Get More Done In Less Time

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From now on, Monday, is Chaunna’s day to post a blog topic about the other side of our business. The side where organization, management, all that stuff that I hate to do. hahaha

You’ll get kind of a behind the scenes look at what it really takes to make a profitable web business. Today’s topic is about time management and how she was able to help me get more time out of my days.

Behind The Scenes With Chaunna

A lot of times Justin and I are asked, “How can I finally start making my website profitable?” But how this question actually translates is, “how can I stop failing and start reaching some success in this – nothing seems to work?”

The only way I know how to answer this question is by sharing what works for Justin and me. So now that I’ll be posting weekly I’ll be sharing some of the techniques Justin and I are using on a daily basis to continue our success.

This week, I thought I’d start with a technique that has been crucial to our success and is a MUST in every business. It’s using your time management so you can work efficiently.

You see when Justin first started, I was working fulltime as a teacher and would spend like 10 hours a day doing stuff for my job, and Justin would work the same hours if not more, and would always complain that he never had enough time. SO in an effort to help him I told him to plan it out. I mean as a teacher the only way to get more time into your teaching day is to use it efficiently – so the same technique should work for him too.

A week went by and he was still complaining, so I asked him if he started a schedule, he said he had, but it didn’t work so he stopped following it. I ask him to break it down for me, but what he really did was just write down how much time he wanted to spend doing “stuff” for his websites, but never really factored in when and how he could fit it into his day.

This was completely the wrong way to look at it and most people just don’t get how to plan out their time… so here’s how we start with new projects and keep them focused as we work on it.

First ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I need to do each day? – This includes your hours at work, time for the family, plus how many hours you have available for working on your internet success.You probably answered with a schedule something like this:
   8am- 6pm Work
   6pm- 8pm Family Time
   8pm- ?? trying everything I can to make money online

   And that schedule is totally ok, but you’re probably exhausted every morning because you stayed up until 2-3 am, and when family time rolls around you can’t focus on it because you just want to get back and work on making money online so you don’t have to get up and go to work the next day.

   However, you’re hurting yourself doing this day in and day out, so here’s what you do next.

1. Allot yourself a specific amount of hours to work on your internet business. If it is after family time give yourself from 8pm – 11pm. 3 hours can be plenty of time to build your business, and then on the weekends give yourself 6 hours a day – that’s 27 hours a week!Note: you can obviously do more than 6 hours on the weekends, but remember you still need to have family time – having the luxury of quiting your job to work from home means nothing if you lose everything in the process.
2. Now that you have a set amount of time, start writing down what part of your internet business is a priority for you.For beginners this could be getting your website published, start building traffic. For the intermediates, this could be applying new techniques, getting more traffic, increasing sales/conversions. You can also break this up by project. Now that Justin and I run multiple websites, we have to list each project and what needs to be done for each of them.

   Now that you have a list of things you have to do, rate them by which needs to be done first.. you can drive traffic before you have a site. So site goes first. If you have a site, traffic goes first, and then conversions. Etc.

   Note: on this step you should get specific. List the exact methods you want to try – if you don’t know how to do them, be sure to add in the time it will take for you to watch the training and apply it. So for example, if you’re a beginner and you need to get your site published, you may also need to design it first, add the optin box, write content for it, write the “about me page” get advertising/affiliate links so you can monetize it etc.

3. Now that you have a list, lets break it up so that you can use your time efficiently.
   Here’s my sample list of things to do each day:

   Week 1: Goal for this week is to get site published

   Monday: I have 3 hours at the end of the day to do it, here’s my list of things to do and how long I think it will take me:

   1. Install wordpress (don’t know how to do so I have to read about it)
      2-3 hours
   2. Pick a Template & Install it (don’t know how to do so I have to read about it) 1 hour

Tuesday: Goal for today is to get site published – I have 3 hours at the end of the day to do it, here’s my list of things to do and how long I think it will take me:

1. 1. Add Optin box (don’t know how to do so I have to read about it) 1 hour
   2. Write Content for the site – 2 hours

Wednesday: I have 3 hours at the end of the day to do it, here’s my list of things to do and how long I think it will take me:

1. 1. Add Tracking (don’t know how to do so I have to read about it) – 1 hour
   2. Pick out affiliate products that will go well with the site – 1 hour

g.Add affiliate banners to the site – 30 minutes

h.Upload to hosting & Publish site – 30 minutes

Now I’m going to stop there for now, and make a few pointers…. If you don’t know how to do something it’s ok to learn about it, but you’re talking about way more time and frustration than is needed if it’s a task that can be done quickly and easily by someone else that already has experience doing it. For example, on Monday you spent the entire 3 hours learning how to install wordpress, instead go to scriptlance.com and pay someone $20 to install wordpress and the template for you while you’re at work. Then when you get home start working on Tuesdays task and you’re already a day ahead of yourself.

The point I’m trying to make here is that if it can be done faster by someone else (and still be in budget) then let someone else do it. You don’t have to do every step yourself… in fact, one of our very successful friends (in the multimillion dollar range) admits to use outsourcing so often that he has no clue how what he does get’s done, but only cares that it gets done – that was a very powerful lesson.

So, before you go on reading take today to start on the path to success. Follow these steps and start focusing your work so that you can using your time efficiently and reach success faster.

1. break down each project your have going on.
2. Make a list of everything that needs to be done for each project.
3. Estimate the time it will take for you to complete each task –make sure you’re taking advantage of outsourcers when they fit into your budget
4. Prioritize your list by what needs to be done first (not what you want to do first)
5. Split up the task across the time you’ve schedule each day for yourself.
6. Get to work!

I’m often asked “how many hours a day do I work” and I can confidently say that it’s no more than 5 now that I’ve put this method to full use. Here’s my daily schedule:

• 11am – 11:30am Assign daily tasks to assistants, check that yesterday’s tasks were completed
• 11:30-12:30pm Lunch & time with Dylan before school
• 12:30-2:30 This 2 hour block used to work on project 1 tasks (these are tasks for our main source of income so that it continues to grow)
• 2:30 – 4pm This 1.5 hour block used to work on project 2 tasks (these are tasks like blog posts, website flips, SEO projects, planning for the seminar, taxes, networking with other businesses, etc)
• 4pm sons home from school, homework, home (dinner) & family time

Well there you have it… A quick behind the scenes look at how we get more time out of each day. This was just one part of it too, I really didn’t even touch on things like block scheduling and other neat tricks that I’ve whipped Justin into shape with

As always, just reading about this stuff won’t do anything for you. If you want to have more time to make your websites more successful then all it takes is action and action builds confidence!

Have A Great Day!
Chaunna Brooke

P.S. I need some good topics for my Monday posts here, what type of “behind the scenes” things do you want to know about our business? Let me know in the comments down below, I’ll be reading and responding to them all.