Today we’re talking about productivity for entrepreneurs and how to find more efficiency within your business.
My guest today is Kate Erickson. She is the host of the podcast Ditch Busy and co-author of The Podcast Journal: Idea to Launch in 50 Days. Her goal is to help entrepreneurs ditch busy and achieve financial and lifestyle freedom. She is also the engine at Entrepreneurs On Fire, an award-winning podcast where John Lee Dumas interviews inspiring Entrepreneurs who are truly ON FIRE.
Her passion is helping entrepreneurs create freedom in their business and life through developing systems and processes that can help their business scale and grow.
Ditch Busy is all about helping you take back control of your time – not just in your business, but in your life. It’s time to make overwhelm a thing of the past! This podcast will inspire, encourage, and teach you how to start embracing time management in a way that makes you feel free.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVITY
Brandon Birkmeyer: We get to talk about something that every personal brand entrepreneur out there can relate to, which is productivity. It may not be the sexiest topic, I’ll admit that, but it’s definitely a game-changer.
I’d like to hear from you. You can help us set the stage here. Why is something like productivity so important for us?
Kate Erickson: Well, I think productivity is super sexy. That’s my jam, but I can totally understand. A lot of this stuff I end up talking about (systems, time management, productivity, focus, and discipline,) are kind of the wamp-wamp of the entrepreneur game.
However, productivity is so critical because when we have a goal, when we have a vision, when we have a mission, it’s so clear to us. Then many entrepreneurs, because we’re so excited about that vision, so excited about that mission, we’re building our brand. We’re being creative, doing all the things that entrepreneurs are known for.
PRODUCTIVITY IS DIFFERENT THAN BUSYNESS
The problem is that oftentimes we get caught up working in the business or in the brand versus on it. That can result in the actions that you’re taking every single day not actually being in alignment with that vision and that mission.
I like to think of productivity as working on the right things. Oftentimes, unfortunately, we end up in the weeds where we’re busy. We’re doing a lot. Usually that makes us feel good because we think, oh man, I worked for 12 hours today.
We want to brag about it when in reality you could probably be accomplishing more in four hours if you were focusing on the right things. To me, that’s productivity, getting the right things done that are in alignment with your vision and your mission. They’re actually moving you forward to where you want to go.
YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO MEASURE PROGRESS
Brandon Birkmeyer: Maybe we can get specific, like what are some right things. It’s different for everybody, but what would you classify as right things versus in the business things.
Kate Erickson: It’s definitely going to be different for everyone. Everyone’s brand, business, podcasts, YouTube channel, whatever they have set up is going to be different.
I think the most critical thing to think about and be tracking when you’re wondering, “Am I working on the right things?”, is you need to have a measurement. You need to understand that the actions you’re taking are actually bringing results.
If you think about it from an ROI perspective, (return on investment) think of the investment as your time. Usually, people talk about ROI in terms of, “Okay, I spent this much money. How much should I get back?”
We need to be thinking about that as the investment being our time. I spent this much time on this activity. What did I get?
You need to start having some type of measurement. We talk about smart goals a lot. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. That measurement is so important because that measurement is what tells you that you are working on the right things. It alerts you when you’re working on the wrong things because you don’t see results from it.
FOCUS ON WHAT YOU SEE RESULTS FROM
Let me give you just a random example of this. I have received so many Clubhouse invites. Everyone wants to be on Clubhouse right now. I think it sounds like an incredible platform, super awesome. I love social media, I love Instagram, I’m on Facebook for groups. We’ve got Twitter. The platforms are endless, right?
When I think about the time that I invest in social media, it’s a look at what the highest ROI for me is. When I relate that to my business and my business goals, where I want my business to go, my highest ROI is on Facebook.
Why? Because I’m on Facebook to moderate and be an engaged, active member in groups. I can attribute actual revenue to my business and lifelong relationships that I’ve created from those groups.
To me, if I’m going to join Clubhouse, be on Instagram, be on Facebook and be on Twitter, all these other platforms, (there’s probably so many, I don’t even know), if I’m really trying to be on all those platforms, honestly, my measurement is sinking.
My Facebook is high, and on my Instagram, I can have great engagement. I make great relationships on Instagram. I only have so much time, so I can’t just keep adding and adding, expecting that measurement to continue going up. It’s only going to start going down when I’m putting myself on platforms that many times are a distraction.
You just have to keep that measurement in mind. You can’t be everywhere and do everything. Be wise about the things that you are choosing to work on. Make sure that they’re equaling some type of ROI.
HOW TIME MANAGEMENT AFFECTS PRODUCTIVITY
Brandon Birkmeyer: It can be complicated if you have to think about how to chop up your day. Everything feels important. Obviously, the things that are ROI generating like a sales call or something like that I could see as more important.
I think a lot of other things feel vaguely important, whether it’s me showing up on another person’s podcast, something that’s PR-related, or maybe speaking on a virtual stage versus sending emails out or creating a podcast episode of my own.
All of these things feel important in their own right. How do you measure how many hours a week I am spending on that? What should I allocate? Should that be flexible? Where do you start with some of that and figuring that out?
Kate Erickson: That’s excellent, real-life day-to-day: I’ve got all these things, I want to do all of them, but I want to be smart about how I’m allocating my time.
LEARN HOW TO TAKE INVENTORY
What I recommend is a super simple task or exercise. I call it taking inventory. You just gave some great examples of things that you do on a weekly basis, how you are spending your time.
Taking inventory is just having a sheet of paper or online note-taking system and recording every single thing that you work on, that you spend your time on in a given week.
Let’s focus on your business. You could certainly do this in your life too. I have because the way I spend my time in my personal life is just as important to me as the way that I spend my time in my business life.
For business purposes, you would simply take note of how you are spending your time each day. This is super valuable because at the end of the week, you are going to have a very real picture of what you’re spending your time on.
I can pretty much guarantee quite immediately you will be surprised at what you are doing. Brandon, you’ve had this happen to you before and I’m sure anyone tuning in has.
You get to the end of the day. You think, “Dang, I did so much! That was so good. I’m feeling great.” Then someone asks, “Oh, what’d you do?” And you say, “Huh, what did I do?”
You did a lot of stuff. Some of it might’ve been very productive, but to actually recall that can sometimes be kind of difficult. This inventory is not only giving you a super real picture of exactly how you’re spending your time.
It’s also going to help you start to identify those repetitive activities that are important to you like speaking on virtual stages, being a guest on other podcasts, and of course, replying to emails, customer service, and engaging with your audience. All of that is super important stuff and things that you should be doing.
However, once you recognize how you’re spreading it across your week, you can start to implement what I think is one of the most powerful creating tools in business, especially for content creation, which is batching.
BATCHING HELPS FOCUS PRODUCTIVITY
Let’s say you have one podcast interview scheduled on Monday, and then you’re recording a podcast episode for your podcast on Wednesday. Then you’ve got another podcast interview on Thursday morning, and then you’re recording another podcast for your podcast on Friday afternoon.
That breaks up your day and forces you to context switch. Whenever we switch from one task to another that’s not the same type of brain space, we lose time. We’re organizing, we’re plugging in our microphone, we’ve got our earbuds, we’re making sure our applications are closed down.
All these little things that we don’t necessarily stop to think about, every single step, takes bandwidth from your mind, from your productivity, and your focus. It can be quite exhausting to switch from recording a podcast episode to then writing a blog post to then going on social media.
TIME BLOCKING CREATES EFFICIENCY
This whole idea of batching is the idea that your Monday becomes the only day of the week that you guest on other podcasts. Tuesday becomes the only day of the week that you work on content for your site.
You could theme days that way and say, “Okay, Monday’s my podcast day.” Or you could time block on certain days of the week to say, “Thursdays from ten to two, that’s when I’m working on my podcast.”
I’m recording episodes and I’m recording at least three or four of them back to back, which is going to require that you have a time block for however you prepare for your episodes, whether that be creating an outline, doing guest research.
That’s also going to require that you have a time block for making sure that you have interviews lined up. Where are your guests coming from? There are these entire systems and batching processes that we can put together so that we can fit all of the most important things into our week.
We’re just doing it in a super-efficient manner by batching and time-blocking so that we can be more efficient. It’s really what it comes down to.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
HOW TO FIND SYSTEMS FOR MORE PRODUCTIVITY
Brandon Birkmeyer: For someone who’s getting started and looking to more be productive, what’s a good focus? I’m sure it’s all of them, but where do you prioritize? Is it your systems or finding where the tools fit? How do you help people get more efficient?
Kate Erickson: I think what is absolutely 100%, no questions asked, is a task management system, any way you want to cut it. You could use sticky notes, you could use something like Asana, which I love, or Trello Basecamp. There are a number of task and project management tools.
I think that at a baseline, for you to even consider whether to start creating systems or to bring on team members, what’s critical to get a handle on (which one of those things you should be doing or what you need) is to understand your tasks.
What do you have on your plate to do right now? Actually, an awesome example is you describe four categories that make up a majority of what you’re spending your time on in your business. Within each of those things are probably up to fifty tasks, like PR, research, outreach, follow-up booking, promoting.
Be able to break those out, and then also be able to have space to brain dump. As entrepreneurs, as brand creators, we’re constantly coming up with ideas. We might think, oh, that sounds awesome. Brain dump it, put it on a list. You won’t forget it. You get it out of your mind to free up space, to focus on what you should be doing right now. You’ll always have that list to go to.
A TASK MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS TAKES AWAY GUESSWORK
The bottom line is everybody should be using a task management tool to show themselves exactly what’s on the lineup for today. That’s my first task. Every single day I go into Asana. I sort by the due date, and I don’t have to guess at what I’m responsible for today.
It’s all in there waiting for me. I don’t have to think about it. I’m not wasting bandwidth, not wasting time thinking, what should I work on today, because I have every single one of my tasks in there. I know exactly what I’m supposed to do. That would be number one.
Then going back to the inventory exercise that we talked about earlier, that sheet of paper where you’re documenting what you do in a given week, that’s also an insanely helpful exercise. It’s actually the very first step that I give people when you’re creating a system for something in your business.
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO CREATE A SYSTEM
In order to create a system, you have to understand what you can create a system out of. Some systems that would be awesome just based on what we’ve been talking about here today is a podcast production system. What happens from start to finish for you to produce an episode.
Every single step should be outlined, finding the efficiencies within every single step that you’re doing. If we were to take podcast production as a system and write out every single step that happens, then the third step in that process would be to automate, delegate or batch.
You automate things using online tools and systems. You delegate to team members, and you batch anything that requires you, like recording the podcasts. You’re doing that, so you’re going to batch it.
Editing, post-production, uploading, maybe you’re doing that too, which could certainly be batched or you could be delegating that. Automation would be things like setting up your social media and your promotions in online scheduling tools so that that’s happening automatically.
Once you have all your tasks laid out and you find repetition, the lowest hanging fruit for a system would be something that you’re doing daily or weekly because that’s probably taking up a ton of your time. Podcast production, email management, social media management, all of these would be great systems for you to have.
PLAY TO YOUR PRODUCTIVITY STRENGTHS
When you outsource, go back to that inventory. Travis said this on a call that I was on, and I thought it was fantastic because I’ve never described it quite in this way, but it was great.
Once you have your inventory lists, you take a green highlighter, a yellow highlighter, and a red highlighter. You green highlight everything on your list that you love doing and that you’re really good at.
You red highlight anything that you do not like doing and you are not good at. Pretty much everything else gets the yellow highlighter, essentially stuff you like to do, but you’re not best at. Maybe you’re kind of good at it, but you don’t like doing it.
This will help you easily identify; anything in green you should be batching in some way, shape, or form. Anything in red you should probably be delegating.
That’s not only helpful in identifying what tasks you would delegate. That is going to help you start to come up with some type of job description for what this person that you’re potentially looking to hire is going to be responsible for, what skills they need.
That inventory sheet, you can see how key it is. We’ve used it in almost every single thing that we’ve talked about today. It’s so beneficial in so many different ways when you’re looking at time management, the systems, hiring a team, et cetera…
CONNECT WITH KATE
Website: ditchbusy.com and eofire.com
Instagram: @katelerickson
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Talk soon!