How to Do a Year-End Wrap-Up Before You Plan 2027
Before you plan 2027, take an hour to look back at 2026. Pull a few numbers, then write down your five biggest wins, one lesson each about your audience, your offers and the way you run things, what you'll keep doing and what you'll stop, and one word for 2027. Your answers become the starting point for your first quarter plan.
When it's time to plan a new year, it's tempting to open a blank page and start listing everything you want to launch. The problem is that a list like that comes from what you hope will happen, and the best information you have about 2027 is what actually happened in 2026.
That's why the first step in the 2027 planning process is a year-end wrap-up. It takes about an hour, and it gives you real answers to plan from instead of guesses.
This works the same way whether you made your first sale this year or you're running a $997 program and a $97 a month membership. Here's how to do it.
First, pull a few numbers.
Before you answer any of the questions below, spend fifteen or twenty minutes pulling some numbers. Memory isn't very reliable about a whole year, and it's easy to remember the launch that felt stressful and forget the one that sold really well.
You don't need a big report. Pull these from your email tool, your cart and your membership platform:
- How much each offer brought in this year
- How many subscribers you had in January and how many you have now
- Which emails or campaigns got the most clicks and sales
- If you have a membership, how many members you have now and how many cancelled this year
If you're newer and some of these are zero, write the zero down. It's still useful, and next year you'll be glad you have a starting point to compare against.
The four parts of the wrap-up
With your numbers next to you, work through these four parts in order.
Your five biggest wins
Sales, launches, collaborations and the habits you kept up all year.
Your biggest lessons
One lesson about your audience, one about your offers and one about the way you run things day to day.
What you'll keep and what you'll stop
Decide what deserves another year and what took too much time for what it gave back.
One word for 2027
A simple reminder of what the year is about.
Part 1: Write down your five biggest wins
Start with what went well. Look at your numbers and your calendar and pick the five things you're most glad happened this year.
Wins can be big or small. A launch of your $997 program that brought in more than the last one counts. So does your $97 a month membership keeping most of its members through the summer, a collaboration that brought in a lot of new subscribers or simply sending your newsletter every single week.
If you haven't made a sale yet, your wins might be growing your list, getting your first freebie live, getting your first reply from a reader or finishing an offer you'd been putting off. Write them down. They show you what's already working, and that's where your 2027 plan should start.
For each win, add one line about why you think it worked. Was it the timing? The offer itself? A partner who promoted it? That line will help you decide what to repeat in 2027.
Part 2: Write down your biggest lessons.
Next, write down one lesson in each of these three areas.
Your audience
What did you learn about the people on your list? Think about which emails got the most replies, which topics got the most clicks and what questions people kept asking you. Maybe you found out that your readers open everything about pricing and skip anything about social media. That tells you a lot about what to write and sell next year.
Your offers
What did you learn about what you sell? Look at what each offer brought in. Say your $997 program sold well every time you ran a live workshop before opening the doors, and barely sold when you only sent emails. That's a lesson you'll want to use in your first quarter.
The way you run things
What did you learn about how you work? This could be the week you always fall behind, the task that takes three times longer than it should or the tool that saved you hours. Maybe you noticed that every launch took over your whole month and your newsletter went out late because of it.
"Before you plan anything new for 2027, write down what actually happened in 2026."
Dr. Destini CoppPart 3: Decide what you'll keep and what you'll stop
Now go back through your wins and lessons and sort what you did this year into two lists.
The first list is what you'll keep doing in 2027. These are the offers, habits and campaigns that brought in sales, grew your list or made your business easier to run.
The second list is what you'll stop doing. These are the things that took a lot of your time and didn't give much back. An offer that sold three copies all year, a social platform that never sent anyone to your list or a weekly task you could hand off or automate all belong here.
Try to put at least one thing on the stop list. If everything from 2026 comes with you into 2027, there won't be any room for the new goals you're about to set.
For each thing on your list, ask yourself whether you'd start it today if you weren't already doing it. If the answer is no, it probably belongs on the stop list.
Part 4: Pick one word for 2027
The last part is the shortest. Pick one word that describes what you want 2027 to be about. It could be "focus," "simple," "steady" or "grow." Pick whatever feels right for your business and where it is.
This might feel like a small thing, but it's useful in the middle of a busy quarter. When a new idea or opportunity comes up, you can ask yourself whether it fits your word for the year, and that makes it a lot easier to say no.
What to do with your answers
Your wrap-up is the starting point for the rest of your 2027 plan. Your wins and lessons help you rate the five stages of your business, which is the next step in the process. Your stop list frees up time for the goals you'll set for the first quarter. And your one word helps you choose between ideas when you score them.
Keep your answers somewhere you can find them again. At the end of each quarter in 2027, you'll do a shorter version of this same wrap-up for those 90 days before you plan the next one.
When to do your wrap-up
October or November is a good time. The year is still fresh in your mind, and you'll have your answers ready when you sit down in early December to plan your first quarter. If you wait until the last week of December, you'll be doing the wrap-up and the plan in the same week, and that's a lot to fit in during the holidays.
Block off one hour on your calendar this month, pull your numbers before that hour starts and work through the four parts in order.
The full wrap-up page, along with every other page you need to plan 2027, is in the 2027 Creator's MBA Playbook.
The 2027 planning series.
This post is part of a series that walks through the whole 2027 planning process, one step per post:
- How to Plan 2027 for Your Digital Product Business (the overview)
- How to Do a Year-End Wrap-Up Before You Plan 2027 · you're reading this one
- How to Find the One Stage Holding Your Business Back
- How to Decide Which Projects Are Worth Your Time
- Why You Should Only Set Three Goals Each Quarter
- How to Turn One Goal Into a 90-Day Plan You'll Follow
- 3 Systems to Keep Running in Your Busiest Month
- The 10-Minute Monthly Check-In for Your Business
- How to Use Claude to Plan Your 2027 Quarters
Look back at 2026 and plan 2027 in one place
The Playbook has the wrap-up pages from this post ready to fill in, plus every step that comes after it, from rating the five stages of your business to your 12-week plan. When you get it from my website, you also get the AI companion that walks you through your plan in Claude and the live planning workshop.
Get the Playbook for $97 →Frequently asked.
What should a year-end business review include?
Write down your five biggest wins, one lesson each about your audience, your offers and the way you run things, what you'll keep doing and what you'll stop doing, and one word for the new year. Pull a few numbers first so your answers are based on what really happened.
When should I do a year-end review for my business?
October or November works well. The year is still fresh, and you'll have time to use what you learn when you plan the first quarter of 2027 in December.
How long does a year-end wrap-up take?
Plan on about an hour, plus a little time beforehand to pull your sales and email numbers. You don't need a full day to do it well.
What if I didn't make any sales this year?
Do the wrap-up anyway. Growing your list, launching a freebie, sending a newsletter every week and testing an offer all count as wins, and the lessons from them will shape your 2027 plan.
What do I do with my answers after the wrap-up?
Use them to rate the five stages of your business and pick your goals for the first quarter. The Creator's MBA Playbook walks you through each step after the wrap-up.
Dr. Destini Copp helps digital product creators build sustainable, systems-based businesses through the Creator Growth Flywheel framework. She's the founder of Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and has been teaching online business strategy for over a decade. Learn more →
