Okay, so I am so excited to talk to you about what everybody is thinking about right now, if you have not already started thinking about your 2021 podcast calendar, don't worry, it's not too late. It's not like, Oh, you missed the bus. And you should have been talking about it two or three months ago, it's totally fine, even like up until December 31 2020, to wait to play in your calendar. But it might be a little bit more
stressful. So that's why we are talking about this today, I really want to put a lot of emphasis on being prepared for your 2021 podcast content calendar, simply because you can be a lot more strategic, if you know what's coming. Because you will no longer be reactive in the content that you're creating. You won't sit down and say, Oh, crap, what am I supposed to talk about next week, every single week and have like a groundhog day, whenever you sit down to record your
podcast. It's stressful, it is stressful, don't do it. I've done it. Don't do it. I'm like, please learn from my mistakes. I don't want you to be reactive. With your podcast every single week, I want you to go into 2021 with a solid strategy on what you should talk about on your podcast every single week. So today, I'm gonna give you three tips on how to do that. So let's
get right to it. Welcome to the Proffitt Podcast where we teach entrepreneurs how to start launch market their podcast, I'm your host, Krystal, Proffitt, 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 podcasting, think of this show as the time saving shortcut you've been looking for. So let's get right to it, shall we?
Okay, so like I said, in the beginning, we are talking about planning your 2021 content calendar for your podcast. Now, I've talked about a lot of different types of dates. On the podcast already, we've talked about when to pick your launch date for your show, when you should actually start putting out episodes what days you should publish, we've talked about these on the podcast and on the YouTube channel pretty
extensively. So if you want to know more about like the specific week to week of how you should do your show, make sure you check out those episodes and
those YouTube videos. But today, I want to specifically like kind of wrap your mind like help you wrap your mind, I can't even talk wrap your mind around the idea of how you should do this, how you should approach this because I have learned from doing this, here we are, we're on episode 210 of this podcast, I have learned so much about planning ahead and how even if I just have ideas planned out on the calendar, it makes my life
so much easier. Even sitting down today, I actually had a totally different topic I was going to speak about. But this idea came to me. And what I did like for planning for 2021, I just grabbed the other idea we're going to talk about, you know where you should advertise on your podcast, let's just push that into the future, it's gonna happen, it's still coming, we're gonna have this conversation, because I know you want to know about how to advertise your
podcast. But what I did is I just cut that idea out of my little Google spreadsheet. And I dropped it further down in my calendar, because it's something I still want to talk about. But I have wiggle room in my calendar to throw in and off in a spontaneous idea like what I'm doing right now on the show. And it doesn't stress me out. I get excited whenever I have a spontaneous idea simply because I know I have control of my calendar. That's why this is so
important. And I probably wouldn't have control of my calendar had I not planned on a regular basis to know exactly what I'm going to talk about. I have episodes I'm recording this on December 3 2020. And I have going into January and February 2021 already planned out like those are already third done. The ideas are there. I have interviews that are coming up that I'm going to put in there.
I have podcast ideas that I came up with months ago that I want to talk about during certain times of the year and those happen in January and February. Okay, so that's really where this idea today came from and why it's super important to have a content calendar that aligns with your business, but also
just make sense for you. So I'm going to share because I'm actually doing this next week, I'm going to share with you how I'm planning my content, podcast calendar, and how I'm going into the strategy like the mindset that I'm in so it's the tactical side but it's also So the mindset side that I really want to talk about.
So first and foremost, I want you to have your promotional calendar for 2021. Complete, before December is over, you've got to have that down. Now, this doesn't have to be set in stone. And I've talked about this here before we all had big plans. Right? We all had our vision boards for 2020. And we all set them on fire in March in April, right? No, I did. I looked at mine, I actually still have it hanging up in my bathroom. And I looked at it the other day. And I was like, that's a joke,
right? That's, that's a total joke. Everything that I had planned to happen this year is just a dumpster fire. And we're just going to hit reset, and we're going to try again, we're going to try again, that's exactly what my 2021 vision board is looking like. Like, it's just hit reset. This is gonna be a big reset button that you would see like on a video game console. But going into 2021, I know what my promotional calendar is going to look like. So what is a promotional
calendar? Well, that is consistent with your business and what you promote, or what you sell the services you offer the affiliate programs you're a part of, or part of the promotion of your free resources, like maybe you want to build your email list. And that's the first thing you want to do in the first quarter of 2021, you want to push to build your email list to the next level. And you have that strategically set up as part of
your plan. Well, you need to bake that into your podcast content calendar as well. Because even if you're promoting on social media, whether it's instagram, facebook, wherever you are, you need to cross promote and talk about these things in multiple places.
Because something that I have found as a consumer, and a content creator, I realize not everyone follows you and all the places and I don't consume, I may follow someone on YouTube, and I don't follow them on Instagram, I follow someone on Instagram, I don't listen to our podcast, I follow someone on Facebook, I'm in their Facebook group, but I don't follow them on Instagram or somewhere else.
So whenever you are setting up, whether it's your social media calendar, we can throw that into your promotional calendar as well. Because all of these align with your business. And if your business isn't aligned on multiple levels, the shoes gonna drop somewhere, like it's just
going to happen. Like you may think, Oh, I'm gonna put all my eggs in promoting on Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, everything that I talked about, I'm gonna do all my promotional sells all of my Instagram stories, the real, I'm gonna do edgy TVs, I'm gonna do all this
stuff on Instagram. But then in your podcasts, you talk about stuff that's not related to your programs, or you don't have any self sponsored ads in there, you're missing the mark, you're missing a huge opportunity to reach people on your podcast that don't follow you on Instagram. They don't even like Instagram, they don't even want to go on Instagram. They're like, I'm not gonna sign up for an Instagram account. And maybe you're like, Yeah, but that's
not my audience. There's a good chunk of your audience that will never follow you on social media. It's just it's just how consumers are I know, there's a big chunk of my audience, maybe you listening to this podcast, that are on Twitter, and you're like, I want to work crystals. I'm not on Twitter. Twitter's not my place. I've tried Twitter out a million times. It's just not my jam. It's not my thing. I don't I don't like it. And so I just know that about my
audience. So I want you to have your promotional calendar set in stone. And to give you a behind the scenes of how I do this, I plan my promotional calendar by quarters because my brain works really well in like compartmentalizing things to keep myself away from shiny objects. If this is you, if you have shiny object syndrome, I was actually having a conversation with a project manager that I'm working with.
And I told her I was like, I've got to get my content calendar, and everything set in stone, because I'm getting emails from people that have really cool opportunities. I've gotten a few collaboration invites on doing some YouTube videos and you know, some sponsors that have like kind of talked to me here and there. And I'm like, Oh, that sounds like a good opportunity. And I want to say yes, this is my thing is I want to say yes to everybody. It's not so much the people pleaser.
It's because these are actually really cool opportunities. But if I haven't set my own boundaries, and by the way, I'm gonna link to this in the show notes. KrystalProffitt.com/e isode210. If you've never re d the book boundaries, by Henry cloud and Jane, john James To nsend, john Townsend, I don't re ember which one it is, but it's
Henry cloud. And I'm gonna li k to in the show notes, but boun aries is one of the The best boo s that anybody can read, if you have issues with personal boundaries, professi nal boundaries, like with you kids, with your parents, with your spouse, with anybody n your life, this is a huge boo , I read it years ago, and I st ll implement some of the thin s today that were really c ucial in that book. But it helpe me set boundaries professi nally as well. And so I protect
y time. And it's actually one of the reasons why in the m nth of December, I'm not doin any outside interviews that are not people in my communit , meaning previous students of mine, previous clients ight I'm just not doing any kind of interviews, external y, in the month of December And this was a consciou decision. There's a lot of t ings going on. And I had also planned for this in my promotio
al calendar last year. So whene er I was planning for 2020, I et the month of December to redo my course, to figure o t how I wanted to go into the next year with the right st ategy. And this was pre pandemic y'all This is before I even had a membership community. This is efore I started the party pe ple. But I knew the month of December, I wanted to take tim off, I wanted to be more int
ntional with my family. And I wa ted to have the freedom to kind f work on some creative things t at I wasn't going to be able to o throughout the rest of the y
ar. So that's really what I'm talking about when it comes to your promotional calendar So going back to thinking in quarters, I like to look at hings saying okay, in q1, we'r going to do this and q2, this is going to be our big push, li e I said, whether it's a paid t ing, an affiliate promotio , I want to grow my email li t, I want to grow my YouTube hannel, whatever that looks li e, every single quarter has a ma
n goal. And then from there, w break that down into monthly oals, right, like maybe in one q arter, I want to do a really b g push for my digital course, hen one month may look like the ramp up to really talk about th t product. And then another onth may be really pushing ll the free resources we have
or that. And then the last mon h, maybe selling, selling, selling, whatever that looks li e for you and your business But you've got to have this alr ady planned out before you walk into planning your podcast alendar. So that's number o e, gotta have her promotio al calendar in place.
Number two. And I feel like I kind of did this out of order. But we're just we're not saying that any of these are like weighted heavier than the others. But I simply just want to add that holidays and time off in the non negotiables.
That's all number two, you've got to know when you need time off, right like winter, what are those holidays like, for me, it's Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, those are always the big holidays where we actually travel to go see people I know this year has totally looked very different. But I we just knew that we needed to get away. And so we plan for those at the very beginning of the year. So this isn't just for my business. This
is also for my podcast. And the reason why if I have that planned, then I know I'm not going to do interviews that week. I don't even want to do interviews the week before that, because I'm going to be planning to take time off. So I can go into I use calendly to schedule all my podcast interviews. So I can go into calendly and say, Okay, I'm not taking any interviews this week, or this week, because I'm gonna be preparing to take time off, or
I'm actually taking time off. So I don't have to worry about going to a guest who scheduled a time during and I'm like, Oh, no, wait, go. I'm so sorry, I forgot to tell you, we're going to be out of town. Nope. As soon as I know, I need to take that time off, I will go into my calendars and set it accordingly. Or if I know that, you know, it's one of my kids birthdays or anniversaries or something else like that. And then going back to your promotional calendar, do the
same thing. Like all of your calendars should be aligned. You shouldn't have like 15 different calendars, you're trying to make sure things don't overlap. You want to make sure that you have those holidays in there where you know, and even I know guys like most people aren't traveling right? Like it's not a typical year 2021 probably won't be a typical year of people taking vacations and it's you know, extended stays with lots of relatives or anything like that. But I do think it's still
important to take time off. Just because you're not traveling doesn't mean you don't need time off. Right. We took the whole week of Thanksgiving off with family, my husband and I did some traveling ourselves and we needed that and we needed it more than we really thought we did. And I planned accordingly. I worked my butt off the week before we left And yeah, of course, there were still some things that I was like, Oh my gosh, I wish I would have thought about that beforehand.
But I'll work on that on the plane ride home, or, you know, when we're in the car, my husband's driving, like, I get caught up on some stuff. But playing for time off, this is so important. So make sure you add in holidays time off and those non negotiable times that you just know, this is when I'm going to take a break. And I highly recommend, again, going back to the quarters, I like to plan in quarters, you do this at least once a quarter, right?
It's not once a year where you're like, Oh, I think I'm in no, no, no, no. If you look at the school calendar, this is also what I do. As a parent, I will get our ISD, our school districts calendar for the year, I will grab this and say, okay, the kids have a random week that they have a day off. So they end up with a three day weekend, let's plan to do something that weekend, even if it's a staycation. And we all just stay home and play games or whatever
we do. But I intentionally will make sure that I don't have anything business related podcasts related, no interviews, nothing on that day. super important. So this really rolls into the third point. So the first one is making sure your promotional calendar is set before you start thinking about your podcast calendar. The second one is your holidays, and your non negotiables.
And the third is time off. So technically, I rolled in time off into number two. But time off really is that important. Because whenever it comes to holidays, and all the things that you know that you're celebrating, time off is also for yourself and for your business. Or it's just for creativity. I've spoken to so many entrepreneurs that say well, you know, how do you have
the energy for new ideas? How do you have the headspace to think about a new project like I had, I can't even tell you how many people asked me whenever I released my book this year. So I released started binge worthy podcast in October. And so many people were like, how do you have time? How do you have time to write a book? And yes, I do already have an idea for another book. I'm not talking like, I can't stop the creative process from like, it happens to me, I just, you know, I kind of sit
back and it happens. But you have to plan for that. Like I had to plan to be able to write this book this whole year to be able to edit it and format it and all the other steps that came along with writing a book, you have to plan for that. It won't just happen. It will not if you just say oh, well, you know, whenever time pops up, and I am able to sit Nope, you have
to make time for that. So I want you to ask yourself looking at 2021 assuming that none of us have a crystal ball and can say exactly what's going to happen. Because I don't know you don't know. We're just kind of guessing. We're still guessing and a lot of things in life right now. Right? But if you could say, if I could work on this one dream project of mine, what would it be? And I'll share mine is I want to redo my website. This is something that I'm looking to do in q1 of 2021.
It's not something I had originally said, I'm going to do this in January, it's going to be my number one project. But now looking at how November and December have gone for my business. I'm like, I might have to push that into February. And I'm okay with that because I've already done some initial planning to know what's coming up in the next few months. And I'm totally okay with moving around my calendar that way because I'm very specific.
Again, going back to boundaries, I have very set boundaries, I have set work hours, I have a lot of things that are in my control for my business, simply because I've made sure that I still have control of those things. So I'm again I'm gonna link to that. I've mentioned it again. So boundaries by Henry cloud and john Townsend. I'm pretty sure it's john Townsend.
But um, KrystalProffitt.com/Episode210 is where you're gonna find these, or this book and all the resources, all the show notes that we talked about here today, but it's just so important. If you have not done this like this should be your New Year's resolution going into January is I want to have better boundaries around my time around making sure that I put things that are
a priority. And just because I'm feeling a little ranty Today, we are spending so much time consuming social media, and not enough time creating things right I'm almost up on my soapbox for just a second. Okay. We are mindlessly scrolling and just looking at things to see what other people are doing. And we're telling ourselves, well, I'm here to get ideas. I'm here because I just want to see what's going on. But yet an hour has gone by and you've wasted 60 minutes of your life looking at
what other people are doing. And so one of the things that I learned from Marie Forleo, this would have been in 2019 was create before you consume, and I actually had it on my whiteboard, I recently had to wipe everything off my whiteboard when we moved it, and we redecorated the office. But create before you consume is what it's like my mantra in the morning. So every day, whenever I wake up in the morning, I journal have my cup of coffee,
snuggle with my furbabies. Like, it's just what I do every single morning, I get up at like, 5am make my coffee, I do my writing, I do journaling. And I create something before I consume. I don't check my email, I don't check my Instagram, I don't even really look at my phone. I create something before I consume, even if it's just writing in my journal, sometimes it's just nonsense shenanigans that are right in there. But it's just something I have to
do. Because at the end of the day, I can look back and say, okay, at least I created something today. And those some things I'm saying like air quotes, those some things of me writing in the journal, is what you see in my business. It's an idea that I had one morning to create a low ticket item that's going to be available really soon that I'm so excited about, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, like it
was a brand new product. And that product was birthed in that hour of being quiet, being still and having room for creativity. So this is what I'm talking about. You've got to set those boundaries, you have to take time off from just going going going consuming all the time, and not actually creating anything. But that's all I have for you today, guys.
So again, to like reiterate everything recap, the first thing I want you to do before you start planning your content calendar for 2021 is look at your promotional calendar, what are the things that you want to promote, create, sell, advertise whatever that looks like for you, your product services, affiliates, whatever that is, you have to make sure that you have that set in stone, before you create your podcast content calendar, because you want to make sure that you're promoting those
things in all the places social media, your podcast, all the things and we'll have another episode soon about the strategy of how I do that. But I just want to make sure that you have your promotional calendar ready, before you start worrying about your content calendars. The second thing is I want you to look at holidays and vacations. When you're doing your content calendar, like if you know, you are going to be gone every year on the Fourth of July, then don't plan to put out content
that week. I mean, excuse me, let me let me rephrase that because we're always putting out content every week. But I want you to plan to batch two or three episodes a week before if you know you're going to be off. And this is actually something I need to bring up. I made a mistake in the recent vacation that I took. I worked my butt off the week before, to have enough content for whenever I was gone. But I didn't plan for the next week. So I had like, okay, like I'm gonna be gone
this week. So everything's covered for that week. But then whenever I got back, I was like, Oh crap, I don't have anything for this week, I should have had two weeks of content planned and done and ready to go before I left. So it's really important to look at your holidays of when you're going to be gone any vacations, and then going into number three, time off, it is so important to take time off and to plan to take time off, like make this one of your non negotiables that you're going to
take time off. Even if it's just once a quarter. You need to make it happen even if it's just a long weekend. You need to make it happen. So super important. And I hope that you enjoyed this content here today. I would love it if you would hop on over into our free Facebook community. It's going to be linked in the show notes. So again, KrystalProffitt.com/Episode210. It's the profit podcast online community. I would love to know what you thought about this
episode. And give me a little shout out about what you're looking to learn to create your podcast. We have so many podcasters in there that are looking to get started and launch their show. And there's a lot of people that are looking to collaborate and grow. But it's also a great place to get feedback. If you're not already kind of plugged into a community where you can ask questions and say hey, this is my artwork. What do you think? Can you help me between like choose between a
and b? So make sure you join us in our Facebook group. But if this is your first time tuning in, I would love for you to subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. And also leave us a rating and a review. I love to read the reviews. It's one of my favorite things, and to see what people are learning from the podcast or what you want me to talk about more, it really helps us push this content out into front of in front of more
people. And again, the shownotes are KrystalProffitt.com/Episode210. But that's all I have for you today. So remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere