In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a vision board
for 2021. That actually works. I'm Megan Minns. And I help
online business owners learn how to get out of the weeds and the
nitty gritty of running their online business and step into
the role of being the real CEO. Creating a vision board for the
year ahead that relates to your goals is a powerful way to take
what's in your head or in your project management system and
make it tangible and visual. Now, I love to plan and I have
been helping online entrepreneurs set goals and plan
for their businesses for many years, in fact, since 2014, if
you can believe it, but one thing I had never done until
2020 was create a vision board. It is mind blowing to me when I
sit down and actually look at my vision board. And I see how much
of my vision board actually came to fruition and became a reality
despite all of the unexpected things that happened over the
course of the year. In fact, later on in the video, I'm
actually going to show you my 2020 vision board and walk you
through what actually came true from that so that you can see
for yourself how crazy the results are. And that experience
of going through the process of creating the vision board
through seeing it on a daily basis over the course of the
year. And now at the end of the year. Seeing how much of it came
true has really made me so excited to incorporate vision
boards into my annual goal setting process before you sit
down to plan your goals for the next year. I think getting clear
on your vision and creating a vision board is one of the best
things you can do for your business and your life as the
CEO of your business. It is your vision that really guides
everything forward and steers the ship for the year ahead for
your entire business and team. And if you jump into the new
year, without having a clear vision in place, you're going to
end up spending the year jumping around from one idea, one
project to the next one goal to the next without ever really
gaining true momentum and making progress towards something
meaningful. If you've ever looked back at a past year and
felt like you were busy the whole time and you did things
but it didn't really get you any closer to where you're trying to
go in the long run, chances are you've never sat down to really
get clear on your vision. This is really common. And it's
honestly why the very first thing we do with our clients
inside of our empowered CEO program is take the time to get
clear on the vision each of them and you have for your life and
your business. Once you have this clarity on what you're
working towards in the big picture, you are going to be
able to make strategic decisions not only at the start of the
year, but on a quarterly, monthly and daily basis
throughout the entire year. That way, you're making decisions
that are in alignment with your bigger vision that are actually
getting you closer to that vision instead of falling victim
to shiny object syndrome. And having this vision in your head
is great writing on paper is even better. And the next thing
you can really do to drive this home for yourself and make it
something that becomes really ingrained in your daily routine
is making it visible through a vision board having this vision
board which is a visual reminder of you of what you're working
towards. And why is going to be a game changer for you
throughout 2021 by seeing your vision not in words, but in
pictures and imagery and feelings. It's really going to
help you stay inspired, motivated and encouraged on a
daily basis. It's incredible, and I can't wait for you to
experience it. Now let's jump into my easy four step process
for creating a vision board so that you can actually create
yours right now step number one is to get clarity on the vision
you have for the year ahead. When it comes to gaining this
clarity you might be at a loss for where to start, how do you
even uncover what you want to be working towards for the next
year? Well, I recommend you either start with pen and paper
or if you're a tablet person, you can go that route. But
either way, I think taking it off of the computer and onto a
more paper like situation is so helpful for uncovering what you
really want tapping into your intuition. That part of your
brain that isn't thinking as critically as we are when we sit
down on our computer. It's so difficult to really do this type
of brainstorming and journaling exercise when you're typing
because even though you can type faster than you can right we
start critically thinking we start editing ourselves and we
start overthinking what is coming out instead of allowing
ourselves to free think without that type of critical
analyzation in the process. So I'd love for you to grab either
a piece of paper or tablet and answer the following have five
questions to get your brain thinking on what you want for
the year ahead. Question number one, what experiences do you
want to have in 2021? Question two, what achievements or
milestones Do you want to accomplish and 2021? Question
three, how do you want to feel on a daily basis? Question four.
What do you want your home your workspace and your life to look
like visually on a daily basis?
And question five how Do you want to show up on a daily
basis? What actions or habits Do you want to be doing every
single day? Hopefully, by taking the time to journal out some
thoughts on those five questions, you can start to gain
clarity on the vision you have for the year ahead, including
some goals and milestones, as well as those intangibles of
what you want to be feeling, thinking and how you want to be
acting on a daily basis, I find that sometimes those are almost
more powerful than just thinking exclusively about achievements
and milestones. Now remember, when you're answering these
questions, you should be thinking about business and life
together, you may find that you're naturally leaning more
towards business thoughts, in which case, I want to challenge
you to think about your personal life or vice versa, maybe you're
focused exclusively on your personal life. And I want to
challenge you to think a little bit about your business.
And that's because your business and your personal life are
integrated as the CEO. So I really want our vision that
we're creating in our vision board to reflect both so that
you can look at one thing and see this holistic vision you
have for 2021. Okay, now you have clarity on what you want
2021 to look like and what you're working towards. Now it's
time for us to move to step two, which is actually collecting and
finding inspiring images. So what we want to do is take the
words that you've written as we're answering those journaling
prompts, and start to identify how we could visually represent
or reflect what you want for 2021. Now an old school way of
doing this would be to get some magazines or books and cut out
images and get really hands on if that's your style, please
feel free to go ahead and do that. It's not necessarily my
style. So I like to do things on the computer and digitally
instead. So my favorite way to actually find and collect these
images is to go to Pinterest and create a secret Pinterest board
just for my 2021 vision. And I keep all of the images saved
there that I find throughout this process. And then when it
comes to actually finding images, I love using Pinterest
and Instagram, I find that Pinterest is a little easier
because you can actually search for specific keywords. But
sometimes on Instagram by using hashtags or following inspiring
accounts, I will also find images that reflect what I'm
working towards in the year ahead. So I like to use both.
They're both visual platforms. So I think that makes sense. So
whether it's a screenshot from my phone or an image I saved
directly from Pinterest, I'm saving all of it to a Pinterest
board that only I can view so that I can start collecting all
of the images. Now it's really important when you're asked this
step to not over analyze the images that you think are
inspiring and reflect your 2021 vision, just throw them all in
there. So don't worry about finding the one picture that
represents what you're working towards, you may end up adding
10 or more pictures or images that reflect this one piece of
your vision. And that is okay, we will do some editing later. I
want you to view this Pinterest board in this step as just
grabbing anything and everything that represents your vision.
Once you've done that, it's time to move to step three, where
we're actually going to take that Pinterest board and those
images and turn it into your final vision board. Since we're
doing this all digitally and electronically, I love creating
my vision board in a graphic design tool called Canva. Canva
makes it really easy for you to upload images from anywhere. So
once I have my Pinterest board ready to go, I open up
Pinterest, I'm looking at my Pinterest board and I start
downloading the images that I really like the most that I want
to incorporate into my vision board, then I can easily upload
those to Canva and start adding those as a little collage to a
graphic inside of Canva. And this is where you can just get
creative. Add all the images, rearrange crop, change the
layers, play around with it until you are happy with the
vision board you've created, you may end up adding five different
images that represent a specific part of your vision and seeing
if you want to leave a couple of them there, take them all out
only pick one, you'll start to see it all come together and
layer. So I want you to leave perfectionism behind and let
this be an exercise of creativity and inspiration.
Because the ultimate goal is that you have a vision board
that inspires you and not only inspires you but excites you and
motivates you. So while we have an idea of what we are hoping
that this vision board will reflect at the end of the day,
if it inspires you, excites you, motivates you and reflects what
you want for the year ahead. It has done its job. So don't
stress about it being perfect or checking all of the boxes, I
want you to spend some creative time maybe put on some good
music, maybe light a candle, get a drink and allow this to be a
fun part of the process. Once you've done that you are ready
to enter the final step of the process, which is to save and
display. You've got this beautiful vision board on your
computer on Canva. But now it's time for us to take this and put
it in the real world so that you can see it on a daily basis
without having to access it. So I don't want us having to open a
specific file on our computers or have to dig somewhere to find
this vision board. In order for this to be really effective. I
want your vision board to be somewhere physically around Do
that you are seeing accidentally by chance on a regular daily
basis, my favorite way to do this is to actually print out my
vision board. So from Canva, you can either print it out at your
home computer, you can send it to a place like staples or
Office Max to be printed, whatever makes sense for you.
But I love printing my out actually framing it and hang it
up in my home office so that I see it on a daily basis, every
single time I come in and out of my office, I can't help but be
reminded of the vision I'm working towards. You could also
choose to save the graphic as the wallpaper or background of
your phone or your laptop. Again, that's a great place for
you to be seeing it on a regular basis without
having to take additional action steps to find it. And of course,
you can do all of these things, a variety of them come up with
other ways. As long as it's going to be in your environment
somewhere that you're going to naturally and organically see it
on a daily basis, then you are all set. But we want to make
sure we wrap up this exercise by taking that Canva graphic and
making it something tangible that you see all the time. Now
earlier I told you I would actually share with you my 2020
vision and walk you through some of the crazy things that
actually came true from that vision board. So if you haven't
noticed right behind me, that is my 2020 vision board. I keep it
framed, it's actually moved with me. And I always make sure to
have it in my home office that I see it on a regular basis. As we
all know, 2020 was a crazy year. But I am still surprised at
everything that came true for me. Based on my vision board.
One of the biggest life changing things that happened on the
vision board was actually getting pregnant with a baby
girl. Now for those who don't know, throughout 2018 and 2019.
And the first half of 2020, we have had a lot of fertility
issues. We've had multiple miscarriages, we actually did
some fertility treatments. And so when I sat down to do my 2020
vision board, I almost didn't put anything on there at all
about getting pregnant or having a baby or specifically having a
baby girl, which was my secret dream. I really was hesitant to
include it at all. I didn't want to set myself up to fail. But I
knew that it was a big piece of my hopes for the year. So I
throw it on there. I actually have a picture of a nursery, I
have a picture of a baby girl specifically. And I have a
picture of a pregnant woman. And it has been so exciting and
crazy to me that halfway through the year we surprisingly got
pregnant without any intervention or fertility
treatments, it was a total surprise and we are having a
baby girl in February of 2021. So our nursery looks a lot like
the nursery, I actually have a photo of I wear black and have a
very big pregnant belly and we are having a baby girl. So that
was a huge surprise and a big life changing part of our vision
board that is coming true. We also moved in 2020, which I
didn't think we would for sure I thought maybe we would move in
2021. But I actually put pictures on my vision board of a
white brick, one story Ranch House and we ended up moving to
a one story Ranch House that we painted white. And it's just
really funny to see that come together. There's another
picture on my vision board that is actually of a living room
fireplace bookshelf area, which is exactly what our living room
ended up looking like. There were also some travel photos on
my vision board which didn't come true in the end. But it was
really bizarre that after I decided I wanted to have grease,
Hawaii and Napa Valley vineyards on my vision board, things
actually started to come together for each of those
things. Unfortunately, because of COVID they fell apart pretty
quickly. But I was going to go to a wedding in Greece, a
conference in Hawaii and a anniversary or a friend trip to
California so that was kind of crazy to see that almost come
together. I have things about reading more I read over 50
fiction books in 2020. spending a lot of quality time with my
husband happened in a very unexpected way due to being
quarantined at home together I actually put a peloton and
physical activity on the board as well which we ended up buying
a peloton and I did go through a big cooking phase. Now that I've
spent half of the year being pregnant I will say the healthy
eating piece has kind of fallen off a little bit but it still
feels very reflective of 2020 as a whole. For me I had some big
business things on here as well. So I had a little milestone
about hitting a million dollars in annual revenue. Now that may
not have happened but we did have our biggest year in
business when it comes to revenue to date. So that is a
huge milestone. I was also featured and a few different
press features. I had incredible speaking opportunities we got
booked for speaking opportunities in 2021, which is
exciting as well. I also have some images that at the time
represented in person events I wanted to attend those did not
happen because
of COVID.
But what did come together was the online community I built
going into the year it was really seeking community and
meaningful relationships. And not only did I find that through
online friends through voxer message threads with friends
zoom wine dates in the evenings when we were quarantining
joining incredible programs and communities creating our own
free community over on Facebook as well as launching our program
empowered CEO, which is a high level mastermind, all of these
things came together where I really feel like I'm leaving
2020 with meaningful, valuable high level relationships in
place that weren't there at the beginning of the year. And I
even have a photo on here that to me at the time meant building
a team and hiring my own team. And as we wrap up 2020, we have
made the transition from contractors to full time
employees over here at Megan Minns team. So that is a very
exciting transition that came through as well. One other thing
you may notice is that YouTube and a YouTube plaque was
actually on the vision board for 2020 as well. And it is again
for 2021. We are coming back full force here on YouTube in
2021, with weekly videos all about the operations and systems
and planning when it comes to running an online business. So
I'm thrilled to be back over here and I'm excited for YouTube
to be on my vision board again for 2021. So if you haven't
subscribed yet, now is a great time to do so we would love to
have you here on the channel as we come back for weekly videos.
So if you're an online entrepreneur who's looking to
grow, build and run a scalable systemized online business, you
are in the right place. And you should absolutely hit that
subscribe button so you don't miss out on all of the videos to
come this year. And I just want to remind you that when it comes
to creating a vision board and looking at 2021 in the year
ahead, what you achieve in the year ahead doesn't have any
reflection on your worth, as a person, your goals your vision
is only there to inspire you excite you put you on the right
direction and help you make progress towards what you want
your life and business to look like. But I don't want you to
get so caught up and having every single thing on your
vision board become a reality because that's not the point.
It's okay if you don't hit a million dollars, even if you had
it on your vision board. if it helped you show up in a bigger
way and make bigger picture decisions that are going to make
you a million dollar business sooner that is the whole point.
So don't forget to allow yourself to just be inspired
even if it doesn't all make logical sense. I would love to
hear from you now and hear a little bit about your vision for
2021. So leave a comment below with either a description of
part of your vision for 2021 or something that inspired you as
you were creating your vision and your vision board for the
year ahead. If you thought this video was helpful, don't forget
to share it with a friend subscribe and of course hit the
like button so we know to make more videos like this. I hope
you have an incredible 2021 and I can't wait to see your vision
become a reality.