Redefining Annual Planning
A Fresh Approach for Small Business
Imagine this: You pour your heart and soul into crafting an annual plan for your business. You dedicate countless hours to creating a plan that you feel really confident in. After rewarding yourself with a well-deserved holiday break, you return to work with renewed energy, ready to tackle the new year head-on.
But as time goes by, the day-to-day nuances of client projects start to eat away at your grand vision. By the time spring arrives, your annual goal feels like a distant memory, and instead of feeling energized, you find yourself deflated, trapped in a constant game of catch-up.
Does this resonate with you?
If so, you're not alone. Many small business owners still rely on traditional annual planning, and it's time for a better approach.
Annual Planning is Overrated
…Or at least in the traditional way we’ve been doing it. As small business owners, we enjoy the flexibility of shaping our own schedules, choosing clients we're genuinely excited to work with, and the ability to adapt rapidly in a way that larger corporations, bound by layers of bureaucracy, can only dream of. So, when it comes to planning, why are we still following the practices of larger corporations?? Annual planning, in particular, can fall short for small businesses in several ways.
Let’s take a look at the ways annual planning doesn’t work…
Let’s start with procrastination. Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Annual planning often leads to procrastination and decreased focus over the course of a year.
Predicting the Unpredictable: In our rapidly changing world, forecasting a full year is like trying to predict the future, and now with the complexities of AI, it's nearly impossible to know what 2025 looks like.
Delayed Adjustments: Tracking annual goals can be challenging because there tend to be a lot of moving parts, which makes adjusting even more difficult. As a small business, you have the advantage of being nimble and quick to adapt, so why wait a whole year to make the necessary changes?
Blurring the Lines: For us, the world of business and personal development are intertwined, not separate. Your business will undoubtedly suffer if you neglect your personal growth. So why not incorporate both into your planning process?
Eats away at your own Confidence: This is probably the most important so it is worth mentioning again. Wouldn’t you rather have the ability to reflect on what is working, and what is not working and adjust every few months - instead of feeling behind on month 2 and trying to play catch up for the next 10? This starts to eat away at your own confidence, even on a subconscious level.
“Nothing is worth more than this day”
We Prefer Seasonal Planning
Now imagine: Sitting down to plan out the next three months of your business, taking into account all the goals you want to accomplish in your personal life as well as in business. You know you have a vacation planned for month two so you’d like to book a few additional projects during the first month to set yourself up nicely to actually spend time away from the business without stress. You know this might be tricky so you lay out your top three priorities for the quarter, and break them down until you create actionable lists (”book a project” is not actionable - “reaching out the 5 past clients to see if they need anything” is actionable). Once you have your lists, you can take a look at what you can outsource or find support where you need it. And just like that, you get the support you need - you book a few extra projects - you take a well-deserved vacation without the stress.
By focusing on 12 weeks out of the year, you become hyper-focused on the time you actually have to accomplish your goals as opposed to pretending that you can predict where you will be 6 -12 months from now.
A Personal Note
When I first started this studio, I found annual planning to be very challenging. How am I supposed to know what I will want to do a year from now? What is possible in a year from now? How will the market be different? How will I be different? Honestly - I had no idea what I could accomplish in a year.
Before I started my own creative studio - I worked in training and development for a Fortune 100 company, coaching new and aspiring entrepreneurs as they built their own financial practices (very different - I know). A very important piece of their development was to be able to check off daily wins, to help them feel a sense of accomplishment, to build their own confidence, and to get a little dopamine hit of that feel-good chemical.
That is the real beauty of quarterly planning. It empowers you to set better goals, break them down into manageable pieces, assign realistic timeframes, prioritize the resources you need, and adjust accordingly. It’s these simple daily actions that alter your routine, habits, and convictions.
