The Weekly Glow Up: July 12, 2023

Jul 12

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: 3 Things You Can Automate in Your Biz TODAY

As you grow your creative business, you have to find spots where you can eliminate your own manual effort, so you can focus on higher level strategy and doing the things you love.

That means either delegating to other people, or automating.

With the rise of 8 billion AI apps and tools in the last few months, automation can seem intimidating—but I’m not talking about building a system that requires a computer science degree.

There are so many little things you can automate or make easier with the tools you already use, or could very very easily learn.

Here’s a few examples:

💌 Gmail templates. Gmail has a template feature where you can save a pre-written email that you send over and over to save time. This could be handy for a client onboarding email, a payment reminder, a follow up email after a meeting, etc. If the email isn’t EXACTLY the same every time (like you need to insert specific details about a client/project in the email), leave placeholder text and highlight it yellow so you know to replace it with what’s appropriate each time you use the template.

🧾 Invoice reminders. If you use any kind of software to send invoices to clients, it’s likely that it has built-in reminder features. For instance, I use a free accounting tool called Wave, and it gives me the option to schedule payment reminders on the invoice due date, 3 days after, 7 days after, and 14 days after. With these reminders automated, that’s one more thing off your mind that you can count on to be taken care of in the background.

🤳 Social media scheduling. Free tools like Buffer allow you to schedule social media posts ahead of time, so you don’t have to worry about pulling everything together manually every day you post.

🔁 Recurring task reminders. If you use any kind of project management tool, there’s likely a feature you can use for it to generate recurring tasks. This means if there’s something you need to do every week, you can set your tool up to automatically create a new task for you every week—one less thing you have to rely on your overcrowded brain to remember. If you don’t use a PM tool, you can even do this using your Google or Apple calendar app. Create an event on your calendar that serves as a reminder to do the task, then set it to repeat as often as needed.

2. 🧠 Reclaim Your Brainpower For Things That Matter

Your brain only has so much power in a given day—you wouldn’t unwillingly let unimportant distractions use some of that energy up.

Yet, unless you’re very proactive about taking measure to block distractions, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

It may not seem like it because we’re all so used to getting 1000 pings a day now, but these notifications and interruptions are draining our brains of the juice we need to do things that actually matter.

Here are a few easy steps you can take to reclaim your brainpower every day:

Put your phone and computer in “do not disturb” mode while you’re working
Use distraction blocking apps like Freedom to prevent you from getting distracted by unnecessary notifications, apps, and websites while you’re trying to focus
Pause your inbox with Boomerang (for Gmail users) so you don’t feel the pressure to check or respond to emails until YOU’RE ready
Leave the house—if you work from home and get distracted by cleaning, laundry, pets, roommates, etc., remove yourself from the environment and go to a coffee shop or library to get things done

What do you get distracted by the most when you’re working? Reply and let me know and I’ll help you brainstorm a way to overcome it.

3. 🍵 Client Tea: Knowing When to STOP Working

I talk a lot about goal setting and priorities and figuring out the next task you need to do that will move the needle the most for your business.

BUT, there are actually times when I suggest NOT working on your top priorities too.

I was talking to a designer the other day who had just finished a big logo design project.

Lots of heavy creative brain work went into it, and he was feeling drained by the end of the week.

His next top priority was another big project that was due the following Monday. He knew that was the most important next step impact-wise, but he also knew how sluggish and un-creative he was feeling at the moment.

My advice? Work on a lower priority that doesn’t take as much creative brainpower.

When you don’t have the energy to do your best work and be productive, it’s pointless to try to force yourself to keep working on something.

You could push and push and get 50% done with the project after working all day on a Friday when your brain is toast…

Or you could not even start the project until Monday and get 100% of it done after approaching it with a fresh mind.

There’s a balance between knowing what the most important task is and focusing all in on your priorities, and recognizing what you’re capable of in the moment and how that affects your productivity.

Grinding and pushing and forcing is typically never the best path forward for you or your biz! 😅