Want to know how to take your business to the next level in 2025? As…
Want to know how to make 2025 your best year yet in business? Saying you want to have your best year yet in business and actually having your best year yet are two very different things. In this blog post, I’m sharing the 5 steps you need to follow in order to experience your best year yet, rather than just fantasise about it. Keep on reading to find out how to make 2025 your best year yet in business.
This page includes affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.
HOW TO MAKE 2025 YOUR BEST YEAR YET IN BUSINESS
1. Review your previous years and get an understanding of your current position
It’s all too easy when you are excited about making the year ahead amazing to want to dive straight into planning mode. But before you plan for the future you need to look back to review what has happened and also make sure you have an accurate understanding of your business’ current position.
If you want 2025 to be your best year yet then knowing what previous years have been like is key. Now everyone’s version of ‘best year yet’ looks different. It might be you are looking to make more revenue, pay yourself more, be left with more profit, work with more customers or clients, or expand geographically. If right now you’ve got an idea of what areas you want to see growth in to make 2025 your best year yet then you those are the areas you should be reviewing from previous years.
Once you’ve done that it’s time to look at the last year. If you set goals for your business last year review those. Did you or did you not achieve them? And regardless of whether you achieved them or not work out why? By delving into what did and didn’t work you’ll have lessons to take forward into 2025, which will help you to not repeat mistakes, and enable you to know what you should continue doing. This combination will play a key role in helping you to make 2025 your best year yet in business.
By the end of this process you should know what has happened in the business in the past about key areas, what has happened over the last (and why), and your business’ current position. Having an accurate understanding of your business your current situation means you have a clear Point A (where you are now), which will help once you’ve got Point B (where you want to by the end of next year) for you to create the plan to bridge the gap.
| WANT TO CREATE A PLAN FOR 2025 IN JUST ONE DAY?
That is exactly what can happen when you book a 2025 Strategy Day! I have a tried-and-tested process that I’ve used for years that ensures that in just one day I can help business owners to create a plan for the whole year ahead. All you have to do is fill in a questionnaire beforehand and then turn up on the day. I’ll then lead you through the whole process and write everything down – making it super easy for you! For more information and to book a 2025 Strategy Day click here.
|
2. Set your ‘best year yet’ business goals
If you completed step 1 you should now have a good understanding of your business past and current position. So now it is time to look to the future and set your ‘best year yet’ business goals. Success in business looks different to every business owner and when setting your ‘best year yet’ you’ll want to be thinking about growth in key areas, but also what your version of business succes is.
It is likely that your ‘best year yet’ might involve hitting a number of goals, which is fine. Here are some areas you might want to set goals for.
Financial Goals
Let’s start with the money. Every business should have clear financial goals, but it might be that some financial goals are more important to you than others. For example you can have goals for total revenue, total amount of profit, profit margin, the amount you pay yourself or the amount of money that you reinvest in the business.
Offerings Goals
Your best year yet might involve removing some offerings (services / products etc) or creating some new ones. For example it might be your business has been growing revenue wise but because you are delivering a service you hate. And so your best year yet might be to have a decline in revenue but no longer have to deliver that service. On the reverse there might be something you are keen to do in the upcoming year such as publish a book or run an event.
Impact Goals
Another popular goal in business is based around the number of clients or customers. You could set a goal to have [insert number] of clients or customers in the next year. Or you might want to go deeper than that at look at geographical spread and aim to work with customers or clients from [insert number] of different countries.
Marketing and Sales Goals
You might want to set a goal for selling X number of a specific offer. This is less about the overall number of customers or clients you have in a year, but specifically focused on sales for that offer. And another type of goal you can set, but should be careful about, is a marketing one. You could want to grow your email list or followers on a specific social media platform to a certain number.
Lifestyle Goals
Last, but definitely not least, you can set lifestyle goals. For many small business owners the drive isn’t just to make more money at all costs. Your best year yet could be achieving the same level of revenue but being able to work 20% less. Or it might be you taking X weeks off for holiday, never working weekends or evenings etc.
3. Create the plan to make 2025 your best year yet in business.
You know where your business is right now and you know where you want it to be. So it is time to plan how to bridge the gap and make those goals a reality.
Now depending on your business goals your planning might vary, but here are some common areas to cover:
Offerings (Services and Products)
To have your best year yet it might be that you’ve got to make changes to your offerings. As already mentioned it might be that through the year you are going to stop selling some of your offerings and introduce new offerings. This should be planned before. When will it happen and how. It might be that right now you don’t even know exactly what your new offerings will be. For example, it might be you’ve decided you want to add in a scalable offer so you can hit a specific revenue, impact or lifestyle goal, but right now you don’t even what scalable offer that will be. (You can find out more about choosing the right scalable offer for your business here).
Knowing in advance what you’ll be selling throughout the year is important for two reasons. Firstly, if you are going to add something new into your business you’ll need time before you can launch the new offering into the world for researching, creating etc. Also having an understanding of what will be available when will help you when planning out your marketing for the year and with sales forecasting.
Financial forecasting
Whether you’ve set a goal around total revenue, total profit or the amount you pay yourself you are going to need to do some financial forecasting. For example, if you’ve got a total revenue goal for the year it is time to break that down. What volume of sales will you need by each service and / or product? Can you then break that down on a monthly or quarterly basis. If you want to increase profit you’ll need to look at how you can increase income without increasing expenditure (or increasing by a lower proportion), or how to reduce your expenditure.
Whilst this isn’t necessary for your best year yet in business it would also be helpful to do cash flow forecasting. Understanding the movement on money in and out your business will help you to understand when you can make considerable investments and whether you need to be increasing income or reducing expenditure (or having more money in your reserves).
Sales and Marketing
The financial forecasting should mean that you now have clear sales targets. Using the knowledge of what is going to be available when and what your sales targets are you can now move onto planning your marketing. Will you be continually marketing an offering on evergreen? Or will you be doing launches?
For every product or service you’ll want to make sure you have a clear understanding of who the ideal client or customer is, what the core marketing messages are, what marketing channels you’ll be using and what the buyer journey(s) look like.
Resources
As a small business owner it is key to review your resources. This means looking at what you have available to your in terms of skills, personnel hours, technology etc. Ask yourself “Do I have everything I need in order to achieve my best year yet in business?”. It might be that you need more personnel hours and you decide to hire someone (either permanently or a freelancer). Or it might even be that you need to upgrade your technology. For example, when I decided I wanted to start scaling my business I invested in Kartra so I have the technology capabilities to do so.
| WANT TO PLAN FOR 2025 TO BE YOUR BEST YEAR YET IN BUSINESS?
That is exactly what we can do together when you book a 2025 Strategy Day! I have a tried-and-tested process that I’ve used for years that ensures that in just one day I can help business owners to create a plan for the whole year ahead. All you have to do is fill in a questionnaire beforehand and then turn up on the day. I’ll then lead you through the whole process and write everything down – making it super easy for you! For more information and to book a 2025 Strategy Day click here.
|
4. Set clear milestones and metrics to monitor
A lot can happen in a year so you don’t want to blindly follow your plan and not take note of what is and isn’t working. Go through all of your goals and work out whether there are metrics you can monitor on a regular basis. For example, for goals that are quantified (sales revenue, number of clients etc) you can monitor that number on a regular basis (weekly or monthly). Then for some goals you might need to set dates for when you should be hitting a specific milestone. For example, if you want to publish a book you might have milestones around when the first draft will be done, when you’ll send to beta readers and when the official launch will be.
5. Get external accountability
If you really want to ensure you make 2025 your best year yet in business get some external accountability. As a small business owner the fact is you are juggling a lot and that can make it easy for things on your to-do list to slip, especially if those things require you to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Getting external accountability, which is one of the things I provide my 1-to-1 mentees (you can find out more about my 1:1 business and marketing mentoring here) makes a world of difference. You have someone else to make sure you are following your plan, and if you don’t helping you to get back on track.
That’s it. You now know how to make 2025 your best year yet in business.
There is no doubt that not all the business owners who say ‘I want 2025 to be my best year yet’ will achieve that. However, I hope by reading this blog post you now have a good understanding of what you need to do so that can be your reality.
And if you are serious about making 2025 your best year yet in business book a 2025 Strategy Day. In a 2025 Strategy Day we cover steps 1 to 4. So you’ll be way on your way to having your best year yet in business.
For all the information, and to instantly book, a 2025 Strategy Day click here.
Related Posts
