The Weekly Glow Up: June 14, 2023

Jun 14

Welcome back to the Weekly Glow Up, where I share tips and resources that you should know about as a creative who wants to make money from their art.

Here’s what I’ve got this week:

1. ⚙️ Systems for Success: Batching Tasks for Greater Efficiency

Ever heard of “batching”?

It refers to doing several of the same type of task in one time block, as opposed to several very different tasks.

For example, batching your Instagram content might look like spending separate work sessions on each of these:

Generating a list of post ideas for the month
Writing captions for each post
Taking photos for all your photo posts
Recording video for all your Reels/Stories
Adding your posts to your scheduler

Why does batching make a difference?

When you jump between different types of tasks, your brain has to spend extra time switching from one mode of thinking to another.

When you do similar tasks all at once, you can get in a better flow and knock each one out quicker.

Do you batch tasks already? If not, how can you apply this system in your business?

2. 🧠 The “Doing It Myself Is Faster” Mentality Is Killing Your Business Growth: How to Overcome It

I’m VERY guilty of being hesitant to delegate any work, because in the moment, it would be faster to just do it myself.

If I delegate it to someone else, I have to gather all the resources they need, organize them, explain what needs to be done, how I would do it, what they need to take into consideration… it just sounds exhausting.

BUT, delegating is essential for growing your business.

As you grow and want to start scaling, there are going to be things in your business that ONLY you can do.

Which means, if you want to maximize your profits and the ROI on your time, you need to start handing the other pieces to other people.

Here are 2 things that can help you feel way more confident about outsourcing tasks:

Templates. Templates are such a time saver, and they make it really simple to hand a task to someone else and feel reassured that they’ll do it “your way.” You can build templates for things like emails, social media posts, and client communications, and then have someone fill them in and schedule, send, or post them.
SOPs (standard operating procedures). An SOP is basically an instruction manual that explains how to perform a task. If you want to outsource social media posting, you can create an SOP that guides a virtual assistant through your whole process, from where files are saved and what naming convention should be used, to how to format captions, to where and when to post them. There are tools like Scribe out there that make SOP creation easier and less manual too!

The upfront time investment you put into creating templates and SOPs will pay back dividends once all that extra work can come off your plate, and you can focus on higher impact tasks in your business.

3. 🍵 Client Tea: What’s the “Right” Amount of Time to Spend on a Task?

I had a follow-up question after last week’s newsletter around how to determine the “right” amount of time to spend on different tasks in your business.

How do you set that initial time limit for yourself, and how do you know if you should be spending more or less time on it?

My answer:

It'll probably take a bit of trial and error to figure out the best amount of time to spend on different things. You’re going to need data to really make the best decisions.

My recommendation is to use a time tracking app and just start tracking your time, without trying to change anything; just go about your work as you normally do.

After you have some data, you can look back at your totals and see what needs to be adjusted based on your business and income goals.

For example, say you look back at a couple weeks of time tracking and see that you're spending 50% of your time on creating social media posts.

But, you historically have gotten more clients from direct sales outreach, like sending emails or LinkedIn messages to prospects.

Then you may want to adjust your social media strategy to spend less time there, so you can spend more time on the thing that actually works to bring in income (sales outreach).

Or, you may find that you spent 10 hours on a project that you only sold for $200, meaning you essentially made $20/hour on that project.

If that's way lower than the goal hourly rate that you need to hit to meet your income goals, that can tell you very clearly that you either need to find a way to spend less time on that project (or raise your prices!)

(P.S. my Roadmap to Profit toolkit is very helpful in figuring out what your goal hourly rate should be if you're not sure 🤑)

The “right” amount of time is always going to be dependent on your business model and goals, but tracking and analyzing your time is the first step to figuring it all out.

4. 🧠 Biz Strategy: Should I Add Another Income Stream?

When you see how many different product offerings other artists have, it can be easy to feel the pressure to add another branch to your business too.

But, adding a new income stream too early can spread your efforts too thin and be detrimental to your business.

Here are a couple things to consider before adding on another income stream to your biz:

💵 Am I getting consistent sales from my existing income stream(s)?

If the answer is no, you may want to spend your time and effort mastering sales of your existing products first.

💪 Can I leverage anything I’m already doing to create this new income stream?

Some income streams don’t have to be a HUGE lift.

For example, if you’re designing logos for clients already, you could sell unused sketches or concepts on a creative marketplace site.

Or if you’ve licensed a piece of artwork for specific products or specific regions, you could sell that piece of artwork again in a different capacity, with different usage terms.

Or, if you’re already creating artwork for your social media or paying subscribers on a platform like Patreon, can you use that artwork to print on products or put it in a print-on-demand shop?

Adding these additional income sources to your business isn’t quite as heavy of an undertaking, because you’re using things that you’ll already be doing anyway, even if you didn’t add in the new streams.

⏱ How much time will the new income stream take, and how will I free up that time?

If you already feel like you’re drowning in work, now’s not the time to add something else to your plate.

First, figure out where you’re spending your time, and how you can set up systems, automation, and delegation to get more efficient.

When your business starts to feel like a well-oiled machine and you have additional hours you can dedicate to a new project, you can bring in a new income stream.

P.S. Figuring out systems to help scale your business is what I do with clients in my one-on-one coaching program!