Quarterly planning allows for focused and adaptable goal-setting in creative businesses. In this video, I discuss the importance and impact of quarterly planning for creative businesses with my own business coach, Gwen Bortner:
Gwen offers accountability and coaching through her Quarterly Tune-Up program, and I offer Seasonal Planning Sessions every 3 months as part of the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator.
In this video, we chat about the benefits of quarterly planning, such as the ability to focus deeply on specific projects and adapt to changing circumstances.
Gwen shares a case study of a client, the owner of a yarn and knitting shop, who experienced significant progress in her business after implementing quarterly planning. We talk about the value of accountability and the role of a business coach for creatives in providing guidance and support.
Our conversation also explores the concept of success and the importance of alignment in long-term planning. Finally, we discuss the non-comparative and supportive environment of the Quarterly Tune-Up program and how you can get involved.
Gwen Bortner is the founder of the business operations advisory firm, Everyday Effectiveness.
Gwen has a background in the craft industry, with years of experience as a professional knitwear designer & knitting teacher.
She helps visionaries scale their businesses to seven figures and beyond without the stress and overwhelm of trying to do it all on their own. Her approach comes from the belief that personal and professional success looks different for everyone, and most business owners waste time and energy trying to conform to outside expectations and definitions of success.
TAKEAWAYS
Quarterly planning allows for focused and adaptable goal-setting in creative businesses.
Accountability is a key component of successful quarterly planning.
Long-term relationships with a coach can provide valuable insights and support in achieving business goals.
Success should be defined on an individual basis, free from comparison to others.
Gwen’s Quarterly Tune-Up program and Mallory’s Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator both offer a curated and supportive environment for creative entrepreneurs.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Mallory
Hi, Gwen, and thanks for joining me to talk about something that I know is near and dear to both of our hearts, and that is quarterly planning for creative businesses.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
It is near and dear to both of our hearts. Quarterly planning is, the way I describe it, is “the new black” in planning.
Mallory
Yeah, because there's often, I feel like for a long time, the focus was on like quarter or like annual and yearly planning, right? And looking at the entire year, whether you start on in January or you do that like kind of business fiscal year thing that starts in the middle of the summer for, I don't know, like whatever reason. But why is quarterly planning so important and impactful?
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
So for me, the key reason is that it is long enough to actually get something significant done and short enough to not get distracted or bored or to leave it to the end.
I mean, raising my hand here as someone who's done this myself when I was doing yearly planning was all of a sudden somewhere around October, November, it was like…Crap, there was a whole bunch of things I was gonna do by the end of the year and I haven't done them yet and so I'm gonna start them right now. And it's like, well, if I can actually get them done in a quarter, I should have done them by March. You know?
Mallory
Yeah, well, and I think too, I think over the last few years, more of us have realized it's like things change, right? We have like world changing pandemics that affect everybody's life and you could have planned your year and it would all just, you know, not matter anymore. Everything is different.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
You think? Yeah, well, and that is part of it, is things have always been dynamic, but they continue to be more and more and more dynamic, right? And so it allows you to be able to adjust to those dynamics as they're happening.
It also allows you to focus on different spaces within your business over the course of an entire year, instead of getting too myopic on one particular aspect. And I have a kind of a different philosophy about goals than a lot of people do, which is related to why I think the 90 day or the quarter or the three month or however, and I know you like to think about it in seasons, which is also typically a three month kind of thing. Different people think of it differently, but it's generally in that three month, 90 day quarter kind of container.
Mallory
Yeah, and I think it's so helpful for like multi-passionate creatives or people who, you know, are trying to tackle multiple different projects or like creative interests or aspects of things because you're kind of focusing just for a set amount of time a little bit more deeply instead of trying to do all of the things all at once.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
It really is. It's about that distraction factor. Anyone who's highly creative, and everybody I work with, is in some capacity or another. And a lot of them are creatives in what I'm going to call the traditional way.
And the distraction is real, right? The whole shiny object, oh my gosh, this is interesting. Most of them have some level of multi-passionate in them. And it's easy to say, no, we're not going to look at that until next quarter. Back here, back here, back here. No, no, back here, back here…
And it's a short enough time that it's like, okay, I don't have to just hate this for 90 days. You know, I can focus, I can do it, and then get excited about something else.
Mallory
Yeah, well, in 90 days is like, it's so like, it's far enough out that it gives you the space to plan a thing, but it's close enough that it still feels real.
Like, actually the first time I ever hosted the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator as an in-person retreat, this was back in 2018. I got really great advice from Michelle Villalobos about setting a 90 day like date for the retreat and then just telling people about it and then figuring out the logistics afterwards, basically? And that's how I got it done, was just picking a date 90 days out and then just doing it.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
Yep. Yeah, just making it happen. And it is that 90 days gives it enough urgency that you don't just keep putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off.
And at the same point, like you said, there's still enough space that it's not like, that you're gonna fail all the time.
Cause that's another thing is that we get caught up of setting these really aggressive goals or whatnot. And then we fail and then we start saying, yeah, I'm not really good at planning goals and I can't do all that.
That's not actually true either. So it also allows you to get better at setting goals.
That's one of the other things I talk about with my folks when they're coming into quarterly planning is the first couple quarters are probably gonna go really poorly. And that's okay because it's actually a skill to learn how to plan. And so just be prepared.
Like all new things, you're probably gonna suck at it at first, and that's okay, but you're gonna get better as time goes on, and if you just allow yourself that space and permission, you'll be surprised.
Mallory
Yeah, and when you mentioned that you work with a lot of other multi passionate creative types, me being one of them, right? I'm enrolled in your Quarterly Tune-Up program.
But could you maybe share kind of like a more tangible, specific like story or case study about one of your clients who's kind of seen a transformation after they started shifting to this quarterly planning, you know, in their business, how that's been able to help?
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
I had a gal that was in my quarterly tune-up a couple of years ago, and she owned a yarn shop, and it was successful. She had owned it for years. So it wasn't like that she was failing in any sort of way at all.
But when she joined Quarterly Tune-Up after her first quarter, so as she came into the beginning of the second quarter, her comment was, "I got more done on my business, not in my business, but on my business last quarter than I have in the last three years."
And so it wasn't about the stuff that she was going to be doing anyway, which is all the stuff that we actually really like doing, right? And that comes naturally to us. It was about doing the stuff that she knew she needed to do that was actually going to make impact on the business, but was always finding reasons not to do.
And by using the accountability process that we use, which is part for us, that's actually for us, the value of the Quarterly Tune-Up. It's less about the planning and more about the accountability. She said, just knowing that Gwen was going to, you know, look at my list and see how I did, meant that I took time to focus and do the things.
She got deep into her finances and really started understanding what was going on in her finances. She got jobs and roles lined up in ways and started understanding why things, you know, weren't working as well as they could be. You know, there was a whole bunch of things, you know, very specific things, and they were, of course, specific to her business. And, you know, someone else is going to get completely different results. But it was about that focus and knowing that there was some accountability behind it as well. It wasn't just words on a piece of paper that didn't get looked at again until three months later.
Mallory
Yeah, yeah, the accountability piece is huge because like, I've definitely felt that as, as I've been going through the Quarterly Tune-Up and like the weekly accountability check-ins, right?
And like, I often use parts of that almost like journaling. Like I probably, I don't know what it is compared to your other people, but I feel like I write a lot, but it's more for me, right? And to communicate it to you. But then I also so much appreciate like getting helpful feedback.
But also just like sometimes just validation about my ideas, right? Like, oh, this isn't, you know, this isn't so far out there. Like this is, you know, maybe I'm on the right track. I hearing from somebody else like that could be really helpful.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
Well, and you know, there's a couple of things. So, and I'll just tell you, yes, you are one of my more verbose folks, but I love it, right? It's not a problem. And I tell people when they first come in, it's like, some people take about five minutes to do this and others, you know, write me short novellas each week. And I'm okay with, you know, anything and everything in between that, it doesn't matter.
Because ultimately, this accountability piece is really for you to be able to look back and see what did I do? Where did I get, you know, what was working? What wasn't working? You know, where did I have an insight that I need to now apply as I move forward? It's all of those elements.
And, you know, I love being able to celebrate wins with people, I mean, that's always a really exciting thing. But also part of my superpower is being able to see that little something that's like, this might be a bigger deal than you think it is. You need to pay attention to this, or have you thought about...?
We call it micro coaching. I don't know what else to call it because it's not, you know, it's not like real, real coaching, but, but it is, there's a little micro bits of insight and often all of everyone who's ever done Quarterly Tune-Up has said there's often some sort of insight that they're like, oh, yeah, that made me think about this very differently. It expanded my thinking or took me down a slightly different path that really was valuable.
So it's not just the accountability, but it's that it's someone who's really looking at it and paying attention to it and really trying to provide value and not just saying, did you or didn't you?
Mallory
Yeah. And it's like creating this space in between those like every three month check-ins to, you know, because we're thinking really like big picture seeing the whole forest in that like once a three months, right? But then in the weeks in between, you're like in the woods, traveling the path and trying to make sure that you're still staying on the path. And it can be so helpful to have somebody else just to like, make sure that you don't get lost completely in the woods.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
Well, no, and that's exactly it. And I talk about almost every quarter that when we set goals, I don't see the goal as the success necessarily. I see it as the direction that you're heading and that my responsibility as your accountability partner is if I see you going off that path, that you're doing it with intention, not with distraction.
And doing with intention is completely fine. Because sometimes we don't know that the goal that we had in mind isn't actually our best goal until we're part way down the path. And then we're like, oh, this wasn't what I thought this was. You know, I need to do something different. And so I'm never worried about, you know, did you actually achieve the goal, but did you move your business forward with intention?
Mallory
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why it's also so helpful to work with a coach over like a longer period of time too, right?
Like when I joined Quarterly Tune-Up, I think you offer the ability to do just like a quarter, right? But I was like, I want to do it for an entire year. I want to commit because I knew that for me, and I think for most people, like there's more value in that longer term relationship.
I see the same thing with my students in the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator where it's like, if you say that you have one goal that you're working towards... The longer we can work together, the more I can see like, are you, is the thing that you're saying you wanna do really in alignment with the things that you're already doing, right? And I know that you see a lot of that with your people.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, that whole alignment thing is huge. And we were talking about it recently on a short-term LinkedIn Live set of episodes that I'm doing with another ops person and talking about that way to think about what is success really mean to you?
And sometimes, and you were commenting on that, sometimes there's a lot of unlearning that has to go on because we've been conditioned with the best intentions most of the time by our family, by our spouses, by our environment, by our friends, by whatever we're surrounded with, right? And maybe with less good intentions by social media to define success in ways that may or may not really resonate with us, right?
And it takes some time sometimes to go through this process before we start realizing... Oh, this success thing that I think I'm wanting is not the thing that I'm actually wanting. Success actually looks very different for me as an individual.
It's one of the key values that we hold up in the Quarterly Tune-Up is there's no comparison. It's a completely non-comparative environment. And I think, you and I haven't talked about this, so I want you to be completely honest, but I think everyone who walks into the Quarterly Tune-Up the first time finds it really supportive, even though they don't know anybody, right? And they feel very welcome.
But it's because there is this non-comparison. We are all on our journey and we're supporting one another even when we're running very, very parallel. I mean, we have some folks that have very, very similar businesses, but they're 100% supportive of one another because our journeys are different.
Mallory
Yeah, yeah, it's been a really incredible group to be a part of. I've only been at two of the live Quarterly Tune-Up sessions so far, about like halfway through my first year with you, but it's been amazing. If people are interested in getting involved and maybe joining Quarterly Tune-Up and learning more about working with you, how should they get in touch?
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
So they can find more information at EverydayEffectiveness.com/QTU
And they can read a little bit about what the process is. And at the bottom, there's a book a call button because we curate who comes in. And so we talk to everybody before they join. There is no just, I push the button and I sign up because we wanna make sure that they're at the right stage, that they're the right attitude, that all of the things really fit, because that's why when new people come in, they actually feel like they belong, because we've got a curated environment that we're holding for folks.
Mallory
Yeah. And I do something very similar with the Badass Creatives Marketing Accelerator. I think that's really important to make sure that everybody in a group like that is really in alignment or sort of like on the same field of values and things. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much, Gwen. I appreciate you.
Gwen Bortner - Everyday Effectiveness
Mm-hmm. It makes a huge difference.
Oh, I love having these conversations and I can't wait for the next one!
Learn more about achieving your creative goals:
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