2022 Planning – The Five Things You Can Do Now

Five Things To Think About

If you're starting to think about your next year, and focused on your 2022 planning, may I give you five things to think about?

1. More Revenue Streams

Everyone wants their business to grow. But most of the time what I find people doing is doubling down on the existing business they have. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But I find that one of the strategies most often missed is the ability to grow your income with another revenue stream.

So as you look at your 2022 planning, consider what kinds of products or services you can add to your offerings.

2. Narrow Your Focus

Instead of building a product for freelancers and agencies, what would it look like to craft an offering that was for freelancers but not agencies, or agencies but not freelancers. Just asking the question of how they differ will help you narrow your focus on a micro-segment and help you craft a lot more ideas than when you're creating broad and generic offerings.

Do this early in 2022 and see how the brainstorming will help you craft new offerings that you can execute on all year long.

3. More Marketing

I have some friends who have a great offering. And they work on it, and refine it, all the time. But they rarely told the world about it. And as a result, growth was slow. This past year they actually started doing some marketing and suddenly growth was 300%.

So as you look at initiatives to put into your 2022 planning calendar, think about what podcasts you can get on, what webinars you can participate in, and how you can get the word out.

4. New Initiatives That Don't Scale

I have a buddy who regularly comes up with cool product ideas. And then overcomplicates them and turns them into serious development initiatives. Sound familiar? I know at least 10 folks who are reading this and wondering if I'm calling them out. It's that common.

My advice to him, and to everyone who will listen, is to keep things manual and simple at the start. See if the initiative takes off. You can always backfill the development effort if everything is going great. But it's not worth overcomplicating things at the start.

So as you think about next year, consider what kinds of new initiatives you can experiment with to see which ones stick.

5. Build Community Around Your Offerings

I've told you about GoWP and how they built a community around their offerings. This one is simple. If you haven't started building your own community around your offerings, then plan for it in the new year. It's a great way to serve your customers while building deeper trust and relationships with prospects.

Good Luck with Your 2022 Planning

I hope these ideas help you get started with your 2022 planning. More importantly, I hope you enjoy the last week of this year and get really excited for what next year can bring.