If you’re someone who can close the books on one year and immediately jump into planning the next, I need to know what supplements you’re taking.
February is the new January, IMO, because your girl needs time to process over a roaring fire and a mug of Sleepy Time tea.
Case and point: In December, I wrote “2024” at the top of a new doc for the umpteenth time.
That pretty much sums up how 2025 felt.
We moved back to the US (questionable) from the UK (for my husband’s sabbatical year), but not before traveling around Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and tent-camping in France for two weeks.
On the client-side, my business stats for Big Picture killed, and I’m so freaking proud of the projects I wrote, and the fact that my shop sales were steady despite next to no promotion or effort on my end. (My automated email sequences did the trick, even though they are dusty as hell.)
But 2025 was an absolute blur. And I hate that for me.
I know I need to cut myself some slack, because blah, blah, blah, but I was more reactive than present, and the constant feeling of urgency really took a toll on my nervous system.
That’s why I chose PACE as my guiding Word of the Year. (A practice I’ve been doing since I started my business SEVEN years ago---wooooowwww.)
I also plan to track my accomplishments (big and small) so I actually remember what it is I do all day. (I know, revolutionary.)
Inspired by Sarah Kleist, I’m using her (free, btw) To-Done List Notion Tracker. The tracker automatically sorts To-Dones by week/month/year, so I can look back and remind myself that the best parts of my week were sending client deliverables for feedback, while my monthly bests were half days with my kids at the beach (I’m predicting).
Here are the other metrics I’m tracking this year:
- Relationship Rhythms activities
- Time spent on client work (via Toggl)
- My leads, sales, and bookkeeping (per usual)
- My cycle, energy, and mood (bullet journal style)
Here are the changes I’m making to Big Picture:
- Longer project timelines even if I can whip things out faster
- Cutting way back on content writing and focusing on (1) SEO-optimized blog post a month targeting runaway and wishlist keywords
- Some sort of blog playlist or maybe “Choose Your Own Adventure” email sequence
- And…
Letters From Your Editor is switching to a monthly cadence.
Look, if my income were dependent on course and product sales, I’d be yapping your ear off weekly. But it’s not. So I don’t have to run my business like it does.
I love to CREATE things and share my owly wisdom, but the bi-weekly cadence just doesn’t give me the (s)PACE I need to create something worth taking up your RAM.
(And I’m not working 60/hr weeks over here. Been there, done that. Leaving that in my 30s, TQVM.)
Which is why I’m trying a little experiment…
Every monthly edition of Letters From Your Editor will include ONE high-value new resource, specifically for freelancers/independent business owners/bootstrapped marketing teams.
I’ve built a lotttttt of back-end systems and resources you’ve never seen, and I want to share what’s working, while also delivering exceptional client work without logging in on nights and weekends.
So…here’s your first drop of 2026.
If you started the year with the oh-so-real feeling of, “sh*t, I have to do this all over again?”
Here’s the email template that helped me book ~$40K in client work last year without any additional marketing.
(Sorry if revenue signals give you the ick, but I just added up the projects I ended up booking from it and was like, oh, dang, that’s not nothin'!)
Turns out, sending a quarterly client newsletter is another revolutionary business practice I should have been doing from Day 1.
I just sent my Q1 2026 client newsletter out yesterday and I’m creeping HARD on those opens and clicks. (I included this email in the template, just so you know.)
One past client I haven’t worked with in years is always the first to open. (Note to self, add him to my Relationship Rhythms tracker tasks.)
One of my secondary copy services is getting all the clicks. (Note to self, check in with these clients in a few days to see if scheduling a planning session would be helpful for their team.)
As you can see, Reader, this is the dumbest genius thing I’ve ever done.
Learn from my mistakes. Send the email.
🏇Year of the Horse, so GIDDYUP!
P.S. No, your clients won’t think you’re annoying. But the only way you’ll believe me is to send the email and see what happens next.