Ep 200 – Big Picture or Little One?

Podcast Introduction:

Mentoring with Geraldine is a bite-sized practitioner podcast for naturopaths, nutritionists, herbalists, and practitioners. Responding directly to the needs of the practising natural therapist.  With interviews, herbal discussions, something business, something clinical … you’ll get the variety you need to enjoy and stay motivated in practice.

So thanks for joining me today. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast for our episodes. If you’d like more support, get in contact and I look forward to working with you soon.

Episode Introduction: Future Organisation

Hello, everyone.

Here we are getting towards the end of September. I can’t believe it. 

Now, this isn’t the September round-up – that will be coming soon for “Mentoring with Geraldine and the Bite-Size podcast”.  

And also in the groups, we will be having a round-up. 

Are you getting my recap of events email every Friday?

Because that one has links to podcasts and links to my “Lives” in “Strictly Education & Support” (Facebook group). 

So if you’d like to be getting that email, let me know.  

Send me a message – email me [email protected]

So what are we going to talk about today? 

Today is all about future organisation.

Because we are in the September-October time of the year, when not a lot happens, really. Schools are open, kids are doing normal things, the teams are just doing team stuff. 

We’re not ‘end of season’…

I remember my daughter when she did netball (when she was about 10 or 11) and we had semifinals, and we had the semi semifinals, and then we had the semifinal of the semifinal. Then we had the final of the finals, then we had the finals … it seemed to go on forever before we actually got to the final! I kept turning up going: “Oh, this is the final”. “No, no, no, no. This is a semi semi-final”. 

So that isn’t for a while yet – that’s towards the end of the season. 

And right now, September-October time, things are pretty stable, aren’t they?

Use these “In-Between” Months:

When you’ve got to take a kid somewhere for sport, everything is, as it is – we’re just working. We’ve had the July holidays. We’re about to have the Christmas holidays. 

And that’s what I want to talk to you about, because Christmas holidays seem like a long way off, don’t they? We’re writing 9th month, 10th the month, but that means we’re only 2 months off from Christmas. 

Now, I don’t want to worry you. 

I don’t want to panic you. 

• What I do want you to do, is to:
  • go back and have a look at what you delivered to the world last year
• Because you can start getting ahead now 
  • by just tweaking what you delivered to the world 12 months ago

And it means that we are getting ready for the end of the year. 

So I’m getting ready to close the doors of The Academy, so that I can concentrate on the people who are in there. 

I can have ‘co-working’ with them. 

And in that ‘co-working’ time, we all prep for the end of the year. 

We prep to get ahead.

Because that’s the thing when you run your business, isn’t it – you’ve got nobody else doing these things for you. 

You have to do them. 

And September-October time is very set as I’ve said. 

So we know that we’ve got to pick up little Johnny at 4.00 on Wednesday and 2.00 on Thursday, or whatever it is. 

And so we have that set time.

Nothing unusual is going to happen. 

They’re not going to suddenly have a netball final, or netball’s not going to suddenly finish, or there is not going to be a netball party, or school hasn’t started organising the nativity or the Christmas play, or whatever it might be. 

So we haven’t got all these extra drop offs and pickups, and running around for other people.

We are us. 

And if you are single, you’re thinking:

“I’ve just had my holiday” 

“What will I do for the summer holiday?” 

“Will I keep working?” 

“When will I have my holiday? What will I do?”

“Maybe I’ll go to Adelaide for Mad March” 

… so we can start planning those things. 

But we also need to plan to get ahead with social media 

and now is a really good time to do it.

Nobody is going to look back at what you were posting last year

And we are launching all the time, in small business. 

We’re having to tell people we exist all the time. 

We’re having to say: 

“Hey, I’ve got availability here”. 

“Hey, this is what my room looks like”. “

“Hey, Christmas is coming soon. Do you want to be Christmas ready healthwise?”

Let’s Work Smarter, Not Harder:

So if we manage to create …

I have a Trello board actually in The Academy that people can access, with ideas for the whole year – social media ideas. So that’s in there. 

So I use that. 

I have others that I use, but I have a Trello board of what I’m delivering month by month.

So the Trello board I’ve created in The Academy, people can make a copy of it, and then they can adjust that, and make it theirs, so that every year they don’t have to be thinking of new things. 

The new things that you’re thinking of, are top-up to the baseline stuff that’s coming out. Because once we have this system in train – once we have January to December in train, and what we are going to promote and do, then we just update it. 

We go back to:

“What was I doing in September last year?” 

Now you might look at the pictures from September last year …

* Sidenote: Imagery is Important in your Social Media too

So I have a VA, Andrea, as you all know, and a number of times we’ve co-opted her sister, and got her on-board – we’ve got behind, or we want to get really ahead. 

So her sister has done the design of the social media posts for us, just for a few months. 

So when we look back at some of those, she often will put in young people (images).

So I couldn’t understand (about 5 years ago now) why I kept getting all these 20-something young women coming to see me. 

And then I realised that my social media posts were all young women, because she was creating pics about herself. So, although the story – she’d look at what we’d written – so I write what’s going on social media, and then someone else (Angeline or Andrea) creates the picture, and then she schedules it, and posts it. 

So we use Tailwind for our scheduling …. that’s right, I remember now – I think I have an affiliate link somewhere, if you want it, I’ll put it in the show notes.

So I find that very useful, Tailwind, and we post onto Pinterest as well. 

So all of these things that are being posted – Andrea does that – but I haven’t got the time to do the pictures.  As much as I love using Canva, and how much fun it is – I haven’t got time to make those pictures, so they will make the pictures for me.

And a few years ago, she was making pictures of young 20-somethings. 

So I started getting loads of 20-something people to see me.

Now, when Andrea’s going back and having a look at:

“What did we post last year? 

“What did we post 2 years ago – 3 years ago?”

So she updates the picture. 

The words are still the same, because it’s the same seasonally.

It’s the same thing happening. 

So if we’re really organised

and we have something like a Trello board with everything on it 

and links back to those pictures in Canva or those posts 

then we know that we can adjust it

In Canva, you can have files – you can have 100 pictures on the free system.

I can’t remember how many files you can have, but there’s 100 pictures capacity in X number of folders. 

There are 30 days in a month, so you could certainly have a couple of months worth of pictures in each folder, and then it’s easy to go back. 

If it says January, February, March, April … you can go back, find the picture, change it slightly, because of course themes change over time.

We went through a very white phase, didn’t we? 

We went through a phase of all of the pictures, having sort of a creamy salmony sort of background and so on, and so forth.

If we can reuse – and now is the time of year, because everything is so set in stone – you’ve got your timings of when you are available, when you can do things – it’s a really good time to look back to last September-October, and go:

“How can I reuse those posts?” 

“But how can I store them somewhere so that next year, and from this point onward, I can store them in this one place, so I can just reuse them”. 

How can we store them to reuse them again later

because that’s going to reduce our overwhelm 

and our overwork when it comes to the summer holidays 

because we’ve got things organised 

and we are getting ahead

Head’s Up – The Academy Doors Closing for Summer:

So now The Academy doors do close in the first week of October, they have to.  

Because I need addresses off everybody to post their goody bag. 

And because I want to be able to offer ‘one to ones’ to everybody in The Academy over the Summer.  

That’s the thing we do in The Academy – so everybody gets half an hour with me.

Gold members get another one in July, but of course, with the ‘co-working’ and the Q&As, there is actually time with me as well, but it’s just not as long – that half an hour is really, really valuable to people. 

So if you’re not in The Academy, really do consider it. 

It’s really worth that time with me, and that time with the other members, and being able to work together in the way that we do.

Wrap Up Challenge:

So I’m going to leave it there. 

How do you think you’ll get on organising?

And what will you use to organise your social media so that you can reuse it every year,  so you are not reinventing the wheel?

What system do you like? 

What system do you already have that you can use?

And how are you going to make sure you’re not reinventing the wheel all the time?

September-October is a perfect time to get these things done. 

We’ve got to think about next year, but I want you (after this podcast to think):

• How can I organise, repeat, deal with my social media 
  • so that I’m not reinventing the wheel?
  • and so that I’m not exhausting myself and forcing myself into burnout?
  • and if I’m more introverted, I’m not punishing myself by being out there in the world all the time?
• How am I going to do that? 

Signing Off:

So I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and you know the deal – if you’ve got to the end, I’d love a 5-star review.. 

Catch you soon.

Thanks so much for joining me today. Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast, for the weekly episodes. If you’d like even more support and learning, then The Academy is for you. Here, you’ll find part 2 of the herbal discussions, more clinical learning, and case studies, to support your clients in practice. 

Bye for now.

Links:

As promised earlier …

Tailwind

Website: 

https://www.tailwindapp.com/

Affiliate link: 

Use this link for $15 off (a free month) https://www.tailwindapp.com/i/geraldineheadley