In this solo episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast’, I’m guiding you through a year-end review process to reflect on 2024 and prepare for 2025. As part one of a two-part series, I reveal the questions I use with my clients to evaluate their current year, laying the groundwork for future planning. I’m also sharing the importance of tracking sales, expenses, and marketing efforts, and learning from both successes and setbacks. PLUS there’s a free workbook to assist you in this evaluative process.

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Transcript

This is the perfect time of year to review how your year has gone and get ready for 2025. I am giving you all the questions that I ask myself and all of my clients and students so that they can review their current year and get ready to plan the next year. This is a two part podcast episode with the second part coming out on the 6th of January. This first part is about reviewing what you've done to date, and then part two will be about planning for the following year. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Waring. Now, this episode is coming out a couple of days before Christmas in 2024, so I'd never like to do a super long episode around Christmas, only because hopefully you're taking time off, you're enjoying a bit of downtime, and you're not necessarily in business mode as such. However, for me This time of year tends to be a really, really good time for me to work on the business. Now, I have to say I'm pretty good at working on the business because that is [00:02:00] kind of what my job is, is working on my business. However, obviously at this time of year, it's really good because one, during Christmas and New Year, no one expects anything from me. I never have any calls booked in. I never have any kind of stuff where I have to be on camera. And then, It's really good that when your brain starts to relax, that maybe you start to think about things. And what I wanted to do was create an episode that maybe you could do over Christmas. And I've actually put together a bit of a workbook for you. So if you go to teresaheathwaring. com forward slash 2024, you are going to find a download where. All the questions that I'm going to be giving you today and also 'cause this is gonna be part one of a two part podcast. The next part to this two part podcast will come out on the 6th of January. So if you go to choose wearing.com/ 2 0 2 4 the numbers, [00:03:00] you will be able to find the workbook where I list all the questions I'm gonna talk to you about today. And I list the exercises that I'm gonna talk to you about in part. Two on the 6th of January. Okay. Hopefully that covers that. So let's start with the questions I ask myself at this time of year. The very first thing I do when I work with anybody from a goal setting, strategic planning, marketing plan point of view, we start with these questions first. The very first thing I get them to do is tell me what their total sales are for the year. Like, this stuff is really important that we know our numbers. I don't know about you, but I track mine every single month. I have a spreadsheet that basically takes all the information from all the different places, even though obviously I use Xero and things like that. It just puts it on a spreadsheet in a way that I can see it much easily, and it tells me what I've made each month or what I've turned each month. It doesn't tell me the profit. Well, that particular spreadsheet doesn't. And the other thing the spreadsheet does, which I, [00:04:00] is one of the questions that I've put in the download for you is what products and services did you sell and what percentage did you get from an income point of view? That is really important when understanding and analyzing your business, because You could basically have a product that you love and actually when you do this exercise it makes you no money or a product that you pay and it makes you loads of money and it just will help inform you for thinking going forward what you want to do. The next question that we look at is we list all the main expenses. So in an ideal world, we want to know what are we spending out each month as well. And those are kind of just done as like overview numbers more than anything. Okay. So these are where the real questions come in. What went really well in 2024? I asked myself this every single month. I have a productivity coach. She doesn't [00:05:00] like being called a coach. So she calls herself a productivity mentor, but basically she helps me be productive. And in fact, I've done a podcast episode with her. So we will tag that in the show notes with the amazing Louise Miller. And we do this every single month. So every single month we have a call where I go through and I list out everything that went well in that month. So when it comes to doing the end of year stuff, it's really quite easy for me to go back and go, well, what did happen? I highly recommend that you do this, that you ask yourself every single month, what went well, because you will be absolutely amazed how much you forget. The summit I did was this year, and that feels like it was three years ago. And that was a huge success for me, my business. It was a lot of work, and it would be so easy for me to forget that it was at the March this year because so much else has happened since then. So list down everything you can think about. And the other thing I would say [00:06:00] is this doesn't have to just be business. It can be personal as well. We are our personal brand. So, or we are our business. So make sure that you write down as much as you possibly can in terms of what went well this year. When I do this in a group activity and I do this for my members, my clients, anybody who works with me in any capacity gets invited to a strategy day, which actually at the point of recording this, I'm actually doing tomorrow on the 11th of December. One of the things that's really good is I get people to share what wins they've had that year and that really helps other people go, Oh yeah, I did that. Oh yeah, this thing came up. The other advice I give you is to go through your camera roll or also to go through your calendar. Both of those things really helped me go, Oh yeah, this is what happened this year. Next question. What didn't go as planned this year? Now you'll see that I don't write what went terribly this year because The truth is it just didn't go as you hoped or expected it to go. [00:07:00] This section, people normally find really easy because they find it so much easier to berate themselves than actually celebrate themselves. So I'd almost want you to not give yourself too much time on this because otherwise you will just keep going like with all the questions and all the things. So for me, it's a case of like, what's the main things that didn't go as planned this year? Then we look at what did you learn from this? This is the beauty of when things go wrong is we learn something every single time. People think that like the thing in business or the one thing that you can do wrong in business is fail. No, no, no. The one thing you can do wrong in business is inaction, is taking no action. Because when you take action, you either win or you learn. And the things that didn't go so well, in 2024, [00:08:00] you will absolutely have learned something from them. You might learn, I don't like doing that thing and therefore I won't do that again. You might learn, actually, this was the result I got, but I think if I change this or tweak this, I would get a better result. This is the really important bit of that previous question in terms of what didn't go so well. It's what did I learn from this? What can I take from this in terms of what didn't go so well? So what did you learn this year? The next one, what do you plan to do differently in 2025? And this can be really generic or it can be really specific. So we obviously in part two, I'll go into the specifics of goal setting and things for next year, but This can be, do you need to show up differently? Do you need to overhaul stuff? Do you need to create something new? Like, what immediately comes to mind when you think, what do I need to do differently in 2025? Again, [00:09:00] it could be thinking like, I need to bring in my morning routine, or I need to take more time for me, or I need to get more organized. Now I hear people say that one all the time. And I have to say someone I have coached for years and years kept saying that to me. And in the end, I had to say to her, maybe you're just not an organized person. We can't all be organized. Like that isn't, you know, there's a reason I have a productivity coach to help me be even more organized than I want to be. So like, don't try and change fundamentally who you are, because that might be basically you setting yourself up for a fall. Okay. So what do you plan to do differently in 2025? So then. We look at the marketing specifically. So the next questions that I ask are what marketing have you done in 2024? Now, again, just a quick note on this. If you would set yourself a goal to do YouTube, in fact, that was one of my goals later in the year, I was going to start YouTube and life and work got in the way and it didn't happen. And I'm not going to berate myself about that. I'm not going to be [00:10:00] angry about it. I'm not going to think I'm useless or stupid or any of those things. I'm just going to go, I didn't do it. And I can write, what did I learn from that? Well, it wasn't the most important thing at that point. And then I can kind of debate with myself, is it still important? And do I want to bring it forward to 2025? When it comes to what marketing have you done in 2020? 24. I just want you to be really realistic about what did you actually do? So I could put in there that I consistently put a podcast episode out. I was consistent ish on social media. I consistently put emails out. Again, this isn't to go, look how amazing I am or look how terrible I am. You're basically, what you're doing at the end of every year or what I do is you're drawing a line in the sand and you're going, that action got me those results. What if we do different action? So then we look at what worked and what didn't. So for instance, I was really consistent in the podcast, which is brilliant. And you are listening to this, which I am so, so grateful for. [00:11:00] But in terms of growth of the podcast, it didn't grow particularly this year. Now, was it one of my main objectives for the year? No. So I'm not going to beat myself up about that. I'm just going to go, okay, that's interesting. I didn't do anything different and therefore it didn't grow. So. When I go, what worked and what didn't, well, what worked was I was really consistent. What didn't work was we didn't have any growth in the podcast because we didn't focus on the podcast. Like I said, these questions are only meant to help you think, they are not meant to judge you. The beauty of doing this is that you're learning and we can change. The, the person who doesn't even go to the effort of doing this are the people who are the most unlikely to make any changes in their business. So spending some time thinking and going through these questions is really going to help you move forward in your business. And then the last one within this review section is what marketing do you want to do in 2025? And this isn't any detail. This is just your [00:12:00] initial thoughts based on what you've just written down in that previous section in the, what marketing did you do? What, what, what didn't, what do you want to take into 25? Just notes, because in the second part of this podcast, so the one I'm going to do on the 6th of January, I'm going to take you through a bit of a marketing plan and how I do that for the next year. Okay, like I said, this is really short and sweet. If you are listening to this before Christmas, I wish you a very, very Merry Christmas if you celebrate it. I hope either way you have a chance to sit down, recoup some energy back, reflect, enjoy some time with your family. And I will see you in the next episode.