This article is by Roslyn Rozbruch, my wife and business partner at Tax and Business Solutions Academy. 

It’s a new year — yippee! Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? I’m not much of a make-a-resolution-for-the-new-year kind of person. I make changes year-round when I see fit. In fact, I started thinking seriously about 2017 in October of 2016!

Michael and I planned out a lot of 2017 together. And here’s a Michael fun fact — he has a huge yearlong calendar on the wall in front of him in his office, so he can see his year at a glance. Scheduling 2017 was easier than the previous two years because we have so many systems and programs in place now. In our first two years as a “startup,” we worked nonstop, putting in the foundation of our business: the Tax Resolution Domination System and Toolkit, our VIP Insider’s Circle monthly membership, our mastermind group, and our two big events. These two big events are our joint marketing conference with ASTPS in January and our own marketing and sales conference in August. The first two years in business, we thought about all the work ahead of us; now it’s nice to be able to build on the foundation we’ve laid.

With that foundation firmly in place, we were able to sit down and map out the year ahead. We calendared when our events would take place and where, as well as some new and exciting information Michael wants to offer this year to make your practices more profitable! We even scheduled in some personal time off and are going on a vacation! It’s been a while — three years, but who’s counting? — since we’ve taken a “real” vacation.

As always, all of this talk about me brings me back to you. Even though the year has only just started, I want to know if you’ve given any thought to your year ahead. Have you thought about what you would like to achieve this year? How much money you want to make? Do you have any personal goals? Outlining your year is a little like driving; it’s always easier to reach a destination with a map than just getting in the car and guessing your way there — that just leads to aimless driving. Mapping out your year is a great tool to be successful. And I don’t mean a New Year’s resolution. I mean, have you set some reasonable goals for yourself this year? “Reasonable” is an important word here. Don’t set the bar too high, or you might not reach it. Then you’ll end up disappointed.

Everyone has a different way of planning their time, and you know what works best for you. So with the new year now upon us, get to it! Whether you jot your goals down in a book, put them in your Outlook calendar, or put them on a giant calendar on your wall in front of your face, map out your path for the year ahead so at the end of 2017, you can say “Yippee! What a great year I had!”

-Roslyn Rozbruch