"It's like 75 Hard for Personal Branding"
In case you missed it, I'm launching a 35 Day Challenge for personal branding. I've take 20+ years of marketing experience and created 35 lessons, 5 workshops and a daily accountability group for anyone looking to get off the sidelines and get serious about their personal brand (whether you intend to monetize an audience or just want to stand out at your company or in your industry). 💪 35 days of content for only $175 ($5/day)!
Learn more about the challenge here. Starts October 15th!
♟️ MY TURN:
If you've been following Life's a Game for a while you know that goal setting and intention are the foundation of the game.
But so many fail at goals because they don't pause to
- Celebrate wins
- Acknowledge setbacks
- Recognize patterns
- Make adjustments based on new information.
As many of you know I approach my yearly planning the same way I approach building a marketing calendar as a CMO. I slice the calendar in 4 ways:
- Annual tentpoles & events
- Quarterly launches
- Monthly beats
- Weekly non-negotiables
- End of Quarter Retros
Today we are going to perform a Q3 Retro.
At the end of every quarter I review what's working, what's not and what changes I need to make to win in the next quarter.
Ready to take a closer look at your Q3: 2024? Let's dive in.
Step 1: Review your burners
I like to picture life as a stove top.
Some quarters I bring career and ambitious goals to the front burner……with relationships, travel, fun and fitness to the back.
Other quarters I move fitness goals, parenting or fun to the front and career to the back. Everything is still cooking but this quarterly retro is an intentional moment to move things around so nothing gets too cold or too burnt (out).
What was on your front burner in Q3?
What was on your back burner in Q3?
What changes are you going to make for Q4?
I've had work and family on the front burners with back to school and launching a few new products.
For Q4 I'm focusing on family and fun for the front burners.
Step 2: Review the 3 Ls
On a sheet of paper or in an excel doc, make 4 columns. In the first column list your main burner categories.
In the remaining three columns, write the 3Ls: liked, learned, and lacked.
Take 15 mins to make notes of what worked, what didn't and what you learned about yourself in those categories during the last 3 months.
Step 3: A Deeper look at Your Big Business Goals
Next I look at my business OKRs and see how the data lines up. If you need a primer on OKRs, you can read that here.
So many fail to grow because they don't know what's working or where the benchmark is.
If you don't look at the data, you won't know if you actually achieved your goals and which tactics to shift for the next month.
Here were my Q3:24 Business Goals
Objective 1: I want to launch a new product.
- KR 1: Ideate, create and pre-launch product
- KR2: Add $2k MRR
Objective 2: I want to Make Office Hours extremely valuable
- KR 1: 80% M4 Retention Rate
- KR2: Prep new Office Hours strategy for October launch
You see that growing on social and growing my newsletter were not goals for Q3 but will be a big focus of Q4.
A reminder: if everything is important, nothing is.
Step 4: Dive deeper.
Since awareness is the greatest agent of change, we need to pause and reflect. Take 20 mins to write down the answers to the following questions:
- What am I most proud of this quarter?
- What am I most grateful for this quarter?
- What energized me this quarter?
- What could have gone better?
- What challenges did I overcome?
- What lessons did I learn? How did I grow?
- What did I say I was going to do but never did?
- Where did I put my focus that did not serve me?
- What do I want more of in my life?
- What do I want less of in my life?
Step 5: Make changes.
Reflection without change is a moot point. Now it's time to shift things around and look ahead for the last 3 months of the year.
- What's on your burners for Q4?
- What's your big business goals for the quarter?
- What are you shifting in your week to make space for these new goals?
- What other changes need to be made?
- What are your anti-goals for Q4?
Hope this helps! Excited to see you push for what you want in Q4!
PS if building a personal brand is on your Q4 goals, check out my new 35 Day Personal Brand Challenge here!