Yearly Planning for Your Business

Last week I shared exactly how I determine my yearly goals for my business. Today, I’m back to share about the next step in the yearly prep process – yearly planning.

When it comes to planning out our year in business, I often see students wanting to plop down their promos and launches and work their way around those. OR, even worse, I see students decide on a month-by-month basis what kind of promos they’ll be having.

This kind of planning leads to burnout, overwhelm, longer working hours, content that isn’t cohesive, and a life that revolves around your business. But you and I? We started a business to enjoy a life of freedom and flexibility. For me, that means lots of time spent at Disney and traveling, daily naps, and the ability to work when I’m most productive and not being stuck with busy work to fill time. For you, it likely means something different. But it all comes back to freedom. And when your life revolves around your business? There’s no freedom there.

So today I’m sharing the 6 steps I take for planning out my year in business – and planning out a business that supports the life I want to live and not the other way around.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives!
Snag the 2025 Chasing Simple Marketing Planner!
Check out my book for a crash course in content marketing
This week’s action step: Set aside a day or two to plan your year for 2025. Focus on fitting your business into your life vice fitting your life into your business. It can be easier said than done, but I promise you the reward is worth it!!!
This week’s book recommendation: Get Rich, Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield Thomas
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Last week I shared exactly how I determine my yearly goals for my business. Today, I’m back to share about the next step in the yearly prep process, yearly planning. When it comes to planning out our year in business, I often see students wanting to plop down their promos and launches and work their way around those.

Or, even worse, I see students decide on a month by month basis what kind of promos they’ll be having. This kind of planning leads to burnout, overwhelm, longer working hours, content that isn’t cohesive, and a life that revolves around your business. But you and I, we started a business to enjoy a life of freedom and flexibility.

For me, that means as much time as possible spent at Disney and traveling, daily naps, having my husband home with me, and the ability to work when I’m most productive and not being stuck with busy work to fill time. For you, it likely means something different, but it all comes back to freedom. And when your life revolves around your business, there’s no freedom there.

So today I’m sharing the six steps that I take for planning out my year in business and planning out a business that supports the life I want to live and not the other way around. You’re listening to episode 241 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you eve...

Ep. 241: 6 Steps for Planning Your Year in Business