055: The one shift that helps you make faster progress in your solo business
Solo business mini series part 3
I’m just gonna give it away in this very first sentence; the one key shift that helps you make faster progress is to spend your time on tasks and activities that make the biggest impact.
There are five types of activities that I see as the most crucial ones that make an impact for small business owners, which I'll dive into in this episode.
Episodes mentioned:
049 Frustrations of a business owner
045 Productivity for entrepreneurs and creatives
Productivity Ecosystem summary
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Shownotes
If you often go to bed feeling like you were busy all day, but you don’t feel like you actually accomplished anything that’s gonna make a difference, then this episode is for you.
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I’m just gonna give it away in this very first sentence – the one key shift that helps you make faster progress is to spend your time on tasks and activities that make the biggest impact.
I know that can be a bit annoying to hear, because it’s so very common sense.
But think about it – how often do you have a pretty good feeling of what would be important, of what would actually make an impact for you – but you end up working on other things.
Your to-do list is a mile long and it feels like you have to catch up on that list, and do all the other things that pop up during the day, before you can get to those impactful activities and projects.
Now – this is not your fault. There are psychological and biological reasons for why this happens.
I’m going to dive very deep into this in the next episode – for now I want to talk about what it means to focus on your most impactful tasks – what are they?
There are five types of activities that I see as the most crucial ones that make an impact for small business owners:
1. Take good care of yourself
When you feel well, you think more clearly and creatively, and can notice opportunities for improvement that you won’t notice when you’re exhausted or drained. This is *suuuper crucial* for the longevity of your business, and annoyingly enough you just need to stick to the basics and you’ll already be ahead of most people: sleep enough, eat mostly nutritious food, drink water, move your body, and nurture your relationships. That’s it.
2. Give yourself time and space to put your CEO or owner hat on
This means that you need to have space in your schedule to do creative big picture thinking, evaluating, planning, networking.
These are tasks that don’t necessarily bring you an instant result, or that can’t be checked off a list, but they’re key things that can boost your business forward faster.
If you spend all your day just checking off to-dos, your brain doesn’t have the space for this kind of work – which is why it can be hard to shut your brain off once you step away from your work. And then you can feel pulled back to work again.
It’s crucial that you make time for thinking, so that you can make good decisions in your business instead of just keep doing the things you’re doing out of default. I dove a good bit into this stuff in episode 019.
3. Implement key things that you realized as you were in thinking mode, and tackle those big projects that would propel your business forward
Maybe you have ideas on how to spend your time more effectively when you work with clients, or maybe you realized you could simplify your marketing strategy. Maybe you need to update your website to reflect the kind of client you want to work with. You gotta make space to apply those things that you know will be helpful long term.
4. Doing marketing and sales activities that help more people be aware of your existence and buy from you
This one is tricky, because like I mentioned in the previous episode, not all the things we do are as crucial to marketing or sales as we think they are. This is why it’s important to track your data; be aware which actions that have brought you sales.
5. Delivering on your sales – also important
Doing your work well and in time helps your clients be happy and ups the chances of them talking about you.
I’ve put these five types of activities in this order, because if you ignore your well-being it gets harder and harder to have energy for your work or to think clearly.
And if you ignore big picture thinking, you might end up spending time on a bunch of marketing and sales activities that aren’t fruitful to you, or doing your work in a way that’s not as effective as it could be.
And if you ignore your marketing and sales activities, you won’t have clients to work with once you’re done with clients.
Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking “Ok Jenna, this all sounds great. Buuuuut I don’t even know what my most impactful tasks are, what if I don’t know what I should focus on because I have so many ideas for what to do?”
Well, it sounds like we need to have a chat about possibly working together through my VIP intensive. Together we can identify which of your tasks are the impactful ones, and which ones you could let go of to free up your time and energy.
I don't want you to keep checking off more and more to-dos out of habit anymore – I want to help you focus on the tasks and activities that actually bring you results ❤️