If you didn't watch last week's video, well surprise, I am quite pregnant. I
am six months pregnant. I'm obviously really excited and I feel like I am preparing for a
massive shift in my life. And I am working with clients in 47 different countries,
I run a pretty darn big business at this point. I have a team that I work with and I love, and also
I'm preparing mentally and physically to become a mom with doctor's visits, all these things.
And I know that things are only about to get more hectic. I know the parents watching
this are probably like, "Ooh, you just wait". And so I've been really honing in on what already
is a strong strategy for prioritizing and how I plan out my months, my year, my weeks, my days.
And it's really, really specific and intentional, and I know that it could help. So I thought it'd
be helpful for me to share it with you because you might be thinking, "Wow, you got a lot going on.
You're running this business, you must work all the time. You must be hustling all the time".
If you've been watching this channel for a while, that's just not how I roll. My
business is built to create a life that is really aligned with how I want to live,
and it's allowed me a ton of flexibility, but it's taken hard work to make things this simple.
So I thought regardless of where you're at, this will be helpful because I'm not working all the
time. I make dinner pretty much every night for my husband and I. I love cooking really good, healthy
food. It makes me happy. It's kind of meditative for me. I work out, I take care of myself. I'm
with my friends and family. I prioritize a whole life, not just a busy one. While
also running a multimillion-dollar business. So if this is interesting to you and you're
excited to take a look at the behind the scenes, give this video a like, be sure to subscribe for
new videos every week, and I've created a free guide on how to detach your time from your income
smash, the income and impact ceiling, and how I was able to scale my skillset, the 10 steps it
took to get there, so that you can do the same. So you can download that at the link below in
the description. All right, let's get into it. So I plan 12 months at once. That is the first
step of me making sure that I stay on track, I stay focused, and I'm not doing things that
I don't need to be doing or wasting time on shiny object syndrome. The very, very,
very first thing that I look at before I even start the planning process,
which I'm going to get into in a second, is I make sure that I am super focused and centered
and aligned around what our North Star is. So our North Star is essentially the mission of
our business and our core focus. So our North star is, we help burnt out experts who lack visibility,
go from being a best kept secret, unable to create the impact on the people who need them most,
stuck trading their time for money to elevating their income, impact and authority by an online
education business so that they can create a legacy business that outlasts them and
democratizes entrepreneurship and education. And once I have that, it makes it easy to focus,
like I said, and then dig into the nitty-gritty aspects of the business. Let's do that.
From there, I break the business into the fundamental aspects of it. So this really
applies to any business and this is what you can apply to where you're currently at
to make it really easy for you to plan out what actually matters and to prioritize,
so you're not wasting time on stuff that doesn't. So first and foremost, obviously you have
something to sell, you have a business. So what's the offer? And this is broken down into,
if I look at the full year ahead, here's the thing. I look back at what I've done
in the past years and use that as my sort of baseline average of what we can project
to do moving forward, and how we can improve on that based on what happened in the past.
If this is your first year of business, just have a rough estimate and start with what you want to
achieve and work backwards from there. So things like, okay, well, how many client testimonials
do we want to gather for the next year? What's our goal for that? Our goal number? What's our
client retention look like, in terms of making sure that people are going through the program?
What's the structure of our program? Are we making any changes to that? Probably not. It works really
well. And then what are any updates that we're going to make to the actual curriculum of the
program itself, any changes that need to be made, and when can we schedule that in? So that's the
first component. If you don't have something to sell, you don't have business. So that's first.
The next step is your ideal client. I mentioned this in past videos. I have a video about finding
ideal clients if you're stuck on that right now, so you can check that in the description below.
But I want to think through, okay, our focus, our guide is we're working with one kind of client,
we have one offer, one core offer in our business. And for that offer,
we have one client we work with. And so there's three factors to an ideal client,
especially for an online course business, knowing that you're going to be able to scale it and reach
more of those people. So it's one specific ideal client at one specific place on their journey,
seeking one specific outcome. When I mentioned our North Star earlier, I went through exactly
who that client is and what it looks like. The next piece is sales. So how many clients are
we aiming to attract into our program and enroll into our program in the next 12 months? And again,
if you look back at past data, it's going to give you a really good idea of what's doable and how
you can improve from there if you want to. And if you're starting fresh, what's your goal? So number
of clients for the year, and then what's the average conversion rate in the business? Again,
if you're starting fresh, you'll really start to gather this data as you go, but we can look
back and know, okay, our average conversion rate is around this amount. So if we want to attract
X amount of clients, then we need to know that we need to have X amount of leads based on this
conversion rate to get that number of clients. Next piece is obviously sales leads right into
finances of the business. So I look at, okay, what's the revenue target for this
year? What's our profit margin percentage we want to stick to for this year so we have cash flow
and we have abundance in the business and we have security in the business, and profit does lead to
peace of mind, so what's your profit number. Next is, what's the amount of cash collected
that we need to have in the business to be able to achieve that? And then what is the
amount of runway we want to have? So I always say to folks, if you have a business, your goal
should be to have a minimum of three months of runway. Meaning business shuts down today,
all hell breaks loose, you still got to pay your expenses, you can cover your expenses for at least
three months. I like to be more conservative than that to be totally honest with you, it just makes
me feel better and it's individual for you, but a minimum of three months in terms of runway to
cover your expenses in case anything were to happen is a good place to start from.
The next piece is marketing and operations. So to create the finances, the sales,
all of these things, the clients in the door, what are we going to do to make that happen?
So what are our core platforms in our business, have explained this in other videos, we're really
simple. It's really YouTube and email are our core platforms in our business. Those are really
the only ones we focus on. That breaks down into, okay, well for the next year, how many emails are
we going be going to be sending to our community, to our leads to convert them into clients,
to nurture them, to provide value to them. How many YouTube videos do I need to create
for the next 12 months? How many client case studies are we going to do? We have a whole
separate channel for our client case studies, and we do one of these a month and it's so much fun
to be able to actually speak to these people live. So we aim generally for about 12 of these a year,
eight to 12 is kind of our target. And then how many webinars are we going to do for the year?
How many live webinars, if we choose to do those? How many leads do we need to generate? How many
booked calls do we need to generate in order to hit our targets for the next 12 months?
And the final piece is team and hiring. So you may not be at a place right now where you're
looking to hire, I for a long time didn't have a team and I'm so grateful to have the
team I have now. You've met a few of them on this channel. But really important to understand, okay,
what's the business model look like currently and where could potential areas of opportunity be in
terms of a necessity and bringing somebody on. So we have our core leadership team, ops director,
client success manager, sales manager and finance manager, and of course myself up here. I forgot
to put it on here, so it's tiny. So underneath these roles, what does that structure look like,
and are there opportunities in the next 12 months that we think we're going to need? Do we need to
bring on another enrollment coach underneath the sales department? Do we need to have an
assistant for the client success manager? Do we need to have somebody who's assisting on
the ops front. Just looking at that structure and going, do we think there's any threats or
holes that we may need to fill? Okay, what would the timeline roughly look like for that? So you
can plan ahead, plan the hiring process, plan the recruiting process, and make it happen.
So here's the magic of this. It's pretty simple, right? When you look at the fundamentals of each
part of the business, and those are the core pillars of the business, the core pieces, it's
not a ton to think about, you can do this exercise in one afternoon. And it will help you stay laser
focused so you're not winging it or trying all the shiny object things and doing all of the
things at once. That's not going to help you. So what I do from there, when I go over the
next year, I then break it down by quarter. So by quarter, how many clients leads calls do we need?
How many pieces of content am I creating? Who and when are we hiring if we need to, we may not need
to. And what are any updates we need to do the program and when can I block in time over the
next year to make that happen. So I can disperse them, spread it all out, so I'm not trying to do
this all at once because that kills you. That kills your productivity, that kills your soul,
it kills your time management. It makes you not have the best time as the leader of the business
because you're not able to be there for your team. So spread it out, spread out the key priorities.
Anything else you want to do that comes up and you have time for it, cool, cool, cool, great,
do it. But if you don't have time for it and it's not a high priority, get it off the list.
So then all you need to do is really get this down on paper, set your targets for each quarter,
and then from there I break it down by month. And that allows me to know, okay,
for the next 12 months, each month, this is what we need to hit. And it allows you wiggle room.
Let's say you missed targets in one of the months, then you can sort of add that on and disperse it
over the following months of the year. That can happen. So it gives you full control and
the big picture scope of what needs to happen, so you can break it down on a granular level,
month by month, week by week, day by day. That's where I use a tool like Asana and
Google Drive to keep those things organized, to keep the whole team on the same page,
so we're all working towards the same thing and we're not all kind of working in our own
little worlds. So let's dig into that. So I have two key tools that I use for managing
my tasks. So number one is Asana. That's where we put all of our projects, all of our tasks,
and I break them down by month, week, and day. And then I use this something called time
blocking, which I mentioned before, which allows me to block the amount of time that
I want to allocate to each aspect of my life and every part of the business to make sure
that I'm actually planning ahead for it. There's some quote about if you don't plan,
you plan to fail. I really do believe in that. And making sure that you're blocking off that
time is so important. So those are two aspects. And then to make it even more simplistic, I use
Post-It notes. They're my best friend. It's my favorite part of planning, and I break down every
week and I pretty much have a theme for every week. So week one is dedicated to, let's say,
content planning. That is my main focus for that week. Week two is on camera and actually creation.
And let's say also I'm going to do the live case study with my client that week. So
everything's about being on that week. Week three is focused on team. Talking
to my team one-on-one, making sure that everyone's aligned in terms of their goals,
targets. And then week four is prepping for the month ahead, any long-term projects that I want
to chip away at or work on or plan ahead for. And then I just take all four weeks,
I lay out the associated tasks with what the theme of that week is. I try to do no more than four
core priorities each week. Sometimes it's a lot less. And then it just posts them on the bottom
of my screen on my desktop so that it keeps me hyper-focused and I don't get distracted doing
things that aren't really productive or helping the business, my team or my own peace of mind.
I've found that trying to plan for every single day just does not work for me, and it really
comes down to planning week by week so that I can shift things around and adjust and be flexible.
Back to the whiteboard and talking about daily priorities. So this is where people get tripped
up, especially when you're running a business because, let's be honest, so many things can
happen in a day that can throw you right off your game. So the only things, and I share this with
my clients and I harp on it a lot to keep them focused because it's what worked for me and it's
continued to work for years, I only have four key focuses every single day inside of my business.
Sales, ensuring that we're generating new clients, that we're getting clients in the
door. We're staying on top of our financials, quality control, so feedback on the program,
et cetera, making sure that any updates that need to happen are happening, planning for them. Social
proof, so collecting those results, those wins from our clients. And then profitability. So what
is our financial situation looking like? How are we looking in terms of giving ourselves a little
bit of a grace period and security blanket? And then my morning tasks as the CEO of the
business, and this has been the same for almost six years at this point. The very first thing I
do in the morning is the tactical stuff to make sure I'm top of my game and I'm on top of things
for the team. And this takes me probably about 30 minutes to an hour every morning depending
on the volume. But I will make sure that our clients are taken care of, any questions are
being answered. I make sure that the results are being gathered in terms of wins, testimonials,
et cetera. I celebrate them with the team. I make sure I'm gathering any stats applicable
to each of the core areas of the business we went over earlier so I know what's going
on and I have the full picture and can make adjustments if needed. And then I'm also on
top of any feedback that's come in, that means we need to make a change or update something,
et cetera. That's it. That's all. So those are the only things that I know I'm going to look
at every day. Beyond that, as I said earlier, I like to plan week by week, not day by day,
so that I can kind of move things around depending on what's going on in my world.
So two key things that made me really good at managing my time over the years and hopefully will
bode well for me when I do have this baby. One is a time journal. If you don't know how you're
currently spending your time, it's hard to figure out where you're kind of wasting time, and so
really auditing and keeping a journal for a day, a week, of writing down everything that you're doing
and how long it actually takes you. What the other bonus of this is, let's say I write down, okay,
I filmed content today, I filmed three videos, it took me two hours. I then know next month, okay,
I need to block two hours to film those three videos. I know exactly how long things take
me so then I can adjust and make a plan moving forward and know exactly how much time I need
and block it off, so you're not haphazardly sort of guessing and being frantic about it.
And when you do that, you really do start to see some trends and it allows you to focus
on three questions that came from a great mentor of mine that I always go back to and
I use often. Does this need to be done at all? Because a lot of the things in your to-do list,
they're just there as busy work. You don't really need to be doing them. So just take them off. Does
this need to be done by me or can I delegate it? You probably can delegate it. The third piece is,
does this need to be done right now? Is it urgent? If it's not, let's move it to another week.
And a book that was really valuable for me, it was called Essentialism. Holy smoke-a-doodles,
if you haven't read this book, go get it because it's about prioritizing and it's about keeping
the main thing, the main thing in whatever it is that you're doing, so you have a whole life and
not just a busy one. And where you're constantly stressed out, you start to resent your business,
you start to resent whatever it is that you're doing and you find your flow with it again.
I hope this is helpful for you. This channel and my whole business is dedicated to helping
you create a peaceful, purposeful, and profitable online education business. Regardless of what kind
of business you have, I know that a lot of what I shared today will apply. So comments are my
love language, so please let me know below what you took from this and what was super helpful
for you. And I'll have to make an updated video about all this when I do actually have a child,
because we'll see how it works. Good luck to me. But I think I have a good baseline to work
from and hopefully I've set myself up for at least a little bit of success. And I know that
it's worked really well up to this point. And like I said, I have an entire guide that
I created to detach your time from your income and scale your skillset. It's the 10 steps to do
so you can smash the income and impact ceiling, and I know it's going to be really valuable for
you as well. So you can grab that for free right now, download it at the link in the description.
Like I said, I know it might seem from the outside like I am constantly busy and working,
but truly I have created my business in a way that allows me to have a whole life. And that's
really important to me, especially after I hit massive burnout in 2017, made me reevaluate what
really actually matters, and so this keeps me on track, it keeps me calm, it keeps me centered,
and it keeps me really focused on what actually matters, which is all about the impact.
So like I said, hope this was really valuable for you and helpful. That's
the goal of it. That's the intention of it. And we'll see how this goes
with the real test. I hope to see you in the next video. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.