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Transcript

Episode 137: Planning with Intent: A Deep Dive into Optimizing Fourth Quarter Performance · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to another Imperfect Marketing Brief.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kendra Corman, and in this week's Imperfect Marketing Brief, we're going to do a little fourth quarter check-in and talk about reevaluating and adjusting your goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, I cannot believe it's the fourth quarter.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, this is crazy.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But what I want to talk about is that fourth quarter planning is hugely important.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, as everybody knows, it's the last chance of annual goals and if you plan annually, then you may not have looked at them recently, right, and so it's a.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: It's the last stretch to really hit those goals.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: There's also a lot of seasonal opportunities.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So, like things like the holiday season and if you're budgeting, all of those different things create opportunities in the fourth quarter.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So planning in the fourth quarter is really important.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: As a marketer, I prefer to plan in 12-week increments.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, I have annual goals, but I work out where those things are going to fall and I create calendars for each of the quarters.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: It allows me to adjust based upon what's happening and sometimes based upon my workload, right, as small business owners and entrepreneurs and solopreneurs.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a little bit hard to work it all in.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you a little bit about leveraging your goals and taking a look at them.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: You want to adjust them.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It might have been too ambitious, you might have already met your goals and if you have, is there a way to add more to it?
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I have talked about in the past is my full focus planner.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I love my full focus planner hashtag not sponsored, but I do love it because it really keeps me focused.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It allows me to plan in 12-week increments, but it also gives me a view of my rolling quarters and what's happening in the next quarter, etc.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I set my daily big three.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: That is, the three most important tasks that I need to get done each day.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Sometimes one of them is for a client, sometimes two of them are for a client, but I always make sure at least one of my daily big three is working me towards the results of what I want to achieve in my business.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I work myself into my daily big three because if I don't, then I forget about myself.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And if you've listened to my imperfect marketing briefs, you heard the story of Kendra the marketer with no marketing plan, like the Cobbler's kids who have no shoes, and the daily big three allows me to pay myself first, we talk a lot about that with your 401k savings and things like that when you work for somebody else, but it's more than that.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It's about making sure that your stuff gets done despite the fact that you have a lot of demands on your time.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that Michael Hyatt talks about in the full focus planner is rituals, startup rituals, shutdown rituals, wake up rituals, your end of the day rituals, things like that I have.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: My startup ritual is I do 30 minutes of email, 10 minutes of LinkedIn, 10 minutes on Facebook, 10 minutes in Asana, which is my daily scheduling tool, and then I also take a look at my weekly big three and I review my goals for the year.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Touching on those every day keeps me tied to it, but one of the things that I do is a weekly and quarterly review, and these are crucial.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: These are very, very crucial things that you want to make sure that you're working on.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that I wanted to highlight when it comes to my full focus planner is when I'm reviewing what worked, what didn't work, what do I need to adjust when it comes to my review?
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want you to think about what has been working so far this year, what hasn't been working?
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Go ahead and get rid of those things.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Focus on the top one or two goals, maybe three goals that you have to finish the year strong.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: What are those things?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And you know what.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Some of your goals might need to move into 2024, and that's okay.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: But adjusting your goals and strategies can't be done unless you know where you're at.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: So go ahead and I want you to review what you've done so far this year what's worked, what hasn't worked, and what are you going to start doing more of and what are you going to stop doing.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: And then, what are your goals for this final quarter?
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: What are your big three targets for the end of the year?
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: It's powerful, right, it's really powerful to think about this and to make that happen.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Now, again, you don't want to be overplanning, because you don't want to be spending so much time planning and that you're not actually doing, which guilty over here.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I've done that before and you definitely don't want to procrastinate on this.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Take some time this week Okay, we're in the first week of October.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I definitely want you to think about what it is that you can do to make a difference in your business or in your personal life, because maybe your business is rocking and rolling, which would be awesome, so maybe you need to make some tweaks so that you are more present with your family and other things.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Again, reevaluate, adjust your goals, take a look at where you're going and where you've been.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: This is a great time to take a look at those things.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for tuning in to another Imperfect Marketing Brief.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Hopefully this reminder will put you on the right path.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: If you learned anything today, I would love it if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening, and I hope to see you on another episode soon.