Parenting Australia

New Year, New Goals

This morning as I embarked on what I hope will become a more regular morning walk than it has been to date, I thought about what I wanted to happen in the year ahead.

Last year was one of huge change for me, my family and my business and I want to make sure I build on the foundations I’ve set down throughout this period of change.

In the last few weeks of 2009 I blogged about my achievements for the year and my goals for 2010 on my Strawberry Communications blog. These achievements were a collection of professional and personal and I will share them with you now as Parenting Australia welcomes the New Year.

Johanna Baker-Dowdell

My achievements for 2009 included:

• Giving birth to a healthy baby boy, our second son.


• Launching Strawberry Communications as a full-time operation and relinquishing my role as full-time carer for my two children to my husband


• Reaching the finalist stage of the Central Coast Business Achiever Awards


• Writing an eBook, The 21st Century Guide to Promoting Your Small Business


• Growing my business income by an extra 50 per cent on the 2007/08 financial year


• Building my profile as an expert through book contributions and speaking engagements.

I also thought about what I wanted to achieve for the year ahead. I have a sense this year will be even bigger for me and my family so I hope you'll be happy to share our journey.

This is my list of goals for 2010:

1. Spend more time together as a family – now we’re all at home we have been taking barbecues to the beach, walking to the park and exploring new places at the weekend. I hope we’ll continue this into 2010 and beyond.


2. Continue to grow my writing and public relations business, Strawberry Communications.


3. Delegate – this is not one of my strong points, however to achieve the growth goal I must pass some work on to others (who knows they might have a better and/or quicker way!)


4. Write my book for mums starting a business – I’ve written the book proposal and whether it is published by a publishing house or by me I intend to write it this year. I've already been approached to launch it in Brisbane at the end of the year! Nothing like a deadline to get me writing.


5. Lose weight – this is my perennial annual goal and has been for more than 20 years, but if I can end 2010 weighing less than I did when 2009 finished I will be happy. I have started looking after my diet better under the guidance of a nutritionist and been speaking to a personal trainer so I am arming myself with the tools I need to make this happen. I am also running the PR campaign for Real Body Enterprises National Fat-Loss-a-Thon and have signed up to the program myself! Find out more at www.fatlossathon.com.

What would you like to achieve in 2010? I’d love to hear your list and we can compare notes in a year!

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Johanna Baker-Dowdell is mum to two boys – Noah and Ethan – and combines looking after them with her work as a blogger, journalist, writer and public relations consultant. She owns and manages Strawberry Communications which started small in the third bedroom, but has grown into its own office space (in the converted garage).

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