In today’s episode, I’m sharing a powerful year-end process my team and I have been using to set crystal-clear goals, refine our company values, and build our 2025 strategy with total alignment.

I break down how we reviewed what worked (and what didn’t), set 10-year, 3-year, and 1-year goals, and created a plan that’s already helping us make more intentional decisions.

If you’re looking for a way to end the year with clarity and momentum, this episode is for you!

More ways Embodied Marketing can support you:

Build your 2025 Custom Marketing Plan LIVE with Emily in this FREE workshop happening December 12 & 13th: https://embodiedmarketing.com/2025 

Join Emily in Austin, TX for 3 days at this epic marketing event, Embodied Marketing LIVE. Grab your ticket and we’ll see you January 16-18th: https://go.embodiedmarketing.com/live 

Tired of inconsistent revenue & marketing strategies that leave you overwhelmed? Whether you’re just starting out or ready to scale to multiple 7-figures, book a call with the Embodied Team to see how we can help: http://helpmystrategy.com

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

Hello my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having a great week. And if you’re also feeling the holiday busyness, I see you. I posted this on my Instagram stories the other day, but I was like, if you are also running a business and a parent and trying to keep up with everything that happens around the holidays and the extra you know pajama day or my son has dressed like an elf at his preschool or like their spirit week and the presents and the extra parties and all of the things that come with the holiday season while trying to stay healthy and You know, do the regular everyday life things. It’s always such a busy season. This year, every year I try to do this, but this year especially I have said no to a lot of things. And we intentionally made our kids activities like the minimal as possible during this month and into January.

Because I don’t want my weekends packed when we only have a few weekends before Christmas to one, get some shopping done, get things done, but also just make memories. This last weekend, my husband took my two oldest kids and they went on an off-roading adventure. Austin’s so funny because it will have like one day is a high of 50 degrees and then one day is a high of 70 degrees. And so we have like one pocket of warmish weather.

And my kids have been asking to go camping and my husband did a whole upgrade to his truck this last year and loves it. I don’t really get that thing, you know, get trucks and and that, but he loves it. And so it’s ready for off-roading. So my kids, my older two kids went and I got to spend the whole day with my youngest and it was so fun. We went Christmas shopping. and We went to my favorite our favorite coffee shop. We went for a hike. We played outside. We painted, we crafted. It was just such a great time and it’s it’s so important. It reminds me how important it is to do that one-on-one time with the kids, each parent. So that was my weekend. I am trying to keep my weekends so open so I can sit in my living room and enjoy my Christmas decorations and sit by the fire and read with my kids and do Christmas crafts and bake cookies.

So we are saying no to some parties and limited sports and all those things because it’s easy to overpack your schedule. It’s actually hard to keep it from becoming overpacked when you have multiple kids and life. Anyways, today I wanted to share a process that I have been doing internally on my team for probably the last six to eight weeks. We actually started really early this year and we deep into the process and the things that we’re doing and it’s been amazing. I am going through this with myself and my direct reports in the company, so the leadership team. And then it carried over to the rest of the team, but it really helped us kind of set the vision, get everybody excited for the new year, do a deep dive into what worked and what didn’t work during and this year. And it’s just been a really, really powerful process. 

I think the more in your business that you can make sure your foundation is solid and you’re clear on where you’re going, what your goals are what your plan is to back up those goals and get everybody on the same page whether you have one team member or twenty plus team members this process can be the same and i actually decided to bring some of these things into my in person Embodied Marketing Live event happening in January here in Texas. We have about five tickets left. So if you haven’t grabbed your ticket, you still can. If you go to embodiedmarketing.com/live, you’ll see that event. But the first day of the event, we’re going to do some of these things live and I’m going to take you through obviously deeper than I can explain on this podcast, this entire process and pull out the most important things and we’re going to do it together.

But I figured I would share from a high level what that is because now is such a great time of year to be spending doing these things. I think December is such a great month, not to add more time because as I just said at the beginning of this episode, it’s already a busy season, but in the times that you would already be working. So for me, it’s like, I’ve got my working hours. I’ve prioritized what I’m doing during those hours to accommodate this process.

It’s not necessarily about adding more. It’s like, what could I simplify? What could I remove so that I have time for this in the already determined hours that I’m working? So this is the process and this is a great thing for you to do. Come to the live event and do it with me or You can do this on your own. I am also hosting this week on Thursday, Friday. It will incorporate a little bit of this, but it’ll be a little bit more detailed, like your marketing strategy. I’m hosting my annual workshop, two day workshop on creating your 2025 marketing strategy. So if you would like to come to that, you can go to embodiedmarketing.com/2025. That’s a two day free workshop.

And we actually get into the weeds of your strategy, like your email marketing, your funnels, your live launches, your promo calendar, all that. This is a little bit more high level leadership visionary work. And we’re going to dive into that at the in-person event in January.

Okay, let’s dive in. So first thing that we did as a team and what I do personally is sit down and make a list of what worked and what didn’t work this year. Like what is going well? What is a good use of time and energy and resources? What is something that we’re putting resources towards, but it’s maybe not working. It’s feeling like there’s force. It’s feeling like there’s a lot of resistance, it’s feeling like there’s procrastination, you know those things that’s like that’s not going smoothly. What are those things in the business this year that worked really well? You know they are moving the needle towards your goals and then the things that didn’t. And you’re currently doing them and they’re not working, they’re draining your energy, they’re draining your resources, and they’re not moving the needle. Just kind of take inventory, what went well, what didn’t.

Then the next thing that we did, and this one was really powerful, is going with my leadership team and reviewing the foundation of our company. I talk a lot about the foundation of your marketing, but this is the foundation of your company, which is your mission. like Why does your company exist? What is the mission of your company and not some BS corporate sounding mission? like If you were to say it, someone could actually understand it and resonate and believe it. If you were to say it to a team member, if you have one or you have them, they’d be like, yeah, that’s totally our mission. Not a chat GPT statement that really means nothing, but you want to put something down. What’s the company mission? What are the company values? And what is the niche of your company? Like who are you actually going after?

This is the foundation of your entire business, not just your marketing, but your business is why are you doing what you do? What are the values that you stand by as a company and who are you doing it for? That does impact your marketing, but it also impacts your delivery. It impacts the culture of your company. It impacts what you say yes to what you say no to.

So we went through all of these and we actually ended up updating them because I hadn’t done this process before with my whole leadership team. I had said a lot of these and they weren’t bad But we actually redefined especially our values and I will probably be sharing those at a different time and more so just trying to clarify what actually represents our company. So what we did was we looked at it from the perspective of if we were to make decisions based off of who we would hire and who we would fire and how we would move forward as a company.

What are those non negotiable values like if I picture myself in a conversation with a potential future employee? What are the values that I would look for and I would actually hire based off of those values or a situation with an employee not performing?

What are the non-negotiable values that would actually cause me to fire somebody? and i And I hadn’t fully looked at my values in that perspective and that really helped a lot because I think a lot of times with values, they’re already there. They are already things that you feel are important. I mean, our values as a person are really important. i have We have family values hung up on our wall in my house.

The Hirsh family values and I think your individual values and your values in a relationship, your values in your company, it’s like those are the things that you turn to when there’s not a manual on how to do it. Those are the things that are non-negotiable. Those are the things that drive what you say yes to, what you say no to, how you do things, how you show up, what you feel is within integrity. Those are the things that oftentimes in a company you can’t train. You can’t train somebody’s values. So for me, one thing that’s really important is

A constant drive for growth and accountability. Accountability is so important to me. I have a zero tolerance for victimhood. And for me, that’s something that a lot of times you can’t train because it’s so deeply ingrained in somebody how they show up you have two types of people if the people who show up and they want to grow and they want to get better everyday and they are willing to look at themselves and look in the mirror and say okay here’s where i’m here’s where i’m doing well here’s where i can improve here’s what I could own that i could do better and here’s where i can take accountability for a situation or for my role or how I show up each day. You have that person and then you have the other person who is not capable of looking in the mirror and taking accountability and they have to blame others or blame situations or blame external factors because if they didn’t it would threaten themselves so much that they couldn’t do it. 

And that’s such a deeply ingrained based on trauma, based on your beliefs, based on your past, like some people will never change in their entire life in the way that they show up. For me as a person, this is how I operate every single day. How can I improve? How can I show up better? How can I look at myself and take accountability, even in the toughest scenarios or the situations where I am so angry because somebody did X, Y, Z, how can I take accountability? Because at the end of the day, I think that’s the only thing we can control. Anyways, that’s not the point of this. That is something I can’t train somebody. That is ingrained within them. And so when I look for clients, team, partners, people to associate with, even my friends, my husband, like all of these things are so important to me because I don’t think that I could have a close relationship with somebody who didn’t value that.

You don’t have to do the same as me, but you have to value that for it to work out. So what are those values in your company that are already there? They’re in you. Just have you defined them or not. Then what we did, we refined all of that. And then we actually did a values assessment. So we went through and we looked at every team member on our team and we did an assessment of how each one is kind of owning up to those values. And then we have we’re about to do this process, but we’re going to do a 2024 assessment with all of the team members where they get to rate themselves against the values and we’re going to set goals for the next year. So really getting everyone on the same page with the values with what that means like values are one thing and then how does that actually translate into what you do every day in your specific role in the company.

Then as a leadership team, we defined our 10 year big goal, which was just a revenue number, not just, but it’s a single revenue number. I don’t feel that I can define another 10 year goal besides that because there’s so much nuance and there’s so much unknown that I think that you have to, in a 10 year time span, stay really open to what you don’t know, we what we don’t know, we don’t know, right? If we plan out too structured, it’s like then we become blind to opportunities. so We set a 10-year goal where we want the company to be in 10 years. Then we set a three-year goal, again, revenue goal and profit goal and then we we set one-year goals. and The one-year goals, we got more specific than just revenue. We got revenue specific.

But then also some other specific goals related to the podcast related to our live event related to metrics as it relates to clients like percentage of clients who are profitable within four months of working with us. We have goals on our done with you side of how quickly they launch their ads. So success metrics for the company and we set annual goals for all of that. We took our annual revenue goal and we broke it down by month, every single month, taking into consideration a season that might be a little slower. For me, sometimes the summer can be a little bit slower in terms of sales. And then I have really big months in the spring and at the end of the year. And so we took that into consideration and we broke down every single month, how much money, how much profit, how many clients we would need on both sides of the company. We broke that down and it’s like we are so crystal clear where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, and what those exact numbers are. Once we had that, we broke down Q1 goals and the actual marketing strategy and the plan that was going to get us there. So I know at a high level my entire marketing strategy for the next six months.

I know the launches we’re doing. I know the evergreen funnels we’re launching. I know when, you know for example, my mastermind launches a retreat that I’m going to host in April. like It is all planned out so we can align our promotional calendar and our actions with those goals and then tie it to revenue. I am a pretty good planner, but I’ve never had it this planned. And it’s interesting because being this clear on everything has already made a difference in the company in the last two to four weeks, because it’s already caused me and the leadership team to say no to things and projects that are actually not in alignment with moving us forward, moving us where we want to go. It’s helped us in our marketing. It’s helped the team. We did a team town hall where we shared all of this with them. We shared the company mission, the values, the niche, how it impacts them. We shared the 10 year, the three year, the one year goals. And we’re also rolling out an incentive program based on these for the entire team.

And so it’s put everybody on the same page. Everybody understands where we’re going. Everybody understands how they impact where we’re going. And we’re all moving towards that. And it’s like it’s already started. It’s not the new year, but we know our January goals. And so what we’re doing right now is already setting us up for our January goals and the initiatives that we’re taking. And so it’s just been a very powerful exercise. And again, I have done something like this every year, but we deepened it this year. And then I involve my team a lot more than I usually do because I am more removed from our day to day. And so honestly, they know more than I do in a lot of cases, and they’re going to run these things. They’re going to run the initiatives.

So now we have this foundation and what this does is, number one, it gives us clarity on the actions and the projects and the launches and the funnels that we need to work on. It gives us and the entire team a goalpost of metrics from delivery to marketing to sales. Everybody’s got metrics. You can’t argue with metrics. That’s why I love them. It’s like either made it or you didn’t. Number three, we’ve got a vision and we’ve got a foundation that can dictate what we say yes to, what we say no to, where I put my time and energy, where I choose with my team to put my company’s time and energy. Is it in alignment with this vision, with these goals? So this process we are going to do live in January in Austin, Texas in person. And I think it’s going to be pretty incredible that plus a bunch of other things like I have. Last week I finalized the schedule and it’s so good. You guys, it is so good. I packed it in, but also curated it into this incredible intentional experience. Like what happens first, what happens next, how it’s all happening, the few guest experts I’m bringing in, like it’s going to be so good.

And it’s also in this big Airbnb. It’s an intimate experience with lots of opportunity for side conversations and one-on-ones with me and my team. So it’s like it’s like a business event. But i when I created this, I was like, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to do it in a hotel room, like a hotel conference room. That is not my vibe. It’s got to feel like a retreat, even though it’s a business strategic workshop. It’s embodied, it’s addressing it all and it has to have that feeling of intimacy and retreat-like experience. So I would love to have you there. If you have any questions about the event, feel free to reach out to me. Again, we have about five more spots left and I am so excited and we are going to literally do everything I just said in today’s podcast episode.

If you can’t make the event and or you want to come just plan your marketing strategy with me, then I will be doing that this Thursday and Friday. And you can save your spot for that at EmbodiedMarketing.com/2025. That is free. It’s a two-day workshop. I did it last year. I did it the year before. It’s one of the top things that I teach every year and I update it, of course, every single year but it will build out your entire strategy, your promotional calendar, when you’re going to live launch, what your strategy looks like. So I hope to see some of you there and see some of you in person in Austin and I’ll talk to you all on Thursday.