| Did you know there’s an audio version of this email? My voice sounds totally weird right now because I have Invisalign (again!) Click here to listen to these emails on your favourite podcast app. |
I need to issue a formal retraction.
Remember last week’s email? I wrote (foolishly, I now see), “FCKN, BRING IT ON MERCURY RETROGRADE.”
Cancel that order, people!!!!
Not kidding you, the very same day that email went out I got the stomach flu. I spent 7 hours camped out on my bathroom floor, and the other 17 hours sleeping on various floors, couches and beds.
This was literally my worst fear for my mastermind.
Remember this email about Rachel Rodgers getting food poisoning during her retreat???? Geez Louise. It almost happened to me.
Thanking the Almighty Creatrix that I made a lightning-speed recovery in time to host our second monthly call, and gratitude to my former self who logged many hours preparing for and communicating with members about the various aspects of this program.
I had exactly ONE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY to get sick and not totally collapse all of my ridiculous, over-the-top plans for the next three weeks, and the stomach flu arrived with enough divine timing to make me believe that God is real and so is Mercury Retrograde. (Maybe they're the same? Not sure. I’m still trying to figure out what my beliefs are. It’s possible I’m an atheist but I hope not.)
And yet…
I’m looking around at my life / business, waiting for the red lights and alarm bells to go off telling me what to be stressed about. I’m wracking my brain for balls I dropped, things I forgot to do, debts that are about to come due…
…and I just can’t find any.
One of the main reasons I have the business that I have today is that I am a huge planner.
Without thinking about it at all, I can tell you pretty accurately what I’ll be doing next February—planning my March mastermind retreat, finishing up delivery of Email Stars, onboarding the membership, and going into enrollment for the next cohort.
I have Google folders full of supportive documents for all of those plans including:
- Promo emails I’ll send
- Onboarding emails new customers will get
- Acuity appointment types for delivering 1:1 support
- Spreadsheets for tracking things like student email submissions, enrollment numbers, revenue, etc.
- Landing pages I’ll edit and reuse
One of the reasons business coaches will tell you to create just one thing and keep launching it is because there is a lot of infrastructure that goes into creating a program.
Landing pages, emails upon emails, virtual group setup, call reminders, terms and conditions, checkout pages, zoom rooms, calendar events, facilitation plans, and and and
Every time you launch something new, you have to set up all of that stuff FROM SCRATCH.
The more you do it, the faster it gets. But no matter which way you swing it, launching new things is a shit-ton of work (says the person who launched two brand new things this year that never existed before: my secret membership and my mastermind).
Many service providers I know are basically flying by the seat of their pants, telling themselves they’ll do a signature offer someday, when things slow down with clients.
That pretty much never works.
If that’s you, may I humbly offer you a lesson for today’s email.
Have a quarterly plan.
In a former iteration of my business we had daily meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, as well as quarterly and annual meetings.
It sounds exhausting (and sometimes it was) but we got a f$%k of a lot done. And I’ve loosely retained this structure as I move forward in this new way of doing business.
If you don’t have planning experience, you can start by looking at what you want to accomplish in the next year.
- What offers do you want to create?
- What existing offers will you promote?
- Are there list-building goals you want to hit?
- Where can you improve delivery of your existing offers?
- How much revenue do you need to produce in order to make your business / life work? Where will that revenue come from?
From there you can plot out what you want to be doing quarterly, how many clients you can realistically take if you’re going to hold to the things you said were your priorities, and which BIG ROCKS you’re going to tackle each quarter.
It can be simple.
Currently, mine is a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers and programs in it. It could be a lot better but it’s what I can manage right now when my top priorities are delivering for my current customers and camping as much as possible until the summer’s over.
Once the weather turns cold, I’ll fix my spreadsheet.
If planning is something you want to know more about, please hit reply and tell me! I’ve been noodling on doing a free workshop but I have one too many ideas for things I want to talk about. Another idea I came up with was “Linguistic Activism”—all about expressing your values with language and how bias shows up in language, but maybe subscribers will think that’s boring.
In any case, when it comes to planning the best first step is to block off an hour and just start.
And once you’ve done it, share it with a colleague, a team member or a friend who can breathe some life into it. You can always send it here 📝, if you just want to say, “Hey Tarzan, I did it!”
That’s it for this week.
Email Stars is opening for enrollment on September 20 and begins Oct 3, as per my quarterly plan! We’re still negotiating some of the finer details, but the call time is 10am ET so we can accommodate Europeans. I might add an Aussie-friendly time too. Still working that out. This is the last time I’ll run it for the year.
BRB with more details.
In the meantime, how about that quarterly plan?
Tarzan
