You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 146.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi My Strong Friends,

It’s hard to believe we only have 1 week of 2022 left.  I feel like my year is really taking off right now.  It’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that today is supposed to be my last working day of the year.  Two of my kids are here earlier than I expected.  And I found out even more family members will be here starting Monday.  I haven’t started to wrap Christmas presents yet.  I have 2 days until Christmas.  That’s what happens to me when business is taking off.  I wouldn’t change an thing.  I love this.  It’s the best of both worlds.

Did you know that every year in your business should include a Year in Review?

This is when you look back, in a structured way, to harvest all of your gold.  The gold I’m referring to here is Knowledge.  You learned a ton this year!

You learned new skills, new business aspects, you met a bunch of potential clients and business partners, and you learned what works and doesn’t work in your business.

As you start 2023, you’ll want to bring that gold forward.

But you can’t bring it forward if you didn’t harvest it.

So, that’s what this podcast episode will help you do.

Now, I know today may not be the day to do this.  That’s ok.  Just listen to it to get your memory jogged.  Then, next week, after things have settled down, find a quiet spot to record your answers.  You can listen to this episode as much as you need to.  Or look at the transcript.

5 CATEGORIES FOR A BUSINESS YEAR IN REVIEW

For today’s exercise we are going to focus on 5 categories related to your business.  I’ll ask the same 5 questions for each category.

These 5 categories are also what I help you define when we come up with your Business Vision.  I just hosted a Business Vision workshop last week.  I’ll be offering another one in January.  I’ll also be offering a Schedule workshop.  I’ll share more details later about those.

The 5 categories include:

Mental Health

Schedule

Product

Sales Funnel

Money


If you didn’t have these 5 categories defined in your Business in 2022, this will be a good discussion so you can include them in 2023.

MENTAL HEALTH

As you are aware by now, I advocate for putting your Mental Health first in Business.  Did you have a specific Mental Health goal for 2022?

I like to use a Metric with a target as my goal.  It creates an Intentional Life.  It also helps to uncover and resolve the obstacles that get in the way.

At one point my Mental Health Metric was about Depression.  I wanted to significantly reduce and then eliminate Depression.  Not sadness, depression.  There’s a difference.  I already accomplished and maintained that goal before this year.  So I picked something different.

Stress and Anxiety were my choice.  How I measured it was on IBS attacks.  I could have selected how many times my chest hurt.  But, the IBS attacks were worse.  I wanted to reduce and eventually eliminate them.

What emotion or physical system of Mental Health did you include in your 2022 goals?

You could have approached it as an emotion or physical symptom you wanted to decrease.

Or you may have chosen an desired emotion or physical symptom you wanted to increase or enhance.

Now that you have it identified, here are the questions for you to answer.

1.  What obstacles got in the way of achieving that goal?  (Make a list)


2.  How did you experiment to resolve them?



3.  What worked?


4. What didn’t work?

5. What would you do differently in 2023?

SCHEDULE

At the beginning of 2022, what was your schedule Vision? 

• Which days would you work?  
• What were your work hours? 
•  What was your plan for how you would divide up those work hours each week?  
• For non-routine work, or work that happened at a different cadence than weekly, what was your planned schedule?
  
  
  

Quick check-in question before we do the Review.  Did you use your Google Calendar to plan your schedule back in January?  Or at any other time during the year?

This is one of my biggest suggestions for you.  Not only does it help you leverage Law of Attraction for your business, it also helps you set reasonable estimates for your timeline and balance your workload.  As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to offer a workshop on this in January.

Ok, let’s assume you did have a Schedule Vision.  Even if you didn’t, you’ll be able to answer the Review questions to some extent.


1.  What obstacles got in the way of adhering to that schedule?  (Make a list)


2.  How did you experiment to resolve those obstacles?



3.  What worked?


4. What didn’t work?

5. What would you do differently in 2023?

PRODUCT / SERVICE

At the beginning of 2022 were you crystal clear on your product or service?  Did you already know what it was?  Was it created and ready to sell?  If you offer more than 1 product/service, were they all crystal clear?  Was your process for delivering the product/service well defined?  Did you already have repeatable, effective result with those products/services?

I know that was a lot of questions.  Don’t worry if you don’t have answers to all of the questions.  Or if you don’t like the answers to the questions.

Businesses and products/services are meant to evolve over time.  The questions cause just enough healthy tension to move you forward in the evolution of them.

In your yearly Vision you should have your Product(s) / Service (s) defined, including how they will be delivered.

For each Product/Service you offered in 2022, answer the same 5 questions.

1.  What obstacles got in the way of repeatedly delivering effective results with your product/service?  (Make a list)


2.  How did you experiment to resolve those obstacles?



3.  What worked?


4. What didn’t work?

5. What would you do differently in 2023?

SALES FUNNEL

Let’s talk about Sales Funnels.  Are you familiar with the term Sales Funnel?  Are you familiar with the 4 phases of a Sales Funnel - Traffic, Marketing, Sales, Fulfillment.

There are more than 50 different types of Sales Funnels.  Actually, substantially more when you consider all of the variable components in each phase.  In the Smooth and Scalable course I offer to my 1:1s and inside the Unshakable Business Co-Lab, I provide 10 of the most common sales funnels and how to build and optimize them.

Your Business Vision is solid when you know which Sales Funnel you’ll use.  Then you can set very specific targets on your actions and results.

For today, we’ll keep it high level so everyone can do this exercise.  We’ll answer the same 5 questions for the 4 phases of your Sales Funnel.

A. Traffic (how people learn you & your business exist)

B. Marketing (how you market to your Ideal Customers to bring them into your Sales Process)

C.  Sales (the process you use to pitch your product to your customer and close on the sale)

D. Fulfillment (how you transfer and onboard your client onto or into your product/service)

Have a separate sheet of paper of each of those phases.

Now answer the 5 End of Year Review Questions:


1.  What obstacles got in the way of achieving your target for this phase?  (Make a list)


2.  How did you experiment to resolve those obstacles?



3.  What worked?


4. What didn’t work?

5. What would you do differently in 2023?

MONEY

In a Vision I’ll usually have you include a Revenue Goal.  It may be a Breakeven Revenue goal, Sustainable Revenue goal, or a Bold Revenue goal.  For this exercise, I want you break down Money in 3 subcategories:

A.  Revenue

B.  Expenses

C. Profit

I believe it is important to look at all 3 because too many entrepreneurs only look at the Revenue number.  I get concerned by how much they are spending in order to make the Revenue.  I know it’s possible for 2 entrepreneurs to have the same $45k in profit, yet one will have Revenue of $50k for the year and the other $300k.

My wish for you is to have the highest profit margin you can get.

Having targets for each will help you with that.  You can have a Revenue target, an Expense Budget and a Profit Margin % target.

Now consider each of those separately.  Then answer the Review Questions.


1.  What obstacles got in the way of achieving your target for each?  (Make a list)


2.  How did you experiment to resolve those obstacles?



3.  What worked?


4. What didn’t work?

5. What would you do differently in 2023?
 

CARRY THE GOLD FORWARD

Great job!  I know that was a time investment on your part.  But, it has a great Return on Investment.  All of it is pure gold.

Some of you have already wrote the Draft of your 2023 Business Vision.

Is there anything you would change about that Vision based on this Gold?

For those of you that haven’t created your 2023 Business Vision, make sure to listen to next week’s episode.  I’m going to walk you through it.  Next week, I’ll also announce the 2 workshop dates for January.

My friends, it’s time for me to wrap up for today.  I’ve got some Gingerbread houses to decorate with my kids.  I hope you all have a Merry, Love Filled Christmas.  For my friends that celebrate other Holidays I wish you lots of love too.  I look forward to learning more about your traditions in the New Year.

Take care.  I’ll talk to you next week.  Bye bye. 

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove Podcast. When you are ready to make your dream business a reality and take care of your mental health, I invite you to join the Unshakable Business Co-Lab. This is the mastermind membership you've been waiting for. There's no limits on your imagination, nor your timeline. We're with you every step of the way. To learn more, please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com/join. I'll see you there!