Every year around goal season (a.k.a., late November to early January), there’s a lot of talk about what you should or shouldn’t do when it comes to your annual planning.
But every single business is different, meaning that every single annual plan needs to be different. Meaning, what works for one person may not work for you and your business.
Here at the Thrivers Team, we’ve done a lot of annual planning over the years, trying and testing a lot of the popular methods…but time and time again, we keep coming back to the same strategies.
Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on the ones we use every single year and walking you through how to adapt them to your own business.
Ready? Let’s dig in!
Strategy #1: Reflect
It might sound simple, but starting your annual planning by looking back on where you’ve been is crucial to creating a successful plan for the next year.
Start by listing the things that worked in the last year. Maybe it’s your social media posting schedule, maybe it’s your website, maybe it’s your online booking system. Then dig into the things that didn’t work.
Let go of judgment as you work through these lists and truly reflect on what happened in the past year.
The great part about this exercise is it gives you what we call an issues list. This is an inside glimpse at what needs some attention in your business and helps you get an idea of what to focus on in the next year.
Strategy #2: Find your North Star
Now that you know where you’ve been, it’s time to figure out where you’re going.
We have an in-depth exercise walking you through how to find your North Star in Wealthiest Year Yet, but here are the highlights:
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Create a 365-day vision statement (ex. “Next year will be the year I ______ and the result will be _____.” Tip: this sounds easy on the surface level, but really dig in here.)
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Define true wealth. Round here, we define wealth in four pillars: love, health, time, and money. Does your North Star fulfill all those areas?
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Is your North Star goal something you really have to work for and want to achieve?
The best way to tell if you’re on the right track? When you create a North Star, it has to be so well-stated that when you read it, it gives you all the feelings, and you would do anything to make it happen.
Strategy #3: Strategize
You’ve reflected, you decided where you want to go. Let’s figure out how to get there.
This is the part where you break down your goals into smaller and smaller actionable chunks so you can make progress on them every single day.
First, ask what projects will be critical to ensure your idea vision for the year ahead (a.k.a., your North Star) become a reality?
If you want to work on increasing your perceived value, this might be projects like:
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Optimizing your guest experience
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Building your website
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Showcasing why you’re special on social media
Each of those are still pretty big projects, right? Break them down more and more until you have a set of clear, actionable steps you can take daily (or weekly, whatever works for you) to achieve that project goal.
How do you know when you’ve broken a project down enough? You should know what you need to do in the next 90 days to make sure it all comes together.
Building an annual plan can feel overwhelming, but we hope these three strategies we use every single time we sit down to plan will help! And if you want the full annual planning strategy that professionals across the industry use every year, check out Wealthiest Year Yet!