Planning for 2022 – What is Your WORD?

What the word you’ll use to describe 2022?

I know, it seems cheesy, but I can tell you that doing this little exercise each year has had a massive impact on my business and I just want you to share in the love too!

I’ll give you the backstory on when I started to do this for my business.

About 3 years ago now I was listening to a podcast - and I can’t honestly say which one it was, although if I had to guess I would say more than likely Amy Porterfield’s podcast because I’m a HUGE Amy fan.

Anyway, they were talking about choosing a word to describe your year.

Writing down all your goals, your hopes, your dreams, your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BAHG), and then choosing ONE WORD that would describe all those goals, hopes, dreams that you could think of every day in your business.

I kind of thought at the time – “One word, are you kidding me, how am I to think of one word to describe all that!”

But in true Jenn fashion, the thought wouldn’t leave my head.

It was November 2018, I’d just left a business partnership and I was re-thinking all my decisions, all my business decisions.

I’d been coaching and teaching social media and marketing for almost two years already.

But when I was doing the coaching and mentoring, it was never really branded as me, Jenn Donovan. I had never really been working on my own - and now I was TOTALLY on my own.

That podcast I listened to talking about this idea that I could have one word to describe what was pretty unknown for me, what 2019 was going to bring for me? Well, basically I was starting a brand new chapter! This idea and concept kept building in my head of what the “Jenn Solo” chapter would look like.

So, I asked myself these questions:

• What did I want 2019 to look like?
• What impact did I want to make on the world in 2019?

I asked these questions over and over and over again.

And, as I discovered, within those questions, lay the answer.

Answers are often just in front of us aren’t they!

IMPACT.

IMPACT was my word.

And how did this word IMPACT materialise in what I did during 2019?

Well:

• Impact was why I started this podcast on January 1st
• Impact was the reason why I took on my private coaching clients.
• Impact was the reason why I hosted over 47 workshops/webinars that year.

In this time in 2018 when I was planning 2019, I decided that if I was going to do this thing, build the Jenn Donovan brand, then by heck it was going to have an Impact – an impact on my listeners, clients, workshop attendees, and on me.

So, that’s my backstory on how choosing a WORD to guide my business planning really helped me go into the next year with a fire in my belly to succeed!

Now I’ll turn it over – WHAT’S YOUR WORD?

In 2022, what will your word be??How will you show up?

WHY CHOOSE A WORD OF THE YEAR?

If you’re new to the concept of choosing a word of the year, here’s a few reasons why it could be useful for you.

• It helps to give you focus
• It allows for flexibility – Do you ever feel like your goals change a lot over time, or you fail to meet a goal and then feel like it all goes out the window? It’s totally happened to me before. But by having a single word, you can adjust your goals over time, so long as they are in line with the focus word you choose at the beginning of the year.
• It’s easy to remember - If you’re like me, type it up and print it out and put it in front of you, in your diary, wherever you look every day!
• It can unify your goals - Generally, our goals are broad and cover all the different elements of our life, making it hard sometimes to use them as criteria for making decisions. But by analysing your goals and then choosing a word that resonates across all of them, I find it makes it easier to define your approach for the year and guide any decisions you need to make.
• It makes it easier to review your achievements – During the year you can ask yourself: ‘Does this (insert activity) reflect (insert your defining word here)?’.

CHOOSE YOUR WORD FOR 2022

So, are you ready? It’s TIME! Time to decide on your own word!

You might know straight away what you want your year’s word to be, it might be something on the tip of your tongue. Or you might need a little help to develop some ideas, which is totally fine too.

The beauty of the exercise is that there’s no pressure to know straight away. In fact, I give you permission to take your timmmmeeeee on this.

If you head to my website you'll find the blog post that has the worksheet included: 2022 WORD

There’s 3 steps involved and the worksheet goes through them:

Step 1. Do a little brainstorm of words that come to your brain about the year to come.

Step 2. Then, if you want to, list some thoughts under the different areas on the sheet.?What are your personal goals, your fears, what can’t you wait for in 2022 and how are you going to give back to your clients/customers/community/yourself/family/friends.

What’s your big project for 2022??Your goals for your business/career??What’s something new you’d like to learn? List all this out too.

Step 3. Finally, choose one word that you think unifies your thoughts across all your goals and write it down at the bottom. You might find that your chosen word relates to your strongest goals and not to all of them, and that’s ok, but the broader it is the more useful it will be.

NOW – you might be wondering what my word will be for 2022.

And, well honestly, I haven’t quite figured that out yet as I am in the middle of writing my new goals for 2022 and doing some planning!

But, the front runners are:

• IMPACT – yes, Again! Because who said you couldn’t use the same one a few times and frankly the pandemic has got in the way of me having the impact I wanted or perhaps on reflection, I’ve had an impact, just not in the ways I imagined when I choose the word last year!
• CONNECTION is another one, because I think networking, collaborations and connections will play a huge part in my 2022 according to my goals.
• GROW is also a front runner!

I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours!?Seriously, though, I’d love for you to hop into the Like Minded Business owners group and let me know – what is your word of the year going to be?

Go on, inspire someone else with your thinking and your willingness to take charge of 2022!

I cannot wait to read what your word will be!

CONTACT JENN:

If you are needing some help to come up with your business plan for 2022, book a discovery call with me!

We can have a chat about your goals, your struggles and roadblocks and what’s holding you back and how I can help!

Send me a message on any of my social platforms or book a call at: https://calendly.com/jenn-smm/discovery

I also have my brilliant Facebook Group dedicated to all things small business - Like Minded Business Owners. Please join if you aren’t already a member and become a part of such a wonderful community who are so supportive of others and sharing of their knowledge!

Or you can DM me on Instagram or send me an email [email protected]

I wish to acknowledge?the Traditional Custodians of the land, the Yorta Yorta People, on which I conduct my business today and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reading this blog post today.

About the Author:

Jenn Donovan of Social Media & Marketing Australia.?Jenn’s a coach and mentor from rural NSW and is all about empowering business owners to earn what they’re worth so they can make a bigger difference in the world.?The Founder of Buy From a Bush Business, Co-Founder of Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business Marketplace and host of the very popular podcast Small Business Made Simple, Jenn is all about community and humans interacting with humans!?H2H Marketing – human to human marketing. Jenn talks the talk but importantly walks the walk! Jenn’s online?community is over 320,000 with her famous Facebook Group currently at almost 320,000 members and still growing every day.?She’s the major of her own little online city!

Get in touch – www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au

On Instagram - @jenndonovan_

On Facebook – Social Media and Marketing AU

Or on LinkedIn as Jenn Donovan