My Q4 Business Growth Plan (Exactly What I Do Every Year)

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:00:00] Can your business actually grow within the next 90 days, despite all of the holiday sales Black Friday and being inundated with ads on social media. Before you buy into the idea that no one buys this time of year, we have to talk. As a multi seven figure business owner myself, I’ve used the five strategies you’ll learn today, not just to survive the holiday season, but to actually grow my business in the last 90 days of the year and I’ve never even offered a Black Friday sale. And what I didn’t expect is that what you do between now and December 31st will not only grow your business, this year, but it can actually set the foundation for major growth next year. Let’s hop into the five strategies you can use to grow your business before the year ends and to set up your business for success next year too.

The first Q4 strategy that you should steal is leaning into the end of year marketing messaging. For these last three months of the year, you can lean into [00:01:00] the marketing side of getting your customers to take action. Now we have got this like really nice find endpoint of December 31st of saying like all year you’ve been talking about changing X, why don’t we get that done by December 31st? And in order for you to get that done, you have to take action today.

I also like to lean into the end of year marketing messaging to get people to get in the head space that they’re going to hit the ground running in 2026. So, if you want to change some major thing in your life or achieve some goal in 2026, waking up on January 1st, 2026 isn’t when you should really start, really, you should be laying the groundwork and the foundation now in order to hit the ground running with that goal on January 1st.

So this is something you can quickly implement when it comes to your social media content, your email marketing, any major pieces of content you’re creating on YouTube or for your podcast, and even just thinking about it when you’re having sales conversations with your customers.

The second strategy you can [00:02:00] steal is thinking about what’s happening outside of your business, that’s what everybody else sees. Like all of the other strategies we’re going to talk about today, and then there’s what’s happening in your business. That’s what you are doing quietly behind the scenes, what you’re working on as the business owner. Now, just like I mentioned in the first tip, you can quietly and internally be working on things in your business during these last 90 days of the year in order to set yourself up for success in 2026.

For example, I run a really big live promotion at either the end of January, early February, every single year. Our four day sales sprint made over $338,000 and in order to do that and to do it successfully, all of the planning and the iteration and the assets that I have to create for that are happening now, or at least now between now and December 31st, right? So a lot of times what entrepreneurs will do is January rolls around and they think, oh, I wanna run a big sale now to [00:03:00] capitalize on this like New year, new you energy.

And then all of a sudden you’re scrambling trying to get all the pieces together to put together a sale. Or you sit down in January and you think, okay, what kind of sales do I wanna have for the rest of my year? And you start plotting them out. Well, from my perspective, the best time of the year to like start up with some kind of big sale and come out hitting the ground running is in January or February. In order for you to do that successfully, you have to capitalize on the next 90 days before the end of the year to put all the things in place and put everything in motion so that essentially you’re just hitting play when it comes to January.

The third strategy you should steal from me for sure is to show up without all of the stories. So when I first started my business in 2017, every time this time of the year would come around, I would buy into all of the stories that I would hear and see my friends talking about, like no one buys this time of year. People aren’t watching content this time of year, everyone’s [00:04:00] away like all that kinda stuff. Or I can’t compete on social media when there’s all these ads being run for Black Friday sales or something like that. And I decided after the first year or two that I was going to try something. Instead of buying into that language. What if I just pretended like it was any other time of the year. What if I just showed up and stayed consistent and did what I would normally do if it was March 15th or June 15th or December 15th. It doesn’t matter. I was just gonna show up like normal. And you know what happened? My sales grew.

So yes, ads are up, ads become more expensive. You’re definitely competing for real estate online and attention and to be seen, but I find that even just you committing to showing up and showing up consistently will automatically have you ahead of your competition because I bet you they’re buying into the story that nobody buys this time of year.

The fourth strategy you can use to increase your revenue in quarter four is to offer up a sale [00:05:00] before the typical sales period that your peers are using. So if you’ve always thought about running a Black Friday sale, or you’ve thought maybe you would run something for Christmas, but you’re like, me and Thanksgiving’s your favorite holiday and you don’t wanna be online, or you know, you know, practically that ads are more expensive at that time of year, and there is more competition for people’s attention on social media thanks to the inundation of ads, right? Well, why not run a Black Friday sale a week or two before? Let your audience know. Hey guys, this is my version of a Black Friday sale. I’m not running anything else. This is it. So if you want my best discount of the year, join now. Or you could run a holiday sale in the very beginning of December and say, this is my holiday sale. You won’t see anything when it comes to the holiday period because me and my team, we take off. I really think that this is a win-win because you both beat the crowd in terms of your peers, but also like the the race to get attention online. Plus you actually get the time off when it comes to Black [00:06:00] Friday or the holidays.

Last but not least, the fifth thing you can do to increase your sales before the year ends is to use tax deduction possibilities. So depending on what you sell and what you offer, what you sell might actually be a tax deduction for your customers.

So if it is, if you sell something for business or even health and wellness, things can count all kinds of things. You can advertise that in your marketing as yet another means to get people to take action before December 31st and say, if you purchase this thing before December 31st, you’ll be able to capture it as a business expense or something like that.

Last year in December, I sent out one email, one very simple email just to my email list saying, if you purchase the Ultimate Bundle® today, that’s my main product that gives people all the legal templates and trainings they need to start an online business safely, then you get this big discount, and by the way, this would help you with your taxes. And I leaned into the tax savings and we had a huge, [00:07:00] huge day, a multi five figure sale for one email.

So these are five strategies that I use in my own business, and I found really, really helpful. But honestly, as I always say, I think mindset here is key. If you take the mindset that your business is able to prosper during this time, that it’s not true that, or you wonder like just start questioning these things that you’ve kind of adopt it as beliefs, like is it true that this kind of business can’t do well? Is it true that nobody buys these kinds of products at this time of the year? Just challenge it. You really have nothing to lose to show up normally as you would, you’d be surprised just how much happens as a result of like the, the kind of the mindset we adopt and then how that influences our behavior.

And then it that hardwires the result. So if you’re walking around thinking no one buys during this time of year, so then you stop posting so much, you’re then hard wiring that you’re not going to make as many sales or you’re hard wiring that your email list isn’t going to [00:08:00] grow.

That’s the other thing is like the, you know, making more money for the rest of this year is not always the only or the best focus. So the other thing that you can think about is like maybe this last quarter of the year is about email list growth for you. And so you’re going to show up normally with all calls to action to lead to your email list so that when you run a sale in the beginning of 2026, you have a lot of fresh email leads to sell to.

But yeah, after listening to this episode, you’ll have to reach out and let me know, dM me on Instagram at sam vander wielen, or respond to my email and let me know if you enjoyed this episode and which one you’re going to implement, or you can head over to YouTube to watch the full video and leave a comment there.

I really appreciate you listening and watching. And if you don’t already, make sure you click the link down in the show notes to get my weekly newsletter, Sam’s Sidebar. It’s a free newsletter that lands in your inbox every single Tuesday that 50,000 of your online business peers get already to get my best legal tips and my marketing strategy and advice on how to grow a successful online [00:09:00] business without any of the bs. So make sure you sign up for that down below.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.