As 2024 draws to a close, does the prospect of conducting a year end review of your business leave you feeling overwhelmed? Many entrepreneurs rush through their December planning, missing out on valuable insights and growth opportunities. In this enlightening episode, I share my unique approach to year-end business reflection that blends strategic analysis with sacred practices.
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Show Notes | Transcript“Your business is still an extension of you and it deserves the care and respect that you show others, not only this time of year, but all year long.” – Gloria “Grace” Rand
Drawing from my own recent experiences, I guide you through a process that goes beyond mere number-crunching. We explore how to approach your business review with mindfulness and intention, treating it as a spiritual practice rather than a dreaded chore.
Discover how to:
- Set the stage for a mindful business review through grounding exercises and intention-setting
- Conduct a comprehensive assessment of your business, from client acquisition to social media engagement
- Celebrate your wins and learn from your setbacks without judgment
- Align your financial goals with your business vision for the coming year
Key insights include:
- The importance of acknowledging external factors that may have impacted your business performance
- How to set realistic financial targets while still dreaming big
- A powerful ritual for releasing outdated aspects of your business identity
- The value of expressing gratitude for both successes and challenges
I also share a personal anecdote about investing in a coaching program that didn’t deliver the expected ROI, demonstrating how to find value and growth opportunities even in disappointing experiences.
Whether you’re wrapping up a stellar year or facing some setbacks, this episode offers a compassionate and practical guide to year-end reflection. Tune in to learn how to honor your business journey, set aligned intentions for the future, and approach the new year with renewed clarity and purpose.
Resources:
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TRANSCRIPT
Your business is still an extension of you and it deserves the care and respect that you show others, not only this time of year, but all year long.
I am Gloria Grace Rand, founder of the L.O.V.E. Method and author of the number one amazon best seller Live. Love. Engage. – how to stop doubting yourself and start being yourself. In this podcast, we share practical advice from a spiritual perspective on how to live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically so you can create a life and business with more impact, influence and income. Welcome to Live. Love. Engage.
Namaste. Does your year end business review feel more like a dreaded chore. Oh. Than a sacred opportunity? Well, many entrepreneurs kind of rush through their December planning missing the chance for some really deep reflection and aligned growth. And so today I’m going to be sharing myself signature approach to year end business reflection that combines strategic review with some sacred practice. But first, I do want to welcome you if you are new to Live Love Engage. I am Gloria Grace and I help female entrepreneurs and lightworkers attract ideal clients by going beyond traditional search engine optimization techniques to embrace my definition of SEO, which stands for spiritually engaging others. And it’s about really getting into alignment, which is kind of what we’re going to talk about a little bit here today. So I’ve been doing my own reflection of business over the last couple last, last week or two, I guess, reviewing what’s gone well and, you know, what needs to be addressed in 2025 and like being more intentional about my marketing, for instance, and paying closer attention to analytics. I’m, you know, numbers are, numbers are, are fun, but they’re not always something that I enjoy to do. Although it’s very important. You know, it’s, that’s the thing. It’s like to be a business owner, you’ve got to know your numbers. They drill this into you and, and it’s important. And at the same time, you know, sometimes it can really, it really can feel like a chore to do that, especially this time of year because for those of you watching on YouTube, you will not that. I have my little, I’ve got a little Christmas tree back there that’s a, it’s a, it’s a treasured family heirloom, I guess I could call it now because it was something that my mom bought years ago, probably 25 years ago by now, maybe even 30, and that I’ve been keeping around. And it’s, it’s used to have a different stand, but that broke. So now my, I created a thing. I have this old little Santa Claus mug and I put some of that floral foam in there and stuck it in there so I could still use it. And I’m also, I’m in Florida and it’s been a little chilly the last couple of mornings. It’s been only in the 40s, so I, I also have my little Christmas mug. Peace on earth, goodwill toward women. And so I’m sipping a cup of tea while we, while we chat today. So. All right, enough of that. Let me get to it. We got to get to it. So Reviewing. So what I encourage you to do is to take some time, especially I would say in this next week before it things get really too hectic with holiday celebrations, holiday parties and, you know, what, not, or, you know, wrapping presents and maybe you’re going to be shipping them, which I still have to do myself. If you still do Christmas cards, you know, maybe you’re doing that, whatever. But your business is still an extension of you and it deserves the care and respect that you show others, not only this time of year, but all year long. So before you dive into doing this financial review, what I encourage you to do is to take a moment, you know, get grounded a little bit and just take a few deep breaths. Because depending on how your year went, you know, let’s hope that it was a really good year. But, you know, maybe there were some areas that didn’t quite go as you had planned. But it’s still important to just. Again, we want to treat this as, treat your business as, as this really spiritual part of you, because it is, it’s. You are, you are a divine spirit living in this human shell and think of your business that way, too. And so set an intention to be really mindful and reflecting about the state of your business before you dive in. Because I think when you can kind of set that stage and really be calm, then it’s just going to help you go through things so much better. Because, let’s face it, there’s a lot of things to take a look at. Just, here’s just a few.
You know, you want to maybe review how many, how many new clients you had this year. You want to look at revenue milestones. You know, ideally you set some goals for yourself at the beginning of the year and so see how you were doing or at least maybe just in this last quarter to see how you are, reflect on, you know, maybe projects that you completed this year, if you’ve made any improvements and your productivity, time management, things like that. Go over testimonials. Did you receive some good testimonials and what have you done with those? I might have to do. I should maybe do an episode about that in the new year or maybe still even this month, possibly on testimonials, you know, looking at social media engagement. Now, this is, this is something that I’ve been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn this year, putting a lot of effort in that. And that’s something that I kind of started off the beginning of the year being very diligent about keeping track of things. And then I don’t know, somewhere over the summer, I kind of lost track, so I got to get back on that. And I’ve been putting some processes in place using some Excel spreadsheets and things to track that if you have any product launches that you did this year and, or maybe some areas for. Of cost, cost saving. So the main thing is that as you’re going through this, if you manage to hit your targets, shall we say, and you really did, or maybe even exceeded your expectations that you had celebrate, dance around your office, put on some music and just go, yay, I did it. That is a wonderful way to be able to. Then, you know, again, you’re lifting your vibration so that you can carry that enthusiasm forward into the new year. And on the other hand, if there is ever the, you know, there may be some areas that you didn’t quite feel as happy about and that you would like to do better on in this coming year. So what I encourage you to do is to not get down on yourself about that, because you’re only human. You did the best you could at the time that you were going through that. And in fact, that might even be something for you to think about were there extraneous situations going on in your life at the time, perhaps here in Florida? Well, and actually in a lot of across the Southeast, we’ve had a couple of hurricanes that have really done a number on people’s livelihoods, their personal lives, as well as their businesses. And there’s all sorts of other things that, you know, happen other, you know, it could be something, maybe you had a family member get ill and you had to become a caregiver. There’s lots of different things that can come up and they can, you know, perhaps keep you from accomplishing exactly what you had intended to accomplish in a particular time period during the past year. So give yourself the grace to look at that and say, okay, yeah, you know, that happened and I’m not thrilled about it and I’ve moved forward. And that’s the thing, is that if you can end the year still in business. Hey, hey, hey. You’re, you’re, you accomplished something right there. If you are still in business, that is fantastic. Because here’s the thing. We can always improve. I, I will, I will be real with you right now that I, I know I haven’t finished looking at all of my financials, but I know just in reflecting on how this year has been is that it was not as wonderful as I had anticipated it to be. And in fact, I even invested in a very expensive coaching program this year that didn’t quite deliver the ROI that I had expected or that was promised, frankly. Now part of that was on me. So I didn’t take advantage of all the training that it offered. So, you know, and, and I saw yesterday that was kind of kicked out of the, kicked out of the school community that I was in. So, you know, and I’d been kind of kept putting off going back in and reviewing some of this stuff and I’m like, ah, you know, and however, what I decided to do though was really look back on what did I get out of this program. And actually one of the things that it encouraged me to do led to a new client. So did I totally make back the money? Not yet, not yet. And I’m setting an intention for 2025 that I will generate the income to replace what I invested in this. And it’s because again, and I think it is part of being in that program is it finally got me off the ground to launch a new program, a brand new program that I’ve been doing. So it’s been, we’ve, we’re in week two right now of this 30 day align to shine Academy. And I’ve been, it’s, it’s been wonderful and I’m like so thrilled that the people have been participating and it’s been great. And so I’m going to be doing this again probably once a quarter, you know, in 2025. And I know that each time I do it it’s going to get better and then I will attract more people to it and I will, like I say, I’ll get on that path to be able to making my investment back.
So set your financial intentions for the year as well is what I would encourage you to do. And you want to make them realistic. And this is something that I’m going to do as well. I’m going to kind of look at, you know, what I did like this quarter and in pricing this program and things like that, trying to decide what I want to do and I’m going to be setting those goals. So, you know, it could be perhaps you might want to do like set a goal of like a 10% increase in revenues from like this quarter, let’s say, for the next quarter. So you want to have it so that it’s a little bit of a stretch, but you don’t want to necessarily have it be too big a stretch. You don’t want to say that. Okay, let’s say you had $5,000 in revenues this past quarter and now you want to say in the first quarter, I’m going to do $50,000. You need to look at. Is that really realistic? Perhaps you might want to try doubling it, perhaps, or maybe just go to $7,500 in revenue. This might be a good goal for the end of the first quarter instead. And I will also tell you, though, while you’re doing those practical targets that you’re setting, it’s also good, and I’ve learned this somewhere from some coach over the years, to have a big, hairy, audacious goal. So dream big. So that could be $50,000 or $100,000 or a million dollars could be your big, hairy, audacious goal. And you do want to have that because you want to have a. Have a nice big goal that you can strive for so that as you’re hitting these other incremental ones on the way, you’ve still got that lovely thing in your mind to be able to get to. Because let’s face it, if you don’t dream big, then you’re never going to get there. So you are worthy of all of the wonderful things that you want. And so why not let’s, you know, create a wonderful, you know, there’s all sorts of, like, you know, a lot of this time of year is, you know, you start thinking, or in January, you start coming up with, like, vision boards of what you want your business to be like. And so, you know, you might want to think about doing that as well. They’re really great. I love that. I still remember years ago, I was at some program and they said, write down three things that you want to accomplish and like, I don’t know, the next year or two years or something. I was like, okay, so I wrote it down, put it away like two years later, maybe a year later or something. I was going through things in my office and I came across it and I went, huh, did that, did that, did that. Cool. So it does pay to write stuff down. So definitely, you know, taking some time to do that. Now, one of the things that may also have come up for you this year and which, which often does, and in fact, I’m, again, this is something that I’m going to be doing as well, is that you, you may have undergone some, you know, maybe some personal growth, some spiritual growth, some business growth, frankly, and you realize that you were going in this direction and now you’re going to the left, and now maybe you want to go to the right because you realize that perhaps this is. These are the people. Let’s say perhaps that you want to be able to attract to your business. You realize that, you know, things weren’t quite aligned over here, and I’m going to go focus this way. But my website doesn’t really reflect that. My brand doesn’t really reflect that, and I’m going to have to change things up. And I will tell you,
I’ve been kind of slowly going through that process myself this year and I. And I’ve been kind of making incremental changes to my website, but it really needs a whole new look because it, it still was geared more for when I was really, most of my business was doing copywriting. And now it’s more of this coaching and healing focus. You know, that I want that to be like 80% of the business and then 20% of the copywriting. So it needs an upgrade. So thankfully, I’ve got a wonderful daughter who is a web designer, and so I’m going to have to be getting on the horn with her to have her help me out. But if you are in this process and you’re, you’re thinking that perhaps it is time for a change, what I would encourage you to do is to pay honor to where you’ve been, pay honor to that business identity that you have had up until now, and do a ceremony to release it because you want to be able to kind of clear that out, make space for something new. And I think I’m going to be doing this as well because I, I found this and I, unfortunately, I can’t give credit where credit is due. I’m borrowing this from someone that I found on the Internet and I really appreciate this and I think it’s really great. And so I’m going to share it with you because I think it’s a wonderful thing to do. So here’s what you can do. You can, you know, choose a nice, quiet, comfortable place. You might want to, you know, possibly cleanse the area. You know, if you do Burning Sage, I do that. I love it. Or just light a candle. And then you want to set an intention and say something like, I am ready to release the outdated aspects of my business identity that no longer serve my company’s vision and growth. And then you might want to do then is to then also write that down as well on a piece of paper and list all of the outdated, perhaps business practices and beliefs or identities that you want to release and be specific and honest with yourself. So this might take a few minutes. You know, don’t rush this process and then really reflect on it. Take a look at each item that you wrote down and acknowledge is past role, acknowledge that it got me, got you where you are today, and thank it. That’s not in my notes, but I’m going to say thank it, express gratitude for that, that identity that, that got you where you are now because it did serve you most likely in some way. So appreciate it and then think about, you know, again, why it’s time to let it go and reflect on that. And now you’ve got a. We want to do the releasement ceremony. So there’s kind of two ways, a couple ways to go about this. One is you can maybe go outside, preferably and safely burn the paper and put it in a little container or something that’s won’t burn. Also, like I’ve used a metal bucket before when I’ve. When I’ve done releasement ceremonies like that. And then just, you know, visualize that smoke just kind of carrying away the old identity. And you could also, of course, just rip up the piece of paper, lots of little pieces, as much as you can, and just throw that away as well. If you’re near water, you might want to, if you’ve got, I don’t know where you can get this, but get some sort of dissolving paper and let it dissolve in the water. That could be a good way to do it as well. And then close that ritual with an affirmation like, I joyfully and willingly release these outdated aspects of my business identity and open myself to new opportunities and growth. And then again, express some more gratitude for the experience and this opportunity you have to evolve your business, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. So other things you might want to consider doing at the end of the year, as you are going through this process of reviewing, reviewing your financials and things is to also, you might want to just spend some time journaling about it. And in fact, that might even something good now that I’m thinking about, you might want to even journal first before you even look at the numbers, maybe just journal first and reflect on everything that’s happened over, you know, try to, try to think back on what were some of the highs, especially that you experienced over this last year, and again, you know, really celebrate that and, you know, maybe think of areas that you’ve grown, whether not even necessarily as a business owner, but maybe as a person. And again, you know, express gratitude and just appreciate that, that you have, you have done this and also offer gratitude for the things that didn’t work out the way you planned. And I know that sounds a little counterintuitive. If you can express gratitude for things that went wrong, it still is really a great practice for helping you to, again, just kind of keep your vibration up and appreciate that perhaps the timing wasn’t right for it or that it taught you a lesson about something. And that’s often, you know, when, when things happen that, you know, we don’t plan or, you know, it can be really sometimes challenging in the moment to appreciate what’s going on. And if you can still just say, okay, I don’t know why this happened. It’s, it’s. I’m not thrilled about it and I’m just going to surrender and let it go and just trust that there’s a higher purpose going on here. And even though I don’t understand what it is right now, I’m going to trust that it’s all in my highest good. And that’s, that’s all we, we really can do.
So you might want to spend some time in meditation as well. And I’ve got a really great gweat, great, great tool for that. It is a short, little light language meditation that I’ve put together that you can actually get for free on my website. You go to gloriarand.com freemeditation I know, not the greatest call to action, but there you go. I’ll have it in the show notes anyway. And it’s just, it’s just about, I don’t know, five or six minutes of light language to listen to and just absorb. And what it will be also good for is to. What I would encourage you to do is when you listen is to set an intention that it’s going to help you gain some clarity perhaps about where you want to go in 2025. And so I would encourage you to take advantage of that. And most of all, I would just encourage you to again, just take some time right now and just, just reflect on where you’ve been this year. And like I said, you know, celebrate the highs, release the lows and say, okay, let’s see where we can improve next year. Because as long as you’re growing, you know, that’s, that’s the important thing. And we can always learn new things to do. I know I am learning and I am always learning and I love to learn. It’s, it’s what keeps me going. And I do know I’m. I’m actually going to put one other plug in as well, is that if. How shall I say this, One of the things that has really been helping me lately to be more, more grounded and more frankly, business focused has been all of the personal work I’ve been doing on myself, healing work that I’ve been doing, which has been a lot with using light language and it’s, I’ve been, I use it not only with clients, but I also use it for myself. And I’ve had some really great healing sessions that I feel has really opened me up to being a better business owner. And that’s, that’s really one of my big intentions for 2025 is just to be able to be a better business owner so that I can serve more people because I really believe that I’ve been given some wonderful skills and tools that are meant to be shared with a bunch of people. So, so that’s my intention for 2025 is to be able to really help more people. And if you want to talk to me about that, I would love to chat with you about this and any of this. So you can always go to engage with gloria.com and, and schedule a call with me and let’s, let’s have a chat. I would love to do that. You can also reach out to me on social media. You know, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m here on YouTube, I’m on Facebook. So just look for Gloria Grace, Rand actually and, and you’ll, you’ll find me. So I think that’s going to do it. I think that’s going to wrap it up for today. So I wish all of you a wonderful week months ahead, depending on when you’re listening to this or watching the replay or watching it brand new on YouTube in fact as well. So for those of you watching on social media too, yeah, I just wish, wish you much joy and success and yeah, joy and success for the rest of this year and the coming year. And also one quick little thing is don’t feel like you necessarily have to stop promoting your business this month. You might want to still keep it out there, but you can slow down a little bit and enjoy the season because this time of year comes once a year, so you want to be able to enjoy it as well. So I’m, I’ve made some plans. I’m doing some different things, especially next week, some fun things and I’m looking forward to that. So, yeah. So thank you again for watching, for listening. I hope that you are subscribed. If you’re not already subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, subscribe on YouTube. And until next time, I encourage you as always, to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
