What Should I Be Working on Right Now? (The DIY-Your-Biz Blueprint)

We’ve been tackling so many aspects of making a full-time income from a blog, I thought it might be helpful to take a breather.

Step away from the minutiae of DOING for a minute. Let’s look at your business from a different perspective so you can see where you’re at right now, and more importantly, what your unique success formula looks like moving forward.

Think of it as a 30,000-foot-view of your business.

Here’s what I’m covering in this post:

• How to know what you should be focusing on now
• How to “work” your stage to get to the next level
• Setting high-level goals for each stage
• Breaking those down into bite-sized goals

Let’s dig in…

What should you be focusing on now?

This is a great question! It’s so easy to feel a kind of push and pull between what you think (or even know) you should be doing, what the experts say to do, and what other brands and competitors are doing right now.

Should you be doing those things too?

It depends.

First things first, you need to pinpoint what phase of business you’re in.

This is crucial because there are certain things you need to focus on at each phase of your business. Knowing where you are right now will help you build a platform for your next phase. Think of it as a road map for getting your business from Point A to Point Z as quickly as possible.

Now, you’re probably wondering about these phases of business. I’m going to break them down for you right now.

Bonus: If you want to get a jumpstart on the phases below, you can use the 90-Day Planner I created with sample milestones, goals, and tasks to help you get started. Click on the image below to access.

Stage #1 – The Launch Phase

FOCUS ON: BUILDING YOUR BLOG + PLATFORM

Time to get your blog up and running. Your focus is on narrowing down your passion/niche, validating your profitable idea, laying the foundation for your brand, and getting your first few subscribers. This means writing your core message, identifying your target audience, designing a logo, launching your social networks and writing your first posts.

Whew! It’s a lot. You’ll definitely need some time to implement everything.

In case you’re curious, you’re in the Launch phase if…

Stage #2 – The Hustle Phase

FOCUS ON:  GROWING YOUR AUDIENCE + TRAFFIC

High five! Your blog is up and running and you’ve built a platform for your business. Now it’s time to hustle.

While you’re in the hustle phase, you’re going to be building your audience, driving traffic, and generating initial sales. You’ll want to focus on social media, building a following, growing your email list, and of course, creating original content on the regular.

You’ll also want to follow these steps to optimize your website so that it generates leads, subscribers, and sales. Psst…You can also grab the handy Lead Generating Website Checklist below:

How do you know if you’re in the hustle phase?

You’re in the Hustle phase if…

• you have 2-5k email subscribers.
• you’re publishing original content on your blog or video consistently.
• your combined social media following is between 100 – 10,000.
• you’re generating revenue (or close to generating revenue) but it’s not enough to replace your salary just yet.

If you really want to build your traffic and grow your social media following, grab my blog promo plan. It will help you create a plan for what to share and where, and how frequently you should share your blog posts to get the most traffic to them.

Stage #3 – The Growth Phase

FOCUS ON: CREATING COURSES + FUNNELS

This is where you’re really going to start seeing some traction in your business, where all your hard work spent building your platform and audience will start to pay off.

During this phase, you’re going to focus on streamlining your sales process, building funnels and setting a foundation for scalable growth. Your goal now is to move beyond selling 1-to-1 services and toward a “1-to-many” business model. The best way to do this is to create online courses and digital products. These will allow you to free up your time and prepare your online business for success, which is up next in phase #4.

You’re in the Growth phase if…

• you have more than 5k email subscribers and your list is growing on autopilot.
• you’re starting to generate enough revenue to sustain yourself and pursue your biz full time. Woo!
• your business is gaining momentum month after month.
• you have more than 10k social media followers.

Stage #4 – The Scale Phase

FOCUS ON: AUTOMATING YOUR BUSINESS

You’re ready to take your business to the next level! In phase #4, your business is growing consistently, and it’s time to add more team members and implement even better business systems. But, you may not have the resources just yet to do all that. You may need to increase your revenue first.

I’ve got the solution right here.

In this phase, your goal is to start scaling the things you’ve already created so you can generate even more revenue and profits from them. Your focus is on automating your sales process and offers so you can sell more with less effort. You also want to start streamlining and organizing the work you’ve done, so you scale with ease.

You’re in the Scale phase if…

• you have 15k email subscribers or more.
• you’re generating at least 50k a year.
• you’re selling courses and offers that free up your time every day.
• you’ve completely moved away from offering 1-to-1 services.
• you have 2-3 sales funnels that are converting consistently.
• you’re ready to hire at least two staff members (even if they’re part-time).

Next up, how to work the phases

Here’s where you start identifying what you should be working on right now so that you can get to the next phase. Before we dig into specific goals though, we need to know what we’re aiming for.

For example, let’s say you’re in Phase #1 and just launching your business. Or, maybe you’ve been in business for a while but need to shift your focus, rebrand and chart a new path with it.

Either way, you’ll need to hit some milestones during this phase. I love working in 3-month time blocks because it’s far off enough that I have something to work toward, but not too far off that I can’t see my end game.

Here’s what your milestones for Phase #1 might look like:

• Launch business and brand
• Publish 9 blog posts
• Complete social media profiles
• First 100 subscribers
• 500 combined followers

This means that at the end of phase #1, you will accomplish each of these milestones. If we look at it another way, these are prerequisites for reaching Phase #2.

From here, you just need to pinpoint specific goals and tasks that will help you accomplish them.

Don’t forget to grab my 90-Day Planner – I’ve even got a sample plan you can follow.

Next, create high-level goals

Now it’s time to break the milestones down into goals. You don’t need to get granular just yet. All you need to do is set high-level goals for the next few months. Make sure you account for each bucket in the Blog Profit Plan:

• Content
• Traffic
• Subscribers
• Profit

Now, I know you’re probably thinking How am I going to get it all done? I have a hard time focusing on just one of these!

I get it. This is one of those things where not all area will have an equal focus each month. Still, it’s important that you do address each focus area throughout the month.

Why is this so important?

Addressing each area will give you a direct route to your next phase.

Think of it like this:

You’re driving down a superhighway going 100mph on a beautiful sunny day. You’ve got the sunroof down and there are no cars, lights, or speed bumps ahead to slow you down. Just you and your destination.

That’s how you’re gunning here. You’re tossing all four focus areas in your backseat and hitting the highway. The point here is to get into a habit of constantly juggling them.

Using our same example above, here’s what your goals might look like:

• Evaluate your niche for profitability
• Finalize logo
• Pick a theme for your blog
• Write your first 5 blog posts
• Create social profiles
• Share content each day on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook
• Choose an email marketing platform
• Send first 5 broadcast emails
• Create one freebie
• Create my first welcome email sequence

Your goals may look different than this depending on which phase of business you’re in.

Finally, break down your goals

This part is straightforward. Usually, one goal will precede another, meaning that in order to tackle the next goal, you need to do “x” first. In the example above, you might focus on these first:

• Evaluating your niche
• Researching products
• Setting up your blog
• Writing your first few posts
• Choosing brand elements – logo, colors, fonts

Then move on to:

• Creating social profiles
• Sharing content each day
• Creating your first freebie
• Setting up your email marketing platform

The items listed above will become your priorities. That means no matter what else is happening, you chip away at them one by one. You get them done. When other things pop up, you reschedule them to make room for your must-do items.

This is easier said than done, I know! But there’s a way to make sure you stay on track, and that has a lot to do with how you manage your daily and weekly activities.

Here’s that 90-Day Planner again:

I like to use the planner with this time-blocking template to prioritize my weekly tasks.

Trust me, this combo is a powerhouse for helping you stay on track, avoid distractions, and master your to-do list.

What’s your plan for your business? Have you created one yet? Let’s hear it!