182: From Reflection to Results: My Step-by-Step Year-End Review Process

So I was recently invited to an event called ideas for 2025. Now, this is an annual event that Stu McLaren puts on. It is a really incredible week where we pull together some of the biggest kind of successes and names in the entrepreneurial industry. And we all come together. We mastermind for two days in a closed room. And then the night of the second day, we host an online event to raise money for Stu's charity called Village Impact. And so we are all sharing ideas that are related to next year. And I'm going to tell you more about the questions that we get to answer. But the charity is incredible. 100% of proceeds go to help Stu's charity build schools in Kenya. And so it's something that I really believe in. It's also a ton of fun and also incredibly impact. So this is the third year that I've had the honor of participating in this event. And so I wanted to do two episodes. This one is going to kind of break down how I prepare for that event, but really it's how to review my year and think about what's coming ahead. And I want to invite you to do the same exact thing. And then later this week in the next episode, I want to tell you actually my answers to the questions that we're going to talk about today.

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So for the event, the questions that we answer are, what worked in 2024? What didn't work in 2024, and what are we taking in to 2025? What strategies? What mindsets? What are we banking on or betting on as we move into the next year? And so for me, this really begs the opportunity to just get quiet and reflect. It's actually one of kind of my. It's kind of like a side effect of this event. But it calls me every December early in the month to get quiet and really, really reflect on, like, what did work really well this year and what didn't work really well this year and why and what am I taking into 2020 again, I'm going to share my answers to all of those questions in Thursday's episode, but today I want to break down how I really look at my year and decide on these things. I end up with notes, like printed out notes that really everyone makes fun of me for. I had like 12 pages printed because I like to be prepared and I also like to really have my head wrapped around what did we do? And if you're anything like me, it can kind of get lost in the year. Like we did a ton this year and also sometimes it's hard to remember. So this kind of reflection time has been so telling to me. I. I think I would typically like to do this kind of thing, but I don't know that I would be that I would actually do it if I wasn't essentially forced to in preparation for this event. And some of my takeaways have just been the most incredible takeaways, like really kind of refocuses me at the end of the year and makes my following year even more impactful. So I want to share this so that you can use it really as a guide to review your own year. The first thing is that you've got to set the stage. You've got to really clear your desk to have this kind of reflection. And so this doesn't happen by accident. In fact, I booked myself a hotel room an entire day early just so I could go get quiet and reflect. So it's typically an entire day. And what I would say to you is that you probably need to remove yourself from your normal situation. If you typically sit at a desk with your computer and Slack or social media or emails pinging you left and right, you'll never get this done. So you can stay at home one day, you can go a coffee shop one day, or like me, you can book yourself a hotel room. I booked myself just a day early of this event, but I really had the entire day to just get quiet, get centered, and get thoughtful about it all. So that's really stage number one is that you've got to make the time. You've got to clear your desk. The next one is with no judgment. You just need to start gathering the data. So what I did was gather my revenue reports. So income over the year by program or by product. I also gathered marketing performance metrics like email open rates and ad roi. That's return on investment. I downloaded everything from everywhere that I possibly could. So my manychat statistics, my statistics from Kajabi on the products that we are offering. My email service provider is Kit. I love Kit, downloaded my metrics from there. Any metrics that I can possibly download I got my hands on and then I also went back to review any of our launch outcomes. Now I track our launches pretty closely and I typically actually do a write up of a launch debrief after everyone. This is going to include things like conversion rates and traffic sources and revenue breakdowns and so I have that. And then also most important of all is feedback from our customers and students and our team. These metrics provide such a holistic, clear kind of factual lens that we can really evaluate on from there. And so again I would focus on those key areas like revenue, engagement, audience growth and feedback from your customers. If you've been surveying, I hope you have along the year.

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Now the next step is to pause and just really reflect on the wins. Now you don't have to take a long time to do this, but I want you to recognize the wins that you've had, both big and small. If you've had a record breaking launch or you had a high converting, you know, ad or opt in, or maybe you had an evergreen funnel that went really well, or maybe you had a product that was your bestseller, maybe you made a key hire that's been working really well. Whatever it is, whatever milestone, whatever achievement, however small, however big, what moved the needle for you over this year and what are you most proud of now? One thing that I did that I really enjoyed was that we keep meeting notes every single. Well, we actually do two things. Let me tell you about them. On our team, first and foremost, we have a weekly meeting and we keep detailed notes every single week in a Google Doc. Now we keep one Google Doc for the entire year. Yes, you heard me. One Google Doc for the entire year. We just copy and paste the format up above after every completed week so that we have the entire year at a glance. And then the second thing that we do is an internal team newsletter. So our, our weekly meeting is now on Wednesdays used to be on Mondays, if you've been listening for a while, we do them on Wednesdays now and then on Thursdays we send out an internal team weekly newsletter. This is an opportunity for every single person in on the team to highlight what they're doing, what's going on. It really solves the problem of like communication across the team. Like what does the inbox team need to know about marketing? What does marketing need to know about our customers? What does the shop need to know about, you know, our email campaigns coming up? So it's typically a couple of pages each week and we keep that in one giant Google Doc for the year as well. And so something that was really helpful was that I downloaded both of Those as a PDF, I fed them to ChatGPT and I had ChatGPT kind of bullet point and summarize all of the major events, all of the major things that we did in the year. And wouldn't you know, I had forgotten about some, some that were considered huge wins, like really key hires or products that we did really successfully. And just little nuances that came up in our team meetings, of course, in our team newsletter, of course, that I just couldn't recall on the spot. And so that was one of my favorite ways to use AI because I probably fed my goodness, like 500 pages of a PDF and it was able to pull out the key moments of the year. And it was actually incredibly helpful. So reflect on your wins. The next one is to analyze the challenges, to really think about what didn't work. And this one is not fun. I beg you, though, to not be judgmental. Just learn from the past. We have to understand what didn't work and what and kind of ask ourselves why so that we can correct the problem. We learn best from the challenges, hands down. So we want to be transparent about the areas that just didn't go well. For instance, programs or strategies that just didn't meet our expectations, bottlenecks or inefficiencies within the team. I'm usually the bottleneck, missed opportunities or campaigns that could have been improved. And is such an important way to just approach the challenges with curiosity, not so much criticism, but just asking, like, what challenges did we face? What did they teach us? What, if anything, can we change moving forward? The next step is to kind of extract the lessons. So what lessons overall are we learning from this year? I have so many examples of this that is really going to use as a lens for us to put everything through, like a filter, everything through in 2025. So incredible. Again, I'm going to be sharing all of those with you in the very next episode. But you want to try to extract the lessons. What are we learning from what worked well, what are we learning from the challenges that we had and how do we want to apply them moving forward? Then it's time to kind of plan for the future. So can you narrow down your focus? Can you choose a couple of lessons to put forth for the next year and then how you share some of these goals with the people that they impact? Do you have anyone on your team, anyone that you need to basically cascade these messages to? What kind of learnings do you have that you need to share across the board that's going to impact the next year? Keep them front and center. I like to keep mine in a way that I can reference it quickly. And so I'm recording this just about three days after I've gotten back from this event. And tomorrow I'm having a whole meeting where I get to cascade, really everything that I pulled together during this day where I reviewed and reflected and planned for the future. And, you know, some things that I had a hunch over really became very, very clear to me through the process. So I'm excited to share those with you again. Meet me back here in the very next episode, and I'll tell you everything that were my takeaways from this day of review. I to review your year as well. Clear the way. And remember, the three questions that you're asking are what worked well for you in 2024? What didn't work well for you? What challenges did you have? And why? And then what are you taking into 2025? Okay, my friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you. I'll see you next time,

Sam.