Alright my busy business babe – it’s time for some productivity hacks!

From personal experience in starting my business and working with my coaching clients – we solopreneurs take on A LOT. Like never ending-task list, working nights and weekend, sorry I can’t leave the house every again.

After 7 years in business and working with coaching clients in lots of different industries, I’ve discovered that it’s almost always way more than we need to do to get where we want to go.

Which is why in this episode I’m sharing how to pare down your tasks so you can actually be MORE effective in your business to get more clients, customers, and increase your revenue.

I love to hear from you – tag me on instagram @xosarahmorgan and tell me your biggest takeaway from this episode!

Resources + Links

The Productive Solopreneur Course – https://daretogrow.co/beproductive

The first couple of years working as a freelance web designer I was…

• Working from an endless task list
• Building sites for my web design clients
• Selling premade templates on Etsy
• Writing weekly blog posts
• Creating content for social media
• Recording + editing videos
• Answering email
• Sending contracts, chasing down payments
• Doing all my bookkeeping in a spreadsheet

Nothing was automated and I had no help. And as you might imagine I worked exhaustingly long hours – often until 10 or 11 at night.

This might be where you are too – proactive and ambitious, always reading blogs, listening to podcasts, watching webinars, taking courses. I absolutely advocate for continuous learning, but sometimes it means you’re testing a lot of strategies, adding in everything that sounds like it will help, and leaving your days crazy packed.

And you might not always see results from everything you implement.

Today we’re going to talk about how to pare down your task list so you can actually be MORE effective – get more clients, customers, increase your revenue – while doing less.

Because now that I’m working about 5 hour days, I stress less, I actually have time to workout, meditate, journal, learn, and I’ve more than doubled my income.

Here’s how I make that happen…

Use a project management system

Yes, it’s time to let those paper planners go and set up a digital calendar JUST for your business. A project management system like Asana (I use the free version) will give you a space to plan, organize and track your tasks.

Being able to see my entire month at once helps me to feel like i’m on top of everything I need to do. So when I close my laptop for the day I actually feel like I’m done instead of worrying about all the other tasks left on my list.

Focus on selling ONE thing well

If you aren’t earning the money you want then skip all the extra stuff and get back to the basics of SELLING. Focus on creating results with one product instead of adding more and more options to your shop.

And I’ll confess, when I started creating digital products I broke this rule myself.

I spent a whole year making lots of courses and workshops (which was fun and creative) but it was also a lot of work. And to be honest, not everything sold that well.

Looking back I now realized that I could have benefited more from focusing on one or two products and re-releasing those over and over.

Give up strategies that don’t generate CASH 

Because we’re so inundated with tactics, advice, and the next must-have thing, we end up implementing strategies, letting them run for months without making sure they actually work.

(Get out your pen + paper – I’m gonna give you a list)

When was the last time you checked… 

• Which products sell the best?
• Where most of your audience is paying attention to you most?
• Where new leads come from? (blog, Youtube, podcast, Instagram, Pinterest, referrals, affiliates, etc.)

If no one told you yet, you’re allowed to stop doing things that aren’t working and you’re also allowed to stop doing the stuff you just don’t like.

I stopped posting to Twitter years ago. Yes, I had 11k followers but most of my traffic came from Pinterest. So I ditched Twitter and focused on the platform that was actually bringing traffic to my website.

So how long should you let things run to determine whether you should stick with it?

• Quick strategies like email funnels, IG ads – a few days (you should be seeing immediate results)
• Bigger projects like a YouTube channel, IGTV, podcast – 3 to 6 months

We are often so quick to add new strategies, but not so great at checking back in to make sure things are working. If a strategy isn’t working, your best bet is to hire someone to take over, take a course to learn how to make it work better, or ditch it altogether.

Once you’ve simplified, found what’s working and cleared out what isn’t, let’s talk about getting all of it done.

First, figure out how many hours you have in your day. Do you want to work 8 hours? 4 hours? 6 hours?

Second, add your most important tasks (the ones that grow your audience and sales) into your schedule. I like to focus on one project at a time, so I might spend 2 weeks writing an ebook, 1 week updating an email sequence, or 2 months creating a course. Break your project into tasks and add 3-5 (depending on how long they’ll take) into each day.

Third, add recurring tasks so you’re more likely to be consistent. For example: write Instagram posts on Monday, do bookkeeping on Friday, and batch record podcasts episodes the first week of every month.

And don’t forget a recurring task for planning. On the first of every month I figure out which projects I’m working on, which products I’m promoting, and then plan all my tasks and subtasks for the entire month.

Then when you sit down to work every day, do the money making tasks first. For example: emails that generate course sales, Instagram posts that warm up your audience, client projects that have a deadline.

Often tasks like organizing our inbox, creating extra graphics, or changing up your website design feel important, but not if it means less time on the money makers!

If you want to see how to specifically use a project management systems, how to automate tasks, how I spend less time on emails and in my inbox – Productive Solopreneur course has trainings on all of this. Head over here to check it out!