If I asked you right now, “Is your revenue goal high enough to pay yourself…
Want to know how to create your first annual plan for your business? Most small business owners know that they need to be planning for the future. They know the importance of having an annual plan, but if you’ve never created one before, it can be overwhelming. You might be thinking “How do I start?” and “What do I need to include?”. Well, there is no need to panic. My name is Charelle Griffith and I’m a business strategist and annual planning queen, and in this blog post, I’ll share how to create your first annual plan for your business.
This page may include affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.
Why Annual Planning Matters (Even if you are a one-person business)
For some reason, some business owners have got it into their heads that they don’t need to do annual planning. I would argue that it is even more important as a solo, micro or small business owner to have an annual plan. Resources are limited. You don’t have time and money to waste. You want to get the most out of everything and that is what annual planning will help you to do.
Annual planning will give you a clear direction and focus. This means throughout the year, it is easier to make decisions. When faced with new opportunities (which always happen) you can think about whether it is supporting the plan or a distraction. This will help you to make decisions faster and also not spread yourself, or your team, too thin.
Annual planning also helps you be realistic about the workload throughout the year. By having everything together, you’ll be able to see sooner rather than later what your year could possibly look like. This means you can identify issues faster and make the necessary adjustments, whether than be changing the timings or getting additional support.
The important thing to mention is that annual planning doesn’t mean you have to create a massive document that you don’t refer back to. As you’ll see, I have an annual planning process for small business owners, and in reality the final documents end up being only a few pages long, so it is a working document that can be referred to throughout the year.
HOW TO CREATE YOUR FIRST ANNUAL PLAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS
1. Set aside protected time to create your annual plan
As a small business owner, the reality is you are having to wear so many hats in your business and constantly juggle so many things. In order to create the best annual plan possible you need to set time aside to be in CEO mode. Depending on how detailed and thorough you want your plan to be you’ll want to have anywhere from half a day to a full day set aside for putting your plan together. I highly recommend committing a day, but if that means you won’t do it then find a half day and give it your all.
Find a time in your calendar, block it out and when the time comes to plan you’ll want to be in a place where you won’t be disturbed.
2. Have a process to follow
Setting aside the time to plan is a good start, but if you sit down to plan with no annual planning process to follow the likelihood is very soon you’ll be overwhelmed because you’ll be thinking “How do I start?” and “What do I need to include in my annual plan?”. This is where having an annual planning process to follow makes such a difference.
Having a process will mean you understand what you need to cover in your planning session, as well as what should be included in your final plan.
If you search on the internet, you can find a whole range of articles about what to include in an annual plan. However, it’s important to remember that as a solo, micro or small business owner, you won’t need to cover everything a big business does.
As someone who has spent years helping solo and micro business owners to create annual plans for their business, here are the steps I recommend.
Step 1: Review and Reflect
The first thing you should do is review and reflect on the past year or 12 months. Hopefully, you set some annual goals for your business. Look back at those goals and see whether you achieved them or not. Then you’ll want to look at the key metrics in your business. Whilst I would love to imagine that you’ve been on top of yoru key metrics all year long, I know that isn’t always the case. Regardless of whether you’ve been on top of them or not, now is the time to really make sure you look at your numbers. You’ll want to look at your business’s current position and then what has happened over the last 12 months.
Then, once you’ve reviewed the key numbers, it is time to do some reflecting. The numbers are only going to tell part of the picture. As a business owner, your experience and feelings matter too. It might be on paper great that the business increased revenue by 50%, but if that meant you were working day and night, didn’t get more than 4 days off at any time, and are exhausted, then you probably don’t class it as a great year. During the reflection, it is important to add your personal feelings and thoughts in relation to the numbers so you get a rounded picture. You’ll also want to think about what you did and didn’t enjoy, and the lessons you learnt that you want to take forward.
I could write a lot more about what to include in an annual business review, because there is so much you can do. However, since this is about creating your first annual plan I won’t go into further detail. However, if you’d like more detail about what you can include in your annual business review, have a read of this – How to do an annual business review.
Step 2: Set Your Annual Goals
By the end of your review and reflect session. you should have a good understanding of your business’s current situation and how it got to that point. That will now act as your Point A (aka where you are starting from). Next, you need to think about your Point B (where you want to go), which means it is time to set some goals.
At first don’t filter yourself. Write a list of all the things you’d love to achieve in your business over the upcoming year. Then afterwards you can go back through the list. Firstly, wherever possible, you want to make sure you are setting SMART goals, but you’ll also want to ensure that your goals are achievable together. For example, sometimes you have goals that are working against one another.
There are so many different types of goals you can set for your business, but here are some common types of goals.
Financial Goals
You should have clear financial goals for your business. Having clear revenue and profit goals is vital for your business. You might also consider having financial goals around the amount of money you want to be able to take out of the business or the level of reserves you want the business to have
Impact Goals
Another common type of goal is an impact goal. For example, you might have the ultimate ambition to support 100,000 people through your business and so for the year ahead you set the goal of having 5,000 people impacted by your business – this could be customers, clients, event attendees etc.
Service / Product Goals
It could be that you really want to launch something over the upcoming year and so you set a goal to publish a book, launch a mastermind or run your first retreat.
Lifestyle Goals
As a small business owner, I would encourage you to also think about your personal lifestyle goals. Your business has a direct impact on your lifestyle and to ensure they are aligned, you need to be clear on your lifestyle goals. Maybe you want to only work X hours per week or be able to take off X number of weeks holiday per year. Having these written down will help when planning to ensure the goals of the business and your lifestyle goals aren’t clashing.
| TAKE YOUR ANNUAL BUSINESS PLANNING TO THE NEXT LEVEL BY WORKING WITH ME – BOOK A 2026 VISION-TO-STRATEGY CEO DAY
I’ve been running annual planning days with small business owners since 2019. Doing your annual business planning with someone external from your business and with tons of business and marketing experience and expertise makes a massive difference. I’ll support you to face the facts about your current position, dream big about the future and get really strategic about what you need to do in order to achieve those big business goals. So if you are planning on preparing for 2026 and you want to get your annual planning done in the most effective and efficient way, book a 2026 Vision-to-Strategy CEO Day. For all the information and to instantly book a 2026 Vision-to-Strategy CEO Day click here. |
Step 3: Consider different aspects of your business
With your goals now decided, it’s time to start looking at different aspects of your business and looking at what needs to happen in order to be able to achieve your goals.
Again the aspects you need to consider will depend on your type of business. I specialise in helping service-based businesses and here’s what I usually cover
Offer Suite
It’s important to know what range of products and services you’ll be staying. It is possible that your offer suite will stay the same or there could be changes. From your review and reflect session, you might decide to stop selling some of your offerings. You might also decide to introduce new offerings because of your new annual goals.
Pricing
You should review your pricing at least once a year so reviewing your pricing whilst doing your annual plan is a smart move. Look at the prices of everything in your offer suite and decide if they’ll stay the same, decrease or increase. For those you decide to change will it be immediate or at a further point in time?
Marketing and Sales
By now, you’ll have a clear idea of what you are selling and for how much, but how are you going to create demand. You’ll want to make decisions about timings, but also the marketing channels you’ll be using.
Operations
How will you successfully deliver everything and keep the business running? You’ll want to consider the technology your business is using. Is it still fit for purpose or do you need something else? Also, look at your team and see whether you have what you need in order to successfully deliver all your offerings and keep the business running smoothly. If you don’t do you need to upskill yourself or yoru team, or do you need to be new support?
Finances
Your offer suite and pricing will help you work out the potential income side of your finances, and having properly thought through the operations side of things that should give you a rough idea on expenses. With this information you can do some financial forecasting and see whether your financial goals are possible or not
Step 4: Create the Annual Timeline
A key part of your annual plan is creating an annual timeline. This will be a month-by-month breakdown so you can start to plot when things will need to happen. Having this annual timeline is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, by bringing everything together, you’ll be able to see better where there are possible clashes. Seeing these sooner rather than later means you’ll have the opportunity to see if timing-wise wise you can move things or you can get the extra support you’ll need. Secondly, a month-by-month timeline is really helpful for goals that are going to take a while to achieve and have to follow a process. For example, if you are planning on writing a book it’s going to take longer than a month and your annual timeline will enable you to map out time for writing, time for editing, sending out review copies, launching etc.
The annual timeline is the part of the annual plan that you’ll refer back to the most and should be a working document that changes throughout the year where needed.
| TAKE YOUR ANNUAL BUSINESS PLANNING TO THE NEXT LEVEL BY WORKING WITH ME – BOOK A 2026 VISION-TO-STRATEGY CEO DAY
Does the thought of putting together an annual timeline feel like too much? Let me do it for you! During a 2026 Vision-to-Strateg CEO Day we’ll discuss all the key areas that need to be covered when annual planning. Then within 72 hours you’ll get your annual timeline and strategy document delivered straight to your inbox. You don’t have to do your planning all by yourself, in fact, you shouldn’t. Let me make preparing for 2026 a joyful and productive experience – book a 2026 Vision-to-Strategy CEO Day. For all the information and to instantly book a 2026 Vision-to-Strategy CEO Day click here. |
Step 5: Monitoring
At this point the plan is done, but you aren’t meant to blindly follow the plan and then at the end of the year see how everything has gone. You’ll need to be monitoring the results of your actions throughout the year. Depending on the goals you might want to set regular monitoring or milestone monitoring.
Regular monitoring is where you’ll choose a frequency and then check a key metric. For example, for your financial goal you might make the decision to check weekly or monthly on how you are progressing. Milestone monitoring is for goals that involve clear steps and are usually not based on numbers. In this instance you might have ‘finish first draft of book by 14th of March” and so you’ll check your progress on the 14th of March to see if you achieved that milestone or not.
For all of your goals decide the best way to monitor.
That’s it. You now know how to create your first annual plan for your business.
Reading through this might have made you feel like putting together your first annual plan is a lot, but I’ve gone into a fair bit of detail as I want to give you the opportunity to create the best plan possible. However, it is important to remember that you don’t have to follow every step perfectly for the plan to be powerful.
If you’ve never created an annual plan before, then creating your first is a big step forward in the right direction. Anything is better than nothing.
However, if you want to give yourself the best chance of creating an amazing first annual plan, don’t do it alone – work with me.
I’ve helped numerous business owners create their first annual plan, so when you work with me, you’ll be in safe hands. Not only will I take you through my signature annual planning process so that you can easily create a robust annual plan that you have total confidence in, but you’ll also be working with a marketing expert, that will ensure you have a sales and marketing strategy that will achieve all of your financial goals.
For all the information and to instantly book a 2026 Vision-to-Strategy CEO Day click here.
Related Posts
