I hope you've enjoyed a lovely holiday season. Mine was spent traveling since one of my twins graduated from Virginia Tech on 12/20.

We made a family trip out of it and 8 of us traveled on to Washington DC and then Baltimore to spend Christmas with our East Coast relatives.

So proud of my son! (Side note - VA Tech was named "50 most beautiful college campuses by Conde Nast - it's all quarried from local limestone and modeled after Oxford and Cambridge. Even the basketball stadium pictured here has Gothic arches :)

After all of the holiday madness, I look forward to easing into the new year.

Honestly, I'm still in low-key holiday mode. After all, the 12 Days of Christmas run from December 25th through January 6th. That's closer to how my family celebrated growing up, and many Orthodox religions' Christmas is 1/6 or 1/7. (Getting your Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving is an American retail phenom.)

I enjoy this quieter "in between" time once all the consumerist stuff has passed. It's the perfect time to reflect on the past year and plan for the upcoming year.

So that's what I've been doing, and I have some practical, actionable tips to help you start strong in 2025.

Housekeeping For The New Year

WORK SPACE:

Clear out your desk and work area. A clean, uncluttered space helps to literally declutter the mind so you are better able to focus and process information (Harvard Business Review)
Schedule a weekly (or monthly) 15 minute session to clean your desk and surrounding work space so the desk build-up doesn't happen. (Still trying to level up to this one. #goals)

WEBSITE:

Update your website footer's copywrite year. I'm turned off when I see a website with an out of date copyright. To me it signals the business just isn't paying attention/can't be bothered and that the details don't matter.
Update content that references the prior year: "Top X of 2024" blog post titles etc.
Give your website a new year's review: what could use a refresh and what can be eliminated or simplified? After all, it's your most important digital asset.

If you need help with revamping your website copy or design, check out my services.

My website was revamped last fall, but I updated my home page hero image. It feels fresh, clean, and green for the new year and my new pivot toward websites, copy, and SEO for service providers.

The funny part is I've actually come full circle; it's the same hero image I've used since the get-go on my Greenhouse Studio blog. I was thinking to myself "I need an image with lots of white space and a touch of green." It actually took me a while to realize I'd already been using exactly that elsewhere.🤷🏼‍♀️

How I plan for the upcoming year

When setting goals for the upcoming year, I break them them out into Income Generating and Lead Generating opportunities.

I also list Non-Negotiables which can be negatives you don't want or positives you do: e.g. - "I'm only going to work on 1 major project at a time until it's finished" or "I'm taking 3 weeks off in June."

In other words, what are you not willing to do and/or what are you committed to doing to progress toward achieving your successful year. These ideas come from Amy Porterfield.

When it comes time to nail down dates in the calendar though, I pull back from annual planning and instead focus on the upcoming quarter.

This idea is based on the book "The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months" by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington.

The premise is that 12 months is too long. Over a whole year, it's too difficult to predict what will happen and when.

Not only that, but trying to plan in 12-month cycles often results in what Moran calls “annualized thinking”, where you assume there’s plenty of time in a year to achieve your goals.

Annualized thinking can delay key actions that would take you closer to completing your goals because you assume there's still plenty of time to do them later.

Personally, I feel a bit like Harry Potter trying to read tea leaves if I try to plan much farther out than a quarter. It feels more like an exercise where I'm going through the motions rather than a true compass for the year.

Compressing my outlook to the next 12 weeks helps me visualize and focus by fostering a sense of urgency and clarity.

So the 12 week year system works great for me.

I name quarterly goals and assign specific tactics to each goal.

From there I nail down my calendar with projects/tasks that are assigned start and end dates for completion. These are are entered into my calendar.

For example, I have a Q1 revenue goal I've set. Key to accomplishing that is my goal to "Finish revamp of Website Leads Lab & launch it" by January 31.

One of the main projects associated with that January relaunch is "Re-record remaining Website Leads Lab videos."

With that goal and project nailed down, I can then assign specific weekly and daily tasks (e.g. re-recording specific video lessons) to a timeline so I can predict how and when this project will actually get done.

So now that my next 12 weeks are charted, it's time to get to it!

What are your goals for your 2025 and your Q1? Leave a comment below and let me know.

If you need help with your website, check out my services.

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and successful new year!

— Tina