Automate Your Life

What's the one thing you hate doing? I mean you could think of 456,348 other things to do in place of this thing.

I for one hate cleaning, not like borderline hoarder, but it’s number one on my I could be doing something else list. I've always hated to clean up, I blame my parents. I never had chores as a child and my mom washed my clothes until I was 20. Talk about a disservice.

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A year ago I outsourced cleaning to my older children. Fail. It must be genetic. They were horrible and I had to clean up after they cleaned, a total waste of time.

A few months ago I decided I wanted someone to come in and clean my house on a regular basis. The BEST decision I could ever make.

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Initially I had to get my Huni on board because his thought process was we were able bodied and should be cleaning our own house. I thought to myself, “well you clean it.” I didn't say it but Lord knows my thoughts have to be filtered at times.

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Hiring the house cleaner took away from thoughts of not wanting to clean up or having to use time and energy actually cleaning. That time is now spent doing whatever I want. And I mean whatever.

THAT IS PRICELESS!

Two years ago I outsourced my daughters hair care. It used to take me hours to do her hair. Remember how I said it should never take 8 hours to do a blog post. Well it was taking me about 3 to 4 hours to wash, dry and style her hair, and the style was bootleg. Every other Saturday she has a standing hair appointment. I drop her off and I go about my day. Priceless.

Here are 3 chic ways to automate your life:

1. Thumbtack offers so amazing services (house cleaning, food preparation, dog walking, etc.) to help you automate your life. The biggest win with with Thumbtack is you are supporting other small businesses.

2. Amazon has an auto fulfillment service, Subscribe & Save, that delivers baby items, health & beauty items, pantry grocery items and household items on a recurring schedule that you set. So put that toilet paper and toothpaste on autopilot and you don’t even have to think about it. Subscribe & Save even offers coupons.

3. In my signature program, Automate Your Biz, I help women to automate their business so they can enjoy their lives.

What can you automate in your life?

VA's are NOT Band-Aids for your business

Your income has been consistently increasing and you're ready to hire a virtual assistant (VA) for continual work.        

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Go you! It's your birthday! Go you!

In the online world this can be a badge of honor. You hire your first long-term assistant and you start to feel like a real GIRL BOSS. You have a team and are checking off your accomplishments for the year.

Then you meet with your VA for the first time, you feel like you were given a final exam for Neurosurgery 505. ​

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She asked you for everything but your mother's maiden name and if you aren't using LastPass she may need your mother's maiden name.

You tell her you'll get everything she needs before she starts.  

Now here you are this gorgeous GIRL BOSS trying to slap an ugly bandaid on your business and your lovely new VA calls you out on every inconsistency and flaw of your business. And if she doesn't say it to you, she's telling all her VA girlfriends about you.  

From the outside looking in your business is ideal. You are the IT girl in your industry. And now you have someone looking at all your skeletons in your chaotic biz closet.  This was not what you signed up for. Think about this, If you go into something as serious as surgery, you would want the doctor to be prepared with more than band-aids right?

Of course! So just hiring a VA will not instantly transform your business. There’s some prep work to be done on your part.

Help yourself and your future VA out today! Get your business out of your head. You do not want to be a one woman show.

I'll repeat you do not want to be a one woman show!

This will cripple your creativity and drain your energy.

Here's 3 things you can do today:

1. Sign up for LastPass, seriously it's $12 a year for the paid version and saves you the headache of changing passwords when you need to bring someone on.

2. Get a piece of a paper and WRITE down everything that you do in your business. Spoiler Alert: a business that lives in your head does not have the full capabilities to flourish.

3. On another piece of paper, fold the paper into fourths. Look at the previous paper and now put those tasks into the following categories:

1. Tasks only you can do (your expertise)
2. Tasks you are okay at doing
3. Tasks that take you aren't that good at and(or) hate doing
4. Tasks that take you forever and (or) you just don't know how to do effectively.

3.1. Add these lists to Evernote so you will have them on hand when you write up your job description.

Stop treating your customers like gold! Treat them like Taylor's Swifties (pop culture case study)

People will tell you to treat your customers like gold. Ignore them! Gold is so cheap these days.

Instead treat your customers like Taylor Swift treats her fans. Taylor Swift is known for the love she pours into those that support her.  She calls her fans "swifties" and they all receive bestie treatment.

Taylor sends thoughtful gifts to her Swifties. Recently she sent $1989 to pay for student loans after reading a Swiftie wrote on social media that she was struggling to pay her loans. Taylor has invited her biggest fans to pizza parties at her home AND she bakes them cookies. Yes, homemade cookies. Beyonce hasn’t made me cookies YET. Meanwhile, Taylor also has sent jewelry, bought lunches, written handwritten notes and homemade Valentines cards.

No more gold. You want to treat your clients like Taylor treats her Swifties.

She pays attention to her social media and knows who is talking to her. She engages authentically with her swifties.

So if you're still treating your peeps like dusty gold sitting around on your dresser or stuffed in the back of your jewelry box- dust yourself off and move in a new direction.

5 chic tips for giving your clients superstar treatment:

1. Buy your customers gifts

2. Send them handwritten thank you notes just because

3. Randomly send past customers love tokens

4. Engage with your social media followers (let them get to know you while you get to know them).

5. Run fun contests that gets them involved in your business.

Use Evernote or Trello to keep track of the ideas that you come up with for your client lovin system. Because of course client lovin’ is a system.

Come across a cute etsy shop? Save the link in your Evernote so you easily can access it.

Your customers will love that you took the time to show your gratitude (no matter how big or small).  

What ways can you woo your customers and make them feel better than Taylor's Swifites?

Question: Can't anyone do systems stuff?

We all have that one friend (or we’re that friend) that was in a crappy relationship and just didn’t see the crap for what it was.

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Sometimes we are so close to something that we just can’t see or smell it for what it is. B.S.

In business it’s the same principal. You know your business inside and out.

You are the expert.

Go on with your bad self. You expert You.

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That expertise can limit us when we don’t fully own our truths. You know...acknowledging our strengths and weaknesses. 

I’m a creative that is multi-passionate whose mind processes things **wait for it** systematically.

Most creatives are not systems oriented. The word on the street is that systems are not sexy and that they are scary. I say that’s BS, but again I am a little too close to systems, so I’ll take their word that systems are scary for the average solopreneur.

That’s the thing I love about you though, you aren’t the average. You are chic and savvy. You’re ambitious. You have money to make and a world to change.

And you can’t do that by being scared.

Systems came into my life because I had so many creative ventures going on and they weren’t working together. Let me be clearer, they were working, but I was burnt out and overwhelmed which decreased my desire to continue.  I didn’t want to quit one and choose another because I knew there was a way to make my businesses work together and still maintain the life that I had created. Systems were how I pieced everything together. I didn’t even know what systems were when I started piecing them together.

I sat down and took my businesses out of my mind and wrote every aspect down. That alone was 40 pounds lifted off my shoulders. I organized what I did and what my team members did. Once, I completed this, I no longer needed to talk someone through a process because the processes were there for others to see. Booyah! 

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Once I got my businesses straight, I started teaching others how to automate their business. Person after person it was clearer and clearer that systems just aren’t something you can google.

Don't believe me?

Go ahead and google away. The hours you lose in trying to figure out what you need specifically for your business isn’t even worth the time of trying to gain time in your business. There's so much information and none of it is customized to your business. 

If you took one hour each week to look at your business as an entity and not an extension of yourself, then break the processes down that your business needs. You would save yourself an enormous amount of time, energy, and money in the weeks to come.

So to answer the question: Can't anyone do systems stuff?

Answer: No you need my brain. 

How about that for owning my expertise. Sounds pretty cocky, but its the truth, and we don't lie to our lady friends. I’ve mastered organizing chaos, it’s just how my brain works. If you want to waste time and money because time is money, let me know how that goes.

I've been there and done that and  was too tired to even buy the t-shirt. 

However, If you want to save the time of not knowing where to even get started, let my brain do the work for you and get your biz automated. After all, I am the one girl you want all up in your business. 

Click here to have my brain automate your biz.

Break the Internets...I double dare you + a worksheet

A few weeks ago I deleted 100 people off of facebook. I unfollowed every group that I'm in and left a few that I don't participate in. I deleted my biz facebook page with over 4k people. And guess what happened?

I broke the Internet.

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Facebook's algorithm didn't know what to do with all of that info at once, so it shut me down.

I would only see 4 posts from the same 4 people. That really deters the urge to log in. So I didn't. When I would post, no one would like it. Okay yeah maybe it wasn't entertaining or maybe no one cared.

But I knew that wasn't the case. You know we all that one person that you can count on to like your posts so don't drift into self imposed loser ville. Mine is my sister-and she lives on facebook. So when she didn’t like the posts, I KNEW something was up.

So I wrote this post:

Do you see how many people liked it?

I didn't say anything revolutionary, funny, comforting, or inspirational. Yet facebook took me out of timeout.

Sometimes, you have to break the internet. Make your own waves.

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Whenever you notice things aren’t going the way you want them, make a ripple of change, and switch things up.

If you have a social media system that isn’t working for you, play around with it until you see traction.

For instance on Instagram I use hashtags like it’s no one’s business. At one point my instagram numbers were increasing rapidly but with spammers. Likes mean absolutely nothing to me.

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Seriously, try going to Chipotle and attempt to pay with a few likes.

So I revised my hashtag system. Instagram allows you to use 30 hashtags at one time. I later figured out you can use a different set of hashtags up to three times. So that’s 90 hashtags that I’m able to use to get reach on a picture. Each week, I get a minimum of 10 people who sign up to my email newsletter from Instagram. Annually that’s 520 people added to my brand just by a simple system. I have an evernote folder with 3 sets of hashtags, a leadpage and domain set up specifically for Instagram peeps to sign up. Did I mention this is one picture per week? When I increase my Instagram tactics, it increases.

Systems should always be evaluated as they are here for your greater good. Quarterly evaluate what’s working and not working for you. That’s right, so next week, I challenge you to review what’s working and not working in your business.

Ready to break the internet and crush your goals? Start tracking your efforts with this worksheet

Trello Gold is FREE yo + a quickie video

App sumo is offering Trello Gold for free.    

Trello is one of my freemium (free + premium AKA its free and rocks) tools that's I use to organize my biz.

I use Trello to organize projects and keep up with resources and tools quickly. Trello Gold allows you to upload more attachments and makes the experience more customized by allowing you to add various picture backgrounds and comment with emojis. Because emojis make life more fun.

I recommend Trello to all my visual lady friends. Trello is essentially a virtual white board for post-it notes.

Let's map a project out together real quick:

Mo Money...Mo Problems

Everyone online wants to make six figures. It's the Solopreneur dream.

My goal is multi-millions but that's neither here nor there.

From January to now I've seen 6 figure promises everywhere.

E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E!

What I haven't seen is what happens once you start making the money.

DUH, Kimber you spend it…(I know you were thinking it.)

How do you handle all the new business? How do you have time to spend this money? How do you serve each client as if they are the most important person in your life?

Please believe that when at minimum of $10,000 a month finds its way to your PayPal, you are working hard for it.

Truly an extra two clients a month can turn your world upside down if you aren’t ready for them.

You get the first paypal notification. Happy Dance!

Second paypal notification. Oh yeah, I’m in the money!

Third paypal notification. Okay. I got this!

Fourth paypal notification. W-H-A-T I-N T-H-E W-O-R-L-D

By the sixth paypal notification that day, you’re already on your third Kombucha sipping it as if it were wine. You need the energy to ensure each client is scheduled, receives the pre-service paperwork, and all the admin work that you need to complete in order to get the client processed. Let's not talk about all the other stuff you still have to do. 

The first few days of being in demand are ah-may-zing.

The second week: your days and nights are merged into one.

The third week: you’re scheduling showers in your phone so you won’t forget to get up from your computer.

The fourth week: you add a new alert- “queue dance for you by Beyonce,” because you are tired of your honey side eyeing you as he walks past your office as he heads to bed alone.

More money shouldn't mean more problems.

Potential problems that come with business growth are:

• PayPal holding payments for an extensive length of undocumented time

• Forgetting to complete important tasks for one of your many superstars

• Being attached to your smartphone and computer 24-7

• Not spending time with your family and friends

• You're part of team #nosleep

• Experiencing money blocks

• New friends (trust me when I say this is a problem...hello Collabs)

• Not having time to spend the money

• Despite being able to afford an assistant, your chaos is to the point where an assistant cannot even begin to fathom how to do anything

• Fraud complex comes and goes

I can go on for days with the issues that occur when your business grows. There's an easy fix- plan for the growth!

Steve Jobs created Macintosh (Apple) in a garage. That cute little phone that you scroll with would have never seen the light of day without real preparation and thinking forward.

Thinking small is more than just a money goal, begin to run your business today as if it were where you dream of it being. Walmart, McDonalds, Dell, and Apple started with one person wanting more than what they had at the moment they began. They created systems and processes to automate the things they hated doing. They hired on others who they were able to teach to recreate these same processes. However, you can’t teach what you are unaware of and afraid to address.

If you are afraid of systems and processes or the more so common “I just don’t have time” excuse, you are deciding that you are okay with not growing your business to its highest potential. Because it’s impossible to maintain more money without structure. Your business system cannot simply live in your head.

The ball is in court, are you ready to change your song to More Money, Less Problems? More money shouldn't mean more problems. 

People Hate Being Sold To- Do This Instead!

When you're in the mall and the creepy dude from the kiosk jumps up and asks to feel your hands you immediately start walking closer to the perimeter of the store across from the kiosk and smile. All the while he's telling you how amazing his hand salt is.

His hand salt, hair extensions, phone case, insert anything else that might be sold in a mall kiosk might be the one thing you really need. His methodology and process just isn’t ideal. When this is mastered he can sell product after product.

Online marketing which ALL online Solopreneurs do- even those that suck at marketing and just don't get why you need to do it- still do some type of marketing. It might not be that amazing, hence the PayPal balance.

You need to have a true and tested process with your sales funnel from beginning to end. Spoiler Alert: your PayPal account is not the end.

Let's be real, people don't pay for inspiration.

Inspiration may get someone to sign up for your mailing list, but the inspired usually unsubscribe when they see a series of sales emails. That isn’t what they signed up for, and we all know people hate being sold to.

If inspiration is your sole sales funnel it's going to take prospects a lot longer to get to their desired outcome, if ever. People pay to reach their desired outcome.  

Point A - some internal/external hell/chaos a prospect is experiencing

Beginning annoyance with said hell/chaos - the prospect is introduced  to your brand and thinks you can assist in diminishing the chaos.

Mid breaking point with said hell/chaos- the prospect has a bit of awareness and engagement with your brand and believes that you can assist to diminish the chaos.

Point B is the holy grail. Point B is wedding day for little girls that have been dreaming of being a Disney princess all their lives and they have been planning this wedding since they were four. Point B is pretty iconic.

You are hired between breaking point and point B. The prospect becomes a client and they are expecting results (point B). Now it's times for you to do your thang!

Your thang/gift/expertise is your brilliance and it’s transformational. It can be inspirational, but in order to truly help and to keep your clients happy, there must be a transformation.

Look at your current sales funnel:

How are you getting your prospects from point A to point B?  

What tools are you using?

What strategies are effective?

How long is your sales funnel?

What are the requirements for your new clients to advance in tiers to work with you?

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Show Me The Money!

Have you ever seen Jerry Maguire? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the movie all the way through. The one part that sticks with me is the scene “SHOW ME THE MONEY!”

Even as I typed that I silently screamed “SHOW ME THE MONEY!”

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On March 10th and March 12th I am doing a live virtual course on sales funnels. And what did I name it? SHOW ME THE MONEY!

It’s one day (3/10/15) of teaching you how to create an amazing sales funnel to increase and maximize on your profits.

The second day (3/11/15) is individual implementation in which you will take everything we did on the first day and create/edit your sales funnel.

The third day (3/12/15) is customized coaching on your sales funnel.

Sales funnels are an important part of your business. They may just be the most important part, but I’ll leave that up in the air to be debated. Knowing that you are able to meet your financial goals month after month and quarter after quarter is priceless.

There are 10 spots available at an insanely amazing price. I'd love to work with you on developing a customized sales funnel for your business and help you to maximize your profits and leverage your time.

Ready to maximize your profits? Let's do this!

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Set it up, move on, and get clients while you shop!

The number two reason why people never set up systems is because they don’t have time. The irony in that- systems provide more time.

The number one reason why people never set up systems is because they are cool with the chaos.

Today is a new day!

I don’t want you to get caught up in reason one or reason two. Deal? Deal!

Every week if you set aside 30 minutes to set up one system. By the end of the month you would have used two hours total to  free yourself an hour each week going forward. So 2 hours can provide you with 52 hours.

Do you really not have time for that type of return on time?

Streamlining your business can be stressful and boring, but so is grocery shopping. Some things we just have to do until we don’t have to do them anymore.

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The day grocery delivery is available in my area - I am signing up! Part of automating and systemizing your business is first assessing the things you don’t like to do and don’t do that well. This way you stay in your lane of genius much more.

One thing most chic + savvy solopreneurs don’t like doing is constantly repeating herself:

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)

Instead of answering the same questions over and over and OVER again in your email, create a thorough FAQ PDF and send it to your prospects in your welcome auto-responder. If the prospect doesn’t know how amazing you are yet and isn’t on your email list. Create a canned response in your email to send them the FAQ PDF. Do it once and you’re done. It may take you 15-30 minutes to create. However, that’s a one time investment of 15-30 minutes. Don’t want to create a FAQ PDF? Add a FAQ page to your website. Send the prospect your link.

Another thing is worrying about the money:

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FINANCIAL

Use Freshbooks to get your financial system organized. Once your account is set up, Freshbooks will do the work for you.

Once a week you should set aside time to review the financial systems in your business. There are many aspects to this system. However, having a service to track and keep it organized is a great start.

Chic + Savvy Solopreneurs have big visions and respect their time. Hence, scheduling is a BIG system.

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SCHEDULING

Emailing or messaging on social networks to schedule is a BIG waste of time. You know your schedule better than anyone. Enter into google calendar and sign up for Acuity Scheduling. Acuity links with google calendar and allows you to set your availability for your clients. You can also link your paypal account and have your clients to pay and schedule their sessions at the same time.

I’ll be doing a review of three schedulers next week, so stay tuned, if you haven’t found one that you adore yet.

Once you set these systems up, move on, and go do what you please. Maybe it’s shopping with your bestie mid day on Friday. Or taking a nap before your spa day because you want to be WELL rested before pampering. Or reading to at-risk youth before a lunch date. Whatever you decide, you can do it in peace without checking your email to see if you need to complete a biz process.

Are you ready to organize the chaos in your business? Let me help you automate your biz, maximize your time and profits!

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