Hey Reader,
Last week I was in a check-in call with one of the brands I’ve been managing off and on since I started Cedar June (in fact she was the first client I ever booked through Honey Book). I hadn’t done her mid-year brand reset and looked at the numbers yet - but she was expressing wanting to go all in on one platform this month - and ditch Instagram, maybe even FloDesk.
A lot of her feelings toward why she wanted to do that were valid. That is important to note because at the end of the day it doesn’t just come down to the numbers.
If you are creating content on a platform that you hate - that energetically affects you, your creativity, and in turn the rest of your business. It is its own form of the branding butterfly effect.
To have a brand and content strategy that truly works for you, you need to balance your feelings with the facts.
I tapped the brakes mid-conversation and pointed out that
- The content we had posted on Instagram was working and performing well
- There were some simple navigational tweaks that we could make to her website and Instagram links to get more people over to Substack
- That we didn’t know the numbers yet - we didn’t know (and still don’t, honestly) that people weren’t going from Instagram to Substack. It was just an assumption that was being made based on emotion.
- Andddddd that this Summer - more than ever people are spending less time on socials. Which means the numbers game is even more important. I pointed out that me and I both are bricked 50% of the time, and that means we can’t just decide something isn’t working overnight.
I know you’ve done the same.
I have to.
You burn it all down just to realize - maybe you should have paused for a minute?
(Like when I rage deleted every old blog I had written on my old site because I decided they all sucked one day)#baddecision
So - we haven’t made any decisions yet. We have ideas - but we are waiting to get the numbers and balance those with the feelings. We're actually giving ourselves to the 15th to experiment a little bit.
The decisions we make, what we prioritize - and work on first, will all be determined by those numbers and balanced with the feelings.
The mid-year brand reset is designed to help you do just that - and come up with a few strategies to implement in the next quarter - that are designed and aligned to help you get closer to your end-of-year goals for your brand.
But implement is the keyword here.
Because sure, you can create a strategy - but what really matters is what you do with it.
In this week’s newsletter, we are going to talk about becoming your own brand manager and working on your ability to zoom in and out.
By the end of the mid-year brand reset, you should have 2-3 Strategies or initiatives you want to execute in Q3. It is important that these are tied to the bigger picture - and the goals you have for this year as a whole (here's a template that can help you do that).
Now we need to figure out how to actually execute and implement the Brand Strategy you designed.
Step #1 Understanding your time
- This is why in Pt. 1 of the mid year brand reset I included details about your work schedule and what your capacity will look like in the Strategy prompt.
- How do you work, and how will you work best in this season? Do you communicate better in the afternoon? Or would you rather get your admin done in the morning? Only have childcare half the day? What do you want to do while your kids are gone? Thinking about what work will look like for you this summer is the first step in creating a plan that you won’t ditch after a week because it is more work than you actually have time for right now.
- Also make sure you are accounting for whatever time off you already have planned so you don’t launch something the week you get home or forget to make extra time the week before to batch out content.
Step #2 Getting clear on the baseline
- What do you need to do vs. what do you want to do?
- If you only did one strategy, one initiative this quarter - what would it be??
- What could it look like to go all in on one project, one launch - and let the rest sit?
- What is the bare minimum you need to do to check each project, or initiative or strategy whatever you want to call it off your list?
- If you can help it - pick one thing to start with and limit yourself to three things you are working on this quarter.
Here’s an example from my Q3 strategy
Okay - so you have the things you are going to focus on behind the scenes of your brand this summer. Once you know how much time you have to work on your own brand, you are going to pick one thing to start with.For me the way the timing worked out - I kicked the quarter off with the Birthday Studio Sale.
Step #3 The Brain Dump
Once you know the first strategy you are going to tackle - grab a pen and paper and brain dump everything - every task and question you have related to it on a piece of paper. Make it imperfect - mind map it. Let your thoughts be fluid, ebb and flow. And then maybe - just maybe before you move on to the next step - you sleep on it.
Keep your notebook close - or a notes app, because you and I both know that you will think of more later on and come back to it. By the next day or so you should get to a point where you can begin to sequence it.
Now if you get to this point and **you don’t actually know what you need to do to get to point B. You have more questions than answers, and you don’t know how to do a lot of the things you need to do to reach that goal, launch that new offer, rebrand that newsletter. It’s a clear sign that you are stuck in the messy middle of your latest brand pivot.
Booking a studio session gets you
- A sounding board a second set of eyes on your brand,
- Someone who has done something similar before and can show you exactly what to do
- Someone to teach you how to navigate the technical and design aspects of your project through 1:1 recorded looms
- Related recommended and trusted resources that are curated to answer your nuanced, unique brand and content questions.
It clears up the murky middle of it all if you can’t see the way through on your own.
Basically - you know you want to do this thing but you don’t even begin to know how to get started on it - then you should book one of the three remaining Summer Studio Sessions.
If you do feel like you’ve got the brain dump piece down - keep reading.
Step #4 The Plan
Once you have your brain dump and you understand your time, you can organize those tasks in sequence - what you need to do first → last.
You could also organize them by month, or week (it depends on your brain and the season of business you are in). I recommend you focus on one initiative, goal, or project - whatever you want to call it at a time.
Plan out the first one - figure out everything you need to do, and the general order you need to do it in. Then create the time to actually do it.
Everyone has different strategies for managing their tasks and projects but here are some recommendations to keep in mind.
- Visualizing your time, meeting, and blocking time allows you to understand how much time you can commit to your brand
- Platforms like Notion, Notion Calendar, Google Calendar and more allow you to block time and move it around freely - so life can happen (as it does) and your plan can bend with you if needed.
- If you are blocking time, make sure to leave lots of blank space and schedule in time for your habits, hobbies, and routines.
- Understand the difference between the kinds of work you do re: deepwork/generating vs. admin/responding and how you work best/when you work best on those things so that you can make the most of your time when you are working and get into a flow more easily.
- Batch your time in some capacity. If it isn’t a CCO week then maybe you want to commit to working on your goal for an hour a day, or even every Monday and Wednesday. You have to protect that time you have for your brand if you want to get shit done.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to find ways to multiply your efforts and do double duty. If you read through my example you’ll see how i’m working towards my goals in more ways than one - and each step builds on the other.
- Install process control. Sounds lame I know. And yeah you have a plan for the quarter - but I can promise you it isn’t going to go perfectly. Creating daily, weekly and monthly routines and checkins for yourself is how you will see real progress and avoid creating a plan just to forget about it two weeks later. Come back, tweak things, reassess - let it breathe a little, then pull it back in.
Step #5 Repeat
Once you’ve planned out one strategy and executed it. Move on to the next step - this is why I encourage you to start with the baseline - if there is only one thing you are going to do. Start with that and see what happens.
Trust me - I am saying this as the girl who has tried to plan out a quarter or more in advance - only to realize that life doesn’t work that way.
Even in my retainer brands - brands that have a team way bigger than mine, I only focus on one big chunk at a time. The next launch. The next project. I build time to plan into my schedule - so that I can rewrite the story i’ve been fighting for years (that I am always and inevitably behind) and instead I can let one thing flex and flow into the next.
Sure - i’m thinking three steps ahead. Quite literally here. But I am only planning for one thing at a time.
I planned out the Birthday Sale and focused on that first. That Stratgey is done for the quarter now. Next i’m focusing on the CCO week - shifting the conversation and working on prepping for my own CCO week, and creating content about that for a minute.
Once that is over - i’ll be going out office and have less time to focus on my own brand.
I’m setting myself up for success now - because the last thing I want to worry about when it comes time for my wedding, is being burnt out by work, creatively drained, worried about what I didn’t get done yet for Cedar June or my clients.
