To ease myself in to 'planning all the marketing', I wrote a plan for the blog to get me to launch week and started redeveloping my website so that I felt that I had made a good start and had a handle on the bulk of the work that needed doing... I then bit the bullet and soft launched my new branding... And from there got completely swamped with burst pipes, broken cars and a lack of a workspace... Best intentions and all that ...
This is a prime example of a completely unattainable goal, I didn't break it down, I just wrote down one big fat item on my to-do list with no structure... But you have to start somewhere and that one unachievable goal triggered the start of the planning to make it happen... And why am I telling you all this...
Today's prompt for #PLANUARY is SIMPLIFY, an absolute gem, I will be using it to help me simplify my planning in to a task a week that I need to complete to get to overall goal of 'homeware collection launch', this will also help me to look back on my weeks with a sense of achievement... So instead of 'last week I didn't plan a full launch strategy', I can say, last week I wrote a launch plan for the blog as a foundation for my launch, soft launched the branding and started on the website.
I like to plan in quite an organic way, it is a part that I love about being a small creative business, I get to harness that creativity... Most of the time. I also have consultancy work separate to my textiles work and this sometimes stops my planning from being as organic as I would like.
I do find that time blocking is an incredibly important tool (I use Google Calendar, but there are lots of shiny tools out there to do this in a much prettier way), especially when working in a totally separate role as a part of my consultancy work, it helps to set boundaries and gain focus on the tasks I need to achieve, especially if you don't enjoy doing them (if you only have a certain amount of time to get them done, you can't ignore them! Clever ey...) I won't lie... This doesn't always work, but it is a solid start... I work well with a deadline... But I am getting better at being productive without one...
So… ‘This week I will…’ finish uploading my products to my website and work on their descriptions, I will put together a newsletter plan and I will block out the time to do this, what's your goal for this week?