#348: 3 Tips to Crush Your 2025 Goals

Read this episode: 3 Tips to Crush Your 2025 Goals

If you want to make your 2025 better than any year you've had before, listen in because you're going to get three tips to help you move into 2025 Strong. 

 

Hello my friend. Welcome. You are officially, if you're listening to this in real time, in 2025, you are going to move into a brand new year. And every year, in fact, every day you have the opportunity to change how you approach things, how you grow, whether you own your own practice and you're looking to expand and to grow, whether you are working as a lawyer for somebody else and you want to really open up 2025 so that you can see what's possible.

 

I want to today's episode to really mark a place for you to move into that version of you, that next version of you. So today, no matter what time of year it is, when you're listening to this, I want you to hear this as a signal for you to reassess, for you to do things a little bit differently, especially if you have big dreams, you have desires that you wanna move into, you want to create, but you're not really sure how to do it. You don't really know how to think about what the future looks like that you wanna bring to you. <laugh>. And I always look at myself and the lawyers that I work with, and you as the powerful creator in your life, so easy for us to let time slip by to tell ourselves that we don't have enough time or that we don't know where to start.

 

I want you to, if that's coming up to your brain this year in this moment, I want you to just put that to the side. I want you to think about things differently and I'm gonna guide you through some things to think about so that you can create the reset that you want in your life to do this. I have also created something about a year ago, I did this five hour workshop for my, my students, my clients, and it was really amazing. I got some incredible feedback around it and I never did anything with it. I never made it available to anyone outside of people who are working with me one-on-one. So what I wanted to do with this is to offer it to you, and you can get it at dina cataldo.com/precision planning. You can also find it in the show notes. What I created was this 45 page workbook where you actually get the strategies that you need to assess where you are right now.

 

The way the, how to think about what you can create in the future, how to set a goal, how to think about how you will achieve that goal, which means the mindset, which is the piece that lawyers who are going after goals, who are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, they don't have it. And when they have that piece, everything changes for them. When I used to set goals, I would be left exhausted and depleted. I would feel demoralized at the end of the year if I didn't hit my goals. And it really put a block, right? It really put the brakes on me moving forward. It had me procrastinating and not doing the things that my brain was telling me I quote, unquote should be doing. So the reason I wanted to package this up for you, the the workbook, which is really the meat and potatoes that allows you to have a reference guide throughout the year to the decisions that you've made.

 

You make these decisions ahead of time and then you just stick with them and you evaluate and you keep going. And I walk you through the whole process in the precision planning, how to really get that planning process, process for you, for your most profitable year in the law ever. But I also wanna offer you this, if you don't own your own law practice, is that this guide will help you think through what you want and how you're gonna get it. Because remember, you are the powerful creator in your life, but if you are at the mercy of the files that come onto your desk, if you are at the mercy of feeling horrible, when you get an email from opposing counsel who is asking for something that your brain says is impossible, I want you to really come to this work, whether it's in this podcast or whether or not you download the workbook and the uh, workshop that I did, that if you, if you come to this work really thinking about how you want to shape your year, you're gonna get a lot out of it.

 

So I want to offer, if you don't own your own law practice, to listen to this with the mind for how does this apply to me? How can I use this to really strengthen my resolve in 2025 to bring together the life that I want in 2025? Alright, with that, let's, let's talk about this. Let's talk about the three areas of your practice that are really gonna help you think differently about your goals. And it's also gonna help you calm everything down, alright? It's gonna help you think more clearly. It's gonna help you problem solve, but you've gotta be willing to sit with this and you've gotta be willing to do the work. And sometimes it's gonna be tedious work and let that be okay. Because one of the things that most people don't do is take the time to strategize, to take the time to do the tedious work.

 

And when I started doing the tedious work, my business grew, my self-esteem grew, my confidence grew, everything in my life began to flourish. And I taught myself that I can follow through and I can do hard things. So while some of this might be tedious, this is the most important work that you will do going into your new phase of life, your reset whenever you are listening to this podcast. So the first tip I will offer you is that you wanna look at your financials, and a lot of people don't wanna look at their financials. There's a lot of mindset, a lot of emotion that comes up with this. If you download my precision Planning Guide and workshop, you are gonna get all the mindset that you need to really begin thinking differently about this. But what I wanna share with you is that if you don't do your financials, you like look at the numbers, what did you make every single month?

 

What were your most profitable areas of practice? So if you have multiple areas of practice, what was the most profitable? You might have had great income coming in, but was it profitable? Did you make money off of a return off of the work that you did? Same thing with billing your hours. How many hours did you bill? What were you billing every single month? And take into account those dates that you took off, right? Maybe you had a kid who was sick and you had to stay home from work, or maybe you, you know, decided you wanted to take a couple weeks off for vacation. Just keep that in mind and be compassionate towards yourself. If you didn't hit your target, maybe you didn't even have a target. And I wanna offer to you that now is the time to begin making targets. Because even if you don't hit a target, at least you know where you stand.

 

At least you know where you are. So you can make changes. A lot of us wanna turn a blind eye to the numbers, wanna turn a blind eye to creating targets, goals, whatever you wanna call them. And when we do that, we make it impossible for us to make the changes that we need to make the shifts. And if you're telling yourself, you know, this is what I hear from from a lot of lawyers is, you know, oh my gosh, I can't look at the numbers because I know I'm gonna feel horrible about them. Then if you do that, then you are missing out on the opportunity to make the changes that you want, the reset that you want, and you're not learning the skill that you need to achieve goals, which is persistence, consistency, and compassion towards yourself. There's, there's other things too. But those top three things are going to take you so much further.

 

I'll tell you this year I did not hit my goal, but I know exactly why I didn't, because I went through the process that's in precision planning and I have a plan for next year a hypothesis of how I'm gonna do it next year. Now, might that change of course, because I am gonna do the assessment that's also in precision planning every single month to show me what are the numbers, how is this working, what am I seeing? Is my hypothesis correct? And that way I'm approaching my goals as a scientist and not somebody who is, you know, cracking the whip, telling myself, I gotta work harder, I gotta do more. No, that's almost never the solution. <laugh>, I'm looking at it from the perspective of what am I doing right now that's working and I, I walk you through this process. What am I seeing in the numbers and what do I need to change within myself to make the shifts that I wanna make?

 

And sometimes that means giving myself more rest. Like I could tell in this last month in December that I needed more rest because I just said, Hey, you know what, I, this is the perfect opportunity for me to rest because so many people are on vacation and I'm gonna do this really intentionally and give myself what I need to do that. And because I did that, I also gave myself space to create when I wanted to. You know, if I, if I give myself rest, I give myself more creativity. It's really an interesting feedback loop because when we give to ourselves more, more is able to come out of us. And when we don't rest, we end up in this cycle of work, work, work versus rejuvenation. And then the ability to move forward. And this whole new year process, or whenever you're listening to this episode, is about rejuvenation, resetting, rethinking what's going on right now in your life, in your law practice.

 

So that's the first thing that I will offer to you is you've gotta look at the numbers inside your practice. What is the most profitable? Are you billing the number of hours that you want to bill? And walk yourself through an evaluation process like what is going well in your practice? What is not working the way that you want it to, and what will you do differently next year? So then what I also wanna offer to you, this is the second tip to go into 2025 strong, is what lessons do you want to take away from the prior year? Because there's gonna be some good stuff in there and there's gonna be some nuggets that you need to move forward strong. Let me give you an example of this. So when I look back at my year, I can see where I didn't show up on social media as consistently as I would've liked.

 

And I recognized when I did my assessment, I had some really stinky thoughts about social media because my brain wanted to tell me, this isn't any fun. I don't like being on here. It takes too much time. I mean, I had a lot of crummy thoughts. What I needed to do is I needed to take my brain and empty it out so I could see all of those thoughts and say, okay, why didn't I show up on social media the way that I had initially planned last year? Here are all the stinky thoughts, let me empty them out and write 'em all down. And now how do I wanna think intentionally moving forward into into 2025 when it comes to social media? And when I did that, I saw an immediate shift in how I started doing things. I recognize that my people are on social media, that they want to hear from me, that I have so much good stuff to offer.

 

And it doesn't have to be hard to post on social media, it doesn't have to be a big production. In fact, I did a batch of social media yesterday. I did seven posts and I did it all in two hours. And then I just had them scheduled for Instagram and LinkedIn. Like it was so simple yesterday because I got outta my crummy thoughts and I put myself back into my intentional thoughts. And even though I'm a coach, it doesn't mean I'm not a human. And so I need to have the thoughts available, the mindset available for me to perform at my best. And when I'm not consciously doing that, of course I'm not gonna show up on social media the way that I want to. I'm not gonna be able to help the number of people that I want to. I'm not gonna be able to expand my reach the way that I want to.

 

When you do these assessments like I'm offering you in precision planning, you are going to be able to make these kinds of shifts because you're going to see, oh wait a minute, in my practice I wanted to hit a goal of let's say $400,000 this year, but I didn't hit it. Why not? Well, let's take a look at the reality of what you thought it was going to to achieve your goal and what it really is gonna take. So in precision planning, I break this down, but when you're thinking about last year's goal, assuming you had one, then I want you to ask yourself, how many times did you actively think about your goal? Did you kind of set it at the beginning of the year and then you ignored it the rest of the time? And when you do something like that, you are not allowing yourself to be intentional about where you want to take your practice.

 

You're not being intentional about what it's going to take to help you take the actions that are going to allow you to grow your practice. That's like what happened with me with social media. Yeah, my practice grew and it grew in different ways, so I'm not mad about that, but I wanted to show up in social media more. I wanted to have a bigger presence. And the part that was putting me or preventing me from taking the action to have that larger presence was the mindset piece. And if you're not paying attention to what you're thinking, you are not going to have the intentional result that you wanna create. That's all that it is. And we lose out on that mindset piece when we beat ourselves up and we tell ourselves, you know, I didn't work hard enough, I didn't do enough. I should have done this, I should have done that.

 

Oh my gosh, I'm such a, you know, bad lawyer, I shouldn't be setting goals. I'm just like the worst <laugh>. When we do that to ourselves, then we block ourselves from doing just the math, right? Just looking at, oh, okay, that's interesting. Why didn't I show up the way I wanted to? And a hundred percent of the time it's mindset, okay, I'm gonna say 99% of the time, sometimes it's because there's something that came up in your life that was a priority over your goal. And I see so many lawyers beat themselves up about not hitting their goals and then they discount that they had decided intentionally to prioritize taking care of a sick family member. They were taking care of their own health, they were doing something that needed to take their attention and they wanted to give their attention to. So if that's you and you didn't hit your goal, I want you to be so compassionate to yourself, give yourself so much grace.

 

Just because you set a goal does not mean if you hit it, you are a better person, that you are successful. It doesn't mean anything, it's just this random number that you pick so that you can become the person who now has that result. That's it. It's not something that is going to be life changing for you. I will tell you that it feels amazing. I'm so proud of myself for what I have achieved in my practice. But I want to share with you that just because you hit your numbers does not make you a better person. You're not suddenly gonna see rainbows and butterflies every single day. You're gonna keep moving forward assuming that you are compassionate to yourself and you're kind to yourself and you keep yourself focused on the main thing for you. And that's what I wanna offer to you because what, just because I didn't hit my goal this year doesn't mean I don't keep the goal, right?

 

I'm keeping it, it's now my goal for next year and I can see that I was just wrong about what I thought it was gonna take for me to hit the goal this year. That's all it was. I was wrong about what it would take to hit that goal this year. I don't make it mean anything about me not knowing what I'm doing, being confused, blah, blah, blah. No, I don't do that anymore. I used to do that and it felt horrible. Now what I do is I say, okay, well I didn't hit it this year, let's go after it next year. And I take the same number and I say, alright, well what do I think is going to be what needs to happen? And so I have my plan. And to create that plan, we've gotta start getting creative. We gotta start thinking outside of the box.

 

And I walk you through a really cool exercise actually in precision planning that will help you do that so that you're not thinking about doubling down on the same old things. Because I could say, alright, I wanna do, you know, um, this actually came up and so you're, you see this in real time with me, okay? So if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you can, you can kind of see this. So my tendency, my mindset tendency is to say, let's double down on what's working and like go harder on it, right? That's what my brain says. But then there's another part of my brain that says, Hey, you know what would be a really good idea is if we just did twice the amount of what it is that you do. And then that, that makes a lot of sense, right?

 

Like, we should just do twice, twice as many of those things, in this case doing twice as many podcasts because it's working. So why not just double down on it? Now I have seen that strategy and so that's, it makes sense that my brain would say, oh yeah, this makes sense, right? And to be really subtle about it, not like you should work harder, which is what the first part I mentioned was, is like, work harder, you're gonna get it, just work harder. And then I had another part of my brain do the nice softer version of that because it gets sneakier as you get better with mindset, it gets sneakier, <laugh> and it says, no, this is a really good plan. You should totally do this. But then when I went through this assessment, I told myself, what am I doing? Like I see what you're doing, brain.

 

You want me to work twice as hard to get the double result? I, I get that. I understand that. But what if that's not the answer? Because these podcasts take some time, right? Like they take some thought, they take me thinking about what's going on. You know, in my, my practice when I'm seeing lawyers, talking to lawyers, what are the problems that you're facing so that I can bring something of value to you? And if I am doubling down on the podcast, it's preventing me from doing other things, like thinking more thoughtfully about the content that I'm bringing to you because the, it's like squeezing a turnip, right? Like I am not going to overwork myself, although that's what my brain wants me to do, right? I'm not gonna overwork myself. So I've gotta catch myself and say, ah, wait a minute. That's what my brain thinks the strategy is, but what if it's wrong?

 

So that's why the exercise in precision planning is so helpful because it helps you spot where you're overworking and then bring you back to, wait a minute, what if I just try something different? What if the answer is not just doubling down on whatever's working, but maybe it is, you don't know? Could be, but it's going to take some thought. And if I'm looking at how I wanna save my time and I want to serve in my group program timepiece for lawyers, I want to create a really quality podcast for you. I want to serve my one-on-one clients to the best of my ability, and I wanna create content that's gonna allow me to have a further reach. I've gotta think differently. So I, I did that and I came up with other solutions. So yes, consider maybe doubling down on something might be the answer, but if it is taking a significant amount of your time, it might not be, which was the case for me.

 

So really thinking through the lessons that you learned over this past year are going to allow you to make some tweaks. And so my tweak was saying, alright, well instead of doing two podcasts a week, what do I think could be beneficial? Well, one is blocking out time for me to think about content, really have that time where I can be thoughtful, experiment, those kinds of things. And then having time set aside to plan my content strategy. And when I do that, and it, it just makes, makes me feel so good because I have that time set aside already on my calendar for 2025. And it, it just becomes so much easier. In fact, I have a yearly planner. I, I'll put that in the show notes too, because I just think it's so helpful to be able to see everything you want in one place, including your vacations and, you know, any time you wanna spend with family for holidays, those kinds of things.

 

It's so helpful just to have that all in one place. And then you can kind of plan out what it is you want to create in 2025. And maybe one of the lessons that you learn is that you need to give yourself more time to complete projects because you notice yourself rushing at the last minute. You notice yourself telling clients, okay, I can't do this right now. Or you, you skip out on projects entirely. You know, you, you stop calling, right? Because you're just like, oh my gosh, every time they call me, I feel guilty because I haven't done the, the work that they, they, um, hired me for. And so instead of beating yourself up for that, look at your calendar because chances are you're not giving yourself enough time to complete projects. You're underestimating how long it's gonna take you. And having a planner, like a wall calendar, it's gonna help you do that, right?

 

It's gonna help you see, oh, wait a minute, I'm currently telling my clients it's gonna take two weeks to get back to them on this one week to get back on them, to them on this. And what the reality of my calendar says is, that is not going to happen. I need a month, I need four, I need six weeks. Whatever it is, you've gotta know the reality of it because you're the one creating your reality. And so when you look at the lessons learned from the past year, you are gonna gain all of this information and you're going to be able to implement it. And that's important because you can have this information, it's really nice, but then you gotta implement it. And then the final lesson that I want, the final takeaway that I wanna give you is to evaluate, and I mentioned this earlier and I walk you through this whole process.

 

I give you even the a workbook part of it so that you can do this every month is to evaluate what's working, what's not going the way you want to and what you will do differently next month. This is incredibly important because we wanna keep ourselves honest and we wanna implement. And if we're not doing these monthly assessments, then it makes it really difficult for us to see, am I being honest with myself when I told myself that I was gonna give myself space to do client work? Did I really do that or did Im, I make a promise and break it right? How did I treat myself when I made that promise and I broke it? And when you evaluate, you're less likely, less likely, <laugh> to beat yourself up about what's not going the way you want it to. And instead see the math of it.

 

Just say, oh, this is a new habit that I am implementing. And when I implement a new habit, it takes time, it takes persistence, it takes compassion with myself. And then when I evaluate, I have the ability to say, oh, okay, I'm not doing that. So this month, let's, let's say more attention on doing that and ask yourself, how can I make sure that I have more attention on, you know, making more time for client work? How do I do that? You get to make these decisions. And then when you do, you have this evaluation process that will help you stay on track when you use it. And like this, this precision planning workbook that I created is meant for you to use throughout the year because you're actually gonna be able to see the decisions that you made now and see all the lessons that you learned this year.

 

You're gonna be able to see all your financials in one place. So when you come to the end of the year, you're gonna be able to look back and see with clarity, oh, wait a minute, I know exactly what happened here, why I didn't hit my goal, or oh my gosh, I hit my goal. What did I do differently this year that really helped me achieve that? And this process is something that I go through every single year. I had another client tell me the other week she was, she was like, I am going through that workbook again. We're doing this again. She loved it because it gave her this really clear step-by-step process to think about what she wanted, what was working in her practice, what wasn't working in her practice, and then what did she want to move forward doing? And then to experiment thinking about what was possible for her.

 

'cause she's expanding her practice, she's expanding her reach in a lot of different ways, and she's having fun doing that. What are some other possibilities? And one of the things that we were working on is she was telling herself she could not hit her goal again this year because of some reasons that her brain came up with and, and I said, is that true? And she said, yeah, absolutely it's true. And I said, okay, well why don't we take a look at some of the numbers. And when we started working the numbers, like you'll do in precision planning, you can begin to see, oh, wait a minute, when I just look at the numbers, I look at how I can do this using math and not drama. 'cause the drama is the worry, doubt, fear, all that good stuff, then I can see how I can not only achieve the goal that I had set for myself for this year, but I can surpass it because I have a different strategy around it.

 

So I wanna offer to you that if you are thinking about these kinds of things in your practice right now, that precision planning is for you, you can download it at dina cataldo.com/precision planning or go to the link in my show notes. I hope that you get everything that you want in 2025 or the future. Whenever you are listening to this, you absolutely deserve everything that your heart desires and you can create it. I'm living proof of that in case you're wondering, but you can accomplish this. What you want matters, and it is 100% within your power to create it for yourself. All right my friend, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and I'll talk to you next week.