How to Make Your Rebrand Happen This Year - And Other Productivity Hacks

About the episode:

In this episode, I’m sharing practical tips for how to make big goals, like a rebranding project, ACTUALLY happen. I think it’s easy to have that new year energy and make really big goals, but when that shine wears off, how do you stay motivated and dedicated to take your goals over the finish line? I’m sharing a process using Google sheets has been game-changing for me in my business and I’m so excited to share it with you. I talk about why it’s so important to stay connected to your big vision on the regular while also making space for that granular view of hourly and daily tasks. I hope this episode helps you so you can make your biggest goals happen this year and gives motivation and encouragement that you absolutely can do whatever you set your mind to.

Takeaways:

• The 3 overarching steps to make a big goal happen

• How to set big goals and stay motivated throughout the year.

• How I’m using Google Sheets to plan and organize my goals and tasks.

• Why creating an hourly schedule to manage your time effectively is imperative 

• You need to find a management system that works for you that’s why I encourage you to try different ones until you find the perfect fit

Resources

Your Checklist for Hiring a Designer Ep. 20

The Organized Mom Photographer Podcast with Ashley Freehan

• Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode

  Hello, hello, thank you so much for joining me again this week for Rebrand with RuthAnn

  Hello and welcome back to the show. I'm so excited that you're here this week. This is gonna be a good episode. So definitely, you know, stick around. Even if you're not wanting to rebrand, this is great if you have a really big to-do on your list, like writing a book or coming out with a passive stream of income or launching a mastermind course. This is the episode that's really gonna give you some practical tips for how to make these really big tasks on your to-do list and on your goal list a reality this year. So I'm so excited to be chatting about how to make your rebrand happen this year and other productivity hacks. So many of us have really big goals and I know for me as an Enneagram 7, I'm constantly writing down goals and creative ideas in my notes app and I just have a laundry list of so many things that I want to do. Sometimes in January, we have all that excitement and energy to go at our goals and do all the things that we wanted to do. And it's exciting. And I feel like I definitely had that motivation and that excitement to going back into work and stuff. But sometimes whenever that dies down, it can be hard to continue to make progress on our goals and to make the thing that we want to do actually come to life and come to fruition. So hopefully this episode is really going to be helpful.

  So if you are looking to rebrand this year, specifically talking about rebranding, this episode goes really well with last week's episode all about hiring a designer. If you, it's like your checklist for hiring a designer. So definitely go check out that last week's episode. If you are in the hunt for the perfect person to help you design your brand, design your website, I definitely recommend checking that one out.

  And but yeah, today we are talking all about how to make your rebrand happen this year. So we'll go over like the top three things and then I'm going to break down something I'm doing this year for the very first time that I've never done that is really helping my productivity and just keeping me on course for how to make baby steps towards the big goals that I have and make them happen. And

  I have to say it's going really well. I'm so excited to share about this because I actually heard about this on another podcast and I'm excited to share because it has helped me so, so much. So, okay, the top three tips for how to make your rebrand happen this year or any big behind the scenes project that you have going on is number one, write it down. Number two, map it out.

  Especially this is specifically talking about like writing down which steps you need to take and then number three put it on your calendar And I'm gonna dive into each one of these in depth and so I have to share so I was listening to this podcast the podcast is the Let me actually look because I don't want to mess it up. I was listening to it the other day I mean I listen to it all the time, but I just want to make sure I get the name right.

  Okay, so I have to give credit where credit is due, and I got this idea, part of this idea, from Ashley Freehand, and she is the host of the Organized Mom Photographer podcast. Such a good podcast. If you are looking for a great one, I just love Ashley, and her podcast always has so many great mothering tips and tips on how to stay organized in your business and all that stuff. So I definitely recommend you check that out. But in one of her...

  podcast episodes, she was talking about this in the putting it on your calendar section that I mentioned in the three tips for how to make things happen. And so I really wanted to share that with you here. So because it's been helping me so much, I will say I just started doing this January 1st, so it hasn't been like forever. But in the last, you know, whatever it's been 21 days, 23 days, it has been working so, so well. So I'm really excited to share.

  So instead of feeling, instead of having on your to-do list, rebrand my website or like rebrand my business, refresh my website, those are really big tasks and it's just hard if that is on your to-do list because you don't know how to get started when it is such a big task like that. So something I did this year was I created a Google Sheet in Google Drive and I have different tabs for each thing. So I'm going to share the tabs really quick and then how I'm using each one. And hopefully you can pull what sounds useful to you and leave the rest, whatever works for you in this scenario. But I'm really excited to share. So in my little tabs, I have number one is vision, number two is quarterly planning, number three is monthly planning. Number four is hourly schedule. And then I have like a couple other tabs, tracking metrics and CEO days. So vision is my overall big vision for the year, what I'm hoping to achieve. And I broke these down into four different areas of personal, family, work, and some goals that I have. So I feel like it's really good. And I've done this before in the past. Like I've written down like my vision for the year, but I've never really kept it super close, I guess. It just got kind of lost in, maybe it's in my notebook, or it was in a Google Doc that I didn't have connected to something else.

  And so having it all in this one spreadsheet is really cool because I could just toggle between the different tabs and I can be reminded, like this is my vision, this is what I'm really hoping to happen in my personal life, in my family life, in work, and with my goals. And then I did like, you know, steps to make each thing happen in that area. So you have your overall big picture vision.

  Which is really good to check in with every now and again. And then in the other, in the next tab, I have the quarterly planning, and this is the year at a glance. So I have it in quarter, so January, February are in like one quarter, March, April, May are in another, and so forth, and I actually don't have this area super filled out, I just have the first half of the year filled out, because I know a lot is gonna change when the baby comes in June and all of that kind of thing. So.

  So right now I am kind of looking more in quarters or half of the year at a time, rather than the whole year. But this has been a great thing that I can just kind of see quarterly, like some financial goals I have for the quarter, and just kind of like some overall things. Again, big picture. And then the next tab is monthly planning. And this breaks it down into four to five weeks.

  in the month and my focus for each week. And that includes my work focus, my marketing event, like what I'm gonna be promoting, the offers I have. And like this is really good for me just because it just kind of shows me what, yeah, what my like weekly focus is to get to my bigger goals. And then guys, this is where the magic happens. And this is what Ashley was talking about. This is the hourly schedule. This is the tab that has the hourly schedule.

  And this is the one that, like I just said, this is the one that Ashley talked about in her podcast. So I kind of like embellished the other part of it just to make it work for me. But this hourly schedule, I honestly have to say, I've heard about this before. This, you know, Ashley is not the first one to talk about chunking, breaking out your day into half hour blocks of time. I've definitely heard this before.

  And I've just honestly always been scared to do this because I don't like the idea that your whole day is planned out. I don't like that it is like rigid. I'm an Enneagram seven, I'm a free spirit. And I just like having more freedom, I think, in the day. But I have to say, this has been working so well for me. This is where your whole week is mapped out in every single day is in half hour blocks of time.

  And like I said, this can feel overwhelming at first maybe, especially if you're more of like a free spirit. But I think the reason this has really been so helpful is because I can see exactly where my time is going. It's kind of like having a budget for your time. You can see like what you are working on. You can see where your family time is. You can see where you're taking your son to preschool in my case.

  You can see when you have to prep dinner, you can see the time that you have to work, and it really kind of was eye-opening because it did show me exactly how much time I have, which is actually less time than I thought I had. I thought I had like 12 to 15 hours of work a week, and I actually only have 10 to 12 hours, which is not a lot of time. And so it is really helpful because I can see.

  Especially because this year I really wanted to make it a goal to where I was like more intentional with my time when I'm not working I don't want to be on my phone all the time. I don't want to be checking email And so I'm kind of trying to put parameters in place. So when I am working I'm really focusing on work like a hundred percent and when I'm not working I'm with the kids a hundred percent or I'm with Fawad a hundred percent and that's something that is It really important to me and that's something I really wanted to focus on this year. And so having this hourly schedule really shows me like this is the time I have, and in those blocks of time, I have them like highlighted yellow because that's my like business work time. I can see like, okay, I have an hour here, I have an hour and a half there, and in that Google spreadsheet, I'm able to write down, okay, for this half hour, I'm working on this, for this half hour.

  I'm working on this and it just gives me so much direction for the day. Because sometimes I can sit down to work and I feel so overwhelmed with everything I have to do. I just end up in my inbox or scrolling Instagram and I end up wasting a lot of time because I'm feeling overwhelmed and I don't really know where to start. And this has been so...

  game-changing for me because I see like, okay, this is the week I have in front of me. You know, these are my three, these are my three priorities for the week. And for me, I broke them down to internal tasks and external tasks. So internally in my business, I'm working on this opt-in, I'm doing this welcome sequence, you know, whatever, it may be And then for external, you know, I'm working on this podcast episode, I want to reach out to this influencer to see if we can do a collaboration. And so it's kind of like showing me these are the things that I have internally and externally. And it just helps give me so much clarity and focus when I sit down to work. It has been so awesome. And so I just, if you have never tried this, or if this sounds like something that you maybe are intimidated by, but you want to give it a try, I just really encourage you to give it a try, especially if you have really limited time to work like I do. It just helps you see how much time you actually have and you're realistic about the time that you have. Because in the past, I know I'm like, sometimes I would sit down to work and I'm like, okay, I'm going to draft out two podcast episodes. I'm going to finish my opt-in design. I'm going to write this newsletter.

  And it's like, okay, let's be realistic here. Sometimes we don't have time to do all those things. And for me,being able to see what the time I do have and being able to put it in that block of time really helps me get the things done. And so, and so that is my master Google spreadsheet that I'm so excited to share with you. And so when we're talking about how to make a big goal happen, like a rebrand, so let me just break down into like how you can go about this. Is number one, put it on your vision board, whether that's a spreadsheet or your computer background, or it is kind of like an inspiration board of sorts. Put it on your vision board. What are you really hoping to accomplish? And for me, that's that vision tab in that Google spreadsheet that I mentioned. I put it there so I can kind of toggle back and forth and see what my vision is and read through what I'm really hoping to accomplish. Number two is...

  Put the thing, whether it's the rebrand or the writing of a book, whatever it is, put it in your quarterly planning. Maybe it's, you know, Q1, if we're talking specifically about rebranding, number one, or like, sorry, Q1 is hiring a designer. Q2 is, you know, working on your copy. Q3 is going through the actual rebrand. Q4, launching a rebrand, that is actually a little, sounds a little bit long. I don't think that process would be that long, but you know what I mean. So it just kind of put it in your calendar. And then the next step is to put it in your monthly and daily calendar of next steps to take. And this is where you really chunk it down into those baby steps of what you need to do. If you are looking to hire a designer, if you're talking about that weekly schedule, maybe you're going to research 10 different designers, you know, that could be a task. Number two is like schedule two or three discovery calls. So that kind of thing. So it's just really like chunking it down so you can actually get the things done. And the key is putting it in your hourly or weekly schedule because if it's not there, it will not get done. And this is something that I recognized that I have never done in the past as far as I know.

  I was thinking about this, I was like, this is the missing link for me, because I would always do my big picture vision, I would always do my quarterly goals, and I would always do my monthly goals, but I never had a daily, weekly, definitely not hourly schedule, to where I was actually putting it on my calendar of this is what I need to do. And I think I did it in different, when I was feeling motivated in different ways, I would do it but this way feels so much more connected to my overall vision. And I think it's probably because in that Google spreadsheet I was talking about, all of the tabs are all right there. So I can kind of, I can toggle back between my daily and hourly tasks, and I can toggle back to my vision, I can toggle back to my monthly. So it's really cool because it's all in one spot now. And before I would have it like all who knows where, just everywhere on my desktop and my Google Drive, all over the place. So it's really nice for me to have it in one specific place. And yeah, the thing is actually putting it on the calendar so it gets done.

  So let's recap those one more time. So you want to whatever the thing is, whether it's a rebrand, writing a book, coming up with a passive income stream, write it down. Number two, map it out and number three, put it on your calendar. And those are definitely like you know big picture things but I encourage you to you know however it works for you, the best thing you can do is put it on your calendar and it will get done.

  You know, obviously you have to go with the way that works for you. This has really been something that I've always struggled with, with how to be more productive when I sit down. And this has been an incredible, fantastic way that's really helped me. But whatever works for you, I encourage you to give it a try and just, you know, try it for 30 days and see if it's making a difference. If you are getting tasks done, if you are making progress on your really big goals, you know, that is.

  That is the thing, you just have to kind of give it a try and see how it goes and collect data and go from there. So I hope this was helpful. I wanted to let you know I have some exciting episodes coming up, I am going to be doing a series with my client where we're gonna be sharing her rebranding journey on the show, so I'm really excited about that. So that's gonna be coming out in the next month or so, so definitely stay tuned. I'm still kind of like.

  figuring out the logistics of that, because I've never done anything like this, where it's like, not live, but it's kind of basically just recording the whole process. So definitely stay tuned. It's gonna be a really great series. And if you are loving the show, I would be so honored if you could share it to your Instagram stories or on your social media channel and tag me. I would love to. Thank you so much for sharing and I would love to get this podcast out to more women who could really benefit from the discussions that we're having of like how to make your really big goals happen.

  how to go through the rebranding process so that it's not overwhelming, and yeah, navigating change and growth in your business. So thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for being here, for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and I will chat with you later.