With the year nearing its end, it’s time to start planning for the next one coming in. In this episode, Kendra Perry shares with you practical advice on how to plan out your most successful year in business. Managing your own business can be a lot to handle, but that’s precisely why it’s vital to plan out as much as you can so you don’t take on more than you can carry. These simple steps can make a world of difference. Get ready to take notes and start implementing Kendra’s helpful strategies for success today!
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Plan Out Your Most Successful Year!
In 2020, I screwed myself over. I did this by overplanning and overpacking my calendar and my schedule without even realizing it. Up until that point, I wasn’t much of a planner. I’m a rebel. That means that I don’t like routine. When I try to get myself into a routine or even over plan, I tend to rebel against it. It’s an annoying quality about myself. With that, I’ve always run my business up until that point as a free for all, going with the flow and doing things as they come up. Up until that point, it worked generally well for me but a big part of that was because I didn’t have much of a team. I could make random plans at the last minute, change course and switch things. The only person who drove me crazy was me and probably my virtual assistant.
In 2020, I ended up scheduling multiple launches, one big launch and one small launch for both of my courses. I started a yearlong mastermind with a colleague at the time. We got that started. I had a trip going on. I had a bunch of personal stuff. I was going to Mexico for a wedding. In March 2020, I was supposed to be running a live event for the mastermind in Colorado. I remember doing all this and not thinking about it. Suddenly, it was the middle of January and I was looking at everything on the schedule and all I felt was so much anxiety. I was like, “Kendra, how are you going to do all these things?”
In 2020, I was doing so much better with my health but I still had some fatigue. I still wasn’t feeling 100%. It was exhausting to look at everything I had created for myself. I managed to get through February. I was exhausted. It was way more than I wanted to put on my plate. The only thing that saved me was COVID, to be honest. I will never forget when I woke up one morning. I was supposed to be running this mastermind with a friend colleague of mine who lived in Europe. In March 2020, if you can recall in the US they grounded all flights from Europe. They weren’t letting anyone from Europe.
My friend was like, “I can’t come to the States anymore.” Our retreat was in a week and a half. She’s like, “Trump has grounded flights.” It’s funny, I got chills because I was stressed out. I’m not a live event type of girl. This was the only time I’ve ever considered doing that. My colleague with whom I was running the mastermind was all about live events and experiences. I didn’t want to do it but I said, “Okay, fine.” I was stressed out. I remember being like, “What do you mean you can’t come? I can’t run this event by myself.” I was so overwhelmed.
It’s funny because I remember I wanted the government to shut down the border. I wanted them to do it so that I didn’t have to go and then they did. I got way more than what I bargained for with that. We all did. I take that back. Please, don’t shut down the border. That’s what saved me because all of a sudden, I was supposed to go to that live event and then to another live event for a coaching program that I was in April and suddenly travel was over. That was the thing that saved me from this overwhelm and overplanning that I’d spun myself into. It was at that moment in time when I realized, “Kendra, you need to start planning and looking ahead. Make sure that you’re not overloading yourself.” I’m notorious for doing that.
That is when I learned the importance of planning. That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. I’m going to take you through a simple planning exercise that I like to do with you at the end of every year on the show because this is going to set you up for success. I understand that life doesn’t always go as planned. We all learn that in 2020 that things can go to a mess and everything can be different overnight. I’m not trying to get you to plan this rigid plan that you must stick to no matter what but what I want you to do is get into the habit of looking ahead and at least planning out your next quarter or your next three months and looking at it like a flexible framework.
This is what helped me with my rebellion against routine and planning. It was like, “We’re just making a plan. You are the boss. You can change it if you need to.” The truth is sometimes our plans go out the window. I’ve never given childbirth but I know many women who have. I have lots of friends who have. I have friends who have these amazing birth plans that are like, “I’m going to hypnobirthing. I’m going to do all these things. It’s amazing.” That day comes and everything goes out the window. The person suddenly being like, “Give me all the drugs,” or they’re going into an emergency C-section or whatever it is. For any ladies reading who’ve gone through childbirth, you probably know that it’s great to have a plan but it needs to be flexible because sometimes your plan goes out the window.
We want to consider this as a flexible framework. For all my rebels out there, hopefully, this will help your brain. I’ve created a simple workbook for you that you can utilize as you go through this exercise. Essentially, it’s simple. You don’t need the planning workbook. You can pull up a Google Calendar or even better. If you’re a visual person like me, go get one of those paper calendars, the big ones, not the little ones with the cute little wolf and get four colors of highlighters. If you don’t have that and you want it, go get your materials and then come back. You can also use a simple Google Calendar as well.
The first thing when it comes to planning that is important is to reflect on the past year. I want you to think about what were the things that went well in 2022. Was it you had a successful launch and you found a new marketing strategy that works? Maybe it’s that you did well on a certain social media platform or you noticed there was a type of content that did well. Maybe you hired someone to schedule your social media and that relationship is working out well. I want you to sit down and think about all the things that went well in 2022. Using myself as an example, if I think back about the things that went well, I would say I did a five-day free challenge in February on building out an online program. That went well. It had great engagement and so much energy. I had a lot of fun.
People found a lot of value in that. That would be on my list of things that went well. I also ran my first online virtual summit in June. That went amazing. It was a fantastic experience. It’s going to be an annual thing. I would write down that in everything that went well, for example. Another thing that went well for me was finding a new style for my YouTube videos. If you want to see a more comedic demonstration of business, go check out my YouTube channel. My handle is @KendraPerryInc there. I have tried to bring a little bit of weirdness and comedy into the boring topic of online business. Go check that out there. That’s an example of things that went well for me in 2022 and I want to carry over into 2023.
Next, we want to go through the bad things or the things that we felt didn’t go as well as we wanted them to. For example, I didn’t do well with the evergreen funnel that I set up. I need to rework that. I also had a lot of issues with contractors and team staff. I had to fire a couple of people in 2022, which was super crappy. I would write down those things that didn’t go well. Start to think about everything that went well and everything that didn’t go well. Feel free to pause to write these things down if you want to go along with this exercise.
First thing, brainstorm everything awesome that went super well. Be as detailed as you can and then write down all the things that didn’t go well. The next thing I want you to do and sometimes this is helpful, if you do a little meditation first, if you do you sit cross-legged, you get grounded, you take a few deep breaths in and get real quiet, maybe put on some nice music and start to visualize and think about what your ideal day would look like in 2023.
How many hours do you want to work in the day? What ideally would you like to be working on? Are you going to go for a walk in the middle of the day? Are you going to start early and finish late? Are you going to start early and finish early or start late and finish late? What’s that ideal day going to look like? Get clear on what you want that to look like. That’s going to help you with your planning as well. Feel free to pause this episode. Take a few deep breaths. Maybe drop in, do a little bit of meditation and think about what your ideal day would look like in 2023.
The next thing you’re going to do is think about what you’re going to be offering in 2023. What are your offerings going to be? Maybe for you, you have a one-on-one coaching program. That’s all you would put in. Maybe there is everything else you want to do. Maybe you’re like, “I want to test out doing a live paid workshop. Maybe I want to launch this online course. Maybe I have a one-on-one program but I want to transition it into a group coaching program so I have both one-on-one and group.” Think about, “What are the things that I’m going to be offering in 2023?”
The next thing you’re going to do is where you need your calendar. A nice big calendar will work but you can also use a Trello calendar, a Google Calendar or something like that. Grab some calendars. You could also go into Canva.com and use one of their calendars. If you have a paper calendar, you want to have four different colors of highlighters. The first thing we want to do and this is important for all types of planning is you want to mark out or highlight. Let’s say you’re using a yellow highlighter.
You want to highlight the days in 2023 that are going to be your personal time off, vacations or anything that is going to make you unavailable to work or at least have limited availability. Maybe you’re going to go to Hawaii in March, for example. Make sure to mark that off. Also, take into consideration the day before when you’re probably going to need to do the packing because you’re probably not going to be super available for work that day.
Maybe you know that your kid has a soccer tournament or something like that in April and you’re like, “There’s going to be three days where I’m going to be away at the soccer tournament.” Put that in. Whatever it is, anything personal at all that is going to limit your ability to work or be available that day, I want you to put that into your calendar and highlight it, let’s say yellow or whatever color you have. If you’re using something like a Google Calendar, you can create an all-day event and use one of their colors that blocks out that time. You can pause this episode and then block all those things off. Remember this is a flexible plan and you can add things in as you go.
The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to get another highlighter. Let’s say we’re going to use pink. I want you to highlight any promotional periods and promos. Maybe you have a one-on-one group coaching program and you don’t plan to do any promos. That is fine. This section will be easy for you but perhaps you have a group program and it’s live so you’re like, “I’m going to launch this in February. I’m going to launch in April and September.” Remember it’s flexible.
You may be thinking, “I don’t quite know when I want to launch it in September, Kendra. That’s far away.” Put something on the books because you can shift it with time. Put it in there and make sure it doesn’t overlap with personal time. This was a big mistake that I used to make. It’d be two months away and I’m like, “I need to do this launch. I got this vacation or this thing. I forgot about this thing.” I was trying to squeeze my launches in.
Take a look and maybe you’re going on a vacation at the end of August and so you’re like, “Maybe I don’t want to plan a launch for the first week that I’m back after my vacation because that’s going to be crazy. I’m going to need time to prep for it. Maybe instead of the beginning of September, I’ll do it at the end of September so I have a few weeks to recalibrate and get the last-minute things set up.”
Any promotional stuff, for example, if you’re someone who promotes on Black Friday, put that into your calendar. Anything that you can think of. Maybe you’re doing an online summit or going to promote a live workshop. Do your best to put it in there. You are going to have time to revisit this. Remember, it’s flexible but put all that thing those things in. That will help you not overschedule yourself because you’re going to be like, “I’m going to be in Hawaii this week. I shouldn’t do a launch the week afterwards.”
The next thing you’re going to do, another color of highlighter, let’s say green, you’re going to mark out any of your professional development. As a health wellness coach, you have to do professional development to keep up your credentials. Maybe there are some workshops or conferences you’re going to or maybe you’re going to put aside some time every month to work on a course that you’ve purchased.
This was something that I came up against. I would want to upgrade my learning skills on let’s say hormones or something like that. I’d buy this hormone course and then I couldn’t fit it in. I realized that I had to schedule that. I was like, “The last Friday of the month is open. That’s what I go through. I do some research. I go on PubMed or do the course that I bought.” You want to put that in there as well. The final thing you want to do so is another color of highlighter, blue, let’s say, you want to put aside a few hours at the end of each quarter to review your plan and make necessary changes.
With planning, it’s important to make sure your quarter is planned out as much as it can be. When we start going beyond a quarter, that can be difficult because life can happen. All these other things can come up or things will change but you want to put some time aside every quarter to review the next quarter.
For example, at the time that this episode is released, it’s going to be December 2022. You’re going to be planning out your January, February and March 2023. That’ll be your next quarter. You want to make sure that’s solid. Schedule a time I would recommend at the beginning of March or maybe even the end of February to look at your next quarter, your April, May and June 2023. Go over your plan. Bring out your calendar, look at it and see if anything has changed.
That’s where you can make changes. You’re like, “I decided to extend my vacation there. Maybe I need to switch the time of this launch. I feel like I want to try a live workshop. I’m going to put that in there.” Put a little bit of time aside in the middle of each quarter to assess for the next quarter. Great way to plan. This will help you out so much because it’ll stop you from double booking and double scheduling yourself. You’ll always be able to see ahead as to what’s happening. For example, if you decide, “I’m going to do this live paid workshop on April 15th,” then you know that in the two weeks leading up to April 15th you need to promote it.
All your social media content should have a call to action towards that live workshop. What I used to do in the past is I’d be like, “This workshop,” and it would be in my head and then I’d create my content for the month and realize that none of it was promoting what I was promoting. This is going to help you look ahead, be organized and make sure that you don’t burn yourself out. My friend, I hope you have the most amazing plan for 2023 and that you are highly successful. I am sending you all my good wealthy vibes. I will see you next episode where I help you become wealthy AF.
