007: Get Crazy Productive In Just ONE Hour A Day In Your Senior Photography Business
/We are just about a week away from the Peak Virtual Summit where I just happen to be one of the speakers. Dan Frievalt has put together an amazing lineup of speakers & I am so happy to be among them. It all starts next Tuesday, September 21st - 23rd.
You can register for the Peak Virtual Summit & watch all of the speakers at the link below:
PEAK VIRTUAL SUMMIT DETAILS & REGISTRATION
Today we are going to talk about procrastination. I am a pro at this. Like I would challenge anyone in this area if you’re up for it.
But guess what? When we are able to call out our weaknesses, our own hang-ups, we have the power to do something about them, right? We have to take ownership of the bad stuff right along with the good stuff.
I have a question for you. Does anybody else love to make lists? Because I think I’ve been making them since I learned to write. I remember making lists for my little brother when we were kids! It was a lot of fun to give him & all of my stuffed animals pretend homework from my pretend elementary classroom.
It never really stopped. I made lists all the way through college & today I am still a list maker. I’m just a little more organized than I was back then!
The issue though is that those lists can get the best of me sometimes. I look at them and think “there’s no way I’m going to get all of this done”.
I knew I had to get a handle on it when all that overwhelm started causing me too much stress & anxiety in my business. I turned into a productivity sponge. Anything & everything I could learn about productivity, I soaked up.
Getting more productive made me feel more in control. It gave me confidence that I really could get this stuff done.
“Productivity brings control and control brings confidence.”
One of the best things I did in my quest for getting super productive was to implement what lots of people call a Power Hour.
This is how I got control of my to-do list.
A Power Hour is an hour dedicated to working on a combination of important daily business driving activities along with the non-urgent but still important tasks that just need to get done.
I find it best to use this time for things that “can” get done anytime, but always seem to move down to the bottom of my list. They aren’t super time-sensitive so they keep getting put off. Anybody else guilty of this?
I will admit that I personally used to hate returning calls, checking voicemails and email. It felt like an interruption to me. But you know what? That’s because I was letting them be an interruption instead of being smart about how to handle them. I was allowing every notification to go off and basically yes, interrupt me, for things that weren’t urgent at all. So now the notifications are off & I am in a beautiful clueless bliss until I choose a time in my day to handle them.
What has helped me most to not get too backed up with the things that have to get done no matter what is to just tackle them all at one time. I love calling it my Power Hour because I just blaze through these daily tasks as fast as I can to get them done and get back to what I love to do - create.
There are 3 main areas of my business I focus on during my Power Hour.
Follow-Ups - email, voicemail, client & inquiry calls, DMs
Engagement - 20 minutes of intense & intentional engagement with my ideal clients on social media, basically growing my network, meeting new people & warming up my audience to whatever I’m going to post
Visibility - that usually means posting to social media, either on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. I try to post or at least get a post fully prepped to post later on that evening and maybe even hop on my stories.
If I have more time I try to knock out a few tiny items on my to-do list as well, just to keep it manageable. These are the things I talked about earlier. Yes, they are important, but they aren’t super urgent.
The problem is that all those nagging things on your to-do list can weigh on you after a while. They take up mental & emotional space that just don’t need to be wasted. All those little non-time-sensitive tasks can be overwhelming & zap your energy.
Once you get on a roll, you can just power through that list using the time you have left.
Here are some tips on how to be successful with setting up your own Power Hour:
One of the most important things is that you schedule your Power Hour. Put it on your calendar. It needs to be an appointment with yourself that you are determined to show up for.
Keep a running list of “issues” or tasks that you can easily knock out when you sit down to focus like this.
Turn off all of your notifications and get rid of any distractions.
Set a timer. The point is to power through & get as much done in that one hour as you possibly can.
Pump yourself up for it. I have a Bad Ass Work Mode playlist on Spotify that I absolutely love. I put it on anytime I really need to get into work mode.
Give yourself a reward. When you work your tail off for a solid hour give yourself a 10 minute whatever silly tik tok binge you want to go on! Or go for a walk, maybe even a Netflix show you’re into if you feel like you’ve been super productive.
If you have younger kids at home, naptime is the perfect time for a Power Hour.
Wherever you need to fit it into your day, just be consistent and you will start to see compounding growth in your business.
Let’s revisit what you need to be doing during that hour.
Follow-Ups - email, voicemail, client & inquiry calls, DMs
Engagement - 20 minutes of intense & intentional engagement with your ideal clients on social media, growing my network, meeting new people & warming up your audience
Visibility - posting to social media, getting on your stories, or at least prepping something to post later on that evening
Seriously, do those 3 things consistently every day and you will see results.
Honestly, you could create Power Hours for all sorts of things in your business & life, which would essentially be time blocking. But that’s a story for another day. I’m sure we’ll get to that subject here on the podcast because I love that too!
Let me know if you give this Power Hour idea a try. Send me a DM on Instagram at Senior Studio Success & let me know how it goes for you there.
Ok, you guys. I’m gonna tease you here just a little bit. You do not want to miss next week’s episode because I’m gonna spill the tea on something VERY BIG just around the corner. And nope, you’re not gonna get it out of me until then. You’re gonna have to come back to see what it is!!
If you want a group of hard-working, action-taking, senior photographers to do life with, bounce ideas around with (like building your website), listen up because that is what you get inside Studio Secrets.
Once a year I launch my business mentoring program called Studio Secrets. If you need somebody to come along beside you and help you do business the right way so that you can bring home a paycheck, spend more time with your family and save for retirement then you need Studio Secrets.
The doors open on November 4th for something very special for a handful of photographers who are ready to get laser-focused on their businesses.
Studio Secrets is a 6 month business coaching intensive where we dive deep into your business together. It’s not a DIY course on one or two topics. This is EVERYTHING you could ever need to know (and all the tools & resources) to run a senior photography business - branding, messaging, websites, pricing, sales, marketing, social media, senior model teams, systems, workflow, automation and SO MUCH MORE! And bonus - you get me to lead you through it in our hot seat calls and a private community to bounce ideas around with.
If you’re ready to turn your expensive hobby into a thriving business be sure you are on the waitlist. You can do that at www.seniorstudiosuccess.com/studiosecrets.
Plus everyone on that wait list will save $500 on launch day - November 4th. Woohoo! I can’t wait to work with you!
If you want to continue this conversation there’s a facebook group dedicated to all the business stuff behind our pretty pictures and I’d love to have you there.
I’d love to connect with you on Instagram as well. Screenshot this episode, tag me and share it to your story! And if you’re the type of person who loves to help other people the biggest and most awesome thing you could do right now is to give this podcast a rating and review on iTunes. That helps it get found by other amazing photographers around the world who want to build their dream businesses too.
Until next time my friends, see ya soon!
Success is found in the simplicity of a system.
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