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Transcription

You know it's been a crazy month 😵‍💫 when the last video that I posted before this was the last planning video. Clearly, that's a sneak peek into how this last month went! 🙃 Welcome to today's planning session. This is where I take you behind-the-scenes of being an online business owner. Starting with reflection on the last month, then sharing exactly what I'm working on this month. I'd love for you to do this along with me! I think it's so important for us to reflect on what's been going on in our business and figure out exactly what we need to tweak, and what changes we need to make in order to hit the next level in growth that we want. 🪜

Reflections of a Business Owner

March for me was INTENSE (kinda like camping 😜🏕) as a business owner. I had a lot going on, and I was trying to get the new update of my online program Uplevel with Asana done. Now, while I made a lot of progress, I did not succeed in getting it all done (even though I tried my absolute hardest). Because of this, I was really stressed out for a lot of the month, 🥵 which obviously isn't great. This happens anytime that any business owner piles too much on their plate, or sets unrealistic deadlines. I thought that my planning was pretty good, but I didn't leave room for any unexpected challenges to come up.

That's something we can all do with our project plans: is add some more buffer time. You can’t limit yourself for planning that everything is going to go according to plan. It would be nice if you were going to be able to be productive and your brain was going to actually be able to work every single day, but some things don’t go quite according to plan. Give yourself a buffer for things to take a little more time!

Outsourcing

While I didn't get the new project all the way done, we still made a ton of progress and were able to pull it together quite quickly. And I want to share a few reasons as to why that happened: I outsourced anything that didn't need to be me specifically. For example, I could get help with editing videos, formatting the course area, creating workbooks, transcripts, and uploading all of that to the course. Whenever you're doing something as a business owner, ask yourself if that task really needs to be you, or you could bring in someone else to help you with it. Even if it's a small task, or something that feels like it's not going to take much time. They can still take up a lot of mental energy and take you away from the more important task. Even if it's small, make sure to outsource it!

There was a lot going on this month. I was busy working on the course, also my family came to visit me in Panama. 🇵🇦They are still here. I am having a blast with them. It's been awesome. 🏄‍♀️🏊‍♀️🧘‍♀️ Even this past weekend, we went to Santa Catalina, which is one of my favorite places to go in Panama. That was awesome! And we went snorkeling 🐠 and I saw Nemo. It was awesome, and we were still trying to turn our house into a home. While I was working on the course, my team was working on systems behind the scenes for Uplevel with Asana as well. We asked ourselves questions like: how we could improve customer onboarding, and how we can improve our affiliate system as well. If you are an affiliate partner of ours, expect tons more resources coming your way. 👍

2 Steps Forward…

Another major project that we had was our list-growth system. What was great about this, is we managed to get it all done. We set up full systems for hosting a live webinar, and we created a brand-new freebie of a hundred plus tools and systems (which you can definitely go and download). This has a list of 100 tools that are going to help you be more productive and hit your business goals. That was exciting. Problem is again, we ran into so many issues with that and things didn't perform as well as we had hoped. This was frustrating, because it meant we needed to do way more work than was expected.

That's something that is very common and happens to basically every business owner, as well. I just want to remind you that this is totally normal in business. This has happened to me throughout my entire entrepreneurial journey. I will do something that I think is a wonderful idea. I will put it out there, it doesn't go quite as well as I'm hoping, and then I have to go back to the drawing board and make some tweaks and improvements. Very rarely has it all just gone perfectly and seamlessly. If that is happening to you, just know that the tweaking and improving and the constant reiteration is a very normal part of all of this. Still definitely frustrating, because we put in all this work and now need to go back and redo a lot of it. 🤷‍♀️

Recap

So what can you take away from my recap of last month? It is to be honest about your capacity. Be okay with the fact that sometimes it is going to change drastically month to month. As a business owner, I should have been a bit more realistic with my planning. With the house, the family, and all the other things considered. Take time today to review the past month for you specifically. What you accomplished, what went well, and what didn't go so well and needs a bit of improvement.

Strong Second Quarter

We are in a brand new quarter, so I'm going to go into my favorite project management system ever, Asana. As a business owner, I ❤️Asana❤️. I’m going go into my project list and add my projects for Q2. That way, I can figure out exactly what I'm going to focus on. My top priority, of course, is getting the new update out into the world. I was able to release a ton of content, but over the next two weeks I need to get all the remaining tutorials filmed and out to my students. That will feel really good to finalize and have done.

List Growth

On top of that, I need to create systems for the new live calls that we added to this program. Now we have two live calls every single month. One where we plan your month together, and a second where I share some behind-the-scenes strategy that I do not share anywhere else. Third, I'm going to continue to work on that list-growth system. I say it all the time, but your email list and your audience growth is so important for your business growth overall. If you want to see some of the tools I use to keep my list strong, click here. I need to go back to the drawing board a little bit to make some tweaks and improvements. That way, I can get it converting exactly where I want it to.

Finally fourth, it is time to launch again. Learning how to launch has been one of the best things that I've done in my online business. If you are currently on the fence about doing it, I would highly recommend it. I'm going to be working on a brand new five-day challenge, and I hope you join me for that. It will launch later in this quarter.

K.I.S.S.

Beyond this, I am keeping it simple. As a business owner, there’s so much that we need to do on an ongoing basis in order to run and build our businesses. So, I'm going to stay focused on helping our clients. Then I need to get back on track with our sales and marketing efforts, which for me is free content. Also, just general systems behind-the-scenes in the business. I'm not adding too many projects for this quarter. I'm gonna keep it simple, which is something I think I've said on every single client call that I've done this year. 😂

For this month, I'm going to be focused on finishing the course. Then, I will also start working on that launch.

Wrap Up

I hope that you loved this video. And I hope it gave you lots to think about when it comes to being a business owner. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about anything that I covered. I'll see you real soon with another video. I have a really great one coming about a new software that I am obsessed with. I’ll share with you exactly how to use it🤫. If you haven't yet, make sure that you hit subscribe and I'll see you! 👋