In this episode, we take a real personal look at our relationship with money, how we can develop a positive relationship, and ultimately break through our current mental barriers.

We kick this episode off by unveiling the new basement studio that we built this winter. 

Episode Summary

We tell our story of our own money journey and how we’ve come from a very disconnected and absent mindset when it came to our feelings and relationship with our bank accounts. Factors like upbringing, values, and personality play a huge role as to why you think, feel and talk about money in the way that you do.

 Think of your relationship with money like you’re dating:

• Are you communicating? i.e. Do you check in to know what’s happening and how each other is feeling?
• Do you have a commitment to each other?
• Do you appreciate each other?

Your mindset plays a huge role in how you will be able to grow to the point of financial success.  You don’t need money before you make a plan for it.

Cut the ties between your identity and how much money you have:

• Your amount of wealth does not change your identity, it changes your circumstances.  
• Your value as a person is not tied to the value of the dollars in your bank account

[From Jen Sincero’s Book] Write money a letter and make a money contract that you’re willing to commit to.

Build and hire a money support system – this is the foundation of your financial success:

• Are you banking with a helpful partner? When is the last time you’ve talked to someone from your bank?
• Do you have an accountant? It’s imperative to have someone that knows your business and can help lower your tax liability and guide you to take advantage of creative tax-savings.
• Do you have a financial planner? They will set you up with a plan for saving, retirement, life insurance, investing, and a budget.
  • This is something you should do before you even “have money”. Don’t wait for years thinking that you don’t make enough, put a plan into action now, even if it’s just a budget.
• Do you have a lawyer? They will help you with setting up wills, trusts, buying property, etc.

Dissolve your money blocks:

• Audit your beliefs and experience with money
  • A good way to do this is to journal it out
• Notice your daily money habits
  • Are you emotionally buying things?
  • Do you spend money as soon as it comes in?
• Read or listen to books/podcasts about money
• Say daily money affirmations
• Decide to break up with and start a new relationship with money

The Next 3 Steps

1. Write a letter to money and air out all of your grievances.  Get it on paper and let it go.
2. Find or develop a money affirmation or mantra that you can say out loud every morning.
3. Look at your current money support system and see what’s missing, or if you need to find people that are more in tune with your needs. 

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 Voice Mail for the Podcast – www.learnit-doit.com

Rhi + Pete VLOG – www.rhiandpete.com

Jen Sincero – “You’re a Badass at Making Money”

The post How’s Your Relationship With Money? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

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.

We are in unprecedented times right now amidst the COVID-19 public health crisis, and a lot of us self-employed business owners are finding ourselves forced out of work, or waiting for the economy to pick up and the customers to flood back in.

It’s important to take a minute, take a deep breath and focus on what you CAN do right now, while you are staying inside to #flattenthecurve. In this video, I talk about how you can take advantage of the extra time in your business right now and get productive while you prepare for after the dust settles from all this.

Here’s what we discuss in this video:

• Audit Your Marketing: Website, Social Media, Emails, etc.
• Audit Your Messaging for Audience Focus
• Organize your Database and Prepare Email Marketing
• Do a SWOT Analysis on Your Business
• Create Helpful Content for Your Audience

Take advantage of this extra time you’ve always been waiting for. The world is sort of in a state of “PAUSE” right now and you can talk this as an opportunity to get organize, re-evaluate, and create some amazing content to take your business forward! Stay safe and good luck!

HERE’S MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT:

FREE MINI-COURSE “How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/learnitdoitedu

The post What Should I Be Doing for My Business During COVID-19 Crisis? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this video, I outline some content ideas you can be making right now, amidst all this COVID-19 chaos. Now is not necessarily the time to solicit business from your customers, but now is a great opportunity to build credibility, lend a helping hand, and stay memorable in the eyes of your clients.

Here’s what types of content we discuss in this video:

• DIY Video Content Ideas
• Email Content You Can Create
• Social Media Messaging

It’s important to avoid being tone-deaf and simply talking about yourself right now. Think of ways you can be helpful and inform or entertain your potential and current customers right now and you’ll stay top of mind in a positive way through this unprecedented time in our history. Stay in and Let’s DO IT!

HERE’S MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT:

FREE MINI-COURSE “How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/learnitdoitedu

The post Content You Should Be Making Right Now appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Episode Summary 

Brand value is a very important thing to understand, especially when you’re a SEBO who is on your own. 

It’s also very important to the business owner who is looking to revamp themselves due to inefficiencies in their pricing, marketing, and overall brand image.

We assume that you’re awesome at what you do.  There’s a ton of people who are really awesome at a lot of stuff. But what’s going to get you into the conversation with bigger markets, clients, affiliates and frankly more overall business — is how legitimate people feel you are — based on your branded marketing materials.

You’ve been there.  Someone refers you the name of a company for a cleaning service and you immediately google them.  First, I check their website to see if they’re “legit”…and that’s the key thing. We’re all looking for legitimacy.

Then, I might head to see if they’re active on social, check online reviews and etc. 

Have you ever looked up a business and found they had no logo? Or their logo looks like your nephew made it?  When you see a low-quality brand it tells you that the business didn’t invest a lot of money into the way they look.  And if a company doesn’t care enough about how they look to invest in it…I assume they aren’t a very profitable business…which probably means they aren’t very good.

Think of it like hiring a new employee.  Potential Employee A sends in a typed resume with a nice photo of themselves and a portfolio of their work.  They show up to the interview dressed professionally and present themselves well. Potential Employee B scribbled their past experience on a napkin and shows up in pajamas.  They could both be equally qualified and skilled, but there is no doubt one of them has a higher perceived value and THAT person is getting the job.

Is your business wearing pajamas?

Perception is everything!

Quick-Wins

• How would a stranger value your brand? Audit your brand and see where you can find any deficiencies. 

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.

The post Quick-Win Episode 5: What Is Brand Value? & Why Do I Care? 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

“How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/LearnitDoitEdu/

The post 4 Ways To Use Your Phone To Be More Productive 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 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.