Permission To Plan Differently (A Year End Review and Then Some) | Episode 79

Hello hello and welcome back to the Purpose & Progress Podcast.

It’s the top of another year and we’re “supposed” to review, reflect, plan. But let’s unpack that a bit.

First of all, the end of a calendar year is still pretty arbitrary. I know some people prefer to think in school years, fiscal years, in terms of the zodiac, with the lunar new year, in 12-week stints, or any other interval that resonates. You do you.

And then on the brass tacks side of this, I’m actually pretty bad at setting and achieving goals, taking time to reflect, etc. Or at least I feel I am. Or I’m not good at doing it during dedicated windows—it’s more of a slow burn in the back of my brain, or flashes of inspiration that come during walks, or like this year, in random bursts of motivation and clarity when I happen to have time to capture it all.

And let me be clear: showing up and sitting down in front of a computer and magically producing a thriving business or year-long plan doesn’t work for most of us.

(Hello, fellow multi-passionates, overthinkers, neurodivergents, mamas/caregivers…honestly, most humans in general.)

But as I’ve been in conversation with people lately, I find myself feeling permission to not to have “white space” on my calendar because then I don’t know what I”m supposed to do with it, and even when I DO have a firm plan, I tend to follow my whims. Or intuition, if I want to view it more positively.

And as Lexi, who I’ve hired multiple times as a thought partner and interviewed in episode 5, linked below), says about goals, abstract goals actually work better for many of our brains. She had this viral TikTok around being personally attacked by SMART goals. (Which of course, I watched on Instagram because I’m a millennial dragging my heels on being on yet another social media platform. Regardless, it’s linked in the show notes too.)

Basically, the argument is that by living in the abstract, we’re able to accomplish our goals with every action, big and small. We can celebrate each decision, rather than just the arbitrary milestone. (I have a whole episode on celebrating milestones—episode 50, linked below.) Basically, it’s this idea of progress over perfection, which is something I’m continually re-learning and advocating for.

Even in the recent pricing panel I did (episode 78, linked below), we talked about how goals aren’t even necessarily meant to be achieved. Instead, they’re a really useful litmus test for what’s working and what’s not, what’s actually a priority and what’s not. (I can 100% see that in my personal goals I had for myself, which I’ll unpack in a bit. I delivered on the work front but that meant my bandwidth for personal growth definitely took a backseat.)

And even with all the biggest ideas and best intentions, I know I’ve personally recruited reinforcements in my own business time and time again. Swaps, advisors, accountability buddies, and the peer mentorship group that directly inspired my own version, Peer Pods. (Both an episode about my experience and a link for you to join Peer Pods in Q1 are in the show notes.)

So, in Peer Pods and in my business in general, I’m prioritizing process over planning. The idea of showing up and committing to what I can in the moment and relying on momentum and external supports and trust in myself to shift when the time comes.

Ok, so that’s all my context before I actually dig into this year’s review. By some miracle, I have done some version of this reflection every year since I went full-time. I literally quit my job on Jan 2 so that my vacation days would reload before I left. When I tell you I ruminated on that transition for ages…I mean it. Anyway, if you’re SUPER curious to see the evolution of my thoughts around business, I’ll link each year’s past blog posts in the show notes. True to form, they’re all a different format.

And this year, a few things popped out at me.

First, what went well. Because optimism, right?

And the first thing that went well (by my standards, of course—yours could look and feel very different) was revenue. This is a business podcast, so money is an important topic. I did a whole series around money when I first launched the podcast, the pricing panel I just mentioned, it comes up often in interviews and conversations I have. Anyway, I’ll link a whole money-related playlist in the shownotes. My philosophy: Money makes the world go round and we have to get comfy talking about it, even if not with tons of specifics.

This year, I made almost twice as much as in 2022 and over 1.5x as in 2023. I passed my income goal for this year. That feels really really validating.

I had my first elusive 10k month. I had been close before. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve had lots of very VERY low revenue months. So it’s really cool—and essential, really—when the big months balance them out.

Again, I’m not going to share exact revenue numbers because honestly, it doesn’t matter so much as the fact that the increase shows that I’m on the right track. And I’m finally figuring out this entrepreneur meets motherhood thing, even with another baby in tow.

And I got to over half my goal in template sales. This was still a really small number, even if I had achieved it, but it’s sort of nice to have a passive income stream working mostly in the background for me.

I sent out over 57000 emails over 78 campaigns—honestly not sure if this counts my automated workflows or not. I didn’t have any goals around this, but this seems like a feat in looking at it!

I worked with 26 different clients (plus a couple affiliate partners and workshops hosts). And the biggest win about this was that most of these people I worked with at least twice THIS YEAR, plus some others I had worked with in past years. Basically, recurring and retainer is where it’s at for me and my people right now.

As I have in years past, I thought about my offers differently to meet where I am in my life and as a practitioner and to meet where my people are. I definitely finally felt like I hit a groove on the sales front, although it’s far from perfect or predictable. I have a reflection on a successful launch in episode 77, linked below, and my next episode solo (so next month) is all about human-first sales.

It’s my gut instinct and in my nature to iterate, sometimes to my detriment. I pull SO many levers that I can’t pinpoint what’s making or breaking it. But I followed my gut to create Peer Pods and thoroughly enjoyed it and want to do more in the group setting. I’m also in the process of reimagining my bread and butter brand messaging strategy, moving away from the VIP Day model that was SO trendy a few years ago (shoutout to Jordan from Episode 58 who really brought that model to the forefront for online service providers). And instead, I’m moving toward a still-intensive-but-less-compressed model.

Which suits not only my brain and bandwidth, but also my clients, who I’ve finally discovered and labeled are the deep thinkers of the world. (Verging on overthinkers when we let ourselves get in our own way.) That realization alone and the ability to point to a common denominator was really revolutionary for me, to finally have a “niche” or specific audience.

Another nearly accomplished goal that I’ll still count as a win is that I passed 4000 podcast downloads this year. I was aiming for 5, but honestly, just arbitrarily. It’s still pretty amazing that people out in the world wanted to sit and listen to something I created 4000 times over.

And then on the personal goal front, really the only one I semi-accomplished was reading 14 books. I was aiming for 18, but again, not for any specific reason. And I really enjoyed lots of the books I read, so that’s a win. And it’s a miracle and a half that I get any reading done with how little time/sleep I get. Side note: I do mini reviews of anything I’m reading or watching in my weekly newsletter, so jump on that list via the show notes if you’re curious.

Then exploration is one of my core values. I love to tinker and add and try new things. So a few things I added into the mix this year included a paid podcast ad sponsor! I’d do it again, although I’m not sure how impactful it was—would need to experiment some more.

I launched and filled Peer Pods, my peer feedback group I’ve already mentioned. It was SO energizing and permission-giving. We got really personal really quickly (there was talk of cancer and caregiving and depression and rosacea and self doubt, amongst other things), but our conversations were also super universal. It was everything I hoped! I loved it so much that I’m already hosting another group this quarter. It’s linked in the show notes.

I also co-created and launched a curated email template collection with Angela. I interview her and we talk more about the collection in Episode 54, linked below. We’ve since iterated the collection to be more around not just a values-aligned customer experience, but really about establishing gentle boundaries and clear communication from the get-go.

And then the biggest new thing in my life, was my baby boy. He was born in May and we just hit the ground running together. Big girl started preschool 3 full days a week in October too, which was a big and very welcome transition.

But then this year was not all roses and sunshine, of course. I had some big struggles, just like anyone else.

I continue to hem and haw and feel a bit ungrounded in my pricing. I did raise my prices earlier in the year and felt good about it, but might change things around again in 2025.

I’ve been working a LOT on figuring out my own brain and my own desires, both in life and business and especially in how they’re intertwined. I’m about 95% I have a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis and I’ve spoken to and seen content from SO many other high achieving women in their 30s who are in the same boat. My 20s were all about discovering the world around me, while my 30s have been a lot more about discovering who the heck I am, or want to be. I’m sure there’s a full episode about this brewing in the back of my mind.

Child caregiving has been a LOT to handle this year. I’ve had some support and I actively have to remind myself that I choose not to put one or both of my kids in full-time daycare, but that balance (whatever that means or looks or feels like) between the parts of myself that I care about—my work being a big one—can feel really elusive. Thank goodness, my clients and partners I chat with have been so gracious in having a squirming, nursing, distracting baby on 90% of my calls.

Despite loving the clients I worked with and having such a good year revenue-wise (especially compared to my own past years), lead generation continues to be a bit tricky for me. I have lots of methods that work, but they all take time and energy and trust. And I don’t do nearly as many Alignment Calls, which is what I call my sales or discovery call, as I’d like to.

I created Project Push, which was my massive content creation marathon leading up to giving birth because I had no idea what my capacity would be and I didn’t want to miss a beat from the outside looking in. So that was a success, but then after all the pre-scheduled content tried up, creating more was actually a big pain point for me. Especially the podcast. And I think it’s because I wanted to update the whole vibe of the podcast, but I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted it to feel or how I’d get all the moving pieces done, so I just kept not doing anything. I had gotten feedback from a podcast strategist and wanted to implement around it, but the deeper I got into his advice, the more reaffirmed I was with what I actually had. So then I kept putting off drafting solo episodes and inviting new guests because I wanted the new vision to be clear and new evergreen scripts and new interview questions and styles. Basically full-on analysis paralysis. I’m still a bit there, but I’ve recruited 2 trusted colleagues to work through it with me and I think the shifts will be much more minor than I originally intended. Again, I’ll probably have a dedicated solo episode about this transition in the future.

And then the biggest struggle was definitely on the personal front. Almost all my personal goals fell by the wayside. Again, I think that mostly just means they weren’t actually that important to me, at least not right now. But I also gave birth and was postpartum and am breastfeeding and broke a toe (which was a whole thing) and am navigating not only this probably-later-in-life ADHD diagnosis, but definitely a later-in-life type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Plus, I have a strong-willed toddler—if you know, you know. And I basically haven’t slept in 3 years straight. So life is a lot. Mostly good, but also exhausting. Both can be true. I’ve been leaning into micro moments and tiny victories as best as possible.

Ok, so what’s the point of reflecting, if we’re not going to change anything? Or double down on what’s clearly feeling good?

Like I mentioned, I want to refocus the podcast and how it operates in my business. I love creating it, but it takes a ton of time and energy and some money, so I wanna be savvy. I actually have a whole episode on how I re-evaluated it in the past, so I’ll link that.

More retainers and more recurring clients. This is better for my balance sheet. It’s better for my brain. It’s better for the style of work I do, when I understand their voice and vision and audience and specific vocabulary and personal hang-ups and all the things. It’s also better for long-term relationships, which I was missing when I was ONLY doing short-term one-off work over the past couple years.

I want to focus more on speaking. This was part of the vision for this year until I found out I was pregnant. It’s just hard logistically with wake windows and childcare and feeding schedules. But I think it might also be time to re-evaluate my standard topics—they’ve been in rotation or barely revamped for many many years now, so it might be time to mix it up. I just have to keep myself in check and not go overboard and scrap everything that’s working.

And actually a good excuse to revisit my speaking decks in general is that I have slightly updated visual branding. The Eco Helper is launching a web design business to run in tandem with their VA business (they’re who produce this podcast for me—I’ll link our interview together in the show notes!). They re-designed my website and tweaked my visuals so that I can still use the same logo, but it’s all just a bit more sophisticated and cohesive.

I was speaking with a designer and saying how meh, I don’t love my visual design or website, but it’s not like it’s costing me clients. And she said…how do you know? Unless someone is super bold, it’s not like they’d tell you. And honestly, so much of branding (both visuals and messaging) is about vibe anyway that them being put off or mistrusting or whatever else might even be more subconscious than not. So that’s a change that’s in the works and almost complete that I’m feeling optimistic about.

Besides that, I felt like I did more networking than in years past, but according to my monthly tracker, maybe not. That’s something I could ramp up because most of my favorite clients have come via referrals or are simply peers that I have a longstanding relationship with. (Although there’s a strong sprinkle of SEO magic that also brings in clients, plus speaking engagements often do too, which I love.)

Alright, so that’s my year-long reflection, if not a bit ragtag.

By some miracle, or more likely sheer stubbornness, I also do a little monthly reflection. I’ll share the super bare bones framework that I’ve created for myself, both out loud here and as a duplicable template in the show notes.

I start each month’s review with a word of the month — not a pre-determined intention like lots of people do with a word of the year, but an after-the-fact summary. If you’re curious, mine this year were:

• Change
• Planning
• CONTENT CREATION
• Validation
• TRANSITION
• INFLUX
• SPACE
• SLOW
• REIMAGINATION
• LAUNCH
• SQUEEZED
• CELEBRATING

Then I just brain dump anything that comes to mind for the following categories:

Accomplishments & Milestones

Favorite Client/Project

Looking Forward To

Dreading

Lessons Learned

Struggles

Gratitude

Memories & Special Moments.

You could add stuff daily, weekly, or like I do as a giant month-end round-up. I find it especially helpful to look through my calendar and to do lists to remember when DID I do, because all the days blur together for me.

I also mix the personal and professional in this review.

Then at one point, I was also doing a version of Jules Acree’s quarterly reflection. (It’s linked below) I’ve added a version to my monthly template that’s in the show notes. Basically, you capture what you liked, learned, lacked, and longed for. Obviously I love the alliteration of it, but also I think these 4 simple categories or prompts cover a ton of ground.

I also track monthly stats…do I do anything with this information or make any informed decisions with it, no. But I do it for the sake of being organized in case future me or a future collaborator ever needs this info?

Personally, I track # of new email subscribers, total number of email subscribers, # of networking calls, # of Alignment Calls, # of brand messaging intensives (although that may no longer be a measure of interest for me since I’m focused more on my Messaging Momentum retainer in the coming year). I also track # of speaking engagements, # of guest podcasts (again, much less aligned with my current goals than in years past), and revenue. Another thing I could track is number of new clients and number of repeat clients. I think that would be useful and interesting.

In a separate database, I also track email stats since that’s my main selling mechanism. So # of campaigns and # of emails sent (not sure the latter matters much). And then open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate.

I track some LinkedIn and Instagram stats, but honestly, they’re dismal and again, I do literally nothing there, so not sure it’s worth mentioning here.

I track my website stats—# of visitors, how many of those visitors were new, average time spent on my site, number of page views and the top 3 pages viewed. I feel like that last stat is the most interesting and relevant.

Lastly, I track the podcast. # of episodes, # of downloads that month, # of downloads overall, average number of downloads, number of reviews, and top 3 episodes. (I have a whole playlist with the most popular episodes, linked in the shownotes.)

I didn’t realize I tracked so much, especially as a self-proclaimed non-data person. But again, I don’t feel I’m really leveraging it.

I also track testimonials as they come through—official and just nice messages from nice people. I highly recommend you have a Happy File or some other sort of bank to pull from, not just for marketing purposes, but just for your own motivation and validation when you’re doubting yourself. When I was creating a lot of collateral for clients, I literally had a list of everything I created…it didn’t feel like it in the moment because I was so in the weeds, but I just found a Notion database from 2021 and all I can say is that I was prolific.

Ok, that’s enough talk of reflection and planning and zooming in and zooming out.

I’m genuinely curious what you measure, what you care about, and how you define success. Because it definitely is and should be different for everyone.

A while back, I defined success as taking and encouraging confident, meaningful action. If I take a step back, I feel I did that this year. Both in and through my business, and with my kiddos. So I’m pretty pleased, despite all the failures and hiccups and achievements I mentioned above.

As usual, rooting for you on your own journey toward purpose and progress!

Be sure to check out all the 101 resources I mentioned in the show notes below or at ashleesang.com/episode79.

And come back next time in 2 weeks because we’ll be in conversation with another ambitious and inspirational woman entrepreneur.