8 Questions to Help You Reflect and End Your Year Strong

Reflect and Refocus for Success in 2025

As the year winds down, I’d like to encourage you to reflect on the past twelve months in order to plan your goals for 2025.

For your e-commerce business, what worked well this year? What didn’t work? What do you want to do more of in 2025, and what knowledge gaps do you need to fill in order to grow your business?

To get the ball rolling, I’ll share a few highlights from the year-end reflection and goal planning session that our team did recently.

Afterwards, I’ll show you some questions that you can use as a guide for your own reflection and goal planning session.

Chase Your Dreams Review Highlights ✨

What worked well? 

💖 Site Audit Plus

Site Audit Plus launched in July, 2024

This comprehensive website audit service was created in response to demand from e-commerce brand owners who wanted to understand their website's strengths and weaknesses compared to their competitors, see where they stand in the market, and identify opportunities to outperform their competitors. This service has proven to be a great starting point for many e-commerce businesses who are thinking about improving their SEO, but don’t know where to begin.

💖 Blog Briefs and Blog Optimization

As part of our regular SEO service, we have been creating topic clusters and blog briefs for clients to write high-quality blogs that are SEO friendly and useful for their audiences. Clients have found our blog briefs helpful to guide their writing. We provide clients with constructive feedback on how to improve their blogs, and help them optimize their blogs for SEO.

💖 Referral Partnerships

A majority of my new clients came through referrals in 2024. The trust and rapport built through referrals led to smoother onboarding. This reinforces the importance of nurturing existing relationships and networking which I will continue to do in 2025.

💖 Helpful Resources for Clients

Many brand owners want to know more about what's involved when it comes to working on SEO. They also want to see if hiring an SEO specialist would be worth the money. This year my team and I continued to publish helpful blogs to address those needs and take the mystery out of SEO. One of our major pillar blogs published this year was The Complete “How-To” Guide for E-Commerce SEO - From Beginner to Advanced.

I’m proud to say that our blog content has depth while being easy to understand—and includes insights from my experience as an SEO specialist for fashion brands.

My vision for 2025 ⭐

My goal is to be the go-to resource for e-commerce fashion brands who want to grow.

How do I aim to achieve this?

• Continue to provide high quality SEO services that bring measurable results
• Offer a directory of other types of service providers that support e-commerce fashion brands
• Knowledge sharing through newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and social media

Service Directory Coming Soon!

I specialize in SEO, and while it’s a crucial part of e-commerce, I know that it’s not the only thing that drives success. Some of you might need additional help from other types of service experts but don’t know who to trust.

That’s why in 2025 I will be creating a directory to share my network of trusted service providers who specialize in areas such as Google Analytics 4, Shopify Development, Pricing, Exit Strategy, and more! Many of those service providers have been guests on my podcast too!

More Founder Stories

Do you ever look at successful fashion brands and wish you could have a conversation with their founders and CEOs to learn how they made it all happen? You’ll find these types of conversations on my podcast.

And in 2025, my aim is to do more interviews with people who built and grew successful e-commerce fashion brands, so that you can learn from their wisdom and get practical tips that you can apply to your business.

Questions for Reflection and Goal Planning

Now it’s your turn to reflect on the past year and plan for the one ahead!

Here are 8 questions to help you reflect:

1. What Worked Well This Year?

• Identify the strategies in your marketing and operations that brought positive results
• Look at sales trends to pinpoint top-performing products

2. What Didn’t Work as Planned?

• Identify areas where goals fell short
• List reasons why those goals fell short

3. Did Your Work Bring You Fulfillment?

• Identify what energized and excited you during the year
• Note aspects of the work that felt draining or overwhelming

4. What Is Your Brand Known For?

• Identify what your customers consistently praise about your brand
• Identify your niche and assess how your marketing and offerings align with your target customers’ needs

5. Is Your Business Sustainable?

• Assess whether your business is making a healthy profit where money can be reinvested to grow the business
• Assess whether you have enough resources to run and grow the business without causing burnout

6. Where Can You Reduce Waste?

• Identify tools, apps, or services you no longer use or need
• Simplify offerings to focus on what really drives value, profit and efficiency

7. What Do You Need to Learn?

• Identify areas where you feel less confident, such as marketing, financial management, or e-commerce strategies
• Determine specific skills or knowledge gaps to fill through courses, workshops, mentors, or industry resources

8. What New Things Do You Want to Try?

• Identify any new projects, products, or collaborations that you want to try in the new year
• Assess whether those ideas have potential to generate more profit

What’s your plan for 2025?

After reviewing the past year, identify some big picture goals for 2025, then break those down to SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound). For each goal, identify one key action you can take immediately to build momentum and ensure your plan is rooted in the lessons and successes from the past year.

What did 2024 teach you and where do you want to go in 2025? Share in the comments.