Wow, I can’t believe it! It’s already the week before Thanksgiving. Are you as amazed with how fast this year has gone as I am?
Are you getting ready for the holidays? I’m so excited. My daughter and her family will be here, so we’ll have all 3 of my daughters and my sister with us. What I love about Thanksgiving is that it’s really about sharing and being grateful. While all the shopping has begun to encroach on the holiday it still seems to be more about the meal and the togetherness.
As you start your holiday planning I don’t want you to forget that it’s time to start planning for your 2015. Over the next few weeks I’m going to share the same steps I use in my personal planning session and with the participants in my Sage – Grow Your Business Program.
I’m going to share one piece at a time so you’re not overwhelmed with the whole process. I also have a neat new offer that I’ll share after Thanksgiving that will also support you as you grow your business in 2015.
For right now though let’s take the first step in planning next year.
Step 1: Review what you did last year.
By this time you should have a good idea where you’re going to end up for the rest of the year. I’m going to suggest that you to take about 45 minutes to an hour and review the year.
Here is some of the information you’ll want to have available while you do this.
- Your Vision and Mission
- 2014 Goals
- Revenue and Expenses (an estimate to date)
- Additional Metrics such as
- Retained clients
- New clients
- # of Networking events
- # of Speaking events
- Social Media #s beginning of year and current
- Email subscribers (your list)
- Any additional metrics that are relevant for you
As a small business you don’t want to have too many metrics and you also want to have the right ones, the ones that are leading indicators. Leading Metrics are those that tell you today how you’re doing tomorrow. If you don’t have these at this time don’t worry about it now. We’ll get back to those later.
Right now the important task is to gather the information so that you can create a picture of last year.
Another suggestion is to create an Annual Planning folder on your computer and then create a 2014 folder under that. Make other folders as appropriate.
Next create a document and save it as 2014 in Review in the 2014 folder.
This way you’ll have all your information in one place going forward.
Now it’s time to review 2014.
Start with these questions.
- What were my goals (or what was my focus)?
- Where did I exceed my goals?
- Where did I come up short?
- What challenges did I face?
- What happened that I wasn’t prepared for? (Personal or Business)
- What did I learn?
- What would I do different?
- Do I think I’m tracking the right metrics?
- What metrics do I think I should I track?
Copy these questions into your document and answer them there.
Once you’re done give yourself a BIG BACK PAT, then watch for Step 2. I’ll be sending it out after Thanksgiving.