7 hacks to speed up your business outputs

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

 I’m going to be honest, I’ve really been struggling with my mental health lately, and I actually recorded a Instagram live about this because I want to start to normalize these conversations. That’s a whole separate conversation. It did inspire me to record this episode because what I’m finding is that I’m having less time, less energy, energetic availability for working on the business. And so I’ve had to do some things to speed things up, to learn how to create content faster and to still be effective in my business while also looking after myself. So this episode is all about how to speed up your processes, whether you are struggling with showing up in your business or not, here’s some hacks to make your business run more efficiently.

 As I mentioned in the intro to today’s podcast episode, I’m increasingly finding that I’m having days where it’s really hard to show up in the business. As I said, I recorded an Instagram live about that, which I’m going to link to in the show notes for today’s episode. So if you want to go and find out a bit more about that, and also some of the things that I am doing to help manage my anxiety, you can listen to that in the Instagram live.

The reason I wanted to talk about this on the podcast is because I wanted to share some strategies, share some things that I am doing myself to start to ensure that I can get the things done in my business that I need to get done without burning myself out. And one of the key things that I’ve been looking for is efficiencies, ways of doing things faster. And there’s some of these things that I’ve been doing in my business before and some that are new, but regardless, I wanted to share them with you because they might help you to create some more efficiencies in your business.

The first one is to outsource and don’t micromanage. So one of my biz friends said to me one day, she was checking through some of her assistant’s work, and I said, why are you checking your assistant’s work? I know they’ve worked together for a long time, and it occurred to me that this is something that I do in my business that perhaps not all business owners do.

Which is that at the start of working with a new contractor or someone inside the team, I am very hands on. I’m checking their work. I’m really having a lot of conversations, communicating very clearly. And then in time, I like to really step back to really just let someone get on and do their job and not be micromanaging each step of the way. And this is really helpful if you are trying to buy back time. Because if you are cross-checking and cross-checking everything that your team is doing, it’s not really getting you the efficiencies that you are after. Now, it’s not to say that you, you know, aren’t sort of staying across what’s being done, but it really is about starting to let your team get on and do what they do best.

Now, my assistant Sally and I have worked together for many, many years now, so I know that the quality of her work is excellent and I know that she rarely makes mistakes. So obviously we, we do have that rapport and that trust there. And similarly with other people that I work with or have worked with inside my team, and also my other team that I am running inside my volunteer role. If you don’t have that relationship. Now, I know that this is going to be one of the first things that people say or think, what if I don’t have that level of trust? Well, for me, I would really start to question. Are they the right person for the job? Now, this of course needs to be balanced with perfectionism because we need to be realistic about you know, our team, people make mistakes. I make mistakes. Of course, people in your team are going to make mistakes as well. And we need to have the capacity to say it’s okay if sometimes mistakes happen.

If there is an area of your business where this would be very critical, for example, with your business finances you might want to obviously make sure that you have those checks and measures in place.

And an example of 1 check and measure that I have in place in my business is that I have my accountant who will prepare things. And then I also have my in house bookkeeper. So we are running cross checks against numbers, against figures, we’re checking reasonableness as well. So we’re not just completely saying, Oh, well, we’ll hope for the best. We are running cross checks as well, if that makes sense. So there are some parts of your business that are going to be really critical. And there are other parts where perhaps you need to let go of the perfectionism a bit.

An example of this might be, I’ve seen people who will delete an entire social media post because there was one typo in it. Now, you know, if the typo was completely changing the meaning of the, of the reel or the post, maybe, but for the most part, one typo isn’t going to change the trajectory of your business. And sometimes you just need to let go of those little things, if that makes sense. And as I alluded to earlier, if, if there really is a lack of, of trust, if you really are saying, I cannot let people in my team get on and do their job, then you might need to question, are they the right fit?

The next time saving hack is to have meetings as often as possible virtually. So I know that this is going to ruffle some feathers. It’s not right for everyone, but this is really is a big game changer for me. And I’m not even talking about just inside the business, you know, a lot of the meetings, for example, medical appointments meeting with my therapist, I now run online. And again, I know it’s not quite the same as the in person experience, but for example my son had a doctor’s appointment. We would have had to get in the car, drive there, wait in the waiting room, and then drive back. It would have been hours out of the day. And I asked, Hey, could we run this as a, as a zoom meeting? And they said that was fine. And the advantage of that is that it saves the travel time, but also we didn’t have to sit in the waiting room because I just contacted, said, are they running on time? No, they’re running about 15, 30 minutes late. And then we were able to still have the same outcome from that meeting remotely.

Again, I’m not saying this is right all the time, but it’s something worth exploring. Can you bring some of your meetings both inside and outside of your business into a zoom or your online meeting forum?

Alrighty. The next one is this, and I know it’s not really a hack, but it kind of is as well. Stop procrastinating. If you are a procrastinator. Like me, you will do everything but the important thing that needs to be done. So I know for me, I’ll be, I’ll just quickly go through my inbox. I’ll just quickly pay this bill before I sit down and do the meaty chunky thing that needs to be done.

Now, this is saying you may have heard it. It’s J F D I just effing do it. And it can sometimes feel really counterintuitive. We put off the thing we put off the thing, but a lot of times I find, for example, that I feel really anxious about getting a big chunky piece of work out, but ironically, the longer I push it off, it actually ends up being more stressful and more anxiety inducing because then the next day it’s still there, plus other jobs that have built up as well.

So if you know that you’re a procrastinator, just shut down your inbox, put your phone on aeroplane mode and just take action. Often that’s the thing that we just need to do is just get in and do it. Mel Robbins has a saying that she uses to, to tackle procrastination.

And she said, I just count down. It’s five, four, three, two, one, right? Let’s go. And that might be something that you can try as well. Don’t push off the important thing.

The next hack is batching. I’m going to be completely honest with you, this is something I really struggle to do myself in my own business. But when I do, it just makes life so much easier. So for example, if you’ve got some social media, if you’re posting reels on Instagram, like I am, if you have your hair and makeup done and you just go and record the first reel, record the second reel, change your outfit, of course, so that it looks like you’re not just recording them all in the same outfit, then it’s just done. And I know sometimes I can sit down and record five reels in like half an hour. And that week of content is just recorded. It is so much easier.

Similarly with writing social media captions. If every day you stop what you’re doing, go and write a social media caption. It’s broken up as compared to sitting down and writing a week’s worth of content in one hit. It’s so much easier. It’s done. You’re already in the mode or mood of writing captions.

Similarly, I know that at times I pre recorded a bunch of podcast episodes and oh my gosh, it’s amazing because it’s all done. You don’t have to think about it. There really is a lot of power in just doing the same kind of work all at the same time.

And like I said, I want to be completely transparent. All right. I do struggle with these my brain likes to do things at the very last minute when they are urgent, but when I actually do go through the process of batching. It really does make life easier.

The next one is something I spoke about when I said, just stop procrastinating, but it’s to focus on the needle shifting items. So a lot of times when we are trying to buy back time, when we were just feeling busy, we’re just trying to get all of the things done. We aren’t focusing on the most important tasks at hand.

So how do you know? What to focus on to really speed things up in your business. Well, this is my little way of prioritizing items. Number one, it’s always clients first. My paying clients take my priority in terms of my energy. And that includes as well, people who, for example, have paid me to show up and speak to their audience. To me, your paying clients are the backbone of your business. And I know for me, I always want to give 110 percent to my clients. Secondly, I focus in on attracting new clients into the business. So this is things like in particular, regular marketing activities that you undertake. So for me, it’s the podcast it’s showing up on my Instagram and it’s emailing my list. And I do believe there is a lot of power in being consistent. And, you know, even if you really struggle with consistency, that’s how you build trust and rapport with your audience. If you aren’t just popping in to be like, Hey, buy my thing, if you are adding value to your audience on the regular. Next is to focus on marketing. And particularly I focus on honoring my existing marketing platforms. So for me, it’s, it’s this podcast, it’s Instagram, and it’s showing up to my email list. I really believe there is a lot of power in consistency and building that trust with your audience. So that is the second thing to focus on. How can you be showing up in your marketing in a consistent way and everything else I kind of leave until I have the capacity or bandwidth to do it. So an example of this might be, I know I need to go in and review my BAS, but at this point in time, it’s not due for a couple of weeks yet. So I can leave that until it becomes something that, you know, is really both important and urgent.

The next hack is to repurpose content. Now, If you like me, I love to create content and you really like to be showing up in a great way for your audience. This can feel a little bit awkward because you think I want to constantly be creating new stuff. But the truth is this most of your audience won’t see everything you create. On Instagram, for example, only one to 5 percent of your followers will see each piece of content. So you can put that piece of content into a different platform and increase your audience’s chances of seeing it. Most people are not seeing everything. And if there is someone who happens to be a super fan, who reads every single post that you create, that reads every single email that you send, I’m sure they won’t mind if they see something more than once, particularly if you shuffle it around a little bit. But bear in mind too, a lot of times we need to hear or see the same thing multiple times before it clicks and let me share for example, if I’m going to buy a new item of clothing, I will think, oh, I need to buy a new pair of shoes. And then I might get an email that says, Hey, here’s a pair of shoes that’s on sale. I go, great. There’s a million other things going on. I completely forget about it. If I had a brand that I was following and I then saw, you know, that then post about it on social media, I got another email about it. I finally, I’m not saying, Hey, that sale on that shoe that you wanted is about to end. I go, Oh, thank you. There’s so much going on that being reminded of the same thing again and again is actually helpful. And if you’re a service based business, as I know that many of you are, it’s the same with a lot of the messages that you are sharing and hearing. I know for me a lot of times I need to hear something a number of times before it eventually clicks and that is when you take action. So don’t be scared of sharing the same message again and again.

The final hack, that I wanted to share or speeding up your outputs in business is to use AI or artificial intelligence. I ran a workshop and mentioned AI inside that training, and this topic was just blowing up. We had a ton of questions, people wanted to know more about it, how I specifically am using these tools and so much so that I’ve decided to run another training specifically focused around AI and going a lot deeper into AI, each of the different areas showing how I actually use the tools, some prompts, et cetera. So I haven’t actually officially launched that training yet, but please keep your ear out on the podcast and keep your eyes out on my socials because you really don’t want to miss this workshop. It’s going to be a game changer in terms of being able to speed up the way that you do things in your business. And this is whether you are completely new to AI or whether you’ve been using it a bit and are just looking for a few more tips around how you can use it to create more speed and efficiencies inside your business.

So to sum up today’s episode of the podcast, some tips of how you can speed up your business outputs. Firstly, outsource and don’t micromanage. Secondly, look at ways that you could do things remotely or meetings that you can have virtually. Number three is, To stop procrastinating, just take action and get the thing done. Next is batching, doing things all at the same time. Then it’s to be focusing on the needle shifting actions. Don’t be busy just for the sake of being busy. Do the important things next is to repurpose content. And last, but definitely not least is to use AI to create efficiencies in your business. Thanks so much for tuning into today’s episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed, and I look forward to chatting to you again next week. Ciao for now.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio