Founder's Thoughts – 2023 Limitless Intentions

Why I am setting limitless intentions instead of big goals in 2023

The beginning of the year sees everyone obsessing about goal setting. I was no different for many years. Every single year until now, I would set big business and personal goals, and then work tirelessly towards achieving them, exhausting myself in the process.

At the end of the year, I would review my goals and realise that I’ve achieved some of them, but procrastinated on others. And the problem with that is, that the goals that weren’t achieved, would carry forward to the next year, and the next year, and the next year. As a result, I would never get the dopamine boost that comes from achieving my goals. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect on me—it created a sense of disappointment and failure, and made me feel disinterested in trying to pursue those goals in the years to come.

This January, I’ve dusted off some of my planners from previous years, and discovered just how many unachieved goals I still had. Also, I’ve realised that, quite frankly, I am no longer excited, or even interested in pursuing many of them.

This is when I knew that for 2023, I needed a new planning strategy. After giving it some thought, I came to the conclusion that big goals may in fact be quite limiting, as they make me chase a certain idea or move in a specific direction no matter what, and just because one day in 2019, I thought it was a good and exciting thing to work towards.

Therefore, I’ve decided that in 2023, my goals will be all about the process, rather than the destination. They will be a set of intentions for actions that I would like to take, relating to change or growth that I would like to see in my business and personal life.

That way, I can get a sense of achievement, and a dopamine kick, every time I do one of the things that I’ve set out to do, or see that a positive change is beginning to take place in my business or personal life.

I see setting intentions simply as an act of stating what I want to accomplish through my actions, and who I want to become as a result, while being present in the moment, and falling in love with the journey.

So that’s it. No big goals for 2023.

This year is all about setting intentions and working towards them through a set of actions, leading to (hopefully) positive outcomes within myself and my surroundings.

No goals = no disappointment.

Action taking = sense of achievement.

“Intention is more than wishful thinking.
It’s a willful direction.”

— Jennifer Williamson

Here are some of my intentions:

Growing the marketing services range.

Currently, we’re offering Copywriting, SEO, and Mailchimp services, as well as Copywriting, Blogging, SEO and Mailchimp Expert Calls.

This year, we’re excited to innovate in this area to enhance the offering with add-ons around content writing, SEO extensions, and email automation.

Elevating our strategic consultancy.

For the past four years, I’ve been offering 60-min Brand Breakthrough sessions to help business owners ideate around their brand strategy and creative direction. Those sessions were very beneficial to those business owners, who were feeling stuck, and did not know which direction to take with their brand. Over the years, I came up with ideas for even more comprehensive strategic and creative direction processes, and now I am finally ready to launch them into the world.

The new packages combine deep reflection work, with 1:1 strategic or creative ideation sessions, comprehensive brand strategy reports and follow-on consultancy. I am very excited to work with more amazing clients through those this year!

Becoming the agents of change.

As part of our ongoing effort to become the agents of change that we would like to see in the world, this year, we’ve already planned a couple of social impact campaigns. Our first one will be all about becoming more sustainable as a business, and the next one will be about helping graduates enter the workspace.

Leaping into the future of the web.

In 2023, we’re excited to take the leap toward the future and immerse ourselves into the magical and unexplored world of Web3. We’re not sure yet where this may take us, what we’ll produce, or whether we’ll decide to commercialise the learnings that we’ll gain throughout the process, but we’re planning to run a few internal experimental R&D projects around the concepts of NFTs and the metaverse.

Saying YES to PR opportunities.

For the past few years, I’ve been in hiding and shied away from saying yes to podcast interviews and speaking opportunities that often came my way. Perhaps this had to do with my overall feeling of disconnection with the external world due to the pandemic; or perhaps, I was just too busy finishing my MBA Degree and Management Chartership, while also trying to keep up with a rapidly growing company.

This year, I have much more headspace, and I am also feeling much more inspired to get out there and share our brand story, our message, and the learnings that I’ve accumulated while bootstrapping an agency from just an idea, expanding it globally, building an awesome team, instilling the culture of greatness, championing creativity and living the laptop lifestyle dream.

Organising team building activities.

With the pandemic finally over (fingers crossed!) and the world finally open for international travel, I am looking forward to seeing my team more in real life. The first meet-up is in the diary happening in Athens already and we’re so excited for some co-working and socialising time this month. I am also looking to organise some online learning, inspiration and socialising sessions to bring our team together outside of work.

On a personal level, my intentions are very simple this year. I want to buy less, and experience more. I’ll prioritise quality over quantity. I’ll maintain a life-work balance. I’ll put my free time to good use by investing it into learning, creating and wellness activities. I’ll be sociable and organise more frequent meetups with friends and family. That’s all.