Episode 51: Effective Planning for Designers

Show Notes for This Episode:

[1:00] Today we’ve got another listener question from Lisa @lisasbalcony
[1:30] Lisa’s question
[2:00] Planning can be a great thing, but it’s human nature to fall into bad habits
[3:00] Lisa recently started planning and reviewing her years
[4:00] Dustin’s been trying new planning techniques and asks himself ‘what went wrong last year?’
[4:40] He let his subscriptions build up, as he tried them and forgot to cancel which meant a huge bill at the end of the year
[5:00] Planning is a bit like spring cleaning – things will pile up and once a year you clear it all up and feel like you can breathe again
[6:00] Tom suggests listing some tangible examples of how the hosts plan their work
[6:10] Tom prefers to plan quarterly, plans one big thing for each quarter but uses a weekly to-do list
[6:40] Design Cuts will launch two big things this year and Tom says he wouldn’t be able to manage more than that
[7:30] Having a goal of reaching 20 things in one year is not a realistic goal
[7:50] Dustin tried this and achieved only 3 of his goals
[8:15] He admits being really bad at organisation and planning
[8:40] This year he found a holistic coach that helps him with planning
[9:40] If you can’t afford a business coach, you can try a mastermind with your friends
[10:20] Make sure your mastermind includes people you look up to and will help elevate you
[10:50] Ian spends most of his time around his children and this helps with his childish nature
[11:00] Lisa has a theme for the entire year and last year it was getting the website sorted
[11:50] This year’s theme is: ‘do less, earn more!’
[12:30] Her aim is to focus more on her personal life but at the same time she would like to grow the business
[13:00] Planning your year ahead will also inform how much time you have for creating products
[13:30] One of Lisa’s goals should be hiring an assistant
[14:00] And to create step-by-step guides for the work flow
[14:30] How do you keep yourself on track and keep going?
[15:00] Lisa has recently discovered Trello and it changed her life
[16:00] The benefits of using Trello and how it’s been set-up for tasks at Design Cuts
[17:00] Tom believes the app was built by designers for designers
[17:40] Ian wishes to get his studio built in 2018 and Dustin wants to come to UK and help him
[18:40] This will help Ian be really inspired and his YouTube videos will look better
[19:30] Tom looks back at Lisa’s question and suggests an annual goal, which would be to double her income
[20:00] Then he split the year into quarters: in one look at marketing and distribution and in another quarter looking at dropping costs
[20:30] Your day to day work will continue as it is but the planning will give you more focus
[21:00] The next step is setting-up monthly goals e.g.: social media calendar, reaching out to influencers
[22:20] You will only need to allocate a bit of time daily to your monthly goal
[22:50] Tom lists other examples from improving your business: optimising what you have
[23:40] The list includes: redesigning your preview images, analyse the sales process, dig into the data and inform process for new products
[24:40] Lisa has lowered her expectations for the number of products she wants to make every year
[25:30] Be realistic when setting-up your yearly goal and this might mean giving up something else
[26:00] Most importantly think about growing your business in the long term
[27:10] Think about boosting your purchases from your return customers
[27:40] Offering discounts with increase number of products is also a useful strategy
[28:20] All the extra revenue adds up
[29:00] Lisa doesn’t enjoy sending automated emails but she knows she’ll have to do it one day
[29:40] Dustin says he will do every activity first to get a sense of it
[30:20] Tom suggest having a quarter dedicated to getting more from your existing clients and list the monthly steps
[31:20] Send a personal email and/or personalized gift to some of your existing customers to let them know how much you appreciate their support
[33:30] Ian admits he is not the best planner and Tom wants to hear his perspective on the topic
[34:30] Ian tends to shy away from things that he is not strong at and hopes they will sort themselves out
[35:00] He would like to sort out his website and make his offering clearer to his clients
[35:50] For this he will need external help from a website designer
[37:00] Tom suggests hiring a part time designers/copywriter
[38:00] Ian needs a specific designer for Shopify and someone with experience in MailChimp
[39:00] He would like to know more about the back end of these tools and learn how to use them
[40:00] Start with something no matter how small it is, even if it’s just sending an email
[40:40] Ian needs someone to conceptualise his website
[41:30] You can still get clients and have a running business with a basic website
[42:40] Tom confesses being ill at the end of 2017 and having an anxiety attack when thinking of everything he wants to achieve in 2018
[43:40] It’s important to look after yourself and your health
[44:20] Take the first step and you’ll feeling much better when you’re doing the work
[45:20] Dustin thinks Ian is great at executing and that is his advantage
[47:30] Everything eventually becomes a habit
[48:20] It takes 14 days for something to become a habit
[48:50] This is how Ian got into the habit of having coffee every day
[49:30] Closing thoughts from the hosts
[50:00] Lisa – what needs to change in yourself for you to achieve your goal?
[50:30] Dustin – have a theme for every quarter
[51:00] Tom – be realistic about the number of things you want to get done
[51:30] You should aim for 1-4 goals each year
[52:00] Ian’s goal for 2018 is to get 100K subscribers on YouTube and receive the Silver Creators Award
[53:00] To achieve this he made a goal of uploading a YouTube video a week
[54:30] Ian – See what works for you
[55:00] See the big goal and just reverse the steps down to smaller steps that you can take
[55:30] Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode