Year End Review Week 1: Clients

Welcome to December!  As 2022 comes to a close, I’m looking forward to taking some time to reflect back on the year, and create a vision for what I want in 2023.  

This year, I would love for you to join me in this process, so I’ve created a Year End Review Workbook that you can download here.  Inside I have simple questions and prompts to help guide you through your own year end review. 

Completing a year-end review is all about stepping out of the role of worker-bee in your business and embracing your role as the leader.  It is a big part of cultivating confidence and a CEO mindset in your business, which is one of the foundations of Designer Sanity.  

It’s so easy to become reactionary in our own businesses, simply responding to what shows up for us and running around trying to complete our to-do lists for the day. From time to time it is refreshing  to step outside of the hustle and take a larger view of what we’re doing and why. We get to analyze what is working, what is not, and where we want to go  in the coming year.   It’s like the old analogy that Steven Covey talked about - we can get so good at cutting down trees, but are we even in the right jungle?  

 “The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, 'Wrong jungle!' ...Busy, efficient producers and managers often respond ... 'Shut up! We’re making progress!’” 

- Stephen Covey

Completing a year end review is all about being the  leader of your own business, instead of merely the manager or producer. 

From a practical perspective, if you’re thinking about your niche or who you want to focus your marketing efforts on in 2023, doing a year-end review is going to be so helpful in helping you home in on exactly the types of clients and projects you want to focus on next year.  

For me, personally, I could never get inspired by the idea of niching down from a marketing perspective.  Instead, what I have always been super interested in is how I can enjoy my business and professional life to the fullest.  I started doing year end reviews so that I could better understand what types of clients and projects I enjoyed the most so I could work on cloning them in the future.  I wanted to create a vision of my ideal working life - clients, projects, colleagues, and work/life balance so I could realize that vision in the future.  

Guess what?  In creating that vision, I accidentally identified my niche market and my ideal client/project from a marketing perspective.  I started connecting with my ideal clients and projects, and they led to more of the same, and more of the same, because like creates like when it comes to referral sources.  As a result of visioning exercises like this one, I can now confidently tell you exactly what my ideal client/type of project is from a marketing perspective as well.

So, my primary motivation from a Designer Sanity perspective in doing this year-end review is for you to gain insight into what has worked best for you in the past, so you can create more of that in the future.  I want to support you in having the best work/life possible, and a huge part of that is self-knowledge.  Taking some focused time at the end of the year to step out of the day-to-day and reflect on what you want to create in the coming year is a huge part of that. 

I’m confident with this year-end review you will enter 2023 with a renewed sense of vision and purpose for your business, feeling refreshed and ready to take on new challenges like never before.  

Click here to download the free year-end review workbook that will guide you through the whole process.  

I’ve broken this year-end review into 4 parts, lining up with the last 4 weeks of the year.  Here’s what to expect in the coming weeks:  

Week 1: Clients

Working with great clients can make or break a job, simple as that. Who is a great client for you?

Week 2: Projects

That's what it's all about, right? But are you simply taking the jobs that come along or are your steering your ship toward the perfect projects for you? What are they, anyway?

 Week 3: Colleagues

Who we work with can make or break our careers. Who's a good fit for you and how can you work with them more next year?

 Week 4: Work/Life Balance

The perfect clients, jobs and colleagues will mean nothing if you are burning the candle at both ends and totally exhausted. What's the ideal work/life balance for you?

 Okay, so let’s begin!

 Week 1: Clients

 Click here to download your free Year End Review Workbook with journaling questions for your Clients

We review our clients from the year so we can get perspective on who was a good fit for us and what types of clients we want to get more of in the future.  Who would you clone if you could?  So often we are just taking whatever clients show up for us, and running around trying to do our best without ever stopping to reflect on if they are even the type of client  we should be working with at all.  

Remember, the interview process is not just about the client deciding if they want to hire you or not - equal or more importantly, it is about you interviewing the client and deciding if you want to work with them.  

Are they a good personality and demographic fit for you?  Ignore your best judgment at your own peril - bad fit-clients can make our lives a living hell.  They can make our working lives miserable, and they’re clients we’re not going to want referrals from, so they’re also a dead end, instead of a future referral source. 

Just because someone is a luxury client or a nice person does not mean they're a great fit for you.  Only you can know that. And discovering that means slowing down and reflecting on your past clients  and how and they were or were not a good fit for you. 

Journaling exercise: Clients

Find a quiet time when you will not be distracted and you can concentrate.  Pull out a journal or notebook and write out your responses to the following prompts:

1. List out all of your clients from the past year (or you can go back as far as you want!)
2. Note their referral source next to each one
3. Rate them in order from most to least favorite

Now Answer these questions:

1. My favorite clients I wish I could clone this year were:
2. How did they find me?
3. They were my favorite because:
4. They were a good fit for my personality/services because:
5. Describe them (demographic, age, profession, income, interest, family life, personality, where they live, where they work, etc.):
6. My least favorite clients this year that I never want to repeat were:
7. How did they find me?
8. They were the worst because:
9. They were a bad fit for my personality/services because:
10. Describe them (demographic, age, profession, income, interest, family life, personality, where they live, where they work, etc.):
11. Reflecting on my most and least favorite clients from the year, in the future I'd like to work with this type of client:
12. Reflecting on my referral sources from my most and least favorite clients, here's where I'd like to put my networking/marketing energy next year: (Examples: best clients came from past clients or GC's=nurture relationships with these people OR worst referrals came from instagram=invest less in this channel.)
13. How it feels to work with my ideal client:

 ✨✨✨

There you have it, week one of your year end review.  How did it go?  Did you have any “aha” moments in reviewing your clients from the year?  

 I’m always surprised by how many clients I had over the course of the year, it’s fun to see the whole list in one place.  If nothing else, it gives me a nice sense of accomplishment.  

 But more than that, really thinking about who was a good fit for me - the clients who made me feel respected as a professional and allowed me to do my best work has helped me to identify and work more with the same kind of clients in the future.  

 The better I’ve been able to identify my best-fit clients, the happier and more sane my work life has become.  It’s had a huge impact on my overall work and life happiness.  I hope it will have the same effect for you!

 Don’t forget to click here to download your free Year End Review Workbook. 

 It has all the questions in one place to keep you focused.  Having the workbook completed will be a great record of your thoughts to refer back to and keep them top of mind in the coming year, not to mention a great record to look back on of your progress in future years!  

 Next week we’ll focus on our projects.  See you then!