One of the things I like most about the New Year is the chance of a fresh start. I always dream about everything being organized and planned, in order and ready to go. Today, I’d like to share a bit of my planning and organizational process. Here are my top tips for planning the next year of your yoga business like a pro.

Plan the next year of your yoga business:

Plan the Year

First it’s time to get a general overview of the year ahead. Get yourself a big wall calendar with all the months and weeks on it or use a tool like apple calendar.  Write down all the events and dates that you already know about: retreats, workshops, holidays, maybe even product launches. This will help you get an overview of what’s ahead. Hopefully you don’t have any ugly surprises like a vacation one week before a retreat you are giving (though of course a vacation is NEVER an ugly surprise), but if you plan ahead at least you can schedule it in and get all the preparatory work done in time.

Take this opportunity to plan in some big things too. Like your first yoga retreat or an online course on meditation you want to launch. This will help ensure that you are going to work ON your business in the next year, not only IN your business.

Monthly Marketing Calendar

Some people like to plan each 90 days but I believe in planning the month ahead. At the end of every month have a look at the month ahead and plan it out in more detail. What’s happening? What deadlines do you need to put in your calendar? What are you planning to create? What newsletters do you want to send out? For your blog write down all the blog posts you plan to publish that month, just the title is enough.

After each month, have a look at the last month and celebrate what you accomplished. Analyze your results, have a look at your numbers and goals and see where you are.

Set up a Weekly Schedule

Instead of just working on your to-do list and getting lost in the nitty-gritty jobs, reserve time each day of the week for certain tasks to work on.

For example your week could look like this:

Monday: work on new content (for example blog posts, newsletter)

Tuesday: Teach yoga class and work on new projects (for example planning an upcoming workshop, developing a digital product for your website…)

Wednesday + Thursday: teach yoga classes

Friday: social media + admin stuff (create social media updates + schedule for week ahead, accounting and invoices)

Weekly To-Do List

Based on your monthly calendar, create a weekly to-do list for the week ahead. Try to be as detailed as possible and include every single small task. For example, instead of just writing “plan new workshop”, schedule “come up with outline for yin yoga workshop”, “write newsletter invitation for workshop” and “create flyer for workshop”. Don’t forget to set dates until each task needs to be completed. There are many tools that can help you with that. You can use a paper planner or an online tool like Trello, Asana or Things.

Daily To-Do List

If you use an online planning tool like Trello or Things, it will automatically create a daily to-do list for you based on your weekly plan. Add things that might have come up, like a visit to the doctor, and be realistic when looking it over – do you have a chance of accomplishing everything on your list that day? If not check what you can reschedule. Doing this now and not at the end of the day will make you feel so much better!

Another great tip that helped me a lot is to get the biggest problem out-of-the-way before you get lost in the daily small tasks. Scan your to-do list for the 1 or 2 most important tasks and tackle them first.

Planning your year ahead lets you see when you need to tackle that big project if you want to make it come true. Give power to your plans, write them down, visualize them, cross them off, and then go celebrate.