The Thriving Maker

Choose Your Future & Achieve Your Goals in 2025

• Sarah Kavanagh • Episode 20

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This episode centres around the art and importance of goal setting for your creative business, emphasising reflection on past achievements and understanding your future aspirations. 
Setting goals isn’t just for the start of the year. It's a flexible process that evolves with life's shifts and turns. Whether you’re planning for the coming year or the coming weeks, this episode offers a treasure trove of strategies and encouragement to transform your creative passion into a thriving business. Crafting a roadmap that supports the lifestyle you desire and empowers you to take proactive steps towards growth and transformation.

• Reflecting on past accomplishments to inform future goals
• Envisioning success for the coming year
• The significance of decision-making in shaping outcomes
• Working backwards to create achievable milestones
• The need for writing down and sharing goals
• Taking consistent action as a pathway to success
• Invitation to engage with a creative business growth quiz

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🚨 QUIZ: Your Creative Business Growth Type

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➡ Year To Thrive Planner 2025

Connect with Sarah:
➡ ONLINE | https://designermakercoach.com
➡ INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/designermakercoach



Sarah:

Hello, in today's episode I want to talk to you all about goal setting, but before you go ahead and start setting some of your goals and looking at the bigger picture, I want you to take a moment and reflect back on what's been before and really think about what it is that you want. So, wherever you are and however you're listening, I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. My name's Sarah Kavanagh. Your host and I started the Thriving Maker to support makers, crafters and artists just like you to grow your creative passions into flourishing businesses on your terms and give you the life that you want. I'm a jewellery designer maker and started my own handmade fine jewellery business over 15 years ago. I now also help other artisans and makers build their own craft and handmade businesses through marketing and branding and techniques and strategies I've studied, learned and put into practice along my journey. Right now, I want to help you to establish and grow your own designer business so it can help support the lifestyle that you want. Think of this as your go-to resource and check in for all things strategy and marketing for your business, along with stories and anecdotes from my life as a handmade entrepreneur. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to the Thriving Maker podcast. Hello, I hope you're well.

Sarah:

In the episode today, I'm talking all about goal setting and I want to share with you my take on it and the techniques that I think work really well and will help you to really achieve what it is that you want to achieve out of the coming 12 months, the coming three months and the coming weeks. And it's important, before setting any goals, to take time to reflect on what's been before and what's happened over the previous 12 months. Have a think about what is it that you're most proud of from last year? What are your accomplishments? What did you really celebrate? And if there was an accomplishment or achievement that you didn't necessarily celebrate at the time, take a moment to celebrate it now and to congratulate yourself on your achievements. Also, think about what you learned from last year. Was there something that you'd do the same or is there something that you'd do differently? Going forward, what are the things you would like to let go of or stop doing or stop worrying about? Going forward? Is there a project that you've been working on or that really isn't filling you with joy, or you're not moving forward with it and it's not what you thought it would be. For you Is now the time to let go of it and to do something different. And what do you want to continue to do? On the same terms, as the project might not be filling you with joy, it may be something that you really want to continue to do, to get off the ground.

Sarah:

So take a moment, before sitting down to plan your goals, to reflect on what's been before. What did last year give you? What did the last 12 months give you in your life? And then, when you've spent time reflecting on your previous year, spent time reflecting on your previous year then look at the big picture for the next 12 months and ask yourself the similar questions what is it that you want to achieve? Where do you want to be 12 months from now? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your business to look like? What do you want your craft passion, your creative passion, to take you? Where do you want to be and what do you want to have accomplished? 12 months passion to take you. Where do you want to be and what do you want to have accomplished 12 months from now? The reality is, you're not going to get anywhere with your goals without taking some kind of action. It won't miraculously happen without some energy on your part, and it's this energy that I want to talk about for a moment.

Sarah:

I've just been reading a book by Carlo Rovelli called White Holes, and it's a book about the cosmos and the theoretical physics of white holes. Now, the physics in the book are largely over my head, but in the final few chapters the author writes his beautiful and poetic conclusions about why it holds, and this one sentence really stood out for me and I would like to share it with you now, and it's he says we are the irreversible foam of free energy that was trapped in the disequilibrium between hydrogen and helium freed by the sun. Okay, so there is chemistry and physics in that, and you can be saying why are you telling me this? What has that got to do with building a creative business or setting goals for the new year? But I want you to take this away. I read this as being that, even in this currently damp and cold and dark winter days that we have in the UK and maybe you have elsewhere, when you don't feel very energetic at all, to remember that we are bundles of energy waiting to take action and to do something and to actually be.

Sarah:

The book talks a lot about the universe and the concept of time within the theory of white holes and black holes in the universe. Essentially, we don't get to decide what happened in the past, but we can choose the future. We can decide. And the author, carlo Rovelli, continues and says when we make a decision, we consider the pros and cons, we assess the available information, consult our memory, assess our objectives, take our values into account, weigh up our, our motivations, our desires, our deepest ethical convictions and so on, and at the end of this process we decide. And to decide is the name that we give this complicated process that takes place between our neurons before an action. And there is nothing strange about this. The world is full of complicated processes and, whether at the end of a troubled process of evaluation or intuitively, without thinking, it is we who decide spontaneously in a way that cannot be anticipated. The world can evolve, following this free decision of ours, toward different futures. We can freely decide, but only on the future, not the past. Now, this is really interesting.

Sarah:

I think I'm fascinated by the universe. I can't describe it because I don't have the language of physics to necessarily verbalise what's going on in my head. However, I find this concept really interesting. We are just, we are energy, we are a ripple from space and we get to decide where, when, where our journey takes us next. We may think we have no choice in the matter. We may think things are set in stone and we have to follow the path that we've been on for the last through our lives, or the path we're currently on. That's not the case. We can decide to turn left or right. We can decide to speak up about something or to stay quiet. We can decide to make one design over another design. We can decide to talk to and share our work and talk to media about our work and get our voice and our designs and our work out into the world, or we can decide not to and do something completely different.

Sarah:

And it's these decision processes that I think is key to achieving your goals in the coming 12 months, in the coming year, and it was these words that I read as I was finishing the book the other night that really spoke to me and I wanted to share with you in this episode. And so, when you're looking ahead at where you want to be in the future, you need to make the decision to start and to put in place the starting steps and the actions that will take you closer to make the decision to start and to put in place the starting steps and the actions that will take you closer to this future. We can decide where we want to go in the future, but we cannot change the past. So, although at the start of this episode, I talked about reflecting on the past and reflecting on what's been before, that is so that you can learn lessons and you can go forward with information and knowledge and take that in your decision making this year. The best way to achieve your goals this coming year and achieve those future plans that you have is to work backwards, so that you can move the needle in the right direction and follow the right path from day one and make the right decisions that are going to take you on this journey, with daily actions and simple steps that you can take right now. So take that big goal, write it down.

Sarah:

What is it that you want to have achieved this time, next year or 12 months from now? Where do you want to be? Where do you want your business and your creative passion to have taken you, what do you want your life to look like, and write that down. And then next, identify what four milestones you need to reach on your way to that big goal. And it's these milestones that will then act as your 90 day or quarterly action goals that you're going to be working towards over the next 90 days. When you've identified what milestones you need to reach, write them down and then choose the first one that you need to get to when do you want to be at the end of March? We're in January now, so where do you need to have reached on your journey to your big goal in three months time? So where is it you need to be by Easter? And it's this first goal, this first milestone, that you want to start mapping out and to start planning and building routines and habits around first of all. So think about what you need to do over the next three months. Think about what you need to do in your first 30 days. So, come February, where do you need to be? Come Valentine, come February, where do you need to be? Come Valentine's Day, where do you need to be? This can then turn into your weekly goals and you'll be able to set daily tasks to help you get to where it is you want to be by February. What are those routines and habits that you need to start putting into place to help you meet your weekly goal?

Sarah:

There are three key things that I think are crucial to meeting your goals. The first one is to write it down. To write down what your goal is and then to tell somebody to share it, whether that's with a partner, whether it's with a friend, somebody that you can trust. Tell somebody else what your goal is. If you want to share it in, put it in a DM to me and I will keep you accountable. So share your goals. And then, thirdly, to take consistent action. There is no point having a goal and then thinking, oh well, I've got this goal. Now I want to run. I want to be able to run 10k comfortably by the end of the year. If you don't take any action, you're going to be in the same place in December. You're not going to have moved your fitness level forward, you're not going to have grown your stamina and developed your running ability. So you need to take action, and it may be small action. It may be creating that initial habit of actually getting into your running gear and going around the block. So now is the time to start creating those habits and putting in place those daily tasks and routines that will help you get closer to that first milestone that you need to reach.

Sarah:

I try to identify different types of goals. Keep them simple, keep them achievable, but also challenge yourself. So identify a personal goal, a health and well-being goal and a financial goal. If you have a creative business or you're thinking about selling your work, set yourself a financial goal for this year and keep yourself accountable. So, to give you an example, one of my personal goals this year is to plant a vegetable garden, which will give us fresh produce and be a space to take time away from the desk and be outside and to enjoy our garden more. Now, there's obviously time limits with this. It needs to be ready by spring so that there is time to plant seeds, and so this is going to be my first 90 day milestone for my personal goal, and that's to have the vegetable garden space ready. So I have to clear the space level it, put raised beds in, put a fence around it to stop the dogs from destroying everything before I can start planting anything, and so that's my first 90-day milestone that I need to reach for my personal goal. Now I also have a financial goal for my business and I have different steps along the way, different milestones, that I need to meet to reach that as well. So, whatever goal you're setting with your creative passion and your handmade business, break it down into smaller goals with closer time scales so you can start working towards them to keep them moving forward.

Sarah:

And remember what I was saying about my tangent, about energy and space and the universe and time the future can be changed with the decisions that you make. It's not happened yet and it's not set in stone. You have the beautiful ability to decide. You have the ability to make the decision to start and to take action and to change the path that you're on or to continue along the path that you're on. It is all possible. Make the decision to start and start taking actions.

Sarah:

So I hope that was useful for you to really see that you need to be taking actions. So I hope that was useful for you to really see that you need to be taking actions. And I'm here to give you a gentle nudge in the right direction. So don't push it to one side and think oh well, I think I'm going to do this this year, but I'm not going to write it down. I don't want to write anything down. Do it. Write it down, put the steps in place and you will gradually, step by step and taking consistent action, reach that milestone, that first milestone towards reaching your, your big goal, that big achievement for this coming year.

Sarah:

And as you're thinking about the year ahead and where you want to take the next 12 months and how you want your creative business to look, I want to invite you to take the creative business growth quiz, which is a short, fun quiz which will help you identify your creative business growth type and where you are on your journey and and help you really to plan for the future, for this upcoming 12 months.

Sarah:

And you can go to that. If you go to the website designandmakeacoachcom, you will see links to the quiz on the homepage there, but I will also put a link in the show notes for this episode. So that's it for today. I hope this has been useful for you and if you're listening to this at another time of year so not in January you can still take the concepts of goal setting and you can set goals at any time you like, it doesn't have to be in January. You can change your goals as your life or your journey or your circumstances change. Nothing is set in stone. You can't change the past, but you can make decisions and affect change for the future. So until next time, take care, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye for now.