Last week was our monthly Tuesday’s Together Rising Tide Society Meeting. Unfortunately, this Tuesday was a very popular date for events in the Birmingham, Alabama area, so our regular attendees weren’t able to make it. Our monthly topic was on productivity, and this is something that I focus really hard on, and I’ve spent a lot of time researching and molding my on workflow to be efficient and productive. What I found out yesterday was that the few people at the meeting were very interested in how I manage things. A full-time business, a household, a newborn baby and a personal life. After feeling like I might have stolen the show from our RTS Leader (Rising Tide Society) I felt that I should write a blog and share for everyone. Maybe it will help. I feel like this might be a long blog, so let’s get started. NOTE: This is a long blog but please stick with it. It’s an easy read and isn’t as bad as it looks 😉
After going full time in April, I realized that the structure that my previous desk job gave me, I was no longer accountable for. I.E being at work at a specific time, and a boss giving me a list and a timeline to complete those tasks and consequences for not completing said tasks. I didn’t have someone else telling me “Hey Alex I need this done” Or “Why didn’t you make it in at 8 am.” After you make the leap into running your own business full time, you don’t have anyone holding you accountable. Yes, you have obligations that you made to your clients, but you don’t really have anyone pushing you to meet those requirements. It’s all up to you!
So the first week of being self-employed was very chaotic. There was absolutely no structure, there was no alarms being set to wake up, I was just making it up as I went along. Sometimes that works, but it didn’t for me. I would wake up at 10:30 am and sit at my computer and try to figure out what needed to be done. Which usually meant skimming through emails, sipping coffee, listening to my favorite radio talk show. Sound Familiar? I’d do this for an hour and then hop on Facebook for 10 minutes… Ok. Ok, 30 minutes… But for real 45 minutes later, I’d check emails again, edit some photos for a few hours, work on an album, get on Facebook again, and the next thing I knew it was 5:30 and I couldn’t tell you what I did that day, and I defiantly didn’t have anything to show for a “days” worth of work! Needless to say, me being my own boss was very unproductive and frustrating at the end of each day. I felt defeated!!!
After that first week, I knew the “wake up and wing it” method wasn’t going to cut it. My new goal was to spend time researching productivity, exploring goals of mine, and talking with fellow entrepreneurs. My goal was to make sure I got more productive each day, make sure all of my time is being well spent, and running my business efficiently. This would make sure that leaving my cushy desk job was going to be beneficial to the growth of my own business vs. being the downfall of it.
Now that I’ve had about five months to really put new workflows in place and have a structure for each day and can gladly say that I’m getting more work done in a shorter amount of time and feeling so good about closing my laptop at the end of a day of work. I honestly never thought that would happen. Most nights I would lay in bed being stressed about the work I didn’t do or the work that needed to be done. Once you have a workflow put in place there will be no need to stress because you can believe in your system and know that everything has a time and day to get completed.
So let’s get caught up just a tad. April I left my full-time job, June our first child was born and September Sara (my wife) went back to her job as a nurse. So right now in the midst of chaos I still have structure. So much of a structure that I only have to work three days a week.
Let me repeat that! 3…DAYS…A…WEEK!
Those three days are strictly business days. So yes we still shoot weddings and engagement sessions on the other four days, but photography is what I love, not business. And honestly, our business has never been better!!! Let me give you a little more context, we have an average of a 2 week turn around time on weddings, a 1 week turn around time on engagements, we have around 50 photo and cinema weddings this year, my inbox is always clear at the end of the day, I work out 4 times a week, and all while taking care of a newborn. I have time to do this because of my workflow.
A good internet friend of mine Abby Grace recently said in one of her blogs,
“Our mission is to run a business that enables a life that we want to live, not a life ran by our business.”
I may be paraphrasing a bit, but you get the idea. Right now especially in my life, I want to spend as much time with my little dude and also spend time with Sara when she’s not working. Sara works three 13-14 hour shifts at the hospital. So three days a week we don’t see each other, and she really doesn’t get to see the baby either. So when she’s not working, I do my best to mimic that. Our business week typically looks something like this when we have a wedding on that Saturday.
Sunday- Recover from wedding AKA. Eat Brunch, be lazy around the house, binge watching a TV show and order in Chinese for dinner.
Monday- Off Day or Engagement Session day.
Tuesday through Thursday- In the words of Rihanna “Work, Work, Work, Work, Work.”
Friday- Off Day/ Personal Day/ Prep for wedding. Whether we decide to do errands or just stay in.
Saturday- Wedding Day
Now this schedule isn’t set in stone. Being in the wedding business, I don’t think a schedule can ever be set in stone. You’ll always have a client who has a Sunday wedding or has to have a weekend engagement session or has to have a consult on a Friday. And yes I do at least check emails on Monday and Friday. Which all of this is fine just don’t let those curve balls throw you off or make you so busy that you don’t have any free time.
So let’s get into how I do this!
Let me start by saying, a three day work week doesn’t happen over night. No one should start a business and say “I’m only going to work three days a week.” This will take a little bit of time if you’re starting from scratch. If you are, that’s fine. Start little by little and clear out that inbox, create some client workflows that streamline your process. Ill talk more about this later.
I’ve grouped my scheduling into three parts that help maintain a healthy personal and business lifestyle; business productivity, client productivity, and personal productivity.
Let’s dive into each of these.
Business productivity is probably the most self-explanatory. That’s being efficient at email, workflow, and editing (if you’re a photographer). But pretty much anything that involves your Day-to-day tasks.
I live by my day to day to do list. Although my list my change daily, the format stays the same. My day to day format looks like this:
From 7am-9:30 am I wake up and try to watch the Today Show and finish my cup of coffee before the baby wakes up, which is typically between 7:30-8. This is a total WIN if I can do this. This small little task gets my day started right. Between 8-9:30 I’m able to hang out with our little dude and be present while feeding him. Enjoying the morning giggles and a few minutes of play time before I start work.
9:30-10:00 clear my inbox
10:00-1:30 Be creative, Be inspired, Educate myself… This is the time I love! This is time for reading my favorite blogs, Writing blogs like this one, skimming through The Rising Tide Facebook Group, watching a new tutorial on SLR Lounge. That’s right, I have fun for the 3.5 hours before I do “real” work. But honestly, this lays the foundation for my day and helps me and my business grow. Doing this makes me ready to tackle the real projects for the day
1:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-5:00 Business Tasks! This is real deal business time. Doing whatever I predetermined yesterday. This could be culling, editing, accounting, albums, invoices.. Whatever! I give myself 3 hours to do this each day.
5:00-5:30 Prep schedule for the next day
This is a little tip I picked up from Erin Youngreen
I’ll talk more about tracking time, speeding up tasks and outsourcing in our next blog
Client Productivity: Making sure that your clients are happy and that you are going above and beyond for these people. After all, they’re the ones that are putting food on your table =) But at the same time, you need to make sure you have clearly set client boundaries and make sure they know about these. You don’t have to be rude when explaining them but just make sure they’re out there somewhere.
A few of ours look something like this:
-Office Hours Monday-Friday 8-5 (although I only sit down at my computer three days a week I’m still there for my clients during the week, I still answer emails, phone calls, inquiries, etc.)
-We only take one engagement session a week when we have a wedding that week and they have to be booked two months in advance.
-We are happy to text our clients, but if it’s for something important, it needs to be emailed.
-We don’t answer emails after business hours. (except for inquiries. I answer inquiries almost immediately because they are sent to my phone from 17hats
-We don’t book more than four weddings weekends in a row. ( We’ve broken this a few times but knowing when to say No is a huge factor in your business)
We have a few more, but you get the idea. These help me love my clients, even more, it lets them respect me and my time, and honestly clients get it. They don’t want me to blow up their email at 9 pm or plan their engagement session a week from today.
Client productivity also dips into business productivity a bit. You need to make sure that you get emails responded to every night before closing your computer or upload that client gallery overnight so you can deliver it the next day.
Personal Productivity: Making sure that you have time in your personal life to do things that you want to do. Meaning having free time to spend away from your business doing other hobbies or knowing that you have time to be spontaneous when that friend calls you and says “Hey do you want to go to a concert tomorrow night” or your parents ask if you want to come over and grill out. You can say Yes
But there are also things in your personal productivity that will affect the other two productivity groups. Meaning if your house is a mess and you sit down at your desk (or couch) to work, and the mess is distracting, you can’t expect to get work done. If you didn’t grocery shop on your off day and you now have to run out and grab lunch on a work day, then a 30-minute lunch turns into 1hr and 30-minute lunch, that messes up your work schedule.
As you can see each group effects the other. They all have to run in full circle for this to work
I know this was a long blog, and I hope you stuck with it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
We will have future blogs to add on to this on soon.
–How 17hats will streamline your business
-Do what your best at!!! Outsource the rest
