It’s the end of 2022 and 2023 is in sight! Honestly, where did this year go??

I not only love this time of year for the holidays, but I also love reflecting on the past year and setting goals for the year ahead. I do this by conducting an end of the year business review! Essentially, I dive deep into my business and ask myself some hard questions: What worked? What didn’t work? Did I achieve my money/sales goals? How was my time spent?

The best way to grow your business in 2023 is to have a clear view of what 2022 looked like! Once you know where you came from you can look critically at where you’re going and put strategies into place to get there.

A good end of the year review of your business allows you to look at the highs and lows of the year, and start the new year off with renewed fire for accomplishing your goals moving forward!

If you’ve never done an end of the year review of your business before, well, you’re in the right place! I’ll be walking you through the exact steps I take so you can do it too! I hope this review gives you more confidence & a refreshed approach to the new year!

How To Conduct An End Of The Year Business Review

When To Conduct Your Review

There’s no right or wrong answer to when you should conduct your review, but I would suggest the earlier the better! For me, I generally block off an entire day to sit down and do a complete review of my business. Others I have coached split this task into a few days! Honestly, it’s whatever works best for you!

The important thing is to schedule some time (I suggest early December!) to really dive deep into your business. Actually, go ahead now, grab out your calendar and find some time to do this! Once you find that date(s) write it into your calendar. I’ll wait! 🙂

After you complete the review of your business, then you can step into goal setting for 2023. You will have a much clearer picture on what goals you want to set and be ready to take on the new year!

Facts Vs. Feelings

When you do a review of your business, you will be assessing two different things: facts and feelings. Facts and feelings are very different, but they are both very important when doing your evaluation.

Facts are essentially the data in your business. How much revenue did you earn? Did your newsletter subscribers increase? What about your instagram following? Did it go up or down? These numbers are telling you exactly what is happening within your business.

Running a creative business there tends to be a lot of feelings! Especially with comparing ourselves with others, the instagram algorithm, burnout.. we have so many feelings throughout the year! When we evaluate feelings, we want to know how you are doing in your business.

It’s important to weight feelings alongside facts when asking ourselves some of these tough questions. Doing an end of the year business review by weighing them together is the best way to do it!

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s dive into the five different areas you’ll be reviewing: time, money, goals, client, and executive.

Time

As a momma and a business owner, I really want to dive deep into where I’m spending my time throughout the year. Personally, I want to have a balanced lifestyle between work and family as much as possible. I know, I know, what is a balanced life.. especially as a business owner?! But, by doing a review of where I’m spending my time it’ll help me to tweak things in the year to come (so I can eventually get that balanced life).

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What did my daily work schedule look like?
• Did I have enough of those days?
• What needs to change for next year?
• Am I happy with my family life from the past year?
• What is one area I want to improve? Change?

Money

Next up is the money category! This one will most likely take you the most time to review as you’ll need to gather some data. Whether you utilize Quickbooks, Honeybook, or Square, you’ll have to do a little bit of digging to find some of these numbers. Money plays a big role when creating goals for the following year so don’t sleep on this one!

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What offers/services did you have this year? How much revenue did you make in each category?
• Which one was most profitable? Least profitable?
• Why do you think they were profitable? Why weren’t they profitable?
• What offers/services can you cut out next year? Which ones can you scale?
• How much total revenue did you earn?
• What were your three largest expenses? How can you reduce those costs next year?
• How much did you pay yourself? What is your salary goal for next year?

Goals

What a year you’ve had! Let’s take some time to review the goals you set for yourself in 2022. What did you accomplish? What didn’t you accomplish? By doing a quick review, it’ll allow you to see what small or big goals you tackled!

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What goals did you achieve? Which ones fell flat?
• Why do you think those goals weren’t achieved?
• Write out a highlight from each quarter. Is there a specific large picture goal you accomplished?
• Which goal progress surprised you the most?
• What goal are you most proud of?
• Are there any milestones you celebrated?

Client Review

Constructive feedback from your past clients/customers are helpful when doing a review of your business. What worked well? What didn’t work well? Take a peek at some of the reviews your clients left you. Jot down some of the things they said.. were there any common themes?

Here are a few additional questions to ask:

• What clients did I love working with this year? Why did you love working with them?
• Where did these clients find you?
• Were there some clients you didn’t enjoy working with? Why not?

Executive

The final assessment you need to complete is the executive review. In this review you’ll dive deep into your marketing, workflow and outsourcing practices.

Here are a few questions to ask:

• What tasks did I enjoy doing this year? What didn’t I enjoy doing?
• Are there any items I can outsource to free up some time? If so, which ones?
• What marketing did you do? Which one was the most profitable? The least?
• What marketing do I want to continue with next year?
• Looking back at each quarter, which one was the most stressful? The least stressful? Why?
• What is an area I want to do more of next year? Less of?
• Take a look at your education. Who did you learn from? Who do you want to learn from next year?
• What is something you want to improve upon next year?

There you have it! If you take the time right now to assess these five areas, you will be more strategic in creating your goals for 2023! If you’re reading this in January or even March, it’s never too late to run an end of the year review of your business. I hope this helps you end 2022 and step into 2023 with clarity!