Hi friends and welcome back! If you’re like me, and you have your own online business, you may have noticed that fall and winter seem to be a lot busier than normal. I notice that people are watching a lot more Youtube, most likely since they are home and inside more often. If you see your sales pick up, people are likely gift shopping for Christmas. This makes it a busy time for small business owners, especially if they are doing everything on their own.
When I first started out, I started small. I only had one YouTube channel, and since no one was really watching anyway, I wasn’t busy in regards to answering comments or making videos that people wanted to see. I just created what I thought people wanted to see. You don’t really have good feedback until you have an audience, and it takes some time on Youtube; you won’t see results overnight.
As time went on, I started scaling my business. I created a second YouTube channel, and I wanted to start creating stickers. At the time, I wasn't sure what route to go: website and/or Etsy. I ended up creating a website because I also wanted to have a blog. I have a lot of thoughts and I felt the best way to share them was through this form of writing. However, a lot of people have both. On Etsy, you have an instant market, but it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. Your website is your own, and you stand out, but only if you get visits to your site. (This is why marketing is so important!)
So as you start to scale your business, you get busier. You have choices though. There are things you can do to keep up with the work. Some of these include:
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Hiring help
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Getting help from family members
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Planning ahead
> Getting Organized
> Prioritizing the most important tasks
> Add systems to streamline
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Scaling back
Some of these things do overlap each other. For instance, the whole act of getting organized might include prioritizing, writing in a planner, scheduling ahead, etc. Also, if you do get help (hired or not), you need to have certain things in place beforehand. We will discuss each of these topics below.
HIRING HELP
So I was having this discussion with my business rep from my bank, and in order to legally pay people and have them work for you, you need to have your business incorporated. This protects you from getting sued personally, and only your business can be sued. Obviously, I am not a lawyer or an accountant, so full legalities are not discussed here. However, I do know that it takes about $500 to incorporate your business. Most times, if you are starting out in your small business, you will have people tell you that you don’t need to go this route. You can remain a sole proprietor and maintain your business. However, I am pretty sure you can hire a contractor, since it would be under your business name (i.e. not to be confused with a trade name. Your legal business name as per the government for a sole proprietorship is your given name). It would be similar to hiring a photographer for your wedding for instance. You sign a contract, you pay x amount of dollars and they do the service for you.
GETTING HELP FROM FAMILY MEMBERS
This is another way you can get help with the work you do in your business. Obviously, every family is different and you may or may not have family that can help you. For me, I think of this like my mom coming over to babysit. If I were to hire a babysitter, I would have to pay them money out of pocket. For my mother, I ask her to babysit and she does so out of the kindness of her heart. That doesn’t mean I don’t pay her in other ways. I sometimes invite her over for breakfast or dinner, or I do something special for her. In the case of my husband, when he’s not working himself, he has already offered to help me pack orders when my sticker business picks up.
PLANNING AHEAD
These are the major steps that I have taken personally in my business in order to get ahead by a couple of months. These five things together have helped me in my business to the point that I no longer have the amount of stress that I did at the beginning. When I started, I felt like there was a huge mess of thoughts bouncing around inside my head and I had no idea where to start. I was confused, disorganized and I didn’t have a plan. If you follow these steps, you will definitely see some success in your own business.
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Set Goals
This is a crucial step to basically obtaining anything in life. Having a goal for something you want is taking the first step. I do have a blog outlining how to create intentional goals for yourself. You can read it here: https://sandradahl.ca/goal-setting
Brainstorm all the things you want to see happen in your business, following the guidelines I laid down in the above blog. Then, write down your goals for the current year. The trick here is to break down those goals into smaller and smaller steps so you can see the next task you need to accomplish to move forward. This gives you a starting off point and reduces the brain clutter. It allows you to focus on one thing and become highly productive, instead of wasting time wondering what you should do next.
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Getting Organized
Get a planner. Or a calendar. Or a bullet journal. I don’t care what tool you use, but you need a calender if you want to plan ahead. You need to see the big picture laid out in front of you. If you have successfully created your goals, the next steps are much easier.
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Prioritizing the most important tasks
Figure out what your business revolves around. Are holidays important? Do you have sales based on certain dates? (i.e. Black Friday). If so, schedule these and determine what would make your business pop and stand out. You can always work the smaller, easier tasks around the larger, more difficult ones.
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Add systems to streamline
There are different systems that will help you in your business, but you need to experiment with them to see which ones actually work for you.
Filing systems (whether that’s on your computer or in a filing cabinet will help keep all of your important documents organized, and you will be able to find things easier).
Project Management Tools - Trello or Asana are great at keeping your projects organized online at home or on the go. They are also helpful if you have other people helping you in your business. You can make templates as well so you can easily refer back to the same info if you were training someone for instance.
Planning System - I strongly believe that everyone should have a planner. No one can remember absolutely everything. You can keep all your important info in one place, manage your schedule and take notes without searching for a random piece of paper. I personally have fallen in love with the Franklin Planner system, but I have used Happy Planner, Erin Condren, a bullet journal, and tons of other planners in my life.
Time Managment Systems - Examples of these are batching and day theming. I started doing both of these things because my husband started working out of town, and it was hard for me to find time to do any work. Also, I have two children so I had to work around them as well.
Batching is the process of creating or doing a bunch of the same things at one time. (Eg. I will film 3 videos in one day). This helps because you already have the tools, the products or the mindset to do the one thing, so why not just do it many times over? It saves time and makes your process much more efficient (i.e. increases productivity). I also look at batching as a scheduling method. Since my husband is home for a week at a time, I use that week to film instead of doing any other tasks.
Day theming is the way I schedule my week. Since I have kids, I usually just do one theme per day, because I know that’s all I can accomplish. However, you could do one in the morning and then something else in the afternoon. Every single week is the same for me).
Monday - Editing
Tuesday - Shop/Design
Wednesday - Blog Writing
Thursday - Editing
Friday - Shop/Design/Catch up day
Saturday - Planning
Sunday - Home
Knowing that this is my schedule every single week allows me to save time. I’m not thinking about what needs to come next; I already know. The only thing that I need to figure out is exactly what I plan to edit or design or write. (I also have a brainstorming session once per month).
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Hard work and going above and beyond
Usually, when you work for someone else, you work the amount you get paid for. (i.e. you don’t go above and beyond, because generally, there is no intrinsic value in working for someone else unless it is a value you care deeply about like teaching children, or working in health care). When you work for yourself, all that changes. You put EXTRA time into your business. Unless you have people working for you, the work won’t get done. But on top of that, if you want to take a holiday and not have any interruptions in your business, you need to work ahead and make sure everything is in order while you are away. For me, this is creating youtube videos ahead of time so that I can take time off occasionally. Sometimes this means I’m working 10 hour days. Sometimes I get up at 5:00am and there are nights I go to bed at 3:00am. Since the work I put in holds intrinsic value for me, I don’t mind working long hours or dedicating my time to my business. I enjoy it and it doesn’t feel like a job to me.
SCALING BACK
There is always the possibility that your work load is just too heavy, and you can’t manage to keep up. It is ok to evaluate your business and determine whether you need to cut back a service or product. As a matter of fact, as a good business conduct, you should be evaluating your business every few months or so. There might be products or services that aren’t selling as well as others. In my case, when I opened my sticker shop, I had to cut my video schedule down from five videos per week to three videos per week. Creating content is very time consuming, and people are unaware of how much work that goes into creating a video.
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you again next week!
💛 SANDRA
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