126: Starting the Year Strong: Part Two of My Planning Routine

Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. Here, I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there.

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Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast. My friends, this is the second episode of the brand new year. And today is a continuation from last week. So Last week, I shared the first few steps I take when planning for a new year, when planning for my business goals, my personal goals, how I intentionally kind of set my plan for the year and where I want to go.

And honestly, this process is what helps me achieve so much and I’ve done it for years. And so I’m breaking this process into two episodes. Last week I shared the first few steps I take when I’m, when I’m doing this planning, I start with reflection and then I work on creating those aligned goals. Then I take my routines and habits into play.

I really think through what changes I need to make that will support me becoming the woman that I want to be this year and in the future. And so if any of this sounds intriguing and you didn’t catch last week’s episode, I encourage you to go back and give that a listen first. And if you did listen or maybe you went and listened to that real fast and now you’re back, this is part two of how I intentionally plan for my year.

Part two is specific to business. Part one, I talked about personal development and business development. This episode today is all about how I intentionally plan for my year as a business owner. So after I have spent time reflecting on the last year, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and then I map out goals for myself and I take into considerations, what habits and routines I need to build to support these goals.

Then I move on to the tangible business planning. And the two primary ways that I do that are with tools that I call a money map and a marketing map. I’m going to go through briefly what those are and how I use them. And my hope is that this is going to inspire you to create these maps for yourself.

Okay. So first of all, a money map, this is a Google sheet. You can do it in Excel or Google sheet. And it is, it’s literally just a spreadsheet. I am taking my business goals, my offerings, my revenue, I’m breaking things down by month. And I’m looking at them over the course of a year. So when I personally am creating a money map, I like to use a past year as a baseline.

So for me, this Google sheet will have the previous year’s numbers, and then I will have a place for the future year’s numbers. Okay. So for time of recording, it’s going to be 2024 data, and then it’s going to have a place for 2025 projections. Transcribed And I personally like to have quantity and revenue in there.

So what that looks like is for the photography side of my business, I will have all of my different offers listed on the left in a column. So I’ll have family photo sessions, motherhood, mini sessions, first 48 sessions, newborn sessions, et cetera, et cetera, whatever your different offers are. And then I will have the price.

Point next to them. Okay. And if you are someone that sells packages, you could use the average spend. You could also use the lowest spend. If you wanted, you can decide how you want to use that. But I’m an all inclusive photographer. So I have my, my price points listed there. And then across the top, I have the months.

So I will have January quantity, January revenue, February quantity, February revenue, et cetera, for the whole year. And then what happens is I’m filling in the blanks into what actually happened for the past year. So how many newborn sessions did I have in January? And then what revenue did that equal?

And it’s just a formula, right? It’s, you know, if I had two newborn sessions, it’s, The two multiplied by whatever the cost for that offer is, and then the sum for the revenue. And I have all of those numbers in there. So the current year or the year that just ended is going to be all actual data. That gives me a really clear picture on what months I had the highest revenue, what months did better with certain offers than others.

What offers were the lowest performing offers? It gives you all of that really, really valuable data. And then what I like to do is I will have the future year as a forecast. And that’s where I’m playing with what needs to happen to meet my financial business goals for that year. That’s where I have the ability and the space to play with.

Well, what does it look like if I raise my rates? What does it look like if I take an entire month off? What does it look like if I drop an entire offering? What does it look like if I double the number of sessions I do? What does it look like if I create a new offering? You can play with all of that information and see what spits out basically, because you’re seeing as you shift, as you allow the numbers to ebb and flow, what happens to your bottom line.

So what’s important to know about the money map is that it is revenue only. It is not taking into consideration my expenses, my costs, and all of those fees. You can absolutely create a more in depth forecast with all of that information in it. But for the money map, I like to just play with the top line stuff.

I really just want to see what shifts need to happen to hit certain revenue markers and goals. And it allows me again to play with those things. So like I said, if I have always dreamed of taking the month of June and the month of December completely off, letting those be a sabbatical for myself, plug that into the spreadsheet and see what happens.

Am I okay with where those numbers land? Do I need to make up that revenue somewhere else by either raising my rates or increasing the number of sessions I have? Do I need to add a new offering to make up for that? What happens? I don’t know. Right? Because then I can plan. I can have an intentional plan instead of every year saying, gosh, I wish I could take the whole month of June off.

And not having a plan and freaking out and then deciding to abandon that idea halfway through the year because, Oh my gosh, well, I, I don’t know how I could ever make that up. So I can’t do that. So I guess I’m just going to keep working in June like normal. When you can plan for those big goals, you can confidently say, okay, I’m taking this entire month off.

I’m taking these two months off, whatever that may be. And your dreams start to become a reality because you have an intentional plan. The same thing goes for what if you’ve always wanted to stop photographing newborns. You hate photographing newborns. You feel like you’re not confident in them. They’re not your best work.

You get so many inquiries about them and you take them because it’s good money, but that’s not where your heart is. Your heart is with families. You wish you had more time for families, but you don’t know how to drop newborns and you’re scared. This is how you can play with that. Look at what happens when you take an entire offering off of your forecast.

What do you need to do revenue wise? Where do you need to pick up the difference? what needs to happen to support that decision of you dropping an offering. So a money map is extremely valuable when planning for your year and shifts and things that need to happen. So if you have never done this, when you are starting off a new year, I highly recommend it.

The other thing about a money map is it’s a forecast. It’s a forecast. It’s a best guess. It’s an ideal situation. It may or may not pan out that way, but it is always better to have played with your money map and to have a loose forecast than to have no plan at all. It is always better to go in informed and to feel confident about your decisions and what’s happening in the timeline of things than to just wing it.

Because when you wing it, you always have a little bit of fear. You always have a little bit of scarcity. Is this going to work out? Is this going to pan out? What’s this going to do to my revenue? What’s this going to do to my business? What’s going to happen? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s all these stories.

There’s no confidence whatsoever, but when you can play with something like a money map and look at a forecast and have really informed information and data to take with you, you have confidence. You have confidence to know, okay, I can do this. I can hit this revenue goal. I can raise my rates. This is what’s going to happen.

I can drop that offering. I can make whatever changes that looks like. So that is a huge part of how I create an intentional plan for my businesses. I am looking at that money map. Now, I gave you an example of what it looks like as a photographer. Obviously you, the listening audience, whether you’re new here or not, I am still an active photographer.

I am also an educator. So I’ve got this podcast. I’ve got one to one coaching clients. I’ve got a mastermind, I’ve got courses, I’ve got a membership, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I’ve got a lot of other offers. I’m doing the same thing. I have a money map and instead of it just being photography offers, it is multifaceted.

It has my photography offers. It also has my education offers. And so I’m doing the same exact thing. I am playing with, well, what happens if I offer a new course? And what happens if I launch it twice a year instead of once a year? And what happens if I raise the price on my mastermind? And what happens if I don’t offer this thing anymore?

And so I’m doing the exact same work and I’m just, I’m looking at those numbers as both a photographer and an educator now. Okay. So in case you are someone that has a multifaceted business, this can also work for you. Friend, I want to take a quick second to tell you about a new freebie I have that I’m Super excited about whether you are hoping to launch a new offer this year, or maybe you’re just burned out and looking for some creative inspiration.

You will love this new freebie portfolio on purpose. This is my exact step by step framework for planning and executing a successful model call that I’ve been teaching my paying students for years. In case you don’t know why this is so important, model calls are a great way to do a lot of really positive things in your business.

They get fresh eyes on your business. They give you a way to create images that support a new offer that you might want to launch. Model calls give you a place to play and create without the expectations of paying clients. And they’re a great way to fine tune your skills and expand your portfolio. The portfolio on purpose freebie includes a video worksheets, checklists, examples, and everything you need to make this process super easy and super successful for you.

When you go through portfolio on purpose, you will walk away with the knowledge of what the benefits of model calls are, how they can support your business creativity and growth, how to create one that pulls in the right people, how to keep it organized. Including a step by step workflow at the end of this freebie, you will feel inspired to take action and have the steps and tools necessary to successfully put the model call out, find the right models and most importantly, get the images you are looking for.

If you’re hoping to run a model call or maybe a few this year, head over to Sabrina Gebhardt. com backslash model dash freebie to get yours today. Okay, back to the show. So after I’m playing with the money map and I’m feeling good about the ebb and the flow of the finances and the way things are forecasting, then I start to play with what I call a marketing map.

This is similar. It’s an outline of what my year looks like from a bird’s eye view. It is not an in depth marketing plan. I am not breaking down the kind of content I’m creating and what I’m saying and when I’m going to share this reel and when I’m going to write this blog post. It’s not that in depth.

It’s the bird’s eye view. Look at what marketing shifts need to happen and when they need to happen through the year. And then from there, I take my marketing map and start to drill down into monthly, weekly, daily content to support the map. But what it looks like is. It’s literally, I do it in a Google doc.

Okay. I do it in a Google doc. You could do it in word. You could do it in notes. You could do it pen to paper in a spiral notebook, but I literally have January through December. So I just have the month written there. Okay. I’ve got January, February, March, all the way through December. And the first thing I do again, because it’s a bird’s eye view is I am plugging in personal stuff first, just big picture things.

Okay. This is not where I’m plugging in doctor’s appointments. Your copy Or anything like that. I’m plugging in vacations that we’re taking. I am plugging in speaking engagements or retreats. Anytime that I’m traveling, that’s going on there. And then anytime where I know I want time off. Okay. This is not just, this is not your weekends.

This is, I know I want to take the week of my birthday off. Or I know I want to take the entire month of June off. Okay. Those are the things you’re plugging in. I have January through December listed and I’m going to go through and I’m going to make a note. Okay. In January, I’m hosting the alumni retreat in Palm Springs, and I’m going to be gone for six days on these dates.

And then in February, I’m hosting the mastermind retreat in Savannah, Georgia, and I’m going to be gone for these six days. In March, I’m going to be at a volleyball tournament with my daughter for these four days. And then we’re going to go on a spring break vacation as a family for these days, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, for the whole year.

Obviously, there’s sometimes where you don’t have travel planned a year out, but you have a best guess, okay? If you know in the back of your mind that you’re hoping to get away for a long weekend for your anniversary, go ahead and put it on there. If you know you’re hoping to surprise the kids with a trip to Disney over Thanksgiving break, go ahead and plug it in there.

Whether or not it actually happens, you’d rather plan for it. and not have it happen. The first thing I do with this marketing map is I’m plugging in the big picture bird’s eye view things, uh, personal things happening in my year. Then what I’m doing is I am plugging in when I am launching certain things in the year.

And this is where I’m going to try my best to describe it to you. It’s, it’s a, it’s gonna, may sound a little bit messy, so bear with me, but it’s really important because you never want to overlap and launch multiple things at the same time. It confuses you and it confuses your audience. So this is where you wanna make sure that you’re only launching one thing at a time.

The other thing I want you to hear me say when I say the word launching, yes, I’m talking about launching your fall mini sessions or launching your motherhood sessions where you’re selling something. I am also talking about when you are promoting something that is free. So if you have a new freebie that you’re creating in the first quarter and you want to do a big push to get that freebie out to as many people as possible, we’re also considering that a launch.

Okay. So when I’m using the word launch here with this marketing map, it is interchangeable with just doing a marketing push for something, whether it is a sell, like something you’re selling a paid offer or a free something or other. I’m going to talk through an example of what this could look like. So if I know that I am going to host motherhood mini sessions on May 1st, okay, and my friends, I don’t know, even know what day of the week May 1st is.

I’m just throwing out dates for the sake of giving you an example. Okay. But let’s say that in 2025, I’m going to host motherhood mini sessions on May 1st. Backing up, that means that I want to launch them for sale on April 1st. Backing up even more, that means that I want to start marketing and promoting motherhood in general.

March 1st ish. Okay, I want to give myself a solid 30 days. So for the whole month of March, I’m going to be using motherhood as the theme. I’m going to talk about motherhood all month. I’m going to share motherhood images all month. I’m going to write emails to my email list with stories of motherhood.

It’s going to be all motherhood, all March. April 1st, I’m going to say surprise cart open doors open. I’m now booking my motherhood mini sessions. Grab your spot, limited availability, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You are selling motherhood sessions. And then on May 1st, you are doing motherhood sessions.

So do you see how that works now that I have seen that? Yeah. I’ve started with the, with the end date. I’ve started with the date of the session of the offer and then I’m backing into, okay, when do I need to offer it for sale? And then I’m backing up 30 days more. When do I need to start talking about it?

That gives me a really clear bird’s eye view of what I’m talking about and when and what’s happening in my business. Remember how I said, you don’t want to overlap things. So if I know that I’m going to be talking about motherhood for the entire month of March, that means I am not going to be launching something else in March, because it’s not going to make sense.

I’m not going to be launching branding sessions. Or newborn sessions or a senior photography guide because I’m going to be talking about motherhood all month. So creating this marketing map gives you the time and the space to spread things out so that you have the appropriate amount of time to prepare your audience for your launch, for your marketing push, and then to talk about that thing and to sell that thing successfully.

It also ensures that you are selling things enough in advance of a session date or an offer date that people can actually book it. If you are hosting these motherhood sessions on May 1st and you don’t even offer them for sale until April 20th, they’re not going to sell well. Okay. And I’m telling you that because I’ve done this before I’ve been in business 14 years at this point, and I’ve made every mistake possible.

And this is one of them. And this is something that I see happen over and over and over again. You wait way too late to launch an offer for sale and people’s calendars are booked. They’re not interested. They can’t do it. It doesn’t work for them. And then they don’t book and then the photographers get frustrated.

Why is nobody booking my offer? Taking this marketing map and, and after you’ve plugged in all of your personal plans. Starting to think about, okay, when am I gonna have special promotional things that I need to sell? When are my motherhood sessions gonna be? When are my fall mini sessions going to be?

When are, when am I going to do personality portraits? When do I want to share about this new free thing that I’m creating, et cetera. Plugging all of that into this marketing map so everything gets its own month so that everything can get its own attention. I’m making sure that there’s no crossover. The reason you’re putting personal things on the marketing map first.

It’s because if you have a particular month where you are traveling a ton or you have a lot of birthdays in your house or you are planning to be on sabbatical, remember the example of, Oh, I want to take the month of June off. You don’t want to be pushing anything, launching anything, marketing anything really intentionally during those times because that’s also not going to go well.

Trust me. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way when you are trying to have an awesome vacation with your family and you’re sharing behind the scenes of what you’re doing with your fam at the beach and making sandcastles and all of these fun things, but you’re also trying to sell a course. Yes, I’ve made this mistake before.

Your audience is more interested in what you’re doing with your family than this course that you’re trying to sell. It’s not going to work well. Don’t, don’t try and sell major things when you’re on vacation or you’re traveling or you’re on sabbatical shift your marketing calendar around so that you are selling things, pushing things, launching things, marketing things when you are truly all in on your business, not the months when you’re trying to have personal time off and travel time.

I know that seems really obvious you guys, but I’ve made the mistake and I know that so many others have to. Okay. So just trust me on that. Those are the two things that make a massive, massive difference in how the flow of my year goes, how I hit so many goals, how I’m able to be really intentional with my business plans for a year.

Obviously, That’s not the extent of my planning. After I have my money map, after I have my marketing map map, then I’m really deeply drilling down into, okay, what is the month of February going to look like? Okay. What do I need to do to prepare for that? Okay. What kind of content do I need to create for that?

What kind of images do I need to gather to sell that offer? What do I need to do to grow my email list? Then I’m really drilling down into what needs to happen, but having that bird’s eye view of the forecast of my business. hit how I’m going to hit the goals I have for myself and also what this marketing map for my entire year looks like.

I cannot tell you how much confidence it gives me going into a new year that I’ve got a plan, that I’ve got ideas, that it all makes sense on paper, that the forecast is there. I am rocking and rolling. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have flexibility. That doesn’t mean that everything goes as to plan, but I carry with me that confidence, that assurance into a new year, as opposed to that energy of fear, unknown scarcity that I talked about earlier.

When you can have that confidence going into a new year of, okay, this is what things are going to look like. This is what I’m doing. This is what I’m not doing. That is absolutely priceless. Start in your year with that kind of energy. Even though it’s just energy, even though it’s just your mindset, it’s just how you feel.

It’s not anything that’s super tangible. It is a game changer. It is an absolute game changer. So if you have not ever tried these two things before, a money map and a marketing map, I highly, highly encourage you to do both of these exercises this month, because I think they will really make a really big difference for you.

I hope these two episodes have gotten you excited to plan for growth and success this year. And I hope that you’ve gained a couple of new ideas that you can take and implement into your planning process. And My friends, I’m wishing you all the success and joy this year. And always, I’m always, always rooting for you.

That’s it for today. We’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at sabrinagebhart. com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhardt photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review.

Until next time, my friends, shoot it straight.