Ep 105: Mastering Productivity: Sarah's Themed Workweek Strategy for Marketing and Business Success

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Ever wonder how to streamline your marketing efforts and still have time for yourself? In this solo episode, I, Sarah Norrell-Block, unfold my tried-and-true themed workweek strategy that helps me balance marketing, client work, and personal endeavors seamlessly. Discover how dedicating Mondays entirely to marketing, from checking interview schedules to editing my podcast—an anchor for my business development—sets the stage for a productive week. Get ready to gather actionable tips on how to efficiently manage your tasks and set your business up for sustainable growth.

Join me as I walk you through my week: from scheduling micro offers and client kickoffs on Tuesdays to focusing on client work mid-week, and wrapping things up on Fridays with catch-up tasks or relaxing activities. Learn how this structured approach not only keeps me on track but also enhances my relationships with prospects and clients. Whether you're cozying up with coffee or wine, this behind-the-scenes look into my routine promises to inspire you to organize your schedule for maximum productivity and business success.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Welcome to Tiny Marketing. This is Sarah Norrell-Block, and this is a podcast that helps B2B service businesses do more with less. Learn lean, actionable, organic marketing strategies you can implement today. No fluff, just powerful growth tactics that work. Ready to scale smarter? Hit that subscribe button and start growing your business with Tiny Marketing. Growing your business with tiny marketing. Hey friends, welcome to episode 105 of the tiny marketing show.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Today is a solo episode and I am doing something a little bit different. I'm taking you behind the scenes of my Monday morning marketing. So I talk about this all the time. I have my Monday morning marketing routine because I have set my schedule for basically theme days. We talked a little bit about this in episode 66 with Savannah from Knapsack, and this is basically what my week looks like. On Mondays, I do all of my marketing. Tuesdays are kickoff days, so those are the days that I usually schedule my micro offers, my gateway offers and any kickoffs. Wednesdays and Thursdays, I do client work, and then Fridays are my catch-up day. So anything I didn't get done during the week I do on Friday, but most of the time I'm usually just watching some true crime show with my mom and eating sushi. So that is what my week looks like.

Speaker 1: 2:17

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Speaker 1: 3:16

So we're getting into what my Monday morning marketing routine looks like. If you're ready for it, get cozy. Grab your coffee or your wine or your water whatever you feel like drinking. You know what I'm not judging. Sit back, get your coziest blanket. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 3:36

So the first thing that I do is I have my interviews. So I'm not lying when I say that I do all of my marketing stuff on Mondays. That includes all of my interviews for the show. Now I lie a little bit because my interviews usually take place at 1 pm, central Time on Mondays, because I need to wake up a little bit before I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for those interviews. So that's in the afternoon, but that's the first thing I do is see do I have any interviews that day. 99% of the time I do, first thing I do is see do I have any interviews that day. 99% of the time I do. And if I do, I have to figure out what am I going to wear, because I'm not getting dressed up if I don't have an interview that day. So that's the first thing I do. Look at my schedule Do I have interviews? Do I have to put on pants today? The next thing I do is my podcast editing. The next thing I do is my podcast editing. That's a non-negotiable. I have to do it every Monday. Today I'm doing it twice because I'm actually going to be out of town next Monday, so I have to do all my Monday morning marketing routine twice today. So this can be a little bit time consuming. So it's always the first thing that I do in the morning because it's the most crucial step too. It's the anchor of my marketing is my show and anybody out there who's listening. Your signature series is the anchor of your marketing too. It's the thing that you are probably getting discovered for more often than not it is definitely the thing that is nurturing your relationship with your prospects, and it is also very likely that it is the core of your business development relationships, too. All of those interviews that you're doing for your signature series. That is probably the reason because you have that signature series that you're able to get all of those conversations with prospects, with people who share the same audience as you, et cetera, et cetera. So I usually spend probably about two hours cleaning up any edits that I mean you guys listen to this show. I don't do a lot of editing to the podcast. I honestly intentionally leave in some of my mistakes because I want it to feel approachable. If I'm able to grow the tiny marketing show with just my smarts and other people's smarts and not a whole lot of editing. You see me flub over words. I think that that's probably a good lesson for everyone. Perfection is the enemy of action and it's okay to have mistakes and it honestly makes you more approachable. So I leave most of my mistakes in and the editing that I do is what show am I going to produce? That week is one of the big things because I like to make it thematic with the other things that I'm working on. I'll also take out if a guest does a lot of ums, uhs, likes, you know, those kind of things. I'll remove those because that can be distracting and I'll make sure the sound is really good. I'll use my studio sound in Descript. So those are things that I have to make sure are adjusted in my podcast before it goes live. I also occasionally have ads. I have sponsors. I do now MouseFlow, hi, mouseflow, and so if that's the case, there's even more work because I have to put the ad in. I have to make sure that the copies in the show notes page. I have to make sure that I'm telling my podcast manager at what point in the show did the ad appear, things like that. So that complicates the process a little bit, but so that's. It usually takes about two hours for me to do that, especially now that I'm also posting my podcast episodes on YouTube, and I loved my podcast editor, my producer, that I used the previous three years, but I also felt at the same time that it was really important to be able to do this myself, because I am teaching other people how to market themselves, so I practice what I preach. And I thought, if I'm paying someone else to do this even though it wasn't a crazy amount how am I supposed to teach someone else how to have their own signature series and do it all themselves if I'm not doing it and I'm not fitting it into my schedule? So I said forget that. And now I'm doing it all so I can teach you how to do it all. So blah, blah, blah. After editing the audio and the video elements of my show, I have to work on the show notes. So I definitely have hacks for that. I upgraded in Buzzsprout to the version that does an AI show notes. So the initial run through of the show notes or like the first draft, I guess is a better word for that is AI written and then I will tweak it to make sure that all of the elements included have, like my guests, information in there, any ad information that I need to have in there. If I talked about something super specific that I want to make sure is linked, make sure that's in there. So I do all of that and that's really probably takes like 10 minutes, because AI is doing the first draft for me, but you know it doesn't grab all the resources I've talked about. So that's a, that's a thing. So that usually takes me about like 10-15 minutes. So that usually takes me about like 10-15 minutes. And I also have all of my podcasts turned into an article for my LinkedIn newsletters that go out on Fridays. So hintity, hint, hint, if you aren't subscribed to my LinkedIn newsletter, go do that, because that content is only available on LinkedIn. I'm not repurposing it anywhere else, you can only get it there. But what I do there is I take the episode that I did that week and I turn it into a really actionable article. I want you to be able to implement whatever I taught that week from that article. So it is completely flipped on its head version of the podcast that goes into the newsletter. So that's the next thing I do and I pre-schedule it for Fridays. So that's all done for me. And that probably takes me about 30 minutes if I'm going to break down exactly what my Monday morning marketing routine looks like. So we're spending about two hours working on the podcast and about 30 minutes on the Friday LinkedIn newsletter. Next up is my email marketing. So if you're on my email marketing list then you know I absolutely freaking love my email marketing. I don't use a hint of AI in that. You get all of me. I don't even do first drafts with AI because it's just like my love language is talking to you directly in my email marketing. If you're not on that list, go to sarahnoahblockcom slash newsletter. So I send out my email marketing, my newsletter, every Tuesday to my subscribers and it's usually the core of it obviously is my podcast, taking an element like a learning moment from the podcast and converting it for the newsletter. So this involves writing a little story around the episode while we talked about how I've implemented it in my life or how someone else has, and that probably takes about less than an hour to do. I'm a fast writer, I love writing, so I schedule that out for Tuesdays. So let's just do a little run through of everything I've done so far. So number one I'm going through my schedule. I see if I have any interviews and if I have to put on pants. Next up is podcast editing. That takes the most amount of time, so I make sure to get that done, first thing. And now it includes video, so I have to also make sure it looks good on that element too. Now let me give you a little hack. I use Descript for my editing, so everything is edited in one place my audio, my video, it's all edited in one file using Descript, and that makes it a lot easier. And I export that video and I use Opus to create shorts for it that also huge hack. I create shorts from all of my podcast episodes and connect it to the long form video of it, and that really increases my views. Okay, so we do interview, we do podcast editing. Next up is all of the writing around the podcast, so show notes, the LinkedIn newsletter and then my email marketing. Okay, so the next thing is LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is my core channel and what I usually do is I have a whole other routine around LinkedIn, because it's also where I do all of my business developments. All of my relationships are made there. So I spend 15 minutes every single day on LinkedIn making sure I'm connecting with new people, I'm building relationships, I'm posting, but on Mondays I'm usually also drafting up all of my posts for the week and pre-scheduling. So right now I have all of my LinkedIn posts except for around my podcast, those promotional ones written and scheduled in LinkedIn already all the way through the beginning of October, because when the mood strikes I just write them all at the same time. So I do that and then my LinkedIn is pulled into more my everyday profit habits. If you know what that is Actually, let me pause and I'll tell you exactly what episode I talk about. Okay, I'm back. Episode 98, 10 Everyday Habits to Skyrocket your Revenue is where I talk about my everyday profit habits. So LinkedIn falls into that category. But I do a lot of my initial drafts on Mondays. Okay, last I check if I have any masterclasses to work on that week. So about every six weeks or so I put on a new training, and today I do. I looked at my schedule and this week I am doing a masterclass called Everyday Profit Habits. So episode 98 just touched on the beginning of that. This past weekend I drafted up what the rest of that masterclass will look like and I have about 40 everyday profit habits that you can honestly just take five to do a day, but all of these will increase your sales, your revenue, every single day. So that's what I'm working on today and this involves content creation, preparing any slides I have to do, rehearsing the presentation, making sure I have a whole funnel on the back end. Am I going to try and upsell into a micro offer following that masterclass? Is there some bigger thing that I can offer? As an example, I did a gateway offer masterclass and then I offered an upsell into the gateway offer challenge so they can go deeper on that. So I taught them the what in the masterclass what is a gateway offer, and the how kind of like how you can use a gateway, or more like, how can you leverage a gateway offer to pull more people through your sales funnel into your signature offer. So that was the masterclass. And then I offered a challenge which has 17 mini trainings in there and documentation basically everything you need to be able to launch your own gateway offer. So with every other masterclass I have, I also have to think about that. Am I going to tie this to a micro offer to give people a bigger win? I still haven't decided and I'm doing this tomorrow. We'll see. So I usually spend a few hours on my masterclasses, depending on how long it's going to be. This one has a lot of momentum. People are very excited about this particular masterclass, so I actually spent all weekend working on it. I have spent the last month experimenting with my everyday profit habits. So there were a lot went into this one, but on a typical one, if it's like a mini training, I can probably get it done in about two hours, and I do them about every six weeks. So for anybody who follows my lean marketing engine, that would be considered one of my active lead generators. So that is a wrap. That's what my Monday morning marketing routine looks like. It's a lot of work, but I love every minute of it and it does make it a lot easier for me because I have this routine. I have habits around my marketing and that's the reason why, in the four years I've been in business, I have never missed a newsletter. I have never missed a week of posting on LinkedIn. I've never missed a podcast episode. I am on top of it because I have a routine in place. It's easy for me because it's like, okay, it's Monday, this is what I'm going to do, and if I'm out of tone on a particular Monday, I just do it twice the week before. Thanks for tuning in and I hope you found this behind the scenes look interesting at the very least. So be sure to just subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And hit that bell. I literally just noticed this, but you can get a bell notification on your podcast apps to make sure that you get notified when a new episode goes live. We go live on Sundays, but you know, just in case you forget, hit the bell and don't forget to go over to YouTube, because we are now posting all of our episodes on YouTube too. So my channel over there is just at Sarah Noelle Block. All right, I will see you next week. You love all things tiny marketing. Head down to the show notes page and sign up for the wait list to join the tiny marketing club, where you get to work one-on-one with me with trainings, feedback and pop-up coaching that will help you scale your marketing as a B2B service business. So I'll see you over in the club.