How I Prepare For A New Year: Part 1

As this year comes to a close, I take an assessment and begin planning out my next moves. I’ve found that a few moments of research and reflection are imperative to plan for the next year with intention and wisdom.

First things first: We Audit

Where do I do this planning? Most of the dollar figures are kept in spreadsheets saved in DropBox that I update throughout the year, usually on a daily or weekly basis. A lot of ideas I jot down in my notes app, but the formal planning I keep in a Word document. If you’re the pen-to-paper type, open up your favorite notebook and grab an assortment of beautiful pens!

Revenue

When I’m looking at top-line revenue, I compare it to prior years (in a beautiful, colorful graph) broken out by month and year, and also by source (session fees, product sales, commercial photography, stock photography, affiliate commissions, education, etc). I compare monthly revenue against the goals I set at the beginning of the year and I ask myself things like:

• How did I feel during my highest-grossing months? Was I stressed by too much work? Was the load ever more than I could handle?
• How did I feel during my lowest-grossing months? Was the break planned? Did I enjoy having a break? Was I still profitable? Was I stressed out?
• Did I meet every goal? How/why did I meet some monthly revenue goals and how/why did I miss some revenue goals? How do I feel when I exceed a goal? How do I feel when I miss a goal?
• Where did the majority of my revenue come from? Where do I spend most of my time? What tasks do I enjoy and want to do more of? What is the lowest-hanging fruit – or areas I could increase revenue with little effort? How can I continue to diversify my revenue while keeping my focus in the right areas? Am I too scattered and need to shut off a line of revenue? Is something that produces very little taking too much of my time?
• How can I make more and work less next year?

I pray over the numbers and thank the Lord for every single client and dollar he brought to me that year. How can I love people better? Was I a good steward with what he trusted me with?

Profit

I comb through my expenses the hardest. I compare each category to years prior and assess what was necessary, where I can trim expenses, what investments produced the highest return, and compare to my goals. Did I max out my 401k and ROTH contributions? Did I invest in the right areas? Did I pay myself more than the year before?

Which months had the highest expenses? Which months had the highest profits? Why? What caused this? And how can I continue to increase profits?

Session Averages

I calculate my average sale per session and compare this average to years prior. Is it more than last year – why/how? How can I increase this number for next year? I count how many sessions were over $10,000, over $5,000, and over $4,000, and compare those numbers to prior years. I also assign a lead source to every session (was this a returning client or did they find me off of a referral, magazine, Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc). I assign which percentage of shoots came from each lead source, and the total sales dollars per lead source. I love to have a firm understanding what which outlets are generating the most clients and the most dollars. Most years, 40% or more of my clients are returning, and 30-40% are referrals. That tells me where I need to spend my energy and marketing dollars for next year!

I keep track of every expense tied to every session (this spreadsheet is included in my Pricing course). This allows me to keep track of my profit margin per session and understand which packages yield the highest profits for me.

I also look back through every single session and assess my favorites and my least favorites. What do I want to do more of? What would I like to book less of? Is there something I need to say “NO!” to altogether?

Contracts

Did my contracts serve me well this year? Did they cover me exactly where I needed them to? Did I have the appropriate contracts for every session? Did I have difficult client(s)? If so, do I need to alter my contract, or were those flukes?

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Workflow

Looking back on the year, I want to know which tasks overwhelmed me, where I can consider outsourcing, how much time I’ve spent per client, and where I can increase efficiencies. Do I need to invest in a different software infrastructure? Did I maximize the software I currently have? Are there any tasks I avoided or dreaded doing? How can I spend less time working?

Have you checked out my FREE workflow course yet? Sign up here.

Marketing

I review my marketing outline and goals that I set at the beginning of the year. Did I stick to the business plan or did I deviate? Maybe my deviation was intentional since it is important to be fluid. Did my deviation work? Did it produce the results I wanted?

I like to take an audit of my marketing efforts:

• How did my emails do: how many emails did I send, what was the open rate, what was the clickthrough rate, is my email list growing, etc?
• How is social media doing: how many followers did I gain, which types of posts had the highest reach, how often was I posting, and what trends did I notice?
• What was my in-person marketing like: which events did I attend, and what did I do to promote myself at that event?
• How did my website and blog posts do? What had the highest reach, and why? Where are the referrals and traffic coming from?
• Where was I featured this year? Magazines, blogs, websites, social media, award recognitions, etc.
• What did I mail out this year? Christmas gifts, Christmas cards, welcome packets, thank you notes, etc.

Understanding what I did this year can help me plan how to improve next year.

Click here to read part 2!