In today’s video I am walking you through my monthly functional planning process. Watch as a plan my month and share exactly what functional planning principles and guidelines I integrate into my monthly calendar.
When I first developed the methodology of Functional Planning back in 2016 I defined a set of parameters to use as a guideline to ensure your planner and the way you were using it were functional. I assigned 3 roles to the functional planner:
1st is to Schedule Events 2nd is to Track Tasks 3rd is to Plan Actions
Now, in the way I execute on the Functional Planning methodology, the Monthly Calendar Spread is the way I choose to keep track of scheduled events and items.
Here are a few popular types of events you might want to ensure you are scheduling into your planner, specifically on the monthly calendar.
Reoccuring Events:A scheduled event that happens on a consistent frequency
Things like bill due dates, trash days, paydays, events with a predictable pattern- for myself as a content creator, this may also mean using my monthly calendar as a place to map out the days content will be posted so that I remain on schedule with those items.
Now with reoccurring events, a major tip I always share is that although it might be nice to schedule everything in your calendar- unless you need the information for reference or because you are taking a specific action related to it, I think less is more- especially in a monthly calendar spread where space is usually limited.
Appointments: A non routine event that takes up a block of time in our schedule
Things like doctors visits, classes, meetings, anything that will take up time and you may also need to prepare ahead of time for. You will keep the schedule in your monthly calendar, but then any associated tasks or prep should go on a master task list for the month or directly into the daily or weekly spread you use.
Special Days:Holidays, birthdays anniversaries etc
I know some people might keep a list of holidays or birthdays on a separate reference calendar, but I think its good to transfer that information to your monthly especially because its much more functional to see those days in your calendar so you can plan accordingly. I can’t tell you how many times I missed a special event because it was on some other list I wasn’t in the habit of checking regularly!
Due dates:If you have projects or work with specific due dates, I also think its important to keep these on your monthly calendar. Again, you will likely keep specific task information on your Master Monthly Task List and transfer it to the day or week it belongs to as well, but having that big picture view of your month is important.
And I want to be clear, it doesn’t matter what type of monthly calendar you are using. Here I am using a Month on 1 Page, but, these parameters still apply for Month on 2 page as well. You will still be tracking the same types of events, but depending on your spread, you may have more or less room for detail- choose the monthly spread that works for you, and use whatever means works for you to mark down information on your monthly. If that means writing in appointments or using highlighters or color coding to indicate things wonderful. I use some stickers to help me indicate specific things on my calendar. Just do what works for you and what you like. As long as you know what everything indicates create whatever shorthand works for you.
Of course, in terms of the monthly spreads I use that are designs from TheCharmedShop.com my monthly calendar is always followed up by a Master Task List for the month.
Like I mentioned earlier, task tracking is essential to the functional planning methodology and on a monthly basis I make sure to compile a full list of tasks that apply to the month and transfer them to this master monthly task list. The tasks that go on this list may be individual tasks but they may also be projects taken from my project planning or business planning inserts. Sometimes with projects there are really too many tasks to list out on the master list individually so I find it acceptable and still functional to list out the project itself so long as you have those individual steps of the project broken out somewhere for reference.
I’ll also make sure to populate a top 3 priorities for the month as well. The concept of prioritization is also a major element of Functional Planning. Not only do we always need to know what is on our plate, we need to have some sense of hierarchy. Having a monthly top 3 gives me clarity throughout the month that no matter all the little tasks or projects I might touch- I am clear on the fact that the priority ones deserve the most attention to ensure they are completed.
So that is how to create a functional monthly plan. I hope this information has been educational and inspiring. If you would like to purchase my Monthly Calendar Inserts, I will leave you a link below. Of course you can expect that I will be creating more content on functional planning in the future that walk through weekly and daily planning as well as project planning and more.
I hope you had a wonderful and productive month of July. I know I, yet again, took a step back from the blog last month in order to focus more fully on completing and launching my 2021 Planner Insert Collection, but I am back and I have amazing news for you!
Last week, I had a TREMENDOUS BREAK-THRU! And it has to do with my content.
If you’ve been following my Entrepreneurial Journey for the past few years, you may recall that there was once a time (2016 and few years previous) that I had been posting consistently across all my major platforms. I blogged several times a week, posted weekly videos, even updated my Instagram feed multiple times per week. But in 2017 I burnt out, I took a step back and pretty much since that time, I have been struggling to get myself back onto a consisting posting schedule across all my platforms.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying, I would set out with the best of intentions to reignite content on my platforms but for no substantial reason outside of a major mental block, I couldn’t make it work. There was something in my mindset, some limiting belief about what I was capable of and what would be sustainable that ultimately continuously threw me off my content creation schedule.
Over the last few weeks since the launch of my inserts, you may have seen I had been posting 3 videos a week, trying to catch up on essential videos I knew I needed to produce to answer key questions you in my community have been asking me to address, particularly around my inserts. The launch was the optimal time to get that content out to you and I was able to make it happen, of course at the expense of posting to other platforms.
But last week I had a break-thru. During a particularly High Vibe Business Planning Session, I sat down and felt inspired to map out a complete Marketing Plan for all my platforms. Blog, YouTube, IG, and even my email list. And in that moment something major clicked for me. Like the proverbial switch had been flipped and the lights turned on. I had a reasonable content creation schedule sitting in front of me that was populated with content I was actually excited to create.
Now, I’m not going to claim this break-thru was completely sudden. It was definitely the result of some mindset work I have been doing over the past few months to help me get out of that weird funk I had been sitting in because of all the world drama that was emotionally draining me. Particularly, in just the few days before that High Vibe Planning Session, I had done a few excellent journaling and future writing sessions where I believe I unclogged a lot of negative gunk that had accumulated in my mind over the past few years.
There is a quote I love from Marianne Williamson that says “God is the water, and you are the faucet.” I think my faucet had been clogged for quite some time and I needed to do the work of removing it from my psyche so that the water could flow again.
And flow it certainly did!
You know, several times over the past few years, I have hit a peak with my mindset after a period of stagnation, and I feel like each time those small break-thrus helped me take more and more steps into alignment. Even though valleys ultimately followed those peaks, right now in this moment I feel an even greater sense of clarity and confidence that I will be able to follow through on this new endeavor because this time it feels like a missing piece has been found. I’m seeing my future vision so much more clearly then I have in a long time. And for the first time in a long time, my content schedule isn’t merely a fill in the blank schedule, it’s actually filled with exciting content ideas.
So, of course I want to share my new content schedule with you! Here is what you can expect:
MONDAY Instagram Post
TUESDAY Blog Post
WEDNESDAY Instagram IGTV Post
THURSDAY Blog Post
FRIDAY Instagram Post
SATURDAY YouTube Video
SUNDAY Email to my list
Yea, that is one heck of a content schedule, right? Daily content from me and I feel very positive about it.
Of course, if you want to make sure you catch all the wonderful content I produce, you are going to want to make sure to do the following:
Next, let me give you a short preview of the types of content you can expect from me moving forward.
Planning & Productivity (of course!)
Online Business Strategy
What I’m reading and book recommendations
Mindset shifts
Metaphysical topics
My success rituals
Inspiration and motivation to live your best life and pursue your dreams
New monthly freebies, downloads and updates to TheCharmedShop.com as well!
There is so much I can’t wait to share with you moving forward! I do hope you will continue with me on this journey and that we can use this opportunity to grow closer together as a community. I would love to hear about what content you would like to see from me and have me integrate into this new content schedule, so don’t hesistate to leave me a comment, send me an email or drop me a DM on Instagram!
Wishing you a productive and successful month ahead!
I am very pleased to announce that the 2021 Planner Insert Collection is now officially available on The Charmed Shop!
Click the button below to shop the collection of printable inserts now.
New & Noteworthy
There are over a dozen new print on demand insert options in this collection ranging from new calendar and agenda spreads, to new a la carte insert options and even a few new bundles.
The biggest change that has been made in The Charmed Shop for 2020 onward, however, is that all the PDF inserts have been reformatted and when you purchase a design you get BOTH the Half Letter AND Personal Size File. Included with each purchase is also a highly detailed set of Print Instructions that will walk you through printing your inserts at Personal, Half Letter, A5, Full Letter and A4 size!
AND that’s not all! So many of you have been asking if my inserts can be printed to fit the Happy Planner and it’s proprietary dimensions of 7in W x 9.25 in H and I am pleased to announce that the answer is now YES!
One of the most significant changes to the 2021 Planner Insert Collection has been made to the Charmed Life Master Planner. Now called the Master Plan System, this print on demand functional planning system now includes multiple different options for Monthly Calendars and Weekly Agenda spreads. For monthly spreads you can now choose between Month on One Page Calendar or Month on Two Page Calendar. For weekly planning you can now choose between Week on Two Pages, Week on One Page or Day on One Page inserts. There are also options for you to purchase all the monthly or weekly insert options as well at a special bundle price. All the print on demand inserts have been reformatted to be even easier to print at home, and are a breeze to mix and match. It’s never been easier to swap and customize your planning system to fit your evolving planning and organization needs as the year progresses!
2021 Planner Insert Launch Party
Now, of course to celebrate all the new planning goodies launching in The Charmed Shop, you are invited to the LIVE Planner Launch Party I am hosting on YouTube TOMORROW Saturday July 11th @ 2pm EST. I’ll be emailing out a direct link to the launch party on Saturday morning to those on my email list if you are interested in joining me. During the party, you’ll get a chance to see all the new inserts in action and ask me all your planning and productivity questions!
So, I hope to see you LIVE on Saturday for the launch party and get a chance to introduce you to each of the new inserts in The Charmed Shop personally!
Of course, all the new inserts are now available so click the button below to start shopping now!
I hope you are all staying safe and healthy at home with your families during this quarantine time.
Today I want to give you an update on a project I am working on, specifically, the launch of my 2021 Planner Inserts and I wanted to share my latest monthly freebie from my shop!
But the first thing I would like to express before we get into all that is that Black Lives Matter.
Now, if you take any issue with that statement, I don’t think I’m the creator or business for you. My channel, my platforms, my business, work and mission in life is to help people identify and move closer to their goals and dreams for their best life ever, and if you objectively cannot see or understand that a significant population of people have been intentionally and systematically stunted from that opportunity that many of us take for granted, than this isn’t the place for you and I encourage you to take time away from my content and learn more about the Black Lives Matter movement. I’m going to leave some resources linked here for you to check out if you need them.
Now, let’s talk 2021 Planner Inserts!
So, I am in the process of updating my 2021 Master Planner inserts and I am going on a completely new direction with the format of my master planner system. I don’t want to give anything away too soon, but I am adding more planner spread options to the master planner and also turning it into a more flexible functional planning system by giving you mix and match insert options.
It is my intention right now, to hold the live stream launch party for my inserts on Saturday July 11th @ 2pm eastern standard time. At that time, you’ll be able to purchase the newly formatted designs and I will walk you through all the options and how this new system works.
So if you would like to join me live for the launch, please mark your calendar for July 11th @ 2pm!! Those of you on my email list will receive the direct link to the event that morning.
Now, with that being said, I also wanted to reach out to you in my community, to see what other inserts you need for your system that I don’t already offer. I know over the last few years I have been streamlining my planner options down as my planning needs changed and became more streamlined, but I’m seeing things differently now and changing my own planning system up, and I want to start creating a more varied and flexible system that will work for more people. So, please let me know in the comments what types of inserts you would like to see from me. Do you need a specific layout that doesn’t exist or that you think I would improve the design of? Are there supplemental inserts you would love to have in your planner outside of just calendar spreads and project plans. I am going to be releasing a Finance bundle with this launch, which was highly requested, but you tell me what you need and want in your planner because I want to create it for you!
Speaking of things I have created for you, if you didn’t know, each month this year I have been designing and releasing new free printable inserts, and my freebie for July is ready for download. It is a set of print on demand half page lists. I love a good half page list, they are a great way to add a task list to your planner spread if you are running low on room, or perfect for making a shopping list to take with you while you run errands. I love them and of course I design and use my own, and I wanted to share them with you. I recommend printing out and prepunching a bunch of them to keep on hand. Or you could even laminate them and make them reusable. Here is a link to a video I made a few years ago on creating reusable to do lists if you are curious.
I wish you all the best for a productive June and I hope to see you at the Live 2021 Planner Insert Launch Party over on my Youtube Channel on Saturday July 11th, 2020 @ 2pm ET!
I sincerely hope you and yours are doing well, staying safe, healthy and productive at home. As you may already know from my May #ICYMI post, the past month was something of a mental struggle for me social distancing for so long in this remarkable time we are living in. This is the thing though, I have gone through so many dark periods in my past that I know how important it is to first honor the way I am feeling in the moment, but also not to let myself succumb to it for too long. So yes, I was struggling this month, but I had to just let those feelings out once and for all and then force myself back into a positive mindset. One thing I know can happen to me when I go through a rough patch is that if I don’t actively fight it, I can stay in that sad mindset for way too long. It’s certainly not easy for me to shift out of that place, but I have an arsenal of mindset shifting tools that I use to help me, and if I don’t execute on them, I know I can get stuck for a longer time than necessary. It all starts for me with making the executive decision that I’m not going to allow myself to stay in that mindset, especially not without a fight!
So, what are those tools? How do I dig myself out of a dark place when I’ve fallen into one? Here are some strategies and tools I use.
Gratitude: I think gratitude is one of the most underrated and glossed over topics when it comes to managing your mindset. It’s easy to take for granted, that’s for sure, but no matter what is going on in your life at any given moment, each of us has dozens, hundreds maybe even thousands of things we can be grateful for if we choose to tap into that energy. It is, of course, a choice to feel grateful, and I think one of the problems around the idea of gratitude is that we hear about it so often or we can rattle off a quick default list of things to be grateful for, but we fail to tap into the feeling of gratitude when we do so. I could make a list of a hundred things I am grateful for right now, but just approaching that task as a catalog won’t shift my mindset. Instead I need to stop and focus on each gratitude item and think about how that item functions in my life and what my life would be without it. It’s certainly true that we often don’t appreciate things until they are gone, and to evoke a true emotional response from myself while making a gratitude list, this is a prompt I often use to help me really feel the energy of gratitude and experience the benefits a gratitude practice has to offer.
Rampage Meditation: There is a subgroup of meditations out there that are known as “rampages.” Go ahead, type Rampage Meditation into the YouTube search bar and you will see what I am talking about. This is a specific style of meditation that has grown in popularity over the past few years, usually, but not always associated with Abraham Hicks and Law of Attraction, but I find that this type of meditation is a really great tool to use to shift my energy. Essentially, this meditation type is a guided meditation where someone is feeding you prompts, affirmations and insight intended to help you shift your dominant emotional energy (aka your vibration) upwards to gratitude, love, happiness, joy, etc! If you think about your emotions as a sliding scale where sadness, depression, anger, etc are at the bottom and happiness, joy, contentment are at the top, the point of these guided meditations is to wind your energy up towards the more positive feelings on the scale. When I am particularly sad, this type of meditation often works the best for me. Because just sitting and meditating on my own is something I can’t do easily or effectively. But these rampage meditations give me the thoughts to think and help encourage me.
Journaling: Whenever I am feeling bad about something in my life or feeling like things aren’t going the way I want them to, journaling helps me so much to identify my limiting beliefs and overcome them logically and reasonably. Journaling is often a tool and strategy I use to self-coach or give myself a mock-therapy session. Now, if you have never done any sort of coaching or therapy, let me walk you through my general process for how I journal out my feelings. First, I always identify what I am feeling and the reasons why I believe I am feeling the way I am feeling. I know that for myself, there is usually some issue in my life that is not going the way I want it to that ends up causing my emotional distress. In the case of how I’ve been feeling recently in lockdown, I know the problem for me is that I start feeling powerless that I cannot just do whatever I want right now. So I start with that situation and feeling and I rant it out to my journal. I complain it all out to my journal until I feel like I’ve exhausted my feelings on the matter and laid them all out. Then, I play the role of coach or therapist for myself and force myself to recognize logical reasons why whatever I am complaining about is not true. For example, even though I can’t go out and do all the things I want to do right now, there are still plenty of things I can do and want to do, and it’s important for me to identify those things and why those are very important for me to do if I want to adjust this feeling. Then the final thing I like to do in this journaling session is make a plan for moving forward. Essentially I ask myself what I am going to do moving forward from this journaling session in a way that combats the negative emotions I was experiencing to begin with. I might list out steps, brainstorm ideas, or make a to do list, but I always like to end these journaling sessions with a plan for self-management to help me avoid the trigger again. Then I have this list or this plan to come back to if and when those feelings creep up at me again, which they do- but having the plan acts as a sort of defense for me. Like “no, we are not going to go down this road again, you already solved this problem, here is the plan, focus on the plan.” And honestly, this helps me a lot to break out of the negative emotional patterns and focus on establishing the positive emotional pattern instead.
So, that is what I do when I get into a low place, like I was in during May, and this is a strategy I am going to continue to focus on as I move into June. Because the trigger itself isn’t going away, I am still in isolation, so I need to stick to that plan to keep myself positive and execute regularly on those strategies that help me stay positive and motivated. This is my executive decision to choose joy and focus on that instead of letting negative patterns take over my mind and ultimately derail my life and happiness. But if it does happen again, and I do go dark again, it’s okay because I have these strategies to help pull me out and each time I get stronger and stronger. It’s progress not perfection we are aiming for here!
I hope this installment of Entrepreneurial has been insightful for you! Here is to another great month ahead. I would love to hear how your May went and what you are up to in June, so please do feel free to leave me a comment and tell me about it!
I have to admit, this month was something of a struggle for me. Being at home on lock down since my birthday in March, it’s been a mental battle staying productive and positive for so long in such unusual circumstances. So, if you have also been struggling, my heart goes out to you as well and just know you are not alone. So many people are struggling right now in so many different ways, but just know that your feelings and experience are valid and worth taking the time to acknowledge and understand.
Despite the mental anguish May brought to me, I have to admit, creating content for you was certainly a welcome outlet and reprieve from my own mind. This month I created 12 pieces of content for you that I hope you were able to enjoy and learn from, but if you missed something, don’t worry, I have catalogued it all for you here in this post for your quick reference.
As always, I do hope this post is useful to you, and I do find that for those who like to share my content, this is always a great post to share with friends, family and co-workers because it gives a nice overview of a months worth of content on various topics with easy links to everything new! So, don’t hesitate sharing this post above all because it really is a nice bit of reference for all the content and information I publish in a month.
I hope this roundup helps you locate any content of mine you may have missed this month. I’d love to hear which content was your favorite from the month and what you’d like to see more of from me in the future. Please leave me a comment below and share your thoughts!
June is right around the corner, so you know what that means? Time for another fun monthly freebie!
When I was outlining the designs I wanted to create for my new round of freebies this year, I original had listed that I wanted to create a printable travel packing list for June just in time for summer in the northern hemisphere. However, things change of course, and with most of the world still on lockdown and social distancing, I thought that insert design wouldn’t be the most applicable. Instead, looking at my own life for inspiration, I realized I was watching a lot more shows and movies now and that I needed a little tracker to help me remember all the titles I wanted to watch and their schedules. So, that is what I decided to create for us for June. A Television and Movie Tracker insert!
The Television & Movie Tracker Insert is a FREE Planning Printable you can use to keep track of all the television shows, series and movies you want to watch. The versatile design makes it easy to list out the title of your show or movie, then circle the day of the week the show airs and below that the time. You have room to denote the network or channel for reference, whether you have your DVR set to record the show and finally if you have watched it. Simple as that- now you have one simple insert to use as reference when you are planning out your week so you make time for all the shows, movies and series you are interested in!
The insert is delivered as a printable PDF file sized for half letter 5.5″ x 8.5″ without cut lines when printed at 100% scale, but feel free to print in larger or smaller scale as needed.
And of course, if there is anything you need from me, any questions you have for dealing with your productivity or life during this challenging time, please let me know how I can support you and bring you the solutions or resources to make things a little easier for you!
I have been reevaluating my plans for the rest of May and have decided to cancel the two live streams I had scheduled for this month. I would like to establish a new schedule starting in June once I have my thoughts in order, but for now I just need some time and space to work on things behind the scenes. Thank you so much for your interest in my live events and I hope to have you join me for another in the future!
Today, I just wanted to quickly update you on the next two live stream classes I will be holding for May. I know for the past few weeks my schedule was up in the air, but things have calmed down now and I have set my final two live classes for the month.
• Saturday May 23rd, 2020 @ 2PM EDT: HOW TO GET CLEAR ON YOUR BUSINESS GOALS
• Saturday May 30th, 2020 @ 2PM EDT: JUNE PLAN WITH ME
I would love for you to join me live for these events, so please do mark your calendar and set a reminder. If you are on my email list, as always, you will receive an email from me before class begins with the link and reminder. I may begin sending these reminder emails a little earlier than I have just to ensure everyone has a chance to join on time!
This week I celebrate my sixth year in business! That’s right, six years ago I left the safety and security of my Fortune 50 sales and marketing job to go full time for myself creating a business and income via social media! I had no clue at the time that just one year later I would have completely replaced my income and grown my community online to over 50k regular viewers, subscribers and followers, and now six years in, have created a steady six figure business with a following of over 125k! If you had asked me when I had gotten started to say what my business would look like in a year, let alone six, I most certainly couldn’t have predicted that my online shop where I sell digital products and services would become my dominate area of income, and that I would be shifting my focus to develop educational programs aimed at helping small businesses replicate my success. But despite all the success I have found in the last six years, I know that I also made plenty of mistakes, especially in that crucial first year of business. No business or person is perfect and I think I fell into some very common traps as I started my business that brought me a great amount of insight into the way I run my business and the direction I want to take it in the future. So, for your edification and perhaps amusement, here are the 5 mistakes I made in my first year of business and the lessons I learned from each of them!
Mistake #1: Work Extremely Hard
I think there is a major misconception that if you work really hard you can make a business a success, as though sheer force of will and effort will make it so, but unfortunately that’s not the case. When I left my job to go full time for myself, I took on a major amount of work, committing to producing five videos a week for my YouTube channel, thinking that this great effort would bring me success. Although I wouldn’t say this was a futile effort, it certainly wasn’t as effective because I was doing a lot of work but it was all over the place. The main problem was that I didn’t have a plan. I just thought I would make a bunch of videos and that would bring me a greater audience. Once I stopped this nonsense and made a plan for what I wanted my YouTube channel to become, I suddenly found that I was able to make fewer videos a week, but because they were focused against my plans for my channel, a cohesive vision quickly came together and my subscriber count grew astronomically!
Lesson Learned: Hard work is useless until you have a clear plan
Mistake #2: Make sure your products and services are perfect before launching them
When I started my business May 2014, one of my major goals was to get a shop up and running where I could sell my printable inserts. I had been asked by numerous members of my community to sell the printable inserts that I had created for my own planner and I thought that the printables would be a nice (albeit small) passive income. I did a lot of research figuring out how to set up a shop on my existing website, and spent way too much time anguishing over whether or not my inserts were high quality enough to sell. It took me until October of that year to finally launch my shop, and once I did, my inserts were met with overwhelming praise and support. I immediately regretted taking so long to get the shop up and running. That small income I had originally expected surpassed my expectations the first month of my launch and then that small income became larger and larger as months progressed and more products were added to my shop. What started off as an idea for a small side income turned into the majority of my monthly income which eventually lead me to replace my former salary in just a few months!
Lesson Learned: Done is better than perfect
Mistake #3: Try to help everyone
Within that first year of business, I experienced an extraordinary amount of growth. I know for some, my numbers may seem small, but I have been able to exceed every goal I have set for myself in terms of my community growth. When I first started off with my business, I told myself that it was of the utmost importance that I gave each and every member of my community my time if they reached out for my help, and in the beginning, this was not a problem for me. As months progressed, however, and I began to get more and more questions and emails from members of my community asking me for help, I began to realize that I wouldn’t be able to personally help everyone. There was just not enough time in the day for me to respond to each lengthy email from a subscriber with an equally lengthy email. I can’t reply to every comment, and I can’t answer every question, I’m just one person trying to do my best for my business. This was probably the most difficult lesson for me to learn, but over time, I began to train myself to give short and succinct answers to emails, to use links to my videos and blog posts to help me save time answering questions and to rely on the help of my more informed community members to pick up the slack with frequently asked questions. Although I’d love to have long email chats with my community members, I know that my time is precious and that I can help more people in less time with my new strategy, which means I can give more of myself in other areas.
Lesson Learned: It’s not personal, it’s business
Mistake #4: Make sure you look busy!
I don’t know if this mistake was something I inherited from my years in the corporate world at a Fortune 50 company, but early on in my business, I became keenly aware that I needed to make sure my community thought I was very busy because busy equals working hard! As a blogger and YouTuber I knew that I was something of an (extremely) minor public figure and that people would begin to notice and comment on how I spent my time. If I didn’t look like I had a lot of work to do I thought no one would respect me. The problem is, I have always been the type of person who likes to get their work done quickly so I have more time to do what I want instead of what I have to do! I have an arsenal of systems and hacks in place that I utilize everyday to make sure I’m getting my work done in less time and that’s the way I like it. To me, it’s not about keeping up the appearance of busy. Busy is bullshit! Way too many people like to consider themselves busy as though it’s some sort of measure of self-importance. Everyone has things to do, some people have more than others, but everyone makes choices for how they fill the 24 hours that they get in a day, so don’t let the concept of being busy create some sort of excuse for you not to achieve certain goals, and don’t let the busy peer pressure make you feel inadequate if you happen to have a simpler life. Personally, I love the fact that I have a good amount of free time during my day because it gives me the opportunity to be creative in a way I could never be if I was always busy!
Lesson Learned: Busy is bullshit! Strive for productivity & efficiency
Mistake #5: You need to discover the secret to success in order to achieve it.
I’m the kind of person who likes to research things ad nauseam! When I first started my business, I was sure that the secret to success was hidden out there somewhere and that it was my job to read and research and learn as much as I could about business until I discovered the secret for myself. Problem is, there is no secret. Literally, there is no secret to success in business. There is no reason why you can’t start a successful business from scratch right now with little to no business knowledge. I didn’t go to school for business, and for some time, I thought this put me at a disadvantage, but the truth is the unique knowledge and skills that I do have, the ones I was busy building while I wasn’t attending business school, are just a marketable and important to the success of my business as any business degree. Don’t let the fear that you are lacking some nonexistent business secret sauce keep you from starting your business and kicking butt at it! You can seriously make your own rules, create your own secrets, and build yourself an empire!
Lesson Learned: You can do this!
Yes, you can do this! The truth is that when you start a business, you will make mistakes, you will learn and you will grow, but the most important part of the process is to continue to move forward and learn from your mistakes until you find the success you are looking for. I wasn’t the first person to make the mistakes that I made, and I certainly won’t be the last, but you don’t have to be one of them! That’s the wonderful part of having the online business community and all the resources available to small business owners today. So many people, including myself, are more than willing to share their mistakes, lessons and resources they have learned in so many facets of their businesses. One such resource I would love to share with you today if you are also a business owner is my CEO Strategy Planner.
The CEO Strategy Planner is an undated, print on demand business planner with 60+ elegant and functionally designed inserts to help you organize, plan and execute on your business vision! Get your ideas out of your head and onto paper, and get down to business with the CEO Strategy Planner!
The CEO Strategy Planner is the ultimate bundle of business planning inserts designed for the modern creative entrepreneur or business owner. The planner is divided into multiple sections that follow the essential parts of any good business plan. This strategic planner seamlessly integrates with the calendar or agenda system of your choice. Whether you use a physical planner, a digital calendar and planning tools, or, if like me, you use a mixture of both- the CEO Strategy Planner can be used in conjunction with any calendar and planning system to create your custom business, marketing and financial plans.
I designed this planner first and foremost, for myself, out of a need for structure to keep myself focused on my business goals and objectives. As a lover of paper planners, who works via the power of digital media, I needed dedicated inserts with enough structure to allow me to outline all my essential business objectives, marketing activities, and financial tracking into one streamlined business plan on paper before I then executed on the work on my computer. As a paper planner lover and a creative, I know the power that taking pen to paper can be for your ideas, inspiration and clarity. There is nothing like getting ideas out of your head and onto paper and then getting down to business organizing and creating your vision.
The CEO Strategy Planner contains all of the essential planning tools you need to organize your business, tackle your to do list efficiently, manage your marketing efforts and keep track of all your key financial targets. With the help of this strategic business planner, you will create a vision for your business and have all the tools and strategies at hand to execute!
I know the CEO Strategy Planner is the perfect tool to help you set and achieve all your business goals whether you are just getting started or have been in business for years. So, click the button below to purchase your copy now because this is a business tool and resource you do not want to miss!
Today I want to share with you a recent video I made explaining how I built my business website. This is a question I get asked about a lot. What platforms I used, how I built it myself, what plugins for business I use, my hosting company and the package I use. Everything you want to know about my business websites is compiled into this video.
I hope this video helps answer your questions about building your own custom business websites. If you have any questions, I’d be glad to answer them in the comments below!
