Making a "Five Year Plan"

$97,587

That’s the income goal I’ve set for myself for next year.

It might not seem like much to some people but it’s a pretty ambitious goal for me. I’ve never actually made that much money in one year before.

But why $97,587? Why not just round up to $100K?

I got that number by doing something I’ve never done before, something that had me both excited and intimidated.

I made myself a “Five Year Plan.”

I’ve heard of other people doing such things but it always sounded a bit ludicrous to me. What kind of plan was I going to make?

…I’ll work a job. …I’ll try to make as much money as I can and put some away. …I’ll take vacations, have hobbies, and do whatever else I can to keep my soul from withering away. …Hopefully I meet somebody special, but you can’t really plan that, right?

I never felt like I had enough agency in my life to make these sort of ambitious plans, so what’s the point?

But recently I’ve been turned on to the idea of thinking big, imagining possibilities beyond what we were willing to believe before, setting my sights higher than the horizon I had previously accepted as the limit.

And if you’re rolling your eyes and fighting back the urge to puke in your mouth or laugh in my face right now, I get it. That’s how I would have felt had anybody told me this even six months ago.

Prior to even starting on the five year plan I had been doing some work to get in touch with my purpose or “why” in my life. What did I want to be the guiding philosophy in everything I did? This would also help me determine if I was on the right track with every new initiative I put out into the world.

The “why” statement I came up with was that I want to inspire people to create the kind of life they want for themselves, and open the doors to create a world that's more equitable, fulfilling, and sustainable for all.

That’s my “why.” That’s what motivates me through it all.

One of the people I want to inspire is ME! As part of this inspiration, I want to travel and take time off. I want to build in time for personal growth and discovery. I want to prove to myself what’s possible and how it can be done.

This is actually part of what inspired the five year plan. I began thinking about the kind of life I truly wanted for myself, regardless of perceived obstacles or notions about what would be financially realistic.

This included trips I wanted to take, projects I wanted to do, and ways I could help people. Some of the help would be through coaching and other things I offer. Some of it would be through energy I’d donate or other projects I’d bring to fruition.

The only limitations were that these had to be things that could theoretically be in my power to create on my own, i.e. no assuming certain people or relationships would be in my life or want this journey for themselves. Everybody needs to decide on their own path.

Now that I had the vision, I started working on how much this life would cost.

Where did I want to live? What kind of living situation did I want? How much did I want to put into a retirement/investment account? How much did I want to donate to good causes? What other projects did I want to do? What expenses would be involved with each? What kind of help would I need to hire to make it all happen too?

I made some generous estimates on what all of this would cost, plugged it all into a spreadsheet, and came up with a number. A very big number.

It wasn’t a “take a trip to Mars” number or even a “mediocre professional athlete” number, but definitely a much bigger number than I felt used to believing I was capable of.

I’m not gonna lie. The number scared the bejeesus out of me. I couldn’t fathom that any such number would ever be attainable. But there it was. If I want to make this happen, then that’s the number I need to shoot for. It’s either that or find a new vision and imagine a new life.

I then did an assessment of where I’m at right now. I assessed my current income and all its sources, and added up all my current expenses with projections on how each might go up over the next five years.

Then, using the numbers for where I am now and the numbers for where I want to be, I used the power of spreadsheets to plot out where I need to be in each of the next five years to get to that big scary number at the end. I even calculated taxes and inflation, as well as extra expenses that will come up at different stages of the timeline.

This is where I got the number, $97,587. That’s how much I need to make this year, both for everything I want to do this year, and also to be on track for that five year goal. This includes my own living expenses, investments, donations, people I want to hire to help, everything…

At first it was a really intimidating number for me. It's significantly more than I’ve made in any of my entrepreneurial endeavors so far. I’ve actually undervalued myself and struggled quite a bit with money in my life. Even believing I could pull this off is a big step for me, but it’s the goal I’ve made for myself for next year, so how do I do it?

The next step was to make a list of all the skills, methods, services, and other means at my disposal to make money. I can coach. I can host workshops. I can do organizational trainings. I could write and sell a book. I can pick up freelance copywriting gigs. Some are things I’ve done before, others are new.

Once I had this list, I once again leveraged the power of spreadsheets to make a whole matrix to evaluate what percentage of my income could come from each of these sources, what I would need to charge for each, how much of each I’d have to do to get to that $97,587 number.

And you know what? Once I plotted it out, it all seemed pretty doable.

I’ll need to get to the point where I’m doing 6 coaching sessions a week. Right now I’m doing about four. I’m confident a couple more clients will show up in due time..

I’ll need to make about $300/week with freelance writing. Right now I’m doing double that so I’m already ahead of the game there.

I’ll need to be hosting more workshops than I have in the past, and hopefully have an ongoing mastermind group running. Those are both new and exciting stretches.

I’ll need to do some organizational trainings, but what I have projected is quite a bit less than what I’ve done in the past so I may actually overshoot that goal.

Somewhere in the middle of it all I gotta write that book too, but I’m already two drafts deep so I should be able to finish that reasonably soon.

Basically, I’m rolling into the year pretty well set to get 70-80% of the way there with plenty of time to build on it.

And here’s the other wild part…

Now that I’ve done all this work and calculations for next year, I’m looking at that plan and number I’ve got for five years from now. It doesn’t seem as intimidating anymore. In fact, it feels like I might even be selling myself short and I need to double it.

Putting all this together was a lot of work. It basically took me an entire weekend to do the visioning, add up the numbers, and create the spreadsheet. But it’s created a lot of clarity and has been helping me see new opportunities too.

It’s interesting to me also because I had this default way of thinking about work and projects that basically went something like, “work hard and things will happen.” But that never really defined anything but “work hard” which is all I ended up doing. I worked hard but not with a real focused direction and benchmarks for myself as to where this hard work should take me. So I just kept working harder and harder but I never defined what I wanted to come from that hard work.

So strangely enough, as big and scary as some of the numbers I came up with are, they’re also kind of a relief. It’s not foggy wishful thinking anymore. It’s all laid out. I know the specific goals I’m shooting for, and I work towards them. No more. No less.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m pretty excited by these goals. It’s exciting to feel like I have the opportunity to make it happen too!

If you want to do this for yourself, you should be able to follow the steps based on what I’ve shared above. I'm happy to answer questions too.

If there’s enough interest maybe I’ll do a workshop or draft up something more comprehensive around this too. Shoot me an email or leave a comment to tell me what you think.