Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about strategically planning for success in 2024, how to make it less painful and more pleasurable while keeping a focus on your productive plan for your brand and business in 2024. 

We’ll be covering the key points of how we annually plan ourselves and with our global clientele that run service-based and product-based businesses. We focus on energetics, strategy, mission, vision, and possibility in this episode. Prepare for a perspective shift to harmonize the masculine and the feminine in your annual planning. 

Why we marry energetics and strategy together during annual planning

I’ve always been an energetics girlie. Most of the time our clients ask why I’m not a mindset coach or a lifecoach. There isn’t any way I could ever run a business without my intuition and I certainly couldn’t communicate with female founders around the globe about their businesses, lives, and purposes on this earth if I didn’t lean into energy, mindset, and the subconscious patterns that influence them to make choices or not for the better.

Therefore, every day we have the opportunity to learn, shift, evolve, and expand with every teensy experience we have or major challenge we endure. 

Marrying this to the power of a strategic plan is my superpower. Our annual plan that we’ll be providing to you at the end of this episode as just a beautiful gift to you for listening to this podcast, leaving a review, and sharing it with your business friends is meant to help you rewire how you prepare for your golden era of business, life, and success. 

When you know what’s possible on paper, or through the proof of concept from other folks sharing their success stories and their joy on the other side of their intentional work, that’s when your brain starts to go haywire.

As in, all of your childhood experiences might rush in subconsciously, you might start considering that you’re not made for this work, or maybe you rush through it so fast that you miss the lessons even though you achieved the result you desired but made it to the proverbial finish line breath-less, friend-less, and peace-less.

There’s a book I must suggest you read before the end of 2023 and it’s called “It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle” by Mark Wolynn. 

I want you to annual plan with your highest capability, with a perspective that’s energetically as clean as you can get and as harmonious as you can be. When we arrive with intentional energy we can plan with intentional energy.

The Difference Between Annual Planning And Strategic Planning

The long and short of it: an annual plan details goals and objectives over a 12-month period that connects to the overarching strategic plan for the business over (usually) a 3-10 year period. 

Both are roadmaps that lead to the destination set in the strategic plan. So, though we’re going to provide you with our annual planning checklist, what you’ll need in order to finish that checklist is an overarching strategic plan that acts as your compass to the destination you’re seeking to take the business to.

Why it’s relevant and it always will be, even if the plan shifts and changes

This is always my favorite question and thought that comes up in client conversations.

Some folks literally love to plan; they get high off of the plan and we just go back and forth with possibility, opportunity, gaps, solutions for the gaps, and overall destination EXCITEMENT for what’s to come the following year.

And some folks are like “Ash, what’s the point of this? It’s all going to change, I just know it, and I feel like a plan hinders our ability to pivot.”

I’d be curious to know which camp you sit in; feel free to leave us a voicemail here!

It’s relevant because regardless IF the plan shifts and changes – it will in some ways, especially with how fast consumer behavior changes even if you are a timeless brand that focuses little on trends and much on timelessness – you’ll still have a reference point for retroactive reviewal of the previous year, major gaps that need to be evaluated regardless if their complete in March or December of that year, and an overall aerial view to the health of the brand in comparison to the strategic plan.

My background is in corporate, higher education, startups, retail management, hospitality, and events… without a plan, we were lost. 

You might be a one person show or a five person show or a 30-100+ person team right now and the thing that I wish every organization could do for their team members is plan regardless if it shifts and changes a bit. That’s the nature of a startup, first off, but second off, having this annual plan (and the strategic plan that we’re assuming you have) is a roadmap that everyone can refer to instead of referring to you as the CEO or the leadership team alongside you in the business. 

Give folks the opportunity to see more of the plan, let them align with the vision, give them a compass to coordinate their energy with, and watch the exploration of your brand’s ability to move society forward actually move forward.

Our customized annual planning process 

When I firsted started The Cheetah Company I loosely planned. We were a startup, and still are as we turn the corner to our fourth year in business and this being my third business in my life, and annual planning looked like:

• Build
• Invite
• Serve
• Repeat

Now, annual planning begins for me in summer – usually to simply review our data, match that to the current annual year’s plan and the strategic plan of the company as a whole, and it becomes a whole intuitive, energetic session with me, myself, and I.

The team and I start annual planning in October of each year, sometimes the end of September as we did this year. 

Sometimes that looks like 1-2 long meetings after we’ve all completed the same document and other times – as it does this year and with how much we’re working on restructuring the company together, it looks a bit different.

This year looks like private planning sessions with our documentation, several phased meetings for discussion, integration with our project management system to begin the work, and winter will be a head’s down time for all of us to prepare for 2024 and how much is changing. Excited to share more of the details when we’re ready, but if you’d like a more private look into the process connect with us on social and our email list. 

Let’s get into the details of annual planning; this is something we usually do with our private consulting clients and so many of our clients have commented on the process over the years and raved about it. The big piece of this that’s missing that we are keeping to ourselves and for our clients exclusive access is strategic planning; you can have an annual plan in general, but without connecting it to a strategic plan… sometimes we’re not reaching the overarching vision and instead staying in the same space of doing things the same way.

If you’d like support to strategically plan 2024, inquire below for an intensive or private consulting. 

Our Annual Plan Breakdown:

• Profit simulation and offering structure
• Word of the year per team member
• Questions for the team specifically:
  • Where do you see the company going next year and what do you believe are a part of our next steps?
  • Where do you believe we can deepen our vision and mission?
  • What is the mission and the vision of this company?
  • What is your soul’s calling and why are you on this earth? 
  • Every community member, membership member, and client is important. When we say “yes” to them and vice versa, we enter into an energetic agreement to support them. How can we honor them, help them more, and do this better?
• Retroactive reviewal for the team, per team member:
  • Per quarter and initiative:
    • What felt good?
    • What didn’t?
    • What are my roadblocks?
    • Where am I feeling drained in my role? In life?
    • What’s been lighting me up in my role?
  • CEO and others review all data:
    • Marketing
    • Sales 
    • Financials
    • Quarterly Reviews
• Top 3 business goals
• Top 3 team goals
• Top 3 focuses for founder & CEO
• Top 3 focuses for holistic harmony
• Top 3 focuses per team member
• Main focuses to serve our community more
• Month-by-month breakdown of all that will happen per quarter
  • Getting launches on deck, new initiatives, experiential offerings, maintenance and input (versus output), vacations, etc. 

Resources:

Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.

Bio:

Ashleigh Henry has been in marketing, sales, and leadership positions for the last decade and it was exhilarating for Ashleigh to climb the retail, corporate, higher education, and start-up ladder holding positions such as Marketing Strategist, Copywriter, Social Media Strategist, Manager, Editor, Co-Editor…until it wasn’t. Alongside her degree, Ashleigh decided to bring all of her experience into the freelancing world until it became clear that she didn’t just want to pay the bills – she wanted to create a company that was foundationally built on cheetah print, legacy-minded marketing, and sexy sales structures that could stand the test of trend and time. The Cheetah Company, founded by Ashleigh, does this for female entrepreneurs through their education, coaching, and consulting services. Learn more about Ashleigh here.