Six Foundations for an Effective Business Year
“The important thing is that you’ve got a strong foundation before you start to try to save the world or help other people.”
~ Richard Branson
I want to share with you six foundations I recommend getting in place to have a more effective and successful year ahead.
1. A strategic business plan
We all have things we want to achieve in any business year and what I see most people doing at the start of a year is pulling together a laundry list of goals that they would love to achieve or that they think they should achieve.
The problem with this approach is that we don’t do any thinking around what actually makes strategic sense for our business.
To counter this I recommend first looking back over the past year to assess what worked and what didn’t and to integrate any learnings into the year ahead. We’ll also want to consider what our overall business objective for the year is and what our strategic priorities should therefore be.
Once we’ve identified which goals make strategic sense, an effective business plan will lay out how we plan to achieve these goals, answering the question:
What do I actually need to do to make these goals a reality?
Knowing why you’re choosing the goals you are choosing and how you expect to achieve them are key to having a strategic plan. To read a blog I wrote on this head here and to purchase a replay of my Business Planning Workshop for 2025, head here.
2. An ideal schedule
As you may have already realised, it’s so easy to waste valuable time, when trying to build and grow a business, either getting lost in distractions or procrastination.
And it makes sense, when left to our own devices and wide open days, anything and everything looks more appealing than getting down to business.
Having a schedule for my working week has been an essential that I don’t know how I lived without. If you, like many of the people I work, feel resistance at the thought of scheduling your days and weeks, let me remind you that what I’m talking about is an ideal schedule i.e. one that works for you.
A schedule that protects your freedom rather than restricts it. A schedule that, first and foremost, protects when you won’t work and what you will do with your precious time when you do work. For full instructions on how I recommend pulling together your ideal schedule, head here.
3. A system for tracking your finances
I know, I know this is one most people love to hate but have you heard this phrase?
Where attention goes, energy flows.
I wholeheartedly believe this to be true and so it makes good business sense to pay attention to our business finances even if (especially if) they feel dire right now. For me this looks like setting an annual and monthly financial goals (having a business plan to back up those goals) and then tracking my income (and expenses) on a monthly basis to see how I’m doing.
I use the word “system” but it really doesn’t need to be anything fancy. I have a simple spreadsheet I use (if you want a copy email me and I’ll send it over).
I look at my income regularly and if I haven’t yet updated my spreadsheet, I can always go into Stripe (the payment processor I use) and check the figures that way.
4. A Content Plan
I could wax lyrical all day long about how important I think creating content for your business is but rather than do that, you can read a blog I wrote on the importance of content here.
A business can only become truly financially sustainable if people know it exists and content is a great way to have your business become more visible.
That’s why having a clear content schedule and plan makes it on this list.
And yet again, it doesn’t have to be anything too complicated.
If you grab a piece of paper right now and draw a grid with days of the week along the left side and your channels (e.g. email, Instagram, blog etc) across the top and then fill in what type of content you will publish and when, you have a content schedule.
If you want to learn more about my approach to content you can read this post or if you want to go deeper, you could purchase my Content Marketing Training.
5. An organised digital space
More simply put a filing system for any digital documents related to your business as well as an easy way to access any important information you need in your day to day work.
After years of having issues with space on my laptop, I finally bit the bullet in 2019 and set up a new filing structure on Google Drive with four key folders: 1. Internal Operations 2. Products + Services 3. Marketing 4. Professional Development — each with its own set of sub-folders.
For a full run through of my filing system click on the video below.
I also use Bookmark Folders in Google Chrome for easy access to everything I need online during the working day. These things take a minute to set up but once done, save you untold hours of time in the future.
6. A clean and organised physical space
Last but not least, I recommend making sure you have dedicated space to work on your business, be that a space on your dining table or a whole office to yourself. Wherever you decide to work on your business, I think it’s crucial that it’s clean, tidy and well organised.
This one really is a quick win but has a huge impact on our state of mind as we sit down to work.
Being surrounded by clutter or mess can have a negative impact on our ability to focus and at the same time it’s important to have everything you need at your fingertips to do your best work.
And that’s it, 6 things you don’t to get in place today or tomorrow but that would serve you well to work towards over the next few weeks.
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