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The Amy Porterfield Show
How to Plan Your Next 12 Months (And Stop Winging Your Revenue)
00:37:06
Map Out Your Most Profitable Year Yet
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Hey there. Welcome to the amy porterfield show. When somebody comes into, let's say the Millie Club or even my upcoming brand new coaching that I'm creating and they say, I want to make $300,000 and I'll say, okay, break it down for me. How do you think you're going to do that? And they have no clue. I can promise you, I can guarantee they will not hit $300,000 by the end of the year. You need a plan how you're going to do it. You might not be able to see it and especially if you don't watch YouTube, you really aren't going to see it. But this weekend I got a microneedling procedure and I've done this off and on for many, many years. But she did something different this time and I got it done on Friday. And then when I woke up on Saturday, Hobie looked at me before I was looked in the mirror and he looked at me and he's like, what is happening? And my whole face was peeling off, which is a good thing. However, it looked very scary. So it basically peeled all day Saturday, all day Sunday. And now I'm recording this on a Monday and I have done everything I can to hide it and I think I've done a pretty good job. But if you are watching the video, if you look at my neck, it's definitely peeling and, and I've like covered it as much as I can. But that's the thing, it's hard when you do video all the time to get really good skincare procedures done. I'm a big fan of micro needling and I'm a big fan of lasers and I'm always planning things around video, which is kind of a pain in the butt. I mean, first world problems, right? Poor me. But I was thinking in my newsletter soon I'm going to share all the procedures that I actually absolutely love. I mean, when you're pushing 50, your skin changes dramatically. But I wish I would have done some of these things in my early 30s as well. But anyway, I'll share some of my favorite stuff around skincare and lasers and microneedling in the newsletter if you are at all interested. Okay, so today we are talking about planning for the new year. So no matter when you listen to this, I really want to just make sure that you always have a plan moving forward at least a six month plan. So let's pretend you find this episode in June of 2026. I believe you could take everything I'm going to teach you right now and plan your next six months if you don't have those next six months planned out. Ideally, I love a 12 month plan and there have been many years in my early years and that I did not plan everything out. And when I'm talking about planning, I'm talking about every single launch you're going to do, putting revenue goals to every single launch, building out the time on your calendar to get ready for the launch, building out the onboarding of new students. Like it's all in the calendar for 12 months so that you and your team, if you have a team, know where you're going and when everything's happening. And I think the reason I started planning in advance like I do now, and I usually plan in October and November for the new year and it takes me a little while, like your first session, you'll go back to it and move things around and go back to it. But by December 31st, I want that plan to be locked in and then I share it with my team in early January and or late December too, before everyone goes out on breakfast. That's probably more ideal if I can get it all done, which I usually can. But the thing is, what was happening is I could never predict my revenue. I never knew what I was going to make by the end of the year or if I was even close to what I wanted to make. Like, I didn't have clear quarterly goals, sometimes not even yearly goals. Revenue was like, I just hope I do well this year. I mean, these are my early days, right? And when I started to have a really small team, even just a VA or when I hired my first project manager, I was years into my business and I didn't plan. Like I'm going to show you here today. And I remember when I hired Chloe, my first marketing project coordinator, who ended up rising through the ranks and becoming my CMO before she left to have a bunch of babies. But when Chloe came on, I didn't have a plan like this either. And she did not know where we were going or what we were doing at any given time. It was like maybe we were working a month or two in advance. And I can promise you, planning six to 12 months in advance can make you more money. It could help you feel more in control and it could help you plan your revenue and profit so much more precisely. And there's just so many benefits of planning. So I'm going to walk you through how to plan for the new year now at any given time, if you think I wish Amy would have a live workshop where I could do all of these things with her step by step. Well, you're in luck because I am actually going to do a live planning workshop in December. So if you go to amyporterfield.com Plan Plan, you can read all the details and everything you learn here today and more. I can't get into everything in this episode, so it will be much more in detail, much more specific, and it will be a workshop that I'm going to be doing in December. So we can plan your whole year together in December if you want to. Amyporterfield.com Plan okay, so when I eventually started to plan out my year and everything changed and I don't plan every little detail, you'll see as I walk you through this, you're not necessarily planning the how, you're planning the what. So we are planning the big things that truly move the needle. Revenue goals, when are your launches, Core content that you're creating? Team support that you'll need so that you can make all of this happen. You're planning if you're going to do leadership retreats, if you have a leadership team, or when you're going to do all company meeting. So everyone, I think you should do one, even if you have a small team every quarter, at the beginning of every quarter, share what worked last quarter, what you're going to do this next quarter in terms of your goals, like plan all of that in advance. It also helps so that you can plan vacations around all of this or maybe plan your vacations first, then plan your organization work events next. And if you have a small team, they know when it's not a good time to take off. Like when I planned Digital Course Academy and we had all the dates in the calendar, my team knew when it was appropriate to take off time and when it wasn't. So those kind of things kind of sort themselves out with the calendar like this. Here's the thing, you can plan ahead and you can stay flexible. So if you're like Amy, I don't know, I don't have all the answers yet. And, and what if I want to move some things around? And what if I'm not sure about this or that? Plan it now and you can still be flexible. You don't have to choose one or the other. So today I'm walking you through the exact process I use with my team. It's simple, it's adaptable, and honestly a total game changer for staying focused, calm and in control, no matter what surprises the year brings you. And if you're anything like me, there were a lot of surprises in 2025. I took a lot of pivots, a few detours. We looked at some launches like what the heck is happening? So there were a lot of pivots this year, but at least I had a foundation to work from versus starting from scratch when something happened that I needed to make a quick change. So having the foundation is so important. So the first step you're going to do is you're going to zoom out and and look at the full year. The first thing I do is I pull up a Google spreadsheet and list out all 12 months, January through December. Now I'm not filling in anything yet. I'm just giving myself space to see the year as a whole. And this is about getting like a bird's eye view so I can start thinking like a CEO, not just someone reacting to her to do list. And I ask myself, what's my focus for the new year? What's the shape of this new year? Where my big things go? What seasons already feel full like family wise or travel wise? Personally, like maybe you have a trip planned for Europe already next year. Get it on the calendar. I want to see the white space first and I want to see what months feel heavy or light because before I decide what I'm doing, I need to know when I'm actually having the capacity to do it. So what I'm saying here is if you have some things already planned, put them in the calendar right from the get go just so you can start to see what's already committed to. Usually it's personal things like personal trips. But I do have a mastermind that I'm attending that I'm already planning for 2026. So I would put that in initially knowing I already committed to it. Now I also like to use instead of a spreadsheet there is a website called Calendars that Work. Now this is super janky. I've used it for like 10 years. I am sure there are better options right now, especially with ChatGPT, but I'm going to be old school for just a second. So calendars that work dot com. You can get a calendar per page of the new year. And because I like to have the paper in front of me and scratch out things and write things, I have literally one page per month in front of me as a calendar and I really like to use that. And also one thing I will do right away is I'll get all the holidays in the calendar. Because I have been notorious for planning a launch, not realizing it falls right in the middle of like Labor Day or something like that. And it really affects people paying attention. So I do like to put all the holidays in the calendar and anything I've already committed to. Okay, step two is to reflect before you plan. And in my live planning workshop that I'm going to do in December, I walk you through this step by step. And the reason why I think this is so important is that if you have read the book the Gap in the Gain, you know that you live in the gap in if you only look forward and you're trying to get some arbitrary number in terms of like a revenue goal versus looking back, seeing how far you've come, looking at the gain, and realizing what has worked and using what has worked in order to get to where you want to go. So this reflect before you plan is a little bit like the gap in the gain concept of there's so much knowledge to look back on to get you to where you want to go. So what I do is I look back at the last 12 months, what worked, what didn't, where did the majority of my profit come from, what did I love doing, what totally drained me, what was my least profitable campaign that I did in the last 12 months? Now, if something totally burned you out, it doesn't belong in the next year the way you did it this year, and even if it made you money. So you need to really document all of that so that we don't make the same mistakes we've made, but we start building off of what's already worked for us. And if something felt really good and it moved the needle, well, we want more of that. Right? So you want to just really take a moment and document what worked, what didn't, what felt heavy, what felt light, what was exciting, what what took way too much effort, what was really easy for you, and just document all of that. This is kind of the energy and the emotion part of it, but then you can get more tactical. It's also a time to look at your numbers. So pull up your P and L, your profit and loss statement and really take a look at where money came from and where it went as well. Now, I love the idea of taking 12 months of a profit and loss statement statement and putting it into chat GPT and having it analyze where you were making the most revenue, what was working for you, where might be the holes or overspending. So you're going to have to feed ChatGPT more information than just your P L, give it some more Information to work with and ask it the questions that you have. But you can use CHAT GPT as your financial analyst based on all of your numbers. Now, if you don't have a P&L1, I want you to start considering it. If you're making, let's say, a hundred thousand dollars or more in your business each year, I want you to have a P and L. And this is something you can research and figure out and you can hire someone to of course create it for you. And that's what I would do. And it's not too expensive. But just having a bookkeeper to check in with on a regular basis and, and put together your P and L, I think is a very good investment on your part. So essentially you want to look at your month by month spending and your month by month revenue. What are the months where most revenue came in? For me, that would be September with Digital Course Academy that I've launched for years and years, always in September. So I'm well aware of that. But you're looking for trends and patterns and just maybe some things that you weren't seeing before. Now, I don't want you to overanalyze here, but I do want you to use ChatGPT to guide you if you want to really look at your numbers. And the thing is, I have the Milli Club, which I've talked about a bunch. And what I've noticed, even these women that are making 500, 600, $700,000 a year, they don't know their numbers as well as they wish they did. And it's just something once you know, then you fix it. So that's one thing we focus on in the Millie Club is really getting to know your numbers. Because the more you know your numbers, the smarter your decisions can be. And so this, this step's important. The energy, the emotion part of it that I mentioned, but also just sitting down and analyzing what did the numbers look like this year? So that's your step two. Now step three is to brainstorm without limits. So this part is fun. So once you've reflected, it's time to dream a little. A great question to kick this step off is what would I say yes to if I knew it would work? If I knew I couldn't fail, what would I want to do in the coming year? Maybe it's a brand new offer, a podcast. Maybe you want to create a VIP mastermind for your students. Maybe you want to speak on big stages, start your YouTube channel. Or maybe you would finally turn your program into an Evergreen Funnel. Maybe you would finally hire your first person, like a marketing project manager on your team. That's scary. I know, but it's a big one. Maybe you will finally put together a leadership team. Whatever it is, what is it that you want to do? Like, big dreaming in 2026 now or whatever, whenever you're listening to this episode, because I know it lives on now. This part is all about possibility. Like, no pressure. You do not need to know the how in this entire planning session. You do not need to know the how at all. We're focusing on the what and some of the why as well. So dream big and align your ideas with, you know, the business you've been creating and where you want to see it go. And this is where I'll sometimes bring in support. Support. Like not just from my team or a mentor, but even tools like Chat GPT. Again, it could be a really big mentor to you. Here, I'll. I'll ask. Chat GPT, what are some bold scalable offers for me? Knowing what you know about me now, where do you see my business going and what could I do in the coming year in order to double my revenue? What would that look like? What would I need to do now? Knowing what you know about me now, what kind of reoccurring revenue models could I test in my business this year? So use ChatGPT as your business mentor as well while you're going through this, just to make sure that you're. You're dreaming big enough and setting really big, audacious goals. It's like if you use ChatGPT, it's like having a super smart sounding board the whole time. Hey, real quick, before we continue, a quick word about our sponsor, I've got to tell you about a really cool model that I'm a little bit obsessed with right now. So it's called the working genius model. And I'm telling you it's going to transform your work, your team, and your life. And really, it will do so by leveraging your natural gifts. So it's an assessment that I recently took. It takes like 10 minutes and the results you can apply immediately. You're going to discover how to increase joy and energy at work by understanding what you. What your geniuses are. And it kind of blew my mind. Cause I thought, this makes sense why I do some things and I hate doing them. And then I do some other things and it fully lights me up. And it actually gave me permission to stop doing the things that totally drain me. Because now I understand why they Drain me. So it's really good. So essentially, you're going to get more done in less time with more energy and joy. Yes, please. Right, so you can get 20% off a 25 working genius assessment if you. If you go to workinggenius.com and just enter the code marketing at checkout. So you're going to get 20% off. It's 25 bucks. It's worth every penny, but you'll get a discount. Go to workinggenius.com and enter the promo code marketing at checkout. Okay, let's get back to the episode. Now, I've never gotten to do this planning with ChatGPT because I really didn't adopt AI until the very end of last year. And so this would be the first year that I'm using it as well. And it's been so cool because I've already started this process. But it's the first time that I can teach you different prompts of how to use CHAT GPT. So in my live training that I'm going to do in December, I'll make sure to give you the prompts at each stage that I'm going to walk you through that you could use in order to get the most out of the stages or the steps. So that's something that I want to include for sure. Now, here you're going to be thinking of all the big things that you want to do. And once you have this list, I usually look for the ones that feel expansive and aligned. I said that word earlier. And aligned is so important because if it's out of left field and if it's going to take you out of the game and a totally different direction, but your goal is to build the business in front of you. You don't want to be doing that. So I want you to be really mindful in that way. Okay, let's move on to step number four, which is you're going to choose three to five revenue drivers. Now, in step three, I had you dream big, and some of the things that you might have listed aren't necessarily revenue drivers in terms of offers that are going to make you money. Maybe you said you're going to start a YouTube channel eventually that could make you money, but it's not going to right out of the gate, right? Or starting a podcast or starting a newsletter. All of that is so important for the success of your business. But right now I want to talk about revenue drivers, which would be offers that you're going to put on your calendar. So in my case, the business that I had in 2025. It's going to look very different in 2026, but you know, my business in 2025, so I'll use that as an example. So obviously one of my business drivers or revenue drivers is Digital Course Academy. Another one in 2025 would be my Evergreen Funnel List Builders Society. And then another one could be promoting somebody else's program. Program. And then of course, I had the Millie Club and the Made to Scale Mastermind. So those are revenue drivers. So I want you to choose three to five. Now, I'm not talking about how many times you're going to launch them. You might just choose two or three, but you're going to launch them multiple times. I love that even more. The less revenue drivers, the better. If you can still hit your revenue goal and at the end of the year, and you know I'm a rinse and repeat kind of girl. When I teach you to create a digital course in the beginning, I want you to launch it two to three times each year. And so I know I've gotten mine down to just once a year, but that took a while. And so two to three times a year allows you to make more mistakes and correct yourself and get better and better. So it might just be that you have two to three revenue drivers, but you're repeating them. A rinse and repeat method makes your life a whole lot easier. So I want you to think about all the things that you could offer and ask yourself which of these offers will bring in real meaningful revenue and what does my audience actually want and what are they ready to pay for? And in addition to that, ask yourself, where could I focus in the sense of doing one thing really well again and again out of all the offers you have? Because a lot of the people that I work with, I'll tell them that when I look at their business, you have way too many offers. And so I'd rather you have less offers but do them really, really well and make more money with fewer offers. So I want you to think about that and choose, let's say two to three offers that will be your main money makers. And then if you have like maybe two other things, like you're going to affiliate for somebody's program next year or, or like one of my revenue drivers is affiliate tools and software. So I get money from membership IO and kajabi and kit every single month. So that could be one of my revenue drivers. But it's not going to be the main thing that I'm focusing on. Right. So looking for all the different ways you bring in money, scaling that down as much as humanly possible. And we'll talk about this in my live workshop because I really don't want you going into the new year when with too many offers. But we need to determine what they are. How are you making money in the new year? The benefit of identifying these offers now is that you can plan everything else, like the content for those offers or the lead gen going into those offers, or even people you might need to hire in order to get those offers off the ground. You can plan for that when you know what offers you're going to be offering in the new year. So that's why it's so important. Okay, step number five, align your list building strategy in advance. So this is what a lot of people skip over. When you're planning for the new year, I want you to plan for your list building efforts. And I always say the most important time is when you are not launching because that is when you're building your audience and you're building real relationships. And so I want to see on your calendar maybe every quarter a week where you're focusing on a new list building strategy. Maybe you're going to debut a new quiz or maybe you're going to do some kind of free workshop and the whole goal is just to grow your list and you're going to align these with your campaigns. So let's say I'm going to launch something in September. Well, June, July, August. I'm looking at how I'm growing my email list intentionally to be ready for my September launch. So you'll want to front load a lot of list building intentional efforts before launch. And if you have a calendar, you can do so. Now my motto is always be list building. So you're going to be list building in the back end of your business. Like it's going to happen every day. But you can have really concentrated times. Like I mentioned, you can debut a new quiz at a certain time right before a launch or a month or two before a launch, which is always a great idea. So be mindful of your list building efforts as well. Now, you know I'm big on newsletters, right? I think that you should launch a newsletter in the new year and if you haven't done so already, maybe put it on the calendar of when this newsletter will will launch. Maybe you're not ready in January, but you're going to go for it in February. And you have to make sure you have time on your calendar that you're writing that Newsletter every single week you want time on your calendar to create your social media. So this is where you're starting to see where am I going to be spending my time intentionally to get this kind of stuff done. Now, as a side note, this is also a really good time to start thinking about your ideal week. This is something I learned from Michael Hyatt, and it's never going to be perfect. I've finally learned that over the last few years. But if you say, okay, Tuesdays are going to be my content creation day, Wednesdays are going to be my meeting days, and Thursday is when I'm recording a bunch of things or whatever. When you start to look at your week that way, it makes you understand where you're going to have time to to do all this stuff that you want to do. And so after you plan, I do want you to sit down and say, what would my ideal week look like if I had chunks of different things that I was doing on the calendar? Like, this is the only time I record. I only record on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or something like that? It really allows you to make sure you're spending your time wisely. But anyway, you could do that after you plan. So you want to get really intentional about your list building efforts, whether it be new lead magnets, a bootcamp, a challenge, a quiz, a new podcast series that you like, a secret podcast that people have to sign up for to get it. Like, there's so many things that you could do but be intentional. And your newsletter. I really do think that 2026 is your year for a personal newsletter, episode 37. So just amyporterfield.com will give you a lot of insight into how I do my newsletter. What's working, lots of insights and tips to help you get your started as well. So I just did that two episodes ago. So anyway, I just want you to be intentional with your list building in the new year. And then the final thing you're going to do is step number six, which is you're going to get it all on the calendar, so you're going to start blocking it out. So that's why I love calendars that work. I'm so embarrassed to tell you this because there's so many other things you could do for this, but I just like to have the calendar in front of me and I like to plan out all the launch dates. So you're going to say, this is when the cart is opening, this is when the cart is closing. Now you might only want to do Evergreen next year. Great. So you're not going to have live launch dates on the calendar. However, I promise you, you're going to need to tinker a lot with that Evergreen offer. So. So maybe you're building in one week each month where you're testing different things for your Evergreen campaign. So there's different things that you could do for Evergreen as well, but get them marked out on your calendar. If there's any big live events that you want to attend, get it marked down on your calendar. And also, if you want to do something really big but you're not ready to do it, let's say in January, you can plan for it in September and October, knowing that it's coming and building the time to create it. Okay, let's talk about that for a second. So one of the things that I do that I think is unique in my calendar planning is let's say that I want to create a brand new digital course and I'm going to create it this summer. Or let's say I want to launch it this summer. So I put down the launch dates, I'm launching my new digital course June 1st. So I put June 1st through June 10th. I'm going to do a 10 day launch and then I back out the next 30 days for pre launch and like dedicated list building and all of that. But when are you actually creating it? When are you doing ideation, building the outline, putting together the slides and the scripts? When are you recording it? Maybe you want to record it live week by week when you sell it, which is great. But if you want to pre record it, that needs to be in the calendar. So when you look at these different launches and different offers and different initiatives, you also want to build in your calendar when you're actually going to create it. Now why do I know that this is so important? Because I've literally not done this year after year in the past. And it's burned me every time where my calendar starts getting filled up and I'm like, I don't even have any time to create that course, let alone record it and edit it in advance. So the ideation, the creation, the content, all of that needs to be in this calendar. And I promise you, it's so overwhelming in the beginning, I promise that. But the better promise I have for you is it actually starts to shake itself out over the next month after you do this, it starts to all really make sense because you're moving things around. And that's why I just, I love a written calendar in front of me with a Pen and I scratch things out and I move things here or there. And then the best thing you can do is if you have a VA or if you have a team, have somebody else look at the calendar and poke holes in it. Because they will. Because I have a leadership team, my CEO and I will create the initial calendar of the big things we want to do. And then from there we will send it to our leadership team and say, poke all the holes. What did we miss? What's overlapping? What did we forget? And we need to include whatever it is. And so having a second set of eyes on the finished product or semi finished product, which is the calendar, is a good idea. Now here's where things get interesting. Once you have it on the calendar, what I want you to do is start assigning revenue goals to each of your revenue generators. So let's say you're going to do a launch in February. Well, how much money are you trying to make with that launch? So let's say you want to have a $20,000 launch for a course you're selling in February. Great. So you're going to put that down and then you're going to launch that same thing in six months. Well, hopefully you've grown your list, you've got better at launching. So let's say if we could double it, and your goal is $40,000 for the next launch. So you're going to put dollar revenue goals next to each of your revenue generators. That's how you can decide, like if you want to make a hundred thousand dollars or $200,000 next year or a million dollars. You want to see how you're going to get there. And I don't mean how in the weeds, I just mean how many launches is it going to take? What are you estimating for your Evergreen? What are you hoping to hit for that affiliate launch you're doing for somebody else? And in the beginning, when you're brand, brand new, you're making it all up. But most of you are not brand brand new. You've been at it for a few years, so you're going to look back, not forward. There's nothing to see in front of you in terms of how to choose a launch number. You're looking back to see what have you been able to do in the past. And of course, we are always trying to beat ourselves, right? So if you did a launch last year and you made $10,000, but you debriefed and you know what you did wrong and what you did right, and, and what you would Change. Now, you're going to increase that. Let's say you want to hit $20,000 this year, but you're going to learn from the mistakes you made in order to hit that 20,000. You're going to look at conversion numbers and say, okay, I converted at 5% on my webinar. So if I convert, let's say at 7% because I'm going to get better, how many leads am I going to need in order to convert at 7%? Like, that's the kind of stuff you can start thinking about when you have these revenue goals for each of your campaigns. And so that's how your promo calendar actually turns into. And here's how I'm going to make that money. Because when somebody comes into, let's say, the Millie Club or even my upcoming brand new coaching that I'm creating and they say, I want to make $300,000, and I'll say, okay, break it down for me. How do you think you're going to do that? And they have no clue what I can promise you. I can guarantee they will not hit $300,000 by the end of the year. You need a plan how you're going to do it. Now, that plan will not shake out perfectly. If your goal is to hit $20,000 on your February launch, you might come in short at 15k. Now you have a 5k deficit, right? Well, first you're going to celebrate the 15k because that's a lot of money. You're going to stay in the gain, but then you're going to say, okay, I've got a 5k chunk of money that sounds ridiculous that I need to make up for. And so now you can look at the rest of the year and say, what could I tweak, change, or hopefully maybe make even more in my next launch to make up for that. But you know where you're trending all year long based on your promo calendar. And to me, that is so incredibly important. Okay, so there's so much more to this. Like, this is just a mini session on planning your new year. And I just wanted to give you some insights, such as get all the months in front of you, put all your personal travel and fun stuff on it, put all the holidays on it, put your launch dates on it and the things that you want to do. Assign revenue numbers to all the launch campaigns and all of that. But I can do something such a better job if you give me about an hour and a half to two hours in a workshop session live. And that's what I am doing on December 9 live. I'm going to walk you through step by step. And there's some steps that I wasn't able to include in this podcast episode that we're getting into that are so incredibly important. I'll slow down, I'll make it all make sense. And of course you're going to get a PDF guide that will walk you through it step by step by step. You learn this once and you could do it year after year after year. So this is special. I rarely offer this, so go to amyporterfield.com plan to get all the details. It's very affordable, I promise, and it's going to be so good. And my goal is to have some time at the end to do some live Q and A to help you if you get stuck. But wouldn't it be amazing if you woke up on January 1st and you knew exactly what your year looked like? You knew what your goals were, what you're working toward, and you could communicate that with anybody on your team. So no one's like, what are we doing? Where are we focused? I'm unsure about what's going on. That's not going to happen if you can map it all out. This was one of the biggest game changers for me to finally hit the million dollar mark and beyond. This is something that I cannot wait to teach with you in much more detail coming up in December. So amyporterfield.com plan I hope to see you there.