Moving towards your goals

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Moving towards your goals is essential if you want to get them accomplished. It’s not enough to just set a goal and hope for the best. Most of us have done that before and with slight exception have probably ended up being disappointed.

In this post I’m going to be reviewing my annual goals, taking a look at my 30.60.90 for the first quarter of the year and developing a new one for the next 3 months.

For this post, I encourage you to get familiar with my original 30.60.90 post and if you haven’t already, take my Learn to Plan Challenge which will walk you through setting your goals, but more importantly, will help you create a plan to follow through on them.

What I’m working with

At the beginning of the year I set some big goals and I broke down milestones that I wanted to hit during every quarter of the year.

I built each milestone around the larger goals that I planned to accomplish through the year. My big goals included blog growth, income generated, and saving for a family trip.

I had previously defined each goal into specific, measurable amounts so that it would be easy to track and obvious as to whether or not I was hitting them.

My blog growth involved number of subscribers, and monthly visitors.

Income included monthly revenue from ads. As well as opening up some new channels by providing ebooks and a course.

Then I had a predetermined amount I wanted to save this year to put towards my trip and broke that down into a quarterly amount.

Based on these numbers I developed a plan around the milestones in the Q1 section. Which you can see below.

Again, if the 30.60.90 is new for you make sure to read this post to get a good understanding of what you’re looking at before carrying on with this post!

Reflection

The first step in moving towards your goals is reflecting on the progress you’ve made already.

So fortunately there is much that I was able to get checked off my plan in the first 3 months of the year! I was even ahead on some of the milestones that I had set.

I got accepted to the ad network I applied to in January and didn’t need to wait until March so I was able to start earning an income a full 6 weeks earlier than I was expecting 🙂

I was also able to hit my traffic goal in January and February but did see a drop in March so I’m not sure that I’ll hit that goal. My rate of subscriptions is also different that I excepted but I think that’s due to this being my first year blogging. I really didn’t have a lot to go on.

Wins

Wins from this first 90 days of the year include:

• Being accepted to Mediavine
• Selling the first copies of my ebook, The Pillars of Planning
• Participating in 2 successful affiliate product launches
• Completely surpassing my January traffic goal of 20,000 visitors and hitting a whopping 61,000!
• Making my first $500

Challenges

Although there were some great wins there were certainly some challenges as well. As I get more familiar with developing my business I will hopefully be able to build on my results and gain some consistency.

Challenges included:

• A drop in subscription rate
• The (apparent) dreaded Valentine’s Day dip in online traffic

Building my next 30.60.90

Based on my Q2 goals and the progress I’ve made in the first 90 days of the year I’m going to start forming my plan for the next quarter, April-June.

Adjustments to Quarterly Goals

The first thing to do is see if there is any adjustments that I should make to the quarterly goals that I already set.

Is there anything that I’ve already done? Or anything that’s way out of reach?

I’ve already hit 40K visitors to the site here in January but it was under that in February and March so I think this is still a relevant goal to keep. I do think that hitting 3,500 subscribers might need some adjusting though based on my results over the last 3 months.

I’ve gained about 500 new subscribers so gaining another 500 each month might be a bit of a stretch at this point unless I get a hugely viral post (fingers crossed that happens!)

Goals for Q2

By June 30th I want to:

• Have 40k visitors to planningwithmaggierae.com
• Gain 600 new subscribers
• Launch first bullet journaling e-course
• Write outline for next e-book
• Make $500 in ad revenue
• Save $500 for my family trip

So in June I need to:

• Gain 130 new subscribers through engaging opt-ins and increased social media presence.
• Increase website traffic by updating and republishing 4 older posts and creating new, eye-catching Pinterest pins in increase click-through rates.
• Continue to have a strong focus on optimizing content for SEO in every new post.
• Create a launch plan for myecourse
• Save $200 for trip.

In May I need to:

• Gain 130 new subscribers by running a new Challenge
• Updated and republish 4 older posts and creating Pins
• Record all necessary video content for ecourse
• Save $200 for trip
• Write ebook outline

In April I need to:

• Gain 130 new subscribers by optimizing opt-ins used in published posts
• Updated a republish 4 older posts and create new pins
• Make sure I add enough pins to Tailwind Tribes
• Create slide deck for my ecourse
• Research and be ahead of trending topics to win more traffic
• Save $100 for trip

Making the bullet journal spread

This isn’t a complicated spread. For me it’s to be more functional than decorative.

I chose to create it in the same style that I used for my 30.60.90 in my 2019 set up at the beginning of the year.

This is to give it continuity. It makes sure I think that this is a continuation of my hard work, not something new. I know my dedication will pay off!

Creating your plan

I hope walking you through my plan will help you go through your own and build on the milestones that you’ve set for yourself.

It’s so important for you to keep up the momentum and check in on your progress regularly. It’s ok to be off track but it’s not ok to allow yourself to stay off track.

If you’re behind, move those things that need doing to your current 30.60.90. If you’re ahead, move things up. If it’s not important anymore, cross it out.

It’s your plan and it works if you work it!

Remember to check out the Learn to Plan Challenge in order to get a total walk through on developing this for yourself. I guarantee that if you do it and follow through you’ll see major progress in the year to come.