Jul 30, 2018
3 Weeks To Launch - Follow Along With Our Daily Tasks π
by
Caroline Zook
We are in the home stretch of bringing Wandering Aimfully to life (on August 20) and doing our first official launch. Check this post daily to see what we're working on!
π If you want to get caught up,
click here to jump to the first daily check-in post
(at the bottom of this page). ππ
We sat down to talk about our content plan for this under construction site and decided we'd already written a crapload of lengthy/in-depth content. We could continue to do that until our official launch, but we need as many hours as we can get to bring Wandering Aimfully from 90% to 100% completion by August 20.
Check this post daily until we launch
Each day we'll share a checklist of the to-dos we're working on. At the end of the day we'll let you know if we've completed our tasks and if there were any lessons learned (or other things worth sharing). It's our own form of accountability to finish this project!
5 Days And Counting π³ (Wednesday, August 15) - Last update!
So.......... The entire day today was spent working on ALL the domain transfers (3 domains across separate sites and hosting was quite the mess!)
We're making the decision to stop the daily updates here as we're in crunch-mode until the finish line on August 20. We're also taking a weekend trip to Santa Barbara for Caroline's 30th b-day. That's also why these updates are stopping π .
Catch us on Instagram
and make sure you're on the
Wandering Aimfully email list
to catch our launch announcement on Monday!
Thanks for reading all these posts as we brought you along on the WAIM-build journey. Hope you enjoyed riding the roller coaster with us.
6 Days To Go π€ (Tuesday, August 14)
We sent our first "Wandering Weekly" combined newsletter yesterday:
Hurray!
But...
Bad news:
Something is wrong/weird with our email sending and the new from email/from name in the email (we didn't change email providers and we have been sending emails from our new email/name already). We average a 20+% open rate on our emails in the first 24 hours and our first Wandering Weekly email is at an 8% open rate after one day. Something is afoot. Yay for one more thing to think about, especially email-related as that's how we'll be selling our WAIM Memberships next week! π€£π π©
This about sums up our feelings at the moment, in case you were curious...
Us, now.
To-Dos for 8/14:
β Email Drip Support about folks not getting our first Wandering Weekly email that went out yesterday π
β Update copy and images on these pages: Homepage, Sales page, Contact, 404, About, Podcast/Show, Workshops, Privacy, FAQ, Terms, Register, JasonDoesStuff, Made Vibrant (and probably a few others...
this task is hefty!
)
β Try to get local environment setup for WAIM + GitHub (this has been tricky and way more difficult than we thought)
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide (FINALLY)
β Color correct WAIM Sales video (donezo!)
β Upload WAIM Sales video to YouTube (wooot!)
β MAYBE...... do some domain stuff π¨π¨π¨ #scary (def had to wait to do this tomorrow)
β Caroline to write "street team" email for
Your Brightest Life
book reviewers (pushing to Friday)
β Write copy for the Customer Journey page (two avatars - this is a maybe)
β Caroline to get 3 sections completed of in-depth Intentional Living guide (same as ^)
β Record WAIM Dashboard walk-through video for Sales page
7 Days To Go π± (Monday, August 13)
The countdown is on folks!
β Work with developer to get Articles added to WAIM Members Dashboard
β Morning meeting about the priorities for the day (I ended it with a πͺ)
β Caroline is working on content and content plan for
@wanderingaimfully
Instagram promotion strategy the next two weeks
β Caroline to finish all the graphics for WAIM Sales video
β Caroline to convert 16 Made Vibrant articles to WAIM articles
(NOOOICE!!!)
β Caroline to go through Drip double opt-in process for our email forms
β Caroline to create thanks and confirm pages for double opt-in process
β Get 1st cut of WAIM Sales video edited (just have color-correction left!)
β Convert 5 JDS Pages to WAIM Pages (IWearYourShirt, et al)
β Go to the gym πͺπΌπ¦ (we've been skipping OrangeTheory because it saves us about two hours of precious time we need these last few weeks)
β Write copy for the Customer Journey page (two avatars)
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide (not sure I'll get to it)
β Caroline to get 3 sections completed of in-depth Intentional Living guide (same as ^)
β Caroline to write "street team" email for
Your Brightest Life
book reviewers
Check back throughout the day to see us update our tasks!
9 + 8 Days To Go (Sat/Sun, Aug 11-12)
It'll be a working weekend around these parts! Short term pain for long term gain, folks!
to-dos for 8/11 and 8/12:
β Caroline to write script for WAIM sales video
β Review Caroline's script for WAIM sales video
β Storyboard WAIM sales video
β Convert 5 JDS articles to WAIM articles
β Learn Git and Github! (we feel π§π»π΄π» and π€ at the same time)
β Record WAIM sales video
β Rough edit WAIM sales video
β Caroline to create graphics for WAIM sales video
β Caroline to write, format, and schedule first Wandering Weekly newsletter (JasonDoesStuff and MadeVibrant email lists are
officially combined!
)
β Budget meeting (woof)
β Write copy for the Customer Journey page (two avatars)
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide (knew this wouldn't get done, but keeping it on the list)
β Caroline to get 3 sections completed of in-depth Intentional Living guide (same as ^)
β Caroline to write "street team" email for
Your Brightest Life
book reviewers
β Convert 5 JDS Pages to WAIM Pages (IWearYourShirt, et al)
β Play Overcooked 2 on Nintendo Switch with friends (we capped our weekend off with a break that was desperately needed πͺπ π #3starfamily)
10 Days To Go (Friday, August 10)
Each day seems to be a full re-adjustment of priorities at this point. We'll have a morning meeting to get on the same page with what we want to accomplish today.
Meeting was had, now we have to-dos!
to-dos for 8/10:
β Morning meeting to re-adjust priorities and tasks (see Airtable at very bottom of this post for our exact tasks and priorities π§)
β Create FAQ Page
β Create temporary Workshops Page
β Get 5 existing WAIM Members to give feedback on our new subscriber email automation
β Finish writing WAIM Site copy (Sales page, a few other pages - 3,500 more words!)
β Convert 10 JDS articles to WAIM articles
β Final, final feedback for our developer for WAIM site
β Caroline to create all product images for WAIM Sales page (30ish images)
β Caroline to create temporary Podcast page (podcast is launching in September)
β Caroline to finish the design and coding of the Customer Journey page
β Get clarification on domain/DNS stuff for next week (from Flywheel)
β Go to the gym! πͺπΌπ¦
β Convert 5 JDS Pages to WAIM Pages (IWearYourShirt, et al)
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide
β Caroline to get 3 sections completed of in-depth Intentional Living guide
β Caroline to write "street team" email for
Your Brightest Life
book reviewers
β Budget meeting (woof)
11 Days To Go (Thursday, August 9)
to-dos for 8/9:
β Woke up at 5am and knocked out converting 8 JasonDoesStuff articles into WAIM articles! (pre-donut "workout" π)
β Get donuts in the morning! π©π©π©
β 1-on-1 call with an existing WAIM Member
β Email Flywheel about plan to migrate JasonDoesStuff and MadeVibrant over to new WAIM site (along with domain updating of this site)
β Review additional work by our developer for WAIM site (so close, so close!)
β Take our Tesla Model 3 in for service (the AC is acting funky)
β Write WAIM website copy for Sales page, Contact page, and Articles page (knocked out 5,600 words πͺπΌπͺπΌ)
β Caroline to get 10 more Made Vibrant articles updated to WAIM articles
β Convert an additional 12 JasonDoesStuff articles to WAIM articles (about 40 are left)
β Caroline started the custom code [4 hours!] for our Customer Journey page (for WAIM Sales page)
β Caroline to get 3 sections completed of in-depth Intentional Living guide
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide
Very important donut photo!
12 Days To Go (Wednesday, August 8)
12 days left!?? It's crunch-time folks!
to-dos for 8/8:
β Gym workout (not OrangeTheory as we need the extra time)
β Have a 30-minute meeting about WAIM Affiliates and Member Welcome Gifts
β Order (new) WAIM Member welcome package goodies! π¬ππ
β Delete old pages from Made Vibrant and JasonDoesStuff on new WAIM WordPress (this stupid task took nearly 3 hours... ugh.)
β Caroline to get 10 Made Vibrant articles edited and updated to WAIM articles
β I'll match Caroline and try to get 10 JasonDoesStuff articles done too! (Only got 5 done)
β Caroline to get 3 sections completed of in-depth Intentional Living guide
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide
β Watch the first episode of the HBO Show Hard Knocks ππͺπΌ
13 Days To Go (Tuesday, August 7)
Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity! Whew! Today we'll get some stuff done, but it's also Caroline's book launch day! πππ»π±
Grab a copy of your brightest life on:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Target
To-dos for 8/7:
β
Share the secret video I made for Caroline
ππ
β Celebrate Carol's book launch!
β Go somewhere fun for lunch
β Go over WAIM website pages from developer (we're getting close!)
β Go somewhere fun for dinner to celebrate
β Have a 30-minute meeting about WAIM Affiliates and Member Welcome Gifts
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide
β Delete old pages from Made Vibrant and JasonDoesStuff on new WAIM WordPress
β OrangeTheory workout (ARGH, we don't like skipping fitness)
14 Days To Go (Monday, August 6)
We're hoping that as you check these daily updates you'll see that it's normal for to-do items not to get done (and often not get done for days). While we are HUGE advocates for taking action and getting things done, we're also big on keeping our sanity and knowing when not to burn the proverbial candle at both ends.
That being said, we only have two weeks left and this week is going to be a busy week!
Send good vibes our way, we'll need 'em. ππ»π
To-dos for 8/6:
β Work with developer on design tweaks for WAIM site
β Record another WAIM Show episode (rescheduling for Friday of this week - low priority)
β Drop off 235 copies of Caroline's book
Your Brightest Life
at USPS ππ
β Make final tweaks to Working To Live email series
β Test Working To Live workflows and worksheets (and troubleshoot because they didn't work right away! We got it figured out though.)
β Go through all old workflows in Drip and shut off any we won't be using with WAIM
β Have our make-up budget meeting because we missed the last two Fridays!
β Finish Debt Guide (yaaaaa buddy, this was a BEAST!)
β Record one last Debt Guide walk-through video (Debt Sucks Spreadsheet)
β Setup initial workflow in Drip for our WAIM Sales Emails
β Have a 30-minute meeting about WAIM Affiliates and Member Welcome Gifts
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide
β Delete old pages from Made Vibrant and JasonDoesStuff on new WAIM WordPress
β Last minute stuff for Caroline's book launch (tomorrow!)
β Have dinner with our friends (tequila and taco break from the to-dos!)
16 + 15 Days To Go (Sat/Sun, Aug 4-5)
I wasn't exactly sure what we were going to do for this post when it came to the weekends. When we aren't launching a new project, we try to enjoy our weekends and while we may work on Saturdays and Sundays, it's verrrrry relaxed. That being said, this weekend was a bit different as we
are
in launch-mode (as you well know) AND Caroline's book comes out on Tuesday! WAHOO!
To-dos for 8/4 and 8/5:
β Package up 235 books for our existing BuyOurFuture/WAIM Members
β Nothing else! πΉ!
But truthfully we did do other stuff...
β Write Action Army newsletter for Caroline's book launch (going out Tuesday 8/7)
β Caroline write book preview newsletter for Self-Made Society (going out Monday 8/6)
β Caroline write book launch newsletter for Self-Made Society (going out Tuesday 8/7)
β Caroline write blog post for Chronicle Books (her book publisher)
β Format and update two more articles from JasonDoesStuff
β Gym workout at the YMCA (still wanted to workout)
β Weekly budget meeting (getting caught as we missed last week π¬)
You can't say we don't love our community members! (screengrab from an IG story)
17 Days To Go (Friday, August 3)
Fridays are always a bit more relaxed for us, but we do still have a few items on the list we hope to knock out (especially stuff we've had to carry over - arg!).
To-dos for 8/3:
β Record another WAIM Show episode (our goal is to have 10 eps recorded and waiting)
β Make final tweaks to Working To Live email series
β Finish Debt Guide (we're close!)
β Record Debt Guide walk-through videos (one video left)
β Edit Debt Guide Expenses walk-through video (took way longer than anticipated)
β Have a 30-minute meeting about WAIM Affiliates and Member Welcome Gifts
β Caroline is having a "girl's happy hour" (woot - π―ββοΈ)
β Write Sections 4 and 5 of in-depth Audience Building guide
β Fix Restrict Content Pro registration and login page issues
β Go over some final responsive functionality for WAIM Sales page
18 Days To Go (Thursday, August 2)
We hope you've noticed, even by the third day we're updating this daily checklist, that we don't always get our planned to-dos accomplished. Each day becomes it's own balancing act and we give ourselves permission to push items to the back-burner that are of lower priority.
To-dos for 8/2:
β Send final WAIM Sales page tweaks (responsive stuff)
β Fix an unexpected issue with Restrict Content Pro payment form
(weee!)
β Review all Working To Live emails
β Test all Working To Live Typeforms (have one thing to check/fix)
β πͺπΌ Do OrangeTheory workout (2,000 meter row day π)
β Finish Debt Guide (we're close!)
β Record Debt Guide walk-through videos (one down, one to go!)
β Have a 30-minute meeting about WAIM Affiliates and Member Welcome Gifts
β Write Sections 1-3 of in-depth Audience Building guide (3,500 words - weee!)
19 Days To Go (Wednesday, August 1)
We made the decision mid-day to not record our second helpful video this week. While we want to keep up with creating content for our YouTube channel, it's more important to focus on the tasks that bring Wandering Aimfully (the website and business) to life. So, those get big fat red X's for now...
β Storyboard helpful video #2
β Film a-roll and b-roll for helpful video #2
β Organize, import, and do first edit of helpful video #2
To-dos for 8/1:
β Caroline has a therapy appointment
β Enjoy a delicious lunch (pizza) and grab iced coffee after ππΌ #treatyoself
β Write fourth Sales Email for WAIM Launch (4 of 7)
β Write fifth Sales Email for WAIM Launch (5 of 7)
β Write sixth Sales Email for WAIM Launch (6 of 7)
β Write seventh Sales Email for WAIM Launch (7 of 7 - WOOOT!)
β Finish Day 5 Working To Live email
β Format and add new branding to all five Working To Live emails
β Have a 30-minute meeting about WAIM Affiliates and Member Welcome Gifts
β Finish Debt Guide
β Record Debt Guide walk-through videos (two of them)
β Review all Working To Live emails
β Share photo of aforementioned
$90 of Spindrift
π
It wasn't on the to-do list, but because we tabled the helpful video work I had some extra time on my hands. I decided to tackle a few of the remaining articles that needed updating from JasonDoesStuff (I think I have about 20 articles left):
β Reformat and rewrite Significance article
β Reformat and rewrite You Are Not Average article
β Reformat and rewrite Startup Weekend article
β Reformat and rewrite Weird Al Yankovic article
(no, seriously.. hah)
20 Days To Go (Tuesday, July 31)
This will be the first day we have carry-over to-do items from the previous day that didn't get done. We're hoping to not have to carry to-dos over from the previous day too often, but only time will tell if that's a recurring theme of these daily check-ins!
to-dos for 7/31:
β Write third Sales Email for WAIM Launch (3 of 7)
β Weekly budget meeting (we'll be skipping this until Friday)
β Design image for this check-in post
β Write email for check-in post (and schedule for tomorrow AM)
β Record a WAIM Show episode (wanted to get two, will record second one on Friday)
β πͺπΌ Do OrangeTheory workout
β Finish resources for Get Out Of Debt guide
β Record walk-through video for Debt guide
β Small design file exports for developer
β Finish Day 5 Working To Live email
β Review all Working To Live emails
β Write script for helpful video #2
21 Days To Go (Monday, July 30)
to-dos for 7/30:
β Write first Sales Email for WAIM Launch (1 of 7)
β Write second Sales Email for WAIM Launch (2 of 7)
β Finish Day 5 Working To Live email
β Review all Working To Live emails
β Finalize WAIM newsletter email template
β Create Working To Live email template (similar to WAIM)
β Weekly budget meeting (moved from last Friday)
β Finish resources for Get Out Of Debt guide
β Record walk-through video for Debt guide
ps - I also ordered $90 worth of Spindrift on Amazon. We're hooked.
Where This Post Started (Saturday, July 28)
This update will probably be one of the lengthier updates in this post. As we get closer to our launch date, don't be surprised if we have a simple bulleted list of to-dos and whether we did them or not on most other days!
This past weekend we sat down at a coffee shop and wrote a gigantic brain-dump of everything we had left on our plates before launch.
Don't worry about to trying to read all those to-dos, we've embedded an Airtable (below) we'll be updating daily!
We spent two hours writing down every single remaining task we could think of, grouping them together as best we could. The different groups of tasks ended up being:
Newsletters (WAIM, JasonDoesStuff, and Made Vibrant)
WAIM Automated Workflows
Previous Automated Workflows (what do we need to turn off/tweak?)
WAIM Articles (damn you humungous content migration!)
WAIM Dashboard Stuff
WAIM Site Stuff
Video Content
Social Media Content
Customer Journey (post-purchase stuff)
Plan After Launch??
We broke each of those groups down into smaller tasks and then Caroline worked her magic to bring them into one sheet in
Airtable
. That way we could organize all the tasks by category, person assigned, priority, due date, and status.
We'll be updating that Airtable daily if you want to come back and take a look at it. We're also using a calendar view in Airtable to organize tasks week by week (while also blocking off time on Google Calendar). Yes, it's a bit redundant to update two calendar views, but, this is how you get a crap-load of stuff done in 3 weeks!
Our calendars typically only look like this during busy projects. Otherwise, it's a lot calmer!
Now... feel follow along each day (come back to this post) as we share our list of to-dos, check them off, and add any other thoughts/lessons/random updates.
Here we come August 20!
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