Quarterly Review & Planning

Quarterly Review & Planning

by | Planning-Organization-Productivity

Oh my goodness, quarterly planning is one of my favorite things to do. Let’s go ahead and step through a quarterly review and planning! Why are these days so important for your online business? Because what you focus on improves. Taking a few hours each quarter to review the previous quarter and plan for the next gets you out of the day-to-day and strategically focused on growing your business. 

If you’d like here is the perfect opportunity to download my planner. It will walk you through this!

This is non-negotiable! 
 

You must have enough time set aside for reviewing and planning your quarters. Block off two hours on your CEO day to get this done, preferably before the end of the quarter. However, this can be done at any 90 Day increment. Copy and paste the link for this blog into your calendar event. (: 

Set the tone

Grab a cup of coffee, water, or your drink of choice. Also, have a timer handy you’ll want that. If you don’t have a timer, simply Google the word timer, and one will pop up in the browser.  

If you like essential oils as I do, here is an article on 10 Essentials Oils for memory improvement and better focus. Read it here. https://www.wellnesstoday.com/be-well/mind/10-essential-oils-for-memory-improvement-and-better-focus 

Limit your distractions

Turn off all the distractions because it's time to get focused on your online business. Let me elaborate, turn off your notifications, put your phone in do not disturb mode, and close all the application and browser windows. 

If your business growth is unimportant to you, then who is it important to? Put on your CEO hat and be the person your future self will be proud of. (: 

Unlock the Secret to Business Growth: Learn How to Plan Your Next Quarter!

Start with Reflection

Now, this is important for your quarterly review and planning to begin reflecting on where you’re coming from in your business. You need to look back to look forward. 

I can almost hear you thinking, what the heck do I reflect on?  No problem, I’ve got you. 

What worked really well?

What are the areas of improvement?

Umm, total feedback – not doing that again!

Woohoo, review your win jar (in case no one has told you lately YOU’RE AMAZING, just sayin’)

Did you achieve your quarterly goal? If not, why? 

Are you on track to hit your yearly goals? 

Reflect on this last quarter, this last month, this last year, your whole time in business, whatever pops into your head. 

Go ahead now, and set the timer for five or ten minutes, whatever you feel comfortable doing. Grab your journal or notebook and get to writing. 

Mind Sweep

Stay with me now; I want you to do a mind sweep and get all of your thoughts that are distracting you out on that paper. This provides for a clear mind while you’re planning. With a mind sweep, it lets your brain know that all your thoughts are in a safe place and you don't need to worry about them while we're moving forward in the quarterly review and your next quarter planning. 

Revisit Your Vision

Moving on with our review, what's your vision? Pull that out and read it. 

What if you do not have a vision? Now is a perfect time to write one out. 

Does your vision feel in alignment with you still? Do you feel like, oh, yeah, that's my vision! 

That's exactly where I'm going. 

Your original vision for your business, is it still where you're heading now that you've grown as an entrepreneur?

Bottom line, does your vision still feel in alignment with you? Great. 

Let's put your vision on paper; what are your three-year and one-year goals?

If it's the same, beautiful. Write it out exactly the same and step into your future self that is already living the vision of your business. 

Pause and set your timer for about five minutes. 

What is your vision for the next 90 days? Pause and tap into your vision of how the next 90 days will go in your business. 

What are your goals? 

What goals do you want to achieve for the next quarter, the next six months, and the next year? Whatever it is, you can achieve them! 

 

This is where I really want you to focus. What is your goal for the next quarter? 

Will what you what to accomplish in the next quarter will push you toward your one-year goal? 

Here’s what I mean, if what you want to accomplish in the next quarter will not directly impact your one-year goal, that is pushing your business towards your vision. 

Ask yourself, why am I trying to accomplish this goal when it is not in alignment with my vision? 

As a follow-up question, would achieving this goal make you feel like you’re living your good life?

Get that timer going! You may want a bit more time for this one. 

The next thing, what do you want more of in your life and business?

For example, would you be on cloud nine if you were to do this daily in your life and business? What is it? What do you want more of in your life and business? That will make you feel like, yeah, this feels wonderful. 

Now, knowing what you want to do less in your life and business is important. The problem is there are things that you're doing that you don't need to be doing that drain your energy. 

What are those? Go ahead and write them out. Here’s why that’s important those draining tasks will be the items we look at potentially outsourcing to somebody else that would not find it draining.

And the best part is it will preserve your energy for things only you can do in your business as an entrepreneur.  

Those tasks draining your energy and focus need to get off your plate if you hope to grow your business to six figures. 

What is that? What can someone else do for you? 

Circling back to your goals, what would make you jump up and down with joy if you were to achieve them? Or have it happen? Or come across? What would that be? 

Don’t forget what your top three personal, financial, and business goals that you have for the next quarter are. 

Here’s how to filter your goals

Now, this is the kicker; this is the goal-filtering question I ask my clients.  

Read those goals that you just wrote down for your life, your business, and your finance. 

Looking at those goals and ask yourself, are you committed? Are you committed to those goals? By committing, are you willing to devote two hours a day to achieving those goals? If not, they are not meaningful to you. 

Map out important dates

Time to pull out the calendar. What dates do you need to plan around?

Here’s why this is important when planning out how to reach your goal. You’ll reverse engineer from the end date. You need to understand you’re runway. If you have two weeks out of the office for a vacation that will play a huge factor in getting stuff done.

Block all the time you’ll be out of the office. In your paper planner, you can use stickers or wasabi tape to make it fun.

  • Vacation Days
  • Important Kid Events
  • Holidays
  • Launch Dates

Breakdown the Goal

Here’s how it works, in order for the goal to be a success, there must be a commitment to follow through.

This is plain and simple, you can hope all day to reach your goal. Here’s the bottom line, if you’re not committed to creating a plan, following through, and taking action you will not have success. This is accountability Friend!

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution it’s breaking down the goal into a plan by figuring out who, what, when.

This is actually breaking down the project. Digging in and figuring out what needs to be done, who will get the work done, and when it needs to be done. You may need to figure out the where too if it needs a physical location.

👊 Quick Tip: With the project plan, depending on how much needs to get done creating this in a spreadsheet and importing it into a project management system can be a lot easier and faster.

Business Pulse

The final thing, what is your business pulse? What I mean what are the numbers telling you about your business? Do you have a healthy thriving business? Or do you have areas that need to be focused on in the next quarter?

If you’re not tracking your numbers weekly or monthly, do that now. What gets measured gets improved. Here are a few common stats.

  • Website Traffic
  • Email Subscribers
  • Engagement
  • Number of Clients

✁ Just a Snippet

Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪

  • Looking back is the best way to move forward.
  • Are you still in alignment with your vision?
  • What are you actually committed to doing?
  • Add all the important out of office dates to your calendar
  • Create a plan and commit to your success
  • How do you know you’ve improved without having a business pulse with all your numbers?
  • Go get ’em, tiger! You’ve got this.
  • Schedule time on your calendar for your NEXT quarterly review and planning.
Organize Your Email Inbox

Organize Your Email Inbox

by | Online Business, Planning-Organization-Productivity

Would you rather walk on hot coals (oh hey Tony Robbins) or organize your email inbox?

We are about to turn your email inbox from painful to manageable and dare I say a pleasure to open.

If your searching for topics on organizing your inbox, I’m guessing right now your inbox feels overwhelming, scattered and chaotic. Not to mention out of control and a total pain in the butt.

If you feel this way, these are the simple steps that I used to clear my own inbox and how I show digital CEOs or their executive assistants how to clean out their inboxes so that it feels calm and in control. woohoo

Does the thought of having an organized inbox send you into thoughts of a happy jig? I know right, the joy of it all.

An email inbox that is chaotic will cause a waste of time and energy.

Your email inbox should be treated as a tool in your online business, it should not be where you spend the bulk of your time. Here are the simple steps for a clean email inbox, therefore giving you the steps you need to finally organize your email inbox.

Clear The Clutter

The dreaded backlog

This is real, the dreaded backlog that’s inside your email. I’ve logged into accounts that were pushing 100k in unread email, yes unread email. I know how overwhelmed I feel looking at that number, but there is hope.

Create a Folder

Move all the emails that are older than one to two months old into a folder. Name it what you like Old Emails
Dreaded Backlog
Lord, please help me,
Really whatever makes you smile.

Unsubscribe

As an online entrepreneur, you know that having people on your email list that do not open and read your email affects your stats. Do everyone a favor and just unsubscribe to these lists.

A couple of options here. One is to sign up at unroll.me. This is a slick little application that will sort through your emails and roll up all your newsletters into one email a day or you can have them unsubscribe for you too.

Another is to create a folder to put these into as your sorting through your inbox. When you’re sitting in front of the TV, go through the folder and start unsubscribing.

This is how I personally handle it, but my email inbox is pretty clean.

Organize Your Email Inbox

You’re in charge of your to-do list, not your email inbox

You start your day full of energy and excitement ready to tackle everything on your to-do list.

But, you make the mistake of opening your email inbox first thing in the morning before you do anything else.

Suddenly, you have all these demands on your time that aren’t in alignment with your goals or project for your business.

If you want to get into your email inbox right away in your day. Do that but do it with the understanding that you’re sorting only:
Do – if it will take 2 minutes or under
Delegate
Defer to later when you can schedule the appropriate time on your calendar
Delete
You get 15 minutes to do this, don’t get on caught on a runaway train. In and out.

For the items that have been deferred to later. Send a quick reply and let them know it has been received and will be completed by [insert date here].

Or one of my favorite time protection tips, turn on your auto-reply with your business policy regarding email. It can be this simple, hmm maybe something like it.

Greetings,
Your email message has been received. Our normal office hours are [insert office hours] and we will be back in touch within [insert hours here] business hours. Thank you for your patience. We appreciate you.
Schedule time on your calendar when you’ll go through your email inbox. Put it on your calendar as an action.

Labels and Filters make for a clean inbox

Setting up labels and filters is the first step to an organized inbox. In the past, I've created a number of labels, but I've scaled that back a bit. 98% of the time if you go looking for an email, likely you’ll search for a keyword or person before you go and look for it. If that’s not the case, how are you finding those emails? Searching is quick and easy.

Here are the best labels or folders that I’ve found work for me:
0-Immediate
1-Action
2-Active
3-Hold
Finance
Finance/Payable
Finance/Receivable
Review
Unsubscribe

Any specific folders that are needed in your business. Such as client or product folder.

Another option for inbox filtering is the Eisenhower Matrix for email. The folders would be
Q1: Urgent & Important
The action for this is Do
Q2: Not Urgent & Important
The action for this is to Defer for Later or Schedule
Q3: Urgent & Not Important
The action for this is to Delegate the email to a team member
Q4: Not Urgent & Not Important
The action for this is to Delete or Archive the email.

Let's talk about these labels or folders and the purpose they serve.

If you notice I have a number in front of a few of the labels. You may also use a character, such as an exclamation point or dash. It’s really your preference, you can change these later if need be.

0-Immediate

Immediate is the emails that must have immediate action, as in less than 24 business hours to complete or respond.

1-Action

Action is the emails that require action by you but doesn’t require immediate action.

2-Active

Active is to store the emails for active projects that are getting a number of emails. Generally speaking, I would suggest creating a filter to put them directly into the active folder. The filter can be on an email address or subject. As a result, you know where to go when looking for an active project.

3-Hold

Hold is for emails for meetings, travel, reservations, activities. Usually, anything you need to hold for a later time. Hence they are tied to a specific date or an agenda that will no longer be needed after the event has taken place. I actually named this folder Waiting Room in my inbox.

Finance

Finance is used to hold the emails that need to have an action done with them. Such as added into your accounting software or anything that may take longer than a couple of minutes to complete. Once the action has taken place, the email can be moved to either the payable or receivable sublabel/folder pending what it is.

Review

Review is for emails that do not have a timeframe as to when they need to be reviewed. This is where I put the marketing emails that I like to skim and archive.

Ashlyn from Ashlyn Writes calls her folder Read At Leisure which I think is a cute name.

Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe, is for all those emails that you signed up for but no longer read. This folder can either be manually added to or a filter can be created.

Although, I’ve done it both ways, personally, I prefer to manually add these when I’m sorting through my emails. Since some of the marketing emails will be added to my review folder to be skimmed later and possibly archived.

Inbox Applications

You have options, options and more options when it comes to inbox applications. I can’t even remember all the inbox applications I’ve tried out. At the present time, I regularly use Spark and Kiwi as they both have a certain set of features that I like to use. Do not be scared to try different applications, you need to figure out what works for you. You have so, so many possibilities!

Why I like Spark

I like Spark because it has an app for my iPhone, while Kiwi is for my desktop. I can pin emails, save canned responses, schedule emails, and have emails come back into my inbox.

Not to mention, they also have a paid option for teams to chat back and forth on emails. One other feature is Quick Reply this option allows you to set up canned responses that can be sent with a click of the mouse.

For example, this can be used to send a quick email to let your client know that you’ve received the email and will take a look at the request. It is handy dandy.

Why Kiwi

Kiwi brings your Gmail to your desktop and if you have multiple Gmail accounts they receive tabs to jump back and forth with.

Kiwi, together with Boomerang you’re able to have a number of the same features as Spark. Including, setting up emails to be sent at a later time or to snooze an email to review later.

Get out of your inbox

As an online entrepreneur, it’s important that you get out of your inbox. After all, your work should not be driven by the emails that you receive.
Instead, it’s best to block time to work on your email. Schedule when you’ll check and sort your emails.
As an entrepreneur, it’s important that you plan and schedule inbox time. Otherwise, you’ll find that you’re using it as a procrastination tool instead of revenue-generating activities.

To begin with sort your inbox when it’s first opened. Everything gets filed in the correct label or folder so that it is completed in the correct time block.

It is possible to get a clean inbox, it just takes a bit of time to clear out the clutter. Once you have the system in place email is so much more than an unproductive time waste.

l

Little Side Note

We forget that time is our most valuable non-renewable resource. Once we use our time we can never get it back. Focus on aligned action that will move your business ahead.

✁ Just a Snippet

Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪

  • Share this with your Executive Assistant as a starting point to organize your inbox. 
  • Your inbox is a tool in your business to be utilized. 
  • If you haven't read it in two months how important is it – really? 
  • Unsubscribe to marketing emails that should not be your priority Digital CEO.
  • Time to review your and organize your email inbox should be planned. 
  • Labels and Filters are your best friend to have an organized email inbox. 
  • Find an Email Application that works for you.
  • As a Digital CEO your time needs to be focused on revenue-generating activities. 

This post was originally published on December 24, 2019, and has been freshened up a bit on August 17, 2021.

Creating a winning record in online business

Creating a winning record in online business

by | Planning-Organization-Productivity

Working closely with online entrepreneurs I understand firsthand that checking the done box is not all that exciting to them. Why is this a problem? Missing deadlines leads to issues with achieving a goal and/or finishing an important revenue-generating project on time. I know what you’re thinking how do you making it task completion exciting? The solution is simply creating a winning record in online business.

Stay with me here I'm not necessarily talking about the number of leads, or the number of offers, or the number of clients, that's not what I'm talking about with creating a winning record in online business.

In The Game

I spend a great deal of time at sporting events and talking about sporting events because my kids loving playing sports in school. And that's great. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Prior to any game, we discuss the record of the opponent, along with who they played and the individual statistic of the players. Y’all numbers tell stories.

This got me thinking about how do you keep track of a winning record in online business? To gauge how things are going. Look at it from a different angle, besides the everyday metrics which cause a glazed-over look in the eyes of almost every online entrepreneur I know.

Why is this important in your business?

You must be wondering why is this important, how does this relate to creating a winning record in an online business, and it's pretty simple.

Let me break this down for you if an action item is completed on time it’s a clear win. If it’s not completed on time it’s a clear loss. Pretty simple right!

And here's the thing as an online business owner you play an important role in taking a project across the finish line or achieving a business goal. Those action items aren’t always exciting to the owner.

Creating a winning record in online business

Break it down

In order to achieve a goal, it needs to be broken down into action items. The same thing in order to complete a project, it needs to be broken down into action items, everything that you're doing and trying to accomplish in an online business needs to be broken down into action items.

If your online business is not at a place where you can hire a project manager or OBM to figure out the project plan for you, this is how you’d figure out the action items for yourself.

Begin with a mind sweep of all of the possible action items that you need to either complete the project, reach the goal, do whatever it is that you need to get done in your online business.

Next, you put those actions in order how they need to be completed.

Start with the end date in mind, working backward from the last action to the first action begin to assign a completion date.

If you want to reach this goal by x date, then you're going to work backward on your timeline assigning dates.

Note, this is important if you haven't done that action before make sure you overestimate the amount of time it will take to complete. Add a little buffer.

When I’m breaking down a plan if I feel it will take a team member 3 hours to complete, I’ll estimate it to take 6 hours, always double up that time.

I can almost hear you thinking, what about Parkinson's Law? The old adage that work expands to fill the time allotted.

Still, I’ve found it’s better to have the extra buffer time than asking a team of contractors to find more time in their already full calendars. If it takes less time, great! Getting a bit of extra time in a project is super exciting, guaranteed you’ll find something else that you can fill it with.

Creating a Winning Record

You must be wondering how do you create a winning record in your online business?

Here’s how it works for every action that you complete on time is considered a win.

And every action that doesn’t get completed on time and on the due date, that's considered a loss, boohoo.

I’m a Notion enthusiast for almost all of my task management, I’ve added two fields one for the win and one for the loss. To figure out my record at the end of the week or the end of the month I filter on the date range in a table view and sum the total at the bottom.

Here's my suggestion on how you can go ahead and track to make sure that you actually have a winning record, because what you track actually improves.

If you have a project management system that allows for custom fields, then create a win field, and a loss field. You could also use the same field and either give yourself a 1 or -1, depending on if your win or loss.

If you're not using a project management system that allows for custom fields you can create a spreadsheet with your action items with a column for your wins and a column for your loss. Summing them up at the bottom for the record.

What does creating a winning recond tell you

Creating a winning record will shine a light if action items are getting completed on time or if action items aren’t getting completed on time.

Occasionally things come up and the action item isn’t completed by the actual deadline or due date. The keyword is occasionally.

If the record has more losses than wins, it’s time to take a look at what’s going on inside the online business to cause this.

That’s valuable information to use and improve on the record.

Is creating a winning record something you’d like in your online business?

How fun is this little spin on getting action items done? I'd love to hear if you found this beneficial.

So go ahead and leave me a comment below if you did. Thank you and I appreciate you have a wonderful day.

l

Little Side Note

With action items, it's essential as the business owner to only be working on action items that ONLY you can do. Can the action be done by someone else?

✁ Just a Snippet

Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪

  • Feel like creating a winning record in your online business?
  • This inspiration came from the many sporting events and discussions we have in our household.
  • This got me thinking about creating a winning record in online business.
  • What could be a simple way of creating a winning record in online business?
  • Give yourself a win when you complete the action item on time, a loss if you do not.
  • Yes, see simple right.
  • Here is the thing, in order to achieve a goal it needs to be broke down into action items.
  • If you do not have a project manager or OBM to do this for you, begin with a mind sweep of every action possible to reach the goal.
  • Put each action in order by how they need to be completed.
  • Every action item that is completed on time is a win! Woohoo.
  • Every action item that is not completed on time is a loss. Boohoo.
  • After you've reached your goal, you'll have a Win-Loss record that you can improve on for the next goal. (: