Learn to love the "P" WORD PLANNING

Keeping all aspects of a coaching business organized and running smoothly is difficult at best. And, if you don’t have a system or plan for what to do and when, organizing it all can be overwhelming. Even if you have an overview of where you want to be in five years, you still need a quarterly, monthly, and daily plan to coordinate management tasks, marketing activities, and content creation.

Let me tell you from experience, “improvising” just doesn’t work. Sitting down to write a blog post, in front of a blank screen with no idea what to write about, is a horrible and daunting feeling. You have a LOT to say and your audience wants to hear from you, so don’t be afraid of the P-word PLANNING!

WHAT TO PLAN

There are 3 types of business planning:

1. Planning your goals

2. Planning your marketing strategy

3. Planning of daily tasks

1-Goals

Setting business goals is always the first step in starting a business or starting a new phase / year in your business. Your business goals will be the foundation for the rest of your business planning. Once you decide on, say, an annual income goal, you’ll want to plan the action steps to take throughout the year to achieve that goal. When business actions are goal-based, they provide structure and meaning to daily activities, strengthen social connections, and help people get through tough times.

2-Marketing strategy

Planning your content marketing strategy starts with what you want to promote. Most companies know a year in advance what they want to promote. You may only have one training program to start with, and that’s fine. Start by planning when, where, and how often you’ll promote it. You will also want to think of different types of promotions for the same program, for example a lead magnet, a challenge, a webinar, or an email series.

Later, you can add additional coaching programs for your advanced clients and / or digital products that you sell for additional income. Then you will need to plan when and how you will promote each of those articles.

3-Daily tasks

Now that you have a plan for what to promote and when, you need to break down the administrative tasks required to get your promotions implemented. For example, a webinar will need a sign-up and thank you page, a series of follow-up emails, time to schedule the webinar (and record it, if it’s permanent), and time to make slides, if you’re using them. .

You will need a certain amount of content to accompany each of your promotions. Therefore, content planning should become part of your daily schedule. You won’t have to create content every day, but you will at least need to schedule when to create it. Think about how often you want to share new content and that will tell you how often you should spend time creating it.

When I started blogging, I would designate every Monday morning to write a weekly article. Sometimes it only took a few minutes and sometimes several hours. But it was done!

Creating an action plan or daily to-do list will help you stay organized and focused from the moment you sit down to work. You will know exactly what needs to be done, without question. You’ll know when you need to write blog posts, when to send emails, when to write new content, when to do your billing, and when to schedule your customer calls.

Some entrepreneurs like to use a 90-day planner to schedule their quarterly events, promotions, and general tasks. This gives you an overview. Then, they divide the tasks into monthly, weekly, and daily.

HOW TO PLAN

Become a customer

Imagine that you are working with a client who needs help planning their business tasks. What process will you give them for this? Now apply that process to yourself as if you were your own customer.

As much as you want a complete training schedule, leave some space for you to complete your administrative tasks. Running your business is just as important to sustainability as taking care of your customers, so give your business tasks the same priority, including creating content. Blocking time is a popular way to schedule longer tasks, such as writing blog posts, recording videos or podcasts, or email marketing.

Set aside an hour or two, write those posts or emails, make the recordings, have them schedule them, and then move on to the next item on the list. If you block enough time often enough, eventually you’ll start to have two or three (or more!) Pieces of content ready to post as needed, which can take some of the stress out of it.

Remove writer’s block

Create a calendar that takes note of important topics or themes that occur during the year.

• What vacation does it inspire you to write content about?

• Is a big event coming up in your city or in your niche? Write about it. Interview the panelists and speakers of the event.

• Are you planning the launch of your flagship product? Create and schedule special content around the launch date.

USING PLANNERS

With all the organization that needs to be done in your business, it helps to have what I call “mini planners.” These are planners that help you focus on tasks that are specific to a particular project in your business. There are planners to create a webinar, to produce a lead magnet, to create a product or course, as well as to plan your content and your social media posts.

The International Association of Professional Life Coaches® provides planners as part of their product line, because it makes perfect sense to use a planner designed to include only the tasks you need to focus on for any given project.

For instance …

Tea 90 day planner– Plan the next 90 days of blog posts, videos, social media posts, and email content. Includes pages for monthly and weekly action steps.

Tea Cash content planner– Guides you to create profitable content by covering 5 different sources of income for a coaching business and how to plan content to generate income from them.

Tea Product creation planner– Guide you through the process of creating a product that you can use as a digital product that you can sell for passive income, or give as a gift.

Tea Private Coaching Program Planner– Guides you through the essential steps of turning your proven system into a salable product that gives your customers the results you promise.

In conclusion: Planning your business tasks, projects and sources of income will significantly increase the chances of your business success. Using professionally designed planners by experts will save you time, organize your action steps to achieve your goals, and ensure that key elements of your business activities don’t slip through the cracks because you didn’t know all the necessary steps involved.