Two months to go in 2024!
Did that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up!? With 61 days to go until the new year, we’ve got a great opportunity to reflect and set ourselves up for success in 2025.
Our clients have performance reviews to prepare for and résumé to update, which forces a look back at the accomplishments and achievements of the past year, but we don’t have that forced accountability to take stock of our progress.
Consider this your nudge 🙂
Here’s how you can dissect 2024’s experiences to celebrate your wins while planning how to push your business forward in the new year.
1. Conduct a Comprehensive Review of 2024
If you don’t know your numbers, you can’t monitor your progress, so start by gathering data.
→ What services did you offer most?
→ Which offerings were most profitable (accounting for your time as the “cost of goods.”)?
→ Which services were surprisingly over (or under) performing?
Reviewing how your services perform will be eye-opening; I remember the first time I went through this exercise and realized that my most frequently selling service also took most of my time! Yeah, I made some adjustments after that.
In addition to the quantitative review above, I recommend pulling the analytics on client interactions, feedback, social media engagement, and other qualitative outcomes to see:
→ Which services received the highest praise?
→ What services drew your ideal client type?
→ Who is that client type, and where did they come from?
→ What marketing channels drive the highest engagement and/or best leads?
The goal here is to identify trends and patterns that can tell you where your strengths lie, how your marketing is working for you, and what might need tweaking.
2. Learn from the Analysis
Understanding your business outcomes is one of the best ways to guide your focus in 2025. You never know—maybe it’s time to drop what’s lagging – when you didn’t even know “it” was lagging while doubling down on something surprisingly effective or profitable.
→ Which of your marketing efforts paid off?
Maybe your blog drove more engagement, or LinkedIn posts got more shares. Use this data to refine your marketing strategy and decide where to invest your energy.
→ What adjustments from 2023 did you make that led to the biggest wins?
Was it a new service package? A pricing adjustment? Recognizing positive changes can help you replicate those outcomes at the next level!
→ What fell flat?
We’ve all been there. Group career coaching programs have been my Achilles heel forever, and I just had to admit that it’s a service that doesn’t meet the expectations of my audience.
These realizations aren’t failures but learning opportunities that help us work smarter, not harder!
3. Set Clear, Achievable Goals for 2025
Whether you want to work through a formal SMART goals process or take your insights and turn them into goals, the big picture review will help you set realistic expectations for 2025 – and maybe some stretch goals, too, while reverse-engineering those goals into milestones, quarterly activities, and monthly actions that will stack up to get you there.
Here are a few examples:
→ Revenue Goals: Based on this year’s earnings, set a realistic yet ambitious revenue target for 2025 – make it at least the same percentage growth you saw from 2023 to 2205, and break it down quarterly to make tracking easier.
→ New Service Offerings: Iterate, enhance, and optimize your offerings based on what you’ve learned this year from the market, résumé trends, new coaching tools, or other outcomes that highlight what makes you competitive and relevant.
→ Professional Development: As a coach, your growth is as crucial as your clients’. Plan to attend at least two professional workshops or seminars in 2025 to keep your skills sharp and network active. [Thrive is a clear no-brainer ;)]
4. Roadmap Your Year
Here’s where strategic planning gets real (and fun, if you ask me).
Step 1: Block out time on your 2025 calendar for all the personal commitments you know about ahead of time – vacations, Fridays off (if you’re me), holidays, kid stuff, you get the gist – this ensures you maintain a work-life balance that keeps you at your best.
Step 2: Rough in and schedule major Launches and Events by planning major business milestones ahead of time. This could be introducing a new service, starting a new marketing campaign, or even onboarding a new technology – timing them right (and intentionally) can maximize impact without completely disrupting regular business operations (and life)!
Step 3: Set aside weekly or monthly time blocks for regular workloads, such as client consultations, content creation, and administration. Regular slots build a routine that you and clients can rely on, and also help you anticipate your maximize client load to be sure you’re filling that schedule with consistent revenue (while also not overdoing it, either)!
In Summary
Reviewing the year behind can reveal some amazing insights to help you streamline your business and maximize the potential both it and you have.
Get ready to make 2025 your most successful year yet!
Your Friend and Coach,
Angie M. Callen, CERW, CPCC, CPRW
Get Certified
Establish yourself as an expert. Join our certified & accredited professionals.
Popular Articles