#99 - End-of-Year Wrap-Up: 5 Steps to Reflect, Reset & Plan Better for 2026

If you’re a purpose-driven solopreneur, coach, or online service provider looking to grow your business with intention, this episode is for you.

I’m walking you through a 5-step annual planning process to help you wrap up the year with clarity and step into the new one with confidence. We’ll talk about what worked, what didn’t, how to set bold but aligned goals, and how to map out your calendar without burning out.

✨ You’ll learn how to:

• Do an honest business audit of 2025
• Dream BIG without getting overwhelmed
• Choose your anchor goals for the new year
• Start sketching your 2026 calendar
• Visualize the version of you that’s already achieved it

Whether you’ve already grabbed your planner or you’re still stuck in the holiday haze, this episode will give you the clarity and spark to end the year strong.

👉 Join me this Thursday, Dec. 4 at 2 PM ET for the free Plan + Envision 2025 Workshop and get access to the full workbook plus a few surprises for those who show up live!

Mindset to Market is a Luminous Creative Production. If you'd like to learn more about our business coaching program and group coaching container, please visit us online at DeborahcSmith.com.

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Mindset to Market is produced by Deborah C. Smith and designed to inspire and support big-hearted creatives in finding their own unique path, building a sustainable business, and creating financial, spiritual, mental wellness and abundance.

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💕 Visit Deborah online at DeborahCSmith.com
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Transcript

 Hey there, friend. Quick question. When was the last time that you hit pause and really looked at what's working and what's not working inside your business? And I'm not just talking about glancing at your numbers or maybe cleaning up your email list. I mean, truly reflecting back on what. Is aligned in your business and what's not.

If you've been stuck in the swirl of creating content and meeting with clients and trying to make sales and just the constant motion of running a business, then I get it. There's not a lot of time to reflect, but in the words of the great James Clear, we don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems, and so we need systems that work for us so that we can put certain tasks inside of our business on autopilot and reclaim some of our time so we can deepen relationships and actually do what we're here to do and not spend all of our freaking time being marketers.

So if you want 2026 to feel more aligned, to be more profitable for you and just less chaotic, that's gonna start with getting honest about 2025. So in today's episode, I'm gonna give you a simple five step planning process. It's gonna help you wrap up your year and clarify your vision for the coming year, and then actually map out your business calendar.

And this is gonna help you grow from a place of strategy rather than just survival. And honestly, if you're listening to this, like in the time machine and maybe many months from now, or even years from now, this entire process can apply to wrapping up just about any major period of time or process. Like if you were winding down before you took like a maternity leave, or if you were, you know, deciding to pivot and you wanted to just get some end of period of time data, this could help with that as well.

So I'm also gonna be sharing how you can get a free seat to join me for the plan and Envision 2026 workshop that's happening this Thursday in real time, December 4th at 2:00 PM Eastern Standard, and we're gonna do this process together. With a workbook and some truly supportive materials. So let's get into this episode and I'll tell you more about that in just a minute.

Hey there, and welcome to the Mindset To Market Podcast, your go-to place for practical tools and solutions for the everyday challenges of being a creative and spiritual solopreneur living in a material world. I'm your host. Deborah Smith. I'm a holistic business coach with 17 years of experience, and I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and build a daily practice that prioritizes your business's financial growth as well as your personal health and wellness.

I'm here to offer you support, creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect messy actions so you can find balance while building the dream. Business. If you're a purpose-driven solepreneur, who's working on that dream one day at a time, then you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Okay, thanks for listening, friend. I hope you find this podcast supportive and it gives you some inspiration and some practical tools to apply towards your business growth and clarity. And if you're new here, welcome. Um, I'm so grateful to have new listeners. It's December 1st, so it is the beginning of the end of 2025.

Hallelujah. I, for one, I'm going be kind of happy to see this year, uh, put this year in the history books, but we still have a full month left of the year, and I wanna use that strategically to help us. Reflect on what's been going right, what's been going wrong, and what we wanna call into our businesses for 2026.

So in today's episode, we're gonna do just that. I'm gonna walk you through, um, a simple process that I have been doing for many, many years inside my own business and it's really transformed how I look at sort of the end of the year. And plan for the coming year. So just a bit of housekeeping. I will tell you more about this towards the end, but please save the date for this Thursday, December 4th.

If you are free at 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, and you have a couple of hours that afternoon, if you can make space in your calendar. I highly recommend you join me for the live workshop version of what we're gonna talk about today. You do not wanna miss this if you're somebody who needs more clarity as you head into 2026.

Um, we have been doing this for years. I do it with all my clients. Uh. I, you know, I've done it as a paid workshop. Um, it's been something that I feel really has helped me focus and grow my business, and so I love sharing it with other business owners and entrepreneurs. It's just a great thorough, clear planning session, but it's got a little, uh, element of visualization and kind of dream scaping to it.

So it's, it's a lot of fun. It's not just numbers. So what we're doing now, isn, I'm gonna share these five steps with you that are gonna help you get the gist of the process. And then if you're not able to join us for the workshop or get the replay, which by the way, if you register for the workshop and you cannot make it in person, you will get the replay.

So you might wanna consider registering just to get the replay. Um, and you'll also get the workbook and you can keep it and it's all free. And this is not a sales webinar, it is literally just a free workshop. Um, so, but if you're not gonna be able to join us, totally cool. You might wanna stop and pause here and actually.

Do these steps, or you might wanna bookmark this for later time when you can sit with a hot cup of coffee or tea, or maybe you're into matcha and honey, which is my new obsession. Um, and actually do these steps because these steps are gonna help you so much as you close out 2025 and prepare for 2026. So.

Once again, please come do this with me, live on Thursday, December 4th at 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. But right now, I'm going to talk you through it and help you understand the purpose of each step so you can do it on your own. And this entire process, if you're truly focused, is really gonna take you about 90 minutes to two hours.

Um, if you are scattered or if you wanna delve in deeper for any of the segments, it could take you, you know, three, four hours. Um, or even just like spread it out over a couple of days. I've done it different ways. There's been times when I really just carved out one full day of my life and was like, this is my reflection day and I'm gonna do this thoroughly.

Other times I've broken it into several days, and last year's workshop ran about two hours. And we were kind of speeding through, and for sure people had to do more additional work on their own. Um, so let's just start with the steps and you can decide how you wanna do it. So step one of this process is to reflect honestly, and I underscore the word honestly, because what happens sometimes in our business businesses, we don't wanna look at the pitfalls, right?

We don't wanna really dwell on the doomsday, you know, numbers and, and realize like. Yeah, I have a thousand people on my mailing list, but only 30 of them are opening my emails. Like, it's tough to look at the downside of all of our effort and get honest with ourself, but this first step is really about that brutal honesty.

This is the laser focus that's gonna get you into the right kind of action for the coming year. So I want you to set aside 20 minutes. For this particular step, and you're gonna look back at the, at the past year, at the, at all of 2025 up to this point, and ask yourself, what worked in my business, what did not work in my business?

Uh, what lit you up? Like what really remember any moments where you were like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is exactly why I got into this. Um. Make a, make a note of all the things that lit you up. Also, ask yourself what kind of dragged you down? Like what didn't work for you? What was making you feel really bummed out?

Was there a task or a person or maybe you tried building something that didn't function correctly? Um, there's all kinds of things that could have been like a big bummer. We wanna make a list of those things. You are gonna, you're gonna make a list of, um, what offers brought in the most revenue, right? So we wanna track our money.

We have to look at the numbers and, and ask of all the things that I sold this year, which brought me the most money and which did not sell well, was there something that you tried that just did not work out? Um, where did you grow your audience the most? This is an important one. Like, where did you get the most people that came into your world?

Um, what are you most proud of for the, um, past year? And this could be personally or professionally or where there might be an overlap there. And you just wanna kind of take inventory on all of the different pieces of this past year that affect how, not just the money that you made, but how you actually feel as you're working in your business.

And what you're gonna find is that there are gonna be things that worked really well as intended, and things that you tried that that just really did not work. And where you find those things, I want you to pause and reflect a little deeper and ask yourself why didn't it work? And the same thing. You're gonna, you know, what lit you up and what dragged you down?

Get a little deeper. Why did it let you up? Can you see a correlation with maybe like your personality, your human design, your, you know, natural skills that you have that are actually where your, it's your zone of expertise. Um, I just had a conversation yesterday with a, a colleague of mine who's an amazing salesperson.

Like, she's so, so good at it. Like she could sell, you know. I don't know. I used to in Eskimo. But anyways, she hates, um, managing staff and she's got this amazing team of other amazing salespeople. So she's a great salesperson and she's got all these great salespeople, but she doesn't wanna manage them. And so she identified that managing staff is not, it, it drags her down.

It, it gives, she spends so much extra time, she gets so frustrated. She feels like it's just a waste of her time. So she hired a manager to manage her staff. Um, and it's just a really good example of where. She was able to grow by bringing in somebody to replace her, uh, her in a role that she felt like was really wasting time and energy inside her business.

So we wanna look for these like gaps in the system. Right. So again, what, what offers brought in the most revenue and which ones didn't sell? Well, I mean, point blank. If your offer is not making you money, there could be a couple of different reasons. It could be the offer itself. It could be that the messaging around it is not landing with your audience.

Um, it could be that, that, that part of the market is just. Saturated or that there's somebody who's best in class who's just killing it, and you actually need to differentiate from them a little bit to be seen. There's a lot of different things that you could learn by looking at where you didn't make sales when you tried something.

So we're looking for those nuanced gaps that we can kind of fig fix going into next year. And of course you wanna look at audience growth and, and, and the things that made you feel really good. And again, this is not about judgment, it's about data. So really it's about the energy that you put in, the energy that you get back out.

And just being honest, right? Our business is gonna thrive when we get honest with ourself. I, I wish I didn't have a gigantic list of moments in my past where I was brutally honest with myself about things that were not working. But that has gotten me to be, I make so much faster decisions because I have this list of experiences where I've either failed, where I tried something that didn't work, or I learned something about myself.

And I've done this analytic real, like deep sort of diagnostic assessment of my own work. So what we wanna do is we wanna use the wins. And the lessons as fuel for what's coming next. And that brings me to step two. So step two is fun. It's about dreaming. It's about really allowing yourself to brainstorm and what I call dreams scaping.

So dream scape is, to me, is taking an idea, a vision, a dream. And actually mapping out like how it could actually work in real life. And so now that you've looked back, you get to ask yourself, okay, so then what do I want next year to look like? What do I really wanna build inside my business for the coming year?

Is it a new offer? Is it a new way to deliver the current offer? Is it a new, ideal client that I'm getting more aligned with? Is it a new price point for the offer that I've sold a bunch of times? Is what you're doing not working for you at all? And you have to get brutally honest with yourself that you don't even like the thing that you built.

And just if that's you for some reason, if you're the person who doesn't love the thing that they spent like an entire year building, um, I can totally relate to that. In 2021, I launched a full course that I built. It took me months and months and months of editing and video shooting and all the content creation.

And I sold it a bunch and I was happy with the work that I did, but I didn't wanna keep going in that direction. And so I had to do, I chose to do, um, a pretty serious pivot. And it was based on reflecting back at the end of the year, this exact process and really being honest with myself that I did not wanna keep selling that course no matter what.

I just wasn't gonna be what fulfilled my bigger destiny. So I had to change direction and pivot because that's what we're here to do, is to grow, is to change, to evolve, to level up. And you're not gonna stay the same whether you want to or not. So if you do not love what you're doing, permission to change.

Okay. And essentially that's what this step is about. It's about. That big, big, beautiful dream that you have for your life. It's not the safe plan. It's not the nine to five plan. It's the aligned, exciting, soul expanding vision. So you're gonna ask yourself the following questions, do you have bigger income goals?

Is it time that you want to launch your signature offer? For example, are you ready to really. Put yourself into a personal brand and say, this is me. This is who I am. This is what I do, this is how I help. Is 2026 the year that you're gonna launch a podcast or a YouTube channel or some other form of long form content?

Are you scaling back from work? Maybe you're in a phase of your life where you wanna move back to three or four days a week and not be working so much. Um, maybe this is for some people, this might be the year that you're finally gonna build an automated funnel that actually helps you. Move away from so much busy work and, and really focus on whatever it is you do.

But whatever the dream is, I want you to let yourself really go big like bigger than you think, because you can always come back and edit it later. And no matter what you do, big or small, you're gonna have to work for it, right? So why not be working towards the really big, beautiful dream and let yourself expand beyond what you think is possible.

Uh, and then just take some time to write down what that dream really looks like and get as expressive and specific as you can possibly get. And if you don't like to hand write and you don't wanna type it out. You can hit record on a a Notes app or whatever and just talk into it or have a chat with your GPT.

Okay. Moving on to step three, we're gonna set some anchor goals. So here's where you're gonna pick a few bold priorities for the coming year, and. You know, once you've gotten all these ideas brainstormed and written down on paper, you can choose like three to five, what I call anchor goals for the entire year, for next year, for 2026.

And these are gonna be your non-negotiables, right? These are the things that will guide your projects and your launches as you move forward. So anchor goals might be something like hit 100 K in revenue, or, you know, build Evergreen funnel by spring. Or launch a new group program by summer. Um, or how about take four unplugged vacations with no phone?

That would be an amazing goal to set. So whatever your goals are, I want you to write down three to five major anchor goals and then ask yourself what needs to happen to make each one of these become reality. Because that takes us right to step four, which is where we're gonna have some fun mapping it out.

So in step four, you're gonna sketch out your 2026 calendar. So you can do this with a giant big wall calendar. I love those. Um, you can use Google Calendar, you can just use sticky notes. You can come on Thursday and get the 12 month calendar that I'm gonna give you the blanket calendar. And what you're gonna do is start blocking out.

Your personal wellness and like vacation time and special birthdays and all that stuff first. And yes, I want you to prioritize you. I want you to put your personal time first. This is so important. This is what entrepreneurs forget to do all the time. They like map out all this busy work and all these everybody else's, you know, needs and we forget to put ourselves on the calendar.

So we're gonna start with you. Vacation, birthday, special events, times that you wanna be traveling and block it all out. Then you're gonna have a bunch of open spaces left that you can start to layer in things like. Launching a new product, hiring a new team member, you know, having, holding a workshop, promoting, you know, different seasons of each of these different offers, whatever you're doing.

And of course, you wanna block in some CEO weeks or buffer time around any busy seasons so that you have time to actually. Work on your business and not just inside of it. And then you can start visualizing your business like a year long ecosystem, because it's not just like a week to week hustle where you're like, okay, what am I doing today?

What am I doing next week? Oh my God, it's Christmas already. Right? We don't wanna be like that. We want to have a plan and do the best we can to kind of adhere to that plan and let it let it support us in our growth. So step five is a really fun step. You've got ideas, you've got brainstorm, you've got big goals.

You've got a map on your calendar. Now I want you to start to visualize what that life will look like. So step five is to ask yourself, how does this all feel? So you can imagine yourself, you know, look at that calendar that you just mapped out. Imagine that it's all working perfectly. You've got the staff you need, the time you need, the finances you need, and ask yourself.

Does this all feel aligned to me? Do I have enough spaciousness in there? Do I, did I make sure to block out room for all the downtime and the processing? Where might I need support? Do I wanna hire a team member for that workshop to help me in the, you know, be in the comments? Like little things, right?

Start to really see where you need support and what can be automated, what can be simplified? What do I have on this list of things to do that I don't actually need to do? And then once you've done that, like really refined it, I want you to close your eyes and just visualize the version of you who followed through and who did all of those steps, and ask yourself how it's gonna feel.

How does she feel? What did she create? Who did she help? Imagine that you're a year from now, you're looking back at 2026 and you're saying, holy cow, I grew my revenue, I grew my team. I am so proud of myself. Who did you, who, how many lives could you impact? Right? How much support could you bring to your family or your community if you're successful?

And this planning process is about helping you cut the noise out and see a, a possible step by step future for the way your business can grow. I mean, the goal is to do the thing you love, but also have it make you, you know, help you be financially stable in your life. So this visualization step is, is beautiful.

It's very fun. You can certainly use actual visuals. You can do, you know, a digital vis vision board. You can do an actual vision board. And I love to do that, just like literally cut out pictures and put them on my 2026 calendar and vision board and look at those and say, that's what I'm doing this year.

Um, so once again, I wanna. Remind you that if this sparked something for you and you're feeling a pole to take this process deeper, and you really wanna do this with support and you wanna walk through the full, fleshed out steps with me, um, please come join me live for the Plan and Envision 2026 workshop.

And it's happening Thursday, December 4th. It starts at 2:00 PM Eastern. I'm saying please block out two full hours. If you can only drop in for a few minutes, that's totally fine. You can get the workbook and you can just say hi, and we can get you on the right path. And so you can do this, um, on your own time, but please come because it's gonna help walk you step by step through this whole process with a lot of support, creative prompts, real time brainstorming feedback.

And as soon as you sign up, you'll get the workbook and you'll get, um, sent the zoom link and you'll also get the replay if you can't make it live. Um, you also get added to my newsletter when you sign up if you wanna be on my newsletter, which right now I'm doing the 12 Days of Biz Magic series, and it's just.

Some really fun business tips and some special discounted deals with partners of mine and some of my clients. And it's just a kind of a fun end of year, um, business tools and clarity series. And also I will let you know that if you wanna go deeper on this work, I do have a VIP tier that's only $47, which gets you a full VIP audit.

Um, those are, there's two days that I'm hoping holding space for those, and it's on December 8th and ninth. And you can join either session or both. So. This is really like a sweet mix of business strategy, digital tools, and a little end of your magic to help you stay inspired all the way through the end of December.

And again, if you're listening to this in another point in your life and another point in the year, think about how you might apply this to whatever season you're in. This is a useful step by step process to do at any point in time. It doesn't have to be December, it can be. April, it can be June. Um, it's whenever you need to do this process.

So if you're ready to stop guessing about everything and you're ready to start planning and like create a roadmap for your personal growth and your business growth, this is the moment to take advantage of this offer. Who knows if I'll do it again next year. I say that every year. I love doing it, but who knows where I'll be next year.

So sign up at the link in my bio. I hope to see you on Thursday, and until then, I invite you to just take a deep breath. Enjoy the beginning of this beautiful month. Um, get honest with yourself and remember that you don't have to do everything. You know, entrepreneurship is not meant to be a solo journey.

Even if you're a solopreneur, you know, tap in, join the community and take care of yourself in the process. And, you know, being in community often helps me feel like I'm on the right path. So, I hope to meet you in person this week, and until next week, may you be vibrant. Have a great rest of your day.