Episode Summary: “WAVE 2026: One‑Page Business Plan That Actually Works”

Podcast: Special Ops with Emma Rainville
Host: Emma Rainville
Date: December 9, 2025

Overview of the Episode

In this episode, Emma Rainville dives deep into annual planning using her signature “WAVE” framework—a practical, one-page business plan method. Emma shares the step-by-step process she uses at her own company, Shockwave, to set a realistic yet ambitious direction for the year ahead. With a focus on direct response marketers and e-commerce sellers, the framework is about building a business—and a life—by design, not just by default.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Importance of Realistic Planning

Balancing Ambition and Reality:
Emma opens with a frank discussion about how goals need to align with lifestyle, especially for entrepreneurs who want both business growth and family time.
- “You can't 10x a company year over year for 10 years as CEO and be mom or dad of the year, going to every soccer game, every theater show your child puts on.” (00:00)
Difference Between Goals and Commitments:
At Shockwave, Emma distinguishes between goals (“a target people try to hit”) and commitments (“things that people don’t go home unless they’re finished”).
- “Commitments are things that people don't go home unless they're finished. They're done.” (04:30)

2. The WAVE Framework

Emma guides listeners through the four pillars of WAVE:

A. Written Vision (02:10)

Start by writing a vivid paragraph about where you want your company to be in 10 years.
- “If we all know where we're ultimately going, then we know exactly which way to paddle.” (02:25)
Include both business and personal life elements for alignment.
Example: “Our revenue is $10 million a year and our profit margin is holding strong at 24%.” (03:55)

B. Flash Forwards: Milestones for 5 and 3 Years (04:20)

Identify critical milestones for 5 years and 3 years—the “flash forwards.”
These should cascade logically from your 10-year vision, but Emma stresses that they don’t need to be linear or perfectly spaced.
- “A lot of our products are going to come in the later half [of 10 years]… you can think that through.” (05:25)

C. One-Year Commitments (06:30)

Commitments are the non-negotiable accomplishments for the year, broken down into specific, measurable deliverables (not just high-level targets).
Attach clear KPIs and definitions of “done” to each one.
- “It shouldn’t be: ‘I want to hit $10 million in revenue.’ It should be: ‘I want to launch five new products. Here are the products, here’s how much each product’s going to do for a total of $10 million in revenue.’” (06:55)

D. Absolute Focus (09:30)

Establish a one-sentence statement of what your business is absolutely focused on this year.
Use this as a filter for opportunities and as a guardrail to avoid “squirrels everywhere.”
- “Whenever a new opportunity arises that doesn’t fit our commitments for the year, we can test it against our absolute focus.” (10:35)

E. Values Driven Future (11:10)

Define the values you want to see in your team; find 4-6 that represent both you as a leader and what you want in your staff.
- “They should align in your values. They don’t have to align in your skill set, but they should absolutely align in your values.” (11:45)
Exercise: Think of 3-5 people you loved working with. List their values, then narrow and consolidate.

F. Execution Plan (15:00)

Break your annual commitments into Q1 goals, assign a single person responsible for each, and assess what resources/people are needed per goal.
- “One person on your team or you ... can only have responsible for the outcome, while many people may be contributing.” (16:05)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Reality vs. Optimism:
“While we all want to be optimistic as business owners when we're talking about big ideas and big projects and creativity, this is operations. So we do need to be realistic here.” (01:12, repeated emphasis at 08:10)
On the Power of Written Vision:
“If we all know where we're ultimately going, then we know exactly which way to paddle.” (02:25)
On Making Commitments:
“Goals are a target people try to hit. Commitments are things that people don't go home unless they're finished.” (04:30)
On Filtering New Opportunities:
“Whenever a new opportunity arises that doesn’t fit our commitments for the year, we can test it against our absolute focus. Does it align? Does it fit? Does it make sense?” (10:35)
On Company Values:
“You have to live, breathe, and emulate these values always; they have to align with who I am as a person as well.” (14:35)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:00 – Opening perspective on realistic planning and CEO lifestyle
02:10 – Introducing WAVE and Written Vision
04:20 – Planning 5-year and 3-year milestones (“flash forwards”)
06:30 – Distinguishing one-year “commitments” from goals
09:30 – Defining and applying Absolute Focus
11:10 – Values Driven Future: team values and culture alignment
15:00 – Quarterly execution plan and assigning accountability
17:05 – Recap and encouragement to visit Visionary Vault for free resources

Episode Flow & Tone

Emma Rainville’s tone throughout is practical, direct, and a bit playful—designed to empower entrepreneurs with specific, no-nonsense steps. She uses relatable analogies (rowing canoes in different directions, chasing squirrels) to reinforce focus and fulfillment.

Resources Mentioned

Visionary Vault:
Free resources and the WAVE one-page PDF at specialopspodcast.com

This episode is a concise playbook for business owners who want a clear, actionable template to set (and achieve) high-impact goals—without losing sight of their personal priorities or burning out their teams.

Transcript

A (0:00)

You can't 10x a company year over year for 10 years as CEO and be mom or dad of the year, going to every soccer game, every theater show that your child puts on. If you have four kids, think about time commitment. We are all optimistic to doing everything. You need to be realistic in this phase and build a life by design. Goals are a target people try to hit. Commitments are things that people don't go home unless they're finished. What do we need to accomplish this next year to set us up to be well on target for where we're trying to go in the next 10? It's important to be realistic. We all want to be optimistic as business owners when we're talking about big ideas and big projects and creativity. This is operations. So we do need to be realistic here.

A (0:47)

Welcome to another episode of Special Ops podcast where we take actionable insights for direct response marketers and e commerce sellers. I'm your host Emma Rainville. Today we are diving into one of my favorite subjects, yearly planning. At Shockwave, we utilize a foundational framework called Wave and every year we revisit it so that way we can set off running at the new year. So 2026 is no different. So come on and plan it with me. We're going to be talking about our foundational framework, wave, Written Vision, Absolute Focus, Values Driven Future and Execution Plan. I'm going to run through these pretty quickly and you at home can go ahead and go into our visionary vault at www.specialopspodcast.com. sign up for our free vault. There's tons of resources in there. I'm going to have a one page PDF on how to do your wave. There'll be more resources on Wave if you're interested in there. So Wave, what is it? So written Vision is where we're going to start. The first thing that we need to do is understand the destination before we start planning what to do. Otherwise we're all in canoes rowing in different directions. If we all know where we're ultimately going, then we know exactly which way to paddle. So we're going to sit down and we're going to write just a paragraph on what 10 years from now looks like. Where are we trying to go? What does your company look like in 10 years? What kind of products are you selling? What kind of services are you providing? What type of customer is your avatar? And I want you to spend some time going deep on that, but make sure it matches your personal life. You can't 10x a company year over year for 10 years as CEO and be mom or dad of the year, going every soccer game, going to every theater show that your child puts on if you have four kids. So I really want you to think about time commitment and while we are all optimistic to doing everything, you need to be realistic in this phase and build a life by design, by you on what you want out of it. So year 10, what does everything look like? I'm selling X amount of products or I have X amount of services with a full C suite staff handling the majority of the delivery. I'm responsible for big projects and big relationships, big ideas. While my team executes, we are selling to direct response marketers and e commerce sellers in the direct response space. Our revenue is $10 million a year and our profit margin is holding strong at 24%, something like that. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to think about what milestones we need to hit in the next five years and the next three years. We call those flash forwards. Those will be bullet points. At five years from today, I'm going to have added if I want 24 products by year 10, how many do you need to have by year 5 in order to hit that mark? So most people would think we automatically have to be about halfway there. That may not be the case. We may need to develop a manufacturing plant in year one and then be able to get all our licensing by year five. And a lot of our products are going to come in the later half. So you can think that through, but you're going to put your bullet point. So perhaps we have added 10 products to our product line. Perhaps we have added a full time CFO and COO to our company. Perhaps we have taken customer service in house or created a proprietary blend for a supplement. You can go through and think through where you need to be from today to five years from now in order to hit that 10 year glimpse that we've created in the previous step, then we're gonna do the same thing for year three. So if today where we're at, we know where we want to be in five years, what do we need to do between one and five years on the third year to make sure that we're well on track. And all of this is just to set a target so that not only you know where you're going and what you need to accomplish, but also that your team knows. Because then your team can not only make those micro decisions, they can make those macro decisions to run the day to day to your business. Because everybody knows where they're headed makes everything a lot easier. So we've got our 10 year glimpse, we got our five and three year flash forward bullet points on milestones. Now it's time to get really serious. That's all very movable throughout every year when you go through and you do this, you'll change your three year, you'll change your five year, you may even change your 10 year and that's okay. But your one year, those aren't goals. We call them commitments at Shockwave. Goals are a target people try to hit. Commitments are things that people don't go home unless they're finished. They're done. So what do we need to accomplish this next year to set us up to be well on target for where we're trying to go in the next 10? And what are those things going to be in deliverable? So it wouldn't be I want to hit $10 million in revenue. It should be, I want to launch five new products. Here are the products, here's how much each product's going to do for a total of 10 million in revenue. So you want everything very connectable. You also want to be able to set KPIs to each of the commitments. What is the definition of done and what is the number that you can look at as, as a business owner, week over week or bi weekly or monthly, depending on the size of your team and how much you have going on to make sure that those things are well on track to get done by the end of the year. And so that's your written vision. Pretty simple stuff. You want to think through what you want to do. If you want to meet the love of your life in the next year, but you have yourself grinding 70 hours a week for work, those two things are probably going to be very difficult to navigate. So make sure that you look at both and make sure they're realistic. Because we're calling them commitments. It's important to be realistic. Well, we all want to be optimistic as business owners when we're talking about big ideas and big projects and creativity. This is operation. So we do need to be realistic here. If we want good morale and good culture, the next part we're going to look at is absolute focus. We all know this. We all have this issue. We see opportunity everywhere and it causes it to be squirrels everywhere, taking our concentration off of our main objectives. So I want you to sit down and I want to write you to write down what is your absolute focus? What are you absolutely focused on in your business for Shockwave it's helping entrepreneurs in the direct response, marketing and e commerce space realize their vision through operational excellence. And so for you, it may be to help all of those who are willing down a path of health. If you're a supplement provider, it may be something like to provide customers in X niche excellence in customer service. If you're a customer service provider, you get the idea. So you want a statement that says what you are absolutely focused on. And whenever a new opportunity arises that doesn't fit our commitments for the year, we can test it against our absolute focus. Does it align? Does it fit? Does it make sense? And if it does, where do we put it on the shelf so we can bring it to the forefront without throwing wrenches at our team? And that's absolute focus. Yo, we interrupted this pod to tell you like and subscribe. What are you doing? Why haven't you liked? Why haven't you subscribed? Just subscribe. What's the problem? In all seriousness, subscribe so that you get notifications every time we drop new content. Additionally, if you have not signed up for our visionary vault, what the hell? Www.specialopspodcast.com Go sign up. It's free. We never try and sell you and we're putting all kinds of stuff in there to help you with the operations of your business because we're passionate about it and we want to share operational excellence. We're with our direct response, e commerce and online selling family. The next one. Values Driven Future. This one's my favorite exercise. I think that it's highly important to have an avatar for your staff, your employees and the people that you work with. They're the representation of your business. Whether it's someone in marketing writing emails on your behalf or customer service agent answering your phone. They should align in your values. They don't have to align in your skill set, but they should absolutely align in your values. Some of the values that we have at Shockwave is proactive problem solver. I'm not a big fan of working with people who will see a problem that's going to arise and not fix it before it does. So that was a big one for me. Integrity is a big one for me. I want to believe everything that you tell me every time you say it, when you say it. Those are the types of words that we're looking for in these values. So what I want you to do is I want you to sit down and think about three to five people that you've worked with that made you happy to work with them. That excited you and challenged you and pushed you. And then write down the values that they had. Were they super honest? Were they hard working? Did they think outside of the box? Were they a 3D chess player? Were they a proactive problem solver? What were those things? And just jot down all the words that come to mind when you think of these people, then I want you to go through and get rid of the words that mean the same thing. You can't have integrity or strong character if you're not honest. So with honest there, you can cross it off because that's built into integrity and character. So you'll just go through and you'll narrow those down to your four to six. I can't live without these, but they need to be you too. So I can't choose to have detail oriented on mine because I'm not, believe it or not, I have people around me that are detail oriented for sure, but that couldn't be a value in my company. That would be extremely important to me because the fabric in the details is completely lost on me. I'm a big picture person. So because I have to live, breathe and emulate these values always, they have to align with who I am as a person as well. So once you have your four to six values, we're ready to move on to our execution plan. And our execution plan you'll do. Every quarter you'll take your one year commitments and you'll think through Q1 of 2026. What do I need to do to get me well on my way to completing all of my commitments by the end of March in 2026, and those I do call quarterly goals. And we'll take the goals and we'll set them out and then we'll write out what are all the resources you need in order to achieve those goals and who one person on your team or you that's going to be responsible for achieving that goal, you can only have responsible for the outcome, while many people may be contributing to the overall goal. So once we have that all aligned and done, we've got our written vision, we've got our absolute focus, we have our values driven future. So we know what we're trying to accomplish over the long term. We know what we're absolutely focused on doing, we know all of the people and what they're going to be and what they're going to emulate that are going to do it all. And then we know exactly what we're going to do in Q1 to get us way higher on our way. And so there is your wave for 2026. Run on over to www.specialops podcast.com. sign up for our free Visionary Vault. I got some resources in there that you can look at. I've got a one page PDF on the wave process to kind of help you, guide you through. Probably will take you three to four hours to really go through if you're doing it right. And we will see you next time. Don't forget to like and subscribe. So those notifications.