In this podcast episode, we break down the phrase “fake it ‘till you make it” and talk about the practical uses and the impractical side effects.

Our three main problems with the idea of “faking it till we make it.” 

1. It never ends because there is no quantifiable “making it” period. How do you know when you’ve made it?
2. It breeds the foundation for the Imposter Syndrome. Even if you’ve gained experience, this way of thinking will knock you down into believing that you’re not supposed to be here or that you’re no good at this.  
3. It doesn’t allow you to learn and grow, because you avoid vulnerability.  

We talk about the psychology of what happens to your long-term confidence and growth and what you can do to maintain a healthy confidence level.

“Faking it” breeds a long-term identity crisis. You become obsessed with your external image and you end up putting yourself in a lot of stressful situations.     

We share stories of things that we experienced when we launched a photo portrait studio in 2013 and how “faking it till we made it” affected our business starting out and as we grew.

The Next 3 Steps to keep “fake it until you make it” in check

1. Set a goal for when you’ve “made it”. It can be a monetary amount, a certain number of clients, your number of products sold, or even a time frame. It’s entirely up to you and your business goals. But the point is to set a tangible goal and allow yourself to say you’ve “made it” and can stop “faking it”.
2. Take daily action towards “making it”.  Stop spending time, money, and energy projecting that you’ve made it and just focus on actually doing the things that put you on course to your success.
3. Find other ways to build confidence. You can do things like taking courses, networking with peers, and getting client reviews.

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

Leave a voicemail for an upcoming podcast: www.learnit-doit.com/podcast

The post The Problem With “Fake It Until You Make It” appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this video, I go over 4 habits for you to implement to save you from wasting over a day each week on your phone so you can be more productive. We know cell phones can be time suckers, but I’m here to help you change the way you use it!

When Apple created the new screen time app, I was horrified to learn how much time a day I spent on my phone. That’s when I implemented these tips on myself and now I want to share them with you!

For all you people who think there’s not enough time in the day, I’m going to help you save 10-20 hours each week with these tips. You’ll soon find that there is plenty of time in the day to be productive.

MY 4 TIPS FOR LESS SCREEN TIME & MORE PRODUCTIVITY

1. Set app restrictions using the apple screen time app.

2. Turn off unnecessary notifications.

3. Use “sleep mode” [do not disturb]

4. Schedule a window of time for “productive phone time”

By the end of this video you’ll have learned 4 ways to be more productive and spend less time on your phone. So the next time you think there’s not enough time in the day to get all the things done, remember this! Share this video with your procrastinator friends!

FOR MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT FREE MINI-COURSE

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In episode five, we tackle the challenge of how to stand out in a saturated market.  The issue begins to arise when we spend too much time paying attention to what our competition is doing and not enough time focusing on ourselves and our unique differentiators.  Although you may offer the same products or services as other businesses, you can stand apart based on your own unique qualities, experiences, and expertise. As you’ll hear in this episode, Dawn is an experienced Realtor who is looking to provide value to people who are just beginning their house buying journey so that she can cement herself as the local trusted expert who is dedicated to providing a top-quality service.

Guest Bio – [From her website] “I have had the privilege of assisting people in buying and selling homes for over 14 years. As a dedicated mother, wife, daughter, and friend, I have learned that multitasking, balance, and negotiation keep me at the top of my game in all aspects of my life. I have built my business on trust, integrity, and always putting my clients’ interests first. From first time buyers to downsizing sellers, I am always working hard to make their dreams come true.”

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 5 Summary

• Understanding triggers that will make you more memorable 
• Brainstorming your service differentiators
• Niching down your audience 
• Breaking down audience buying habits
• How to use your experience to your advantage
• How to use Facetime or video for client communication
• Brainstorming custom content
• Using Meet Up to create in-person groups
• Breaking down your ideal client experience
• Using stories and visual descriptions to make yourself more memorable
• Developing your brand voice and branding yourself 

The Challenge & The Next 3 Steps

Dawn does a great job providing top-notch service to her clients, but she’s looking for ways to connect to buyers earlier in the buying process so that she can provide education and insight to her clients earlier on to ensure a more successful process. 

1. Use video to send responses to digital messages from potential new clients so that you can stand out among all other agents.
2. Niche down your audience and outline where they spend time digitally and physically
   1. Be as precise and specific as possible
   2. Outline a few profiles so that your messaging can speak specifically to them
   3. What experiences have you had that make you unique and different and how can you use that to relate to a niche audience?
3. Create a content strategy to get people into your sales funnel much earlier
   1. Write out your content for the month at one time so you don’t get burnt out
   2. Use messaging and topics that your niche markets would be interested in

Recommended Resources 

Dawn at Coldwell Banker Classic Realty

Dawn on Zillow

Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income

MeetUp.com

The post Episode 5 – How to Stand Out From Your Competition & Show Your Value appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Let’s Define Social Media

By now most of us are accustomed to using social media (at least personally) and we know that it seems important to be on there in some capacity.  We see it everywhere, we hear about it, read about it, and we certainly know that it’s here to stay, but almost all of us have zero ideas on what to do or even where to start.  

These are all frequent questions that we are asked during consulting meetings:

• Should I get a Facebook Page? 
• What about Twitter? 
• How do I get immediate business from Instagram? 
• I set up some accounts but that’s basically it. Now what? 
• Should I have a Linkedin because it’s about business?

Before we get into any of this, I want you to understand a realistic perspective that you should have about social media and what it can do for you as a self-employed business owner. 

What Social Media is.

It’s a tool that is used to engage with people. 

That’s it. Think of this as a tool and only a tool. 

It creates top of mind awareness among your customer base.  

Word of mouth referrals happen because of top of mind awareness.  When the timing is right for someone to need your product or service, they will probably talk to someone about how they are looking for “X Product/Service.”  Your followers will be more likely to refer you and your business because they are seeing your regularly posted content, which allows them to recall who you are, what you offer, and why you’d be a good solution for their friend in need.  It’s all about “Top of Mind Awareness.” If you and your business are at the top of their mind, they are MUCH more likely to refer/hire you.

For Example – You own a chiropractic business.  Your patient Jody loves your service and follows you on your social accounts.  You post about your practice and general body health regularly. Jody has a friend Taryn who was mentioning over a luncheon that her sciatic nerve has been bothering her and she needs to find someone to do some bodywork on her.  Jody will most certainly recommend you and your services and she’ll remember to do so because you were at the top of her mind.

It is a resource of information for prospective customers. 

When people go to look up a company, brand, product or service they usually type it into google and look for RELEVANT and RECENT information.  This is incredibly important to understand. You’re creating your own database for your brand. You get the opportunity to educate your clients about who you are, why you do what you do, why they’d want to work with you, and what overall solutions you can provide them. People like to use social feeds to see how legitimate a brand seems before reaching out.

It creates a brand voice and a perceived brand value.

Your brand voice is what will turn casual followers into fans.  People want to be educated and entertained and you get to choose how you present yourself via your messaging.  Perceived brand value comes when people believe something is valuable based on the way that it’s presented and understood.  We all know that a pair of gas station sunglasses cost $5 and we’re totally okay with the fact that a pair of Rayban Sunglasses can cost upwards of $200.  That’s brand value and it begins when people assume value and are 100% excited to be a customer.

It helps create brand fans and convert them into customers.

This is your chance to build a relationship with your customers and fan base through conversations.  The more you engage with your audience, the more meaningful of a relationship you create with them. When your audience becomes champions for your brand, you’ll certainly begin to see a lot of word of mouth (WOM) referrals and repeat business.

What Social Media is not.

It is not a gauge of your success

Do not use followers or likes as a business thermometer. We’ve seen it hundreds of times where our clients will wonder what they’re doing wrong in their business because they’re not amassing followers like they thought they would.  The internet is a busy place and it takes a lot of time and money to grow a social account. On the plus side, there are a lot of people there too, so be sure to regularly post valuable content and you’ll start to see followers convert to customers over time.

It is not the be-all-end-all of your business

Do not put all of your stock into social platforms.  You do not own your accounts and you can’t control what happens to algorithm changes, ad revenues, etc. A lot of people think that likes, followers, fans, and re-tweets are a measure of success and that is simply not true.  So much of these “metrics” are meaningless and the statistics hold no weight for your business. It’s much better to have meaningful conversations with a smaller number of followers than to have an inflated following of random people with little to no engagement.

It is not an immediate ROI

It takes a lot, I mean A LOT, of time and energy to successfully build and run a social account.  It will be extremely beneficial and valuable to your business, but not immediately. Again, initially, we’re looking for the top of mind awareness among our followers and we’re posting as an informational resource for prospective followers to read up on you and your brand.

It’s not worth stressing or obsessing over

Just know that you should be posting regularly and don’t worry about likes, engagements, stats or metrics.  To be clear, we’re not looking to post our valued content into the void of the internet for no one to see it.  You should be posting once a day or once every other day in order to keep your brand current and relevant. Regardless, it’s important to not beat yourself up about a lack of engagement or viewership on what you post.  Just focus on the goals and keep sharing valuable content for those that do see it…it will all work itself out over time.

Mindset

We often lose sight of why we’re on these social platforms in the first place.  The endgame with social media is to create more customers. That’s it. 

The problem that arises is that our ego takes over and we begin to seek external validation.  While doing this we begin to compare ourselves to everyone else, and it’s really easy to fall into the trap of envy and comparison. Likes and follows are not a metric that should be driving your business strategy.  Genuine conversations in comments or groups, email subscribers, and direct messages are how you can get the most “ROI” from social platforms.  

Unless you are a 100% Social Media brand and putting in 100% effort daily, it’s not worth the constant let down, especially while you’re in grow-mode.

That said, it is extremely important to have a social media strategy.  If you do not plan your content, implement a content creation strategy and distribution workflow, you WILL get BURNT OUT VERY QUICKLY!  If you think that you just need to sit down each day and write a quick post, I’m here to tell you that it’s much harder and more time-consuming than that.  You should be able to write out a month’s worth of content in one writing session and then use a scheduler to ensure that you’re not chasing your tail each day trying to keep up with your daily posts.

Even if you don’t have many followers at the beginning, it’s easy to overlook the people who are constantly interacting with you.  Don’t write them off, they are actually the people that matter the most. Each person that is a fan of your business is connected to at least 200 people.  Just remember that there is value in each and every person who supports your business. Stop worrying about who isn’t there yet and nurture those who show support.

The moral of the story.

Understand that this is a long game of creating a brand voice, brand value, and loyal fans of your brand.  Having an active social media account does matter in today’s landscape, but it should supplement what you’re doing offline and you shouldn’t get caught up in chasing likes or getting let down when your accounts don’t grow as fast as you thought they would. Keep yourself focused on providing value and getting new customers, both online and offline, and you’ll begin to see your business grow to new heights.

The post As a Self-Employed Business Owner – What’s Your Social Media Mindset? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In episode four, we tackle the dreaded “elevator pitch”.  We’ve all been in a situation while networking when someone asks you what you do and you either spout off some generic answer or you’re just too long-winded for it to be effective.  We talk with Pam about how to overcome the hurdles of talking about her services, which deal with the taboo topic of money. Whether your service is hard to talk about with strangers, or you haven’t mastered your one minute pitch, this episode is a must-listen!  We touch upon many ways to connect with people, how to introduce topics, and why storytelling should always be your go-to move when getting your message out there.  

Guest Bio – [From her website] “With a background in social work, an MBA in Business Administration, a Master’s degree in Education, and training with Dave Ramsey, I’ve got the resources to prepare you to succeed financially while ensuring that you feel comfortable during this transitional process.

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 4 Summary

• Understanding triggers that will make you more memorable 
• Brainstorming your service differentiators
• Using terms, phrases, and examples that people will immediately understand 
• How to use testimony and transformations in networking
• Making people comfortable and confident in your service 
• Using forms to help do some self-research
• Using stories and visual descriptions to make yourself more memorable
• Developing your brand voice

The Challenge & The Next 3 Steps

Pam does a great job providing top-notch service to her clients, but she’s noticed that she has trouble describing her services in live networking situations in an effective way. 

1. Make a Typeform questionnaire to get your audience warmed up to you and your services.
   1. Get people to think about the questions that you’d ask to get to others to understand what you do. 
2. Reach out to all-star clients and ask them how they would describe you.
   1. Reach out to 5 clients and pay attention to the language that they use to describe you in their responses.
   2. Ask them things like: What is the #1 service I provided you? What was your biggest challenge and how did I help you?  What was your ah-ha moment? What prompted you to reach out and work with me?
   3. What 3 words would you use to describe me and my service?
3. Create a document with these words, phrases, and language.
   1. Use this document to create your brand voice in-person and digitally.
4. BONUS STEP! Test your new phrasing and descriptions at networking events! 

Recommended Resources 

Money Mastery With Pam

Typeform – for forms and questionnaires

The post Episode 4 – How to Effectively Pitch Your Biz When Networking appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

1. Understand that tasks take time

We’ve all made the mistake of saying “give me 10 minutes,” only to realize an hour later that you totally lost track of time.  When we used to photograph weddings, we’d have brides tell us that the church was “5 minutes away,” and on the day of the wedding, we’d be scrambling into the ceremony with seconds to spare because NOTHING takes 5 minutes. Remember that things DO take time and even writing a short email takes longer than 2 minutes, so be sure to schedule your time accordingly ; )

If you have a To-Do list sitting on your desk, do yourself a favor and write a number next to each task so you can be realistic about your day.  Resist the urge to underestimate the length of time you need. In fact, OVERestimate. No one has ever been upset that they completed something earlier than they anticipated and I assume you aren’t the first one out there who would be.

2. Be reasonable about your To-Do lists

It’s also important to break down your tasks into “accomplishable” chunks.  For example, rather than putting a giant task on our list like “edit John Smith’s video,” which could take days of work, we learned to break things down into manageable tasks that take less than 2 hours. For example, instead of:

• Edit Video A 

We’d break that major task down to:

• Load Footage (30 min)
• Organize Footage into folders (20 min)
• Make a Project file and sync footage (20 min)
• Create Markers and label favorite takes (1 hr)
• Cut the video (2 hrs)
• Edit the Audio (1 hr)
• Color the footage (2 hrs)
• Add Graphics and Text (1 hr)
• Export Draft for Review (20 min)

Not only will you be more organized about where you are in the project, you’ve now created clear start and stop points that will allow you to come back to your project, which helps you schedule realistic timeframes to get things done. 

You’ll find that once you start checking tasks off your list, you’ll be more motivated to keep going, rather than staring at the same task on your list for 3 days while you’ve been continuously working on it.  Break your TO DO list down into tasks that take 20 minutes to an hour (2 hours max) and you’ll find yourself becoming more productive and more aware of what you can handle on a normal workday, rather than totally overcommitting and coming up short and stressing out. 

Bonus Tip: Make sure to [especially if you work at a desk or workstation] get up between tasks, have a stretch, drink some water, have a snack and give yourself some credit for what you’ve just accomplished.  It’ll help keep the positive energy flowing right into your next task.

3. Control your own schedule

We used to think that we had to work around our clients’ schedules in order to be a quality and accommodating service provider.  In a lot of ways, this is true. If you are trying to win someone’s business, you want to be able to meet them where they are and work around their needs.  However, don’t let this hurt you and your business. Sometimes we feel like adjusting our schedules to help others is the only option, but the reality is, you can totally set reasonable boundaries that allow you to be more efficient without compromising your ability to accommodate the requests of your clients.

For your client, there is a very slight difference between you saying, “I’m going to be in your area on Tuesday and Friday this week, would there be a time those days that would work for you?” and saying “Whenever you are available this week, I’ll be there.”  On the flip side, there is a HUGE difference between those two scenarios for your schedule and sanity.

Do yourself a solid and resist the urge to make open-ended scheduling for your clients, partners, and colleagues.  When it’s time to schedule a meeting, always lead by providing a few options and asking if either of those options work for the person you’re meeting with.  Worst case scenario: they say those don’t work and give you some options or ask you for some more options. In both cases, YOU are in control of your schedule and still providing an awesome service.  

Bonus Tip:  We actually found that by giving the options it was actually easier to schedule with our customers and potential clients.  Giving them an open-ended option provided too many choices and proved overwhelming and easier to put off. Giving a few choices makes it an easier decision for them and a more efficient way for you to manage your days for productivity!  Win-Win!

4.  Start to automate or simplify repetitive tasks

Think about the things you do over and over again and find ways to automate them.  How could you use a software, template, process, or video to make your repetitive tasks take less time?

We work with an awesome graphic designer that sends us videos of her recorded screen while she explains her design work rather than scheduling a meeting with us to review over the phone or in-person.  This is such an efficient way to manage all of our time. We are able to move projects forward without meeting and getting distracted with side conversations, plus we can refer back to these videos at any point.

Another way we’ve improved our productivity is to create templates for emails we have to send regularly.  You may customize these messages each time depending on the details, but if there is a large chunk of what you say that is the same every time, create an email template that you can start from and save yourself a ton of time doing things over and over again.

Lastly, see what you can do to avoid wasting time on travel and unproductive meetings.  When we first started our business, we were more comfortable in person and every time we had to talk with a client or a subcontractor/team member, we’d schedule an in-person meeting.  This meant preparing for the meeting, packing up our stuff, driving to another location (dealing with traffic, etc), arriving early, conducting the meeting and then often letting things get off-topic or letting a meeting take a full hour or more even though we accomplished the goal in the first few minutes, etc.

Think about meetings you schedule that could be more productive through video, email, over the phone, or through Skype/video chat.  A meeting that could take up 2 hours of your day could be shortened to 1 hour or less if you don’t have to leave your office!

Now that we’ve shared a few ways to improve your productivity (and sanity) let’s put this stuff to good use.  Start to use these tactics in your business and let us know how they work for you! Or, if you have any other tips you’ve implemented that have worked well for you, we want to hear about them.  

Let’s get more done in less time!

The post 4 Simple Tips to Be More Productive! appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In episode three, we talk about how to organize and strategize your service offering to enhance your client experience with Donna Briggs, the owner of Harmony Massage.  It happens all too often that we get our businesses up and running by taking the path of least resistance and that isn’t always in the best interest of your client experience.  In many industries, service providers tend to use a cookie-cutter approach to their content and marketing, and in almost every case, it isn’t what’s best for your particular business and customer experience.  In this episode, we tackle how to educate your clients so that they know what you offer, why they’d want to work with you, and what’s in it for them.

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

Guest Bio – [From her website] “Owner of Harmony Massage, Donna Briggs, is an NCBTMB Board Certified massage therapist, licensed in the state of New Hampshire. Donna graduated from the Northeast Institute of Whole Health in 2010 and has since acquired extensive experience in therapeutic massage, to include Lymphatic Drainage Massage, Sports Massage, and Cupping Therapy. Donna is also certified in Thai Bodywork and The Auth Method of Deep Tissue Massage. She is skilled at providing massage to enhance wellness, reduce stress, assist in rehabilitation efforts and deliver therapeutic touch; providing balance and harmony for each client.  In her time off, Donna enjoys kayaking, road cycling, and training in Muay Thai.”

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 3 Summary

• Write to your audience just as you’d talk to them 1 on 1
• Focusing on the value of the transformation/solution
• Create client confidence
• Saving time, stress and energy with forms
• Using email to create educated clients
• Blogging: Storytelling vs cookie-cutter explanations
• Share testimonials and client case studies that people can relate to
• Share tips with your digital audience – just like you would in person
• Give your audience a quick win
• Create fans of your brand
• Remember your brand voice needs to be genuinely you
• Set proper expectations with your marketing and brand

The Challenge & The Next 3 Steps

Donna does a great job providing top-notch service and being the trusted advisor for her clients, but she realizes that her current service offering is creating a roadblock that leads to client confusion — which then leads to Donna spending more time and energy explaining her different services.  In order to help her solve this roadblock, we created these next 3 steps to help her create a better client experience.

1. Audit your service descriptions and re-write them for your specific clients or customers.  Ask yourself questions like: 
   1. Who is the specific person that this service is for?
   2. What are they feeling physically and emotionally?
   3. What transformation will they go through or what solution with they find?
   4. Add photos or videos to help show what to expect.
2. Use forms and questionnaires to help save you time and energy.
3. Write blogs that describe your services 
   1. Use stories to engage the reader and speak to them like you would one on one.
   2. Make an ongoing list of topics and batch writing your blogs for each month so that you’re always playing from ahead.

Recommended Resources

Harmony Massage 

Typeform – for forms and questionnaires

The post Episode 3 – Organizing Your Services to Enhance Your Client Experience appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Learning how to control your schedule is crucial to being in business for yourself.  Without setting proper processes, boundaries, and expectations, you’ll soon find yourself running in circles and spending most of your day in between productive activities, rather than getting things done and feeling accomplished. This is a lesson we learned (the hard way) when we were running our measuring business.

How We Learned This Lesson The Hard Way

As we described in Episode 0 – Who are Rhi & Pete and What’s this Podcast All About? we started a side business doing carpet estimates for multiple carpet installers who were contracted with a box home improvement store while we were in college.

Every week, we’d be sent the contact information for 20-40 people in the New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts areas that we had to schedule appointments with for that week.  Our territory included 9 stores that spanned 86 miles at their furthest points. In order to effectively schedule ourselves, we had to account for: 

• The location of the home we were measuring
• Any traffic or construction we might encounter on the way
• What we had to measure and how long that might take 
• Hoping the people we were meeting weren’t running late or not showing up
• Using map books, printed directions and old school GPS devices without real-time traffic updates.  

Needless to say, scheduling all these appointments was quite the cumbersome task.

When we first started, we would simply call each person in our pile of paperwork and ask them when they were available, and put them in our calendar.  We’d write down the list of appointments we’d scheduled in order, print out directions from the internet, hop in the car and hope for the best.

Before long we realized there had to be a better way.  We’d run into traffic, no-shows, incorrect directions, and endless days full of stress, running late, and rescheduling.  Our days were long, stressful, and inefficient and we realized that it was costing us time and money. It was pretty agonizing at first…what had we gotten ourselves into?!

So how did we attempt to fix this problem?  Well, we started by sitting down and outlining all the places where we were running into issues.

Once we outlined our major issues, we decided that if we could improve our ability to estimate how long tasks actually took and improve our customer process, we could get more estimates done in less time, and create days with less stress and more productivity. 

Sound like a dream come true?  Well, it certainly was for us! We went from barely getting 25 estimates done in a week to easily scheduling 50 estimates and working fewer hours…this was like doubling our income without increasing the number of hours we were working!!  It was all about efficiency.

So, let’s take a look at how this could be applied to your business to save you time, decrease your stress, and increase your productivity (and hopefully increase the amount of money you’re making)!

How We Solved This Problem

1. The first thing you need to do [and as we did in our situation] is to define the problematic areas of your scheduling process.

Take a hard look at what processes or routines (if any) you use to schedule yourself.  

• Is it first come first serve for your time slots?  
• Do have dedicated days for certain clients, geographic areas, meetings, or work? 
• How do your personal obligations fit into this schedule? 
• Are there certain tasks or obligations that keep being bumped for “things that come up?”

Consider your answers to all of these questions and try to pinpoint the places that are creating the logjam and stress for you.

For our measuring business we uncovered that our biggest roadblocks were:

1. We were constantly underestimating the amount of time it took to complete a measurement, travel between point A and B, and stop for lunch/gas, etc.
2. We were assuming that every appointment we made was going to be kept by the customer without any sort of reminder process.
3. We were letting each customer set the day and time when we would come to them, rather than being more efficient and scheduling similar locations in the same time window (kind of like batching our stops together based on location).

2. Second, we brainstormed solutions for each of our roadblocks.  

Problem 1: We realized that it was extremely important for us to be realistic about estimating the amount of time we needed to do our jobs correctly.  In order to do this, we recorded the time each task took us for two weeks of measuring (because each job and destination was different every time) and we used the averages to help us schedule and plan.  This is what we came up with: 

Time spent measuring

• Single Room: 10 minutes
• ½ house: 25 minutes
• Whole House: 45 minutes

Driving Times

We used MapQuest at the time and just added a 15-minute buffer for each stop.  This gave us time to get gas, eat and helped with any traffic we encountered.

2 Hour Window

We gave our customers a 2-hour window on when to expect us.

Having these numbers allowed us to use a formula for scheduling. We’d just plug the numbers in and know exactly how much time we needed and it saved us from guessing or trying to figure it out every single time.

Problem 2: We encountered a lot of no-shows.  Most of the time people just forgot because they too, are bad at making or keeping a schedule.  So to fix this issue, we told each customer that we’d call when we were about 15 minutes away and we made sure to get the phone number of the person that we’d be meeting.  This is twofold — first, a lot of people were meeting us and this 15-minute heads up ensured that they’d have time to still get there if they forgot; second, we weren’t always meeting with the person who we originally scheduled the appointment with.

Problem 3: We’d just start calling the customers as the jobs came in and asked when they’d like us to come. This made for total chaos in our schedule and made for very long and stressful days.  To solve this issue, we batched together when we made our phone calls. We decided since the store’s policy is to call the customers within 48 hours of receiving their paperwork that we’d wait until multiple jobs came in so we could organize them by geographic location, map out our ideal itinerary and begin making calls.  

We also decided that we were going to give the customer two options for the appointment (ie. We’ll be in the area on Monday morning or Wednesday afternoon, do either of those times work for you?).  The majority of the time those time slots did work and that’s the moment when we started making our schedule on our own terms.

Realizing that our clients don’t know our schedule and don’t assume we are always available for them was a big lesson.  We always felt like we needed to accomodate them in order to provide an awesome service, but the truth is, the more efficient we are the better service we can provide.  It’s also so much easier for our clients to choose between two options than to review their entire schedule and toss out their own ideas. We assume that their suggestions are convenient for them, but sometimes they are just as random as you allow your schedule to be when you don’t control it.  Giving a few options shows that you are organized, efficient with your time, and accommodating because you are giving them options.

Improve your process to get more done

Lastly, think about ways in which you can improve your process to control your schedule more.  For us, it meant letting our customers know the window during which we would arrive, and telling them we would call them when we were on our way to their location with an exact time.  It didn’t really take extra time on our end because we were already in the car. What it did do though, is allow some flexibility for us if there was traffic or other unforeseen reasons why our day was running a bit off schedule.  It also meant that our customers knew exactly what to expect, knew that we valued their time, and made our “no show” ratio almost zero!  

Now, if you’re schedule meetings with your clients, no-shows may not be a big issue for you.  But I am sure we have all had meetings cancel last minute, or arrived at a location to find that our client was running behind or no longer had as much time to meet with us as we or they had planned.  This can really mess with your schedule and efficiency. Think about simple ways you can improve or add to your client process in order to improve your efficiency and I am sure you won’t regret it!

Let’s do this!

Now that we’ve outlined a few ways you can audit and improve your processes, habits, and management of your schedule, it’s time to put it into practice.  Take a few of these tips and start implementing them in your business and see how you can start to be more efficient, avoid unnecessary stress, and take control of your schedule!!  

Have you tried any of these methods before?  Have other ideas you want to share? We want to hear what works and doesn’t work for you!  Comment below to share the scheduling challenges or successes you’ve experienced.

The post How to Control your Schedule and Accomplish More Each Week appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

When We Decided to Do Something Different

We started our company Do Something Different Media in 2008 by freelancing for friends, family, local businesses…whoever would let us make something for them. We knew that building a portfolio would be very important if we wanted to start making real money.

This provided us with a ton of experience working with different people, a variety of industries and projects, and helped us gain the confidence to take things to the next level. Whether you’ve started your freelancing career or you’re looking for the courage or strategy to do so, know that NOW is the best time ever to get started!

Acknowledge the Demand for Your Skillset

Whatever your skill is, there is a huge 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 because it provides them with quality work that doesn’t require the expense of on-boarding or the need to provide full-time work and benefits.

In addition, this trend is happening because a lot of managers and team leaders aren’t equipped with the proper knowledge base or skill set to train or even manage a new hire. This knowledge gap plays right into the hands of you, the freelancer.  

Strategize a Strong Start

It is extremely important to get started properly! We encourage all of our clients and students to follow these simple steps when launching their freelance businesses. If you’ve already started getting your feet wet with freelance work, take a look at the steps below and make sure you’ve covered your bases before you take things to the next level.

LEGAL ENTITY: Set up a Limited Liability Company to protect yourself and your business. This essentially means that if an unforeseen event should occur (ie: a client is mad at you and wants to sue you for everything you’ve got), your personal assets can’t be claimed in a lawsuit, only the assets your business owns.

We obviously want to keep things positive and assume you will never need this protection, but it’s a simple and fairly inexpensive way to know that you are safe and have nothing to worry about.  (Please note, we are not lawyers, nor are we trying to provide legal advice. This information is a super simple breakdown of why we were told to start an LLC business entity and there are plenty of other reasons and other options available…do your homework!)

BANK ACCOUNT: Open a Business Bank Account under your LLC name. This is very helpful for tracking your business expenses and income. When it’s time to pay your taxes this will make your life SO MUCH easier…and also make doing your taxes less expensive to complete. This also means that your clients can write checks to your business name instead of your personal name. If you are looking to make more money as a freelancer, this is a simple way to seem much more legitimate and to lock in some of those larger clients who wouldn’t be interested in working with a “guy/gal” with a specific set of skills.

CONTRACTS: Make sure that you have a proper and legally binding contract that you can send to your clients. It’s worth paying a lawyer for a few hours of expertise to make sure that your contract is legitimate. Your contract is all you have. It didn’t take long for us to realize as freelancers that you can’t trust everyone’s word and sometimes people will try and not pay you for the work you’ve done. There are a million reasons why this might happen, but if you have a strong, clear and legally binding contract in place you have nothing to worry about.

When we first started out, we looked for contracts for our industry on the internet and then drafted out what we wanted to use and what things we thought were missing. Then we took that document to a lawyer and asked him to review the document and add what we needed.

Make sure that you’re very organized when providing materials to your lawyer. Their time is money and if your stuff is a mess, you’ll pay for it. You can expect to pay between $300 and $500 to put the contract together, but it’s a small price to pay to know you are doing it right, covering yourself, and presenting yourself professionally. Most larger organizations expect you to have a real contract, so if you want good work, hire a lawyer and get a real contract in place.

BUILD YOUR PORTFOLIO:  Building your portfolio is how you are going to prove yourself to potential clients in order to get more work. Start with work that you’ve already created and then add as you go.  

If you haven’t created anything yet, now is the time to start!  You can offer your skills to friends, family, your church, or any other group you are a part of. We’ve had freelance friends create “spec projects” where they create logos/designs/blog posts/video ads for either fake companies or real companies that they encounter and are inspired by. These spec ads are obviously not paid work, so don’t go crazy…but it is a free way to gain experience and build a professional looking portfolio to show off what you can do.   

As you begin to pick up paid jobs, you will rotate them into your portfolio to show people your most updated work. And most importantly, as you grow your portfolio, make sure to only show what you’re really proud of and what you want to do more of.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL MEDIA: When you are starting out, set yourself up a free website [Squarespace, Wix, etc.] and use it to showcase your portfolio, introduce yourself, and the services you offer. Make sure that you are also a part of the same social platforms as your audience. This is the main way people will find and contact you, so make sure that you are there with your best foot forward.

CONFIDENCE & MONEY: It’s very easy to get overwhelmed or feel underwhelmed in the confidence department. Many of us don’t know how to value our own skillset and get a pit in our stomach or a lump in our throats when we think about selling, charging people, and collecting money.  You are not alone…but you DO need to make money to be in business. Money and confidence go hand in hand. It’s okay to start out charging very little so you can build your portfolio and gain experience to build your confidence. In fact, we really recommend doing this. When you aren’t charging a lot you can confidently over-deliver and impress your clients without the high stakes of an expensive price tag.  

But once you’ve done that, you must accept that it is absolutely okay to charge industry rates for the work that you do. You are worth it, your work is worth it, and people who hire you expect to pay you for your work. Look up your industry rates and charge something similar to that.   We’ve found, in our experience, that most companies will question a small quote (especially the high-end clients you really want). They’ll question you, your experience, and your quality if your price is low. n the flip side, if you charge a reasonable industry rate and present it with confidence, you’ll find the clients respect that and think highly of you for it. Just remember, you are already good at what you’re doing, that’s why you’ve received jobs and built a portfolio doing it.

PROCESS & WORKFLOW:  The best way to keep your clients happy and staying stress-free is by having a solid client process. You need to create a process and a system that works for you in order to find clients, onboard (get the project started), create, manage, and deliver your project.   You will find that telling your clients what to expect and delivering on those expectations will make your whole process stress-free and, in the end, you’ll have happy clients that are likely to refer you more business! There are plenty of systems out there that will help you organize your clients and projects. But the BEST system out there, and the only system you need is the one you will actually use.

Being a freelancer who gets paid to provide your service to others is an incredible opportunity and privilege. Remember, in building a proper foundation you’re setting yourself up for the potential to make more money, gain more clients, and enjoy the process.

Good luck, freelance friends! Now, go make it happen!

The post How to Start and Structure Your Freelancing Business appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

The following represents our top 5 steps to help you get out of a rut and rid yourself of fear and doubt.

Of course, there are dozens — probably hundreds — of strategies to shake your stale spell and get back into the groove. But, these are our five favorites because they have proven tried and true, time and again.

We invite you to share your time-tested strategies with us in the comments!

Step One: Reading

You may or may not be into personal development books, but let me tell you, once you find the right topic, author or story that resonates with you, you won’t be able to get enough. Having a consistent dose of personal development reading will help bring balance to your mind and keep you on the proper path.

Step Two: Journaling

Journaling allows you to clear your mental plate. Rather than carrying all of these uncomfortable emotions and thoughts, let them out through journaling and feel lighter, more confident and more creative. A great way to start journaling is to find some prompts to get you going. The best kind of journaling is the one that you do, so make sure you make it easy for yourself!

Step Three: Daily Meditation

Learn to meditate and practice it regularly.  Meditation isn’t a medicine that you take only when you’re sick or run down. Meditation is literally like breathing, you need it always (and it’s also literally 99% breathing in the physical sense).

Please don’t think that you’re going to sit on a pillow with your legs crossed and hum “ommm” for 30 minutes. You need to learn to meditate and — lucky for you! — there are a lot of mindful and meditation-focused apps to do just that. Just like journaling, use guided meditations to introduce you and coach you in meditation techniques.

Personally, I’ve been using Headspace for almost three years and I’m coming up on almost two straight years of daily meditation. Every day for two whole years. Sounds like a commitment that you don’t have time for, right?

Wrong!

My average daily meditation time is approximately seven minutes. Recently, I’ve tried shooting for 15 minutes at a time, but when the days are hectic, I happily turn on a two or five-minute meditation. The whole purpose is to just stop, be present, and create space between your subconscious mind and your thinking brain.

Step Four: Action Breaks the Spell

Whether you’re taking action in your personal life, or taking online courses to further your professional life, you’ll see a dramatic increase in your energy, mindset, and overall well being if you’re pursuing something for yourself.

For instance, I began learning piano and it exercises a new part of my brain that helps bring balance to my life.

Start going to a class [exercise, cooking, dancing, music, etc]. Start writing your book, start planning your next project. It doesn’t matter what it is, just make sure it’s something that brings you joy and then make sure you start.  

Step Five: Camaraderie is Key!

Hang out with people who you look up to. Friends, mentors or other people in your field.  Being around positive energy will help you break the spell.

Make momentum your MO with these five suggestions. Before you know it, you’ll forget that you were ever in a rut to begin with!

The post 5 Steps to Help You Get Out of a Rut of Fear and Doubt appeared first on Learn It - Do It.