Episode Summary 

I know what you’re thinking; “Never finish your To-Do list is bad advice.”  But hear us out!  You always need to have something on your list to keep you moving forward. If you have completed everything on your list and have nothing left to do, this means you aren’t working towards anything.

In order to be successful in your business, it’s extremely important to eliminate stress, be efficient, and make sure you are always moving towards your goals. We’ve noticed that things that generate a lot of stress for self-employed business owners are often related to their To-Do lists.  

Three common To DO list stressors business owners struggle with are:

1. Unrealistic To-Do lists
2. Not knowing what to do next
3. The “Getting Ahead” Myth

How to Overcome Stress from Unrealistic To-Do Lists

We’ve all been guilty of creating To-Do lists that go on forever and are impossible to complete. We think that writing everything down on an epic list is the perfect way to relieve the stress we have of keeping everything in our heads.  The reality is, these impossible To-Do lists end up adding to our stress because they are impossible to complete!  This means we end every day with a never-ending list of things we didn’t get done and it’s deflating.

The way to fix this problem is to focus on making different To-Do lists.  Your Daily To-Do list should only include tasks that you can actually complete that day.  Force yourself to really consider how long something will take you to complete and make sure you are breaking down your tasks into their smallest form so you can easily check things off as you go.  It’s not helpful to have giant tasks on your To-Do list that require multiple steps.  This means that as you complete each step you have nothing to check off so it never feels like you are making progress.  This can lead to stress!  After focusing on your daily To-Do lists, think about breaking things down into different categories and making different lists to work off of.

Tips on Making Different To-Do Lists:

• Weekly Tasks

These are things that have to be done no matter what, like housekeeping.  It’s not exciting but it’s got to be done.

• Client Tasks

These will constantly change as weeks go by, but if you’ve got a good client workflow process and a project management system in place, it should be simple to manage.

• Internal Business Tasks

Any time an idea pops into your head of something that you want to do or SHOULD do for your business, you need to write it down.  Not on a sticky note, but in an organized place for your business tasks.

How to Overcome Stress from Not Knowing What to Do Next

When you don’t know what you should be doing for your business or your current clients/projects this can be really stressful.  We use WRIKE to manage our projects and when we come up with things that need to be done, we create the task and keep it in a folder that we can pull from when we begin to make our next week’s agenda.  Think of this as your “Backlog” that you can pull from whenever you aren’t sure what to do next or you have extra time.  Believe me, when you properly plan a daily To-Do list, you’ll sometimes have “extra time” and this Backlog will come in really handy to keep things moving forward and avoid time-wasting.

If you have nothing on your list to do, it’s impossible to keep moving forward. For example, I like to always be reading a book so I keep a list of potential books that I can always pull from.  A few months ago, I finished the book I was reading and realized that I didn’t have any more books on my Reading Wish List, and before I knew it an entire week had gone by without me reading!

How to Overcome Stress from The “Getting Ahead” Myth

I used to work tirelessly in my business to try and get EVERYTHING done so I could get ahead and relax.  The reality is, it is impossible to “Get Ahead.”  Think about it,  if I ever actually finished EVERYTHING that needed to be done for our business, it would be the day we were no longer in business.  Finishing your To-Do list means you are out of business. 

There is always client work to do, bookkeeping, business development, organization, etc.  If you actually finished everything, it would be because you had no work and no money coming in and effectively, NO BUSINESS.

Quick-Wins:

1. Organize your To-Do lists into different categories
2. Make realistic daily To-Do lists
3. Create a “Backlog” list with tasks you can pull from when needed
4. Forget about trying to get ahead and focus on always moving forward

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses. 

Recommended Resources 

Wrike Project Management

The post Quick-Win Episode 7: Never Finish Your To-Do List appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Episode Summary

If something triggers you to get into a funk or in a bad emotional space this gives you the opportunity to do a little bit of investigative work.

Hit the pause button and pinpoint the root of these bad emotions or experiences.

We hear a lot about business owners carrying a lot of stress around.  We get it, being a business owner is by no means a walk in the park and you’re going to have rough patches, but we’ve all got to realize that we’re not in business to cause ourselves stress.

Get to the core of the issue for any particular bad day. 

Are your clients causing you stress? If so, what’s it about?  A process that you control or something outside of your control.  

Are you stressed that you don’t have enough time? Do a time audit, figure out what’s sucking away your day.  Usually, it’s tied to a lot of inefficient processes that you can easily fix with a simple plan, automation or outsourcing.

Is money your main stress? If so, it’s going to be hard to become a successful business owner if you don’t have a good relationship with money.  Figure out the root of this – is it confidence based? Is your pricing an issue? Do you not have enough clients?

Is it something going on personally? Or your lack of self-confidence?  It’s easy to let your personal life bleed into your business when you are self-employed.  Sometimes when you really look at it, it’s personal stress of bills or a lack of time to spend with your family, or maybe even a lack of support or self-confidence that it’s eating away at you.  This is why personal development is so important for self-employed business owners like us…sometimes we are our own worst enemies!

Moral of the Story – Bad days put a magnifying glass on things that are inefficient and stress-inducing.  Once you know the problem, you can work towards a solution.

Quick-Wins

1. Target the cause of your bad day.  If you can do something about it, do it.  
2. Implement changes to your workflow or processes if you’re seeing work or client related stress.
3. Always work on your personal development to stay balanced and level-headed.

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Recommended Resources 

Time Audit Worksheet

4 Ways to Use Your Phone to be More Productive Video

You’re A Badass At Making Money

The post Quick-Win Episode 6: Bad Days Are A Good Thing appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Episode Summary

We hear it, I say it, and we all do it – but using personal time is not the way to “get ahead.”

First of all, getting ahead rarely leads to more free time or making more money and secondly, for most of you that terminology of “getting ahead” is hollow.  

Unless you have a strict schedule of work – but most of us just flow with what’s happening.

*NOTE: If you work in certain industries, your business relies on the weekends, which is not what we are talking about.  Maybe your “weekend” is Tuesday/Wednesday, but whatever it is TAKE IT OFF!

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR SCHEDULE

If you find yourself working all the time it’s because YOU allow that to happen.  You are always setting expectations for your clients. If you are always available, that’s what they’ll expect and then you always need to be available.  If you set boundaries and tell your clients when they can contact you and when they can expect to hear from you, they’ll understand and expect that. The hard truth is, YOU are the one allowing your business to control your schedule and it doesn’t have to be that way.

YOU NEED TIME AWAY FROM YOUR BUSINESS 

-You’ll have more energy

-You’ll come up with great ideas

-You’ll spend time recharging your personal life and friendships

-You’ll resent work-time less when you allow yourself free time

-You’ll remember WHY you work so much

YOUR GOAL SHOULD BE TO CREATE A BETTER LIFE

-The whole reason you’re in business is to live your life!

-Take yourself seriously → this shouldn’t be work vs. life…this is just one big life.

-Weekend work is usually due to an inefficient work week or procrastination, which leads to stress.

STOP ALL CLIENT OR TEAM CORRESPONDENCE DURING ALL NON-WORK HOURS

-We’ve all been guilty of it, but DON’T DO IT…otherwise, you’re self-sabotaging your time and setting the wrong expectations

Quick-Wins

1. Commit to giving yourself time off
2. Create boundaries for yourself and your clients
3. Don’t check emails on your weekend

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Recommended Resources 

-THINGS TO HELP: Set SLEEP mode on your phone, use a scheduler for email correspondence, don’t reply to things during non-work hours.  Your dentist wouldn’t answer the phone at 8pm, neither should you!

The post Quick-Win Episode 4: Stop Working On The Weekend! appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this quick-win episode, we share our own story of learning the valuable lesson of separating our work life from our home life.  Early on in our career, a mentor told us to be strict about the time spent on our business and the time spent on ourselves.  As simple as it seems, this is extremely hard to accomplish when you’re working to make more money any possible way.  We talk about habits, concepts, and ways that we keep ourselves grounded and make sure that we’re bringing balance to our everyday lives.

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.  

Episode Summary

• It’s okay to work non-traditional hours
• Make sure that you’re not always available for your business/clients
• Schedule your personal chores, hobbies and family activities just like you would business meetings
• If you end up working weekends, or nights, make sure to swap out other times in your week for your personal time
• Create weekly business goals, so that you can actually be mentally present during your personal time and allow yourself the flexibility to take personal time

Quick-Wins

1. Make a schedule for your personal time as well as your business time
2. Don’t make work available everywhere. Separate it physically from you. Commit to your scheduled personal time.
3. Make clear goals.  Weekly goals are extremely helpful to get out of the workaholic mindset.  Once you’ve hit your goals, you can celebrate with personal time.

The post Quick-Win Episode 1: Being Strict About Work & Play appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In our maiden voyage of the Learn It – Do It Podcast we introduce ourselves and give you a little insight on what this show will be about.  We’re a husband and wife team who’ve been in business for ourselves since the fall of 2008. We share our story of how we jumped feet first into being self-employed entrepreneurs and discuss how we navigated the challenging task of creating our own opportunities in business.  Over the last 10+ years, we’ve worked with hundreds of clients and we noticed that almost everyone struggles with similar challenges. We decided to focus this podcast on the topics of Content & Marketing, Business Strategy and Personal Development, because no matter what industry you are in or what your business is, these topics play a crucial role in running a successful business.

Episode 0 Summary

• We introduce ourselves as business owners and podcast hosts
• We talk about our qualifications and experience in this space
• We share why we wanted to start this podcast
• We tell you what this podcast will be about and talk about who it’s for
• We describe the show format and episode details

Recommended Resources 

Check out our creative media agency: 

Do Something Different Media – www.dosomethingdifferentmedia.com

If you want to apply to be a guest on the podcast head over to www.learnit-doit.com/podcast

The post Episode 0 – Who are Rhi & Pete and What’s this Podcast All About? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.