I made $980… and it changed how i’m planning 2026 (with a free Notion Biz Planning Template)
What started as a very simple post sharing some shit I’ve been doing to plan my year for 2026 evolved into this FULL ASS post with a sick freebie Notion planning template for you… 😆 SO let’s get into it.
For context: I’ve been making handmade beaded jewellery for almost a year now, as a small creative side quest to my main biz offering design templates & resources (like The Stash, Layout Legends, etc).
I only sell the jewellery in two small local stores in British Columbia, Canada. I don’t sell it online/on my own website (yet), I’m not doing markets or selling it anywhere else. I started doing it under my own name, but I’m now phasing it into its own brand called Marine Parade. 🌞
Before I get fully into the BTS stuff of what I've been noticing & planning, there’s one really important thing worth knowing:
👉👉 I’m not relying on the income from Marine Parade at all.
Marine Parade doesn’t exist to scale, or replace my main income. It exists so I can make hand crafted goods from the slow lane, follow my curiosity, and let it be a creative playground. 🌀
That said, I have recently gone deep on mapping out costs, pricing, expenses, and cash flow for the jewellery, as well as scheming and dreaming for the year.
So here’s the thing that surprised me most…
Running a mini retail brand alongside an online business has made buying customer patterns extremely obvious. 😳
Here's what I found: Q4 is usually quieter for online business stuff, and that held true again in 2025.
What surprised me was seeing my retail/jewellery sales jump at the same time. From roughly Sep-Dec I made around $1k in jewellery sales, and nearly half of that amount landed in a tight late-Nov/early-Dec window.
Duh-Christmas, but still cool to see IRL!
It’s obviously really small compared to my online offers, but because Marine Parade is low-pressure by design, it just feels like a fun side quest and like bonus money when it does come in. I share the $$ because I find it genuinely interesting, and if anything, to show that you can do stuff just because you want to, without it needing to take over your entire life, or streams of income.
Zooming out, this contrast between digital buying patterns vs retail buying patterns has given me so much clarity for planning ahead. 👉
From my own experience (plus years of client work and researching data pulled from platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, etc), Jan–March and September are the best times for big digital launches.
Q4, on the other hand, is usually a lot quieter online, but very strong for retail. 💪
Knowing this, combined with looking more into my own patterns and rhythm throughout the year gives me SO much to go off in my planning for 2026, so here's a couple examples:
📅 Big digital launches in Jan/Feb and September
😎 Q4 my energy & capacity dips big time, so here I can lean more into Marine Parade, with only smaller design workshops and template offers on the online side of my biz. (This is also where digital launches drop off a LOT, so its a perfect ebb & flow between the two)
😉 Built-in space after launches to cool off from promo and make things with zero pressure.
Even if this exact setup of online/offline biz doesn’t apply to you, mapping the year this way, by looking at your own biz & personal patterns + your customer or client patterns makes the natural ebb and flow so much clearer.
This is the guiding question I kept coming back to—
What patterns are already there in my own energy & rhythm across the year, and what does my past data tell me about how and when people buy from me?
Here’s a look at how I take that into a practical yearly calendar format...
This isn’t set in stone (it never is), but laying the whole year out like this has helped me so much. It’s just the big picture, the details come later. 📅 (I have the template of this for you linked below)
I made a FREE Notion Template—The Year, In Rhythm, for you to map this shit out for yourself. 📅
Like I said, I wasn’t planning to make this big ass template but tbh the calendar by itself was way too boring and only half of the process, so I spent a few hours building out this guy for ya. Get it below!
