This will happen when you just assume that in order to be successful, you need to be busy. It’s exactly what I had thought originally. I remember thinking, “If I can just get enough clients so that I can tell everyone that we’re really busy, then my friends and family will be impressed.”  

Straight up, there are two things that are very wrong with this mindset. Number one, your friends and family’s opinions are not at all any sort of reflection or meter for the worthiness of your business, and number two “being busy” is not tied to success.

Breaking the Busy Myth

When we were “busy” just as I had asked for, I noticed my patience would wear thin, my energy levels dipped, and my body felt the physical and mental symptoms of constant stress. My work became something that I was falling out of love with. I kept telling myself that I love being a creative person. And I knew that I love taking photos, making videos, and designing and launching projects, but I just couldn’t stomach tomorrow’s To-Do list.  

The Busyness of Business

I grew with my business, just as we all do. In the beginning, I only had to do the tasks that I loved to do — ya, know, the creative stuff. But as we got busier and grew, my role expanded because the business chores expanded, too. These chores were usually dropped in my lap and would take hours of time and energy away from the creative duties that I would still have to complete afterward.  

Burning the candle at both ends led straight to a tipping point where I had a serious sit down with Rhi to talk about what “the point of this all was.” It was hard. I was putting my own “baby” on trial as if it had purposefully slighted me.

The truth is, I just never stopped to actually figure out, track, and choose the tasks that were assigned to me. I just did what was in front of me and did it enough to feel “busy;” as if that was the goal. With that in mind, it was no wonder that I felt overwhelmed with tasks that didn’t bring me joy or necessarily help the business move forward effectively.

Gametime Decision

We decided that it was time to do a basic SWOT Analysis to gauge the general health of our business. This led us to create a time audit questionnaire to find out what will create more energy, what will deflate us, where we excel, and where we fall short.  

The name of the game for your business is to be as efficient as possible. If you’re the one gumming up the tracks, then step aside and get help from someone who excels at that particular task.

I started by physically writing on a sheet of paper the daily work I had completed. The trick to doing this successfully requires writing down every. single. task. No matter how long it does or doesn’t (so you think!) take.

Why? Because for some reason, we tend to only track time if it represents a significant expenditure. In other words, we won’t record 2-minute emails or phone calls– but if we did, we would see that these tasks “not worth tracking” amount to 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes of our day. That adds up.

Evaluate Your Efforts

Looking at your total time expenditure, break out your week’s worth of tasks into categories as follows:

1. Tasks that could be completed through technology [thinking automation]
2. Tasks that can be outsourced to contractors
3. Tasks that can be better planned and batched together

Within these lists identify the tasks that you:

1. Love to do
2. Hate to do
3. Spend zero time on  
4. Spend too much time on
5. Frequently procrastinate about (and consider why that is. Hint: see #2).

Envision Some Strategic Support

Although you may not be at a point in your business that you can outsource tasks quite yet, it’s a good idea to have a roadmap for when you do get to a point where you can hire outside help. You’ll never be ready for help if you don’t have any ideas as to what they would do for you…this is a great place to start!

Cherry Picking is Key

As far as technology is concerned, there are an infinite amount of free websites and applications that can help you solve problems and be more organized. The key to using apps and automation is to choose the programs that you’re going to actually use. It’s easy to get caught up in signing up for subscriptions and memberships just to forget about them. Make sure that you’ve made good use of any trial subscriptions and commit to using the software before you decide whether it will be part of your business.

We use software to make bookkeeping simpler and project/team management more efficient because we found those to be our most time-consuming tasks.

Oh My, Organize!

Next, create a plan of action to re-organize all of these tasks. It’ll take some work to get organized, but you NEED to make these changes in order for you to maintain sanity and to allow your business to grow.

When organizing your schedule, make sure to batch similar tasks into the same time blocks. For example — we have set times that we check our email and social accounts each day. Rather than being at the whim of notifications or your email inbox – check these accounts on your terms.  

This concept may take some getting used to, but it helps if you just give your clients, co-workers, and team members a heads up and let them know, “Hey, I’m checking my email at 10 am and 4 pm and I’ll be sure to respond accordingly.” Establishing this kind of schedule will tremendously reduce getting derailed by random messages and will reduce your daily stress.

Here’s a quick video from Tim Ferriss further explaining the concept of batching.

Finally, we want to leave you with our time audit questionnaire to help you complete your own.  Fill out this Questionnaire and get your answers emailed to you so you can start to outline your plan of action:  

The Time Audit Takeaway

Ultimately, how did doing a time audit save me from my business? Plainly stated, I was able to filter out tasks that drained my energy and created stress. I found wonderful team members to assign these tasks to, and I started using programs to automate tasks that I didn’t enjoy or became a waste of my time.

Taking the time and organizing my day to day routine opened up a whole newfound perspective on my business and it gave me more energy that helped me be a better business owner and creative entrepreneur.  

Now, I can honestly tell you that I absolutely love my “job” in my business and I stay excited to crack into my task list every day!

It doesn’t take long to get organized, and doing so will save a lot of time and energy…so what are you waiting for?  

You’ve got this!

The post Doing a Time Audit Saved Me from my Business appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Take advantage of these Benefits to Make More Money!

We’re all so fortunate to have the internet at our disposal as a means to create income for ourselves. Whatever your skill is, there is a vast market for freelance help in today’s business sphere. We’ve found that companies are turning to freelance professionals before they look to hire full-time employees! This trend is happening because a lot of managers and team leaders don’t have the proper knowledge base or skill set to train or even manage a new hire. This knowledge gap provides the perfect opportunity for you, the freelancer, to come in and save the day.

Whether you’re just getting started or have a full portfolio, there is plenty of money to be made helping companies meet deadlines, create media, and train employees. In most cases, you’ll be able to make a steady income, even while maintaining your day job.

Check out our list of 7 benefits you should know about your freelance business in order to increase your client base and generate profits.

1. You get to work remotely or from home.

Being remote means that you don’t need to carry overhead, but you can still acquire larger clients. If you have a full-time job, you will still be able to manage your clients. Think about a typical work day at the office, how much of that time is spent getting stuff done? When you work from home as a freelancer, you only have to spend time completing your assignment. You won’t find yourself sitting there just to satisfy your hourly obligation. This means less time and more money in your pocket for the work you do!

2. You will leverage loads of valuable client experience.

As a freelancer, you get to work with tens or even hundreds of clients. You have the freedom and ability to manage multiple clients at the same time and reach people at different business levels within a variety of industries. Ultimately, this leads to work/client experience that you could never match in a job situation. Every client you work with provides a vast array of knowledge, research, and life lessons to help you grow your business and provide better service to future clients.

3. You get first-hand insight into every organization that you do work for.

Working with lots of different clients means you get an inside peek at how various organizations work behind the scenes. You can cherry-pick good ideas for your own business, from marketing, management, customer life cycle, planning, and overall business model. You also get to see what to avoid in your own business. The ability to foresee pitfalls is invaluable to a growing company and this type of education you can’t always learn from internet research.

4. You gain confidence in your work and yourself.

Like I said above, by working with a variety of clients, companies, and industries, you’ll gain knowledge and insight that will allow you to be more effective and efficient in your own business. All of this experience amounts to gaining more confidence in yourself, and your work. The more experience and confidence you have, the higher your perceived value, meaning you can charge more for the work you’re doing and make more money!

5. You get to master the interview process.

As a freelancer, you will end up having hundreds of client inquiry meetings, which are essentially job interviews. After a while, you’ll develop your method to get the sale every time, and you’ll become a professional interviewer. Think about it. Most people interview to get one job to pay them 50k a year. You’ll be interviewed multiple times with the chance to get numerous 50k contracts. The better you are at the interview/proposal meeting, the more money you will make! Find what works for you, and with lots of practice, you’ll be a champion at “interviews.”

6. You call the shots!

Being in charge might be the best feature of being a freelancer. You determine the cost and length of your contract with each client. You get to set the boundaries in your client relationships; what is and is not accepted. You can hire clients and fire them! If you are working with a client who is challenging, unappreciative, and miserable to deal with, you can choose to stop working with that client or at least choose to never work with them again. I cannot overstate this. We’ve all had bosses or co-workers that made our jobs easier or harder. As a freelancer, you decide whom you work with, for how much, and how it will all go down.

7. You get to use other professional freelancers as sub-contractors.

If you find yourself with a big fish on the end of the line and fear you can’t handle it on your own, team up with other freelancers in your sphere to get the job done. We do it all the time, and it works out very well. Working with other freelancers means you get a professional quality product/service every time. Also, let’s face it, there is plenty of work to go around, so collaborating with other freelancers means more opportunity to work together on future projects and provides the ability to build strong relationships with people just like you!

So, if you don’t have a network of other freelancers yet, it’s time to meet some. Having a roster of talent will always come in handy when those opportunities come around! [NOTE: Make sure you have a proper sub-contractor agreement in place with anyone you bring on board to help out. This contract is so you don’t get burned, which keeps these collaborations a win-win.]

By understanding these concepts, you can begin to pay attention to specific details, plan your goals and shape the path of your business to help you grow your profits. It’s time to make some serious money as a kick-butt freelancer! You can do this!

The post 7 Benefits of Being a Freelancer appeared first on Learn It - Do It.