How to Review your Year, Quarter or Month for Your Business

It’s that time of year again! Time to reflect on the past twelve months (or quarter, or month) and set some goals for the year ahead. The great thing about this is that you can do this whenever it feels right for you.

One thing you can’t skip is reviewing your past performance in business and really seeing what happened in your work, and what didn’t happen. This is the time to gather all the info, data, goals, income, calendars, and whatever info you have to make sure you can see how far you came and how much room for improvement you actually do have.

As entrepreneurs, we naturally go into this review the year mode, so here are tips on what to reflect on, and how to do so in a way that informs the goals you can set for the future.

First, congratulate yourself! Being an entrepreneur is no small feat. It takes guts, discipline, a whole lot of tech and learning to do what we do. You deserve to be applauded for doing something that not many people do!

Now, the review. Here are a four steps to review your year, quarter or month and plan for the next:

Review Your Past Year

By taking the time to review your year, you can get a better sense of what’s working well and what could be improved. Use these insights to help you set goals and make plans for the year ahead.

Congratulate yourself on the progress you’ve made in the past months. This is huge. You are a different person now and if you don’t let your accomplishments sink in and let yourself bathe in that feeling, you might risk always chasing the next big accomplishment because your never satisfied. Trust me, as an overachiever I know what this is like.

Here are things to reflect on that will help:

• Take some time to reflect on your accomplishments.
• What did you achieve this year, both big and small?
• Think about what you learned. What new skills or knowledge did you acquire over the past year?
• Consider your challenges. What obstacles did you face, and how did you overcome them?
• Could you actually sit down and describe what you did over the year?
• What did you spend the majority of your time doing?
• How would you rate your progress? Would you pay yourself the salary that you’re paying, that you’re getting paid now? Would that be something that would be worthwhile to know? Would you, how much would you pay yourself for it?
• Were you happy with the results, right?
• What are your focus areas and intentions that you had set? Did you meet them?
• And, and what would you do differently about setting goals? Did you set the right goals? Did you set smart goals?

Gather Your Data

If you haven’t written down any of the numbers in your business data, it’s a great time to start that. Write down what digital products you have, what services you offer, and how much you’re making for each. Email lists are so important these days.

Do you know how much time you’re actually spending writing your content or with one-on-one clients or, um, spending time managing your Facebook group?

Here are numbers to collect for your review. Make a simple spreadsheet and start to track these:

• Revenue
• Email Subscribers
• Number of clients
• Social media followers and views
• Number of sales broken down my product
• Numbers of subscribers based on Opt Ins
• How much time you worked per week
• Pie chart of revenue
• List of annual and monthly expenses
• Visitors to your website
• Conversion rates of your landing pages, open rates of email etc
• Any other data you feel is relevant to your business

There are a lot of numbers to look at, so do what works for you. Bonus tip: break out your numbers into a pie chart (you can do this in Canva), so you can see where money and time are being spent.

Set Your Priorities for Your Business

Setting priorities for your online business is essential for ensuring that your efforts are focused on the most important tasks and goals. The first step in setting priorities is to clearly define your overall business objectives. This should include both short-term and long-term goals, such as increasing sales, expanding your customer base, and improving customer satisfaction. Who is your ICA, and what is your vision for yourself and your business?

Once you have a clear understanding of your business objectives, you can begin to identify the specific tasks and projects that will help you achieve these goals. It is important to prioritize these tasks based on their level of importance and urgency. For example, tasks that are critical to the immediate success of your business, such as fixing a major bug in your e-commerce platform, should be given the highest priority. On the other hand, tasks that are less urgent or less important, such as redesigning your website, may be given a lower priority.

List out the areas you want to focus on in the new year. This will look different for everyone of course, but maybe you want to:

• Finally create a website (I can help with that in a VIP Day)
• Start your email list
• Focus on Pinterest growth
• Participate in bundles to grow
• Develop a stellar content plan that you can do in less than 2 hours a week

It is important to regularly review and update your priorities as your business evolves. This will ensure that you are always focused on the most important tasks and goals, and that your efforts are aligned with the overall success of your business. Additionally, it is also important to consider and review the resources available for your business, including time, budget and personnel, as these can affect the feasibility and urgency of certain tasks.

If you need tips – let’s just call this the lazy girl’s guide to priorities. Start with these and see if your daily activities can fit in to these categories.

• Your Email list
• Your Offers
• Collaborations
• Marketing
• Long form content

Create Your Marketing Plan

This is where you promote yourself and your business. Spend time to get very clear on the following things that should drive your everyday life and the activities you do.

A marketing plan is a comprehensive document that outlines the strategies and tactics that a business will use to achieve its marketing objectives. A marketing plan that includes long-form content, such as blogging or podcasting, should focus on building relationships with customers and prospects through engaging and informative content.

Blogging and podcasting are both effective ways to establish a business as a thought leader in your industry and to build trust and credibility with customers. Plus it’s fun to blog!

Blogging can be used to provide in-depth information on a particular topic or product, while podcasting can be used to provide a more personal and conversational approach. Both can be used to showcase the expertise of the business and its staff, as well as to provide useful information to customers.

In addition to long-form content, a comprehensive marketing plan should also include other marketing outlets such as social media marketing, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO). Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can be used to reach a large audience and to engage with customers in real-time. Email marketing can be used to reach out to customers with targeted and personalized messages. SEO can help to improve the visibility of a business’s website on search engines, which can lead to more traffic and more customers.

Overall, a marketing plan should be a well-rounded and cohesive approach that leverages multiple marketing channels to reach and engage with the target audience. It should be regularly reviewed and updated to keep up with the changes in the market and the customer needs.

Pro Tip: One great way to create a marketing plan is to print out a blank calendar for the year and start writing down what you want to do. I just make one in Canva (affiliate link). This can include:

• Monthly workshops
• Your email sends
• Live videos
• When you’ll release content
• Monthly themes for your group
• Podcast topics
• Vacations and days off
• When you’ll do learning for courses you’ve purchased
• Product launches

Even if you do this once a quarter, you will be in a better place to know how things are going for your business and be able to make effective plans for the next month, chapter or year!