All right,

beautiful people.

You have asked, Emma,

what is your planning

process for a new year?

Great question.

I don't think you'd

like my answer though,

but I'm going to share

it with you anyway.

I find planning boring.

Do you, anyone?

Hands up.

A little bit boring.

It's like, ugh.

Yes, you do.

Without a plan, it's

just a hope and a dream.

You've got to have a

plan, but you've also

got to keep it flexible.

Now, how I start my

planning, well, the

month I start my

planning is in July.

Oh, I know you're like,

Emma, that's so early.

I know it kind

of sucks for us.

Basically, we

run a program.

You've heard me talk

about it before.

It's called thriving women.

when we go to sell

that program, we start

selling that program.

We launched that program

in September and we have to

have all the bits figured

out in the calendar because

people want details.

Don't they?

If you're going to buy a

program, you want to know

when it's going to run,

what's going to happen,

et cetera, et cetera.

That means the Emma

McQueen planning

cycle starts in July.

Sometimes it starts in

August, but we have to

make sure that we do that.

So there's enough

space for other things

when they pop up.

So the first thing I do

is I dive into the data.

I take a look

at the service.

And it's a combination

of all the resources that

we have offered across

the course of the year.

And I list all of those.

I probably take a

couple of days to do

this, by the way, it's

a meeting with myself.

I take myself off and

I have a meeting with

myself and I print out

all the data or the data

is all in my fingertips.

I look at zero.

I look at our email list.

I look at all the things

I look at my gut instinct.

I look at the

feedback that we get.

I kind of have a few

different data points here.

The very first question

I ask myself though

is, has this service or

offering given me joy?

or has it stolen my joy?

because if I don't love

doing it, the chances are

I don't give my clients the

best possible experience.

And if something

is stealing my joy,

we've got to get rid of it,

we've got to ditch it,

we've got to trash it

because there'll be

something else that will

help me feel more joyful.

So if the answer is it's

stolen my joy, I don't

have too many years like

this now, but when I was

starting, I did roll out

a lot of different things

and some of them just

took my energy, stole

my joy, and I had to,

in the end, ditch them.

Now, I will put

a caveat on this.

These things are hard

to ditch if they're

making you money.

If they are making you

money, and you feel like

you still need to ditch

it, just make sure you've

got another revenue

source to top it up.

So a couple of years ago,

a number of years ago now,

I made a decision to cut

out half a million dollars

in our business through

corporate programming.

I just, it didn't

give me joy.

I didn't love it anymore.

I loved the people and

I wanted to work with

the people, just the

organizations I didn't

want to work with.

Now, before I did that

though, I went, okay,

that's going to be

half a million dollars

worth of a revenue stream

that I need to replace.

So then I started working

on replacing that revenue

stream before I started

killing the first one.

So let's be smart about

how we do that, right?

Just because it makes

commercial sense

doesn't mean you need

to keep doing it.

But also, if it makes

commercial sense, you

need to make sure that

you're happy to either

cut that off or replace

it with something.

So the first question,

write it down.

Does it give me joy or

does it steal my joy?

Because you know what?

We have lots of joy and it

can be stolen like that and

your energy can be ruined.

The second question I asked

myself is about financials.

So I dive a bit deeper

than just the joy question.

So I want to look,

has the service done as

well as I wanted it to?

Have I put in the

effort that is necessary

to make it work?

Is there something

that was missing?

Was it not the

right timing?

Would I change anything if

I was to roll it out again?

And if the commercials

are there and you got

to work out what your

commercials are, but if

the commercials are there

and you think, yes, I

just need to dial up some

marketing or I need to let

more people know about it.

Or maybe I need to utilize

my list a bit more.

Awesome.

Make sure you're

making those decisions.

The other thing about

starting this in July,

ladies, the other thing

about it is that you're

not too tired yet.

You start doing this

in November, December,

you probably don't

give two craps about

what's actually going

on because you're tired.

So July or August

is a great time

to start planning.

Please come on that

bandwagon with me.

That would be amazing.

The third question has a

few different parts in it.

the things which is

connected to joy,

but also connected

to energy and time.

Do I want to keep

doing this thing?

So for instance, my

Thriving Human program,

that's going into

its seventh year.

I love that program

with all my heart.

Yes I want to

keep doing that.

What do I want to trash?

Now, this might be

about service offerings.

It might be about ads.

It could be

about marketing.

It could be about all

the things that make up

your business sphere.

Yeah.

And then what do

I want to start?

Now, this point is a

particularly tough one

for me because sometimes

inspiration comes and

it's not on the plan.

That's where having

space on the plan to

be creative and get

inspired kind of works.

An example of this I

have spoken about in

a previous episode was

our business development

sprint that we did.

So I had this idea after

Day with the Queen, we

would take, uh, Group

of women through an

hour of power a day,

business development.

And then I expanded that

out and we had like 60

women do that business

development sprint.

Now that couldn't have

come at a worse time.

I was in the middle of a

launch for Thriving Women.

We were doing our

planning and I had

an event coming up.

But we did it anyway,

because it felt right,

it felt aligned to me.

And it was a happy,

happy accident.

In fact, I reckon one of

the happiest accidents I've

had in my whole business.

See, after seven

years, you can still

have happy accidents.

It was so energetically

aligned to me.

I even had people

solo poloing me.

We use a system

called Marco Polo.

I even had people solo

poloing me saying, you are

glowing in this challenge.

And you know what?

I reckon I was, I

was because I was

so in service

to the group and

helping them get

their results.

I was just in my element.

of course I had already

done my planning by

the time we did this.

So I've snuck it in much

to Serena's disgrace.

The thing about being

an entrepreneur and

having lots of ideas

is that someone has

to implement them.

And I am very lucky to

have Serena, shout out

to Serena, cause she does

listen to this podcast.

She is my sister.

She's the smart one.

And she lives in Western

Australia and she's also

my business manager.

And she cringes when

I say something like,

Hey, I've got an idea.

She's like, Oh, how is

this going to impact me?

Anyway, she's beautiful

and she does all the

things that we need to do.

But I was like,

this business

development sprint,

this has legs on it.

I think people need this.

I think we need to do this.

And she's like, righto,

what do we need to do?

So we've decided that we're

going to run that three

times a year, but actually,

what that actually needs

is that now we need to

formalize some stuff.

So the last one, and

I like to experiment.

So the last one

was literally just

a happy accident.

I did it all very low

tech and I was okay to

experiment that way.

And I know that there are

a lot of women who go,

Oh, I need my offer

to be perfect,

the copy has to be right,

the landing page

has to be up,

I need to make sure

I've got all the

bits before I hit go.

No, no, no, no, you don't.

Let's take

imperfect action.

I am the queen of it.

So this challenge, I

decided that I would talk

about it on the Tuesday.

We rolled it out

on the Friday.

We started the following

Monday for two weeks.

Yeah.

We just moved really

quickly and I can do that.

I can do that

in my business.

My business is built

to allow me to do that.

Is your business

built with space in it

so that if you had

a creative idea,

you could outwork

it really well.

You could test the market,

and then make it perfect.

Um, I never make

things perfect.

Perfect to me is like 50%.

Anyway, that's another

story for another day.

I went ahead and rolled

this thing out I just

kept this tech, super low.

And once I tried it,

I was like, Oh, okay,

now we can make it a

little bit more slick.

And so that's what we've

done for next year.

So we've incorporated

in next year's

calendar already.

We've talked about it.

It's going to be up

on the website, et

cetera, et cetera.

But in the first instance,

I just went low tech on

it and everyone gets that.

And it was fine because

you know what I see women

time and again, create

an offer, create the

perfect landing page.

Create the perfect

copywriting, then

they try and select

and no one wants it.

Don't do that.

Go and talk

about something.

See if you can get

some groundswell and

then do something else.

It's just experimenting.

that's not how my whole

business works, right?

the whole year is planned.

And this year I wanted

to achieve some pretty

big things for us.

Uh, for us, it was a focus

on systems and making

sure that we had the right

systems in the right place

with the right people.

And that's taken a good

year to get that sorted.

I was very focused on

registering thriving women.

Um, and so we have been

able to do that, and I

was also very focused

on creating an awesome

experience for our current

cohort of thriving women.

Now, I've managed to

achieve those things,

and some are easy

to be ticked off.

So do we have the

systems in place?

Tick.

Do we have the

people in place?

Tick.

Do we have this in place?

Tick, tick, tick.

Is the registration sorted?

Yes.

The experience for our

clients, well, only

time will tell, right?

Proof is always

in the pudding.

But one thing I know, and

it's a data point that

I pulled, was we have an

85 percent retention rate

from this year's Thriving

Women to next year.

85 is pretty good.

And 85 doesn't count the

people that are in Thriving

Women who are moving

to one on one coaching.

Right?

I've just done it

from Thriving Women

to Thriving Women.

But from the 15%, there's

been a couple who have

moved To one-on-one

coaching, so the

retention is probably 95%.

It's awesome,

but you've gotta know

your data to do that.

So you've gotta pull your

financial data, you've

gotta pull your email data.

You've, for me, I

pull my podcast data.

I pull all the data

that I can find.

I talk to people, I ask

them what they want.

Even my thriving

women this year.

I said to them, what

do you want next year?

What would you like to see?

And if I can make that

work, then I will.

Next year's thriving women.

We have some amazing

masterclasses coming

up with special guests.

We have an AI

expert coming in.

We've got a

lawyer coming in.

We've got a content

creator coming in.

There's so much cool

stuff, which I haven't

even advertised, but

there's so much cool stuff

based on what we need.

for next year.

Amazing.

I wanted this episode

to be a reflection

episode for you.

I want you to think about

what's giving you joy?

What is not giving you joy?

What do you need to ditch?

What do you need to keep?

What do you need

to start doing?

And also what are

the financials

attached to that?

You have to have a plan,

but make sure you create

space in the plan.

so I would love you

to look back over the

last year and look at

how far you've come.

When we look back, we

realize how much progress

we've actually made.

When I think about the

things that we bit off this

year, Sorina was right.

She probably gave

me a hint that I may

have bit off more.

Bitten off more than I

could chew and I just had

to chew real quick because

I made that mistake.

So we have to just

get on with it.

Next year has a little

bit more space in it

because I've said no

to some other work,

which has been amazing.

And also we're creating

space to have conversations

with people to do

some collaborations.

Collaboration is

my next big word.

You heard it here first.

Serena collaborations.

So we're going to

collaborate with

a lot of different

people next year.

Watch this space.

Anyway, I realize it's

not July anymore, but

it's still a really good

process to go through.

If you can carve out a day

or two and just look at

your data, look at your

financials, have a look

at what gives you joy.

And I can't wait to see

what you decide to cut out,

what you decide to keep

and what you might start.

So exciting.

Let me know how you go.

Love to hear.