Inside My Monthly CEO Session: The process I use to keep my business moving towards my annual goals

Want to know what happens inside my monthly CEO session? As a solo business owner the reality is I can’t be in CEO mode all the time. Like many solo and micro business owners I have to wear multiple hates in my business, but I also know it’s vital to make the time to be in CEO mode, especially if I want to continue to grow my business on my terms. There is no point setting annual goals and creating an annual plan, but then not making the time regularly throughout the year to see how the business is performing. That’s why every month, without fail, I’ll sit down for my monthly CEO session. Keep on reading to find out what happens inside my monthly CEO session and the process I use to keep my business moving towards my annual goals.

Inside My Monthly CEO Session - The process I use to keep my business moving towards my annual goals - Pin

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What is a monthly CEO session?

A monthly CEO session is a dedicated time where the business owner can step away from working in the business and instead work on the business. Unlike in big businesses where the CEO gets to be in CEO mode all of the time the reality for solo business owners, and many micro business owners too, is that they have to wear multiple hats in their business. They are juggling client delivery, marketing, sales, admin, finance and more. This can mean very little time is spent being the CEO of the business.

A monthly CEO session is where the business owner can take a moment to look at what is happening in the business over the last month, remind themselves of their annual goals (and bigger vision too) and then make strategic decisions about what to do over the next month.

A monthly CEO session is just one of the session a business owner should have as part of their ongoing planning process. The ideal combination is annual, quarterly, monthly and weekly, with each level serving a different purpose.

CREATE A STRATEGIC PLAN TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS FOR THE NEXT YEAR – IN JUST ONE DAY!

I’m the Annual Planning Queen and I specialise in helping solo and micro service-based business owners plan for the year ahead.

Success in business is a result of having clear goals and a plan to achieve them and my annual planning day will help you to have both.

By booking a Strategy Day with me I’ll ensure you have a powerful and productive annual planning day where we consider all the major elements to ensure you can achieve your goals for the year ahead.

All you have to do is secure your date, block it out in your diary and get ready to be guided through my signature annual planning framework that guarantees by the end of the end of our time together you’ll have a clear roadmap to achieve your goals and be excited for the year ahead.

For all the information and to book a Strategy Day click here.

INSIDE MY MONTHLY CEO SESSION: THE PROCESS I USE TO KEEP MY BUSINESS MOVING TOWARDS MY ANNUAL GOALS

I’ve been having a monthly CEO session for many years and the process has changed along the way. Now I have a three-step process that I swear by. It’s the process I use in my own business, and am going to share in more detail now, but it is also the process I used when working with one-to-one clients and in my programme On Track.

The three steps of the process are:

Review
Reflect
Plan

Part 1: Review the past month

The first thing part of my monthly CEO session is focused on reviewing the data. In business it is vital you understand your data and given the amount of data we now have access to as business owners the reality is I can’t monitor everything every day. I use my monthly CEO session to ensure I’m on top of the key data in relation to finances, sales, marketing and time. And then I may track data I track depending on what my annual goals are (for example in 2026 I have the goal of helping 1,000 business owners with annual planning so I’m tracking that as well).

The financial data I review:

Revenue – How much was generated in the last month.
Expenditure – How much money was spent over the last month
Gross Profit – What was the difference between money generated and money spent.
Revenue split – What percentage of revenue was from one-to-one services, scalable offers or speaking/training.

The sales data I review:

Total sales – How many individual sales / invoices / payments were made
Recurring revenue versus new sales – How many transactions were a result of monthly recurring revenue and how many transactions were from new sales
Repeat business versus new client – How many transactions were from repeat clients or new clients.
Conversion Rate – Conversion rate of sales calls and on sales pages.

The marketing data I review:

Website – Total volume of traffic to website, percentage of traffic via sources, top pages visited
Email – list growth, average open rate, average click-through rate
Social Media – Follower growth, engagement, most popular DM codes

The time data I review:

Total working hours – How many hours did I work across the month?
Time breakdown – How was my time spent between CEO, client, marketing and sales, finance and operations.
Days off – How many total days off did I have

This might feel like a lot and there are definitely some business owners who will spend their monthly CEO session just looking at the financial side of the business, but that only shows part of the picture. By looking at the finances, sales, marketing and time is what enables me to understand the fuller picture, which is vital when making decisions about how to spend my time and what to focus on moving forward.

Part Two: Reflect on the past month

Once I’ve reviewed the data it’s time to move onto the reflection section of my Monthly CEO session. This is where I will check in with how I have felt in the month. As a micro business owner business success isn’t going to be just about the numbers. It might be that you had a record-breaking revenue month, but that was because you did a launch that meant you worked every day across the month and now you have so much work to deliver over the next few months you’re stressed out.

In the reflection section of my monthly CEO session I will ask myself a number of questions including:

What have I achieved this month?
What have I enjoyed the most?
What did I not enjoy this month? What changes can I make moving forward?
What lessons do I want to remember going forward?

Asking these questions is a key for ensuring that I am growing my business on my terms. I don’t want revenue and profit to keep going up but I’m doing work I don’t like or working with clients I don’t like. By asking these questions I’m able each month to refine my business so I do more of what I enjoy and I remove or reduce what I don’t enjoy.

Part Three: Plan for the new month

The final part of my monthly CEO session is where I plan for the month ahead.

The first thing I do is pull out my annual goals and plan and asses whether I’m on track, behind or ahead. Then I’ll set my monthly priorities. I try to keep these to a minimum (but let’s be real that doesn’t always happen).

I’ll then have a look at my month as a whole and if it is one that is especially busy I’ll block out time for when I’ll be able to work on the priorities. If it isn’t an especially busy week then I’ll leave that for when I do my weekly plan.

Why I will never skip my monthly CEO session

You’ve now seen what I do in my monthly CEO session. I set aside 90 minutes for this session, but very often it is complete within an hour. However, even something that only takes an hour can be tempting to cancel on. But I never do. I know how important this session is to keep me moving towards my annual goals. As the Annual Planning Queen I’ve helps lots of business owners set business goals and I can tell you how few achieve them because they quickly become forgotten.

Having a monthly CEO session not only means I keep my annual goals top of mind all year long, but it also ensure that I am reviewing how the business is performing in relation to my goals, and I know what I need to be focusing on doing in my business to move forward. It’s all too easy in business to be busy doing the wrong things. My monthly CEO sessions means I focus on doing the right things.

Running your own monthly CEO session.

Hopefully you can see just how important a monthly CEO session is. If you aren’t already having a monthly CEO session and want to start here’s what you need to do.

1. Block out the time – Go into your diary and block out time every month for your CEO session. I usually try to do my session as close as I can to the 1st of the month.

2. Decide where you’ll record everything. Personally I use a spreadsheet for the review part and a powerpoint for the reflect part. You can decide to do it digitally or manually or a combination. The main this is you want to be recording the information in the same place month after month.

3. Choose what metrics you’ll monitor – You’ve seen what I currently monitor and the likelihood is some will work for you and some won’t. Looking into the key areas of finance, marketing and sales, team and time, but also ensure you tracking key metrics based on your goals.

You absolutely can do your monthly CEO session by yourself, but it’s also an easy thing to skip, or not to get the most out of when alone. That’s why I run monthly CEO sessions with all of my one-to-one mentoring clients, and monthly CEO sessions are a core component of On Track.

On Track is my strategic CEO support programme that is exclusive to business owners who have created an annual plan with me. It’s a combination of quarterly planning sessions, monthly CEO session and CEO resources to ensure the goals you set become a reality. To find out how you can work with me to create your annual plan click here.

CREATE A STRATEGIC PLAN TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS FOR THE NEXT YEAR – IN JUST ONE DAY!

I’m the Annual Planning Queen and I specialise in helping solo and micro service-based business owners plan for the year ahead.

Success in business is a result of having clear goals and a plan to achieve them and my annual planning day will help you to have both.

For all the information and to book a Strategy Day click here.

That’s it. You now know what happens inside my monthly CEO session and the process I used to keep my business moving towards my annual goals.

As a solo or micro business owner, you have limited time to be in CEO mode, but setting aside just one hour, once a month, can make a massive difference.

I’ve shared what I do inside of my monthly CEO session to give you an idea, and whilst I swear by the review, reflect and plan steps the reality is what you decided to monitor in the revenue section will be different depending on your business and your goals.

I hope you’ve found this blog post useful. If you have do let me know over on Instagram or LinkedIn.

And if you are serious about becoming a better CEO of your business so you can grow service-based business on your terms then I would love to help you.

You can find out more about my one-to-one mentoring here.

You can find out more about my Strategy Days here.