Podcast episode (Doing Business Like a Woman) hosted by Melissa Kellogg Lueck discussing the value of systems, rhythms, and weekly planning for marketing and business growth. Melissa describes her personal routines—weekly planning on Monday, task scheduling in Asana, calendar time-blocking, themed days for focused work and client coaching—and argues consistent systems build trust (with audience and self) and free creativity for client work. The episode ends with an invitation to contact her about private CMO services.
Welcome.
I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time.
Well, hello, friend. How's it going? If you're having a great Monday so far, just getting myself set up here. Here we go. Beautiful. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it's already in the afternoon. Late afternoon. I wanted to just hop in and say hello, welcome to Monday. How was your weekend? And give you a little marketing power up for the week. I don't know about you, but my weekend was super, super busy. And I spent the weekend in Breckenridge with my son. It was his final weekend of soccer for the spring season. And so we were up there and lots of driving. We listened to a. Oh, shoot. I was going to get a quote from this book, but we started listening to Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. It's his memoir and his story of founding Nike and how that all happened. And, and I, we're just at the beginning of it, but we listened to it all the way up and all the way back. So we're, I don't know, five hours into the book. And it's super good. So for all aspiring or young entrepreneurs or even seasoned entrepreneurs like myself, it's super inspiring. And it really just reminds me that, you know, entrepreneurship really takes a lot of persistence and grit and even, you know, it just always, it's. It's hard, right? And it always takes. Continues to take creativity and just determination and so. But after a busy weekend, I love Mondays. I mean, I know I'm kind of weird, but I love Mondays because I love just being able to sit down at my desk and not have all the movement and action and house full of people that I do during the week. And so it's. It's been a great Monday. But often times on the weekend, after a weekend like this, I feel like I need a vacation from my weekend. Do you ever feel that way? Like it's so busy and so sometimes I feel like I need a vacation from my weekend. And this, this weekend was definitely one of those. And so I was thinking about how I, I don't always feel, you know, after a weekend like that, I don't always feel a lot of inspiration. I just feel like I want to rest. And yes, rest is fine, but at the same time, like, I've got stuff to do. I, you know, We've all got stuff to do. And so the one thing, and this is what I wanted to share with you today, particularly around marketing, the one thing that really helps me out when my inspiration isn't, you know, I'm not feeling so inspired, is having great systems and having great, Having a great plan to follow. And I have some notes here, so that's why I'm looking, looking down. But so in times when we can't rely on inspiration, it's always super valuable and super helpful to have a plan that you can stick to. Right? And so that's why that's something I teach all of my clients and that I practice as well, is really having as many systems in place to help keep things going in a reliable and consistent way. And we know that consistent marketing creates trust, right? And it's not only trust with your future clients or potential clients and your, or your audience or your current clients, it's trust with you too. When you're consistent and when you follow your plans, you create trust within yourself. And that may seem silly, but it's really super important because we won't ever allow ourselves to grow and to grow our business and to take on more clients and more responsibility if we don't trust ourselves to be able to handle it. And the way that we develop that trust is through having good systems, having a plan, and then following that plan and consistently doing so. Now, that doesn't mean that we have to be perfect all the time. I mean, God knows I am not perfect all the time. I have lots of systems and lots of plans and I don't always follow them. But, you know, committing to it and doing our best, that's, you know, forget the rest, right? That's all we can ask of ourselves. So one of the systems. So, and it's not just system, system sounds really corporate and dry, but it's like rhythms. It's like having rhythms to your week, having rhythm to the way that you run your business, the way that you run your marketing and sales. Those rhythms really support you and support your growth. And because when you have great rhythms or great systems around things that you do regularly, then it frees you to be able to use your brain power and your creativity and your be able to tune in to your inner wisdom in service of your clients. Right? Because if you're not constantly sitting down to your desk and thinking or saying to yourself, okay, what am I going to do today? And having to reinvent the wheel all the time, then you have more space to be thinking about and serving and using all of your creativity for service of your clients, for service of your mission, for service of your future clients. Right. And that's really what we want to be doing and that's what's going to help us grow. So I wanted to just give you an idea of some of the systems and rhythms cycles that I like to practice in my own business. So the first thing, so Monday. So one of the first things I do in terms of systems and rhythms is I like to plan out my week before the week begins. So whether that's on Sunday or Monday, I give myself freedom. And obviously I was traveling yesterday, I was not doing a lot of planning. I didn't do well, I did a little bit, I wrote some appointments in my calendar and whatever. So I started the process. But I always have an hour block on my calendar on Monday for doing my plan for the week. So sometimes I'll get a jump on that on Sunday, but if not, then I still have that block on my calendar every Monday to plan out my week. And so what that means is I'll take a look at all of my appointments and make sure I don't have any conflicts. I have to obviously check the kids schedules and make sure I have all their stuff on there and my husband's calendar and where is he traveling, when's he coming back, that sort of thing. So I just get that all organized and then make sure I don't have any conflicts. And then I have a project management tool called Asana, which you may have heard of. It's a really great tool, I highly recommend it. And so I have my list in Asana of all of my tasks for the week, right. And then, so then what I do is I will go into Asana and actually one of my tasks today that I've already checked off is to plan out my week, right. And I have a process for how I plan out my week. I have, I've thought about it ahead of time, all the steps that I take to plan out my whole week. And so there's non negotiables, things that I always want on my calendar like time to time for networking, time for coaching, you know, getting coached. My coaching calls with my clients are already on my calendar. Time to, I always have time to write my weekly emails, those sorts of things. So all of those tasks that I have in Asana, each one of those items on that list also has to be in my calendar. And I see so many of us don't do this and it's really been a game changer. For me. So I don't have a task list that says separate from my calendar. Everything on my task list also has a time assigned to it on my calendar. So I know exactly when I'm going to get that thing done, that task done. And then so when I do that, then I have budgeted my time to also respect the tasks and things that I want to get done this week. And so if I'm all booked up and there's still tasks, then I know those things are either not going to be on my plate, I'm going to delegate them, or I'm going to eliminate them. Right. So those, that's an example of a system. And just, you know, in interest of keeping this rather short, I thought that would be a really great marketing power up for you because all of the marketing activities that you have, you can also assign time to on your calendar. And so then you know when they're going to get done and then hopefully they get done. Right. And like I said, respecting that calendar also helps you to develop trust with yourself. And so I love when I also. Another thing I'll say is, one thing I really love that I've done with my calendar is I have a cadence for the week. I, I don't do the same thing every day. I have themes for each of the days of my week. So for example, I am a private coach, right? So I have my private clients on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. And so on those three days I will see all of my clients. And so I love that because then I can focus 100%, you know, with all of my energy and my creativity on serving my clients. And so I love having that focus. And then there's days like today. Monday is a lot of planning. I have a lot of meetings that are not client meetings but other types of meetings and, and content creation. And I used to have a lot of content creation on, on Friday, but I found that by the time I get to Friday I am so I'm just ready to be quiet on Friday. I don't feel a lot of inspiration to create, I've noticed on Friday. So I like Friday for a lot of backstage type work which is, you know, evaluating and doing all of my, my administrative type work, doing any follow up, just finishing things up. I love that kind of energy on Friday. And then Monday feels like a much more creative day. Today's a day where I, I get a lot of coaching and so I feel powered up myself and so I feel much more inspired to create and, and be publishing so that is kind of how I theme out my days. And so everybody has different cadence for your energy and for what you, how you like to order your week. And I would just say like experiment with it. I am always experimenting with my calendar, with my schedule and just really find what works for you. But I think when you have systems in place that really helps to support you so that you can focus your creativity and your cognitive energy, just like your best thinking on your current clients and on creating your future clients, which is what marketing is. And so this is a work I love to do with my clients and, and as a private chief marketing officer for women entrepreneurs, I love helping you to find your best fit clients and then close those sales. And part of that work that we do is around creating systems, creating a great marketing, a very simple, essential marketing system that helps you to bring in new sales opportunities. And then having a consultation process, for example, that helps you to really bring those clients or those potential clients through a process and to help you and them determine if you're working together would be the best thing for them. So, and then for example, follow up processes, that's another great process to have. And then we work on evaluation processes. And so when you have the processes in place, it really can just help to support your growth. So if that's something that you are interested in learning more about or talking to me about and how this can really be the foundation and the undergirding to support your growth, I would love to talk to you and I hope you have a great rest of your Monday. Feel free to reach out direct message me and I would be happy to have a call conversation with you to learn more about you and your business and how I can support you as a private chief marketing officer for you and your business and your growth. So that's what I have for you today, my friends. I hope you have a wonderful Monday and a really fabulous rest of your week and I will see you again soon. Take care. Bye.
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