How to be More Productive as a Small Business Owner

It is episode 282, and you get me this week, and I hope you love it. Get ready to take some notes because we are talking all about productivity and planning and how to get more done during your day, but also how to start your day on the right foot. So you are ready to go no matter what Crazy Obstacle 2020 decides to throw to you. Next, Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually work, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys. This week, I'm so excited to talk to you about something that is not just business, but it's personal. You know, there's a big part of me, as I look back on my own journey in business, I think about some of the reasons that we're successful. I would say the majority of the reasons why we are successful go back to how we approach each and every day with our mindset and our habits and how productive we are. Right? We all have access to the Internet. We all have access to courses. We have access to people smarter than we are to tell us what we should be doing to succeed. Right. We have access to those things. But what we don't always have access to or we don't always realize is it doesn't come down to doing the task that makes us successful. It's being in the right frame of mind, right. That allows us to be successful. It's shifting from being an entrepreneur to being a CEO. It's taking control of how you approach your day with intention that allows you to have more time, more flexibility, and the ability just to think bigger than you ever thought possible to grow your business into what it's capable of becoming. And so today, I'm so excited on the podcast to dive a little bit deeper into this process of how do we become more productive and more peace. More at peace every single day in our business. So as we launch this, this week, I guess our 2021 Boutique Boss Planner, this really has me in all the fields of what does it take to be productive and what does it take to approach each day with success? Because as I look at my 2020 planner, I mean, let's admit, it's a little bit like a dumpster fire and I already Write like a 12 year old boy, so I'm not that excited about how it makes me feel when I open it up anymore. Right. It's a little bit scattered a little all over the place. I'm always ready for a new month or a new quarter or a new year to seemingly start things fresh. And so as I think about launching the 2021 planner, I'm so excited because it's that fresh start. And as many of you are going to be receiving your 2021 planners so soon because they're going to be shipping out so soon. And if you want more information on them, of course I'll have them linked up in the show notes. It's BoutiqueBossPlanner.com the only planner made for boutique owners by boutique owners. And several tear off sheets and things that we've added. I want to just deep dive into exactly how to use them this week. And specifically, again, how do we get in that right frame of mind to be the most productive and to create the best versions of our business possible? And when I think about this, there's a lesson that I learned from a mentor of mine, Brendan Burchard, that I learned several years ago and this has always stuck with me. And I want to share this gift with you today. And that's what are three questions you can use to start your day each and every day that are going to not only help you be more productive, but also more grounded and feel like you're ending the day at peace with who you are? Because we all get into business wanting a few things, right? We want flexibility, we want no cap on our earning potential. But really, what does that come down to? It comes down to freedom and peace. And if we are so tied to our business that we're working 80 hours a week and we can't seem to get away and things aren't profitable, we've really lost that opportunity in terms of why we started our business in the first place, haven't we? So how do we get back to that feeling of peace? How do we get back to our big why? How do we get our freedom back in a way that is going to still encourage us to be as profitable as possible without, you know, being married to the business 24 7? And these questions really help me drive that process home each and every day? So let's dive into it. The first question that you should ask yourself each and every day and I do this process whether I'm laying in bed or if I'm in the shower, I do it a Number of different ways. But the first question to ask yourself each day is, number one, what am I excited about today? What am I excited about today? Because we live in this world where it's so easy. And I'm definitely guilty of this, of rolling over in the morning, grabbing my cell phone, and it's like those notifications and that dopamine hit, they're always there, right? And so we grab our phone and we want to know what's new on social this morning, or how many orders came in overnight, or what customer service emails do I have to answer this morning? And immediately we are sucked into the trap of allowing a device to tell us how we're going to feel. Right? Have you ever been there? You roll over and then you're like, oh, dang, I just saw a post from someone I didn't want to see a post from right competitor, someone knocking you off or whatever it is. And then you get that pit in your stomach feeling. And you start your day in this negative frame of mind with this pit in your stomach because you let social media determine how you were going to feel about your day before it even got started. And so the challenge I have for you is to put the phone down and not start your day by looking at social media, but instead by asking, what am I excited about today? So that you have a surefire way to know you're going to start your day on the right foot, looking forward to something that makes you feel good. You're finding a dopamine hit in a brand new way, and it's coming from within. It's not coming from a device. And I tell you guys this because I feel like this is a lesson I first learned in high school. And I've actually shared this story with some of you recently. You're about to hear my guts on the line here. But let me just tell you this. When I was growing up, I came from a very small town, small school. I was a ranch kid. I lived in the country. The popular kids all lived in town. And there's times, for those of you who have ever been a country kid growing up, maybe some of you have no idea what that's like, but I'm going to tell you, you don't always get to be in the cool circles. And there was a time in high school where I really felt like I had to struggle to find my place and to fit in. And it was to the point where I would wake up in the morning and I would be so sick to my stomach dreading what was going to happen that day that I wouldn't want to go to school. And my mom knew it too, right? She knew when I said I'm sick today, I got to stay home. It was probably more anxiety than it was ever actually me being sick. But that happened a fair amount. And in high school, at some point during this process, I learned that the only way I could get up and actually go through my day and make it to school and back was I had to start my day with that question, what excites me today? Whether that was a basketball game we had that night or I knew I was going to get to do something fun after school, or I knew there was some project that I was going to nail in school that I was really excited about. I mean, big or small, it does not matter what it is. But we have to find some ray of hope that we are going to latch onto every morning that's going to drive excitement. So we are in control about how we're going to feel the rest of the day because it truly does set the tone for the rest of the day. What you think about, you bring about. It's just like the secret. The more you are in the moment of dread and in space of anxiety, you're going to attract more dread and more anxiety. You're going to feel it that much more often versus if you are in a state of gratitude and excitement, you're going to start to see and seek more of those opportunities throughout the entire day. So question number one is critical and that is what am I excited about today? Question number two is equally as important because we all have goals that we're striving for each and every day, right? Maybe the goal is to get healthy or to get fit, right? And we're focused on the positive connotation of the goal, not the negative, not the I'm fat and I need to lose weight and I have a negative self body talk and body image. But rather than focus on what you need to lose, and again, a state of lack is what that creates, we focus on the positive and what can I gain? So versus I need to quit eating Oreos, which if you know me, you know I'm addicted to them. Instead it's I'm going to add drinking more water, I'm going to add 30 minutes of exercise to my day, right? I'm going to add this new healthy habit. So when we know what those are and we know we're on track, we've got these goals that we want to achieve throughout the day and maybe it's you know, we know that we're struggling with productivity and we know we need to get rid of social media, we need to put our phones down. So we think about question number two, which is, what could trip me up today? What could trip me up today? And when we think about that, we go, okay, let's mitigate what might get in our way. So let's say it is I scroll social media and I see a post of a competitor or whatever, someone I don't like, and it puts me in this negative frame of mind. And now I'm playing defense, okay, so maybe it's I need to like snooze that person on social media, or maybe I need to align myself with an hour of social media at lunch, an hour of social media in the afternoon, but I can't have it open. Like, other than that the phone has to be off and it has to be locked away somewhere or my tabs all need to be closed. And I'm only focused on what I'm working on at this moment. So what is it we're trying to achieve? And then what might trip us up today? And how do we mitigate that? How are we prepared and ready so that we start our day playing offense and not playing defense? Now question number three. I love this question. Question number three is, who could I surprise today? Who could I surprise today? Who could I show gratitude to today? Because, you know, I've heard people say that you cannot be living in a state of anxiety and fear and in a space of gratitude at the same time. It's physically impossible for our brains to and our emotions to go both places at once. And so, yes, we hear about journaling, gratitude journals, you know, starting your day in a space of gratitude, but taking that one step further and physically, who can I surprise today? Who can I reach out to and touch today? That's a whole new level. You guys have been in the Starbucks drive thru when either you, the person in front of you buys a drink for you, right, and they pay it forward or you buy a drink for someone behind you, right? The other day I was in a Starbucks drive thru and I have to tell you what happened. This is the craziest thing. There was a police officer behind me and so I went through the drive thru and I said, I rolled down my window, made my order and as I was done, I said, there's an officer behind me, can I please pay for his order? And the woman, the barista, smiled at me and she's like, you know, she said, I have to tell you, he already paid for yours. So funniest thing, like I went to buy this gentleman a drink and he had already, when he was making his order say that he was going to buy mine. So the coolest thing happens when you ground yourself in this place of gratitude and physically paying it forward for somebody today. So the third question is who can you surprise today? Who can you show love to today? Because we all know that we get what we give tenfold. And when we give to someone from this, you know, pure place of gratitude, that comes back to us tenfold. So the three questions, what am I excited about today? What might trip me up today? And who can I surprise today? I really wanted to share those three questions with you guys today because a part of what we are doing this year with the 2021 Boutique Boss Planner is we are launching a whole set of tear off sheets that go along with the planner. So things that just keep you on track each and every morning. And so it was from the space of those three questions, again, thanks, Brendon Burchard for giving those to me. It was the space of those three questions that really was the starting point for one of the tear offs that we created this year. And then we took it a step further and added a little bit more to the tear off. So we created, if you check it out on BoutiqueBossPlanner.com or the BoutiqueBossStore.com There's a gratitude daily gratitude tear off and I've got to grab it so I have it in front of me. But on this gratitude tear off, it starts by asking these very questions. So the very first space on this tear off is today's date. Obviously it says grateful vibes. It's a grateful vibes tariff and says today I am grateful for. And it is what am I excited about today, right? What's going to happen today? What am I looking forward to today? All those things. It's got five spaces, although you could probably write a lot more than that. Now, the second space on this tear off sheet is another little strategy I want to give you when it comes to productivity because the reason for this strategy, which I'm going to tell you in just a second, is this. So often I don't know if you guys are list makers like I'm a list maker, but it is so easy to start a list of all the things you need to do today and it gets really long, right? Or maybe it's the weekly to do list and you just keep listing things and you get to the end of the day and you're like, dang, what did I do today? Like, what did I even accomplish anything on my list? And we start to judge ourselves based on what we did or did not accomplish on the list and it becomes like a never ending trap. We can never get out of the stupid to do list and it just begins to cause more anxiety. To do lists are created to help us achieve something and be productive. Right? Which should, you know, should build good feelings, not anxiety. But because we are so used to adding to that stupid to do list and not knowing what we accomplish at the end of the day that it gives us more anxiety and holds us back right from what we could have accomplished in the first place. So a friend of mine gave me this strategy and she said, hey Ashley, why don't you. There's a to do list strategy which I'm going to tell you guys about in a bit. But she said, flip it this way and make a to done list. So at the end of the day, before you walk away from your desk, before you go home, before you go to your kids, whatever it is, write down what did you accomplish today? And so the first time I started to do this, I started to write this down and I was like, hot dang. I got a lot done today that I didn't even realize. It was things that came up. The team needed me to do this project or I needed to reach out to somebody, or this collaboration popped up or we got this wild idea and we ran with it. And every day that I that I did this, at the start, I was always amazed that I accomplished far more than I had ever written on my to do list in the first place. So on this tear off sheet, the second question is this. What are the goals I crushed today so that you can end the day in gratitude, just like you started the day in gratitude and you can physically see what you did accomplish. So you end the day on a high vibe, on such a high note, knowing that you had the best day possible. And it's also kind of counteracting that question number two of what could trip me up today, right? It's proving to you that you didn't get tripped up and you actually accomplished a lot today. Now, going back to this, I'm going to come back and I want to tell you in a little bit more about my to do list strategy. It's called a four part to do list. I'll highlight that in just a second. The third space on the grateful vibes tear off that. I want to talk to you about is that. Question number three. Who did I surprise today? And so the space on the tear off says, who did I help? People I helped today.