I wanted to chat about what it looks like to plan out your quarter as a stationery designer. Don’t think that because you didn’t put together a full business plan in January that you’re stuck until next year! It doesn’t matter, start now!
And don’t think that you have to plan out a FULL year at a time!
Some people just can’t function like that. I personally like to have an “overview” of what I want to accomplish throughout the year, and then I get more detailed as it comes to my quarterly planning.
I find that oftentimes we can get frazzled and overwhelmed when we look at a blank slate or calendar. You have all of these amazing ideas and goals you want to accomplish and don’t know how to start, when to start, making sure you finish. Does any of this sound familiar?
So I wanted to share my tips and tricks on how to make sure you plan out your quarter in a way that works for you and that at the end of the quarter you feel accomplished and can bask in the glory of all that you have completed.
I believe that if you have too much on your plate at one time, you get what is called “analysis paralysis”. In short – you overanalyze what you have to do and you end up doing nothing.Simply because it’s easier. I have found that one way to avoid this is to actually plan on when you are going to do things, this way you don’t feel guilty for working on X instead of Y. You know that Y has its own dedicated slot next month.
I want you to make a big list of what you want to accomplish this year. New branding, design a collection, grow your Pinterest, nail email marketing, all those goals you can’t wait to crush.
Now go through that list and prioritize each of them simply by numbering them. Are there any items that are critical for your business to function? Those are probably top priorities. Are there any that once accomplished will really help propel your business forward and have a good ROI? Those can probably be next. Other items can be after that or sprinkled in between for a good flow.
Once you have them prioritized you can easily work them into your quarterly plans and break them down into actionable tasks to make sure it is accomplished.
Planning your goals out like this helps keep you from bouncing from project to project and not finishing any of them. There is something about seeing something written out or scheduled on a calendar that makes it more official and you have a much higher probability of accomplishing it.
Curious how you can focus on planning realistic goals, check out this helpful blog post here!
As you are looking at each quarter — think about your client’s work as well. Is this generally a busy quarter for you when it comes to booking and weddings? If so, maybe you only schedule 1 big picture business item for the quarter. Maybe if it’s a slow season for you, you can schedule in 2-3. See where I am going here?
And you can even have multiple goals in the quarter, but maybe they’re not all BIG picture goals. Maybe some are smaller or medium-sized which won’t take up tons of time, but still need to be done and scheduled in so they’re completed.
Once you have these goals for your quarter, I suggest creating a list for each one (I love using Trello templates!) and writing down action items that need to be done to complete that task. Below is an example of some of my items from my wedding collection launch.
Launch New Wedding Collection
Goal: April 16
Design new suites
Revamp suites that are staying
Schedule branding/flat lay photoshoot (this would have it’s own action item list too)
Have samples printed
Create collateral to accompany samples (ink swatches, how to order, etc)
Update website to show new collection
Warm up audience for launch (email, social media etc)
Create a marketing plan (this would have it’s own action item list too)
See, it doesn’t have to be super in-depth or complicated. I just need to know the action items that need to be done so I can work those into my daily/weekly schedule leading up to my launch date.
If you take each of those goals that you’ve written down, placed them in the quarter/month you want to accomplish them, then as that quarter approaches, you can go through and create those actionable to-do lists for each of those goals/tasks and then place that into your weekly/monthly schedule. It all works backward like a funnel to make sure your goals are being accomplished!
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