You sit down in December with the best of intentions: pull up January’s plan and hold it next to what actually happened.
Some of it landed. A chunk of it never happened at all. And a few of the best moments of the whole year were things you never planned for in the first place.
None of that is a failure. It’s the raw material for how you plan your community strategy for the new year, if you’re willing to look at it honestly instead of writing a fresh list of resolutions and hoping this round sticks.
Here’s how I do that at the end of every year, plus an honest look at what my own review turned into for 2025, so you’ve got something real to react to instead of a blank page.
How Do You Actually Plan Your Community Strategy for the New Year?
Look hard at what you actually built and what people responded to this year, then let those two things point you toward next year, instead of a fresh set of guesses.
I do this every December, and it’s part personal reflection, part business audit. I want to know what worked, what people showed up for, and what took far more of my time than it ever earned back.
The honest version of this review isn’t a highlight reel. It’s closer to a receipt: here’s what happened, here’s what it cost, here’s what it actually earned, whether that’s revenue, engagement, or just peace of mind.
Once that receipt is in front of you, next year’s plan stops being a guess. It becomes a response to real evidence about your own community, instead of somebody else’s list of trends to watch.
What’s Actually Worth Reviewing Before You Plan Next Year?
Your specific wins, not vague vibes. The exact launches, offers, and relationships that shaped the year are what tell you what’s worth repeating.
For me, 2024 held a rebrand of this podcast, a live retreat, a brand new mastermind, and more than one moment of second guessing my own direction. Here’s what actually rose to the top once I looked back at all of it.
The Retreat That Became the Year’s Biggest Launch
The Strategy Lab was a live retreat where community creators sat down together to reflect on their year and set specific, actionable goals for the one ahead.
- Watching people leave with real clarity instead of a vague resolution was one of the best parts of my whole year
- The value wasn’t the content alone. It was giving people dedicated time to actually do the planning, instead of just hearing about it and meaning to later
If a workshop or retreat idea has been sitting on your list, this is the kind of return that makes it worth building.
The Service People Kept Choosing
Virtual summit builds and execution was the single most requested service I ran all year. Helping clients bring an actual summit to life, from strategy through the live days, was consistently the most fulfilling work on my calendar.
- The three episodes that got the most downloads this year all trace back to this same territory: free, paid, or hybrid community models, branding a community before you build it, and running a challenge that keeps people showing up
- If you’re not sure what to build next, your own most requested service and your own most listened-to content are the two lists worth pulling up first, before you invent something new
The Relationships That Changed the Shape of the Year
Starting a mastermind with a small group of women this year was the biggest personal win of 2024, full stop. The connections built inside that small group changed how I think about the work, and none of it shows up neatly on a scorecard.
Not every win from a year of community building is measurable in downloads or dollars. The number that mattered most to me by the end of the year wasn’t a metric at all. It was the actual count of meaningful connections made through emails, DMs, workshops, and conversations along the way.
Where Should Live Education Fit Into Next Year’s Plan?
If you want to grow past one-on-one work, a live event that brings your people into the same room, virtual or otherwise, is worth the lift it takes to build.
One of the biggest additions to my own 2025 plan is the Community Creator Summit, launching later in the year. It’s built for community leaders, community managers, podcast hosts, course creators, and membership builders, essentially anyone who wants to sharpen their skills and connect with people doing the same work.
Think conference meets workshop: real sessions, hands-on time, and the kind of conversation that only happens when a room full of people already understand what you’re dealing with day to day. If your own community has outgrown one-to-one calls and DMs, a live event is one of the clearest ways to give your best people more of your time at once, instead of less of it spread thin.
Should a Regular Audit Be Part of Your Community Strategy?
A structured audit on a set cadence catches what’s quietly not working before it turns into a bigger problem, which is exactly why I built one into my own 2025 offerings.
I’m calling mine The Glow Up: a live screen share session where we walk through your spaces, your systems, and your engagement strategy together, then name what’s working, what needs refining, and where the real opportunities are sitting untouched.
You walk away with a recording of the session and a personalized action plan, and that second part is what actually matters. An audit that only points out problems and leaves you to figure out the fix isn’t worth the hour. The value is in the plan you leave with, not the diagnosis by itself.
You don’t need a formal audit offer to use this idea. Blocking out even thirty minutes on your own calendar every quarter to walk through your community with this same kind of honesty will catch things a weekly glance never will.
How Do You Turn a Good Idea Into a System You’ll Actually Keep Running?
Pick one repeatable format, put it on a real cadence, and let it earn its place before you add anything else on top of it.
The plan for my own 2025 leans hard on this. A weekly YouTube series called Quick Wins for Circle Communities is going up every single week instead of whenever I get around to it, because a cadence is what actually makes a series a series instead of three videos and a long pause.
February is set aside entirely for podcasting, timed around a Notion podcast planner template I built in partnership with Cat, the Notion expert I work with, so anyone thinking about starting a show has both the plan and the tool in the same place at the same time. And gamification kicks off the year inside my own community and on this podcast, because a strategy only sticks if you give it a real block of time, not one episode and a move on to the next thing.
None of that works without somewhere to actually track it. This is where a real content calendar for your community earns its keep. It’s the difference between an idea you mention once and a series people can actually expect from you.
Try This Prompt
Once you’ve pulled your own top offer, top content, and biggest personal win from the year, this turns that short list into an actual plan instead of a pile of notes.
“I run a [type of community] for [who it serves]. Here’s what stood out from this year: my most requested service or offer was [describe it], my most popular content was [list a piece or two], and my biggest personal win was [describe it]. Based on those three things, help me draft three priorities for next year that build directly on what already worked, plus one new idea worth testing. Give me the output as a short list I can pin next to my calendar.”
It organizes what you already know. You still decide what’s actually worth building.
The Plan Matters Less Than Who You Build It With
None of this year’s plan matters half as much as the actual people behind the numbers. The retreat, the mastermind, the summit calls, all of it comes back to the same thing: real connection with people doing this work alongside you.
That’s the number I keep coming back to when I think about 2024. Not the downloads, not the most requested service, just the actual count of emails, DMs, workshops, and conversations that reminded me why I do this at all.
Whatever your version of a 2025 plan looks like, build it around the people you want more of, not only the metrics you want to move. The metrics tend to follow anyway.
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2024 Wrapped: A Year of Growth, The 2025 Glow-Up, and What’s Next for You
More like it on Your Community Strategist, new every Thursday.
More Like This
Listen: How to Choose a Community Model: Free, Paid, or Hybrid. One of the year’s three most downloaded episodes, on the decision that shapes everything else.
Listen: How to Create a Community Challenge That Works. Another of this year’s most downloaded episodes, on keeping momentum past week one.
Watch: Branding Before Building: The First Step to a Thriving Community on Circle. The third of the year’s top episodes, on screen.
Watch: Plan Like a Pro: Unleashing the Power of Content Calendars in Your Community. The system behind turning a good idea into something you actually keep running.
Keep Going
coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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