I hope this email finds you in the midst of a quiet season in your inbox, so you can reflect on the year that's passed and have a moment to prepare for the year to come.
Read the previous parts of this Year End / Year Ahead series:
Part 1: Review the Reality of your Year.
Part 2: Align with your Context
Part 3: Choose the Next Hard Step
Tell me your plan!
If you're actively planning your next quarter using this framework, I'd love to see what you're working on and help where I can.
Fill out this short survey with your arc, your trajectory, your Q1 root-building project, and your seed planting plans.
I'll respond with any resources I have that might help you and check back in 90 days to see how your first quarter went!
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By now, you’ve done work most people skip.
In Part 1, you reviewed what actually happened in your business—not what you hoped would happen.
In Part 2, you looked honestly at your capacity, stage, and Zone of Enoughness.
In Part 3, you identified the bottleneck—the real constraint shaping everything else.
We’re finally ready to bring everything together for a grounded, actionable plan.
Even after all of the foundational reflection work, this is the moment when it’s tempting to default to “dream your ultimate vision and set goals so big they scare you” planning.
Yet revenue doesn’t reset every January.
It follows a trajectory. A trajectory that, with effort, can be changed.
As William says in A Knight’s Tale, “A man can change his stars.”
The Three Components of a Yearly Plan
Your plan is not an aspirational revenue goal, reverse-engineered into client acquisition targets.
It’s three things:
1. Your arc (3-5 years)
What you’re building over the long term—your stage of business and the larger cycle you’re in. We arrived at this in Parts 1 and 2.
2. Your trajectory (annual)
Where your business is likely to head this year—based on the seeds you’ve planted, the bottleneck you’re addressing, and any changes you plan to make.
3. Your execution (quarterly)
The specific projects, practices, and decisions you’re committing to—the root projects you’re taking on and the seeds you’re always planting. We discussed this in Parts 1 and 3.
That’s it. Arc, trajectory, execution.
It's time to look at the piece we haven't yet addressed: the annual trajectory.
Know your trajectory
Most goal-setting frameworks assume last year’s revenue is your baseline. That the same level of effort will lead to the same outcome or more. And that your goals are simply to take your prior revenue and add a growth percentage.
But that only works if last year was sustainably fueled.
If, in Part 1, you saw that you were mostly harvesting referrals, selling to superfans without expanding your network, relying on clients or offers that may not repeat, or weren’t consistently planting seeds, then last year’s revenue isn’t a stable baseline.
It’s closer to a best-case scenario.
(Which is the least aspirational, most realistic thing I can say. Sorry not sorry?).
When you’ve been harvesting without replenishing, the natural trajectory isn’t “same again.” It’s often flat or slowly downward.
That's simply the nature of systems.
Your default trajectory—based on what you’ve been doing—is one of three directions:
- Downward: Clients or projects ending, with a thin or empty pipeline, and without the prior seed-planting that builds future momentum
- Flat: Your past activity will fuel current revenue but may not expand it
- Upward: You've been doing the compounding work that’s created momentum
This is your default, IF you don’t change anything.
Your trajectory is not your destiny. But it is where you’re headed based on past actions.
So before moving forward: Where are you headed by default?
And more importantly—do you want to change your direction?
If you do, that’s where the third component of your plan comes in: execution.
Making a change means making a change
If you don’t like your default trajectory, you need to do something different to alter it.
Revenue doesn’t change because you want it to.
It changes because you alter the system that produces it—and because momentum from that work opens doors you didn’t see coming.
Which means the real question isn’t: “What revenue do I want to make next year?”
It’s: “What am I changing in my execution—and how forcefully or strategically am I changing it?”
There is always a lag. Last year’s actions have created this year’s revenue. This year’s actions are creating next year’s revenue.
If you’re just starting to plant seeds or address your bottleneck, expect results in 6-12 months:
Start intentionally building relationships in January to see an increase in inquiries by the summer.
Start publishing your point of view in April to see the impact to your authority by the end of the year.
If you need to change your trajectory faster, you have a few levers:
You can apply more concentrated effort to your bottleneck—more conversations, more direct asks, more deliberate focus.
You can choose work that compounds—building authority that keeps working when you aren’t, deepening relationships that generate referrals and guest appearances, strengthening delivery so clients get better results with less of your time.
You can shift what your business needs to do for you. Reduce business expenses. Consider contract work or a part-time role to fund your business while you plant seeds.
Or you can reduce friction and get support so decisions happen faster, follow-through improves, and you’re not carrying everything alone.
These are the mechanics of changing your trajectory.
But there’s something else that happens when you execute consistently—something I can’t put in a formula.
When momentum creates magic
I can give you frameworks for projections.
I can show you how to identify bottlenecks and build leverage.
But here’s what I can’t quantify:
The magic that happens when you do this work more intentionally and regularly than you have before.
I’ve watched this happen dozens of times:
Someone plants seeds for 6 months—building relationships, publishing their POV, showing up in more conversations.
And then something happens they couldn’t have predicted:
- A market research chat turns into a project that turns into a full-time opportunity
- A framework they published catches the eye of someone who introduces them to 5 clients
- An old connection resurfaces at exactly the right moment with exactly the right opportunity
That’s not manifestation as “think it into being.”
It’s the mysterious momentum of consistent action.
When you’re planting seeds, strengthening your roots, maintaining movement—you’re not just creating direct, traceable results.
You’re creating energy. Visibility. Momentum.
And momentum attracts opportunities you couldn’t engineer.
I can’t put that in the projection formula.
So yes—have a plan. Plant your seeds. Create leverage. Make hard choices.
And leave space for the magic that momentum creates.
The unexpected client. The serendipitous introduction. The opportunity that appears because you’ve been consistently showing up.
You can’t control it. But you can create the conditions for it.
Which brings us back to the practical: how do you actually structure your execution to create both the mechanics AND the magic?
Through a quarterly rhythm.
Each quarter builds on the last—not as a rigid annual plan, but as a discovery process where one quarter's results reveal the next quarter's focus.
You plan one quarter at a time, but the quarters compound.
Your Quarterly Rhythm
Goals and outcomes are held lightly.
Execution is not.
Here’s the quarterly rhythm I encourage for you:
Quarterly Planning:
- Choose one bottleneck system to address (from Part 3)
- Select 1–2 root projects, the specific things you’ll complete to address that bottleneck
- Define your ongoing seeds. No matter what bottleneck you’re addressing, you need to set a minimum threshold for seed planting—the relationship and visibility work that feeds your pipeline.
Your baseline seeds might look like:
- 5 outreaches per week, with 1-2 conversations every week
- 1 authority-building piece per month with a handful of ways to share it (e.g. newsletter, podcast or social)
- 1 guest appearance/networking engagement per month
These aren’t your only activities. They’re your minimum to keep planting while you focus on your bottleneck (and running the rest of your business).
Monthly Tending:
This will directly feed the reflections from Part 1. Why wait a year to see what's happening?
- Track your seeds and roots (did you do the work?)
- Notice the sprouts (conversations, inquiries, traction)
- Stay open to fruits, both expected and unexpected (what are the opportunities you didn’t plan for?)
Quarterly Reflection:
- Did you execute the plan?
- Is the bottleneck shifting? What’s the new bottleneck (because there’s always one)?
- What surprised you?
- Do you need to change how you’re planting seeds?
- Then create your execution plan for the next Quarter: 1-2 root projects addressing your bottleneck, and define your ongoing seeds.
Fruits may come this quarter.
They may not.
What matters is whether the system is changing—and whether you’re noticing what is sprouting, even if it’s not what you expected.
Changing Your Stars
You can't create total certainty.
You can't make perfect forecasts.
What you need:
A plan grounded in reality—your arc, your trajectory, your execution.
Fierce commitment to executing that plan—planting seeds, strengthening roots, doing the work.
And space for the magic that shows up when you do.
You can’t engineer it. But you can’t ignore it either.
So yes—be strategic. Track your metrics. Fix your bottleneck.
And also—stay open. Notice what sprouts. Follow what surprises you.
Your trajectory is not your destiny.
It’s simply your default direction based on past actions.
And you change it—quarter by quarter—through the choices you make and the work you do.
If you want support running this rhythm—that’s exactly what we do inside the Deeper Foundations Membership.
But whether you do it with me or on your own:
Stop wishing. Start steering. And leave room for magic.
That’s how businesses actually grow.