It's already October, which means it's time to start thinking about your 2027 business plan. And while that might feel early, you can either plan now and head into January feeling confident, or put it off and start the year already feeling behind.

But here's the thing: If your annual business plan only works for the most motivated, caffeinated version of yourself, it's probably not a plan you'll actually stick to.

In this episode of Growing a Deeply Rooted Business, we're walking you through our signature 3-step annual planning process: Assess, Align, and Act. We'll show you how to reflect on what actually worked in 2026, align your business goals with your real-life capacity, and turn your big-picture vision into actionable quarterly and weekly priorities.

Plus, we're sharing how we use AI and intentional planning rhythms to stay on track without overloading our calendars.

Because the goal isn't to do more in 2027. It's to build a business plan that supports your growth and the life you actually want to live.

In This Episode, We're Talking About:

• Why October is the perfect time to start planning your 2027 business year instead of waiting until January
• How to assess your 2026 business performance by looking at both your numbers and what actually felt good (or draining)
• How to align your revenue goals, offers, and marketing calendar with your personal commitments and actual capacity
• Why focusing on fewer goals and turning them into actionable quarterly and weekly priorities leads to more sustainable progress
• How to use AI, Notion, and regular business planning meetings to stay on track and actually follow through on your plan

Resources Mentioned

Rooted in Reality Business Planning Workbook

Our Rooted in Reality Business Planning Workbook walks you through our signature Assess, Align, and Act process so you can reflect on your past year, set intentional goals, and build an actionable plan around your real-life capacity.

Get the workbook here: https://buy.stripe.com/eVqaEY0pC9v8cPl9F6d3i00

Project Manager Paula — AI Assistant

Project Manager Paula helps you break down your big business goals into manageable projects, deliverables, and action steps so you know exactly what needs to happen next.Grab

Project Manager Paula here: https://gal.thrivecart.com/paula

Meet Your Hosts

Jessica Walther is the founder and CEO of The Launch Collaborative and Sustainable Success Systems. As a launch strategist and systems consultant, Jess is dedicated to helping solo business owners and small-but-mighty teams build businesses that deliver both peace and profit. She specializes in creating sustainable growth strategies that align with her clients' values and lifestyles.

Rachel Lopez is the founder and CEO of Gal Marketing Agency, a boutique email marketing and strategy firm. With over a decade of experience, Rachel helps heart-driven entrepreneurs craft intentional marketing strategies that attract, nurture, and convert leads sustainably. Her human-first approach ensures that marketing efforts feel authentic and effective .

Together, Jess and Rachel blend systems, storytelling, and soulful strategy to help you grow a business that's deeply aligned with your life—not just your revenue goals.

Connect With Us:

• Jess Website
• Rachel's Website

Hang Out & Say Hi!

• Deeply Rooted Business Instagram
• Jess Instagram
• Rachel's Instagram

Can you believe that it is already mid-October and it is time to

start planning for twenty twenty-seven?

And if you don't believe me that now is the time, now is the time, 'cause

two things are about to happen.

You're either going to do your planning now, be able to shut your computer,

relax, take that last week of December where you just kinda do nothing but

couch rot, and then open your computer to a fresh plan ready and raring to

go in twenty twenty-seven, or you're going to procrastinate planning.

The holidays are gonna come on, you're gonna get exhausted, still take that week

off, but then when you open your computer in January, you're gonna be like, "What

the heck am I supposed to be doing?"

And you're gonna start already feeling behind before the year even starts.

So today we're gonna be walking you through our signature

annual planning process.

The one in that is rooted in actual reality, not manifestations and dreams.

We do leave space for a little bit of that too, but we wanna help you

build a plan that is actually built around your life that gives you the

best chance of execution and actually hitting your goals and has your real

capacity in mind so that when twenty twenty-seven hits, you're ready to go.

You're feeling confident, you're feeling grounded, you're feeling

ready to take on the year.

So today, again like I said, we're gonna walk you through our signature

three-step planning process, which is assess, align, and act.

And we're gonna be telling you how AI can help you kinda bring all of your

data that you've gathered into this year and make next year's planning

process better and bigger than ever

welcome back to Growing a Deeply Rooted Business, the show for women

building businesses that support their actual lives versus swallowing them

whole and leaving you burnt out, sad.

I'm Rachel, your marketing ecosystem strategist.

I'm here for the message, the audience, and making sure that the pieces of

your business cohesively work together.

And I'm here with Jess, our sustainable systems strategist

and resident plan translator.

Give her a annual goal and she will tell you exactly what needs to happen next

Tuesday to make it actually reality.

So, this is our new series on planning your 2027 business year,

and we always like to say, this is not the aspirational year that your

most caffeinated self can achieve.

This is your most average self executing things that are possible in

every week, day, month possibilities.

Before we get into this, we're gonna do a quick energy check, because I

think that a lot of people feel this kind of anxious anticipation, this

pressure to build the perfect plan, and we know that the plan itself isn't

necessarily gonna always execute at 100%.

We know that's not true.

But we wanna make sure that what we're not doing is putting so much pressure

on this plan that once we build it, it goes into our Notion database or the

bottom of our planner and just disappear.

So we're gonna release all of that.

We're gonna take a slow deep breath in and let it out.

We are not solving all of our 2027 problems in this episode.

We are just merely allowing the foundation to exist so that we

can start when we are ready.

Let's get into it

All right, so let's move into step one, which is assess.

So this is the part where we look back, because you can't get to

where you wanna go if you don't know where you're currently at

or what currently got you here.

So in our assess step, we're gonna really just take the time, take 90

minutes to two hours to kind of just look back at your past year and really

dig into all of the bits and bobs that make your business run so that you're

making your plan going forward, not just on intuition, not on guilt, not

on guesses, not on some internet guru's template that they gave you, and they've

got a 30-person team to execute in.

We're gonna build it based on us.

So before you choose what you want your next year to look like, you

need to know what actually happened this year, and take a really

honest assessment of where you are.

this is something that I feel like a lot of people, especially me, 'cause

when I was planning and I was in the midst of burnout, I would just bury all of the

things that I thought were happening, and I would say, "Nope, whatever."

And so something I've been doing recently, 'cause I do feel like I'm

trying to get into a new creative space of my business, is that I've been flow

journaling, and this is flow journaling in just writing off of a prompt.

So you can say, "How did 2026 feel?"

And you can essentially just set a timer for 15 minutes and start there.

Because honestly, I think the energy of the year is super important before

you get into the tactics and the layers and the clients and all of that.

So, assessing, how did it actually feel?

Do we want this to move forward with us?

If we wanna start, stop, continue, what is the energy that we want to maintain?

And I do think that there's a lot of subconscious, gunk buried in there

that flow state journaling or non-stop don't lift my pen up for 15 minutes

kind of thing has really helped me recently get through a lot of this

decision-making of where I want my business to go and all of that.

So if you're into the woo, I say give that a try before you get into any of

the pulling out the receipts, doing your client trackers, and getting into that.

Yep.

So I actually just got off a launch debrief call with one of the teams that

I am helping run right now, and what I always say is that we need to look at both

qualitative data and quantitative data.

So quantitative data are all of the thing, all of those business numbers

that you already track revenue, expenses, or hopefully already track.

How many clients you have, how did they come in?

How did your sales go?

The indicators or KPIs that tell, how your business is actually performing.

But then that qualitative data is just as important, like what Rachel said.

Like, how did things feel?

What felt good?

What felt depleting?

What do you wanna start doing?

What do you wanna continue doing?

What did you try that absolutely didn't work, and you're like, "Eh,

I'm never gonna do that ever again"?

All of those things are super important.

So like I said, you wanna be looking at one, how did you feel?

What offers did you love?

Not only what offers sold, but what offers did you love delivering?

What offers drained your soul?

What offers did you procrastinate giving the deliverables to the

very last second 'cause it's something you didn't like to do?

Same thing with clients.

We're looking at not only where did those clients come from, how did you

attract them, but which clients did you actually, get it lit up working from?

What did you fulfill, did you get fulfilled working from?

'Cause I think the key to building, the life-first business in the way that we

think about it is, yes, we wanna protect our, profits, but we also wanna protect

our peace of mind and our purpose and make sure that we're working into our

purpose just as much, and that's why this assess step in our planner walks

you through not only the reports that you need to pull to be able to get all the

information you need to plan, but also it gives you those journaling prompts

that we'll walk you through so you can really start to sort through all that

year full of gunk that you went through.

So you have a really clear and rooted in reality picture of where you're

starting from in your business.

once you have those two, the quantitative and the qualitative areas

reflected on, go through that list and do simple three groups, which is

repeat, adjust, and stop entirely.

repeat what worked and what fit into your life.

Adjust what essentially had promise, can be adjusted in some way to fit better, and

then stop all of the things that really just were completely out of alignment.

And then once you have that, then you can get into the next

step, which is the align step.

This step is really bringing forward alignment with our business,

our energy, and our life goals.

Jess is planning a wedding, right?

Her align is gonna be completely different than her align was this past year because

her energy systems are gonna be different, her rhythms of her weekly cadence

and everything is gonna be different.

So when you're in your align state, what you really wanna do is start by saying,

"These are the dates that are blocked out from a life-first perspective."

My calendar, get that up to date.

Say commitments, family commitments, vacation commitments, client commitments,

all of those things, get it visible.

And then start working forward towards what are we bringing up?

What launches are we pulling forward?

What do I truly, truly have capacity for in this state of what I'm bringing,

what I want to do, and what is the reality of my calendar and my life?

I think that's the key of this second step.

Yeah, I actually had AI checked me, Tober checked me the other day

because basically I was telling it some career goals that I had.

I always like to be like, "Oh, this is my future case study," or, "This

is what I want my resume or my LinkedIn to look like in five years."

And I was like, "What do I need to do to make this happen?"

And he was like, "You need to stop spreading yourself so thin, because you're

not gonna be able to achieve this type of result in that area if you keep saying

yes to all of these things as well."

And I think we like to think that we can do it all, but really everything

that you say yes to is something you're gonna have to say no to something

else too, to make that yes happen.

So making sure that your yeses are aligning.

For example, in my life, I am working towards becoming the director of

marketing at this one company, but we also have this podcast and

this brand we're starting to move.

But I also have the Launch Collaborative, which is my own

agency that I'm still trying too.

And me trying to focus on all three of them this year has got me micro

steps to where I Know if okay, for this one quarter I'm gonna push Launch

Collaborative aside, 'cause that's not what's lighting me up right now.

I wanna go all in on Deeply Rooted, and then I wanna sustain this director

of marketing role that I have.

That's my plan.

But trying to go all three at one time?

Impossible.

Yeah, I mean, and that's something I feel like we have to

remind everybody every single time we do a planning episode, which is,

our brains naturally overestimate what we think we can do, right?

In business year one, my annual plan probably had 15 business goals.

I wanted to do this, I wanted to do this, and do all of the things.

And like we always like to remind, which we get into this in the

next step of act, is that one business goal is not a single task.

One business goal is a project of 15, 20 layers of things you have to do,

of deep thinking, of action executing, and all of those various things.

So when you're sitting there and you're saying, Q1 I wanna launch

this, I wanna build this, I wanna do this," that's overloading on top

of client work, on top of family commitments, on top of general life.

My son has been sick the last month because of daycare, and I

have now been sick the last month, and it has affected energies.

And these are things you can't necessarily always plan for.

So just making sure that when you're estimating your time, you're being real

in top priority and project parking lot.

Happy to pull from the parking lot when I have time, but most of the

time you will probably execute, what, two projects a quarter?

One to two?

Yeah, I would say, yeah, maybe.

It just depends on how much your client work is.

So I think it's really first about setting, one, your revenue goal.

I think as business owners, sometimes, even my clients are like, "Revenue goals?"

But, no, that should be where you start, 'cause we're all in

business to make money, to sell.

So what is your revenue goal and then what are the offers that you have

from your assess step that you both love doing, you have the proximity to

people to sell it well, you're priced well, you have the passion to do it.

Picking one or two of those offers, because every different offer is

gonna come up with its own different set of projects and trackings.

I'm setting up a metrics dashboard for a client who added a bunch of

different offers on, and it's like we can't even manage the funnels to them

because there's so many now, and we just don't have the team size to do that.

So one or two offers.

When are you gonna sell them?

Plan your marketing calendar around your life.

Obviously I'm not gonna sell anything around March 20th, 'cause that's

when I'm getting married next year.

Plan it around your life, and then reverse engineer all of the different other

things, other little projects that need to go in to making that sales a success.

So maybe if you know I need to sell this offer, I love doing it,

I've had these people convert it, they've gotten good results, I just

need to get more people into it.

So now my project becomes how do I increase my top-of-funnel traffic

to do that, and then how do I build my marketing rhythm around that?

So really, the least amount of goals, the better.

That's the hardest part - picking what you want to focus on so

you can really pull that lever.

Yeah, and I think too, where if you're a new baby business

owner, it's super exciting to try to make as much year over year growth.

But in the long term, you should be planning three to five years

out, and really saying, "Okay, this isn't a this year project.

That's a next year project."

what did you tell me the other day when I was like, I had an

idea about wanting to do something?

You're like, "That'd be great, except we don't have the

people to do that right now."

So, you can have the ideas to do something, but there might be a bunch

of other things you need to check off first in order to get there, especially

if you're bootstrapping your business.

You may have to work up the budget or even the revenue to be able to run

ads, to be able to run a 1,000-person membership if that's what you wanna do.

But, you can't go from A to B in a year, and that's just the reality of it.

But you can still be really successful and grow year over year, 'cause we've done it

Yeah.

For real.

right, so then that brings us to the act step, which this is essentially trying

to break down where you can have a good quarter of a time, like a quarterly

project, and then you can then drill down into weekly actions with owners and dates.

This is not my strongest suit because I hate looking that far

out 'cause everything changes.

However, it is super helpful for those quarters that kind of go by a blur

I think Q1 flew by so fast that we were in Q2 and I was like, what am I

supposed to be working on right now?"

But because we had already done our project planning for the year for

both the podcast and then for our individual businesses as well, it

was easy to open up and say, "Okay, this is my priority for the month.

Here are the projects that I'm working on," and get into it.

So a lot of this is saving future you from having to break down

those details and really have to start at step zero, essentially

Yep.

And, we did an episode, I think it was one of our first episodes way,

way back where we talked about all the meetings that you need to have

even if you're just with yourself, and that's where this kind of act comes in.

'Cause once you have your annual plan, you wanna break it down into your 12-week

plan where you're setting your goals for that quarter and then backing it out,

and you're taking your monthly goals and what content needs to go out that month.

And then you're kinda looking back at your weekly review to see what got done

last week, what needs to get done next week, so that you're really starting

to break it down into those chunks.

I know people are like, "I love paper planners."

You cannot run a business on a paper planner, I'm sorry.

You can't especially if you wanna scale.

I do have a paper planner.

I use it for my own personal self and tasks that I need to do every

day, but my business plan goes into my business management software or

my business brain, which is Notion.

So you have to take your annual plan, you need to put it into Notion so that if you

want to delegate, you can onboard people.

If you wanna use AI to help you get things done, you can, they can reference that.

And then you need to break it down by quarter and by project so that you

have all the steps laid out for you

Yeah, and then use our skill, Project Manager Paula, to take each

project and actually break it into deliverables that tell you exactly

the context of what you need to be doing, planning, all of those various

components so that when it's February, you know exactly what task you

need to be working on and doing all of that.

And I think that's the part that gets you there.

And I do wanna go back to something that Jess said about the meetings, which if you

are a solopreneur or a small team, those meetings should be treated like church.

It should be treated as your Bible.

Put 'em on the calendar now.

Exactly.

You do not skip those meetings because that's the only time you're

gonna have dedicated business time to show up and do the work.

And then once you build that habit and build the motion of putting your

brain in pause mode, pause for client work, pause for all of the various

things going on, you're gonna see so much progress happen because you're

showing up consistently versus looking at a plan once every six months

Okay, so let's recap and bring all the steps together.

Number one, you wanna assess.

So looking qualitative and quantitatively at what happened that year.

What worked, what didn't work, where your clients came from, what offers you loved

delivering, what time would you like to take off next year that you didn't?

What boundaries do you wanna put in place?

Maybe it is protecting time for content creation in your weekly blueprint.

Maybe it is protecting time for these quarterly plannings that you stay.

Those are all the things that you wanna identify in that step one, assess.

Number two, you wanna align.

You wanna map your life rhythms first, and then you wanna map

your promotions around them.

How are you gonna fit your revenue goals, your launches, your marketing,

and all the different little projects and initiatives around your actual

capacity and around your actual life?

And if you find that there's an imbalance here or you don't have the capacity to

do things, then the decision becomes, am I gonna push this off into the idea

parking lot, or is this something that I wanna invest in now, either by dedicating

more time knowing that it's gonna be a short-term squeeze for long-term ease?

Or do I wanna bring in another contractor to help me kinda get this done?

And then number three is you wanna act.

You wanna break that annual plan down into a 12-week.

Just start with the first quarter 'cause I guarantee you that the first

quarter probably is not gonna work out according to plan, and in quarter two

you're gonna have to come back, review your quarterly plan, what actually

happened against what you had planned, and then adjust your annual plan going

forward into your quarterly plan.

And then every month you're checking in with your month about what days do

you need to be protected for content creation and marketing, and what am

I selling this month, and what does my content messaging need to say?

And then every week you're kinda looking back on the review.

How did I do versus what I wanted to do this week, and what do I

need to shift this week, and where do I need to kinda re configure?

Like Rachel said, it's church, it's a doctor's appointment for

your own business development.

'Cause I think as service providers or coaches or course creators,

we can get so into providing for everybody else that we forget to do

the same for our own business, and that's where we end up stalled out.

And then when that client that we thought was gonna be with us forever,

something happens and they get pregnant and have to let you go 'cause

they're pulling back on your business, then you're in a panic because you

poured all your stuff into them and you haven't saved anything for you.

So I just want you to make a promise to yourself next year if you're a solopreneur

or you have a tiny team, that you're going to protect your business first.

If you'd like a workbook or a worksheet to walk you through this entire

planning process, last year Rachel and I created the Rooted in Reality

Business Planning Workbook, which will walk you through all of these steps.

It'll tell you the exact reports to pull, the exact things to think

about as you're working through each step, and it will give you AI

prompts to help you assist you, so you can really have a brainstorming

partner in this process with you.

so Make sure you check that out.

if this episode helped you look at planning differently, share

it with a business bestie whose annual plan is still sitting on that

paper planner or that document that she hasn't looked at since January.

And tell us which part of assess you're starting with.

Is it gonna be the journaling, or are you diving straight into your

numbers and your client sources?

DM us on Instagram, @deeplyrootedbusiness.

We read everything.

Or on TikTok, too.

And until next week,

We're rooting for

for you.