It’s Groundhog Day!

Well, actually it’s Veteran’s Day but it time for me to do the Periodic Review and see just where we are.

After I resigned from the Tavern in September it took me a while to get back into the swing of things – that is, working from home, writing, keeping myself motivated, etc. Before I knew it 10/10 had zoomed by and I didn’t get a chance to do a review. I did take some time and sit down to figure out what I wanted to accomplish.

Funny thing, there was a ton of material waiting for me in the old home office, it was just buried and neglected. Left to get dusty while I slaved away at the Tavern for 60-odd hours every week.

Cleaning up and organizing the office was obviously the place to start. It took some time but as of today it is neat, clean, and orderly. Files and books and papers have been stored away or archived or filed where they belong.

Setting Periodic Goals

I use a junior-sized Circa notebook for plotting out and tracking my goals and projects. Yes, I know there are digital tools for this. I don’t like them. The paper is quad-ruled and has the “Cornell” notes box on the left side, making this extremely versatile for checklists and so on. I have Monthly Tabs to divide the notebook into sections and organize my time at a glance. I use these calendar pages to coordinate with the Lovely Bride’s schedule as well as any trips we are planning (such as going to see her family for Thanksgiving).

The notes for September were pretty sparse and vague, but I was still recovering from the summer and frankly I needed a break.

September

• Re-establish network connections and catch up with friends and colleagues
• Establish a writing schedule for blogs, cookbook
• Create marketing strategy for bringing WLC back to life
• Research and create outlines for webinars

It was a lot of fun to get back on Facebook and the telephone and reach out to my friends. I had not spoken to some of them in months and I felt bad about that. The Lovely Bride and I took a trip to Burlington VT for a getaway weekend. Now that was some fun, seeing new places and getting to spend a few days together. Just us.

We took a cruise on Lake Champlain and ate some great (and mediocre) food, went on a micro-brewery tour, did some sight-seeing. It was very nice and relaxing.

I went on and on in my journal about how relaxing it was. When we got home it was time to get serious and make something happen. I was writing blog posts like crazy and trying to work on writing a book. I thought that I had a great idea for it but the more that I worked on it the worse it got. By worse I mean embarrassing. Wrong model, wrong topic for who and what I am now. It might have been something fun to do 10 years ago, but today it’s just plain dumb.

I put off the novel-writing stuff until October when a flag in my calendar reminded me about NaNoWriMo, and I started thinking about including that project in my November plans.

October

• A-ha NH business summit
• Write and design ad for Chamber of Commerce mailing
• Design business model plan for 2012
• Prep for NaNoWriMo
• Design new business cards and collateral [final biz card design here]

These were the “Big Rocks” for October, recurring tasks included writing blog posts, doing my Morning Pages, getting some exercise and thinking about what to write a novel about. It was in October shortly after attending PodCamp Boston that I got the idea for the Social Media Literacy Project and the plan for growing my business next year really came together.

Social Media Literacy Project (a sneak peek)

Welcome to the Social Media Literacy Notebook.

In this space I will be sharing and “thinking out loud” about Social Media Literacy, its terminology, vocabulary, and common usage for Small Business. This is where the sausage is being made.

None of this is “Official” in any sense, it is all “Draft” material and should be weighed as such. Nor should it be viewed as complete and authoritative. This is a basic primer on what Social Media is and how it can be used for marketing and building community awareness and involvement for your brand and business.

Click here to register for updates.

I am very excited about this for three reasons:

1. I have been working “in” and “on” Social Media for almost six years now. For three of those six years I made my living teaching, consulting, and building all sorts of Social Media “stuff”. I still regularly encounter people that have no idea what to do with marketing their business on the Internet. They need a resource like this.
2. Most of the folks that I have spoken to about this idea are pretty excited about it as well, a few have even offered to help with it. Sweet. I may not have to do all of the work myself.
3. Creating this resource dovetails nicely with the content that I want to create and deploy as part of the business model plan for next year. Create things once, use (or sell) them over and over.

(If you are interested in hearing more about the SML Project and how you can get involved, send an email.)

The other Big Rocks for October were dealt with and by the time Halloween arrived I was pretty jazzed about how things were developing. Then we got a foot of snow! Blegh. That sucked. But it was a helpful reminder from Mother Nature about “best laid plans” and all of that. I decided that I was going to get back on this GHD Review bandwagon and with that in mind I began to plan November’s Big Rocks and projects and tasks more granularly.

November

Recurring tasks:

• Weekly “Staff Meetings” on Saturdays – review what worked and what didn’t for the previous week.
• Morning Pages every day
• NaNoWriMo – 2,000 words per day to reach the 50,000 needed to complete the project by my birthday
• Scheduled “Social Media” time for networking, sharing, and chatting with friends and colleagues

Big Rocks:

• Create the ICMM welcome video – complete!
• Groundhog Day Review – complete!
• Write script and create slides for Social Media Marketing presentation #1
• Create mini-consulting packages
• Visit family for Thanksgiving

Things are moving along nicely and I am quite pleased with the progress that I have made over the past two months. As of today I am going back on the GHD calendar for planning purposes. Here is an outline of activities for the next review period (11/11 to 12/12):

November/December

Recurring tasks:

• Weekly “Staff Meetings” on Saturdays – review what worked and what didn’t for the previous week.
• Morning Pages every day.
• NaNoWriMo – 2,000 words per day to reach the 50,000 needed to complete the project by 1 Dec.
• Scheduled “Social Media” time for networking, sharing, and chatting with friends and colleagues.
• (starting 1 Dec) Daily zazen

Big Rocks:

• Write script and create slides for Social Media Marketing presentation #1
• Create mini-consulting packages(in progress)
• Visit family for Thanksgiving
• Write script and create slides for Social Media Marketing presentation #2
• Schedule, reserve space for, and market January SML Workshop
• 2012 Q1 Goal prep (I have scheduled this to be due for 3 Dec, planning starts next week)

Tomorrow starts a new Review Period, with the projects above being due on 12 Dec. The reason that I shift the calendar like this is because the last two weeks of the year are consumed by The Holidays and nothing gets done anyway. I like to think of it as building a little vacation into the calendar.

2012 Planning

Starting in January, after the New Year’s business is out of the way, there will of course be a new set of recurring tasks and Big Rocks to be addressed. These will be outlined and assigned due dates before the 12/12 review.

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