“How do you stay motivated when you’re working for yourself and from home? How do you stay focused and make things happen every single day?”
If you were to actually have someone sit on your shoulder and watch everything that you do, are you actually working?
This is something I’ve done a lot of research into because there’s a lot of people who study productivity and have said that a lot of us overestimate the time we’re actually working and underestimate actual work, actual work getting done.
Often, people think that they’re working 60 hours a week but if you actually looked at what they were doing during those hours, there was a lot of scrolling around on Facebook or a lot of getting distracted and pulled in a lot of directions.
I’m talking about 100% focused time. That’s the biggest reason I am able to work in 20, 25 hours a week is because I stay focused.
When I sit down to work, I don’t have multiple screens open. I don’t have Facebook open and then my Instagram on my phone and then I’m also trying to write something. I sit down and all the distractions are shut off.
When I sit down to work, I am working. If you’ve taken my Fired Up and Focused Challenge, you heard me talk about the Pomodoro Technique where you are literally single tasking. You’re focused on one thing at a time.
Another thing that’s really huge for me is planning my work. I have read that for every 10 minutes you spend in planning, you save an hour in execution time.
Planning is really, really important. I did a whole three-part series on how I plan my week. I did a whole three-part series on big rocks and understanding what the priorities are in your life and in your business, and how I create my model calendar.
“I just moved far away from my free childcare and family in Florida to San Francisco. Now I’m learning to do more of my business in my home. Do you have tips here?”
I think this is a challenge for a lot of people. 2008 was the year that started this whole journey. That was the year that I quit my job as a corporate consultant, didn’t know exactly what my next step was.
It took me about a year to really launch. It wasn’t until after that, after I started the business, that I got pregnant with my twins, and then a whole other layer of complexity was added, which was how do you have babies and grow a business.
I wrote a huge blog post on my website, it has a whole range of creative solutions for those of you who are in that position, like you’re growing a business you have little people around, and you know you need help.
“Do you stick to defined office hours?”
Absolutely. I think this is so important for you and for your clients. For me, I know that I am a high-achieving super motivated person.
I love the work that I do. I could very easily work all day. Ask my husband. He would tell you if I get in a zone, I can often sit there for hours and not realize it. Office hours are just as important for me as they are for my dream clients.
Office hours help me make sure that I am creating some balance in my life because I will work if I don’t have a clear boundary there.
“How do you create a workable schedule so you don’t get lost in Facebook?”
I don’t go into Facebook unless I’m specifically doing something. I will go into Facebook to specifically answer questions for my community and for my clients and then I get off. I don’t just sit there and scroll Facebook for the sake of scrolling Facebook.
Same thing with Instagram. I’ll specifically have a plan to go on and do an Instagram story or do an Instagram live or post something, answer a couple things, and then I get off.
“How did you get out of your inbox? How do you find the best people to outsource to and keep them?”
It takes time to find the right people to build your team. I’m really lucky in that the people who are on my team that manage admin stuff, operation stuff, tech stuff, customer service stuff. First of all, you don’t just start a business and have like a team of four or five people. Keep that in mind
I definitely went through a process to find them. All the people who have been on my team have been on my team for years now. One big thing that really helps with getting out of your inbox, and that’s the first area I got out of my inbox with, is spending time onboarding those people.
One of the challenges I see with a lot of people who are trying to build a team is they kind of are like, “Okay, great. Now you’re handling the inbox. Go.” That doesn’t really work very well.
They don’t know your clients. They don’t know what you do. They don’t know how you respond to things. It helps to have procedures and systems for how to handle different types of emails.
This is something you can start documenting now as you get ready to hire somebody. You want to make sure you’re giving people a chance to get used to your inbox, to get used to your business.
“What tips do you have for someone that’s working on building their business while working other jobs?”
I would say the biggest thing for building your business while working other jobs, one is: What is the direction you hope to go?
Know what you’re moving into. Know what job you’re building for yourself. You have eight hours a week right now. Are you planning on working more or is that pretty much where you are? Also know what income do you need to replace.
Let’s say your jobs bring in $5,000 a month and you need to replace at least $2,500 of that, half of it, in order to start adding more time into your business. Think through that so that you can create a plan.
It might be possible to reduce some hours in that job while you increase your business just with some strategic planning there.
- Are you working on the highest value things in your business?
- Are the jobs you’re working actually giving you the return on investment you need?
- Is the job paying you as much as working for yourself would for that same hour?
These are hard questions. You need to make sure the time and energy you’re spending is actually worth it and yielding a result.
“What are your tips on creating an online course?”
If you have an online course, the most important thing you need to understand is how are you enrolling people into that. If you don’t have a clear plan to market that course and to sell that course, it’s going to be really, really hard for it to grow.
The worst thing you can do is create an online course and then just stick it on your website and like, “I hope people buy it.” That’s not going to happen. The other thing you want to be doing is knowing how are you selling that. Knowing conversion rates is really important here too.
You can sell several people a month into that course simply by using your eight to 10 hours a month to have conversations and enroll them via a conversation, a phone call, a Skype call, a Zoom call, whatever, and enroll them into your program.
That’s going to be generally the highest converting on a one-on-one basis is actually having one-on-one conversations. We talk about this a ton inside of Sweet Spot Strategy.
“How to prepare your business for the birth of a child?”
I did not have children when I started my business, so this is a journey I’ve been on a couple times. The first thing I would say is whatever I say right now about how to prepare your business for having a kid, it might change.
You might listen to me and think, “Oh, that sounds good,” and have the perfect plan laid out, and then this baby comes and your world is upside down and you’re not sleeping and the baby has colic and you just have to be ready to throw everything out the window.
All I can share is babies are like anything that’s going to be big changing in your life. You want to prepare for the worst and then hope for the best. Prepare for the worst case situation and then hope for the best.
How do you do that? One is know your numbers. If you don’t know what your business needs to be generating for you, it’s going to be really hard to do any planning.
That was the biggest priority for me each and every pregnancy, was, “What do I need to be generating in order to pay our bills?”. I knew exactly what we needed to be generating in order to pay our bills and that helped me make some key decisions.
The other thing I would say is this is not the time to try to reinvent your business. I really, really would say to every mom, new mom, wait until the baby is here to make any big changes.
“Are facebook ads the way to go?”
I think it depends. The reason I think it depends is because most Facebook ads do not convert well to just a sales page. If you saw a Facebook ad and it said, “Join Sweet Spot Strategy,” and you’d never heard of me, you’re probably not going to click through to it.
What is working is using ads to grow your community and then in the community you educate them and then invite them into what you’re doing.
What we’re doing is sending people through a process. We have the Grow Your Business From Five to Six Figures webinar going on. People see that Facebook ad and then they join the webinar.
They listen to a 90-minute training. I invite them into Sweet Spot Strategy. Then they have that webinar piece that helps them see who I am, what I’m about, etc.
Facebook ads will not work if you don’t have a clear journey for people to go on. If you don’t have a clear marketing and sales system you have designed to guide them from hearing about you, understanding what you do, making sure it solves their problem, and then taking that next step, then Facebook will happily take your money, but you probably won’t see great sales from it.
“Can you tell us the program you mentioned?”
Yes, it’s called Sweet Spot Strategy. That is our online mastermind for women entrepreneurs who want to design a business they love around the lifestyle that they want.
If you are interested in that, you can check out YourSweetSpotStrategy.com and that’s where all the details are for Sweet Spot Strategy. I think that’s all the Qs that have come in here on my Facebook page.