How Successful Designers Plan Their Year: My Proven Step-by-Step Goal Setting System

As the year speeds toward the finish line, it’s tempting to jump straight into goal setting without taking an honest look at what worked, what didn’t, and what actually made you money.

In this episode, I’m walking you through my proven Year in Review and Goal Setting system, built specifically for interior designers. You’ll use your calendar to review the year accurately (not just from memory), identify what you want to repeat and what you’re officially done with, look at your numbers in a simple, non-intimidating way, and turn all of that into clear goals for 2026 that you can actually follow through on.

If you’ve ever set goals and then watched the day-to-day of client work swallow them whole, this episode will help you reset with clarity and a plan.

episode highlights

1. How to do a Year in Review using your calendar so you don’t miss patterns

2. The reflection questions that uncover what felt easy, what felt hard, and what mattered most

3. The “Repeat vs. Never Repeat” exercise will make decision-making easier next year

4. The numbers every designer needs to understand (even if you’ve avoided them)

5. Why gross revenue matters and what it reveals about your business

6. How to calculate your consultation conversion rate and use it to plan your pipeline

7. A practical way to set financial goals based on project size (small, medium, large)

8. Time blocking basics: free days, buffer days, and focus days

9. The mindset shift: becoming the future version of you now

Your Mini Action Plan

1. Set aside one focused hour to finish the review and pull any missing numbers

2. Choose your top 3 goals for 2026 (not 10)

3. DM me on Instagram with your biggest takeaway for accountability

Episode Resources

• 10x is Easier than 2x

Read the Full Transcript ⬇️

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;14;09
Rebecca Hay
How we see ourselves is how the world sees us. And if we want to be seen differently, if we want to show up different, if we want to play a bigger game, then we need to start acting like that person today. All right.

00;00;14;11 – 00;00;43;12
Rebecca Hay
I’m Rebecca Hay, and I’ve built a successful interior design business by trial and error podcasts, online courses and so many freaking books. Over the last decade, I’ve grown from an insecure student to having false starts to careers. And now I’m finally in the place where I want to be. Throughout my journey, it’s been pretty obvious that I’m passionate about business and helping other entrepreneurs do the same.

00;00;43;14 – 00;00;55;29
Rebecca Hay
Each week, I’ll share tangible takeaways from my own experience and the experiences of other badass women to help you build your confidence and change your business.

00;00;56;02 – 00;01;15;07
Rebecca Hay
Hey hey hey, it’s Rebecca, and welcome back to Resilient by Design. We are in that wonderful, slightly chaotic stretch right before the holidays, when the year feels like it is speeding to the finish line. And I know that for so many of you, this is when you finally get a moment to step back and ask, how did my year actually go?

00;01;15;10 – 00;01;43;04
Rebecca Hay
And you’re thinking, what do I want next year to look like? And you might spend a little bit of time over the holidays thinking about this. So today’s episode is the perfect companion for that exploration. I’m going to share with you a goal setting and a Year in Review workshop that I originally ran live inside my community. I’ve edited it so that you can hear just my guidance and my coaching, and you can follow along as if you were right there in the room with us.

00;01;43;06 – 00;02;10;09
Rebecca Hay
Inside this workshop we walk through reflecting on your year, celebrating the wins you might have forgotten. Looking at your numbers in a simple non intimidating way and getting clear on what you want to repeat and what you’re officially done with. And of course, turning all of that into aligned, intentional goals for 2026. And you can absolutely listen while you’re driving, wrapping gifts, or preparing for a little holiday break.

00;02;10;09 – 00;02;29;15
Rebecca Hay
Go for a walk with the dog. But at some point, I do encourage you to grab a notebook and revisit the questions in this episode. This process has shaped some of my biggest years in business, and I hope it brings you the same clarity that it has for me. All right, let’s dive in. Year 2026 starts right now.

00;02;29;17 – 00;02;55;02
Rebecca Hay
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. We’re goal setting and reviewing our year. It’s the best time of year. Holiday season is upon us. It is here. Thanksgiving just happened south of the border. I’m sure everyone’s feeling the festive spirit. Or even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you’re probably just so ready for a break. I know a lot of us are feeling like, whoa, what a year!

00;02;55;02 – 00;03;26;15
Rebecca Hay
And that’s why I am so excited for today. My hope for today is that you leave feeling really empowered, really excited for the year ahead. I love goal setting. I love reviewing where I’ve been. I love walking others through that process. So I hope you have pens and paper ready. Let’s dive in to the workshop. Today I’m going to walk you through a review of the year and help you to set the most powerful habits for your year ahead to help you actually achieve your goals.

00;03;26;18 – 00;03;45;03
Rebecca Hay
This is similar to the end of year review. I did last year. Although I have updated it made some tweaks. So even if you’ve done this before with me, it’s always helpful to have someone walk you through it. It’s like I’m going to handhold you today. I’m going to make you do these exercises today in real life. Okay.

00;03;45;03 – 00;04;07;16
Rebecca Hay
So if you’re like, oh, I’m just going to kind of half listen and do it later. That’s fine. But we have the time today for you to just get this done. Remember, it’s progress over perfection. It is about just starting and not waiting for the time to make it perfect. Maybe that time that you have reserved over the holidays is the time where you tweak it and fine tune it.

00;04;07;17 – 00;04;25;05
Rebecca Hay
Now you’ve had time to think and process. So can you tell me in the chat, are you committed to doing this work today in our call? Say yes if you are. Yes. Okay, good. I’m getting some. Yes, ma’am. Good. All right. Here we go. We’re going to walk through these five stages today. So first we’re going to reflect and celebrate.

00;04;25;06 – 00;04;44;27
Rebecca Hay
We’re going to review your numbers. We’re going to have you share your goals for 2025 with each other. And then make a plan for success in the year ahead. And lastly I’m going to have you make a commitment to yourselves. Okay. First. And this is something that I just recorded a podcast episode about as well, which you guys will love.

00;04;44;27 – 00;05;12;15
Rebecca Hay
And I’ll add in supplement to what we’re doing here today. It’s coming out later in December, but you need to look back before we can dive into planning our year ahead. It’s important that you look back to see where you’ve come from. There was this quote I saw yesterday and I thought I wrote it down, but essentially it was like you can’t move forward if you don’t look back first, because how do you know where you’re going?

00;05;12;17 – 00;05;28;12
Rebecca Hay
You need to know where you’re coming from before you can really intentionally move forward. And there’s so much power. And this is something that I avoided for a few years in my business. I just wanted to set goals. Can anyone else relate? I was just like, I just want to set great goals. I want to like, I want to achieve them.

00;05;28;12 – 00;05;55;28
Rebecca Hay
I’m a futuristic. That’s my other cliftonstrengths. If you haven’t done this test, you guys have to do these cliftonstrengths. This Myers-Briggs is number one the first. My biggest strength is that I’m futuristic. No, I don’t dress up in, like, alien outfits. It just means that I have this amazing ability to see the future, to forecast, and to just constantly be ahead of myself, which is wonderful.

00;05;56;00 – 00;06;15;22
Rebecca Hay
But if we can’t look back, we’re not going to get as far as we want to go. So open up your calendar and this is going to help you as we move through these exercises today. Open your calendar. Whether it’s a Google calendar, a paper calendar, maybe you have like a wall calendar that you put things on that you flip through.

00;06;15;22 – 00;06;36;22
Rebecca Hay
Go grab that. Come back here, open up another tab, maybe in your desktop if you need to, or on your iPad. I want you to pull up your calendar and start in January. Because just trying to remember what happened, you’re going to miss things. I want you to use your calendar throughout today. I want you to go back.

00;06;36;27 – 00;07;00;02
Rebecca Hay
Look, go week by week in January. What did I do? What did I do? And answer these questions. What was your favorite business experience of 2024? What felt easy? What felt hard? And what was your biggest moneymaker? I just want to remind you, no matter if you crushed your goals this year, or maybe you barely made it through the year.

00;07;00;05 – 00;07;25;23
Rebecca Hay
You know, most often we’ve landed somewhere in between. There are going to be lessons in all of it, and I want to take a big step back before we can move forward. So I want you to spend this time. I’m going to give you three, four minutes max right now just to start to go through your calendar. And I want you to think about all of the experiences that you had this year in your business.

00;07;25;23 – 00;07;43;01
Rebecca Hay
And it might be more than one thing when I did this exercise in Nashville, these are questions that Amy Porterfield asked us when we were at our mastermind in Nashville. I had several things. I think I had five or 6 or 7 bullet points here under what were my favorite business experiences? That is okay. You don’t have to pick just one.

00;07;43;03 – 00;08;05;01
Rebecca Hay
This is going to be the last time we look back. So make it count. Don’t worry if you don’t have all of the answers right, what comes to mind and what you can see in your calendar. But these are the important questions I want you to answer before we dive into planning and designing your best year yet. Okay.

00;08;05;03 – 00;08;37;17
Rebecca Hay
Now I want you to reflect on, as you’ve gone through your calendar, what were your big wins? What were your big wins this year in 2024? And then hopefully you’ve got a few. They can be big, but they can also be small. It could be simple. Something as simple as I got a client in that neighborhood or I finally followed my process from start to finish, or I got a brand new mouse for my computer and I’ve needed that forever.

00;08;37;21 – 00;08;59;01
Rebecca Hay
Whatever it is for you. Okay. Now, what I want you to do is you’ve looked kind of over your calendar, or at least you’ve started. You’ve looked at, you know, what felt easy? What felt hard along that same vein. What I would love for you to do is take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.

00;08;59;01 – 00;09;24;26
Rebecca Hay
On the left hand side you’re going to write, repeat, and then on the right hand side, never repeat. And what I want you to do is to go back through your year and reflect. What do you want to repeat? What felt easy? What felt fun? What made you money that you want to do again or you just really felt was beneficial?

00;09;24;28 – 00;09;49;25
Rebecca Hay
And then what do you never want to do again? Here’s an example of when I’ve done this exercise. So for me, when I look back on my year, what did I want to do? Family ski weekends. That was incredible. I love doing that. I want to ensure I do more of it in person get togethers, hosting a presentation at our studio, paid consultations, speaking on stages, guesting on podcasts.

00;09;49;26 – 00;10;11;16
Rebecca Hay
What did I not want to do? Doing a stage talk without a marketing plan because they weren’t paying me too many lunch and learns. People coming to my office showing us their product that I’m never going to use. Designing for friends. My live pop launch during back to school time. Hiring employees without an actual budget in place to pay for their invoices.

00;10;11;18 – 00;10;32;02
Rebecca Hay
Drinking too much so that the next day is a write off. You can put personal things in here too, but these are examples to get you thinking. What do you want to repeat and what do you want to never repeat again? Maybe it’s a win like you were sharing in the chat, or maybe it’s something that’s come up from reviewing what felt easy?

00;10;32;04 – 00;11;00;13
Rebecca Hay
What felt hard? What are you learning about your year? So we’ve reflected we’ve celebrated a little bit the wins. I want to now look at the numbers. So it’s one thing to look at. Oh what felt fun without easy. What felt difficult. But what does that look like from a financial standpoint? I know that finances are not everyone’s favorite topic.

00;11;00;15 – 00;11;23;20
Rebecca Hay
They were never for me. Then looking at the numbers is always been laborious. It’s been something I’ve avoided. It’s not something that historically I really felt very good at. I’ve really had to force myself to do it over the years too, so that I’m now at a place where I feel very comfortable. It wasn’t easy. So if you are like, oh God, do we have to do this part?

00;11;23;23 – 00;11;48;20
Rebecca Hay
I feel, yeah, but we’re still going to do it and I’m going to show you just simple, simple areas that you need to focus on. So get your pen and paper ready. I’m going to ask you some questions. Now you may not have the answer to all of them right now. And that’s okay. If you’re able to pull up your QuickBooks or something in real time or design docs or whatever it is that you use, fantastic.

00;11;48;23 – 00;12;07;08
Rebecca Hay
But maybe you just put down some ideas of what you think. The more you can actually get the answer to, the better. And I just want to remind you that it’s okay if you don’t know the answers. It’s okay if you’re like, gross. What do you mean? We’re going to talk about that in a minute. But what about the expenses?

00;12;07;08 – 00;12;28;14
Rebecca Hay
Like for the longest time, I didn’t know my expenses until it was time to file taxes. And my accountant would say, here’s how much money you made, and these were your expenses. And I was like, oh my God, I spent that much money on my business. Like I wasn’t paying attention to it. Don’t sweat it if that’s you, but this could be your wake up call that this is something we now need to be tracking and really paying attention to.

00;12;28;17 – 00;12;51;27
Rebecca Hay
What was your biggest moneymaker this year, or was that a hard question to answer? The reason we ask these questions, and you’re going to see it in a little bit as we move through this, is we want to really understand where we want to focus our energies and our time in the year ahead, because sometimes we get caught up doing something that transits, actually not bringing in a lot of money, and we might need to cut it loose.

00;12;52;00 – 00;13;16;06
Rebecca Hay
So these are really great questions to to reflect on. And so these are questions that I recognize are kind of heavy lifts. Please take the time before next year to answer these for yourself. These are really important. You really need to know what your revenue is. And I will be honest with you, for the first few years of running my business, I didn’t even know what my revenue was like.

00;13;16;06 – 00;13;36;04
Rebecca Hay
Gross revenue is like top line. Like the money you bring in before you pay out any expenses, before you pay any cost of goods, like what is the top line that comes into your business? And I never knew this until literally tax time when my accountant would say, you owe this much in taxes. I was like, that’s impossible.

00;13;36;05 – 00;14;00;03
Rebecca Hay
How could I owe that much money in taxes? She’s like, well, this is your income statement. And so this is something that will help you also set goals for the year ahead. If you’re able to look at your total sales before the cost of goods or any expenses. And if you don’t know that yet, please, please, please work with your bookkeeper or dive into yourself to get the answer.

00;14;00;06 – 00;14;21;12
Rebecca Hay
So the next slide, I would like for you to do a deep dive into your numbers. I want you to consider these things your overall profit margin for the year, the average size of projects. If you were to look at all the projects that you had this year and the total dollar value associated with each project, what is the average?

00;14;21;14 – 00;14;43;03
Rebecca Hay
I did this exercise a few years ago, and I realized the average project size that we brought in at that time was 150 to $200,000. Now my money. Right. That’s how much they were spending on on the goods and the materials and the design fees. So what is your average size of projects? What is your consultation conversion rate and then which projects were most profitable.

00;14;43;05 – 00;15;13;19
Rebecca Hay
So this will require a deeper dive into your numbers and looking through your accounting software. If you have one or just you could do, you know, what’s it called back of the napkin math. Which projects were most profitable. So it may have been a bigger project, but maybe it’s a big project. You’re doing all the construction implementation, but at the end of the day, are you making as much money as maybe a simple decorating job where you did someone’s living room and you did really beautiful high end furniture, or just a kitchen or fill in the blank.

00;15;13;21 – 00;15;33;00
Rebecca Hay
And I also want you to be tracking if you haven’t done it this year, the average number of hours that you are spending on a project. So if you’re tracking your time, whether you’re flat fee or hourly, how many hours did you spend on each one of those projects? What is the average? These are questions for you to answer in your own time.

00;15;33;02 – 00;15;58;04
Rebecca Hay
What I want to get dive into conversion rate. Consultation conversion rate. This is essentially what I’m talking about. We want to continue this conversation about setting goals for our clients and understanding how many consultations do you need to do in a year to land your ideal number of projects? How do we get there is first looking back. So look back at last year.

00;15;58;04 – 00;16;14;17
Rebecca Hay
You could do it over a couple of years if you haven’t had that much activity this past year. If you haven’t ever done a consultation, you can’t do this yet, but you will want to be tracking this moving forward. How many projects did you land this year? Is the simple math. Let’s say I had ten projects last year.

00;16;14;19 – 00;16;40;11
Rebecca Hay
How many consultations did you have this year? I had 20 consultations this year or during a period of time you can pick that period of time. So what’s the conversion rate? Well, if I had 20 consultations and ten of them turned into a job, then my conversion rate would be 50%. So it’s number of projects divided by the number of consultations times 100 gives you your conversion rate.

00;16;40;14 – 00;17;03;07
Rebecca Hay
What you can do now is you can use this as we move forward to set financial goals for 2025. If you know you want to make a certain amount of money and you know that, you know you want to have ten jobs, will you know that you probably need to have at least 20 consultations and likely you want to have them in the first, first or second quarter of the year, right?

00;17;03;07 – 00;17;25;13
Rebecca Hay
So that you can get those projects started. And this can help to inform your marketing. It’s going to help you set some goals. So setting financial goals. So this is something that was taught to me by a coach a long time ago. And it was really impactful. And essentially the idea is that when you look at the different size projects you’ve had and you figure out, okay, what is the average size project, you might notice a trend.

00;17;25;13 – 00;17;47;16
Rebecca Hay
You might notice that, well, I had a few small jobs that were around, you know, 5000 to $10,000, let’s say, for a design fee. I’ve had some medium sized ones. The design fee was 10 to 20,000. And maybe you had some large projects that were 20,000 plus. This is not a benchmark that you have to be following. This was just an example that I did to explain the difference between small and medium.

00;17;47;16 – 00;18;09;19
Rebecca Hay
But maybe your small projects are less than 5000. Great. You’ll want to fill in. You know what that is? I want you to think about the financials and you set a financial goal for the year. I want you to look at how many projects do you need to achieve that financial goal, and then work it backwards to figure out how many consultations you need.

00;18;09;25 – 00;18;28;16
Rebecca Hay
Now we just did that part right. We just did the consultation rate. So we know the conversion rate. We know how to calculate it. So now we know based on a consultation conversion rate how many consults we need to have so many projects. But what we haven’t talked about is that those two top lines, which is the goal and how many projects.

00;18;28;16 – 00;18;54;23
Rebecca Hay
So in simplest terms, if you’re going to set a financial goal, you can do one of two things. You can do total project spend. Or you could just do interior design fees. It’s up to you how you want to do it. I started with interior design fees just because it was smaller and simpler to understand, but if you want to do a total spend of a project, we can dive into that.

00;18;55;00 – 00;19;16;21
Rebecca Hay
The idea is that whatever the goal is, whatever you’re however, you’re deciding to set your financial goal for the year. How many projects do you need at what size to get that goal? So this is an example, right. So the average in 2020 for my small projects was about $7,000. So I set a goal in 2021 that I wanted my average small projects to be around 9000.

00;19;16;21 – 00;19;43;16
Rebecca Hay
I’m like, let’s bump it then medium projects. I would love for the average medium project to go from 12,000 to 15,000 large projects. You see the same thing. So the goal number of projects that I wanted to get for small ones was three of them to bring me at 27,000. Three of the medium ones would bring me to 45,000, and let’s say four of the larger ones could bring me to 120,000.

00;19;43;19 – 00;20;07;15
Rebecca Hay
So if you add all those up, that is a financial goal of $190,000. What you can do is work backwards. So what is your financial goal? Let’s say this is just for design fees for the year. Is it $50,000? Okay. Well let’s go backwards. If it’s 50,000, how many large projects do I want to have? Do I want to just have two big large projects?

00;20;07;17 – 00;20;41;01
Rebecca Hay
Is that realistic. And you can play around with this to figure out. And again this is not guaranteeing you’re going to get three small projects three medium ones and four large ones, but it helps you to see when you’re going into consultations what your goals are for the year. For me, doing this exercise was a game changer because I was then very clear on when somebody called me getting clear on in the discovery call, pre-qualifying them, understanding what size their project was, and if I was getting too many small projects.

00;20;41;01 – 00;21;03;26
Rebecca Hay
I needed to be really intentional because I didn’t have the team to support so many small projects. I would rather have a few bigger projects because I don’t need to scale my team. So you can play around with how you want to do this, but this gives you a sense, because sometimes we also set these goals that are so lofty and we don’t actually have any idea of how we can actually achieve them.

00;21;03;28 – 00;21;25;24
Rebecca Hay
Or you’re like, I want to make 300,000 next year. It’s like, well, what does that look like? Like, is it feasible? Like maybe I did this exercise and then I realized, oh God, like, I don’t know if I can get all those projects. Maybe I need to readjust. Again. This is an ideal. It’s going to shift. But the idea is like, let’s set those financial goals so that you can be intentional with your consultations.

00;21;25;27 – 00;21;48;07
Rebecca Hay
And what I would do from here is recommend you set a monthly or quarterly goal. How many consultations I’m going to have a month. So if I need to have in this case, in this scenario, I need 15 consultations to get that many jobs. Well, if I want to have all those jobs start within 2025, I need those consultations to happen before June halfway through the year.

00;21;48;09 – 00;22;12;02
Rebecca Hay
So let’s break that at six months. So I take 15. So what if I do? Okay, so 15 I could do maybe 2468I could do I do like 2 to 3 consultations a month. Or is it 3 to 4 consultations so that I have a goal so that I can be tracking that. And it doesn’t mean that your conversion is going to stay the same.

00;22;12;08 – 00;22;36;14
Rebecca Hay
I can tell you, when I raised my consultation fee, my conversion rates went from 50% to 85 or 90% because I was getting more of the right clients, I was having fewer consultations. I know I’m going quickly through the money side. I want you to take the time that you need to really review your numbers and to set some financial goals for 2025.

00;22;36;17 – 00;23;02;17
Rebecca Hay
So the path ahead, we’re going to now dive into those goals for 2025. So get your brainstorming hat on. Brainstorm your big ideas. So it could have to do with money. It could have to do with what you didn’t want to do. But what would you do in 2025 if you could not fail? What would you do if you could not fail?

00;23;02;19 – 00;23;24;12
Rebecca Hay
Please go big. Don’t hold back in the next year. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Here’s some examples. Maybe you’re like, I’m going to do three consultations a month. I’m going to speak on stage at the home show. I’m going to get my first decorating job. Maybe I’m going to eliminate implementation altogether and just focus on decorating.

00;23;24;15 – 00;23;44;02
Rebecca Hay
I’m going to hire a full time designer or admin. I’m going to take a four week summer sabbatical. Some of these might sound crazy to you right now. You might have ideas. You’re like, oh, I’d love to take December off, but don’t even know. And what will that be possible? Write it down. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail in your business?

00;23;44;05 – 00;24;03;03
Rebecca Hay
Be specific about what these goals are. So as you’re thinking and planning for 2025, because if you’re not specific, it’s hard to measure them, right? How do you know that you’ve achieved it? If you’re just better organized, how do you what’s the benchmark for that? The last two steps are making a plan, a plan for success and committing to them.

00;24;03;06 – 00;24;22;07
Rebecca Hay
I want to recommend this book. It helps with time blocking. I’ve talked a lot about this. I believe there’s even a training in the portal on time. Blocking. This has been really, really helpful because being busy is not always the same as being productive is easier than two acts with by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. And in this book, it’s actually more towards the end that he talks about this.

00;24;22;15 – 00;24;45;12
Rebecca Hay
He talks about this idea of blocking your weeks, blocking your calendar for the year so that you have the time to achieve your goals. The idea is you want to get a time blocking system, because if you have all these big, beautiful ideas, but you don’t actually have time to execute or do the follow up, or reach out to the realtor or go to the networking events, then it’s not going to happen.

00;24;45;14 – 00;25;15;01
Rebecca Hay
And so the idea in his book is he talks about free days, buffer days, and focus days. So free days would be things like vacation, travel, blocking that out in your calendar so that you make sure you have time for vacation with your family. Of time to take that December off. If that’s one of your goals. And then there’s the buffer days, which are the days where you would be doing team meetings, zoom meetings, client meetings, maybe calendar planning, phone calls, project notes, car travel prep for meetings.

00;25;15;01 – 00;25;38;16
Rebecca Hay
It’s like that busy work for buffer days. And then lastly is the focus days. And this is when you’re really going to get shit done right. And this is when you’re work creating your art. You’re working on design schemes. Maybe that’s AutoCAD renderings, creating those internal documents, reviewing your financials heads down, doing the work. The idea is that these are like minded tasks.

00;25;38;19 – 00;26;09;14
Rebecca Hay
Whole concept behind time blocking your calendar is scheduling chunks of time for hours at minimum. Where you are doing a like minded task. It doesn’t mean you need four hours to review your books, although sometimes I feel like that’s not enough time. But you do want to take that chunk of time where you’re not interrupted. You don’t have to zip out and pick up a Kravitz fabric sample, or you’re not being called to a job site, or you’re not like, oh, now I’m going to like, I’m volunteering at my kid’s field trip for the second half of the day.

00;26;09;14 – 00;26;29;25
Rebecca Hay
Like, know why? If you’re volunteering for a half day field trip, take the other half of the day off. Do other things you need to do. Try to do similar tasks that are using your brain in the same way on the same day. And then we’re going to commit who do you need to be for all of this to work?

00;26;29;27 – 00;27;05;23
Rebecca Hay
Because the future version of you who has achieved that goal, who spoke on stage, who has a well-oiled machines and systems in their business, is not the you that is sitting here today. It’s you, but it’s the future version of you I want you to consider. How does this future version of you, the person who shows up, who’s speaking on stage, the person who’s at the networking events, connecting with others, the person who is hosting 3 to 4 consultations, a month?

00;27;05;23 – 00;27;26;02
Rebecca Hay
What activities does that person engage in? What does that person need to do? How does that person, that version of you need to show up when you look ahead to those you admire and the things that they’re doing that you want to do, are they living their life a little bit different? Are they waking up a bit earlier?

00;27;26;04 – 00;27;50;12
Rebecca Hay
Are they taking time off so they have the balance. And I’m going to encourage you to start today to be her now. And this is something I’ve been has been my mantra for the last six months. I went to a conference in June and it was all about about this idea of your self-image and how we see ourselves is how the world sees us.

00;27;50;14 – 00;28;09;13
Rebecca Hay
And if we want to be seen differently, if we want to show up different, if we want to play a bigger game, then we need to start acting like that person today. And it’s going to be different for each and every one of us. But I want you to consider how do you show up? Do you get to the office in the morning instead of taking extra time to make the coffee?

00;28;09;13 – 00;28;32;03
Rebecca Hay
Or do you say, I’m not working on Fridays? That’s my that’s my day. What is it? And how can you commit to being her now? What are you going to do different? Because next year is a new opportunity. You can do what you dream of doing. You can’t do everything all at once. And so I encourage you over the break to really think about the goals I had.

00;28;32;05 – 00;28;53;26
Rebecca Hay
I’m looking at the goals and the ideas that I set for myself when I was a national, I was like, oh my God, it was so many things. And then I went back through them. And I encourage you to do this, go back through those big ideas, those opportunities that you were brainstorming and circle the handful of the ones that are the ones you really want that are really going to move the needle.

00;28;54;00 – 00;29;12;15
Rebecca Hay
Because if you set too many goals, you’re probably not going to achieve any of them because you’re going to be spread too thin. I’ve done this way too many times. I still make that mistake. I’m like, well, maybe I can also learn the guitar. Like I reviewed my goals that I set for 2024. One of them was learn to play the guitar.

00;29;12;17 – 00;29;41;22
Rebecca Hay
Do you know how many guitar lessons I took? Zero. Big start. Frickin zero. But I accomplished probably 3 or 4 of the 7 to 10 goals I set. And then I thought to myself, If I only set 4 to 5, I bet I could have achieved all of them. So be intentional with your goals. I am the first person to dream big and want to do everything, but then you spread yourself.

00;29;41;22 – 00;30;03;08
Rebecca Hay
Then you get caught up in the day to day and it’s really hard to focus. So this is the process. Reflect on how you did this year. Celebrate your wins. Review your numbers. So for those of you who don’t have those present today, please go and spend some time doing that. I would give yourself the better part of a day.

00;30;03;10 – 00;30;25;27
Rebecca Hay
Really, I would. You could dive into so many aspects like have all the products I resold, which ones had the biggest profit margin, which vendors did I give the most business to? This is really helpful. Maybe you approach those vendors and say, hey, last year we brought $30,000 worth of business to you. Do you think you could give me a better discount and then set and share your goals for 2025?

00;30;25;29 – 00;30;55;11
Rebecca Hay
Make a plan for success. So block off your calendar, make sure you have the time and commit to being that future version of you. Okay, this was a lot. Thank you for showing up. Not for me, for each other and for yourself. This exercise is for you to better your business to make 2025 a great year. My most successful years have been when I actually slow down to take the time to really look ahead and plan and really intentionally set some goals.

00;30;55;14 – 00;31;14;09
Rebecca Hay
I can tell you this past year I didn’t do a great job last year, I just didn’t take the time. I don’t know what was going on in my life, but it just wasn’t as organized and I didn’t sit down to do the end of year review in as much detail as I’ve done in the past. And I can tell you, as a result, 2023 felt a little little all over the place.

00;31;14;09 – 00;31;29;18
Rebecca Hay
I’m not going to lie, I did achieve a few goals, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for. And so it was a great reminder to me to take the time now to really set myself up for success for the year ahead. So I hope you guys and I encourage you to do this to have a really great holiday.

00;31;29;21 – 00;31;53;23
Rebecca Hay
See you soon. Okay, so let’s just take a pause. You just walk through a full year in review and goal setting process, and I hope you feel a little lighter, a little clearer, a little more grounded heading into the holidays. And so here’s what you can do next. Set aside one more hour focused time before you kick start your year in 2026.

00;31;53;25 – 00;32;18;16
Rebecca Hay
You know you can do it with a coffee, sit by the fire, but like, sit down and really finish the work that we started in this episode. And then I would recommend you stick to three top goals for 2026. These are going to be the ones that are really going to shift your business forward, and don’t set too many goals and then of course, if you want accountability, I would love it if you could come on over to Instagram and leave me a DM and share your takeaway.

00;32;18;18 – 00;32;38;21
Rebecca Hay
I love hearing from you guys. I know I say this every episode, but far too few of you take me up on this. I really do believe that the end of the year is a reset point, and you know whether or not 2025 exceeded your expectations or stretched you as it did me, in every direction and interactions you did not expect to be stretched in.

00;32;38;23 – 00;32;59;16
Rebecca Hay
It’s time to set an intention for 2026, and we can decide how we want to show up. So thank you for spending part of your December with me here, and for doing this work that so many of us avoid. Your future self will thank you and wish you guys a restful holiday season and lots of time to disconnect.

00;32;59;16 – 00;33;11;04
Rebecca Hay
And I will see you in the new year.