How to Plan and Create Content that Grows Your Business with Brittany Barnhart

Hey, we are live. I think, as usual, I'm going to spend the first 10 to 15 seconds saying, Am I live? Can you hear me? Can you see us? If you can, just say hi and let us know where you're calling in from. I'm here in Brooklyn and I'm here in Detroit. Is it really Detroit, or is there more to the story?

That's the thing, is, I'm between Ann Arbor and Detroit. I'm equal distance between, but people know Detroit versus, like, the town I live in, which is Ypsilanti. So it's a lot easier to be like, I'm from Detroit. So.

Yeah, I hear you. Cool. Cool. All right. So, yeah, if you can hear us and see us, let us know where you're dialing in from. Want to make sure that we're set up for success here. And you're gonna hear some kids in the background. Cool. All right, we got Elmira from Atlanta dialing Amira. We got. Actually, if you're. If you have a chance, check out her profile. She has a really great system for you to plan, essentially, your life, what you want to ascend to, but also blocking off the time and finances involved with achieving it. So please go to her, her link, if you want to put it in the chat. Actually, I think that'll be valuable. I've been going back and forth with her all day in regards to that, so I thought it was pretty cool.

That's amazing.

Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's actually aligned with what we're talking about today, so it's pretty good. Pretty good timing. So we got Alfred here, we got Aquan, we got Cynthia, we got Eric from la. Got Bogdan all the way from Barcelona. Bogdan, good to see you. Saw some people skateboarding the other day, and I thought one of them was Bogdan, because that's his thing. He actually rode his bike as well from, I believe, LA to New York, so. Whoa. Yeah. So glad to have him here. We got Philip from Virgia.

Yeah.

Cynthia said it's not a fun live stream until you hear Terry's kids screaming in the background. Thanks for that.

It makes it more real.

You can probably call them up by name now, too. Yes, but. But here's the thing that I do want to say is my kids are home because unfortunately, my family been hit by Covid. Four out of six of us have it, and luckily, everyone's doing well enough. So you hear some kids screaming when everyone's healthy enough. And it's great. But it actually aligns directly with the topic of today, which is planning your content in advance and also aligning it with the desired outcome for your business. So on my end, yeah, it's been a rough week because all my kids are under six years old and three out of four of them are sick. But if you look at it from an outsider's perspective, I'm still active on LinkedIn and posting because all my content was planned in advance. So even when you're going through challenging times, it makes it easier when you more or less front loaded yourself for success by having this stuff set up. And one thing I want to bring up before we get into it is on my end, I'm really good at strategy and having ideas and I'm also really good at execution. What I'm horrible at, which my wife will tell you, is planning. Really bad at, bad at planning. And fortunately that's where people like Brittany Barnhart come in, where she's really good at planning. And we're gonna be talking about a tool called notion. So yes or no in the comments, have you heard of notion before? Just to get an idea and level set. We can explain what it is if we need to, but that's what people like Brittany are for. And then Meg, my executive assistant is also in attendance right now. She's growing at that. Me, if you let me plan stuff, we're in trouble, right? So I'm not that guy. Who I am is, I am a business development consultant and normally what that involves is helping other entrepreneurs grow their brand and revenue. It could be coming up, your pricing, your pitching, your social media content, so and so forth. That's what I do. And I like helping with early stage entrepreneurs so I can help people avoid the same mistakes that I made when I was first starting my business. But what I also want to do now is give Brittany a chance to introduce herself as well.

Hello everybody, I'm Brittany Barnhart and I my business powerhouse, Brand Studio and I help entrepreneurs build brands that actually attract and convert customers. And so a lot of that comes down to developing their brand and business strategy and then actually like developing those things and developing the missing pieces, whether that be their email marketing, opt ins services, content marketing, things like that, to make sure that they're business is running as they want it to.

And I think Brittany, she goes by B, by the way, she's part of a new wave of branding experts who traditionally would have done logos and look and feel stuff and are now closing the loop and making sure that you're building your business as well as your brand. So look for more of that to happen, because with tools like Canva out there, I mean, it's. I'm not saying it's the same, but, you know, we can all get like a logo or a nice, you know, PDF or whatever. So with Brittany, people like her realizing, look, to increase my value, I have to say, look, it's not just here to look pretty, it's to be functional and actually back into business outcomes. And again, that's the goal of today. We're going to talk about, first of all, where do you get ideas for content? And I'm going to take that part. And then the part that I'm horrible at is how do you actually plan content? We're going to hand it over to Brittany for that. And then often what happens is you'll have all this content, you're getting likes, you're getting shares and all this stuff, but it does not map back to any real business goal or you'll feel like you're just going through the the motions because you're not growing. So we're also going to talk about what are called OKRs. Yes or no? In the chat, do you know what an OKR is? And I'll just give you a hint. It's a way for you to plan your goals normally for a short period of time, around a quarter or so. So do you know what OKRs are? And if you do, can you please, can you write that out with the O the K and R stand for? But if you have those two juxtaposed, meaning you're really good at planning your content that provides value to your audience, and you also have these okrs behind that. You're in a really good spot because you're not only creating good content, you're optimizing the results of it to actually lead into real business goals. So if you. I'm seeing a lot of no's on the OKR part. It's all good. That's what we're here for. But if you don't have that, you're just spinning your wheels and you're going to be wondering why, you know, you're not getting traction. You might feel like it's a waste of time reposting on social media. It's not a waste of time, it's a lack of strategy. And we're going to talk about that during the back half. But what I want to do now first is just talk about a few ways to create content, because often that's where we get stuck. And I see Fernando knows what These okrs are Ilani does as well. Ilani. My daughter's name is Elena. So if I call you Elena, my bad. Eric, is it like a smart goal? It's, it's similar to that. It goes a bit deeper. Angela nailed it. It's objectives and key results as well. So. So Eric, stick around, we'll get into this because it would be remiss of me to tell you how to create content and say peace out and not tell you what to actually do to make money from it. But what are a few ways to make content? Right? I'll give you five easy ways. And the reason being is because of the millions of people that are active LinkedIn monthly users, only 3% post once a week, right? Which is pretty low. And it's good news for you because that means there's a lot of space available for you to grow on this platform. And the benefit of LinkedIn versus an Instagram or Twitter is it's a content deficient platform, meaning people are not as likely to share content on LinkedIn as they are on Instagram or TikTok or other channels. So you can get much more views for your content than you would with other platforms. It's great, right? But what do you write? Right? That's the big question. Here's the easiest way to start. Easiest way for, like Terry to, you know, what's the hack? No hacks. But here's an easy way to do it. Think of 10 questions that your audience has. Step one, answer them. That's it. So you're just answering questions. And by design, if you're answering questions, you're providing value to your audience. So again, we'll do this as a poll here. Yes or no, can you think of 10 questions that your audience has? So for me, it's going to be, how much should I charge? How do I get more clients? How do I run a business with four angry children yelling in the background, things like that. And as long as I'm providing those answers, then I'm providing value to my audience, right? That's the first one. Another one is taking a contrarian approach. So everyone feels this way, you feel that way, right? So one post I had recently was, you know, people say you should never work for free. It's ridiculous, you know, it's, it's demeaning so and so forth. And my thought was, well, you pay to go to college to get experience and connections. Why would you not work for free to get experience and connections, right? So that's a contrarian approach to should you work for free or not, when most people would say no, you should not. Right. So you want to be contrarian, but don't do it just to be, like, rude or to get attention. Like, there should be some kind of goal to it or some kind of value in it. Don't just say, like, I think this is stupid. Do you agree or disagree? Like, don't be that person. Right. Another is motivational. Right. Third one's going to be motivational. And what I'll say is something like, hey, you know, if you're just starting out, I know it's tough, but it actually takes around 18 months for any entrepreneur to feel like, you know, they have it nailed down and that, you know, they feel confident. So if you're within that 18 month, you know, window, keep moving forward, use failure as data, so on and so forth. Right. That's the third is motivational. Last one is current events. Actually the fourth one, current events. What's going on in your industry that's relevant to your audience? It could be some new data that came out. It could be in regards to an upcoming conference. But what you want to do is say, this thing is going on. Here's how I think it's going to affect the rest of us. Right. So one thing that's going on in general is a lot of people that work in offices are being forced to go back to work, which is unfortunate because I was on the subway the other day, hated it. Right. So I can't imagine being forced to do so after you've been so comfortable working from home for the last two years. I could say something about, you know, this new report that came up. It said, x number of people don't want to go back to the office. What does this mean to you? Maybe you should start your own business. If you need some help with that, I gotcha. And the last thing is going to be day in the life content. What's going on with you? So again, right now I'm happy to be leading this webinar. Why? Because I'm getting a break from the chaos that's been going on the last week. Right. So when you love your job like I do, stuff like this does not feel like work. It feels like almost an escape. And I genuinely am happy to be here. But as a result, I know that your time is valuable too. So I want to make sure that I give you value in exchange for that time. So those are the five ways. I wrote them down because I'm tired. First one is answer questions. The other is Be contrarian without being rude. The third would be motivational, fourth being current events. What's going on? And the last is something personal, something day in the life that you can tie back to your content. So those are the five, and I'm curious just in the chat one, if you can put in here which ones resonate with you the most? Right? I'll say it again. Is it answering questions? Is it contrarian? Is it motivational? Current events? What works for you? And since there's a lag, I'm not actually going to wait for response, but I will call it out momentarily with that. We have all these options here to create content. And I'll say this, if you want to learn more about my process for creating content on LinkedIn, I. I do have a workshop coming up next Tuesday the 26th, from 4 to 6pm Sorry, from 2 to 5pm Meg is going to drop a link in that if you want to learn more about that. But more or less it's LinkedIn marketing and optimization for consultants and other entrepreneurs. If you want to do that. Cool. There might be kids yelling in the background, but that's part of life, right? So let me know if you want to get on that. But what I want to go into now is the planning part of content. Because for me, again, that's where I fail, right? I have all these great ideas in the moment, but here's the problem with that. It won't always align with my overall goals or since it was in the moment and not well thought out, I'm prone to typos, which people are very nice to, you know, ignore or politely correct sometimes. But it's not as thoughtful or impactful as it could be because there is no plan for it or I'll have an event like this and I forget to promote it, right? So now I'm scrambling to get people to come to this in, you know, with a reasonable period of time because I didn't promote it properly, right? So that's the benefit of planning. And again, that's where B comes in. So I'm going to have her walk through this amazing tool called Notion. And more amazingly, this, this dashboard she made for you to plan and optimize your content. And we'll also talk about repurposing content shortly as well, because one of my goals is with any piece of content I want to 5 exit or 10 exit. What do I mean by that in this case? Right now I'm leading a webinar with Brittany, right? You will see this next week on other Forms of social media on my website, on YouTube in a shorter version, full version, text version, so on and so forth. So we'll get into that shortly as well. But for right now I'm going to stop talking so I can mute myself. And I want you to walk through this board which I've been blown away by and greatly benefit by us.

Yeah, thank you. So I'll walk through it real quick or shortly. But I ended up building, started using Notion a couple of years ago. I've used, you know, try to use Google Drive for everything. I've used Asana ClickUp, just so many trello, so many platforms to kind of manage my business and create content. And I was having such a hard time actually finding a flow of like what actually worked. Everything felt too strict and like didn't flow the way that I wanted it to. And so what I've loved about Notion is I've been able to really kind of customize my process and build a board out that works perfect for what I need it to. And so I'm going to start sharing my screen and we'll walk through this marketing dashboard that I have created. So here we have our marketing dashboard. And so what we're looking at is kind of an overview of all of your content creation. And so this can be content marketing. This can be any sort of like lead generation that you want to focus on anything to promote your business. And so with all of my templates I always provide a loom training that you can watch on your own time to make sure that like you're optimizing the template as much as possible. But from here what we're looking at is on the left hand side. I've created a couple of different dashboards for you because I find it really important to make sure that we have access to the your brand assets, growth and analytics and so kind of setting those quarterly or yearly goals for your content and then kind of a database where you can compile caption formulas, hooks, anything that can help you create content faster from there. What we're looking at is a content brain dump. And so I don't know about you, but I personally, you know, kind of, you know, you have those shower thoughts or when you're taking a walk in the middle of the day, there's all these thoughts that kind of come up during that white space that you might have during your day. And so at that time I like to utilize this particular page just to brain dump all of my content in this. And so you'll see I've Got a couple of ideas here already and from there I can classify as necessary. So if you have a team, this is really great because you can assign it to particular people in your team depending on what their role is. We have phase so that we can distinguish what phase each piece of content is in. So we've got research, write, edit, design and schedule the repurposing, which is really handy when it comes to this platform. So when you brain dump a piece of content, you can select which platform that you intend for it to go on. And then long term, if you wanted to, if you're having one of those days where, you know, maybe you don't have any content planned, but you want to post something, you can go back and see what hasn't been posted on that particular platform. From there we've got these pillars. And so kind of going back to what Terri was saying, these pillars could be, you know, the contrarian approach, it could be motivational, it could be current events. So that can help you distinguish what the goal of that piece of content is. And then from there we've got a due date, which is like what day you're actually going to sit down and do that thing. And then we have a post date. So kind of making sure that you have your. When you know that you'll be posting that content. And then another thing that I like to add in is like a goal, you know, like, do I want to entertain people, do I want to educate them? Is it for lead generation, anything like that? So this is just kind of the brain dump here. And then from there we can just have an overview based on platform. So if you want to see an overview of what's going where and when, we can take a look at the calendar, when you've actually posted things. And what's really great is you can drag and drop as necessary if you kind of like to operate in that way, the phases that things are in, who it's assigned to, or the pillar. And so I spend a lot of time in the platform and in the phase section just because it's really helpful for me to see like what are things that I need to actually stop and research, what do I need to write, what needs to be edited, designed and things like that. And then same with the platforms, you know, so now we're looking at all these different platforms that you might be utilizing and then from there you can see which type of content that you want to repurpose on any other given day. So that is the overarching kind of marketing dashboard. And I'm going to stop sharing and see what questions folks might have regarding that template.

Two things I want to bring up, first of all, if you have any questions, please do ask. But two things I want to bring up, first of all is the ability to filter by goal is so important because what I found sometimes is people are just posting with no goal of actually generating leads or anything transactional, and they're wondering why their content isn't working. It's like, well, they've never said, hey, sign up for my email list, download this lead magnet, attend this event, so on and so forth. And at least around 20% of your content should be more transactional, some kind of direct response. But at the same time, if you go through that filter and realize like, well, 80% of my content saying, click here, buy now, that's why no one's checking for you, because you're too transactional. So it helps. And you can also see how you're spreading out different types of content from week to week, day to day, so and so forth. And I think another benefit of that is getting data on it and seeing what's working and what's not working. Now, one thing you touched upon, and we just have to reiterate is repurposing, right? You know, I'm busy, you're busy, we all have stuff to do. So when you create a piece of content, you should intuitively be thinking, how can I turn this into more content? So if you're doing a video, how can that become a blog? If you're doing a blog, how can it become a social media post? And you can start borrowing from yourself to see what's successful, and then at the same time, using this, this, this, this counter you have, you can go back three months ago and see, hey, what worked well in the past and what can I use now? As opposed to kind of come up with new ideas all the time? Because I'm sure you've heard this before, but you're really the only one who remembers your posts, right? I mean, that's, that's how it goes. I mean, I got caught once. I got caught once with that because, like, I, I'm not gonna go to the details. And someone's like, didn't you post this like 5 months ago? And I'm like, thanks for following, you know, like, whatever, like boomy. So this is what you need. If you're like, hey, I want to grow my personal brand. I want to get more followers, I want to get more business, I want to get more inbound leads. You have to commit to this stuff because everyone I know that is successful, they have some kind of plan in place. And maybe every day you don't go with what was scheduled, but you always have something scheduled you in case you don't. And that's the benefit that comes from it.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I forgot to mention it, but I'm sure Meg will kind of drop in the chat where to actually grab this template if people want to start using it. It's currently on my gumroad, so yeah, she mentioned that.

So if you want to buy this, she has this already ready for you. And there's instructional videos on how to use Notion and this template specifically. So this sounds good, go for it. If you want to recreate it yourself, go for that too. I failed miserably, which is why I scattered from her. But yeah, that's the benefit of having an expert set this stuff up for you and a tool like Notion that's so flexible. But let's go ahead and get some questions here. This one's from Walter and Walter, Walter Gaynor ii. You should follow him too. He makes some amazing content. He has these really good lives too that are just very well produced and engaging. So check out Walter. His question is, when you have something to repurpose, do you create a new task or just keep using the same task and just edit it?

For my process, I tend to like to just kind of keep it as is. I don't like to kind of add more tasks than necessary because I find it overwhelming. And so I'll just kind of go back and see when I posted that piece of content on that platform and kind of do that drag and drop feature again that you saw in that calendar and go from there. But if you're somebody that kind of likes to create new tasks and organize it in that way, it could be beneficial to kind of create a new task. And what's great about Notion is if you were to create a new task, you could link to that old board and so you can kind of create this fluidity between what you've already posted on a particular platform and the new task that you're creating for repurposing that content.

Awesome, thanks. Another question here from Jamila. Sorry, Jamila. And she's saying what was the goal area examples? So when you had that, that drop down goals, it could be educational, they could be, remember the rest of them. But can you give the examples that you provided and maybe there's other ones that she might want to use as well?

Yeah. So the Ones that I ended up sharing were, let me go back here. The goals that I had were entertain, educate, storytelling and lead generation. So that's kind of nice mix that I like to keep for my own content to make sure that like I'm showing up as me, but I'm also educating my audience and I'm doing that lead generation and showing up in those ways. And what's great is if you have other goals for your content, you can add in those particular filters. And so you might have maybe two other goals that you like to have for your content. You can absolutely add that in. And so that's another great thing about notion is that like obviously this template is available to you, but you can customize it to fit your unique process.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So on my end I have a podcast coming out. So one of my goals might be to get podcast listeners. And that's going to be the theme of that post. So you want to make it your own. And I think that's the problem with some templates is sure, start with a template, but templatize, then customize. Otherwise you'll never reach your desired outcome because it wasn't set up just for you. So you do want to put some time in to watch those videos that be set up so you can make it more of your own. Otherwise it's always going to feel like it's someone else's process that you're following and you should definitely be your own person. Follow what you want to go forward with.

Yeah, absolutely.

But one thing you hinted at was goals. And that's where I want to make this pivot now into having these okrs objectives and key results. And this is often a fatal flaw I see with many businesses is they'll have a vision. We want to be this, we want to be that, but they don't have actual objectives. What does this actually mean? On a quarterly basis, not an annual basis. Because often things move so quickly. You want to have these, these three month sprints because it gives you enough time to accomplish something meaningful. But it's not so long that you don't pivot quickly enough if it's not going to be successful.

Yeah.

So that's where OKRs come in place. Objectives and key results. So on my end, I could say one of my objectives is to, let's say I want to be seen as a thought opinion leader, as an entrepreneur by getting, trying to think of a good goal here. Probably should have thought this in Advance. I'll say 25,000 people to download my podcast within one quarter. That's my objective. What are the key results? What things do I have to do in order to meet that goal? Well, one is I have to create content about it on social media, right? So I got to make sure that I'm talking about it, encouraging people to do so. And maybe I'm saying at least three days a week of talking about the podcast. Another thing could be enabling my guest to spread the word. So every time someone's a guest, I'm like, hey, B, thanks so much for attending. Here's some clips from the post. If you are from the podcast, if you want to put them up as well, here's some, you know, great talking points, so on and so forth. Here you go. So I'm empowering my guests to do the same. And the last one could be some kind of contest, right? So, hey, if you listen to the podcast, there's an Easter egg here. You know, at this moment in the podcast, I say, what high school I went to. Post it online, share with your friends and I'll pick five people to win. Right? So these are examples of an overall goal and then the underlying, let's call them, projects you have to do to meet that goal. And for you, it might look different, right? For some people it might be, I want to get 10 new clients this quarter. Okay. That's the overall objective. What do you have to do? I have to post on LinkedIn three times a week. How do I do that? Get this planning system. What's another thing? I have to do 10 outreach messages every week, too, right? That's another option. Another option could be, I want to land five speaking opportunities. Therefore I'm on stage, everyone's listening to me, and as a result, I'll get inbound leads. So again, the objective is to get X number of new clients, but these are the actual key results you would have to achieve in order to do that. And if you write your key results correctly, if you achieve these key results, you'll land, you'll hit your objective as well. That's the way to do it. How'd I do, B? Does that sound good?

Yeah, absolutely. I. I often kind of will go into this in the template, but I often like to take it just a little bit step further because I found that, like, in my own stuff and then in the work that I do with my clients who are doing all this business development, the key results are helpful, but it's sometimes those can feel still like. Like big milestones that they're Almost too big. And so what I've done is kind of created, I like to identify three to five tasks that need to be completed in order to kind of reach that key result on the way to that like overarching objective. So it feels a little bit more tangible or, you know, there's smaller steps and to feel like you're making progress towards that objective. But yeah, so that's how I generally do my okrs.

Yeah, like I said, I'm not good at the planning part. Like step one, 25,000 downloads, step two. But yeah, that's the thing, that's what you want to do. And I'll reiterate what you said, just for clarity. So, first of all, yes, have an objective. And again, it could be 10 new clients, then your three key results. One key result could be doing outreach every week on LinkedIn. But under that might be a subtask which is writing a script for you to do outreach. It could be having something to give away when you do outreach, a lead magnet. And the third could be a process for engaging with the person before even do outreach. So it does get pretty interesting. And there's a question here from Fernando saying how granular should the key results be? Should it be something that takes X amount of time? Well, first of all, good question. The, the okrs should be a 90 day sprint, so all this stuff should be done within one quarter in regards to the key results. So they have to fit into that constraint. But I think the question within the question is you could also have them be sequential, like key result. One happens so I can do two, two must happen, so I can do three, so on and so forth. But as long as they all happen within this 90 day period, you're good to go.

Absolutely.

All right, so how do we actually plan this stuff? Because I obviously need help. Can you show us what that looks like within this amazing notion board?

Yeah. So a lot of what I'm going to show you is a piece of what I do for my clients and so kind of building those brands that actually attract and convert client or clients and customers. We always need to make sure that we have those okrs set and are able to track our progress, assign tasks to your team, anything like that. So I built out yet again another notion board, but let me share my screen and walk you through it.

And just before you do that, Ilani made a really good point. If you have more than five key results, you probably have more than one objective. And that's fine because I normally have three objectives per quarter. Right. Otherwise it's like, I'm just gonna do this one thing and then just like you CrossFit after that, like, you know, you can do more than you can have more than one big objective. So again, three objectives that have three key results. Maybe each key result has three subtasks underneath them. And you might be thinking, gosh, Terry, that sounds like it's gonna take a while to plan. Good, you're planning a quarter. Take a couple weeks to do it. You know, like, don't, don't rush to plan. But I feel like that happens way too much. We rush to plan because, like, oh, I want to be doing stuff. But if you're more present with the planning and put in more meaningful plans, the doing is going to be much more effective, right? So I know what it feels like to just want to get to the doing part. But if you just sit and just focus first, everything that you do will be much more impactful. And we have another question here. Let's just answer this one. It's also from, from Jamelia. Again, question. If you're just beginning and don't know how to start to show or present yourself, what do you do? More or less? So what I would say is two things. If you're just beginning, realize it's a learning process, right? You're going to try one form of content, you're going to try another. You're going to find that some stuff works better for you and your audience and then stop doing the stuff that doesn't. But if you learn to see your initial activities as an experiment, then you'll never fail. Because the point of an experiment is to learn and to optimize from the information you have. But if you're like, here's this new thing and I have to succeed or I'm. Or I'm done. Yeah, it's going to feel like you're messing up, but you know, first of all, you get unlimited shots. If you're posting organically, you're not paying for it. But it takes time to find your voice, it takes time to find your audience, it takes time to get in the rhythm of creating content. So I would just start by saying just forgive yourself for things that hit or miss and never associate your self worth with how many likes or shares or comments you're getting on a post because you're obviously more than that. And right now what you're doing is just building your voice, right? Another thing I would say is success leaves clues. So I would say find someone who's found success in a Similar industry or the similar audience who you think has a good. Not just personal brand, but character too. Right. Because there's personal branding that's look and feel and pep woods and stuff. There's character branding. You know, are you a good person? And I think that's more important than ever. It should have always been in style, but, you know, whatever. It's more important now than ever to not just do personal branding, but character branding as well. So success leaves clues. What can you reverse engineer that they're doing and not steal their style, but more or less not reinvent the wheel either by trying out some of their approach? So another question from Megan. Would it be possible to share a master list of all Britney's templates in addition to each one she's going over today? I don't know. Like.

Yeah. So Meg will drop a link. So I have three different templates that I have available for you guys to grab. The two that I'm going over today is the content marketing dashboard. We're also going over the OKR template, and I also have a daily and weekly planner if you want something that's a little bit more granular. Need something to kind of hold yourself accountable day to day, week to week with your business development and client work. But that link will be dropped in the chat. Chat whenever Mike drops it.

So cool. Awesome. And, yeah, keep the questions coming because we want to keep this organic, but I'll let you share that board now because I'm sure there'll be more questions from there as well.

For sure. Awesome. All right, so here is the OKR template that is built out. And again, you. Everybody will always get a, like, training to watch this, because I know that as we're looking at this, at first glance, it might be incredibly overwhelming, but I want to break it down as easy as possible to make sure that you can feel like you can make progress and you're not feeling overwhelmed, which I know can be a very common feeling when you start making these really big quarterly goals. And so what we're currently looking at is at this top. These are tasks that are due today. Um, and so you'll see that I have a status for each of them. Whether I'm on track, it's been completed, or if I feel behind on it, they're attached to particular objectives, which we'll go over in a minute. Um, and then you'll see that I actually kind of divvied it up into a task month. And so I'm somebody that, like, yes, I definitely want to set A goal for quarter two, But I also want to identify, like, what month should that particular key result be done or that task be done, so I can make sure that I'm actually making progress. Um, because it could be really easy to just be like, I'll do it tomorrow, you know, um, and then from there I have a due date for those tasks, a way to check it off if it's been completed, and then again a way for you to sign tasks here. So this is the first part of this board. And then from here we actually get into the quarterly objectives. And so you'll see what I've done here is I've set three quarterly objectives for quarter two for my business. I want to book five clients, I want to increase my newsletter to a thousand subscribers and then book three podcasts. Um, here I've again outlined the quarter, and then I also have a focus area. So I've added in a focus area because I find it really helpful to make sure that I'm not just focusing on one particular thing. So, for example, I have focus areas that include lead generation, growth, marketing, business development, and partnerships. And so you can absolutely use these in your own business. Or if there are particular focus areas that you want to add in, you can easily add that one in. So maybe you want to do more, I don't know, client work. That's probably a bad example, but you can add that in super easy. This is actually attached to another database on this separate board, so we're going to kind of skip over that for the moment. And then from here, what's great is that we get to get a sense of progress with. So each task that you assign to your objective, you get to see how much progress you've actually made to that overall goal. I don't know about you, but setting these goals can be daunting, but also exciting. And it can actually really help to see what type of progress you've made and just feel good about what you're doing.

I want to pause you here because that's so important. So I'll reiterate. You can see the progress that you're making towards your overall goals. Why is this important? Because so often when you have a large goal, it's hard to see any or feel like you're making any kind of progress because there's so many steps involved, right? And you're like, this thing is not done. What have I done? I wrote this, you know, I planned this, I, so on, so forth. But it feels like you're not actually accomplishing anything. When you see that number going up, it's almost like gamification for yourself. Like, wow, you know, I'm doing this. And maybe you set a reward. Hey, once I get to 25%, I'll do this. Once I get to 50, I'll do this. Once I Get 75, so and so forth. And then inversely, if you see you're at like, you know, 75% for one and you're only at, you know, 25% for another key result, you need to start focusing more on the other one too. Right. So it's, it's very beneficial to see this and just, again, reward yourself, not just for the outcome, but for the commitment to the process. Because if you don't stop to take time to celebrate these things and acknowledge them, you'll never make it to the end goal because you don't see the outcomes from all your effort.

1000%. I am somebody that definitely needs that reminder pretty consistently because I'm always just like, work, work, work. But again, it's always nice to like, celebrate that progress. I'm really glad that you brought that up. And then from here, so we have all those objectives that we set for each quarter. From there we get into the key results and then the task that I mentioned earlier. And so each time. So let's run through an example. So for quarter two, I want to book five clients. And so I currently have a key result that says I need to schedule 15 discovery calls. If I need to schedule 15 discovery calls, I'm going to set another key result for maybe I need to post about services at least one time a week. And then I'm going to assign it to the objective. And then you'll see here, if I look at the book five clients and then the key results over here, that has been added to those key results. And so this is just kind of like a fluid way of adding in results, objectives, and tasks. And then from there, so we have those key results which can be helpful to kind of see. I like to view the key results as milestones. And then I like to kind of break it down further into potentially two to five tasks that need to be completed to even reach that key result. It makes it feel a little bit more attainable for myself. And so here we have a table full of tasks. And so if I need to post about my services once a week, I'm going to create a task of writing one Instagram post per week regarding services. And then from there I'm going to assign it to the objective. And then what month I want to have it done, and then I can assign a due date when this needs to actually be completed, which is today. And from there, so we have all these tasks that are now assigned to each objective. But this is so fluid. And so each time I assign a task to this particular objective, if I scroll back up here, we now see that this additional task has been added to this database. And so another thing that I want to kind of mention is I know that this kind of overarching view can be a little overwhelming, but even within each objective we can kind of customize it even further. And so this is in the template, but I'll just kind of like run through this real quick. But if you're somebody that just wants to open up this particular objective and see a database full of just the tasks for this specific thing, we can create a linked database of the tasks and then set up a filter for this objective. So each time I open up this objective, quarterly objective, I'm only seeing the tasks that are associated with this particular thing. And so this is how I like to set those okrs every quarter so that I have a really good grasp on what's actually due today, what progress I'm making, what things need to happen on the way there, and then tasks that are due on a day to day basis to accomplish those goals.

Awesome, thanks for that. And I want to pause just to get feedback from the audience. What do you think about this tool? Does it sound interesting? Would it help? You just want to get your general thoughts, but. And then I'll. During the interim. One thing I like about this is because this is something that Bea was doing for herself and her clients. And I saw it, I was like, yo, this is a really, really powerful solution for other people. So it's a, it's a good example of how entrepreneurs will solve a problem for themselves, but then realize that other people have the same problem as well. Because as soon as I saw it, I was blown away. I'm like, other people are going to want this. And fortunately you can help a lot of people with it by selling it as a template as opposed to some of the one on one work that you're doing or you know, one business work that you're doing. So for me, when I saw it, I was blown away. But I'd love to get everyone else's input as well. And what I also just kind of want to double down is the fact that you should be spending time on this stuff, you shouldn't rush through it. And, and I'm guilty of that too. So as you're looking at this, if you're like, oh man, it's a lot of stuff that I have to plan, you're going to do it anyways, you're going to do this stuff anyways, you know, like. But if I know, oh, there's 47 steps for me to be successful this quarter, I'm going to write them down, you know, like, I'm not going to skip that step. That's just kind of how life goes. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you know, I hear you, I get it. But it's like you're going to do this stuff anyways, you might as well make sure that all your actions are aligned with a defined goal. And again, the benefit of going through the system is, you know, she has these videos that'll help you set it up just for yourself. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, I get it. You know, I don't want to do this stuff sometimes either. But I also, when I, when I wake up often I'll get up around like 4:30 in the morning to get some work done before my kids get up. And when you're up at 4:30 in the morning, you know what you want to do the most important stuff. So if you already have this planned out in front of you, you're just off to the races. You're not just staring out the window thinking about life, you know, you're getting work done.

Yeah, I'll say for myself, I've been in business for like seven years actually this coming May. But the most progress that I've seen has been in the last two years when I started implementing, doing this type of process because I was holding myself accountable and actually doubling down on what do I actually want to achieve this quarter, how am I going to actually make progress instead of kind of getting lost in the day to day, which I think can be a really easy thing to kind of get into the habit of, like, oh, I have to work in my business, you know, and so having this template and really kind of dedicating 30 minutes or an hour a week or whatever that looks like for you to setting these okrs can really help you out, actually make progress and work on your business so that you're not feeling stuck or lost. So, so that's how I like to do it.

Yeah, I hear you. One thing I want to also mention is you can also use this for your personal life. And that's what I was going back to earlier. If you go to against Amira, her Her profile. And I'm gonna ask Meg to put a link in there to her profile. She was talking about how we can have more or less okrs, not just for our personal. Our business life, but our personal life as well. And I always like to quote this from Dr. Michael Dr. B. As humans, there's only three things we can train. We can train our craft, meaning our business. We can train our body, and we can train our mind. But unfortunately, we train. We spend a disproportionate amount of time on the first two, meaning our craft in our body, and not nearly enough on the last one, meeting our mind. So if you want to, you can make that an objective, right? My objective is to do xyz. It's to meditate more. It's to be more present, whatever it is, and to say, you know, am I meditating enough? Am I, you know, getting enough white space, whatever it is? So it's not just a business, it's you designing a life based on what your desired outcome is. But we got a lot of questions here, so I'm going to stop preaching about stuff people didn't ask anything about. The first question is, is there a learning curve to using Notion?

There can be. It definitely depends on kind of your comfort level with the platforms that you might be using now. And so, you know, if maybe you're a Trello user, getting into Notion and might be a little overwhelming. And so I. The clients that I have onboarded into Notion, I always include, again, those tutorial videos. And so I think a part of when you get into Notion, you have that video to watch how it actually operates and how you can kind of customize it, it gets a lot easier. But if you're kind of going in blind and just like, starting from scratch, it can be overwhelming. When I first started using the platform, maybe for like, the first year, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just gonna figure this out. I'm gonna keep, like, working, revising, making these processes and making it better. And so hopefully having a template to start with will kind of help aid in that learning curve and then you can customize it even further as you continue to grow.

There you go. Another question from Nikki. Nikki Estes, I believe so. Nikki, thanks for joining. She's saying we use Asana for this kind of organization. How would you compare that to Notion?

So for Notion, I. I'm a huge fan, obviously, this is what I'm talking about of Notion, because it's so customizable and so When I used asana, used it like for a short amount of time, I was really frustrated with how kind of like limiting it felt. And just like kind of the. The experience of planning out any sort of business development tasks, any marketing, everything felt just kind of not together, I guess the best way to say it. And so notion, you can develop a ton of different templates. So, for example, I have templates and automation set up so that every time I get a new client, when they pay their invoice, a new template is created and it has all the tasks that are associated with that particular project just with the click of a button. And same with kind of expanding and building my team. I've got endless templates built out. And so I find that notion has a bit more flexibility, and that's generally why I use that over Asana.

And one thing to bring up is you can make notion look just like asana if you want. And I think that's a good way to kind of transition to it initially. And then on the side, you can start doing some other cool stuff that you can't do in asana. So if you're kind of, especially if you have a team and like, no, we use asana, it's like, okay, cool, this is Asana, but it's different. You can kind of get by like that. A really good question from Fernando. He's saying, you know, in your experience, does planning and structure payback and save time, effort, energy and cost and execution, as well as improve quality and direction? No, it doesn't. No, I'm joking. Yeah, it does, man. Yeah, I always like to. No, it does, Fernando, because, I mean, first of all, it reveals blind spots. Like, if you start planning stuff and you're like, oh, I want to do a YouTube video. Oh, crap, I don't have an editor. I don't have a thumbnail. I don't have a good microphone. Like, when you sit down and actually write these things down, all those gotchas come to you in the moment. And what you might also see, Fernando, was like, wow, for me to do this one thing, it's going to take me a lot of effort. Well, heck, I could just do this for less effort and make more money. So when you look at all the steps involved in the process and this kind of goes back to what we're saying before. Take the time to do. So you might say, man, this is going to take a lot of time. You know, maybe I should just do something else instead. But. And this is something I've done with, with Meg My executive assistant who's on the, on the, on the line right now from a company called chatterboss. So if you need help with anything in regards to admin, content distribution, so on and so forth, please reach out. Because she's amazing, but I have to document everything I'm doing to show her how she can help me. And as I'm doing it, I'm like, there's like 10 steps involved in just doing this. Like, just this, just me pushing a button. There's 10 steps involved. And on, you know, weeks like this, when I have four angry children at home, I don't have time to do it. So when you actually document this stuff, then first of all you can see does it make sense to do it this way? And. Or if you have a team, it's much more easier for you to hand this stuff off. So does it take time? Yeah, but you can definitely save more. Save time, make more money and just have more clarity in regards to what you're doing going forward.

Yeah, I think a lot of that too really kind of comes into like finding your zone of genius, you know, So I think that it can get really easy to want to do everything yourself because like, yeah, like we're all human capable. We can absolutely do it. We've all been in like startup mode trying to figure out how to do it, but taking that time to really identify those steps to do this. You know, those 10 steps, actually just hopping on this LinkedIn live today can really help you maximize your zone of genius, you know, so maybe your time is more valuable when it's spent on like big business development and it doesn't need to be spent on the day to day, like tasks and organizing and things like that. And so I think as like, you know, entrepreneurs and professionals, it can be so valuable to maximize our time and also work with people that we really enjoy who are really good at those particular things and kind of share that energy.

So another benefit of okrs is some things you want to accomplish, there's a lead time that goes into it. So again, one of the okrs I mentioned was getting five speaking engagements. Okay, so what do you have to do for that? Well, first of all, what are you going to talk about? Right, so you have to write down that message. Another is, where are you going to deliver these talks? Right, so you have to find these organizations and then just like Meg's doing on my behalf, getting the contact information for companies that you want to reach out to or organizations you want to reach out to and saying, do you want to do this thing. And even if they do want to do that thing, it probably ain't going to be tomorrow. So maybe it's one week out, two weeks out, three weeks out. Whatever it is, if your goal is to do it within that quarter, then you know you have to start much earlier. So being able to almost have a timeline of what order your tasks or I guess actions have to go into is beneficial. And that's why, again, taking the time to write this stuff out will save you time, will save you headaches going forward, but you have to dedicate that amount of time to do so.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cool. All right, so let's get some more questions rolling in here. We got about 10 more minutes and then I have to go raise small children. So. So please give me a reason to stay on. What questions do you have for me? What questions that for B could be about notion, it could be about okrs, it could be about planning. But I want to make sure that again, you all get value in exchange for your time. And on my end, again, I keep on going back to it. Just some of you are probably like me, where you have really good ideas and you're not lazy, you're willing to execute it, but it's like the planning where you're like, oh, man. Like that's where you get bogged down. And then you become a bottleneck for your own organization because you haven't put the steps in place to be successful or things fall through the cracks or they don't go as well as they could have because you didn't plan well. That's the point of having these templates in place. Yeah.

Yeah. There's been a couple of clients that I've worked with who during our time together, they end up expanding their team and actually like how hiring full time employees and the biggest thing is like helping them not be that bottleneck. And so it's like, how can we document your process? What can we create in terms of templates or videos or anything like that to make this process so much easier? And kind of going back to Fernando's comment, it can take a lot of work to actually like develop this stuff, but once you've completed it, man, smooth sailing. It'll be so easy to keep growing your business and you won't be that bottleneck.

Yeah. And one more question for the audience. Do you know what SOPs are? I'll give you another acronym, SOPs. Yes or no? Because if you don't have these in place, then you're. There's a Bit of a challenge there too, because you're not sure of how certain things flow. And if you ever want to hand things off to someone as a team member or an assistant, you're stuck. And you're stuck just kind of explaining things on the fly and maybe not doing a good job. So, sops, do you know what those are? And if so, can you go ahead and put that in the chat window? And again, on my end, this is something that I have to use a video for, because with SOPs, and I'll give it away, with SOPs, you're more or less planning or you're documenting every step of a process, right? So step one is this, step two this, step three is that so and so forth. And on my end I just skip over stuff whenever I'm explaining it, unless I really sit down and practice. I'm like, step one this, step 14 this, step 39 that. And it's like, that's why again, Megan comes in handy so often. She's like, wait, this. Let's. Let's slow down. So, yes, sops, Tanya has it. So does. Looks like actually Tanya, the only one who got it. Cool. Congrats. It's standard operating procedures, right? Matthew has it too. Matthew's a pretty bright guy, creating some really good content on LinkedIn. So if you want to learn more about him, please do. He's a pro at digital marketing. Standard operating procedures. And since I'm so bad at documenting them, what I do is actually record them using a tool called Loom L O O M. And with that you can record your screen. You can also notate underneath it as well, but then you can share that with whoever is doing these tasks. So again, on your end, if you're documenting stuff for a team or even a client, where it comes in handy, Loom works. But I believe Bea, is that what you use to document your notion board as well, or did you use a different tool?

Yeah, so Loom, actually you can embed Loom videos in notion. And so anytime I like build out a notion template, you always get like a loom walkthrough and then same with clients. Anytime I'm providing feedback on anything that they're developing, it's always a Loom video. And it's easy because you can just embed it and watch it in notion.

Yeah, with Loom, I mean, I use it not to get off topic, but I use it instead of answering long emails. Yeah, if someone's like, hey, Terry, they just bombing out a bunch of stuff, I'm like, let Me just make a video and I'll. I'll like because that way it's a more like extreme of thought type answer. And I'm not worried about how it's structured. But yeah, so I see Xavier chiming in too. Xavier. So another question from Nikki. She's saying, in planning social media tactics, where do you see the best use of your time? Is it to have a specialized team members for each platform, not just LinkedIn, blogs or Facebook? And what about alignable with. With. What about aligning with Google Business and TikTok and YouTube? So the question is, what's the best use of your time? I mean, just whenever I hear team, I think, well, how big is your team? If someone's really good at TikTok, they might be really bad at Google Business. So you want to let people play to their strengths as opposed to developing weaknesses. Typically. But that's also the benefit of having data. Where are you getting the most impact for your time? Right. You know, you could be doing, you could be getting a bunch of likes and followers on TikTok where they actually buy anything from you. If not, maybe LinkedIn's a better spot to go. So that would be my. That's like the blanket response, like, look at the data. I would also look and see where your competitors or similar companies appear to be having success too. And if they're going really hard on LinkedIn, maybe you should double down there as well. But like I keep on saying, success leaves clues and you want to analyze your own data based on the overall goals you. I will say this though. I mean, if you have a, if you have blogs, hell, that's great because blogs can become social media content, but they can also become the script for a video. So going back to repurposing, once you have this, it's almost like there's a hero hub hygiene model that YouTube encourages. Once you have this hero content, this large, wide, sleeping, like more, more robust content, you can then repurpose it into smaller pieces, meaning a social video, social post, so on, so forth, and then from there just keep on extending the life of the content. Yeah, so that would have been a good loom response. Like if you just asked me that question on email, I would have been like, I just want to talk for five minutes and hope you either gave up or got the point. But hopefully that was helpful. Xavier, thanks for the, thanks for the backup there. All right, so B, I gotta go. You gotta go too. So if you can drop that link one more time again, this is going to be a Great way for you to organize your content and your goals using this template made in Notion, which is super customizable. And again, the benefit is we have these videos that are going to help you do the same thing that'll help you make them yours. But what I'd like to know, and you can chime in afterwards is was this helpful? What other questions do you have about OKRs, about planning your day, about Notion? We're going to monitor all the comments because I know people can't watch it live all the time, but I do want to make sure that your questions answered and I might send a video if it's easier. But. But before we take off here, where can people find you? What are you up to? The best way to stay in touch.

Yeah, the best way to stay in touch is I'm Most active on LinkedIn and Instagram and on both platforms you can find me at Powerhouse Brain Studio. Make sure to follow me in whichever platform you enjoy. And I I'm working on more Notion templates, starting to develop a business development course that's will be launching this summer. So lots of good things in the works. So you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Cool. And I'd also say like, let her know what other templates you'd be interested in. Right? Maybe it's just one for creating a podcast, maybe it's just one for creating your YouTube videos, whatever it is. But yeah, chime in because this is what she enjoys doing. And on my end, I'll be here again next week with Amina Altai, who is a holistic business coach. And she'll be talking about how to develop your money mindset. So how to ask for more during sales calls, how to remove any kind of blockers or supplement beliefs involved with that and how to get paid for who you are, not just what you do. So I'll see you here next week for that one, but thanks for tuning in.

Thanks guys.

Skip over stuff. Whenever I'm explaining it, unless I really sit down and practice, I'm like, step one this, step 14 this, step 39 that. And it's like that's why again, Megan comes in handy so often. She's like wait, this, let's. Let's slow down. So yes, sops Tanya has it. So does looks like actually I think Tanya the only one who got it. Cool. Congrats. It's standard operating procedures, right? Matthew has it too. Matthew's a pretty bright guy creating some really good content on LinkedIn. So if you will want to learn more about him? Please do. He's a pro at digital marketing, standard operating procedures. And since I'm so bad at documenting them, what I do is actually record them using a tool called Loom L O O M. And with that you can record your screen. You can also notate underneath it as well, but then you can share that with whoever is doing these tasks. So again, on your end, if you're documenting stuff for a team or even a client where it comes in handy, Loom works. But I believe B. Is that what you use to document your notion board as well or did you use a different tool?

Yeah. So Loom actually you can embed Loom videos in notion. And so anytime I like build out a notion template, you always get like a Loom walkthrough. And then same with clients. Anytime I'm providing feedback on anything that they're developing, it's always a Loom video. And it's easy because you can just embed it and watch it in notion.

Yeah, with Loom, I mean I use it not to get off topic, but I use it instead of answering long emails. Yeah. If someone's like, hey Terry, they just bombing out a bunch of stuff, I'm like, let me just make a video and I'll. I'll like. Because that way it's a more like extreme of thought type answer. And I'm not worried about how it's structured. But yeah, so I see Xavier chiming into Xavier. So another question from Nikki. She's saying in planning social media tactics, where do you see the best use of your time? Is it to have a specialized team members for each platform, not just LinkedIn, blogs or Facebook? And what about alignable with. With. What about aligning with Google Business and TikTok and YouTube? So the question is, what's the best use of your time? I mean, just whenever I hear team, I think, well, how big is your team? If someone's really good at TikTok, they might be really bad at Google Business. So you want to let people play to their strengths as opposed to developing weaknesses. Typically. But that's also the benefit of having data. Where are you getting the most impact for your time? Right. You know, you could be doing, you could be getting a bunch of likes and followers on TikTok where they actually buy anything from you. If not, maybe LinkedIn's a better spot to go. So that would be my. That's like the blanket response, like look at the data. I would also look and see where your competitors or similar companies appear to be having success too. And if they're going really hard on LinkedIn, maybe you should double down there as well. But like I keep on saying, success leaves clues and you want to analyze your own data. Basically, the overall goals that you. I will say this though, I mean, if you have a, if you have blogs, hell, that's great because blogs can become social media content, but they can also become the script for a video. So going back to repurposing, once you have this, it's almost like there's a Hero hub hygiene model that YouTube encourages. Once you have this hero content, this large, wide sleeping, like more, more robust content, you can then repurpose it into smaller pieces, meaning a social video, a social post, so on, so forth, and then from there just keep on extending the life of the content. Yeah, so that would have been a good loom response. Like if you just asked me that question on email, I would have been like, I just want to talk for five minutes and hope you either gave up or got the point. But hopefully that was helpful. Xavier, thanks for the. Thanks for the backup there. All right, so B. I gotta go. You gotta go too. So if you can drop that link one more time. Again, this is going to be a great way for you to organize your content and your goals using this template made in Notion, which is super customizable. And again, the benefit is we have these videos that are going to help you do the same thing that'll help you make them yours. But what I'd like to know, and you can chime in afterwards, is was this helpful? What other questions do you have about OKRs, about planning your day, about Notion? We're going to monitor all the comments because I know people can't watch it live all the time, but I do want to make sure that your questions answered and I might send a video if it's easier. But, but before we take off here.