#743: Plan 2026 in 26 Minutes

Foreign. Business can be a lonely game. But it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host, Ashley. Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, it's you and I and I want to be as effective as possible because I know that every single one of you listening today you are getting ready to plan out all of your new year and how to make 2026 your very best year yet. And it's one of my favorite times of year to jump in and do this with you. It's something we do together in our best year yet challenge and it's definitely something we do together when we start off retail boot camp. But today I wanted to give you a quick, short and sweet version. So if you are sitting in your office, you've got some free time. I want to get you a jump on what actually works when it comes to planning out your year, what questions to ask yourself, and how to be strategic so that you can make this year as effective as possible. So in order to get started, we're going to plan 2026 in 26 minutes. But I want to make sure if you have the boutique boss planner, you go ahead and grab that or whatever planner, notebook, fresh set of gel pens, whatever you need in order to make you feel like you don't Write like a 12 year old boy, like I do to be successful. And, and we're gonna get started, all right? Because this episode is gonna be designed for you to pause, rewind, rethink, go back and not just listen too actively while you're out for a walk or whatever you're doing. Like, I want you to take notes while we are here together and actually reflect on some of the things that we're gonna talk about. So again, not a to do list session. We're gonna plan from clarity, not just the chaos of what's happening in our head. We're gonna put our thoughts down on paper and if we don't get split specific and map out not just the things we want to do, but also the time frame that we want to do them in. Then we are letting you know the wind, plan our priorities, not actually letting our calendar create the clarity and the focus and plan our priorities for us. All right, so show me your Calendar, show me your priorities. That's the goal for today. Okay, so here's the first reflection question I want you to start with. I want you to write this down in your notebook and just. You can pause, think about it for a second. But the question is, by the end of 2026, I want my business to feel like this. Leave it blank. All right? By the end of 2026, I want my business to feel like blank. Go ahead, pause, reflect, think about that question, and then come right back. All right? Did you think about it? You know, what you're wanting your business to feel like by the end of the year. So in order to go forward, I want you to work backward, and we're going to do a process of elimination of some things that worked and didn't, and so we can get clarity on where we're gonna go in the future. So let's learn before we plan forward. All right? So next section I want you to think about in your notebook is this. What was your biggest win of 2025? What were the highlights? It doesn't have to be just a number or a huge achievement. When did you actually feel really good about your business? What did that look like? When did you feel really good about your team? When did you feel like you were on the right track? Right. So write that down. Your biggest wins of 2025. Next. What were your biggest challenges? What were the things that really caught you off guard, that made you stumble for a second, that you didn't expect to slap you in the face on a Tuesday morning? What were those challenges? And then finally, if you could sum up, what were the biggest lessons that you learned? Some of those lessons are direct results of those challenges that you faced. Right? They're a direct. Like, this happened, and so I had to pivot and go this direction. Here's what I learned. Here's what I need to do more of, or here's how I won, and here's how I got there. So what were the biggest lessons? All right, once you look at those questions, I just want you to take a second look back at your answers. If you've paused and started again, I want you to look at those answers and just ask yourself, okay, what am I acknowledging that I need to repeat in my business? Circle it. And what am I acknowledging that I need to eliminate in your business? I want you to cross it out and then finally pick two things from that list. Two lessons that you learned, two strategies you picked up, two areas you won and you know you could double down on. And I Want you to star two things that you know you can go all in on in the next year. If you've ever read the book by dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, 10x is greater than 2x. That's gonna be a huge theme of our year here at the Boutique Hub. Our mastermind's gonna be doing it. We're gonna be talking about it at the Boutique Summit and several. And it kind of goes along with this strategy, right? We are so busy with all the noise and chasing all the things and wearing all the hats that we're just busy trying to incrementally get ahead in each of these areas of our business. But if we actually eliminated 90% of whatever that focus is, the things we're chasing, the things we're doing, the things that aren't working, and went all in, and really, 10x, the things that we know are working, how different could our business look in the next year? It's a worthwhile question to ask yourself. All right, so next thing I want you to do as we think about narrowing down our priorities and focus going forward for 2026, is what is the one thing that if you double down on and improved in 2026, the one thing, if you got this one thing right, it would change everything. What is that one thing? Is it managing your cash flow and your income inventory, you know, buying plan and markdown strategy? Is it inventory management? Is it cash flow? Is it understanding profit first and expenses and where's the flow of money happening in your business? Maybe it's pricing strategy in relationship to those things. Maybe it's your team. Maybe it's you acknowledging that you really need to double down on training and optimizing your team and allowing them to take things off your plate for you. Maybe it's systems. Maybe you built the plane as you flew it, right? Maybe you're busy and you've been doing all the things and wearing too many hats, but you need to write the sop. You need to make a loom, right? You need to train your team how to take these things off your plate so that you can systematize and scale. Maybe it's customer retention. Maybe if you looked back and asked yourself, you know, there's only three ways to grow a business, right? New customer acquisition, getting customers to buy more, or getting customers to buy more often. Where are you winning and where are you falling behind in those three things? And if you figured out how to double down on retention, getting customers to come back more and more often and buy more, what would that look like? In your business in the new year, how do you get there? Or maybe it's just you doubling down as the CEO of your business. Maybe you've gotten lost in being busy and doing all the things. And if you actually set yourself a priority and said, no, this is how I operate in 2026 as a CEO, here is how I set boundaries, here's how I take care of my health, my mental health, my personal well being, so that I can use that to take care of my business rather than just, you know, letting my business get the best of me and everyone else gets the leftovers. Maybe that changes things. I want you to think about this for a couple minutes. Pause if you need to. But what is the one thing that if improved in 2026 changes everything? And then I want you to highlight that or circle it, underline it, whatever you got to do. But that is going to be your word or your theme of 2026. And if you want to use this in AI, you guys take those notes that you just wrote, put it in AI and let AI make some suggestions for you on the word or the theme of the year. Because then when you are in this planner and you are doing all the things, I really want to make sure that that word goes on the top of every single week, the top of your calendar. That word or that theme goes there again and again and again. Because I can't tell you how many people have a word of the year in January and they come back by March, they forgot it or they forgot why they were focusing on it because now, like, their head's over here and they're going a different direction. So put it in there. Now, if you have the planner, if you need more like reflection questions, maybe to help you get a little more clarity than the condensed version I just gave you, I encourage you go to page 23. In the boutique cost planner. There's an annual self assessment and then there's goal planning worksheets that follow. So if you need a place, like maybe you're going to jot this on your notebook and then you're going to iterate, break it down and then you want to put it in, in your planner, this is where you're going to put it. So start on page 23 and then by the time you get to page 26 and 27, you're going to break those goals down into time frames and you're going to assign them. By what month are you going to be doing some of the certain things that land on that goal list? Sound good? Are you ready to kick off the new year? Right. I hope you will join me. It is my favorite time of the year. Q. New planners gel pens. Trying not to Write like a 12 year old boy. That's what we do during the Best Year Yet Challenge. But better yet, we help you plan out your year from scratch. And we go far beyond just goal setting and the regular things that you put on the board that you say you're going to do but maybe don't do every single January instead. January 6th through the 8th for the best Year Yet Challenge, we're going to spend three days together, you and I, Sarah Burks, Jeff Fenn, our team here at the Hub, helping you map out real strategy for the new year. Talking about what's actually trending and working right now across our industry. Everything from mapping out content, mapping out inventory strategy, sales, sales strategies, growing your team, or just making sure you have the systems and processes in place for you to be the CEO of your business this year and not just the hustling entrepreneur. Let's face it, I just want to make sure you have more profit and peace not only throughout the holiday season, but all the way throughout 2026. So come join me during the Best Year Yet Challenge. It's completely, completely free. Members, non members, doesn't matter if you're listening to this and you just want to start your year off a lot stronger than come and join me for the Best Area Challenge. All of the links are across our social media in our show notes. Be there or be square. Let's start this new year off right. All right, now let's get some goals that are smart, specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound. All right? So I want you to think about we're just going to pick on maybe one goal for now and then again because this is a plan in 2026 minutes. I've got a clock ticking here. There's many more goals that you're going to focus on, but I know that every single one of you listening is going to have this goal and it's going to be what is my desired 2026 revenue? Right? Everyone has that goal. But I'm going to pick on you and I'm going to encourage you to say, okay, what is my 2026 desired revenue? But then what is my 2026 desired margin? What percentage of that revenue am I going to commit to paying myself? What is left over for me, Right? Because it's not just about growing the business, but it's about how is the business also going to Pay you back. All right, so what is that number? I want you to think about that number, jot it down on paper, and then I want you to think about a couple of questions in order to help get you there. Because again, when we're doing specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time bound, smart goals, it's not just about putting a thing on paper. This is what I want to do. But for every goal you write down, I want you to work your way backwards and say, okay, that's the lagging indicator, right? The goal tells me, did I hit it? Did I not? It's like a past tense thing, thing. But I want you to focus on, okay, what is the leading indicator that's going to get me there? What are the things I can measure leading up to that will impact the outcome of that goal? Here's what I mean by that. So if we're focusing on revenue, I want you to think about, well, what is my current capacity for that revenue? Where do I need to ask for help? Am I falling short and reaching that revenue because of time? Team inventory that I don't have, traffic that I don't have? Like, what is stopping me? What is the gap from me getting to where I. From where I am right now to where I want to be? Right, so identify the gap and then you're going to take that gap and say, all right, in order for it to be true for me to hit this goal, what needs to happen to overcome that gap? What is the thing that needs to happen? So again, in the example of revenue, we would work it backwards with the boutique traffic formula. And again, this is something in retail bootcamp we go heavily into. And I bet in the show notes of this episode I can get to a freebie that will help you calculate your very own boutique traffic formula. Because I've got a freebie for you here at the Hub. So how that works is this. Here's my goal in this period of time, in order to get there, I want to know how much traffic do I need to hit the goal, what's my conversion rate need to be to hit the goal, and what's my average order value got to be to hit the goal? Because those are things I can impact on a day to day basis. They're things I can incentivize my team to do so that I can hit the goal. Right, because the goal means nothing unless you know how to get there. So, so here's how the formula works. It's your goal in that period of time. So let's say you Break it down by the month, right? Cause every month has a different sales goal. So the sales goal that month divided by your average order value, which you've got that on Shopify or whatever point of sale you've got. So the goal divided by your average order value gives you the amount of transactions you need to hit that. I need a hundred transactions this month. I need a thousand transactions this month in order to get to this goal. Okay? Transactions, measurable. It's the number of checkouts. Now, I take those number of transactions, and I divided by what is my average conversion rate? If I have a brick and mortar, I measure my brick and mortar conversion rate specific to the goal in my brick and mortar. If I'm online, I measure my online conversion rate specific to the goal of my online business. You can't intermix the two because it's two types of traffic, two totally different things. All right? So I would take my transactions divided by my conversion rate, and that's going to give me how much traffic I need. All right, you following along? You got this. So sales goal divided by average order value gives me the transactions I need. Transactions I need divided by my average conversion rate gives me the traffic I need. Now, when I know how much traffic I need to sell a million dollars in business, now, I've got a very specific, actionable, measurable, accountable plan that I can work on with my team or with an agency or by running ads or whatever I'm going to do. And in order to get me to that traffic outcome. So I want you to repeat that again in the planner or wherever, for whatever goal you create, I want you to think about working that goal backwards. What is the formula? What is the leading indicator that's gonna get me there? All right, now, doubling down on that marketing strategy. Cause again, I know every single one of you has a sales goal. Every one of you can do the traffic formula. And I know every one of you is also gonna have a marketing strategy if you're joining us during the best year yet challenge. Or again, in retail bootcamp, we walk through all of this together, but this has to be a part of your planning sessions. Okay? It's not just about setting goals for the year, but now it's what's the marketing strategy in order to get me there? So I want you to plan smarter when it comes to your marketing strategy in 2026. So, again, in order to get there, we need to work our way backwards a little bit and ask, well, what worked in 2025, right? Where did my best customers come from? How long did they stay? What did they order? What was their lifetime value? Right? Because retention in this business is way more important and way more valuable than acquisition. Everybody's chasing new customer acquisition, but the riches are in the niches. The riches are in your ability to attract a customer and keep a customer. Right? Your brand being authentic and building relationships and having community and solving people's problems, and your ability to stay top of mind, having a great return policy, having a great loyalty program, all those things become really critical. So I want you to double down on clarity. What do I need to really build this plan out? I want you to identify what are my two most important traffic sources, My two most important proven traffic sources, right? Some of you like Instagram because it's pretty, but is it a proven traffic source? Or if you actually went down and doubled down on the data, is it actually Facebook? Is it actually Facebook that's providing you, the customers and the sales, what's actually working versus what do you feel like is working? And you're going to need to dig into your Google Analytics in order to get there. So then if I know what are my two top traffic sources and then what are my two biggest retention strategies for those traffic sources? What's the content that's working? Is it my ads that are working? Is it the engagement content that's working? Is it when I show up as myself, is it live video that's working? What is actually working? Right? Pick two to three things and then literally everything else on your to do list. When it comes to marketing, cross it out. I have seen such a trend of everyone being spread far too thin, right? They're doing too many things, they're going way too wide in marketing and trying to be something to everyone and being everywhere. And I'm on TikTok and I'm making TikToks, but nobody's actually buying anything on TikTok, right? Get rid of it. Double down on what's actually working. Double down on where your customers are and be really fricking great at it if you're gonna go live. Going live once a month isn't enough. Double down on where you're gonna go live if you're gonna run ads. Double down on producing really freaking great ad content and double the amount of it. Right? Get really good at what is driving the metric in your business and figure out how to eliminate the rest. All right. After we move past marketing, the third thing that I know you're gonna wanna plan for 2026, that's gonna be a Part of your goals is everybody wants more time, right? You want more time back, you want things to happen a little bit smoother, a little bit better, a little bit easier. Well, in order to get there, systems and processes are literally the least sexy thing we talk about in business. No one gets excited talking about it. You're like, yeah, yeah, I know, I need to do it. Yeah, yeah, I need to document it. Yeah, yeah, I need to ask for help. But it's just easier and faster if I just do it myself. I am so guilty of this, it's not even funny. I am the bottleneck of the business nine times out of 10. So I'm preaching to the choir when I tell you this. But it's really important here at this point of clarity, at the beginning of the year, especially leading into a January season where January is what you make it, right? You're going to use it to your advantage or it's going to crush you. And those are your two choices. So if you're going to use it to your advantage, I would think about what are the things that I can double down on fixing and enhancing and improving in January. And your systems and processes to me are number one on the list. So let's think about where can we introduce AI and systems and processes to make my life easier this year? So, questions to ask yourself. Number one, what feels heavy? What is something that you touch two times or more every single day or every single week? What is, oh, it's a drag, I gotta do it again, right? What's manual and what shouldn't be? And then where do you know you just haven't explored it yet. But where do you know AI could save you time and money? Is it in product descriptions? Marketing, planning? Analyzing reports? Making team training plans? Making updating your employee handbook, Systematizing different areas of your business? Coming up with promotions ideas and strategies or collaboration ideas and strategies? Reviewing your lease for you? Where can AI help but you maybe just haven't explored it yet? So if there are things that you are touching more than twice, or if there are things that don't sit well in your stomach, they need a system. So for today, in your notebook, I just want you to start here. What is one system I'm committed to building in January? What's one automation that can help make me money while I sleep that I'm going to implement in January? And what is one task that I am willing and committed to delegating? So what's a system? What's an automation? And what's a task if you can look at those three things for January. The rest will become much easier. But it is getting yourself in the CEO mindset that the only way you can scale your business is to create systems and processes that build more time into your schedule so that you can focus on the income generating activities. So this is literally how we're going to get it done. All right. All right, then. Is that a word? I just invented it then. I meant to say, then, the last goal that I want to walk you through in this little planning session, which, you guys, I'm ahead of schedule. If I'm going to be done 26 minutes, like, we've got this. The last goal that I know so many of you are going to have is really going to touch hand in hand with what I just said when it comes to systems, processes, uses and using AI, which feeds into really, CEO alignment. And so I want to talk to you about how to actually be the CEO in your business this year. So I want you to reflect back on last year. Where did your calendar in 2025 match your priorities? What did you actually save time for in your calendar that matched your priorities? I want you to circle those things. All right, what are things in your calendar that you found yourself often sacrificing? Things that were. Oh, yeah, you put them in your calendar, but they were the first to go. Like, you cut yourself short. Oh, yeah, I put going to the gym on my calendar, but I crossed it out. Oh, I put my, you know, weekly date with my numbers per Sarah Burks. Like, I put that in my calendar, but I often forgot. Right. I want you to underline that, make a note of that. What are the things that ended up on your calendar in 2025 that did not serve you? How many hours of Netflix did you watch? How many hours a day did you spend on your phone? Was it sports? Like, not your kids sports? Because I want you to be all in on that. But was it like an obsession with, you know, the Green Bay packers that you were like, God, I just couldn't miss a game. But, like, really, maybe I could have. Like, what were the things that did take your time that could have been spent somewhere else? And then what are the things that you need to say no to in order to say heck yes to something else? What are those things? All right, so if you look back, make some notes on what needs to be eliminated, first of all, then I want you to look forward on where are the new opportunities. So one of the things I love doing, we do this together right away in retail Bootcamp is the four part to do list. And I think this is really important for someone to move from being an entrepreneur to being a CEO, right? Like CEO mindset's key. And the four part to do list goes like this. List number one is what are the things I need to do every single week? No matter what, every week has to get done. Okay, make the list. I'll tell you what to do with the list in a minute. List number two is what are the things that need to be done just this week? Like, it's a hot item. It's something that popped up. Like, I need to get this done this week. Short list, like five things. That's it. All right. List number three is what are the things I know I need to get done, but it's not critical this week. So it could be next week, next month, next quarter, big dreams, big visions, next year, right? Later list, write that list. And then finally, list number four, where do I know I could actually say no or outsource or ask for help? What are those things? Now if I took that four part to do list, here's what I would do with it. List number one, I would build into time blocks or theme days on my calendar. So every single Monday is marketing Monday for me. Here at the Hub, we are planning out all the big projects. We are analyzing all the KPIs, we are talking about all of the content, the launches, the things that we are working on. All right, then what day is it to work on our team? What day is it to work with the vendors and do ordering and reordering and analyzing inventory? What day is it? A day to have your weekly date with numbers or CEO time. Right. Those things from list number one, they have to happen every week. They go on the calendar first. This also includes two very important things that man person to person, many of you are moms. Mom to mom. Two things that have to go on there. Number one is where's your family time that every single week has to get blocked? Is it your kids basketball games? Is it drop off in the morning? Is it taking care of yourself so that you can take care of your family? It's gym time. It's non negotiable and it has to go on your calendar first along with the every single week list. Okay? You owe that to yourself. You cannot fill someone else's cup if yours is empty. You gotta fill your cup up first. So make sure that's blocked. And then the second thing I want to make sure is on there is when is your best like working time. I call it my tiger time. So it is the time where I'm most effective getting things done. For me, it's like 8 to 10 in the morning anymore. My schedules got a little creepy, so now it's like 8 to 9 in the morning. Like, I give myself an hour where it's like the things on my to do list, boom, boom, boom. I can knock them out and then I can go on with whatever else is planned for the day. So that's list number one. Critical to get that on your calendar first. List number two. Those are your Sunday night edits. Every Sunday night, you look at that long old to do list you have. I keep mine in Trello, maybe use Monday asana or just a notebook. But I go back and I'm like, okay, this week, my biggest priorities this week are these five things. I've gotta narrow it way down. That's list number two. If I am lucky enough and efficient enough to get that list done, then I can move on to my later lists. But don't overestimate what you can get done in a week. Instead, I think we underestimate what we can get done in a year if we break things down in smaller chunks and hold ourselves accountable to one small bite at a time, versus thinking we're going to constantly chase this long all to do list because it's really discouraging. So that's list number two. List number three is my later list. So again, whatever's not list number two and is this week, it's just in a holding place for later. And then finally, list number four. This is going back to the systems and the processes and the team. What is the thing you're committed to letting go of? Where are you going to ask for help? What are you going to outsource and say no to? Yes, you can do all the things, but is it smarter for you to be doing all the things? That's the question CEOs are constantly asking themselves. All right, so doubling down on all of the above, right? You're identifying boundaries. You're making the four part to do list. You're becoming the CEO of your business. You're planning all these goals. I want you also to make sure you're planning time not just for today to make these goals happen, but then every 90 days, every quarter this year, I want you to map it out in your calendar. All right, quarter one. Now I'm going to plan quarter two. And the exercise you're doing right now, you are doing it again in quarter two. And then Quarter three and then quarter four. Where is there a quarterly planning time set aside in your calendar so that you can be the CEO that leads you your business? That's the huge next step as you're planning out your year. All right, you guys, I hope this has been helpful for you so far in thinking about how to map out the year that's ahead of you. You have a huge opportunity to step in and be the leader that your business deserves this year. So I want to leave you with this one big question. If you didn't do anything else this year except for Blank, 2026 would be a win. If you didn't do anything else this year except for blank, fill in the blank. 2026 would be a win. All right, Dig into it. What is that thing? Ask ChatGPT for help. Ask ChatGPT for tips. Ask Ask Ashley inside of your Hub membership for boutique specific tips on how to get there. But you owe it to yourself to not try to do more. I want you to think about how do I do less to achieve the same result. You don't need this, like perfect plan with all the things you need. You just need a really clear one that is simple, that breaks it down step by step over time and creates a clear path and accountability. All right? And that is exactly what I want to help you do this year. So you guys, if you are not already in the best Year yet challenge or watch the replay of the best Year yet challenge, if you're not in retail boot camp this year or not being active inside of your membership at the Boutique Hub or Boutique Hub Black, this is my personal invitation to you that I want to see you succeed in 2026. So come and join me. Join my team of experts at the Hub, you guys, and let's make this year freaking awesome. All right, thanks for joining me. We planned 2026 in exactly 26 minutes. I wish you guys all the best. Let's freaking go. Thanks for listening, guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We'd love to hear your feedback and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.