It’s time to get back to work for the New Year, which means a lot of bizfluencers and marketing “gurus” are going to try to sell you their strategies for “making this year your best yet.” They’re probably going to tell you that they have the hack you’ve been looking for to increase your reach and engagement on [insert platform here], or they’re going to attempt to shame you into signing up for a planning workshop since it’s resolution time.
Rest easy because I’m not going to try to sell you anything.
What I do want to talk to you about today is:
Setting strategic impact goals for 2026, rather than focusing on financial or vanity metrics.
Most people look at annual goal setting in two buckets:
1. Financial metrics that say, “I’m going to make $100,000 this year by selling 150 program seats, 12 coaching packages, and 100 books.” Then they reverse-engineer the projects and initiatives that will help them effectively hit those numbers and bring in money. If you’re wondering whether you should set financial metrics, the answer is sure! If that works for you, because the reality is that setting S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and time-bound) financial goals works for some energy and personality types, but not all. Plus, when you’re developing true thought leadership and creating channels for change that are designed to transform industries, a lot can evolve in a year.
2. Vanity metrics that they believe will make their business more profitable and their work more valid, such as “growing to 50,000 Instagram followers” or “getting enough subscribers to monetize YouTube.” Again, using that as a starting point to create content plans based on attention-based strategies to hit those numbers.
Let me first say:
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these goals.
We all have to bring in a certain level of income to maintain our lives and businesses. Creating revenue breakdowns is often an important step when you’re new to business and have no idea how to make enough money to pay yourself throughout the year, or if that’s just how your brain and being work best.
And vanity metrics? Well, when they’re actually vanity-based, they’re not so great, but audience-building goals matter when they’re a means of connection.
That’s because connection fuels impact, and reaching more people across platforms means building a living, breathing ecosystem where ideas circulate, relationships form, and collective learning happens in real time. In fact, we’ve set our own audience goals for 2026 (10,000 across all platforms and channels), but it’s our least important metric.
Impact goals are S.M.A.R.T. and involve big numbers, but they’re not about ego. They’re about stretching ourselves to do better work for more people across different areas.
In full transparency, this is my first year setting impact goals.
I’ve set strategic goals in the past that never really went anywhere, because they honestly didn’t speak to my heart. The mission and vision were there, but the goals felt flat.
When I set them for Choose Your Calling (the creative engine that powers Channels for Change), which you can read about here, I intended to create a strategic plan that stretches and moves us forward. Think exponential growth, not minor milestones.
It took me several weeks to clarify our impact goals. Months, actually, since I only just finalized our tracking and categorization over the holiday break. But I’ve found a process and approach that works for me, and that I want to share with you.
It breaks down into four categories:
🤔 How many people will you REACH?
🤔 How many people or causes will you AMPLIFY?
🤔 How much value will you REDISTRIBUTE?
🤔 How many people will you SERVE?
These questions are rooted in true thought leadership, not content creation or the “how to make seven-figures doing nothing” mindset. I’m going to break down each one so you have more context for why I believe these matter and to bring out the best answers for yourself.
So, get out a notebook or open a new doc, and let’s dive in!
1. How many people do you want to reach?
This is about meeting more people where they’re at and inviting them into a deeper relationship with your conversations and work. With reach, we split our goals into two categories:
First, how many people will you reach directly?
These are unique individuals (counted only once per year, no matter how many different ways they engage) whom you reach with your content. This includes unique subscribers and opt-ins, new visitors to your website, and unique attendees to free workshops or online trainings. Free content and access = reach.
Second, how many media impressions will you generate?
As a thought leader, you must understand that visibility is power, and every impression matters because it directly shapes culture. Because it’s impossible to count unique impressions across most initiatives, this generally includes totals for video views, social media impressions, ad impressions, podcast downloads, and an honest percentage of traffic to guest posts and features.
What’s honest? Well, if a website gets 10,000 visitors a month with a 50% bounce rate, you can assume a guest post or feature gave you 1-5% in impressions. For our business, we’re working with 1% to challenge ourselves and achieve the highest level of accuracy possible. In this example, that means we can count 50 impressions. In some cases, you can ask the website owner or podcast host to share actual numbers with you for more accuracy!
2. How many people or causes will you amplify?
On this website, we’re focused on helping you build a brand, business, or channel for change that contributes positively to the world. To achieve that, we believe all our work as thought leaders must amplify and center underserved and underrecognized causes and communities to reduce systemic harm.
No matter what you do, I promise there’s a cause you can align with. No matter who you are or who you serve, I promise there are underrecognized leaders whose work isn’t being centered. Not because it’s not incredible, transformative work, but because the systems of our world center whiteness and men above all else.
So, the first question is really: who or what needs more amplification in your particular conversation or industry?
Notice if your ego comes up and tries to interfere with this process, or if any fear creeps in and diverts your attention from the honest answers and toward something that feels “less conflicting” to you. I guarantee there are leaders in your space whose work has been overlooked and excluded, and as business owners and change agents, we must move away from self-centering practices.
Yes, even if you have a personal brand.
The second question is: how can your work and presence uplift underserved communities and underrecognized leaders?
*Not to feel good about, center, or position yourself as a savior.
- Will you interview more diverse guests on your podcast?
- Will you feature more underrecognized leaders on your blog?
- Will you bring on partners from underserved communities?
- Will you volunteer your time for aligned organizations?
- Will you feature these people and work online?
Look at your business model or channel for change and ask yourself: how can I amplify and center people and communities of the Global Majority in everything I/we as a company do, and what’s a stretch goal we can set around this?
3. How much value will you redistribute?
Impact isn’t only measured by growth, but by how resources move through society. Value redistribution reflects a commitment to redirecting time, expertise, platform access, education, and financial support toward communities and leaders historically excluded from (and frequently harmed by) these spaces.
This can look like:
- Donating a percentage of your income to a specific cause.
- Providing pro- or low-bono services to the underserved.
- Offering non-punitive payment plans and sliding scale pricing.
- Creating scholarship spots for low-income individuals or leaders.
- Prioritizing hiring skilled women or people from the Global Majority.
- Volunteering your time with mutual aid organizations.
Whatever it is, it’s about reparations and redistribution to people and communities who have been systematically limited.
4. How many people will you serve?
Where most people start with the money they want to make, we begin with service. How many people—real, live human souls—do you want to serve this year?
An important distinction here: reach ≠ service.
You can argue that free content serves people, because it does. But within our impact goal categories, it’s about how many people deeply engage with the work. This is why we categorize paid engagement as a person served, and someone who engages with free or ungated content as a person reached. And similar to reach, count each person once. If someone buys a program, then hires you for coaching, and then invests in a done-for-you service months later, that’s one person served.
Remember: this question isn’t about money or math equations. It’s about your vision and mission statement, and choosing a number of people you’d love to serve this year, while stretching yourself. You know what’s reasonable, possible, and a stretch for you. Trust that, and try to make yourself a little uncomfortable with this!
Money follows impact.
And impact results from greater reach and visibility, prioritizing social responsibility in every way, and aligning with causes and leaders that truly make a difference.
And when you’re operating based on impact goals that are designed to stretch your capacity in any given year, you have to think and move differently to achieve them. These goals then turn into projects throughout the year that elevate everything from your impact to your thought leadership to the offerings you put out.
Please take some time to sit with these questions.
I promise your business (and your income) will be better for it.
Now…
How do we turn impact goals into projects for the year?
Let’s talk about how we choose and plan projects to help us reach those thought-leadership-based goals in a way that’s meaningful and supports our unique wiring.
That means the first piece of the puzzle is understanding how you work best, your capacity, and what feels aligned.
One of my favorite tools for this is Human Design, but since we’re still working on an in-depth training with one of our mentors, and there’s a lot that goes into understanding your design, I recommend starting with the following questions:
🤔 What’s my current energetic capacity?
This includes your physical, mental, and emotional capacity.
If you’re dealing with health issues, what can you realistically do in any given month or quarter without making your symptoms worse? If you’re dealing with burnout, depression, or other mental health challenges, what do you need to stop doing, and what types of activities feel life-giving, expansive, or restorative to you?
🤔 How do I work best?
Do you thrive with a ton of super-specific, time-bound goals that are set well in advance, or do you need more open-ended focus areas that leave room for you to respond to your intuition? Do you work better alone, or does having people around you help? Is it more aligned for you to experiment and see what sticks, or do you feel better when you have clarity about exactly what you’re doing? What’s an ideal daily or weekly schedule that supports your well-being?
🤔 What feels expansive for me to work on?
It can be super easy to fall in line with what the talking internet heads have to say about how to be successful in business, but that generally has nothing to do with what will work for you or what will feel energizing to focus on.
What types of projects do you really enjoy working on? What clients are most energizing to you? What pain points do you feel thrilled to solve for others? What wants to come alive inside of you and your work this year (not what you think you should be doing, or what’s worked in the past)?
Don’t skip these questions and rush into project planning; otherwise, you run the risk of burning yourself out on tasks with little return.
And remember, we’re operating from the belief that money follows impact.
Our focus is on reach, amplification, redistribution, and service, all while honoring ourselves and how we work best. Once you’ve answered the above questions…
Let’s talk about project planning for 2026!
I’m going to give you some focus areas to consider, without any step-by-step instructions on what to do, because you’ll need to pair your answers to the above with the projects you choose. If you get stuck, you can always take advantage of my 60-minute introductory mentoring session for just $97 here. We can walk through your impact goals, energetic wiring, and project ideas to map an approach to 2026 that feels nourishing and aligned.
1. What initiatives could help you reach more people?
Reaching people requires visibility, and as I’ve been sharing for some time now, posting on social media isn’t the way to do it. Most accounts are seeing a significant drop in reach and engagement, with less than 5% of their audiences seeing their organic content. This means you have to consider alternative ways to grow your reach if you set an impact goal in this area that stretches you.
Do an alignment gut check on the following ideas:
- Start a podcast or be a guest on others.
- Create a search engine optimized website.
- Contribute guest posts to high-authority websites.
- Boost social media content if your budget allows.
- Host free online or in-person trainings and workshops.
- Join networking groups online or in person.
- Go live on social media with aligned partners.
- Be a guest teacher on an online summit or in a program.
- Run lean ads on audience-aligned platforms.
- Create several keyword-based YouTube video series.
- Implement a Pinterest strategy that drives traffic.
- Submit to win business or service-specific awards.
- Reply to journalist queries on sites like HARO.
- Seek out opportunities to be featured online.
- Create business listings on quality sites.
- Put up fliers at aligned businesses.
- Publish press releases for major announcements.
Remember: increasing our reach breaks down to both reaching individual humans and increasing media impressions, resulting in greater visibility.
2. What initiatives could help amplify the underserved?
Remember, this is about amplifying and centering underserved and underrecognized causes and communities. So, for the following, when I say leaders, service providers, communities, etc., I’m talking about Black, Indigenous, Latine, and other people of color, as well as LGBTQIA+, women, and nonbinary individuals.
Do an alignment gut check on the following ideas:
- Feature leaders and creatives on your platforms.
- Interview leaders on your podcast or video series.
- Invite leaders to contribute to your website.
- Sponsor and promote events organized by leaders.
- Read and highlight books by authors.
- Build a referral network of service providers.
- Share quotes (with attribution!) from leaders.
- Recommend leaders for speaking engagements.
- Nominate their organizations for awards.
Once you’ve selected the options that stand out to you and honor your energetic answers from above, you can start thinking about what specific initiatives you can put in place to achieve them. And… do your research! Don’t just support or amplify the causes and leaders that are in the spotlight; dig deeper into Google searches, communities, and recommendations from others to find individuals and organizations that aren’t getting as much support.
3. How can you redistrubute value?
This is about redirecting time, expertise, platform access, education, and financial support toward communities and leaders historically excluded from your spaces. No matter what you do, if you’re white and/or male, you inherently benefit from the systems that seem invisible in everyday life, including algorithms. That means reparations are a part of creating a better world, no matter what your thought leadership or body of work specifically focuses on.
Do an alignment gut check on the following ideas:
- Donate a percentage of your sales to an aligned cause.
- Add fundraising campaigns to your marketing calendar.
- Sponsor events organized by underserved leaders.
- Partner with and pay underrecognized thought leaders.
- Plant trees in Global Majority communities for book sales.
- Sponsor clients for pro-bono service projects.
- Create sliding scale or pay-what-you-can pricing.
- Set up a scholarship fund for program enrollment.
- Allot a certain number of free or low-cost sessions.
- Create a micro-grant for underserved individuals.
- Volunteer with organizations that need your skills.
- Teach your programs as volunteer classes.
- Find land tax organizations that support Indigenous tribes.
- Hire and pay skilled workers from the Global Majority.
- Venmo money to any BIPOC leaders you learn from.
- Research and read more books from BIPOC leaders.
Whatever it is, it’s about reparations and redistribution to people and communities who have been systematically limited, and choosing to uplift them while growing.
4. How can you serve more people?
Service requires depth of engagement, which is why we count people who’ve paid as a person served, and those who engage in free content as a person reached. While there are many ways to work with individuals in a paid capacity, challenge yourself to think of projects that will help you serve more individuals this year, while still honoring your available capacity and personal preferences.
Do an alignment gut check on the following ideas:
- What programs can you launch?
- What new service containers can you create?
- What group containers can you test?
- What virtual or in-person events can you host?
- What content can be turned into paid products?
- What consulting can you offer?
Notice that these ideas are all service-based, not different income streams. There are plenty of other ways to bring in money (like affiliate or referral programs), but that’s different than directly serving someone with your thought leadership.
How does all of this translate into projects?
Take what stood out to you on the lists above, or that you came up with yourself, and create clear projects for the year that consider and weave together multiple impact goals.
That might look like:
🎙️ Launch an audio and video podcast in April that features nine BIPOC leaders and fundraises for three causes that work with underserved communities throughout the year. Hire and pay a producer from an underrecognized community and test lean ads for pillar episodes, implementing keyword-rich show notes.
🗓️ Publish a short, topical book by the end of the year around a core focus and complete keyword research to create an SEO content funnel that leads into the book. Hire an editor and book designer from an underrecognized community, plant a tree for every book sold with One Tree Planted (a favorite of mine), and leverage the book to speak on podcasts and online summits.
🎥 Host quarterly in-depth workshops on my thought leadership topics that lead into a signature program. Invite guest experts to lead workshops or offer a program bonus, and use pay-what-you-can pricing for underserved individuals, donating a portion of every program sale to a nonprofit doing similar work in communities.
Don’t forget to check in on your capacity and what you need this year. Money may follow hustle for some people, but not all, and if you want to have an impact, YOU need to be resourced.
Part of that is remembering that for some people, you’re not going to set all of your 2026 projects right now. You might find yourself drawn toward a couple of projects that excite you, trusting that additional projects will surface at the right time.
