Reviewing 2019 Goals / Looking Towards 2020 Goals

Well, here we are, closing the door on another whole decade. It's time to revive the roaring 20's and see what a new year and a new decade has in store for us.

But before we say goodbye, let's take a walk down memory lane and review how Four Tens did when it came to the goals we set for ourselves this year...

2019 Goals:

1. Be More Social: Our goal for our first year was to set up a reoccurring content calendar. Although it did take a while to get into the groove, especially during our busy periods, we’ve successfully gotten better about publishing consistently and sharing current projects.
2. Work Smarter, Not Harder: It’s definitely tempting as a digital marketer to constantly be trying and applying the latest tools and apps to your workflow. However, getting into a consistent flow and minimizing your toolbox to only use what is beneficial keeps you optimized. We’ve settled into using a few of our favorite services like Asana, HubSpot, Brandcast, and Wordpress, to stay organized, and get our work done right.
3. Prioritize Work-Life Balance: This goal ended up being easier said than done. Although we pride ourselves on not working Fridays, some weeks require Friday meetings or “overtime” work to stay ahead of deadlines. It’s also tough not be constantly available when your work email is accessible through your phone. We’ll be continuing this goal into the new year.
4. Always Be Learning: Although we originally set this goal with planning on getting more certifications, learning new tools, and attending industry events, it came to represent learning how to grow our business as well. We also took the time to learn how to set up partnerships with services and other professionals through our Four Tens Co-Op.
5. Give Back to the Community: We just nearly completed a volunteer assignment every month this year! We helped the Humane Society, Habitat for Humanity, and Feeding Tampa Bay, just to name a few. This is one goal that we felt good about and absolutely will continue into 2020.

Just like most goals, some were total successes while others were a little murkier. Learning from 2019’s goals, we’ve got a few we will be working towards in 2020 as well:

2020 Goals:

1. Fewer Meetings: This naturally depends on the organization and your team dynamics, but as a small business, we pride ourselves on being able to respond quickly and complete projects ahead of schedule. What we’ve found through working with our clients this year is that some want lots of meetings to stay consistently updated, while others just want to get us set up and then review the final product. For us, we prefer to work through a to-do list instead of establishing by committee. Therefore, one of our goals is to minimize meetings that aren’t necessary and use project tools and email to answer questions when possible.
2. Keep Volunteering Once a Month: We love getting out of the office and out into our community. It's a core part of our business along with keeping a work-life balance. We’d like to branch out and find new community partners to volunteer with, so we’ll add that as a sub-goal!
3. More Videos For Everyone: We blog a lot about how video is the king of content and that isn’t going to slow down in 2020. While we cut our teeth making property videos for our Commercial Real Estate clients, we’ve found a need for shorter, more social-sharing ready video content that all industries and clients can take advantage of using. Social media, email, website content all benefit from having short form video content. Our goal is to increase the share of video work that comes in for these short form video needs.
4. Grow, Grow, Grow: Having completed our first full year of business without accidentally lighting anything on fire, we’re looking to hit the ground running in 2020. We’re planning on getting the word out about what Four Tens can do to help any business, big or small, expand their digital footprint and have their marketing get in front of the right sets of eyeballs. Though we’ll probably remove the phrase “eyeballs” from our pitch deck. If you’re looking to outsource your marketing needs on demand, you can learn more here!
5. Maintain Work-Life Balance: Consistency is key, and it takes a long time to break free from the expectation of being busy all the time. We think that anything > working on Fridays, and we intend to practice what we share. Expect more #FridayFreedom content on our Instagram.

Four Tens wishes everyone happy holidays and a happy new year! We hope it will be full of productivity, great video content, and achievable SMART goals. We’ll be back in 2020!