Strange & Charmed

How I’ve Been Spending My Time Productively During the Pandemic

As I am writing this post, I have now spent over five weeks in social isolation at home due to the recent world pandemic, and I know each of you are likely in the same situation. At this point, it looks like some countries might begin loosening social distancing regulations soon, but we’re still going to be inside for a while longer and I wanted to share with you how I’ve been spending my time at home productively, to give you some ideas or inspiration for how you also could make good use of this time.

First let’s talk about my mindset during this pandemic, because I think its good to start with your head in the right place. I know there is a lot of anxiety going around, and fear for our health, safety and future economic security, but I pretty much refuse to give into that fear and lack mentality. Things aren’t perfect right now, thats true, and it feels like there is a lot of uncertainty in the world, sure, but honestly, life itself is a lot of uncertainty. Nothing has really changed about that, anyone could leave us at any moment, we could loose our financial security because of a job loss or downturn in an industry or market, really the only thing that has changed is that we are now seeing the truth. The world was never a certain place. I get that can be frightening for people. Humans have what is called a cognitive need for closure, which means we like to know what’s going on, we like to understand situations, good or bad, we don’t like to be left hanging with unknowns. Right now, the world seems like a big unknown, but I promise you, just as life is filled with uncertainty, it also has a persistent way of fighting on. When we look at history we know this is true. After world wars and pandemics in the past, we have been faced again with prosperity. Things will get better, they will go back to normal, nothing lasts forever. Because every time we overcome a hurdle, we are better for it.

So, I’m not feeding into the false idea that we should be afraid or worried- all of that is a waste of time and energy. Honestly, if we really did have significant cause for worry, worrying would be the absolute worst use of our energy in that situation. We need to keep calm cool heads. Which is why I’ve been doing a lot of meditation during this time. To keep myself calm and focused, and grounded in my knowing that this is just a temporary situation, a construction that is going to lead to new expansion.

Task #1: Meditate daily
Spending just 30 minutes a day in the morning when you wake up or just before you fall asleep relaxing to a meditation track will do wonders for managing any anxiety or stress that you might be experiencing during this time. YouTube has free meditations for every situation, so I recommend using one of those to start.

Now that we have our heads in the right place, let me explain a bit about my strategy during this period of time. Strangely enough, I truly believe that this reordering of the world is an opportunity for each of us to take our focus off the outside world and outer expectations, and start focusing inward. How many times have you or I said “I wish I had more time for x?” X being some long held personal goal, project or objective that you just didn’t have time for in the busy-ness of our former lives. Well, guess what? Now, stuck at home all day, we have an opportunity to focus on those other goals. While the past five weeks haven’t been an all expenses paid vacation, the new challenge of making life work from home has also come with great new opportunities. The vast majority of us now no longer have a commute, regular social obligations, events or other distractions on our time. So, if you are home feeling a little stir crazy running out of ideas of things to do, it’s time to put your energy into that project you’ve been putting off. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that this is the perfect time for me to focus on my health and the back end of my business. I can’t go out to eat, I’m not distracted by dinners or brunches with friends who might derail a diet, so I should focus on sticking to my meal plan and getting in shape. With the economy taking a hit, although I am very blessed that my business hasn’t been affected, I should take this opportunity to take a step back and work on those lingering tasks and upgrades I’ve been putting off for too long. Focus less on selling and more on what I can do to create better systems that will eventually make my life easier in the future. That would really be a productive use of time right now for me, so determine what would be a productive use of time for you. How can you use this time to set a goal, map out a plan and track an objective that will make your life better once we are on the other side of this pandemic?

Task #2: Set a goal to hit at home
Choose something you can do at home with an outcome that would make all this time inside seem worth it. Organize elements of your life to work around this goal so you give yourself time each day to move the needle on it. Your future self will thank you. If you need a great project planning tool to help you with this, check out my 2020 Project Planning Insert Bundle!

The final thing I’ve been doing during this pandemic to help me stay motivated and productive is having video dates with friends and family. I don’t know about you, but before the pandemic hit I remember shaking my head at all the memes that would go around poking fun at how people would make plans with friends but then either cancel or prefer to stay home. I know you have seen at least a few of these graphics yourself, and I have definitely been on both sides of that situation. Having friends cancel on me at the last minute because they don’t want to go out or personally feeling too drained to get myself up and ready for a night out. I feel like what is happening with social distancing is almost like all those memes have finally come to fruition. All our social calendars are clear, we are all spending quiet evenings at home. As much as I would say I have been taking well to the social isolation, I know that I do need social interaction to keep sane. For the first few weeks this wasn’t a priority, but after a friend invited me to my first pandemic girls night via zoom, I realized that I had been sorely missing social activities. So, I have been prioritizing them now. It really has made such a difference just to see and talk to people, and scheduling a date out ahead of time gives you something to look forward to in a time when all the days of the week start to blur together.

Task #3: Schedule a weekly video date with a friend or family member.
Don’t just play this by ear, set a scheduled day and time to devote to this so you have something to look forward to and to get ready for. Put a but of effort in getting ready, especially if you haven’t had many reasons to get yourself dressed up to be on camera.

*CLICK HERE to download your FREE Productivity Toolbox and make the coming week your best week ever!*https://mailchi.mp/786d23044cad/productivitytoolbox

So, that is how I have been spending my time productively during the pandemic. I hope this post gave you some inspiration for things you could do while you are stuck at home to continue living your best life! I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to, so leave me a comment below, and check out my Live Events schedule and consider joining me for my next free class to hang out and learn together!

xoxo,

Online Business Productivity

5 Reasons Why Reusing Old Content is Great for Your Business

Recently, as part of my content marketing strategy, I’ve been reaching back into the archives for my platforms to identify and reuse some older pieces of content. If you are an OG follower, perhaps you noticed this, but my guess is that most of you had no clue I was doing this and have done this from time to time. So, today I wanted to explain more about this strategy to you by sharing 5 reasons why reusing content is great for your business!

Reason #1: Reusing old content saves you time and energy on content creation

I don’t know about your editorial calendar but mine is back on a pretty tight schedule. Three blog posts, a new video, and at least one email a week. That’s a lot of content to produce on a weekly basis. And of course, that’s not even bringing social media posts into consideration. Of course, not each and every piece of content is wholly unique. I have some consistent messages that I reiterate, but the truth is much of my content is created the week it goes out and that takes a lot of time, creative ideas and energy to make happen. So, when I can find and reuse an old piece of my content, it conserves some of that energy for higher priority work. This may look like reposting an old blog post, using a blog post as an outline for a video script (or visa versa) or reworking a blog post for an email and although I don’t replace 100% of my content creation with old posts, just integrating one old piece a week into my calendar is a major time saver!

Reason #2: Most of your audience isn’t seeing everything you’ve created

Believe it or not, as much as your current audience may love what you produce, the vast majority of them aren’t seeing everything you create. That means, they likely missed some older posts that you worked really hard on at the time, so serving them up some older ideas will still seem new and fresh to the majority of your following. This is especially true if you’ve been creating for years and have a backlog of old content just sitting their unloved. Yes, thanks to SEO those great posts aren’t completely covered in cobwebs, but by reposting or repurposing that content you will get extra life out of it.

Reason #3: Reposting is a great way to update content or test out different keywords

Although a majority of my content is evergreen, meaning that it is applicable to the right audience at any time of the year and doesn’t necessarily show it’s age, it is still a good idea to keep some key content up to date. This is something I like to do with old blog posts that may walkthrough older versions of my inserts. The post itself may perform well in terms of SEO but old pictures or examples can date the content, and older links can be broken or lead to no where. Reposting is a great way to keep valuable content up to date and at the same time, test out new keywords on your content as well. This is a strategy you will often see me use on post or video titles. I will change the title of a blog post during an update and post the new information, then see if the new title with slightly different keywords performs better or worse than the original title.

Reason #4: If content didn’t perform well on one platform it may do better on another

Sometimes we work hard to create valuable content but it flops. One reason that may have happened is because the content itself wasn’t right for the platform. Perhaps you created a youtube video that would have done better on Instagram, or recorded a podcast that should have been a blog post. Factors across platforms vary and some content just performs better in certain settings. So, if you took the time to create some great content, but you don’t see it getting the attention you believe it deserves, repurpose it to another platform and see if it does better somewhere else. Although most of my content and platforms are pretty consistent, I find that I have a slightly different audience on my Instagram, Blog and YouTube. It doesn’t matter how much I cross promote my platforms, different people will prefer different styles of content, and perhaps that underperforming post can be quickly repurposed and shared elsewhere to a warmer reception.

Reason #5: If content performed well, repurpose it on other platforms

Likewise, sometimes we create content that does very very well on a platform. In which case we know we hit the nail on the head with the topic and value and there is really no reason not to share it on other platforms. Don’t worry about cannibalizing SEO, overall it’s always better to share a message that resonates with your audience as much as possible. Plus, you don’t have to reuse the entire piece of content. If you have a video or blog post that does well, take the main message and share it on social or another platform. Consider summarizing longer content and then redirecting your audience to view the full content elsewhere. You just want to get as much mileage out of the successful content as possible because it is marketing gold!

So, those are five very excellent reasons why I like to reuse or repurpose old content from my archives and why I think this is a strategy you should consider as well. Of course, I’m not talking about making all your content ongoing a repost of something old, but reusing some old pieces in new ways along with new original ideas can be a great way to manage your time, energy and expectations as a content creator! I’d love to hear how this strategy works for you, so do leave me a comment below with your thoughts!

xoxo,

Productivity

This is Why You Are Not Seeing Your Work Pay Off

This is why you are not seeing your work pay off!

Today I want to talk to you about a very common situation that people face when they are setting and working towards their goals. The situation is this: you are busy, doing the work, executing, but you’re still not hitting your goal. You are trying, their is effort and organization, but the results aren’t coming.

I know when I talk about setting goals and working towards objectives, it can seen overly simplified sometimes. See the goal, set the precise objective, make sure it’s a SMART goal, and then do the work, but sometimes we can go through that process in earnest and it gets us no where.

So, I wanted to share with you my take on why this happens.

From experience with hundreds of productivity students, I have seen first hand that when we are taking action but not seeing the results, the primary issue is that your plans were made on expectations not actions.

What do I mean by this?

Sometimes we can set goals against outcomes that we can affect, but don’t have complete control over. We believe if we do x we can achieve y result. And while that may be true, when we set goals against our expectation of results and not against the precise actions we will take, we can find ourselves in situations where we don’t meet the result.

Let’s consider an example.

You would like to grow your following on a social platform, let’s say Instagram. So, you set the goal to hit your first 1,000 followers in 90 days. Now, realistically, that’s feasible. Someone getting started with Instagram right now could reach a following of 1,000 subscribers in a 90 day period for sure. However reasonable this expectation is, though, it’s not actually a good objective to set. The reason being, you can’t control whether 1,000 people hit follow. All you can do is post great content in order to attract those followers. So, really the proper objective to set in this situation is something like “post daily to a specific niche on IG for 90 days.” That is something you can do and you have control over, you don’t have control over whether people follow you or not.

Let’s try another example.

This time, you set the goal to sell 100 copies of your ebook this month. Again, you’re not the one controlling the outcome here. So you work and you work, write blog posts, make content, send emails, all that jazz, and at the end of the month, your sales goal comes up short. It’s a disappointment for sure, doing all that work and not hitting the target, but that’s because your target was for an outcome you didn’t control. So, next time, you choose a different target. Make a sales pitch to 100 target customers in your audience. As they say in sales, “if you want to make a million dollars, seek first to help a million people.” This is practical advice, because you can’t control how many people purchase your product but you can control how many people you reach out and pitch to. What this might look like practically would vary depending on your business. For someone it may be sending DMs to followers on IG, for another it may mean hosting some live streams where you can talk to followers on an individual level. Yet another business owner might open their schedule to free 15 minute consults. There is certainly work involved in each of these situations, but the objective is within your control and focused on the actions you will take, not the actions others will take.

Do you see the shift in approach necessary here? That we are going to change the objectives we set to be based on our own actions and not based on the expected or anticipated actions of others. We can’t control other people, but we can control ourselves. Once you make this shift you will see more and more than your work pays off. And when it doesn’t you can see where your shortcomings directly led to your results.

No more guessing or wondering what went wrong. When you set objectives against your own actions, you will know exactly what went right and what went wrong. You will either meet your own expectations or you will not, but you will see how your choices impact your results.

So, I hope you found this article enlightening, especially if you are someone who struggles to meet their objectives. I would love to hear how this advice and information helps you change your personal productivity strategies, so please do leave me a comment and share your thoughts.

xoxo,

Online Business

#1 Marketing Element Your Business Needs

There is a lot of chatter out there in terms of different advice or strategies for marketing your business. It can definitely be overwhelming deciding where to start, what your strategy is going to be and which platforms to use, but there is one single element of your marketing that you have to have in place before you even get to those questions. In fact, this one marketing element is the single factor that is going to help you choose those strategies, those platforms and nearly every single element of your brand marketing.

That number one most essential marketing element is your Ideal Customer Avatar. Also known as an ideal or target customer profile, however you want to think about it, this is a model for the precise customer you are looking to attract, sell to and serve.

Knowing your Ideal Customer Avatar is the step one for all business marketing, but if you have already started your business and still haven’t clearly defined that ideal customer yet there are many problems that doing so can solve.

Defining your ideal customer avatar will help you:

Choose the right platforms to use
Build an audience
Grow a stagnant audience
Increase engagement from your existing audience
Create content ideas
Fill your editorial calendar
Secure new leads and sales
Identify new products or services to expand your revenue
Determine your price structure for your products and services

That’s like every element of your business marketing, right?

I know it might sound too good to be true, but I’m totally serious when I say that having this one marketing element decided on, knowing who your idea customer is, can impact everything about the direction and success of your business. This is such an important aspect of all businesses that in order to fully explain this concept and help you define your customer avatar, I have built a free video workshop on the topic that I highly recommend you watch and take notes on immediately!

So click here to get on-demand access to the workshop and learn exactly how to create your own ideal customer avatar and all the ways it will help skyrocket your business marketing!

I can’t wait to hear how this simple marketing element transforms your business and your brand marketing for the better. Let me know how it goes and if you have further questions I can address for you on the concept!

xoxo,

Online Business

7 Foolproof Strategies for Growing a Follow on Any Platform

These 7 Strategies will help you establish and grow a following on ANY online platform!

7 Foolproof Strategies for Growing a Follow on Any Platform

There are a lot of platforms online these days and as much as I know it would be popular to teach in-depth on each one and exploit the secrets to grow a following with it, after evaluating many different platforms, I understand the real secret is that growing a following on any platform involves the exact same strategies. Yep! Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are not specific secrets for each individual platform, if you want to grow a following on Twitter, it’s the same as growing a following on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok! And the reason is clear, because people are the same no matter which platform they are using. Fundamentally speaking, the same things that draw attention, spark curiosity, and precipitate loyalty on one platform will work for them all, because they draw on human nature. So, today I’m going to share with you the seven foolproof strategies for growing your following on any platform so you can get to work growing a following on the platform of your choosing!

#1. Get clear on your branding and messaging

Whenever you start with an online platform, its important that you have your branding and messaging worked out to inform the types of content you will be sharing or creating on that platform as well as the specific audience you will be trying to attract. If you have a business or personal brand outside of this platform and this is going to be an extension of it, you will use that. If you don’t have anything else going on and this is going to be a fresh start, spend some time understanding what your goals are for the platforms, what you are trying to accomplish, why you want to accomplish it and how you plan to accomplish it. In terms of messaging, keep it simple. Have a clear, easy to understand purpose that you demonstrate through your content.

#2. Learn how to properly use the platform

You can’t expect to grow a following on a platform if you are using it wrong. That is to say, you are using it in a way that’s a departure from what people usually expect of that platform. Do your research, find out how the platform is used and then check out some of your favorite personalities or brands on the platform. Often times big brands or notable personalities are at the forefront of innovation for a platform, so check out what other big timers are doing and learn from their example what works and what doesn’t.

#3. Determine your perfect balance of content curation vs content creation

When it comes to most platforms, the content you share will either be your original work or content you have shared from others, which is commonly known as curated content. On most platforms, users will balance content curation and content creation, but their is no magic formula for a perfect balance. Some users have accounts that are all original, some have all curated and many mix both. Find what you are comfortable with and try to stick to it!

#4. Get on a consistent posting schedule

Speaking of sticking to what you are comfortable with, the same goes for your posting schedule. Unfortunately, there are no foolproof rules for when to post content to a specific platform for significant success. Yes, you can look up popular posting times and stick to those, but it doesn’t seem to make a significant difference for most people. What does make a difference however, is defining your posting schedule, the precise days and times you will be posting, and sticking to that consistently. Consistency breeds loyalty on all platforms, and the more loyal followers you have, the faster you will grow!

#5. Cater to a community on the platform

Although it’s great to be a niche brand, even the most unique are still a subset of some larger community online. Make sure you know what community your brand belongs to, and keep up with that community in terms of the trends in how they use the platform and by following or engaging with people in that community regularly. No need to become a copy or start obsessively following the trends, but understanding where your greater community is headed is a great way to stay on the same page with them, and if you can find a way to work the trends into your content in a way that’s natural to you- the more success you will have!

#6. Interact with others on the platform

On any platform, interaction will garner you respect a favor among your followers. Just like consistency, interaction, by replying to comments and also engaging independently with others in your community, will help to build loyalty. The best way to do this is to have a genuine interest in the platform you are using and to go to it, not just to post content but to also consume the content of others. When you really enjoy a platform and use it regularly, it shows, and your following will grow the more you go out and engage!

#7. Make sure your content is valuable

When it comes down to it, people will follow you on a platform if your content is valuable to them. Meaning that it gives them something they want, like information, inspiration, or entertainment. All valuable content online can be boiled down to one of those three buckets (information, inspiration or entertainment) and as long as you are sharing content that either gives people information they are looking for, makes them feel good or keeps them entertained, your following will grow!

Oh course, when it comes to growing a following on any platform, you are going to need a foolproof planning tool that gives you the ability to brainstorm, outline and map out your content and marketing plans across all your platforms. That’s precisely why I designed the CEO Strategy Planner with a set of defined content planning inserts to streamline this process for you!

Click here to purchase your copy of the CEO Strategy Planner and get your creative ideas out of your head and onto paper so you can get down to business!

xoxo,

Business Online Business

HOW TO FIND FOCUS AS A MULTI-PASSIONATE ENTREPRENEUR

How to Find Focus as a Multi-Passionate Entrepreneur

Today I want to talk to you about finding focus as a multi-passionate entrepreneur because this is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. I do consider myself to be a multi-passionate entrepreneur. I’m someone who enjoys a wide variety of different creative endeavors and strives to fold them all together into my business. Practical skills I enjoy such as writing and blogging, photography or videography and designing. Plus multiple interests I pursue regularly, productivity and planning topics, success and entrepreneurship, but also metaphysics and spirituality. There are so many different things I’m passionate about and I’ve been lucky enough to figure out a way to pull those all together into one business. Now this is also a really important topic to me because within my Empire Building Online Business Program, I work with a lot of business owners who consider themselves to be multi-passionate entrepreneurs as well. They’re either in a stage of business where they’re trying to start their business or they’ve already begun their business and they’re trying to figure out the next step, but because they’re multi-passionate and they have all these great ideas and creative visions, they have a hard time focusing on what they need to work on next. So, this is something that I deal with personally on a day-to-day basis. Not just by myself but with my clients as well. So, today I want to share a strategy that I use and recommend for anyone looking to find focus and who considers themselves to be a creative multi-passionate individual!

The first thing I want you to do if you are someone who has a lot of different ideas and you’re trying to determine what to work on first is to go ahead and write down all those ideas. Do you a brain dump if you will of everything that interests you, ever clever business idea and concept. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Once you’ve written them all down I want you to go one step further and I want you to write down all the tasks and actions you currently have that pertain to that idea or to that product/project you want to create. Whatever this new endeavor is, I want you to write everything out that you already have thought about. All the plans don’t have to be solidified, they don’t have to be things you know you want to do, just ideas you’ve had that pertain to this concept. I want you to get it all out of your head and onto paper so we can sort through it.

Now, while you are writing out this list of ideas and putting together supporting ideas that will go with it, I want you to make sure you pay attention to two things. I want you to be able to identify why it is that you are interested in this project or in this concept specifically, and I want you to identify what your goals are for this project. What is it going to bring to your business? What is it going to do for you? Is this a new revenue opportunity? Is this a new promotional opportunity? How does this fit into your business? You need to be able to identify those two things- why is it something that is interesting to you and how does it fit in your business! These are very important questions that you’re going to want to answer because I cannot tell you the amount of times I have had an idea, rushed into working on it, didn’t ask myself the big-picture questions ahead of time, and by the time all the work was done I looked at the project I was working on and said to myself “I don’t actually think that this belongs in my business, I don’t really see where this fits.” It was just something that was exciting and I wanted to act on immediately, but I really didn’t think it through. I didn’t think about it’s place in my business, in terms of development and timing, and why it was important to me. So, you want to make sure you have those two points clearly outlined for each of the projects that are currently vying for your attention.

The next thing I want you to do is take each one of those projects and rank them based on some very specific criteria. Number one, I want you to rank them based on which idea is the most fully formed. So what idea actually seems like you’ve been able to work through a lot of it already- which of these ideas do you think is the most fully formed and seems like a viable option? Number two, I want you to rank each idea based on which will be the easiest to execute on. Which idea has a quick turnaround time or you know needs the least amount of work? What idea can you get up and running quickly? I want you to go and think about that and rank your ideas based on this criteria as well. Now, the third and final criterial I want you to rank each idea for is how profitable or how easy it would be for you to generate income from this idea. Is this idea a new revenue source or just something promotional? The easier it is to make money from your idea, the higher up the rank it should be!

Once you have your ideas ranked by these three criteria, I want you to start identifying which ones seem to be the best ideas based on how you’ve ranked them. You’ll probably have some on your list that float to the top as good ideas, and then you will have some that fall to the bottom as less practical. Once you have eliminated the less practical ideas, and hopefully your list is down to a few solid contenders, do a gut check and determine which idea feels right for you to work on. Remember, you could theoretically have a page full of great ideas, but the point of this exercise isn’t to deter you from good ideas, rather, the point is to help you choose where to focus your time and energy next. You can always come back to this list and work on the next project once your first idea is complete, but the point is to find a single idea to focus on and complete because we can only do one thing at a time!

If creating a focused and cohesive plan for your business is a topic that is a high priority to you, I want to let you know about a tool I have developed precisely for that purpose. The CEO Strategy Planner. It is my ultimate business planning tool, a set of 60+ undated, print on demand designs that will guide you through the often overwhelming process of business planning. If you need help getting all your creative ideas out of your head, and onto paper so you can get down to business, the CEO Strategy Planner is the tool you need!

Click here to purchase your copy of the CEO Strategy Planner and see the difference a comprehensive business planning tool can make on your bottom line!

xoxo,

Business Functional Planning Personal Development Productivity

My Upcoming Live Class Schedule

Hello My Charmed Ones!

In case you didn’t know, for the past two Saturdays, I’ve been hosting live-streamed workshops on various business and personal development topics over on my Youtube channel. Initially, I started these workshops as a fun outlet and way for the community to come together during an uncertain time. With so many people stuck inside in their homes, either working remotely, or on furlough during this world-wide pandemic, I wanted to do my part in creating content that might be useful and inspiring. But now, with extensions on shelter in place guidelines reaching out to the end of April and likely facing additional extensions after that, I have decided to extend these workshops and make them a weekly fixture for the foreseeable future.

So, today I wanted to make you aware of my Live Class Schedule to ensure you don’t miss the opportunity to join one of these info packed, motivational classes yourself!

• Saturday April 11th, 2020 @ 2PM EDT: IDEAL CUSTOMER AVATAR | Defining Your Ideal Customer for Business Planning

• Saturday April 18th, 2020 @ 2PM EDT: CONTENT KEYWORD RESEARCH | How to research and use the best SEO Optimized Keywords for your Brand & Business

• Saturday April 25th, 2020 @ 2PM EDT: INSIDE MY PLANNER LIVE | How I Plan for Home & Business in One Planner

As you will notice from the titles, most of these topics are business related and that is entirely intentional. With so many people loosing their jobs or the security of a stable income, now is the time to put our creative ideas to work in the form of a business or side hustle. What better way to use this time stuck inside than by building income streams through the power of digital marketing systems.

I am so extremely lucky that this pandemic has not jeopardized my personal lifestyle or business, but then again, luck really had nothing to do with it, did it? I have been intentionally crafting a business based on multiple passive income streams for years now to fulfill my vision of having ultimate time and location freedom. Little did I know at the time that this business model I worked so diligently to establish would also protect my income and stability during a time of international crisis.

In fact, in the last month, as hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens have filed for unemployment due to job changes from this pandemic, my income in the last month actually increased. I don’t say this to boast, but rather to highlight the value of entrepreneurship. Yes, we are living in uncertain times that most of the population of the world will economically struggle through, but that isn’t the only reality right now and there are steps you can take and income streams you can establish to protect yourself and your families stability through future crisis’ as well.

That is why I am committed to hosting these weekly classes and teaching valuable content I have never shared before- because I want to inspire and motivate you to get to work on your own business goals! The next two classes specifically are going to review essential business planning topics pivotal to the success and growth of businesses in online markets. And, it won’t be focused only on information and strategy- I’ll also be using these workshops as an opportunity to share valuable tools and resources that you can use to assist you in proper business planning processes.

Specifically, I am going to go in depth in walking you through inserts inside the CEO Strategy Planner. So, if you have not yet purchased your copy, I highly recommend making your purchase as soon as possible, and printing and binding your copy into the system of your choice before these classes begin.

For those of you who have already purchased, I hope you will join me for each of these upcoming classes and learn more about the essential business planning strategies illustrated through the inserts of the business planner! But I do want to encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about online business topics to join whether they purchase the planner or not! The planner is the tool, I’ll be teaching the strategy to all who want to learn it!

So, I hope you will schedule the upcoming workshops into your planner or calendar system of choice, and if you want future updates on my Live Event Schedule, please do reference the Live Events Page of this site because I will be updating it as often as necessary. For those of you who do intend to join me for the events live, I will be sending out emails to my list on Saturday morning an hour or so before class begins with a direct link to the workshop, but if you visit my Youtube Channel at the prescribed time, you should see the workshop link to join as well, and I do often share the link on my Instagram Story if you are following along there!

Hope to see you on Saturday at 2pm EDT for my next Live Streamed Workshop!

xoxo,

Functional Planning Online Business

2 Simple Strategies to Grow Online Sales

As a business strategist, a frequent issue I come across and work through with my clients is a lack of sales. Obviously, making sales and generating income for your business is a crucial element to keeping your business going but many people find it difficult to begin making sales and then getting those sales numbers to increase. For me, I follow two very simple strategies for making and growing my sales numbers and I want to share those with you today to give you an understanding of how sales work and how you can get your income growing!

Strategy #1: Promote more to your current following or list

The first strategy I use to help me earn and grow sales for my business is to promote to my existing following. When you get started with running a business, list building and growing a following is a critical step to ensure you begin to earn a steady stream of income, but some business owners don’t realize that it’s not enough to mention your business every once in a while or leave a link to your online shop in your social media profiles. You need to actively promote your products and services to your existing audience in order to make and grow sales. A common issue I see when it comes to actively promoting online is that some businesses believe that they have too small a following to begin promoting, but as soon as you begin to get followers you need to start promoting regularly. I personally follow the 80/20 rule when it comes to promoting my business, which means that 80% of the content I produce is informational and value added for my audience and then 20% can be purely promotional. So how often you will need to promote your products or services will depend on how much content you are already (or plan to) create. One thing to keep in mind that can sometimes be confusing for new business owners, is that although it’s good practice to begin promoting immediately, you can really only expect about a 3% conversion rate for how many sales to followers you can expect online. So, if you have 100 followers on your list and you promote to them, you can reasonably expect 3 sales. If you get more than 3, you are doing very well with your promotion and content, and if you get less than 3, perhaps check your content to ensure you are following the 80/20 rule and make sure your promotions are clear for your audience.

Strategy #2: Take steps to grow your following or list

The second strategy I use to help me grow sales for my business is to take steps to actively grow my following. Like I mentioned earlier, list building is an important part of business and if you aren’t currently receiving enough sales for your business, the only way to help that number grow is to take action to get your following to grow. Remember that 3% rule for the ratio of followers to sales? If you have a sales goal for your business, you need to reverse engineer how many followers you would need in order to hit your projected or desired income. Now, once you have that you’re done the easy part! The hard part of all this is to take the steps necessary to increase your following by attracting more eyes to your platforms online and/or to your email list. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is through original content. Developing content for your social platforms and producing content on a regular basis that is designed to attract your ideal customers is the way I grew my following from 0-100,000+ on social media and my blog from 0-1.5 Million annual page views! Because of this, my business earns a regular full time income for me at a conversation rate of 10%+ as opposed to the global average of roughly 3%! If this seems impressive, that is all a result of the great business planning principles and processes I use and rely on everyday!

If you’d like to follow my precise business planning process and use the exact same tools I use to plan marketing campaigns, list building activities and design promotions for my audience to make more sales, you’ll want to get your hands on your own copy of my CEO Strategy Planner! The CEO Strategy Planner is a strategic business planner and the ultimate bundle of business planning tools. If you need a strategic business planning process to help get your ideas out of your head, and onto paper so you can get down to business- the CEO Strategy Planner is the tool for you! Purchase your copy here today!

I hope these strategies give you some better insight into how you can grow sales for your online business. I’d love to hear in the comments below about any struggles or specific sales related questions you have so I can help address those for you either one-to-one or in a future blog post, so please make sure to share.

xoxo,

Online Business

ENTREPRENEURIAL: Executing My CEO Strategy

Welcome to April 2020 my Charmed Ones!

What a month we had in March?

I do hope that all of you are doing well, staying safe and healthy inside as we continue to collectively fight the global pandemic that has hit the world. My thoughts and prayers are with you and yours during this challenging time.

With that said, I hope it’s not insensitive for me to proclaim what a great month March really was for me. Yes, March is my birthday month, so there was that (although my birthday festivities were canceled due to social distancing guidelines) but I also really stayed focus on executing my CEO strategic business plans to revive my business and things really paid off for me.

Never under estimate the affect that some solid planning and dedicated effort can make in your life. A month after writing that last installment of Entrepreneurial and I feel like my business is now in a completely different place.

Let’s quickly recap some of what I think went very well for me in March- hopefully you can learn from my experience and take away some great tips for yourself.

1. I created a ton of great content: From experience I know that creating great content isn’t just great for your business and community building, but on a personal level as a creative entrepreneur, creating is motivation for my spirit. There is no better feeling to me than having an idea and turning it into reality. For me, writing blog posts, creating videos and designing new fun things for you to enjoy is how I create best. It gives me purpose, confidence in my abilities and a bit of catharsis that can only come from bringing an idea to fruition.

2. I launched a bunch of new products: Last month I believe I had a total of three new items hit The Charmed Shop. The High Vibe Bible Digital Planner Inserts, the updated Master Meal Planner Insert Bundle and the CEO Strategy Planner. All three of these inserts are right now bound in my own personal planner and having them for myself has been such a great way for me to stay organized across all the areas of my life. Yes, of course, launching new things is great for my business and revenue, but really for me just having those new tools created for just myself to use is a game changer for my planning. If you haven’t noticed, ever since I went back to a discbound system with my new Chanel Agenda cover, my planning and productivity has hit a new peak and these inserts have everything to do with that!

3: I hosted a super successful business planning workshop: If you’re following along with my content, you know at the end of March I hosted a Live Planning Class where I taught my complete business planning process. A lot of preparation and work went into that live workshop, of course part of it was tied into my launch of the CEO Strategy Planner which was incredibly well received during the event, but part of the class was just an opportunity to bring my community together and I was so blown away that over 200 of you were present with me for the workshop. I know 200 might not seem like a big number in comparison to my overall following but I know for a while there attendance at my live classes and views on my video content had been shrinking. So to have an event go so well and be so well received was really a high point of my month. The success of that live class has really given me the motivation to continue with these live workshops and bring some awesome topics to you that I have been holding off on for some time.

So, what’s the plan for April?

Continue with the content creation.
Continue spreading the good news of all my latest products that have seriously helped me transform my productivity, life and business in March alone.
MORE LIVE WORKSHOPS! Specifically geared towards business topics as I think I have a lot to add to the conversation of online business, especially with all that is going on in the world I think online business owners are struggling in a way that I may actually be able to provide some little relief and strategy to help them through! Plus I just love interacting with you all live and seeing each of you interact together during a workshop as well. Presenting is my strong suit and if it’s what I can do to serve my community during this time, I’m committed to it!

So, with that being said, I’d like to make a few quick announcements while I have your attention!

→ Saturday, April 4th, 2020 I am hosting another LIVE Workshop I’m calling KNOW THYSELF. This is a workshop I have been eager to create for you for some time now, because it is about a topic that is near and dear to my heart- learning and understanding more about yourself! In this workshop I am going to walk you through a few of my favorite personality typing systems like Enneagram, Myers Briggs Type Indicator, and Gretchen Rubin’s 4 Tendencies. As a business owner and someone who is obsessed with personal development, I love using personality typing systems to get to know myself on a deeper level. Self-awareness is a crucial part of success in life, but according to psychological research, it’s a trait only about 5% of the population have. So, join me live on Saturday at 2pm EDT over on my YouTube channel to learn more about what makes you, you, and how we can use that knowledge to maximize our strengths and become more aware of opportunities for personal growth! If you would like email reminders and a direct link to the workshop emailed to you, make sure you are on my list by clicking here!

→ I wanted to make sure each of you knew that today, April 2nd is the final day for the introductory pricing deal on the CEO Strategy Planner. Right now the planner bundle is priced at $49 but tonight at midnight eastern time the price goes back up to the full retail of $75! So, if you are interested in the strategic business planner, now is the time to buy before the price goes up! So far, feedback on the CEO Strategy Planner has been phenomenal, so click here to act now before the deal ends!

Okay, well with that here’s to another great month ahead! I hope this post has been insightful for you and I’d love to hear more about what you are working on this month in the comments below!

xoxo,

Business Functional Planning Personal Development Productivity

#ICYMI March 2020

We’ve now come to the end of March and I have to say- despite all the setbacks happening in the world right now, I’m feeling so positive and expansive as we move into April. Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about how my new intention was to create more content on my platforms? I am so proud of how much I have been creating and the flow I have found myself in again. Honestly, I haven’t felt this good about my creation process and this hopeful about where I am headed with my business in several years. I am seriously in the midsts of reviving my stagnant business as per the plan I had laid out at the start of March.

I could not be happier about how this month has progressed, and so I want this to be a reminder for any of you out there who may be feeling down about the issues on the world stage, or maybe before all this you were questioning you purpose or direction. It’s okay to have those feelings and I think you should sit with them for a while and express them. You can’t get them out of your system unless you express them. But, once you have, you need to pull yourself out of your own funk. You need to start taking some action. You need to set intentions, you need to work on a simple routine to manage your energy, and you need to start planning and executing on objectives. I have never seen the power of intention, planning and execution work so well in my life as it has the last month. I’ll definitely been looking for new ways to share this process with you into next month as well, but for now- let’s take a look at all the wonderful content I created for you in March-in case you missed it- so you can catch up!

ICYMI: IN CASE YOU MISSED IT!

• ENTREPRENEURIAL: HOW I’M REVIVING MY STAGNANT BUSINESS
• High Vibe Bible Inserts Are Here
• A Daily Manifestation Journaling Practice that Works!
• 7 Task Lists to Add to Your Planner
• Master Meal Planner Inserts are HERE!
• The #1 Time & Money Saver Everyone Should Keep in their Planner!
• 10 Productive Time Management Tips that Will Change Your Life
• How to Have the Most Productive Day Ever!
• Planning in Uncertain Times (Video)
• Tips for Working from Home Productively- Especially if you’ve never done it before! (Video)
• How to Use the Moon Phases to Manifest
• VIDEO CONFERENCING FROM HOME (Video)
• How to Create a Functional Plan
• FREE LIVE PLANNING WORKSHOP!
• April Free Planner Insert*
• BUSINESS PLANNING FOR CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURS (Video)
• The ULTIMATE Strategic Business Planner for the Modern Creative Entrepreneur

*Indicates an associated download

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!

xoxo,