This week is all about New Year Prep. Last week I walked you through exactly how I spend December closing out the year and preparing for a new year ahead. If you haven’t listened to that episode, pause this one, because it’s truly a precursor to what we’re talking about today. So go listen to that one and then come back here.

Alright, if you’re still listening, I’m assuming you’ve listened to last week’s episode and are fully prepared to close the year out well. In today’s episode, we’re going to be chatting about exactly how I OPEN a new year. In particular, I’m going to walk you through each day of my first week back, and the exact tasks that I perform each day.

Last week’s episode was much more flowing, and while I gave you guidance, it also left a lot of room for doing things at your own pace and listening to your own gut. This week’s episode is not like that at all. When it comes to opening up a new year, things are much more task-based, and I’m going to tell you every single one of those tasks in today’s episode so make sure you grab a pen and piece of paper so you can jot these down!

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Last week I walked you through exactly how I spend December closing out the year and preparing for a new year ahead. If you haven’t listened to that episode, pause this one, because it’s truly a precursor to what we’re talking about today. So go listen to that one, and then come back here. Alright, if you’re still listening, I’m assuming that you’ve listened to last week’s episode and are fully prepared to close the year out well.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be chatting about exactly how I am. Open a new year. In particular, I’m going to walk you through each day of my first week back and the exact tasks that I perform each day. Last week’s episode was much more flowing, and while it gave you guidance, it also left a ton of room for doing things at your own pace and listening to your own gut.

This week’s episode is not like that at all. When it comes to opening up a new year, things are much more task based, and I’m going to tell you every single one of those tasks in today’s episode. So make sure you grab a pen and a piece of paper so that you can jot these down. You’re listening to episode 244 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

When it comes to being out of office, coming back into office can be really, really stressful and overwhelming because not only are you having to. Get back into the swing of things, but you’ve also got a ton of emails in your inbox Which is just a bunch of people needing things from you when your business already needs things from you and it can be Really really overwhelming.

So like I mentioned at the end of last week’s episode Something that I do is Every time that I go out of office, but especially, especially for the end of your holiday break, I say I’m coming back into office on a certain date, but I really come back in office the day before. So moving into 2023, I am putting.

January 10th as my back in office date, and I’m saying this is when I’ll be back in office. You can expect to hear from me by the end of that week, yada, yada, yada. I’m actually getting back into the swing of things on the 9th, which is a Monday, but I tell everyone the Tuesday so that expectation is there so that they know I’m not going to hear from her before then and that’s fine and that’s okay.

No one cares, really. Unless you’ve promised that you’ll be there for someone and you won’t be, but as long as you are open and upfront about that expectation, it’s not a big deal. But giving myself that one day where I don’t really even need to check my inbox, obviously I do because the temptation is very real, but not needing to and being able to check it and not have to respond to anything is glorious.

Obviously, if there’s an emergency situation in my inbox, I’ll respond to it, but that’s so rare. But, I always say, okay, I’ll be back in office on Tuesday, whatever that Tuesday is that I’m coming back in office, and I leave that Monday to myself. It is a really great way to ease back into things. So, what does that Monday look like?

Well, on Monday, I am closing out the year before. And these are all the tasks that just really, one, I don’t have the mental capacity for. When I’m closing out the year at the beginning of December, but also I don’t have the ability to do because the year hasn’t exactly closed, particularly revenue type things.

Right. So when I get to this point, when I come back into office in January, my goals are already set my quarter. And most of my year is already mapped out. It’s not a matter of doing those things. It’s a matter of just getting into the new year and getting started and preparing myself well for doing those things that I’ve already planned out.

So, on Monday, I’m closing out the year before. I’m sending W 9s to anyone that will need one for the last tax year, anyone that hired me as a contractor and didn’t pay my credit card. I look up the rules on that. I’m not going to, this is not legal advice or financial advice, but I send W 9s to anyone that will need one.

I also email any of my contractors that I paid to ask for a W 9 if I need one from them so that I already am gathering what I need for the tax year ahead. Uh, or for doing my taxes for the year before I should say, then I close out my KPIs, my income expenses, my weekly scorecards, all of those spreadsheets I close out for the year.

So I’m going through and I’m saying, okay, Here are all my December numbers for my KPIs for my income expenses. Here’s the final look at my weekly scorecards. And I’m not only doing it for December, but I’m closing out whatever needs to be closed out for the year. So, okay, what were my total numbers? What were my total, how much did I pay myself?

Owner’s expenses. How much did I do in donations? How much did I spend on, you know, all the different things I’m closing that out for the year. And then I’m basically just going through my typical first of the month KPI workflow, which I don’t know if I’ve done a whole episode on. Uh, if that’s something you’d like to hear, let me know.

But basically this is just me going through all the numbers in my business. And it’s a lot of just monthly tasks that need to happen, like checking in on client birthdays and club content, batching members, student birthdays, and. Setting up different things that need just a lot of just administrative stuff that needs to happen on a monthly basis as well as going through my KPIs and things like that.

So I’m just going through that typical workflow. I always do that workflow the first Monday of whatever month, and it’s just tracking different numbers and analytics and things like that. And then the last thing that I’m doing on Monday is that I am reading last year’s letter to myself, which I’m going to talk about a little bit later.

But basically I write a letter to myself each year and I’m going to go through and read it and just kind of see what I had written that I wanted in the last year. And it’s just a nice way to wrap up. This is the end of all of my, in this case, 2022 business stuff. Where did I leave me? How did I in the year and that’s, that’s just the last task for that.

So that’s how I close out the year on Tuesday, which remember this is when I say I’m back in office. I’m doing client check ins. I am handling emails and that’s really it. And it takes a lot of times, most of the day, just because there’s so much that can accumulate in that time going through the inbox.

It’s time consuming, especially when it’s been left for a couple of weeks and clients. This is when I’m going to be really diving back into everything that they need from me and making sure that I’m checking in on them and things like that. So Tuesday is really simple. It’s time consuming, but it’s simple.

It’s just client check ins and emails. Wednesday is what I call purge day, and not that creepy purge movie that I haven’t seen but get the premise of, not that kind of purge, but the purging of all of my random clutter. I try throughout the year, and this is typically one of my KPI day tasks, right, and quarterly tasks and things like that, is cleaning up different files.

Bye. Things just get out of control. It just is what it is. And, this day is set aside so that I can start with a clean, fresh slate at the beginning of the year. And all’s I’m doing is cleaning up files. So, I’m cleaning up all of the random notes that I have around my office. My post its, my stickies. You know, sometimes I’ll take notes on things, and then It’s not super pressing irrelevant, but I need the information, but I haven’t had time to file it away on Trello or wherever it needs to go.

And so it just gets dropped in this little pile. I’m cleaning up all of those random notes. I’m going through the downloads folder on my laptop and I’m organizing those. I’m basically clearing it out by either deleting what needs to be deleted. To be deleted or uploading things to my hard drive or my Google Drive or the folder needs to be in on my actual laptop.

But the idea is to clear out that downloads folder so it’s totally empty. I go through all of the files on my laptop itself and I Organize and clear those out. Same thing with my Google drive, clearing all that out, deleting. I keep client folders for a particular amount of time. And after it’s been a couple of years, well, I can delete the oldest away.

Basically delete those files, delete, clean up my just Google drive. Cause things get messy. Just clean up the Google drive. I go into Canva. And I clean things up a little bit. There are always going to be some of those that you just don’t need anymore. And they just kind of take up space, right? And it makes it harder to find things.

Try to clean that up. Same thing with Trello. I go in and clean up the boards. What do I not need anymore? What is it serving me? What is just taking up space? And my Dropbox as well. And that sounds like a lot, right? It’s like, You know, do you really need to clean up Canva and Trello? They’ve got unlimited space, yadda yadda yadda.

But, I just like to have a clean slate. And if I don’t, if it’s not serving the business anymore, it’s just mental and visual clutter. Even though it’s electronic, it’s still visual clutter. So I like to clean all that up. Now, the last thing that I’m doing on this day. Is starting and potentially finishing the process of working on the tasks that I came up with from my December audit.

If you listen to last week’s episode, I talked about the fact that I audit the three Gs, especially my goals, my gut and my guest experience in particular. I’m talking about the guest experience audit here. The workflows, the email newsletters, the sequences, the website. I went through and I made a note of all the things I wanted to change within those things, right?

But like I said in last week’s episode, I’m not working on that. Those in December, I’m just making a list. I’m not doing those. I’m not improving those in December. Because I’m not worried about projects, but this purge day is a great day to start going through and cleaning all of those up, checking those things off that task list.

Cause most of those tasks are going to be really quick. Like, Oh, that font looked weird. Let me go in and in two seconds. Change the font on that or the spacing was weird. A lot of them are going to be little things like that, but this is a good time to start going through and cleaning those up. Maybe you finish all of them on this day and that’s great, but if not, don’t worry, we’ve got time for it.

I’ll get to that in a minute on Thursday. I am opening the new year. So Monday I close the year, Tuesday I’m checking in with clients, Wednesday I’m cleaning things up. I’m getting that clean slate ready to go and then on Thursday I am opening the new year. First I’m going to write this letter to myself.

I mentioned on Monday I read the one from last year to close out that day. Well, this is where I’m writing that letter and it’s really just kind of a, this is where I ended last year. Here’s what I’m hoping for in this year. And it’s really just an encouragement to myself. As I start a new year and it’s not super long.

It’s just short and sweet, but it just is a, hey, you’ve got this. These are your goals and here’s where we’re going here. Here’s where we’re at as we start the year. And it’s really fun to look back on when you read the one on Monday and you say, Oh, wow, I really grew this much in the new year. So I start.

With that on Thursday, I am opening the new year by writing that letter to myself, and then I’m going in and I’m creating all of my new spreadsheets, so my new weekly scorecard for the year, my monthly KPI spreadsheet, my income and expenses spreadsheet, all those spreadsheets, I am creating and updating them for the new year.

Then I am looking at, in particular, income and expenses worksheet, and I am reevaluating my monthly spending. I am deciding where to cut things out. Um, and then starting the process of cutting them. And then I’m also saying, okay, what is my monthly average? You know, here’s what I spent last year. Each month had them up, divide them by 12.

What’s the average, right? Re evaluating that monthly average and then updating my savings goal. So I have a savings account for the business that just like a personal savings goal, ideally has three to six months worth of money in there for your operating expenses should something happen. And. Over time, as the business grows, your operating expenses tend to grow as well.

So at the end of each year, I say, okay, well, this was my saving goal last year because that was what my three months of monthly expenses were. Okay, well now my average is this, so this needs to be. My new savings goal and throughout the year I work on making my way to that savings goal so that I have that money Just in case anything happens And then the final thing that I do to open the new year is I go in and I update my website copyright Go ahead and put that 2023 down at the bottom of your website and any of which you may have it I know that I have a lot of pages that are hosted on Cartra and not my website And so I have to go into those pages as well and make sure that that website copyright is updated But make sure you go in and update that website copyright to the new year You And with that, your new year is open.

Now Friday is a bonus day. This is, for me, the day that I go in and if I haven’t finished those tasks from that December audit, that’s when I’m going to continue cleaning up the workflows and sequences. If I don’t need to do that, if I did finish that on Wednesday, I just take that Friday off because We’re easing back into the new year.

Right? It’s a slow process. When you have taken time off, you have to ease your way back in. It’s not just a, Okay, well, I had time off, so I’m gonna hit the ground running and work eight hours every single It’s That’s a lot. It’s exhausting. And so you gotta ease your way back in. So, if you don’t need this day, don’t do it.

But, for me, it’s very much a, What happened on Wednesday, and how much more work do I have on these? Workflows and sequences and I’m going to get that finished on this day if I need to and so that’s it That is how I open the year strong Monday. I close out the year before Tuesday clients Emails just getting all that cleaned up Wednesday is purge day Thursday is opening the new year and Friday is that bonus?

Workshop kind of day where I am just finishing up those tasks that I created for myself in my audit So your action step for this week is I want you to set up a a Trello card and us on a board, whatever platform you use to keep track of all your business workflows. And I want you to get your own workflow written out so that you can start the year fresh and be ready to go for an incredible 2023.

So that when you come back into office next month, you know that I’m doing this on this day, this on this day, this on this day. And this is how I’m going to open the year strong. And you set aside that time for yourself. So. Go ahead and set up whatever that is. Again, I use Trello, so I have different cards that I just have a template and each year I will copy the template and work my way through it when I go to start the new year.

And fittingly, this week’s book recommendation is called Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. And this book. It was very, very interesting because it explains why women experience stress differently than men and it gives action steps for how to minimize stress, avoid burnout, and live more joyfully.

Highly recommend. It is very much worth a read. There’s a lot of science and psychology in there, but it’s all brought into layman’s terms, so it’s really easy to understand, so. Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, highly recommend. And until next time, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your life and biz.

So much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 244: New Year Prep appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

September through December is the busy season for both my business, and my part-time job. And the way you close out a busy season is just as important as the way you prepare for your busy season— because you don’t want your next season to start off with overwhelm and disorganization.

So, over the next two weeks I’m bringing you a two-part series on how I close out one year and open the other, which enables me to take time off consistently throughout the year without compromising my goals.

This week’s episode is all about how I structure December, and what I do in December to prepare for the new year. I’m going to walk you through exactly what I’m doing each day in December, and then I’ll walk you through what those tasks look like as well.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

September through December are the busy season for both my business and my part time job. And the way you close out a busy season is just as important as the way you prepare for it. Because you don’t want your next season to start off with overwhelm and disorganization. So over the next two weeks, I’m bringing you a two part series on how I close out one year and open the other, which enables me to take time off consistently throughout the year without compromising my goals.

This week’s episode is all about how I structure December and what I do in December to prepare for the new year. I’m going to walk you through exactly what I’m doing each day in December, and then I’ll walk you through what those tasks look like as well. You’re listening to episode 243 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

First, I want to start by Sharing what it is that my December looks like and how I plan it out, because I’m really intentional about the way I plan out December because, and I’m sure most of you are the same way, I used to try to finish up the year and spend the whole last month wrapping up projects and doing all the things and making sure I was closing the year out well for the business and And simultaneously, I was also trying to get through this super long list that I had of all the holiday related things that I wanted to do with my husband and with my family and with my friends.

And that meant that I was burning the candle. At both ends like if you could burn a candle at more than two ends I would have been because I was trying to do literally everything and also simultaneously relax and enjoy the holiday season and What it just led to was burnout and I wasn’t excited about starting the new year I started the new year feeling burnt out which meant I wasn’t ready to dive in To all of these goals that I had set for myself And i’m gonna guess that if you celebrate during the holiday season as well that you probably do something similar So this is how i’ve set up my december so that I don’t feel that stress and that burnout anymore, and I’m able to actually relax and enjoy the holiday season and then start January feeling ready to go and ready to tackle all of the things I’m ready to tackle in the new year.

So, when it comes to December, I put zero projects on my plate. None. Zero. All of my projects get wrapped up really before Thanksgiving. I have, that’s the goal, and then I have that little bit of time between Thanksgiving and the new month to finish, but the goal is to have everything wrapped up and done by Thanksgiving so that I don’t have to worry about any new projects in the new month because projects take time.

And it’s not something I have in December or that’s not correct. It’s not something I want to dedicate time to in December. So the only thing I’m doing outside of closing the year is meeting with clients. I meet with my clients the last month of every quarter to plan the next quarter’s content strategy.

Right. And so in December, I’m meeting with all of my clients to plan out their new year, their plan for the new year, and their strategy for the first quarter. They’ve got to have that planned, right? So, That is the only thing that I’m doing and all of my client work happens on Mondays. I try to fit my clients into the first two Mondays in December.

Typically I end up needing to open the third Monday in December as well. So usually that third Monday in December is my last day in office for the year. So I have those Mondays, those two to three Mondays that are just for clients. Outside of that, that first week of December, Tuesday through Thursday or Friday is all about my CEO days and mapping out.

The year ahead. The second week is always batch week. I’m creating my content for January in that week. And then after that third Monday, I’m off for the rest of the year. I’m out of office. Goodbye. Enjoying the holidays with my friends and my family and myself. So this first week of December is all about setting goals and making plans for the next year.

I’m not opening the next year yet, which I’ll get to in next week’s episode, but I am Going ahead and setting goals and preparing for next year. Now when it comes to setting my goals for the new year This is something that I actually start a lot sooner than the beginning of December So all year long the final page of my journal is just a running list of anytime I have an idea of something that might be a goal that I’d like to accomplish in the next year, I go ahead and write it down.

So if I think, oh, I would love to do this thing in the new year, or I think this would be a good revenue goal, I write it down. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be what I end up doing, but when I have those thoughts, I go ahead and write them down in the back of my journal. And so then I can come back to them when this week comes around and I can finalize instead of starting from scratch.

I also really start mapping out my New Year’s goals and my sales projections in particular back in September. Again, it’s nothing final and it’s just a starting point, but I start selling. Q one back in Q four, right? I think a lot of us do that. And so in order to know how much availability I have for one to one in particular, and where I’m kind of going in that first quarter, I start thinking about that.

Way back in September, way back before Q4 even starts, because before I can sell in Q4, I have to know what it is that I’m selling, right? So if I know that I’m gonna have X amount of one to one spaces, well, I have to know where that leads me within my revenue goal. And maybe I need to increase for next year, maybe I need to decrease for next year, or when it comes to my VIP days, especially, I need to know what dates I have available in Q1 in order to sell them during Q4.

And so, some of this mapping happens in September. There’s always brainstorming throughout the year, and then some mapping does happen in September. But during this week, I am finalizing things and I’m saying, these are my goals. This is where I’m going. This is how I’m going to get there for a more in depth look at some of these processes that I have.

I’ve already done some episodes solely on them. So I have four different episodes that you might be interested in listening to. First, episode 92 is six steps for planning your year in business. Would definitely be worth a listen. Episode 87 is how I determine my yearly business goals. And then episodes 81 and 82 are a two part series all about my quarterly planning.

So that’s what I’m doing during this week. I’m setting my yearly business goals. I’m doing my quarterly planning for the new year, and I’m also just planning for the new year in business. So episodes 92, 87, 81 and 82, I don’t know if there’s really a particular order that I would say you should listen to.

Add ’em to your list to listen to if you haven’t already, or go back and listen as a refresh. So I do my goal setting. I map out my next quarter. That’s all happening during this week, and that takes some time, right? It’s not a, I’m gonna sit down at eight this morning and work until lunch and then I’m gonna, it’s not a really a full workday necessarily.

It’s. A workday where I have to give myself space to be the CEO and to go take walks and to give myself creative activities to do so that I can have these thoughts that come in when I make the space for them. Some other things that I’m doing that are more like sit down kind of things would be analyzing different numbers in my business.

Obviously it’s the beginning of December and so I don’t have a full look at my revenue yet, but I’m able to say Pretty close to what I’m gonna make in the year by this point, right? It’s it’s, you know, at some point you have patterns and you’ve projections and you know, okay I’m gonna make roughly this much in this range So I’m looking at my revenue and I’m analyzing those numbers and what came from where in which things were best sellers and which ones Didn’t really sell at all and what am I gonna cut next year?

And maybe what do I have that I could add, you know looking at numbers that way But I’m also looking and analyzing numbers at anything tied to any goals that I have. So let’s say one of my goals was to bring in X number of new members to club content matching for the year, right? I want to have this many members at any given time.

Well, I’m going to look at not only how many members I have, but I also need to look back at the customer journey that I’ve set up and look at those numbers. So I want to look at how many people landed on the sales page And how many people actually converted from a sales page? What is the sales page conversion rate?

I want to look at how many people got into my email sequences and how many bought from there. What is that conversion rate? And I’m going to look at those numbers and maybe in the new year, I’m going to pick one of those to improve. I don’t know yet. I’m just analyzing numbers right now and writing down potential thoughts of, okay, I could work on improving my email sequence, or I could work on improving my My sales page, or I could even look at, okay, what’s my retention rate?

How long do people tend to stay? How many people stay on as VIP members? How long have you, there are so many different numbers that can go into any different goal, but I’m looking at those goals that I had and then saying, okay, not only did I hit them or not hit them, but what are those numbers look like?

I want to say this is something that would be best if we’re doing it all year long and looking at them, but as. Mostly solo printers. I know that we don’t have a ton of time to do that. So I’m making sure I set aside the time to at least do this at the very least at the end of the year. I try to do it quarterly.

But looking at those numbers, and this is also going to be a good time to jot down potential numbers that you want to keep track of for next year. So when you set up KPI sequences, you can say, or KPI spreadsheets, you can say, okay, well, Well, I want to track conversion rates of this landing page. And I want to track conversion, you know, those are numbers that you could be thinking about now to track next year.

We’re not creating the spreadsheet yet. We’re just jotting down ideas to come back to, to settle into over the next few weeks, because let’s face it, this is planning for a new year and being a CEO is not something you can force these thoughts. They kind of have some be mold over, which is another reason to take that time at the end of the year.

Um, but I’m analyzing those numbers and I’m jotting down potential tasks or ideas that I could do to improve them in the next year or that I want to track in the next year. And along with that, I am auditing my business as a whole. And I’ve got three G’s that I audit. I audit my goals, I audit my gut and I audit my guest experience.

Now what I mean when I say I audit my goals, I look back at my goals for the year and I Yes, I achieved it. No, I didn’t achieve it. But I also look back and go, was that a realistic goal? Was it realistic to expect this to happen? And kind of process that. I also am looking at the goals I’m planning for next year and I’m auditing those as well and saying, are these realistic?

Is this something I can reasonably achieve? Am I trying to do too much? When it comes to my gut, what I’m doing there is I am really just making the space again to sit down with my journal and kind of write through what I want in the business. And it’s not structured. I don’t have questions that I necessarily ask myself.

It’s just. What worked, what isn’t working, what doesn’t feel good, and I listen to my gut and what it’s telling me. And this is a lot of times how I decide whether or not to close a program or whether to keep going with it. It’s just listening to my gut and saying, what are you telling me about what I want out of my goals for the next year?

And I do this with my personal goals too. I’m actually not using a goal planner for 2023. It’s a decision that I just made last week and I want to lean more into listening to my gut. Um, and planning less goals. And so when I sit here and I, you know, I, and this sounds so woo and I’m not a woo person at all, but I am as an Enneagram one, I really listen to my gut when I’m making decisions.

And when it comes to my personal goals, you know, writing the book is obviously it’s a business goal, but it’s also a personal goal for me. So I know that that’s a goal I’ll have in 2023 and I, this is October as I’m recording this. So I haven’t set goals yet for 2023. But I know that’s one that I’ll have, right?

And my gut also is telling me to continue to lean into taking care of myself, into actually eating well and working out. Like, taking care of me. And right now, those are the only two personal goals that are really screaming at me and in past years, I’ve used goal planners and I needed to, they had a time and place.

They were incredible. I’m not shaming anyone for using a goal planner. I’ve used goal planners and I’ve followed their structure. To the detriment of listening to my gut. And so that’s another thing. That’s a long personal tangent, but the point is, is that I sit down and I bring different thoughts and ideas to my gut and I listen to what it says.

And I’m auditing what it says and what I’m going to do with my business based on that. Do I also look at numbers? Yes. Obviously we’re analyzing numbers for a reason, but I’m going to take what I’ve analyzed and bring that to my gut and use both of them to balance it out. And then the last thing is a more practical audit, and that’s my guest experience.

So what I mean by that is any type of sequence or workflow or anything like that, where. A guest is going to experience it. So whether it’s the workflows I have in HoneyBook from my one to one clients or my VIP days, or the workflows I have in HoneyBook for my podcast interviews, those are all workflows that I have set up.

Those are all guest experiences. People that come into my space are guests, and they are experiencing me through these workflows. The same thing for The sequences and workflows that I have in Cartra, which is what I use for my email service provider, but every email service provider uses a different terminology.

But those email sequences, those email workflows, whatever it is that your place calls them. Those are also ways that guests into my world experience me in an automated form. So anything like that, that the sequence or workflow or an automation I’m going through and I’m auditing all of those. Another thing final of my guest experience is my website.

That’s a huge way that guest experience me. So what I’m doing is I’m auditing as I’m pulling up all of these and I’m going through and taking a magnifying glass to it and saying, this needs to be fixed. This. Is not excluding people correctly or this copy isn’t how I would like it or this sequence is kind of excessive.

It’s you know, it’s not working. Let’s cut it. All I’m doing is auditing though. I’m not fixing anything. I am just making a Trello card full of things that I can fix. All I’m doing is taking notes. All I’m doing is looking at it as a CEO from that high level bird’s eye view and saying this is not working.

This needs to be changed. This could be improved. And this is just. The best way that I have found personally to make sure that I am continuously improving that guest experience is setting up those systems and workflows and automations, but then constantly going back in and saying, Okay, that needs to be changed.

That needs to be fixed. That needs to be updated and really just taking that magnifying glass and looking at them as a whole and saying, Okay, well, I need to change this link in all of them because let’s be real. Sometimes you put a link in a footer and then Seven months later, it’s no longer relevant and you have to go all the way back in.

This is, that’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, well now I want to change this link that was linking to my one to one services, but now my one to one services are full. I’m going to link it to my shop instead, right? So that’s the kind of thing that you’ll note in a guest experience audit. And again, all I’m doing is taking notes.

I am not actually doing the work yet. This is a really laid back low key week where I am just. Letting things flow. So then we’ve got the second week, which is batch week. You know how my batch week works. I’ve talked about it a million times on the podcast. You can find so many different episodes about it, but what I love about doing this batch week and what I think is so important, if you do not do batch week, here’s why you should, when I’m doing my batch week in December, I am planning and creating and scheduling all of my January content so that.

When I come back that Monday after batch week and I finish my clients, I can close out the year knowing that I have a plan for the new year, that I’m going to open the new year strong and that I don’t have to feel this need to rush back into creating anything. I can ease my way into the new year because all of my content is scheduled and ready to go before I leave office in December.

It is the best feeling in the world. But if you’re going to do batch week, you also have to have the CEO week beforehand in order to know what your plan is. Unless you want to hire me for your one to ones. But by the time you listen to this, come find me and see if I have space. We’ll see. I don’t know.

But. Make sure you have, you’ve got to make sure that you have time to map out your year and your goals and where you’re going in order to create strategic content. So these two really go hand in hand. You’re mapping out your year so you can be strategic so you can create the content that strategically aligns with where you’re going in the new year and what you’re doing and where you’re taking your business.

So that’s batch week. Make sure at the end of your batch week, To put up your away message that says when you’re going to be back in office, set up that email autoresponder. If you don’t have one up, I know some people keep them up all the time, but if you don’t, or even if you do update it so that they know anyone who emails you knows when you’re going to be back in office and when they can expect to hear back from you.

I also personally like to notify all of my clients individually. I tend to let them know at the beginning of December, really, and just, Hey. This is going to be my last day in office. If you need anything from me before then, let me know. Give me plenty of time. Again, I meet with most of my clients, or really all of my clients, in December anyways, and so that’s not, they’re gonna be set up because I’m gonna meet with them personally, but make sure you’re letting people know when you’re gonna be back.

And pro tip, Have a day in mind that you’re going to come back to your office, but tell everyone the day after. I’m going to explain more about that in next week’s episode, episode 138, where I go over the second part of how I open the new year. But just, just give yourself a bonus day when you’re setting up that auto reminder.

And then, after that, enjoy your time off for the holidays. Enjoy that time, or even if you’re not celebrating, enjoy that time to just, Enjoy the end of the year. Your action step for this week is to start doing some of these tasks to wrap up your year well, so that when you come back into the office, you’re not only rested, but you’re ready to dive into an incredible 2023.

So if you don’t know where to begin with that, Make sure you’ve got a batch week set up and make sure that you have at least a day to set your goals for the next year. If you don’t have time to audit your workflows and you don’t have time to audit your business and you don’t have time to analyze your numbers, that’s fine.

But it’s set aside a day to set your goals and to map out at least Q1 of the new year so that you can set up a strong batch week. Make sure you at least do those three things. Setting your goals for the new year, outlining your Q1 for the new year, and having your batch week so that all your content is scheduled and you’re not having to worry about it as you ease into the new year.

Now this week’s book recommendation is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This one feels especially timely. I, when I’m giving these book recommendations, I go just in the order that I read them. And I only give you guys the ones that ranked four or five stars, unless there’s one that’s three stars, but I feel like it’s especially worth the read anyways.

But I’m only telling you them in the order I read them. And so it’s really just super coincidental as to what order you get these in. But this one feels especially coincidental right now, because like I said, it’s October early October as I’m recording this and people on TikTok are losing their minds about Taylor Swift right now and her relationship and how I just anyways, I’m not going to get into the details because it’s a lot, but, and I could spend forever talking about all things Taylor Swift, but But it just feels timely because she’s under a lot of scrutiny for her relationship at the moment on TikTok.

And in this book, it’s about a famous actress that has had seven husbands. And of course, that means that there’s plenty of scandal and gossip and, you know, she’s in the public eye. And so she’s older now, she’s had seven husbands and she’s decided that it’s time and she’s ready to have her baby.

biography written, and she’s chosen this young writer, this young woman with very little experience. I mean, she, she works at, I don’t know if it’s a magazine or something, but she works as a copywriter essentially, but she doesn’t have a ton of experience. And so you spend the whole book, not only like learning the background of Evelyn Hugo’s Life and how it is that she came to have seven husbands and what that entailed, but you’re also learning about why it was that this young writer was the one that’s chosen.

And it’s just a fun and sometimes heavy read, but it was so good. I just saw someone actually, again, very coincidental. I saw someone on TikTok either last night or this morning talking about how they hated this book, but I really loved it a lot. So if you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

And if you haven’t read it, Put it on your list and then come let me know.

So much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 243: End of Year Close Out appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

If you’ve taken my A Year in Preview Workshop, or done any kind of content planning with me, you know that I’m very passionate about ensuring that our business supports our lives, and not the other way around. And the first step I always have people take when mapping out their year is putting their personal calendar into their plans first. Holidays, vacations, birthdays, anniversaries, time off … all of that goes in first so that there aren’t accidental launches during your kid’s spring break.

But before we can even start putting things on the calendar, we need to know what we’re going to put on the calendar. And how do we do that? By starting with our revenue. If you’ve ever wondered how you’re supposed to connect your content with your bottom line, this episode is for you.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

If you’ve taken my A Year in Preview workshop or done any kind of content planning with me, you know that I’m very passionate about ensuring that our business supports our lives and not the other way around. And the first step I always have people take when mapping out their year is putting their personal calendar into their plans first.

Holidays, vacations, birthdays, anniversaries, time off. All of that goes in first so there aren’t any accidental launches during your kid’s spring break. But before we can even start putting things on the calendar, we need to know what we’re putting on the calendar. And how do we do that? By starting with our revenue goals.

If you’ve ever wondered how you’re supposed to connect your content with your bottom line, this episode is for you. You’re listening to episode 242 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com slash book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

Yes, we are talking all about revenue today and in particular, how we can make sure our Content aligns with our goals so that we can increase that bottom line. And if you are feeling the ick or you’re feeling cringy about. Whatever is going through your mind, maybe you’re feeling like it’s greedy, don’t want to bring in more revenue.

I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going through your mind right now, but if you’re having those thoughts, I would really encourage you to sit in that and think about that for a little bit. Why are you feeling those thoughts? Because I know that I’ve been there. I know that I used to feel so shameful around this idea of setting a revenue goal, around wanting to make more money.

And I really had to come to terms with the fact that I’m running a business. Yes. I want to impact people. And that’s what I would hide behind, right? I would hide behind the, well, I just want to impact people and better their lives and help them with their business. And I do, I wouldn’t do all of the work of entrepreneurship, which is not easy in any capacity.

I wouldn’t do all of that if I didn’t want to impact people and help people build their revenue as well. Right. I wouldn’t share all of these quote unquote secrets and all this information I know and help you map out your revenue projections for this year. I didn’t really want to see you increase your bottom line.

And I had to come to terms with the fact that while that’s true, A business needs revenue is also true. A business is not a business without revenue. And the more revenue I make, the more I support my family. The more I support my community at large, the more I can support people and outsource to other business owners for their zone of geniuses, which they will then in turn Support their families and their communities and be able to outsource to other business owners.

And it’s a ripple effect, right? So if you’re feeling that shame, that ick, that cringe, I just want to encourage you that we’ve probably all been there and felt those things. But your business needs revenue in order to be a business. Okay. And when it comes to your content, well, your content’s purpose is to amplify your business, to get your business out there in front of more eyes so that you can bring in that revenue.

And if you want to ensure that your content is aligned with your goals, you’ve got to start by digging into the revenue numbers. So, like I said in the introduction, I’m going to run you through some of the questions that are inside of the JSON Symbol Content Planner that are in the yearly planning section to help you do your revenue planning and your revenue mapping.

So, there’s a two part series that we’re going to do right here. You probably are going to want to have pen, paper, whatever. So, first thing, revenue planning. You’re going to ask yourself, What was your revenue last year? Write that number down. Then you’re going to write down how much each stream of revenue that you have brought in.

So if you brought in 40, 000 and you have one to one clients and you have a course, how much did each of those bring in? Then, And if you have the data, you’re going to really want to dive into how that came to be. So for example, your one to one clients, let’s say of that 40, 000, you brought in 30, 000 with one to one clients.

And on average, the clients brought in X amount. Maybe you have different packages, maybe, you know, you raise prices, but on average, what did they bring in last year individually? So let’s say you had 10 clients. 30, 000, 3, 000. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So each client brought in roughly 3, clients over the year.

You brought in 3, 000. Okay. So you had 10 clients. Well, how did you get those 10 clients? What number of inquiries did you have throughout the year? If you had a 50 percent close rate and you had 20 inquiries, okay, well, 20, 50 percent gives you 10, you know, your close rate, you know how many you needed. You can take that number and go, okay, so next year, if I want to make 50, 000 on my clients and, No, that math’s not gonna be good.

Let’s say 60, 000. I’m trying to do this in my head. 60, 000 on clients, and they’re gonna bring in roughly 3, 000 each. Okay, so I need to bring in 20 clients next year. If I know I have a 50 percent average close rate, that means I need to focus on getting 40 inquiries throughout the year. Do you see how I worked myself backwards with those numbers?

You’re going to want to figure that out for this year so you know exactly how many clients you need to hit your revenue goal so that you know exactly how many inquiries you need and so that you can focus on bringing in the inquiries and not just sit there and go, why aren’t the clients coming in? So if you can dive into the numbers.

Great. If you’re listening to this and you were feeling overwhelmed because maybe your business didn’t bring in much this year, and you just, you don’t have that data at all, or maybe you did bring in money, but you just didn’t think to mark down that information. Well, now, you know, moving forward, what kind of information you need to be looking for and what kind of KPIs to be tracking for yourself, right?

But if you just didn’t bring in the money, and that’s why you’re feeling overwhelmed. I want you to ask yourself a few different questions, similar questions. What did bring in money this year? Even if it was only 100, what brought in money this year? How much did it bring in? And how did you get those sales?

Did they come from word of mouth? Did they come from Google Analytics, did they, or like people finding your website from Google search, I guess I should say, did they come from Instagram? Where did they come from? And what you’re going to do is you’re going to plan for more of the same next year. And you’re going to build from there.

It’s not a neat formula like the other example, and it is messy, but messy is completely normal in these early years. Okay. So don’t feel overwhelmed. Don’t feel lost. Just what worked this year. Keep doing that. Get rid of the other stuff that didn’t work and keep doing what did work. Even if you only made a hundred dollars, you still made a hundred dollars.

You still made some sales. So then next part of revenue planning, you’re going to write down what your yearly goals are. Go ahead and write down all of your yearly goals, but in particular, what is that revenue goal? And if you have any goals that you’ve set surrounding how many clients you want, or anything like that, write those down too, for sure.

The next question you’re going to ask yourself is, what new offers, services, products do I plan to create? Is there anything new that you’re planning to bring to the table this year? Then the final question is, for the revenue planning, is what projects do I plan to undertake? So, are there any Back in things that you plan to do.

Are you planning to update anything you already have? What projects do you have on your plate for the new year? Now all of these are not going to necessarily tie directly into your revenue mapping But having them in mind as you’re doing your revenue mapping is going to be really important Which is why I want you to go ahead and write them down So now we’re going to move into revenue mapping.

We’ve done the planning. You know where your numbers came from. You know where you’re going in the new year. Now we’re going to map it out. So create a list, maybe on a new piece of paper, create a list of all of your offers that you have all of your different revenue streams down the page. And I want you to leave some room to the left and to the right.

Then you’re going to start projecting your revenue for the new year. So to the right, I would write out, How many I plan to sell of something or how much I plan to sell per month. So, for example, I might write down five at 500 per month beside my one to one client space because I only take on five clients a year, but for my shop.

It’s not as precise because there are multiple products and I’m more worried about the shop’s overall bottom line than I am each individual offer. So beside that, I might just write average 500 a month. And if I make more some months, great, if I make less, that’s okay, cause I’m gonna make more other months and that’s fine.

And I base these numbers on the previous year. And then what I’m thinking that my launches and my projects will be, which is where that comes back into play. If I know that I’m going to do less promotion of one stream of revenue, I might project less for it than it made the year before. Or, if I plan to put more effort into an office, I’ll raise it from last year.

And make no mistake that this is a guessing game. You want to consider what you did before, and keep it realistic, But it’s also okay to dream here, too. I know for a fact that I’m only taking on five ongoing one to one clients. But I also have launch VIP days where I help map out an entire launch strategy and marketing plan for clients.

And those, I don’t know how many are going to come in throughout the year. And that’s one where I’m dreaming a little bit, because I don’t have a set number that I’m taking on, and that I know I’m taking on. So that’s one where I might say, okay, well, I want. 10 next year, or I want five, whatever that may look like, there are some that are a guessing game.

So just know that it’s okay to dream as long as we’re also being realistic and using the numbers and the data that we have from last year to do that dreaming so that we’re not just pulling it out of thin air. So then once I’ve written out my projections to the right of each revenue stream, I’m going to put the total projection.

Number for each one to the left of the offer. So the five clients at 500 a month, that’s 30, 000. So I’m going to write 30, 000 to the left. And it really doesn’t matter which direction you do. This is just how I’m doing it. And you’re just kind of showcasing that for you, but I’m going to write that number down to the left.

And then after I’ve done that for each revenue stream, I’m going to add them all up and see what that total number is. You’re going to compare that number to the revenue goal that you wrote down earlier. Is it on the nose? Is it lower? Is it higher? This is where you start playing around with these numbers.

So you’ve done the initial projections, the initial mapping of how much you want to make per each revenue stream per month, how many clients you want to have, yada, yada, yada. You’ve done the initial projection, the initial mapping. You’ve got to compare it to that number. Is it right on the nose of that number?

Is it higher? Is it lower? If it’s really like a lot lower? Well, that might be an indicator that your goal isn’t realistic for next year. If it’s only slightly lower, you may just need to change where you plan to focus your energy next year. Can you tweak some numbers like trying to fit in more high ticket offer clients?

Or in order to, to raise yourself up to the goal number, or on the other hand, if it’s higher than your goal number, you might want to consider raising your goal number. Personally, I like to have my revenue mapping end up higher than the goal. I’m trying to hit that way. I’m still likely to hit my actual goal, even if I don’t end up with the projected sales and clients that I mapped out.

But that’s really a personal preference. You may want it to be right on the nose. You may want. That’s kind of up to you, but I like to have it so that when I’ve mapped out my year, if I hit all those numbers, I end up way beyond my projected goal. If I don’t hit it, I will probably still hit my goal. So, once you’ve gotten your numbers tweaked to where you like, you’ll know exactly how many clients you need for the year, how many sales you need to make within each revenue stream, and how you expect to hit that big revenue goal.

Now you have to decide when you’re focusing on each revenue stream throughout the year. And that is going to inform your content plan, making it so that your content is aligned with your goals and actually moving the needle in your business. Like I mentioned in the introduction of this episode, these questions are laid out inside of the chasing simple content planner, along with many others that are going to help you keep on track with aligning your content to your goals.

All year long. You can grab your own copy over at Amanda Warfield dot com slash planer. And your action step for this week is that it’s never too late to map out your revenue for the year. So even if you feel like you’ve got a plan in place, give it a try and see where you might need to make some adjustments in order to hit that revenue goal for this year.

This week’s book recommendation might be totally out of left field for you, but it’s Skin Care, the New Edit by Caroline Herons, and I did not know how to girl. I say that all the time, like I don’t know how to girl. I never learned how to do my makeup. I never learned how to do my hair. I never learned how to take care of my skin.

These are all things that I just like never learned and I really wanted to start taking better care of my skin. I’m in my late 20s. Like, I should have been doing it a long time ago. I live in the South where the sun is just like beating on my face and my skin all the time. And I was determined to figure out what it is that I needed to do.

But then the more I researched, the more overwhelmed I got, because there’s so much information out there and there’s so many different products. And I was so confused. And then I got recommended this book and it was life changing for me. You know, things about skincare. You may not like it. I don’t know.

But if you’re, if you’re where I was and you’re just overwhelmed completely by skincare, I cannot recommend this book enough. Like five stars. I will gift it to everyone. It explains all the different things and what they mean, but it also tells you how to create a routine and how to create routines.

Based on your skin type and based on, you know, are you in your teens? Are you in your early twenties? Are you in your late twenties, your mid thirties, forties, fifties, whatever. It’s got different routines in there, no matter what your skin type or your age and all of that is. So highly recommend skincare, the new edit by Caroline Herons.

So much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 242: How to Map Out Your Revenue Projections appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Last week I shared exactly how I determine my yearly goals for my business. Today, I’m back to share about the next step in the yearly prep process – yearly planning.

When it comes to planning out our year in business, I often see students wanting to plop down their promos and launches and work their way around those. OR, even worse, I see students decide on a month-by-month basis what kind of promos they’ll be having.

This kind of planning leads to burnout, overwhelm, longer working hours, content that isn’t cohesive, and a life that revolves around your business. But you and I? We started a business to enjoy a life of freedom and flexibility. For me, that means lots of time spent at Disney and traveling, daily naps, and the ability to work when I’m most productive and not being stuck with busy work to fill time. For you, it likely means something different. But it all comes back to freedom. And when your life revolves around your business? There’s no freedom there.

So today I’m sharing the 6 steps I take for planning out my year in business – and planning out a business that supports the life I want to live and not the other way around.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate

Last week I shared exactly how I determine my yearly goals for my business. Today, I’m back to share about the next step in the yearly prep process, yearly planning. When it comes to planning out our year in business, I often see students wanting to plop down their promos and launches and work their way around those.

Or, even worse, I see students decide on a month by month basis what kind of promos they’ll be having. This kind of planning leads to burnout, overwhelm, longer working hours, content that isn’t cohesive, and a life that revolves around your business. But you and I, we started a business to enjoy a life of freedom and flexibility.

For me, that means as much time as possible spent at Disney and traveling, daily naps, having my husband home with me, and the ability to work when I’m most productive and not being stuck with busy work to fill time. For you, it likely means something different, but it all comes back to freedom. And when your life revolves around your business, there’s no freedom there.

 So today I’m sharing the six steps that I take for planning out my year in business and planning out a business that supports the life I want to live and not the other way around. You’re listening to episode 241 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com slash book. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend, this is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And, when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.

Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. 

 So when it comes to planning your year in business, we actually need to start by looking at your year as a whole for your life, because. What we don’t want is to plan our life around our business. We want our business planned around our life, because we want our business to support the dream life that we want to live, right?

So many of us start our businesses so that we have more freedom, more flexibility to be there for our families and just to have for ourselves. And then we start planning our life around our business and our business takes over and we end up working way more than we ever did. I know we’ve all seen those reels and TikToks about not wanting to work a 9 5 and instead end up working 24 7 instead.

We don’t want that. We don’t truly want that. The way that we avoid that is by planning for our life before we plan for our business. So we plan our business around our life so that our business can support our life. So, when you’re looking at your year in advance, you’ve pulled your calendar out for the next year, the first thing you want to do is mark off all time off that you want to take, whether that’s because you’re going on vacation.

Because you want to take a sabbatical. Because you want to make sure that you have a slower period leading up to your child’s birthday. So that you can take time off for your anniversary. Whatever that may look like for you personally. Start by marking off time off for yourself. Mark that off before you add anything else to your calendar for the next year.

And then, once you’ve marked off all of that time off, and maybe, maybe that time off means that, okay, I know that in May, I would really like May to be a slower month, because it’s The last month of school, or maybe you want the summer to be slower. So you intentionally plan for time off in the summer.

Those are the things I want you to think about when you do that. Once you’ve marked off your time off, and your time to kind of slow down and step back, maybe that means you mark off Thursdays and Fridays, so you’re not working, whatever that looks like for you. Once you’ve done that, then I want you to mark off time to step back in your business, time to be the CEO in your business, and time to be heads down focused on solely your business.

So for me, that would maybe look like batch weeks. I make sure I mark batch weeks off first thing inside of the year because after I’ve done all of the life stuff, I make sure I mark off batch weeks because That’s time that I’m setting aside for my business So that my client work doesn’t take up all my time so that I make sure I have the time to do that You also might want to set aside time for you know A business retreat for yourself or time to step back for planning for the next quarter time to step back Whatever you need to be the CEO in your business Make sure you set that aside next because we start with our life But then we also need to set our business as a priority.

So often we get wrapped up in spending all of our time on our clients that we don’t take the time to grow our own business. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got that time set aside for that. Then I want you to take Your yearly goals that you’ve planned for your business. If you haven’t planned for your yearly goals in business, do that before you start planning your year so that you know what you’re working towards when you come to create the plan.

Then you want to determine what your focus for each quarter will be. Now, when it comes to creating a plan for the year, Having a plan is extremely important for making sure that you are steering your business in the direction you want to go. But, I also don’t want you to feel like whatever you write on your yearly calendar right now is permanent.

I don’t want you to feel like you can’t change anything, that whatever you’re doing is set in stone. When you come back to your plan each quarter, Re evaluate. Absolutely. Be flexible with yourself. Don’t let shiny object syndrome come in, but allow for flexibility. So that’s my little side note, my little soapbox.

You have to have a plan, but you also have to be flexible with the plan you create because let’s face it. If you’re creating your plan now in January, you never know what opportunities are going to come up by July, what you may have already accomplished by July, or maybe you’re behind on your goals.

Either way is fine. You will need to be flexible, and you might need to make some changes, and that’s okay. But, after you’ve got your time off marked off, you’ve got your CEO time marked off, then I want you to choose what your focus is going to be for each quarter. Take the goals that you’ve set for this year and break that down into quarterly focuses.

Personally, and what I recommend for all my clients, is to choose a marketing focus, a behind the scenes focus, and then a goal focus. So, have one specific goal you’re working towards. Each quarter, maybe that’s filling spaces in your one to one spot. Maybe that’s filling spaces in your membership. Maybe that’s having a certain number of downloads on a freebie you’ve created.

Whatever that goal is for you, break down your yearly goals and determine what each goal will be for the quarter. Then your marketing goal. What is your marketing focus that will help you achieve that goal? So if your goal is to get. Downloads of your freebie or your marketing focus needs to be all about that freebie and how that freebie helps and what hurdles that freebie helps your people overcome, right?

Your marketing focus needs to be that topic. Then your behind the scenes focus is going to be whatever it is you’re working on behind the scenes in your business, whether that’s copy websites. Setting up your new one to one service, creating new freebies, whatever that is, what is your behind the scenes focus?

So those three things, behind the scenes focus, marketing focus, and a goal focus for each quarter. After that, I want you to put things like promos and launches and affiliate launches. Put all of that stuff on the calendar. If you don’t have exact dates, that’s okay. Just put a sticky note on a month if you know, okay, I want to make sure I launch in August.

I don’t know the exact dates yet, but I’m going to put a sticky note on my August calendar. So I know, okay, this is when this is happening. This is when this is happening. If you can put specific dates down even better. but at least put down a general map and a general idea of when you want to do different launches and different promos.

Then I want you to start looking at your, so we’ve done the yearly planning. First, you marked off time off. Then you marked off CEO time. Then you determined what your different focuses were for each quarter. And then you wrote down when your promos were going to be throughout the year. So you’ve got your year mapped.

Then I want you to focus very specifically on this quarter or this year. The upcoming quarter, whenever you’re doing this and say, okay, what are my long form content topics going to be? This isn’t written in blood. It’s not written in stone. It’s just written in pencil. What are the different topics I’m going to talk about for this upcoming quarter?

You don’t have to outline it. You just got to come up with the topics and you want to. Base your topics around your promo periods to make sure that you’re doing enough pre launch copy and enough pre launch work to get your people ready for whatever you’re selling. So create those long form content topics.

Then you’ve got all that done. Then on a monthly basis, you’re going to move into the batch week process, right? You’re going to double check whatever dates you have coming up in the next month. You’re going to confirm those long form content topics. You’ve already got the whole quarter written out, then you’re going to look at this specific month and say, okay, do these still work?

Do they still fit? Has anything changed? Do I have a better topic or a better idea? Has someone asked specifically for a topic, a blog post, an episode, whatever. Confirm those and then move into outlining your long form content and then writing your emails for the month and writing your social media captions for the month and scheduling it all out, creating all that content.

And then the next month. You do the same thing. And the next month you go back to, okay, it’s a new quarter. Let me map out. What’s my quarterly content. What are my topics for the whole next quarter? And then each month you go back into batching and creating. You’ve worked from planning to make sure that your, your business supports your life.

You’ve planned out your CEO time, and then you work your way down into these specific, these, these social media captions. They are geared towards the goals that I have for my business. So I hope that helps. So your action step for this week’s episode is to set aside a day or two to plan out your year for 2022.

Even if maybe you’ve already planned it out, take some time to step back and think through, did I make sure that I fit my business into my life versus fitting my life into my business? Did I make sure that I set up my goals so that I could align my content around them? Did I set myself up for success for creating strong content throughout this year so that I am supporting my goals?

Which will support my life. And if you want someone to walk you step by step through this process with lots more detail and a ton of tips, go ahead and grab my a year in preview workshop. It is a two hour workshop that will walk you through my entire yearly planning process. At the end of the two hours, you will have your entire 2022 calendar planned out and mapped out for you.

And this week’s book recommendation is Get Rich, Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield Thomas. I’m not a super woo person, but I recognize the power of mindset and this book really dives into money mindset and different ways that you can support your money mindset, that you can change your money mindset, and it gave me a lot to think about about the way I think about money and the way we spend money and save money and plan for using our money.

So if you’re someone who knows that you need some money mindset help, Highly recommend this book. Cannot recommend it enough. Get Rich Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield Thomas, I will put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out, and until next time, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your life and biz.

So much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 241: 6 Steps for Planning Your Year in Business appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

When it comes to setting yearly business goals, it can often feel like you’re pulling ideas out of thin air. Like you’re trying on goals for size to see how they fit. Maybe this year I’ll focus on building a course. Or, I’ll try and hit six figures in revenue. Or, I could potentially even possibly create a podcast!

Or, maybe you have a ton of really intentional ideas, but you struggle with putting too many goals onto your plate each year. Your goals list is so long that you have no idea where to focus your time and energy, and then you end up all over the place with your daily plans and your content.

If either of those scenarios feels familiar, you’re going to love this episode. I’m sharing my 6 steps for setting my yearly goals in my business. These steps will not only help you create intentional goals, but they will also help you created focused goals.

This is actually an episode I aired back in 2021, but it’s one that stands the test of time and frankly, one that you aren’t likely to scroll back nearly 200 episodes to find.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

When it comes to setting yearly business goals, it can often feel like you’re pulling ideas out of thin air. Like you’re trying on goals for size to see how they fit. Maybe this year I’ll focus on building a course. Or I’ll try and hit six figures in revenue. Or I could potentially even possibly create a podcast.

Or maybe you have a ton of really intentional ideas, but you struggle with putting too many goals onto your plate each year. Your goals list is so long You have no idea where to focus your time and energy and then you end up all over the place with your daily plans and your content. If either of those scenarios feel familiar, you’re going to love this episode.

I’m sharing my six steps for setting my yearly goals in my business. These steps will not only help you create intentional goals, but they’ll also help you create focused goals. Now, this is just the beginning. Actually an episode that I aired back in 2021, but it’s one that stands the test of time and frankly, one that you aren’t likely to scroll back nearly 200 episodes to find.

If you’re ready for 2025 to be your best year yet, let’s go ahead and dive in. You’re listening to episode 240 of The Chasing Symbol Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your [email protected] slash book. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? 

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chasing Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. 

Can I tell you a little secret? These last few months have been some of the hardest for me as a business owner. I thought that getting past the days of spending my weekends in front of my laptop in our guest room and desperately trying to figure out some way to make money, well, I thought that would be rock bottom.

But as we all know, since March, 2020. Everything has been unprecedented, and these last few months have just felt really heavy for me, and I know from talking to a lot of my friends that it’s not just me, but you add on working entirely too much on a big project, not a lot of downtime, and a social calendar that’s starting to get back to semi normal, and, well, it’s not a surprise that I, and many of us, are reaching burnout.

But amidst all of those hard things, do you know what I’m really thankful for? That I’ve intentionally created a business that supports the life I want, right from the start. Because you and I, we started our businesses from more freedom. For me, that freedom looks like getting to go to Disney multiple times a year.

But whether that’s monetary freedom, time freedom, location freedom, or some other kind of freedom for you. The root cause always comes back to freedom. Only, all too often, I see other business owners that are searching for that freedom, but they didn’t craft a business that would support the life they wanted.

Which is why I created my A Year in Preview Workshop. This workshop walks you through my signature planning process for planning out your year in business. A process that will help you plan out a business that supports your life, Instead of the other way around at the end of this two hour workshop, you’ll walk away with a strategically crafted content marketing plan that will help you fill seats in your programs.

But the real kicker is that you’ll be walking away with a plan for running a business that supports those freedom dreams you’ve had for yourself. And this time of year is the perfect time to get started. You can head over to amandawarfield. com forward slash AYP to grab the workshop for yourself.

That’s amandawarfield. com forward slash AYP and you can get started planning out your best year in business yet. The very first thing that I do when it comes to determining my yearly business goals is the right. I actually keep an ongoing goals list throughout the current year. So I’ve shared this before in the past, but I’m not a huge journaler.

So whatever journal I have, I like to keep a journal handy so I can get all my thoughts out anytime I feel like I need to just brain dump and I’ve got a lot of thoughts spinning, but I’m not a consistent every day I journal two or three pages. I’m just not that person. But I do always have a journal.

And on the very last page of every journal that I use, I tend really to not use more than one a year. So at the very last page at my journal for whatever year it is, I always have a running goals list that I am constantly adding to. Now this list doesn’t mean that I’m gonna try to achieve all of these things or that they’re even goals that I’ll actually try for this next year.

But I like to write down any ideas that I have so that when it comes time to figure out what my goals are for the next year, I have all kinds of things that I’ve already thought of that I can sift through so that I’m not starting from scratch because I want to make sure that whatever goals I have for the year, I want to make sure they’re really, really intentional.

And if I sit down to a blank power sheets or whatever it is that you’re using, uh, to determine your goals, if I sit down to something blank and have to pull things out of thin air, it’s unlikely that my goals are actually going to be intentional. But by having that space set aside specifically to write down potential ideas for the next year, I’m able to write down things that Come to me that solve a problem.

I’m able to be in the middle of something and say, Oh, well, this is going to be the next step after I finished this. And I really love to do this. And this would help solve whatever this problem is. Those are the kinds of things that I write down so that I know whatever I’ve got written on that spot, I know that it’s something that’s really, really intentional and will move my business forward, whether or not I choose it for the next year.

So that’s the very first thing that I do every single year is the back of my journal. I just keep an ongoing list of potential ideas. Now, when it comes time to actually sit down and say, okay, what are my goals for next year gonna be? After I’ve got that list, the next thing that I do is I look at where I am now.

What are my current offers? What did I do in the back end of my business this year? What was my annual revenue and what was my goal? I have to know where I am in order to know how best to move forward. So I would this year sit down and say, okay, my current offers. I’ve got one on one consultation. I’ve got club content batching.

I’ve got my a year in preview workshop, so on and so forth. I would write down all those things and how much each one of those made. I would look at what was my goal for revenue and what did I make? What did I do? What kind of big projects did I actually accomplish this year? And also what were my goals this year and did I accomplish them?

Then once I’ve written that all down in one place, I evaluate. What worked and what didn’t. So which of these goals did I actually meet? How did I meet them? What worked to help me meet those goals? Which ones did I not meet? And why not? What was missing? And sometimes this can be I’d kind of brain dump journal that out, right?

What worked? What did not work? What do I feel really proud of this year? And what do I feel like is missing? And then I look at all of that that I’ve already set aside. And then I’ll also see what is on my heart. What is something that maybe isn’t already written down or that I haven’t been working towards yet, but it’s something that I think I would really love to do this year.

And I read all of that down and I gather it all together. And then I see. Where is there overlap? What might be possible for this year? What might I actually be able to accomplish? This way, I’ve narrowed down that giant list that I’ve kept throughout the year. And I said, what strategically can I actually get done?

What strategically makes the most sense, right? So I’ve, I’ve narrowed that list down further. And then I narrowed my goals down one more time. By choosing four goals for the year, I choose a revenue goal. I choose a big dream, something that I really want to work towards and that I would love to see happen in my business.

Even if it’s something that this year may just be the first step for, I’ll come back to that in a second. And then I also will set a goal around my main offer and I’ll set a behind the scenes goal. So the revenue goal, I feel like is pretty self explanatory. What revenue goal would you like to hit this year?

Then the big dream goal. So for example, for my big dream goal for 2021 was to get an in person speaking gig. I just wanted to book one. That was my goal. And that may sound like something that’s not really a stretch goal, but I knew that in order to actually achieve that goal of booking an in person speaking gig, I knew that.

There was a lot of buildup that I needed to do. I needed to really practice and hone my speaking skills. I needed to craft a really amazing presentation and I needed to build up my credibility in this industry. And I knew that that was not going to be a quick and easy thing, that I needed time. And so my goal for that, my, it’s a big goal.

It’s a big dream. I would love to move more into speaking in the future. But this year, my goal was just to get one, and that was my big dream. So I highly encourage you to think, what is my big dream? Maybe it’s hosting and planning your own retreat. Maybe it won’t happen this year. Maybe that’s not a possibility.

Maybe it’s not super realistic. But what steps do you need to take to work towards it and keep that goal in mind? Now, my goal around my main offer tends to be things like how many clients I want or how many new signups for club content batching or whatever your main offer is. Give that a number goal, whether that’s a specific revenue amount, a specific number of signups or a specific number of clients, whatever the case may be, what is your main offer goal?

Now, if you don’t have a main offer just yet, that’s okay. Maybe your goal for that isn’t a number goal. It’s just simply getting it set up this year, or maybe Your main offer right now is just a freebie and that’s okay. Maybe you want a certain number of downloads on your freebie and that’s your main offer right now.

Play around with that. Whatever makes the most sense for your business, but your main offer goal would be number three. And then finally, a behind the scenes goal, something that you’re doing on the back end of your business, that You know, is a big project that, you know, is going to take some time, for example, my big behind the scenes goal this year was to set up funnels.

And I am still, as I’m recording this at the end of October, I am still working on setting up these funnels. I have not knocked this goal out yet this year. But I’ve been chipping away at it all year long. Maybe your big behind the scenes goal is a brand new website, new copy, new brain photos, new design, new everything.

And you know, that’s going to take you a lot of time. Maybe it is setting up your First set of freebies. Your behind the scenes goal will really depend on your business, of course. But I would love for us to normalize that big projects take time and not see us all continue to push through these things.

Because this, in years past, I would have said, okay, this is a goal for the quarter and I’m gonna get all my funnels set up in one quarter. But that’s just not realistic between marketing and admin and Clients and all the other stuff that happens in a business. These, these behind the scenes projects, they do take time, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working towards them.

Quick recap, the four goals that I set in my business each year, a revenue goal, a big dream goal, a goal around my main offer. So I make sure to keep that in mind because so often we can lose focus. And then a behind the scenes goal. Those are the four. After I’ve set those four, then I have to gut check myself.

Are they realistic? Do I have a plan to support them, and are they vanity metrics? So are they realistic? At the beginning of 2021, I set a goal of 100, 000 in revenue, and within a month, I very quickly realized that, um, This probably isn’t truly a realistic goal, and I didn’t have a plan in place that would actually support them, so I actually scaled back my revenue goal significantly for this year, for 2021.

So ask yourself, are they realistic? It’s okay to not reach the big shiny number goal, or the big shiny whatever goal. As long as you have a realistic goal, because the next year you can move forward more and more and more, but business isn’t a straight line and things are going to go up and down. So make sure that you’re setting things that are realistic.

Then the next part of that, do you have a plan to support them? So I realized that my big revenue goal that I originally set for this year wasn’t realistic because I did not have a plan in place to support them. I didn’t have a true realistic. Plan that I knew that I could actually achieve as far as how many sales that I was going to reach to get there or how much time I had, or so on and so forth.

You have to have a realistic plan in place to actually support those goals. And then are they vanity metrics here again? I found that the revenue goal that I set for myself was very much a vanity metric. I didn’t actually. Need to hit 100, 000 to do what I wanted to do this year, but I wanted it because it felt like this big shiny number, right?

But it wasn’t actually what I needed until it was just a vanity metric. Maybe when you set a goal around a big dream of yours or a goal around your main offer, maybe you say, okay, I want this many people on my email list, or I want this many people on social media, or I want a reel to go viral. Um, there’s all kinds of different things that we can set, but make sure that whatever goals you’re setting are actually going to do something for your business.

You’ve only got four chances at these goals, right? If you’re, you’re setting really intentional, simplified goals and you follow this method that I’m doing, you’ve got four goals. If any of them are vanity metrics, they’re not actually moving your business forward. So you want to make sure that every single goal is super, super intentional and it’s not something where you are saying, okay, well.

So, I want to get 500 new people on my email list this year, but I want that many people on my email list. Instead, it’s, okay, I need to get this many people on my email list through this specific opt in, because this opt in has been intentionally created to lead them into this next thing. There’s got to be a lot more to it than just, I want this many people on my email list.

I want this many people on my social media. So, real quick to recap before I give you your action step. First, have a place where you have an ongoing goals list so that you already have ideas and plans and thoughts in place when it comes time to sit down and actually create your goals for the next year.

Then look at where are you right now? What are your current offers? What did you do in the back end of your business this past year? What was your annual revenue? After that, evaluate what worked and what didn’t and also write down anything that may be on your heart and then look at all of this and see where the overlap is.

Where do you see common themes? Where do you see common problems that you need to fix? Once you’ve got all that down and you’ve done some, some brain dumping, some flow of conscious, some journaling, whatever that looks like for you and whatever works best for you, choose four goals. A revenue goal, a big dream goal, A goal around your main offer and a behind the scenes goal.

And after you’ve done that, go back and gut check yourself. Are those goals realistic? Do you have a plan in place to support them? And are any of them vanity metrics versus truly goals to move your business forward? Now your action step for this week is to put a date on your calendar and block off a couple of hours to work on setting your goals.

A lot of times. This is something we forget to do as CEOs in our business. We forget that we have to actually intentionally plan time to step back and look at where are we and where do we want to go? We have to step back and set goals because that’s how we guide our business to where we want it to go.

If we just. Keep working constantly and we never take that time to sit back. You’re not steering the ship. You’re not steering your business It’s just floating along wherever it happens to go. So I want you to put a date on your calendar Block off at least a couple hours If not a whole day or two To work on setting your goals for the new year and this week’s book recommendation is the new Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander now this book It was so eye opening because I knew that our, our justice system and a lot of our systems period in America, I knew that it was set up to suppress African Americans.

But I did not fully understand all of the different dynamics in place. I didn’t understand the full extent of how oppressive our system was and how that all worked. And this book was such an eye opener, so I highly recommend that everyone go check that out because I understand so much better about not how to fix it, of course, but why the oppression is so real.

And how seemingly innocuous things make a big difference. So I would highly recommend that everyone goes check that out. It is a very, very, very informative read and also not a hard read. So The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. I will put a link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your life in biz.

So much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Ep. 240: How I Determine My Yearly Business Goals appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

I have finally hit my first six-figure year. In case you missed it, earlier this year I “retired” my husband and became the main breadwinner in our family. I did this by continuing to run my business, but also by taking a part time job at my church. We have some other revenue streams as well, BUT just between this business and my part time work at the church, I will be hitting 6 figures in income for the first time ever.

And whew. If you went back to Amanda in 2017 who was teaching preschool, making pennies, and had no thoughts of ever owning a business — she sure wouldn’t believe you.

She also wouldn’t believe you if you told her she willingly moved back to the cold tundra of Washington, so you know – you know nothing, Jon Snow.

Anyways. Now that I can officially cross make six-figures off my bucket list, I thought I’d share the lessons I’ve learned this year. But first, the most important one: six-figures doesn’t really make me feel any more like I’ve made it. In fact, while it feels cool to acknowledge, there’s definitely a clear vanity edge to it. And I honestly get more excited and wowed about the fact that I’m able to provide for us and allow Russell to pursue what HE wants to. And I’d be able to do that even if I only hit 98,000 this year instead of 100,000.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

In case you missed it, earlier this year, I retired, quote unquote, my husband, and became the main breadwinner in our family. And I say quote unquote because he’s not working for anyone right now, but he’s in school and, you know, he’s certainly not sitting around like you would think of a retired person sitting around.

But anyways, I did this by continuing to run my business, but also by taking a part time job at my church. Just to be clear that this isn’t fully 100 percent the business made six figures. And we also have some other revenue streams as well. But, just between this business and my part time work at the church, I will be hitting six figures in income for the first time ever.

Whoo! If you went back to Amanda in 2017, who was teaching preschool, making pennies, and had no thoughts of ever owning a business, she sure would not believe you. She also wouldn’t believe you if you told her she willingly moved back to the cold tundra of Washington, so, you know, you know nothing, Jon Snow.

Anyways, now that I can officially cross making six figures off my bucket list, I thought I’d share some of the lessons that I’ve learned this year. But first, the most important one, six figures. Doesn’t really make me feel any more like I’ve made it. In fact, while it feels cool to acknowledge, there’s definitely a very clear vanity edge to it.

And it’s, it’s a very clear vanity number. And honestly, I get more excited and wowed about the fact that I’m able to provide for us and allow Russell to pursue what he wants to pursue. And I’d be able to do that even if I only hit 98, 000 this year instead of 100, 000. So the six figures is truly a vanity metric.

And the really cool part of this is that, you know, I get to, I get to help us gain more freedom in our lives. But you’re listening to episode 239 of the Chasing Symbol podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Symbol Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash book. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? 

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. 

The first thing that I learned in my first year making six figures is that I truly don’t need to work as much as I thought I did. This year,

most weeks, I’ve worked 10 hours or less in my business. In fact, I think the max I worked in my business this year was probably 20 hours a week, and that was honestly rare. I would say 10 hours was Probably the average most weeks and some weeks I worked even less than that And numbers aren’t final yet.

We’ve still got A month and a half left in this year. So, you know We’ll see how things end up but I made The same or a little more this year in my business as I did last year in my business And I worked So much less than I did. And honestly, what that mostly comes down to is the fact that I had to focus in more and with limited time means I have worked strictly on the most important things and less on the things that weren’t truly moving the business forward.

Now, that being said, I do think that if I was working more hours in my business this year, that I would have earned more in the business. However, I don’t know that I would have earned more than I’m making collectively with both working my business and working at the church. So, there’s that. Um, there definitely 

things like my education side of my business that got put to the back burner. I spent way less time on social media this year, which I don’t think that necessarily would have translated directly to more sales. And I mean, as evidenced by in the however many years of running my business. So In short, I think had I spent more time on the business, yes I would’ve made more, but I don’t know.

You know, it’s that whole 80 20 rule where 80% of what you make comes from 20% of what you’re doing this year. Definitely showed me that that rule is true. And the vast majority of my income this year came from my one-to-one clients. And as much as I would have loved. more time and capacity to experiment with things like ads and different things like that to grow the education side more of my business this year.

Um, I just wasn’t there. And there’s always that what if, even though I know, even though this year taught me that I don’t need to work as much as I think I need to, there’s still that part of me that thinks I need to work that. Um, another thing that did fall to the wayside this year that has no impact on the business or the bottom line is just the organization of things.

My files on my computer out of control. And that drives me crazy. Um, so it’s, there are some things like that, they fell to the wayside and working less hours. doesn’t, I don’t want it to come off as, Oh, I don’t need to work as much as I thought I did. Everything’s great. Like, no, there are still things that I’m like, man, I really wish I had time for that, but I just don’t have the capacity.

Uh, there’s a lot of that still, but, I made what I need to make. So that’s the first big, Oh, that I learned this year, the big lesson. Um, another thing that I have learned this year is. That man, I have gotten even more clear on my absolute favorite clients to work with.

And I want to say this carefully because this doesn’t mean that I don’t love working with all of my clients

because I do. I love all of my clients like it. I am so blessed with the clients that I have, but the ones that really, that have me thinking about their business in my off hours are the solopreneurs. That are course creators slash, you know, knowledge, educational, digital product creators. Those are the ones that really light me up, and I think it’s because there’s just something, to me there’s something so satisfying about helping someone who is, You know, they’re doing all the things and They don’t have a whole team.

Maybe they’re outsourcing some things, but it’s mostly them running their business and I Don’t know what it is about that that I love so much, but there’s just something about it. That really just gets me excited and

Yeah, and it’s specifically with those that are course creators and digital products I had someone actually very recently They messaged me on Instagram and they asked me, you know, I wanna, I’ve got an audience and I’ve been doing this, but I, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about creating some kind of product and I don’t know if it’ll be a course or a community or guides or templates or I don’t know, but is that something you help people with and holy cow, yes, that is one of my favorite things to do is brainstorm.

what your product suite and your value ladder can look like, and how it can all work together, and how your marketing can send people into those things through lead magnets that convert and through sales funnels. And for me, it’s the, here’s what it is. Solopreneurs, I’m thinking this out loud as I’m saying it out loud.

Solopreneurs don’t have. This person working on this and this person working on this and this person working on this and it truly feels like we are as a team together working on growing your business and I love coming alongside solopreneurs and really going from either a you’ve already got these products in this value ladder and we’ve just got to figure out how to move people from your content.

To those sales through lead magnets that convert and through updating your website and through setting up sales funnels and welcome sequences And you know all of those things or it’s you don’t have those and we’re gonna create them together and it’s this we get to take your marketing as a whole in your business And kind of work on all the pieces.

And that’s so exciting to me. So, anyways, that’s something I’ve learned this year is I’ve gotten, because I’m spending most of my time simply working with clients and not really doing these other things, I’ve gotten a lot more clear on who my favorite clients to work with are. And hey, if you feel like that’s you and that’s the kind of help you need in the new year and you want to work together, let’s chat.

I have, I believe, one space left. for 2025, I think. Um, and I would love, yeah, I would love to chat more about whether or not we’d be a good fit together, so head over to my website or shoot me a DM on Instagram and we can just casually chat there, and you can ask any questions you have. The next lesson that I’ve learned in my first year of making six figures is that I would much rather have Russell home than working all of the time, no matter the paycheck.

He, and to be fair, he’s only been home, I don’t know, five, six months now, so it hasn’t even been a full year of him being home yet, but it’s so nice. There’s a downside of sometimes I have to go to the church or go work at a coffee shop or something because when he’s home, which is often, I just want to hang out with him.

But, uh, man, what a problem to have, right? Like, it’s It’s just so nice. It’s so nice to have him home all the time. He knows so much more about what’s going on in the business and just how things are running and he, because of that, he can help me brainstorm more. And when I tell him, I think I’m going to do this, and he’s like, XYZ?

He has the capacity to think about those things now, which he didn’t when he was working shift work, of course. And just his presence and just having him. Man, just having him home. He keeps talking about, you know, applying for jobs and finding a job and all these things and I will obviously support him in whatever he does and wants to do, but I’m constantly just reminding him, okay, but only if you really want to, you know, because I, um, yeah, I love having him home and You know, we have had to seriously cut back on our spending this year, obviously, with, um, you know, him not working his job.

Um, and I would do it over and over again. It’s taking steps backwards in , our spending abilities in order to take steps forward into more freedom. for us as a family. It’s really cool. It’s really cool to see play out. And also, speaking of Russell, when I was saying, oh, I’m gonna do this episode, what are some lessons we’ve learned this year?

His input was money doesn’t matter if you don’t have cats. Which I don’t think he actually believes, but he knows that the cats are everything to me. So, um, but that was his input on this. That’s what he learned this year, I guess. So, yeah. Another lesson that I learned is how to slow down on my goals and not act like running my business is a race.

And I say, I say that loosely, the how part of it, because frankly, I’m still kind of figuring the how out, but I’ve, I learned that I need to, and I’ve learned that it makes a difference and that it is important. And the way that has looked this year, because again, working less hours, um, I’ve been doing so many less projects, so much less speaking and just have been so much more intentional about.

What I’m doing in my business, because I don’t have the capacity to speak at all the summits. I mean, for the past few years, I was saying yes to every summit, every bundle, every, every opportunity was a yes. And I don’t have the capacity for that any longer. And so I’m really having to sit down and go, okay, they want me to speak at this time.

Do I have other marketing project going on? Because if I do, it’s a definite no, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t handle running multiple marketing campaigns at this point right now, right? And it’s just something that I just don’t, I don’t have the capacity for. Um, and so that’s the first thing I always think of.

And then the second question is, but does it really align with my audience? Is it a great opportunity? And by great opportunity, I, I strictly mean, do I see myself getting a strong ROI from it? It’s no longer. Enough for me to just be adding people to my list. There was a time when that was the case. If I was going to grow my list, yes, it’s worth my time.

Because my time is so limited right now, that’s not the case any longer. And it needs to be something where I feel like I’m actually going to make money off of it, or have the potential to, in order to actually say yes. And so, That’s something I’ve just had to be so much more intentional. Is this audience a good fit for who I want to be in front of?

And will they actually benefit from what I have to offer? And will they actually be interested in what I have to offer? And the same goes for my projects, right? It’s not just about the marketing and getting in front of new people, but also, okay, I only have the capacity, realistically, to work on one project at a time.

In reality, what that actually has looked like is, okay, what two or three projects do I have going right now? And I kind of just trade off which one’s getting my attention. Um, but what one, two, maybe three projects can I actually work on? And then I spend a lot longer working on each project as well.

Where it used to be, I would start a project and I, you know, it was like, Each month there was a new project was the goal and I just don’t have the time for that any longer and so it’s okay, which project is absolutely the most important and is going to do the most for me in the long run. And so that, again, just more intention around slowing down and not acting like running my business is a race, but instead, a slow, I don’t even want to say jog, a slow nature walk. Yeah, just a leisurely walk or a leisurely hike, maybe is a better word, metaphor, whatever. Um, And again, I say how to, but it’s not really, it’s just, that’s been the reality and I’ve been forced into that. And so just learning how to do that with more intention has been a big lesson for me this year.

And then the final lesson I have to share with you today is that, man, relationships make life better, um, both personally and in business. It has been such a blessing to be so close to friends, and it’s The spontaneous, Hey, wanna come over? It’s just so nice. Man, it’s so nice. Um, but then also, relationships and business.

Um, again, having less time, I’ve had to be a lot more intentional about, well, let’s put this weekly co working on the calendar so we can get together and hang out. Um, And using Voxer and just having people to talk to when you’re like dang I lost another client and it’s you know It’s because of XYZ circumstance and it’s not that they’re unhappy with me But this thing happened and they need to they can’t work with me any longer, right?

Those moments stink Um, it also stinks when someone’s just unhappy with working with you, but just when those circumstances happen and they’re like, I would love to keep working with you, but I can’t right now because of whatever reason. Um, or whatever happens, right? Like, just having someone there to be like, This is going on in my business, and I’m bummed, or to celebrate those wins with, or to have as referral partners and just connecting.

I’ve done a lot more connecting this year, but on a smaller scale, deeper connections is a good way to put that. Whereas it used to be I felt like I was just like trying to connect with other people all the time, and now it’s less It’s a smaller blanket, but it’s a thicker blanket. I don’t know. Smaller hole, but deeper hole.

Um, but just better connections, and it’s just made a big difference. So yeah, relationships make life better, for sure. So, anyways, those are a few of my, um, Just lessons learned in my first year making six figures. Um, one more, one more for you. Your revenue streams truly do add up. I used to, you know, you hear that stat about, oh, the average millionaire has seven revenue streams, right?

And

I mean, it’s easy to be like, okay, great, but like, what is that? I don’t know. It’s easy to hear that, but then what do you do with that? But it’s, it’s interesting how, when you build one, And then you build, once you build the second one, and then you free up capacity and you can build a third, it, it’s easier to add them, but also, it is amazing what a little bit from this one, and a little bit from this one, and a little bit from this one will do, because, again, if I wasn’t working at the church, I wouldn’t, I probably wouldn’t have hit six figures this year, I’m just being 100 percent real, um, I would have had more time, I would have made a little bit more, probably, in the business than I did, But I, I don’t think I’d hit that six figure number and yet a little bit from this and a little bit from that and a little bit from this and it all adds up.

So start thinking about other revenue streams, even if, and again, most of my income came from one on one clients, but a good chunk came from my membership. A good chunk did come from education. A good chunk came from affiliate marketing. And so having these different revenue streams in your business. adds up.

And so if you just, just potentially, and here’s maybe your action step for this week, is to think about one revenue and one revenue, one, yeah, one revenue stream that you could add in 2025 and that you could get started with in the new year. Now, instead of a book recommendation for you this week, I actually have a book app recommendation.

If you have not heard of Fable, it is similar to Goodreads. So if you use Goodreads. And even if you don’t, but you have heard about it, but if you use Goodreads and if like me you don’t love it It’s not that great, but it works kind of thing Fable is a lot more beautiful. It’s a lot more user friendly and what I love most about it is That you can import your Goodreads data into it.

So, earlier this year there was a big push on social media about StoryGraph. If you’ve heard of that one, because it’s a woman owned, all this stuff. Um, and it gives you all these cool like stats and data and things. And I was like, alright, cool, I’ll try it out. But then, all of the information that I already have in Goodreads, it wasn’t there.

Now, caveat here. There may be. at this point because it’s been months, or maybe there always was but it wasn’t obvious, there may be a way to import your Goodreads data into Storygraph. However, it wasn’t abundantly clear and I wasn’t aware of it, so I didn’t ever use it. I, I was like, yeah, I mean, it’s cool, but like, I don’t, everything’s already in Goodreads, so I’m just not, you know, I’m very much of the, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, I don’t need to try out new things just to try out new things kind of mindset.

However, downloaded Fable when I, in fact, I this is something I literally downloaded today. Um, saw people talking about it on threads and downloaded it to check it out. And it’s beautiful, and it’s got great data, just like Storygraph has. And it’s very user friendly. And, as you’re setting up your project, Profile, it encourages you to import your Goodreads data and it’s all you do is you click import and you log into your Goodreads and then it moves the stuff over for you.

And so everything that I’ve read this year, all 122 books at this point,

All of that, including the dates and my ratings got moved over. To Fable. It also has a whole section for TV shows, which I have not even played around with, but if you also are someone that loves TV, probably would like it too. Um, but I just loved that all that move over, moved over. I will say caveat, I’m pretty sure it only moved over my 2024 Goodreads data.

So all of the years before that did not get moved over. I’m not really worried about that because really all I wanted was All the books that I’ve read, and that I’m, I was not about to import 122 books, right, by hand, because we’re, it’s November, as I’m recording this, I was not about to import all of those books, and yet, I do want to keep track of, you know, hitting my goal, and how many I’ve read for the year, and so, the reality would have been, I wouldn’t have used it because everything was already in Goodreads, and I would have said, maybe I’ll remember in January to start using it, and I wouldn’t have remembered.

So, anyways, that’s a tangent. But that, instead of a book recommendation, a book, and there’s also book clubs on it, there’s all kinds of stuff. I have, again, just downloaded it today, within the last couple of hours. I haven’t done a full deep dive into it, but I’m really, really, really liking that it’s got the functionality of Goodreads, but it’s beautiful, and has even more.

than goodreads does So, alright. That is all I have for you today, my friend. Until next time, I hope that you will go ahead and uncomplicate your marketing and business. 

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 239: What I learned From My First Six-figure Year appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Facebook Ads don’t have to be so complicated, but they are often a crucial part of a course creator’s marketing strategy. Which is why I brought on my two favorite Facebook Ads experts to help us out today.

With a contagious enthusiasm and a knack for simplifying the complex, Ashley + Elizabeth believe that Facebook ads don’t have to be scary, hard, or expensive.
 Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, they’re on a mission to empower you to amplify your voice with Facebook Ads!
 Outside of business, they are real sisters + best friends raising their combined 5 kids in the North Georgia Mountains. They love Disney World, punny jokes, great coffee and an extra full glass of wine. They believe in community over competition, ethical marketing and widening circles so everyone has a place.

With a contagious enthusiasm and a knack for simplifying the complex, Ashley + Elizabeth believe that Facebook ads don’t have to be scary, hard, or expensive.
 Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, they’re on a mission to empower you to amplify your voice with Facebook Ads!
 Outside of business, they are real sisters + best friends raising their combined 5 kids in the North Georgia Mountains. They love Disney World, punny jokes, great coffee and an extra full glass of wine. They believe in community over competition, ethical marketing and widening circles so everyone has a place.

Social Links:

http://www.thepaidadacademy.com/

Instagram

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

Facebook ads don’t have to be so complicated, but they are often a crucial part of a course creator’s marketing strategy, which is why I brought on my two favorite Facebook ads experts to help us out today. With a contagious enthusiasm and a knack for simplifying the complex, Ashley and Elizabeth believe that Facebook ads don’t have to be scary, hard, or expensive.

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, they’re on a mission to empower you to amplify your voice with Facebook ads. Outside of business, they’re real sisters and best friends raising their combined five kids in the North Georgia mountains. They love Disney World, obviously whoever great friends, punny jokes, great coffee, and an extra full glass of wine.

They believe in community over competition, ethical marketing, and widening circles so that everyone has a place. And today you’re listening to episode 238 of the Chase and Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This Episode was brought to you by the Chase and Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your 2025 version at amandawarfield.

com.

Amanda: How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? 

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

If you are interested in running Facebook ads, but you have no idea where to start and how to use them to fill seats in your course, you’re in the right spot because I am so excited to have Ashley and Elizabeth of the Paid Ads Academy with me today. For those that don’t know me, I’m Amanda Warfield. I am a simplicity focused content marketing strategist and copywriter.

I go live here every single Monday at 7 p. m. Eastern time, 4 p. m. Pacific to help course creators simplify their marketing so they can make a larger impact in less time. And I’m so excited to have Ashley and Elizabeth here with me today, uh, because I am a student of theirs and they have so much genius to offer.

So I’m just super pumped that we get to bring some of that to all of you. But if you guys want to introduce yourself and just tell everyone a little bit about who you are and a little bit about the business. 

Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having us, Amanda. It is such a joy because your community is just People that we love so much, creative educators, and just really obsessed, obviously.

Um, so I’m Ashley and

Elizabeth: I’m Elizabeth. 

Ashley: Yes. We sound a little bit alike. So hopefully your podcast listeners can tell us apart, but we’re real sisters and we own this business together jointly. And, um, yeah, it’s called the paid ad Academy. We teach, you know, female entrepreneurs, how to run Facebook ads. We’re trying to help people have more impact, less stress, all the things that you were talking about.

Yeah, what do you think? Anything else? 

Elizabeth: Yeah, we have like, you know, we have, um, like done with you stuff. And we have our membership like Amanda was talking about. So a lot of different, a lot of different facets, but we’re excited. Yeah. 

Amanda: Yeah, I love Yall’s membership. I’m just gonna go ahead and plug it for everyone because it’s, it’s so helpful.

Thank you. Not only because you guys have such a plethora of knowledge, like, I feel like every time I have a question, you’re like, Oh, we have a resource on this. Let me link it to you, right? But the fact that you guys have two calls a week where you’re just like, what are your questions? How can we help?

It’s, it’s so helpful and it’s so, it’s exactly what I look for in communities and in courses at this point is like, Yes, the education, but also just like, That community aspect of, there are times when I show up to y’all’s calls, and I like, I’m like, I don’t really have a question, I’m just here to make sure that I actually work on the things that you already told me to work on, right?

Like, it’s, it’s accountability, it’s education, it’s everything, so thank you guys for creating that, and we will definitely be linking to that in the description, in the show notes, everything, so people can check it out. 

Ashley: You’re so kind. We’re actually, I’m going to just go ahead and say it. We’re actually changing that a little bit.

I know we’re, we’re not, we’re not going to have two live calls. I just think that sometimes it’s a little overwhelming for people, but we wanted to find a way to really support. Cause I do think the accountability is a big part of being in a membership like that, because for me, I’m in a bunch of stuff and I don’t participate in it.

Or I forget that I’ve even bought it, you know? And so yeah. I don’t want it to be like that. Um, but we still want to make things available. So with Facebook ads, because they changed so fast and so. I mean, like I could do we could do we’re doing a lesson actually this month on, um, the election and then like the holiday.

So it’s election waves to holiday craze, and it’s a pre recorded lesson, but we want people to have access to that kind of information because I think that’s what’s going to pull them back in. And then we’re still going live. It just won’t be as often and the Facebook group. We’re going to start doing more things in the Facebook group instead of just on zoom calls.

So I think I think that’s going to help people who. Maybe don’t, can’t really do the time, can’t really like get two hours a week to get on a Zoom call and maybe get your answers, or your questions answered, you know. So we’re hoping that it’s, it’s going to be a good fit for everyone. But I mean, we’re building this for our community.

And so like, we’re listening to the feedback and hopefully, hopefully giving people what they want, which I’m sure your audience resonates with. 

Amanda: Absolutely. I know. And that’s, That’s the hard thing is so often we, we start these memberships, we start these courses and we have these preconceived notions 

of 

what we have to do and what we should be doing.

But the reality is, is that until you get in it and you do it, you don’t know what your unique audience is going to want. 

Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. 

Amanda: So I have to ask. And this, you know, this has nothing to do with ads really, but I just want to know, what’s it like working with your sister? 

Ashley: Oh, I, I think it’s cool, but 

Elizabeth: she’s like, it’s so fun. I’m like, oh goodness, it’s crazy. Uh, no, it’s crazy and fun. We have a lot of, um, midday laugh sessions, you know, just about random stuff. But then we also can like buckle down and be like, Uh, I think it’s cool because we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, like, really intimately, and so, like, we are, I mean, we’re sisters, we’re business partners, but we’re also best friends, and so, like, we hang out constantly, and, um, 

Ashley: It’s gonna make me tear up! It sounds like you’re tearing up. 

Elizabeth: No, I’m just coughing. Um, we’re trying to hold it in, but, 

Amanda: The duality of sisters. 

Ashley: I know, no, it’s so true, because Elizabeth is like, Elizabeth is definitely, like, the, you know, very direct, she’s like all, you know, like, she has emotions, but, but they don’t exit her as often as mine exit me, and so it’s, we always joke, like, when Elizabeth will give me a hug after something, I’ll be like, oh my gosh, like, cause she’s not really a hugger, but it’s just, you know, it’s so funny.

But I always say that working with my sister in this business is one of the greatest joys of my life. Like it has been such a blessing to get to spend this time together and get to make so much impact with people and get to see, you know, like it’s when you see your husband or your, you know, like your spouse in their work self and you’re like, Ooh, like, I don’t know about you, but I’m like, that’s sexy.

My husband’s a pilot, you know, like, men in uniform, all the things. But it’s cool to see her, like, in her work element, too. I’m, like, so proud, because, like, I’m the big sister. So I’m like, get it, girl! And we get to do it, like, every day, you know? So it’s, it’s really cool. It’s good times. 

Amanda: So sweet. My sister is not a hugger, either.

And so every time I get, like, a real hug, I’m like, oh my gosh. Not the little, like, side, like, pat. That’s what I always get. So, okay. Moving into Facebook ads. If someone hasn’t started. And they haven’t started simply because they’re scared, and they just feel overwhelmed by all of it. What is your, what’s the like, one starting step that you would suggest?

Elizabeth: You probably need to have a Facebook or Instagram.

Amanda: Okay. You know, like That’s simple enough. Yeah. 

Elizabeth: You have the page, whatever. But if you’ve never done ads specifically, I think, um, just having like some sort of little lesson on ads manager, just so you can like not feel quite as overwhelmed, because I think that’s a hard part when people log in for the first time and they’re like, Oh, no, there’s more than 20 buttons on this page.

What am I supposed to push? You know, it’s a can be really overwhelming and intimidating. Um, so I think giving some like, uh, maybe behind the scenes. 

Ashley: Yeah, just to help people feel more comfortable for sure. And then I think as far as like ad strategy and like what to actually run first, um, The answer’s different based off where you are in business.

If you have a more established business and you’ve been on Instagram, on Facebook, like you have a website and you’ve had some traffic coming through and you have an audience, then I would say, put a retargeting ad up and send people that already know you, which would be like a custom warm audience. It sounds scarier than it is.

I promise. It’s actually really easy to build. Um, send them to a discovery call or send them to buy something or do whatever it is that you’re. Your people need to do. And then if you’re brand new to business and you don’t have that warm audience to send something to you, then put up like a traffic ad to your Instagram and put some kind of existing post on there.

Like, you know, those POV reels that people put out like POV, like work with me, worked with me and blah, blah, blah. Or like, we have a friend who’s. Who put up an ad that was just like a day in the life of CEO and it was just her and talking about her business and that kind of stuff. And just put something out there to attract your people, but also repel the people you don’t want and start building that warm list.

And it’s cheap to do it that way, like five bucks a day max. 

Amanda: Okay, so then speaking of budget, what should someone expect to spend if they are retargeting? Or, slash, if they are running traffic ads, so like, they’re just starting out, they’ve never run ads before, what should they budget? 

Ashley: Well, it depends on what you want.

Like, what are your results that you want from this? Because if you’re just You want to dip your toe in and just kind of try it. You could do like five dollars a day. Um, but if you’re like, Hey, I’m running a webinar next month and I want to fill it with a hundred people, then you’re going to have to spend, you know, you’re gonna have to do the math.

So it really is. It’s all about mapping. And then there’s, well, and to kind of talk about that too, when people are talking about optimizing on inside of ads, Facebook wants 50 actions in a week of whatever it is you’re trying to get done. So if it’s a sale, if it’s getting people to your website, if it’s getting a lead, whatever.

And so if you’re getting leads and you need to get 50 leads to fill that webinar, right, in a week, technically, um, then let me just do the math. You would have to do, let’s just say your leads are like 3. And then that’s 150 for the week. So you need to spend about 21 a day. And so that’s for some people, that’s a lot of money.

Cause if you’re thinking about 21 a day over 30 days, that’s almost 650 bucks. So it’s, it just depends how fast you want to go, because you can go slow and steady, or you can just like shoot it straight to the moon. Like it’s. It’s really up to you, whatever you want to do with that. 

Amanda: Okay, walk me through that math again.

How did you how did you get to where you got? 

Ashley: Sure. Yeah, so 50 actions in a week

Amanda: And an action being? 

Ashley: A lead. So an email and a name. In this instance, a lead. Yeah, in this instance. It could be any of the objectives. But, yeah, lead in this instance. And then I’m making the assumption that the lead is an average of 3 per lead.

Which is, it’s very middle of the road. Some people get a lot cheaper, some people get a lot higher. So 3 is probably, uh, Even, I would say, maybe a little bit lower than what the typical would be. Right. But just assuming 3. 3. So, 50. Leads times 3, 150 for the week, and then divide it by seven, seven days to get your daily ad spend.

Amanda: Gotcha. Okay. And is there a reason that Facebook wants those 50 actions or is that just? What you guys have learned. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. So, uh, they’re taking from this giant cold audience, right? Um, from like millions and millions of users, and they’re trying to filter down into your people. So you can give it a little bit of guidance, um, or you can go straight broad and let the AI, like, you know, AI beast take control and see if it can find your people.

Um, but it wants to have those 50 actions so that it can feed the AI system of who. who are the people that are interacting and getting you the action that you want so that it can learn. Um, just like you have to train, you know, GPTs and like all that. If you’re, you’re training the AI inside of Facebook to find your people that are going to do those actions.

Ashley: Yeah. And Facebook tells us that it takes about 50 actions in a week to train their algorithm. So that’s why they want it to be that way. Yeah. 

Amanda: Okay. Okay. Gotcha. So your goal should be to put enough money in. To hit those 50 actions. 

Ashley: Yes. Yes. Now here’s the caveat though, is that this is for a cold audience, right?

People who’ve never heard about you before. This is a huge audience. So if you’re like, I don’t have enough money to do that. Like, that’s fine. We’re all about the small budget. I’d rather you run a little bit of ads with a small budget than

Elizabeth: And yeah, you know, yourself back because you are like intimidated by the cost.

Ashley: Absolutely. Absolutely. I read these, you spend, you know, 2 a day on a retargeting. So what you can do then is do a cheaper ad, which would be like an engagement ad or a traffic ad. Those are pretty inexpensive. You can get 50 actions on those for just like pennies on the dollar. And then retarget with whatever you want, a lead ad, whatever, to people who’ve interacted with your Facebook, Instagram website.

Whatever, there’s lots of different ways to retarget. And so that way you’re spending. a little bit up here on your engagement ads, and then you’re putting more money behind your retargeting, but you don’t need 50 actions a week because it’s a warm audience. So Facebook doesn’t need to optimize that. 

Elizabeth: So they’re only going to show that to people who have already interacted with you.

Ashley: Yeah. So that’s why you can spend a lot less because you’re not trying to get 50 a week. 

Amanda: Oh, okay. Okay. So you, a cheaper way to do it is engagement ad and then retarget from that engagement ad. Yeah. What?

Anyone who’s listening is probably like, okay, well, why would I not just always do that? What would be the reasoning for the first strategy? 

Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. Because the first strategy is a lot faster. You’re going to get way more leads at a lower cost in the long run. And it’s just gonna, it’s, it’s like. I don’t know if you’re like this, but I, we grew up not super rich.

Right. And so I’m like, we’re a little bit cheap sometimes. And so we’ll buy something that’s like not the best quality and I’ll have it for a few months and then it breaks. And then I’m like, well, crap. And then so eventually you end up buying another one and another one. And then you’re like, I should have just bought the really nice one to begin with.

Like instead of wasting all this money, that’s basically what we’re doing. We’re giving you a cheap route. If you truly, truly cannot afford the more expensive one, but you’re going to have to keep doing this one and keep doing this one and keep doing this one. to get the results of this other one. So if you have the money, do the other one, because it’s better.

But if you don’t, you can get away with this. It’s just not going to work as fast. It’s going to cost you more money in the long run, but it’s just going to be slower. 

Elizabeth: It does help you build confidence though. So there’s a lot of times where we have like people who are honestly just scared of running ads in general because they’re putting their face out to thousands of people that they don’t know, which is Scary.

It is. Um, so, I mean, we faced that, like, when we run our ads, we’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want that angle. I don’t know if I want this. Like, oh, this is weird. You know, holes too. 

Ashley: Oh, of course. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Like random people, you know, we accidentally got picked up by a fetish group. That was a whole thing. It was, You a really great time.

Um, so bad world is so weird, super weird. Um, but it really does give you a, like, gives you confidence as the business owner to keep going with your ads. Um, and then, you know, then you can maybe branch out into some of those other things once you’ve built that confidence, it’s a good testing route to you.

Like if you’re not a hundred percent sure if your offer is going to work, it’s a good way to be kind of like, is it going to work? 

Amanda: Okay. So for course creators. Is there a difference in the strategy you would suggest for an evergreen course versus like, oh, I’m running a live webinar in this thing. It’s like I’m doing a live launch.

Ashley: There’s so many answers to that. So different routes, even just within that one, like segment, there’s a lot of different ways you can do it. It depends on how are you selling the evergreen? Is it a, is it also a webinar, like an evergreen webinar? Is that what you? Want this methodology to, 

Amanda: um, for the sake of the example, if that makes it easiest, let’s do that.

Yeah. 

Ashley: Okay, cool. Cool. And it’s free, right? Free webinar, right? Yes. Okay, cool. So in this case, my Follow up question to be, to that would be is how much is the course? Because that also makes a difference on what you’re, what you’re doing. In an ideal world, if we’re just going with, you know, basics here, I would say run some kind of traffic ad to your Instagram, if that’s your, your main platform.

And that way you can test your audiences there. And then spend 5 a day on like four different audiences. Do it over the course of a couple weeks before you’re just going to start your ads to your webinar and your. Then once you’ve kind of got a good audience there and you’re feeling solid, then we’re going to put up a lead ad to your webinar.

And that lead ad is going to go to a cold audience, but it’s going to be broad because you’ve already taught the algorithm with your traffic campaign. So now we’re using that algorithm to just go out and find your people here. And then if it’s a live webinar, you, like, if you’re going to do it repeating, you could keep it up and just not put any dates.

And that’s like top notch. 

Elizabeth: Really good strategy. Yeah. 

Ashley: Really good strategy. If it’s evergreen, you can do the same thing, obviously, because it’s evergreen. Um, but then after you do that, you’re going to want to retarget people to come back and buy the course. So with live, live, you probably already know this live webinars convert a lot better than evergreen webinars do.

Um, but it’s open close, right? Like open, close, open, close. Whereas evergreen, you can keep going forever and it’s just, it’s easier. So make your money fast or make your money slow. That’s it’s, it really comes down to like. 

Amanda: Okay, so the strategy would essentially be the same though, other than the fact that one is open closed on the other is all going.

Ashley: Yes, and the strategy is the same because it’s the same selling mechanism of a webinar. We’re assuming it’s the same course. So it’s the same price point. And there’s a lot of different things. It’s because it’s the same, like it would, I would tell you something different. If you said you were doing a challenge or a lead magnet, or like, you need to do something different for different selling mechanisms.

And also if you have to have a discovery call or something, cause your course is like, you know, four or 5, 000, or it’s a mastermind that’s different too. So there’s different things for different, and it’s, this is where you could talk about customer journey too, because the customer journey is different.

And that’s the customer journey is what dictates. Everything for ads because we do not want to just put up a one size fits all like here’s a lead magnet to this to this and everyone’s doing that because that you I mean, you know, that does not work for every audience. It does not work for every like course creator either.

So you have to customize your ads to what you’re doing, but it’s not as hard as people make it sound. It’s really not. 

Amanda: Okay, so let’s dive into that idea then. How in the world, where do you begin if you’re like, I want to make sure that my, my ads, because, okay, well, I think, based on my own experience, that what a lot of us do when we’re like, okay, we’re ready to start running ads, and we, we pick up a little strategy here, or a little strategy there, and we run it, and then it kind of works, but then it’s like, but then what, right?

Um, and you guys have even pointed out to me, you’re like, you’re, you don’t have a strategy. Like, you don’t have an overall ad strategy. Which I think ties back to this customer journey, right? Is, you know, creating an overall strategy. How do you use the customer journey to do that so you’re not just like running a random ad here and running a random ad there?

Ashley: I’m gonna let Elizabeth answer this, but I did want to say first that you’re not alone in that. In any stretch of the imagination, we have clients we work one to one with. I literally got into her account the other day and I was like, you have 15 campaigns going. This is like, Way too many because you bet against yourself if you’re not careful and then you’re just raising your own ad prices.

So, but Elizabeth can talk more about the at the customer journey for sure. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. So when you’re building, um, your ads, I mean, you want to think about where your people are at and how you can best talk to them where they are. Because I think a lot of the things that kind of turn us off a little bit with like bro marketing, you know, and that kind of like way is that they’re forcing you to feel, to feel a certain way and to act a certain way.

Um, and it’s not like you have to be whatever, like it just that’s the subconsciously kind of is what’s happening. Um, so how can we instead turn around and have like a really ethical way of providing people and in to what they need when they need it? Um, That just feels more authentic, right, without like having that gross feeling around it.

Ashley: And not so manipulative too. 

Elizabeth: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Um, so if you just take a, like, think about your business and then take a few steps back, like, and you’re looking at it from a bird’s eye view, you know, and you’re thinking about it kind of in a linear way, where are they starting? Like, how are they finding you?

How do they know your name in the first place? Like, is it maybe through a traffic ad where they’re like, Seeing you and then you get sent to their Instagram and then get to know them that way. Um, or is it from a YouTube video or a podcast or like, how are they finding you? And then maybe put some ad money behind that, if possible, so you could run ads to your podcast or to YouTube videos or things like that.

Um, and then just being like that in each stage of your business. So then what’s next for them? Once they get to know you, where do you want them to fall? Like, is it a lead magnet? Is it. You know, something different. Um, maybe like a little intro course or a digital product, whatever that is. Um, and then maybe, maybe that’s a retargeting or maybe that could be a cold audience too.

Like, is that a good way for people to find you? Um, and just thinking about kind of each step of where you want them to be and what is the end goal? Like, do you have a one on one? Do you have, you know, what’s, what is your end product? And some people it’s the course and that’s the end. And that’s, that’s great.

You know, you just have a little bit less steps. Um, but each of your. I’m trying to say the word, like each of your offer stack, like your offer ladder, that’s what I’m trying to say. Your offer ladder, each rung, you know, has an opportunity for ads. 

Ashley: Well, and it’s like a funnel too, basically. You’re just creating an ad funnel.

So I used to teach it that when you, when you did the linear way, like Elizabeth was saying, like there are natural points where people fall off. Where they just, you know, people follow you on Instagram and you’re like all they, all they like for like two weeks. And you’re like, man, this person really likes me.

And then the algorithm doesn’t show your stuff to them anymore. They forget you exist. And then you launch and you never hear from them. And it’s just like, it’s all, it’s natural. It’s, it’s natural for that to happen. But with ads, it’s cool because you can kind of like put a little bandaid on that and show some retargeting ads that catch those people who were really interested 30 days ago and just want to.

forgot about you because the algorithm didn’t show it. So that’s one reason that I really fell in love with ads in the first place was just because I’m an introvert, like to the max, and I have crippling anxiety, if we’re going to be honest. And so like the idea of having to do so much marketing all the time and constantly, and I know you and I even talked about this, Amanda, with before when you were on our podcast, like it is the consistency has always been a for me.

And so the fact that I can put 30, 60 behind some ads, and it’s consistent for me, like, it is giving me so much peace of mind. Like, honestly. 

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned not wanting to bid against yourself, but then for those that have this whole value ladder, like Elizabeth was talking about, what, how do you make sure that you’re, when you’re creating an ad strategy, that you’re, Running ads to the different parts of your value ladder without bidding against yourself.

What does that look like? 

Ashley: Yeah, you have to actually map your value ladder first. So you actually need to know like where you’re sending them and you need to know, do they have to build on each other or can they be purchased at any point in the journey? And then also what does your back end marketing look like?

Are you doing email marketing too, which please Lord do email marketing. Please let that be the blanket statement of today. Um, do email marketing and make sure you’re following up with those people you’ve already paid to acquire. If you’re using ads or, you know, busted your butt to acquire because you’re not paying for them.

And so ads should really just be filling. filling this funnel for you, and then you mark it to the other. And now when you’re talking about ads to your different offers, though, you can do it different ways. If you want to run it to people who interacted with a certain video or looked at a certain post or trying to bend to a certain URL on your website, like there are traffic numbers you need to hit to for Facebook to be able to find those people.

But. Yeah. There are very, um, innovative and really cool ways that you can do this kind of stuff. You just have to be willing to like, sit down and think it through. And so if you’re the type of person who can back up and see a plan, big picture, which not everyone is, and that’s fine. Um, but get some help if that’s not you, because there’s in there too.

Like you can even, especially with AI these days, I mean, my goodness, when I first made my first customer journey, it was like 2017 or something, you know, like AI. Was not around. And so I like mapped all these different customer journeys and I used to do these like marketing plans for people. It was like all this crazy stuff.

And now I feel like you go to chat GPT and just tell them what you want and probably get something pretty decent. So I don’t know if that answered your question. I just talked to the circle. 

Elizabeth: You can also like segment people, like just how you segment like your list, right? You could say like, well, if they’ve interacted with me in the first Like 30 days of getting to know me.

I want them to see this set of things in the next 30 days of getting to know me. I want them to kind of switch over to maybe something different. Um, you know, and you can start like maybe excluding people from your audiences too. So it’s, you know, a touch more advanced of targeting, but not hard, just an extra couple buttons.

Um, But yeah, you can kind of start playing around with some of those things. You just have to have the numbers to do because like she was saying, there’s some traffic requirements. You need to have around 1000 people in your audience for Facebook to show, um, to show the ad to them. So, if you start excluding big groups, then you’re kind of pigeonholing yourself a little bit with that.

But. Well, and that, you know, this is these, the strategies we just talked about were several different strategies. And that’s the thing with Facebook ads is that what works for one might not work for another. And so that does kind of suck that you have to try different things. The testing ground is, and different things work at different times, which is why we made a membership and not a course, because it needs to be updated.

And people need to be in there. Like. Learn when they’re running ads, like they need to be somewhere where they’re keep staying updated. Cause right now, like carousel ads are doing really well right now, or they were like two weeks ago, actually. I don’t even know if they still are. I’m pretty sure this is the one who manages all that.

But, um, you know, if you don’t, if you took a course three months ago, they’re going to tell you not to run carousel ads and so you’re not going to know. 

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. Everything changes so quickly. 

Elizabeth: And take away buttons, like, yeah, so quick. Well, it’s never fails. We’re always teaching on it whenever they add or take away a button.

And so we show our page and we’re like, it’s not the right way. Every time, every time, but yeah. So, I mean, we just, Those kind of things, like, it can be intimidating when you go on and you’re like, this is not the right color button that I’ve always clicked. Is this even the same button? I have no idea. And then you get a little update from, you know, the group and you’re like, oh, this is the same.

We did. It’s a little different now, but it’s fine. 

Amanda: So with The traffic requirement needing 1000 people in the audience. If you’re trying to run ads to a specific part of your value ladder, um, let’s say to, well, let’s just say to a course, um, in order, let’s say this, you want to run ads to a course. But before someone takes that course, they need to have probably, I don’t know, let’s say there’s a freebie, a lead magnet ahead of that.

Do you need a thousand people to have landed on the lead magnet page before you start running ads to the course page? What would that look like? 

Elizabeth: You could go about it a couple ways. So you could just go, I mean, honestly, what we would start with probably for Everyone in that scenario would be get your leads and then email market the course on the back end.

Um, just make sure they know it’s available in your, in your Instagram, you know, make sure you’re talking about it, that kind of thing. Um, but that’s going to be really, I mean, that’s really the only surefire way. Um, unless you are putting some budget behind serious budget behind your leads and then getting all those in delay launching your retargeting budget for a little while and get up to a thousand people.

So maybe it took you 30 or 60 days to get a thousand people and then in your warm audience, you retarget for the last. Maybe 90 days of anyone who’s downloaded or something like that. You can kind of hack a little bit around it. Um, but the true answer is that they would have to put a good bit of budget behind it to get there.

Ashley: And I think maybe something to think about. I know this is like a makeup thing, but one thing that I had to learn the hard way is that I was pigeonholing my audience into they have to do this and then they have to do that. Like, they can only be in Big Break Club if they’re, they follow this specific whatever.

And the reality is, it’s just not true. If people want to buy from you, why are you turning away their money? Do they really need that? Like, and that’s not something I learned on my own. That was, you know, our, our business coach had to like really nail that into me, but we had a client a couple months ago who specifically teach this, like one skill to moms, that’s all their messaging, all their marketing, 40 percent of their audience base is men.

So like, tell me, please, like, you know, not even just audience based, they’re customer based. Yeah. They’re paying customers. Yeah. You’re right. 40 percent of their paying customers are men who are not moms, obviously. 

Amanda: Interesting. That is so bizarre. Okay. 

Elizabeth: I know it’s wild. 

Amanda: Okay. So you’re essentially saying though, In that scenario, go back to those first two strategies that we talked about at the beginning, where you’re either putting the money behind the leads or you’re doing the traffic retargeting kind of workaround, right?

What? Go ahead… 

Ashley: I was gonna say you could do a video views ad too. I know, I’ve been, 

Elizabeth: she loves video views. She’s been cracking me up about this. Every single person, she’s like, oh, but you could do a video view. 

Ashley: I’m like really loving it right now. You could just do a video. Right? And run a video view to add to it, and then, because you don’t need a thousand people, you could re target anyone who watches this specific video.

So if it’s like, a really good video about whatever it is they need to know before they join your course, then. Okay, now you can ask your question now that I’ve got my video views out of the way. 

Amanda: I love it. So, okay, but going back to what you said about Not have it. People don’t have to take a specific route.

When it comes to ads, do you suggest selling just straight to a product, like running ads straight to a product like a course? Or is it better to do the get the leads, get them into your email marketing? 

Elizabeth: It all comes back to the 50, the Facebook 50. If you Are you going to pay for that? Because if your course is a thousand dollars and it takes 500 to get somebody in and you have to have 50 of them in a week and you’re, you know what I mean, that is, whoa, you’re spending some serious money, um, which there are people who do that, uh, but.

on just a normal person, you’re probably not going to want to spend 20 grand on ads. I mean, just, just right out the get go. So the other direction is going to be the more used route. 

Ashley: Yeah. And also depends on the cost of your product too. So It’s just, it’s like business model. We all have slightly different business models and it works differently for us.

It works differently for our customers. It works differently for our products and our verticals ads are the same way it is going, the ads are going to work differently for you than they work for us. So every single one of our clients is unique in their ad setup. None of them are set up the exact same way.

And maybe to start out with, we might start people on like, we do have like some common strategies that mostly for most people will work. And we’ll recommend those first, but everybody transitions out of it into something different. So it really, you have to run the numbers. You have to sit down and be like, If I have this conversion rate and you have to know what your average conversion rates are or what your industry’s average conversion rates are, and then you have to run the numbers, put a spreadsheet together, like spend a little time on it.

Um, we have our, our business coach puts together spreadsheets like this, like if she sells them, I can give you her information if you want it, but like do that, like run the numbers and, and see, because 

Elizabeth: It might be on our Instagram. We actually have the backwards ad calculator linked so you could go in and like click the buttons and add it.

Yeah, I think that’s on our if we don’t you guys. 

Ashley: Yeah, if it’s not, I don’t think it is right now that I was saying that if it’s not on our link in bio, anybody’s welcome to DMS and we’ll send them the link because we don’t have a good place to do that. For resources, because the cobbler’s children have no shoes, so.

Amanda: That’s so real. 

Ashley: I know. 

Amanda: So real. Um, okay. Yeah, that’s so helpful. So, whether or not you run ads straight to a paid offer, depends on how much money you’re willing to put into the ads. 

Elizabeth: And how much you’re offering. Right, yeah. If your offer is like 27 or 47, like, sure, you could run them straight through. 

Ashley: So, again, that’s another thing.

That’s like a SLO, right? Like a self liquidating offer. Or, I know, um, Funnel Gorgeous is rebranding it this, right now, as the PLM, which is a paid lead. Magnet? Magnet? I don’t think that’s what it is. No, it’s paid lead maker. Paid lead maker is what they’re calling it. So basically it’s, you’re paying for your lead.

And the idea is that people who are willing to spend some money are better quality leads because they’re going to be willing to spend money now, they’ll spend money later. So just like I was saying, business model, that’s a business model choice. You can make a business model choice for something else.

There’s no right or wrong here. Like this is all. morally neutral, you know, and I think a lot of us forget that, but if you did it that way, and we’re teaching the ads in that program right now, that’s why I’m like right on the brain, but we’re teaching that you run sales ads straight to that. So that has the immediate Self liquidating offer, PLM.

What are the main offer? And then it has a bump offer, and then it has a one time offer, and then you’re selling something on the backend. So you’re increasing your average order value with those things. So you probably won’t break even on this one offer, but add the bump, add the OTO, add the whatever, and you’ll make way more money doing that than if you ran free lead magnet and then sold into the thousand dollar course or whatever.

Amanda: Mm hmm. Yeah, man, every time I talk to you guys, I just feel like I learn so much And then have a million more questions, but

Because you know so much about this and you guys are just both so knowledgeable, um, I love it. Yeah, I’m so glad that One of my clients actually was like, oh I just learned about these guys and you should check them out And I immediately was like, yes I’m in. Like, I’ve never, I’ve never given someone my money so fast.

Ashley: Oh, that’s so sweet. That is so sweet. I remember that now. Like, that was such a sweet thing, too. You even messaged us, and I was like, this girl’s so kind. 

Amanda: Yeah, she was like, I did this free thing that they had, and I tried to find it, and I messaged you. And then the more I looked at your stuff, I was like, you know what?

Forget it. Like, I’m just, I’m in. And then I learned that you guys are both Disney adults, too, and I was like, oh, I’m in for life. 

Ashley: Yes. You see, you see my mickey in the back? 

Amanda: Yeah. Love it. Um, okay, so Ashley, you’ve shared why you love Facebook ads, but I’m curious, Elizabeth, why do you love Facebook ads? 

Elizabeth: Oh goodness.

Amanda: Or do you? 

Elizabeth: Um, um, I do, but I think that, um, because you can, you can like take a break and you can, you know, like still be a human being. Cause I think a lot of times we just like work ourselves into a hole. Um, so being able to like, Take a step back. Like I, I took last week off to Ashley’s demise. She was like, please come back.

No, not really, but I took the week off and it wasn’t a huge deal. I mean, you know, like I had to make sure that was done, but, but like our traffic didn’t suffer. Our, you know what I mean? Like those kind of, like our business is still growing. It’s, you know, like, so those things, um, I think if we just keep Thinking about the bigger picture.

I like to just like, every time I get like overwhelmed in the moment, I’m like, okay, but if I like back up three steps, like, is this actually as serious as I’m making it? Um, and I think ads allow me to do that a little bit. Like, okay, let me have some separation from the business because. I don’t have to get on stories in order for people to see my face today.

Like, yeah, it’s just freeing. 

Ashley: Yeah. Ways to do that too. Like you could do it with batching. You could do it with automations. You could, I mean, you could do it with email mark. There’s a ton of ways, but Facebook ads just. Are the most controllable. And like I, I know if I pay Facebook, they, my, my people are gonna see it.

It’s not like, well, they might not open it or they might not get the algorithm. No, no, no. I paid for that. like, mm-hmm , they’re gonna see that. So that makes me feel good as the type A control freak that I am. 

Amanda: Well, and it just. It can take the batching, all of that, just such the next level, right? Because you don’t have to put out as much content.

That’s such 

a huge part of it for me. It’s like, I don’t have to show up on Instagram every single week. Where, you know, previously, it was, okay, well, I want to be at least one post a week. Right? Like, I’m not trying to be constantly on there. I very much teach consistency instead of constancy. But, I can be consistent.

With one post instead of one every week now, you know, it’s, it, it just takes it to the next level, that stepping away, and I think what I love about Facebook ads, although I’ve had to say this a lot lately to clients, potential clients, I am not a strategist, I, like, there’s a reason I’m, I’m in Big Break Club, um, I don’t know anything, and, no, I really don’t, um, and still, Ashley Elizabeth being like, you need a strategy, not just ads.

Ashley: It was one time. It was a long time ago. You’re, I’m so sorry that I put that on you. 

Amanda: No, oh my gosh, no, I’m so glad you said it, because it’s what I needed. Don’t be sorry. No, I, I’m all for the, the, the teach, teach me. That’s why I’m there. Um, no, but it’s so true. Like, I, you know, anyways, my point of that being, there’s so much I don’t know.

Yeah. I, I am like at the very beginning stages of figuring out ads, but it’s a good reminder of the fact that business is all just one big experiment. And I feel like more than any other marketing that I’ve ever done, Facebook ads is such a good reminder of that. And that’s something as a type A person that I really need is like, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

You can play around with it. It doesn’t have to be right the first time. That to me. Is a reason that I, I love and hate them. Um, cause I wanna, I wanna be able to just like put a strategy in place and then, and then it’d be good. Right. But for me, it’s something that I need. It’s a good reminder that I need constantly of just like, it doesn’t have to be done perfectly.

Right from the start. You’ll figure it out and there’s no one right path. It’s like, um, geometry. I freaking hate a geometry because like, in algebra, there’s one way to do things, right? And then in geometry, they’re like, well, you could go this way with a proof and this way with a proof. And I was like, my brain hurts.

I just want one path, you know? 

Ashley: Yeah, that’s valid. So anyways, okay. 

Elizabeth: It’s so frustrating. 

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. Which is business, right? 

Ashley: Yes. And it’s just like anything you have to pick your hard because like we could choose not to do Facebook ads and our hard would be showing up consistently and finding different traffic sources.

Maybe I would pick putting email marketing more robustly or a better website or SEO are, you know, like we do Facebook ads, but our SEO is in the toilet, basically, you know, like we don’t blog, we don’t, cause it’s a We’ve been a service based businesses for years and we haven’t needed to, to be honest, because we couldn’t take any more than a certain amount of clients.

And so it’s. You just have to pick your hard and do one thing at a time. And if it’s not ads, oh my gosh, we are not gonna judge you. Like, like, we totally get it. But if it is ads and you want some help, like, we’re always happy to help people. Like, especially people who are really trying to make the world a better place.

Because, I mean, at the end of the day, life is so short. And there’s only so much you get to do. And so I don’t know about you, but if I can automate or outsource, hand something off, I want to do it because I would, I, I love my business. I love working, but like, I want to be with my family. I want to be hanging out with Elizabeth.

I want to be going to Disney world, you know, like I don’t, and I think we forget that, right? Like we, at least for me, I have an Enneagram three. Type A, oldest sister, control freak, all the things. And I’m like, I will work, like, I will work myself into a hole. Like I will and have and do, but life is short.

And when you get those reminders of how short life is, you’re just like. It’s not worth it. I’m going to be 80 and I’m going to look back on my life and be like, is this really? I spent my life stressing to the max over a business that has no, like nothing after I’m gone, you know? And I hope that’s not how it is.

Like, I hope there’s something that’s, that stays after I’m gone, but it won’t be Facebook ads. It’ll be the way we treated people and the way we helped our people help other people. And it’s not the methodology that we’re teaching. It’s the impact it has. And I think that’s for everybody. I don’t think that’s just for Facebook ads.

Amanda: A hundred percent, yeah. I mean, yeah. But, none of us started a business because we were just like, Oh, I really love Like, I didn’t start my business. I was like, I love marketing and like I’ve come to love marketing. That’s not why I started my business. Yeah, yeah. Right. You know? Um, yeah. There so much more matters.

So much more. And I’m also, I’m the exact same way, except that I’m a type one instead of a three or agree. Wanna set a three? Um, 

Ashley: I love a type one too. Mm-Hmm. . 

Amanda: But like, type A, like, gotta have my Lexapro like, you know, like I am like older sister, like. A 

Ashley: little cocktail in the morning of medicines, yes. 

Amanda: Mm hmm.

Um, but, yeah, I find myself working myself into a hole all the time, and it is this nice reminder of like, Okay, but does this really matter? No, like we moved out here to Washington a year ago so that we could have more time together so that my husband doesn’t have to work. So there’s all this stuff, you know, and it’s like, it’s so easy for me to get caught up in that.

Oh, but I got to keep working. I gotta grow into business. Like no, I don’t. I could just let it ride. Anyways, okay. That was a whole side tangent. Yeah, exactly. 

Ashley: No, I love a side tangent because that’s a You know, that’s what, sometimes what people need to hear, there might be someone right now listening or listening to podcasts or whatever.

And they’re like, oh my gosh, I never thought of it that way. And maybe they’ll stop working themselves into a hole. I mean, are we going to start working ourselves into a hole? Probably not, but maybe less holes. How about that? 

Amanda: It comes in waves for sure. Yes. 

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Amanda: Yeah. And that’s why, yeah. Simpler marketing.

That’s, that’s the whole point is that impact of like, how can you make a larger impact in less time so that you don’t have to spend all of your time on your business? 

Ashley: Yeah. 

Amanda: Um, Man, I feel like I could talk to you guys for hours. We may have to have you back at some point. For anyone here live with us, this is the last call for questions.

If you have questions about Facebook ads or anything that we’ve discussed for Ashley and Elizabeth, drop them in the chat. Um, and while we wait to see if anyone has any questions for y’all, there are two things that I don’t let anyone get out of here without giving us. First is an action step to take moving forward.

And then the second are book recommendations. They don’t have to be business books, it can be literally anything. So, 

Ashley: I don’t know if you sent that in the prep thing, but I would have a list. Okay. I did not. So good. You have book recommendations? Let me get my good reads up, okay? Hold on. I know, for serious.

We’re book people, okay? Okay. 

Amanda: We can just link to your Goodreads and people can add you as friends. Well, I’m gonna 

Ashley: have to have a disclaimer online if they do that, but, you know. Thanks. All good. It’s all good. Nothing. 

Amanda: There’s no judgment allowed here. 

Ashley: Okay, no judgment allowed. Um, okay. Action step, though. If you want to get started with Facebook ads and you’ve never done it before, we have an ad starter kit.

It’s completely free for you guys. It’s normally 47, but I, I really think like so many people need this because it’s just a place for you to go and not . Get overwhelmed and just be like, Oh, it could be a little easier than I thought. Or, Oh, I’m just going to pick this one strategy. We gave you baby steps inside of it.

We’re like, here’s a baby strategy. Here’s, here’s a little baby budget. Here’s, here’s some creative you can pick. Here’s a little baby ad copy that you can try. So we tried to make it really simple. Is this going to change your life? Probably not. Is it going to maybe help you get over the initial hump? I hope so.

Amanda: Yeah. Amazing. Well, yeah, we will get the link to that and put that in the description in the show notes for everyone. Thank you, guys. 

Ashley: Of course. Of course. All right, book recommendation. Of course, if you have not read A Court of Thorn and Roses. 

Elizabeth: That’s A number one. A number one. Must be done. Go do it right now.

Ashley: And then when you’re done with it, read Reese’s Point of View from Mist and Fury. Have you read that? 

Amanda: No. 

Ashley: Oh gosh. I literally read it in one day. I just, because it’s like a fanfic. And so you have to go like download it. Just google it. I’m sure it’s somewhere like you can find it. But yeah, Reese. Is that how you say his name?

Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. It’s so good. Yes. And then, okay. You tell your book you just read because it was, you were telling me it was so good. Okay. Well. Okay. Wild love. By Elsie Silver. I just read that. It was super great. The Patriot by Jennifer Millican. I don’t read those. I didn’t like these ones.

Um, A Dawn of Onyx. That was really good too. 

Amanda: Okay. 

Ashley: If you want to link the good read. Oh look, look, this is my, this is literally my screensaver. 

Amanda: I love it. I love it so much. Have you seen, did you see the new Kindle colors? 

Ashley: I have. I have. But I’m like, I don’t know if I need that. I feel like. I know. I don’t. I just want things to be simple when I’m reading.

Like, I do use my Kindle, but I kind of. Only because I could put it in my little stand and have my little buttons. Be like a little hermit with my little blanket. What’s your recommendation?

Elizabeth: Okay. All right. Well, you have to read Fourth Wing. That’s, those are really good. I mean, I feel like there’s like the top popular ones, but also I really enjoyed the, um, autobiographies from Julie Andrews, uh, Home and the Two Part.

I know. She’s trying to not be judged. Oh, wait. I’m okay. If you want like a, like a, a spicy one, um, I really liked Done and Dusted. It’s like a cowboy romance. Very cutesy. Um, not Demir. Not Demir. No. Um, but it also, there’s one, oh my gosh, what’s it called? Hold on. I literally have like, I have 30 minutes left in the audiobook and I’m dying.

Um, it’s called Huck from Lulu Moore. It’s a hockey one. 

Amanda: Okay. 

Elizabeth: Good one. It’s a good one. 

Amanda: I love it. Wow, you guys gave us a plethora. I love it. I know. And if you want to link 

Ashley: our Goodreads, like, just Instagram and we’ll, we will, but we have to, like, vet you first. Yeah. Like, are you related to us in some distant way?

No, you can have it. Yes? Mm mm. Nope. 

Amanda: Amazing. I love it so much. Um, okay, no questions have come in. So, for anyone watching this later, if you’ve got a question, drop it in the comments and we will come back and answer it. Thank you guys for being here today. I, uh, Man, I learned so much from you. Still, again, like I said, every time I talk to you and I know that everyone watching did too and listening.

So thank you for being here. 

Ashley and Elizabeth: Oh, thanks for having us. Yeah. Thank you so much. It was an honor. 

Amanda: And we will link your website, social media, everything in the show notes. So people can find you and check you out. 

Ashley and Elizabeth: Awesome. Sounds great.

The post Episode 238: Demystifying Facebook Ads for Course Creators appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Hi friend! Before I dive into the Education Space with Laylee, I want to give you a heads up on the audio quality. When we recorded this interview, I was not in my home office but there was no indication that my internet was not reliable. However, after the fact, it’s clear that that was the case.

Normally, I would scrap the interview and not put it out on the podcast, but today’s guest is SUCH a wealth of knowledge, and she shared so much amazing information that I wanted to try to salvage as much as possible.

So, you may find that this episode feels more choppy than normal, and that’s because my editor has done their best to salvage as much as possible. Trust me, it’s still worth the listen because Laylee Emadi is THE creative educator and if you’re in the education space, you’ll want to hear what she has to say.

Laylee is an educator, speaker, and conference host with a heart for serving clients and fellow entrepreneurs through her coaching membership The Educators Lounge, as the host of the So, Here’s the Thing Podcast, and as the founder of The Creative Educator Conference. She believes in leading with heartfelt encouragement and honest guidance. As a longtime entrepreneur, she’s not afraid to dig into tough topics or transparently share her own experiences—the good and the bad. Laylee is passionate about her goal to equip you in your ability to make a difference, create impact, and to build a life doing what you love.

And today she’s sharing the current state of the education space, what’s working, and what she thinks is to come.

Laylee is an educator, speaker, and conference host with a heart for serving clients and fellow entrepreneurs through her coaching membership The Educators Lounge, as the host of the So, Here’s the Thing Podcast, and as the founder of The Creative Educator Conference. She believes in leading with heartfelt encouragement and honest guidance. As a longtime entrepreneur, she’s not afraid to dig into tough topics or transparently share her own experiences—the good and the bad. Laylee is passionate about her goal to equip you in your ability to make a difference, create impact, and to build a life doing what you love.

Social Links:

https://layleeemadi.com/educatorslounge

Instagram

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

Amanda: Hey friend, before I dive into what today’s content is about, I want to give you a heads up on the audio quality. When we recorded this interview, I was not in my home office, but there wasn’t an indication that my internet wasn’t reliable. However, after the fact, it has become very clear that that was the case.

Normally, I would just Scrap the interview and not put it out on the podcast. But today’s guest is such a wealth of knowledge that I just, I couldn’t, I wanted to try to salvage as much as possible of this interview. So, you may find that this episode feels more choppy than normal and that’s because my editor has done their best to save as much of her knowledge as possible.

Trust me, it’s still worth the listen because Leili Amati is the creative educator and if you’re in the education space, you’ll want to hear what she has to say today. Lily is an educator, speaker, and conference host with a heart for serving clients and fellow entrepreneurs through her coaching membership, The Educator’s Lounge, as the host of the So Here’s the Thing podcast, and as the founder of the Creative Educator Conference.

She believes in leading with heartfelt encouragement and honest guidance. As a longtime entrepreneur, she’s not afraid to dig into tough topics or transparently share her own experiences, the good and the bad. Lily is passionate about her goal to help equip you. Lily is passionate about her goal to equip you in your ability to make a difference, create impact, and build a life doing what you love.

And today she’s sharing the current state of the education space, what’s working and what she thinks is to come. You’re listening to episode 237 of the Chasing Symbol podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Symbol content planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash planner. 

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? 

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner. 

Amanda: Okay, Perfect. 

Alright. 

Hi Laylee, I am so excited to have you here today. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and, um, yeah, who you serve and how you serve them. 

Laylee: Okay. Well, first of all, I am so excited to be here with you. I love you so much. Thanks. Amanda is the queen. I’m so excited. Uh, I’m Laily Emadi and I have known Amanda for a long time.

And now I am, what, who I serve. Let’s see. I serve creative entrepreneurs who want to become industry educators and leaders and or those who are currently serving. Their own communities as a leader or as an educator. So whether that’s as a speaker who goes and speaks at conferences or public events, or maybe you’re a course creator, a YouTuber, a podcaster, some anybody who takes what they know and they help other people grow and they monetize their knowledge.

That’s who I serve. 

Amanda: And for those that are just finding this on YouTube and haven’t met me yet, I’m Amanda Warfield. I’m a simplicity focused content marketing strategist and copywriter, and I am on a mission to help course creators and educators make a bigger impact in less time. So, we go live here every single Monday night at 7 p.

m. Eastern time, 4 p. m. Pacific time, and we’re so glad you’re here. Because today we’re going to talk all about the state of online education, uh, what’s working, what’s not, and just some common myths. So, Laylee, what got you into this? How did you even end up in this space? Because I know it’s, I know it’s quite a journey 

um, I, Laylee started a mastermind years ago and I was like, here’s my money, take it. Uh, it was an incredible experience and I feel like we could talk about this, but all too often in the education space, that’s not the case. You hand over your money and then you go, that was a mistake. Um, and that was not the case with Laylee and I have been like, take my money, uh, very often since then.

So how did you get here though? Because I know that that was quite a journey for you. So tell us a little bit about that. 

Laylee: Yeah, I mean, I’m so excited to have the conversation about like the state of the education space and, um, to continue that and even just like jump, like dive deeper into what you said about, you know, normally when you hand somebody your money, you’re like, what did I just do?

And it didn’t, it doesn’t pan out. And so like talking about, that’s going to be super fun for us. Um, but for me, I got into this. Field within our creative industry really organically. Like my journey was very much, um, I feel like it was a little bit different than most of the other people that I know who do what I do, where I was actually a high school teacher and curriculum designer for my school district.

And then at the same time, I was a photographer on the side, like it was just my creative side hustle, loved it. Um, and then as it started to grow. I went full time into photography and then that led to my former students asking me for help with a camera, which led to former students and their parents starting their speaking and seeing there was this huge gap between the other

industry educators and the knowledge that they were trying to impart on their students. And they just didn’t know how to teach what they did well, and they didn’t know how to do it in a really ethical way where there was like actual transformation happening because they never learned how to create curriculums that would then.

You know, turn around and create these actual great transformations for their students. And so seeing that gap, I just really tried to bridge it. And then a course coach and it was just a conference founder. And so now I have the creative educator conference and I have the educators lounge, which is a membership that also helps, um, creatives, you know, scale and learn how to, how to teach and how to do all the things that you need to do to monetize.

Amanda: Man, your conference is truly, it is a conference that I, like, for as long as you’re doing it, you’re going to see me there, and it’s funny because working at a church now, um, the busiest time of year is Christmas, and then in the lead up to Easter, and your conference is in March this coming year, and to my boss, I was like, I’m going to need to be gone.

 I know that Easter is the worst possible time for me to leave, um, but this is not an option, I’m going to this conference. So, it’s so worth it, it’s so great, and you do such, I mean, I told you this last year at the conference, but you’re amazing.

You’re so good at hosting, like, you’re truly made for hosting conferences. 

and it’s that classroom experience that you’re bringing to the conference, and you did it with the mastermind, and you do it in the educator’s lab. It’s. It’s truly a gift that you. have. And I honestly, I think this is such a large part of what so many educators are missing. And why so many of us feel that education fatigue. Where when online courses were first, really big. And 2022 and 19 20 18, and everyone wanted to do one. Uh, you said, they, they miss the curriculum piece. 

And so we end up with a bunch of bad courses, and now we’re like, well, I don’t really want to learn from courses anymore. So. How do 

we overcome that as educators that are trying to sell courses? How do we let people know that it’s not. It’s not just information. And that we’re actually educating. We’re actually teaching a transformation.

Laylee: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s so many ways to combat that. I think the first one and the one that like you can’t skip over is having Results that were tested before you actually take somebody’s money and this is like, I will die on and I, I just, there’s and of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but I think the majority of people who teach on.

Momentizing education, they are really big about pushing this, this message that you can test things on paying clients. And I think that there again, there are. Exceptions. There are times where that’s appropriate. Maybe if you’re an established educator who’s already taught a bunch of stuff, but if it’s your first time ever doing anything and you’re like, let me create a course idea, sell it in three days, pre sell it, and then teach it like the risks that are involved with that.

To me, the risk reward is so low because the risk is so high, the reward is so low and your reputation is. Just so at stake. It’s like, you’re a baby in this new, like niche of education and your first foray should never be one that leaves a bad taste in someone’s mouth because you only get one reputation.

Um, so that’s like the biggest thing that I would say. And also, sorry to backtrack. I just want to say thank you for the kind words. That was so like, I was literally like, Hold it together. Don’t cry. But that was really nice, though. Thanks. Oh, welcome. 

Amanda: No thanks necessary. It’s just true. Just facts. Um, so that, I guess my question, what I should have asked first is, how do you do that?

How do you, what tips do you have? And obviously, like, we’re not going to go deep into, like, how do you create a full curriculum? But, like, how do you make sure that you’re teaching something that isn’t just, Thoughts, it is an actual transformation because

we want that transformation. And so how do you make sure you’re giving a transformation?

Laylee: Yeah, I think the biggest thing there, I mean, there’s, What is it that you want to teach that you want somebody to walk away having achieved or having learned or understood?

So there’s like a couple of different, I guess, outcomes that you could want for your student. . So it could be an achievement, something that you want them to have learned to walk away, like actually having done the other outcome would be wanting someone to understand something better and be able to apply that like understanding something, learning something like maybe it’s not achievement based, but maybe it’s, um, it’s like an understanding, a deep knowledge base. 

So I think one understanding what is the type of outcome you want your student to have to, I think is then creating a plan around. What does that person need broken down, not by what you would need because you, the expert, you’re not going to need a lot to walk away with that transformation. But what is somebody who has no idea what you’re talking about?

Um, and maybe they do. So you really have to know your student too, but where is your student? And then understanding, but talking like, um, you know, the, what’s it called? The two circles that overlap in the middle. Oh my gosh. Ben diagram. Yes. If you’re like, call the teacher, the teacher in me is like always thinking of a diagram, but like, if you can see what is the outcome and then on the other side is like, where’s your student.

And in the middle is the type of education, how much, like how much be in the middle and what’s going to actually create that transformation. And that’s probably like the fastest I, and like most. High level summary I could probably give to give people like a good understanding of where to at least start.

Amanda: You always have to work backwards. What, what is the end result that you want for everything that you’re showing us live? Do you have any questions about curriculum or anything else that we’re covering? Make sure you drop them in the live chat. But If someone wanted to dive deeper into curriculum with you, what would be the best place for them to go?

Do you still have your course or what’s the best place for them to learn more about creating a curriculum for a course? 

Laylee: Yeah, so we have the Creative Educator Academy, which is currently because another thing I really believe in for education is that you don’t just create a course and then leave it there for years.

So the first iteration of the Creative Educator Academy was in 2019. So every couple of years, I basically go in. Audit it myself and then change any changes that need to be made. Um, so it’s not open at the time of this recording, but, um, yeah, if you head to Laylee Emadi. com, you can find a bunch of resources in my shop.

And then I do offer for those who are really serious about creating their courses or creating a talk as a speaker, I do offer one on one coaching as well. 

Amanda: Amazing. I will link to the course itself and all of Laylee’s links in the show notes and in the description here, guys, so that you can check that out, because truly, her education is the best.

So many details about curriculum, but so many things to cover. So, I want to make sure that if that’s something that you know, okay, I want to make sure my curriculum’s top notch, so you guys can go check that course out. So, I’m curious. What you’re seeing in the online as an educator is probably a lot different from what you’re seeing as someone who worked with educators versus, well, and also different scene.

So what are you seeing behind the scenes of the education space right now?

Laylee: I’m seeing a lot of new trends of people and I’m, I’m excited and wary of all these things. And I just want to put that out there. Like before I say my two cents on all of this from the beginning, I’ve always been excited about seeing people. Try new things and also very wary and for amazing things and a lot of potential for not so amazing things.

So that’s like my caveat to all of this, but one thing I’m seeing a lot of is the return for larger companies. But what I’m seeing a ton of is smaller creators, educators, creating things like conferences, retreats, masterminds that meet ticket offers coming back, and then on the flip side, I’m seeing a lot of low ticket, low touch.

And I’m not seeing as much, I feel like I’ve noticed a lot of like product membership, low ticket, and a lot of in person high 10 off course. Yep. 

Amanda: A hundred percent. I’m seeing a lot of that, although I will say that’s something I’ve noticed within my courses, which for a long time, I was leaning more like I want high touch or I want low touch.

I don’t want in the middle. And so I found that interesting just noticing like my own patterns lately is I want more of that middle ground, but intention that I can take an implant, take an implement. So instead of like hiring someone to do something for me, I can just take and do it myself with the help of a course.

And so I’m, I’m seeing more of that middle ground. That’s It’s not, I touch a lot, just like here’s a template, especially on, I feel like 

Laylee: I am seeing some people like pick up the reins. I feel like it’s slowed down, but you know, just recently Sarah Erickson, who we both know Sarah and design, she is a pension with you.

And after years and years of being like, you need to get your genius of Pinteresting into a course so that people can learn it and do it. Like I, I mean, I probably will have one of my team members do it, but I need them to understand it. And I don’t understand it. So, um, You know, she’s finally coming out with a, with a mini course.

And I’m, I am seeing like an uptick in like the mood. Um, the thing, again, the thing that just, I’m also seeing with the uptick of these things is that a lot of them are falling flat and a lot of, um, events, as you know, as you know, firsthand are so difficult and they are not, um, I think they’re not quite as glamorous as they seem on the, you know, and I think a lot of people are unprepared for that.

And so they deliver not really. What they want to deliver and people aren’t getting what they want out of them. And then, like I said, you only have one reputation and it’s, it’s hard to bounce back from that. 

You have to have something at the end of the day that people want to learn about, um, and that people need help with, and then you have to deliver on that. 

And audience size does not matter when it comes to actually selling. I know people with massive audiences that cannot move a course to save their lives. And when they come to me and I audit it, I’m like, well, it’s big outcome that you want, you know, we find the problem, but the problem is not. Audience size, you know, 

Amanda: well, and just going back to what you said about reputation, I mean, even if you have a small audience and it’s, you know, you sell the course a few times, if it’s a great course, they’re going to share about it.

And they’re going to tell other people about it, which is, you know, there’s a ripple effect if you’re actually putting out a quality course. 

Laylee: Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent 

Amanda: with myths about it, actually, before you go into that. What if someone is like, I’m kind of interested in online education, I’m kind of interested in creating a course, if creation’s right for them, um, slash, who, who would make a good online educator?

Laylee: This is such a tricky question, um, because I think one of the biggest, one of the biggest, most important features of any, Or characteristics of any successful educator, no matter what type of education is always going to be self awareness. So I think understanding the best format in which you are able to convey your knowledge is super important.

Um, now there are within course creation, there are multiple ways that you can communicate your knowledge. Like it doesn’t have to be. Front camera facing with your face. It doesn’t have to be, you know, over professionalized or recorded in a studio. It could, it could very well be delivered in a very different way.

But I think the awareness of where do my strengths lie and how do I enjoy interacting with my students again, let’s say. You are just like, you are really invested in people. And that’s like, that’s me. Right. So I have had the courses where they have no interaction and I have products that there’s not interaction with me, um, really like built into it.

But for courses, for education, for things that I really want to see a transformation, I want to be able to like communicate with my people. And so I was able for my courses to create like a community that then has a little bit of access, a little bit more access to me. But understanding if you’re like, I want to teach the masses or teach to the one.

Um, I think understanding where your strengths lie in, like I said, in the formats, um, but also understanding that there’s no hard and fast rules. So I know that’s like bring yourself and knowing what you want out of it and then taking the noise out because I think we hear course creator and we see a copy paste of the big names, like I said, at the beginning of this episode, those same big names telling you, like, Copy paste.

This is the format. This is how you do it go. And then it doesn’t work. And people think, well, I can’t be a course creator. When really like they just stifle the creativity in you and they like take anything that’s unique to you and get rid of it and tell you to for the. Possibilities. I think one and then two is always just like, try it out.

If you see in the process of creating it that you’re not enjoying it, then change the format. Maybe it’s more of a retreat. Maybe it’s more of a mastermind. Maybe it’s more of a talk or a speech that you can then go and teach in person from a stage. 

Amanda: Is there anyone who should not be a course creator?

Laylee: Yeah, , I think there’s definitely people that shouldn’t be course creators. I think, , people who see, , and again, I have to give, I always have to give a caveat, like, there’s nothing wrong with making money. I think it’s really important. My whole livelihood is, is helping people who want to create education make money doing it.

But I think if you see it as a quick buck and go, well, this person did this course on copywriting and I’m a great copywriter, I’m just going to do it. I think if that’s where the thought process stops, then you should not do that because it’s really just going to cheapen your brand at the end of the day, because you’re going to put out a lackluster, product.

Um, I think people who don’t care about other people’s, you know, Outcomes or successes. Uh, I think people who are inherently selfish, like I hate to say, I used to, I feel like I used to be really careful with these words and now I’m just like, you might not know you’re a selfish person, but like do a gut check.

Like if you’re like, I really don’t care. I like, I just don’t care if Amanda takes my course and like, whether she sees results or not, not on me. And I would maybe, I would maybe not do this, you know, but if you’re like, no, I want people to do well with it and it’s important to me and I’m going to take the time to follow up and make sure it’s going well, then yeah, how about it?

I think it’s great. 

Amanda: Which leads me to another one of those common myths, I think is that courses are passive income, right? Like you can make a course, you can throw it up and you’ve mentioned this a few times, like you audit your course, um, having that like interaction with you. It’s not just like buy the course and that’s it, buy forever.

Um, Transcribed Yeah. Anything else you would say to that, like idea of, I’m just going to create a course and make money off of it forever kind of. 

Laylee: Yeah, no, I don’t know. Like I get it. I get where I get where the phrase passive income like started, but I truly think that unless, unless you have a team that does all the work for you and you are just a figurehead, nothing is passive.

But if you have energy in the team. Yeah, if you, no, you’re 100 percent right, like there is, there is nothing, truly nothing passive about passive income other than the fact that it, can it make you money in your sleep if you have it on evergreen? Absolutely it can. But like, you’re still working the hours, you’ve still got to be like, doing things.

All the time to like tweak it, to make it right, to do the selling, like selling and marketing is as you know, cause that’s your job, like that’s its own job, like all of these things that go into it and not to mention quality control and making sure that you’re out there and, um, checking in with your people.

And even if you don’t have a community, you still need to be doing things like doing random spot checks and being like, Hey, how is this product working for you? How is this online guide working for you? Um, And so, yeah, that’s, that’s the biggest lie of all time is that passive income is truly passive.

I can’t think of anything that you could create that’s yours that you have to sell that you could call passive 100%. 

Amanda: So I have two questions off of that. The first is, you mentioned earlier, you go in and add it. What, what kind of things should someone look at when they’re auditing their course? Um, and then the second question being, If someone, what are some examples of interactions that you can set up within your course that aren’t running a community?

What have you seen other course creators do? 

Laylee: Okay, so I’m going to answer the first one first, and if I forget the second one, just remind me. Um, so the first question was, What to look for in an audit when you’re self auditing, right? Okay. So this process, everybody hates it. Everybody hates it because my first recommendation is to like, go through the entire course yourself and watching yourself for a lot of people, um, can be really, really cringy and like uncomfortable and, and you just want to like speed through it.

Um, but the thing is that the, you that created this course or product. Let’s say, and by the way, you don’t have to audit every, every month. Like I would say one to two years when I, I tried to like skim through it every year, make big changes as they’re needed. But if it’s, you know, if it’s like a little tweak here and there, you can always just add stuff in.

But for me, it’s been several years. So like watching videos and I rerecorded my videos. So they’re not the originals from 2019, but I think I rerecorded it in like 2021 or 2022. So we’re still too, like the me two years ago, I don’t, she’s, she’s had her time in the sun. She, I don’t love to watch that, like, but I’m going to make myself watch it and see, is the content still relevant?

Can they still get the outcome I want with the content and the information that I’ve presented. Um, I say all of the things about how uncomfortable it is to watch yourself because I think you have to keep in mind that you’re looking for content and not perfection in delivery. Like my delivery would probably be a lot better if I re recorded it now, but I’m only going to re record it if the content warrants a re record.

Does that make sense? So I would look for that. And then I would also, I mean, I always like, as part of my audit process, I would like to like, get on a call with somebody who maybe has recently gone through with it or send out a survey and just check in with the people who have gone through it and say, like, is this still working?

Is this still converting into knowledge for you? Um, and if not, that’s a, that’s a sign that you’d have to redo things, but that’s kind of how I audit. If that makes sense. 

Amanda: Yeah. Absolutely. So you’re looking at the content. 

Laylee: Yeah. I’m looking at the content. Of course. Like I always want to make sure that the systems are there, especially if you’ve done, like, I’ve had to change course platform several times and like I’m in limbo and whatever, but like this, it’s good to double check that everything’s working, of course.

But for me, for the full audit, it’s definitely more about the education

Amanda: Yeah absolutely or even just a little bit ago before we hopped on. My husband was sitting here and. Editing a podcast episode for me, and he had his headphones off, and I was like, oh, come on, I don’t want to hear it, you know, like, it’s so easy to be like, I just don’t hear myself, I don’t want to watch myself. But it is so important.

Okay, so then the second question being, what are some other ways that we can add interaction in with our students that may be on a community, because I know something that I’m seeing a lot. Is nobody wants to be in a Facebook group, no one wants to be in a Facebook group. Um, there are definitely other ways to do community.

I’ve got my membership community in Slack, and that’s actually working really great. But, especially for those that have a small audience that aren’t selling a ton of seats, running in a community can feel really daunting. So what are some other ways that maybe if they work to build up to that, they could add interaction in with themselves and their students?

Laylee: Yeah, I think if you if you are not wanting to run a community at all, that’s totally fine. I think ways that I would Um, build in like touch points would be things like assessment checks. So that would be like in your school thoughts, it would be like quizzes and tests and like pop quiz and things like that.

So building in just like quick questions or whatever it is, however you’re reformatting your education. A big one for me is writing out emails that get sent out at a certain point, whether it’s, so for example, if your course platform allows this, doing something where if they get to the second unit or module or whatever you call it, the second piece of your content and they complete it, then it triggers an email that gets sent to them with like, Some kind of sunshine, some kind of like check in some kind of encouragement and a question.

Maybe there’s a survey involved. Um, things like that, where you’re scheduling out communication that feels personalized to the person, but it’s obviously like, and it is, it’s personal when you create it. But they’re, you know, you’re being intentional about when and where they’re getting it. Um, and then the third thing is, uh, I wouldn’t do this for every single student, but especially when you are, you can pick like two or three people to just do quick, like 20 minute check in calls and see what they’re experiencing.

Are they enjoying it? Is there something else they wish was there, um, that helps them and it helps you. So, uh, those are kind of like ways I would build it in. If you’re not quite ready to be like a community leader just yet. 

Amanda: Those are great ideas. So are there, we’ve talked about a couple myths about like the passive income and the I don’t have a big enough audience.

Are there other myths that you see people talking about or that come to you and have been said to you? about online education, about course creation, that you’re just kind of hearing repeated over and over again.

Laylee: I feel like you listed the big ones. We talked about the big ones for sure. And they were all like spot on and so good. Um, I think I kind of had already mentioned before, like the myth that And I guess it’s not a myth. It’s just kind of like an unpopular opinion that, you know, like live running something for the very first time you’re ever doing it, but also charging for it is.

to me like a little bit unethical and also really high risk. Um, I think this is more of like a speaking myth than it is like a course creation myth, but people who say like, Oh, I don’t want to come across as stuffy. So I’m not going to practice. I’m not going to write out my talk. And it’s like, that sounds like an excuse for procrastination as the queen of procrastination.

Like I get it. That’s something I might have said. early in my life too, but, um, that we haven’t really talked about. 

Laylee: Another myth is just like, that, well, we kind of already talked about this too, that like creating, creating, like hosting anything is like easy or just fun or like, how fun to get like a group of people together in a room and then like magic will just happen.

And it’s like, no, I mean, magic does happen when you get people in a room, but you have to cultivate that. I like it. It doesn’t just happen 

intentional planning. 

We’ve all been in uncomfortable rooms. Like there’s a reason that rooms feel awkward or rooms feel warm. You know, it’s just like, it’s just like a home.

So yeah, 

Amanda: which is why your conference is so incredible because you make it feel so naturally comfortable. For the next one, I believe tickets are still available. 

Laylee: Yeah, we do. 

We have some left. We’re about like, I want to say over three quarters sold out. So we have a, we have a few left, but, um, yeah, I love my people.

I’m obsessive, clearly.

Amanda: It’s so cute. I love it so much. 

When you were like posting the stories, I was like, where’s my name? Let me see. So if you guys want to come join us in March, it’s going to be a great time. You’re going to learn so much. And, um, Lily does a great job of mixing. Education and community, which is my favorite thing.

She started talking about her membership on Instagram and I was like, how do I pay you? I was like, I, you would tell him you could teach me. Like you do such a good job of cultivating that community. So if you’re an educator, honestly, the educators lounge is the place to be because you’re going to meet so many other amazing educators and learn so much from Lili and from all of them.

And all like, just it’s the place to be. If you’re an online educator or creative educator in relations with one for sure. And we will look at that as well. 

Laylee: We love our people. They’re so good. 

Amanda: You’ve done a great job cultivating that. Yeah. It just feels like a good place to be. Um, it’s funny cause the mastermind you mentioned, Sarah was on it with me and man, my, one of my best friends in the business space is Haley.

And you know, we would never would’ve met without you. And it’s just. So great. Um, people, it’s amazing. Okay. This is last call for questions from those of you here with us live. If you want to drop those last call for questions, uh, for lately about online education, speaking course, creating curriculum, all of those things.

And really, if you had, if you had to share just one piece of Advice for someone who is a creative educator. What would it be? Which is so open ended 

Laylee: No one piece. Oh gosh I guess if I was gonna go like one thing I could literally say is be patient. Um That’s that’s been like the theme I think of everybody i’ve been working with lately is like you’ve got to practice patience.

Um Because if you, if you’re going for it and you’re doing things in the right way and you, you’ve got all your pieces lined up, it’s, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, and so, um, you know, as cliche as it sounds like, just don’t give up because if you give up, you could be giving up like a day before things like really go off, you know, so just, just practice patience as much as you can.

Amanda: Yeah. Oh, it’s so good. And it’s so applicable for every, every business owner, really. I mean, that’s just, we all have big dreams of, I’m going to start a business and it’s going to take off. And it’s like, Nope, they never really take off. It’s just a slow like step by step by step by step. And then you look back and you’re like, Whoa, how did I get here?

Okay. So if you could recommend a book, any book doesn’t have to be business related, what would it be? 

Laylee: Oh my gosh, a book recommendation and just when you ask hard questions, Amanda. Because I, I honestly like right now, all I’m reading are like romance novels, so I don’t even hear it. Um, it’s funny. I, okay.

Actually I, I, I’m gonna, I’m going to be real. If there’s one book I could recommend to anybody, it would be atomic habits. Um, but I would recommend Maybe it’s the ADHD in me. I would recommend listening to it. And I don’t do audiobooks at all because I have ADHD, but I could not read it. I don’t know why, but I’ve listened to it now a couple of times and I swear it’s like, I It is so transformational.

It feels like a course in a book, so. But then if you’re like, I just want a good romance novel, like, we can talk about those all day. 

Amanda: I mean, I’m all for it.

I am for every recommendation. Fiction, nonfiction, all of them. I love it. I read too much, probably. 

Laylee: Same . 

Amanda: All I ever want to do. Okay. Well, I don’t see any questions in the chat. So thank you for being here. I’m so grateful. And I just, I appreciate all the work you’re doing in the business space because I, I, I’m so passionate about education, but there’s so much not great education out there.

And so I’m just so thankful that you’re out there helping lead the way. Um, this is how we do it. And that’s how we do it really well. So 

Laylee: That means so much. 

Amanda: All right, well, with that, everyone, we’ll see you back here next Monday, 7 p. m. Eastern time, 4 p. m. Pacific, 

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 237: What’s Working and What’s Not in the Education Space with Laylee Emadi appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Hello, Business Owners with ADHD? The longer I’ve been in business, the more and more I realize just how many of us are neuro-spicy. There’s just something about owning a business in this space that works well for our brains. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t still struggle in some capacity.

So today I wanted to share some tips for those of us with ADHD. First, I’m sharing tips I got from Instagram Followers, and then I’m sharing some of my own tips.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

The longer I’ve been in business, the more and more I realize just how many of us are neurospicy. There’s just something about owning a business in this space that works well for our brains. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t still struggle in some capacity. So today, I wanted to share some tips for those of us with ADHD.

First, I’m sharing tips that I got from my Instagram followers. And then I’m sharing some of my own tips that I found that work well. You’re listening to episode 236 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash planner.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of 

Chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we?

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner.

The longer that I have been in business, the more I’ve realized just how many of us are neuro spicy. I am Amanda Warfield. I’m a simplicity focused content marketing strategist and copywriter, and I am on a mission to help course creators and online educators simplify their marketing so that they can make a bigger impact and less time.

And I go live here on this channel every single Monday, 7 p. m. Eastern time, 4 p. m. Pacific time. Sometimes it’s by myself. Sometimes it’s with a guest, but if you get on my email list, you’ll always know ahead of time what I will be sharing about. Today, I want to share tips For those of us that are ADHD or neuro spicy and are running our own businesses, we tend to fall into some really great patterns.

When we are neuro spicey or ADHD and we run our own business, we can also fall into some really big traps because. There are a ton of gifts to having ADHD that come with it and there are a ton of Um things that we can struggle with and I think entrepreneurship Is really attractive to those of us that are a little neuro spicey. Because We have the freedom and flexibility to make it what we need it to be, which is so great. , but I shared on my Instagram account yesterday and I asked for all of my friends with ADHD to share their best tips for other entrepreneurs with ADHD. So if you are watching this live, I would love for you to share in the chat, actually what your top tips are for if you, struggle with ADHD or, have ADHD and you have some tips, I would love for you to share them.

And if you are watching the replay of this, drop them in the comments below and share so that we can all learn from each other. So I’m going to share what my friends on Instagram had to say. about their best tips. And then I’ve also got some of my own tips that I would love to share as well. But just general disclaimer, I’m not a doctor.

I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a therapist. I’m just here to share some tips that have worked for me and that others have seen work for themselves and that’s all. So, okay. First things first. Maria said to set focus timers and this one actually, um, oh, I thought someone else said it, but maybe not, but yes, time limit.

Someone else had said to set time limits. Maria said set focus timers. And this is one that I do constantly. If I don’t set timers, I really, really struggle with my work. So I’m going to get a little deeper into how I use timers in my own business to help with what I’m working on. Um, but Maria, thank you for that.

Setting focus timers is so helpful. Michelle said to make lists of what you need to do and prioritize them and then set time limits. I know that this is so, so helpful. So thank you, Michelle, for sharing this. I think this also can go really well with what Mara shared, which is to use Goblin tools to break tasks down into, tinier pieces and this tool is so stinking cool.

I’m actually going to Share it. I hadn’t heard of this until mara had actually um shared this within my let me uh Get rid of this so that we you can see it with me But until mara had shared this with me on instagram, I had never heard of this and I Was losing my mind about this earlier. I think it’s so cool.

So goblin tools has all kinds of things It’s got magic to do lists Formalize or judge professor estimator compiler chef. I’ll kind of go over really quickly. But basically, chef is, um, here’s what I have here. My ingredients. Here’s the time. What? It’s all there. AI tools, right? Um, compiler is here’s a bunch of brain thoughts.

Or, here’s a bunch of thoughts I have because my brain dump. Turn it into tasks for me. Estimator is, how long is this activity going to take? Um, Professor, give me a crash course. Enter something here and then explain it to me with an example. Um, Judge is, am I misreading the tone of this? So you can say, here’s what, like, here’s the text I’m sending and then judge it and it’ll tell you, like, how your text comes across.

And then I think this one’s really fun. You can take your spicy thoughts and turn them into either more professional, more technical, more accessible, more polite, less snarky, easier to read, blah, blah, blah, all these different things. Um, I just think it’s also fun. But then magic to do list, which I believe is the one that Mara was really specifically talking about is it breaks down your do’s because as important it is for those of us with ADHD, right?

The site is incredible for those of us with ADHD. Or that struggle with, having things on our to do list and then looking at them and feeling really overwhelmed. This is so key. So let’s see what is a great example. Um, Shani, since you’re here live and, uh, I can see you in the chat. I’m going to use something for your business.

Let’s say, um, create new

sticker kit. What you can do here is you can say, How spicy you need it to be so either you need it to not be broken down that much or broken down even more I’m gonna leave it in the middle just for the sake of this example, but you type in what you need So I put create new fall themed sticker kit and add Then you come over to it and there’s this little wand and you click it and it breaks it Down for you.

What you can also do is there are three dots there, and it also has the ability to estimate how much time these things are going to take. Um, and so you can estimate the full project create new fall theme sticker kit. It says it’s going to estimate three hours. Um, But then you can also go into each individual one.

So that gave me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, like 15 steps. For each of those steps, I can tell it to break it down further and estimate each individual step. And so it tells me things like to find the overall theme and color palette for the fall sticker kit. Brainstorm ideas for different sticker designs to fit the fall theme, create rough sketches, select the most appealing designs.

Like it breaks down that task. So let’s say, okay, right here, it says plan a marketing plan, a marketing strategy for promoting the fall theme sticker kit. I’m going to tell it to break that one down further. Let’s see what it does. Um, and it’s thinking it’s thinking, okay. And it gives. So many. Oh my gosh, that’s so many more.

Another 14 or 15 steps just for that one. So review the features and design identify the target audience, research, current trends, develop key messaging, determine the market channels, so on and so forth. So that, um, that was Mars tip was to use that. Golden. I’ve never heard of it. I’m going to use this all the time now because I’m really bad about doing that to myself where I’ll say, okay, work on this thing.

And then it’s like, okay, but what do I need to do? And then I get overwhelmed. Um, so make that list. And if you need help making that list and setting those time limits, use Goblin Tools, just Google Goblin Tools and it’ll come up. Now, Sandra said to work when your mind will thrive instead of trying to force a schedule that leaves you struggling.

And I think this one is such a great tip too. I’m going to go into details about exactly how I’ve done that, um, in my own business, and then you can use that for what you will. But I think that’s something that We naturally crave, and that’s why we naturally kind of move into entrepreneurship, when we are ADHD or, um, neurospicy or, you know, whatever.

But I don’t think we, we also don’t tend to give ourselves The grace at first either we we start working because we like the idea of the freedom that being an entrepreneur gives us and yet we can sometimes force ourselves to try and stick to what we’re used to and Certain work hours and different things like that.

So I think that is a really important tip too Kate said that accountability is huge. Even if it’s just AI talking through ideas with someone which I Yep Haven’t tried AI yet to do that, but I think that’s really cool. And I think I can definitely say we could do that. If you’ve got this idea that you want to brainstorm using AI to help you do that, I could see how that could be really, really helpful so that it’s, it’s not just you in a, um, what does that call? Um, echo chamber, that’s the word echo chamber, not just you in an echo chamber. So, um, again, for those of you that are here live, that are watching this live, if you have any great tips, go ahead and share them in the chat. Those were all the ones from my friends over on Instagram that they shared with me yesterday.

Um, And if you’re watching the replay, share yours in the comments, I’m getting ready. I know we have at least one tip in the chat right now, um, that I’m going to share, and then I’m going to move into my own tips and how I’ve made some of these work in my own business. So meant to hit the send button last night.

Football distracted me. I get that. I get that. Um, I was going to say creating a block schedule. Yes. Having a time block schedule can be so, so, so helpful. And I’m going to talk about how I’ve used that in my business too. So that’s awesome. Okay. So when it comes to those of us with ADHD, we tend to struggle with focusing time management and, um, organization, right?

Which the more I learned about ADHD, The more I’m like, Oh, I used to think, Oh, I’m so organized. Um, and really what I’ve done is I’ve created systems. I’m not really, I mean, and you know, I’m not naturally organized, I should say, but I’ve learned how to create systems for myself that make sense. Um, they don’t always make sense with the way systems make sense in my husband’s head, which causes conflict sometimes between the two of us.

Um, Bless him. He’s just given up and said, where’s this thing? Because he knows that the system makes sense in my head. Um, but I used to think, oh, I’m so organized and I’ve learned like, oh, this wasn’t a natural skill. It’s something that I had to teach myself in systems. Anyways, we’ll get to that. Um, but we are really gifted with problem solving and creativity and energy.

Typically. I’m not so much for that one, but typically with energy and problem solving and creativity So with time management a couple things that i’ve done to really help With my own time management as an entrepreneur and as a course creator who is not only having to run a Business where i’m serving clients, but i’m also running this whole other side of my business where i’m Um, i’m educating and i’m teaching And I you know, i’m I’ve got a membership and I’m constantly increasing, not increasing, but um, creating content for that membership and serving my membership really, really well.

We actually, we have calls every single week. Um, I’ve got a whole shop full of items, right? So, it’s not, it’s not, I’m doing all of these different things in my business, is what I’m trying to say there. And, um, I’m able to do that because of some of these different things that I’ve done to really help myself as an entrepreneur.

So, time management, routines, time blocking, and, um, alarms are three things that I have done that really, really, really help my focus. And again, like Sandra said, um, Working with yourself and working with your mind and with your body, that’s a huge part of this. So, I know that personally, I work with myself.

really well in the mornings. And as the day goes on, I, my focus, it’s harder and harder for me to focus. Um, this four, four o’clock PM time period for me actually is kind of the worst, like 12 PM to like five 30. I I’m not very productive. So I don’t really try to get a lot of work done during that time period.

Cause I just know that that’s not going to happen. Um, so anyways, working with yourself and creating routines for yourself that are realistic and manageable and that are natural. with your own body’s rhythms and your brain’s rhythms, that’s gonna be really helpful in this. So my daily routine looks like getting up, I usually get up about 430, which again, I’m not, I’m not saying that anyone else should get up at 430.

I don’t, I don’t think there’s like, gotta get up early and like eat that frog or whatever it’s called. Um, I don’t think that’s, What’s necessary, but I do think that it’s necessary to know what works for you. And for me, that works. So I get up at 4. 30. I work for a few hours. And then I have, a little bit of time to get ready, and then I go to my other job, my side hustle.

 And then it depends on the day how that looks, but sometimes I come back and I do a little bit of work. Sometimes I don’t, but I know that getting up and first thing in the morning doing my work is actually the best thing for my brain. Also Looking at my routines within the week. So, like I said, every day doesn’t look the same and even when I was full time only working in my business, every day didn’t look the same.

I would block out my days. And so for me right now, Mondays is client work. So I only work from home on Mondays. That is the day that I am This is my day for just my business and , I take client calls on Mondays. I do client work on Mondays like that is my big client day. Tuesdays, I work on my membership.

And so that’s the day that I’m working on my membership. On Wednesdays, that is the day I’m working on any projects that I have currently going on. And that can look like many different things. Right now, I’m working on turning, um, a challenge that I did this summer that got a ton of love, content planning bootcamp.

Um, I’m working on turning that evergreen. And so that’s. That’s my, project right now, but there’s always some project that I’m working on because even though I have clients, I am trying to continually improve my education side of my business, right? My course creation side of my business. And so making sure I have a day for that is so important.

Thursday is always admin work. And then. Because I work at a church, um, Friday and Saturday are my weekend, and then Sunday is my marketing day. So, every single day that I’m working has a specific theme, and that is a routine that I have so that I know when I sit down on any given day what I’m supposed to be working on.

Which, that routine really helps my brain know, okay, this is what we’re focusing on, right? So I’ve got that routine. I’ve got, um, Time blocks in place as well, where I know, okay, I’m going to work instead of saying, so some people, let me, let me back up, some people will say, okay, I’m going to set aside X amount of time to work on said task.

I like to instead say, I’m going to set aside X amount of time to work on a specific theme and whatever I get done in that time I get done. I have found that for myself, that if I am trying to finish something in a certain amount of time. One, I’m not very good at estimating that. Maybe with this goblin tool, I would be able to, um, but I’m not.

I’m not very good at estimating how much time something’s going to take and so I end up frustrated and thinking I can finish something when I just really can’t and you know, some days I’m more focused than others, which also affects how quickly something gets done. So instead I say, okay, here’s a two hour chunk of time that tends to be.

I’ll get to this, um, a bit more with the Pomodoro method, but that tends to be kind of what my, okay, two hour blocks where, okay, this two hour block is for clients, this two hour block is for this, this two hour block is for this, and working in those two hour blocks, and it’s, it’s more of a do a work block on X thing versus, okay, well now go work on this task for this amount of time.

The other thing, alarms, alarms, alarms, alarms. I know, like I said, Maria said, set focus timers. I use, um, studywithme. io right now, but honestly, I used to use just alarms on my phone. I would set alarms for, um, every 25 minutes. And then I would, um, put my phone down and walk away. Using timers though, for focusing while I’m working.

So those 25 minutes, which again, I’ll talk about more when I get to the Pomodoro method, but also just for different things throughout the day. So that if I get hyper focused on something, I don’t lose track of time and I know when to stop. And so if I know, okay, I need to leave the house by a certain time, I will set an alarm for right before I need to leave.

Or when I need to leave about five minutes before I need to leave and then also for whatever time I need to stop what I’m doing to transition and to get ready. Um, so I’ll set a couple different alarms in that case, in case I get hyper focused and just kind of go down rabbit holes, right? Um, timers help with that.

And they help me feel more comfortable allowing myself to not worry so much about the upcoming thing. , Shanie said, all these tips are things I do as well because it helps with the decision fatigue and decrease the day to day decisions I need to make. Yes, absolutely. Anything I can do to help with decisions and decision fatigue, that is always my goal, which a lot of the organization things that I’m going to talk about, that’s what it’s all geared towards.

It’s like, how do I decrease decision fatigue? And if that looks like, , and this is a personal side of things, not business, but that’s like, If that means eating the same lunch all week long, I will do that. So I don’t have to think about it. Or if that means, okay, every single Wednesday, I’m going to work on projects.

Then great. I, you know, like anything I can do to say, okay, one less thing to think about. So, those are some of my best like time management tips that I’ve done. Focusing. First things first is that Palmer door method that I’ve mentioned a few times. This is not, it’s not my method. Um, Some people call it the tomato method, but it basically is, the science says that you can only focus, an adult can only focus for about 20 ish minutes on any given task before we start getting distracted.

So, what I do is I set an alarm for 25 minutes, gives me a little time to like actually get back into the flow of rhythm. I set an alarm for 25 minutes. It goes off, I say, Hey Siri, set an alarm for five minutes. And I do that on my watch. And then I go off and I like walk laps around my house, sometimes I like pick up things.

I try not to do anything with my brain, like mentally though. It’s like, okay, here’s this thing that needs to go in the bathroom. Like let me, as I walk past the bathroom, put it down. You know, things like that. And then I come back down and I sit back down and I sit back down refreshed and clear minded because I’ve stepped away and I’ve come back.

Um, this isn’t a time to pick up your phone. I know if I’m doing that bad news. Um, and you, you just don’t want to get sucked into other things. So this is really a time to just step away, step right back. And then you do four blocks for a full two hour set essentially. And 

, you do those that those four blocks about two hours of work and honestly You’d be surprised at how much work you can get done and then you can feel good about like, okay Now I can go redirect my attention somewhere else and maybe that means you do another a different type of work block Or maybe you go work on laundry or you go run errands or whatever that may look like.

Uh, Shani said I need to be better about actually walking away from my breaks. I’ve noticed I will just reset the time and keep working. When I get into those ruts, what I will do is I will set the alarm on my phone and I will put my phone across the room so that I’m physically forced to walk away and it really breaks that concentration.

Um, putting my phone away is also another tip I have for focus is just like, sometimes I will find myself. I have like struggling to focus and so I’ll pick up my phone and scroll and then I’ll put it back down and I’ll try really hard to focus and I can’t so I’ll pick up my phone so when I get caught up in that rut I again I will take my phone and I will literally go stick it in the drawer like across the room um so that I can’t see it which apparently studies have shown that just like you Being able to see your phone like on the desk, even if you’re not touching it, is distracting, which is crazy to me.

Um, makes sense, but it’s just wild. So, yeah, that is another tip I have, is like literally putting your phone up, using it for the alarm, and then putting it across the room so that it forces you to get up and walk away and break that concentration. Pomodoro Method is one that is super helpful for me.

forcing me to focus and then forcing me to pull back out because what I will do is I will start hyper focusing and I will wear myself out quickly, um, because I will sit there and I will hyper focus for an hour or two hours and then I’ve used all of my mental capacity for the entire day in that two hour period because I didn’t give myself those natural breaks.

 Batching is something that, um, if you’re new around here, I talk about all the time. I’ve wrote a book about batching. I. Can not more highly suggest batching. Now what I typically teach is content batching. I’ve got an entire course on how to create a content batching system for yourself that will work.

But batching itself is super ADHD friendly because It helps you hyperfocus on something, right? It, it works with that part of your brain that naturally wants to hyperfocus and says, okay, we’ll hyperfocus on this one thing. And so then when you continue to hyperfocus on something, you don’t feel bad because you went down the rabbit hole because it’s what you were supposed to be doing.

Um, so batching content, but also just batching your work in general, which is again, why I tend to work with themed routine days instead of. Well, here’s just my to do list. What do I want to start with or what’s the highest priority? Um, because for me, if I just go, what’s the highest priority. Then I get stuck in rabbit holes and I have our focus too much.

But if I go, okay, I’m going to touch on every aspect of my business throughout the week. I know that at some point those high priorities are getting touched and it’s okay if I go down the rabbit hole and I hyper focus on batching out emails or batching out sending guest pitches or 

batching out, creating new shop items, different things like that. So batching out what I’m working on. Just it helps with the hyper focus. Um, so not just with content batching, but batching anything and then Giving yourself rabbit-hole time. Okay. This is the big one for me. Self care and boundaries is really important.

Um, especially as someone with ADHD like ADHD, you have to know when you need to walk away, right? Like, you’ve got to be able to listen to your body and understand when your body is saying, I need a break. Like today is a Monday. I’m supposed to work on client work all day today. I could not focus. Couldn’t do it.

Couldn’t do it. And so I recognized, okay, this is just probably not this, my body, my brain is telling me I need a break. Realistically, I’ve worked a lot lately. We’ve had a lot of events happening, um, with my job and I have been working a ton and I’ve been really tired and My brain decided, okay, we need a break.

So having those boundaries and being able to listen to your body is so hard. It’s so hard, but it’s so important. Um, and so doing that, but then within your boundaries, also recognizing when you just need time to work on, like to have a rabbit hole with your business. Like what I really try hard not to do is work.

at all on Fridays and especially not Friday nights. Friday nights are supposed to be, it’s the night that my husband has, um, he’s got a standing date with his friends where they play video games together every single Friday night, right? That is supposed to be my night to introvert and to be alone and to do what I need to do, to play my own video games, to read, whatever it is I want to do, right?

However, there are some Friday nights where I just really need to have rabbit hole time and there’s you know Something about my business that I’m really excited about I really want to work on Not because I feel like I have to but because I want to and for a long time I struggled with this idea that okay, I’ve set boundaries and so I can’t break them at all I’m really black and white thinker clearly Really really hard sometimes to break out of that.

Um but Like giving myself that grace and that, yes, it’s okay. If you want to go down a rabbit hole with whatever project it is you’re working on, that’s okay. Or for the new project you want to play around with, or a course that you want to take, like those things are okay to give yourself that rabbit hole time, as long as it doesn’t become, Oh, I have to work on these things.

So that is something for focus, uh, chasing the dopamine. Yes. I love that. Yes, having to lean into that dopamine and chasing the dopamine. I do think it’s so important if you are neurospicy to allow yourself that time and to not feel guilty for doing it because that’s something that I struggled with a lot.

Sometimes I still do where I’m like, oh, but I shouldn’t be quote unquote working right now. I should be relaxing. But realistically, honestly, sometimes that is just relaxing for me. If there’s this, this course, I really want to work on or really want to create, or I really want to update this offer. Like sometimes it’s just good and I should be doing that.

So, okay. That’s another focus thing that really helps with that. And let’s be real. Like sometimes that dopamine, like Your brain’s not going to stop thinking about chasing it until you chase it. And so if you don’t provide yourself that outlet for it, you’re going to have a hard time focusing on your other work too.

So that’s what some of this stuff for me is like giving myself the ability, like doing what I need to do outside of work time, typical work time, I guess I should say, to allow myself the ability to focus. Right. Um, okay. What were the other things? Self care and boundaries. Oh, delegating and outsourcing.

This is something that I’ve really naturally leaned into. And so I think it’s something that some of us may naturally lean into already just that idea of delegating and outsourcing. And when there’s something that you know, needs to get done, but you’re not. excited about it. If you can recognize, okay, look, it’s not going to happen.

Who can I find for help? Like that is so important. For example, my podcast editing was the first thing I ever outsourced and it is not cheap, but it’s, it’s the easiest money I spend in my business because I know, I know that if it was left to me, I would not do it. And yet I know how important it is that my podcast goes out consistently every single week for my people.

Right? If I wasn’t paying for it, I meant like episode 230 something of my podcast, right? If I wasn’t paying for this editor, it would not happen. It would not go out. I would not have over 200 episodes. And these episodes are how people learn about me. It’s how they learn about the shop products I have, the courses I have, um, how they learn about working with me one on one, just it’s how they connect with me.

And. That was something that I knew right away, if I didn’t outsource it, it wasn’t going to happen. And I think we naturally can fall into that, of just like, I don’t like doing it, so I don’t want to do it, so I’m not going to do it, but giving yourself that permission to, um, I think a lot of times when people, the advice given for outsourcing is, find something that’s going to bring you ROI right away, and honestly, podcast editing didn’t.

I, I still don’t know if it does, to be honest. Like if I get an a a one-to-one ROI out of it. But let me tell you, it keeps my podcast happening, and that’s enough for me. So I’m not saying just throw your money at anything and everything you don’t like doing. That’s something to think about. It’s okay to pay for help and to ask for that help and to say, okay, I’m ready to move on.

And this just doesn’t, this doesn’t fill my cup. Sometimes they’re just things that like you’re never going to get to, and you’re never going to do them cause you don’t want to do them. Um, okay. Accountability is my last focus thing. This one I have discovered recently. I’ve actually, I think I’ve shared this on my podcast before, but I basically won’t.

I, I won’t invest in memberships anymore that don’t have accountability built into them. And I mean, like real legitimate accountability, um, for example, with Chasing Simple Marketing, the community, we have a weekly call, we have a call every single week. And that is a chance for, and they’re not, it’s not guest educators and it’s not more education.

It’s a weekly call to work on. Work on your stuff on to be held accountable to. Hey, you said you were working on this thing. How’s that going? Right? What questions do you have about this? What? What help do you need right now? It the calls each week. Sometimes it’s silent co working. Sometimes it’s office hours.

But what it boils down to is each and every week is a chance to plug in and to have just that group community around you to say, Oh, yeah, you’re working on this thing. How’s it going? And to focus yourself and get that accountability. There was a long period of time where memberships were basically just like extended courses almost and There’s a time and place for that for sure where we were like where I liked having all that education But now I’m at the point where if I’m gonna be part of a community and I’m gonna pay for a membership it’s gonna have that accountability built into it because having that accountability Just makes it so that you’re so much more likely to focus on the schools that you have for yourself For example, one of the memberships i’m a part of Um, it’s called big break club and their name might have actually changed when I will link to it in the um in the description later because it’s So it’s so good.

Um, if you’re looking to learn how to run paid ads It’s very important. It’s it’s great. They have two calls every single week I can only make one of them But they have two calls every single week where you can just hop in and say Here’s what i’m working on here for any help with a lot of times lately It has been like I pop in i’m like I actually don’t need help with anything And I don’t really have any questions, but this is just a chance for me To hold myself accountable to working on what everything so earlier, I mentioned that I’m turning the challenge evergreen.

The reason I’m turning an evergreen is so I can run ads to it. Right? Um, with running ads to it, like, I can’t start running those ads to until I have an evergreen. And so I show up to those calls every single week and they’re like, what do you have questions on? And sometimes like, I’m just here to listen.

And then while I’m listening, I’m working on it. That goal that I have for myself. And so it’s, I’m holding myself accountable by simply showing up. So anyways, accountability, so key. Um, and a really great way to help focus, right? Cause you’re, you’re live with someone you’re sitting there. You have to show up.

It’s like a meeting, but more low key. And so I know that, okay, at this time each week, I’m going to be working on this thing. Um, even if it’s not my normal day to work on projects, it’s like a bonus period. Okay. So the last thing that we can struggle with is organization. Um, CRM’s client relationship management tools you, you need them.

If you are working with clients, I really love HoneyBook. I recommend it so much. I use it not only for all of my client stuff. I also use it for, um, all of my guest interviews. So every guest that comes through my YouTube channel, my podcast, they are, like, Their forms, everything, it’s all in an automation through HoneyBook, my CRM tool.

Um, project management tools. I am, through and through, a pen and paper planner girl, right? I’ve got my planner, I’ve got my checklist, I, I love these. I am a pen and paper planner girl, even my content planner, right? Pen and paper. However, the pen and paper is secondary to my project management tool. So I use ClickUp, Trello, Asana.

There’s so many out there that really houses my, my business brain. is inside of my project management tool, and then I’m able to use my pen and paper for just my to do list, essentially. Like, okay, what do I need to get done and check off? But I’m able to keep everything I need to keep, from links to notes to information, inside of my project management tool, so that it’s all in one place.

Um, and it’s easily accessible, I think. My husband’s helping me in my business a little bit more so now and earlier today he told me that he didn’t understand the way I have things organized so it works for my brain but but um that’s all you needed to work for right now right uh you need to work for your brain so that everything’s organized and it’s so nice to be able to just go okay I need this affiliate link.

Let me go into this part of my ClickUp. Here’s my affiliate links. Here’s this. Or I want to work on this course. Okay, inside of ClickUp, I’ve got all of my education and

all of my, Login information for all of my courses and the links to log in. So I’m not having to dive through my inbox. Shani said same the pen and paper is helpful to bring things back to the front of mind. Ooh, that’s a really good way to put it. Yes. I find that I’ll fall into the outside out of mind 1 million percent, 1 million percent.

So what I like to do is I like to house everything there in my project management tool. And then like back to the front of the mind, that’s such a good way to put that. Everything goes in here. And I put everything in here from All of the important things I need to remember for today, all of my calls for today, my little reminders for myself, what specific things I’m working on this week, or specifically working on today, versus all the things I could be working on is how it gets broken down.

 And then, uh, Automations and systems automations are things that you kind of do once and then you don’t have to do again. So Pinterest, for example, like my Pinterest, is almost fully automated at this point because I have a system in place where we take the, we create the pins for each episode, and then they get uploaded and scheduled out for like months and months at a time, right?

And so my Pinterest stays automated. The act of the pins going live months later, that’s an automation because it gets scheduled for months out and then I have to think about it. The system in place, though, supports that automation because I don’t have the system to, okay, I’ve created My podcast episode and now I’m creating all my graphics and part of creating my graphics for each podcast episode includes creating my Pinterest graphics and when I create my Pinterest graphics, I automatically add them into plan and then from plan I schedule like that part is the system.

And that system supports the automation, or maybe the automation supports the system. Uh, you get what I mean though. Um, where they work together to keep my Pinterest going and feeding itself for months at a time. I’m not thinking about Pinterest 99 percent of the time, right? Once a month I think about Pinterest and then I don’t think about it again.

But yet it’s continuously putting new content out for me. , But even so systems can have to do with automation and automation is great things like again within HoneyBook setting up those automation so that when someone fills out this thing, this gets sent to them one week before their interview, this email gets sent to them.

And these are things I don’t have to do. It just happens naturally without me having to do it myself. Like, the way I walk through the grocery store. I always start on the right with the fruits and veggies, and then I go around to the meat and the dairy, and then I come back, and then I’ll go through the middle aisles as needed, right?

Like, I have a system for the way I work through it. And so I have a system for the way that I Create new offers. I start with this and then I move to this. Anyways. Um, so systems in place can be really, really helpful as well, especially for things that you’re going to do often or often enough on any kind of regular basis.

, I have a system. with my clients, right? Like, pretty much no matter who the client is, our calls look pretty much all the same because I’ve got a system in place and we go through the system on all of our calls. Um, okay. I think that’s all the tips that I’ve written down. However, I have one more tip.

All of that being said, those of us with ADHD, we struggle with focus and organization and time management. And systems and structures can be really, really helpful. However, sometimes you have to throw it all out the window, and you have to just do something different and shake things up in order to focus better.

So, sometimes when I just, nothing’s working, I cannot focus, I’m doing all of my tips and tricks, nothing’s helping, I go work somewhere else. I pick up and just walking into the dining room and working at the dining room table can help me focus. Um, sometimes it means leaving the house and going and getting work done.

Sometimes my brain just needs to have no structure. So, sometimes, If your brain is like, that’s cool, you’ve given me all this structure, now I’m going to rebel against it. That’s normal too. And sometimes you just need to do that. So having backup plans in your mind for things like, okay, if I can’t focus, how can I slightly change things up so that I can focus easier is going to be really helpful.

Okay, I think this is the longest any of my lives have gone so far. Um, if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. I would like to incorporate them into my own life as a business owner. Um, I feel like there’s probably 10 million more I could think of, but I wanted to give a quick overview today, and I’m sure this will be a topic that we dive into more and more.

Um, just because it’s something that I find so interesting and also that I live day to day and I think that a lot of us entrepreneurs do. So if you have any tips for other ADHD entrepreneurs in making their life easier, making their business life easier, let us know in the comments. And, um, yeah. If you are looking for accountability, come join us inside of the community.

Like I said, we have calls every single Tuesday morning, um, and it, it’s a really great way to get invested in a community. It’s 27 a month. Um, get invested in the community. That will have your back and that will hold you accountable and give you a chance each week. If you’re like, the only time I get focused work on my project right now is through this call each week, then that’s great.

That’s still, that’s an hour each week, at least sometimes our calls are two hours. Um, but it’s at least an hour each week to get focused work done. So for some of those things that you’re trying to do to move the needle. So, if you’re looking for community Chasing Simple Marketing, the community is a great place to start.

Head to amandawarfield. com slash community. I’ll link to it down in the description as well, but I’d love to see you in there. And like I said, we have a call every single Tuesday morning afternoon for those of you in the Eastern time zone and that is it. So if you want more. From this series. If you’d like to see more videos like this, let me know in the comments as well.

And otherwise I will see you next Monday. Same time, same place for another episode with a special guest. 

So, that is your action step for this week, actually, is to find some sort of community, some sort of place for you to get involved in and get invested that will help give you that focus time. Your book recommendation for this week is Bridesmaid for Hire by Megan Quinn. This one, I think I might have read out of order.

It may not be the first one in this series, world, whatever, um, but it was a really cute little story. It wasn’t a little story. It was a story about, um, this woman who her business is planning weddings and things like that. And then she’s also kind of brainstorming, like, what would it look like to have this section of my business where you can hire bridesmaids, um, to help fill out your wedding party and different things like that.

And then it’s also, it’s a rom com, love story, all of that fun stuff. But as a business owner, I appreciated that aspect of it, of the, um, The having a business and then, you know, what’s next? What am I planning? All those things. I’ve also just always found the concept of Bridesmaids for Hire to be fascinating.

So anyways, Bridesmaids for Hire by Megan Quinn. I thought it was a really great book and a fun read. So we will link to that in the show notes. And until next time my friend, I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business. 

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 236: Tips for Business Owners with ADHD appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

What should a prelaunch strategy look like for your upcoming course, and how should you create it? Is it really necessary, and how can it affect the long-term success of a course?

Today I’m joined by my friend, Dolly DeLong, to help answer all of these prelaunch questions and more.

Dolly is a systems and workflow expert dedicated to helping small business owners streamline their processes and conquer the overwhelm of launching. As the founder of The Systems and Workflow Podcast, Dolly specializes in guiding solo entrepreneurs, particularly female business owners, through the complexities of their first or second launches.

If her voice sounds familiar, you may have also listened to episode 146 of the podcast where Dolly shared all about how you can create a strong inquiry process for your potential clients.

Dolly DeLong is a systems and workflow expert dedicated to helping small business owners streamline their processes and conquer the overwhelm of launching. As the founder of The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast, Dolly specializes in guiding solo entrepreneurs, particularly female business owners, through the complexities of their first or second launches. With a background in photography and digital education, Dolly has honed her skills in creating intentional and strategic systems that not only support a successful launch but also empower business owners to maintain these systems long after the launch is over. Through her podcast, blog, and online courses, Dolly shares actionable advice and practical tips that help business owners feel confident and organized in their businesses. Her approach is grounded in her own experiences as a mother and entrepreneur, understanding the unique challenges of balancing work and family life. Dolly’s mission is to demystify the tech, copy, and strategy behind launching, making it accessible and manageable for those who feel scatterbrained or frazzled by the process. Whether she’s talking about the importance of a solid pre-launch plan, the benefits of a streamlined workflow, or how to create a realistic email marketing strategy, Dolly brings a friendly, supportive, and relatable voice to the conversation. Her goal is to help business owners achieve a launch that feels as intentional and organized as possible, with the systems in place to sustain that success over time.

Social Links:

https://systemsandworkflowmagic.com

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Youtube

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

Amanda: What should a prelaunch strategy look like for your upcoming course, and how should you create it? Is it really necessary, and how can it affect the long term success of a course? How do you even measure the success of a prelaunch strategy? Today, I’m joined by my friend Dali DeLong to help answer all of these prelaunch questions and more.

Dali is a systems and workflow expert. Dedicated to helping small business owners streamline their processes and conquer the overwhelm of launching as the founder of the systems and workflow podcast, Dolly specializes in guiding solo entrepreneurs, particularly female business owners through the complexities of their first or second launches.

If her voice sounds familiar, you may have also listened to episode 146 of this podcast where Dali shared all about how you can create a strong inquiry process for your potential clients. You’re listening to episode 235 of the Chase and Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chase and Simple content planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash planner.

…… How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing isn’t is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations about Actionable steps and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? 

Hello, I am Amanda Warfield. Welcome to my channel. I go live every single Monday at 7 p. m. Eastern time, 4 p. m. Pacific time. I do this every week, every time. Um, I cannot say Pacific, Pacific. In that sentence to save my life, I go live every single Monday evening to help course creators simplify their marketing so they can make a larger impact in less time.

And today I am so excited to have my friend Dolly joining me. Dolly DeLong is a um, a launch planner and integrator. So not only does she help you with the strategy behind your launch, but she also does the work which it’s just so unique to what she does because a lot of people are kind of either or.

And so with Dolly, you get both in one go. And I’m thrilled because today we’re going to talk all about the power of a pre launch, but Dolly, go ahead and introduce yourself. 

Dolly: Yeah, definitely. First of all, thank you for having me. I’m very honored to be here, Amanda. I love, , learning from you. I love working with you and I’m really excited, , to talk with you about a pre launch, , okay.

So a little bit about myself. My name is Dolly DeLong. I am based in. The best way to describe it is in middle Tennessee, near Nashville, Tennessee. I have two sides to my business. I am a service based business owner. I, I serve as a family photographer. And so that is one side of my business. And the other side of my business is what.

Is launch being a launch integrator, launch planner, and that’s what we’re going to focus on today. Um, personally, I am married to a sweet man named Ty, and, uh, we have two wild boys, and I was just sharing with Amanda, you all might. Hear them like in the background running through the house because it is the witching hour where we live so I’m sorry not sorry.

That’s just the way it is. And recently I’ve become a dog mom. I’m still a cat mom. Like I still am a cat lover. Yes, I, I don’t really talk about it that much because I’m like, who am I? This is a new identity. Um, but we adopted a dog in the summer and it’s mostly for my boys so that they can grow up with the dog and she is just attached to me and not to anybody else.

And I’m just like, I don’t know why you like me. Like, I like cats. So I am recently a dog mom as well. 

Amanda: I have no idea how I didn’t know this. 

Dolly: Yes, it’s, I mean, I like, I only like her, I don’t really like dogs that much, I just like her, cause she, Yeah, she, and she doesn’t bark, and she doesn’t do any of the, I’m sure some dog person’s gonna come at me, but I’m just like, Oh, I don’t like it when dogs bark, and lick, and like, all that stuff, but she doesn’t do any of that.

And so I’m just like, yeah, she’s really, she’s a chill dog. 

Amanda: That’s incredible. Yeah, I had no idea. That’s so funny. You got her this summer? 

Dolly: Yes. I’m on Oh, also, I’m obsessed with Harry Potter. We got her on Harry Potter’s birthday, ironically. So, yeah.

Amanda: I can’t believe I didn’t know that. I’m just like, I’m so shocked, guys, because Dolly and I have been working together With a joint client all summer and some idea of this,

Dolly: it’s not because I’m embarrassed.

I’ve just been like, okay, well, this dog is for the boys. Like, this is it, my dog. And she is my dog. Now she will not, she will not leave me alone. And I have the baby gate up so that she won’t be in here with me. But yes, Apparently she’s my dog, so. 

Amanda: So funny. It’s like animals, they always like, they choose the person.

Dolly: Yes.

Amanda: That probably is the least excited about them. 

Dolly: Yes, I’m just like, you are Jack’s dog. And she’s like, no, I am your dog. And she, and she has this pathetic looking face that’s so sweet. And I’m just like, oh, I feel sorry for you. Okay, you can follow me around. And yeah, I, I’m a dog mom now. 

Amanda: I love it. Well, congrats.

That’s amazing. Um, Okay, so, like I mentioned, Dolly and I have been working together with a client for their launch. They just had their launch, gosh, has it been two weeks already? That seems crazy.

Dolly: It’s been, yeah, it’s, no, it’s been like three weeks. 

Amanda: It’s been three? Wow. 

Yeah. This last month has flown. 

Dolly: Yes, it has.

Amanda: I don’t know where September went, but we’ve been working together. Dolly is the launch strategist and the integrator. She does all the things, makes all of the details happen, and I have been helping with the copywriting. And Dolly and I have been friends for years now at this point, but I knew that I wanted to bring her on here to the channel because It’s kind of a whole new ballgame with new content and I wanted to make sure that she got to share with you guys all about the power of pre launch strategy because It’s such an important part of a course launch, right?

so can you kind of talk to us about what a pre launch strategy is and How does it differ from the launch itself? 

Dolly: Yeah, definitely. So, I like to think of launching in four different phases, sometimes even five different phases. But the four main phases I like to look at launching is, okay, the, the pre, pre planning of the launch, the pre launch.

The actual launch itself and then the post launch. Um, because when people are looking at launching, especially small business owners who, you know, like they hear, Oh, I launched my digital course and I sold 6 million in like a day. And we’re like, I had a seven figure eight figure launch. Okay. Like we just get so focused in on the launch period, which is technically the cart open phase.

I like to focus on the first two phases, which is like planning of the launch and then the execution of the launch, which is the Relaunch and then the actual launch period goes by smoothly. So I like to look at launching in four different phases and have a really realistic view of it. , and then I like using this analogy because it helps me get into , to understand how to think more forward.

Be more forward facing or forward focused. I can’t talk either. So, I, uh, so I’ll use my example since I’m a mom. I go to Costco a lot with my boys. Not just to kill time, but also we buy in bulk. Like, everything has to be in bulk in our house. Um, because we go through things really fast. So, anyways, I take my boys to Costco in, in July of this year.

I took them there. And Instead of having like normal summer things out, Costco had Halloween things out and it was July. And so July, August, September, it’s like nearly, they’re forcing the customer to think ahead three, four months. And I like to remind small business owners if the big box companies are helping you, , think ahead by three to four months.

It is okay if we, as small business owners, help plant a seed for our own, clients, for our own, , customers, viewers, whoever our ideal client is. I like to encourage my clients. Hey, help them to start thinking ahead what the next quarter could look like with working with you or in the next six months, because we tend to be so focused on what’s happening now.

What is a shiny object that’s happening right now that I need to do? And we forget that launching is also promoting yourself. Marketing yourself. And so, having the mindset of merging, promoting yourself with launching, , I like to, describe pre launching as marketing yourself in one very specific way.

Amanda: Yeah. What would you say to someone who’s like, that’s great, but it’s easy for the big box stores to make you think ahead when it’s so visual. Like, you walk in and the Halloween stuff is like, bam, you’ve got orange and black and you’ve got, you know, the creepy things that your boys love. 

Dolly: Oh, yes. 

Amanda: But what are the, like, I want to say statues, but that’s not right.

The animatronics. That’s where, yeah, creepy animatronic, like, it’s so visual in your face that it kind of triggers that. But what about for course creators who, you know, maybe their, their course isn’t triggered to any specific time period? How do you use prelaunch to kind of force them to think ahead?

To the launch that’s upcoming without saying the launch is coming. 

Dolly: Yeah, so are we talking then about, because I can like go, I look at it in two ways. I look, I’m going to answer the question first of all for the course creator does have the course already made and they’re wanting to learn how , to market it?

Is that how we should go with this? Or should I answer it in they don’t have it yet created and they want to launch it? 

Amanda: Can you share both? Okay. I’m curious, I wonder if anyone, anyone who’s watching live, let me know in the chat which category you fall into and maybe we can kind of skew one way or the other, but I’m curious to hear your answer for both.

Dolly: Okay, so I’m going to answer the first part. If you already have something made, hopefully, You have done your due diligence, and you’ve done market research to know, like, this is something that my clients want, that they need, that they’ve asked me for, and it’s not something you’ve just created based off of, Oh, I feel like this would be a good thing to have.

We’ve, I’ve been there. I want everybody to know. I’ve created things like that where I’m like, oh, people need this, and then it, launches to no one. It launches to crickets. , so let’s say you do have something and you’re like, okay, I, I need to create some sort of launch plan. How do I do this? I would say insert, , this is where the marketing comes in.

I would say insert it into your marketing plan. Let’s say you are, we’re sitting right now live at the end of September, and you want to launch this. course that you’ve created or this product or digital product, whatever you’ve created in December. Okay, look at the next three months. How can you infuse this, like, prelaunch to your digital product into your content?

So this is where content, , intentional content marketing comes in. This is also where intentional list building comes in. Now I will argue all business owners should be building out their email lists year round, um, and , you should be attracting your ideal clients in a very strategic way, with.

specific lead gen, lead magnets or whatever. I really believe and see the importance of infusing Your content into your marketing in the next X amount of weeks to talk about the different facets of your product without necessarily selling it.

So you’re talking about the FAQs. You’re talking about who it’s for. You’re talking about just like the objections or, In your long form content and then you’re also focusing in on how do I build out my email list that In on the back end promotes this product. How do I and then you’re also Infusing your social media marketing Into this as well.

I know this is So layered, and I, and I do this every single day with my clients and I have to realize that you might have heard Jack. He’s saying hi to everyone. Um, but we can, we can like unpack that even more, but is what I’m saying even a coherent sentence? Like, does that make sense? Because I feel like that’s, I’m so in my head with this that sometimes I’m like, oh, I need to like take 10, 000 steps back and explain it better.

Amanda: Yeah, okay, so let me see if I can summarize. So you’re saying that it essentially comes down to talking through the messaging of the course, objections, FAQs, benefits, features, all of that, without necessarily saying that it’s, um, That you’re talking about the course. Is that right? 

Dolly: Yes, like using your, like, leaning into your, here, my thought is my brain is finally caught up with the question.

. Okay, so essentially I always ask my clients Hey, what long form Content marketing. Are you leaning into, um, is it YouTube? Is it blogging? Is it podcasting? Is it, if it’s not one of those, like, is it email marketing? Hopefully it’s always going to be email marketing. Um, which one of those four do you do consistently?

Then let’s weave in some sort of education. That is a facet. Uh, like, it’s like a little seed, like, you’re like planting seeds along the way, because I know for a listener or viewer right now, if you’re watching this, if you’re listening to this later on, you’re like, how do I talk about my course like, over the course of, let’s say it’s like six weeks or seven weeks, and I feel like I’m repeating myself over and over and over and over again.

And yes, it feels like a repetition, but. Leading up to the actual cart open, you want to answer a lot of objections a person would have before you actually open the cart. Because your job is not only to plant seeds of intrigue and anticipation like anticipation, marketing and, um, showcasing transformational stories of past clients who have used this digital product or.

group program, whatever you’re trying to sell. Um, you want, you don’t want to answer objections or FAQ type of questions during CART Open Week. You want to sell during CART Open Week. And leading up to CART Open Week, you want to do a lots of anticipation type of content marketing and infuse that with In your long form content, in your email marketing, and also infuse it into your social media.

And that weaves in, like, this beautiful pre launch strategy. 

Amanda: Yeah. Okay, so then what would you say to someone who either hasn’t even started creating their course, or has started creating it, but is in that early phase of creating it, maybe? 

Dolly: I would say to this To this owner. Hey, like, have you actually done the market?

I know it always comes back to market research for me. Like, have you actually done like either one to one interviews with your, your past buyers or your audience, your clients, and do they want this? What are their words? What do they actually want you to create? I would say spend a large, Not a large portion, but maybe like at least, , people don’t like me saying this, but like at least a month of really digging into what your ideal client would want from you, because that will therefore impact.

The way you create your course, you’re copying, you’re not copying your copy, your messaging, and that might even impact the way you decide to show up on long form content. Because let’s say that, um, this is like, this is a good case in point. You’re like a good example of this, Amanda, because you have both a podcast and a YouTube channel and your clients.

Might be better learners viewing versus listening and vice versa. So let’s say this. This, , business owner has an idea. They haven’t fleshed it out yet. I would say, and then after a month of like interviews and like one to one calls with those ideal clients, they have a better idea of like what product they’re going to make.

And then based off of those interviews, they know how they’re going to educate their ideal audience. Cause their ideal audience may learn best in audio form. So they’re like, okay, I’m going to lean into my podcast and create content that naturally leads to the open cart week. But I am not going to like every week going to say, Hey, I’m going to, I’m selling this in, in three or four months.

Instead, I’m just going to create content that answers , the best way I can describe it is like anticipation marketing, like getting people more excited about that topic without necessarily telling them, Hey, I’m selling this product in four months. 

Amanda: Yeah. Okay. So you mentioned. One to one calls and interviews.

I’m curious, what are some of your favorite ways to do market research? How do you even begin with market research? What are you looking for? But then also, um, for someone who doesn’t have an audience and they’re like, I don’t have much of an audience yet, what are your suggestions for market research?

Dolly: Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk to the person who has maybe has had sold something or has sold something and they want to relaunch it again. I would say reach out to the people who bought that product from you and set up like a 30 minute zoom call with them and give send them like a. I don’t know, like a 10 gift card to Amazon or to start like, whatever it’s up to you, but ask them very specific questions because you need to , get their voice.

Like their voice of customer is key because what you think They’re searching for, for the solution. They might be typing in something totally different. They might be, they might give you benefit statements that you’ve never thought was a transformational statement, if that makes sense.

And that will there therefore impact your, your sales page and your landing page copy and your sales sequence and all the copy throughout your entire prelaunch. So that’s why I’m a huge proponent of like really digging into what’s working for you. Like, if you want to relaunch that again, that’s great.

Let’s interview some people and find out. How you can, like, sweeten up that copy, because you’re getting their voice. And if they’re your ideal client, then you want more people like that, to read that sales page, and to read your emails, and to consume your podcasts, or your YouTube, or blogs, or even your email newsletter.

Okay, if you don’t have an audience, And you’re starting from scratch. This is not like an answer that is like really popular, but I think you’re sitting at a great place, my friend. Like you get to decide like what you want to create, who you want to serve. And then you can iterate from there. Like it’s, it’s good.

It might be a longer process. for you, depending upon like what you’re really passionate about, what you want to teach. And, and like, sometimes you feel like you’re just throwing spaghetti at the wallet. I mean, we’ve all been there, but if you don’t have an audience, I say, again, I, I, I’m looking at this as a positive thing.

Like you, you can determine what you want to create, who you want to serve, what your messaging is going to be, and then you can launch that. And I would say try to do everything in an organic way. Don’t put money towards anything unless you know for sure it converts. Um, that’s another conversation for another day.

But, um, everything I’m sharing is all coming from organic, an organic marketing perspective. But, um, I say if once you, you have created something that you Like, and for the client who you think you want to serve, you can iterate. And I like from, from there after, after that first launch, again, I know it’s not a very popular.

I don’t hear a lot of people say that, but that’s what I think in my head. I’m like, a person who’s starting from scratch, they’re at a good spot. 

Amanda: Well, and I also think it’s so important because realistically, even if you have an audience, you have to be comfortable with the idea of iterations. 

Dolly: Yeah.

Amanda: Reiterating and reiterating and reiterating. The reality is, is that you’re never, almost nobody, is going to launch a course and never launch it again, never need to launch it again. The reality is, is that we look at some of these larger business owners who are, realistically, they’re business owners, but they’re also influencers.

They have these massive followings, they launch a course and make six or seven figures, whatever, right? Um, they could potentially launch a course one time, put it on Evergreen, make money. 

Dolly: Yes. 

Amanda: That’s not the reality for 99. 9 percent of us. It’s really not. To reiterate. Even if you’ve got an audience, you’ve got to get comfortable with the idea of reiterating.

You can’t just launch a course one time, stick it on Evergreen, and never talk about it again. It’s just not gonna work that way. 

Dolly: Yeah, I also want to say, like, things change, are changing constantly around us, like, I’m glad you brought that up, because between, like, so much has changed between 2020 to 2024, like, I feel like this conversation, I’m hearing this conversation constantly, like, oh, like, my course did so well and amazing during COVID in 2020, and now I’m like, re launching it, I re launched it several times, it didn’t do as amazing, and now this year is crickets.

And like, I’m not like, this isn’t a political state, , in any way, shape, or form, but like, we have to look at what’s happening in history, whenever, whenever, You’re about to launch, look at what’s happening around you politically, what, what, how’s the economy look like, what, you have to look at the historical data of like every few years or every, I, I’d like heard a stat, like every, Like six to seven years like this is pretty normal like this cycle of like there are some years are going to be so abundant and some years are going to be kind of stagnant.

That’s pretty normal for the cycle of an online business owner, but for a person who might be either. Owning a business for the first five years, like you’re like, wait a minute. Like, this is actually a very slow year for me and this is scary. And I am not launching well, or versus somebody who is brand new and like no audience and they’re hearing all these horror stories, I just, I just want everyone to slow down and just see.

Like, see where everybody else is, put a pulse on the data and know, you’re not alone. Like, this has been a very slow year. I don’t know about you, but Ah. 

Amanda: Oh, yeah. For me, for all of my clients, it’s been a slow year. No matter what, like, service, courses, digital products, all the way around.

Every revenue stream has been slow. And I think Maybe I’m crazy. Um, my prediction is that courses are going to have a resurgence because we are at this place where I think people want to hire out, but the finances aren’t there to hire out. So we’re having to go back to more DIY options. I’ve purchased a lot more courses this year than I have in the last few years when I had more profit and was able to go okay let me just hire someone else to do it versus this year it’s like well I don’t have as much profit I’m gonna have to and I see that I see it having another resurgence period I think it’s gonna be different than it was before 

Dolly: yeah 

Amanda: where you could just throw up a course about anything and people about like I don’t think it’ll be the same you As it was before, I think a lot of us have been burned by so many courses that were, you know, um, a lot stricter about what we’re purchasing, but I do think there’s going to be a resurgence, but I think you’re totally right.

It’s been a slow year, but also people always want to complain, compare each year post 2020 to 2020. And that was, 

Dolly: that was a strange year for everyone. Okay. That was strange. 

Amanda: Everyone was getting, um, 

Dolly: we were all stuck at home and we were all learning. 

Amanda: Checks. What were those checks called? Oh, stimulus checks.

Stimulus? Okay, yeah. Yes, you’re right. People were getting extra money. Like, of course there was more money to be spent. And, you know, like you said, we’re not getting into politics, but this and that, and how that all played out, but of course it was an abundant year. People were home, they had extra money, they had the ability to start businesses, and spend that money in whatever way they wanted to, and now people are struggling, and that’s just the reality, and so, yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things where, That’s the reality, but it won’t always be this way.

Dolly: Because it changes like every, every year, every season, every few years is like so different. And yeah, I like, this is very normal. Everyone, I’ve noticed a trend, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this trend, Amanda, is that, um, people, like, There are people that I follow that are launching their, not services, but are giving it at a lower price point, 

A little slice of their service, kind of like, to get a person’s foot in the door, and then, um, or like, A little slice of their digital product.

Not the whole thing, but just a little slice just just to sell it like okay I need to get this income stream going again Um, how can I get a person’s foot in the door to trust me? And to know me over time and to build more authority with them over time And that has been I mean, I feel like in my inbox, I am getting all of these amazing deals that I would have loved four years ago or three years ago or two years ago.

Um, I’m like, wow, very interesting. Like, I’m just like seeing this trend with a lot of business owners, not just service based, but digital based business owners, online business owners. 

Amanda: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot more lower ticket offers. Yes. Offered out there. Um, no matter the stream revenue. And then the service based ones, it’s like, okay, how do you make the money you need to make while taking on more clients, but not overworking yourself?

And so it’s like, okay, can you cut out this little chunk of here’s enough, here is part of what people need. I can at least help them with this. 

Dolly: Yes. 

Amanda: Terrible price point. So yeah. And I think that speaks so strongly to. The innovativeness that you have to have is, okay, what’s been working, isn’t working, how do I make it work for now?

Dolly: Yes, and I love that you mentioned that, and I don’t even know if this is conversations going in the direction you want to go, but I am hoping this is encouraging a listener or watcher, but I want to encourage listeners, viewers, that if you are wanting to launch and you have something that you want to relaunch, and if it’s not going the way that it originally went, like, several seasons ago when you launched it and went like, Whatever the term is.

Gangbusters. It was great. I think that’s a good term. A positive term. And like, it, it went great. It sold like hotcakes. There we go. It sold like hotcakes, and then you relaunched it again, and you’re like, Whoa, this is a totally different, like, Feel like outcome. I wasn’t expecting this. , again, going back to, we, we have to look at the data.

We have to see what’s going on around us, but also we need to iterate and be innovative. Like we are small business owners. That that’s the beauty of owning a small business. You can iterate and you can be innovative and, um, See, like try something new with your launch strategy and not. Not do it out of desperation, but do it To see like, will this serve my audience well, and will this also help me out in the long run and that kind of like, maybe I could be wrong reading this, but something that I’m noticing is more collaborations with launches.

Um, I love collaborations. I love like bundles. I love summits. I love. I love working with other business owners. Do you know this? Cause I’ve collaborated with you several times, Amanda. I love, I love it. Not only because it serves my audience getting to know other business owners, but it also serves me to get in front of other people’s audiences and.

I feel like the bigger business owners, the seven, eight, nine figure launch business owners, they do this really well. They have, like, a really good relationship based, um, collaborations, like, for their, for their launches. And I feel like us small business owners, we are just now starting to understand, like, hey, like, if we want our launch to go well, like, And we want to do it in an organic way.

We also need to infuse some sort of collaboration strategy within our launch. Not only like we don’t need to just focus in on good content marketing and good social media marketing and good email marketing to grow our list, but Hey, like we can’t expect. The same results when we’re like launching to our same list over and over and over again, we need to infuse some sort of collaboration, um, again, organic collaboration with people with business owners who serve the type of audience we want to serve and make sure it’s a good fit for them.

Make sure it’s a good fit for us. And so. I feel like I’ve noticed a trend in the last year or so where people are starting, small business owners are starting to collab more, which I love, but they’re starting to infuse it more into their launches, which I really love. And I really strongly suggest leaning into collaborations as a small business owner.

Amanda: Yeah, I know. Yeah, you’re totally right. I think when we had the heyday of Instagram, it didn’t feel as necessary because you could just post on Instagram and people would see it and people would engage with , and you were able to put a successful launch out there that, you know, you just did the organic content marketing your YouTube blog, podcast, email, social media, you were able to just do that.

and see a fairly successful launch, but the reality is that social media, it’s not the place where you’re going to necessarily see results in engagement. Um, it is more of a place to, to truly try to be social. And a lot of that happens in the DMs and kind of behind the scenes versus. What you’re posting. Um, and so those collaborations, like you said, they become more important than ever.

Those relationships are more important than ever. And it’s so important that we are fostering those relationships. That, that is something I think for so long, those of us running businesses, we could kind of do it in a bubble and get away with it. And you just can’t get away with it anymore. You cannot do business with it anymore.

Dolly: You really can’t and I know like it’s frustrating to hear this if you’re like a brand new business owner And you’re like, okay great like so you’re telling me Okay, I need to find something that my I need to build an audience. I need to find something that they need I need to try to do this organically.

I need to lean into content marketing. I need to lean into my net Like, my collaborations, I need to get to know people, this is all stressful. Yes, it is stressful, like, if you look at it, like, somebody told me this analogy a while back, and I was like, that’s smart, you can’t eat a steak in a bite.

Let’s say you’re, you’re vegan, sorry if you’re vegan and you’re offended by me saying steak, you can’t eat a whole salad in one bite. Like, you take, like, little tiny bites over time, and that’s how you consume your meal. And so that’s how I look at, running a business, running, doing a launch, especially it takes it one bite at a time, one step at a time, figuring out, okay, like what your messaging is, what your plan is, like, how are you going to show up with your marketing?

How are you going to show up socially? Okay, who, what relationships should you lean into to collaborate with? For this launch. Okay. Then when do you want to launch? Okay. It’s just like, it’s like taking one baby step at a time and knowing that, um, also going in knowing, okay, this may not work like last time, but I’m learning this time.

And I. It will, it will be okay, and not just a pinning pun. Another thing I want to remind people, I’m all over the place, Amanda. Another thing I want to remind people is, like, don’t put all your financial eggs in one lunch basket. Hopefully, if you are If you, this is a big thing, I want to remind people, if you have a business, , either you’re an online business owner, you should hopefully know your streams of income, you should be leaning into that, hopefully you are not, , just depending upon the launch to make or break your, , future of your business.

I really hope you’re not doing that. I really hope as a small business owner, you are still leaning into the streams of income that are working for you and, and you’re launching on the side. And again, like I have a lot of unpopular opinions because I’m very like, I’m more like conservative with my launches.

I’m like, don’t put everything in one basket. I don’t, I don’t know. Like if I just set a hot button topic or whatever, I don’t know. Like, 

Amanda: I think that that’s the reality. Yeah. Um, I think If you’re someone, and I’ve shared about this before on the podcast, and I think I even shared it in the book, where I talk about the fact that if you need to make money quickly, you need to be a service based business owner.

Period. If you have more time to run the business on the side, and you know you want to be a course creator, you can go straight to the education route, but you have to realize that it’s going to take time to build the audience, because you need space. People to sustain that and I went that route. I knew from the start that I wanted to be because my background’s in education I love teaching.

I wanted to be an educator. I wanted to create courses And so I went that route and it took me a long time to create any kind of sustainable income with my business I mean I started my business in 2018 and didn’t really start seeing traction until 2020 However, if you’re like, okay I just want to start a business.

One day I want to be a course creator. I want to do it on the side, like you’re saying. Yeah. Start with the service based stuff. Build up, because you need one person to pay you for that at a time. You know, like, you need one client at a time. Obviously, people want more, but, like, one client will pay you a decent amount of income.

Um, and I think that’s so important. I think, Um, we have often this vision that launches are going to be crazy successful, they’re going to, you know, make or break our business, and the reality, like you’ve said, is that you’re going to have to reiterate, um, it, you could do everything right, and it may not go the way you want it to go.

Dolly: Yeah. 

Amanda: And it, it should be one of many streams of income, unless You recognize that it’s going to take time to build that audience and build that following for that one course. 

Dolly: Yes. Yes. You beautifully put, succinctly put it all together. Um, cause I, I know I can be very long winded Amanda, but yeah, that was very well put.

And I realized like, I’m also coming from this perspective because I own two sides of a business. I am A service based business owner. I’m a photographer, so I’m making like money one on one with clients. And then at the same time, I’m running an online business for systems, workflow, launching education.

So those are two very different streams of income and you are exactly right. Like I, it took me forever to start matching. My education with my service based business center. Cause like, I was like, Oh, I started earning money really fast with photography. This should be easy with the education side. Cause I’m very passionate about this.

It took a long time. I’m and I’m still building traction but I have like, Oh, this is going to be very different. Like I’m building a different type of business and two different types of audiences. 

Amanda: Well, it’s that, but it’s also just the numbers. Yes. Services pay more. Yeah. You need less people to say yes to a service to make x amount.

First, let’s say you’ve got, we’ll just do easy. Your service is 250. You want to make a thousand dollars. You only need four, four people. Your course is a hundred dollars. And you want to make 1, 000, you need 10 people. And then you think about scaling that to six figures and what that looks like, and how, you know, the numbers just make this big jump from services you need less versus, and of course that’s not really like 100 versus 250 isn’t like a realistic look, but easy math.

Um, yeah, it’s just so, it’s a numbers game. And so much of business and marketing is. It’s all about the numbers, and we think it’s all about the luck a lot of times. Where we’re like, oh, I’m just going to get lucky, or I’m just going to, um, I’m going to put the content out there. My whole business is going to change.

It’s like, no, that’s not realistic. Like, what are the numbers telling you? Numbers should inform your marketing. Numbers should inform your pre launch. Numbers should inform the next iteration of your launch. Right? It’s all about what those numbers are telling us. 

Dolly: And also, um, going alongside, like knowing your numbers.

Okay. Hopefully. Did I just lose my whole train of thought? I probably did just lose. This is mom brain, classic mom brain right here. Classic Dolly brain. But, um, Oh, here it is. Here it is. If you have been hopefully gathering data for your own business, like, so knowing. I’m a big proponent of every month tracking my income, my revenue, where my money is going, what I’m spending on, how I’m, like, everything.

And over time, you collect that data, and year by year by year, you can compare it. So hopefully, I now know when I’m gonna make, have a big cash influx from photography. And I now know when the slower months are so I can focus on other areas of my business. So I’m not constantly panicking every single month.

Like, oh no, , I need to make this much amount of money, like, I can look at my data from the past five years, because I’ve been doing this. No, for six years, for the past six years, I know historically, August to November, those are like my abundant months for the service side of my business.

And now for, for launching, like my launch, like, Services. I now know whenever I’m launching, like depending upon when I launch, I know how to project better. So yeah, like going back to what you’re saying, it all, it all leans back on knowing how to read your data, knowing how to read your numbers, knowing just getting down to the basics.

Everybody should listen to Amanda because she’s teaching you really good marketing strategies and basic stuff. 

Amanda: So, okay, speaking of numbers. 

Dolly: Yes. 

Amanda: How can a course creator measure the success of their prelaunch effort? How do they know whether or not it was successful, what they were doing? 

Dolly: , I’m gonna use our, Our past client as an example, because we, we worked together with a specific client who what had an online course and she was serving a bit.

She knew her messaging. Her messaging was very nailed in her. was nailed in. So I really appreciated that she knew who she wanted to serve. So what we did with her was we, for her pre launch, we had her focus in on two different lead magnets to insert into her marketing in different ways for her pre launch period.

So her pre launch period was eight weeks. So for eight weeks, she showed up with very specific content and her content was YouTube videos because that’s already what she’s doing. So we told her you need to lean into what’s already working for you and that’s YouTube. So she shows up every week. Educating about something very specific.

And in her case, it’s tax education for photographers, super specific. And so we wanted her to show up on YouTube, not just to educate, but also to grow out her email list. So that’s one thing we had her do. And we had her infuse like an email list building plan, like every other video. One video was focused on growing out a specific lead magnet.

Another video was focused on growing out the other lead magnet. And then another video was focused on growing out a masterclass that would eventually be her third lead magnet. And that all wove together to segment her audience who opted in to her lead magnets

like, it showed us that they were interested in learning more about tax education for photographers. And so we measured that, , we measured her. essentially her email list growth for eight weeks. And we were seeing, okay, um, are they interested in this? What freebie are they mostly interested in? Like where you, like her certain freebies were converting better than other ones.

And then we also started, 

Amanda: um, pause there. Yeah. 

Where did this client’s numbers start and where did they end for their email list? 

Dolly: Yeah. Okay. So these are. Listeners, this is not exact numbers, like, this is like, I rounded down, okay, so she started at 300 for her specific segment of education, and I just looked at her, like, segment today before we got on, and it is at 500.

So we grew over 200 subscribers for that segment. 

Amanda: Sixty-seven percent, I just did the math. 

Dolly: Okay, good. I’m like, I can’t do math right now. And that was all organic. I love that. Keeping it real. 

Amanda: No, I’m not doing the math in my head. No, 67 percent organic growth in eight weeks. Thats Huge 

Dolly: Yes. Yes. 

Amanda: That’s one way you can measure the success though, right?

Is you can look at, okay, what was my list growth? 

Dolly: Yes, list growth. , and then you’re probably like, well, did you just have her like, talk about her freebie every day on Instagram? Like, no, like, we actually had a specific, okay, on your YouTube channel, like, this is how you introduced the freebie. , on, Like we set up many chats for her.

We made sure her blogs that correspond with her YouTube channel also pointed towards her lead magnet. So just wasn’t her slapping up like an Instagram carousel once a day or once a week. And just hoping I hope somebody will like, like want to opt into my email list. Like we made sure. That everywhere she showed up, like her content was not only giving the anticipation of her course, like educating very well, but it was also leading people to her email list.

Like we wanted her to grow her email list. So we, 

Amanda: For those that have heard me talk about a content engine, this is the content engine in action. You are giving people your, everything is sending people to this lead magnet or multiple lead magnets and you’re feeding, you know, long form content into the engine and then turning that into an email and then turning that into different social media posts.

And that’s what we did for this client to help them see the 67 percent email list growth. 

Dolly: Yeah. And also like, yeah. One thing I loved that we did for her was we’re like, okay, this should not just be , a strategy that will only work for the summer. We want. this strategy to work for you year round.

So no matter when a person comes, finds your YouTube channel, , cause she does a lot of content about taxes for photographers and that’s something that’s so specific that somebody might just search for in March when tax season comes. So we were trying to be really future focused for her, like, This might not be something somebody, like, researches in August, because, honestly, as a photographer, I’m not researching tax stuff, I’m researching how to, like, set up fall minis, okay?

But, I know that as a photographer, I’m gonna be searching for, like, how to file my taxes, like, as a solo business owner in March, and so, That content, we wanted it to be very evergreen and to work in her favor, so she’s not always having, like, if she wants to take a week or so off from, social media and not talk about her lead magnet, like, then her, her content is working for her like that engine over time, and so we loved that she was already She already had that YouTube channel set up.

She already has that blog set up. So we were just leaning into what was working for her and she has that community that wants to learn. And so it just , it’s still growing, like still to this day, even after the launch. 

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. Are there other ways that we can measure the success of our prelaunch that you can think of off the top of your head?

Dolly: Oh, man. Well, as I was confessing to you before we hit record, Google Analytics. Oh my goodness. I want to love it, but I hate it. Um, but I do, I, I would say like, there are some good, um, like measurement tracking that you can set up. So if you like, especially during the pre and I have set this up, but when I look at it, I’m like, what does this even mean?

I’ve like paid, I’ve paid a Google analytics person to explain it all to me. So I’m going to butcher that. And I’m not even going to try to explain it, but I will say, That having Google analytics set up way before you even launch is really essential because that way, when you set up your pre launch, like when you decide, okay, I’m going to pre launch into this course, then you can set up.

Tracking on certain pages from your. landing page to a thank you page to a sales page. It could all be tracked and you can see the conversion rates from there. 

Amanda: Yeah. So I’m going to actually, I’m going to share my screen and share Google Analytics. So, because this is something that again, those numbers informing the marketing, right?

Um, okay. This is, let’s just do the full month for funsies looking at my pages. When you get into the home of Google Analytics, if you click pages and screens, And then you choose the dates that you want to look at. Then you can look at a specific page. So let’s look at, let’s say for example, we’re looking at the numbers for my content planner that just launched.

Of 64 people, that’s how many views this page got. You also want to look at how many sales you got. Um, I actually don’t have that number off the top of my head. But let’s say I’ve sold, I don’t know a number that’s going to go into that nicely, 3. So 3 divided by 64 times 100. Is 4. 68. That’s a 4. 68 conversion rate on the sales page.

And so that’s how you’ll look at this, guys. If you’re looking at your sales page or you’re looking at freebie numbers, if you want to switch freebies, convert better. Okay, let me look at the page for my freebies, see how many people have opted in during this time period, and then divide it out so that you can know what is that percentage, right?

And, you know, there are all kinds of different, um, averages out there and best practices out there, but the reality is, is that when you’re reiterating your next launch, you want your numbers to be better than they were last time. That’s always the goal. 

Dolly: Yeah, I do want to say this, um, I think there’s, it’s really wise to have thank you pages like confirmation pages set up from even your lead magnets.

Because that way you can know, okay, how many people are landing on my actual landing page for this lead magnet? How many people have converted from that lead magnet? And . Using our client as an example, we can see, we could see which lead magnet was speaking more to her ideal client. And so that way we could tell her, Hey, like maybe you can then create content, but let’s say lead magnet number two.

Was performing better than lead magnet number one and lead magnet number two was about like tax categories. I’m just like making this up on the fly. Then that tells us to tell her, Hey, create, um, long form content that centers around tax categories. And then you can grow out your lead magnet in deeper ways in like later on down the line.

Cause it also informs what type of content. You should be creating in the future. 

Amanda: Well, what you can also do if you want to get really advanced with this, so, if you’re listening and you’re like, I don’t have a course yet, don’t worry about this, but if you’ve got a course, and you already have it on Evergreen, another thing you can do is you can set up, so you’ve got your two freebies that lead to this course.

Instead of a confirmation page or a thank you page, if you take them to a sales page for the course, then you can see which freebie converts best, too. And so you can see which one is a more natural lead in to the course itself. And then you can know, okay, I can push this one more and most likely get more sales.

Um, but looking at those numbers and going, okay, this many people landed on the upsell page for this freebie. And this many bought from this freebie versus this many. Anyways, that’s a whole lot of math. Um, but again, those numbers, they tell you everything. Yes. I love it. I know that we have on Instagram a question.

Launch strategies often include daily emails. Is pre launch the same or are we simply more strategic with our weekly emails to better lead up to a launch? I feel like you’ve covered this, but just so we can make sure that this is answered clearly, go ahead and give your thoughts on that. 

Dolly: Yeah, so my thoughts are, be very intentional during your pre launch, this is not the launch week, this is your pre launch, so in your weekly newsletters, your newsletters, I’m calling it newsletter, your newsletter should be educating, of course, like on the topic that you’re known for, it should be Again, this is, I’m very, um, I don’t even know if I am called old school, but I love pointing people towards my long form content in my email.

Um, like if I, cause I blog and I podcast. And so I always let them know, Hey, I have a new podcast out. Guess what? This podcast is like a pre launch like to my launch. Do they know that? No, but I’m educating them on my podcast too. So on my newsletter, I am leading them to my long form content. I’m also segmenting people in my newsletter if they’re interested in my upcoming launch.

And how I’m doing that is I have, I am a big proponent of a hype event the week before your launch. So a hype event is like that, like It could be a challenge. It could be a private podcast series. It could be, heck, it could be a summit. It could be, uh, I don’t know, a webinar, a masterclass. So I’ve already pre planned, okay, let’s say, we’ll use our client as an example.

She had a masterclass. The week before her launch opened. And so every week for her newsletters, she asked her email list. She’s like, if you’re interested in joining, I’m leading a free masterclass on this date, um, sign up here. And so it’s self segmented her list to show her who are the warmest leads.

that we’re going to be interested in the masterclass that would most likely buy from her from the actual launch. So I would say be very intentional with your newsletters. Make sure that if you do include a hype event that you’re self segmenting, um, So that you, you can sell to them in a different way during the launch period and be, I mean, if you want to, like, you can even like change, I like to visually change my email banners visually to let them know, like, Hey, I’m in doing a series right now and like I, and I’m consistently showing up on the same day at the same time.

So they know when to expect me. And. Maybe I’m upping it two times a week when I’m getting closer to the launch, but I just have a very specific cadence and I love consistency. I love having a specific cadence because my audience like knows when to expect to hear from me. And I am very purposeful with how I lay out my newsletters.

And again, I feel like a lot of people might say that like that’s so old school, but I love. I love consistency and I love like that cadence for me. 

Amanda: So you’re not increasing how many emails you’re sending during the pre launch though, that’s specifically launch, open cart, close cart. 

Dolly: Yeah, for, for my launch week, that’s when I’m like, okay, I, I’m letting them know, Hey, I’m launching something and I am sending emails.

up to two times a day. And that can be intense for some people, but I mean, I let them know ahead of time. 

Amanda: Perfect. Okay. So if you could give everyone one action step from after listening to this, what would it be? 

Dolly: Don’t. Don’t be overwhelmed. I know that’s like easier. So don’t be overwhelmed. Um, really like if you want to launch something I would say like work on Oh, man, this is like three pieces of advice and you’re like, I just want one you long winded Person, um dolly you’re so long winded, but I would say like really hone in on your messaging Of your of the product that you want to sell, like, make sure you know who it’s for, make sure, you know, the transformation and make sure that it’s something that people actually want and not what you think that they want.

Um, so the messaging is so important and then the 2nd thing is if you truly want to. I don’t want to say successful, if you want to, because every, like, success is different for everyone. But if you want to feel like you’ve done everything you possibly can for your launch, allow yourself a good period of time to plan it out, and then to prime your audience, and then to have, like, the different phases for yourself.

Now, I’m not saying, like, you need to go all Amy Porterfield your first launch, like, no. But at least have a good priming period. Um, because I have to share this, even if you don’t launch successfully the first time. The fact that you have put in so much effort leading up as a pre launch period, the stacks are in your favor.

You have built up so much content and you are establishing yourself as like that go to expert. And even if it didn’t convert well in your eyes, like you still should keep up that momentum even after your cart open and can still continue to show up. And then. Try to launch again and you will be pleasantly surprised because when you stack up all of that content It really does go well in your favor.

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely and it Especially because we’re not just focusing on social media. It works for years to come Um, okay, you’ve been on the podcast before so, you know, I never let anyone leave without giving a book recommendation So doesn’t have to be business, but it could be What’s a great book you’ve read recently?

Dolly: Oh my goodness, I’m currently reading another World War II book, I know. You all, Amanda knows how much I love World War II books. And it’s just, it’s wrecking me right now. It’s called The Lucky, The Lucky Child. It’s either The Lucky One or The Lucky Child. It’s a true story of this boy who survived. A concentration camp, and he, he went in with his parents, I’m not gonna give it all away, but he did not tell his story until he was in his 50s or 60s.

Amanda: Is it, is it a memoir? By Thomas? 

Dolly: I don’t remember, I just remember the book cover, like, it’s like a picture of him and his parents, it’s a black and white photo. It’s either the lucky one, the lucky child, It’s very, I just found it at my library a few weeks ago, and I decided, hey, because I take my boys to the library every Monday, and I saw it and I was like, you know, I’m going to check this out.

I’m usually like, I normally read World War II books about females, but this is starring a male, and I’m like, wow, I’m really branching out. My husband makes fun of me. He’s like, wow, you’re really branching out, Dolly. Um, but it’s really good. It’s like, it makes me so sad because it’s a child. Like it just, it’s, I might start crying.

It’s just so, I love World War II books. And I love books like that. So, 

Amanda: yeah, I read some good ones recently. I’ll have to send you the, um, you’ve probably read them at this point, but we’ll, we’ll connect them with the actual title of this and who it’s by. Perfect. Dolly. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Dolly: I hope it was helpful. I know I’m really like, I just go all over the place. So I really hope it was helpful for you. There’s so 

Amanda: much to cover when it comes to launches, especially. In 2024, right? Yeah. So, I appreciate you. For anyone who has follow up questions for Dolly, pop them in the comments. We will get back to you.

Um, and I’m sure there will be plenty of questions to ask from us because we covered so much. So if you want to see more in depth about any, um, facets of this, let us know in the comments.

Dolly: Yeah, definitely. 

Amanda: What should a prelaunch strategy look like for your upcoming course, and how should you create it? Is it really necessary, and how can it affect the long term success of a course? How do you even measure the success of a prelaunch strategy? Today, I’m joined by my friend Dali DeLong to help answer all of these prelaunch questions and more.

Dali is a systems and workflow expert. Dedicated to helping small business owners streamline their processes and conquer the overwhelm of launching as the founder of the systems and workflow podcast, Dolly specializes in guiding solo entrepreneurs, particularly female business owners through the complexities of their first or second launches.

If her voice sounds familiar, you may have also listened to episode 146 of this podcast where Dali shared all about how you can create a strong inquiry process for your potential clients. You’re listening to episode 235 of the Chase and Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Chase and Simple content planner, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.

com slash planner.

When it comes to creating your monthly content calendar and sitting down to create your content because you’re batching it, right? The first step is not writing in the monthly calendar. It’s not even writing your categories and important dates on the calendar. If that’s where you’re starting with your content planning, well, all you’re creating is a plan.

But what you need is a strategy. What’s the difference? A strategy is like the inner structure of a building, while the plan is the decor. A strategy is what helps you achieve your goals, and your plan is how you achieve them. Your strategy is where you’re leading your audience, and your plan is what you’re talking about and when.

Without having a strategy first, putting together a plan will simply mean pulling ideas out of thin air. So, how do you start with a strategy? By starting with your goals and working backwards to ensure that you’re moving your audience toward them. What are your yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals?

And how can you translate them into content your audience wants to ingest? You’ve got to consider those questions before you even begin deciding what it is that you’ll post about. And if you want a simple way to create both your strategy and your plan, grab your Chasing Simple content planner. The planner is my number one bestseller, and for good reason too, because this massive, more than 130 page planner was designed with strategy in mind.

It’s not merely a place to write down what you’re going to post and when. Yes, that’s part of it, but first, you’ll walk through intentional pages full of strategic questions to get your brain moving in the right direction before you even start writing down your topic ideas. In addition to the traditional calendar pages, you’ll find yearly planning pages, monthly prep work, monthly reflection questions, repurposing worksheets, and so much more.

If taking your content to the next level is a goal of yours, the Chase and Simple Content Planner was created for you. Grab yours for just 27 at amandawarfield. com slash planner..

so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 235: Nailing Your Course PreLaunch Strategy with Dolly DeLong appeared first on Amanda Warfield.