want to know the secret behind how I've been able to break down my big creative goals into actionable steps and to achieve more well one big part of it is through quarterly planning breaking down those huge lofty goals into 90day or less chunks and attacking Things based on the seasons or the quarters of the year in this video I'm going to be chatting with my very own business coach Gwen bortner about how this method based on 90 days or quarters often works so much better than traditional annual plan methods especially for multi-passionate creatives like us Gwyn is a business operations adviser who has a background in the craft industry she worked for many years as a professional knitwear designer and knitting teacher and she's also the founder of the quarterly tuneup a quarterly Planning Group session that I'm actually a member of and I have gained so much value from myself so let's get into it 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 it is near and dear to to to both of our hearts quarterly planning is uh the way I describe it it is the New Black in planning 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 like 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 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 uh you know 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 going to do by the end of the year and I haven't done them yet and so I'm going to start them right now and it's like well if I can actually get them done in a quarter I should have done them like by March 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 yeah well and and that that is part of it is things things have always been Dynamic but they're they continue to be more and more and more Dynamic right and so it allows it allows you to be able to adjust to to those Dynamics as they're happening and it also allows you to focus on different spaces within your business over the course of an entire year instead of getting to uh myopic on one one particular um one particular particular aspect and and you know I have I have a kind of a different philosophy about goals than than a lot of people do which is related to why I think the 90 you know the 90day or the quarter or the three month or you know however you know and I know you like to think about it in Seasons which is also typically a three-month kind of thing you know i' I different people think of it differently but it's generally in that you know thre month 90day quarter you know kind of container yeah and I think it's so helpful for or like multi-passionate creatives or people who you know are trying to tackle multiple different projects or like creative interest 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 it really is it's about that distraction you know Factor anyone who's highly creative um and you know 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 um and and they the distraction is real right the whole shiny object oh my gosh this is interesting most of them have some level of multi-passionate you know in them and it it's it's easy to say no no no no no we're we're not gonna look at that until next quarter back here back here back here no no no no no back here back here and and it's a short enough time that it's like okay I don't I don't have to just hate this for 90 days I I can can focus I can do it and and then get excited about something else 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 I actually the first time I ever hosted a badass craters marketing accelerator as an inperson Retreat this was back in 2018 I got really great advice from Michelle Vi alobos about setting a 90day like date for The Retreat and then just like telling people about it and then figuring out the logistics like afterwards basically and that's how I got it done was just like picking a date 90 days out and then just doing it yeah just making making it happen and it is that there 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 um and at the same point like you said there's still enough space that it's not like that you're going to fail all the time because that's that's another thing is that 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 it's like that's not actually true either so it 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 going to go really poorly and that's okay because it's actually a skill to learn how to plan and and so so just be prepared like all new things you're probably going to suck at it at first and that's okay but you're going to get better as time goes on and if you just allow yourself that space and permission it'll you'll be surprised yeah and well you mentioned that you work with a lot of other multi-passionate creative types me being one of them right um I've enrolled in your quarterly tuneup program um 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 so so I had a gal um that that was in my my quarterly tuneup a couple years ago and she she owned a yarn shop um and had it it was successful she had had owned it for years you know so it wasn't like that that she was failing in any sort of you know way at all but when she joined quarterly tuna after her first quarter so when as she came into the second the beginning of the second quarter um her comment was I got more done in my on my business not in my business but on my business last quarter than I have in the last three years and and and so it wasn't about the stuff that she was going to be doing anyway and it's which is all the stuff that we actually really like doing right you know and 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 the by using the accountability process that that we use which is part for us that's that's actually for us the value of the quarterly tuneup it's less about the planning and more about the accountability um 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 and she uh she got deep into her finances and really started understanding what was going on in her finances she got um uh jobs and roles lined up in ways and started understanding why things you know weren't working as well as they could be um you know there was a whole bunch of thing 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 different results but it was about that focus and knowing that 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 you know three months later yeah yeah the accountability piece is huge because like I've definitely felt that as as I've been going through the quarterly tuneup 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 me right and to communicate it to you but then I also so much appreciate like getting helpful feedback um 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 well and you know there's a couple things so and I'll just tell you yes you are one of my more uh rot folks but I love it right it it it's not a problem and 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 that it it doesn't matter because ultimately this 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 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 it's it's all of the those elements and um 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 superpowers is being able to see that 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 you know the these things and you know 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 um but it is there's a little micro micro bits of of insight and often um all of everyone who's ever done quarterly tuneup um has said there's often some sort of insight that they're like oh yeah that made me think about this very differently and and you know expanded my thinking or took me down a slightly different path that that really was was valuable um 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 did you yeah and it's like creating this space in between those like every 3 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 I like a I like an analogy well no and and that's exactly it and I you know I talk about almost every quarter that when we set goals you know 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 right and and um 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 partway down the path and they were like oh this wasn't what I thought this was you know I need 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 yeah yeah and I think that's why it's also so helpful to work with a coach over like a longer period time too right like when I join quarterly tuneup I think you offer the ability to do just like a quarter right but I was like I want to do it for 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 because I see the same thing with my students in the badass creatives marketing accelerator where it's like if you know 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 want to do really in alignment with the things that you're already doing right and I know that you you see a lot of that with your people oh yeah oh yeah I mean that that whole alignment thing is is huge and and um you know we were we were talking about it recently on uh a a short-term LinkedIn live uh 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 you know and you you were commenting on that 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 you know whatever we're surrounded with right um and maybe with less Good Intentions by social media um to to define success in ways that may or may not really resonate with us right and and it takes some 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 as an individual and it's one of the key values that we hold up in in the quarterly tuneup is there's no comparison that it's a completely non-comparative environment and I think you you and I haven't talked about this so you can I want you to be completely honest but I think everyone who walks into the quarterly tuna 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-comparative of one another because we're our Journeys are different yeah yeah it's been a really incredible group to be a part of I've only been at two of the live quarterly tuneup sessions so far about like halfway through my first year with you but it's been amazing um if people are interested in like getting involved and maybe joining quarterly tuneup and learning more about working with you uh what should how should they get in touch so they can find more information at everyday effectiveness. comom qtu quarterly T you know the abbreviation for quarterly tuneup qtu um 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 want to make sure that they're at the right stage that they're the right attitude that 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 we've got a curated you know environment that that we're holding holding for folks yeah yeah and I do something very similar with the badass creators 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 it makes it makes a huge difference yeah thank you so much Gwen I appreciate you oh I love I love having these conversations and I can't wait for the next one [Music]