Step 1 is to forget about yearly goals and go quarterly instead. Yearly goals simply don’t work, so if you’re thinking of planning for 2024 I don’t want you to think much further than the end of March. The gold standard for getting stuff done in business is quarterly goals – and there’s a good reason for that. It’s impossible to know where you are going to be in a year – personally and in your business as well.
Most projects can be planned and implemented in a timeframe of 3 months and you’re more likely to actually take action and make progress that way. That’s why we’re forgetting about writing yearly goals and using the 3×4 framework, which means every 3 months (4 times a year) we set new goals and reassess our businesses. The best way to actually do that is to set a reminder on your phone or put it on your agenda right now. Set a time every 3 months to do this business assessment and look at the important elements of a successful handmade business. What are they? I will give you a few guidelines for that.
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The first thing we’re going to look at is what I call business basics. These are:
Next, we’re going to look at the sales system. These are the elements like:
The next thing is what I call a marketing mix. These are the things like: PR, SEO, paid ads, live events, influencers outreach and social media.
Take some time to ask yourself:
Next step of the assessment is your back end – all that helps you run your business. Things like:
I know I went pretty quickly over those points, but it’s just to give you a framework to work with. Now you should have a few pages of notes with things to consider and focus on in the next 3 months. It should give you an idea of what to compare each quarter, check your progress and see what to work on.
My last piece of advice is: do less to get more. What I mean by that is don’t try to do all the thing at the same time. I always say: if you’re using more than two marketing channels all the time and two or more social media at the time you’re doing too much. The only time you can do it successfully is when you’ve been in business long enough that it’s doable for you and if you’ve already mastered a couple of social media platforms. Let’s say you’ve mastered Instagram and you’re getting sells from it – now you have time and energy to focus on how to grow Pinterest or Facebook or whatever else.
I really want to emphasize that you really don’t have to do ALL THE THINGS and doing less is usually what gets you the best results. That way you can focus and implement in-depth strategies rather than spread yourself thin and be exhausted while getting little results because you’re working on too many things at the same time.
I hope that helps! If you want a done for you system I actually have a planner called The Maker’s Roadmap. It has all of the components I’ve explained to you plus more to really help you focus on what’s important right now and fight the overwhelm and information overload. It can help you get clarity on what you should be working on and what to let go to get those results that you so deserve. You can go here or click the button below to learn more. It’s not just a beautiful planner, it’s also a full member area with coaching videos to help you do those activities and get results.
Do you feel like there’s simply not enough hours in a day to get everything on your growing to-do list done?
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