This is one of my absolute favorite topics and I have talked about it many times here on the podcast and on my YouTube videos, and there's a reason why this is a recurring theme, because this is something that so many of you still struggle with today. Whether you are a brand new podcaster, brand new content creator, or even if you're a seasoned pro who's been doing this for a long time, we all get caught in traps of content planning. So it just seemed fitting that we release this episode about planning when we're at the end of one year and moving into a new season, because it really helps like drive that motivation, drive that inspiration. So I'm going to share with you three main things that I do as I prepare for the end of one year and going into the next year, and how you can use these things to help you in your content planning. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Profit podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, crystal Prophet, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we? Okay, welcome back to another episode. I'm so excited about today's topic because, like I said, I have created so much content about this. It is on my mind. I am a perpetual planner. I plan everything. Like I don't even want to tell you how many Asana project boards that I have in my account right now today, and they're not just for business. Okay, I've done this for home organization when I wanted to redo my pantry, like the home edit style. Like I have literally created project systems for everything. It's how I operate on a day to day basis, and so today I wanted to take some of these tools and strategies and really share with you what I'm doing in my business as I prepare for a new calendar year and some of the things that you can do as well. So it doesn't feel so overwhelming, because what I will hear all the time from podcasters, especially ones that haven't planned for like a full content calendar year. They look at 12 months and freak out immediately. They're just like oh my gosh, like that is 52 weeks. That is a lot of content. How about my creed so much? How do you fill in the spaces? What if you want to take time off? How do you batch plan? Like? There's so many questions around how you can do this and, of course, there's never a one size fits all approach to creating content. Some of you will take bits and pieces of what we talk about here today and run with it, and some of you will hear this and say that's what I aspire to do one day, right, like it's not something that I have the capacity to do today. Or, you know, maybe it's something that you can even outsource to a team member and you can say, hey, like I, some of this doesn't make sense to me. Go listen to this episode, go watch this video and figure out how we can implement this in our business. Whatever way works best for you, I hope that you find some value in helping you plan your content for a new year. But the first thing we need to talk about. So there's three key things. We're going to talk about Google and your promotional calendars. So, whatever your calendars live, that's what we're talking about first. The second thing is your content calendar and where that role significantly plays a huge part in your business. And then the third thing is we're going to talk about project management specifically as Anna, because it's just, it's my go to for all the things. So, first of all, let's talk about your Google and your promotional calendars. Now I want you to pretend that you have a blank slate. Let's like, just think about that first topic. How good does that feel? Okay, like, let's pretend that everything you did this year was written on a whiteboard and you come in with you know, maybe some Windex. If you're one of those people like me that like really wants to get the dry raceboard super clean, you have a paper towel, you have a magic eraser, whatever it is, and you are wiping that slate clean and you are so like, it's just such a good feeling, right, when you get all those marker smudges and everything, like it's a perfectly clean slate going into a new year. Now, what do you put on that Like? If you're automatically like okay, now what? Like? Okay, I have a clean calendar. I don't have anything on my whiteboards. What do I do next? This is what I do every single year and I advise this to everybody that is doing Before you just dump right in and say, ooh, I wanna start planning content, I wanna do all these things. I always start with my non-negotiables. Now, the non-negotiables for me. I have some that are in my business and some that are in my personal life, but because I try to work my business and my content around my personal life and not the other way around, I always start with the personal stuff first. So let me give you some great examples. So birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, time off, these are just some of the things that I absolutely add first Before I put anything else on my calendar. I put these in so that I can plan accordingly, because if I wanna take time off like this is a great example this year I took time off for a summer vacation. Well, actually, I took time off for spring break, a summer vacation. I took the entire week of Thanksgiving off, and I'm taking time off in December, and so it was really important to have all of this on the calendar. Those are like the big chunks of time that I'm taking off. But then there were also these weekends, like the kids had a three day weekend or a time in the summer where they were off, and so I wanted to make sure that all of that was intentionally marked, and I did that this time last year, and, while I didn't know the specifics right. I didn't know exactly when we would be going on a summer vacation in June. I just knew our family had been talking about going to the river, so we wanted to make it happen this summer. So I earmarked spaces in June where I thought this could be where we do it. So I'm gonna make sure that I don't have anything super intense during this time. So, even if you don't know the exact dates, you likely know the important birthdays in your life, the important anniversaries, the important vacations that maybe are traditions in your family. Like 4th of July, we typically go spend with my husband's family. We take some days off before and after the holiday. So I know that I can throw like put mark those on my calendar already. It's like, hey, I probably shouldn't have anything on the bookends like a few days before the 4th of July and a few days after, likewise with other major holidays. But there's one thing in particular that happened this year that I learned from that I should have known Okay, look, I'm calling myself out on this I should have known better, but I totally this slipped my mind whenever I was planning last year. It's not gonna happen this year, but around Halloween the kids always do like a trunk or treat or something like that at the school, and I had planned for profit podcasting. This is my digital course, my program. I was launching it in October. Well, everything kind of got crunched together and we'll talk about that in a second how there were a lot of back-to-back promotions and I was like I got to have a break, I need a buffer week, and so when I pushed out the dates of my launch for profit podcasting, it just so happened that my cart open landed at the same time Like one of my webinars was on the night of the trunk or treat, and I was really upset because I thought I was gonna have to choose. Like there's nothing worse. Like if you're a parent or you have like things that are happening in your life that you don't wanna have to choose from, like it is heart-wrenching, like it's terrible. And of course, you know there's gonna be people that say, well, absolutely, you should go to everything that your kids do. And then other people will say, well, you know they're fine, they won't remember this when they're older, that you know you had to do this, you had to do that. So I didn't wanna have to choose. Luckily, I was able to do both. I kinda missed a little bit of the trunk or treat, but I also wasn't able to fully be live on my webinar because I was also thinking in the back of my head like crap. I have got to wrap this Q and A pretty quickly because it's already like I should've left my house a few minutes ago. So just know that, like going into it, if you have things that happen every single year, fill those in on your calendar. Mark them down now, today. Make sure they live in Google or wherever your promotional calendars are, because they do need to be in there. I know they're for your personal life Maybe, and that's why I choose I don't put all that in a sauna, I just put it in my Google calendar, because I use my Google calendar to plan my a sauna. So I'll make sure and either just put like crystal out of office or spring break I'll put generic things in there like that. But Absolutely super important that you make those things happen, because you don't want to be stuck with those choices and of course, things will always come up. You can't plan for everything, but those personal non-negotiables need to go in your calendar first. That way you can make time, make room for all the other things that matter in your business and in your content. Okay, so that's the first piece, is your personal non-negotiables. The next piece of it is adding into your calendars those business and affiliate promotions, and I always start with the ones that happen every single year. So if you've been around here, then you know that I promote Marie Forleo's B School. I promote Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy. I also promote Marie Forleo's Time Genius program. We have BC stack that comes around once a year. We have Podcasters Kit. So there are a few affiliate promotions that I do every single year and they typically happen around the same time. So, again, while I don't know the exact dates of when Digital Course Academy will open in the next 12 months, I have a placeholder in my calendar that I know it'll probably be within this like four to six week period. So my content for that time should be focused on Digital Courses or generating revenue outside of. You know you create your content, you make all this amazing stuff. Why don't you add in a Digital Course? So it's really specifically focused on those promotions that happen all the time or, sorry, not all the time every year and you can plan for them based on your prior experience. So I would love for you to sit down and write down any of the affiliate promotions that you've done in the past that you plan to do again and again, and again, and if you already know that, that you know leader or whoever it is that you're going to be promoting is doing it the same time every year. Put a placeholder in there. You can always change the dates in the future, but have those slated in. And another thing that this is the moment I was talking about a second ago is I went back to back to back on three launches and it was really hard. It's the first time that that's happened in a while, and it was because Marie Forleo put out her time genius program, which, again, I'm an affiliate for, but I'd never been an affiliate for it before, and so when the opportunity came up, I was like oh great, like this is another fantastic program. It's all about time management. It's actually opening again in January, so be on the lookout for that. But it was something that was coming around that I was like this is also a great thing that my audience needs. I don't really teach it, I talk about it all the time, hence today's episode. It's basically time management in disguise, but it was something else. I absolutely need to do this. So I did digital course Academy, I did time genius and then I also did oh no, actually hang on, that was the reverse order. I did time genius, digital course Academy, and then I did my own profit podcasting launch. So three big launches back to back and they started like pre launch, for DCA started in August and my profit podcasting cart close was on Halloween, like the 31st of October. So all of the things leading up to I actually started pre planning and starting doing things in July. So from July to October, that was a lot of launching. It was a lot of to do list and things that needed to happen in order to have successful launches, which I did. For all of those I'm so proud of the work that we were able to do. But that came a lot of planning, a lot of planning. So what I'm looking at as I plan out the next year is white space. Where can I add in white space in between launches, in between? You know, like, if I'm going to commit to a launch in a quarter, how many am I going to do and where is the white space in there, because I'm fine hustling for a quarter or maybe even 30, 60, 90 days and then rewarding it with. Here's some white space Sometimes I will give myself. Typically the months of June and July are off. Like, I don't do podcast interviews, I don't do guest speaking. I try not to do anything that really revolves around me being on camera on a regular basis, unless I can like plan it or batch it. But that's because I want to travel, I want to like get on the road with the kids, I want to be in a place where, you know, my hair is kind of crazy, I don't have any makeup on, I don't have to worry about any of those things. So I want to make sure that that happens for me, and the only way to do that is to strategically plan it. So get those personal, personal non-negotiables on your calendar, as well as those business and affiliate promotions, and Put those on the calendar first. Then I want to make sure that you add margin in for the launches. When you're launching, reward yourself. I actually was working with a coach recently, so shout out to coach Jen. We were talking about having the celebrations of your launch on your calendar. You put cart open and cart closed, but where's the celebration? Where's your debrief day? Where's the freaking out of office? For whenever you're done and you need to reach hard, it's like make sure you're adding those into your calendar so that you can make sure that they're happening. But the other big thing was my big takeaway for 2023 was using my calendar to help me say no, this was beautiful. I would get emails from people that are like hey, do you want to be a part of this bundle? Can you come speak at our summit? We'd love for you to participate in this. Like. They're all amazing, very cool opportunities. But it was really easy for me to say no because I had prior commitments, whether it was a birthday party I had to get to, or it was I was traveling out of town to speak, or I was already a part of another affiliate. There was actually one period of time I'm not joking I was quadruple booked for promotions, like people asking me like hey, can you be an affiliate for this, can you be part of the summit and can you be a guest speaker in this, while I was doing another promotion, and they were all so tempting. But at the end of the day, I knew that the one promotion that I needed to focus on could bring tens of thousands of dollars to my business. So that's what I did. That was the only thing that I did, and I said no to all of those opportunities. And the reason why I felt comfortable with that is I knew that I still had a fantastic relationship with the person that was asking, and people understood when I said I already have prior commitments and so I can't do it this year, but please keep reaching out. This is like a trick I will tell you to add to all of your emails. When people reach out to you and say, hey, we want you to be a part of this, don't say no, thank you, and then that's the end of the conversation. Say I really want to be a part of this, but it just doesn't work out right now for my promotional calendar. Please reach out to me again when you promote this in the future. It's as simple as that, and I have been getting steady people like coming back and saying Thank you so much for letting us know that this doesn't work right now. We'll reach back out in Q3 or the next year when it comes back around. So keep those opportunities still coming to you, but just don't overbook yourself. Please, please, please, don't overbook yourself. It is not worth it. Okay, the next thing that we need to talk about is your Google sheets or your content calendar planning. Now, I have tons of previous content on this, so, don't worry, I'm going to be sharing those with you here in a second. If you want, like, if you're in full blown, like I'm going to be planning content over the next few days, then you're absolutely going to want to go check out these podcast episodes and these YouTube videos that I have for you. But now that you have all of your personal non-negotiables, you have your business and your affiliate promotions all listed out, like you know when those are going to happen. Go ahead and start filling those in, maybe in, like, the notes section of your content calendar. Again, these don't have to be the exact dates, and I'm actually going to show you my content calendar here in a second to give you an idea of what I did whenever I was planning for promotions. But you want to make sure that you don't tell a guest on your podcast oh sure, we can air it Like because I'll have people ask me. This is happening a lot more and more as I work with coaches and other online business owners that are also launching services or products. They'll say, hey, I'm actually going to be doing a webinar on this date or that's when my registration page opens. Can you air that episode on that date? And I try to be accommodating. I really do. I'm like, yes, of course I make sense. I would hope that other hosts would do this as well. But I would hate to tell someone yes and then realize, oh, that's what I'm doing another affiliate promotion and I'm going to be talking in my dynamic content about that. Or I was going to bake in some ads for when that episode goes live and then it's going to be mixed messages and it's going to feel weird because I'm going to be having multiple calls to action Like, hey, go listen to this person's podcast, but I'm also going to be saying, go register for this webinar. It's like you have too many calls to action and too many things. So in order to have that like massive impact of all of your messages aligning and having like a lot of synergy, you have to plan it out strategically. So, for example, I know in the months of August and September, when Digital Course Academy comes around, I have placeholders already they're going to be in there that say DCA launch, because I know that there's going to be a freebie or there's going to be a webinar, it's going to be cart open, or there's going to be something within that time frame that I need to just go ahead and block it off now and say, okay, if I record an interview, I'm not going to air it in this time frame. I'm going to either air it before or after, but not in this block of time, unless it's related to digital courses. So very, super, super important, because I would hate for you to be in this weird situation of someone asked for a specific date and then you either didn't air it because you are like, oh, I need to switch it for my promotional calendar, that person gets upset, or you compromise your own integrity or your own business to allow, like, accommodate someone else. So it gets weird, it gets awkward. I know these are the things that you didn't know as a creator until someone tells you, but it absolutely can happen. So I want to make sure this is kind of like my side note aside that you are using your dynamic content on your podcast, if you're creating podcast content, if you use Buzzsprout that is what it's called. It's called dynamic content. If you're in your account and you log in, it'll say episodes and then it says dynamic content. That is where you can upload your podcast ads for you know a specific promotion. I'll do this. I actually did this for a long time. It's still actually maybe live, depending on when you're watching this, but there's one for my podcast editing freebie. I put it at the very end of my episodes and you can hear all about. You know this free podcast editing guide that I created and I put that there as a lead magnet and I leave it out there all the time to help people have these podcast editing hacks. Now, does that make sense? To leave it up forever and ever and ever? No, it does. No, it doesn't. But it's made sense. It's helped me grow my email list and it's been a great resource for a lot of people. But I don't want you to feel stuck that you can only promote this lead magnet or this launch or this whatever in the time that you've slated on your content calendar. So make sure that you just don't have those mixed messages of your interviewing someone about this, but then you're talking about this topic but you're actually doing an affiliate launch for this. You want to have that synergy so that you can have a bigger impact with your content message. But I did promise you about planning. So if you're wondering how I plan my content ideas, I encourage you to check out this previous content that we published. So I'm going to read some of these off and then they're all going to be listed in the show notes. So previous content is podcast topic ideas how do you plan your podcast content? That one's a YouTube video. Then another YouTube video is podcast episode ideas a behind the scenes planning session. So I actually just turned on my camera and said this is how I plan content and I walk you. It's a working session of me and you planning content together. And then I did a content calendar for a podcast in four easy steps. So if you want something that's very simple and not complicated, I encourage you go check out that video as well. And then I have two podcast episodes. One is how to plan podcast episodes, and then the next one is how to plan your podcast content calendar. Now, like I said, I actually have some really cool stuff for you for a sauna that we're going to talk about just a second, but if you want to go all in and plan your entire year, I actually have this great resource. It's called one year of content in one hour. It is a super affordable offer. I'm going to have a link to it in the show notes for you to check out. But I did this training a while back and I still love it so, so much and I still teach all of these principles all the time and it walks you through how to get 52 plus ideas for your content very easily and you get it all done in an hour. So you could really have an entire year, one full year, like just think about it over the next 12 months. You don't have to think about what you're going to talk about every single week. You could have an all plan in an hour and it would be relevant for your audience Cause maybe you're thinking well, crystal, can I just ask chat dpt to do this? Can I just get AI to plan all of it? Yes, you absolutely can. But if you want to have really strategic ideas that go along with your audience and your business, then I encourage you check this out again. It's super affordable and you're going to find a link to it in the show notes. Again, it's called one year of content in one hour and actually, if you recently purchased podcasters kid the 2023 one, it's included in your bundle. So there you go, you're welcome. It feels like Christmas came early and you just got a free gift because that is included in your podcasters kid bundle. So go check it out if you recently bought that. But if not, check out the show notes and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Okay, I promise you we're going to talk about a sauna. It is my favorite. It is my love. I love it so so much. I love a sauna, but there's a few things that it's the main thing I was just saying. There's a few things. The main thing, the main thing, the only thing that matters and why I love a sauna so much, is it is my built in accountability, buddy. It's the one that is asking me hey, crystal, you said you were going to do this by Friday. Did you do it? Or you said you were going to have this podcast episode go out on Tuesday. Did it happen? Or you wanted to plan and write all these emails. Did you make them work? And I love it. I love it so much. I need that accountability. There's a lot of people that are like I absolutely need accountability. Well, a sauna is my accountability buddy and I want to show you exactly what this looks like. But first I want to give you two of the resources that I have, so how to set up a sauna for a content calendar for each month. This goes into the specifics of how I reset my content calendar in a sauna and what that looks like. The other one is Asana project management for planning podcast episodes, so that one goes into a little bit more of the specifics of Brown how you can set up your Asana for your podcast episodes. It slightly changes. I mean, I've been using Asana for five years at this point, so how I used it a few years ago differs a little bit today. But I wanted to go ahead and share exactly what I'm doing, and I had promised you also that I would show you my Google Sheets content calendar, so we're going to do that first. So let me pull up. If you're watching on the video, you're going to see this is my three month content calendar and I already did everything for 2024. It's just not all beautiful and organized just yet, but I wanted to go into Q4 of 2023 and show you a little bit. Actually, let's go into Q3 2023, because that one is fully done. So if we look at this, let me zoom out just a little bit you can see how I have everything marked, because we had talked about digital course academy launches and what that looked like B-School, what that looked like, and so you can see. I actually went in before these months happened and I dropped in placeholders for the month of July, august and September and said this is B-School webinar, this is B-School card open, b-school card open DCA, like the different things that we were promoting. So I made sure that I had dynamic content for those or that I mentioned them. I put notes in there for different pieces that I needed to make sure that I talked about or that I used as like supporting documentation for whenever I sat down to go and plan those episodes. So my content calendar doesn't show everything. This isn't my outline. You can see this is literally just like the topic that I spoke about for that episode, but it helps me know what I need to do for the future. So if I go into 2024 or, sorry, 2023, again I have some of the different promotions that are already in here and then going into 2024, I've already started planning some of the things that are going to be happening in the coming months. I have a few very fun surprises that I cannot wait to share with you, but pretty soon I'll go ahead and start filling in. This is this promotion and this promotion. I'm going to be on spring break. Like what can I do? So these are just some of the fun things that I like to have in there for my personal non-negotiables and my affiliate and business promotions. Now let's go back to Asana, because I want to show you my content calendar. So let's look at this. Let's look at this big, magnificent, beautiful thing because, again, I love Asana. I mean, how many do I need to say it like 50 more times? I love, love, love Asana, because what it allows me to do? It allows me to have templates. So if you're just listening on the podcast, you need to go watch this YouTube video, because I have templates for everything that I do for my Instagram post, podcast email newsletter, facebook group posts, podcast episode email newsletter and my YouTube videos. And when I open up each one of these, it has all the different steps. So if you've been around for a while, you know my PREPA method play and record, edit, publish and market. Those are the five steps that I follow in my content creation method, and so if I'm planning for the month, I have all the pieces of content that I need to create for the next month, and then, once something is like, I'm like, okay, I planned it, now I need to record it. It will go into the recording column and then it goes into editing and then it goes into publishing, then it goes into marketing and then it goes into debrief and analysis that needs to happen, and then everything is archived after that. So there's a few different ways you can do this. You can look at this in the list view, we can look at it in the board view, which I just had. We can also look at it in the timeline. So, if you're like okay, how much time do we have to plan everything? That's another really cool view to look at. But the one that I recommend most people who are brand new to Asana and you're like, oh, that feels a little overwhelming is use it in the calendar view, just like you would do a Google calendar, have it set up to where you're like, okay, this episode is going live on this date and then YouTube videos going live here and this newsletter is going live here, and then just go all the way down. If you know for the next year you're going to be publishing an episode every single Tuesday, then put a placeholder in there that just says podcast episode, because this is the secret to batching. People always ask me, like, how does batching content work? I don't know how to get ahead. I don't know how to get in the mindset of being able to batch my content. This is how planning ahead, having a strategic plan, even if you can only plan 30 days in advance or 90 days in advance, that is still better than not planning at all. Can I say that again for the people in the back? If you can plan for 30 days at a time or 90 days at a time, that is better than not planning at all. I don't want the takeaway from today's episode to be oh well, crystal said you have to plan for a year in advance, otherwise you're a loser and you're never going to make it as a creator. No, no, no, no, no, no, no but you do need a plan. You need a plan because the fastest way to burn out as a creator and have seen this time and time again is not having a plan. You sit down to record your next podcast episode or your next YouTube video and you're like, wait, what am I supposed to talk about? What's the next thing that I should talk about? What am I even doing? What should I do here? And then you can't think of anything. So you're like I'll try again next week. And then the same thing happens and you say, well, I'll just. You know, I'll try again the week after that, and then I'll try it. And then six months have gone by and you're like I haven't published anything in a while and I don't know how to get restarted in my content. So I don't want that happening to you. I want you to have a plan for your content. I want you to be able to strategically sit down and make your content work for your business. This is the key around here that we always talk about creating with confidence. And I want you to be able to sit there and say you know, I just feel really good about this week's episode because I know it aligns with the promotion that we have going on or it's setting me up to talk about what we're going to talk about next week, whenever we do have a promotional guest on and we're doing an affiliate like whatever. You just feel so much more confident in your content, what you're creating, when you have the strategic plan in place. So that's the moral of the story here today. I hope that this was super helpful. If you are brand new around here, make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button Wherever you are listening or watching. I'm so happy that you are here and part of this family of content creators, because we love to see new faces around here and it's always so much fun to greet new people. But, as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.