Hi friends!

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

I really want you to 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.

No specific action steps today. More like a bird’s eye view, k?

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 stage of business you’re in.

This is massively important because there are certain things you need to focus on at each stage of your business. Knowing where you are right now will help you build a platform for your next stages. Think of it as a road map for getting from Point A to Point Z with your blog biz.

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

Bonus: If you want to get a jumpstart on the stages 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 Stage

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 stage if…

Stage #2 – The Hustle Stage

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 stage, 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 stage? I’m glad you asked!

You’re in the Hustle stage 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.

[clickToTweet tweet=”In the Hustle Stage, focus on building a following, growing your list, and original content.” quote=”In the Hustle Stage, focus on building a following, growing your list, and creating original content.”]

Stage #3 – The Growth Stage

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 stage, 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 stage #4.

You’re in the Growth stage 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 Profit + Scale Stage

FOCUS ON: AUTOMATING YOUR BUSINESS

You’re ready to take your biz to the next level! In stage #4, your business is growing consistently, and it’s time to add more team members and implement even better business systems. Buut, 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 stage, 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 Profit + Scale stage 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 stages

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

For example, let’s say you’re in Stage #1 and just launching your blog. Or, maybe you’ve been at it for a while but want to shift your blog’s focus, which means that your blog is “new”, inasmuch as you’re rebranding or charting a new path with it.

What you want to do is to create high-level milestones that you plan to achieve during this stage. I love working in 3-month time chunks because that is far off enough that I have something to work toward, but not too far off that I can’t see my end game, make sense?

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

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

This means that at the end of stage #1, you will accomplish each of these milestones. If we look at it another way, these are going to be your focus areas until you get to stage #2.

Phew! Now we’re getting somewhere. From here you’re going to specify 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. Woo!

Next, create high-level goals

Now it’s time to break the milestones down into goals. We’re not getting super granular with these just yet. Right now all you need to do is set high-level goals for the next few months. Make sure you account for each bucket in our 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 buckets!

I get it.This is one of those things where not all of the buckets will have an equal focus each month. Still, it’s important that you try to address each bucket, ev’ry month.

Why is this so important?

The reason is that addressing each bucket will give you a direct route to your next stage. Think of it as if you’re driving down a superhighway going 100mph. It’s a beautiful sunny day…you’ve got the sunroof down and there are no cars, lights, or speed bumps up ahead to slow you down. Just you and your destination.

That’s how we’re gunnin’ here. We’re tossing all four buckets in the backseat and hittin’ the highway. The point here is to get into a habit of constantly juggling the buckets.

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

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

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

Finally, break down your goals

This part is pretty straightforward. Usually, one goal will precede another, meaning that in order to tackle the next goal, you need to do “x” first. For example, if you’re in stage #1, your order of things may be to tackle 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

In the two examples above, the items listed would be your priorities for the month. What this means is that no matter what else is happening, these things get done. When other things pop up, you reschedule them or put them aside 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 each week and each day.

Here’s that 90-Day Planner again:

I like to use the planner with this time-blocking template to help prioritize my time each week.

Trust me, this dynamic duo is a powerhouse for helping you stay on track, avoid distractions, and ultimately, rock your to-do list.

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