Today we’re talking about what my first 3 months of self employment were REALLY like so that I can help you avoid some of these pitfalls that I encountered.
In our last pep talk, we talked about how as a side hustler, I was used to operating in chaos and stress, so much so that when I finally quit my day job, I was surprised that things weren’t as calm as I imagined.
And today, we’re going to talk about how planning factors into that feeling of chaos and stress.
Creating a plan and creating a to-do list are two totally different things.
I’m fantastic at making lists of all the things I “have to do.” I’ve got pages and pages of those.
And I’m also awesome at writing down lists of ideas of what I want to happen, and things that I can do to make those things happen. Like, I want to double my email list this year and these are all the tactics I can implement make that happen.
And because I’ve got my weekly schedule where Monday is my writing day, Tuesday is my project day, and Wednesday is client work day, I even have days where I’ll tackle all those “have-to-do’s”.
I even have things I plan to do each month like webinars, for example.
So, to me, the combination of those four things has always been my “plan.”
Even with all that, I’ve still been totally winging it.
I have an awesome VA team, and I’m not utilizing them as much as I want to because I’m down to the wire getting my content created, and that doesn’t give them enough time to do their part before the deadlines, so then I end up doing it all myself to get it out in time.
Again, chaos and stress.
But I recently realized that I’ve been missing a really big piece of the planning puzzle, and that’s having a completely separate calendar that lays out all the dates that all the things I create are released to you guys – also known as a content calendar.
It seems so obvious to me now – but it honestly never occurred to me to plan my promotion dates first, then schedule out all the topics that would lead up to those promotions, decide exactly what blog posts to write and content to create to lead up to those topics – all on its own calendar, and then refer to that calendar when I’m writing down all my to-do’s on my own calendar.
I really thought that what I was doing was creating a plan, and I couldn’t figure out why I always felt so behind.
Um, you can’t blame this on having a day job because you haven’t left the house in five days…
Now, I’m not saying that I’ve totally mastered planning, but I think I understand some things differently than I have before, and it just feels like it’s clicking.
And tomorrow, I’m going to share with you why I was resisting creating a plan!
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