How I am setting myself up for success in 2023

Photo by Behnam Norouzi on Unsplash

We are back, baby! And better than ever.

The holidays were simple and somewhat relaxing, but with an undertone of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm.

More than anything, I'm just uber excited to be back at work today. I love work, and as always when I have a break away from it, I start to research, ponder, and think about how I can be better at it, move my career forward, and envision what a year from now can look like.

It's the new year, and we are all level-setting with ourselves about work, family, relationships, health, mental wellness, spiritual wellness, etc. etc. etc.

I'm not here to tell you how to set your goals or make them reachable through actionable planning tactics (Finisher Secrets can help you with this—it's a company I make content for and work closely with the owner, Javier, to help share this kind of stuff). However, I do want to share (and process as I am writing it down for you all) my goals and aims for this year and how I plan to complete them.

In this post, I hope to share what you all can expect from me this year by way of content and efforts, both in my personal life and my work life. And who knows, maybe you can garner some ideas of your own by reading this. This is by no means an extensive list, and I hope to keep it fairly simple by design, so that I don't have a thousand items on a to-do list to complete before year's end.

First, let's remember that:

The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing.

As I have shared many times, here is my priorities list that I am constantly returning to:

1. Faith

2. Family

3. Social

4. Work

5. Personal

Now that we have those set, let's attack them one at a time.

Faith

This year, I want to spend more time in the Word, and more time with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I know and understand the value of both, and I always seem to find a reason to abandon each when time isn’t on my side. Though spending time with Godly friends seems to be a bit harder to pass up than reading the Word.

I would also love to truly make an effort to serve God and the church more this year. Not quite sure yet what that looks like, but I do know that playing more often on the church worship team is an easy place to start.

Family

I really enjoy putting the phone away the second work is over, and only grabbing it again after the kid is asleep. I want to really make this a priority this year, as I tend to slip up on this. Especially with a new baby boy on the way, I know I will be busier than ever with the family, and I don't want things pulling me away from that. Baby boy is due in April. I'm scared. I am a boy. I know what boys are like. I pray I can raise that guy to be a God-fearing man one day. Lord, help me!

Social

This ties into Faith a bit, as I have made a handful of new friends at our new church. Awesome dudes with like interests, but most importantly, we share a love of God, which is awesome.

I definitely want to spend more time with fellow church members this year, and keeping up with our community group when we can has been, and will continue to be, a great place to gather and socialize with others.

I am also, just on a basic level, wanting to become a better communicator this year, and get better at large social gatherings and networking opportunities. I am an introvert and an Enneagram 5, so the idea of large social gatherings is literally somewhat of a nightmare, but I understand the value in being able to be a part of a social gathering, both as a child of God, but also to seek, develop, and find opportunities in connections in my professional career.

Which moves us onto our next part.

Work

As you know, I have three sides of what I consider work. My 7-5 job at LeisureMedia360 as a Digital Media Specialist, my media/marketing company, Spencer Pugh Media, LLC, and my personal brand, Spencer Scott Pugh.

LeisureMedia360

Ooooo, I have some lofty goals for my main job, and as I have sat at home over these last couple weeks, I have been itching to develop them more and start implementing the moment I get back into the office.

I have a unique position at Leisure to be both a functioning cog in the machine of the company, but I also get to stretch my entrepreneur muscle and really build out what my department can be.

I don't want to share too much in this post, but to give an idea, I am working on, and want to continue to develop our flagship digital products, continue to aid our sales team in closing deals and better understanding those products, continue to get better at media buying in general, be up to date on all the latest news in my industry, and work to market our company as a standout company with standout people, offering standout products.

I may share specifics in a future post, but that is the gist. I am fortunate for my direct manager, my indirect managers, and my teammates for allowing me the space to learn and grow and flex my various skillsets to best help the company. I am absolutely amped for what is to come.

Spencer Pugh Media, LLC

I currently have two amazing clients that I do work for on the side. Finisher Secrets, and Mag's Paw Grips.

Finisher Secrets is a company that helps entrepreneurs become more productive and effective at their work. I work closely with Javier, the owner, to create content for various purposes.

Mag's Paw Grips is a brand new company that makes nail grips for old dogs, and dogs who are post op from surgery. They help the dog find traction on hard surfaces and have been shown to increase a pup's life span. And the product itself is a really unique and patented adhesive that I have never seen before now. For MPG, I help with social and search marketing, as well as help with their website and any content they may need made.

I love both of these companies. The work is fairly simple, and I can usually crank out projects in a sitting or two. I find that evenings, lunch breaks, and our half day Fridays are the best time to work on this kind of thing.

My goals for each this year are to be more present, offer added help when I can, continue the current work we are doing, and be another brain toward problems and ideas that arise.

Spencer Scott Pugh

I think everyone should have a personal brand they are working on, but that is a post for another day.

If you follow this newsletter, you already are a part of this brand! Yay! I love y'all!

A big goal I want to work on this year is cutting down the amount of social platforms I am on to just 2-3. I am on all of them, and I think it is just too much. I want to double down on my best platforms and leave the rest for another time. That said, I always want to be playing around with new platforms that come around to see how they fit my goals. So I will definitely save room for that.

For this newsletter, I would love to aim for 52 posts this year (one each week), but I want to be more real with myself, so my goal is 45. For YouTube, I have the same goals as last year, with at least 1 video a month.

I definitely want to dive into LinkedIn more this year, but I haven't decided what other social platforms I might want to stick with... more on that later, I'm sure.

I have thought a little more about this, but for brevity's sake, and the fact that I told my wife I would be done with this post at 9:15 PM, and it's currently 9:20 PM, I will save that for later.

Personal

The biggest thing for me this year is being healthier, and focusing less on this “Personal” line item. I truly want to strive to stick to my priorities list in the order they are meant to be in, and keep this one last. Heavy prayer, accountability partners, and disciplines in self-control are all in my future for this year when it comes to this topic.

Conclusion

Welp, in the 25 minutes I had to write this, I wrote way more than I even thought I would. And I have sooooo much more thoughts about all this.

I'm sure more of these ideas will squeak out in future posts, so if you have any questions about anything I've shared in this post, let me know. I love answering y'all's comments.

Here's to 2023. Let's try and make a difference this year, yeah?

Best of luck with your yearly planning. I look forward to hearing from and connecting with you all more this year.

And as always, thanks for reading.