Another year arrives and with it another opportunity to gear up your business for spectacular client service; sensational staff engagement; brilliant personal fulfilment; clarification and targeting of some amazing goals and dreams as well as turning in a splendid profit.

But enough of the fanciful hyperbole - how are you going to do it? What steps do you and your team need to take now, to make it all happen.

The first step I would say is to formulate your own planning first. Talk to your family about the future in the same way as you would encourage your clients to do.

The cobbler may have poor shoes, but you shouldn’t have a poor or worse still, no financial plan.

Only by doing your own planning and creating your own lifetime cashflow forecast, can you then write a plan for your business.

Only when you know how much you need to earn and for how long, can you organise your business to deliver the right numbers.

We all know that the most precious resource is time, not money.

But when we know how much money we need, we can also determine how much time we devote to making it.

Then it is down to personal preference - do you work 80 hours a week for the next 10 years and then stop?

Or do you work 2/3 days at a leisurely pace to get what you need?

Your life – your call.

When you have figured out what you need to earn, you can then work out how you are going to do it.

For example £100,000 is 10 clients paying £10k pa, or 20 paying £5k or 50 paying £2k – you get the idea.

What sort of clients can you attract? Where from? There are plenty of good business consultants out there to help with this stuff as well as marketing and social media and so on – but it all has to start with you!

This is basic stuff but too often doesn’t get done – put your holidays in the diary first, (holidays are an investment in yourself, in your wellbeing, fitness and energy) and without these important periods of recharge and thinking time, you will become less effective and lose your own motivation and inspiration.

Then write down your achievable goals for the year (personal and business,) and tell everyone what they are so there is full accountability and no hiding.

Whatever your goals and dreams are, I hope you achieve them and I wish you the very best of luck.

This column first appeared in the latest issue of Financial Planning Today magazine, click here to read for free.

Julie Lord is chief executive and a founder of Magenta Financial Planning in Bridgend, South Wales