How to do small business planning… in spring!

I’m not going to do an end-of-year review and business plan in 2024. Instead, I am working on a spring clean, an exercise in seasonal renewal.

Ever since I’ve been running my own business, I’ve taken a holiday in December and done my annual review and planning exercise either before or after that holiday.

That’s because it seems this is the time I am supposed to be doing it – end of old year, start of new year, countless articles on the Internet looking forwards and backwards. In South Africa, December is also the long summer holiday period for schools and such like.

It seems everyone takes a breath, and then starts again.

But I am no longer sure I want to be in step with this way of doing things.

Why do we run and run, and get to the end of the year, exhausted, hot and beset by the chaos of Christmas (for those who celebrate and for those who can’t get away from everyone else celebrating) and think this is a good time to take a calm and judicial view of the year that has been? Why do we limp overfed, perhaps hungover and certainly broke into January and think that the plans we’ll make for the year are inspired and inspiring?

It’s all Janus’s fault

We do all this New Year madness in the southern hemisphere because that’s the cadence imposed on us by the northern hemisphere. And they do it because of the ancient Romans.

According to EarthSky, New Year ghastliness stems from an ancient Roman custom, the feast of the Roman god Janus – god of doorways and beginnings, depicted as having two faces, one looking into the past, and the other peering into future.

As the nameless author of the article points out, early January is a logical time for new beginnings as it falls at the same time as the mid-winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, when the short days start gradually to become longer.

Other cultures also mark the new year according to seasonal markers, says EarthSky. “The earliest recording of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, circa 2000 B.C. That celebration – and many other ancient celebrations of the new year following it – [happened] around the time of the vernal [or spring] equinox, around March 20.” The ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians favoured the autumnal equinox around September 20.

I’m with the Mesopotamians!

Equinoxes are natural breathing spaces

In the southern hemisphere the spring equinox, when days start getting longer than the nights, happens in September. And this particular equinox, I am changing things up.

I’ve spent several weeks engaged in my annual business review exercise. I’m working on a year that starts now, and ends in September 2025. The energy and light blooming all around me make this seem a natural time to pause, reflect and re-engage.

How my spring planning exercise worked

I’m outlining the process for those who might want to join me this spring. But I should say at the outset that my plan flows from months of emotional work and reflection – and all that is in the background of what I am about to describe.

Step 1 – It’s a good idea to have a journal going. I write, by hand, in a book, on paper, with a pen, most mornings of my life. And as part of that process I came to a set of fundamental questions about my business on which I based my spring planning process. Your questions will be different (mine are listed later in this post).

Step 2 – I did the obvious thing: I typed ”how to spring clean my business” into my search engine. A lot of results were of the “declutter your computer” variety but I found some that looked at the question more broadly.

Step 3 – I took the URLs from those articles and entered them into Google’s Notebook LM tool. I also added in an article by Jenny Gritters about running a business from a place of abundance. I then asked the AI tool this (rather long) question:

Please survey these four sources and synthesise all the ideas to come up with a step-by-step plan for a business review and planning exercise that considers these key questions:

1. Am I spending my days wisely? Am I doing enough work, or too little?

2. Why does it feel so often as if life passes me by in a blur of overthinking and inattention?

3. How much fun am I having?

4. Am I running from a place of scarcity or abundance?

5. Related: I often feel as though my work is temporary, something I am doing to fill time. As if I am pretending to run a business. That I am not important or well-known or influential, so my work is not important or influential. How can I change that mindset?

6. One of my primary aims this year was to find new clients – but I still haven’t made decent progress on that? What do I need to be doing differently? A new strategy? Better marketing?

Step 4: I took the answer that Notebook LM gave me, shortened it and tinkered with it, and made myself a workbook, using Canva. Then, I worked my way through my own document, usually for an hour or so in the morning.

That was phase one

This process was essentially the review of the previous year, but not as you might expect. There is a lot of “touchy-feely” thinking, and not a lot of business strategizing (that happens later, in phase two of this process). I have come to learn that being a sole trader means that your feelings and fears and hopes are an integral part of what you do every day.

My takeaways from the process: abundance mantras

The first phase of my planning process took about ten days. It seems odd to say that all the work led to a really short set of takeaways, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled. And the four-point list is deeply meaningful to me, so here it is:

ONE: I am bigger than I think I am

TWO: I can make a decent living by:

·        Being myself

·        Playing to my strengths (quiet power)

·        Doing the things I care about (meaningful editing and writing, coaching/mentoring)

THREE: I can learn to do marketing (or get help)

FOUR: My business is to be of service to people

Conclusion, for now

I went on to do a second phase of this process, which I’ll detail in a later post. For now, I am deeply grateful that I’m not going to have to do all this in December. Instead, I’ll do a small quarterly review and get on with the work of my seasonal business year.

GIVEAWAY

In the spirit of abundance, I’m offering a download of my workbook. Download it, play with it, make it yours. I don’t want your email address in exchange, or money, or anything. But if you feel so moved, email me your thoughts about the process? I’d love to know how it went.

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Main picture: Public sculpture in Grange Gardens, Lewes by John Skelton. By Jon Edgar, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

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