How to figure out what to do next...

IN THIS EMAIL:

🧐 THE JOURNALING EXERCISE I WANT YOU TO DO IF YOU OWN A BUSINESS: I promise you it’s gonna be fun and I p-r-o-m-i-s-e you it’s going to make your next moves hella clear.

HERE ARE YOUR Q&A JOURNAL PROMPTS:

I’m gonna share all of the questions I used for myself, as well as some of my own answers to give you an idea of the sorts of things you canthink about.

Your only assignment is: be honest, think deeply and answer each of these questions. ⬇️

WHAT DO I CURRENTLY LIKE DOING IN MY BUSINESS?

Write down anything and everything you can think of [you can be broad and super duper specific].

Here’s some stuff on my list: 

➡️ Content creation [but without pressure…I actually hate content creation when I have the pressure of: OMG, YOU HAVE TO POST TODAY OR YOU WON’T MAKE A DOLLAR AND THE WHOLE BIZ WILL FAIL, AND EVERYONE WILL BE LAUGHING AT YOU].

➡️ Writing emails [kinda like this one]

➡️ Strategizing, brainstorming, and coming up with killer ideas for you and your business.

➡️ Dreaming up and executing killer marketing and branding gameplans for myself and for clients.

➡️ Podcast interviews & speaking engagements [like at conferences or in masterminds].

➡️ Photoshoot planning and creative directing.

➡️ Dreaming up fun offshoots of our current biz [like my glasses chain line and my biz coffee table book].

➡️ Sharing and teaching my mindset hacks [Zero Fucks Club for one and for all].

➡️ Brainstorming for, and creating classes and curriculum for our new membership [One].

WHAT DON’T I CURRENTLY LIKE DOING IN MY BUSINESS?

Here’s some stuff on my list:

➡️ Lots of meetings [on the days I have a packed calendar I am SO damn anxious and bitchy].

➡️ Creating deliverables [like the mini magazines I create after my intensives].

➡️ Long todo lists

➡️ Voxer [especially if it’s a Voxer group…I’m cool with Voxer when it’s just with my existing, fab 1:1 clients].

➡️ Responding to allllllll of my DM’s [while I love, love, love connecting with and chatting with everyone in my community, I usually have so many DM’s that even going into my inbox feels overwhelming…and the same is sometimes true for comments].

➡️ Feeling like I’m duplicating efforts and doing everything inefficiently cause we don’t have lots of systems in place.

➡️ Always feeling like I have no time to create content [and then needing to create content under pressure].

➡️ Feeling like I am the bottleneck in moving projects forward [and then feeling the pressure to do the shit I need to do quickly].

➡️ Basically pressure of ANY kind. 🤣

WHAT AM I NEUTRAL ABOUT IN MY BUSINESS?

You don’t necessarily love doing this shit, but you also don’t hate it. Things like:

➡️ Creating Canva presentations [mostly for our [One] Membership now].

➡️ Creating Canva social media posts [for myself and sometimes fractional CMO clients].

➡️ Researching & hiring new team members.

WHAT THINGS AM I LEGIT BAD AT DOING IN MY BUSINESS?

This list is kinda long for me. 🤣🫣

➡️ Organizing or mapping out projects [more than a basic list].

➡️ Managing my calendar 

➡️ Sticking to any deadlines that are strictly related to me [and are not associated with client work or our [One] Membership

➡️ Taking notes in meetings with clients or team members.

➡️ Remembering ANYTHING.

➡️ Coming up with any systems and processes [and honestly, even when we do have them I’m usually pretty bad at following them].

➡️ Being consistent on social media [i.e. I’m usually not].

➡️ Managing team members.

➡️ Sticking to any type of budget or saving money.

➡️ Doing anything ahead of time [i.e. I wait till the last minute for everything].

WHAT AM I SUPER EXCITED ABOUT IN MY BIZ RIGHT NOW?

Even if this thing does not yet exist, what projects or things get you smiling when you think about them?

➡️ My Brand Pop Podcast [this motherfucker is still not done…don’t ask].

➡️ Growing this email list and making it the core of our biz. 

➡️ Creating my coffee table book. [I actually do think this one will happen in 2024].

➡️ Coming up with a real deal, legit content creation plan [that feels like I can easily execute it and also incorporates repurposing].

➡️ Creating my personal substack.

➡️ Growing our Membership. 

WHAT ARE MY CURRENT BIGGEST TIME SUCKS AND ROADBLOCKS?

The stuff that when you think about it makes you roll your eyes and sigh loudly. Or if not, the stuff that you know is just gonna take up most of your day. Here are some of mine:

➡️ Deliverables for intensives.

➡️ Responding to comments and DM's

➡️ Canva presentations for [One].

➡️ Content creation [brainstorming, recording, editing].

➡️ Canva graphics

➡️ Reading and responding to messages in our Skool community for our membership.

WHAT THINGS COULD YOU DO IN YOUR BIZ RN THAT WOULD REALLY MOVE THE NEEDLE FOR YOU?

It’s hard to know definitively sometimes if this will happen or not, but we usually have a good sense of it. Some of my potentially needle moving tasks:

➡️ Show up consistently on social media.

➡️ Selling and marketing way the hell better in these weekly emails.

➡️ Creating a welcome sequence to send when someone signs up for my email list.

➡️ Adding different tiers to our membership.

➡️ Creating a welcome mag/better onboarding process for our membership.

➡️ Creating an affiliate program for this email and for our membership.

➡️ Finishing our CEO Millionaire You course and selling it.

➡️ Coming up with and executing a monthly or bi-monthly masterclass schedule to get people on my email list annnnd regularly talk about our [One] Membership.

➡️ Updating both our Icon Agency website and my personal website.

➡️ Adding a signature to my emails.

➡️ Create a content library database for repurposing. 

WHAT ARE MY IDEAS, SOLUTIONS AND TAKEAWAYS?

Now I want you to look at all of your answers and start to notice any patterns that you see. Look a little deeper by asking yourself things like:

➡️ Am I doing lots of things in my biz that I don’t like? Or am bad at? Uhm, why?

➡️ Look at your “like to do” list…are the things on that list making up the majority of your days? If not, uhm why?

➡️ Is there anything on your “Things I’m excited about” list that you’re actively working on every day? Or even a lot? If not, uhm why?

➡️ Now look at the things on your time suck/roadblocks list and try to come up with a fix and/or a solution for each thing there [remember: a solution could also be: stop doing this thing].

➡️ Then look at your “needle moving things” list and identify 3 things you could actually tackle this month…this quarter…or even today [I mean truth time: if I wanted to I could add a goddamned signature to my email right this second]. 🤦‍♀️

My guess is: you’re going to have some major ah ha moments after doing this…I sure as hell did.

SOME AH HA MOMENTS FOR ME:

💥 IF I HATE DOING DELIVERABLES SO MUCH, WHY THE HELL DID I MAKE THEM A PART OF MY INTENSIVE OFFER? 

I get to decide what’s included in every offer I put out, so guess what: I’m getting rid of them [also, don’t worry: if you’re already signed up for an intensive with me, you’re grandfathered in]. 🤍

💥 IF SHOWING UP IN OUR SKOOL COMMUNITY IS SO TIME CONSUMING, IS THERE A WAY FOR ME TO DO THAT IN A MORE INTENTIONAL/ORGANIZED WAY?

Yep, there sure is. We’ve implemented an “Ask Erica” thread in there that I’m going to respond to each week on Friday. If I can make it in during the week to spend more time, great…if not, I have this thread where people can always leave specific questions for me.

💥 HERE’S ANOTHER DELIVERABLE I CAN CUT DOWN ON… 

I can make people co-hosts during my zoom intensives and if they want to record the meeting themelves, they’re then welcome to.

💥 DEALING WITH DM’S AND COMMENTS…IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? 

Of course I can hire someone, buuuuut it’s very hard to sound like me…and know what’s in my brain…and know that if you are showing up as me and misspell or misuse they’re, their or there I will hate you forever. Also! It’s not really connecting with my community if I’m not doing the connecting.

I’m not saying I’m going to do this, BUT there are creators out there who just don’t respond to comments ever. Emily Mariko is one of them and she seems to be doing ok.

Again, I’m not at a place yet where I’m ready to do something like this, but if I’m being honest: the idea of never HAVING to respond to another comment or DM again unless I want to kinda makes me feel giddy.

💥 HOW COME ALMOST EVERYTHING ON MY “I’M EXCITED ABOUT THIS STUFF” LIST DOES NOT EXIST? 🧐

It’s very hard for my takeaway here to NOT be: uhm, I’m not excited about almost anything in my biz, except for one or two things. I’m still thinking about this one.

Here’s the link to apply for our new membership [One] —a community of the coolest, smartest, industry disrupting entrepreneurs that are all working to become a “category of one” in their businesses [check out the cutie magazine here that has ALL the details of what this totally unique membership is all about—think Masterclass meets Soho House]. In March our theme is “zero fucks” and we’re applying it to tangible things in your biz that we all should be paying attention to. For example: creating a weekly email like this one from a place of giving zero fucks and doing it all in your own unique, upleveled way. We dropped our schedule last week for our existing members, but we def still have room for you too. It’s only $197/mo.