Year-End Financial Review: Turn Your Numbers Into a 2026 Action Plan

Welcome to the Creative Mind Smart Money Podcast where we turn financial confusion into creative confidence. I'm Samantha Ek, the keeper and fractional CFO for creative entrepreneurs. Each week I'm sharing my financial expertise and actionable strategies to help you build a thriving creative business. Plus, you'll hear from industry experts who bring fresh perspectives on growing your business beyond the numbers. As building a successful creative business starts with strong financial foundations, your next chapter starts now. Your listening to the Creative Mind Smart Money Podcast and if you're listening to this episode on the day it came out, happy new year. It is officially December 31st, 2025 and tomorrow is the start of a brand new year. It's exciting and crazy to think about that 2025 is already gone. I can't believe it went by in a blink. I turned 30 this year. You know, a lot of different things happened this year. So it's been in a very exciting year. And this episode is going to wrap up our 2025 kind of like year end review with our 2026 strategy session. And I'm so excited to kind of dive into this and just go over what we need to do in order to set ourselves up for true, true, true, true, true success in 2026 and have all of the things in mind that we need to. We've already talked about what we need to get out your end end. We've talked about looking at our financials. We've talked about cashless for cash and we talked about how not to over commit for 2026. So now we're going to get really nitty gritty into the strategy. Okay. We're going to dive into the strategy of everything that we've created and how this is going to help us overall as a business. So you clean your books, you review your numbers, you built your forecast and hopefully you've got your breath. You rested. So now it's time to turn everything you've learned into a plan for 2026. Today I'm going to walk you through a mini strategy session, something you can do with a notebook, get yourself a coffee or an indig drink and an honest look at your 2025 results. This is very similar to what I do for my clients. It's just cut back a lot. I just want to kind of give you some tools that you can utilize going forward. Okay. We don't need, you know, some big business plan. We just need to understand what our clarity and our focus is so we can start 2026 really strong. We want to start by reflecting on 2025 and analyzing what worked and what didn't. So, you know, we've already looked at our financial data, but we want to look at our financial wins. What revenue streams are most profitable or consistent? You know, what worked really well, but also look at what didn't. So which revenue streams weren't profitable? What kind of work made us feel energized last year? Maybe it was complete website refreshes. Maybe it was grand photo sheets. Whatever it was as a creative, what made you feel energized and what didn't make you feel energized? Avoid those projects. That's that's an over commitment that I was talking about in the last episode. Okay. What projects, clients, their habits consistently left you exhausted or unprofitable? Those are things you really need to think about. Okay. Something looked great on paper, like when you signed the contract, but it made you absolutely miserable. It's not going to be part of your 2026 strategy. We are going for gold here. You don't want to go for silver. So we're going to ditch what left us feeling miserable. Okay. If you could only keep three things from your business this year, whether it was offers, systems, clients, out of those three things, what would they be? What specific things? That's what I want you to think about. You can write that down with your notebook. Three things in your business this year that's offered systems and clients. What would they be? That was you to write down all of those. What was your most profitable, most consistent? What work made you feel energized and what kind of left you feeling exhausted or unprofitable? And then what three things would you like to keep from this year? Now we're going to start working on our focus for 2026. So we want to narrow down to one main focus area for 2026. So some of those examples, and I gave you some of that very first episode, increasing profit margin, building consistency in your cash flow, helping hire to regain capacity or transitioning from hustle mode into something that's sustainability. I want to emphasize that the focus is the opposite of overcommitting. The clearer that we focus, the easier that every yes or no is going to become, because we already have our 2026 focus in mind. We want to have just a North Star statement. This is a one sentence that summarizes our 2026 goal. For example, in 2026, my business supports both my income and my energy. So for me, I'm just going to give you my 2026 North Star goal. In 2026, my business is going to focus on giving my clients the best that they deserve. So I want to work out my systems and everything like that to give my clients the best that they deserve. Now we want to revisit our numbers with intent. So we want to tie in our 2025 reflection and forecast by asking ourselves, now that we see our trends, what numbers do we want to see shift and look at specific categories. Maybe you want to see something shift down. Maybe you want to see something shift up. You want to raise your prices, increase owners pay or reduce a certain expense category. What does that look like? And then we want to set a measurable goal for our revenue and our profit. And then if necessary, also our owners pay because that's going to help our numbers tell the same story that our goals are. Okay. So we want to align that and really have that intention there. The next thing you want to do is create our core for priorities. If you guys watch screen, you're properly laughing right now because it's core for. So introducing the concept of the core for. So the core for is four key actions or focus areas that will move the needle the most in 2026. So first of all, financial systems. So seeing consistent with bookkeeping, forecasting and reviewing your reports. Okay. Then we also want to have our offer alignment focusing on services that are both profitable and interducing our operational flow building processes, delegating or automating what we need to. And then owners while being whether that's rest boundaries and intentional downtime. And those are four pillars. These are the pillars that you've business rests on for 2026. You need to stick with them that way again, we can focus on the over commitment, not over committing ourselves, not saying yes to everything. Okay. Then once we have all these ideas and these goals in mind, we need to set up a rhythm of review. So first of all, there's a couple of dates we need to pick. We need to have a monthly money date. This is a review of your income expenses and goals. This is when your bookkeeping is done for the month that you just look at everything in comparison. And if you have a bookkeeper, the perfect money date is whenever they give you your financials. Okay. A quarterly strategy check. You want to step back and ask, are you on track? Do I need to pivot? Well, do I need to do to make sure that I'm meeting things next quarter? And we do this every quarter with my clients. If they're not meeting the revenue goal, we shift it so that it can maybe they can meet the revenue goal now. And then a year end reflection to repeat what we're doing right now and do this again next year. Okay. This isn't a one and done document. It's going to be an open dialogue with your business to make sure that you're consistently trucking along consistently, making everything better. The numbers are going to change every month, but the purpose stays the same that we want to make the decisions that support our goals for our business. Okay. So now we want to build a 2026 action plan. We're going to break the strategy that we've set up into our first steps. What's one thing that we can implement in January to support our focus area, the focus that we set up. Then who do we need to bring on board? Is it a bookkeeper via CPA coach? Like who do we need to bring into our team to support this? And what systems are habit through we need to start now to make the plan sustainable? I know this kind of seems like we're setting up ourselves for, you know, our new year's resolutions, but this isn't a new user's solution. This is an action plan. We're going to put these into action. This is not just something we're going to say we're going to do and then we're not going to do. Okay. So we want to have small clear actions over big vague goals. We want them to be attainable. We want them to be achievable. So breaking down our goals into smaller, clear actions. Instead of saying, I want to get better at finances. Just saying, I'm going to review my numbers every Friday morning before I check my email because that's going to help you a lot, right? So not everything is going to go perfectly. Your forecast is going to be off. Your plans are going to shift. It's just feedback that you're going to use to better everything. Strong strategy just isn't about controlling everything. It's about being prepared to adapt with the confidence that you've built. Okay. Planning is not going to kill the creativity. It's going to protect it because if you are constantly putting out fires, you can't think bigger than what is going on right and for me, right? Okay. You now have everything that you need to walk into 2020, six with clarity and power. You cleaned your books, you were reflection on your numbers, you built a forecast. So now it's time to trust yourself and use everything that we built. And if you don't have time to figure it out on your own, you just have to be in conversation with your business one month, one number and one decision at the time. And if you need help, I'm always there for you. Okay. If this is all sounded like something you really need help with, but you just don't know where to start. Reach out. Let's chat. So as if you enjoyed this episode, please leave her a few like, comment, subscribe, share it on social media so that others like you can find it. And if you have a topic suggestion, feel free to let us know what you're looking for in 2026. We would love to know what you guys are aiming for with your own. the new year. As always, I wish you the best week ever. Farewell, fellow travelers.