Most entrepreneurs have never been taught how to plan their year.

I walked my Business by Design clients through my annual planning process recently, and so many of them said the same thing: no coach has ever shown them how to do this. They’d been in programs, spent money, done the work, and yet no one ever sat them down and said, “Here’s how you actually plan your revenue and create some predictability in your business.”

It surprised me. And it also didn’t surprise me at all, because no one really taught me how to do this either.

What I’ve found is that planning your year, especially quarterly business planning, creates space. It allows you to lean back more because at least you know what’s coming. And if you plan in a flexible way (which I’ll explain), it supports both the strategic and the energetic parts of running a business.

Why Entrepreneurs Feel Overwhelmed (and What’s Actually Missing)

Here’s what I see over and over again: entrepreneurs who are busy but not productive. They’re doing a million things. Social media. Maybe they have a program or a course. An offer here, an offer there. But none of it works together. Nothing is synergistic. And that’s exhausting.

When you don’t have a plan, you show up in January thinking, “I gotta sell something. What am I gonna do?” So you start talking about something on social. You’re creating content because you have to create content. You’re on your content calendar, but you’re not on your sales calendar.

The content goes out, but you’re not actually promoting anything. Then you decide to sell something, so you throw it out there on top of everything else. The content wasn’t designed to sell that offer. You’re doing the tasks, posting online, but not posting about what will actually grow your business.

This is why people struggle.

If you knew what you were going to be selling, you could actually promote it. Everything in your business could work in concert together rather than you just doing things. Tactics aren’t strategy. A strategy is a system working underneath everything, making all the tactics work. Content is a tactic. There’s a marketing strategy underneath the content that allows it to drive sales.

This is how we get marketing to result in conversions versus marketing to just result in you spending time on Instagram.

The Power of Quarterly Revenue Planning

The quarterly approach shifts everything.

Here’s why I like it: it keeps you from watching your revenue every single month and spiraling when you have a down month. If I have a great January and February isn’t as good going into March, I might be in the energy of February. But instead, I’m thinking about where I’m averaging across the quarter, and what number I need to hit in March.

That makes me much more intentional with my actions.

When you actually plan what you’re going to be doing, organization creates space. Don’t underestimate how much energy it takes from you, wondering what you’re gonna do and how you’re gonna do it all the time. That feeling of uncertainty, that “what am I gonna do?” causes knee-jerk reactions in most people. Which causes you to make decisions from a place of lack. And that leads to ineffective action, more fear, more overwhelm, super busy, not making money.

It all sucks.

If you can make $25,000 per quarter, you have a $100,000 year. When you think about it that way, it feels different than chasing $10,000 months. $10,000 months feels like “I just have to make more and I have to do it now and I have to do it always.” In my experience, that leads to people feeling overwhelmed, taxed, and usually pretty defeated because when they don’t hit it every month, it just feels like failure after failure.

$25,000 quarters? That starts to feel more doable. People feel more organized about what actions they need to be taking.

Revenue Targets That Actually Work

Now, I know the whole “10K month” thing is everywhere. When I ask people what their goals are, they’ll tell me 15K months, 20K months. Then I’ll ask them where they’re at, and they’ll tell me they’re at $2,000 a month.

Your first goal shouldn’t be $10,000 a month unless you have a lot of apparatus under you. You could go from $2,000 to $20,000 a month. I’m not telling you that’s not possible. Anything is possible. But that requires a certain level of energetic alignment and strategic alignment to make it happen.

Here’s how I test it: when I ask people how they’re going to get to their revenue target, they don’t know. They can’t answer that question.

Revenue targets aren’t just numbers we throw out there. They allow us to keep ourselves accountable to the actions we’re taking. If you want to go from $2,000 to $10,000 a month, we have to look at that $8,000 gap. So many people are just looking to sell more, but they’re so unclear about what that number actually means in terms of what they’d need to sell.

When you understand your Human Design and how you’re wired to operate, these goals become more grounded. If you don’t know your design yet, you can run your Human Design chart here to start understanding your energetic blueprint. But knowing your chart is just the beginning. The real work is aligning your strategy to who you actually are.

I look at my revenue targets and think, “Okay, I know the sales I need to bring in. I know the products I could be selling to hit my revenue goals.” That allows me to be intentional. If I need to sell these things, then I should be talking about them. On my content platforms, to my email list, everywhere.

That’s how you understand what will actually move the needle in your business. What are your needle-moving activities? Well, that depends on your goals and your business. By having revenue targets, you can back into the needle-moving tasks. You’re not just pulling tasks off the wall. You’re asking, “What’s the needle? And how do I get that very specific needle to move in the direction I want it to move?”

The Three Phases Every Business Needs

There are three phases to a funnel: visibility, nurturing, and conversion. You should be doing all of these within your business all the time, and eventually you’re doing all three simultaneously. But in the beginning, you’re probably doing one at a time until you have a system going.

When you don’t have a plan, it’s very difficult to execute on these things. How do you bring new people into your world, nurture them, and then bring them to a sale if you don’t know where you’re driving them? If you don’t know when you’re going to be converting them, how do you know what phase you’re in?

Quarterly planning gives you structure for this. You know what job you’re responsible for in each season. Am I in list-building mode? Am I in nurturing mode? Or am I in conversion mode? Before you learn to juggle all three, you can handle doing each of these things one at a time.

If you’re just posting on social media without a conversion event planned, unless that business model works very well for you, I’ve found it difficult to make work consistently. What I teach is having a mix: softer ways of selling (like selling on social media, selling in stories, selling to your email list) combined with selling one-to-many through launches, workshops, and masterclasses.

Having some sort of conversion event on your calendar at least once a quarter really helps your revenue become more predictable. You get to build your list, warm up your list, and then register them for that event. You have time to do all of that when you plan.

Why Structure Creates Space

I straddle that masculine-feminine energy thing when it comes to planning. And here’s what I’ve found: structure creates space for you to be creative. By having a quarterly plan, by having a year laid out, it allows you to really lean back in the moments you’re meant to lean back.

When you have that feeling like you always have to be on, it’s really difficult to be in your feminine energy. I don’t recommend it.

Your design has a lot to say about how you’re meant to operate in your business. Whether you’re a Generator who needs to respond, a Projector who needs to wait for recognition, or a Manifestor who initiates, your approach to planning should honor that. If you want to understand how your specific design influences your business strategy, a Human Design reading can help you see where you might be working against your nature.

Plans have to be flexible as the industry changes. I don’t have a plan that’s set in stone. But I do have something laid out so that I feel better about everything I’m doing each day. It allows me to lean back in a way where I can make changes to my plan for Q2 or Q3 down the road and feel very supported in that.

The industry is shifting. Things aren’t behaving the way they have in the past. We have to be nimble, but it doesn’t mean we’re flying by the seat of our pants. We need plans that are flexible, and we need to be flexible ourselves. We need to be able to roll with it.

When the Plan Changes (And It Will)

You can’t panic when things shift. And that’s where the alignment part comes in. That’s where the deconditioning work comes in. That’s where being unshakeable comes in.

It’s very difficult to change a plan if you’re scared that when you change it, things will fall apart. You have to deal with that fear. The alignment work, the inner work, is an irreplaceable part of your business. It can’t be just the strategy. It can’t be just laying out the perfect plan.

Almost anyone can teach you planning. But it’s the alignment piece that helps you walk the path and expand yourself so that if something doesn’t go according to plan, you can handle it. Shift, pivot, change, and not skip a beat. And not fry your nervous system just making it all happen.

Understanding your chart gives you a foundation for this work. Run your Human Design chart if you haven’t already. But remember: knowing your design is just awareness. The deconditioning work, the actual shifting of your identity into your next-level self, that’s what allows you to rise in a way that’s nurturing for you rather than depleting.

If you’re looking for deeper support in blending the strategy and energy of your business, I created a secret podcast just on this topic. It covers how to have an aligned and profitable business with Human Design.

Start With Next Quarter

If you can’t plan the whole year right now, that’s okay. But at minimum, plan one to two quarters ahead. Do you know everything you’re doing in Q1? That’s going to be your first big revenue driver. If you have a great first quarter, it takes some of the pressure off. Not every quarter has to be amazing. Some quarters are runaway successes, and some don’t perform as well. That’s fine and normal.

What matters is that when you combine them all, you know where you’re heading.

And if you want to understand how your Human Design type, strategy, and authority should inform your business decisions, a personalized reading can give you that clarity. Because the goal is always the same: building a business that supports you, that feels like an extension of who you are rather than a cage you’ve trapped yourself in.