Happy New Year everyone! Who's ready for 2023?
If you answered yes to the above question then yes, bring it on! You might already have a plan of action for the year. But if you answered no, is it because you haven’t created a plan yet, and therefore haven’t had the opportunity to get excited about your year ahead yet?
If you’re in need of some direction with your resin growth either as a hobby or as a business in 2023 then read on...
By the end of this weeks blog you should have a clear idea of where you’d like to go in 2023 and a plan of action to follow of how to get there - Then you can use this to get excited, because you, yes you, are going to create incredible things in 2023!
1 - First things first, did you read our last blog and work through the questions reviewing your 2022 yet? If not that is the first step you need to take. If you don’t review your past year and see what worked well, and maybe what didn’t how will you know the areas you need to focus on to grow in 2023?
Reviewing Your 2022 Resin Creations/Business
2 - What is your number one goal for 2023? What is the number one thing that you’d like to focus on this year with your resin hobby/business?
Maybe you’d like to grow your customers. Maybe you’d like to grow your social media following. Maybe you’d like to expand your product offering throughout the year. Maybe you’d like to learn new resin skills. Maybe you’d like to learn different colouring techniques.
If you’re struggling to put just one goal down thats ok, write down all the goals you’d like to achieve in a list, then go through them a place them in order of importance. If you end up with a long list thats ok, but too many things on a list can overwhelm, so try to shorten it down as much as possible to at least a top 3.
You might find that one of your goals is actually a task you’ll need to do to complete your ultimate goal for the year, in which case this can go in a separate column as an action step. We’ll talk about actions steps in just a moment.
3 - Take a look at your list, top 3 or top goal, write down why you’d like to achieve this/these?
Would you like to grow your customers because it will then increase your income. If you grow your social media following will this increase your customer reach, increasing your brands awareness. If you increase your product offering will this benefit your customers because they will get more choice and then your business will grow meaning you’ll be more successful. If you learn more resin skills will this enable you to expand your hobby and maybe make you able to turn your resin hobby into a business. If you’d like to learn more colouring techniques will this enable you to take more pride in the projects you’re creating increasing your self esteem a bit more.
Don’t worry about what you’re writing, no judgements, anything goes, almost journal to really understand why you’d like to achieve that goal. Dig deep and get to the bottom of why you’d like to achieve what you’d like to achieve.
4 - What will you feel like when you achieve that goal? What it will mean to you in your core when you do?
Maybe increasing your income will enable you to step away from a day job you really don’t like, you’ll then be creating full time which is your passion so you’ll feel free finally and in control of your own finances. Maybe learning more resin skills will step you out of your comfort zone, connecting you to other artists who’ll teach you new skills, you’ll grow as a person and in confidence when you do so which will make you feel worthy at last.
Again whatever comes out during answering these questions comes out, let it all flow. There are no right or wrong answers, feelings or wants. You are allowed to want anything in 2023, the only limits we have are self imposed ones that we subconsciously set because we don’t know any different. Pledge to release these right now and get writing, the key to achieving your goals is to release what’s in the way, get clear, and work towards them. This is the part we get clear.
5 - Action steps. Looking at your goal/list of 3 goals, what are some action steps that you can do throughout the year to work towards these?
Rome was not built in a day, notice we didn’t say what do you need to do to achieve this goal next week! Lol. All we’re doing in 2023 is taking steps towards these goals. Take the goal itself, now you’ve written it down, out of the equation, we’re not really going to think about it again after this step for a few months at least.
One step in front of the other - What daily/weekly/monthly things can you do to edge closer to your goal?
Can you pledge to work on growing your social media following daily, we have a blog available for how to do this, click here for that blog after you’ve finished working on this one. 5 minutes a day focused growing time might be all you need, do this every day over the year, you’ll look back and think wow!
Can you visit our YouTube channel and watch a Craft Resin tutorial each month, learning a new skill, then put what you’ve learned into practice. In a years time you’ll have learned 12 new resin skills!
Make these action steps manageable! Don’t set yourself daily tasks if you know you’ll never achieve them, don’t set tasks that require your focus for hours a week if you know you haven’t got hours a week. Consistency is the key here, you’ll improve by being consistent with the effort your putting in towards your goals, you won’t move forward if your constantly stopping, then starting again. Small steps, over time, make big lasting changes.
6 - Make these action steps visible, but hide your main goal/list of 3 goals. When you have a big goal and you set out to move towards it, it can seem so big, so unmanageable, so overwhelming, it stops us in our tracks. To stop this from happening, put your main goals out of view, in a draw, to be seen again at a later date when we refocus.
But, make sure your action steps are visible - These are what I want you to see and focus on every day. What are the action steps you’re taking to reach your goals, focus on these and in the process of doing these you’ll be moving closer to your goal!
You’ve made sure these are manageable, however life is still life and we’re still all very busy humans with lots of distractions. What you focus on grows, so focus on these steps, make these your non-negotiable in your daily/weekly/monthly tasks. One step at a time, only concentrate on your next task, not the other 365 you’ve got to do. They will happen, you’ll do them, but all you need to think about is doing this next one, taking this next step, one more at a time.
7 - The goal is not your destination! This sounds a bit counterintuitive to setting goals, but really the goal isn’t your destination, its a path, it gives you direction, it gives you something to work towards, but….
When you reach a goal, its always replaced by a new one, we’re humans, we’re always growing, getting better moving forward. So you’ve reached 500 followers and that was your goal, thats not where you’re going to want to stay is it, you’re going to want to hit 1000 next. The destination is forever moving.
Sometimes your goal is so big that you might not hit it at all , especially in the time frame you want to hit it in. Thats ok - Take that pressure off yourself right now!
The goal isn’t the destination, the actions steps are what we’re focusing on, as long as you’re hitting these and taking these steps more times than not in your year, if you hit the goal or don’t you’ll be a lot further along than if you didn’t set any. You’ll still have grown, you’ll still be better than you were before, and you’ll hit that goal eventually if you just keep going.
So don’t fixate on the goals or the time frame, these can change as you grow along the way.
Fixate on what you’re doing to move forward. And celebrate these, when you get to the end of 2023 and you did your action steps 345 days out of 365 - Open a bottle of something and celebrate that, you took 345 steps forward and you’re 345 steps ahead of 2023!
We hope this helps you look at 2023 and moving forward in the New Year with fresh eyes and new found excitement for the coming year - We are cheering you all along in the new year as always, we can’t wait to celebrate all your wins and all the amazing creations you make in 2023.
Well done for everything you achieved in 2022, bring on 2023!
Topic Of The Week Giveaway:
We have attached a giveaway to these Topic Of The Week announcements on our Instagram platform, this is helping us to spread the knowledge of how to use epoxy resin further, but also enabling anyone who helps us share this information to win free resin and mica powders. These giveaways will still be running over the festive period.
To enter the weekly giveaway please see the latest post #CRWEEK1 on our Instagram feed/highlights and follow the instructions to enter:
We wish you all the best start to 2023!
Team Craft Resin
