Ep. 108 Social Media You Need To Pay Attention To in 2022

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Hey everyone, this is Julie. I hope you guys are doing amazing. Today I want to talk about an underrated, underestimated social channel that I think people should be paying attention to.

And before I do, I want to say that this is specifically for the following people. If you are in the industry of writing, if you are in the freelance industry, if you are in design, if you are an agency, if you are a SAAS company, software as a service, if you are in the wealth or money space, if you are in the personal development space, if you are in the crypto or web 3 space, any of these spaces, listen up because this is where you really need to be. Basically if you are in any kind of business that caters to business. I would say the only people who maybe don’t have to pay as close attention is if you are really targeting a home, like parenting, moms, things like that. I don’t think this is as relevant to you. But anything else, listen up.

Twitter is making a comeback. Twitter it has been around forever, and obviously it’s had its ups and downs. But due to the rise of sort of a lot of the Web 3 NFTs and crypto, not to mention the popularity of Twitter during the run of president Trump, Twitter has actually become a really lively place. There was several years there where it was very bot-driven. And I am back on Twitter and would argue for a lot of you, some of your biggest and best relationships, dream 100 and networking strategies could be found on Twitter.

So before you write me off as being lost in the early 2000s, I want to give you a few tips that I have learned. First and foremost, Twitter has an incredible amount of content quickly. The nice thing is that it’s a quick easy way for you to learn how to figure out your voice. You can tweet multiple times a day without pissing anybody off. Not only that, but you can start to see what tweets get liked and retweeted. It’s a quick easy way to test copy, to test headlines, to test different marketing angles that a lot of other platforms can’t do as easily.

Number two, it doesn’t take anywhere near as much energy as it does to create a reel or a Tik Tok video. Some of those things take a long, long time. The third thing is that Twitter actually is a great place to get research on what is trending and what people are interested in.

So I’ve been using Twitter as a way to fuel some of my podcast episodes, to fuel some of the quotes on my Instagram. In fact, if I find Twitter, if I find some Twitter conversations going on that are really hot, I know that I can go ahead and turn some of that content into quote cards on Instagram or Insta-stories and get good engagements.

So Twitter isn’t just a place to find great relationships and test content, but it’s also a great place for idea generation. So if you have been ignoring Twitter, I would encourage you to get back on.

Now there’s a couple apps that I found, and there’s one that I want to talk about today, and it’s called TweetHunter.IO and the reason I like it is because it will give you a personalized inspiration feed that will help you find things that are already really trending. So even if these people you don’t follow, it gives you some great people to follow, but it also shows what people are interacting with. And not only that, but it allows you to save these tweets and retweet them on a schedule if you want.

Now one of the biggest growth strategies for Twitter is to be able to retweet other people’s content. And not just hit the retweet button, but actually put a commentary or a hot take on their tweet to show that you’re listening.

So if you follow someone and you quote tweet them, that’s what it’s called when you retweet and add a quote, this does not take very much time and Tweet Hunter can help you find these tweets quickly, you can schedule them, you can star them, you can reuse them overtime. It becomes a very, very good way to grow, okay, to grow your account.

Now the next thing that Tweet Hunter does, which is really kind of fascinating, is it registers AI to help you rework topics in your own words. So for example, let’s say that you find a tweet that you really, really like, but you’ve already quote tweeted it, and you’ve you know, kind of engaged with the original person, but you want to say something similar in your own words, you can use the AI button. And basically, you click the AI button and it will generate a different way to say the same thing.

Now sometimes the AI comes up with amazing stuff, and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, it gives you incredible ideas. You can save all of the AI, like whatever the AI spits out, you can save, you can put it in draft, you can schedule it, that kind of thing. And Tweet Hunter also gives you an easy way to find all of the hot tweets so that you can reply and engage with them quickly without having to get lost in the feed. And this way it really optimizes your ability to find and grow quickly.

And a lot of founders and people who are running startups, they own their own Twitter accounts. I mean, even President Trump, during his time in office, he was in charge of his own Twitter account, much to the chagrin of the administration, who wanted him to stop tweeting.

But the point is, there are very few platforms where you’re actually getting the person in the room that you want to speak to on the actual channel. You know if you’re on Instagram, certainly on Facebook, there’s other people, especially on YouTube, there’s other people managing those channels. But with Twitter, you are much more likely to actually hit the person you want to talk with.

And you know, if you don’t know how to win friends and influence people, I recommend that you get the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, because Twitter is making a comeback and there’s an incredible amount of value in using Twitter.

So some of the things that I’m doing now in order to kind of generate a good content strategy is I’m using it for research. I’m using it for engagement, and then when I find something that’s interesting, I can either expand upon it in a blog post, in a podcast episode, in a YouTube video, and then I can test a bunch of my quotes on Twitter, to see how they work, to see how engaged they get, and then I can take some of the best of those and pull them over into Instagram and other channels.

So I end this podcast in the same way I started it. If you are in the money niche, if you are in personal development, you are in SAAS, you are the freelance economy, writing, design, if you are in tech, if you are in any of those markets whatsoever, I would give a second look to Twitter.

Ep. 107 Planning A Launch (Project Management Tips)

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I want to talk about how I think through a launch project. Now I am aware that there are lots of types of launches, whether it’s webinars, challenges, give a ways, events. But no matter what you’re getting out into the world, there’s a way to think about launching when you sit down to kind of archetype the project.

Now if you are using a project management tool, like many people do, this is where I like simple project management tools that allow me to quickly make lists without getting bogged down by the details.

So I think one of the issues that overwhelms people when they’re planning their promotions is that there’s a lot of dependencies, like certain tasks depend on other tasks, and who’s going to do those tasks, and when are the deadlines and all that kind of stuff.

So here’s sort of how I think about it. The first thing that I do, is I actually pull up my Google calendar, a Google calendar is sort of, it just runs everything about my life, and I have 6, 7 different calendars all layered on each other. So I use the calendar to depict what is the date that I actually want this thing out in the world.

Now for a launch, remember sometimes there are pieces of the launch that are the pre-launch. So if you have a coming soon page, or if you have a webinar registration page, for example, you’re going to need those pages faster than you’ll need the sales page. So you want to sort of identify these drop dead dates of when you assets done.

So let’s say you’re launching at the end of January. So January 31st is the date that your cart opens, you need your sales page, you need your order form, you need all that stuff done. That’s like a drop dead date for a lot of things. But you know that you’re going to start the pre-launch, let’s say you’re doing a webinar, you’re going to start that on the 17th. So the 17th is really a secondary drop dead date for some of those earlier assets, maybe group cover photos, maybe Facebook ads, maybe a webinar registration page.

So you want to come up with those 2 drop dead dates in a launch, you may have more. But one is the pre-launch drop dead date, and one is the launch drop dead date. That way you can back into when all this other stuff needs to be done. Once you have those dates, and I like to choose Mondays just because it makes it easy for me to know that things have to be ready on the Friday before, and Iwould just sort of plunk that stuff down on your calendar, and then you can always move it around. You know, if maybe your team does work on the weekends, for example. But for us, I know that if I’m going to start talking about a webinar on the 17th, everything has to be done on the 14th. That’s the drop dead date for the pre-launch, the webinar register page, the group cover photos, the Facebook ads, the ad creative and copy.

So that’s the first thing you do is come up with those dates. The second thing is that you want to make a list of all the stuff that you have to do. And I like to think about it in this order. First I like to think about all of the copy. And Copy usually comes before design. So I write all the different pieces of copy that I have to write, emails, landing pages, sales pages, fulfillment emails, all that sort of stuff. If you are launching a course that’s never been launched before, you’re actually going to have to also include any copy in sort of the delivery of it, like a welcome area, that sort of thing.
Then after copy I think about design. So once that copy is written, what design has to be built from it. Whether its design a funnel, or design a cover photo, or make a product mock up shot, or anything like that.

So I do it all in the sort of the realm of copy first, design second. And then when it comes to tech, I think one of the things that people get really bogged down with, is that they start writing out all the little pieces of tech that they need to do. And at this point in the planning process, I like to keep things sort of big picture. So I will make a to-do item in base camp that says, “Tech” you know, set up the funnel tech, set up the automation. But I’m not going to sit there are wrack my brain on every little step because your brain isn’t in that mode. You’re kind of in that birds eye view. And this is where learning how to work with your natural, like the way your brain naturally works is really helpful. So I’ll just put “Tech” there.

Same thing with Facebook ads, or marketing, like let’s say Instagram. Let’s say you’re going to do story promos every day leading up to it, I’m going to do Instagram promotion. I’m just going to do macro. Thinking big picture because when you make that list, you’re not really worrying about who’s doing exactly what. You’re not looking for the little, tiny checklists. You’re looking for just the big things that have to be done, and maybe you’re just putting the dates. And again, I like to work with two deadline dates. Once you start having a million dates around there, it feels kind of arbitrary. You can always move it around later, but if you’re like, “Okay, all of this has to be done on deadline one, and all of this has to be on deadline two.” Then you can go back and be like, “Oh, well the copy has to be done even before that, so does the design.” But you’re doing macro, you’re thinking big.

The analogy that I like to use about this is when you go to clean out your kitchen, let’s say. If you’re cleaning out your kitchen, you’re taking everything out and you’re sort of rearranging, you probably, unless you get stuck in procrastination, you probably don’t sit there and microscopically organize a junk drawer, in the middle of redoing your whole kitchen organization, right, because that’s super micro. So I know when I’m cleaning, let’s say I’m cleaning the whole house, or even just one room, I’m going to take, I can see, “Oh, look at all that stuff that doesn’t belong in this room.” I’m going to just stick it in a basket for now, and then I’m going to sort it out later. So think of it that way in your project management tool. You’re looking for all the big tasks, you’re going through copy first, then you’re going through design, then you’re adding tech or marketing promotions, you’re kind of categorizing it according to these two key dates.

And then you’re going to go through each thing more individually, like you would go through a junk drawer, or you’d go through that laundry basket filled with crap, and you’re actually going to figure out what of those little pieces have to be done and where those dates have to be arranged.

So in that way you go from macro to micro. And the nice thing is that as you’re working in whatever project management tool you have, let’s say that one of your big tasks was make ad creative. So you’re, you know you’ve got to do creatives. Well, what are you going to need there? You’re going to need an Instagram post, you’re going to need an Instagram story, you’re going to need a Facebook post, a Facebook story, maybe you’ll need a video. Now you’re just thinking in that little context of that creative, and you can add all of those little notes in that task, so that you have everything that you need.

So I hope this helps with your project management. I actually got the idea of this podcast because I’m working on a project for January, it has to be done pretty quickly, and I did this exact process, where I looked at the two key dates, I thought about the copy, then I thought about the design, I kept everything macro, and then I went through line by line on each of those tasks, and wrote out the details and adjusted the dates accordingly, if there were dependencies. So I hope that helps you, I hope you have a great start to 2022, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Ep. 106 All You Need To Know About A Solid List Growth Strategy

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Hey everyone, hope you’re doing amazing. Today I want to walk you through exactly what you need for an epic list-building funnel.

So you know that list growth is important. You know that owning email addresses and phone numbers of your prospects is really the only way to hedge against fickle social media and algorithm changes, and you have heard all the list-building strategies, but you know what, you would just love a really clear, comprehensive, what do I need for an epic list-building strategy in 2022. So that’s what I’m going to do today, is go through all of that.

So the first thing that you need is a very, very, very curious, juicy, irresistible, free offer. And the only way that you’re going to come up with one of those is if you understand exactly who your customer is. So I want you to sit down and think about who your customer is, who your ideal customer is, and think about what it is that they really want right now. What is going to get them off their chair and get them moving? And that is the free offer that you’re going to create.

Not all free offers are the same. Typically free offers that require a high level of commitment, like a webinar, a video training, a course are going to be harder to get people to say yes to than things like PDFs, swipe files, digital assets, things that are quick and easy and shortcut like. Now, that doesn’t go across the board. You may design a lead magnet that really needs to be comprehensive and that’s fine, but just think about that when you’re coming up with your lead magnet. And again, curious, juicy, irresistible, knowing who that customer is. So that’s step one, you need to have that.

The second thing you need to do is you need to write a very, very provocative and curious headline. Most landing pages for lead magnets do not need anything more than a headline, a tagline, and a call to action. It’s three sentences. Spend time on those three sentences, and in fact, I would argue that it may even make sense to work on the three sentences first and then build the free offer to match those sentences. That’s how you make sure you get something that’s really, really irresistible.

The third thing you need is a visual representation of the free gift. Now, it’s hard sometimes when you are selling information, it doesn’t feel tangible, but we need some sort of really good looking visual representation of that lead magnet. So you need the juicy, irresistible content itself, you need the three sentences, which are the headline, the tagline and the call to action, and you need the visual representation of it.

Now once you have those three pieces, everything else comes much easier. First you want to actually put those three pieces together on a landing page, and a thank you page. So you want to get that all designed. You want to make sure it’s mobile optimized, and because there’s so little copy, and so little in terms of actual information on the page, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to get everything above the scroll. Which means on desktop nobody has to scroll, even ideally on mobile nobody has to scroll. This is how you get people’s attention quickly.

So you’re going to get that funnel done, and you’re going to get that up. Now, when people actually opt in you need to make sure they check their inbox to get the lead magnet. So you don’t want to just deliver the lead magnet on the thank you page, because then people can put junk email addresses in. So you want to on the thank you page, direct people to go to their inbox.

Once in their inbox that email, that first email that has that lead magnet, is incredibly important. Why? Because people are going to open it. It is probably going to be your highest open rate email ever. So you want to spend time thinking about what you want to say there, whether it’s inviting them to a group, or inviting them to follow you on social media, or inviting them to a training. You want to do whatever you can to get as much pertinent information in that email, because that is the email they’re going to open up most.

After that you want a five part welcome series. Now if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a lot of work.” Don’t stress, Funnel Gorgeous has actually got one of the easiest welcome sequence templates to write ever. It is a free gift, you can go over to Funnelgorgeous.com and snag that. So you’re going to get that email sequence done, and that’s going to fire everyday or every other day for the first five days after someone opts into your lead magnet. You want to make sure that you’re actually sending them somewhere to take the next step with you, otherwise you just have a freebie seeker.

So those are all the things you need to actually get a great email lead magnet list strategy out the door. Now, once you have it, what do you do next?

What you do next is important because we have different types of marketing channels for getting email addresses. The first one, which is the most common, is social media. And you can put basically a link anywhere on social media, whether it’s Facebook, Tiktok, LinkdIn, Instagram, Twitter. All of those places you want to have a memorable and easy link that you can put on social, and if you have something like Instagram where you want to have a highlight, or a post talking about it, that’s even better. So that’s social media traffic.

The next type of traffic is search traffic. And search traffic means that people are actively searching for content to solve their problems. So depending on what your lead magnet is, you want to think about what would the ideal customer be typing into Google, into Pinterest, into Amazon, that relates to your lead magnet. For most people the easiest way to start getting search traffic is to have something like a blog, where you can look up all the keywords related to what that lead magnet is, of course you can try to get the lead magnet itself ranked, but there’s not a lot of copy on that page. So what’s better to do is to actually write up some blog posts that are keyword rich, and get those on your site with a bunch of visual links and images that ask them to opt in for that content upgrade.

Probably my most famous example of this was, there was a blogger that I knew who was already getting search traffic for a chocolate chip cookie recipe, and I had her make a lead magnet and attach it to that blog post, and she went from very, very slow list growth to just crazy list growth because people were going to this recipe and then opting in for the free lead magnet. So we’re kind of doing it a little bit in reverse.

Another option you could do is create some YouTube videos, you could create some podcast episodes, heck you could even add the link to a free kindle downloadable ebook, if that’s what you’re doing, those are all a little bit more time sensitive, not time sensitive, time intensive. But those are some ways to get search traffic.

The third way, the third bucket is relationship. Now relationship traffic is things like speaking on stage, affiliate promotions, getting PR and media, reaching out to JV partners, things like that. So you want to think about who are the people in your network who would love to be able to promote this. Maybe they just are going to ask you on their stage, or they’re going to ask you on the podcast, and you can then offer it to people. But you want to really target those people who are most likely to click on that link. This is another reason why you want the link to be easy to remember because if you’re on a podcast episode, you want to be able to say something simple like, “Hey, go to Funnelgorgeous.com.” versus “Hey, go to gorgeousfunnels.com/emailleadmagnet.” Right, nobody’s going to remember that, no one’s going to type that in.

The fourth bucket of traffic is paid. And this is where you can see a lot of traction very quickly. You can run Facebook ads, instagram ads, Tiktok ads, Pinterest ads, Google ads, YouTube ads to this lead magnet, and just basically super charge all your efforts. And it is amazing what you can do with one really good lead magnet.

So if we come back to what we were talking about, about how important it is to have that sort of juicy, irresistible lead magnet, once you have it, once its built, there’s really unlimited potential of where this offer can go, and how quickly you can build your list. And then with that email sequence that’s firing in the backend, you can convert between one and five percent of those people into customers.

So that is the strategy, I hope that helps. I hope you have an amazing January and I’ll talk to you soon.

Ep. 105 What Does Next Level in Business Actually Mean?

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Today I would like to talk about what the word or the phrase “next level” actually means. I am so tired of this phrase. “I’m going to take your business to the next level. I’m ready to go to the next level.” What does the next level actually mean?

I want to dive into this a little bit. And as a child of the 80s and 90s, I was a Mario lover, that sounds weird, but I was. I loved playing Mario, but the funny thing about my Mario skills is that they suck, and I wasn’t very good at playing the original Mario. And for any of you guys that remember the original Mario, they gave you like 3 lives, there were not a lot of one ups, it was easy to die and then you’d have to start all the way at the beginning, unless you got through these certain milestones. The newer games realize that we all hated it, and they made it easier. But the original one, the original Nintendo Super Mario Brothers was really hard.

So I just got into the habit of playing level one, and maybe level two. And I just loved playing these levels over and over and over again. I didn’t want to go to the next level at all. I didn’t because I knew the next level would be harder, I would die and the boss would kill me. So I just got really, really good at the level that I was on. And maybe this is a sign that you know, I’m not a true entrepreneur because I stayed at the same level, but I also understood the ramifications of the next level.

So when we talk about this word in business, people are usually referring to the next level of revenue. Like, “Okay my business makes $100,000 a year, I want to make a million dollars a year.” So that’s the next level. Now, depending on how you measure business growth, that might be ten levels away. Or it might be one level away. I find that some people in the internet marketing space that don’t actually know business all that well, think that’s the next level when there’s an unlimited amount of levels in between $100,000 and a million dollars a year. But I digress.

So let’s just for the sake of argument say that the next level means a million dollars instead of 100,000. We talk about the revenue as next level, but what we never talk about, or hardly talk about is all of these things that come with that revenue. So I did a post back on November 28th, I wrote an email, I actually got some flack for it, people taking aim at me, which is fine, but I was trying to explain sort of the next level bananas of doubling a business once it’s past the million dollar mark.

So typically in a business growth pattern, you want to grow 15% per year, 20% a year, etc. Now in the land of tech and internet and stuff like that, we see businesses that grow 100% a year, or 1,000%, whatever, it’s just like crazy numbers that don’t make any sense. So when we at Funnel Gorgeous went from 1 million to 2 million, it doesn’t sound like a big next level, but it was actually 10 times, 100 times more significant to go from 1 million to 2 million than it would be to go from 100,000 to a million. Just because the denominator is bigger, so it’s exponential growth.
And so I knew that hitting 2 million, we probably would not get to 4 million, because again, that’s doubling our business, but at double the exponential value of the year before. So as I’ve been watching our numbers and feeling the growing pains of a very quickly expanding business, realizing somewhere in September or October that 4 million was going to be our revenue goal, that we did in fact double the business, and wanting to explain that getting to that next level, was actually quite difficult and pretty messy.

So I started to say like, ‘Okay, you want to say, let’s take your business to the next level, that means going from a team of two or a team of six to a team of 15.” And in our case we actually grew to a team of 20, and then we had to get rid of some people, not because we didn’t like them, but just because we hadn’t, we had over hired in that growth, and that’s very common, you grow fast, you hire fast, and then you gotta scale back because you’re like, “Well actually this isn’t really making us a ton of money.”

We had to spend months and thousands of dollars rolling out a very exciting employee handbook, and a performance review process, and how are we going to pay out bonuses on a yearly basis, and how are we going to give out raises, and what is our strategy for raises, and our maternity policy, and health insurance, and retirement benefits, are we offering them or not? All of this stuff, so that’s what next level meant.

Next level also meant registering in new states for taxes, which was super fun. Now we are registered in 3 of the worst states, California, Connecticut and New York. So that’s fun. Starting to pay six figures in salaries to team members, five figure software costs, basically planning events with giant budgets that are pretty risky. We’re planning an event with a $300,000 budget. You know, $70,000 in refunds, $83,000 in processing fees for credit cards. Just ungodly amounts of taxes, and just expenses rolling out the door.

So the next time you say, “I want to go to the next level.” Yes, you are saying , “I want more revenue.” But you’re also saying, “I want a harder boss.” Back to the Mario analogy. I want a bigger Bowser, I want a trickier piranha plant. That’s what you’re saying.

So sometimes, sometimes it makes sense to step back for a second and ask yourself, “What is your actual goal for your business, for your life?” and this is sort of a side note, but I partnered with Aryeh Sheinbein in a course called Future Fund, Funnel Gorgeous is the, it’s hosted by Funnel Gorgeous, and this is really that question of like, understanding what you want out of life, what it costs to live, how do you see your lifestyle, coming up with those numbers, understanding what you’re actually working towards. Because you may be like 7 year old Julie, and you may realize, “Actually what I want is a million dollar business. I don’t want to go beyond level 3. I like level 3, I’m going to get really good at level 3. I’m going to fight that Bowser over and over and over again until I can do it with my eyes closed, and I’m going to have a great life, and I’m not going to try to go to level 5.

So anyway, that’s sort of my little rant, soap box on decoding what next level actually means. Talk to you soon.

Ep. 104 Stupidly Simple Way To Strategically Plan 2022

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I want to talk to you a little bit about strategic planning, big picture planning for your business for 2022, which we will ignore the fact that 2022 is just on our doorstep, because holy heck, that was a fast year. However if you are like me, you’re probably sort of neck deep in planning mode for 2022. So I just kind of wanted to take you a little bit into my process. You may have heard me talk about this before, but this is really how I set intentions for the year.

First, I like to think in the context of 3 P’s, promotion, process, and production. So I always start with promotion first, because I know that there are going to be launches throughout the year or features, or things that I’m going to want to be promoting or getting out there. So I start with the promotion category, and I look at the 12 month calendar and think, “Okay, what am I going to promote in 2022? And where? And when?”.

So for most business owners anything more than four large promotions per year is probably going to be hella exhausting. Some people only do one big promotion, some do two, some do four. So at Funnel Gorgeous we have two launches of our signature program, Launch Gorgeous, a year. It happens in the spring and the fall. So the first thing I do is I pick the date of the launch, and I pick sort of the season of fulfillment, the season that we’ll actively be coaching. I can’t be in content creation mode if I’m actively coaching. So I pick those out. For us it’s April and September.

And then I look at the season I think, “Okay, well as a spring and a fall promotion, what about a winter and a summer promotion?” and this winter we have our Marketer’s Heart event in February, so that’s a pretty big promotion. Both selling the virtual tickets, as well as selling the offer at the event, which is going to have some fulfillment. And then in summer, I don’t usually do a big promotion. We do sometimes smaller promotions. So I think about, “What’s going on? What have we just launched? What have we just finished? What hasn’t gotten a lot of attention?” and we plan out a promotion there.

This doesn’t mean we’re not actively promoting our products other times of year, but it gives us a really good focus to start with.
Now here is the danger. If you are an entrepreneur who really likes to hustle and grind and set goals and do all that kind of stuff, you make go through this sort of exercise that I just took you through and feel like you’re not doing anything. It’s just very, you know, boring. “Just four promotions, what am I going to do? Sit on my hands, eat bon bons all year?” We need the other two P’s.

So the second P is process. And process is all the stuff that you have to continually do in your business. So if you’re an agency, you’re fulfilling for clients, if you’re a coach, you’re doing coaching calls. Customer service, social media marketing, your YouTube, your podcast, this is a process in my business.

So you look at all of those processes, and you go through the 12 months, and you sort of block out time. So let’s say for example, you are a solo-preneur and you really want to do YouTube. Okay, well that means that either once a quarter or once a week you’re going to have to create your videos. So you’ve got to build that process in. Maybe you also do a Q&A hour, maybe you have clients. So start to block some of that in, even if you don’t actually have the clients yet, or you don’t actually have the call, block the time. And again, I’m doing this all in my calendar. My calendar is really sort of my over-arching planning tool. Google calendar allows you to make a million different calendars, as many as you want, so I have one for Funnel Gorgeous and I just start blocking this stuff out, blocking all the Launch Gorgeous calls, blocking out the Q&A hour, blocking out when I’m going to work on presentations for the Marketer’s Heart event.

So it’s these process things that happen in the business day in and day out. So now, once you do that, now you’re getting a little bit more of a crystal clear picture, and if you are a content creator in your business you should block out 4 or 5 hours a week just to create content, to start to show your brain, “Hey, yes maybe I only have 4 promotions a year, but look at all this other stuff that I’m doing.” Do you want to block out time for admin stuff, for email correspondence, etc, etc.

Now I should mention before I keep going, that if you are sort of a boot strapping entrepreneur, you are a solo-preneur, you may want to actually start with your family calendar first, and block out when you’re going to be away, when you’re taking vacation, so that you don’t actually double book yourself, so you could do that first.

So we’ve done promotion, we’ve done process, and now we’re going to look at project. Project means it is a set period of time to create something. It’s not like an ongoing process. For example, Marketer’s Heart event, we’re going to have to create the content for the program we’re selling. So that’s a project. What I have to do is plan out where that project is going to go. AM I going to do it in February before the event, or am I going to start working on it in March and pre-sell and fulfill it later? So I have to start blocking out that project. And if I’m launching in April for Launch Gorgeous, now I really just have one month to get that project out the door, if I’m doing it in March. Or I have to do it in January.

So you start to see that all of these promotions actually have a pretty significant project timeline, both before the promotion and after the promotion, if you’re actually creating content. So by the time you get to the project P, you now see that your 4 promotions a year actually taking 8 months because you’re bookending the promotion with these projects, and you’re also trying to fit it around all the regular process stuff you do.

So I’m just going to add that fourth P, the personal, which is the first one, the personal vacations. What will happen is by the time you get to the end of this 30,000 ft view, you’re going to realize that possibly 4 promotions is a lot. And it will help keep you on the straight and narrow if you start to get some idea and it happens in let’s say, March of 2022 and you’ve got your whole year planned out. Well, you can totally do that new idea, but it has to displace something else. So that’s the theory of time replacement instead of time stacking. And most of us who get in over our heads and have too much to do, we time stack, we just keep smushing the same multiple activities, multiple things to do in one time slot, instead of saying, “Okay, well I want to do this cool thing, so I’m going to remove the time slot for meetings, and I’m going to put in the time slot.” Right, there’s the replacement.

So that is pretty much the basics of how I plan out an entire year. So I do it all on the calendar, let’s start with personal, then we move to promotion, then we move to process, because that’s the day to day stuff, and then we look at what project is going to, what projects are going to need to be built.

Now some projects have nothing to do with your promotion. Some projects are very systems based, like “I’m going to move to Google drive, or I’m going to create a new customer support, I’m going to migrate from my gmail inbox to Help Scout.” Those kind of operational projects, you’re going to look and say, “Maybe we don’t want to do this during the launch. Maybe we want to do this on a off month.”

So hopefully that helps, hopefully that gives you a nice simple framework to plan out 2022. Appreciate you, talk soon.