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How to Plan for More Profit and Less Stress in 2025
117 Plays10 months ago
Listen in as Cass & Amanda share our top tips and advice for how to plan a low-stress, high-profit year of business, including the common areas designers go wrong in when New Year’s planning and a great free planning workbook. We also spill the tea on how we’ve planned out our service spots, blocked out our calendar weeks and vacations, how we plan to hit our financial goals, and get vulnerable about our plans for supporting our mental health and personal lives.
Have a design or business question you want answered? Leave a comment on this video or episode and we may answer it on a future episode.
Resource mentioned:
- Map Out Your Year free workbook
- Mental health subscription kit from our client (The Pearl Project)
- Our templates & courses for designers
Our website: FoxtrotBranding.com
Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(01:17) The tea about our winter breaks
(08:13) Mistakes to avoid when New Year’s planning
(11:56) Our recommended planning workbook (it’s free!)
(14:29) Our 2025 design service plans & how we got there
(19:00) How we’re time blocking our weeks
(24:50) The vacation time we blocked off
(28:03) Our financial goals & focuses
(33:34) Emotional & mental health goals
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Transcript
Introduction and Mental Health Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
So I think I'm just going to try and do more things like that to support my mental health this year because I do think I neglected it and kind of just let some of these thoughts like run the show without even realizing it. Right. And I think it kind of goes into like neglecting looking at the positives. You can kind of rewire your brain and your thinking. And so I think that would be really great for you to have that extra support for sure. You're like, yeah, please go to therapy. You need to help. now Welcome to Spill the Tea. We are Cass and Amanda. We are the co-founders of the Creative Studio Fox Shop branding. In these episodes, we share about navigating our lives as designers and business owners and the challenges and rewards that come up along
Planning for 2025: Profit and Stress Reduction
00:00:40
Speaker
the way. So in today's episode, we're going to be discussing how to plan for more profit and less stress in 2025. This is part two. So last month we covered, you you know, going over your data from the past year. And so this episode is going to be about using that data to inform your choices and goal setting for this year. Less stress, more profit. It sounds great to me. Everyone wants that, right? Yeah. um Before we dive in though, if you've enjoyed this podcast, we would love if you could leave us a rating or a review on either Spotify or Apple podcasts, or if you're watching on YouTube, give this video a like because that really does help us out.
00:01:16
Speaker
Okay,
Winter Break Reflections and Stress Management
00:01:17
Speaker
so before we fully get into the topic, what is the tea at Foxtrotcast? Do you want to start us off like tell us about how is your winter break for context for everyone? We took three weeks of winter break, which we do every year, we do three weeks in the summer and three weeks in the winter. So how is your break?
00:01:33
Speaker
Well, I could have used four weeks to be honest. It was a lot. I can always see four times. Always, yeah. I think I usually feel that way, but even more so this holiday season, just because it was a lot family-wise and health-wise, just with the holidays. I know like literally- Yeah, you got sick too. It seems like everyone has gotten some kind of sickness over the past month, so I know I'm not alone in that, but yeah, it was just a lot. I got sick. I've been having some weird headache stuff. I've had to go to the doctor for it. We had a lot of people staying with us, which was great. Loved getting to see everyone. Might
Importance of Taking Breaks and Planning
00:02:09
Speaker
have caused the headaches.
00:02:11
Speaker
No, to be honest, going on I do think a lot of hosting, a lot of stress. like A lot of the health issues I was dealing with was stress induced. just It's coming off of like our last meetings and work that we did, I guess, in like December. I was just feeling really stressed and honestly like pretty burnt out after all that because we just like pushed ourselves to the max to get to this break.
00:02:34
Speaker
So I was already feeling really tired and then, yeah, i just had all the holiday stuff going on and I was I was pretty unwell, like mentally and physically. So that was the first like two weeks of my break. And then that third week, I feel like I came back to my normal brain and my normal body, which was nice. I felt a lot better and I was able to like do the things I love to do on break like ah completely reorganize my craft closet and like you know those are the things I want to be doing and those are the things that help me like feel like I got to reset but it was kind of a lot you know for the majority of it what about you
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sorry. It was so much stressful. My break was pretty good. It was really nice to like have a lot of free time to spend with friends and family it did a lot of just like little hangouts, craft nights with my friends, stuff like that, baking cookies with family. So I had a really good time. I think it was nice to like just fully unplug because I did kind of have my burnout moment like October, November. I think that was when I was like the most stressed and overwhelmed. So I was glad that like December kind of ramped down and then I was able to rest and really like enjoy my break. And yeah,
00:03:35
Speaker
I don't know, I really enjoyed it. And I was like, I could live
Balancing Personal Life and Work with Scheduled Breaks
00:03:38
Speaker
like this forever. i I love our business. But like, I also love not working. So I could have taken more time for sure. But I am happy to be back and like have had that break and feel more refreshed. Because I think that's really helped us in like this first, you know, week back at work and setting ourselves up for success for the new year. Like I feel like a renewed sense of like energy and excitement about our business, which before I was like, not super excited, which I think is normal, we kind of go through phases of like, I just felt like this was work. But now I feel like I'm like back to being like excited about the future of Foxtrot again. So I think we definitely just like maxed out the energy we could put in to ever doing a lot at the end of last year for sure. And we kind of overlooked ourselves a bit. Yeah, we even like moved one of our planning meetings to be the Friday before we came back because we were just like,
00:04:26
Speaker
I was like, I can't even think clearly about that. And I felt this homework
Using Business Audits for Effective Planning
00:04:29
Speaker
right now. like And it would not have been a good meeting if we tried to do a lot of our new year planning before we had that break and that like mental clarity to come back. um Because now I do feel like, OK, I can set new goals. I can take these things on. But like I just truly did not feel that way at the end of the year. So I think everyone should be taking some kind of, that is an entrepreneur, should be taking some kind of extended holiday break that's more than just a day or two you know after the holidays I think because I think not we need like a full week to like disconnect from work and let your brain like shut down from work um work mode and like then you need the other you know you need another week to like do something fun and you need one more week to like relax again after that and reset like that is why we love that like three weeks then because it gives you like plenty of time
00:05:16
Speaker
to do everything you want to do. yeah
Lessons from Past Business Planning Mistakes
00:05:18
Speaker
We joke that like you need to forget what you do. like You need to forget how to run your business. like That's how you know. Take a break. like Live your life and not think about work for a bit, which is a really great privilege that we have like with owning our own business. yeah but i do see like We'll talk about this today too, but I see a lot of other designers who are like, I haven't taken a break in like months or years.
00:05:38
Speaker
And if you're I think my my big philosophy is that if you're going to put in the extra work to like own a business and run a business, then I think you owe it to yourself to like reward yourself even more than like some other corporation would reward you for your work, you need more time off you need more relaxation. You need more more income. and That's my personal philosophy is like I want to be highly rewarded for like the high level of work that we're doing. and That's what motivates me. so yeah and That's why those vacations are so important for us. Yeah. and If that philosophy like doesn't fully resonate with you, if you're like, that sounds nice, but I feel like I can't, I think another philosophy to pair with it is that if you don't take the time off, you're going to be forced to at some point because you're going to burn out and it's not going to be on your own terms.
00:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, which still happens to us too. Like we said, like I still hit a little bit of a burnout moment. um And it was a combination of work and personal life stuff, but we don't need to get into all that episode. But I think also the importance of taking breaks is that if we didn't take this long break before doing our new year planning, I don't think we would have had like the mental clarity to set up the year the way we did. Because when we
Work-Life Balance for Mental Clarity
00:06:45
Speaker
actually came back um in January and had our meeting, it was like,
00:06:49
Speaker
a full day like i thought we would take a half day we end up saying like a full like seven plus hour day yeah to plan out our year which takes a lot of energy but we're both in like really good spirits about it i think we had a lot more mental clarity to like problem solving like.
00:07:04
Speaker
schedule out our calendar and figure out how we wanted to structure our project timelines, all of that. And so now like I actually feel really good about the way we've set up our year, we're going to take way more time off way more half days off way more vacation days, like we've scheduled our our project timelines really nicely, we'll go into more details of like the the new things we're trying this year.
00:07:22
Speaker
but like I'm really excited and like proud of us for taking the time to actually set ourselves up for hopefully our best year yet. for like
Introduction of Planning Workbook
00:07:30
Speaker
I'm hoping the most profit and the least amount of stress, yeah that is the goal for this year for us. and I hope that's the goal for you guys too. I think that should be everyone's goal. right so Yeah. So let's jump into it. Let's talk about how you can plan for more profit and less stress in your year. Like we mentioned earlier, um the part one that that we did to this last episode was about auditing your business. And so we did that meeting for ourself to audit our business before we left for break, um which I think was good to knock out because that did also take us a full day. They're separate parts, I think, for sure, like to wrap your brain around.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah. So we basically like collected data and then we're going to talk about how you can plan with that data for the new year. So first we kind of want to talk about when it comes to like new year planning, how we've definitely made some mistakes and just things we've generally learned from when it comes to new year's planning because we've done this a lot before now. So we've kind of seen like what has worked for us, maybe what hasn't. And then also some areas where we just tend to see a lot of other designers go wrong. Maybe things like, you miss, you forget to think about or just generally like I know ah as a solopreneur it can be it can sometimes feel weird to like set up these sessions or these days or these meetings for yourself because you're like I generally know what I want to do maybe I have a checklist but like why it's super important to actually sit down and have a full session and um make that time for yourself. I think what we do really nicely too is like we try to make it somewhat of a fun thing or like we'll order DoorDash for ourselves that day like an extra little treat or something like I don't know it's kind of nice just to make it a little more of like an event like oh it's let's like look back and really like celebrate ourselves for like the things we did well last year and then okay now let's like
00:09:09
Speaker
get excited about and plan for the new year and and treat ourselves in some way and like and plan for treats in the future we did some stuff for this coming year of like, Okay, how are we, how are we going to reward ourselves more this year. Yeah, I think some other areas that we see that we've gone wrong or we see.
00:09:24
Speaker
other designers go
Balancing Personal and Business Goals
00:09:25
Speaker
wrong when it comes to new years planning is not prioritizing like your personal life or taking it into consideration. Maybe you just get too focused on like the business side of things but you're not taking into account what are my like personal travel goals, what are my personal like finance or just whatever it is that's important to you in life.
00:09:43
Speaker
How can you incorporate that into your business planning? I think for us, one area specifically is that we always forget to think about Monday holidays and we like just book meetings on them with clients or like we just forget to to mark those off or decide what we're going to do about them. And a lot of times we find ourselves being like, oh, I kind of wish we had taken like Memorial Day off because all my friends are doing stuff and I would like to hang out with them. So that's one place we're trying to integrate our like personal lives more into our business planning.
00:10:11
Speaker
So kind of along those same lines of like not taking your personal life into account is not planning enough breaks or any breaks at all. I think it's fully in your power to to schedule that time off and I know that's really intimidating for people too because you think like if I take time off that means less income which sometimes it does but there is there are ways to plan for that in your business. Your
Income Projections and Financial Management
00:10:35
Speaker
brain really needs space as a creative person and as a business owner.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think so many designers that we talk to and see online and it's relatable, but like we just see a lot of people not prioritizing that time off. and I think the key to it is doing it at the beginning of the year. like Now is the best time to plan that out for yourself because your income could actually be the same even if you take a couple of breaks throughout the year. like It might not directly one-to-one mean like you're making X amount of less money if you strategically plan out your project spots and like really think it through which I think is another area that um we've kind of gone wrong and maybe seen some other designers go wrong and is not like fully projecting out what your ear income and your profit could be from a specific a number of like project spots like fully play out the year with how many projects you want to take on like play out your income and and kind of see what the scenarios are. like We'll do like ah a high projection and a low projection and like see what we think is gonna be the most realistic. So I think it really is important not to just like guess and be like, well, maybe I'll do this number. I think it's important to get as specific as you can. Of course, you can't control how perfectly everything gets booked, but playing it out is going to, number one, like give you a more accurate view of what could happen and also like motivate you, I think, once you see like this is what I would like to do. Now, how can I make that happen? So we have created a workbook for you if you're interested in kind of following along as we talk about all of these specific steps that we're planning. It's called the map out your year workbook. We also mentioned it in last month's episode but it is a new year's planning guide for designers and it's going to guide you through collecting all of that data, auditing your business, and then
00:12:17
Speaker
planning for your new year. Yeah, there's some fun parts in there too that are kind of like journal prompts really evaluating what your values are in your life and business how those kind of like intersect. and There's like a vision setting and like vision board section. So it's a really fun activity if you haven't already done your yearly planning the way that we've laid out the process really, at least for us, it really clicks with our brain. It really helps us, you know, look at the big picture and zoom out a little bit instead of just thinking like, I need to hit this income. We're like, okay, well, I want to hit that income, but how do I want to do it? How do I want to feel while doing that? You know, do I want more, more breaks? Do I need more support somewhere? Do I need to make a higher in my business? So things like that, it'll kind of help you think through and that we can plan for your best year.
00:13:01
Speaker
yeah it's
Efficient Service Offering and Timeline Planning
00:13:02
Speaker
a free workbook download so if you want to grab it you can get it using the link in the show notes um or below the video if you're watching on youtube but definitely go download that and i was also thinking when we were talking about how important it is to sit down and make time to do this if you are introverted like maybe it's not you would love to sit down and do this by yourself and just take a day and that would be great. But if you're super extroverted, maybe you could like do some virtual co-working or do this in your co-working space or find a designer that you're friends with who would want to sit down and like take a day to do this with you. I think we've had some designers say they've done this like communally, gone gone through this workbook. So I think that could be a good option too if you want the the community or just the motivation of someone to do this with.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great idea. It's always fun to do that kind of stuff with friends and you guys can kind of help inspire each other with some ideas. and so Yeah, exactly. Because I think if it were just me going through this without Amanda, I would probably, I don't know, I just wouldn't have as good of ideas or it's just so nice to have somebody to bounce stuff off of in a different perspective. Okay, so for some inspiration, some ideas, maybe if you are doing this totally by yourself and you're like, okay, well, maybe I'm not fully sure what my goals are, and these are going to be personal to you, but we thought it might be fun to share some of our goals and how we're planning to go about that. Maybe that'll give you some inspiration for your own scheduling for this year, your own goal setting. We'll also talk about how we're like blocking out our calendar with all of our project spots or vacations, stuff like that. So yeah, let's just dive into it. So the first thing that we're really trying to focus on is like how we're stacking our project timelines. We've kind of changed our services last year. We expanded like our offers. We now offer like a VIP day.
00:14:39
Speaker
a two week intensive and then a full service. So we wanted to figure out a new way this year to actually stack those in a way that makes sense. And I'm really glad that we are really happy with like the the result that we ended up coming up with.
00:14:51
Speaker
So now we have like on our calendar, you know, we have our two week intensives for the first two weeks of the month. And there's an off week where like we'll do our VIP day spot. So we'll do like two VIP days a month. And on the off week, we'll do some extra like internal business work, which is great to have that time like set aside for all of that. And then the next two weeks will be a two week intensive again. And then our full service, we actually have been booking less of those last year statistically. So we're like, okay, if that trend continues this year,
00:15:20
Speaker
we can expect to still be mostly booking like VIP days and intensives. We don't have like set full service project timelines on our calendar, but we just replace those on top of the other services if we get one of those, if we get an inquiry for a project like that. So that's like a really nice way they all kind of stack or overlap um without like wearing ourselves out too much. So really happy with how we figured that out.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think we came to a really good solution. But I will say, like honestly, getting there, just so if you guys are feeling like this when you start trying to plan out your services or your calendar, like it was it kind of broke our brains a little bit. like It was a struggle to be like, okay, how are we going to stagger these? Because we got to think about the certain days that the strategy meetings happen for each project. Because we always have like the prep week before the actual week, that kind of stuff.
00:16:10
Speaker
How much can we actually work during a week? And then how much do we make per project? So how many projects do we like actually need to have on the calendar to meet our goals? All of that. Yeah, which is why it's so important, I think, to play out the scenarios, which feels kind of like it is a lot of work to play that out. It's a lot of math. Yeah, a lot of incorrect math, honestly, which is why I'm so glad to have another person, because we're like, wait, what? That number makes no sense. We're like, that is double what it should be. Well, because we got ourselves confused a little bit, because, for example,
00:16:44
Speaker
for our VIP days, since we're ah brand a brand and web design team, we'll have a VIP day spot on the calendar. But that can technically be two separate services. So we'll have a brand VIP and a web VIP. And a client could book both of them on the same day, or they could be two different clients. And so we were trying to do the math of like, okay, if we have 15 VIP days on the calendar,
00:17:08
Speaker
but that equals 30 like project slots like what is our expected revenue if we book only half of them or if we booked like all 15 days fully booked services you know what would that number be so and then we kind of use that to find like a middle average we also just looked at like our last year's numbers to see okay like we easily did this number so we can probably expect to do that number again this year so that was really helpful but it did take a lot of like math and messing up. But eventually we came up with some numbers that I think will be helpful for us to just like look back on and see like kind of if we're on track or or not.
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's truly like
Streamlining Business Processes
00:17:45
Speaker
small biz probs. I think like trying to work through these things. Cause yeah, like we don't necessarily have the specific processes and data and planning structure that like a bigger company would have. It's like we're, you know, we're planning out these individual projects. We're going to be on most of them, you know, like it's up to us to plan these out and to book them and to like do the math. And it might be a little bit of a unique process every year because we kind of changed things up. So yeah, we just kind of.
00:18:11
Speaker
you know played out the best way we know how, but I think we did come up with like some good estimates that helped us feel confident in those spots that we planned out. So that feels good to have planned out. And then we're probably not going to book all of them perfectly. Your business probably, if you're listening, probably won't book all of your project spots perfectly, but you just do your best and you can move things around. We move things around a little bit as needed um to fill things, but hopefully we'll stick to this as closely closely as we can.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, we're trying to really streamline things even more and like, which that's always our thing. Like we're always trying to be as streamlined as possible. But like I said, it's like, we're our business is always evolving. So we're like always having to like, re-streamline things again. Yeah. So it's always kind of a puzzle. But I like that. I kind of like the the puzzle processing, you know. Yeah. like yeah A few other things we planned out for our calendar is that um we slightly changed up our weekly routine. We're keeping our meetings mainly on Mondays and Tuesdays, um but we did decide that Fridays are going to be our half days and the half day that we do work is going to be for internal work. so We're not going to be personally doing like client work on Fridays. so That took a little bit of shifting of some of our project timelines just to make sure we wrap up everything we need to on a Thursday.
00:19:28
Speaker
And then we actually planned out a different type of meeting we're going to have every Friday. I'm really interested to see how this goes. I'm excited. Like, ah yeah, I hope it feels like realistic because we tried to break up things so that it's not like a huge meeting we're having every Friday. It's kind of just like a little check in on different topics.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, so like, for example, some of those things are like once a month, we're going to do our finance check in meeting, um which we've always done, but we just like always would do it kind of randomly. And we were maybe not looking at everything we should. So this time, we really want to actually like look at all of our our statements in more detail this year, we want to focus more on like, where can we save money? and
Celebrating Achievements and Social Media Planning
00:20:08
Speaker
We've already gone through and like cancel some subscriptions that we don't need stuff like that, just kind of like tidying things up. um But we also want to use that meeting to, to review our like past week or month, and celebrate our wins. So that was when we were trying to pair, you know, this habit of like, let's look at our finances, let's look at our wins and like celebrate those somehow in
00:20:28
Speaker
When I say celebrate, it could be as simple as just acknowledging and writing down a note that like we did this or like we achieved that thing. and It could be that small, but like we just wanted to have something where we can be like more consistently like finding like the good things that are going on in our business and acknowledging those together.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, or if like we got um a nice message from someone or you know i if we ran into like a client in person and they you know they mentioned something positive, all those little things that... Little highlights. Yeah, those those positive moments that are really easy to forget. you know Everyone talks about how on... If you're looking at social media comments, you can see 10 positive ones, but only focus on the one negative one. you know I think that's just truly how our brains work. so That is something we are always trying to get better at is focusing on the positive moments. So we're we're making a meeting for it. That's how yeah that's yeah that's how what we have to do I think because we otherwise I think we just forget. So having it on the calendar to remind us is so helpful. I think that's like the best thing you can do in your business is just like relieve your brain of having to remember all the things. So like write it down somewhere, set reminders, set little pop ups that'll let you know what you need to be thinking about or doing that day like
00:21:43
Speaker
It helps so much. Hey, remember that there are good things in life, not just bad things. Yes, it's very important. Yeah, not everything is terrible and hard. No, our business is not terrible and hard. I was thinking about the world in general. Oh my God.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. Anyways. We truly need the positive moments more than ever. We really do. um and I was thinking the other types of meetings that we scheduled were like one is going to be our social planning meeting. So like going ahead and planning out the the focus for that month and like all the content we want to create. And then the next one will be, oh, and then during that day we're also going to be doing some filming. So like just filming like the role of like us working or us like going to the coffee shop or whatever.
00:22:25
Speaker
Um, just so we have some content and then the next week we'll be actually like doing the content creation and planning it out. So we're trying to go back to like a monthly batching process, but splitting the planning and filming with actual like creating and writing the posts and like scheduling it out. so We'll see how that works. I'm excited to see giving herself like a really specific time block to do it in because I think even when we were batching it out in the past and being consistent with when we would plan it, we would like plan it out together. But then the filming and the creation part of it was like.
00:22:59
Speaker
Drifting into so many days of the week and eating into so much time because we just just like whenever we could get to it and because it feels like such a it feels like such a tour like It's not a fun thing. like I don't lot like making reels. Does anyone like making reels like I don't know ah Yeah, it's not funny. I don't like it either. I don't like yeah i but it. I don't work for business and it's so yeah it's an important part. Like it's not something we're ready to stop doing. um So yeah, we've had to buy. I think by planning these like smaller blocks of time, I'm hoping that it it incentivizes us to like.
00:23:36
Speaker
Actually get it done be like okay. Yeah, cannot daily dally we can't draw this out like let's just knock it out. No dilly-dallying yeah know letting this I just think there's a lot of tasks that it's really easy to let like eat into a really important time throughout your week that you should be doing client work you should be focusing on and a million other things, but it's like, oh, I still have this other thing on my TV list. Before you know it, it's eaten up like three hours of your day because you're thinking about it. You're letting it be harder than it is. So I think we're trying to rein it back in on some of these things and be like, okay, we're going to give ourselves an hour and a half on Friday to knock this out. yeah We'll
Advanced Vacation Planning for Balance
00:24:12
Speaker
see how it goes. We'll let you guys know.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, because I think some people might think like, Oh, that sounds stressful, like to do it all at that time. But I think it actually makes it less stressful because when there's like things always looming over your head that you have to do like, Oh gosh, I still have to like film for that real. When am I going to do that? Like, that adds more stress, um for me at least, I think probably forecast too. So I'm hoping this like relieves a lot of stress by like, and I think we do work well under like time crunches and it's still, we, we're giving ourselves like a healthy amount of time. Like we're having a couple hours in the morning for those meetings and doing those tasks. So it's like, should be plenty of time, but we'll see how it goes.
00:24:49
Speaker
we're also or We've also blocked off all of our vacation time on the calendar, so we've got our two big breaks, and then we went ahead and put any trips that we know of that we have that fall outside of those breaks on the calendar. I'm literally like texting my family chat being like, hey guys, could we pick dates for this trip? I know it's like nine months away, but I'm planning my calendar, could we start thinking about it? yeah um And also we mentioned like taking Monday holidays, that's something we're gonna do for I think like,
00:25:16
Speaker
four to six of those Monday holidays, we went ahead and decided to take those off. Just the ones that like everyone else, like most people who have full-time jobs, if they get that vacation, we're like, well, I kind of want that vacation too. yeah If we can manage it, and as long as there's no other like big things interfering with like the project schedules on that week.
00:25:34
Speaker
So I think that's even more like we've done these things where we're kind of eliminating some of our Monday time and our Friday time that we used to have for like client work and maybe some other tasks. So I think a lot of this calendar planning that we've done is hopefully going to force us in a positive way to just use our time really wisely. Because
Focus on Single Client Projects
00:25:53
Speaker
I mean, I think that's always been our goal of like, you know, how can we be the most efficient that we can be in these days so that we can Have half Friday off, you know have a holiday here and there so that we're physically doing spending less time in the office But being more efficient with that time. I mean, I think that's everyone's goal But since we own our own business we can actually do that, you know We don't have to be in the office for eight hours hours on Friday because our boss says so so like let's try and regroup and actually Make that more effective this year
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it'll be a little easier this year too, since we're not doing as many like overlapping projects or if any at all, like we may occasionally, if we have like a full, full service client, we might do like a VIP day in there, but for the most part, we're only doing one at a time, which I think is really going to help us with like not being overworked or not having too many things on our plate each day. Um, we'll be able to like really focus on like one client at a time and then like have our extra brain space for like internal business work.
00:26:50
Speaker
And now that we've had set times for when we're doing that internal business work, it does feel a little bit more like clear in my mind, at least about like when things will be getting done. So that feels really good. Yeah. And like in these smaller timelines, which we've shifted to doing more of it's, we have the plan for like, you have to send the the direction by this day. You send over the website for their review by this day. So there's really much less like, okay, you could design their logo suite any day in these two weeks or, you know, what but that can feel kind of ambiguous. And for us, we tend to kind of procrastinate it. So it's nice just to have like these little.
00:27:24
Speaker
sprints and these birds yeah my eighty brain is like i can definitely do that on the last day for sure or it's like i'll do it tomorrow yeah tomorrow and you get distracted by something else so it is kind of like set blocks like i have to do it for so i have to do it in this block otherwise i don't really have much time for that until this next cycle this next month or whatever so.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, the things just pile up. You'll find yourself like making a real that day. and that's yeah That takes you six hours when it should have taken you a couple minutes you know if you had just knocked it out the week before. Right, yeah. so I'm excited about all those changes. um Let's talk about how we're hoping to like meet our financial goals. so Definitely like one of the things we said we were doing was like, creating those estimates for ourselves, kind of like the low ball, high ball ranges. What are we expecting? We using that to inform like how many project spots we can fit in the year, which also your project spots is impacted by like the vacation time. So doing all that, we were able to get a pretty clear picture of like what we can hopefully expect to make. If business goes well, if we fill the spots we expect to make, if we make at least what we did last year plus a little more,
00:28:36
Speaker
then that I think like we should be on track for meeting our financial goals. I think we're definitely focusing on more revenue this year from client work and we're not going to do any like huge launches or anything of like courses or anything. like Our courses are now all on Evergreen so we're really trying to like just streamline and have everything just running on its own. Um, so it's like people could join our courses at any time. They can buy our products at any time. And we're hoping that income will still be coming in kind of in the background on top of our client work. Um, we just
Scaling Business with Team Expansion
00:29:10
Speaker
kind of felt like we wanted a little bit of a and mental break from doing any like hard launching because it is just like a lot of work to do that much marketing. And so we're really just trying to like take it a little bit easier this year and focus more on business side of things.
00:29:25
Speaker
which also kind of going into like another big goal of ours is we're kind of shifting maybe like what kind of business structure we want to have. Like, you know, we already have some contract contractors that we work with, but we are considering adding on a few more team members throughout the year, hopefully. So that will definitely impact like, how we meet our financial goals, probably. um And I hope that hiring extra people helps us meet those goals even easier.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. That's the goal. I think we felt our energy like going back to not necessarily doing any live launches this year or launching any new educational products. like I think we really felt our marketing energy split hard between our clients and our educational resources. and For me,
00:30:13
Speaker
I feel like the educational side of the business feels more emotional and personal so that took more of an emotional toll on me so I'm excited to be able to put more of that energy into our marketing for our services and like our sales processes there because yeah even though we're going to be doing like one client at a time for the most part there's still so much marketing and sales work you have to do um On top of that so yeah, I'm so maybe working with one client at a time But I'm we're trying to like book three other clients and onboard those clients once we booked them You know so there's just a lot of energy there and trying to do other launches and um Create new products for like the other side of our business. That's just a lot of split energy there So I'm excited to kind of
00:30:58
Speaker
pull back on that educational side a little bit. like All of our products will still be there. We'll still be supporting and maintaining um all of those, but just not doing anything new necessarily. and then being able to That will free up some time to be able to focus on hopefully making some of those hires and um handing off some of that work because I think a lot of the clarity that I got over break was just like, I am so ready to to hand off some of this and to bring on people to support us in a lot of these client areas because I think we've just fully maxed out like what we can do. Yeah, because I think that's the other big thing too as far as like financial goals is
00:31:39
Speaker
Like I said, I think we've hit the max of what we can do as two people. yeah And, but we do both have bigger financial goals in our personal lives. Like I would like to make a higher income eventually. And so for a while we thought, you know, we could definitely build up the education side, which the education side of our business is still great and we still love that side, but it wasn't growing as much. And also just think about long-term, what our goal is for the structure of the business and all of that. We were just realizing that 2025 needs to be the year that we really like set things up for a small agency model, start hiring, start practicing our skills with managing a team and all of that. Because I think that that is like what is going to be best for our business in the long run. So we are kind of stepping away from education to focus on that. And I think that'll really pay off in the long run because you just can't ah you just you can't do a bajillion projects all the time.
00:32:34
Speaker
on your own. You can't do them all well. And you can't do them all well. But it's like, well, if we do want to make more revenue from that, we do need to book more projects, but we can't book more projects ourselves. But we could if we had more designers on our team to help manage the workload, then we absolutely could fill more of the spots. um Maybe we could hire people to help us like market to help fill those spots. So it all kind of is like a feedback loop. And we're trying to like,
00:32:59
Speaker
create the loop right now. That's our ah goal right now. And
Therapy and Positive Mindset Focus
00:33:03
Speaker
hopefully that will free it more time so that we can make new educational products and resources yeah and in the future because we would love to be able to do that because that's something we enjoy so much. And we're definitely going to keep doing the podcast, keep sending our monthly emails because that's something we love doing. It's something that we get a lot of feedback from you guys that you enjoy. So we're going to keep doing yeah the monthly podcast episodes and hopefully in the next year or so be able to come up with some some new resources because we have that that brain space for it. and Then one of the last goals or like topics we touched on when we were doing our planning meeting is kind of the bigger picture questions like from that map out your year document about your vision for the year and kind of how you want to feel um and like the more emotional side of things with the business. so um and We talked about this kind of like in our data evaluation meeting too. and It was kind of like a ah heavier vibe because we were just
00:33:58
Speaker
you know more burnt out like more tired just not having as much creativity and hope and inspiration for the next year but just talking about like what you know what what felt I think one of the questions is like what felt sticky or tough this year you know what are some areas that you're struggling with and I think for me one thing I realized is I probably need to do some work around my mindset with the business because I had just have a lot of subliminal emotional I think thoughts and feelings that come up throughout the week that I don't even notice and I don't see like how they affect my work
00:34:33
Speaker
at at the business or just how I overall feel about it. So I want to probably do more therapy this year. I think I didn't do very much last year just because I did um kind of wrap up with my therapist after a year, but I think I need to get back into some more sessions. And we actually have a client who we worked with on their web design who puts out a mental health kit. It's like a so it's going to be a subscription.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I started working on a kit that she sent me just as part of our project to kind of try and do some journaling and it was really good. So I think I'm just going to try and do more things like that to support my mental health this year because I do think I neglected it and kind of just let some of these thoughts like run the show without even realizing it.
00:35:16
Speaker
Right I think it kind of goes into like our what we talked about too with like our kind of bad habit of like neglecting looking at the positives and so I think like sometimes you might even like you said like you're in the background you might just be thinking about the negatives not even realizing it and I do the same thing too like I struggle or like forget sometimes to like like focus on like feeling gratitude which i think maybe sounds cheesy but i'm kind of getting to the point in life where i'm like no it really is so important it is so important to like acknowledge the really good things going on cuz then your brain gets wrapped up in all the negatives and like you can kinda rewire your brain and your thinking and so i think that would be really great free to have that extra support for sure.
00:35:56
Speaker
You're like, yeah, please go to therapy. You need to help. now um but Trust me, I probably need to go back to therapy for personal life stuff too. um I find a lot more stress about other things. I think like everyone, you kind of just have your thing. Like what? Yeah. Like everyone kind of stresses out about different things and like.
00:36:15
Speaker
those things can come from your childhood, it can come from like a stressful like work situation like you had in the past and that's like triggering now or whatever. It's like money especially is triggering and like owning a business is triggering. We've talked about this in the last episode that we've done. But yeah, it's like, you need support, especially as a business owner, like you need more support. It's really important. So I'm glad that you're thinking about that. Yeah, me too. Do you have any other like personal or life goals that you're kind of planning for and maybe we've adjusted the business to support or just like generally that you're wanting to work on.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, it's like, I think last year, last year personally was just like a really big healing year. Um, cause a year prior I had like ended my relationship with my partner for years. Um, and that just like kind of blew up my life a little bit and I just felt so caught up in my own like anxiety and stuff that I just really wasn't like focusing that much on the business. And like, I kind of forgot about like my passion for it. I was just kind of like doing the work that had to be done. Um,
Optimism for Future Goals and Conclusion
00:37:20
Speaker
Because I was just kind of surviving and then healing and all that so I went through a ton of stuff in the last year, but I feel like I've Come to a new refreshed point for myself I guess this year of like feeling like I finally have my passion back for the business because I have the The free space to feel that now now that I've kind of worked through all my personal life stuff I'm feeling a lot more better and more I don't know just a few more reset I guess which is good so I'm excited about that because I think what makes me really happy as a person is like I Having these goals and striving for them and achieving those things and like getting excited about that and of course like traveling and Experiencing more things just like in life, you know, so I'm really glad that we've set up our schedule to allow lots of free time um Because I really want to like nurture my own creativity away from the business which I think is also gonna be Interesting and like great when we hire more people to help kind of take on more of the client work
00:38:16
Speaker
Because it's just something I've done for so long, and I do really enjoy the creative work there. But I would really enjoy having more creative space for like myself, you know again. um Because that's like what really makes me happy. So I think that'll be really good this year. I'm excited for the year. Yeah, me too. I'm getting distracted by, is it Charlie or Ralphie that's sitting in your armchair? Both. They're both in the armchair? you might not be I think the couch is covering them a little bit, but they're actually both.
00:38:44
Speaker
They're both cuddled up together. They look like perfect gentlemen because it's like a Victorian style armchair. Yeah, it's my sister's chair. We kind of move things around and brought it out here and now it's the cat's favorite spot in the house. They're being so polite. They'll be like sitting on the top and like shoving each other off. Right now though they're cuddling. Brother problems. Very good. Yeah. Anyways, this was a great episode. I'm really excited about the new year and I hope that like everyone has something they can take away from this and You know, I hope you feel like and a renewed sense of energy about your own business. I hope you really like celebrate your wins.
00:39:20
Speaker
yeah I hope you take lots of time off. yeah Let us know if you have any like questions about you know scheduling projects or anything i don't know anything. If you have questions, you can DM us on Instagram at Foxtrot Branding. If you have a listener question that you want us to answer on next month's episode, let us know. and Don't forget to download the map out your your workbook using the link in the show notes. It's free. Even if you're halfway to January, I still think it's the best time to go ahead and and yeah map these things out for yourself.
00:39:51
Speaker
So we'll wrap it up there. You guys can find all of our templates and our courses for designers at foxtrotbranding.com and we will see you guys in the next episode. Bye! Bye!