Episode 78: Year-End Financial Review: Turn Your Numbers Into a 2026 Action Plan

Welcome to the Creative Minds Smart Money Podcast, where we turn financial confusion into creative confidence. I’m Samantha Eck, bookkeeper 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. Because building a successful creative business starts with strong financial foundations. Your next chapter starts now.

You’re listening to the Creative Minds 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 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 success in 2026 and have all the things in mind that we need to. We’ve already talked about what we need to get our year-end done.

We’ve talked about looking at our financials. We’ve talked about cash flows for cash. And we talked about how not to overcommit 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’ve cleaned your books.

You reviewed your numbers. You’ve built your forecast. And hopefully you’ve caught your breath.

You’ve 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 energy drink, and an honest look at your 2025 results.

This is very similar to what I do for my clients. It’s cut back a lot. I just want to give you some tools that you can utilize going forward.

Okay? We don’t need 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 we’ve already looked at our financial data. But we want to look at our financial wins. What revenue streams were 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 brand photo shoots. 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 overcommitment that I was talking about in the last episode. Okay? What projects, clients, or 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? Like what specific things? That’s what I want you to kind of think about. And you can write that down with your notebook.

That’s what I want you to think about. Three things in your business this year, that’s offers, systems, and clients. What would they be? I want you to write down all of those.

Like 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 in 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 sustainable.

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 on 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’ve seen 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.

Do you want to raise your prices, increase owner’s 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 owner’s pay, because that’s going to help our numbers tell the same story that our goals are. So we want to align that and really have that intention there.

The next thing we want to do is create our core four priorities. If you guys watch screen, you’re probably laughing right now because it’s core four. So introducing the concept of the core four.

So the core four is four key actions or focus areas that will move the needle the most in 2026. So first of all, financial systems. So staying 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 energizing. Our operational flow, building processes, delegating or automating what we need to.

And then owner’s well-being, whether that’s rest boundaries and intentional downtime. And those are our four pillars. These are the pillars that your business rests on for 2026.

You need to stick with them. That way, again, we can focus on the overcommitment, not overcommitting 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 and compare it all. 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? What 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 their revenue goal, we shift it so that it can maybe they can meet their 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, you know, chugging 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 our 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, a VA, a CPA, a coach? Like, who do we need to bring into our team to support this? And what systems or habits do 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 year’s resolution. This isn’t 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, clearer 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 in front of you. Right? Okay. You now have everything that you need to walk into 2026 with clarity and power.

You’ve cleaned your books, your reflection on your numbers, you’ve built a forecast. So now it’s time to trust yourself and use everything that we’ve built. And if you don’t have time to figure it all out on your own, you just have to be in conversation with your business one month, one number and one decision at a time.

And if you need help, I’m always there for you. Okay. If this is all sounded like something that you really need help with, but you just don’t know where to start, reach out.

Let’s chat. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review, like, comment, subscribe, share it on social media so that others like you can find it. And if you have topic suggestions, feel free to let us know what you’re looking for in 2026.

I’d really love to know what you guys are aiming for with the new year. As always, I wish you the best week ever. Farewell, fellow travelers.