Building Your Content Calendar

Now that you’ve identified where you want to be in one year, you can chart a course to get there. Step 1: Monthly Milestones. The next step is to break down each major goal into smaller sub-goals. This is called “chunking”. Think of your goals as the “big picture” and your subgoals or milestones as the bit-sized achievements that make your goal approachable and keep you motivated. • Brainstorm again. For each goal, considering where you want to be in 12 months, brainstorm all of the things you need to do or have in order to reach that goal. Start by thinking about what would you need to accomplish in nine months in order to be close to completion in 12 months? Then continue to work backwards to six months, and then to three. Write down everything you can think of. • Then, group items together, with the goal of creating 12 “milestones” or bigger steps, each of which will contain smaller tasks. • Lastly, put the milestones in order of when they would need to be completed. These 12 milestones will represent the 12 months of the year. Of course, you don’t know exactly how and when everything will unfold—you are making your best guess.

2) Will take about a year to implement (This cannot be something you can bang out in three days or a month.)

DRIVE: WHY DO YOU WANT IT?

When making changes in our lives and working toward larger goals, there are two common things that lead us to stop. 1) First, we get distracted with life. We get busy and encounter roadblocks. 2) Second, we feel uncomfortable with the new change and go back to what we know . Why do these things happen? Because we didn’t have a big enough WHY. We didn’t have a strong enough drive or motive. Our ability to follow through on implementing lasting change depends on having strong enough reasons to keep us focused and committed through the hard times. By identifying the true outcomes you’re looking for, which are usually how accomplishing the goal will impact your life or make you feel, you will have a stronger motivation because you’ll understand why you want the goal. Look at the goals you’ve chosen for the year and ask yourself the following questions (for each goal): • Why do you want to achieve this goal? • What is the outcome you believe you will receive by achieving this goal? • What does this mean to you? • How will it feel? • How will it impact your life? • What will happen if you don’t achieve this goal?

Creating a roadmap for your goal and putting it down on paper helps your brain to hold the vision of the big picture and the real-life action steps at the same time. This is vital!

Step 2: 60-Day Plan. Now it’s time to create your shortterm goals. Research shows that anything that is planned more than 60 days in advanced is most likely going to change. So, take the goals you determined in the first two months of your milestones and break them down further into sub-goals. • BRAINSTORM: What tasks you will need to accomplish in the next 60 days in order to accomplish your milestones? Write down EVERYTHING you can think of. • PRIORITIZE: Then, arrange them in order of priority and what NEEDS to be done first before moving on to the other things. Step 3: One-Month Plan: Take those priority items and put them in a list for month one and put the rest in a list for month two, and save it for later. • For each project goal, brainstorm ALL of the TASKS you will need to accomplish in order to reach your goals in 30 days. Write down everything you can think of. • Prioritize each item on a scale of 1 to 4, 1 being most important OR needs to be done before you can begin on other tasks and 4 being least important or time-sensitive. You now have the next 4 weeks’ tasks (1 through 4).

A small percent of the population set goals and create plans that get them to this point. If you get this far, you’re ahead of the game. However, most people who reach the point of having a plan for the month still don’t accomplish their goals. Why?

Weekly planning is the #1 most important aspect of planning.

Why? Because THIS is where PLANNING meets ACTION. By their very nature, sub-goals in your 30, 60 or yearly plan CANNOT be action items NOW. But, you CAN take actions NOW that will keep you on your path to achieving these milestones. If you “wait and see” if you can get to it, you won’t. Your week will unfold and you’ll be at the whim of other’s priorities, not your own. Leaving your planning off at the “work on this month” level often means you’ll get to the end of the month and find you’ve made little (if any) progress.

Step 4: One-Week Plan:

1: Determine WHERE you’re going to put your list. Our favorite places to keep track of our weekly plan include: • In a daily planner • On a white board where we can see it • In a planning or task app on our phones or computers Just make sure it’s someplace visible and easily accessible. 2: Schedule a weekly strategy session. In order to establish the habit of a weekly strategy session, you absolutely MUST SCHEDULE IT IN! Choose a time that you will sit down for 20-30 minutes EVERY WEEK to plan the coming week’s tasks. Many people make their lists first thing Monday morning. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get sidetracked by emails and other distractions on Mondays, meaning many people put off their strategy sessions. Another common time is Sunday evening, which helps eliminate this problem. However, we’ve found that Friday afternoon is the best time to plan for the coming week. Why? Because everything is fresh in your mind and come Monday morning you already know exactly what your priorities and goals are for the week and you can jump right in. 3: Write Your “Ta-Da” List. WHY WE CALL IT A “TA-DA” LIST: “To-do” sounds like an unpleasant list of tasks that you have to do, while “ta-da” is more inspirational. Every time we finish a task, we cross it off and say “ta-da!” Celebrating even the little victories gives us a sense of accomplishment and builds momentum. We enjoy it so much, in fact, that if we find that we’ve completed a task that we didn’t already have on our list, we ADD IT to the list just so we can cross it off! Take the #1 items from your Monthly Plan and write them down as Actionable Tasks. If needed, break tasks down into sub-tasks. Identify which tasks are a priority (mark 1 through 3) and plan to do level 1 FIRST or write them down IN PRIORITY ORDER. This is your ta-da list for the week. Schedule any tasks that are time-framed into your daily planner and assign other tasks to specific days of the week, when required. Keep the rest of your week’s list someplace easily accessible to refer to throughout the week when identifying daily goals. 4: Create Your Daily Plan. Every day, look at what you have on your SCHEDULE as well as your weekly Ta-Da list. Write in your three to five sub-goals/tasks for the day and then IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE.

Ignite Life

with Natalie Rivera

Natalie Rivera is a firestarter, speaker and entrepreneur. She is passionate about empowering others to GET REAL and live authentically. After a decade of living a life that wasn’t hers and developing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Natalie let go of everything and completely transformed. Through her journey to healing she rediscovered her true self and greater purpose—to inspire others to transform their lives. Natalie “retired” from the rat race at 24, put herself through school as a freelance designer, created a non-profit teen center, and later created Transformation Services, Inc., which offers motivational speaking, curriculum development, life coaching, event management, and publishing. She is also the Publisher of Transformation Magazine. Visit http://www.transformationacademy.com.

Building Your Content Calendar

How to use quirky holidays and observances to promote your life coach business.

By Jowanna Daily

Marketing our life coach services can be stressful. It takes much work, and as small or solo businesses, we are always in a time crunch. Luckily, quirky holidays can help you strategically increase your business’ brand awareness, engagement, and conversions. WHO COMES UP WITH DIFFERENT HOLIDAYS?

Anyone can come up with an unofficial holiday. For instance, you can come up with a holiday based on your coaching business and subject matters that resonate with your audience. You can also sponsor (or pay for) a holiday. These holidays are usually created to shine a spotlight on a specific cause. Luckily, there will be many “national” and “international” holidays that align with your life coach business already, and you can take advantage of the celebrations that already exist— and use them to fill your 2022 content calendar. Here are some basic tips to follow as you build awareness around your holidays each month: Leave Gimmicks Aside: These holiday themes are fun, but they are not gimmicky. Make sure they have meaning, align to your brand, and connect. Don’t Forget Strategy: Pick holidays that help you reach your goals. You can use a theme that aligns with a month-long awareness, a week-long observance, and a day-long holiday within the same period. For instance: • Run a month-long promotion aligned with a theme in the month. • Plan a market funnel that advances on specific days. • Spread brand awareness by showing your expertise in a particular niche. • Engage your social media followers with a themed-based quiz that allows you to find out more about their needs. Less is More: It can be hard to decide what holidays to select; there are so many that you will connect with. Use these general guidelines: • Pick one theme for the month. • Make sure any week-long observance you pick aligns with that theme and don’t select more than one per week. • Try to limit the single-day holidays that you include in your promotions to one per week.