Your project management system probably isn’t the problem. You just need a better way to turn everything in your head into an actual plan.

When a project is scattered across voice notes, Slack messages, sticky notes, and your brain, it’s easy to think you need a new Notion template or a better project management tool. But before you need a tool, you need the right order of decisions.

In this second episode of our five-part Life First Series, we’re walking through how to turn a messy brain dump into a real project plan in about 15 minutes. We break down how to define the destination, choose the route, and turn that strategy into deliverables, production steps, owners, and realistic deadlines.

Because the best project management system isn’t necessarily the software you’re using. It’s having a repeatable process that gets the project out of your head and into a plan that works with your actual capacity.

In This Episode, We Cover

• How to define the business goal, outcome, success markers, and boundaries of a project before creating tasks.
• Why mapping the strategy and phases of a project should happen before filling up your project board.
• How to factor your actual capacity, time, and budget into the scope of a project.
• The difference between a deliverable and a production step—and why breaking projects down this way makes the invisible workload easier to see.
• How to organize tasks by dependencies, assign owners, and work backward from your deadline to create a realistic timeline.

Resources Mentioned

Project Planner Paula — our $14 AI project planning tool that turns your brain dump into a structured project plan with goals, strategy, deliverables, production steps, owners, and timelines.

Grab It Here: https://gal.thrivecart.com/paula/

Meet Your Hosts

Jessica Walther is the founder and CEO of The Launch Collaborative and Sustainable Success Systems. As a launch strategist and systems consultant, Jess is dedicated to helping solo business owners and small-but-mighty teams build businesses that deliver both peace and profit. She specializes in creating sustainable growth strategies that align with her clients' values and lifestyles.

Rachel Lopez is the founder and CEO of Gal Marketing Agency, a boutique email marketing and strategy firm. With over a decade of experience, Rachel helps heart-driven entrepreneurs craft intentional marketing strategies that attract, nurture, and convert leads sustainably. Her human-first approach ensures that marketing efforts feel authentic and effective .

Together, Jess and Rachel blend systems, storytelling, and soulful strategy to help you grow a business that's deeply aligned with your life—not just your revenue goals.

Connect With Us:

• Jess Website
• Rachel's Website

Hang Out & Say Hi!

• Deeply Rooted Business Instagram
• Jess Instagram
• Rachel's Instagram

All right, picture this: It is Thursday and you are finally

2

sitting down to work on that

project you have been thinking about

3

executing for three to four weeks.

4

You open your Notion and voila,

your project board is empty.

5

You've got ideas everywhere.

6

There's a voice note on your phone,

a sticky note on your kitchen table,

7

a couple of Slack messages that

your project collaborator sent,

8

and a sentence in your planner that

says, "Figure out my next launch."

9

And because none of it looks like a

plan, you just assume that you need a

10

better project management system, maybe a

prettier board or new template, or maybe

11

even blocking off a full Saturday to set

it all up, and I promise you, you don't.

12

You just need 15 minutes and

the right order of decisions.

13

So today, we're gonna be taking you from

that hot, jumbled, hot mess of a project

14

in your brain and turning it into a real

project plan that actually gets done.

15

It's not gonna be a list of random tasks.

16

It's gonna be a clear plan with a goal, a

strategy, clear deliverables, production

17

steps, dates, and the whole shebang.

18

And make sure that you stay with us,

because we're gonna be answering some of

19

the questions that we hear constantly,

like what are the best project management

20

systems for a solopreneur business

or a business that has a tiny team.

21

I promise you, it's not

another tool you need.

22

Rachel: So welcome back to Growing a

Deeply Rooted Business, the show for women

23

building businesses that want to support

their lives instead of disappearing into

24

the client work and getting burnt out.

25

I am Rachel, your marketing ecosystem

strategist, and I'm here for the

26

message, for the buyer journey, for

making sure that all of the pieces

27

actually connect to a real business goal.

28

And I'm here with Jess, our sustainable

systems strategist, our resident plan

29

translator, honestly, my second brain.

30

And if you give her a chaotic

brain dump, she will turn it into

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a beautiful phased dependency and

suspiciously satisfying Notion

32

template, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

33

So this is part two of our Life

First series, where we are naming the

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invisible labor that you have been

carrying as a small team, solopreneur,

35

or just general woman in business.

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Today we're taking one very specific

piece of that load, which is the project

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that only exists in your head, and we

are giving it someplace else to live

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Jessica: Right.

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But before we get into anything,

let's do a quick energy check, and

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I want you to bring to mind that

project that is currently taking

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up the most space in your brain.

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Maybe it's something that you set a goal

to do in January, and you haven't done it.

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Maybe it's a launch.

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Maybe it's rebuilding your onboarding

or creating that resource that you've

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been talking about since early February.

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Now, picture what happens

when you think about it.

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Do you feel clear?

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Do you feel slightly annoyed?

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Are you shaming yourself

for not getting it done?

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I want you to release all that

right now by taking a deep breath in

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and let it go.

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All right.

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Rachel: So we're gonna be

walking through three steps.

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First, we are going to

define the destination.

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Second, we're going to choose that

route, and then the third is we're

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gonna turn the route into work

that you can actually complete.

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And inside of that third step,

we're talking about the move

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from strategy to deliverables,

deliverables to tasks, and tasks all

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the way down to dates and owners.

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So we are going to be showing you kinda

like the 15-minute version of this.

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We know that project planning

can be expansive, right?

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We're talking about annual planning.

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It usually takes us a couple of hours

to do, but we're really gonna be driving

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down into a specific project plan.

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And at the end of it, we're gonna

be talking about not only the

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biggest gap, which is my biggest

problem here, which is how come my

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Notion board always ends up empty?

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And it's not necessarily because your

project system isn't working for you

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or because, your platform's wrong.

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We'll get into that at the end.

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So if you have ever built a beautiful

project board, used it enthusiastically

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for three days, and then stopped

using it, this is the episode for you.

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Jessica: All right, so let's get into

project planning step number one,

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and this is one that I see usually

not fully realized, and I think it's

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where first people kind of go astray,

and that is defining the destination.

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Like, taking that vague idea that you

have for a project into a specific

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finish line so you know what belongs

in the project plan and what doesn't.

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In this step you really wanna define

what your goal is of the project, so what

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business goal is this project supporting,

and if it's not supporting a business

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goal or a current business goal that

you have, then you probably need to put

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that back into your idea parking lot for

another time, and then define the outcome.

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Now, these sound like the same

things, but really they are different.

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Your goal is why the project

matters to the business, and your

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outcome is what will exist or be

true once the project is done.

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So let me give you a quick example.

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Launch my new offer is

not a useful outcome.

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It is a project label.

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A clear goal for that might be

enroll 10 founding members into

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my new quiz funnel service.

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The outcome of that project goal

would be a complete launch that

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has run, every buyer is onboarding,

and the first delivery date for

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my quiz funnel is on the calendar.

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The goal is gonna give your project

a reason or a deeper why, and the

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outcome is going to give it that

finish line that you can cross.

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How do you feel about this step, Rachel?

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Rachel: I think this one's important

because I always tell everybody that

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you should always have a reason to

do it, and always have that bumpers

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when you do get off track or when

it's sitting in that to-do list of,

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"Oh, I haven't touched it in a couple

of months," and this and that.,

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If it has a specific business goal, you

will have to prioritize it in that order.

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And when it doesn't have a goal,

it's so much easier to forget

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about it and not accomplish it.

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And so it's one of those things that for

me, if you have a specific business goal

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for your email list as the email person,

you're not gonna neglect it as much

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compared if you're like, "Well, it's just

kind of one of those things that I do."

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This is one of my looming tasks that

has existed on my project list parking

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lot is my new website rebuild, which I

have the whiteboard already laid out.

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I have all of the brands and

everything, but I haven't gone

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through the process of where it

prioritizes with that outcome and goal.

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So it has just sat there

for literally ever.

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So it's one of those things that should

be able to break this down into one

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sentence for the business goal and

really understand that's your little

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Post-It note when you come back to it

and say, "Oh, why am I doing this again?

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Oh, great.

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Yeah, I need new leads

for that quiz funnel.

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So let's put this back on the

top of the list kind of thing."

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Jessica: Okay, so let me tell you

what this actually looks like.

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This means opening up a Notion project,

or I have a project template and

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saying, "The goal of this project is…"

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Or if you're really savvy,

connect it to your goals database

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in Notion and figure that out.

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Then defining the project is

complete when, and then you're

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gonna put some specific deliverables

that are in part of that project.

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And then you wanna define

one or two success markers.

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These are gonna be KPIs that you

can actually observe or measure to

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show if your project was successful.

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And then most importantly, you wanna make

sure that you're naming the boundaries

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of what is not included, and these

boundaries might become more apparent

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as you get into project planning.

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We always talk about version 1.0,

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2.0,

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3.0s

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of items.

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Sometimes you just need to get it

launched, but you have ideas that may

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take more execution or more resources,

but you don't want to execute those yet

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until you have proof or validation that

the beginning part of the project works.

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So defining your boundaries are

important, and then give your project a

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working title that reflects the outcome.

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Rachel: Yeah, This isn't even

getting into the tasks or anything.

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This is literally just setting

up the shell so that you can

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properly put things into place.

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And you have to kinda start on the

right foundation first before you

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can even move into the next steps or

else it will continue to be chaos.

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So step two is choose the route,

and I'm gonna let Jess take this

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'cause this is her zone of genius.

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Jessica: choosing the route is gonna

look a little bit different depending

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on what type of project you're doing.

148

If you're doing a marketing

campaign, it's gonna look one way.

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If you're doing an automation or operation

setup, it's gonna look the other way.

150

But basically, it's going to be

all the steps that need to happen,

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strategy-wise, to get to that

outcome that you're trying to.

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So in a launch, for me, choosing the route

looks like getting out a whimsical board,

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even Canva has the whiteboards now, and

literally mapping out the strategy, the

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customer journey strategy of where that

customer will go through if I'm doing

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some sort of launch or marketing campaign.

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If I'm doing an operational system setup,

that may look like doing all of the

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different steps of, you know, if we're

doing a content repurposing project,

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what has to happen first, second, third,

and then what has to be built in each of

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those steps to make sure that it's route.

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So basically, you are defining

what the project serves, and then

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just finding the steps that you're

gonna need to create between the

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starting point and the outcome.

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I like to break my projects

into different phases.

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If you've listened to one of our

launch episodes, you've usually

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heard that I usually have a

strategy phase, a copy phase, a

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asset-building phase and then, launch.

167

But you can also look at it like a

marketing campaign, ramp up, invite,

168

deliver, follow up, are good ways that you

can kind of take your projects in as well.

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Rachel: Yeah, and I think the most

important part here, and this is why

170

we've included this in the Life First

Business series, is your capacity.

171

You wanna keep that as

a guiding light here.

172

Because when you're talking about your

capacity in terms of project planning,

173

in the same times that if you've heard

us talk about annual planning and

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you're saying, like, "I can get seven

projects done in Q2," when, but when

175

you go to break that down into tasks,

seven projects at 10 tasks minimum

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can be 70 tasks that you have to do

top of client work, on top of kid

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pickup, on top of life just life-ing.

178

Your capacity is the thing that you do

have to honor, and I will selfishly plug

179

the Life First Business, that when I'm

sitting there and I'm talking about one

180

of the skills and saying, like, "I wanna

launch this, I wanna do that," because

181

we've worked into our weekly rhythms and

capacities as a very primary important

182

part of building out that strategy, it

goes, "Well, maybe it's not really the

183

best idea for you to make these changes,

because you can't really take on more

184

than two strategy intensives a month.

185

And if you wanna ramp this up,

you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

186

And so understanding that and at

least having that as a point in your

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brain to help you say, "You're right."

188

Capacity needs to be respected as an

important part, so that the rest of the

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tasks can kind of fall into place there.

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Jessica: Yeah, and I mean, if you don't

wanna also think about capacity, and I

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think as solopreneur or tiny teams, we

don't do this because most of us are not

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operating with a budget because we're

bootstrapping our way up there, right?

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But when you're setting your capacity,

think about what your budget is.

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Like, how many hours times your

hourly rate are you willing to

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put into this to get that outcome?

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Because if it's gonna take you 80

hours to get there and you're $100,

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that's $8,000, but you don't think

that this project is gonna result in

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you bringing in an additional $8,000

in your business, then that project

199

would get nixed for a bigger company.

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And I've seen this.

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I'm currently working with two businesses

that are moving from solopreneur to

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full-on team right now, and this is

the biggest change that they're having

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to make is really defining what the

project budget is for each thing.

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Because if you say, "Hey, Jess, I want

you to do a launch," I can build you

205

the most intricate, crazy launch that's

gonna take a billion hours to do, or I

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can build you a smaller, straight to the

point, just email only launch, and both

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may work and get you to that outcome,

but it's just gonna depend on to…

208

your capacity, your

budget to get you there.

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So it's really important

that you think about this.

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Even if you don't have a full team,

even if you're doing everything

211

yourself, you still need to be talking

about what is your time budget?

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What is your revenue budget?

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What do you think that this is

going to generate in your business?

214

And then, do a real gut check and

if it's yes, this is worth it,

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then we can move on to step three

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Rachel: So then step three is

saying we're gonna take this route

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and turn it into the actual work.

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So in this stage, we are taking all

of those kind of deliverables and each

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turning them into what the tasks and

actual hand-to-hand work is going to

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be, and then even further, we're putting

them on our calendars, we're putting

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them in our weekly rotations and saying,

"This is who is responsible for it."

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So essentially, this is the part where

we're building the actual plan and

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then building it in the order that,

one, respects your weekly rhythm.

224

You're not overloading yourself in

one week or one particular day, and

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it gives you that part of saying

it's continuous motion, right?

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I know as ADHD people, we

love that urgency to really

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help us get that task done.

228

Trust me, Jess and I are working on

something right now, and I'm like,

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"Hello, we have a lot of deliverables

due in the next week or so."

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And I understand that from a

ADHD, neuro spicy kind of person.

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But when you do have an easy way to

chip at certain things, it's a lot

232

more manageable to essentially take big

projects into tiny digestible bites and

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knock them out without it feeling crazy

overwhelming or anything like that.

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Jessica: Yeah, and I think again, this

is where a lot of the solopreneurs, tiny

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teams may get tripped up a little bit

because when you're a solopreneur, you

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can just say, "Create registration page."

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But you're probably getting tripped up

because creating a registration page

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is deliverable, not a production step.

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So we take that and break that down,

the production step may be draft the

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positioning and promise, draft the

copy, collect the brand assets that

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you wanna use on the page, build

the page, create the form, write the

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confirmation message, test the sign-up,

approve and test the final version.

243

Those are all the production steps,

and if you're not used to laying

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those out in an order, you can

give yourself lots of quick wins.

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I know my dopamine loves it.

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But also, if you wanna bring in someone

to support you, you can see, okay,

247

maybe I don't wanna have the copy,

so I'm gonna draft this copy, but

248

then they need to hand it off to me.

249

You can kinda see all the steps,

that are there and the dependencies.

250

So what must happen for the next

production step to begin, and then you can

251

start to kinda work backwards to when that

asset needs to go live, work backwards

252

on, what needs to happen when according

to dependencies, and then assign an owner

253

to every task, even if the owner is you.

254

And then you can kinda take a look at

it and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, I've

255

got like 55 tasks for this one week.

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I need to stretch out this

timeline," because we know our

257

project management triangle.

258

If your scope grows, your timeline or the

money you invest to get somebody else in

259

there help you is also gonna have to grow.

260

So that's really where you can start

really analyzing, do a gut check.

261

"Okay, does this timeline look feasible?

262

Do I need to remove some

things based on my capacity?"

263

That is really the project planning part

of it, and then at the end of it, you

264

may have a project plan that you can

run with, or you may have a project plan

265

that you need to just pull back a couple

of things on because you know you're

266

not gonna have the capacity to do it

at that level that you wanna do it at.

267

Rachel: Yeah, and it's always really fun.

268

I have this system designed for

any time I onboard a new client.

269

So, when you say, "Okay, build a lead

magnet," if you're doing it for yourself,

270

you have the automatic steps in your

brain to kind of going through it.

271

But when we build this out for my clients

and stuff, it is broken out, like Jess

272

said, where it's copy or even ideation.

273

Like what is the title ideation?

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What is this step?

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What is the ideal client research?

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All of those different components.

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And so when I'm onboarding and I

have to import all of this on top

278

of all of my client work, it's wild

to see how sometimes there'll be one

279

week where there's like 25 tasks.

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And you have to understand that that

is not working with my capacity.

281

So then that's when you have to take

a really honest conversation with

282

yourself and put them into the right

buckets while still maintaining

283

your deadline and all of that.

284

So it really is important to understand

that while this isn't necessarily

285

a perfect science, it does become a

solid rhythm when you're working with

286

everything on paper versus in your head.

287

'Cause when you're working with things

in your head, you can't see that there

288

are 15 invisible labor tasks sitting

there waiting for you to do them, because

289

in your head you're like, "Oh, I just

need to make a landing page," or, "I

290

just need to make the lead magnet."

291

So the best part of this stage is that

it really does show you the truth of the

292

lift, and it really helps you achieve

it a lot faster or at least a more

293

reality way where we're always talking

about being rooted in reality here.

294

And I think this step is crucial to

avoiding that burnout and avoiding

295

missing deadlines and all of that.

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Jessica: Okay, so just to recap

all the steps for you, and if you

297

wanted to do this in 15 minutes,

I would say define the goal.

298

What's the outcome?

299

What's the boundary?

300

What is the kind of KPIs

that you are going to create?

301

What's the route?

302

Choose the route.

303

Name who the project serves, what

the project serves, the change you

304

need to create, and identify the

phases or the flow that the either

305

customer or the system that you're

building is gonna have to flow through.

306

And then under that, you

wanna list the deliverables.

307

And then I like to, underneath each

deliverable, list the production

308

steps that go into those deliverables,

and I like to list them in order of

309

dependency because you can't design

the page if the copy's not written.

310

You can't write the copy if

you haven't done your research.

311

So you're just gonna line those

up sequentially and then work

312

backwards from their go-live dates

and add owners and responsibilities.

313

That would be super quick to do.

314

You're gonna work through it really quick.

315

We're gonna give you a

little surprise at the end.

316

We have something to share with you that

might help you do this a little quicker.

317

But all in all, I just want y'all to know

that the best system or the best project

318

management system is not the software

you're using, it is this flow that you're

319

using to create all of your projects.

320

And I promise you, even though when you

have a new project you wanna kinda just

321

jump right into it, if you take the time,

at least giving yourself 15 minutes,

322

you may not get all the different tasks

or deliverables, you may still miss

323

something, but I think this is gonna set

you up for success 'cause you're gonna

324

know what you're going into with it

325

Rachel: Yeah.

326

And I think that this is what's gonna

solve a continuous utilization of this

327

decision sequence is what solves you

not opening up your project management

328

tool, whatever it may be, and being

like, "Oh, there's nothing in here."

329

'Cause if you get into the habit of

continuously running through this process,

330

you'll see how all your projects can pulse

throughout the year versus you sitting

331

down and being in a panic for Q2 and

being like, "I need to make money in Q3.

332

What do I need to do?"

333

So this in capacity with your annual

plan really just help you not start

334

from a blank page every single time

and help you brain dump with structure.

335

If this episode hit home, share it with

a business bestie who has been project

336

living in her head across six different

tabs between three different planners.

337

You do not need a new template,

you need to just work in a

338

different decision order.

339

And if you want to be able to build

this plan in that 15-minute window

340

like Jess just broke down, one of the

tools that we have built is Paula,

341

our project management planner.

342

Essentially you give Paula the brain

dump, and she helps turn it into

343

that goal, strategy, deliverable,

production step, owner, and timeline

344

in just a brain dump transition there.

345

So we have the link in the show note.

346

She's $14.

347

She's amazing.

348

Jessica: the great thing about Paula

too is she's not only gonna help you

349

create the plan, she's gonna put it

into your Notion project management

350

system as well, if you're using Notion.

351

Now you can connect things like

Claude and stuff to Notion or your

352

other project management tools.

353

I've recently been experimenting with

Notion AI and using all of my AI skills

354

right into Notion, which is amazing

'cause it can go throughout your works

355

and grab all the context that it needs.

356

This is the exact tool that I

built for myself to plan the big

357

$3 million launches that have 400

different tasks going into it.

358

This is how I am able to keep all

of that straight and line everything

359

up sequentially so we're not getting

to the day before and freaking out

360

because we have amazing things to do.

361

And I would say one little bonus tip is

when you assign your due dates, make sure

362

that you're also blocking that time off

on your actual calendar to protect it just

363

like an appointment or a client call or

something like that to actually do the

364

work so that you're not getting behind.

365

Rachel: Totally.

366

So check out Project Planner Paula.

367

She's amazing, helps

me with so many things.

368

And then in next week's Life First series,

we're going to be diving into the client

369

management side of things, so those

follow-ups, the decision-makings, the

370

tiny promises that pile up while you're

on calls and serving clients, to do it

371

all while you're running your own business

as well as other people's marketings,

372

launches, OBM stuff, and all of that.

373

So stay tuned, and until next week, we're

374

Jessica: Rooting for you.