Episode 30 | How to Prepare Your Annual Promotion Plan with Sophia Noreen and Laura

Laura: 0:00

Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it. Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia Noreen: 0:25

Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup, and launched it in big box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family and self care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day. There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I am going to be one of your hosts for today. I am introducing one of the clips from our masterclass series on promotion, and I am doing this masterclass of Laura, who is my business BFF. We have been friends since we were six years old, as many of you know, if you are regular listeners to the podcast. So what we did was we had a small masterclass on our Facebook community and we thought that the podcast listeners would also benefit from this information. And the reason why, is because promoting a business is one of the key ingredients to a successful business. You definitely need to go and tell your ideal customer over and over again what you have to offer before they are willing to actually take a chance on you, especially if they are first-time buyers. What I want you to do is take note of the six steps that we speak about when you are planning for your promotion. This particular masterclass is all about when the main reasons that we wanted to hold this particular masterclass was because many people started asking us when they should start promoting, and basically you need to look at your calendar and decide months in advance before you start planning a promotion because it takes time to plan a promotion. So we talked about that topic specifically during this masterclass. Fortunately for you guys, we do have a workbook. And what I want you to do is click the link in our show notes, and that will take you to the workbook where you can download it and you can definitely follow along with our suggestions for planning your promotion. We do allude to the slide content during the podcast but that's okay because in the workbook we have the slides already there for you. So very easy for you guys to follow along and get action planning when it comes to planning your promotion. We also have another worksheet which we allude to in the podcast regarding planning your budget. We will also have a link available in the show notes so you can grab that Planning Budget Worksheet to plan that aspect of your promotion as well. All right guys, let's get started with this amazing replay of the master class, How to Plan Your Annual Promotion. Okay. So we are talking about your annual promotion today, and we're going to go through a few steps. And let's get started. Today we're going to talk about when to launch a promotion and then we're going to also speak about when to start planning for your promotion, and then finally, how to plan for your promotion. We're going to speak very broadly today. We're going to use examples from Laura's business and my business, and we're going to go step by step through a few things, and then a few other items we're going to cover in the next two weeks. One of the items regarding your budget we covered last week, so if you want that link, let us know. Laura has that link available for you as well. The video is not included, but you can get the workbook. So when to launch a promotion? We had this question come up a few times in our Influencer Marketing Made Easy group. They were like: Okay, it's great. We're going to do some influencer marketing, but when do we do the influencer marketing? I know for our product based business, we do our promotion launches when people are ready to buy the product, and our product is very seasonal at the moment, we do have a few seasons that we cater to, but we will do our launches primarily around the time that the customer is wanting to buy the product. Laura, what do you say about that?

Laura Hargrave: 4:26

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, being in photography, it's very cyclical. Being in Canada, we have seasonal weather to deal. So, with like a lot of service-based businesses. We have our busy times and our slow times. So, yes, we are used to those ups and downs, the ebbs and flows of business cycles.

Sophia Noreen: 4:45

Yeah, 100%. So when you are looking at your annual schedule, our suggestion is to really understand who your customer is and what is the product or the service you're providing, and ask yourself if you were your customer, when are you likely going to purchase this product or service? That is going to really help you tailor and zone into the time that you will make the most sales. Laura, as a wedding photographer,when is the best time you would launch and say: I'm going to be selling my wedding packages for this year.

Laura Hargrave: 5:14

I think even still like, to just preface all of that is, when I first started in business and I know we talked about this in the podcast when we were speaking about year ends and it was one of my tips, it was making sure you write down and keeping track of data, and so that kind really helped me to target when those ebbs and flows in my business where, because sometimes you just don't know, right? If you're new to business. Sometimes it takes a whole year cycle to say: Okay, these are my peaks and these are my lows, and this is when I need to be doing this. By tracking that data, I found that the prime booking season for weddings tends to be December, I guess a lot of people get married around Christmas time, December, winter, and then gearing up towards Valentine's day and just after that. up to the month of February. People, just with the new year and going forward on doing their planning, and that's when the engagements happened and everyone started booking venues. So that's how I identified that that was the cycle of booking for a wedding.

Sophia Noreen: 6:14

Okay, great. You may need to go through a year cycle potentially to really understand and zone in on when is the best time to launch your product or promotion, but the take home message here is that it is cyclical. Wedding photographer, seasonal business as well, same with the product based business. You may more of a clothing line or something that is not so seasonal, but you have different launches at different times of the year. So when you're looking at your calendar, we're going to really understand our customer, really understand the product and put in those dates of when do I feel I can make some solid sales? So that's the first thing that we have to say about that. It has to be a tangible exercise. You can't just think about it. You actually need to go and look at a calendar. We didn't give you a printout this time of the calendar because I know a lot of people are digital these days, and you can definitely just go grab a calendar if you're a paper person or agenda. Look at your calendar and really ask yourself, when do I see these dates being my sale promotion dates? You'll notice that big companies will be strategically planning their sales around the holiday season. They are very strategic about what's going to be the discount rate at this time. It's very strategic, and you need to be strategic as well when you are planning on promoting your products and your services.

Laura Hargrave: 7:29

I think the key word is being proactive. I love how you're talking about looking at the calendar and making a plan for yourself, because being proactive alleviates so much stress in the business cycle and it just makes your life so much more simpler so I love that we're reinforcing that to really be proactive in your planning.

Sophia Noreen: 7:49

It's interesting because as a new business owner, you may be pulled in so many directions so it was understandable when you're not being proactive. But if you know that you can reduce your stress levels and you can be better prepared with all your content to do the actual promotion, your email copy, then the experience of promoting your product will be a bit more enjoyable. That's how I see it because you know, half of the angst about doing a promotion or a sale, or even marketing in general is the lack of preparedness that we have. And so by thinking to myself, how am I going to promote my product in December? Or you know, for yourself, you say Laura is doing a bunch of minis now. She's planning her scheduling out her mini photography sessions, and she can start planning her promotion around them now because she already has date down in a calendar. So there's a lot of work, and I know we procrastinate on it because we're a bit scared, and that's a whole different conversation that we'll have for a different day, but I you that by planning ahead, by doing a 12- month cycle, it will really help you psychologically prepare and have you be prepared practically and be proactive. So hint, you will have two different calendars. Laura, do you have two different calendars right now because I don't, but I want to have two different calendars.

Laura Hargrave: 9:00

I have the same calendar, but I like to use color coding for certain things.

Sophia Noreen: 9:05

So do you have your launch dates like when you open up your photography minis to your customers? Do you have an internal promotion planning schedule? Do you say: Okay, three weeks before my launch date, I'm going to start dropping hints?

Laura Hargrave: 9:19

I think you're like the gold star in this I feel like you have this sort of down now, especially with your influencer marketing and sort of thing, you have that schedule going. I'm not great at routine to be honest, but there's always a time of year when I have to do things and when I know to do things to be proactive, like you said. I think that it's a great time to start for me, like in my business plan, because if I start promoting my summer and spring services, it's February blahs. Everybody's bored. Everybody wants to go do something. They want things to look forward to so I realize that and recognize it, and say: Okay, now's the time to jump on this. People don't have their calendar fully set this year, and that's the other thing with this service- based business, right? You want to get in before the noise takes over and they can't see you through that all. So, by doing it at this time, when I normally start the beginning of March, end of February, it's a great opportunity for me because I'm capitalizing on those winter blahs. And before everyone's schedule gets too busy, they already know: okay, yeah. We're looking forward to the spring session. I can't wait for the good weather, it's something to look forward to. We know we've got that weekend plan now to do it. So it's not interfering with our other social schedule. That's the part that I love about making sure my launches are proactive and set in the calendar so far ahead.

Sophia Noreen: 10:35

Yes, I actually think in a way you've touched on the point of respecting our client and customers' schedule and time, because we're not springing it on them last minute. We do also speak about how they need to see it multiple times before they will say: Yes, book it. So by giving them that runway of time saying: Hey, I'm going to have my spring minis at this date, you're giving them all like two month lead time, and respecting their time because they're busy, and you're giving them the opportunity to see it multiple times. I just think that it's the best way of really promoting your business and your services that really puts your customer in the center and you're servicing them.

Laura Hargrave: 11:14

I think it's part of the exercise, and setting this calendar is really just as you touched on before getting in your client's head and your customer's head, and working your way through that data to really analyze what are the peaks and where are the down points. And then setting yourself a schedule to say: Okay, if we know we're busy and X month, we need to be promoting three months before, two months before whatever it is and start to get that timeline going. It's a great exercise for sure.

Sophia Noreen: 11:42

Okay. So guys, the take home with this particular slide, is either have two calendars, if it's easier for you or do what Laura does, and have one calendar and make it very specific on when you're going to have your launch date and then when you, as a team or yourself, if you're working solopreneur right now, make sure that you have your own schedule dates on when you're going to start saying: This week I'm going to make content for my emails. This week I'm going to take great photos of my products so I can put them on social media. When to plan a promotion, get out the calendar, look at the dates. So we spoke about that and Laura alluded to this good planning takes 180 to 90 days prior to your launch. That's three months at least, and we do talk about this in our Influencer Marketing Made Easy program that we suggest you start your planning four months in advance. So this really lines up with that take home message that it takes a lot of effort to plan a really solid promotion. ,And, Basically, we don't want you to feel stressed while you are executing the promotion, so we want you to plan it ahead of time and have everything lined up and ready to go.

Laura Hargrave: 12:46

Think about school's out, summer's done. It's almost similar to retail, too. Think of it in essence. School's done and you go in a week later in the back to school. In retail and you're like: oh, we're just finished school. Why are we seeing the back to school product? But it's the exact sort of instance, right? It takes time for people to get used to seeing that, getting it in their head, the repetition of the visibility. So they're planning ahead and so there's no reason why we shouldn't be planning ahead. Another big holiday that I was thinking about that's so big is Black Friday, right? I think that so many people I know are planning their Black Fridays in the summertime, which is appropriate. You're planning your Black Friday launch ahead of time, so that when you get to Black Friday, you have that big bang. You've got that lead up all down and everything. Building that excitement and the desire to see what's going to happen but you yourself have to get that all in place much, much ahead of time. So like you said, so that you have an amazing launch.

Sophia Noreen: 13:45

Yeah, well said. And I think we really do need to look at the big box retailers even though we can't always but at least we can take some of their tactics. So I love that. That was great. So step one, we spoke about this last week, to plan your budget. We went through a budget sheet and basically, were looking at what you will make as a gross and we skim off the top a percentage to put towards your marketing budget. And I know as a new, business owner, I wasn't doing that initially. I was going Willy nilly and just saying: Okay, I'm going to just spend this much. So now we're going to become a little bit more strategic and analytical, prepared and say, we predict that we're going to make this much this year. So now we are going to set this much money aside based on the calculations.

Laura Hargrave: 14:35

And if anybody missed last week and didn't get a chance to look at the worksheet we had, it is down in the Facebook comments there. I've linked it to it. It's the marketing budget worksheet, and that will help you with this step.

Sophia Noreen: 14:46

So thank you Laura, for putting in that worksheet, it will link you to a Google spreadsheet. Unfortunately, the video has been taken down. We only put these videos up for about 24 hours. But if you are a part of the Boss It community and you are a part of Unstoppable, you will have access. So you can go into your Kajabi portal Unstoppable, and you'll be able to grab the video and the Google sheet, and continue. For anybody who missed it, if you have any difficulty with the Google sheet, let me know. You can always email us at [email protected]. Okay, this is extremely important. This is your first step, even before you schedule, you should know how much you can actually put into your budget. And I think, again, me going through my experience, I was not planning my budget accordingly. So this year and moving forward, we're going to be very strategic and saying: Okay, this is how much money we're planning on making, and this is how much we're going to put directly towards marketing. So even having a general idea of how much you're going to make as your top line revenue, and then what percentage can you take? That sheet will show your B2B, so business to business and B to C, business to customer. There's different percentages for both, because usually you charge your businesses a little less as a wholesaler than you would directly to your customer. Okay. Let's keep going. So this is what we're talking about, set your launch schedule for the year. So we went through that in quite detail but why is it so important to pre plan all your dates? Why shouldn't you just say: Hey, I'm going to do a sale next week because you don't have that lead time to really prepare your audience, or schedule your photography or any services that you have planned. So go ahead, pull out your calendar and go and look at the dates that you think your customers are likely to buy your product or service. Do you have anything else to say about that one, Laura?

Laura Hargrave: 16:25

Do it just don't procrastinate.

Sophia Noreen: 16:27

Okay. Next, my favorite, confirm your ideal customer and client. I actually think step three and step two are intertwined because you need to know who your ideal customer or client is before you even start planning your dates. Because Laura knows her brides and she knows the season in Canada is being not as festive in February. Looking forward to the spring, so she knows her family. So she knows that the brides will be looking for photographers after they potentially get engaged over the Christmas break. She knows her families will be looking for something to do in the spring to get their spirits lifted. So by knowing her ideal customer or her client, she knows now that this is the ideal time for me to launch my product or service so that way they can experience the joy of booking and looking forward to my services, because that's half of the experience for her, is not just actually getting the photography service done with Laura, it's actually looking forward to the event of going with the family. And I think people do sometimes forget that when you book a vacation, for example, it's not just going on the vacation but planning for the vacation, packing for the vacation and all the rest of it. So allowing your customers to experience that without the rush, So for you, make sure you go and look at your ideal customer, your ideal client and really get in their head and ask yourself, how would I best serve them? When should I schedule my dates for my services?

Laura Hargrave: 17:46

And again, this step is so important. It's the root of so many successful points and aspects within your business. So knowing your ideal customer and really looking at their consumer habits and their lifestyle, and checking out their ebbs and flows because that's so coincides with everything your business does. So I think, we've talked about this in the podcast and if you join us in the Boss It community, with our membership, you definitely hear so much about this and get down a little bit more on the nitty-gritty of that too. As you'd like to call it, figuring out your avatar and yes, this is such a key step.

Sophia Noreen: 18:21

So don't miss it guys. I know sometimes it's fluffy, but you got it. My whole thing is you have to fix the fluff, sometimes people think this is just not a real part of business, but this is your pillar of business, knowing who your customer is. Where are we going to promote? If we're going to cover this next week as some of the options that we use in our business for promoting, but before you go ahead and you plan your promotion, you should know that I want to promote on Facebook. I want to promote on Instagram. I want to optimize my SEO. I want to promote on Google. There are so many options these days where you can get your name out without spending a lot of money. We're not looking at TV advertisements and radio advertisements at this time but there are other options in there, a lot of other options. You need to really hone in on where your customer is, again, it's going back to that pillar of knowing your customers. Where do they live? What pond are they sitting at and where are we going to go speak to them? And I have used this example in the past, but my friend, who is an event planner, and she was promoting on Facebook marketplace and her customer was not there. So, What was she getting? A lot of people who were negotiating with her about her price. And I'm like: You're not supposed to be promoting on Facebook marketplace because that's not where your customer is. Your customer won't be negotiating with you because they don't have time nor do they care to save an extra 50 bucks. You're catering to that upper echelon. Not everyone can have fancy birthday parties. And if that's who you're catering to, then don't go to Facebook marketplace. Okay. So we'll go into that more in two weeks from now so stay tuned. Step number five. What are your promotion goals? What are your other metrics that you are going to look at besides money? Because obviously you're going to want a return on investment. You're going to want to see some dollars come in, potentially from your promotion, but there are other promotion goals and we're going to go into this in the final week. We will be doing another live session like this to speak about our promotion goals, on what metrics we should look at when we are going ahead? Basically going ahead and measuring our success in the entire promotion. Some quick ones that I think of when we're doing our Influencer Marketing Campaign is we think about our brand name awareness, and we say, "Okay, well, we don't get a return on investments financially, have we expanded our reach to more customers?" And it's a vanity metric, but a great way of looking at that is have you increased your number of followers? Has your engagement rate increased on Instagram? And then when you go into your analytics, if you have a business account or professional account on Instagram, you can see, have I gone into other countries? And for us at this point, if we're going into other countries and we have to ask ourselves, can we actually sell to those other countries, or is it worth our while to now go international and set up international areas for our business? Laura very analytical. So do you have any words of wisdom at this point? I know we'll do more of a deep dive in a month, but do you have any words of wisdom about metrics?

Laura Hargrave: 21:09

As you mentioned, there's other things beyond sales for metrics in the actual almighty dollar, and I think we even had a conversation about this a week or so ago on the phone. Sometimes things you do don't always generate immediate return. Sometimes you put the work in, but you expect it to come down the road like another year or two years down the road. It's great when you're formally planning these things out because you don't want to only be getting metrics that are visibility or, getting more followers unless it ultimately, somewhere along the line, you're also increasing sales. So you've got to really balance the promotions and how you're getting to your customer, and what your end expectation is so that you have a variety there.

Sophia Noreen: 21:56

Yeah, exactly. And I liked how you mentioned that even though you have the followers, for example, on Instagram or Facebook, and they are vanity metrics in some ways, because we don't know, we're not guaranteed that they will actually turn into customers. If you listen to individuals like Gary Vaynerchuk, they're like: Don't even look at the followers. It doesn't even make any sense because we don't always expect those metrics to coincide directly to sales. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't, but again, it goes back to what your goals are for your promotion. And if one of your goals is to gain brand name awareness, and one of the only ways of seeing that is your number of follower accounts, which hopefully will result in ROI later then that's what we'll use for this promotion. Later on, planting the seeds, like Laura mentioned, we're planting the seeds for potentially a sale two years down the road. You'll have a lot of people that are not going to be early adopters. So there will be lurkers in the background. They're serving your content, they're enjoying your company and they may eventually buy, but they're not going to be the ones that will jump up and line up for your service because they're not the early adopters. They want other people to test it out. They want everyone to understand that: "Oh this is actually a great service. Laura provides wonderful photography. I've seen her work for the last three years", and then they're finally going to say yes to her, but they've been lurking in the backgrounds and the shadows. And Laura was like: Who are these? Thousand people that are following me? I don't know who they are, but you know, eventually they pop out of the blue.

Laura Hargrave: 23:15

It's great though. It's interesting because with a service-based business, you can ask people where they found you quite easily. And so I always do that, like where did you find me? I think it's actually been on my contact page, or I asked that within the first meeting. And so that I can keep track of and the one coupling that recently, they're like: Oh previous bride shared your work on their Instagram, so then I started following you. And then once I got engaged, I knew that was who I wanted to use as a photographer, because I've been following you for the last year. Those are the things where promotion and how you manage your promotion, and word of mouth and that sort of thing. It's just interesting to see it was not someone who was an early adopter. They didn't find me on their own and because there was that testimonial, then they started following me. And then a couple of years down the road when they actually needed that service. It was like: Oh, I know who I want to go to. Not everything is immediate, but it's great to have that metric and know how they found me.

Sophia Noreen: 24:15

Oh, I love that. And for service-based businesses, you should always ask where the lead is coming from. For product based businesses, it is a bit more difficult. I don't even know how we would capture that, I guess it would depend on your volume.

Laura Hargrave: 24:26

There's other metrics like Google analytics and stuff like that tracking who's coming to your website thing. is ways within a product- based business and two, you'll also know based on how you promote. So if you're going to an event and promoting it that event and you sell X amount at that event, that's like this specific niche crowd and that sort of thing, and you always sell X amount of dollars at that event, depending on the business, there's different ways to track who and how they're coming to you.

Sophia Noreen: 24:56

That's true. And I, It completely slipped my mind that if you go into your backend of your website, you can see where the traffic is coming from and it does tell you exactly the sale amount. So if you're selling on Instagram, we'll tell you how many sales actually came through the Instagram app.

Laura Hargrave: 25:08

And even Shopify gives you some information there on analytics. I think Etsy does as well. So there's lots of data that's out there and it's sometimes just being tracked and you don't realize it but it's worth a check to go in and, and look there's insights Facebook or Instagram. look at those analytics every once in a while, see your peak seasons. It's all just great ways to gather metrics to look at your promotion.

Sophia Noreen: 25:34

That's really well said.. Okay, so stay tuned. A month from now, we will be going through that in more detail. And step six, divide up the work. If you have a team, it is very difficult to do everything by yourself but I do understand at the very beginning, we are all doing it ourselves. It is a one lady or one man show. So my other piece of advice is if you don't have an ability to ask family or friends for a little bit of help here or there, develop content, then you need to be very diligent on your own time and start becoming very habitual on, maybe take an hour or two each day or each week, or each couple of days. Tell the family, and we talk about this extensively in the podcast about protecting your time-blocking and how to really say, this hour, I'm going to be making three posts for example, and writing the copy and having it ready to go. It's hard at first. I tell you it's very hard, but you will eventually get used to it. I like doing things daily, personally, but not everyone has the capacity for that, but if you can even just carve out one day a week to start just to become habitual and say: This is my promotion time.

Laura Hargrave: 26:37

I'm just reading one of our viewers also commented too. She'd said, this is what I struggle with, I think a lot of us are moms and one of the favorite sayings, we always talked about it and arenas working through the cracks of time. It's no stranger to struggle with how to divide up the work and how to get it done. And I think that is the beauty of really planning. Give yourself that plan, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not great with routines. Doing things in a habitual way, but maybe it's more so like giving yourself a loose timeframe. So I find this works for me. I love lists, and so a list works for me. Knowing that I have this step and this step to do, but maybe not committing it to a specific day and time, but knowing that I have to get it done that week, it keeps me accountable. Those are the methods that work for me, but everybody's different. I think Noreen's a little bit better with time tracking and she's very more diligent with a routine- based approach. But I think, do what works for you, and we all struggle with this. You're not alone in that for sure.

Sophia Noreen: 27:37

Oh no. And yes, some people have the capacity to close the door and say, I'm not available right now and I'm going to work on this. So if you are able to do that, go for it. But if you can't, I love the list idea. I still have the list running I will say: Okay, I have 15 minutes here. Sometimes I also feel this sounds really funny but sometimes I'm just fearful to finish everything on the list. So we'll come back to the whole divide up the work and have a team. And if I don't have a team, one of the ways of doing this is when you're doing your promotion planning, write down everything that needs to be done. If you're doing email, if you're doing your Instagram, if you're creating Facebook ads, who's running your Facebook ads? Are you running the Facebook ads? And then after you write down all the items that need to be done, then put the names beside the individuals who are doing it, and then have specific dates for them to complete them by.

Laura Hargrave: 28:24

Time management is a whole other beast. I could go on forever about time management. I think efficiency is a huge thing. As simple as emails, I think once we talked about this, I'm like: Make a template". I was like: "Have canned responses". There's just little tweaks that sometimes you have to slow down to make the process a specific way, but it'll add up to lots of time savings down the road. If you can't divide up the work, if you're not able to outsource, which I've been able to take advantage of recently, and let me tell you, it's amazing. But there's other things you can do, so don't think that if you're alone, just think about those tasks that are remedial. Take time, but are just, continuously over and over again. See if there's ways to automate them, make them more efficient. We have another comment on Facebook. She says, or trusts that someone else will do the job to your liking. I think that's a huge thing. Especially when I started outsourcing, I had that concern and my only advice around that is training 100% relates to whether that person will do the job to your liking. So training is hard. It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. I spent hours making videos and sheets of do's and don'ts and whys but in the end, it paid off because you'd let someone into your brain exactly how you want to do it. That's just one tip of what I can say when you're dividing up the work and you're concerned about someone else doing it, and whether they'll do it to the level of your expectation. It does fall back on you on how you train that person. It takes time. A lot of time and sometimes there's frustration involved, but just keep going. If something comes back and it's not the way you want it, go back and then make that note for next time to say: Okay I understand you did this, but I want it to be done this way and why. It's hard to let someone into your brain, and sometimes we don't always know why we have the same instinct or why we think the way we do. And it's hard to verbalize that, but as much as you can verbalize what's going on in your head, I think the better the result of that work will come back to you.

Sophia Noreen: 30:23

Yes, exactly. If you can outsource some of the items on your list to somebody else, training will take time. So add that to the timeline, training your, team, and the way we do it is I make videos and I put them on Google, or I have a link and they access the link. They watch the videos and then they can refer back to the video. So I like doing video tutorials. That's my gold standard. And that way, if they leave then, you have a repository of your standard operating practices. Be like: This is all he needs to get done. If you have any questions, let me know. And then when you're making your videos, don't use anyone's name because I realized that after I was like: Oh, I shouldn't say someone's name because then if that person decides to leave right, then I'm going to pass this video on to the next person. Then that next person is going to feel like: Thanks for just handing me an old video. But that's one of my pro tips, don't use the names of the individual you're speaking to in the video because you want to use that video later on if you need to, because we're thinking like forward.

Laura Hargrave: 31:18

Like you, I use Google drive and do videos, and then I also have a Google doc usually linked to that task too. And then back and forth as things arise, I put new notes in there so that I'm always perpetually updating that with my thoughts or changes or what I'm thinking. So hopefully that helps.

Sophia Noreen: 31:35

Okay! Great comments. Great conversation. We are done, Laura.

Laura Hargrave: 31:40

Okay! Bye guys! See you in a couple of weeks.

Sophia Noreen: 31:43

Yes, in two weeks we'll see you again. Same time, same place.

Laura Hargrave: 31:45

Bye!

Sophia Noreen: 31:47

Wasn't that such a great masterclass. I really hope you guys enjoyed that masterclass and you've gotten the content you require to be able to think about what type of promotion you want to do and when you would like to hold your promotion. I know we went back to the fundamentals, speaking about your ideal avatar, who your ideal customer is, that's the best way of starting to plan your promotion. Know who your customer is, so that way you can basically plan the promotion around when they're willing to buy your product. Also, Laura spoke very heavily about ebbs and flows in businesses. It's great to track when your sales are occurring and when they're not occurring so that way you can look at your annual schedule and say: Yes, lots of people buy at this time of the year because they're getting ready for the next season of photography and that was Laura's example that she would basically promote during engagement season because she knew people were getting engaged. she was able to fill her schedule entirely of weddings. A few other items that came up was the budget worksheet. And as I said in the introduction, you guys have access to the budget worksheet with the link below. And you can definitely get access to the workbook we were using during this past masterclass with the link below. So if you haven't had a chance yet, definitely click on the links and go grab those workbooks and worksheets. Again, if you guys have any questions at all, like we said, you can always email us at [email protected] and we will definitely be able to help you out. Or if you'd like to join us in our Facebook community you can head over to bossitclub on Facebook, and click like and click notification so you know every time that we are going live in the Facebook community. We have not launched our private Facebook group yet. We are just using our Facebook page right now. But by clicking like, and sharing with your friends, and then everyone is able to access this great information. We will be hosting masterclasses monthly, and we want to make sure that you catch us live. So that way you can ask us questions right then and there, and basically take action when we are speaking about planning and promoting your businesses. Again, if you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to us either on the Facebook page or you can send us an email and we are hoping you guys can get into action. So remember, make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all. Talk to you guys soon. Bye. So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the Boss It Podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of your review and share it on Instagram as a post or a story and tag us @BossItclub. If Instagram is not your thing, no worries. Email your screenshot to [email protected]. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our Top 50 Tips for Starting and Scaling a Business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers. So don't miss out. Now remember bosses: make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes you can have it all.