What Have I Been Working On

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Welcome to another episode of 7-Minute Marketing with Pam. Pam Didner here. I love sharing a little dose of B2B, digital, content marketing and sales enablement, seven minutes at a time.

I had coffee with a friend, Maria, last week. We haven’t seen each for almost 2 years. I was very excited to see her. After catching up with talk about our family and kids, she asked me: Pam, what have you been working on lately? Well, that’s a good question. What have I been working on?  How would you answer that question when someone asks you what have you been working on?

The first thing popped into my mind is that I spend a lot of time doing e-mail, Powerpoint, writing, and texting. That just sounds awful as if I didn’t accomplish anything except doing administrative busy work. But, after thinking about it a little more, I realized all of these activities, somehow, tie to the key initiatives and business goals I set out to accomplish at the beginning of the year. I established a revenue target, set the target date to publish my 2nd book, and identified a marketing mix to continuously build my personal brand.

So, what have been I been working on?

I’ve been working on several client projects. Billable hours are nice as that feeds into the revenue goal.  I submitted the manuscript of my 2nd book, which helps in hitting the publication date. I am redoing my website and continue to publish blog posts and podcast episodes.  So, preparing for my book launch, doing content marketing like blog and podcast to help build my personal brand and working to generate potential leads which in turn contributes to the pipeline and revenue target.

All that sounds good. But the question forced me to do a quick evaluation of my progress relative to my goals. While I’ve been spending a lot of time working on client projects, which is great for working towards the revenue goal, I didn’t spend enough time on prospect outreach. Not so good. I completed my 2nd book, but I haven’t created a solid launch plan yet. Although I am producing content such as podcasts and blogs, does that really help on the personal brand building at this time? I am not 100% sure. Her question made me realize that I need to do a more formal mid-year checkpoint of my progress before the start of 2H’18, which is July 1st. A check-point with myself.  I put that down as a to-do list.

Planning vs Plans

Let’s come back to how I answered her question: The first thing that came out of my mouth was that I do a lot of emails, Powerpoint, writing, and texting. What the heck? That was a terrible answer. Then, I said: “Maria, let me take that back and start it again.” This time I told her what my goals are for 2018, then I went ahead and explained that my day tends to focus on client projects, creating content to build my personal brand and getting my 2nd book published with a solid launch plan. Of course, in the midst of that, I try to find time to check off my travel bucket list and do my weekly yoga. Making my clients successful, setting myself up for success, exercising and taking care of myself is what I have been working on.

This question reminded me of a blog post that I wrote several years ago which has the highest number of views on my website. The blog post is called “the differences between planning vs plans.” You can google search that.

In that post, I talked about the differences between planning and plans. Planning is an active way of discussing the goals, objectives, strategies, and tasks that we need to accomplish. Plans are the documentation of planning.

Have a plan, then we need to be ready to modify or adjust it based on changes of your goals.

So, what have been you working on lately? Does that somehow tie with your goals?

Again, send me your marketing questions or thoughts via Twitter @pamdidner

Be well. Until next time.