Podcast S1:E8 How I run my business with ease
Show notes:
What do you want more time and energy for?
This is something that in my previous life, as a tech virtual assistant, I dealt with all the time, it was one of the first questions I asked my clients when I was trying to figure out how I could assist them in making their lives easier. It's something I still ask members of The Capable Collective all the time.
What do you want more time and energy for? I also asked this question in a recent workshop in the free Capable Collective Facebook group.
The answers I got included things like. Focused deep work to think about new products. Finding time for Headspace. Ensuring that I spend time on actually supporting my clients and less on faffing. Resting. Pleasure. Self-care. Being able to get up and go. Working from anywhere. Finding some balance between work and time to herself.
These are things that I see really commonly across my community and across my work. So I want to share with you some of my very best tips, tools and templates to streamline your business in a way that will feel like it's a lot less hard. You can make business easy. I run Calibrated Concepts in like three days a week.
I can do it so easily these days, because I have the right things in place to make it a breeze. So first I want to walk you through some common time sucks that I have seen over and over and over again in business.
These four big categories are: social media and content management, project management, appointment scheduling, and time management. People seem to really struggle with these four big categories. So I want to talk to you a little bit about each one. Where people seem to be hung up. And how to fix it.
So let's start with social media and content management.
I think one of the biggest things is that this can be a really broad topic and it can overwhelm people.
So when I'm talking on this, I'm thinking about obviously your social media channels, your preferred channels. As well as things like your newsletter, your blog, if you have a podcast or a YouTube channel, that's what I mean when I'm talking about content management.
The first thing I usually recommend to people is to create a content library. This is a huge and really simple first step. Put everything all in one goddamn place. People really struggle with this. I think it's because people's brains, don't always work this way. Right? But if you put everything in one fricking place, you can find it again. Everything lives in its own ecosystem, which is really important.
So what I want you to do is go into your Google drive or your iCloud drive or your Dropbox or wherever you like to keep things and create folders. I want you to create a folder that says content library, and in that content library, I want you to have a folder for blog. I want you to have a folder for your branding information. I want you to have a folder for your newsletter and professional photos, stock photos, anything you keep for your social media and content creation.
Have it all in one place and that way, when you go to create things you have everything in one place, but also it means that the content you've already created also lives all in one place, which means you can content repurpose. It means you can create bundles. It means that all of your intellectual property that you've created down the line can be turned into new and better things.
The next thing I want you to do is create a bank of topics. So around social media, it should be really the who, what and how. Right? Who you are, what you do and how you help people. That's what you should be talking about.
For longer form content, start writing down a list of potential blog posts or newsletter topics that you want to touch. Keep those all in a document somewhere so it makes it really easy to get started.
Then I want you to make a plan. So when it comes to social media, I usually recommend that people come up with loose categories. When I was a VA, that was one of the services I offered. And I would often do things like motivation Monday, testimonial Tuesday, Wednesday wisdom, top tip Thursday, fun fact Friday. And usually we weren't saying, Oh, it's motivational Monday. But we would post a motivational type post on Mondays. And it could be anything, but it helped frame the day. Tuesdays would be sharing a testimonial or an example of our work. Wednesday would be dropping some wisdom. And so it covers those who you are, what you do and how you help categories in a loose framework.
Around your other content, your plan should be. Okay. I go in once a month or every other week, and I create X number of blog posts. I create so many podcasts. I do this on this day at this time. Creating a system for it.
The last thing I want to say around content management is to use a scheduler and to batch. So for social media, pick a good scheduler. I'm obsessed with Later. I love it because I have like a thousand photos in there that I've been using over the last four years. And I just keep adding to it. I'm on the free plan. It's amazing.
Can schedule and plan out things for Instagram, facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but I mostly just use the Instagram one. You can also do stories and such on the paid plan. And it's really, really handy.
The other thing is batching things. Batching is essentially just a word for saying, do the things that are similar all at the same time. So I create about three weeks worth of social media posts at any given time. For me, that's a really sweet spot because things tend to be. Relevant. Still. I can be talking about what's actually happening in my life. So it connects with my audience better.
But it also means that I'm not in there every day or even every other week feeling like, "okay, what am I going to say? What are we going to say?" I also give myself a loose framework for how often I have to go in. So I would say that I schedule it. For about a week before I run out of posts, knowing that I can go in when I feel inspired because for me, content creation can be quite draining. And so I give myself a window to go in and do that. I also would batch podcasts episodes recorded multiples in a row. I write my newsletter and repurpose that into content for my social media. And I use my blog post that goes into my newsletter and it all comes together to create multiple areas of content for multiple parts of my audience without having to recreate the wheel over and over again.
The next big category that I've seen as a time suck for people is project management.
So how you manage your day to day kind of work. The first thing I usually recommend to people is to think through your client or customer journey and how to better it.
How do they find you? What is starting working with you or buying your products like? How is that experience? Is it nice?
Are they going to want to recommend you? Is it easy to do business with you?
And then from there to think through how the actual process throughout the work is, or using your product might be. And then from there, think, okay, "how does it wrap up and how do we get them to come back? How do I get them to buy again? How do I get them to use my services again?"
So thinking through your customer journey and bettering it all the time is really important because people will recommend people that made them feel good. Lots of people can do a good job, but if you don't make people feel like they're in the right hands and that not only that, but that they feel heard and understood, and like you communicated and all of that.
Really really important. So that's an episode, go back and listen to my episode with Shannon Baker, because we talk all about this.
From there , I want you to start documenting your processes. There's lots of ways to do this, but the easiest way is to use a screen recording software, something like loom or descript or something like that, where you literally record your screen, talk over it, and tell somebody exactly how to do something step-by-step-by-step.
I use this with my assistant almost every day. I'll record a video of me doing something once. And then he can use that video forever to see how to do that process. So for example, I will record myself doing the entire customer onboarding journey, which generally takes about 15 minutes. I'll record that video and put a link into the task that I set for him and I put that link to the tutorial in that task. And then from there, every time he does that task he knows where that link is and he can refer back That also means that if God forbid Hassan should ever resign or if I need additional help in my business, there are documented processes for how so many things get done that I won't have to over-explain things. They're already there.
That brings me to my next point, keeping track of everything. Again, we've talked about this in some of my episodes, but I use Asana to track everything. It keeps task visible. I can set reminders and deadlines. There are other really great tools such as Trello, Monday, Clickup that are really, really good. But Asana's free plan is absurd.
And the number one reason I use it over other tools is because they have a place that says my tasks and I can set it to chronologically show me my next due upcoming tasks. So every day I can go in and no matter how I've got all of my tasks categorized by areas of my business or based on which client project I'm working on, I have one list of what I have to get done that day. And it means the world to me.
It also makes it really, really easy to outsource tasks. And that is my last tip under the project management section. Outsource. If something takes you more time and energy than it's worth, outsource it. If you can make more money in the time that it takes you to do something that you don't like or to learn something.
Then outsource it. Whether that be building a website, doing your own copywriting, creating social media graphics, scheduling posts - whatever it is. If it takes you so much time and energy, and you could actually be making good money in place of that instead of fiddling away time, though something that isn't in your expertise or interest.
Definitely outsource it.
Something that Paul, my husband and I discuss quite often is the fact that time and energy and money are all sort of the same thing. You have to choose what you're going to spend and choose to spend it wisely. And what I mean by that is.
You can put in time and energy to do something that you could pay someone to do, or you could throw a little bit of money on it. The only thing is money is really easy to make comparatively to time. You can't make time. And you can only, you only have so much energy to recoup. So you have to think really wisely about how you invest each of these things.
The next category, we're getting there halfway through, is appointment scheduling, and this is the easiest thing to solve. If you do not use an appointment scheduler right now, as you're listening to this podcast, that is something I want you to do today.
Calendly is free for one appointment type.
Acuity is fantastic. If you want to be doing some more advanced features, like having group classes or having packages or subscriptions or payment plans. I currently use Calendly. I love how simple it is, but with a lot of my clients that are maybe coaches or yoga teachers or something I recommend Acuity. The reason I feel so damn strongly about appointment scheduling is because it mitigates that whole like back and forth shenanigans.
So I have appointment schedulers for recording podcast episodes. I have appointment schedulers for client calls. I have appointment scheduler for Consultations. I have an appointment scheduler for like business coffee chats. That if somebody hits me up on Instagram and was like, "Hey, like I'd love to chat with you a bit more", or maybe it's been a long time since we've hung out or see each other at that networking event, I send them a link.
And during non-pandemic times they can choose whether that's a zoom call or in person going for a coffee chat on a Friday. And obviously during a pandemic, it's only a zoom call. And these schedulers integrate with Zoom perfectly. So each person who signs up for a meeting gets an individualized link automatically created and it's already in my calendar and also in my Zoom, like dock of appointments. Super fantastic. And I never have to think twice about it. I have each one set up so that it has time buffers around each time between appointments or which days and times that I accept certain types of appointments. It really helps me set boundaries in my business as well.
It means that those are the times I am available. And it helps me so that I don't take calls on Mondays or that I don't take calls in the mornings. I just don't take calls in the morning because I only do calls in the afternoons, because I want to be able to be doing some deeper work in the mornings.
The other nice things that allows you to do is that you can inset up intake forms and customize reminders. And then once you have these appointments scheduling tools, they give you a link and you can put that link anywhere. It can be in your email signature. It can be in an email template that you send out.
It can be in your bio, all over your website, wherever you want it to be. And then you can also embed them in places. So it's super handy and it makes the user experience both on your end and your client's end, super smooth, like super, super easy to be hanging out with you.
The final category is under time management. This was something that when I ran a workshop similar to this and the Capable Collective free group recently, I had a lot of people saying that they struggled with time management.
The first tip that I want to say is make a list of what needs done in your business in a day or a week or a month. And take a look at what you can automate and what you can delegate. What can you use software to solve? What can you use a tool like an accounting tool or a scheduler, like we just talked about to automate? What things can you delegate to a virtual assistant or to a copywriter or something? What can you take off your plate?
And that's the third thing! What can you just remove from your list entirely? And streamline your business in that way. What does just faff that isn't actually giving you any value back? There's no return on investment from the energy you're spending on it or the money or the time.
The next thing I want you to think about is how to set the right work environment. A lot of this is around setting really good boundaries for yourself. One thing that I do is I do time-blocking, like I said, I only take calls in the afternoons. In the mornings, I do more distinct work. I work on websites on specific days of the week. So I typically work on websites on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I usually do a lot of Capable Collective type work on Fridays. And then I have another client that I work with currently on Mondays and Wednesdays. These aren't hard and fast rules. It's not the client work from my website, never bleeds into a Monday or that I've never ever taken something from my other client on a Friday. It just means the in general, these are the pots that I put things in and it really helps me stay grounded in the work that I need to be getting done that day.
The other thing is I do a lot of time tracking. I really believe in time tracking. So I use, a time tracker that's a part of my accounting software, Freshbooks, but there's good free ones. You can use your phone, even just the timer on your phone or do you can use something like toggle, which has a great free plan.
So thinking aroung that the reason I really believe in time-tracking. So I track my time, not just on client projects, but I do track first and foremost client projects, because I need to know how long it's taking me to build websites, to make sure I'm charging the right amount of money.
But I also track how much time I'm spending, marketing my business, how much I'm spending on admin. How much I'm spending, managing my very tiny team of me and Hassan I'm tracking how much time I'm volunteering for committees and things I'm on. And knowing all of that really helps me make sure that I'm spending my time more wisely and investing it in the right places.
The next thing I want to say is minimized distractions. This is a huge thing, right?
We all are addicted to our phones, our emails, et cetera. So the first thing is to reduce task shifting. It can be really exhausting to go from thing to thing, to thing, to thing to thing, and then have to remember.
"Oh, gosh, I just checked my phone in the middle of this thing that I was working on. Where did I leave off? What's next? What was that thing? I was just thinking about." Reducing task shifting is part of why time blocking is so good. And why batching is so good. We've talked about these things. I find that people who really struggle with needing a deadline or some urgency to get things do really well using what is known as the Pomodoro technique. And that's just setting a timer saying I have 20 minutes or an hour or whatever it is to get as much of this done as possible. And when that timer is up, I'm done.
And I think that technique also really works well for perfectionists, because you can say, "okay, I'm going to spend an hour on this blog post. And when it's done. When that timer is up. Like I'm done and I don't have to have it perfect. It's going to be great by that stage. It's going to be good enough."
Another thing I really recommend is turning notifications off on your apps. Both on your computer and on your phone.
So turning off notifications, like not having those little red bubbles are the pings or the things coming up can really help. On my phone, I have notifications turned off on almost all of my apps. I have timers set for how long I can use some of my social media apps. They turn off after I've been on my social media for 45 minutes for the day.
I also have my phone on silent and there's no vibrate, which drives my husband nuts, but it means it doesn't distract me. You can also use, do not disturb mode. I use this on my laptop all the time. So there's no dings or anything that come in when I'm doing either really deep work or recording like this podcast, it means that I can be a lot more intentional with my time.
Another tip. And this is probably the one on this list that I struggle with the most is only checking your emails a couple of times. So check your emails, first thing in the morning and near the end of the day.
This keeps you from being reactive and allows you to be very intentional. If you only check your emails a couple of times a day.
I often tell myself that because I'm a service-based business that so much of my work is down to what's in my inbox, when I'm waiting on things from clients to keep the project moving. But I actually don't necessarily need to be checking it as often as I do. And I often will be looking for that. Describe the distraction of a newsletter coming into my inbox. So I don't have to do something. And I would get more done if I didn't check my inbox
The last thing I want to say around time management is take some time to get organized. Create systems. Create templates. I have templates for everything. I have templates in Canva that I use the same thing over and over again. For every time I have a podcast episode, the cover artist it's based on the same template.
I also use email templates. So if I'm requesting a testimonial from a client or if I have to send them all the information about what it's like to work with me after we have our initial consultation. Clients get the same email over and over and over again. It's written out. It's saved. Your email provider will have a way to create templates and you should definitely definitely use it.
I also have templates for things like my newsletters. I have a template for how I conduct my potential new client calls. And these are in Google docs that I just duplicate. And reuse. So my newsletter is the same structure over and over again, with different content filled in. I have lots of these types of things I use across my business.
And they really, really help. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Nobody cares if it's the exact same thing. And most people will never ever know. They're not usually going to get these types of things twice from you.
So that's it. Those are the four biggest time-suck categories and all of my best tips for how to resolve those issues in your business. These are things we talk about in The Capable Collective community all the time. These are things that I'm helping women's solve every day, finding the right tool to save them time, finding the right template to make something easier in their life or their business to give them that thing that they're wanting.
So all those things we talked about in the beginning, more headspace, more time with our families, more time to travel when it's not a pandemic. Those kinds of things are the reason that you should be setting up these simple tools and systems that I've talked about, making sure that the big bads of content management, of project management, of appointment scheduling ,and time management are all so easy in your life.
It doesn't need to be hard. And so if you want more help in these areas join the free Capable Collective Facebook group. We can't wait to have you!
