In this week’s episode, Anna Lundberg guides you through a review of the past year, focusing on both your business performance and overall life satisfaction. Reflect on your achievements, learnings, and growth from 2024, and lay the groundwork for a fulfilling and successful 2025. Don’t miss this chance to redefine success on your terms and set the stage for an amazing new year.
Key moments:
[00:00] Overview of the episode’s focus on reviewing 2024.
[00:56] Why celebrating wins and assessing performance is crucial.
[03:38] Breakdown of Live, Love, Learn, Lead, and Laugh.
[07:53] Key business metrics to review – revenue, profit, expenses.
[09:41] How to assess where you’ve been investing your time and energy.
[10:56] Identifying what might have hindered your success in 2024.
[12:30] Preparing for next week’s planning episode.
Resources mentioned:
YEAR-END REVIEW
Reimagining Success Episode 318. And in today’s episode, I’m walking you through a review of the past year. So a review of 2024, both from the specifics of your business performance and from a more holistic, big picture life satisfaction perspective. So I hope you find this really valuable. Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your Ana Lumbo, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach, and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started.
It is the end of the year and as one of my clients kindly said to me, it would not be the end of the year if there wasn’t wasn’t my annual planning session. So I will be taking my business accelerator members through the review of this past year and planning ahead for next year. But if you do want to have some support with this process, I do have a recording of last year’s 12 month business blueprint, so I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes that you should be able to read in the podcast description of this episode. But why is it so important to do this? Well, look, we want to celebrate the wins. We’re always rushing off to the next goal. We want to see what’s worked, what hasn’t worked so well and then tweak and adjust and pivot to set ourselves up for success next year. So how do we do this? Well, today I’m going to walk you through reviewing the past year. So reviewing 2024, where has that gone? And next week I’ll be walking with you through looking ahead to 2025 and seeing what you want to achieve that year.
And if you know anything about me, you’ll know that although I use the word achieve, it is not just about the goals. It’s certainly not just about business goals. And it is much more a holistic, big picture view of how the past year has gone. So if you want to do this with me, then go grab a pen. You can pause me, I won’t be offended. Or you can of course just listen, let the words wash over you, and then come back later and do this. But of course it’s always good to get it done because I think imperfect is better than putting it off and trying to have this amazing one day session, week long strategy, you know, doing all the perfect analysis of last year. Far better to do something, get it done.
Even if it’s not completely perfect and comprehensive, it never will be. Right, so first of all, this past year, how do you feel about it? Just have a think. Okay, I’m feeling quite positive. It’s a sunny day as I record, so I’m feeling, feeling pretty energised. I’m here talking to you, I’ve got a clear plan, I’m feeling pretty good. But you know, how are you feeling generally about this year? Do you feel positive, like there’s been movement? Do you feel a bit frustrated, disappointed, overwhelmed? What’s your overall feeling about this past year? And then I have my 5L framework. And if you do want a copy of the full assessment, which is quite a useful thing to do at least once a year or so, you can go to onestepoutside.com forward slash, slash, success. I’m going to say one step outside.com forward slash success.
And that takes you through both the framework of the 5L’s and also then helps you with a bit of an assessment of those areas. There’s a few questions and yes, that is the correct link. I’ve just double checked. So the five Ls are number one, live. That’s your health, your well being. Two is love, relationships and a sense of belonging. So not just romance, right. Community, peers and so on.
Three is learn. So development and growth. Four is lead, because yes, career and especially the impact that you’re making, the meaning of the work that you’re doing is really important. And laugh, which can be the trickiest when you’re a busy mum of young kids or whatever your particular lifestyle circumstances. But that’s all around fun and spontaneity. So for each of those five Ls, live, love, learn, lead, laugh, you can now double click on. Okay, well, I feel pretty positive. I’ve run a half marathon.
On the other hand, I’ve had some hip problems since running said half marathon. I’ve been pretty well, the kids have been pretty well. You know, generally I’m feeling fit and strong, so pretty positive. You can score yourself out of five or ten if you want to love how your relationship’s going, being present with family, friends, spending time with your spouse and so on. Learn. It doesn’t have to be, although it can be and that does make it more tangible. A formal course. Last year I did an organisational psychology course That I just about finished, or maybe I even finished in January, so maybe I can count it for this year.
That would be good, wouldn’t it? But I haven’t done a lot of sort of formal learning this year. It could be more podcasts and, and so on. I have stuck to my duolingo habit though, so that’s good. And for lead, of course, we’re going to double click on business in a moment. But how do you generally feel about your career and the type of work you’re doing, the difference you’re making, how much you’re enjoying that and then finally the laugh, you know, are you making time to go out with friends? I’m going to see a film tomorrow. Are you meeting up for maybe, obviously Christmas drinks and that kind of thing, but you know, your hobbies, paddleboarding, knitting, whatever it might be, right? So are you making fun? Making space for fun. And then a few more specific questions. What are you most proud of? If you look over the whole year, what do you want to celebrate? And this is where it’s really important to comb through your year because sometimes when people ask you this, just like, ah, I can’t think of anything.
And so do really try to celebrate the big and the small. The external stuff is probably easier, but the internal stuff is really important as well. I stayed focused, didn’t get caught up in shiny object syndrome, and I ran my own race. I made a lot of progress on my book, even if I didn’t publish it. But also the big achievements that you also want to celebrate, of course. And then most importantly, as we then transition into looking ahead for next year, what do you want to be different next year? Right. So anything of those five Ls, anything in general specific that you definitely want to be different. More revenue, more profit, a simpler business model, more fun, more time for exercise, more time for family.
Less time for family. I saw someone post on LinkedIn they had too much spare time. So they, you go, if that’s your problem. More work, of course would be nice. More speaking engagements, be more visible, show up more, be more focused, be more consistent. You know, it could be all sorts of things. So that’s the sort of general high level view of the past year, 2024. And then if we look ahead, no, no, we’re not going to look ahead yet.
That’s what we’re going to do next week. Can’t get ahead of ourselves. Rather, if we look to the business specifically, of course, if you already have robust analytics in place and maybe you go through this with A financial advisor or accountant, that’s great. Cfo, if you’re that fancy. But if not, the bare minimum is obviously, look at your total revenue, look at your profit, look at your expenses. That should be something you’re kind of reviewing quarterly or so. Obviously some things don’t change. My expenses are pretty fixed, and there’s not a lot I can remove if I wanted to cut down on things because they would kind of mess up my services and things I provide.
But there’s definitely software in there that you might not be using anymore. It’s so easy. I’ve certainly been guilty of that, you know, to sign up to this little AI tool over here, and I’m trying that. And I order a few books and before you know it, spend thousands of pounds. So total revenue, profit and expenses. And then quite a simple approach here. But what did you sell? So not just what were you offering, I suppose, but actually what what sold. So what did people buy from you is an even better question.
What were all your products and offerings? I had someone talking to me the other day who said he had, you know, these various lengths of coaching programmes and also a course and also a bespoke thing. And I also want to do this and so on. So. But tangibly, what actually did you sell this past year? And then how did you sell it? That’s really important because for years, you know, I had a lot of clients coming to me because they read an article I wrote a long, long time ago on personal branding. So, look, if that’s the case, then obviously it would make sense for me to write more articles on personal branding or create more content on personal branding, or write more articles on other topics, for example. Or, of course, if it’s coming via word of mouth, that could be that you want to push that more, have a more formal referral system for your current clients, or that perhaps you need to be less reliant on word of mouth and you need to have more proactive marketing and sales. So what did you sell this year? How did you sell it? And then also, where did you spend your time and energy? And that’s where it gets really interesting, right? Because you may have sold one particular thing, but spent all your time and energy on this other thing. As the example that I gave now, the personal brand article, maybe that’s where the clients are coming from or guesting on other people’s podcasts or whatever it is.
And yet I’m spending all my time, you know, creating videos on TikTok or posting desperately on LinkedIn and none of that is bringing in clients, for example. Could be. Right. So where did you spend your time and energy? And even worse, if you’re spending it only on kind of the behind the scenes stuff that isn’t actually moving the needle in the business? And then of course, important questions. What worked well? So this can be, you know, looking at all aspects of the business, but hey, it worked really well when I launched this thing or I started showing up consistently there, or, you know, I joined this group that really helped what didn’t work so well. But it’s okay, we can either adapt, change or delete that if it didn’t work so well. And then sort of final question, I suppose, what do you think got in the way of greater success? So was it your mindset that you didn’t have the confidence? Was it a gap in knowledge that you need more information about something you just didn’t know what or how to do? Did you need more mentoring, support, accountability? You know, what was the thing that you think got in the way? Did you not have enough time to spend on the business? Is there a knowledge gap? Is it something else that you need? Right, and that’s a really important question. So that’s it really.
So again, looking over the general feeling of the year, going through the five Ls, live, love, learn, lead, laugh. What are you proud of? What do you want to celebrate and what do you want to do differently next year? And then I walk you through some simple questions. And of course we could go way deeper in this we will do in the business accelerator session. And also I do offer a handful of strategy sessions one to one, so if that’s of interest again, I’ll pop the details for that in the show notes. Or you can always contact me on social. I’m usually @annaselundberg with my middle initials because Anna Lundberg is a very common name. But there you go. So the basics of looking at your revenue, profit and expenses.
What sold what, how did you sell that? Where do you spend your time and energy? And what worked well? What didn’t work so well? And perhaps what got in the way of your success, of course, that you want to change for next year? So that’s it. I hope you found that valuable. Obviously I’ve kind of rushed through quite a lot of questions. It’s not so useful just to listen to this, as I do when you’re driving or at the gym or something. So you do need to carve out a bit of time at least to sit down and review these questions. But you can probably do it relatively quickly and if not it’s a really valuable exercise to dig through. If you do have lots of complex services and offerings and things, this will really help you. Of course if you’re just getting started you might not have the answers to a lot of these things, but that just leaves a lovely blank canvas for next year and next week when we look at what you want to do in 2025.
So I’ll see you then. Hope you found that useful and looking forward to thinking about planning the new year with you next week. Bye for now. If you are at a pivotal moment in your career, if you’re looking at that next level of success and you want more support to get you to where you want to be, then get in touch so we can have a conversation about where you are today and how I might be able to help. Apply for a free call@onestepoutside.com call that’s onestepoutside.com call.
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