So with that in mind , revenue goals , let's say , to make this simple , because I'm not a math guy , I'm even nervous about getting into some math here with you , but I've got slides , thank goodness , 100k . Now the cool thing about an annual goal like this is it's very easy to break it down with the months and quarters .

So if we divide an annual goal by a quarterly goal , that's going to take us to 25,000 . So our goal is to hit 25,000 every three months and a quarter and if we break that down to a monthly goal , then that's going to take us to 8,333 .

Now the really important and cool thing about this is that suddenly six figures looks a little bit more attainable here , doesn't it Like ? Okay , if you're thinking $100,000 , you might be thinking , whew , gosh , that's a lot of work , that's a lot of projects .

But if we're looking at what could we practically get to at around $8,000 , suddenly that makes a little more sense . Because if I did , then we'll get into pricing here . But if goal pricing .

If I had a project that's on average $4,000 , then it's only going to take me a couple of those a month to potentially hit that goal and then , if I have additional services , we could totally hit this . And if we get on average $8,000 , then we are on track to hit six figures , my friends .

So , and this is why it's really important to break down goals , I've found , into quarterly and monthly chunks , because it's just like weight loss If you want to lose a hundred pounds , you don't go outside and start walking or running to lose a hundred pounds . You start small , one step at a time , pun intended .

So that's why it's really important to have a goal . Like you wanna have your annual goal , but you could even hide this if you need to , like set an annual goal , put a file on your computer or in a spreadsheet or whatever it is , or have it in the back of your mind and then break it down into more attainable goals .

I actually really like focusing more on quarterly goals personally and then having and I'll explain , like , how to measure goals in this lesson here but you really want to have your focus on monthly and quarterly rather than annual . You want to have the light at the end of the tunnel , but you really want to focus on quarterly and monthly .

That's my personal preference , when it comes to tracking goals at least . So , for example , let's say when it comes to hitting $8,000 a month on average . Let's say we have a primary service that's $5,000 . For this case it's probably going to be website services . You're going to have web design . No matter what your business model is , we'll look at that .

Ideally , you're going to have one main service . In this case of the goal of $1,000 or , excuse me , $100,000 . Yeah , $1,000 a year , we can definitely hit that really easy . Our primary service is likely going to be around the $5,000 range . So if you have a primary service of websites that are 2,500 , two of those will bring us to $5,000 .

Now , ideally you'll probably have some sort of secondary and we'll get into some actual concepts of these here . Next , and this is just my personal framework , to hit this goal , I would recommend having a secondary service that's maybe about half of what your primary service is going to be .

So in this case , let's pretend that our goal is to hit $5,000 a month with the main service , $2,000 with a secondary service , and then you're guessing it . There's a little more space under here , which probably means that a third one's coming , which is a third service .

Or in a lot of cases , what I found that worked for my business is to have a recurring service like hosting and maintenance , which would ideally get to around the fifteen hundred dollar a month range .

And as your business grows , as you double this and triple this , that's when you can really get to six figures and multi-six figures sustainably when you have a recurring service that gets further up .

Now , with all these services , what we're going to get into in the business course here as we move forward is what I recommend , which are three categories , which are build , grow and support . Now , we're going to dive into this in the next module when we get into your services and pricing .

But just a heads up , this is kind of a teaser into what we're going to get into , because build grow support is what I have in mind when it comes to these slides right here . So the first one web design services . We're hoping for aiming for 5,000 a month . This is going to be in your build category .

These are going to be website designs from the ground up and website redesigns . Then we're going to get into your second category , which I like to consider like a growth type category .

So this might be SEO , it might be marketing , it might be copywriting , it might be video , it might be whatever you're doing alongside your website builds and ideally , in this case we're going to try to hit 2000, . Which means our last service , which are recurring services , are going to be some sort of support , care plans , hosting , all that included .

Ideally we would get to about $1,500 a month and with the goal of $100,000 total , this current setup as our goal would bring us to 8,500 per month . Now , how cool is that ? We took the idea of 100,000 , six figures , which looks a little daunting , right , but we broke it down into these three categories of services and this looks much more attainable .

If you could do one website for $5,000 , if you could do two sort of like growth plans for clients at 1,000 each per month , and if you got your care plans and hosting let's say you have 15 clients paying you 100 bucks a month then you could I don't want to say easily , but you can very practically get to right here 800 or , excuse me , $8,500 per month ,

and that's going to bring you to six figures . That's exactly what we're wanting to get when it came to our goal . So we just looked at where that leads us 8,500 . What was our goal ? Just over 8,000 , to hit our quarterly goal of 25 and our annual goal of 100,000 . So that's a few tips for setting annual revenue goals .

Of course , your numbers can fluctuate depending on what your goal is . Now the second tip I have for you is to make sure , really quickly , that we separate net versus gross . So we talked about $100,000 , but I think if you're brand new to business heads up , you're not going to take home $100,000 when you make $100,000 as a business owner .

This is a big mindset shift , I see for people coming from the corporate world into freelance and web design and I realized this too early on is I had to remember well , if I charge $3,000 for a website , I'm not making $3,000 . And I know your family and friends are going to be like dang , you're making three grand on websites .

No , no , I'm pulling in three grand for the business , but I'm not taking home three grand . There's a difference between net versus gross and if you don't know , or if you need a quick reminder , net is what you take home in your business Gross . I intentionally added this icon because , ew , that's what gets taxed and that's what expenses come out of .

So again , net what you keep , what you take home , gross ew . It's called that for a reason it's because you're going to get taxed on it and all your expenses come out of that . Now there's one other area of this that I want to hit on before we move on to the next point , and that is profit .

Now , profit's interesting because profit is the money that's left over after taxes , after expenses . Or if you read Profit First by Mike Michalowicz , when I had him on my podcast , we talked about this you can also move profit as the first thing you worry about , and then taxes and expenses . As long as you pay your taxes .

Like you can't tell the IRS to not tax me , I don't have enough profit . No , that's not the way it works . But you can use profit for two different purposes that I've found , and the reason I wanna share this with you is because it may just depend on where you are in life and in business with what you do with the profit .

So I tend to take a lot more profit currently for me and my family . That's because I'm a little more established and I know whether I have good months or bad months . I know I'm going to make plenty of that be our expenses and I'm going to have that left over . But there are seasons where I invest more profit into the business .

So profit can either go more over towards net , towards your personal income , or it can go more over to the gross expenses , like building your business . It can go into ads , it could go into hiring , it could go into systems , tools , anything for business growth , and of course you can take a little of both .

So ideally you would have some sort of what you need to take home . And then , apart from that , let's say you need to take $50,000 home . In a year you make $100,000 . Let's say 30% of that goes to taxes , 10% goes to expenses .

You got another 10% that you can either use to grow your business further or you can take it home and go on a really nice vacation that year . That you can either use to grow your business further or you can take it home and go on a really nice vacation that year .

That's an example of net versus gross what you take home , what gets taxed and expensed on , and that profit baby , whatever you want to do with it , and ideally you want to make more and more profit . Now , I'm keeping it very simple with the numbers , but that's essentially the framework that I've used . That's really helped me out with net versus gross income .

Now there's something when it comes to planning and goal setting that I want to touch on Again . We're just scratching the surface on this , but it's the idea of rocks , stones and boulders .

Because when it comes to goals , I'm sure you're like me and thinking business program , which are like specific , measurable , attainable , realistic , timely type goals and that's all great projects for building our business that are going to be really big projects , ie boulders , kind of mid-range projects , ie stones , or just little things that we could kind of put in

there , depending on what season of life we're in and how many projects we have . So let's take this into a deeper level , shall we ? Let's look at rocks , stones and boulders . Now , again , like I just said , rocks are going to be small , weekly goals .

For example , maybe making an SOP , like maybe you go through my web design process course and you're ready to implement this . Maybe you want to put this into base camp or whatever you're using for project management , which , yes , we're going to get to shortly . Um , if you want to create an SOP for yourself , for your team , I would consider that a rock .

It's a small goal , it's something that helps your business and it's likely something you'll be able to do within a week , maybe even less than a day or just a few hours . But when it comes to aligning your big goals , you could totally put this inside of some sort of goal sheet for your business in order to hit those numbers .

So that would be more of a mid range , a goal that you would likely try to get done within a month , and that would be , in this case , maybe like a new website page and not like a portfolio page or a blog post .

But , um , well , it could be a blog post , but I'm talking maybe you do like a big , revamped , uh , success stories page , for example , which is something I highly recommend for you and your business . So in this case you don't want to rush it , and within a week maybe if you're managing a bunch of other projects , I would make this a stone .

I would make this a monthly type goal and it's going to take some time , but it'll really behoove you in the long run and benefit your business . So I would put this goal as kind of a stone .

Also , I mean other monthly goals could be like hiring a subcontractor , or it could be in any number of things that aren't going to take several months , but they are going to be a decent amount of time that you don't want to rush . And then , finally , those big goals . That's a boulder baby .

These are the big needle moving type of projects or goals in your business . These are going to be usually what I do personally . I do these quarterly , I didn't .

I generally try to have like four quarterly boulders and then stones and rocks fill in with the rest of the projects that I personally want to get in here , and I'm going to show you my goals for this year at the time of recording the revamp version of this course in 2023 here .

But , for example , for you as web designers , maybe it's launching a new service , maybe you have a lot of web design services going and you're doing some additional retainer work , but you have not yet built your hosting and maintenance plan . This would be a boulder . You go through my maintenance plan course . You get everything ready to go .

I mean you could do it in less than a month . For sure . You technically do it less than a week , but when it comes to marketing it , selling it and getting things going . I would consider this a boulder . This would be like like how great would it be to finish a quarter of your year and think I got my maintenance and hosting plan going ?

Yes , that was a boulder style goal . So I'm going to show you my actual quarterly planning goal list for this year . Would you like to see it All right ? Here we go , check this out . So it's not super technical , not super wild . It is literally a Google doc for me . This is what I do Now .

I like to label each one of these main goals that I'm going to do within a quarter as a boulder stone or a rock , like I just shared with you . Um , so I'm recording this in Q2 . Rock , like I just shared with you . So I'm recording this in Q2 .

So in quarter one , in quarter one , q1 , I did rebrand what was formerly my web design club into what is now my web design membership . Web Designer Pro set up some sequences and automations . Again , this was something I was able to do , mostly within a week . Launch Pro , which was a biggie . Solidify SEO for web design , business pages and content .

I didn't do that cause I don't know what the heck I was talking about . I don't remember . Uh , there's a good example of making sure your goal is uh , make sure whatever goal you're doing makes sense , cause I don't remember what the heck I was talking about . So I could just you know what .

I'm just going to check and say I did it , uh , because it's working . So my Boulder was launching pro , uh big project was , or , excuse me , my Boulder was just reconfiguring and redoing it , uh , re revamping it , the the stone for me was launching it , and then the little things involved with that were uh , kind of a rock , the the week , kind of stuff .

I'm in Q2 right now . Look what I'm doing . My Boulder for Q2 is revamping this course , the next version of the course . Then I've got a few stones that I'm going to do and the cool thing about this you'll see , like over here I don't even know for sure what I'm going to do in Q4 .

You could really map this out , but essentially what I'm doing is I'm just getting an idea for , like , what's the big boulder for each one of these quarters .

Now , you may have a couple boulders depending on the size of the project , but I would not recommend doing too many huge projects every quarter , especially for you as you're managing your web design projects .

And then I , when it comes to goals , I like to have a little saying like , at the end of this year I want to be able to say I started these things or I completed these things . So this is just a look at what I'm personally doing for this year . So , again , very simple . Mine is a Google Doc . That's it . Nothing wild .

You can go as wild as you wanted to make it . Now let's wrap this lesson up with a few things when it comes to your planning and goal setting . So we talked about revenue goal . Now we have a really good mindset of what we're keeping versus what's in the business and what's going to be taxed .

We talked about the goals that we're going to have and what size they are . A big thing when it comes to your revenue is your pricing .

Now , we're not going to get far into pricing here , because we have a whole lesson on pricing , but one thing I do want to just make sure to tease you with here is that you want to make sure your pricing aligns with your goals . So if you have a goal of $100,000 , but you're charging $1,000 for websites , guess what that means ?

That means you're going to do 100 sites a year and eight sites a month , and unless you have a very templatized structure in place where you can crank out two websites per week , I don't know anybody who is able to do that .

That's what you would need to do , and I know I'm using these numbers because I got to a point in my business and my journey where I wanted to hit six figures , but I was charging about a thousand dollars on average . So it dawned on me that , like if you put this out on a spreadsheet , you can't even want to .

Literally , I would do need to do a hundred sites a year and eight sites a month . And I was like , oh my gosh , I can't do that . Now , if you double your price points , that gets a little closer . Ideally , you would triple or quadruple this , which is what I'm going to teach you here later on in the course .

That will lead you to six figures as an example . So I just wanted to make sure that your goals , your pricing excuse me aligns with your goals . Just remember , no goals equals very unclear pricing . So for those of you who are just not sure what to charge , look at your goals . What's your revenue goal ? What do you want to take home in a month .

That's going to help determine your pricing . And then , finally , just a real quick note before we head on to the next lesson . When it comes to measuring your goals , I showed you how I recommend doing annual , and then quarterly and monthly .

When it comes to measuring this , this is a big hang up I see with a lot of people , and that is you do not want to . Well , let me share this . First , my recommendation is that you measure quarterly meaning right here . You don't want to live and die with every week of your business .

Uh , my mother-in-law was working for a home inspector who used to be one of my clients and , uh , she recently got let go because he is now going into realty .

He got out of the home inspection business , but one thing I noticed with him is he would spin like crazy when they made a lot of money and then he would like lay people off whenever they had a bad week , and it was week to week , and this is no way to be a sustainable business owner .

So , when it comes to your web design business , do not live and die with every week . It's why I recommend measuring quarterly . Now , monthly is good too . You want to see what you're taking in month to month , but you're going to have good weeks and bad weeks . You're going to have good months and bad months .

I don't want that to put you on cloud nine for too long and I also don't want that to destroy you if you have a bad month . I'm learning this and I've continued to learn this as a as an entrepreneur , for many years now . I'm expecting really good months and really bad months , but I look at quarterly . What did I make this quarter ?

Cause it's a lot more achievable , more attainable . I want you to get out of the week to week and month to month trap . It's basically like a hamster wheel because you're literally just live and die again with this week-to-week or month-to-month mentality .

So a quick recap Josh's simple goal-setting framework Set a revenue goal , make sure you separate net versus gross . Set those goals as rock stones and boulders . Make sure your pricing aligns with the goals when it comes to your revenue goal and then make sure that you measure it in a way that's suitable for you , knowing you're going to have good and bad months .

So that's suitable for you . Knowing you're going to have good and bad months . So that's the biggie right there how and when to measure . Well , I hope you enjoyed that one . Friends . Again , this is a lesson from my web design business course , which is available in Web Designer Pro Link below . You can just go to webdesignerprocom .

You can just join the course tier if you want to get access to my business course and my entire suite of courses , or we have the other tiers for you If you want a more engaged and immersive experience . Again , the training I mentioned with Chris Badgett on the annual planning system is what this lesson that I just shared with you is kind of based off of .

So I took a lot from his training that I've applied in my business and it's been super helpful , and I hope this has been helpful for you . I would love to hear from you . If it has , you can drop me a note at joshhallco slash 359 , which is where this episode show notes will be at . I hope you had an awesome 2024 .

If it wasn't so great , then I hope this helps make 2025 awesome . So can't wait to hear from you . Happy new year , and I got to pull the old dad pun , the dad joke . See you next year .