Episode 21 - 4 Planning Prompts That Help When Creating a Holistic Plan

We as entrepreneurs are constantly multitasking and juggling our commitments to get things done each day.

But when was the last time you assessed yourself and your balance of time and energy? 

Are you sacrificing certain parts of your life in order to get stuff done? Are you taking care of yourself? Getting enough sleep? Eating well? Staying hydrated? How did last month go for you overall? 

If you’re having a hard time keeping a balance, this episode can be your guide. It will help you get focused, prioritise what counts and understand what you need to think about when you’re putting your plan into action. 

Over the last month, the Eleshia Lifestyle community has been experiencing a summer school that allowed them to work on their businesses during the summer holidays whilst still sharing time with their family. 

It’s a short but sweet episode that gives you a quick insight into the summer school and explains how I manage to stay focused whilst getting results. We talk about everything from goal-setting, planning, taking down notes, tracking achievements, and much more. 

Did you miss our summer school? Don’t worry, you could still join the next one coming this September so make sure to sign up to be updated!

Eleshia’s Essentials:

• I want to give business owners the chance just to have some sacred time to work on their business.
• I want you to think not just from a business perspective, but also about your lifestyle,  how you felt with regards to your health and your wellness, and anything else that popped up.
• Make a list of all of your achievements, big and small. Write them down because when we write things down, we celebrate what we’ve accomplished so far. And sometimes we forget to do that and we then realize how much we've actually achieved in the month.
• If you know that you need accountability and you want to gain clarity,  you want to be in a group of like-minded people who are working towards their goals and their dreams.

Connect with Eleshia:

• Website
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• Facebook

About the Show:

The Eleshia Show is an exciting new podcast that helps empower female business owners to put their well-being first whilst building their businesses. Tune in every Wednesday as my inspiring guests and I discuss strategies, share stories and experiences and dive into how you can build your business whilst trying to navigate real life. The host, Eleshia Harris is here and ready to share her decades of project management and wellness experience to help you start saying ‘Yes!’ to your business and life.

Show Transcript:

Some people think that when you're not being sporadic, but as business owners, yes, we can be. But we also need to get the things that we need to get done, otherwise, it becomes a very expensive hobby.

Eleshia Harris: Hi, I'm Eleshia Harris and I am your host of The Eleshia Show. I am also the founder of eleshialifestyle.com, and I'm so excited that you're here with me and I am here with you. I'm also really appreciative. Each week, I'll be sharing strategies and stories, and insights to help you enhance your wellbeing and to build your business while still navigating life. Because sometimes we often try and separate the two and let's face it, if you are not well, you have no business. So let's try and work with these two things combined because we can enhance your lifestyle. Again, I'm really excited to have you here. I have wanted to put together a podcast for over two years, and so here I am ready to share. Let's get into this week's episode.

Hello, and welcome back to The Eleshia Show. And as I promised, I'm here to talk about business. So I have just finished The very, very first E-Lifestyle Implementation Summer School and it was phenomenal. It was everything that I could have asked for and a whole lot more. I decided to do this on a whim in June. I started to think, it would be great just to be able to have a program where you could work on your business whilst on summer holidays with your family, so you're not taken away from that precious family time but there are things in the business that still need to still get done for it to take over. But sometimes when we're in a family mode, it's hard to really concentrate on the business and vice versa. That's how the world goes. We're constantly juggling our time, we're constantly trying to multi-task, and so forth.  I wanted to give business owners the chance just to really have some sacred time to work on their business. So the idea came to mind and I was able to scope a program out that gave people 9 hours of just dedicated time over the course of August to really focus on their business.

And well, did we have some amazing results? I am truly blessed that I had these amazing women who trusted me to do this. This was the first time. It was lovely to have a group of women who know my work already and we’re like, yes Eleshia, I am all in, and they came prepared and they didn't miss a session. It was just amazing. So in this episode, I wanted to give you an insight into what we did, because as we go into the last quarter of the year, I know many of us are starting to think What else needs to be done by year-end? What are the goals and desires and dreams and tasks that need to be done by the end of the year?

I'm here to try and help you to finish the year strong. So over the next couple of weeks, I am going to be giving you an insight into the things that I'll be looking at and things that really helped me to stay focused and prepared. And as you know, I only work part-time because I want to have time for my family, I want to have time for myself. So I'm trying to really continue to work on Eleshia's Lifestyle, making sure that I am practicing what I'm preaching and making sure that I am honoring myself, honoring my family, and honoring my business and my clients to be able to continue to show up.

So let's get into the recording of the planning workshop.  Obviously, I'm not going to share the whole recording because you weren't there. So, I'm going to share some of the things that I think will really benefit you when you're thinking about starting to plan out your last quarter. I'll be back on the other side.

Eleshia Harris: Hello ladies, and I'm just going to go through the instructions again. So we are going to go through the Goal and Planning workbook, and I'm going to ask you the questions and I want you to complete your answers. Although I still want this to be interactive, I want you to use the chat if anything comes up so that we can be present with ourselves.

Yes, we are here in a group setting, but I really want you to spend this time to really be open and honest to exactly what you want over the next month together. I have gone through this workbook myself because I think it's really important to do the work.

Sometimes we put products out there when we don't actually like to drink our own lemonade and try it. So I've done this and found it really insightful, but it made me think about certain aspects of my business also and my life and what I need to put in. So throughout the session, I'm going to give a few more prompts because once I was going through it, I was like, okay I want the ladies to think about this also.

So let's start on our first page, and the question that I asked was, how did last month go for you overall? I really want you to think about not just from a business perspective, I want you to think about lifestyle, how you felt with regards to your health and your wellness, and anything else that popped up. So I want you to spend a couple of minutes just really thinking about that and then when you finished, in the chat just type done, and then I will be able to go onto the next question.

Remember, nobody's going to see this information except for you so be honest to yourself. It's intentional for me to do it this way because sometimes we start and we buy courses and so forth and we don't always get to the planning stage, we like to get to the end.

Now that we've gone through how our month went overall, make a list of all of your achievements. So big and small, write it down because when we write it down, we celebrate and sometimes we forget to do that and we then realize how much we've actually achieved in the month.

This was a large win for me. Scoping, planning, and then launching Summer School and then having you, wonderful ladies, join me. That is a large win. And then while most of you are thinking about your achievements, also think about any key challenges for the next question, any key challenges that may have come up. Again, try not to think about that just from a business perspective, think about health-wise, family-wise, and everything that may impact what you were trying to achieve with your life.

Think about what you did from a self-care, nutrition, and sleep and hydration perspective, what did it look like? Were you lacking in your nutrients, sleep, or hydration? I said it in the last podcast, my last solo, but I used this. I put my reminders on my phone so I use my Google calendar. I've got everything in my diary so I get a ping. Some people think that when you're not being sporadic, but as business owners, yes, we can be. But we also need to get the things that we need to get done, otherwise, it becomes a very expensive hobby.

Did anything come up that you're like, how am I going to get this done? Are you using the planning document to just work back and just see what it is that you need to get done this week to move projects forward? And then think about all of those things, because when we get to Thursday and we've got all the co-working sessions, I'm creating the space for you to do that. And at the beginning of the session, I'll ask you what you're working on, but then you're going to be working on it. 

For this week, I need to finish my website updates. I want to get my website updates in because then it means that I'll have all of my offerings on my website, and I'll be completely transparent here. Part of me not doing that for so long was the fact that then I'm being seen a lot more, so now I need to be seen a lot more because I want to expand my business now. 

Student 1: Okay, now it's 6:00 AM. 6:00 AM club is my permanent schedule forever, but as it turns out, I don't do 6:00 AM on Fridays. It's just Monday through Thursday because I get to say so. 

Eleshia Harris: Exactly.

Student 1: And in 6 to 9, I'm going to have two hours of concentration on business and one-hour concentration on movement with my dog, so real joyful, lovely find bands for her too. We're both going to get to it. Look for us on Instagram. I don't know if you'll find it.

Eleshia Harris:  I love that.

Student 2: That would be nice to know what the people's Insta handles are so that we can start sharing each other. Are people on this in their names or people got special?

Student 1: I'm not on my name. But I just did, not even just, I think I did the new IG accounts at the end of June, but I didn't go back to it. 

Student 2: Me too, I have to look up to what I signed up as. 

Student 1: That's one of the things I have on here for this month. 

Eleshia Harris: Okay, that's great.

Student 1: And I've been getting messages. I think people are finding it somehow because my name and the email are connected, and I'm like, oh hmm because I still have my personal one alive. I created another one to have the business separate, but I've still been living in the personal so I need to make space. I should make space for the business and I need to add the business one onto combining them on the same account so to speak. So that it's easy to switch between the two because right now it's just not part of the habit. Right now, it's here and I'm like, oh yes I did that. 

Eleshia Harris: But to bring it together, so shall we say by Thursday we will be in a place where we can share each other's handles? 

Student 1: Yes, yes. 

Eleshia Harris: Okay, ladies. So do you have a plan? Are we going to work that plan? And is there anything that you want to share with the group so that they keep you accountable or you're all good?

Thank you so much, ladies. Okay then, I'm going to let you percolate your plans and if anything does come up between now and Thursday then let's get in touch. But then I will see you on Thursday, and let me just see if I can do the math of the time for everyone. So on Thursday, we shall meet at 2 o'clock UK time, which will be..

Student 1: 6:00 AM in Oregon. Yes, it was already here. Yes, 6 o'clock, it's going to be here as well. 

Student 2: What time will it be in New York? 

Eleshia Harris: Nine. 

Student 2: You would have saved the world by then. 

Student 1: It's funny because when I put it in the calendar, I put it in the 7 to 9 blocks so then I went, oh wait, wait, it's later?

Eleshia Harris: Amazing. Amazing. Alright then ladies, thank you again so much, so much for being on this journey with me. I am so excited to see what we get up to in August, but also just to know that we have each other, that we have it covered. I think that's a very magical place to be and yes, I'm here for you. You know that.

Student 1: Thank you, Eleshia. 

Student 2: Right back at you.

Student 1: Yes, this is magic.

Student 2: Have a great day everyone. See you next week.

Eleshia Harris: I hope that that record and extract helped you consider some of the things that you need to think about when you're putting your plan of action into place for the last quarter of the year. If you know that you need accountability and you want to gain clarity, you want to be in a group of like-minded people who are working towards their goals and their dreams then I would urge you to get on to the waitlist for the Autumn School because we're going to do this all over again.

One of the pieces of feedback that I received was that it just wasn't long enough, and that was the plan for summer. I didn't want it to feel like you had to put in all this time and effort over the time when you want to be spending time with your family.

But I understand now that over the course of the next couple of months, you are going to want to spend some dedicated time thinking and building out your business for the new year. So I'm going to make it longer,

And I want you to be there. I want you to be there too. We had such a good time and it was a nice supported un-judgmental group of powerful ladies. I had some real powerhouses in the group and we got to work. I met the participants where they were, and that was the lovely thing about some of the feedback that I got. One of the ladies said that she thought it was going to be very regimental, so she was happy that it wasn't, but she still got everything that she had written down on her plan completed and more because she had the space to do it.

She knew that she was being held and she was being held accountable but in a non-judgment, a non-aggressive way which is amazing. It's great. Sometimes you just need that community. Sometimes you just need a cheerleader in your corner to let you know that you are doing great, and that's my job. That's what I love to do. As I've said on many occasions I love to see you win. If you win, I win and that's where my strengths lie. If this is a program that sounds great for you then drop me a line or put yourself on the waitlist, and you won't have to wait long because we are going to get back together by mid-September to do this all over again. I hope you really enjoy just listening to an extract of the planning session from Summer School, and that was just the beginning, it definitely was not the end. 

We had so many great sessions. Some of the participants had the chance to get fast-action coaching on the spot when we got together for our Get Unstuck Power Hours, and that was really beneficial for them not to stay in a stuck place. They would then be able to move their projects forward, so that was really helpful for them. We co-worked together, and we had a review and reflection session, and we celebrate it together. We did all the things, so if you want in on the next cohort, then please get in touch. I will see you next week. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Eleshia Show. If you know somebody who needs to hear the conversations that we are having, please share it, take a screenshot and send it to them. Also, I would really love for you to rate and review the podcast as this really helps, and I'd love to read your comments. Lastly, remember, you need to invest in yourself first because you are important and amazing. Take care until the next time. Bye-bye.