A few years ago I wrote a sponsored post about the five things you should do for your business before the new year. I have previously discussed the topic of reusing content to develop new content. Since my old blog will soon be shutting down I wanted to revisit this post and update it based on what I have learned in the past three years. My first post was outlined like this:
- Examine what went right this year
- Examine what went wrong this year, how will you change this in 2017 (I told you this post was a few years old).
- Develop an expense sheet
- Develop a plan of action
- Develop a marketing strategy
Upon the first examination of this outline and post my brain was screaming well duh! Of course, you should do all of those things. However, then I got to thinking about it those things may not be so obvious to everyone, especially those who are new to entrepreneurship. I mean I would say I am still relatively new myself. When I thought even more deeply about this post and this advice written by me I realized I started my business officially a year ago, but I did not start off doing these things, despite having myself written this article two years prior to that.
Talk about #mind-blown right?
Essentially what I was looking at was a letter to future me, but when I originally wrote the post it was out of desperation to make a quick dollar to support my family around Christmas, while simultaneously being extremely depressed and wondering how on earth I was ever going to get out of my funk.
Honestly, though this post has some amazing advice, and I would like to reshare that advice in more detail with you, plus with the added bonus of me not being depressed desperate to make a dollar. Since I wrote the original post way back in 2016, at the beginning and early days of my freelance writing career I have learned a lot. However, the outline is still really very good, and I have decided to keep my old outline for my new post.
The goal behind the original article was to inform business owners on how they could set up their businesses for success in the new year.
I aim to speak to those who are considering starting a business or those who already own businesses. If you are reading this you are likely a business owner or have hopes to one day be a business owner. With that said here are the five steps to set up your business for success in the new year.
Examine what went right this year:
I am happy to say I had a lot of things go right this year, not that my year was perfect, but it was much better than any of the years prior to it. One of the biggest things I did right this year was put myself out there, and develop a brand for myself and my business. I started doing live videos, I created my first opt-in, I paid for a brand new website built from scratch, and I must say it is beautiful. Big shout-out to my designer Joanna Sherrow for developing this amazing site. I invested in my business and I started actually thinking about what I was doing as if it were a real and true business.
These are all the things I did right in my business. I want you to consider your business though, and what you did right in your business this year. Did you have an amazing month this year where you made amazing sales? Did you develop a new product? Land a big client? Even if you feel like your year was terrible, think hard about the positive moments you had this year in your business. Now I want you to ask yourself how did you manage to acquire that success? What led to that amazing month? What made the development of that new product so fabulous for you? How did you get that big client?
I don’t want you to give silly answers either like, oh it fell in my lap, or it was just luck. There are events that lead up to things falling into your lap, you talked to someone, you impressed someone. The same thing with luck, a string of events had to take place for your “luck,” to be triggered. Dig deep and truly look at what steps you took in order to manifest your dreams this year, even if they are small victories, a victory is a victory and we should celebrate every victory.
Examine what went wrong this year:
You have celebrated your wins, now it is time to review your stumbles. What went wrong this year, and how can you improve that moving forward into 2020? I think my biggest mistake this year was jumping in without a full plan for what I was going to do or how I was going to market myself. However, being that it was also my first year, and previously I had created plans and never followed through on them, jumping in this year with the mindset of “let’s see where this goes,” was actually helpful for my growth.
I have always been a planner girl. I always had a schedule and a plan for the order of my life and the direction it would go. However, graduating college and being thrust into the real world where plans do not always work out was a real disappointment and caused some serious self-deprecating thoughts about me being a failure. If I had developed a plan for this year and followed it through I might have seen some faster results. However, there is also the possibility that I may have stumbled and returned back to that foggy dark place.
I was not confident in my pricing or my payment requests. That has improved in the last few months. I now request payment upfront and occasionally offer payment plans. I will continue this in the new year and likely up my prices as well.
Again I want you to think about your own business and what you could have done better this year. Maybe you were not consistent in your marketing? Perhaps you lacked confidence in your sales calls? Maybe just maybe you launched a product before it was ready? Did you make a blunder in your business? Think about what you need to improve. What can you do better next year?
Develop a Plan of Action:
You have looked at what went right and what went wrong this year, now how are you going to utilize this information to make for an even better year in 2020? An action plan is definitely on my list of things to do going into the new year. I had a large number of project orders this year because I did a great job of marketing my project packages. What I did not do such a great job on was marketing my monthly packages and services, what I can offer to do for people on a recurring basis. This will be a big part of what I look at and plan for as we move into 2020.
When creating a plan of action you don’t want to just look at your marketing. You want to look at your services, your packages, your prices. In addition, you want to plan out your sales and offers. When will you be doing a big push for your services and products and when will you be stepping back for a minute to give yourself some rest time. You do not want to be constantly pushing, pushing, pushing for sales. This is a quick way to burn yourself out.
Your plan of action should take into account holidays and vacations where you will want to spend time with your family. Big event months are not the time for you to be doing a big sales push since you are likely going to be focused on handling your kids and your family.
Spend a day writing out the big events for next year, and then go through and decide when you will be launching new products/services and when you will be doing a big marketing push. Look at your services and products and determine what will be going with you into the new year and decide when you want to give focus to what. Review your prices are your prices too low, too high? Think about all those tiny little details and how they affect your plan. Set your goals and how you plan to achieve those goals.
Develop an Expense Sheet:
If your business does not already have an expense sheet it needs one. Break down the cost of everything it takes to run your business. The cost of your website, plugins, memberships, licenses, social media schedulers, employees, daycare if you have kids, overhead i.e internet, office space rent you get the picture. Include dates of when things need to be renewed.
Beyond this, though I received a great tip from a friend recently about also breaking down the cost of actually doing a service for someone including in that cost the time it takes to complete the service. As an online service provider, my overhead costs are relatively minimal. However, my time and the breakdown of that time spent on client work is important to consider. You also want to include and breakdown the time and cost of your backend work, how much time are you spending working on your business vs. in your business. This should be considered in your expense sheet as well. By doing this for every aspect of your business you get a clear picture of where your true break-even point is and where your return is.
I am not an accountant or a financial advisor and I do not pretend to be in the slightest. However, this tidbit of advice is definitely something to take in and play with.
Develop a Marketing Strategy:
You have an action plan in place, you know your true costs of doing business. You have an understanding of what went wrong and what went right. In the new year, you have the opportunity to try new things and make new mistakes and reach new goals and new successes. Your marketing strategy is ultimately what will help you get there. Think of your marketing strategy as the baby steps towards achieving your goals, and the action plan the outline for achieving your goals the bigger picture vs. the elements within the frame.
As I touched on in my blog post 6 Steps to Building Your Business Through Content Creation, you need to choose your long-form platform: Blogging, Podcasts, or Videos. From there you need to breakdown your long-form content into smaller pieces to be spread across your social media pages. You must be consistent with where and how you are showing up.
Use your action plan to develop your topics for your long-form content. This can help you focus vs. appearing to be scattered all over the place. Determine how often you want to show up on your different platforms and what themes you want to project at what times.
Created branded templates that are easy to just drop in new images and new words in order to market yourself and brand. Look at where you can reduce your workload by reusing material or even by recycling old posts from 2019. No one is going to remember that you shared that same quote or meme in May 2019 as you end up sharing in April, May, or June 2020. They likely won’t even remember you shared the same quote or meme in August 2019. Do not be afraid to recycle content if it is relevant.
I am working on putting together a monthly newsletter filled with my most popular blog posts, videos, and tips. I would love to have you join my list so you don’t miss any of the amazing new material I will be dishing out in 2020.
Jumping into your inbox for me is a very personal endeavor, I want to build relationships with you my readers and get to know you and your business. This is why at least for now each of my newsletters will be custom written to you straight from my email account to yours.
If you would like to join my email list please click the image link below to sign up.
I also have plans to do a few free live courses, and webinars in 2020, I have webinar dates scheduled for December of this year as well click here if you are interested in learning how to 3x your profits through blogging.
