Latest / Growing a Deeply Rooted Business: Launches, Funnels & Email Marketing with Intention / The Final Step of Your Midyear Reset: Turn Your Goals Into an Action Plan

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The Final Step of Your Midyear Reset: Turn Your Goals Into an Action Plan · Growing a Deeply Rooted Business: Launches, Funnels & Email Marketing with Intention

• 0:00
  Jessica: All right, tell me if this sounds familiar.
• 0:01
  Jessica: You've got the plan.
• 0:03
  Jessica: You sat there and spent a couple of hours figuring out every single item that you needed to do to launch this new initiative or to be able to hit this new goal that you're trying to reach.
• 0:13
  Jessica: It's super pretty, except it's missing a couple of things.
• 0:18
  Jessica: Couple of very important things.
• 0:20
  Jessica: It doesn't have a date, it doesn't have who's gonna do these magical tasks.
• 0:24
  Jessica: and it's not a full and complete plan.
• 0:28
  Jessica: A goal without a plan is just a wish basically.
• 0:33
  Jessica: And for most of my clients, they come to me and there is some certain aspect of their business, either they're trying to launch something new, whether it be a new offer, or they're trying to do a new content
• 0:43
  Jessica: thing, it's probably because they didn't take the time to actually put a project plan around it.
• 0:47
  Jessica: So this is how you bring your goals to life, and is one of my most favoritest things to talk about because once you learn this skill, you can apply it not only to business, but also to your personal
• 0:59
  Jessica: life.
• 1:00
  Jessica: So today we're finishing up our mid-year reset series.
• 1:03
  Jessica: So we already went through our two assess and align episodes, and then today we're talking about the last step of our Rooted in Reality planning process, which is act.
• 1:13
  Jessica: Putting all these ideas, these goals into action so that you can move a little bit closer to the business that you're trying to build.
• 1:20
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 1:20
  Rachel: So welcome back to Growing a Deeply Rooted Business podcast.
• 1:24
  Rachel: I'm Rachel, your marketing ecosystem strategist, here with Jess, our sustainable systems and growth gal.
• 1:31
  Rachel: And like Jess said, we're in part three here, which means if you've been with us for the last couple of weeks, and hopefully have done the work, you have assessed what's worked, what hasn't worked, what's felt good, what
• 1:42
  Rachel: doesn't feel good.
• 1:44
  Rachel: You've aligned it with the new direction for the next six months.
• 1:48
  Rachel: You hopefully know what's making you money, what's making you tired, because both of those things are important.
• 1:55
  Rachel: And hopefully we understand a little bit for the next six months what they're supposed to look like and all of that.
• 2:00
  Rachel: If you're just joining us, welcome.
• 2:02
  Rachel: You can absolutely start here.
• 2:03
  Rachel: We do recommend that you go back and listen to those last two episodes because it is a compounding effort that we are building here.
• 2:11
  Rachel: So before we get into it, we'll obviously we're gonna do our quick little energy check because this is my guilt shame bucket.
• 2:20
  Rachel: This episode is why I hold so tightly Jess's friendship in my life because I 1,000% was the person with all of the tasks loaded with no assignment to me, 'cause I didn't wanna see them on my to-do list,
• 2:35
  Rachel: 'cause it was overwhelming.
• 2:37
  Rachel: And absolutely no to-do dates because how dare I?
• 2:42
  Rachel: You know what I mean?
• 2:43
  Rachel: So if you have gotten here and you're like, "Oh, assessing all of this felt really good," maybe you felt a little uncomfortable looking at your numbers.
• 2:52
  Rachel: It's fine.
• 2:53
  Rachel: We're aligned.
• 2:54
  Rachel: We feel better about this because now, we feel a little bit more jolted into the new year.
• 2:59
  Rachel: That's amazing.
• 3:00
  Rachel: We're gonna hold that energy because this part, if you're ADHD or neurodivergent, is typically where things start to fall apart, or where the action tends to fall short.
• 3:12
  Rachel: So take a deep breath.
• 3:15
  Rachel: Let's jump into this, and let's get started
• 3:19
  Jessica: All right.
• 3:19
  Jessica: After last week, if you followed us along, you probably have a list of projects or initiatives that you know that you need to do either to hit your revenue goals or to bring more ease into your business or
• 3:29
  Jessica: just help you, attract more clients or audiences.
• 3:33
  Jessica: What you're gonna do now is start to make it a reality by planning it out.
• 3:37
  Jessica: So you're gonna wanna kinda look at everything you've got and figure out what your priorities are right now, or where were the biggest holes when you were doing all of your conversion assessments, where are those biggest holes, and
• 3:50
  Jessica: plug it.
• 3:50
  Jessica: Because creating a new offer doesn't really make any sense if you don't have any traffic going to it in the first place.
• 3:58
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 3:58
  Jessica: Or if you've got offers that are working, that are validated, you know that they are selling, and you just need more eyeballs on them, then you know to focus there as well.
• 4:08
  Jessica: Or maybe you've got a ton of traffic, but nobody's buying anything, or they're opting for your lead magnet but then not converting, then you know "Oh, the project about going in and looking at my email follow-up sequence is
• 4:20
  Jessica: gonna be the key."
• 4:21
  Jessica: So you're gonna first prioritize, and then you're gonna wanna kinda go through and assign, one or two initiatives because you are also serving clients unless you have a team that is doing that for you.
• 4:32
  Jessica: One or two initiatives per month that you are going to tackle.
• 4:36
  Jessica: And then you're probably, if you're like most people, gonna have more than will fit into your quarter, and then those are the things that go into your ideal parking lot that you can revisit later.
• 4:47
  Rachel: Yeah, I think that we need to emphasize this because I am also guilty.
• 4:52
  Rachel: Jess and I, we still do this.
• 4:54
  Rachel: It is like a constant
• 4:55
  Jessica: lady.
• 4:56
  Jessica: My ideas parking lot is what a parking garage now.
• 4:59
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 5:00
  Jessica: going
• 5:01
  Rachel: But if we're looking at let's just use us for an example, like the Deeply Rooted business.
• 5:07
  Rachel: We were like, "We're doing this, this, this, this."
• 5:10
  Rachel: this."
• 5:10
  Rachel: We over-committed in a energetic way, right?
• 5:14
  Rachel: Because we were so excited about all of the things that we have, and we immediately, because Jess and I's busy seasons tend to overlap, we immediately were like, "Whoa, hold on," because the value in our business is both
• 5:29
  Rachel: of us having the time to support each other, not being like, "Oh, Jess, I don't have Q1 capabilities.
• 5:37
  Rachel: Jess maybe has a little bit more than here.
• 5:40
  Rachel: That still doesn't work, and so that's one of those gaps that we're like, we still have to fill that kind of thing.
• 5:44
  Rachel: So we always overestimate all of the things that we can get done.
• 5:49
  Rachel: So if you take one thing away from this episode, let it be to be honest with our capacity.
• 5:55
  Rachel: Let it be real that we do one, maybe one and a half big projects per month, and not try to overload it, because then we start to feel that shame and disappointment when things don't come to life.
• 6:08
  Rachel: So just re-emphasizing that.
• 6:11
  Jessica: Yeah, and if that sounds scary for you, then it's probably a priority issue.
• 6:14
  Jessica: You really just need to identify the things that are gonna really help move the needle further.
• 6:18
  Jessica: What is that first domino that has to get knocked down?
• 6:22
  Jessica: One of my favorite books about prioritization in projects is The One Thing.
• 6:27
  Jessica: And he says asking the focusing question.
• 6:30
  Jessica: So when you're trying to determine where you should focus, you say, "What was the one thing that I can do now that will make everything else on my list easier or unnecessary?"
• 6:41
  Jessica: And usually by asking that question, you're gonna find it's probably something that you've been avoiding of the time.
• 6:46
  Jessica: But you just gotta do that because that's part of working for yourself.
• 6:49
  Jessica: It's probably the one main thing that I would say give anybody as business advice is you gotta get really comfortable being uncomfortable and doing those one things that's gonna make everything easier instead of trying to dance your way
• 7:00
  Jessica: around it.
• 7:01
  Jessica: So example is, as much as I do not...
• 7:04
  Jessica: i'm gonna learn to love content.
• 7:06
  Jessica: I do not learn to love content, but I know that having a big audience will make everything else easier or unnecessary that I'm trying to do, so that is my one focus for the next couple of months.
• 7:18
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 7:18
  Rachel: So now that you have your one focus and you have it slotted into, we're truly working with two quarters here, right?
• 7:25
  Rachel: So we're sorting into our quarters.
• 7:27
  Rachel: We have the additional layers that we've established in the first two parts where it's our capacity, our life rhythms, our busy seasons, and all of that.
• 7:36
  Rachel: Now that everything's placed in their quarter or in their month, then what?
• 7:41
  Jessica: All right, so then we're gonna wanna start to break those projects down into tasks.
• 7:46
  Jessica: If you haven't done it already, you're gonna kinda wanna like, "Oh okay, so I wanna launch a new lead magnet.
• 7:50
  Jessica: What is that gonna look like?
• 7:51
  Jessica: I've gotta write the lead magnet copy.
• 7:53
  Jessica: I've gotta get it designed.
• 7:54
  Jessica: I've gotta set up the tech and the forms for it.
• 7:56
  Jessica: You're probably gonna definitely wanna have an email follow-up sequence for it.
• 8:00
  Jessica: You're gonna need to load those into it.
• 8:01
  Jessica: Those are the ones that I can just think of off my head.
• 8:04
  Jessica: But you're gonna write them all down, and then you're gonna kinda figure out sequentially what needs to happen first to move it down.
• 8:12
  Jessica: And what I typically follow for project planning is strategy first, obviously.
• 8:16
  Jessica: You gotta get that nailed down.
• 8:18
  Jessica: And then I move into copy, and then I move into building the thing, whether it be the website or the actual asset itself, and then we move into tech set up and testing, and then launch.
• 8:29
  Jessica: And pretty much that will work out for almost any single project that you're taking.
• 8:35
  Jessica: And then you want to figure out when do you wanna do this by, and then work backwards from there.
• 8:39
  Jessica: And then you're gonna look at it again and say, "That means I would have to work 80 hours this week."
• 8:44
  Jessica: And then you're gonna give yourself permission to push that launch date a little bit back and maybe deprioritize a project.
• 8:49
  Jessica: This isn't wasting time, because if you do this for every single one of those quarterly projects, I recommend just doing Q3, even though we have Q4 planned, go into Q3 first 'cause a lot can change in 90 days.
• 9:00
  Jessica: Do it all, and then this might show you, "Oh, i've still got so many projects on my plate."
• 9:05
  Jessica: That wasn't time wasting breaking that off, because now you've already done that part for Q4 when you decide to do it.
• 9:10
  Jessica: But you'll be able to really see what your capacity is for working on a project and being really honest about what it is.
• 9:18
  Jessica: Or if you do have the luxury of having a budget to bring on people to help you, you can identify "Oh, I could get this launched if I outsourced it to this person instead," or these pieces of it
• 9:30
  Jessica: to this person instead.
• 9:31
  Jessica: You're gonna go back to that project management triangle that I talk about, that you're gonna either need more people or more time.
• 9:37
  Jessica: And that's how you're gonna get done.
• 9:38
  Jessica: And what I am realizing right now is that I need to listen to myself, because Rachel and I signed up for a challenge where we are going to post content every day, and nowhere in my planning did I
• 9:48
  Jessica: block off the time to do that.
• 9:51
  Jessica: That is my homework this week.
• 9:53
  Jessica: And guess what?
• 9:54
  Jessica: I posted one video this week, and I'm sure Rachel...
• 9:57
  Jessica: She just told me when her time block is, so she is planned, and she is actually executing, and I am not planned, and that's why I am having trouble executing.
• 10:05
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Rachel: Let me go back four steps here, because I think the reality of probably 70% of business owners who are not good project planners for themselves is that they do take that launch this.
• 10:18
  Rachel: Launch new offer, and that's their one line item.
• 10:22
  Rachel: And I know for me, I used to operate like that, too, and not only does that affect, one, if you have that mental load issue where you're like, I don't know where to start."
• 10:30
  Rachel: "What do I tackle now?"
• 10:31
  Rachel: "What do you mean launch this?"
• 10:33
  Rachel: But it also works into delegation, too.
• 10:35
  Rachel: If we're looking back at that kind of role play that we all have to do in our business of employee and founder, CEO, do you then say, "Okay I can knock this out"?
• 10:46
  Rachel: This is my Tuesday morning brain kind of not required type tasks that I can just put on there kind of thing.
• 10:53
  Rachel: Those are the things that you have to have awareness on, and when you have it as a single line item in your project management system, hurts you from a delegation standpoint, whether you're delegating to a team or delegating
• 11:04
  Rachel: to yourself.
• 11:05
  Rachel: It also hurts you just from a capacity because, like Jess said, when you take one, just a lead magnet, right?
• 11:11
  Rachel: When I'm helping somebody with a lead magnet in their business, there's probably 20 hours that go into developing and executing that.
• 11:20
  Rachel: So it may look like a simple task to just say, "Oh, launch this," but design, writing, or reverse in that order, writing, design, implementing into your platform, those are all things that I personally have struggled with breaking down
• 11:35
  Rachel: an individual task.
• 11:36
  Rachel: And it wasn't until Jess gave me this genius AI skill that I could literally take this and it gives me all of the things that I just kinda categorized in my brain unknowingly.
• 11:47
  Rachel: So just wanna name that reality because it is so real for people to think it's a single line item when it's actually 20.
• 11:55
  Jessica: And then for the next step, you're gonna wanna load it into some sort of project management tool.
• 12:02
  Jessica: So obviously, my tool of choice is Notion, but I've used Asana, I've used ClickUp before.
• 12:08
  Jessica: You could do a paper planner.
• 12:11
  Jessica: why I am against paper planners is because the project is probably not going to shake out exactly on the days you think it is going to
• 12:20
  Rachel: happen
• 12:20
  Jessica: So these digital project management tools allow you to shift dates when they're inevitably going to need to get shifted around because things come up, a kid gets sick, something takes longer than you thought it was than you estimated
• 12:34
  Jessica: it was gonna take.
• 12:36
  Jessica: But yeah.
• 12:36
  Jessica: So my favorite thing right now is to load it into Notion on the date that I want to do it, and then when I'm doing my weekly planning sessions now, Notion actually has Notion Calendar, which you can bring
• 12:46
  Jessica: in your task, you can connect your task to it, and it'll show you at the top of your calendar all the tasks you're supposed to do that day.
• 12:52
  Jessica: And then you can drag those down and actually start time blocking them into the actual day when you want to do them.
• 12:58
  Jessica: That has really started to help me a lot because I have a lot of client meetings and other meetings to work around to really see oh, okay, I can slot something here, and then slot something there.
• 13:08
  Jessica: So that's my favorite way right now to plan it is, and I do that in the beginning of the week.
• 13:12
  Rachel: Yeah, and I'm gonna give a plug for time tracking here, because let's say you are a solopreneur or a small team kinda thing.
• 13:19
  Rachel: When you're recreating all of these different workflows and creating you're not only ever gonna create one lead magnet, right?
• 13:26
  Rachel: You're probably gonna have a few in your lifetime of your business.
• 13:30
  Rachel: So if you do this where you have it set up and you say, "Okay, I'm gonna conceptualize my lead magnet, 30 minutes.
• 13:37
  Rachel: I'm gonna then write my lead magnet," and you're truly time tracking this, the next time you go and do it, and you go and drop those tasks in, when you put a 20-minute task on your to-do list or
• 13:49
  Rachel: on your calendar in between two client call meetings, you start to understand if that's a reality or if that's just a dream.
• 13:56
  Rachel: Is that actually gonna happen in that 20 minutes, or does it need to get bumped?
• 14:00
  Rachel: So just being, super honest with yourself.
• 14:03
  Rachel: I have had to time track to break myself of this everything takes 30 minutes illusion I was in.
• 14:10
  Rachel: Delusion, what we should call it.
• 14:12
  Rachel: And it has actually helped me be way more controlled in how I assign tasks to myself because if I'm like, "Oh, I need to get this done," I know that right now, recording a video is more on the
• 14:24
  Rachel: 30, 40-minute efforts right now if I'm in this YAP challenge.
• 14:27
  Rachel: To edit and record and script it and all of that, I can't just do it while Henry's watching something over here.
• 14:33
  Rachel: So just putting this out there that if time tracking has always been like, "Ugh, it's so useless," it's actually super useful for your future self, 100%.
• 14:43
  Jessica: I know during our Notion setups, one of the columns that I do have is an estimate that I think each task will take, and then I can look at my day and be like, "Oh, got 13 hours worth
• 14:53
  Jessica: of tasks scheduled today.
• 14:54
  Jessica: That's not gonna work."
• 14:55
  Jessica: So move that.
• 14:56
  Jessica: Or we also have integrated a time tracking into our Notion where we can see a roll-up of how long the task actually did take, and then that is great for informing for the next time, like Rachel said.
• 15:09
  Jessica: So having the system that kind of all connects and everything is beautiful.
• 15:13
  Jessica: It's also great for delegation too, if you're trying to manage somebody.
• 15:16
  Jessica: This skill of project planning and especially launch planning, I can do in my sleep pretty much right now, and I definitely have all the hacks for making this faster.
• 15:26
  Jessica: So what I've done actually is trained a project manager.
• 15:30
  Jessica: We have Project Manager Paula and she lives inside the lab.
• 15:33
  Jessica: She's one of your assistants that you get within the first couple of weeks.
• 15:37
  Jessica: And what she will basically help you do is either giving her a strategy doc or a loose list of tasks that you're going to accomplish, and from there, she's gonna help you break it out into tasks, like I
• 15:49
  Jessica: said.
• 15:49
  Jessica: 'Cause every task, especially if you're working with a team, even writing copy, writing an email, it's like write the email, get the approval, load it up, test the links, all of this.
• 15:59
  Jessica: She'll really help you get into those granular aspects of the task.
• 16:03
  Jessica: And then that way if you have a target launch date, she will help you out those tasks if you have team members to delegate, who you're delegating to and all of that, so that you walk away with a
• 16:13
  Jessica: pretty project plan.
• 16:15
  Jessica: And then the most amazing thing that I love about using this within Claude is that you can connect your Notion, and then from there you can say, "Okay, great, these look great.
• 16:22
  Jessica: Now take all of these tasks and put them into my Notion database and connect it to this project via relation."
• 16:30
  Jessica: And it just automatically puts everything in there, and it makes my life so much easier as a project planning person, and it's beautiful.
• 16:38
  Jessica: And I don't know what I did without AI and Paula before.
• 16:41
  Rachel: Yeah, and I think one of the things that maybe nobody really considers is the fact that, when you're setting up your business brain, you've established your weekly rhythm, your capacities, your hours that you wanna work, and all of
• 16:54
  Rachel: those things.
• 16:55
  Rachel: And so when eager beaver you sits down and says, "I have four priorities I wanna get done in August," your business brain will check you, 'cause I've done this already, where they go, "Oh, actually this doesn't quite work.
• 17:09
  Rachel: You wanna launch this, but actually your windows of opportunity are pretty limited, and we have this, and this."
• 17:16
  Rachel: So it's one of those things that if you've done step one and step two of this three-part series of assessing and aligning, all of these layers come into play when you're then project planning.
• 17:27
  Rachel: And then when you have, Project Planner Paula holding you accountable for this, it's super valuable.
• 17:32
  Jessica: Let's recap the steps of our ACT session.
• 17:36
  Jessica: Like we said, if you haven't listened to the past two episodes, we definitely go recommend you to go listen to those.
• 17:40
  Jessica: But for this step in particularly, you're going to wanna sort your projects by priority and map out one or two that you wanna do each month.
• 17:49
  Jessica: And then from there, you're gonna start to break your projects down into tasks with owners, because it's not gonna get done if you don't assign it anybody.
• 17:56
  Jessica: And then you're gonna put it in your project manager and assign it a date, because if it's not on my calendar, I'm definitely not doing it.
• 18:02
  Jessica: and then you wanna make sure that it's, all loaded into whatever project management or task management system that you are using.
• 18:13
  Rachel: yeah.
• 18:13
  Rachel: And make sure you're who it's assign it to because that is my biggest thing, and then it never shows up on my to-do list, so.
• 18:15
  Rachel: all right.
• 18:15
  Rachel: These three audits, which If you listened to all three episodes, this is the whole process of annual planning, mid-year planning, and holding you all together, right?
• 18:25
  Rachel: The three audits, your clients, your offers, your marketing traffic, the assessing and aligning all of this stuff forward.
• 18:32
  Rachel: This is how it all comes into a sustainable life first business system that helps you, one, not burn out, one, not feel guilty for not getting all of the things done, and get your goals into off of your
• 18:46
  Rachel: planner and into reality.
• 18:47
  Rachel: So that's the whole process.
• 18:49
  Rachel: We do recommend that you check in on this quarterly.
• 18:52
  Rachel: Have your little business meetings with yourself.
• 18:55
  Rachel: Don't push them away 'cause they are important.
• 18:59
  Jessica: We hope you enjoyed this series.
• 19:03
  Jessica: back next week because we're gonna be moving into a launch series.
• 19:05
  Jessica: This is one of me and Rachel's and one of our most favorite and exciting things to do because we're both moving into launch season, which usually happens around that September, October.
• 19:16
  Jessica: It's a really great time to launch.
• 19:18
  Jessica: And I know I've got a couple of clients launching.
• 19:19
  Jessica: I'm sure Rachel does as well.
• 19:21
  Jessica: So next week we're gonna be talking about how AI changing the launch landscape, so I'm super excited about that.
• 19:28
  Jessica: And until next week
• 19:30
  Rachel: We're rooting for you