My Quarterly Planning Routine for productivity!

If you are a business owner who is working with your clients one on one, and you are trying to create an online course or some type of digital passive product, time is very limited. And figuring out what you should be working on, when you should be working on it, and how you're going to get it all done can be super overwhelming. And I know from experience because it took me a long time to really figure out how to plan out my days, my weeks, my months. In fact, I did an entire series on how I do that. I will link to that playlist right here. But in this video I want to share with you how I plan out my 90 days. Again, I did a more detailed version of this video. This is going to be more casual. And I just did this session with my 10k on replay mastermind to help them plan for the next quarter. And I will tell you, I did not do this process last quarter. And I have felt for the last two and a half months that I have been drowning because I just, if I don't know what projects I'm supposed to be working on or I don't have a game plan going into the quarter of what projects I'm going to be working on, on I don't know what realistically I'm going to be able to get done. And then I just don't feel accomplished. I don't feel like I'm working towards the goals that I set at the beginning of the year. So let's break this all down so you can map out your next 90 days so you're not feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or like you're missing out on something. So this is going to be pretty interactive. I encourage you to grab a paper and a pen and save this video to come back and watch every 90 days. So, like, put it on your calendar to come back and watch this video. Because like I said, this is something I do every single 90 days. And, and I think it's really critical for you to do so you can understand what you're working on and actually be productive in all the things you want to get done. So the first exercise that I teach my 10 camera play clients is let's just think about all of the wins that we accomplished over the last quarter because we can get so set into our mindset that here's the list of things that I didn't get done yet and that can discourage us, that can cause us to be unmotivated. And so I want you to hit pause on the video right now and just list out three to five things that you were able to accomplish in the last quarter? For me, I was able to pull off my first ever virtual conference. I also then followed that up with a launch of my Program Video Strategy Academy. And then I had three weeks, kind of more like four weeks vacation. So I had a lot of time not in the office, and I was still able to continue to drive revenue and book clients into my business. So take a few minutes, list your wins, and if you want to share with us your wins, pop them down in the comments so we can celebrate you too. Okay, now that we're in a more positive and excited mindset, I want you to list out all the things you think you want to do over the next 90 days. Okay? Now, sky's the limit here because we're going to weed through these and really figure out which ones we need to work on and which ones we can put in our idea parking lot. But I really want you to take a second here or a few minutes, go ahead, hit pause like I said on this video and list out the things that you want to do. So for me thinking in this next quarter, I am updating my program Video Strategy Academy. I am creating a new roadmap for my 10 can replay coaching clients. And we are also going to be planning for a challenge at the end of these 90 days as well. And then I also have to think about personal life things too, which is something we're going to talk about soon. We have vacation planned, I have summer camps planned and I also have a extended weekend trip where I won't be in the office either. So just think about the things that you want to focus on. Some other things that I want to put on. My idealist is figuring out Instagram a little bit more, leaning into Instagram, tweaking my Strategy here on YouTube. I'm really excited for the future of this YouTube channel. I got a really good idea of where I want to take it. I'm also thinking about pitching podcasts. So we've already started this process. We've got a couple, couple podcasts that we are talking with and scheduling. But those are all things that I want to really work on in Q3 that I think I want to work on until we look at the calendar. Now there is a process of this 90 day planning session that needs to happen after the quarter. So if you're thinking quarters in your business, January 1st through March 31st is Q1, April 1st through June 30th is Q2, July 1st to September 30th is Q3, and then of course, October 1st to December 3rd, 31st is Q4. And so you have to actually wait till that quarter is over to get some of these numbers. But it's really important to track. And so what we do is we track these every single month. So at the end of the quarter, it's really easy to pull these numbers. And some things you should be looking at every single quarter is how many sales that you had. Now, this could be core sales, online course sales, this could be digital product sales, this could be clients. Did you retain your clients? Did you increase your client base? Did you decrease your client base? I would also encourage you to track traffic to any funnels that you have now. This is a huge milestone inside of my mastermind that I teach my clients is building a solid funnel, having your first funnel built. Because if you're creating content here on YouTube or Instagram or anywhere else, you want to make sure that content is making money. And the one way to do that is to have a solid evergreen funnel in place that you can send traffic to for people to buy something or for people to specifically sign up to work with you. So the metrics, metrics you should also be looking at every single quarter is how much traffic did you get to the landing page of that funnel, what was your conversion rates for that funnel? So people who clicked on your page that actually bought. Because you want to make sure that all of the work you did over the 90 days, all of the projects that you committed to, all of the content that you created is turning into more revenue. That's the whole point and why we're doing this. Or if your goal is to just say sustainable or stable, you want to make sure that that's happening as well. So these are numbers you should look at as soon as the quarter is over so that you have those numbers. Because if we're doing it, you know, a week before the quarter is over, you still have a week worth of time. Now, I do have a spreadsheet for tracking these numbers. I give them to my 10k on replay mastermind clients if that's something you're interested in. Specifically getting your numbers understood. Building your funnel for your online course or your one on one services, creating content that's going to drive traffic to it, getting a 90 day plan in place. We are accepting a few clients, we only take so many at a time. So there is a limited amount of availability. So I will link to the application below. It's at trina little.com forward/10k and we will reach out to you with further information if we think it would be a good fit to work together. But let's move into this core piece of my 90 day planning and it follows my 3S system. So like 4S's sell, support and scale. So the first thing we're going to do is sell. This is where we're going to figure out what are we going to be promoting every single month over the next 90 days. Because if you aren't promoting something, people aren't going to buy. You have to talk about your offers, you have to talk about your services if you want people to buy or sign up to work with you. And trust me, this is a huge mistake. And still some kind of lazy habit that I fall into is forgetting to talk about what I have available and what I do. And so I actually skipped a step. So if we go back before we look at sell, you want to pull out your calendar. And for me, I literally just grab printer paper and make makeshift calendars. I also have scratch calendars for my clients where they can print scratch calendars that I've made that look a little bit nicer than this. But the key here is to write out the next 90 days like a calendar. And I want you to, before we start mapping out what we are selling, I want you to look at how many work days you realistically have to work during the next 90 days. And so for this particular quarter, I'm looking at Q3. Maybe you're watching this video and you're planning Q4. Now maybe you're planning Q1. But for this particular quarter, I am going to use the example of Q3. And for me, like I said, I know I may be out of town at my own mastermind, a week in July. I know that we are possibly doing an extended weekend trip with our kids in August. I know that the kids in September already have a specific day off of school that I need to account for. I'm trying to take Fridays off in the summer as well because I don't have child care scheduled for Fridays and I know we have a camp week for the kids where I don't get the kids to camp till 9 and then I have to pick them up at 3. So my schedule is a little bit wonky that week. So I need to get that on the calendar to see what actual days I'm working with. Other things you want to consider putting on this calendar during this time is any doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, massages that you want to book. Get this on your calendar and I will just sit at my dinner table while the kids are at Nana's house and just start mapping this out. When I do this process, if I want to take it slow and just enjoy it, it may take me two to three hours. Otherwise, I can probably zoom through this in about an hour. But it saves me hours of time throughout the following quarter to have this game plan. The next thing that I want you to put on your calendar as well, before we start mapping out what you're promoting, is when you're going to be creating content. So the biggest question I get from people all the time is how do you stay consistent with YouTube? It is on my calendar. I treat it as like a doctor's appointment or a dentist appointment. For me, I have found my rhythm works best. Planning on creating content every other week. So, for example, on this particular calendar that I have mapped out, I have the day that I'm going to create the content. So plan it, research it, script it, and then the next day I have what I'm going to film that content. I do have that day blocked off, those days blocked up. But generally these are tasks that take me about two to three hours. And they're. They're the first thing that I do in the morning, so planning and scripting my content, and then the following day filming my content like I'm doing right now on a Thursday morning. Um, so I still can have things in the afternoon, but if I'm not creating content, I'm not talking about my offers and I'm not going to make sales. And so this is why it's important. If you are going to commit to wanting to get sales, grow your business, you have to commit to creating content. And like I said, I like to be in the schedule every other week that I'm doing this. And that means I'm doing two videos at a time. I'm only posting one video a week on YouTube because it's a very targeted video with a very specific topic that I know my audience needs once and will convert them. And so that's why every other week I am doing two videos at a time. And for me, that's a good pace. All right, I hope you hit pause and you've mapped out your calendar. I'm just curious if you want to share with us in the comments, how many actual working days do you have over the next nine, 80 days? I only have about 30 to 34 working days over the next 90 day quarter. And so this is really what's going to help us figure out what we can realistically get Done. So we don't feel stressed, we don't feel burned out and we aren't dreading our to do list. So let's talk about sell this first. S in my planning system, I mentioned earlier, you need to be thinking about what you're going to sell every single month. So this could be a major launch. I recommend only having one of these a quarter because they are exhausting. So if you do want to have a launch over quarter three or whatever quarter you're planning right now, I would put it towards the end of that quarter so you have plenty of time to plan for it. Other things that you can put on your plan to promote are like flash sales, maybe special bundles that you're going to do with your offers. Maybe you're going to highlight a certain product so you can increase sales to that product that particular month or maybe you're doing some affiliate pushing. So we know in this particular quarter we are actually doing a partnership with our funnel software, FBI funnels. So we know in one of these months a lot of our content is going to be talking about funnels and we are going to expect to see some revenue generated during this period for affiliate sales. So how this particular calendar, it looks like for me in this quarter is the first month in this example, July for me, we are going to be doing a free three day workshop series called Profitable YouTube Presence. So if you're watching this in real time in June of 2020 and you want to join me for this free three part workshop series about a profitable YouTube presence, go to treanalittle.comworkshop to sign up to participate in these three totally free workshops. So we know that month one in this quarter we are really promoting list building. We are generating a lot of content around people signing up for this workshop series and we're just going to provide value, lots of value. All right, we may not be selling a lot. We don't have any pitch specifically for this workshop series. The goal here is to just build our audience and provide value. Then in August we are actually doing something brand new that we've never done before. Because as YouTube continues to change and strategies shift for business owners here on YouTube, I'm going to be revamping my YouTube program and I'm going to be doing it live with a select amount of people and what I'm calling my YouTube accelerator. So we are going to be be talking about the YouTube accelerator program. It's going to be just a few people inside because like I said, I'm going to be going through all the brand new course content and teaching it live to get feedback and to see things that I need to tweak so that I can ensure I'm teaching YouTube strategy clearly and that everybody that goes through the program once it's finished, will get the results that they want. And then in September, we are planning for a launch. We don't have a specific launch yet, but we know it's there. We're going to get some feedback based on our workshop series in July before we determine what we're going to launch in September, but we know that is our other promotional period. Now. We will also throughout the month be featuring other products that we have, like our going video program where I teach you just how to get started with video, how to film your content, how to create a YouTube workflow. Right. So I will be promoting that and then because of the funnel built behind it, it'll have people being offered different products behind the scenes. So we should be continuing to make sales throughout the summer if we are promoting our $37 offer. Okay, so hit pause, figure out what you're going to be promoting or at least talking about, or at least making sure you're telling people to sign up or purchase during the next 90 days. And if you want to go ahead and share with us if you have something big that you're going to be launching or promoting over the next 90 days. Now that we know how we are making money over the next 90 days, which is what keeps the lights on in our business. The next S is support. What are the tasks you're going to be doing that you have to do in your business to keep it running? Right. We need the money to keep it running. But there are things that we have got to do to keep the business running as well, specifically content creation. Right. This is where you're going to ensure you have the time mapped out in your calendar for planning content. All right? Because without content, you're not talking to your audience, whether that's through email, podcast, whatever you're doing. But you need to be talking to your audience. You need to be building relationships with your audience and you need to be having calls to action for them to buy or work with you. That is key in this support phase of your 90 day planning. Are you adding to your calendar right now if you didn't before time to create content? This is also where you're going to add time into things that you do every single day, like client work. So, for example, I'm going to add to my calendar right now every single Monday morning From from about 8:30 to 11:30 is supporting my 10k on replay mastermind. They send me audits by 8am Monday morning and then I respond to every single audit that comes in. So I know there is nothing that I'm doing Monday morning every single Monday of my calendar over the next 90 days, but committing to responding to my 10k on replay clients. I also have one on one hot seats with my 10 count replay clients clients in the afternoons of Wednesday and Thursday. So I block those afternoons off as well so that they have availability to book time with me so we can talk one on one about their strategies. So I need to block that off my calendar as well. Another thing that I do every single week is writing a personal email for Monday morning. If you've been on my email list, you've seen the last couple of weeks I sent a personal email about the truth about launching and the truth about working over the summer. This is just a way for me to get back to writing, start building my confidence in writing and share more personal transparency with my audience to see what really goes on behind the scenes in a business. So I know Fridays or Thursdays I need to find time to write that email because I really want it to be as real time as possible. Now other things that are on this support area in my calendar are things like team meetings, marketing team meetings, team check in. So I do have three full time employees that I'm checking in with. I also have a weekly group coaching call with my 10 count replay clients and I'm also actively looking to create new valuable content all the time for my 10 count replay clients. So I need to make sure I'm baking this into my 90 days as well. So again, if you're working one on one with clients, this is where you're going to add on your calendar the time you're going to spend with those clients. You may also want to think about the time you're going to add for discovery calls, application review. I did get a question the last time I hosted this with my clients about what is your ratio of where you're spending your time? And I will say about 50% of my time goes into marketing. So whether that is content creation with YouTube, emails, Reels, responding to people on Instagram, about 50% of my time does go in to marketing because that's the backbone of your business. I would say then the other side of the business, the other 50% would kind of like slide back and forth between 30% clients, 20% team. So I'm having to support My team, I'm having to ensure they have what they need to be successful in their business. They are also supporting my clients as well. And so they have certain things they support my clients with too. And then that 30% is me just showing up for my clients, being on the calls, being on the hot seats and doing those audits for them. The last thing that I will add here that you should add time into your calendar and the support area is admin time and specifically tracking numbers, monthly sales, monthly traffic. So it's the content you're creating, driving traffic. You really want to get an idea of what your business is experiencing each month so you can start to see trends. You can start to see the time you're putting into marketing. Because if you're putting 50% of time into marketing, is it paying off? But you should definitely be adding time to at least every single month to review some of these numbers. This third S is scale. So these are the projects that you're going to be working on over the next 90 days to help you scale your business or generate more revenue in your business. So remember I talked about earlier having a funnel that you can send traffic to to make consistent sales. Maybe that is on your list. That is something that you need to do. That is something that we help our 10 Camera Play clients with all the time so that they can start making money as soon as they join the mastermind. So maybe that's on your list to do this quarter. Maybe it's to start a YouTube channel because you got to do the research on the back end and build out the strategy. Start planning your content and filming it. So that could take you a few weeks to get it up and running. So that's going to be a project for this whole quarter. If you're going to be launching, that's another project. If you want to be creating an online course, course, that's going to be a project as well. Now, realistically, again, if you are on your own right now, which is at the first five years of my business was me, you probably can take on about two to three projects each quarter because I know where you're at in your business. You're working heavily with clients and you don't have a lot of free time to work on these extra projects. But I think it's really important that you find the time to work on these projects because. Because if you're wanting to make more money in your business, we can't add more hours to the day to take on more clients. So I actually had this conversation with one of my clients, she said, how do I start finding time to work on an online course? And I said, well, there's two options. You can start working more evenings through the night, right? Because that's the only other option. Or you take one less client, hopefully the business can weather having one less client. And you take the time that you would spend spend on that one client that you're going to release and spend it on building a funnel that's going to generate you revenue so that hopefully you can start generating revenue through that funnel to take up the money you lost from that client. Then you have time to start building your course. And then hopefully as that funnel keeps generating revenue, maybe you can then lose another client and you can get your course out to the public, right? So that's how you're really going to start to look at how you're prioritizing what projects you're actually taking on. What is your end goal? What do you want to be doing by the end of this quarter or really by the end of the year? Okay. And then you're going to start to prioritize the two to three projects that are most important that are going to get you there quicker. So now that you have these projects, there's going to be all these tasks that are involved in these projects. Like you don't just say launch a funnel, right? There is landing page copy, landing page design, funnel automation, all of that stuff, right? So what I like to do is I focus all my project work in the front end of my day like I mentioned earlier. So from 8:30 to 10:30 that is my project time, all right? That is when I'm focusing on these scale tasks and projects. Then I, like I said, have certain days blocked off for content. So every other Tuesday and Wednesday day during that 8:30 to 10:30 time period, I'm working on content because my afternoons then are for clients, right? So I really like to theme my days for these different parts of my 90 day plan. Sell, support and scale. Now I do have a way that I use Google Calendar to do this. I will link that video up here for you to watch so that you can see how I then get this into my Google Calendar. Now this last step in my 90 day plan is crucial and it's getting it into my Asana. This video is already massive. I'm wondering if you would just like me to do a full tutorial and how I set up my quarterly plan inside of Asana. It's a board that I've created caught at a glance and it breaks down my 90 day goals in what I am selling and what I am scaling so I can see from a glance at a glance what I'm working on and help me track my my goals. If you want to see the At a Glance video comment below At a glance because having it in asana again allows me to stay productive. I sit down here every morning, pull up my asana and see what is on my checklist. Everything that is in my asana checklist is associated with everything that we wrote down here in this video in this 90 day plan so that I'm not focusing on anything that is not driving me to achieve the two to three projects that I laid out for the next 90 days days. Like I said, I did do a full planning series earlier this year. I will link it on your screen right now. I will also link in the description box that Google Calendar video as well so you can check that out. Please let me know any questions you have about this 90 day plan in the comments and I'll see you in that next video.