The Weekly Glow Up: June 21, 2023

Jun 21

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: Get More Done By Planning Less

As a bona fide organization nerd, I really love filling out planners.

I get a lot of satisfaction from just plotting out to dos, checking them off, dreaming about how productive I’m going to be…

But there lies the problem—your to do list for the week shouldn’t be a “dream” of what you want to do.

It should be brutally, honestly realistic about what you can do.

You may have a huge blank page in your planner that is calling to you to fill it up with things, but you probably don’t have a huge blank day in your week.

You have to make sure that the time slots you’re filling in with plans are equal to the actual time slots you have available in your life.

For the past year or so, I started using a different kind of planner—one that is designed to help you actually limit your planning, and focus in on just a few key priorities each day or week.

I’ve found that I get a lot more done this way, and feel a lot more productive.

Even though I’m putting less in my plan for the week, I’m making it achievable and I’m forcing myself to really evaluate what the most important thing is.

There are a couple planners I’ve tried out that do this really well:

If you’re feeling frustrated with your never-ending to do list, give one of these a try and see if it helps you focus in on what’s most important!

2. ⚙️ Systems for Success: How to Spend Less Time on Client Communication

Working with clients as a creative service provider is a beautiful thing—they bring in a lot of income, they give you a chance to flex your creative problem solving skills.

But it can also be a really frustrating thing when your inbox is overflowing, you’re stuck in meetings all day, and you’re doing rework because someone chimed in with last minute feedback 😑

Here are a few tips for reducing the amount of time you spend in client communication land so you can get back to the work that fills you up:

💌 Create templates for the emails you send over and over.

If you send an email or even a certain paragraph in an email more than once, that’s your sign to save it as a template.

It could be an onboarding email that you send to new clients, or just a blurb you put in emails when you’re sending over project progress with a reminder of how to access the draft and leave comments.

If you use Gmail, you can save what you’ve written in an email as a template, then add it into a fresh email in one click. I recommend highlighting the bits that you’ll need to change or personalize each time so you don’t forget.

🙅 Set boundaries around communication time and methods.

A while back I had a client text me on my personal phone, then text me about an hour later to make sure I’d seen the first text, and I was shook.

It never occurred to me that people thought this was an appropriate way to send business communication 😂

But, I’d never set any boundaries, told them how I preferred to communicate, or established a standard response time to communications, so how should this client know any better?

I’m not saying you can’t text your clients, if that’s easiest for you then go for it!

But whatever method you prefer, whatever hours you want messages to roll in, and whatever time limit you want to establish for when you’ll get back to them by—make sure you clearly communicate those standards in writing 🙂

🎥 Record Loom videos or use other asynchronous communication methods.

Asynchronous communication means you’re not talking live.

Think of it as the difference between taking a course online and taking a course in-person on a university campus.

The online course allows you to your reading, watch the lectures, submit your assignments all on your own schedule.

If you do your best thinking at 2am, you can do your coursework at 2am. You do you.

An in-person course means everybody in the class has to be in the same place at the same time, ready to participate regardless of your preferences or when you work best.

One sounds more attractive than the other, right?

Tools like Loom allow you to record a video of yourself talking over a screenshare, then send it to someone to watch on their schedule.

You get to provide feedback or talk through your thoughts at a time that works for you, and the person receiving the video gets to absorb it and respond at a time that works for them.

It allows you to share ideas when you’re in the zone, instead of waiting for an arbitrary meeting time.

And it cuts down on all the time you may have spent going off on tangents or filling time on a scheduled call.

How are you communicating with clients today—synchronously or asynchronously? How much time do you think you could save by switching to more asynchronous communication?

3. 🍵 Client Tea: The Five Second Rule

The other day I was in a meeting with a new client who needed help with their messaging.

They filled me in on what their product is, who it helps, and how… and it took an hour and a half.

Which, in all fairness to them, I was digging deep and asking them to elaborate so I could fully understand in order to craft their messaging.

BUT, it also got me thinking—you don’t have an hour and a half to explain your product to a potential customer.

You have MAYBE 5 seconds to grab their attention, then perhaps another minute or two if you hook them and they start poking around your Instagram.

That’s why having a clear system for your messaging is so important as a business owner.

What I would include in that system is:

Your ideal client profile
Your transformation
Your content pillars
Your differentiators

When you have these pieces super clear and well-defined, you know what to say to grab your ideal client’s attention.

You know what they’re looking for, what they’re feeling/experiencing, and what facets of your offering will stand out to them.

So whether you’re posting a carousel on Instagram, sending an outreach email, or talking to someone IRL at an event, you’ll be able to succinctly share what your business does in a way that resonates.

If you had to give a super quick one-line pitch for your biz or services right now, do you feel confident that it would hook your ideal client? Or do you have some work to do on your messaging system? 🤔

4. 📙 Good Readin’: Atomic Habits

I recently picked this book back up off my shelf and remembered how freaking impactful it is.

The author, James Clear, breaks down the science behind why we do or don’t stick to habits, showing the way we can alter behaviors to actually get the long-term results we want.

I consider this a must-read for any entrepreneurs.

Growing your business is all about long-term results and payoffs. You have to be willing to stick to your good habits for potentially months and years to see the level of success you want.

Here’s Clear’s quick cheatsheet for creating good habits: