Build Your Momentum Plan
Lesson 16 from: FAST CLASS: How to Build a Business While Learning Your CraftMegan Auman
Build Your Momentum Plan
Lesson 16 from: FAST CLASS: How to Build a Business While Learning Your CraftMegan Auman
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:31 2Why Do You Want to Make Money from Your Craft?
02:13 3Exercise: Take an Honest Look at Your Financial Situation
01:34 4(A)lways (B)e (R)eleasing
06:03 5Priority #1: Email List
13:34 6Priority #2: Your Product Photography
05:52 7How to Build an Audience
07:51 8Which Audience Building Strategy is Right for You?
03:52Audience Growth Strategy: Search (with Tiffany Whipps)
08:45 10Audience Growth Strategy: Press (with Brigitte Lyons)
19:45 11Audience Growth Strategy: Visual Content Creation
07:30 12Is Your Growth Strategy Working?
04:53 13Honing Your Craft
09:35 14How to Optimize Your Experimentation
03:57 15How to Handle an Evolution in Your Craft
11:29 16Build Your Momentum Plan
09:28 17Simplify and Celebrate Your Progress
06:12Lesson Info
Build Your Momentum Plan
Now we're gonna pull everything that we've done in this class together, and we're gonna build a mo mentum plan for you. So I have a question for you guys. I started the class by asking if you were feeling overwhelmed, so I wanted to know specifically. Do you feel overwhelmed when you think about all the tasks you should be doing each business day? Some of you, some of you not who makes like it to do s that feels a 1,000,000 miles long. I way awesome list maker here, I can tell. So what I want to do here now is literally help you answer this question. What should I be working on today? Where should I be spending my time? All right. So we want to figure out how you're dividing your time between honing your craft and growing your audience. And really, you're probably adding in this third layer that we talked about feels like ages ago. Now, with improving your photography to whether that's just your product photography, whether that's also your visual content, you're probably you might be ...
spending some time and there as well. So you want to figure out how you're dividing up this time. So you want to take stock of where you're at and where you need to be. And we started this class. See, it all comes back around. We started this class by looking at the financial needs for your business. And again, we didn't crunch hard numbers in this class because we did that and make a living selling what you make. And this class is meant to be sort of like the simple version of that. And then when you're ready to crunch a little harder than you could go into about swim, right, this is just the sort to get you started. But we established what your financial needs are. It was sole breadwinner. If it was partial breadwinner, if it was like some contribution, if it was, support your craft. And so you should have an idea approximately of how much money you need to make to hit that right? Just ballpark. Give them in the in your head, you go jogging your book like approximately How much do you make? Ah, Month to hit. Whatever. That financial goal was for you. And then you want to start to ask yourself things like, Well, your current audience support that. I mean, I think it doesn't. That's why most of you are here. Okay. Guess what that means. You're gonna You're gonna give a chunk of time the audience growth. All right. Do you need better photography to increase conversion or grow your audience? Is that holding you back? Be super honest about that. Ask people about that. Um or do you need to work on developing your product line? Are you missing key elements? Is there something that can help you sell better? Or do you need to actually hold your focus before you could ever even work on these things? So figure out where you're at is related to your financial needs and then determine what percentage of your time to spend on each of these activities. And this is Super Ball Park. This is not like a perfect number, but think about like Okay, kind of where you're at now, right? So where are you dividing your time? Are you spending most of your time on making? Are you spending most of your time on marketing And then does that need to change? Right. Maybe you're 50 50 and you realize that to get where you need to go, you need to be About 2/3 of your time is spent on growing your audience right now. Or maybe you've been living in LA la land and you're spending most of your time on making, even though where you really need to be is growing your audience. And so you're gonna work on getting yourself closer. That 50 50 split. I think that 50 50 split is a good goal. But sometimes you have to be more aggressive at one or the other. If you got to make the money, you've got to make the money. And if that means spend a little more time on audience growth, maybe that's what it means. I know there are points in your business. We're gonna see we'll get into this. But there are points of your business. Or you can trade time for money. So really thinking about what those percentages look like for you? Do you guys feel like you can kind of ballpark that like it's starting to make sense for you and where you again? This is not perfect. It's not like we're not sitting here by the clock. You look at the clock when I'm working like I have no idea what time it is most of the time. But this idea, then you should sort of no like, am I spending the bulk of my day on audience building strategies? My spending the bulk of my day on working in the studio, my spending the bulk of my day on improving your photography, figuring out where you need to be spending your time and just having these big broad stroke answers because then we're not worrying that little micro manage. I'm not going like okay today, I need to spend minutes on Instagram doing this. No, it's like OK, say I have to get up. I have to get my block post out. I have to schedule it on Pinterest. I have to email my list. I'm gonna reach out to my stores. Then I'll go to my studio, Right? Simple. He has. We want to simplify. You also want to be honest about the amount of time you have to spend on your business. So if you only have 10 hours a week, but you really have to start making money, you might have to spend nine of those an audience growth. And if you're like well, I can't produce enough product in 10 hours a week to do that, then you raise your prices, feel that works, right. But be honest about the amount of time you have to spend in your business and then cut out any tasks that don't support these three areas. There is one more big reason why I didn't talk about Facebook as a marketing strategy because there's a giant time suck, but you feel like you're doing work. I feel like I went on Facebook to promote my business, like four hours later watching CAT videos. Right then, once you know kind of where you need to be spending your time, and then you have to get comfortable with, like how concrete you want this to be. I am clearly not that concrete, right? Like I have some big ideas of where I'm spending my time each week, and I'm really comfortable with that. I don't have a planner or not. I would never use once they're beautiful, but I don't plan, okay, it's just not my style. I don't like to micro manage my day. That's why I don't have a real job, but I know where I need to spread my time. And I feel comfortable that in the beginning, if you have to write it down in a little more detail, write it down a little more detail. OK, then. The other thing you got to Dio is you need to decide if you're going to allot time for each day for all three of these if you have to get all three down a day or give each element its own days and times. So for me, I have this sort of breakdown of market in the morning make in the afternoon. Here's your goal. And I know for long list makers, this is a tricky one. No more than 3 to 5 items on your to do list for any given day. If you're like Megan, that is impossible. And I have kids and I have this that I have that and that's not happening. I'm gonna let you create a second list. It's called Your Odds and Ends list. It's all that little stuff, right? Call the pharmacy to get prescription like pick up snacks for the bake sale. Whatever it ISS right. Those things go on your odds and ends list or even things like fill orders. Reply to email. Put those on the odds and ends list. This list comes first. That list comes second, right? You get to make a game out of this one. Like how little time can I give myself and still get it done like most of the time goes here. A little bit of time goes here. Make sense. All right. So, yes, the goal is to spend the majority of your day on the things that move your business forward. No more busywork. Here's the other thing. No more learning that doesn't support what your focus is. So here's what you're going to do to build your momentum plan. You're gonna assess the financial needs of your business. I know we did that, but just revisit that jack down a number. Determine approximately what percentage of time here has spent on growing your audience, honing your craft and improving your photography and be realistic. Step three. Be realistic about the amount of time you have to spend on your business and cut out any tasks that don't support your core activities. Make us stop doing list we're gonna stop doing and then step for determined if you're gonna break your time out by hours or days. All right. And then you're gonna create your to do list based on what you need to dio in each area on any given day So you can do this the night before. Are you new when you wake up? Okay. It's Tuesday to say is a grow your audience day. My strategy is search. I'm gonna pick one product. I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna do my keyword research. Gonna figure it out. I'm gonna rewrite my listing. Maybe if you're being a little more aggressive or you have more time, you're gonna do three products, but that's how you're gonna set those goals.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase