Flow State Business

Designing 2026 Now

• Ruby Lee

Share episode

Send us a text

This episode is all about business planning for your next season, and why these annual planning days have become one of the most expansive rituals I do.


I’m walking you through the exact process I use to reset, zoom out, and shape the next three months of my business with genuine intention and clarity.


If you’ve been craving space to think, create and design the business you want… it starts right here.


What you’ll walk away with:

  • How to shift from day‑to‑day tasks into big‑picture strategy
  • The four pillars I use to map business + life
  • A simple planning day structure you can use before year‑end to set your 2026 path


********

 Hello, my loves. Welcome back to a new chat, a new episode. I am fresh back from five Days in Sydney, Australia, and it's about an hour flight from the Gold Coast, so it's not too far away at all, but it's amazing how just one very short flight can change the whole scene and the whole vibe of, yeah, how you're operating, what you wear, who you meet up with, the culture of the city, so on and so forth.

Anyway. In this episode, I wanna share with you more about how to plan for the next season of your business because you're listening to this live. If you're listening to this live, we are here at the end of the year in November, and so you are more than likely wrapping things up for the year and also maybe even beginning to think about what do you want 2026 to look like?

This was the perfect timing because two of the five days that I'd spent in Sydney was actually with my VIP clients. Justine and Sasha - shoutout, ladies. Oh my gosh. I will actually leave both of their profiles linked below. So you can go and have a little stalk and a little look. Both of them just doing amazing things in this world, and both of them were also in my inner circle.

So it was just, it honestly felt like a reunion of old friends and we just picked up from where we left off and just dived straight in. But so many deep chats and it's just so wonderful to have days like that. Also out of the five days, one of the days was with me and my husband Michael. We sat down to map out what's next for us in our business and our life.

And this is the very thing that I wanna talk to you all about today. I wanna discuss the power of planning days and the deeper meaning of how this actually sets out the energy for the rest of your year ahead. And how powerful something like this can be. Yes, for the business, yes, for the financials, but also for manifesting and remembering the big picture vision.

And I wanna share with you how also we're shaping out the next season, heading into the 2026 year. Also, what we're doing for the next three months, because I think this sort of zoom in and zoom out, energy gives you this perspective that we can sometimes forget when you are so in the details. If you are in that head space, or you haven't even thought about planning, because quite honestly you just wanna make it through the rest of this year, I hope that this is just a refreshing reminder that you have full permission to zoom out and to think about these big goals and to think about some of the things that you just didn't love so much about how this year went for you, but also using that as a fantastic platform to be like, you know what?

I'm gonna use that energy and calling what I actually want. Let's get stuck into it. I'm gonna pick up from Sydney, so why not? I'm fresh back from Syders. We call it Syders here. I don't know if you guys do as well. Anyway, we're fresh back from Syders and um, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling excited. I'm feeling focused af and the first part of the trip was definitely all about Sasha and Justine.

They're about my clients, and these days are actually amazing. So twofold. One is, if you are a coach and you don't offer this. One to one in person days and you are just stuck behind the zoom screen. I want to challenge you slash inspire you. To put an offer like this out there for your clients. It is definitely not gonna be for everyone, but the people that take you up on that, and the, and most of the time I've done maybe 50 of these in-person, one-on-one VIP days all around the world.

Lisbon, Bulgaria, the US, Asia, Dubai. I've just been everywhere doing this. I've loved it all around Australia. Obviously I have always just felt this rekindled. Fire for the business and it's like this remembrance of like why I do what I do and just hanging out all day with somebody talking about business is amazing.

But also, if you haven't experienced it for yourself and you run a business and you find a coach or someone that you're working with, reach out to them and be like, do you offer in-person sessions? Do you have an in-person hour? Do you have a workshop? Do you have a half day? Do you have a full day? What does that look like?

And even if they're not local, like why not put it into your vision planning for the year of like, I'm gonna fly to them. Or maybe you meet somewhere around the world with your coach. I do this all the time, like I've got a client of mine that I'm speaking to right now and we're like, Hey, let's go next year to Lapland and meet there.

I've got another client who's like, Hey, would you do one in Bali sometime in like April, may? And I'm like, hell yeah, let's do it. Let's plan that out. So anyhow, they're amazing. VIP days are awesome. And how this usually works is most of my clients get these days inside of the higher level packages that they get, and they get like a full day made just for their business.

There's no distractions. It's literally just massively deep intentional work. With lots of great food and a drink here and there and vino and great music, and always if you're doing a VIP day with me, always luxury vibes. So this time around, we're in this beautiful hotel, like inside of this hotel. It was like five star Tulum Dubai Beach Club vibes.

It was so stunning. And in this environment, we built some new offers. We redefined messaging, actually lots around messaging, lots around how to say what you wanna say to attract the clients that you want, and then overall clarifying, this is where the money pipelines are, these are the ones that aren't producing.

Let's turn those off next year and focus on the rule of one: the one project and the one aspect that you wanna go really big with. And then literally just looking at how we can. Gather all of the scattered ideas. And I love this about VIP days 'cause like my clients come in and they're like, Hey Rubes.

Like, oh my god, 10,000 ideas. How do we turn them into solid plans and what is the best move forward? So, so fun. And honestly like something always happens when you are in the room with the right people. And also for me, something always happens when I travel for work like this because client sessions.

And the quiet moments that I have after the sessions back at the hotel, I personally feel all the excited energy, like I start to get clarity for my own business too. So it was actually so cool that Mike and I had already set aside a day. It's sort of a yearly ritual for us where we check into a lovely hotel, we order room service, or we sit poolside and we grab the iPad and any whatever, the laptop.

And we just start sketching things out for how we want to design. And that's what it is, isn't it? Like how you wanna design your life and business for the year ahead. And we like to do it in November, you know, it's really nice time of year for us. It's like spring here in Australia and um, it just is like a really nice big picture moment for us.

So anyhow, I definitely wanna talk about like, why you should be doing this and let's, let's go there because I feel. You might just be like, well, I plan every day. I have like to do lists and I have time blocks. It's not the same thing. I am talking about reconnecting with the why, right? Like why you are building this business in the first place.

Get out of the to-do list. Actually, just that's got nothing to do with planning. That's just operational day by day tasks. You are tasking. So when you're thinking about vision planning, most people, if you think about it, like maybe you are in this space as well. You started your business because you wanted to escape something.

You wanted to leave a way of doing things. And for the most part, most of my clients wanna leave their nine to five, but eventually what happens is that the business starts feeling like a nine to five, or the business starts feeling like you are not really in control of it, but you are. It's just an illusion.

And the reason why that's happening, or maybe you're feeling that energy, is because you haven't allowed yourself to think bigger. So a planning day, like the one I'm talking about here is how you take your power back and how you move from reacting to leading yourself from worried about what the algorithm and industry and the markets are saying right now to how you are choosing to design your life around it.

Right? Designing your life with purpose, because ultimately, guess what? It's really not about how much you do, including those to-do lists, but it's about the kind of life and business that you wanna make. And actually, one way that Michael and I have always thought about this is our business is sort of like, how do I best describe it?

It's about what kind of life our business is funding for us. So we think about the business is always giving us something in return. Yes, energetically, it's giving us fulfillment. It's giving us this sense of purpose and this sense of drive and connection, all those wonderful things and giving back. But on the more tangible side of things, I was actually talking to Justine about this.

I'm like, think about it this way. Launch something, whether it be a private coaching package, and you've got this idea that you wanna sell like five of those, and let's say each of those packages are 5K or 10 K, we're talking 25 to 50 k. Instead of just thinking, oh, that money's just gonna go straight back into the accounts and pay for everything, which by the way, I did talk about how I manage my personal finances in the episode last week.

So you can go back and listen to all of that. But instead of it just being like, Hey, I'm just gonna chuck it into some account and hopefully it pays all the bills, try playing with the energy of. You know what I'm gonna do? So well, in this next launch, I'm gonna serve five amazing clients who are all gonna come forward and be magnetized to my message.

And that's gonna pay for a lovely holiday to Greece for three weeks and thinking about it around that perspective of the kind of life your business is funding. And that's how I want you to approach this planning session. How do you want your business to fund the life that you desire to have? Most people starting in their businesses will chase a form of financial freedom.

So the end goal is that you have enough money that you're not feeling like you have to go back to an employer or feel like you need a ton of loans to just stay afloat or needing to borrow from a whole bunch of people. For a lot of my clients who are in this like financial freedom space, the end goal for them is where perhaps like passive income might cover their everyday expenses, their living expenses, like their mortgages or their car repayments, and it's a worthy pursuit.

Like honestly, it's, it's so good, but it's actually a very, very, very long game, and it takes a long time to be satisfied by that pursuit because. I'm sure we all know this by now. Setting up any kind of business model and especially a passive income model, requires some time. So if you are putting this long pursuit alongside a goal that you're wanting to achieve, it can feel completely unsatisfactory.

And that's where you start feeling extremely frustrated with that like time, space reality, where it's like, I really want it, but I'm not there yet and it's taking ages. So here's another way of thinking about your planning. I want you to think about what you are actually craving, right this very moment.

And if I would've challenged to say, Hey, it's actually not financial. And you might be like, rubes, you don't understand. Like, you know, we need the money, okay? Yes. But do you think if there's any possibility at all this is true for you, that what you are craving right now is time freedom? So stick with me here.

What does time Freedom give you? It gives you the ability to control how and when you work. Time Freedom gives you the ability to buy back time in some form and to take Tuesday off and to plan from a hotel once a week and be at the beach the next. And this time freedom gives you this spaciousness to think.

And to get creative and to stay in your lane and to be authentically you and to not feel like this constant rush of, I need more money. I need more money. I need more money into, I am who I am, and I'm creating that from within. Now if you are saying no rubs, like, I really do need this financial freedom and therefore my entire business planning is around the financial aspect.

Okay, here's another way to think about it. Financial freedom is a destination. You will get there if you put your head down and you do the things and you stay focused on what it is you're here to do. I just wanna say like you will get to a point of financial freedom, especially if go back and listen to the Personal finances episode that I did last week.

There are some healthy habits that you're developing that creates this for you. But time freedom is the journey that we're on every single day, and the fastest way to get there isn't by saving more. Saving is great, but again, it's a very long game. But it's actually by earning more through your meaningful offers, through flexible work that you actually have.

And to me that's about building a lifestyle business. It's about creating profit with purpose. It's about working when I want, where I want, it supports my life and not the other way around. So thinking about all of this, when you are entering your. Business planning slash life planning. Exciting. Sit down, think about these four pillars.

This is what we actually do. So we draw out like our four pillars for the business and we, we do it like in this sort of format. So we do, what's the fun part? What is the work that we actually really enjoy doing? And so for example, I really enjoy VIP days. I really enjoy being in person with my people. I really enjoy masterminds.

I absolutely love it. I really. Also in the next bucket, think about the flexibility. How do I wanna spend my time? This year, I decided I didn't wanna spend my time on a bunch of Zoom calls. I can probably count like on all my fingers and all my toes, how many Zoom calls I've been on this year. That's it.

I've just decided I'm spending my time instead recording a course in a day. I have a course on how to record a course in a day, and that continues selling and selling and selling. So I'm not needing to be on constant. Free master classes, free webinars, blah, blah, blah. It's just so loud and noisy for me right now, and that doesn't feel flexible.

Creating a course in a day feels really flexible. The third bucket I think about is what's gonna give me this level of fulfillment? What's the work that matters right now? To me, what matters right now to me is I wanna help my entrepreneurs learn how to sell every single day like I have this year. It's not about like busting your nervous system every single launch and feeling like shit afterwards.

It honestly, for me, the fulfillment is seeing daily sales ticking in and knowing that my business is open for business and that is what I love teaching my clients. That's fulfilling to me. If someone comes to me and they say, rubes, I made $57 off that one post that you taught me how to write, that is fulfilling.

It used to be roofs. I made $57,000 every month. And then what would happen is that person would like crash out the week after and just feel awful. And I just was like, oh my gosh, you've just put everything behind it that now you're sick or now you feel like so tired and exhausted, you wanna blow your business up.

That to me, didn't feel like a fulfilling way of doing business. And then lastly, it's financial. So of course like I'm thinking about what do I need to do? To earn, to live well and to invest into my lifestyle, to fund my life, to fund the adventures in my day-to-day life. And yeah, long-term, invest in the future when these four align.

So it's fun, flexibility, what did I say? Fulfillment and financial aspects. That's when you hit this level of flow state, when you're planning and, and how you are delivering on that plan, because this is where you start to feel like, you know what? Business expansion is exciting. It feels sustainable, it feels grounded, it feels for real, and there's something really cool about that.

So now we get into the chunky part, how to create your own planning day. So let's pull in all the themes that I've just discussed. If you've been craving clarity and you wanna do this, I want you to a change your environment. Do not try and do it from your home office or wherever it is that you work from every single day.

I know you think that it's just fine. You'll just clear out some stuff. You won't access your socials that you'll buy a whiteboard that you'll just like get some cool pens and you can do it from home. Change your environment. Step out of your usual space. This does so much for. So much for flow state, right?

Like your brain craves something new, new environment. So book a hotel. Just go treat yourself and take yourself offsite. So when I used to work for corporate, they used to do this with our team, our leadership team. Once a year we would have like an offsite and a vineyard and a winery somewhere else, and it was just so nice to just get away from the office.

You know, years ago it was so revolutionary at the time, but Bill Gates and Microsoft used to literally go to a room in their offsite areas and it would just be like whiteboard, um, like floors, whiteboard ceilings, and they would just go and like literally have whiteboard days. Where they could just jot down anything and brainstorm anything, and it was just like the coolest looking room.

Anyhow, whatever you need to do, if you are like rooms, I cannot book a hotel, like literally I am. I'm not able to financially, time-wise, kids fine, go somewhere else. That's inspiring. Even if it's like a cowork room that you book, there's so many sites that you can just go and book a co-work room for a day and it will be like 50 bucks, $80, go somewhere inspiring where you can just sit down and do this.

Okay. Secondly reflect before you project. This is like Michael and I say this all the time. We have to reflect before we project into the future. So we think about. What worked this year? What did we like about this year? What was it that just didn't happen for us this year, even though we wanted it to? Or what did we try?

And it just honestly fell flat and didn't do a single thing. It didn't move the needle. So we just come up with all of this stuff like, I really love this, really love this. Would've loved to be further here. You know, we seem to have sort of hit a cap with our daily earnings at about 5K maximum. So we think about that, like, oh, what would it look like if we could do like 20 K days?

What levers do we need to pull, for example? So we put all of that out and don't feel bad about this part. Don't like, you know, talk yourself down. But clarity does live in honesty and, oh, I like that. That just rolled off my tongue. Clarity lives in honesty. And when you get real with where you are at, like, it's like when you go to.

A therapy session, kinesiology, hypnotherapy. Even if you sit down with your best, best girlfriends and you just go, you know what? This is actually what's really happening, and you just feel this like, oh, wow, I've never said those words out loud, and you just feel this like weight off your shoulders. That's what I mean.

Clarity lives in honesty. Then from there, you can set the theme. So this year our whole theme was expansion with ease. That was so good that like literally we've had such a great year on social media. We've had such a great year with passive income, just income in general. So it was so good. Like every decision that we made flowed from that energy, set a theme, have fun with it.

What does it look like? You know, like the year before for us it was like, I think the year before our theme was, uh, nest Egging our Wealth. And that was intense, that like nest egging is a lot because it kind of implies that you are earning a lot and you're putting a lot away for the future. So it felt like real future building stuff, which is growth, which means head down, bum up.

That's how it was. So yeah, we, we've definitely thought about what our next year's theme is, which is really cool. And then we started planning out both life and business. So. Firstly, we plan everything out for on the business side of things. So what new offers do we need to fill in the gaps? What current offers are we gonna take into 2026 that we love, which includes like cash creator course in a day boosting basics.

They'll all come along with us. There's old courses that we've decided we're gonna finally fully retire, like feel a selling or permission slip. Or story. So they're gonna go on a really, really, really big sale at the end of November, and then we are retiring them forever. And so that means like there's gonna be a lot more room for new courses, which I'm so excited about.

Then we start thinking about like, okay, what else? Like in the business, social media, how is that working? The podcast is flying. I'm so excited. You guys just love the podcast at the moment, which I'm loving sitting down every single week and chatting to you guys. Podcast is flying. YouTube. I have been very inconsistent with which I was really consistent for the first like 15 episodes, and I did one last week.

Obviously we went to Sydney, haven't picked up again. So, you know, I wanna make these decisions around like staying closer to YouTube, looking at things like Substack and launching there. So that'll be really exciting. Actually. I'll keep you guys nice and close with how Substack goes. Probably launch it around December, January, and then on the life side of stuff.

I made a Instagram story post on this. It was like property investments where we wanna travel to lifestyle upgrades. Again, the business funds your lifestyle, and then we anchor it into action. We're like, Michael and I are amazing builders. We are world builders. We can get down to it once we see the plan.

And like, you know, it's just we, we've got the architecture there. We know what, what needs to happen to make that shit happen. It's funny 'cause I looked at it and at the end of the planning day it was like a nice note, like, you know, kind of a, a nice amount of notes in the iPad. And I said to Mike, do you reckon like this is all we need?

And he goes, yeah, we just need a couple of guide points and we are there. We're gonna get building, we're expert builders. I'm like, yes, we so are. So if you are not an expert builder, if you are an expert planner and strategist, and therefore not necessarily someone who. Is the best at getting down to business and building out the nitty gritty.

At this point, I'd probably say to you, if I were coaching with you, you need someone who's really gonna be an executor for you that can come do the work, and that's where you would look at what areas do I need to have someone come build that for me or with me? How much budget do I have set aside for that?

What does that look like realistically? Because if you're not filling in that gap, you will always be in planning. And you'll always be in strategy, but you'll never actually get shit done, which sucks. So anyhow, we've got this whole list of what my next season looks like and I'm, yeah, I think what I might do is actually chuck it into a Google Doc.

Would you like that? And if you do, I'll leave it in the show notes and you can just go download it. It'll be free. So you'll see what I'm doing, at least for November, December, January. And it's just really simple, like high level notes. Like I said earlier, I think you'll be shocked to see exactly what's in my notes because it's so.

Loose and it's very, it's not detailed whatsoever, but just looking at from now till January, it should be at least quarter of a million dollars that we'll make and bring in. So have a look going to the show notes now and download that. But besides this, actually, I also, I'm speaking to another client of mine, Aisha, shout out Oath, Oracle.

Love you, babe. She actually inspired this entire episode. There you go. And she messaged me after seeing something I'd posted about Sydney. And um, she said to me, you know, I've been thinking about doing the planning thing as well and she's in Canada so she's heading into the depths of the winter. So cozy planning vibes, which I was sort of jelly about just thinking about it now.

It sounds so wonderful, but you know, I had to potentially booking a hotel and she's gonna plan out her year ahead. I love that. I love that for her and also. Let this inspire you because it's exactly how your next expansion will begin. You don't always need a new course or a new funnel, but you need space and you need presence, and you need to create an environment where you know, like your next vision can actually really come and speak to you, and you will notice even just in a day or two.

Some things will start to rearrange. You might even get signs, you might even have different dreams, like actual physical dreams, but you'll just notice like, Hey, I forgot that I had this dream. Why did I let it go? Why does it feel so impossible? So when you're honest with yourself and you start really thinking about what didn't work this year and where you would like things to work more, your clarity will come through.

And in these like spacious, quiet moments, because I'm gonna guess like a lot of my clients, you guys have never, ever. Really prioritize clarity and spaciousness. You're just like, yep, one launch done onto the next one, client done onto the next one month, done onto the next, and you actually haven't had these quiet moments for yourself.

And I, by the way, don't mean quiet moments where you are in bed, scrolling other people's stuff. That's not a quiet moment. That's a very, very loud, cognitive moment. Okay? I'm talking about peace and quiet, different environment, vibey all about you. If you are someone who works best with somebody else, then reach out to me and we'll do a VIP day together and we'll just make it a vibe, whether it's like virtual or in person.

I'll fly to you, you fly to me, like let's chat about what that looks like. But having somebody to, you know, have this moment with this day with where. It's fully dedicated to you and your goals and what your next season actually needs from you is gonna take you so much further than that crappy little to-do list that you probably got sitting beside you right now.

Okay, so I'm gonna end on the mindset stuff because when there's an episode that's quite heavily focused on. You know, like visioning and planning and strategy and ops and the things that you need to do. I need to remind you very, very quickly that all the numbers and the data that you are thinking you need to be a success actually doesn't really matter that much.

What matters, and this is like even Michael and I sitting down looking at the overall plan was it's a feeling. So when you go download my. Now to January notes, you'll see like just a whole bunch of handwritten notes and not handwritten. I'll type it out for you, but you'll, you'll see a whole lot of like dot points and they will mean nothing to you.

You'll look at that and go, oh, that's it. But to me it's this feeling of overflow. Like I, I read it and I see this image of us sitting hotel poolside in Sydney and how we, you know, had quite a few drinks and had a lot of fun there. But it's also thinking about the clients that I loved coaching. Like after finishing up with Justine and Sasha, I would like run back to the room and I said to Michael, oh my God, I fought these ladies so much and it just reminds me why I do what I do.

And also like on the day that I had, um, with Justine, I was saying to her, oh, like, you know, we've been sitting here for four hours and I've made 1200 USD just from having offers that run whilst I'm doing the things that I actually really love doing, which is being in front of my client and having a lovely Greek lunch, you.

So it's really that feeling. I'm just reminding you of that. It's looking ahead to 2026, knowing that you're building something so intentional, a business that's funding your lifestyle and not the other way around, not a lifestyle. Pressuring your business to perform. And I want you to think about it from a place of excitement, of fun, fulfillment, you know, having this sense of like, yeah.

I am not writing my 2026 business plan out of neediness or attachment or chaos, but it's written from a place where it just feels filled with possibility. We're about to come into January very soon before you know it, and that is my favorite month for possibilities. 'cause it's just like a brand new slate and it's just clean and it's there.

So why not put yourself into a place right now where you can replicate that feeling of it's a brand new slate and it's there. So do that, and maybe this is your sign to go and book a hotel, book a co-work space, get out and do your own planning day between now and the end of the year. Grab your iPad, your notebook, your order.

Go grab a beautiful bottle of Dom and take it with you and you can just celebrate yourself or reach out to me or your favorite coach that you wanna just workshop with and bounce around with. I love this time of year for that. And you'll just notice like, okay, there's already this exciting change that's ahead.

There's something new and there's something different. I have two more of these VIP days. Actually. I've got a client who's flying in from Canberra and I've got a fly client who's flying in from New Zealand to come see me on the Gold Coast before the new year. And like I said, a lot of, I don't advertise this, you guys like this is the first time I've actually really talked about this to my audience.

Like this episode will get thousands of listens, but I don't really at all ever talk about it. It's just people reach out to me saying, I really love your vibe. Can we just have a day together? So I guarantee if you just reach out to like your favorite coach or somebody, you'll never know what comes off it and it will just feel so different than just trying to do it on your own.

Okay. If this episode resonated, please let me know. Share it with me. Screenshot, tag me in this episode. Send me your own planning day itinerary. Um, I wanna be there with you and just be like, oh my God. Let's find, go. Have a look at my notes in, um, my planning day notes in the show notes as well. I might also throw in some.

Guidelines on how to, you know, create your own planning session. Yeah, I'm excited. Okay, go do it because this is where the next big expansion will begin for you. I know it so, so much. Have the best day ahead. If you are in the podcast vibe still go listen to last week's episode where I talk about personal financials and how that can help you also plan for next year.

'cause you might hear some stuff that I'm saying there and you're like, okay, wait, I need to really think about this and put this into the planning for 2026. Big love, big kisses, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye.