How to Plan Your 2026 Business Goals (Using Your 2025 Data)

How to Review Your Business Year and Set Aligned Goals for 2026

Learn how to plan your 2026 business goals, using your 2025 data. As we get ready to step into 2026. Now is the perfect time to pause, reflect and take an honest look at how 2025 has unfolded for your creative product business.

Reviewing your year isn’t about judgement – it’s about gathering the insights, patterns and data that will shape smarter decisions, clearer priorities and more aligned goals for the year ahead.

Whether sales have been strong, slow, surprising or inconsistent, there is gold in your numbers, your habits and your creative process. This simple set of questions will help you review 2025 with clarity. And map out meaningful goals you actually want to work towards in 2026. Grab a notebook, open your spreadsheet and let’s dig in.

15 Step Process to Set Your 2026 Business Goals

1. Use your instinct first, what are your thoughts and feelings of what has gone well when you look back on 2025?

2. What are the bottlenecks, struggles or issues you have faced in 2025?

3. What systems do you have in place to help you work? How are they working? (think finance, planning, marketing, creative, orders)

4. Downloading your sales across all of your sales platforms, what are your top 3 channels in order and how much have each taken in 2025?

5. What are your top 10 best-selling products? Why do you think they do sell well?

6. Looking at your data, what products have not sold well? And why do you think they haven’t worked well?

7. What new products do you want to create and why?

8. What are your top 3 marketing channels that direct sales to your website or create money for you?

9. Are there any new marketing channels you want to expand into and why?

10. Looking at your analytics, what types of content do well for you?

11. Thinking about your sales, where are you income-wise and where do you want to be?

12. If you were to rip up what you have done so far in business, what would you keep and what would you get rid of? (Insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results, so think outside the box here!)

13. Think big and brain dump all of your goals and ideas you want to create.

14. Then ask yourself:

What am I most excited about?
What will bring in the most money? (consider over time)
What aligns most with my values?
What does my customer need/want the most?
What do I need to make this happen?

15. Now narrow down your top 2-5 goals to achieve in 2026

Ready to Set Your 2026 Business Goals?

When you take the time to review your year with clarity, everything becomes clearer.

What’s working, what’s draining you, what’s profitable and what needs to evolve. These questions aren’t just a planning exercise – they’re a reset button. A way to step into 2026 with purpose instead of guesswork.

Remember: your goals don’t need to be huge, loud or dramatic to be powerful. They simply need to be aligned, strategic and achievable for you.

You’ve gathered the data, listened to your instincts and anchored your vision. Now you have everything you need to choose the goals that will genuinely move your creative business forward in 2026.

You’ve got this!