Transcripts
1. Introduction: Thanks for checking out my course. This ones for you. If you're a small business owner or product-based business, and you find yourself working over time all the time. Or you just never get enough time to create new designs, create new products, or spend time focusing on marketing. I know exactly how that feels, for a few years now been running a vinyl decal business. But I really wanted to get into creating courses like this one. and making YouTube videos and also selling my designs, which is all stuff I now do, but for a long time I was so busy making orders that I just didn't have time to do anything else or achieve any other goals. So I created a number of different systems that helped with efficiency and really figured out where I was kind of wasting time and spending too much time doing things that I didn't really need to be doing. So in this course, I will go over how to figure out where you're spending the most time and pinpointing what areas you need to improve on. And then I'll give you lots of different ideas and links to resources that can help you improve your efficiency and help you make the most of your time. So you can spend that time doing other things, whether it's just spending more time with family and friends and doing hobbies, or if you want to spend more time growing your business, creating new products and designs, spending more time on marketing or diversifying your income somehow. And then also the more efficient your work setup is as well, the more profit you can make. You may also want to take my previous courses first, if you need any help with branding or figuring out your niche, or if you're struggling with creating designs that sell, or also if you aren't quite making a profit from your products yet, you might want to take my third course, make sure you're charging the correct sort of prices. All of these courses are aimed specifically at vinyl Decal sellers because that is what I do. It's my main bread and butter. But all of them have a lot of tips and advice in them that can be applied to any type of business, especially craft businesses. So it's worth having a look if you need help with any of those things. Just because this course is probably suited to people who have been running their business for a little bit of time now and are kind of making consistent orders and just need help getting to like the next stage of their business. So if that sounds like you and you think this can benefit you. Then let's get going. Although first, be sure to download the workbook from the class project section as it contains loads of different resource links and you can work through it as you go along.
2. Create a timesheet: Okay, so the first thing you need to do is for a week, take note of every little bit of time that you spend on your business. And I'm not just talking about when you're sitting at your desk or making orders. I'm also talking about when you're posting on social media, replying to customers in the evening, when you're out and about, if you're going to the post-office or dropping stuff off at a customer's house. That is all business time and you should be getting paid for it. Again take my last course if you need to, to make sure you're charging enough, because it's so important that you're not spending way too much time and not getting enough compensation in return. So I've added a page in the workbook that you can print and use throughout the week, give a color code to each thing, and then color in a square depending on how much time you spend on it. I've broken it into 30 minute chunks, but if there's something you only spend about 15 minutes on then, maybe just color in half a square. And then at the end of the week you can just count up each color. And then you'll know how many hours or minutes you spent on each different thing. Of course you don't have to do it this way. If you work irregular hours or this is a side hustle or you work in the evenings when your kids go to bed or something like that. I've left the following page, blank. It's just gridded so you can use mine as an example, or you can completely design your own and figure out how it will work for you and the hours that you work. Or just record it as notes in your phone or in your diary or whatever works for you. Just be sure to do it as close as possible to the time when you're actually doing those things. Because if you leave it to the end of the week and then try and fill in, even if you leave it to the end of the day, you might not remember every single thing you've done and how long it took you. So it's really best to try and fill in as close as possible to when you've done that thing. Ideally, you will fill that in for a week, come back to the course once you're done. And then you can figure out all of the areas you need to improve on and then go through the course and you'll know what will apply to you. But if you think there's a chance that you might go away and then not come back in a weeks time, then maybe it's best to just make notes as you go through the course. And then you've got it to refer to once a week over. And then you can always come back to the course if there's anything you can't remember or need to kinda rewatch or reread.
3. Assess Where You're Spending The Most Time: So once you've filled in your timesheet for the week or even longer, if you want, add up all of the color blocks and figure out how much time you're spending in each different area of your business. I've added a page to the workbook that you can fill in, but I left a few blank spaces if there's other activities you want to add in there. I found that when I did this, I was spending way more time than I even realized, just answering customer queries and also scrolling on my social media pages for my business and kind of disguising it is work. But really, I wasn't achieving anything by doing all of that scrolling. For you It might be something as small as spending time finding new designs, looking for suppliers, or posting on social media - that might be taking up way more time than you had realized. Alternatively, you might get a lot of your customers from social media, but you're not finding enough time to get on there and create new content as much as you would like anyway. So maybe you want to look at different areas where you can reduce time so that you can spend more time doing that. You really want to think about what your aim is. You obviously want to be spending more time doing stuff that you really enjoy. But if there's any bits of your business that make you feel really miserable and you're spending way too much time doing that, then maybe that's something you can see if you can reduce. I left another blank page in the workbook for you so you can write down your thoughts about what you want to improve on. And then also any of the initial ideas that you might have that you might want to look into as we go through the next sections.
4. Organisation Tips: So my first tip is just removing any barriers that are causing you extra time. So for example, in my office, I have everything within reach and everything in designated areas for when I'm doing it. So I have my rolls of vinyl right beside my Cameo machines so I can feed those straight in there. Then I have my cricut mats right beside my desk where I cut vinyl for my Cricut, which is right next to my bin to put vinyl scraps it. And then I package everything up here, which is right beside my envelopes, all different types of them, and then also next to this kind of little postage station which has stickers and tape. And then I've got an in and out tray to for my orders and I can move freely around my office without anything getting in my way as well. Even if you don't have an office. So even if you work from a kitchen table or a corner of your bedroom, try to invest in like a rolling cabinet if you can. So you can literally just pull it out. Everything is there all in one place and you don't have to get it from different areas of your room. And it's just ready to go when you're starting your day. You could also invest in a tool organizer or some stick on hooks. And then everything is kind of within reach and you don't constantly searching for things, as well as organizing your physical space. You want to make sure everything you do digitally is organized as well. This is how I organize my files. I have all of my designs saved into different folders, which corresponds with the sections I sell them in on Etsy and Shopify. And I try not to add too many to one folder so that they are easily searchable as well. I design all of my cutting files for my Cricut and cameo in Photoshop and save them in a custom designs folder with the date they are made on them and the color. I am cutting them in. I will link a video and a workbook for more in-depth process of how I do this. But this is basically so that if anyone gets back in touch with me and wants a repeat design or replacement or something, then I have that saved. And you can obviously make up your own way of organizing whatever works best for you. And I think there are like industry standard ways of doing that. So if you're sending designs to clients, you might want to look into that. But for me, I just organized it the way I found easiest and quickest for me to kind of navigate.
5. Improve your productivity: If procrastination is a big problem for you, or if you're simply just taking like a long time to do things that can be done much quicker, then you may need a better productivity system To keep myself on track and to know I'm doing, I use Trello. So it's a really easy website and also an app that you can use to kind of do whatever you want to do. I use it for a weekly plan, so I have a to-do list. I just kind of add things into it and then I will divide it into days of the week and keep checking it every day. But then I also have it for each of the projects I'm working on. So say I'm doing this for my YouTube channel. I'll have a brain dump where whenever I come up with a video idea I'll add that into there. And then once the script or outline is written for it, I'll move the idea across to the next section. And then once it's filmed, edited, scheduled, and so on, kinda move across and it really helps me keep on track. But there are a ton of different tools and apps out there that you can use for similar sorts of things depending on how your brain works. Oh, obviously you can use a paper diary if that works better for you. Or learn how to bullet journal if you like doodling and drawing, then there are plenty of tools and systems designed to help you focus, so there are ones like, Pomofocus which is a 25 minute interval timer based on the Pomodoro technique, which is a time management method. If you've got a real issue with picking up your phone all the time and you want to help the planet. Then there's the forest app, which will plant a tree if you go a certain amount of time without picking up your phone, or you can try timeblocking or maybe get in a habit of planning your day ahead. So the night before, write six things you want to achieve and then the next day, don't move on to the next one until you achieve that first one. There are so many out there, and obviously not all of them will work for everyone. But whatever you think will motivate you make a point to look into it and try it out. Even if it means you have to try a few different ones until you find the one that sticks. And also don't forget to celebrate the little things and maybe reward yourself after you achieve certain goals or complete big tasks. If that's the type of thing that's going to keep you motivated. I just think being proud of yourself and being grateful for how far you've come so far. is such a good way of continuing that growth and making sure you stay on track.
6. Automating Tasks: So if you find that you're kind of losing a lot of time, just doing like little bits of stuff here in there. Or you're kind of wasting time switching between different tasks. Then there are a lot of tools out there that can help you with automating things like this. So a very important one as small business owner is obviously taking account of your stock and recording expenses and income. If you're not already doing this, then there are loads of different accounting softwares online, like QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks for example. A lot of which can sync up with your bank accounts so that any expenses and any invoices are being paid are all being recorded automatically without you having to input them yourself. And that saves so much time if you don't already do that. For postage. I have covered this in my previous course a little bit. But there are lots of ways to, go, whether it's ordering your postage online through a shipping provider or getting a label printer so that you're not writing out envelopes or using Etsy integrated labels if you sell on Etsy, and that means you just have to print the order form and the address is automatically on there as a sticker. And that's what I do with my Etsy shop and it makes things so much quicker. I will make a note of a lot of these things in the workbook, so don't worry. Then another thing that can save you loads of time is automating customer replies on all of your social media sites, but then on your selling sites as well. So this is how you do it for Facebook. So if you go to your Facebook page on your inbox, it'll take you to Facebook Business Suite probably. And there's a section called automated responses. If you turn it on, it will give you a textbox, where you can add your own messaging. So this'll be sent automatically to anyone who messages you. So if you don't check it that often, it might be worth asking the customer to email you instead or checking a frequently asked questions page. And you can set frequently asked questions as well. if people are always asking you the same type of thing, and that will just save you quite a bit of time rather than having to respond to the same things over and over again. You just add the question in that and customer, will click on it and it'll take them to the answer. And then if that Facebook pages links to your Instagram, it should give you an option to sync those up. So it sends the same message to customers in both places. And then for Etsy, this is how you do it. So if you go into your messages and go into, autoreply in the top right corner, turn it on, and you can change your message in there so anyone who contacts you will be sent it. This message is only for shorter term stuff. So maybe if you were just having a bit of time away from your computer, you want the weekend off or something like that. And that is better to do that rather than having to constantly answer messages when you are off. The thing that actually saves the most time on Etsy is saving replies. So you can reply to all the same types of questions by just clicking a button. So you can see there's a couple of saved ones here, but you can also save your own replies as well. So when you're in a message to a customer, there'll be a button that says saved replies underneath. And if you click on Etsy has a number of kind of pre saved ones that you can use, but you can also add new ones in, so just add new button and then add a title to what It's going to be so that you remember and your message. And then select a category for it. What I did is I have a number of ones that I send to people with instructions after I send my decals. But I also have ones for like my most frequently asked questions. So I've added all of those in as well. Once you've saved them, whenever you write a message, they will come underneath, or if you're in an order, it will look like this and it just saves so much time is so good. And then I'm sure there'll be a way for all of the selling sites as well. And then obviously you can also do it with your emails too. And then as well as all of those, there are more general tools like Zapier or IFTTT that let you automate so many different things. So no matter the problem you have and where you want to save a little bit of time, there is probably an online tool that can solve that problem or help you get a little bit of time back. Again, as I said, I've added a lot of different ones to the workbook for you to check out.
7. Social Media Tools: Flight me. You often find yourself down a social media rabbit hole after you only check one thing. Well, firstly, it's not our fault. Don't feel guilty about that design that way. They're designed to keep your scrolling and make you feel good about being on there all the time. And it's very easy to get addicted to these places, but to try and avoid this as much as possible, then there are so many tools you can use for automation, which means you don't have to spend as much time on that. And you can kind of create posts and posts them without even having to go on the app. So here are just a few. So first one is tailwind, which I use to schedule pins on Pinterest, but there is also a feature on it now creates pins for you automatically as well. So you just need to add a link to view, wanted to point out a couple of pictures. And then it will create loads of pictures like this. And all of them are gray. And just select a few that you like. You can edit them a bit as well. And they just kinda my weekly schedule and they'll post at the time they say they're gonna post this also, communities on there that will, you can pin their opinions, their opinion. A really good tool for Pinterest. Then the next one I use is called later. And I use this for Instagram scheduling in particular, because they have a really good kind of grid feed that shows you what your feed will look like once your posts have been posted. So if you're looking at if you're trying to get like a consistent lock or like a certain color scheme. That's really helpful for that to make sure that everything kind of looks on brand. And then the third one is HootSuite. I use it for Facebook, but you can't use it for other social media sites as well. And it's really good too. You can either use like a calendar view or you can have timeline view depending on what you prefer. It's really easy to just kind of drag things in under the posts automatically for you. And it's really great that you can get quite a lot with just the free plan as well. That's what I have. And it does more than I needed to do on the free plan. But as well as using tools, I think you also need to be intentional with how you're using social media. Perhaps if you are trying out time blocking, then you can allocate a bit of time period day for social media or in catching up or messages, or do like one day per week or per fortnight where you just batch create content all day long and scheduled at all. But then if you wanna do like Instagram stories or answer messages, then you can do those really sporadically throughout the week. Social media is such an amazing place to grow your business, but I think we all know, we have to just be careful about actually using it for a purpose rather than just mindlessly scrolling.
8. Outsourcing: So you should know your hourly or daily rate. So if something is taking you a whole day to get done, but you could potentially outsourced to someone who could do it a lot quicker and then also cheaper for what you could make an a day of making orders, then it's definitely worth looking into and is the best way to grow because your time is spent actually doing things that will generate money, like creating products or new designs or communicating with customers. Places like Upwork or 50 are a good place to start, especially if you've got small budget. You obviously want to be careful that you're not underpaying or undervaluing someone's time, but there are plenty of people on either, I think are charging a fair rate. And it seems to be a lot people on that are making a really good living. So I do think it's a good place to consider looking for people. Even if it's just the odd little thing like creating social media graphics or editing a video. And you just kinda testing the war as just look for people with good reviews and a proven history of given good work. Or it might just be that you outsource your bookkeeping and accounting to a local firm. If you'd rather do that or get a social media system, if that's the area you struggle with, or get a virtual assistant. If you just need help with the admin side of your business, whatever area you have pinpointed that takes up a lot of your time. And especially if you don't like doing it, then is just worth checking out the costs of who you may be able to get in to help you and you don't even need to take them on as full-time staff if that's what's been putting you off, that you don't want to have to deal with everything that comes with taking on staff. If you outsource things to freelancers and you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. And less your hiring them over a certain amount of hours per week. Then is to flag up might come into account. But if it's just for jobs here and there, little tasks that you can outsource. You shouldn't need to worry about that. But obviously do look into your country or state rules on hiring people if you're unsure. And I had a feeling so places like this that you can go to find freelancers if you're interested.
9. Other Suggestions: Then there are obviously so many of the different ways that you can save time. And they're going to be so independent to what you do and what kind of business you run. I thought I'd just do like a quick list here of some other things that I do to save time. And you can just have a look and see if any of them might apply to you. So because I buy all of my materials in bulk, it means I spend a lot less time on my suppliers websites and I have to do orders very infrequently because of that. I also try not to multitask. I will set aside days for certain things so I can work in a state of flow and are not kind of going back and forth between different activities. Then I only got the post office about twice a week at the most. Only do local drop-offs and pickups as an exceptions while which saves me a lot of time. And I only answer emails and messages at the beginning and end of the day unless they're urgent. So I'm not stopping and starting tasks. Then in my personal life, I try and meal prep on batch cook for weeks when I know I will be busy with work. And that saves me time throughout the day. So normally stop and take ages to make food makin, just get on with doing this. Law is important to take breaks as well. Obviously.
10. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking my course. I'm so grateful and I really hope it's helped you, even if it is just giving you like one or two different types that can really save you some time as you're working during the week. So your project is to fill in the workbook and then let me know in the discussion what you're gonna do with that extra time that you have saved. Maybe it's learning a new skill, spending more time with your family, ageing and other stream of income to your business. Or maybe it's just taking some time to relax because we should all be doing more relaxing. As business owners also let me know in the discussion if you have any other great tools or tapes that have come up as you've been working through trying to save yourself time, it be great to hear if you have anything that you think would benefit other people as well. I've added some further reading and resources to the workbook. If you want to kind of do a deeper dive into productivity or automation, and please leave a review. A few have benefited from this course and you've enjoyed it would really mean a lot to me.
Sarah Bradley, Making & Selling Vinyl Decal Classes
