Taking a fresh perspective on 2025 business planning

Like a lot of businesses, I’ve been thinking about what &Something Studio should look like over the next 12 months. By now, we’re all a bit fed up with seeing our social feeds filled with posts about 2025 goals and trends. It all feels a bit…contrived to me. It’s not the real world, is it? I mean, do we all aim to be running 6-figure businesses?

I’m not convinced we’re looking at this in the right way. Perhaps we need to step back from this online marketing madness and get back to basics – and back into our own way of doing things. Let’s not get caught up in all the influence and think rationally about what we want our businesses to look like.

What are the ‘rules’, anyway?

Now and again, I fall into the trap of reading stuff online and thinking, ‘Oh, so that’s how I should be doing it!’. How many of us do that? Especially when we spend a lot of time working alone or in a small group. When you work in isolation, as many of us do in the design field, you find yourself open to all sorts of influences that perhaps aren’t entirely helpful.

I’m not saying all of it is awful – there’s some great advice out there. What I’m suggesting is that we need to consider our own unique situation and our own experience. Rather than trusting what we read, put some trust in ourselves, too. No one knows your business and particular aspirations better than you – certainly not some random person on the internet who’s never met you. 

Nothing is set in stone in business, and nothing stays the same. What worked last year might not work this year. And so the rules keep changing – the goalposts are always moving. The rules – and our plans – need to be flexible. The trick is to monitor our marketing efforts and know when things need to change.

The rules we set should be ours and ours alone. Sure, take guidance and seek advice – learn from what you read, and those you trust, but decide what’s for you and what isn’t. Just because something works for one person doesn’t mean it will be right for you.

How often do you review and plan?

Having a 12-month goal can sometimes feel overwhelming. We all have goals, and it’s good to have something in place so you know where you want to be heading. But, like I said earlier, things often change, and we need to accommodate that.

Between those yearly plans, I find it helpful to look back every few months to see what’s worked for us, and where we’ve been wasting our efforts. Sometimes, I’ve put loads of time into marketing in a particular area, and then in the second half of the year, it’s just…stopped working. That doesn’t mean I should abandon it, but it might mean that I try something else for a while, or change the way that I do that particular exercise.

Some people do that monthly or quarterly. It’s not really set in stone, but it’s definitely helpful to do throughout the year. And it means that you won’t get to the end of the year and realise how much time, energy, and money you’ve wasted on something that hasn’t brought in any business at all.

Slow growth is still growth.

There’s a big emphasis on business growth – and yeah, it’s a vital part of any business to always be marketing for new clients in order to keep the pennies coming in. But is it necessary to grow at a million miles an hour? 

Again, we always see messages online about how we need to earn X amount to be successful – but what does success mean? Because in my experience, it’s not just about money. It’s about finding projects that excite me, spending my time working with the right people, and moving forwards creatively. Sure, I need my studio to make money for me to live, but it’s about more than that. The whole profit-building exercise feels a bit crass.

I’ve mentioned in past articles that my future goals are centred around doing work that I enjoy. I recognise that I need to make sure that the business is profitable and that I need to survive, but I’ve no desire to become a millionaire anytime soon. So, while I want to grow the studio, it’s not driven by earnings – and if increasing my earnings means that I lose my enjoyment of the work, I’ve done that before, and it’s not the trade-off I want again.

Knowing our limits

We all have our limits – both in how much we can do, and how much we can spend on building our business. While it’s usual for us to push those from time to time, we should also recognise where to push, and when to let go.

Let’s use marketing as an example, though the same applies to production, illustration or rolling out websites. We’re pretty fortunate that we get a lot of marketing tools these days for free. Stuff like social media allows us to get in front of thousands of people in an instant – something that we’ve never been able to do without spending on ads before.

But there is a cost – to our time, at least. We can lose hours creating stuff for our social feeds, only to not bring any interest. If you think about it, you can easily lose money because every hour you spend on social media can be an hour’s profit lost.

Most of us who run small businesses have limited resources and can’t always outsource. Marketing specialists, copywriters, and social media agencies all cost money, and so many of us end up taking on those tasks ourselves.

Think about where you stand to lose the most. Is it worth taking back some time by outsourcing? In some cases, it will be. Bear in mind that time = money. Just because you do it yourself doesn’t mean it’s free.