Hey entrepreneur! Ready to set your business up for success in 2025? In this episode, I’m sharing the two key assets that every entrepreneur needs to have in place before January rolls around. These simple yet powerful tools—your time plan and revenue plan—are what kept me energized and growing throughout 2024 without burnout. 

After hearing from so many small business owners this year who felt overwhelmed, burned out, or even ready to take a break, I knew I had to share the strategies that made all the difference for me. Learn how to use these assets to take control of your schedule, protect your time off, and achieve sustainable growth in the year ahead.

Key Takeaways:

• Why These 2 Assets Are Essential
  Burnout, overwhelm, and reactive decision-making are common struggles for entrepreneurs. Learn how these two assets can help you avoid those pitfalls.
• The One-Page Time Plan
  I’ll walk you through how to map out your business year on a single sheet of paper—events, launches, promotions, and (most importantly) your time off.
• Revenue Planning That Aligns with Your Life
  Discover how to create a revenue plan that works in tandem with your time plan, so you can hit your income goals without overworking.
• How These Assets Work Together
  I’ll share how using these tools side by side can keep your business running smoothly, help you stay focused, and create a sustainable pace you’ll love.

Your time and revenue are the backbone of your business. Having a plan for both ensures you can grow without burnout, take intentional time off, and achieve the work-life harmony you’ve been craving.

Listen to the episode here!

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I’d be honored and grateful if you would head over to iTunes to leave a review and let other female entrepreneurs know what you learned! While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] If you are a burnt out entrepreneur, you need to watch this video. There is a trend out here. I'm hearing it in all of the small business groups. I'm a part of . I'm hearing over and over again that people are burnout. They're wanting to go on a sabbatical. They can't keep up with the pace or pivoting. 

[00:00:16] They're this, they're that. And friends, I did not experience that in 2024. I've had a great year. The business has had a great year. It's grown without any Even impacting our profit margins. And it has, because of these two key assets that I spend intentional time on before the start of a new year, every year, and it keeps my business growing. 

[00:00:36] While making sure I don't burn out.  

[00:00:39] Hey there, welcome back to work life harmony. So the time that this episode is dropping, we are really getting ready to wrap up the year. This episode is dropping here, the very beginning of December. And I wanted to dedicate an episode specifically to fellow small business owners, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs like myself. 

[00:01:00] if you are juggling running a business of any size, I wanted to give you some tips and share with you two key assets. That I firmly believe every small business owner should have in place prior to January. Mine is actually the draft of it is already done and I do some fine tuning here over the course of the last few weeks of the year. 

[00:01:26] Now, before I tell you what they are, I want to help you understand why you need them because the minute I tell you what they are, you might be like, eh, I don't feel like doing that. But when you understand the value they provide and why I encourage you to do this, you might be ready to listen with some more intrigued ears, if you will. 

[00:01:45] I don't know about you, but over the course of 2024 if you are in any kind of community with other small business owners, I have just heard a ton of people just talking about burnout. Overwhelmed. They're talking about like wanting to take a sabbatical in 2025. A lot of people were kind of shutting down parts of their businesses or looking for pivots or doing new rebrands. 

[00:02:11] There's just seems to be a lot of kind of exhausted energy. out there when I'm in rooms with other entrepreneurs. I always feel a little uncomfortable when I'm in those settings because I haven't experienced that in 2024. The, the business here, the Pink Bee, it's grown in revenue. It's maintained its profitability without having anybody working more hours. 

[00:02:36] I didn't have to bring on new team members this year. And I'm rolling into the end of the year feeling this is a pace I can keep doing and I know that so much of this is because of these two things that I wanted to talk to you about today. I firmly believe that without these two things in place, I too could have fallen into exhaustion. 

[00:03:00] Pivoting, burnout, unease, the business definitely would not have grown the way that it did. Now the other reason why these are so important is let's face it for a lot of us, the reason why we wanted to start our own businesses was because we wanted to be in control of our time, right? So to me, the definition of time freedom is being in control of my time, meaning I get to decide. 

[00:03:26] For the most part, what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, how much I'm working, how much I'm not , when I want to be off, I want to actually be off and like be resting, be on vacation and in order to really have that, if you want to have sustainability in your life as an entrepreneur and not get burnt out, you're going to need these two things as well. 

[00:03:49] All right. So what are they? I'm going to tell you what they are, kind of give you an overview, and then we're going to kind of break down some details here. So the two things that, that we really need when we are, getting ready to step into a new year is we need what I'm just going to refer to as a time plan at a high level, where is our time going this year for our business? 

[00:04:08] And then we also need a pairing up with a revenue plan, what are my expectations around income here with the business? And it sounds so obvious, but I know for a fact that the vast majority of entrepreneurs, people running their own businesses, solopreneurs are not doing this. They're kind of winging it month after month. 

[00:04:28] They may set a goal for the year, like, Oh, I want to make X amount of dollars this year, but then they're kind of winging it every month on what they're doing. to get there. Well, how did that go this month? I'm not as great. Let me do something different next month. Right. And this leads to exhaustion. I promise you it does. 

[00:04:43] I know this because when I was brand new in business, I was doing that too, until I realized this is not sustainable. So first let's talk about what goes into this kind of new year time plan. And it's far more simple than you think, but it's incredibly powerful. This should be able to live on one piece of paper. 

[00:05:03] All right. So if you were to pull out an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, this 1 year plan could fit on that. And the way I like to do this is I just divide that piece of paper into 12 rectangles, if you will. So four rows of three, kind of thinking of Q4, and each rectangle represents one month. 

[00:05:22] all that we are capturing in here first, and this is going to be different depending upon the type of business you run, right? You might be running a brick and mortar store. You might be doing an online business. You might be doing a hybrid of both. You may do group work, one on one work, whatever it is for you, you will be able to figure that out. 

[00:05:40] But then within each of those rectangles, the first thing that we need to layer in is what are the activities? Where is your time going in your business? So you need to be thinking about what events are you having any events in a given month, whether it's in person or a virtual event. So for example, if you attended my Planapalooza event in October, Next year, 2025 in my square for October, it says plan a palooza, right? 

[00:06:09] I know I'm doing that next October. I do it every year. You may also have things like maybe you're launching something new. Maybe you make actual physical products and you're launching a new product line. Next year or you have seasonal things that you kind of launch you, you're launching a new product or a new service in a, in a given month that could go in there. 

[00:06:30] Promotions, right? Do you have a business that does heavy promotions around certain holidays? maybe you really have a business that I know one of the businesses I talk about that I love, I'm an affiliate for is color guru. They have promotions different times of years where they do kind of sales on their services. 

[00:06:49] Now, you may also, like I am, I am an affiliate for certain other businesses that I firmly stand behind where I love to participate in promoting their things. That also needs to go into this one page view. So you're kind of, again, capturing where is your time going? What's your plan for your time? 

[00:07:10] Around the big things that you're going to be doing in your business over the next year. Now, layered into this, and this is really important because there are people out there that will give you, you know, some tips or steps for building a quote business plan. But especially for my fellow entrepreneurs like myself, We can't build that in a vacuum, right? 

[00:07:32] What this one page view also needs to include is when do you know you're not working? Now, I'm not talking about like two hours on a Tuesday afternoon. Like for me, I'm talking about, oh, there's two weeks off over the holiday season at the end of the year. I'm not working. I'm in full mom mode and I want to capture that. 

[00:07:53] I also take pretty much the entire month of June and half of July off every single summer. I need to write that on that plan as well. So why do I need to do that? Well, I need to make sure that there's things aren't contradicting, right? If I know that I want to be pretty much not working for the month of June, I don't want to see something huge written in that square that's going to involve. 

[00:08:17] Me being live and in person, right? Like I would not run plant a Palooza in the month of June. That's a huge live event that takes a good chunk of my time. So we need to make sure that we are layering in our outside of work, big time commitments into this one page view as well, to make sure. That we're not overbooking overscheduling. 

[00:08:40] Nothing pains me more than seeing all the, funny reels or memes or tech talks or whatever out there showing, funny footage of entrepreneurs quote on vacation, where they're like in the ocean with their laptop, where they're, you know, sitting beach side, whether kids are playing on their, on their laptop, kind of showing the picture of as an entrepreneur, like you never really get time off. 

[00:08:59] You absolutely should be taking. Time off like 100 percent time off, but it's going to require some upfront planning and thoughtfulness around this. Now I want to take this conversation of this one page time plan a little bit deeper because again, this next step here is what's really going to help you not to like to actually be able to enjoy your time off, not get overbooked, not get burnout. 

[00:09:25] So let's talk about things like an event. Or a launch that's going to involve you. And I'll just use plan a Palooza as an example, as I talk through this, cause you guys are, you know, if you've been listening for a while, you're familiar with the event. in my, one page in October, it will say I'm holding plan a Palooza, now I need to think about when do I actually start working on this? 

[00:09:44] Right. If I waited till October to start working on it, it would never happen. what you'll see on my one pager is you will actually see in August, there's a, you know, there's a note there in the month of August that says early bird launch for plantapalooza. We usually do early bird tickets in the month of August. 

[00:10:03] Okay, so if those need to be ready in August, then now I can work backwards and say, oh, yeah, we usually build an entire workbook and that has to go to the printer and it takes time for approval and printing and all of that. And if I see on my calendar, oh, I'm taking the month of June and half of July off, but the early bird and the workbooks need to be ready in August. 

[00:10:25] Well, then guess what? That means we need to have that work pretty much wrapped up by the end of May because I want to truly take vacation in June and July. And so when I'm back through this, this is why every year we start prepping for an October event in March. And you would not think that if you were just kind of winging it, if you went, Oh, I'm going to do this great big event in October and the month of March, you wouldn't be thinking, I'm going to get ready for that. 

[00:10:53] Right. You'd be going, Oh my God, I've got tons of time. I don't need to be worrying about that. Well, if we didn't start in March, I could not truly take the time off that I desire in June and July. I'd be, getting up early on vacation, trying to work or just not being able to have the vacation at all. 

[00:11:11] So along with. So if you want to learn more about the actual events on that one pager, you need to be asking yourself, when do you need to start preparing for it so that it's not this last minute crunch. Now, if you are, I really want to speak to newer business owners, especially if you're running an online business. 

[00:11:32] A lot of people run summits or events where they will bring in multiple speakers and I get invited to present in a lot of them. Um, I always feel bad when I, you know, I get a request from someone to say, you know, maybe, let's say it's the beginning of February and they'll be like, Hey, I'm doing a summit in, four weeks. 

[00:11:48] I'd love for you to be a speaker. And there's always promotion requirements. I'm thinking, Oh man, my promo calendars booked six, eight months out. Right. And I know if somebody is trying to cram together a summit in a four week window, That means that the prep and the thoughtfulness is not going into it. 

[00:12:04] And they're probably running themselves ragged to pull something like that off in such a short amount of time, , again, if you were in Plano Palooza, you noticed we had six guests or seven guest experts in there this year. Well, we had those guest experts identified in March, right? So they had all the time they needed to do what we, you know, their trainings for us, get their stuff into the workbook. 

[00:12:26] They could then put it on their promotion calendars cause we were doing this way out ahead and it just makes things run a lot smoother and a lot less stressful. And think about the same thing with promotions. If you know there's an event that you wanted to promote. So for example, I have a lot of people that promote Plantapalooza in October. 

[00:12:44] Well, we communicate with them kind of at the beginning of the year saying, Hey, we'd love for you to help promote plan a Palooza here's when the promotion window is. So they're able to put that into their calendar way out, in advanced and we can have really effective communication there as well. 

[00:13:02] Now once you've built all this out and you're kind of looking at that one pager, right? You really need to go through the lens of when is it that I am not working? When do I want to have that time off? What events do I have planned and am it, can I pull this off? Do I have the prep time that I need, right? 

[00:13:21] Do I perhaps need to be prepping for something in March that isn't actually happening until October? And having this time plan in place is what 100 percent keeps the pink bee here running at a sustainable pace for myself and for the team as well. Because this is something you can share with people that are supporting you in your business and my family too. 

[00:13:47] I put all of that on my giant wall calendar. They can see it. So as a family, we know like, no, you know, Hey, mom's got this big thing in October. We know about that. So. Let's not make a choice to maybe go on a weekend trip the couple days before, right? It really helps to get that central communication. 

[00:14:03] Now I mentioned there was two key things, right? There was the time plan, which we just talked about. Now, if you would like to see at a much more granular step by step, how I create my time plan for all parts of my life, Work, business, personal goals, et cetera. That's what I teach in Planapalooza that I was just talking about. 

[00:14:29] And we still have replays available for about another week or so. So if you want to grab the replays and actually build out your annual plan for 2025, watching along with the replays, You can still go grab those at megansumrall. com forward slash plan. But again, those will go away soon. We only offer those repays for a little window cause I want you to watch it and actually get your plan in place. 

[00:14:56] Now the second part of this is the revenue plan. We need to have our time plan in place so that we make sure that we're not going to be burnt out and overworked and we're not looking to take a sabbatical in the upcoming year. But then along with that, if you're in business, chances are you're in business to earn money, right? 

[00:15:16] This is how I know I contribute to our family. So a revenue plan is something that gets a lot more granular than the time plan because we're actually building out through a step by step process how we are kind of estimating and planning how much revenue is coming in on a month by month basis for the new year. 

[00:15:37] A lot of business owners that I meet when I ask them like, Hey, how are you? You know, what are you planning for revenue next year? How are you going about that? Their answer is usually to say, well, I'm going to I really want to increase by 35 percent from this year. So let's say they made a hundred thousand dollars this year. 

[00:15:52] They're like, yeah, my goal for next year is 135, 000. And it's just this goal. Michael, how are you breaking that out? Month over month? Oh, I'll just divide it by 12. But do you have a plan in place to have revenue coming in every month? Right? And most people aren't thinking about it at that level. So I teach a very step by step how I do my revenue planning for the year inside a little mini course. 

[00:16:16] I've got called revenue planning for small business owners. we actually offer that as kind of an add on to those Plano Palooza replays. But here's what I want to tell you that you need to be thinking about with your revenue plan. The reason why this time plan and revenue plan have to go in tandem with one another is for instance, in my life, as I shared, I pretty much take the month of June off. 

[00:16:39] So if I know I'm not working in June, my revenue plan for the month of June, let's say I'm planning on making a certain amount of money that month. I better clearly see on my time plan how that's going to happen if I'm not actively doing anything. Okay. Right. So maybe it's that we have some, you know, evergreen type stuff that's going on sale. 

[00:17:04] I typically do something fun in July for my birthday where we do something related to the top planner. Again, I'm really not working much in the month of July. So I need to make sure that what's showing on my revenue plan makes sense. With what is showing on my time plan. And what's really powerful is when you do this revenue planning and then you're actually tracking your actuals, every month and you start building a business over a couple of years, you start to see patterns in your business, right? 

[00:17:37] So I know typically when there are months where revenue is lower than other months. And if I know that and I planned for that, then I can prepare the business for that. So that otherwise what would be happening if I didn't see that plan for it and prepare for it. If it was a month where maybe revenue was lower, I might start freaking out, right? 

[00:17:58] Oh my gosh, things aren't working. What do I need to do? And I see business owners doing this. They do this. Okay. Let me respond real quick. Let me just run a quick flash sale. Let me do some kind of promotion. Let me do something to get money coming in. Well, maybe that's not the solution. Maybe what works best for you is to say, yeah, I'm going to take the gas off a little on these couple months. 

[00:18:15] Maybe I'll put something else in place on my time plan that I know could generate some revenue without involving me being present. Right. Or maybe you just decide to say, yeah, those are months where revenue's going to go way down. I'm going to know that. I'm going to plan for it so that if that happens, I don't start freaking out now, along with that revenue plan. 

[00:18:37] We also have to be tracking our expenses and therefore our profit. We need to make sure we're actually profiting, not just bringing revenue in as well. Right now, some other benefits of having this revenue plan that ties to your time plan for your business is again, I already mentioned it keeps you from not freaking out. 

[00:18:57] If you're having a lower month, but you're like, Oh yes, I planned for that because we didn't have anything big going on this month, but the next two months we do. Right. So it helps me not get emotional in the highs and lows that is being a business owner. And then it really allows me to have a lot more meaningful conversations with my CPA when we're doing tax planning and bookkeeping and all of that for the business. 

[00:19:19] So it definitely can level up that whole experience too. But again, at the end of the day. These two kind of artifacts, if you will, they need to match, they need to talk to each other. They need to make sense side by side. If I see I have absolutely nothing going on in the month of June on my time calendar, but I'm like, Hey, I'm going to make 75, 000 that month. 

[00:19:41] I need to step back and go, well, where is that coming from? Right. And I need to make sure I know how that's even happening. And then this document, this time document gets to be a living, breathing document, I'll have my plan for the year. But things are going to pop up. I might change my mind. I might learn about something I want to do that I think would be cooler than what I'd plan to do. 

[00:20:05] This doesn't mean that now you're stuck, that you can't be an entrepreneur. Part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is I'm always coming up with new ideas, right? I love that part of, of running a business, but it means I get to be very intentional about where I want to shift, where I want to change. And I'm always looking at that time plan to make sure if I'm saying yes to something, Is this going to impact the quality of life that I want? 

[00:20:31] I want to keep this a sustainable business year after year after year. And so, you know, I know last year I got invited to two really cool things in August, but it would have meant a pretty significant time commitment for me in June and July. And while I wanted to say yes, I knew for me, what was more important was having that time off that I had planned. 

[00:20:53] So I said, I can't do it. You know, I'm, I'm, I don't have the time for that. And if I had said yes, it would have meant that I was not enjoying the time off that I had planned to enjoy. So you get to use these tools to support you all year long. So again, if you really want to kind of learn this annual planning process in more detail, and again, it's going to include business, but also your life around it. 

[00:21:19] You can still grab those. Megan Sumrall. com forward slash plan at the time this episode is airing. And I really encourage business owners have your own flavor. Of a time plan and a revenue plan for the upcoming year to make sure that you can build a business that's sustainable for you that you enjoy that you love and that meets your needs All right. 

[00:21:43] Have a great rest of the week and i'll see you back here next week.