If I asked you right now, “Is your revenue goal high enough to pay yourself…
On Wednesday 26th November 2025, I hosted my third Visionary CEO Planning Day LIVE. As the Annual Planning Queen and someone who loves going to in-person events, I had for a number of years wanted to run an in-person, intimate group version of my one-to-one annual planning Strategy Days, where I would be able to help a small group of business owners create a plan for the year ahead. In 2024, I finally made that ambition come to life, and I hosted my first Visionary CEO Planning Day (you can check out my review of that day and experience here). In this blog post, I share my reflections of running the 2026 Visionary CEO Planning Day LIVE.
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.
2026 VISIONARY CEO PLANNING DAY EVENT: REFLECTIONS AND INSIGHT
Planning continues to increase confidence around achieving goals
When attendees first set their goals, I’ll ask them to rate their confidence in achieving their goal on a scale of 1 to 10. And then at the end of the day, once they’ve got a plan in place, I’ll ask them again to rate their confidence in achieving their goals on a scale of 1 to 10.
At the first Visionary CEO Planning Day LIVE, people’s confidence increased by 2.2. At this event, people’s confidence increased by 2.6. Their goals hadn’t changed, and in most circumstances, they were now much more realistic about the work it would take to achieve their goal. But their confidence still went up.
I know it seems counterintuitive if you’ve never created an annual plan before, but there is no denying that creating an annual plan increases your confidence in achieving your annual goals. If you have a goal and no plan, you have no idea about what you’ll need to do to make that goal come true. And whilst many business owners feel as if seeing everything they need to do will make things more daunting, it rarely does. Especially when you are looking across a year and can see that you’ve got work to do, but it feels manageable. This means you have confidence in your ability to do those activities and therefore achieve your goals.
| Want to have more confidence around achieving your 2026 goals? You need a plan and I’ll help you create it at the virtual 2026 Visionary CEO Planning Day.
There is no denying that if you want more confidence in achieving your goals you need a plan. Which is why I am running a virtual 2026 Visionary CEO Planning Day on Monday 12th January 2026. And if you can’t make the whole day I’m actually making it a planning WEEK so that as many business owners as possible get their planned created. My annual planning process works. I have no doubt if you commit to going through all the steps you’ll have more confidence about achieving your goals, and you’ll be able to do it in a way that doesn’t mean you are sacrificing your life. |
Extending the day was a positive change
For the first two Visionary CEO Planning Days, I ran the day from 10am – 2pm. Honestly, this was because of wanting to cater to the Nottingham business owners I knew and the majority of them were Mums, so creating the day so they could do the drop off and pick up made sense. However, what surprised me from the first two Visionary CEO Planning Days was that people travelled. I ran the event in Nottingham, but had people travel in from Newark, Leicester and Milton Keynes. Knowing that people were willing to travel, I decided this year to make it a full day and run from 10am to 4pm. This is still shorter than my one-to-one Strategy Days (which run 10am – 5pm GMT/BST/ET), but I thought the two extra hours would help me to go into certain aspects of my annual planning framework deeper, which would help the business owners to create better plans.
When planning the day, the extra 2 hours meant I was able to go deeper into the core strategy aspects – offer suite, pricing, marketing, sales, operations. However, it was surprising how quickly that extra 2 hours disappeared on the day. The longer format definitely made the day feel less rushed and enabled attendees to plan in more details.
The experience of planning with me is great – and my marketing needs to communicate that better
For this event, 4 people bought tickets and ALL of those people had planned with me before. 3 had been to a 2025 Visionary CEO Planning Day LIVE and 2 had been to online quarterly planning workshops. Something I truly believe is that you can have a poor service, but great marketing and someone will buy from you once. But for someone to buy from you multiple times, that means the service you deliver is actually good.
The fact everyone had planned with me before and 3 had created an annual plan with me (which is the whole point of the Visionary CEO Planning Days) got me thinking a lot about the experience I delivered and my marketing. Because those who plan with me come back to me. This is particularly interesting when you could argue that they already know my framework and so could easily decide to work through it by themselves. However, the fact they still want to come back and work with me shows the value I bring to the annual planning process. So now my challenge is to improve my marketing so those who haven’t planned realise how powerful the experience is and book.
| Not all annual planning processes are equal. When you plan with me you’ll build a plan for your business that takes into consideration the lifestyle you want AND that feels achievable.
My annual planning process is created specifically for solopreneurs and micro business owners, and it is designed to help ensure you are building a business that enables you live your best life. That means you’ll consider what your business needs to provide in terms of finances, flexibility and freedom so you can life your best life. And the way I bring everything together ensures that your plan feels achievable without sacrificing your life. So what are you waiting for come and plan with me.
You can either: Plan with me one-to-one by booking a Strategy Day Or |
Understand the money model of your event
One of the reasons it took me a number of years between saying “I want to run my own events” and actually running an event is because I’m a business owner who stays on top of my figures. I focus on creating profitable offers and the majority of events are loss leaders.
The finances behind events fascinate me (and that isn’t surprising since I spent over a decade selling tickets in the live entertainment and performing arts industry). Some event make their money from ticket sales, some make it from sponsorships and some make a loss in the event, but offset it from the money they make off the back of sales at the event.
As someone who loves to deliver a wonderful training, workshop or talk, I’m all about delivering a great experience there and then. I don’t want to gatekeep. I don’t want to hold back the most important thing, so someone has to buy something else from me. So for the first two events, I focused on trying to make the event itself profitable.
Yes, I did share how people could work with me further, but it wasn’t a hard sales pitch and I wouldn’t have included those sales in the event finances.
Whereas this year, I was more intentional about using the event to drive further sales. The costs of the event had gone up and I knew I wouldn’t make a profit from ticket sales alone. So I created a new offer specifically for attendees, and it was closely aligned to the event. But it was an extra, an addition, a next step. It didn’t require me to hold back anything during the day, and everyone who attended still got.
So if you are reading this as an event organiser or someone who wants to host events in the future, understanding your money model is so important.
That’s it. You know now my reflections and insights from my 2026 Visionary CEO Planning Day LIVE.
I thoroughly enjoyed delivering the 2026 Visionary CEO Planning Day LIVE and now with the mission of helping over 1,000 business owners create an annual plan in 2026 there is no doubt that I’ll be running more one-to-one Strategy Days and group CEO Planning Days.
To find out more and book a one-to-one Strategy Day click here.
And if you are reading this at the end of December 2025, beginning of January 2026 there is still time to plan with me.
On Monday 12th January, I’ll be running a virtual 2026 Visionary CEO Planning Day. You’ll get all of the annual planning goodness from the live event without having the leave the comfort of your home, office or wherever you decide to tune in.
For the info and to grab your ticket click here.
| Plan for your best year yet – Get a personalised strategy for the next 12 months.
My Strategy Days are perfect for business owners who are short on time, but want to plan for business growth. I’ll guide you through my annual planning process and look at your business growth strategy, offer suite, pricing and marketing so you can experience more income, impact and freedom over the upcoming 12 months. |
Related Posts
