How to do a 2025 Business Plan & Audit

It’s always a good time to get your business plan straight. As I write this it’s the end of the year and it’s now an especially great time to do so! Walk right on into the new year with the confidence that you’ve done the work to set the foundation on a successful 2025.

Here are the steps I’m taking and suggest you do, too:

Review Your Business – The Audit

If you have a year of business under your belt then you have data and experience to look back on and work out.

Looking back isn’t great as a regular practice but as an occasional strategy it’s a great way to spot things that may not be working to stop, things that are working to improve, things to add, etc.

What kinds of things can you audit in an online business? Here are my suggestions:

• Important Business Information such as hosting, domains owned, software, WordPress plugins, etc.
• Education and Professional Development so you know what you’ve bought and whether you’ve done the work to get the ROI on those purchases.
• Sales and Marketing that moves the needle such as what offers you sell, what you have planned for the new year, ads, affiliate team, etc.
• Business Expenses such as hosting, memberships, software and ongoing payments. Look at what you can reduce, cut, keep or pay for annually to save money.
• Team and Services Management for any people you hire or services you use to grow or maintain your business.

Plan Your Offer Marketing

Knowing what you intend to sell and how you intend to sell it at least for Q1 is going to allow you to hit the ground running when January hits.

It seems like every month of the year we say “where did the month go?” so you don’t want to fall into that in January.

Many people will use the time between Christmas and New Years to get things in order, so you may want to do that as well if you haven’t been on top of it yet.

I use a sticky note calendar for my offer marketing that looks like this:

Get Your Finances In Order

Could 2025 be the year you finally have all your tax information ready to go when the time rolls around? YES – it could be! When you get your finances in order at the beginning of the year and follow the system all year long.

By doing this you are showing yourself (and the universe if you believe in that sorta thing) that you are SERIOUS about having more money come to you.

I have a spreadsheet I’ve created over 20 years that I use to track all my income, all my expenses, my monthly income goal and my profit margin for the month/year. The spreadsheet also sorts all my expenses into the categories for tax reporting so I can just pull them out easily come tax time!

Create a Budget

Are you really going to just buy everything that comes your way in 2025 or are you going to create a budget that makes sense?

Another way to do this is NEVER buy anything that you don’t plan to fully earn back an ROI (Return on Investment) from. That way you can use the money you make off one purchase to fund the next purchase or boost your purchase budget.

So many people fall victim to the idea that they can buy their way into success. They think success is in the next coach or the next course and they keep searching for “the one”.

Please don’t do that!

“The one” is you. You are the only person who’s going to turn your business into a success. Courses and coaches and products are absolutely resources and helpful along the way – I recommend them! Just don’t come to rely on the idea that you can keep buying until you eventually get all the money back – MAKE the money back with clear intention action or don’t buy it.

I personally have a business budget spreadsheet that I review at least once a year to give myself a goal spending max. I also ALWAYS look at any purchase and decide if I can use it immediately to get an ROI. If not, I pass.

Project Your Future Income

If I want to make $20k this month I don’t just sit back and hope for it. I project it. I create a path to success by looking at my offers and determining how many of those offers I need to sell to make it to the goal income.

Then I work backwards to see if I can make that happen. Sometimes the price of the offer is not enough with the amount of traffic I could send to the salespage – so I either need to revise the income goal, the offer or the pricing so that I CAN reach the goal.

Monitor Your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

What are the metrics that move your business?

I’ve been having so many discussions on this with my peers as the year ends. We are talking about how to know which metrics to choose, how to keep from feeling overwhelming when looking to collect data and how to use that data to grow our businesses.

If this is all new to you then keep it simple!

I remember in my very, very early years and I was a burned out virtual assistant who went for a job interview at a bookkeeping software company. One of the first questions they asked me about my business was “what metrics do you track?”. I knew SO LITTLE about the idea of tracking data that I replied “Metrics?”… I didn’t even know what they meant!

But… you learn and you grow. That’s what we do in business.

My important metrics for the next three months are:

• Salespage Views – because the more views the more sales.
• Subscribers – because the more subscribers the more views.

Of course I’ll be using a spreadsheet to track this and also look at the leading indicators (the actions that make them happen).

That’s it. I’ll be focusing on these two for at least three months, maybe more. My coaching clients would think this looks familiar because I tell them to grow their list, make more offers and check their views very, very often!

I have a spreadsheet that tracks the “lead indicators” and “lag indicators”. The “lag” are the results – for example in my case the salespage views. The “lead” are the actions you take to get results – for example in this case it could be writing blog posts just like this one that have an ad in them for my templates!

Tracking your lead and lag indicators keep you focused on the actions that lead to the results and that’s a powerful way to run your business.

Keep Accountable

I’ve thrown a lot at you!

The truth is business IS a lot. It’s not easy. It’s not free money. And it sure as heck is not set it and forget it.

So to get things done I find it absolutely ESSENTIAL to have accountability. I have quite a few options for accountability help because in my opinion it is imperative!

Now there may be a rare few people who just do the work because the work needs doing.

For the rest of us it’s REALLY helpful to have someone checking in on us.

I offer my Group Accountability Challenge every single month. It’s a monthly fee of only $10 (or you can join just one time) and it’s so incredibly powerful.

I’ve also created an Accountability Planner that you can use along with an accountability coach, partner or the group challenge – just to seal the deal!

Where to Start Planning Your Year

If everything above looks and feels like too much to try to do at once, that’s because it probably is!

The business systems I’ve listed above have taken me YEARS (in some cases move than 20) to put together and get used to using.

The good news is you don’t have to feel overwhelmed or like you need to create them all yourself. Pick the one thing that you need the most and start there.

I’ve created a full 2025 Planning Business Audit Templates package that you can use to jump right in. Do the thing you need first, then move to the next without having to create your own spreadsheets and planners. I’ve got you covered! See the details below: