10 | Plan with Me 📝 Setting Monthly Goals for Teacherpreneurs
Planning goals in a consistent manner helps to ensure our businesses are constantly moving forward. My method of goal planning starts with a bigger picture view of my goals and then breaks them into more manageable goals and tasks. This way I know everything that I’m doing in my business is moving me closer to where I’d like to go. Listen to this week’s strategy session for more details about how I plan my monthly goals.
I take you through my four-step process that ensures my Quarterly, Monthly & Weekly goals line up and help me to continuously make baby steps towards my long-term business goals.
Check my progress from the previous month.
Start by reviewing my quarterly goals to see where I’m going this quarter it helps me see the bigger.
Create monthly goals that are in line with my previous progress and quarterly goals.
Break each monthly goal into weekly tasks.
This process ensures that each task that I complete is moving me closer to my ultimate goals. How do you plan your monthly goals to ensure they’re in line with your bigger picture goals?
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers. Just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Hello, and welcome to episode number 10 of Market Scale Grow. I am so excited that you are here with me and I can't believe we are in double digits. This is amazing. Today, we are going to be talking about planning our monthly goals. It is the end of April, and I thought it would be the perfect time for our Saturday strategy session to discuss how I go about planning my goals for the month. I have three different sets of goals that I'm always kind of juggling. The first one is my quarterly goals. The second one is my monthly goals. And then the third one is my weekly goals. I use those to move my business forward.
So when I go to set my monthly goals at the end of a month for the following month, I have four steps that I go through. The first one is to look back on my quarterly goals, to see where my business is headed this quarter and what those important tasks are for me to get done in the quarter. I use my quarterly goals to set those monthly goals. Then once I've set monthly goals, I go ahead and use the monthly goals to dictate my weekly tasks. So they kind of all feed off of each other.
So, the first step is to look at those quarterly goals. Q2, I set the goal of creating 25 podcast episodes, creating a strategy that has me repurposing my content with purpose, and goal three is to get my lead magnet out there and to start building my email list for my marketing business. I have an email list that is decent for my Teachers Pay Teachers portion of my business, but I'm still very much at the beginning phases of building my email list for the marketing aspect or marketing side of my business. So, that was my third quarterly goal.
In April, I wrote those goals down into getting my lead magnet up and running, launching my podcast, and figuring out a schedule that works for our family. Now that third goal doesn't work with or directly tie into the quarterly goals, but it was really important for our family because we were trying to juggle myself and my husband having time to take care of ourselves, so do our workouts and have time for me to work on my business, and him, time for him to play his video games. While we obviously also need to take care of our children and have time with our children, so we were trying to figure out a way that we both got to do what we wanted, and we both were able to give our children the attention that they deserve and that we want to give them. Plus, we need to make sure that we're eating and groceries get done and our house stays clean, so there were a lot of moving pieces and we just hadn't figured out a schedule. So that was goal number three for April.
So, I kind of jumped ahead a little bit, but step one is to look back on those quarterly goals. Step two is to look at and review the previous month’s accomplishments and how I did on the goal. So like I said, the first goal in April was to get my lead magnet out there. I'm going to put a check on this one-ish. I have a couple of different lead magnets that I've been testing out and trying out. One of them is the quiz that I was promoting in the first two episodes of the podcast. I also have a list of Facebook ad targeting groups for teachers that I'm trying out. That one is linked at the beginning of this episode. If you're interested, you can go to marketscalegrow.com/audience to grab that freebie. Then I have a couple of other ones that are twirling in the back of my mind, but I haven't done anything with them yet. But I'm going to give myself a check-ish, because like I said, I got them kind of in the works.
Number two was to launch the podcast. Obviously, since we are on episode, number 10, I'm going to give myself a check for that. It has been a wild success. I've been really enjoying this. I love having conversations with fellow teacherpreneurs and learning all about different journeys people are having. I've had the opportunity to talk to people who are Teachers Pay Teachers sellers and course creators. I even have a teacher who is on Outschool coming up in a few episodes. So I've been loving this podcast and I'm so excited for it and to see how it continues to grow and change with me and with the business. So that is a check.
Then goal number three was to get a schedule up and running for our family, and we have definitely done that. We now have dedicated Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings for me to be working on my business. So my husband actually works Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays. He does a weekend shift, which makes our schedules a little bit more complicated than other families. So I am on kid duty 100% of the time, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday because of his work schedule. That gives me nap time that I can work on my business on the weekends and then after the kids go to bed, I have work time for my business. Then on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, when my husband is home, he takes the kids in the morning and I have time to work on my business. Then in the afternoon, I'm responsible for the kids and he has his time to play his video games and do whatever else. So we've been doing this schedule for about two and a half, three weeks now, and it's going so well. We love it. It's actually Thursday morning right now as I'm recording this. And it just, as I said, I'm loving it. It's great. So that is a huge checkmark.
So that's step number two is checking in with my previous goals. Step number three is to use the progress that I made last month and the quarterly goals to create this month's goals. So looking at my goals, goal number one was to get 25 episodes of the podcast out. So my first goal here is going to be related to the podcast and making sure that I continue on the right track. So what's really important I think at this point in my podcast is actually to create standard operating procedures because it is a lot producing two episodes a week and I know that hiring out is going to be something I need to start thinking about, different pieces and making sure that I can continue to produce these episodes and use the content. So I really need to get standard operating procedures in place.
That actually kind of ticks off a couple of boxes. It ticks off the creating my episodes, the 25 episodes, but it also helps and is the first step of repurposing the content. So the podcast is my base content. It's my long-form content and it is where I will be taking pieces to repurpose. At this time, all I'm doing is posting it on Instagram with a sound bite. So that was the first step in my mind of repurposing the content a little bit, but I also want to add in show notes because those are so important for the search engine optimization and having more people to be able to find the podcast. So show notes is on my list, emails are on my list, Pinterest is on my list, and probably using it more strategically, Instagram also needs to be on my list. But what I really need to know is how I'm going to be doing each of these steps and what goes into each one of these steps. So when I am ready to hire out, I have everything ready to go, so that person knows my procedures knows what they're responsible for, and can roll with it right away.
So getting the standard operating procedures in place is my first goal for May. Then my second goal for May is to start working on those show notes. So I have the transcriptions from all of my episodes, but what I want to do for my show notes is have an intro paragraph that is SEO, done, ready to go. Then I also want some bullet points of in this episode, we talk about check, check, check. So I need to get that done because I haven't done any show notes. So I need to get that done for the first 10 episodes and then also the episodes going forward. So getting through at least the first 10 episodes, which would be about two a week for May, is my goal. Maybe trying to bump it up to three a week so that I can catch up and I just don't stay continually in a lag is probably a better idea. So, goal number two is three show notes per week to help me start getting caught up on my show notes.
Then goal number three is to work out which lead magnet I'm really going to run with. As I said, I tested out the quiz. I'm putting the targeting groups here. I think that is an important step for me to take is to really figure out my lead magnet.
Okay, so then the last step in my goal planning each month is that I go in and I try to pencil in the different pieces of the goals so that I have an idea of what I'm going to be doing when. So goal number one is the podcast SOP. I definitely want to work on that in the first week, so that as I'm recording more episodes, and as I have more podcasts experiences that are happening, I can go back and each week, spend a little bit of time tweaking, refining, and adding details. So hopefully by the end of the month, my podcast SOPs will be complete or as complete as they can be at that point. So each week I'm going to pencil in, well for the first week, I'm going to pencil in podcasts SOP, and then I will make sure that on one day each of the following weeks, I have some time in one of my work blocks to just review the podcast.
For goal number two, to write three show notes or get three show notes published per week, I'm just going to go ahead and each week, add that as my goal- three show notes, three show notes, three show notes, three show notes- so that it is fully penciled in and set up ready to go. All I need to do is pencil in one of my work blocks, it will be to work on show notes.
Then for the last one, for the lead magnet, for now, I'm going to work on testing and pushing out my audience targeting, for teacherpreneurs, and going to set that up first. Then I'm going to come back and review how it's doing and what I want to do moving forward halfway through the month. So I penciled that in the first week, and then the third week to review the lead magnet, so I can see how it's doing and what my next steps should be.
So just to recap, when I'm planning my goals, the first thing that I like to do is look back on my quarterly goals and to see what I'm working on this quarter. Second, I look at the previous month's goals and think about how I did on my progress there towards the quarterly goals that I'm working on. Then I plan my monthly goals for step number three. Step number four is to pencil in weekly goals based on the monthly goals that I just completed. This way, I feel like all of my goals and all of my steps are moving me in the right direction, and I have a really good, big picture idea, the quarterly goals that are guiding those baby, small steps in my weekly goals, because everything kind of leads from one step down to the next step, down to the next step.
Then, of course, when I'm planning my weekly blocks and we can talk about this in a separate episode of how I block schedule and how I really figure out what I'm going to work on when, but when I'm looking at my weekly schedule, I take my weekly goals and make sure that those tasks are getting plugged into my schedule so that I am again, making strides towards, well not even strides, baby steps, truly baby steps towards those weekly goals, which are baby steps towards the monthly goals, which are baby steps towards the quarterly goals. Then, I can feel successful when I'm looking back. So I highly suggest that you find some sort of ladder or staircase method for planning your goals similarly so that you can also know that these baby steps you're taking each day are taking you in the direction that you want your business to be going long term.
I really hope that you found this helpful, and I would love to know what your goals are for May. So, screenshot this episode, share it in your stories, and let me know what your big goal for me is. I love to see your shares of the podcast, and I always reshare them. My Instagram handle is @heyitsjenzaia and I can't wait to hear about your goals.
Thank you for listening to today's episode today was brought to you by Dubsado my absolute favorite customer management tool. If you're looking to streamline and systematize your service-based business, I highly recommend Dubsado for 20% off of your first month. Head to marketscalegrow.com/dubsado that's D U B S A D O and use the code Jenzaia at checkout. And don't forget to head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community where you'll find inspiring, ambitious teacherpreneurs who are looking to grow and scale their businesses just like you... See you soon.