Planning Without the BS: How to Prep for the New Year Without Wasting Time

When planning for the new year, we’ve all been sold the same tired formula: big, bold goals, detailed action plans, and endless hype about setting yourself up for your “best year ever.” It’s everywhere—on social media, in webinars, and in ads for fancy planners. 

While it might sound appealing, most of this advice misses the mark for solo business owners. You don’t have a team, an unlimited budget, or hours to map out every detail. You’re running the show yourself, which means your time and energy are finite resources that need to be protected.

That’s why traditional planning often fails solo business owners—it’s not built for us. Instead of getting caught in the trap of doing more, this episode is all about helping you plan smarter.

Before diving into all things planning as a solo service business owner, I want to discuss why you need to plan differently.

The truth is a plan that doesn’t align with your goals and capacity will set you up for frustration and burnout. You’ll spend hours on tasks that don’t move the needle or chase goals that don’t actually support the life you want. 

That’s the trap of traditional planning—it’s focused on what you could achieve, not what you should achieve, based on what matters most to you.

This is where the Staying Solo Framework comes in. It’s not about doing more or adding to your already full plate. It’s about narrowing your focus to what truly matters: protecting your space, aligning your salary goals with your revenue, and building a strategy that works for your business—not against it. 

Using this framework, you can cut through the noise and create a realistic, actionable plan grounded in your unique reality.

In today’s episode, we’ll explore the three pillars of the Staying Solo Framework—space, salary, and strategy—to help you build a sustainable plan for the new year.

Why Planning Goes Wrong for Solo Business Owners

Let’s start with why planning often goes soooo wrong, especially for solo business owners. First, most planning advice assumes you’re working with a team or chasing “scale” as your ultimate goal. One-size-fits-all strategies are designed for businesses with endless resources or operations that look nothing like a solo service business. 

That advice doesn’t reflect the reality that you’re doing everything—from client work to admin to marketing. Your time, energy, and bandwidth are your most valuable assets, and they’re limited.

Planning also tends to miss one critical step: defining what enough looks like. We’ve been conditioned to think that success equals constant growth—more clients, more revenue, more everything. But that mentality is a recipe for burnout. 

The Staying Solo Framework challenges this approach by asking: What does enough look like for you? Enough might mean earning $75,000 a year, working 20 hours a week, and having Fridays off. Or maybe it means maintaining a flexible schedule so you can prioritize personal commitments. The point is that your version of enough is unique, and it’s the foundation for sustainable planning.

Overall Planning Prompt:

What does enough look like for you in 2025? Think about your income, workload, and lifestyle. Write it down. This isn’t just a nice exercise—it’s your anchor for the rest of the planning process.

Let’s tackle a common objection: What if enough isn’t ambitious enough? This is where we need to redefine ambition. True ambition isn’t about overworking yourself or chasing arbitrary goals. It’s about building a business that supports the life you want, with room to grow sustainably if and when you choose.

Space: Protecting Your Time and Energy

Let’s start by looking at the space pillar of the Staying Solo Framework. Space is really about your capacity because your time, energy, and emotional bandwidth are finite.

Planning for the new year without addressing your capacity is like trying to run a marathon without doing any training at all. 

Start with this question: How many hours a week do you want to work in 2025? Not how many you think you should work, but what feels realistic and sustainable.

Once you have that number, examine your current schedule. Are you over-committed? Underbooked? Somewhere in between?

Use tools like time tracking to see where your time is going. You might be surprised at how much time is consumed by low-priority tasks.

If you’re feeling maxed out, raising your prices is the easiest way to create space. For example, you work 40 hours a week but want to cut back to 30. A 15% price increase could help you maintain revenue while reducing your workload. 

Capacity isn’t just about time, though. It’s also about emotional and mental bandwidth. If you’re saying yes to every client request or project, it’s time to reassess. Strong boundaries aren’t just good for your sanity—they’re essential for protecting your energy and delivering high-quality work.

Space Prompt:

How can you free up space in your business? This might mean raising prices, streamlining your services, or eliminating tasks that don’t add value.

Write down one or two specific actions to protect your time and energy as you start 2025.

Salary: Setting Financial Goals That Matter

Next, let’s dig into the Salary pillar of the Staying Solo Framework: salary. Most planning advice will have you obsessing over top-line revenue goals. Six figures. Seven figures. It’s all flash, no substance. What good is hitting a revenue milestone if you’re barely paying yourself?

For solo business owners, take-home pay is the number that matters most. Your revenue goals should serve your salary goals. 

Here’s how to get started. First, look at your current numbers. What’s your average monthly revenue? What are your expenses? And how much are you paying yourself? If you’re not where you want to be, use this as your baseline to set a realistic salary goal for the year ahead.

Once you have that salary goal, reverse-engineer your revenue goal. Let’s say you want to pay yourself $60,000 and your business expenses are $20,000. That means your revenue target is $80,000 for the year, or about $6,700 a month.

To do this math, use the Reverse Salary Goal Calculator in the Calculator Kit.

Once you have some solid numbers, you can use that to make some decisions using the following prompt. 

Salary Prompt:

As you plan for the year ahead, use these key questions to identify opportunities for improvement and ensure your strategy supports your income targets and your capacity.

• Are you offering the right mix of services to hit this target?  
• Do your prices align with your income and capacity goals?  
• Are there opportunities to streamline or cut unnecessary expenses to maximize your take-home pay? 

Remember, this process isn’t about pie-in-the-sky numbers. It’s about creating a financial plan that aligns with your reality while giving you room to grow. And don’t forget to build in some flexibility—life happens, and your goals might shift as the year progresses.

Strategy: Aligning Your Business with Your Goals

Finally, let’s discuss the strategy pillar. Planning isn’t just about setting goals—it’s about making intentional choices that align with one’s values, skills, and more.

Start by looking at what’s already working in your business. Where do your best clients come from? What services are most profitable and enjoyable to deliver? What marketing strategies feel sustainable? Double down on those things, and let go of anything that isn’t producing results.

For example, if referrals have been your best source of clients, focus on nurturing those relationships. If you’re getting great results from one-to-many marketing like a podcast or social media, lean into that. You don’t need to be everywhere—you just need to be where your ideal clients are.

Your strategy should also include room for experimentation. Maybe you’ll try a new offer or shift your pricing structure. But remember, the goal isn’t to overhaul everything at once. Small, strategic tweaks can have a big impact over time.

Strategy Prompt:

As you plan for 2025, are you on the right path, or is it time to pivot? What do you need to shift or evolve.

Next week’s episode will help you answer that question in more detail, but for now, reflect on what’s working and where you feel stuck.

The Power of a Plan Built for Solo Success

Planning for the new year can be so overwhelming. Everywhere you look, someone is shouting about the importance of setting big, bold goals, outlining complex strategies, and building detailed plans that map out every minute of your business. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype and feel like you’re already falling behind if you don’t do it all.

That advice isn’t designed for you. If you’re a solo business owner, you don’t have the luxury of a team to delegate to, unlimited time to execute, or a bottomless budget to throw at your business.

You do have the power to decide what success looks like for you, to focus on what truly matters, and to create a plan that works with your reality—not against it.

That’s where the Staying Solo Framework comes in, and you can use these three pillars to help guide your planning: 

• Space: Protect your time and energy by establishing clear boundaries and working within your capacity.  
• Salary: Set a realistic take-home pay goal and reverse-engineer your revenue target to align with it.  
• Strategy: Build a simple, aligned, and actionable plan that leans into what’s working and lets go of distractions.  

This isn’t about adding more to your plate or chasing arbitrary growth. It’s about focusing on what truly matters: building a business that supports your life, not one that runs it.

And if you’re feeling unsure about your next steps, don’t worry. This episode will help lay the groundwork for next week, where we’ll tackle the big question: Should you pivot your business or persist with your current path?