Quarterly Planning May Not Be Sexy

Quarterly Planning May Not Be Sexy

by | Goals, Planning-Organization-Productivity

Quarterly Planning May Not Be Sexy ​

The fourth quarter is just around the corner, while quarterly planning may not be sexy, it’s necessary for the success of your online business. 

You may resist planning in your business because the thought of it feels difficult. Friend, with even an outline of where you’d like to go and what you’d like to accomplish it, will keep you from feeling insanely busy EVERY single day. 

We all pick our difficult. Would you rather have a couple of hours of difficult or day in and day out difficult? In the end, it is always your choice. What do you feel is the best use of your time and energy?

Let Me Guide You Through A Quarterly Project Plan… 

Firstly, pull out the calendar and figure out the actual number of working days you’ll have in the quarter. Are you taking any time off for vacation, rest or leisure? 

Block those days off in your calendar now. 

Secondly, grab your notebook it’s time to create an exhausting list of all the projects that you want to accomplish in the next three months. When I say exhausted, I mean get it all out even those crazy ideas. No project is too small or simple for the list. Write down everything that pops into your head, without any judgment.

What projects are in aligned with your vision

With your exhausted list of ideas, which projects do you feel is the most aligned with the vision and mission of your online business. Next, go on and cross off anything on your list that is unaligned or doesn’t bring a sense of joy. 

Then, circle all the ideas that you feel are aligned with the vision of your online business and rank each of the tasks by importance to you and your soulmate clients. This will aid in where you need to start.

Quarterly Planning May Not Be Sexy
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Little Side Note

If you’re planning a large launch to take place in the next quarter and you know all focus needs to go into this. This would be your only project for the quarter. 

Mindmap the project

My favorite way to create a project plan is to begin with a mindmap. I’ve talked about mindmap previously in the post if you’d like to read it. 

In the center of a new sheet of paper pick one of the ideas from your list. This is how you start your mindmap.

Circle your idea in the center of your page and begin to create lines off of this idea with all the items that need to take place in order to bring it to completion.  Then create small accomplishable tasks off of items that need to be completed. 

For example, if one project in the next quarter is to create a new opt-in. You’ll need a landing page for one of the items. What are the small accomplishable daily tasks to create a landing page? Here are a few ideas. 

  • Find images 
  • Write Copy
  • Create Wireframe
  • What else do you need to do? 

Get it scheduled

If you have a project management system you can set this all up inside, so that you know what to do when. If not, a paper calendar or Bullet Journal will work just fine. 

At the top, write out your online business mission, vision, and goals for the upcoming quarter. Under this breaks it into three columns. One for each project. 

Looking at your list if you had to pick just one project what would it be? 

Start with that one.

Under the Project Header

Now we are going to put in all the tasks that need to be completed by who and when. Will you need any resources, such as a new software application, to complete the task? 

Not all the tasks must be completed by you. It’s very important that you stay in your lane and delegate out the tasks that can be done by someone else.

Are you keeping your WordPress website in tip-top shape?

Are you keeping your WordPress website in tip-top shape?

by | Online Business

Are you keeping your WordPress website in tip-top shape?

We all do it, do a Google search find a website and determine in three seconds if we will stay. Are you keeping your WordPress website in tip-top shape? Your website is a software application. For example, how many app updates happen each week on your smartphone? Well, that same thing is happening with the themes, plugins and WordPress software application on your website. Further, the updates are software enhancements that protect your site or better yet provided you with a new feature. 

What exactly do you need to be doing to keep your WordPress Website looking good and in tip-top shape?

The recommendations

Here is a list of the recommended updates that should be performed on your WordPress website at a minimum monthly. 

Website Wellness To-Do List

Monthly Backups

We use the plugin Updraft for these backups. It can be set to happen automatically. In addition to the backup each month, you’ll want to make sure that you send this to a third-party location such as Google Drive, DropBox or your local computer.

Because if something happens to your website, something will happen to the backup that is stored locally on the website. 

Most importantly, if you automate your backup to a third-party location. For the love, make sure you check that it is happening. 

Applying any updates 

You’ll need to apply updates to WordPress. Updates are guaranteed as the software is always evolving and changing. Updates will need to be applied to WordPress, your theme and plugins at least monthly. 

It’s best to apply these updates one by one. Trust me, we know this is time-consuming. However, if the software is conflicting with the current software on your WordPress website it could take the site down.

We’re talkin’ about those dreaded blue or white screens.

As a results, by updating them one at a time you’ll be able to check that your site is still up and running after each one of the software updates.

If it’s not up and you’re getting a heart-pounding error message, you’ll know exactly what needs to be disabled or deleted on your cPanel to get your site back up and running.

Here is an article on disable or deleting on your cPanel. Or a quick Google search will help with this too.

Reviewing spam

If you allow comments on your website you’ll have spam comments from bots that search the internet just to put comments on the website. Yeppers, it’s a thing. 

These comments take up space on your site – clear the clutter people. (:

Checking for Broken Links

They have a plugin for checking for broken links, but you will need to fix those links manually.

Other updates to consider

Fresh Content

Why is it important to keep the content fresh? Your website is your online storefront. For instance, would you walk into a physical building that looks like it’s old and falling apart? Heck no, you have three seconds to make an impression before a visit makes the decision to stay or leave your site. 

Have you found a blog or a website that you felt provided fantastic information? Bookmarking this site to check for new content, but sadly disappointed when nothing new was added. Let’s be real, you’ll remove the bookmark and never coming back to that site again. Don’t let that be your website! 

Providing new valuable content builds up the know, love and trust factor with your soulmate clients. Oh, and we know that this is easier said than done! 

Adding new content is a great thing to consider outsourcing. How much simpler would it be to just type new content in an email or document, along with the page location and when you wanted it added. Um yep, so much simpler. 

And if you want to get your website ranked with Google you need to be adding fresh new content or at least updating your current content. Plus doing the research on keywords. 

You do want to put a bit of effort into getting your site seen, according to hostingtribunal.com, to date, there are over 1.6 billion websites in the world and more than 500 million are recognized as blogs.

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Little Side Note

Here is a great article from smashingmagazine.com on image optimization and website speeds. 

Changing Up Your Images

Changing up your images on your website can give it a fresh look and feel. But, it takes time to resize the images and format them for the website. Plus, clean up all the old images that aren’t used any longer. 

You know all those exciting things that we’re sure are getting done on the regular, right, to keeping your WordPress Website up to date and running smoothly.

​You're Crazy

If you’re thinking you’re crazy I don’t have time for that! We’d love to help you out. We have three different packages for keeping your WordPress Website up to date, and they are all fabulous. Send us a message and we'll get back to you. 

Nah, I’ll do it myself

Great, just make sure you are keeping your WordPress Website up to date! To help you out, we invite you to sign up for our Monthly Wellness Reminders, where we’ll send you a reminder each month that it’s that time again and we include a little WordPress information to keep you in the know.

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How do you know when you’re ready to outsource?

How do you know when you’re ready to outsource?

by | Online Business

How do you know when you’re ready to outsource?

If you’re asking the question how do you know when you’re ready to outsource that’s a good sign that it may be time to hire a virtual assistant or an online business manager. 

Too small for outsourcing

You’re barely making any money in your business are you too small for outsourcing? However, let me ask you could someone else do the job better and faster? 

For instance your social media. You could easily have someone else manage the posting and you can handle the engagement. 

To clarify, with outsourcing, it doesn’t have to be hours and hours. You could find a virtual assistant to help with a few small pieces of your business. 

Keep a log of where you’re spending your time. What tasks do you despise? What tasks do you love to do and it causes you to procrastinate on income-generating tasks in your business?

What is DYI costing you?

While I get it, some things are better done by you. But, what is DYI costing your business? Are you wearing too many hats in your business and running around and not really getting anything done?

Certainly when you focus on short term outcomes continuing to doing it all yourself may seem like the cheaper option. 

However, when you begin to look at the long term goals of your online business what is the actual cost of doing it all yourself?

Above all, the one thing that you can never get back is your time. 

You have all these great ideas but zero time to develop and implement 

Is this you? You have all these great ideas but, the day to day routine tasks are hindering your growth by preventing you from implementing all your great ideas. 

Consequently, you already have more work than time and even thinking about all the tasks that would need to go into developing your idea into reality seems overwhelming. 

This is a sign you're ready to outsource. 

Your mind is filled with Never Enough Time

Your mind is constantly going with all the tasks and ideas. While you’re working on one tasks you’re thinking about all the tasks that still need to be done. 

You started your business for a purpose and now you’re stuck in the backend of your business with no end in sight. 

You need to grow but you can’t do it alone with all the routine day to day operations that take up all your priceless time.

This is a sign you're ready to outsource. 

You’re simply tired of wearing all the hats in your business

This is a sign you're ready to outsource.

Okay, Friend, you see all the signs that you're ready to outsource

Now you ask, who’s the best fit to outsource tasks to in your business? First of all, this is determined by what stage you’re at in your business. 

Therefore, let’s take a look at the different service providers' roles to figure out who’s the best fit for you and your business. The roles are a Virtual Assistant (VA), a Techie Virtual Assistant  (TVA), Certified Online Business Manager (OBM) or all of the above. 

Depending on what stage your business is in all three may be what you need to take your business to the next level.

Virtual Assistant|VA

Commonly, your first hire is going to be a virtual assistant, that special hero that gets you back to why you started your business and take all those routine day-to-day tasks and creates more time in your day. Hallelujah! 

Friend do I need to remind you that wearing the busy badge will not generate more income in your business? Stop trying to be everything to everybody and just focus on what you do best. 

A Virtual Assistant will get you out of your inbox, organize the to-do list, protect your priceless time on your calendars, simply be the organization and time-saving hero for you and your business. 

In short, a Virtual Assistant will be a doer of all the routine day-to-day tasks that you have in your business. 

Techie Virtual Assistant|TVA

Do you need to learn a new skill or fine-tune a skill to take your grow to the next level?

A Techie Virtual Assistant is going to be a subject matter superstar on a software application. 

The Miss Task Team is a group of Techie Virtual Assistant or Subject Matter Superstars. Our Techie Superpowers are working with WordPress Website Design and email service providers, such as MailChimp, MailerLite, ConvertKit, and Ontraport. We also work with the all in one platform Kajabi. 

To sum up, a Techie Virtual Assistants take the hassle out of having to learn a new skill. Leaving you more time for income-generating tasks in your business. 

Online Business Manager|OBM

An Online Business Manager or OBM for short. An Online Business Manager actually supports the business owner and manages the business. 

An org chart for an online business would have the OBM directly under the owner managing all the team members. The focus of the OBM is on the how and the who. How the vision of the business owner is going to be carried out and by whom. 

We manage all of the things. An OBM manages all the people, all the operations, all of the things that are going on with the projects that you have in your business so that you're able to focus on your vision and the income-generating tasks that only you can do in your business. 

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Little Side Note

It is the Pareto Principle that 80% of your results are caused by 20% of your effort.

Two Resources

What? Yep, I have two resources that you could download. First is my Overwhelmed to Outsourced Planner. Second, is my 100+ Ways An OBM Can Boost Business. 

Want to know if we would be a good fit? Fill out an inquiry form and let’s chat. 

Say you can and outsource

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