Planning Ahead for Uninterrupted Success | EP240

What if a single bout of illness could throw your entire business off track? On this episode of the Mindset in Action podcast, I share my recent struggle with falling ill unexpectedly and how it underscored the critical importance of business planning and preparation. You’ll hear firsthand how not having a backlog of pre-recorded episodes led to last-minute scrambles and increased stress. I discuss strategies for preparing ahead, automating tasks, and creating systems that ensure business continuity even when life throws you a curveball. Discover how to keep your operations running smoothly, from handling podcast episodes and client check-ins to staying engaged with your audience.

Consistency is key to maintaining visibility and fostering growth. This episode highlights why regular posting is crucial for staying part of your audience's routine and preventing a drop in engagement. Learn about the benefits of batching and scheduling content, and how being a month ahead can keep you on track even during tough times. We also explore the impact of a steady online presence on platforms like Pinterest and for selling evergreen products. Finally, we delve into the advantages of leveraging Virtual Assistants and putting an emergency plan in place to seamlessly manage your business during unexpected events. Tune in for valuable insights and actionable tips to ensure your business thrives, no matter what challenges come your way.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:40

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. Proper business planning demands that you focus on the self-interest of the customer at all times. Brian Tracy, welcome back to the podcast. Everyone, I am so glad to have you here today. Today we are going to be talking about kind of preparing for the unexpected Also the expected, but more often than not the unexpected in our businesses, and why it's really important that we do this.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Now, if you have been listening over the last few weeks, you may well have seen that there has not been as polished as it normally is over here on the Mindset in Action podcast, and there is valid reason for that. But this is why this episode is so important. So a little bit of backstory for those of you who are new welcome. It's been a bit of a roller coaster for me over the last sort of six weeks or so with various different things, but in the last couple of weeks going back about a week now for a couple of weeks I haven't been very well and one of the things that happened was that the podcast wasn't ready to go out. Now I have been a huge advocate of batching and making sure that you have things in place. I fell off the wagon, so to speak, back in January. Terrible time to fall off the wagon, isn't it? Most people are getting on it, but for some reason, when I came back in the new year, I had this idea for this second podcast that I was going to do, and I never really got back into the rhythm of my batching after having the couple of weeks off over Christmas. So I feel like that was kind of me putting myself into a situation where I was going to drop the ball because I was out of my routine. So it was very difficult for me to get back in. And then I had this second podcast on my mind and things just didn't quite ever get back on track. So I've kind of been doing the doing it as I go kind of thing, which I don't like to do, because it does leave me in a position where oftentimes, late on a Sunday night, I'm going oh my God, I need to get the episode out for tomorrow morning, which is not ideal, not good for stress levels, not good for family time, just not good in general. So if you find yourself doing that. I want you to take this episode as your kind of stop point with me that we're getting back on track. In fact, this is the first episode in a batch of four that I'm doing today to make sure that I'm ahead of things. I've also got all of my guests for the next 12 weeks sorted in a list, so I'm going to be sending them emails this afternoon, so we're kind of getting back in the groove already.

Speaker 1: 3:51

But I wanted to talk about the reason behind it because, like with everything we do in life, in business, if we don't understand the why behind it, then it's really hard to have the motivation to pursue the end result. So why do we need to plan ahead of time? Why do we need to have these things sorted in our business? And this doesn't just go for podcasting. This could go for regular emails that you send out to your clients. It could be that your clients are on a schedule with you where you check in with them at certain times of the month. Those times could be automated so that they are done regardless of what's going on with you. There's lots of things that you can do to prepare for it, but what is the for it? What are we looking at? So the three things that I've written down, that. You might have other things that might pop up that cause this, but these, I think, are the three main areas.

Speaker 1: 4:53

So, obviously, illness, which is what got me. I was ill and therefore I wasn't able to actually record my podcast because I lost my voice, which is the first time that that has happened in forever, and it hadn't gone completely. I have been touch wood, touch wood, donna, touch wood. I have never lost my voice completely, like not been able to speak, but it was very hoarse and very quiet. I had to speak very quietly to get sound out not conducive to a podcast and I hadn't recorded the podcast episode. So illness is a big factor because when you're ill, it's often out of your hands. You aren't able to do the things that you would normally do.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Then there is family emergencies. So it might not be that you're ill, but something might happen in your family. That means that you have to step away from your business for a period of time and that can be that you could be doing what I was doing while I was ill, which was like trying to keep on top of other things, but there are going to be balls that get dropped, and it's usually those things that you see as taking up too much of your time they're going to take too much time to do, or that you feel are less important in that moment, which isn't always the case, which is like why we need to prepare for this. So, family emergencies. And then the third is that elusive holiday. Anybody remember what they are Like?

Speaker 1: 6:22

I don't know about you, but I actually sat down with my partner at the weekend and I realised that we haven't actually had a holiday a week away since July 2022. We didn't go away at all in 2023. I don't even think we did a weekend. If I'm thinking about it, I really don't. I don't think we went anywhere in 2023. And it's not to say that you have to go somewhere, but the ability to actually step away, especially if you work from home, the ability to not be anywhere near your office, really does create that stop gap where you're like, okay, if I wanted to work, I could only do it from my phone right now, which would be awkward, and I don't wanna do that, so I might as well just enjoy my holiday. I know there are people out there that understand that. So holidays is one that oftentimes, unless you have young children that are on half terms and summer holidays, it is very difficult to actually take the holiday in the first place. But if you are taking the holiday, are you preparing your business so that it is working while you take that break, so you can completely switch off from it?

Speaker 1: 7:33

Now somebody who talks a lot about preparing for the holidays is my business bestie and she can be your business bestie Carly Wall. She has a fantastic group on Facebook. I mention her quite a lot on this podcast because she is a great source of information. She's been in business for 11 years now over 11 years and she's been through all the highs and lows, from growing a business to scaling back a business, to making those hard decisions and building those boundaries for herself, which she's done really well. So I will link her group in the show notes for you so you can go and connect with her. But those are the three reasons that I see.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Why preparing our business for that unexpected or expected in the case of holidays time away from our business? So the next thing to think about is why? Why do we need to prepare to sort of continue, be seen to be continuing work when we're not there. So this is one of the things that a lot of people will sort of say well, no, I just, I just tell people that I'm going on holiday and I go, and that's it, it's done. But the problem with that is that it means that you drop some balls in some cases.

Speaker 1: 8:53

So the three things that I wanted to touch on were your promotional plans. So I'm going to look at it from the point of view of illness rather than holidays, because holidays we tend to plan in some way, shape or form, even if you don't know where you're going. You'll sort of say, okay, we're reserving these weeks for holidays during the year, so you can plan your promotional calendar around that. But unexpected time off often throws us completely through a loop. So the reason we need to not just stop down tools if we can, if we can prepare ahead of time, is because of your promotional period. So if you are in the middle of a promotional period or building up to a promotional period, it could really badly affect your results if you have to step away for a week or two or more. Now, if it's a long-term illness, something that's really going to impact your work, then there is the potential that you need to move that promotion anyway. But if it is just like I had common cold that just really took me out for a couple of weeks, then you need to be able to sort of see yourself through that period without it being you know that you've had to down tools and not do anything. So it's really important to keep that promotional calendar on track when you're poorly, because that is you know, that's how you're making your income. So the next thing is visibility, and it really badly impacts your visibility when you stop doing the things that you always do.

Speaker 1: 10:37

And we've spoken about consistency on this podcast before. I talk about consistency being bs and to a. You know from what I said in that podcast episode, which, if I can find it, I will link it below I talk about consistency in there. But it's not just consistency you need to think about, but if you are consistently posting, like for me, this podcast goes up on a weekly basis. If I was to miss my weekly upload, especially the Thursday, which has been ingrained now for nearly four years, because I started on a Friday, I think changed it about three months into a Thursday If this podcast was to not happen. What would happen is that my true blue listeners, my fans of the show, as it were. They would likely miss it and go. Oh, that's weird. They might look for it the next day. They might be back the following week. If it came back on the Thursday, they might see it and go. Okay, it's back fine.

Speaker 1: 11:44

But a lot of the times what happens is that you just kind of fall out of favour, and it's not because the person doesn't want to hear from you anymore, it's that you're not there when they normally listen to you. So some people who listen to my podcast won't listen on a Thursday when it's dropped, but they might have something that they do on a Friday that is part of their regular routine and they always listen to their podcast. So for me, I go for a walk every day and I listen to podcast episodes. So I know that on certain days, like on a Thursday, the Far Too Fabulous Girls will have released a new episode. So I know that I've got that to look forward to when I go for my walk on a Thursday. So you become part of people's routines. So if you're not there, they're just going to choose something else and then you aren't part of their routine anymore, and it is as simple as that. It is as flaky as that, because unless they are true blue fans, you know there are other things that are out there. There are things that will fill that space for them. So the following week when your episode is back, it may not show in their feed as high up as it normally would. They might not scroll that far to see it, they might just pick something else because they're not in that routine of going oh, it's Thursday, it's Friday. I listened to this podcast episode because they didn't do it the week before. You know it's Thursday, it's Friday. I listened to this podcast episode because they didn't do it the week before, you know.

Speaker 1: 13:05

So it's really important for your visibility to keep showing up, and another example of this is Pinterest. So I am doing an episode on Pinterest coming out soon, so do stay tuned for that, because it is quite interesting to look at the stats. You know I'm a stats girl. I do love my numbers. So we're going to look at how my Pinterest journey has gone so far.

Speaker 1: 13:31

And one of the things that I do notice is that if I don't upload regularly and by that I mean if I'm not uploading a pin a day, and by that I mean if I'm not uploading a pin a day, the view counts on my Pinterest plummet, absolutely plummet, and it is quite shocking and it is like you are being punished for not showing up. Now there is obviously with Pinterest. It's slightly different, because you can build that back up and your pins have longer longevity on Pinterest. So a pin that you posted last year will still get people viewing it. In fact, I have a pin up. My most viewed pin in the last sort of six months is one that I put up six months ago and it is like my highest viewed pin by far, and so it still gains traction because people have been interested in it. So if there are pins that are doing well, then they will continue to do well. But your new pins, you know, and on that particular day you just kind of get completely disappeared from the um, from the platform. It's's bizarre. So showing up consistently, even when you're ill, is going to help you maintain your visibility.

Speaker 1: 14:52

And then the third thing is sales. So and this kind of links into the promotional plan is that you could have things in your business that are evergreen products, that are passive income generators. So for me, that would be my launch ready system, which is on my website. So, for people who have got all the podcasting stuff down, they know what they want to do with regard to recording and editing, guesting. They've got all of their ducks in a row with that because they didn't find me before they got there, so they haven't worked with me. So they've got all that sorted, but they really want to make sure that they launch their podcast. Well, so I have my three-part training on my launch strategy on my website that anybody could buy at any time, so I can talk about that in my socials, in my emails, on my podcast, and that can be generating me income all the time, whereas, you know, something like my program only comes out a couple of times a year. So therefore, you know I need to be a bit more present with that. I need to be there for the eight weeks of the program, of course, but there's the promotional period beforehand, so that's a little bit different.

Speaker 1: 16:12

But when you are ill, if you are not posting anything anywhere, if you have completely disappeared from the internet and you just put up a post that says I'm ill, I'll be back, then your income stops as well, now you may have people that find your website by Google searching and, you know, go and find your things and still buy from you, but it's not going to be as much as it would be if you were maintaining your visibility. And I would say, even more so, especially if you've got evergreen. You know passive income opportunities there. These are the things that you need to have prepared in the background. So those are sort of the three reasons why you don't want to just stop work because of an emergency or an illness or a holiday, because you're going to stunt your growth and reduce your income by doing that.

Speaker 1: 17:13

And oftentimes the things that stop us are actually things that mean that we need more money. So if you're ill, you know that could mean doctor's appointments, that could mean medicine, that could mean all sorts of things that cost you money. And if you are not able to post on your socials or whatever, if you're not able to stay present in your business and keep your business running without you, then those income streams stop and then you haven't got the money that you need to do what you do now with your money. So really important to continue. So how do we avoid being in a position where we just stop.

Speaker 1: 17:57

So the first one is, you know, my number one fan thing, which I spoke about at the beginning of this episode, and it's batching. So making sure that you are batching things like your blog posts, your podcasts, your videos, making sure that you are batching your newsletters you could do it so that the majority of the newsletter is written because, like for me, my podcast is what I send out in my weekly email. So if I've batched my podcast, I can batch my newsletters and what you can do is just leave like the first little space for you to go in on the week and put in a little bit of you know how your week's gone or whatever it is that you do. That's more timely. You can add that in at the time, but you can have the basis there batched ready to go. Same with social media. You know, especially if you've got a core pillar content like a podcast or a blog, you can create your posts for social media, for those things, ahead of time, and you can then do the second thing, which is scheduling. So you can schedule all of your pillar content, you can schedule all your social media posts, you can have all of that done.

Speaker 1: 19:12

So I would recommend trying to get a month ahead with all of this. If you can be a month ahead, then if you're ill for a couple of weeks, you're not going to be stressed about it. So that's really where you kind of want to get to, and this isn't something you can just sit down and do like, okay, I'm going to get a month ahead. So, technically, I'm recording four podcasts today. That's a month worth of podcasts. Actually, because I have guests interluded, that's two months worth of podcasts of my podcast. I just need to get the guest episodes done as well. But I am not going to be able to prepare myself for four weeks because I need my guest episodes for one, but for two there are other. You know, I've still got to run my business whilst trying to get ahead with all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 19:58

So it's something that you can like gradually do so you can build up to be in. You know, okay, this week I'm going to work on getting two weeks ahead so that I'm that far ahead, and then next week I'm already going to be two weeks ahead, so I'm going to try and get another two weeks done, which will put me another week ahead, so that you can do it like that and it will mean a lot of work up front to start with to get you there, but if you can get four to six weeks ahead, you're just going to really take the stress off. For one but two, it allows you to be more strategic because you're thinking in a bigger way. So thinking about okay, what do I want to happen and what do I want to do in my business in the next six weeks? Like, what does that look like? Where am I going? What goals I heading towards? What do I need to focus on to reach those goals?

Speaker 1: 20:50

So it may mean that you do a little campaign about your evergreen product, that you have a post that goes out once or twice a week talking about that product, but unless you plan it, you don't know. So I think a lot of times, especially with the social media side of things, people tend to fall back on the. They're just doing it as they go, and I am totally guilty of this. I used to be very good at planning and creating ahead of time and again fell off the wagon and now it's kind of a daily thing. But that means that there's just less strategy behind it, because if you haven't got the plan behind it, then you can't strategically think OK, I need to be posting about this because this is coming up. So if you can schedule, batch and schedule, that is going to allow you to have a more cohesive appearance to what it is that you're putting out there and it's going to make more sense to you, it's going to have a bigger purpose and it will get you better results as well.

Speaker 1: 21:55

And then the third thing that you can do to help avoid you know this just stopping because of an emergency is to have VA assistance. So a lot of people think that a VA is a really costly expense that they can't afford. They think that they've got to, like, have this certain amount of hours or this certain budget, etc. Etc. They've got to have these particular jobs. You don't have to have all that. I would start talking to VAs now, about an emergency plan. Talk to a couple of people, see where they are, and it's good to have a couple as well, because obviously VAs tend to be solo workers and they take on enough work to do what they want to do and they may not have the time.

Speaker 1: 22:45

So if you were to fall ill and you need somebody to be there to like do those extra little bits in those emails that are no longer going to be out. You're not going to be able to do them because you're ill, so you need a VA to go in and just adjust the email and just put a little thing saying I'm not actually well at the moment, guys, but I have managed to get this out for you and I hope to be back on top form soon. Something like that in that area where you would fill in your timely content, you might have a VA do that for you. Or there might be particular links and things that you want dropping on particular posts that you would do on the day, because you don't want them in the post, you want them in the comments, and a VA could do that for you. So it might only take a VA a couple of hours a week to do what is needed to just keep those things ticking over for you.

Speaker 1: 23:36

But having that plan in place with a VA, with a couple of VAs so in case one is too busy at the time to do it, you've got a full back VA that would be really, really useful for you and it would just mean that your business is going to keep ticking over even though you're poorly, and it could even mean that you have income coming in. Now, one of the things that you could do with a VA is you could have a section in your Canva. You could do it in Canva, you could do it in Doc, you could do it in all sorts of different ways, whatever works best for you and your VA, but you could have a selection of posts that are about your passive income generators or your evergreen options that actually, if you're poorly, depending on what you've got up, you can say to your VA okay, so over the next couple of weeks, I've got these posts scheduled about this upcoming event that I've now had to cancel because I don't know if I'm going to be well enough to do it. Whatever, please replace it with. Please replace all the posts promoting that with my evergreen posts, and you can have a set of posts that are there to be swapped out that a VA could do for you.

Speaker 1: 24:55

Now, technically, depending on how ill you are, I would have been able to have done that myself if I had that plan in place. I would have been able to just sit down one day whilst I was not well and just swapped those posts out and put that information in, and it wouldn't have taken much for me to do that because you would only do it for the week and then come back the following week and see if you needed to do it again, back the following week and see if you needed to do it again. But it depends on how poorly you are or what the emergency is that's taking you away from work, whether you need to really be able to switch off and not think about it, and then a VA could handle those things for you. So that is kind of my little look at how to be prepared for the unexpected or even those lovely holidays that we get to take. Wouldn't that be nice, being prepared in your business, being able to get ahead of the game, having that stuff actually created so that you've got some kind of path forward for the next six to eight weeks, however long you want to do it. I mean I wouldn't go more than six weeks myself, because then it allows you to be a bit more timely.

Speaker 1: 26:09

And if you are well and you are doing something and you've planned out the next six weeks, they're all there, all of the information, the podcast, the blogs, whatever are there, and something timely happens within your industry or niche that you want to comment on. You can just push your schedule a week and add in that thing as the timely thing. So don't think that, oh, now I've missed this opportunity to talk about such and such because I've already done this week's podcast. You can always take that podcast and move it to the end of the line or just move all of them down one. It's not a problem when you're well to do it, but if you're're not well, you're already set and you don't have to worry about things because there are things that are already in place. You're staying visible, you're keeping on track with your promotional plan and you will still be able to get sales coming into your business. So I hope that has helped. Hope it's opened your eyes to some ideas that you might want to implement. Do let me know.

Speaker 1: 27:08

There is a brand new feature on my podcast, if you haven't noticed yet. So I know some people look at it on my website. It's not on my website but if you are well, actually, if you go to my podcasts on the website and not the blog, it is available. But on my, on the podcast player, you should see underneath the podcast where you've got the play button and everything, something that says text me. So if you want to drop me a text, say hello, tell me what you thought about the episode, tell me your ahas, your takeaways, fill me in on what you do when you go away on holiday.

Speaker 1: 27:45

What are your boundaries around that? How do you cope with sickness? Maybe I could do a follow-up episode of your advice and tips on how you handle that situation. So if you go to your podcast player, it says text me. It's not really a text. It kind of comes through to my host platform and I can see it and I believe I can reply. I don't know, I haven't had one yet, so maybe you could be the first and we'll see how it works. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening today. I will see you in the next one. Bye for now.