3 Subtle Shifts that Will Increase Your Productivity Forever

The first few months on my own as a business owner were ROUGH STUFF. 

I remember crying in my (very clean-- thanks procrastination) office thinking, "if I only had a boss to tell me what to do!! I'd be so much better off."

Ha.

Fast forward to nearly five years later and I'm much better equipped to handle the day-to-day tasks of my business (or just skip out on work for the day because I feel like it!) because of these nifty tricks I've learned along the way.

I can promise you, if you implement ONLY these three things over the next week, you will see dramatic improvements, and feel ​​​​​​​​​​much less stressed than usual.

I know these life lessons are squished down into just a handful of words, but don't let the brief read fool you into thinking they're not powerful shifts for you too.

​​Here are the three best things you can do to immediately create less stress in your business!​​

1. Talk, talk, talk.

I'm a HUGE fan of over-communicating at all times possible. I don't think you can ever communicate too much if there's any kind of logistics involved (read: every client you work with, ever). 

Remember, this is the 578th time you've done this, but. it might be their first.

You've got to walk them through it like a five year old every time. It's not that our clients are stupid. They're just busy! Like everyone else, and when we remind them about things 5x, they'll get it at least one of those times ;)

2. Get systems in place.

Systems is a scary word. The truth is, you're already using them-- they're probably just poorly implemented.

Every time you post to Instagram, or write a client email, you are doing something over and over that you've done who knows how many times before.

Probably so many times, you've more or less committed the task to memory. But here's the kicker: you haven't.

Take an extra 90 seconds to list out, step-by-step, what you do as you post to Instagram, or write a client back. Some helpful areas to create a list around are:

• your process for sharing about your business at networking events (hand out a card? swap Instas?)
• posting to Instagram (picking a picture, writing the caption, how often?)
• creating a new product listing​​​
• onboarding a new client​​​​​​​​​​
• writing a blog post
• sending a weekly newsletter (or monthly, whatevs!)
• responding to IG comments
• taking a blog post and turning it into a tweet, IG story, Pinterest post, etc.​​​​

P.S. Almost always, I've been able to swap an expensive hire for a repeatable process or system!! And automate it. It sucks to get it set up, but then oh my word, you will be thanking yourself for literally years afterwards!! ​​

3. Just do something.

I'm a broken record, but for good reason-- I am constantly telling myself, and my consulting clients, "do what you can with what you have." Doing something is better than doing nothing.

If you don't believe me, check out Sean Wes' keynote at Craft + Commerce. 

Long story short, sitting there, crafting the most perfect anything is nearly always going to be inferior to the efforts from someone who tries more often and puts out more, because they have more chances to succeed.

Cheers to making big waves this week!​​