Most of us plan a new year by asking what to do next, and a long list of next steps doesn't tell you whether you're headed anywhere you actually want to go.
In this episode I walk you through how I'm planning 2027 the other way around, by deciding how I want the year to end for both of my businesses, Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and then working backward into a plan I can work every week.
In this episode
- Where the idea of writing the ending first came from, by way of Joe Pulizzi's newsletter, The Tilt
- How I let AI interview me about how I want 2027 to end
- My real 2027 endings for Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and why I did each business separately
- Three places people get stuck when they write their ending
- The five planning steps that turn your ending into a 90-day plan you work every week
Resources mentioned.
- The free tool from this episode: Write Your 2027 Ending
- The full write-up, with both of my endings and the five planning steps: How I Plan 2027 by Starting With How I Want the Year to End
- The planning system I walk through in this episode: The Creator's MBA Playbook
- Joe Pulizzi's newsletter: The Tilt
Write your own 2027 ending with the free tool I built for this. It asks you six questions, one at a time, and takes about ten minutes.
Write my 2027 ending →Episode transcript.
00:00Most of us plan a new year by asking what we should do next. What should I launch in January? What should I post this week? What's the next thing on my to-do list? I get that, but the problem with this approach is that a long list of next steps or a to-do list doesn't tell you whether you're headed anywhere you actually want to go.
So this year, I am doing it the other way around. Before I plan anything for 2027, I'm deciding how I want the year to end for both of my brands, and then I'm working backwards from there.
In this episode, I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like for me, including my real goals for the Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and then I'm going to walk you through how I turn that ending into where I want to go into a plan I can work on every single week.
01:00Hi there. I am Dr. Destini Copp, and welcome back to the Creator's MBA show, where we talk about how to grow a digital product business with systems that keep working after you set them up.
If you are listening to this in the last couple months of the year, you're probably starting to think about 2027, and you might be feeling a little stuck on where to start. That is exactly what this episode is for. And if you want to walk through this exercise yourself while you listen, I built a free tool that walks you through it.
It is called Write Your 2027 Ending, and you can grab the free tool in the show notes, so I wanted to start with where this idea came from, because it wasn't mine originally. Joe Pulizzi writes a newsletter called The Tilt, and he sent an issue about getting stuck.
02:00He told a story about a friend who was going through a hard situation, and Joe then asked them a simple question, which was, "How would you like this to end?" And his friend didn't have an answer. Then Joe talked about a clip where this comedian explains how he writes jokes.
He writes the punchlines first. He doesn't know yet how he's going to get to each one, but he knows the ending, and then he works backwards to build the joke. Joe actually tried this on a novel that he had been stuck on for a long time. He had about 20,000 words written, and then he hit a spot where he didn't know where the story was going.
So he wrote the last chapter first. And once he knew the ending, he could go back through the rest of the book and see what needed to happen to get to that ending.
03:00He also made a point that I think matters a lot for those of us running these online businesses.
You usually can't know how something is going to end, but you can decide how you would like it to end, and that is something that we're actually going to do. So I started building around that idea for my own planning for 2027 and for the Creator Pivot Summit that is coming up. So here's what usually happens when we plan without an ending.
We sit down with a blank page, and we start just listing things. Launch the new course, grow the email list, start a YouTube channel, redo the website, try a new tool. And every single one of those sounds really good, but there's nothing to check them against.
04:00There's no way to tell which one of those ideas actually gets you closer to where you want to be at the end of the year, and which one of those ideas are just new and interesting to you.
I've been there, too. So you end up doing a little bit of everything, and you get to the end of the year busy, maybe a little tired, and not really sure what all that work was supposed to add up to. But when you know the ending first, it's a lot easier to look at that list and say, "This one moves me towards where I want to go, and this one can wait."
So how do I actually figure out how I want to end the year? So what I did this year is I let AI interview me.
05:00Now, sometimes I talk through it out loud, sometimes I type in my answers, and both of them, quite frankly, will work. It's really a personal preference. I have it ask me questions one at a time, and then I answer them the way I would answer if a friend was just asking me over coffee.
The first question I started with, and I think it's the one that does a lot of the work, it says, "It's December 31st, 2027, and you're looking back on the year feeling really good about it. What happened?" That question makes you write it like it already happened, which is a lot different from writing a goal.
A goal sounds like, "Grow my membership," but the ending sounds like, "My membership grew to this many people, and here's what I'm spending my time on now."
06:00Then from there, the questions get more specific. What does a full year look like in your programs? What does your week look like at the end of 2027? What are you spending your time on?
What are you no longer doing yourself? And I did this separately for both of my businesses because the Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, they don't need the same things from me next year. So let me walk you through what came out of my interview that I did with AI. And let's start with the Creator's MBA.
The first thing that came up was our events.
07:00So I want to feel really good about the events we're running. Every event we run has somewhere between 20 and 40-plus contributors, and I want every single one of them to get a real return from being part of it. I want the speakers to get good leads, I want our sponsors to feel like it was a worthwhile investment, and I want us to get our return from the event itself.
The second thing, which is my main goal, is filling up our programs. So I have the Newsletter Profit Club and the Creator's MBA Mastermind. When it asked how many members I wanted, I'll be honest, I didn't really have a specific number at first. My answer was as many as I could possibly get. Right? That's what a lot of us would say there.
08:00But I was like, "You know what? I gotta get a little bit more specific on that." So I went aggressive. I want both programs to be into the thousands. So I want to be very aggressive in terms of our growth next year, and that is going to be the main thing that I'm going to be focusing on every single month, is getting new leads in and conversions into my programs.
The third thing is I want our programs to really stand out in the industry, and that's one of the reasons why I am custom building a new member platform. It's tailored to each member's business. It tracks their results for them. It points them to the Creator's Growth flywheel, to exactly what they need to do next in their business to get results. Then the question was: what does my week look like at the end of 2027?
09:00So for me, the majority of my time is spent in my programs, coaching and our events, and that's where I want my time to go. So we're changing how the programs work. Members are going to get the build content at the beginning of the month, and then we're going to have live coaching throughout the month where they can come to the live coaching.
They can also post their questions in the course platform, in the members community at any time. So tons of opportunities for people to submit questions, because I never want them to feel stuck. And if the programs grow the way I want them to, I may need to bring in additional coaches to help me, so I've already started looking into that.
The last piece for the Creator's MBA, which I'm going to focus on in 2027, is building out the sponsorship program with sponsorship sales reps, the same way that I am doing it for HobbyScool.
10:00Now, moving on to HobbyScool, because HobbyScool is definitely a different story here, and I think this is a good example of why you would do this separately for each of your businesses.
I know several of you that are listening here, you have multiple things that you're working on. So for HobbyScool, what we're doing today is working. 100%, it's working. So for most of 2027, it's going to be business as usual, but scaling what we're doing today because it's definitely working. I don't want to change what's working.
But the one area that I want to build out is sponsorship. So my goal is for sponsorships at HobbyScool to bring in multiple six figures next year, and I am hiring commission-based sponsorship sales reps to help us go out and reach those craft and hobby brands, get on calls, and close those deals.
11:00So for one business, my ending has a bunch of moving pieces, right?
For HobbyScool, it's kind of business as usual. We're scaling what we're doing, and we have one main area that we are going to be focused on. So I want to stop here for a second on the numbers because this, I think, is where a lot of people get hung up.
For HobbyScool I have a pretty exact number in terms of what I feel like I can make next year based on the income that we're bringing in this year and what we have planned for the sponsorships. Then for Creator's MBA, it's a little bit more up in the air.
12:00I know what I want, but I don't have as much of a, history, if you would, 'cause I'm really going to be focused on growth in that particular brand and scaling that particular brand.
So what I would say, if you're like, "Destini, I really don't know what the possibilities are," I would say that you don't need every number to be perfect before you start. What you need is something specific, and that's going to give you a number to work backwards from. If you don't know your number, I like to pick a number that's a little bit more aggressive and realize that I can adjust it every quarter once you see how the year is actually going.
So the point here is to have something to shoot for, and then you can change it later. Now, before we get into the plan, I want to walk through three places that I see people typically get stuck when they try this, so you can skip them.
13:00The first one is writing a goal list instead of an ending.
So if you want to write down "My goal is to grow my email list, launch a course, post more on Instagram," that's a to-do list. It doesn't tell you what the year looks like when it's over. An ending reads like it's already happened. So my list is this big, my course has this many students, and this is what my week looks like right now, or this is what my business looks like right now.
And when you write it that way, you can actually picture it in your mind, and you can tell whether a new idea that you're, like, thinking about moves you towards that. The second one is only writing down a revenue number.
14:00Now, don't get me wrong, revenue matters, and you should have an idea of that, and you should have a number.
But if the only thing you write down is a revenue goal, you can hit it and still end up with a year that you weren't entirely happy with. That's why the question about how you spend your time in your business or how you go about your week is in the tool that I have for you. So if you hit your number but you're busy spending your whole week doing customer support, fixing tech, is that really where you wanted to end up?
For me, the answer to that question was coaching and events, and that really changes what I build next year, including bringing in more coaches and people to help me and changing how my programs run. The last question in my free tool is: What's the biggest thing standing between where you are now and your 2027 ending?
15:00And this is something that I really don't want you to rush through. Whatever you write there is the thing your plan has to solve for. If the answer is, "I don't have enough people on my list," then your plan needs to put a lot of focus on lead generation. If the answer is, "I don't have enough time, I feel stressed," then your plan needs to start with that, and what you're going to stop doing or hand off or delegate or bring in AI to do a lot of that work for you.
So you know how you want to end the year.
16:00Now what? This is where I use the same system that I teach in the Creator's MBA Playbook.
The playbook breaks the year into four 90-day cycles, and each of them runs on the same five steps. And everything in it ties back to the Creator's Growth flywheel, which is the framework I use for growing a digital product business. Now, if you are new to the flywheel, it has five stages. The Attract stage is getting new people into your world and onto your email list.
Engage is getting them to sign up for your free gift, and then having that tripwire-type funnel where you can turn them into first-time buyers. Nurture is building trust with that consistent content, whether that's blogging, YouTube, really your leadership-type content, whatever you're doing there.
17:00Obviously, I do podcasting. And then you have your weekly newsletter that goes out in that nurture stage. Retain is keeping customers happy, and buying, and renewing. And then advocacy is turning your happy customers into referrals and affiliates. So each of those stages feeds into the next one. So here are the five steps in this planning process.
So step one is mapping the whole year on one page. In the playbook that I have, this is called the year-at-a-glance page. Each quarter gets a theme and one main number to track, the main campaign or offer that's going to drive it, and a revenue target. This is where your ending, where you want to be in 2027, turns into numbers.
18:00So example, for HobbyScool, let's say that I have a $250,000 sponsorship goal. I can break that down between quarters. Now, the first quarter's probably going to be less. We're still ramping all of this up, but you get the drift of how you break that down. So that's the number that goes on that page, and then I adjust it as the year goes on.
Now, step two is auditing your flywheel. So at the start of each quarter, I rate each of these flywheel stages from one to five using my real numbers. So I'm looking at things like new subscribers per week, conversion rates, renewal rates, and affiliate sales. Then I pick one or two stages that would make the biggest difference in my business if they got stronger.
And that's where your quarter's focus goes.
19:00Step three is scoring your ideas so you work on the right ones. The audit always turns up a lot of ideas. You looked at your numbers, and then you have dozens of things that you want to fix.
So I score each of my ideas on three things from one to five. Impact, which is how big the result could be if it works. Confidence, which is how sure I am that I can actually pull it off, right? So as an example, thinking about growing the sponsorship revenue in HobbyScool, I tried it this year. So confidence-wise, do I think I can get this to work? I don't know. I do think there's a lot of opportunity here, but I wouldn't say my confidence is a five. I would probably rate it at about a 3.5 right now. And then effort, which is how much time, energy, and effort that particular project would take As an example, with the sponsorship one, I'm actually going to go out and hire experts to do that because I don't have a lot...
20:00I don't have really hardly any time to work on this. My current team does it. We don't really have the skill sets in-house, so I know and I learned the hard way this year that I've gotta go out and actually hire people to do this. Okay? And so then I take all of that, average it, and then the top three ideas are the projects that I work on that quarter, and everything else waits.
Now, step four is setting up three SMART goals. So each quarter gets no more than three goals, and each one is tied to a flywheel stage, so it has a number that I can measure and it has a deadline. And I kept it to three on purpose because honestly, if everything is a priority, nothing actually gets done.
21:00That's what I have learned.
So really, three goals is a good number to focus on in one quarter. Now, step five is working it on a weekly, checking it monthly, and resetting it quarterly. So every Monday, I take about 15 minutes, I look at my 90-day goals, I pick my top three priorities for the week, and then every Friday I take about 10 more minutes to write down my numbers and plan one small improvement for the next week.
So once a month, I do a check-in on each flywheel stage, and at the end of the quarter I do a wrap-up, look at what worked, what didn't, and I carry that into the next quarter's plan. And then I start the next 90 days still working towards that same 2027 ending. So there's one more piece that I want to mention here, because it's easy to get so focused on your big quarterly projects that you really let the basics slide in your business.
22:00Now, while I'm working on the bigger goals, three things always keep running every single week no matter what is going on, and the first is lead generation. Okay? I never take my foot off the gas pedal when it comes to growing my audience and bringing new people in. So I'm always promoting and having campaigns in my business that run day in, basically almost daily because promoting stuff daily gets you daily sales.
So lead generation, having those campaigns, bringing people into your world is very important. The second one is the weekly newsletter. I send it even when things get busy because that is where you're building that trust, you're showing your thought leadership, people get to know you, and you need that trust and authority to sell your offers.
23:00And again, the third one is offer visibility. Making sure that people know how they can buy from you, how they can actually pay you, and not hiding that information. We need people to know how they can actually support you and give you money.
So all of those three run in the background all year long, and then the quarterly plan, kind of the improvement plans, if you would, sits on top of that. Here's the thing about writing the ending first. You probably won't get the exact ending you wrote down, and the year is going to take some turns and twists that you didn't actually plan for.
24:00It always does for me, and that's okay.
The point of writing the ending is that it gives you something to check every decision against. So when a new idea or a new opportunity shows up in the middle of the year, and it always does, I can guarantee you, I can ask myself one question: Does this move me toward the ending that I wrote, or is this just something new and interesting?
If it doesn't connect to where I want to go, it's going to wait. Because the plan resets every 90 days, I'm never stuck with a goal that stopped making sense. At each quarterly wrap-up, I look at my numbers, adjust the targets, and keep going towards the same ending. So here's what I want you to do this week.
25:00I want you to go back and answer that first question. It's December 31st, 2027, and you're looking back on the year feeling really good about it. What happened? Write it down like it already happened. And don't worry yet about how you're going to get there.
That comes next. To make this easier, I built a free tool called Write Your 2027 Ending. It asks you six simple questions, one at a time. What your business sells and who buys it, how you want your 2027 to end, and the one number that would tell you it was a great year, what your week looks like, and what you're no longer doing yourself, and the biggest thing standing between where you are now and that ending. When you finish it, it writes your whole ending out in one place so you can copy it out or print it and keep it somewhere where you will look at it again.
26:00It takes about 10 minutes, and you can get it free at the link that I have in the show notes. And once you've got your ending and you're ready to work backwards from it, the Creator's MBA Playbook is the planning system I walk you through in this episode.
You'll see it when you finish the tool. If you do the exercise, I'd love to hear the one number that would tell you 2027 was a great year. You can reply to any of the emails and let me know. The full write-up of everything I just talked about today, including both of my endings and the five planning steps, is on the blog on my website, and I will put the link to that in the show notes.
Thank you so much for listening to the Creator's MBA show, and I will see you next week
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