In this episode, you’ll get the secrets from host Julie Hood on how to plan your next 90 days to keep you moving forward on the most important projects to grow your course business. This masterclass may require a 2nd listen… the first listen to understand the concepts and a second listen to sit down and implement them!
In this episode, you’ll get the secrets from host Julie Hood on how to plan your next 90 days to keep you moving forward on the most important projects to grow your course business. This masterclass may require a 2nd listen… the first listen to understand the concepts and a second listen to sit down and implement them!
LINKS MENTIONED
See the template links below in Key Takeaways.
Danielle LaPorte’s book, The Desire Map
David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 7 Key Steps:
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Oh, my goodness. I can't believe the second quarter starts this week. Today. I want to share with you my 90 day planning process, including some free templates to save you headaches and lots of time and make your online course business so much better this quarter. So let's get to it. Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses.
And now here's your host Julie Hood. Before we get started, let me give you the link to get all the free templates that I'm talking about today. Go to coursecreatorshq.com/36, and I've got the link to the different templates and documents That I'm talking about today. And actually this episode is more like taking a master class in planning with me.
So you might need to listen to it twice, once to kind of get the concepts and the ideas. And then a second time to actually sit down and do the work that I'm recommending. So set aside an hour or so in the next few days and download the files, fill in the templates and let me know how it's going for you. Okay.
So where do we start? I've got seven steps for us to consider and, and then I'll share some of the answers that I use and how they're it's coming together for me for the second quarter of 2021 and how I'm going to use them working forward. So the first step is actually to take a look backward and look at what worked or didn't work last quarter.
So for me, first quarter was really, really good. We launched the 24 hour course creator daily program again, and ran that in January and February. I had some phenomenal students I'm so proud of, and I was also very consistent with getting a new podcast episode out every week, plus the email newsletter. So those are my big woo-hoo wins for the quarter.
March was actually a bit of a challenging month because we had all of my family members getting the vaccine shots. So we did have a lot of downtime keeping up with all that, but overall, it was a great month on a personal level. We had some really fun family time and some remote family calls. So that was fantastic. And I didn't quite finish a couple of other organizing projects that I had on my list,
but that's okay. They can roll forward into this quarter and I'll take care of them. Now, another big surprise actually for me in first quarter was how much time I spent on clubhouse. So I had planned last year that it was going to do a lot of live video recordings, but instead I jumped into clubhouse and been, have been hosting rooms every week.
So come find me at Julie Hood, if you haven't yet on clubhouse. Cause I'm doing some really fun clubhouse events on there. So how about you? What worked in the first quarter and what will roll forward into the next quarter for you? That's the first step? The second step is to either review or create some goals for 2021, and you can use my goal tracking sheet that's in the notes.
Your second step is to sort of review what your overall plans are for the year. And don't worry about it. If you aren't quite on track right now, it's okay. You can always jump back on and get back on the horse. The, the tracking sheet that I shared with you is a Google doc. And so you won't be able to edit it,
but you can use a file, make a copy to get your own copy of it, to edit or file download. Even if you want to download to work with it in Excel or a different program. So file make a copy. We'll let you get your own Google spreadsheet. So I grew my goals into seven different categories. I have business, health,
wealth, relationships, spiritual life, stuff, time and organization is all one category actually and fun. And so I'll list a few of the things that I've got on my list and put them into each of the categories. And then I started thinking about how I want to feel about them. And this is from Danielle LaPorte's book, it's called the desire map.
And she really talks about the emotions behind what it is that we desire and what it is that we want and how important it is to tap into how these things are going to make you feel. So if you haven't checked out that book yet, it might be worth grabbing it. And she's got some great emotion lists in there that can be helpful if,
cause I know when I'm like, oh, I'm not quite sure how I want to feel exactly what exact emotion that is. So I can use her listen and come up with some more ideas. So sometimes on the sheet I'll list start and end dates, but not always, sometimes they just make it on the list. And then one column that can really keep you moving forward is the next step column.
And this is from David Allen's book, getting things done, which I'll also link through link to in the show notes. It's a fantastic book. If you haven't read it on organizing and keeping your life together, he talks about focusing on the very next step that you need to move your goal or project forward. So if you can keep those top of mind on this goal tracking sheet,
you're keeping track of what your next step is. You're more likely to get the whole project done because you're just focusing on the very next thing that you need to be doing. So step number three is what are the big projects for second quarter for you? So out of these goals that you have for your year, pull out some of the major projects that will move them forward.
So for example, I have four big business projects that are going to happen in this quarter. The first one is I'm going to create and run a brand new five day challenge for course, creators in June. So I am hoping you can jump into that with us. Second that'll be leading people into my 24 hour course creator daily program that we're going to launch again in June.
And then I'm also ramping up my team to help manage all of this. I've got a summer intern plus some other helpers that are jumping on board. And then the last big project is to expand and connect with some more JV partners, which I talked about last week on the podcast. So those are my four big projects, you know, think about,
do you have 2, 3, 4 that are big for you this quarter and how do those fit in? And then step number four is to sit down and actually do some brainstorming of what the next steps are for each one of your projects. And this is where things really start to happen for you. This is when you can move your projects forward because you're thinking not only about what needs to happen,
but when you're going to do it. And that is sometimes the biggest challenge because it's really easy to make a lot of lists and come up with a lot of things that we want to do, but it's not till we actually put them on the calendar and actually think about when we're going to do them, that we can actually get things finished. So for example,
for my five day challenge, I could have sat down and come up with all the steps by myself, but that would have taken forever. So I bought a program to help me organize it. And it was so much more efficient to just pay for someone else who had done all the thinking work for me, it came with a Trello board to help me stay organized and keep track of all the moving parts.
So we're using that to organize that specific project. Step number five is to update your tracking stats for the quarter. And there's a link for you to part of the Google spreadsheet that I told you about where it's calculates a lot of this for you by month. Peter Drucker has this really terrific quote. He says, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it.
So let's start by making sure we're measuring some of the most essential numbers and statistics for our course businesses. And so here are a few of my favorites. The first one is how many email subscribers you have. And if this is the only one you track, this is the most important one in my opinion, because emails are where people buy. So the more email subscribers you have,
the more you can connect with them and share your stuff and share the promotions that you were doing. So if that's all you track, that one is essential. And then here's a few others. There's some social media ones that you might want, you know, Facebook followers, Instagram followers, Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers. And then I pay very close attention to my podcast downloads and the podcast reviews because I want those to constantly be increasing.
And then I'm going to add a couple new ones this quarter. I want to have a very close eye on the number of JV partners that I have cause I told you I'm working on building that. And then also the number of podcast and clubhouse events that I either host or speak on. So I'm going to start tracking those two to see what kinds of results are coming from that.
So that's step number five, taking a look at your numbers. Step number six is to know what your content plan is going to be for each week. Like, what are you talking about with your audience? What are you promoting? I've got another link for you to a calendar that you can download. It's a one sheet 90 day calendar that I really like,
and this question will help you make sure that you're always sharing good content with your audience. So you probably can't sit down today and fill the whole thing in for the next 90 days, but it gives you a place to sort of make notes and think about it and plot out the timing of things. So I plug in my launch dates and then I start filling in behind it.
So for example, as it gets closer to the 24 hour course creator launch, I'm going to shift into content that I share in the emails. And then I share on this podcast to focus more on creating courses and that'll help encourage sign-ups. So you can see how that all fits together. You work backwards from your launch dates. That's a step number six,
which is thinking about your content plan and what kinds of things you're going to be promoting. And then step number seven is what does my time map look like for a normal week in the next 90 days or so, and this last question will actually make or break how much you accomplish in the next 90 days. So let me back up and start by telling you exactly what a time map is.
When I was back in college, back in the dark ages, we had to put together our own schedules manually. It wasn't, it didn't come together on the computer like it does now for the students. And so what I did is I created a grid for myself and it was all the days of the week and then across the top and then down the left,
where the times like hours. So each hour of the day, and then I would slot in when my classes were going to be plus some travel time, cause I was on a huge campus. So I had to make sure I get from one building to another. I was also working part-time. So I needed to be able to have blocks of work time.
Luckily I could set my own work hours. So that made it pretty flexible. But this whole time map for what a regular week look like had my courses, my work time, you know, my travel time between buildings plus meal time. So I had it all laid out in what a normal week would look like. And it helped me be so much more productive.
Cause I knew where my open slots were. So ever since then, I've used time maps to help me understand kind of the basic structure of what a week looks like in our household. And this was really, really essential when my kids were younger. So if you've got young kids, let me explain how this can help you. We, our school district actually had three different starting times,
depending on what grade the kids were in. So I was constantly shifting, you know, one year they were had to be at school at 8:30, the next year they had to be there at 7:30. And so all of that would shift our morning routine depending on who was getting up when and how we were getting out the door and getting to school.
And then that also meant the end of the day times were different. So it shifted a lot and it also helped me figure out, okay, this quarter, we're going to have dance and baseball and volleyball. And so what days is that happening and how is this all gonna fit together? So I'd use these time maps to figure all of that out for just a standard week.
And then each time I'd spend a little time thinking about this, we would be so much more efficient because we kind of group things together. So let's have grocery time. That's going to be, you know, this right now. Let's see, let's try putting that on Saturday morning and see if that works. And one of the best things that helped with this was that I gave my self provision to constantly be tweaking this,
to make it better originally, I was like, okay, I'm going to get this perfect time map. That's going to work all the time. And it will work for a while until the schedule changed and then I'd have to redo it. So once I finally acknowledged like, okay, this is the one for now and we're going to have a new one frequently and that's okay.
It made it work a lot better. So for example, now, you know, my podcast, I'm tending to record on Tuesday mornings for solo episodes and it works, but it's also very last minute because I try to publish on Tuesday mornings. So I'm wondering if I should move it around and give it a better day. So it's less of a last minute kind of project and then make sure you're adding in regular blocks to your time map for working on your course and working on your marketing.
So even if it's just a couple hours a week, if you can schedule in, so, you know, okay, I'm going to do this at this time every week. Not only will the routine help take away some brainpower of trying to figure out, well, when am I going to do this? Because if you always do that on Tuesday mornings,
then you then it's takes that routine makes life easier, but also make sure you don't forget to do it. So there you have it, seven steps to make this the best quarter ever for you. And let me recap them and then be sure to go to coursecreatorshq.com/36, to get all of the templates that I was talking about. So step one is take a look backward.
What worked or didn't work last quarter. Step two is to either review your goals or create your goals. Using the goal tracking sheets. Step three is to think about what are my big projects for this quarter. Step four is to do some brainstorming about the next steps what's going to move them forward. Number five is to update your tracking stats for the quarter.
Number six is to think about what your content plan is going to be for this quarter. What kinds of things are you going to talk about with your audience? What are you going to promote? What guests are you going to have? If you have a podcast and there's a calendar link you can use. And then step seven is what does my time map look like for a normal standard kind of week?
So if you enjoy this episode, be sure to jump on my email list because each Sunday I send out planning, reminder emails to help you. So it, you'll get my weekly questions. And then like this week I sent out the quarterly question. And so if that's something you like, just go to coursecreatorshq.com/idea, and sign up for that free training and it'll get you on the list and then I'll make sure you get the planning emails on Sunday nights too.
So thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode and got an idea or two that you can share and use to make your quarter even better. I really appreciate you listening. I so thank you for subscribing. And if you did get something useful, if you could go leave us a five star review, I appreciate it. Those reviews help us get in front of even more course creators.
So I appreciate your time doing that and thank you so much. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing and thank you for reviewing. Have a fantastic weekend. Let me know if this turns into a really fantastic quarter for you. I want to know how it goes, what works and what doesn't. So take care of everyone and I will catch you next week.