the 10 year plan. If the world doesn’t end tomorrow, that is.
I recently realized, with the guidance of some friends and other small women business owners, how helpful it is to have a 10 year plan. I know that it’s really far into the future and some of us don’t even know what we’ll be doing in a month or two (I know I don’t. All my current work projects will have wrapped up by then). It’s not the specifics that’s important. I mean it’s really hard to predict where you’ll be living, where you’ll be working, or even who will be in your life that far into the future, but it’s a really intriguing question to ask yourself, “what do I want in 10 years?”.
In a lot of ways it’s a cliche question, isn’t it? We’ve been conditioned to expect it on our cheat sheet of anticipated questions we might be asked at a job interview…”where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?”. But think about it. Think of all the things you want in 10 years, whether or not you think they’re attainable. Dream big, why not?
So…
In 10 years, Mia will be headed to college. (OMG, no stop. No, really. THIS, folks, is what makes me feel old, never mind that I will also have just entered into my 5th decade of existence).
In 10 years I want our business to have fully supported our family for at least 5 of those years which means that whatever “next” career I’m working on is “extra” income for stuff like, oh…I don’t know…the hundreds of thousands of dollars it’s going to cost me to send Mia, then Claudine, to college.
In 10 years Mark will be managing a small team of bakers and not baking so much himself. The business will run like a machine so that we’ll be able to keep our business open and profitable when we’re not there (meaning, we won’t lose income if we decide to take a vacation like we do now). I’ll be honest in that I have no aspirations to be a mega huge operation. I still don’t know if I even want a retail storefront, but what I do know is that we need to grow so that not everything falls on Mark’s shoulders. That much is obvious.
In 10 years our brand will grow beyond food. It will become a food & lifestyle brand (eh, don’t ask me how or what. I don’t even know what that means. Just putting this out there).
In 10 years I won’t be designing for clients anymore. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll be leaving the industry. I’m open to whatever opportunities there may be in the future, but if I’m still working in this industry, I’ll be managing or directing, not pushing pixels around on a computer. I’ll be too old for that. Really.
In 10 years I will be taking photos and getting paid for it.
In 10 years we will have traveled with the girls to Europe, Hawaii and Asia, among other destinations. We’ll continue to make it a priority to take at least 1 big vacation and 1 small vacation every year.
In 10 years I will be able to afford better healthcare for my family. In 10 years I hope there are more and better healthcare options for small business owners and freelancers.
In 10 years I will have the financial security I crave…and we’ll have more than enough money to afford all the things we want and all the things we need. Also, retirement won’t look so scary. In fact, we’ll be able to see it.
The 10 year plan was actually an assignment for our next small business owners meeting group. Not surprisingly, I’m one of the older, if not oldest person in the group and the only parent. I’ve never written down any 10 year plans when I was 30, but I realized at our last meeting that I had already achieved some of the goals that may be on many of their 10 year plans: a family, owning an apartment, owning a business, sitting on savings, having a retirement account and not living paycheck to paycheck anymore. I’m now looking at the next 10 years and the next phase of my life now that I’ve met these milestones. The next 10 years are also about the girls. After that they’ll be gone, away to college. When I think about it this way, my 10 year plan is also about making the next 10 years count.
love it.