Kristen Doyle 0:00
As we head into a new year, there is one thing that almost every entrepreneur is either doing or thinking about doing, and that is making some plans for 2025 it is so easy to feel pressured to set big revenue goals when you’re doing your year end planning as an entrepreneur.
Kristen Doyle 0:20
But what if success isn’t about earning more? What if it’s about building a business that earns enough and it fits your life better? Today, I’m sharing a different approach to planning, one that focuses on intentional growth and work life balance, instead of just chasing bigger and bigger and bigger numbers.
Kristen Doyle 0:42
I’ll walk you through how to reflect on what’s working, decide what to stop doing and set goals that actually serve your lifestyle.
Kristen Doyle 0:53
Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like teachers pay teachers, Etsy or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place.
Kristen Doyle 1:08
Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff, tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let’s get started y’all.
Kristen Doyle 1:33
When we think about planning for a new year, it is so easy to get caught up in revenue goals, but I want to share a little bit of what I learned when I took a very different approach to new year planning last January. Last year, when my coach was asking me what my business goals were for 2024, my first thought was to think about revenue goals. What are the numbers? How much do I want to make in my business?
Kristen Doyle 2:02
And what I realized while I was thinking through that, is that I really didn’t want to make any more in my business than I made last year. I was doing great. I was proud of the amount that I was making. It was supporting my family. What I wasn’t thrilled with the year before was the amount of work I was doing.
Kristen Doyle 2:20
So my goal last year was to make the same amount of money, but to work less hours. Now to do this, I had to put some systems in place that made it possible to work less, but I also had to get really intentional about choosing to do other things during my work day, things like going to kids events at school, taking time out of the day for exercise, saying yes to lunch with a friend.
Kristen Doyle 2:48
Now that we’re at the end of the year, I can share that I will actually earn a little bit less than the year before, but our family income is okay with that, and what I realized is that By intentionally focusing this year on work life balance instead of on growing and earning more, I love my business more than I ever have.
Kristen Doyle 3:10
I’m so excited about the things I have planned that are coming in 2025 in my business, and I am doing so much better as a person, a whole person, when it comes to my relationships with my family and my friends, my physical and mental health and yeah, even as an entrepreneur.
Kristen Doyle 3:32
I’ve been reminded throughout the year in some very real ways that success isn’t just about the numbers in your bank account. It really is about building a business that you enjoy and that serves your life. Success can sometimes mean business growth, but it can also sometimes mean creating space for life outside of your business.
Kristen Doyle 3:53
The only way I was able to come to that goal for 2024 was because I took time to do some big reflections. It’s always important to reflect on the last year in order to plan for the next one. But to build a business that really works for you, you have to look at both the data, the numbers, and how you feel about what you’re doing, and that is where I really saw something different.
Kristen Doyle 4:20
Looking at pure data doesn’t tell the whole story. So look at both the numbers and how the work you’re doing makes you feel. So for example, as you’re looking at your data, pull up your top selling products, note what they are, but also consider which products you really enjoy creating. Which of those top sellers are a drain on your energy? Do more of the things you love and less of the rest.
Kristen Doyle 4:45
One question to ask yourself is, which of the business activities that you’re doing energize you versus which ones drain you? Make yourself a list of each kind of a pros and cons list almost which things that you do in your business do you love? Do they energize you and then which ones just wear you out and drain you?
Kristen Doyle 5:05
That way, you can focus your plans for next year on the things that are working for your business and feel good to you. Sometimes the hardest part of business growth is deciding what to stop doing. The reality is not everything that makes you money deserves your time. Likewise, not everything you’re spending your time on is making you money.
Kristen Doyle 5:28
I have stopped doing a lot of things over the years in my business, and I wanted to share a few of them with you on this episode to hopefully give you some ideas, but also just to help you understand that it is okay to give yourself permission to stop doing something.
Kristen Doyle 5:45
So one example from my Teachers Pay teacher store is a planner that I had in my store. Initially, it sold really, really well, and I was providing free updates every single year. The updates really didn’t take that much time, but I dreaded doing them. Absolutely hated doing it.
Kristen Doyle 6:07
Well over the years, as that planner got a little dated and other planners popped up, it slipped out of my top sellers. So this planner is not one of my top sellers anyway at this point, and I hated doing those updates. I would put them off and put them off and put them off, and it would be time for the school year to start, and I was just getting started making those updates when buyers were asking for them.
Kristen Doyle 6:31
So the solution for me was to go ahead one year and create the next five years worth of updates and to set an end date and just make people aware this planner is now updated through it’s actually through 2025 so this next school year will be the last one, and then I won’t be updating it anymore. So I’ve changed the description. I’ve changed the language around the forever updates. The purchase now goes through 2025 and won’t be updated again after that.
Kristen Doyle 7:00
So that was a way to take something off my plate that I really did not enjoy doing, and over the years, it had stopped being one of my best sellers. So that time I was spending, and that dread, that energy I was exhausting on it, really just wasn’t giving me a return on investment anymore.
Kristen Doyle 7:20
Sometimes we need to either eliminate or automate tasks when they aren’t helping our business. This is why I put my social media for my chalk and apples business on autopilot last year, and I’ll share a link to a podcast episode where I went into detail about how I did that, in case you want to do the same thing.
Kristen Doyle 7:39
But what I realized was it was really important for me to maintain a social media presence, but the time and energy I was investing on creating new content for social on a regular basis just wasn’t paying off. In fact, most of the time my older content, when I reposted, it performed better. So I put my social media on autopilot, and I am reposting and recycling that old content now so I don’t have to spend my time and energy on it anymore, and it is still maintaining that social media presence for that business.
Kristen Doyle 8:13
A key question to ask yourself when it comes to figuring out what you need to stop doing is, what are those tasks that you constantly procrastinate, and why are you putting them off? How can you change that? Whether you decide to eliminate a task completely, or you choose to outsource it, or find a way to automate it, if there’s a task that you are constantly putting off, that is one of your biggest indicators that something’s not right here, and you maybe need to give yourself permission to make a change.
Kristen Doyle 8:43
Another question you can ask is, what are you doing in your business that you could stop doing that would create more work life balance for you. One reason that I decided this year would be the last year of my very, very successful, super popular Profit Booster Bootcamp is because the evening and the weekend call schedule that I have to do with that type of event just wasn’t working for our family schedule anymore, and so I gave myself permission to stop doing something that actually was really successful in terms of income and bringing in people to my audience, but just wasn’t working for our family anymore.
Kristen Doyle 9:24
So we’ve reflected we’ve talked about what to stop doing, it’s time to set some goals. Instead of focusing all of your attention on setting those year end, big picture, dollar amount goals, how much you want to earn for the year, let’s talk about goals that you can actually control and that have some actionable steps.
Kristen Doyle 9:43
Think about those metrics that you control, the ones that will lead to sales and revenue, things like how many products you want to create in the next year, or how many old products you want to update. Maybe you have a goal to grow your email list to a certain number, or by a certain percent. Maybe you want to launch a course or products a certain number of times throughout the year.
Kristen Doyle 10:08
Think about those metrics that you can control, and then what actions can you take to achieve those goals. That might look like blocking off time in your calendar for product creation or updates. Maybe you’re going to create a really great lead magnet and start running ads to it, to grow your email list.
Kristen Doyle 10:25
If you have goals about launches, then map out a tentative launch schedule for the year right now, knowing that you might shift dates around a little bit, but try to map out at least what month, maybe even what half of the month you want to do your launches in so that you have those on the calendar right now and can start planning for them as you get closer to those dates.
Kristen Doyle 10:46
Another question to ask yourself is, what specific actions will most impact your business while also supporting the lifestyle that you want? One of my goals for 2025 is to create more and better SOPs, standard operating procedures for my business. And the reason that I want to do that is because I know that it will help reduce my own mental load, because I can just follow the SOP I already wrote instead of having to think about steps. But it will also help me be able to hand tasks off to team members or VAs when I need to do that.
Kristen Doyle 11:22
Think about framing the goals that you have around both your business and your personal life. What do you wish you had time for in your personal life, and how can you make that time? In 2024 I intentionally carved out time in my daily schedule while the kids were at school, which is what I typically think of as my work day, for fitness. I really wanted to get back into a gym and to start exercising again, and so I decided to carve out that time during the work day to go to the gym.
Kristen Doyle 11:53
It took months for me to stop thinking I don’t have time for a workout today. And fortunately, I had a really great accountability buddy who pushes back when I text and say, I’m too busy today. I can’t go, because she knows that this is something that I struggle with.
Kristen Doyle 12:11
So think about those things that you wish you had time for in your personal life. What can you move around in your schedule, or what can you cut from your schedule to make time for that? For me, it really came down, not even to cutting things from my schedule, but to choosing to be intentional about going and to picking an accountability buddy who goes to the same gym I do, and telling her to push back.
Kristen Doyle 12:37
With those intentional goals in mind, you’re ready then to create a focus plan for the year. Personally, I like to map out about a quarter at a time. I don’t do well trying to map things out more detailed than that.
Kristen Doyle 12:52
So at the beginning of the year, what I like to do is choose one or two key focus areas for each quarter, and then at the beginning of each quarter, I can get more detailed and specific about what I’m going to do in those areas. The reason I say pick just one or two things each quarter is because you really need to avoid spreading yourself too thin.
Kristen Doyle 13:11
When we set too many goals for ourselves, it can start to feel like there’s no way we’re going to reach them all, and then that can cause us to lose motivation. So instead of spreading yourself too thin, just pick one or two each quarter, spread your goals for the year out over the four quarters, and then focus on building out systems that can help you to reduce those daily decisions and time investment, like my focus on SOPs for the coming year.
Kristen Doyle 13:36
Take a look at what you can eliminate to create space for things that work better and keep the focus on sustainable growth rather than the constant hustle. Keeping your business healthy, but not running yourself into the ground to do it. In this world of just constant push and hustle culture, it is so easy to think that every year needs to be bigger and better and more than the last.
Kristen Doyle 14:06
But when you find a place where you can be content with what you have already achieved and just continue doing that, you can really find a more sustainable business, your business can stay healthy and you will still love what you’re doing, you’ll have a better work life balance, and your year will feel so much better.
Kristen Doyle 14:25
So your action step for today is to think about and maybe redefine what success looks like for you in 2025, beyond just the revenue goals. What is success going to look like and feel like for you in 2025? Identify at least one task you are going to stop doing in order to make room for better things, and pick at least one personal goal that has nothing to do with your business, and decide how you’re going to make time for that.
Kristen Doyle 14:56
When you do, I would love for you to DM me on Instagram @kristendoyle.co with one of those three things, whatever you feel like sharing. Remember, we became entrepreneurs for flexibility and for freedom, not to be tied to our computers and work 24/7! So let’s make 2025 the year your business really fits your life. Talk to you soon.
