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How to Theme Your Work Days to Optimize Productivity

How to Theme Your Work Days to Optimize Productivity

Most of us have a never ending stream of tasks and activities we perform at work and struggle to get ahead on our to do lists. If you are jumping from task to task blindly you are wasting precious time and mental energy. Although some of our work may be varied, I bet that you have some repetitive tasks or projects that could be managed so that you get more work done in less time and help you do better work or produce higher results. No, I’m not talking about batching your work, although I a way that this part of todays topic. I’m talking about theming your workdays. Having a plan for each day of your work week to tackle similar items or spend dedicated blocks of time on important projects without interruption so you have the breathing room to do your best work. As you may already know from watching my Work Week Vlogs, I have been theming my work days since I went full time for my business, but this was a practice I also regularly employed in previous positions that helped me do excellent work, beat my deadlines and demonstrate myself as a capable employee who was able to take on bigger and better positions. So, let me teach you a simple process you can use to create a themed work week with virtually any job position!

What Does it Mean to Theme Your Work Days and Why is it More Productive?

If this is a new concept to you, theming your work days means that you are designating a specific day of the week to complete a specific task or project. For example, in my themed work week Monday is dedicated to writing blog posts. Now, writing blog posts won’t be ALL I do on a Monday, but it’s my focus for the day so that I am batching this work. When we batch work, we know that we save time because we are doing a specific activity repetitively and not jumping from different types of tasks which causes a time lapse when we need to stop doing one thing and change mental direction and focus to start another thing.

Think about a production plant where workers down a line are each doing one specific task over and over. It’s more efficient to work this way from a productivity standpoint because the worker remains focused on one thing, and it almost becomes an automated process for the worker. One summer I worked in a data processing facility and spent eight hours (with breaks of course) at a computer typing information from paper forms into a computer program that gathered and tracked the data. I’d start the day with a stack of forms and as I completed my work new stacks would be delivered to my work station. I did one series of tasks over and over robotically, in a room with many other data entry workers and we processed a lot of information very efficiently! Although some of us may have a job like this where we do one specific task or series of tasks over and over all day, most of us have more varied positions that give us the flexibility to choose what we will work on from various tasks we have been assigned. Because there is this strong element of choice and self determination, jobs like this make us feel less like a robot, but also trigger some of our most basic human flaws.

Our inability to prioritize can cause issues with deadlines, the lack of structure can cause us to waste time thinking about what to do next, and fear of failure can cause us to procrastinate on certain tasks. All of these basic human flaws waste both time and mental energy because we are jumping from task to task without focus. In addition to that, when we work without focus, not only are we wasting time and mental energy, but the quality of our work falls. Focus is an important part of productivity and finding a way to create structure in your work both inside and outside of the office can lead you to do more work in less time and truly work smarter, not harder!

How to Theme Your Work Days (even if you think you can’t)

If you are thinking that theming your work days sounds like a nice idea but that your job is different and can’t fit into a themed week, consider these steps.

Step 1: Keep a list of all the tasks and projects you complete each day and compile them for a week or two. The list doesn’t need to be detailed and it can be kept on a separate sheet, your computer or in your planner, but just make sure to make a quick note of all the work you do each day and the general time frame for when you worked on it.

Step 2: Review your list at the end of the tracked time period with a pile of sticky notes and a pen. Review your list first for tasks related to dedicated projects and write down the project on a sticky note with a few bullets underneath for different related tasks and mark down the number of days and total estimated hours you worked on that project. For example, if you worked on a presentation for an upcoming meeting and you ran some reports, sent some emails to get information, built a slide deck and created handouts your sticky note may read:

AOP Presentation

Reports

Emails

Slide deck

Handouts

(3 Days, 4 Hours)

Step 3: Review your list for tasks you did more than once and write the task on a sticky note with the number of times you completed it and total estimated hours spent. These tasks do not necessary need to be identical, but the same general task. For example, if you ran multiple reports in the week that is one item, but the fact that the reports may have varied in terms of parameters doesn’t necessarily matter. The idea is that you were doing a task that could be batched. Make sure to cross out tasks from your list as you make a sticky note so you don’t duplicate.

Step 4: Create a hierarchy in your sticky notes by laying them out on your desk or on a wall so you can get a sense of your work. Layout all your projects together, and then the additional non project related reoccurring tasks can be ordered by frequency so you can see what work you did over and over.

Step 5: Make a sticky note for each day you work (example, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc) and stick them in a row to act as a header to a column. If you work 5 days a week, you should have 5 labeled columns. Looking at your work from step 4 think about how you could have mapped out your work from the previous week(s) more efficiently if you had assigned tasks to specific days. Start transferring tasks and projects from the hierarchy to the new daily column system, placing tasks and projects under the days they would have best fit. This is your chance to go back to the past and rework how things should have been done now that your week is over and you know what was accomplished and what perhaps wasn’t. Consider your reorganized week and determine if you can structure any of your days according to an optimized theme.

Not every task will fit perfectly into this map, but that isn’t the point. The point of the exercise is to visualize your work to see if patterns emerge for any days once you reviewed and laid out your week optimally now that it’s over. You may see that Monday would be a great day for you to run all your reports because optimally once they were out of your way, you could immediately move into completing other subsequent tasks or projects. You may also see that you can push certain work off to the end of the week because other tasks have priority.

Keep in mind through this activity that theming your work days doesn’t mean that all you can do on a certain day is a certain task. Remember when I said that Monday I write blog posts but that won’t be all the work I do? That’s because inevitably I need to reply to emails, place orders, make calls, and perhaps even tie up loose ends on a project as well. By setting blogging as my theme for Monday, however, I am providing myself a structure and telling myself that I will block out time in my schedule for my blog posts to be completed. Depending on your week, you may be able to dedicate a block of two hours on Monday to reports, and then spend the rest of your day doing your work as you normally would. You don’t need to have every moment of the day planned, but having some structure in place for when you will perform certain tasks can help you automate your work day and optimize it productively!

I would love to know if this concept of theming your work days is something you are interested in trying or have tried in the past. Let me know your experience and feel free to provide additional insight in the comments of this post so we can all learn from each other!

xoxo,

Online Business

The Best of Strange & Charmed 2016 | Blog Posts, YouTube Videos & Productivity Tools

The Best of Strange & Charmed 2016

Now that we have reached the final weeks of the year, I am spending a lot of time in reflection. I’ve been calculating my results for the year and reviewing my content, products and platforms to understand what I’ve done right and wrong over the year to help me build my brand and business. So, I thought I would recap here on the blog my top 5 blog posts, youtube videos and products from the year.

Blog Posts

These are the top 5 performing blog posts from 2016 that were also written in 2016! I have a lot of content accumulated in my site, and many of my older posts still drive their fair share of traffic to Strange & Charmed, but I really wanted to understand which newer posts had the best traffic as well. Since you can read each of these for yourself, I won’t recap each, but overall planning and productivity win the day on the blog. I’m glad to see a business post sitting pretty at the top of the list, but I think I would have liked to see more, so I will probably dig deep into #1 to understand how I can replicate it’s success for future posts or optimize current business posts to drive more traffic to the site.

1. How I Made $1,000 From 1 Instagram Photo and the Strategies You Can Use to Repeat My Success

2. 5 Simple Planner Tips that Helped Me Gain Control of My Schedule

3. The 7 Items to Track In Your Planner for Less Stress and More Productivity

4. How I Use My Planner to Automate My Life

5. How to Plan Your Day like a #GIRLBOSS

Videos

These are the top 5 performing YouTube videos from 2016 that were also posted in 2016! As with the blog posts above, I won’t go into each because you can watch them if you are not familiar with the content, and like my blog, my YouTube channel has many videos posted before 2016 that also do extremely well over the years. Again, I’m pleased to see a business video at the top of this list, but after that, it’s all planning content. Two are specifically Functional Planning related which is a good sign to me that the concept of functional planning is really well understood by my community and a topic I need to create more content around in 2017.

1. How to Use Instagram to Promote Your Business in 2016

2. Intro to Functional Planning: 5 Reasons You’re Not Finding Planner Peace

3. 2016 This is Your Year | New Free Printables + Planner Updates

4. Plan with Me | Weekly Functional Planning

5. Inside My Planner September 2016 | Discbound, Notebook and Agenda Cover

Top 5 Best Selling Items from The Charmed Shop

When it comes to the products in my shop, I tend to have a good understanding of what items are doing best throughout the year in terms of revenue, but looking back over the majority of 2016, it was interesting for me to see the number of individual purchases. Some of these items are not a shock to me, but others were and I’ve even included a BONUS #6 on this list because when I ran the numbers I was shocked at how many sales this product had over the year.

1. You Got This
It is no surprise to me that the You Got This workbook was the best selling item in my shop in terms of number of individual sales. It’s not even close to any other products, it has sold hundreds of copies this year alone and because of this, I really think I need to decide how I can either make this product even better in 2017 or how I can add another ebook type product to my lineup. I think the ebook format was very popular and with the lower price point on this item, it’s almost a no-brainer type purchase for any of my audience members who are interested in the topic of goal setting.

2. Charmed Life Planner
I guess the Charmed Life Planner being #2 shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. All of my Charmed Life Planners added up do incredibly well, mostly because they are the system I use and prefer, which that means something to my audience. The real shock to me, however, was that not only did the category of the Charmed Life Planner reach the number 2 spot, but the A5/Half Letter version that I use was also #2 in individual product sales. Again, I think this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, but seeing that the specific size was #2 was pretty interesting.

3. The Digital Styling Lightroom
The fact that any of my higher priced courses or offerings made it to this top 5 list seems pretty incredible to me, and really gives me insight into the fact that my promotional efforts for the course AND my content marketing for my brand overall are working well. I also think this means I shouldn’t be afraid of higher priced products because the market exists for those with in my community and within the ideal audience I am attracting.

4. Planning for Success Master Class
No surprise here with my Master Class. My master class product line in general is a value packed and practical educational experience. This was the first product I created this year after my summer hiatus and it signified my return to normalcy and routine, but it also proved to me that the master class format I had introduced in 2015 was a winner for my audience and business. The feedback I received on this class was phenomenal and I’m so thankful that this relatively new product has done so well over the past few months.

5. Productivity and Planning Master Class
Again, my first master class sitting at #5 is no surprise to me. It had a great year last year at it’s launch and really opened me up to a new product line and way to educate and inform my audience. I absolutely LOVE the master class format and I am excited to create more in 2017!

BONUS 6. Empire Building
Okay- so I had to include this major shocker on the list! In terms of revenue, nothing in my shop touches Empire Building, however, when I ran the numbers and found that it was so close to hitting the top 5, I was shocked. In fact, had I included purchases of the program from within the Online Business Bundle into the overall number of purchases, it would be sitting in at spot #4. It’s amazing to me that this product, my brain child that represents 6 years of research and took me at least 6 months of work to create, is not just a revenue driver, but a sales leader in the shop!

What content and products of mine did you enjoy most in 2016? I’d love to hear from you on what you’d like to see more of from me in the new year!

xoxo,

Productivity

The #1 Secret No One Told You About Productivity!

The #1 Secret No One Told You About Productivity!

No matter how much I write about productivity, I still receive numerous messages each week by loyal members of my community who are swamped with too much to do and too little time to do it! They feel overwhelmed, they want to focus more on the things they love and they want to know the secret to my productivity. I can completely relate to feeling like you are cagged in by your work and a slave to your schedule, but the truth is their is only one productivity tip that will help you, me or anyone else tame our workloads. This tip isn’t much of a secret, unless of course, no one has ever told you about it, so today, let’s unpack this #1 Secret No One Told You About Productivity!

What is the #1 Secret No One Told You About Productivity?

The biggest secret about productivity that you may not know is that You Can’t Do It All! I know, I know, this goes against everything we have been taught to believe about human ability and persistence, not to mention every girl power message I’ve heard for my last 30 years on this Earth, but it’s true. No one single person can do everything. Yes, I do believe you can achieve all the things you want to achieve in life, but you certainly won’t be doing it alone and if you’re clever, you’ll find ways to hack your daily life and to do list so that you are focusing on the key tasks, routines and decisions that will support your quickest route to success. Now, I want to come back to this point on hacking your life to optimize your success in just a moment, but first, I want to give you some practical strategies for taking this productivity secret and using it to your advantage!

If I Can’t Do It All, How Does Everything Get Done?

You’re probably asking yourself, if I can’t do it all, how does everything get done? You do important work, you have lots of important priorities, and much of what you handle must be done, right? Absolutely! Much of what you handle probably does need to get done, but not necessarily by you. So, if you find that you have too much on your plate, you put in the work and still find that everything isn’t getting done, you really need to start doing two things.

You Need To Delegate And Delete!

First, you need to take a look at everything you do, all your priorities, projects, work, and personal obligations. You need to have a complete understanding of all the elements that take up your time because you will need to Delegate some and Delete others. To delegate, you need to understand what tasks on your list can be completed by someone else. I know many of us, especially the type A’s out there, have a hard time giving over control of tasks to others because we want to know something has been done right, but if something does not require your hand to complete it, you need to assign it to someone else. This could mean an assistant at work, a spouse or child, or even hiring help like a cleaning service or handyman. Not every option is going to be available for every one of us, but wherever we can, we should try to delegate important tasks to someone who is capable of completing the task, even if it means we have to train them how to do it and then reap the time benefits in the future.

Once you do that complete evaluation of your obligations, you will certainly find that you have some things you are doing that can be deleted from your to do list altogether. Like I said earlier, most of what you do probably needs to get done, which means some of what you do can be let go of completely to help you lessen your load. Think about all your extras first, like voluntary obligations outside of work or home. It’s great to be a team player and responsible member of your community, but if you are overwhelmed by everything you need to do and frequently find that you are missing important tasks, you really need to delete any priorities that you signed up for. This doesn’t mean you can never add them back in, but be honest with yourself about what is truly important and be ruthless with anything that takes up your time. Of course, it won’t just be voluntary tasks that you need to delete. Ask yourself what tasks are repeatedly missed or forgotten. Sometimes when we frequently push a task off it means its not actually required to be done. Any extras like this should be deleted from your list until you have reached equilibrium with your time and tasks.

Optimizing Success By Hacking Your Productivity!

Like I mentioned earlier, all of us can improve our productivity and succeed in achieving more of what we want if we optimize our lives with a few hacks here and there. If this sounds interesting to you and you’d like to learn these tips for working smarter, not harder, I’m very pleased to announce that my Planning for Success Master Class is now available! This Master Class and Q&A replay are four information-rich hours of actionable strategies designed to solve your most pressing productivity issues. Included with the class are numerous downloads and worksheets to help you put the strategies taught in place for your specific situation. This class is a tremendous value filled with the precise information you need to optimize your daily life for productivity, but don’t take my word for it! Here is what students from the class are saying:

“The Planning for Success Master Class was so timely for me! I am in constant struggle (more now than ever) with time management and project/tasks all being priority that this class gave me major amounts of tools and guidance that will allow me to gain some sanity again. As a business owner, wife, mother and a person who wants to be all things to most people, this class gave me perspective to what is manageable and plan-able! It has been what is missing in my many years as a professional. I am so glad that I can watch the master class and q & a as much as I want in order to help me build better planning habits. I loved this class and it was time and money well spent! Thank you Alexis!”

– Beth, MO

“The Planning for Success Master Class was a truly great experience! As someone who has run workshops and training, I am in absolute awe at Alexis’ planning, delivery and thoroughness. It has been incredible value for money and I hope that many more will be able to experience this amazing product. I have been given so much information and feel so inspired! Alexis has managed to address most of the organizational, time management and motivational issues that have been plaguing me. I am in-between careers and had hit a dark and sticky rut. This workshop has not only showed me the way forward, it has also turned all the lights on! Many of the concepts were new to me so it has helped to go through the video more than once. It is invaluable that I am able to keep referring to it and I can see how it will all become second nature with some practice. The Q&A session is also extremely interesting. Alexis’ generosity with her time and information sharing are what make her such a great Mentor. I was a fan, now I am a convert! Thank you!!”

– Maria, Australia

“The Planning for Success Master Class was amazing! I have been feeling overwhelmed and almost paralyzed lately in regard to achieving my goals and completing projects. This Master Class provided me with a clear and manageable blueprint that I believe will help me to begin living my life fully again. The value I received from the Planning for Success Master Class was far greater than what I paid for it. Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge and your time. And, I think your online presence is both impressive and beautiful; how you manage to communicate with complete strangers you can’t even hear or see, with such a high level of compassion and grace, is beyond amazing!”

-Cynthia, NV

Don’t let your dreams and goals sit by the wayside any longer! Sign up for the Planning for Success Master Class and join the countless members of my community who’ve benefited from this informative and actionable class!

xoxo,

Productivity

Time-Saving Work Day Hacks To Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder!

Are you ready to hack your workday to get more done in less time and truly work smarter, not harder? If my love and study of productivity and organization is meant for anything, it’s meant to help us (me, you, everyone we know!) learn the essential strategies that make our workdays easier. So today I have compiled a list of twelve of my favorite time-saving, stress-releasing, and productivity inducing workday hacks to help you become the master of your own workflow in the office!

1. Get properly dressed: Yep, first things first! If you aren’t wear the proper clothing for work you are going to be uncomfortable, uneasy and you’ll ultimately end up working slow and miserable counting down the hours until you can return home to step into your pajamas. Although you may work in a formal business environment that requires a certain dress code, unless you are wearing a uniform, you have some say over the cut and materials of the clothing you buy, and so many brands have popped up in recent years to give women more comfortable formal office wear options.

2. Diffuse essential oils: One of the first things I do when I step into my office for a workday is create a blend of essential oils for the workday. I wrote about my essential oil secret weapon a few weeks ago, so make sure to check out that post if you want some tips from me on oils to diffuse.

3. Listen to white noise or classical music: For most of us, working silently isn’t the most productive way to work. I personally love listening to classical music while I work or turn on a sound machine app that can create some subtle white noise so that I can focus better, especially when I am working on difficult or stressful tasks.

4. Theme your workdays: Ever since I began theming my work days I have been much more efficient. Essentially, I took all my major work tasks and grouped like items together to come up with themes for each day of the week and on those days I use the theme to guide my work. Although I may need to stray from time to time for urgent issues, theming my days has kept me more accountable and helps me streamline my work.

5. Batch like items together: This goes along with theming my workdays, but whether or not you theme your days, you should always batch process your work. Jumping from task to task has been scientifically proven to be a waste of time, so when you can spend a chunk of time doing the same task over and over, you save yourself time by working more efficiently.

6. Set a timer to complete annoying tasks: Whenever I am avoiding tasks, I find the best thing to do is to set a timer to get them done! Having the deadline of a timer helps me get past my mental blocks and just do the hard work. Give it a try next time you recognize that you are avoiding certain tasks.

7. Shut your door: Shutting your door is a simple way to tell yourself and others that you are busy working. Having an open door policy in the office is nice, but when people see an open door and want to waste some time at work, they head straight for it! Likewise, when your door is open, it encourages you more often to leave your office or allow passers by to distract you from your tasks. So keep the door shut and if you are working on a particularly difficult project or task, you might want to leave a Do Not Disturb note on your door to discourage visits.

8. Make a NOT To Do List: No matter if you work in an office for a big corporation or if you work in your bedroom on your own small business, tasks come across our desks and emails that we should not waste our time on and one of the hardest parts of managing your personal workload is understanding which tasks you should not be doing. I’m a people pleaser and when I get a task, any task, I take ownership of it and strive to complete it, but through the years I’ve learned that sometimes tasks come up and they are not worth your time, even if they are assigned to you. So, as you learn about these useless tasks, keep a list of them so you know not to do them in the future. If you work for yourself it will be easy for you to delegate them to an assistant or ignore them completely, but if you don’t you may need to have a slightly difficult conversation with your boss and let them know you aren’t completing the task and give them a reasonable and well thought out explanation why the tasks is a waste. A lot of time, especially in corporate culture, tasks get attention that are worthless and our superiors keep assigning the task because that’s the way it’s always been done. Be willing to stand up for change to save yourself and your company the time and energy.

9. Use an email autoresponder and only check email twice a day: For some, this hack is NOT an option, but for those whose work is not tied to checking emails for customer service or something similar, you should give this a try. Set up an auto response email that says something like “Thank you for your email. I generally reply to all emails within 24 hours but if this is an emergency please call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX”. What this simple auto responder does is sets an expectation to anyone emailing you that they will get a response but not immediately, while also creating a process for urgent issues so that you can turn off from your email and check it when you are ready without fear of missing something important.

10. Keep your cell phone off your desk: I am always distracted by my iPhone. Not just by messages but also by the fact that I can at any time pick it up and check Instagram if I want, and I unfortunately spend too much time during my day doing this without even thinking about it. So, when I keep my phone off my desk, either on a charger on another table or in my bag, I remove the distraction. Since I use a Mac, if I get a phone call while my phone is off my desk, I can actually screen and answer the call from my laptop without having to get up, but if you are worried that you may miss important calls, devices like the Ringly or Apple Watch notify you without having to keep your phone out.

11. Keep hydrated by drinking water at set intervals: Keeping hydrated through the day is very important for mental productivity, but if you keep a bottle out and sip on it all day, you’ll end up disrupting your workflow for bathroom breaks. So, to combat this, I try to drink my fluids in bulk at regular intervals so that I’m not running back and forth from the bathroom as I work.

12. Reward yourself with activity after each 2 hour block of work: As I work, not matter how productive I am being, I always get the urge to check social media, read a blog post or watch a YouTube video, however, I have started to discipline myself to only engage in these activities after I have completed a block of work. This helps me to create a reward system that entices me to work faster and complete more tasks throughout the day. And it’s much healthier for you than taking a snack or smoke break!

I hope you enjoyed these twelve workday hacks and if you give any of them a try I want to hear about it! Tag me on Instagram @MissTrenchcoat and use #CharmedGTD in your description so me and the rest of our community can follow along with your productivity journey!

xoxo,

Online Business

5 Mistake Brands Make when Working with Online Influencers

5 Mistake Brands Make when Working with Online Influencers

Last week I posted some great PR tips for bloggers, YouTubers and small businesses that were looking to put their best foot forward online in order to attract sponsors or customers, but this week, I want to turn the tables a bit and discuss some best practices for brands or businesses who are looking to solicit online influencers to help promote their products. As a blogger who has worked with sponsors in the past and is often approached by brands for partnerships, you’d be surprised at the mistakes brands and small businesses are making when approaching an influencer. So, I wanted to share with my fellow small business owners the common mistakes I see being made and give some tips for reaching out to bloggers or influencers in a way that will get you a more positive response and better results from the influencer if and when you proceed with a partnership opportunity.

Mistake #1: You don’t do your homework on the influencer!

As a business owner, I understand that when you want to spread awareness of your brand or products you may approach multiple influencers with the mindset that having more options is better than fewer options. However, it’s very important that you really do your homework before you solicit a blogger or influencer and really understand who they are, what they do online and who their audience is. As an influencer, I get dozens of emails a week from small brands that want me to share about their products, however, it’s clear to me when when I read the first paragraph of their emails that the vast majority don’t know who I am and have sent a blanket email to a countless number of bloggers hoping to get a response. These offers are impersonal and often out of line with the context of my blog and I delete them immediately. However, when I receive an email from a brand that clearly knows me and my audience I consider their offer much more seriously and take the time to respond and interact with them. If you are a small business owner, I challenge you to do your homework and make an effort to understand the blogger you are contacting before making them an offer. I promise you will have a much more positive result and in doing your research you may be able to pitch your offer in a personalized way that will impress and flatter them into a partnership!

Mistake #2: You waste time by giving too much or too little information.

After you have done your research on an influencer and decide to reach out, make sure you respect your own time as well as the time of the influencer by keeping your email direct and informative without turning it into a short story. Give the influencer all the information they would need to make a decision on whether they will want to work with you, and make a simple pitch that clearly states your offer and objectives, as well as the benefits you are willing to offer them for their service. Don’t hold back important information or be misleading in order to “hook” a potential partner. When you are upfront with all the information, not only can the influencer make a better decision, but it will help expedite the process if you begin working together.

Mistake #3: You forget that you get what you pay for!

The number 1 mistake a brand or small business can make when working with a blogger or online influencer is that they think they can get something for nothing! I think the practice of soliciting an influencer and offering them free products or social interactions for their work is atrocious. You get what you pay for! If you expect someone to review your products or use their influence to further your brand, you must be willing to pay. Value is an exchange, they do the work and you pay them for it. If you’re not willing to exchange a fair value or their effort, it will end up costing you dearly with your reputation!

Mistake #4: You fail to negotiate.

I understand that for many small businesses, the idea of striking a deal is daunting. It may be our first instinct to approach an influencer with an offer and then if they do not accept the offer, to turn away and pitch the same offer to a new influencer. It’s easier to turn away than it is to open a dialog of negotiation, but if you have spent time doing your homework to identify the influencer you want to work with, negotiating is essential. If your offer is well received, find out what objections the influencer has and edit your offer to overcome them. You don’t have to give it all away, but even just showing that you are willing to discuss the terms of an offer can go a long way to getting someone to agree to those terms.

Mistake #5: You fail to lay out clear expectations.

The final mistake I see small businesses and brands making when working with influencers is that they fail to lay out clear terms on who is doing what and when. A mistake like this could lead to communication issues where the influencer under-performs their responsibilities or the business fails to fulfill their end of the deal, which can lead to disaster if an influencer is left feeling cheated! Make sure to lay out a clear plan that details what each party is responsible for and when delivery of those details are expected. Don’t be afraid to double check details and over communicate in an effort to keep both parties responsible for upholding their end of the partnership!

Now that you understand the 5 most common mistakes I see businesses making when working with influencers online, I hope you can take this information and make better choices when it comes to working with those who can grow your brand. I think bloggers, YouTubers and social media content creators are great resources for the small business community online, and they can be more effective for small business growth than standard advertising or marketing. Just make sure to follow these best practices when working with them for positive results and brand building!

xoxo,

Career Productivity

Letting Go to Do Your Best Work!

Does this ever happen to you? You sit down to start an important project, you know exactly what’s expected because you have either done it before or are familiar with what the end result should be, however, even before you have begun, those expectations begin to nag at you. You begin to worry that you may not do a good job, you obsess and knit pick over elements of your project and after all your mental anguish and second guessing you finish your project and it all turns out fine. Maybe you have also experienced this second scenario. You sit down to start an important project, but this time it’s something you have never done before. You’re not exactly sure how to begin or how things will look by the end, but you think about your project logically, put in a solid effort and in the end, it turns out spectacular! Why does that second scenario usually turn out better than the first? You would think that someone would do better in a situation where they had more experience and understood the expectations, but that isn’t always true. It’s beginners luck! You may have heard of it before, it’s a common phenomenon where someone attempts something new and ends up successful in their effort. Now, while “beginner’s luck” has never been statistically proven, most of us have experienced it in one way or another and we can certainly learn a thing or two about how to do great work from it!

Beginner’s luck is tied to the idea of expectations. When you attempt something new and admittedly know very little about it, you often find that when you give it a try, you are much better than you would have assumed. That’s because you didn’t expect much, but you gave an honest effort none-the-less! As humans, we are often tied up in notions of what is possible and what is impossible, and in that mindset we project upon ourselves what we think we can do, what we think we can’t do, and we end up surprising ourselves when we actually succeed where we had no expectations of success.

Okay, so how do we use this concept of beginner’s luck to our advantage? There are a number of ways where a shift in your perception to this beginner’s luck mentality can help you do your best work and live your best life!

1. Don’t be afraid to try new things, you will do better than you think!

This goes for work and personal situations. Although many of us are plagued with fear of the unknown, beginner’s luck tells us that when we try something with an honest effort we get a better result than anyone would have guessed. Even if you have tried something before with a negative result, giving it an honest shot the second time around may prove fruitful!

2. Reach for the “impossible” because that standard is imagined.

Voices outside and even inside of ourselves are often telling us what is possible and what is impossible. Think of these voices as bookies at a horse race giving you the odds in a situation. If you bet on the long-shot and lose, you just lost the few dollars you initially bet, but if you win you will rake it in! The odds may be against you in a certain scenario, but taking beginner’s luck into account, anything is possible. When it comes to your future and your dreams, if you have more to gain than to lose, trying for impossible is actually a better bet!

3. Let go of your expectations and just get to work!

Don’t think, just do! Thinking can often over complicate things and cause irrational fears to pop up. If you let go of your expectations for the end result, you will be open to whatever direction you are led to while you work. Some of the most creative and brilliant solutions have been found by accident while trying to find a solution to a different problem. Do not think, become.

Are there any areas of your work where you feel like expectations are getting the better of you? In what ways do you plan on letting go of your expectations and embracing the concept of beginner’s luck to help you do better work? Let me know in the comments how you think you can execute these ideas in your own work life and feel free to share any success stories that may have resulted from your own beginner’s luck experiences!

xoxo,

This article was first published on Strange & Charmed on July 10th, 2014 and is being reposted as part of my Holiday Prep Hiatus! For the months of November & December I will be recycling some vintage S&C content that you may have missed in order to give myself some extra time to finalize projects and spend time with my family during the holiday season. All reposted content will be marked as such. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past blog post!

Career

How to Succeed at Work!

I know I spend a lot of time on my blog and through my various social media platforms talking about how to succeed with your own online business, however, as someone who spent over 5 years working for a Fortune 50 company and had 4 different jobs in those 5 years, I clearly also know a thing or two about how to succeed at a 9-5 job as well! I know that for many of you reading this, landing that great 9-5 job or working your way up in your current company is going to be a real priority, so here are my five best tips to find success at work!

1. Exhibit Curiosity

Employers love it when they have employees that are interested in their work and curious enough to take extra time to research subjects and topics that may help them come to a greater understanding of their job. When you show a true interest in your job, your boss and company will notice and will reward such curiosity with increased responsibility, pay and ultimately, promotions!

2. Work Hard

This one may seem pretty obvious, however, you’d be surprised at the number of employees who think they are working hard but really aren’t doing all they can to benefit their employer. Sheer hours spent on the job isn’t a true indicator of productivity and hard work. What truly matters is how much you are able to accomplish with your time. If you are constantly ahead of schedule with projects and tasks, that will go a long way to show your work ethic!

3. Try Different Things

When it comes to working your average 9-5 people tend to get into routines and habits for their work. That’s not a bad thing, but problems can arise when you become too rigid with those routines and refuse to take on new tasks and experiences. When your supervisor presents you will new tasks and challenges, you should eagerly be saying “Yes” to these opportunities because this is your chance to try something new, expand your knowledge and show that you can take on new and different responsibilities!

4. Don’t let anyone rain on your parade

I’m not going to lie, competition is always going to arise in corporate culture, it’s just the way it is, but you shouldn’t let that competition get to your head or throw you off balance. Ignore the office politics, gossip mongering and rumor mill and focus on your work and producing great results. Try to be that beacon of positive energy in your company or on your team so that people always think of you as a good person and worker. Acknowledge that when you are successful with your job, people are always going to try to tear you down one way or another so that they can take your success and claim it for themselves, but you can prevent this by tearing clear of the drama!

5. Ask for what you want

Too many workers, mainly women, believe that if they work hard and keep their head down, they will be acknowledged at work with raises and promotions, however, that is not the way corporate culture works. It’s not enough that you do your job and do it well, you really need to make sure you are clear with your employer about what you want from your career and the opportunities you expect them to give you so long as you continue to be a productive asset to the company. Remember, corporate culture is competitive and if you don’t show interest in that open job position or ask for that raise, trust me, your employer isn’t just going to hand it over to you!

If you would like to learn more about how to get ahead in your current job, make sure to check out my series called How to Stand Out at Work. It’s filled with numerous tips, tricks and advice on how to gain more favor and responsibility at work so that you are poised for a raise or a promotion! Let me know what you thought of these tips and feel free to leave your best tips for success at work below in the comments. I’d love to hear your stories and how you have been able to climb the corporate ladder no matter how big or small your company!

books

What the Successful Know About Habits is Why You’re Not Achieving Your Potential

If you remember my On My iPhone post from the end of March, you may already know that I have been listening to a very popular business book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. I actually recently finished the book and I have to admit it was pretty eye opening to hear about the role our habits plan in our lives and specifically how this pertains to success. Not just success as in a vague representation of our lives, but in terms of how often we as individuals are able to achieve the things we set out to do. I know I’ve discussed before that people often comment to me that they believe I am a very focused and disciplined person, an observation that never fully made sense to me until I was exposed to this book. The book basically explained to me the key information about habits that successful people know and use to their advantage, including how my own habits were bringing me consistent success without me ever feeling like I was “working hard.” Since childhood I have been operating under a certain set of habits that were instilled in me as a child and basically have defined my work ethic ever since. So, the fact that I am constantly achieving my goals, while obvious to outsiders as being a result of disciplined action and focus, just felt like normal day to day life to me. Now, if you feel like you are someone who is not achieving their potential, guess what? I have good news for you! You can change your habits so that success is a habitual activity for your. You just need to understand what successful people know about habits, something I fully realized while reading this book, and am going to share with you today!

Successful People Know that Our Lives are Ruled by Habits

You may think that you have control over your life, but when you boil down your days everything comes down to your habits. Humans are creatures of habit that rely on a sense of regularity to their lives in order to survive, but successful people are able to leverage knowledge of their habits and use these instinctive procedures to make them better at what they do. You can argue against this point if you want, but just accepting the fact that habits play a major role in our lives will make changing them to your own benefit that much easier. Everything from our work, sleep, social relationships, and diet are based on our habits and unfortunately, habits are a hard thing to break. If you have ever tried to quit smoking or implement a new diet or excursive regime, you know first hand that it’s hard to change habits because they are part of an overall routine. When you just try to start or stop a habit cold-turkey, you fail because the overall routine kicks in, resets itself and brings you back to your old habits fast, but when you swap one habit for another strategically, you find that success is achievable!

Successful People Know that You Achieve More when You Don’t have to Think

Remember back to grade school when you were learning math and the teacher taught you how to add and subtract. But it wasn’t enough that the teacher would teach you HOW to perform addition and subtraction, they always went a step further and forced the whole class to remember lines of equations repeatedly. 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 1 + 3 = 4, etc and so on. Well, if we knew how to add and subtract, why did we need to basically memorize addition tables? Wasn’t it enough that we knew how to add, so that if we were faced with the situation of having to add 1 + 1, we could figure out how to get to 2? Well the answer is no, it’s not enough, and the reason is because it’s always easier, quicker, and more efficent to know information or to perform an activity when the outcome is a knee jerk reaction as opposed to having to think. Thinking requires effort, it’s a process in and of itself, so when it comes down to having to complete an action, it’s actually more efficient when you know what to do, as opposed to having to think about what to do. When you have to think, time is wasted, errors can occur and questions can even arise in your own mind of whether or not you are correct. When things are an automatic response, its much simpler and smoother of a process. This is why successful people have systems and routines in place that allow them to remove the burden of thought from their lives and work so that important tasks are habitual and therefore more efficient and accurate. Then they can reserve all that mental energy that they would have used on thinking and put it to good use working on solving problems and developing new sources of income!

Successful People Know that You Are What You Repeatedly Do

Aristotle said it best “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” If all our actions in life boil down to our habits, then being a person who is aware of and in control of their habits is almost like a litmus test for success. If you can control your habits enough to achieve success once, you can do it again, and soon you can become a person who seemingly succeeds at all they do. Success and achievement are recipes, they are not the same for each and every person, but once you find the recipe to success in your own life, the sky is the limit for what you can achieve once you apply that knowledge and routine to other aspects of your life. This is actually the reason I purchased this book to begin with. As an online entrepreneur, I noticed that other successful entrepreneurs had many of the same habits and once I started seeing the pattern, I knew I needed to learn more about how to control my habits so that I was achieving at a higher level! If you look around and notice that all the people you look up to seem to have habits and routines in place that you are currently lacking, it may be time for you to change your habits as well!

Overall, I think that The Power of Habit was a great business book, and I’m certainly glad I purchased it! I will say, it was a very fun book to listen to on tape as I did, via Audible.com and I would suggest for other entrepreneurs or anyone else who categorizes themselves as a life long learner, that you sign up for an Audible membership because you are seriously able to devour more books and knowledge this way! I’m not sponsored by Audible or anything, you guys know that when I find something I like, I love to share it with you all, and so far Audible has been an excellent tool for me that I plan to use to the fullest extent!

xoxo,

Productivity

Getting the Most Out of Your College Classes

As the fall semester of most colleges and universities comes to a close, you may be taking a good hard look at your grades for the semester and wondering how you could have done better. If you are early in your college career, you may not yet have learned the best ways to maximize your time in class and in college as a whole, so I thought now would be the perfect time to share some tips about how to get more out of your college classes. Think about these tips as you head into winter break and get yourself a plan of action for the spring semester!

1. Show Up: Look, college isn’t like high school, you are actually paying to be there and believe it or not, the time spent in class can have a profound affect on your knowledge and understanding of the world. Make your best effort to show up to all your classes, and make sure to get there early to snag a great seat!

2. Sit in the front row or center aisle: Apparently, studies have shown that students that sit in either the front row or center aisle of a classroom score higher than their peers in other seats. Make this special T zone your permanent destination in every class.

3. Actively participate in class: Yep, classes can sometimes be boring and even though you are in college, there are still classes that you are required to take that may not interest you. But, you know what they say? Time flies when you’re having fun! So, actively engage in your classes, take copious amounts of notes and ask questions regularly to keep your brain working. This will result in more information retention for you and a much quicker and enjoyable experience all around.

4. Buddy up with your professors: Although some of your professors may seem big and scary, for the most part, they can be some of the most interesting people you will ever meet. Now, I’m not saying that you need to hang out with your professor regularly, however, getting comfortable with them will drastically help you with your classes and workload, because you will feel more at ease asking them for help or advice. Plus, if you become friendly with professors in your major, they are more likely to write you great recommendation letters for grad school in the future or be a great reference for a resume!

5. Get your assignments done early: In most classes you will receive a syllabus on day one outlining all your assignments and their due dates for your class. If you stay on top of your work and get your papers and projects done early, you will be ahead of the curve. A week or two before that assignment is due, when your other classmates are just beginning their work, you can bring yours to your professor and ask them to review it for you before you hand in a final draft. This means you get feedback from your professor on your project or paper with enough time to make the necessary edits and hand in perfect A+ work!

So, those are my tips for getting more out of your college classes. If you are in college or know someone who is, feel free to share this post with them, and don’t forget to check out my tips for a Productive and Successful College Career, as well as my Biggest Regrets from College!

xoxo,

Career

Why it’s Important to Wear Lipstick to Work!

Now, before you get the wrong idea I want to make perfectly clear that I do consider myself a feminist, but also a pragmatist! Sometimes you just gotta use what God gave you and say to hell with the rest! You may not think that wearing a little lipstick is going to make a difference either way in your life or career, but it does, and perhaps not in the way that you might assume. You’re probably thinking that I am advocating wearing lipstick to work as some sort of way to please the general vanity of the masses, as though wearing lipstick means that you are trying to make a good impression and make yourself look your very best! It’s true, wearing lipstick probably does have that affect on your co-workers and bosses, either male or female, but that’s not the reason I suggest wearing it! Nor am I suggesting that you wear it to heighten the appearance of your femininity and perhaps make yourself seem more attractive to the opposite sex, thus gaining some competitive edge that usually only works on police officers and speeding tickets!

No, the reason I am advocating that you wear lipstick to work is because it has been scientifically proven to help women get the attention of others during discussions! Don’t ask me where the study is that concludes this, I honestly have never seen it, I have only heard about it! Once, I attended a women’s professional development workshop where the keynote speaker insisted that if you wear lipstick to work, specifically to meetings or during any sort of discussions or negotiations, the people in the room are more likely to give you their attention. It has something to do with your mouth being highlighted by the lipstick so that it draws attention to you and to the value of your words. Pretty interesting I thought! The speaker even went so far as to glance around the room and eventually pointed me out to stand up, saying that my lipstick was so bright (I was wearing a hot pink for sure!) that I got her attention despite the fact that I was seated in the very last row!

I love being made a positive example of, but I really think she was right! For some time before this event I had been wearing bright pink lipstick (in a color that suits me, don’t think I will just pick up any old neon pink I can find!) because I thought it drew attention to me. After all, not many people think they can pull off the color, so most don’t even try. I had been getting compliments on my lipstick for a long while by the time the speaker had pointed me out that day at the meeting, and I have received those compliments ever since. I think that for a long time I had already known what she was telling us, that your lipstick mattered! So make sure you wear it and make sure you pick as bold a color as you can muster! Keeping the attention of a room is a difficult task to achieve, but to think all you need to achieve it is a little bright lipstick and the confidence to wear it!

Do you wear lipstick to work? How do you feel confidence-wise when you wear it? Do you notice that more people pay attention to what you say when wearing it? Has this article inspired you to wear bright lipstick more often? Maybe you think this isn’t true or doesn’t work? Let us know what you think in the comments!