Wanna know what’s going on around PB HQ and what’s coming up next?! Here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at what we’re busy working on right now!

Deciding on projects:

I’ll admit, I’m never one who is short on new business ideas. I’m more just short on the capacity to make all my ideas a reality. It’s now mid-October as I write this and I have 2.5 months left in the year. I also have a list of ideas which I want to get done before the end of the year that is a mile long.

So the first thing I had to do the other day was decide what I’m actually going to realistically focus on getting done in the rest of 2019.

Here’s the list of things I wanted to get to:

  • Launch Square Secrets Business course

  • Give a talk at a coworking space

  • Research, plan & launch business retreat

  • Put 2 products in an online shop

  • Put processes in an online shop shop

  • Evergreen the shop products

  • Create affiliate program for my courses

  • Survey & host chats with audience

  • Create podcast guest application

  • Film a promo video

  • Revamp website & get a coding issues fixed

  • Improve SEO

  • Create a ton of content

  • Onboard new bookkeeper

  • Host a meetup in Bali

  • Create a vlog for 30 days

  • Improve email marketing game plan

  • Redo Square Secrets course when Squarespace 7.1 is fully launched

Obviously … that’s a slightly unrealistic workload for 2.5 months. SO, I took my own advice and followed the steps I mention in episode 023 of The Online Business Besties’s Podcast called Can’t decide which biz project to start next? Do this! (You can find a list of those steps in the show notes here).

I evaluated the options against how much they were asked for, how much I was excited about doing them, how well they fit with my current business offerings, how much they would likely generate in a year and how passive/time-intensive they would be to create and maintain.

I then made a game plan of what I could realistically achieve in the months before the end of the year. So here’s what I’ll be working on in the coming months.

October:

  • Create a ton of content

  • Onboard new bookkeeper

November:

December:

  • Survey & host chats with audience

  • Create podcast guest application

  • Create a ton of content

2020:

  • Redo Square Secrets course when Squarespace 7.1 is fully launched

  • Evergreen the shop products

  • Create an affiliate program

  • Research, plan & launch business retreat

  • Film a promo video

  • Improve SEO

  • Improve email marketing game plan

Not doing:

  • Put processes in the shop

  • Redo website & get coding issues fixed

  • Create a vlog for 30 days

Content Creation: You’ll notice ‘create a ton of content’ is in both October and December. I have just been getting content out on time for the past month and a half because I’ve been so busy with other activities, and I’d like to be able to get ahead now. And then I’d also like to create a bunch of content in December so I can go into January fully ready to head into new projects instead of creating content.

Other tasks: I plan to fix our bookkeeping issue, FINALLY launch an online shop, and launch SSB again!

Giving a talk: I also had it on my list of 2019 goals to do my first speaking gig and do a talk somewhere. And what do you know, I pushed that goal alllll the way to the end of the year because I’m rather scared to do it. BUT, I’m not letting myself back out of this one, no matter how uncomfortable I feel, because it’s important to me. So I’ve already chosen my talk topic and in November, I’ll be creating it and finding a coworking space in Bali to give it at.

Survey & subscriber chats: I also am feeling a wee bit disconnected from y’all, so I’m excited to host a meetup with ya IRL in Bali and then also do my annual survey and host subscriber chats again!

(What’s a subscriber chat you ask? When I legit call up email subscribers and shoot the breeze with them for a half hour, getting to know them, their lifestyle, their goals, dreams, struggles, burning business questions, etc. I send out an email to subscribers and invite them to fill up my calendar with appointments to chat basically. If you’d like to get that email, be sure to subscribe! Lookin’ forward to chatting friend!)

Podcast guest application: I’m also looking to create a full podcast guest application process, which should make it less time-intensive for me to brings guests onto the show.

Business Retreat: In the new year, I’m still determined to get that business retreat launched! I had plans to revamp my Square Secrets course for a while to also include guidance for product-based businesses and add in the e-commerce aspect of Squarespace to the course. Since Squarespace just launched 7.1 in Beta, I’m waiting until that’s fully out and then will rerecord the entire course all at once. That will likely be a project that takes a couple months TBH.

Shop evergreen funnel: In order to sell my shop products consistently throughout the year instead of getting sales in peaks and valleys, I also plan to set up an evergreen funnel to my new shop products.

Affiliate program: We’ve had students and industry peers ask us to be affiliates for our courses so so so many times now and so we’re finally getting around to creating an affiliate program! (Which I have to say, it makes me one seriously happy course creator to know students got so much out of it that they REALLY want to tell others about it, and that industry peers also see it as the bees knees of Squarespace courses!)

If you have great things to say and promote our courses, I couldn’t be happier to give you a thank you for helping get the word out there! I’ll announce the affiliate program launch exclusively to our email list, so again, if you’re not on it, today is the day friend!

Improve SEO: We’ve honestly done exceptionally well in ranking for everything Squarespace-related, and I put that in large part down to our super consistent blog content. Granted, I love Backlinko’s content strategy; less frequent, but the most in-depth blog posts you’ve ever seen!

I also need to do some research on what I should be trying to rank for in order to appear in the search results for girls who are looking to build online businesses, quit their jobs and go live their best life … which is a wee bit more complicated and a less direct path than ranking for how to pick a Squarespace template.

Improve email marketing game plan: I started off 3 years ago with a minimum viable game plan on email marketing, send 1 piece of content to our email list once a week. And honestly, it works, buttt I feel like there’s room for improvement, so I intend to do a little more learning on the email marketing front and get a new game plan in place!

Anddd that’s what we’re up to! If there’s any of those things you’re personally really stoked for, please leave me a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

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