GET MORE DONE IN LESS TIME

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Getting more done in your day comes down to one important skill: time management. This isn’t just for getting more done in your business, but in life in general. So how can you learn more about time management? Keep reading to find out how you can hit all of your goals.

Time management means getting organized, which doesn’t mean anything without showing you how to get organized. By the time you finish this post, you’ll know about focus blocks, what they are, and how to use them. These are going to be essential to your productivity. Before we get into that though, it’s important to set some ground rules. By ground rules, I mean setting up priorities. When you’re starting your week, day, month, etc, you need to set some priorities of what to get done. What is the main thing you need to accomplish? That should be your priority.

How to Get Started

If you’re planning for the week, write down all of the things you want to get done. Next, you’ll spread them out across the week. Now, this is where the blocking comes in. Spread out your tasks per day using calendar blocking or general time blocking. If you aren’t familiar with what calendar blocking is, try searching it on YouTube for some quick video explanations. Everyone uses this method for different purposes, but you’re just going to use time blocking to focus on one thing, undistracted.

For example, you want to work on your business’s social media and

batch creation. What you’re going to do is first set the goal for how many posts you want to do, say, four. So you’ll block off time on a day that you can realistically (important word) complete this task. If you don’t wake up at the crack of dawn, don’t set your time block at 6 A. M. Being realistic with the time you have keeps you from putting it off and also allows you to be confident that you can complete the work. Now, for this example, you have 2 hours to do these four posts. That means for these two hours, you’re completely focused on these posts, with no distractions.

Photo by Rahul Chakraborty on Unsplash

Getting Rid of Distractions

When you're working and get distracted, what tends to happen? You get an email or a text, and of course, you need to answer it. You see your package has been delayed and you end up doing more online shopping. And then you end up on a different site. Until you completely lose track of time, then it’s 2 hours later and you didn’t complete your tasks for the day. So during your block of time, it’s super important to be conscious in everything you do. Some tips are to:

• Turn off your phone notifications

• Put your phone in the drawer

• Put your phone in another room

• Don't listen to music that’s too distracting

If you absolutely need to use online resources, it’s important to be diligent with yourself. For instance, with my social media post example, you may want to use Instagram for inspiration. That means you’ll have to stop yourself from scrolling aimlessly and stay on track. Distractions are natural, but it’s important to have discipline.

Putting it all together

To put it all into a few bullet points, here’s what you need to do when you’re time blocking.

1. Lay out your tasks for the day or week.

2. Prioritize all of your tasks.

3. Spread these tasks out over the course of the week, blocking off a few hours at a time.

4. FOCUS!

Remember, your time is precious. That means you need to be making the most of it and getting things done. The more you get distracted, the more it drags out and the more frustrated you get. Whatever it is you have to do, or whatever it is that you have your heart set on working towards, do it ! With determination and will, you can get it done, and making the most of your time is the start.

If you liked this post, you can find more posts to help with your creativity and productivity on our Instagram, @koloraddikt. Be sure to follow us and our DM is always open for questions.

HOW TO CHARGE MORE IN YOUR BUSINESS

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You want to make more money right? Everyone does. You might be wondering how you can raise your prices, and I'm here to help. It all comes down to three important steps that I’m about to spell out for you. Ready to make more money? Keep reading.

Determine Your Cost of Doing Business

If you’re earlier in your business or just trying to get to the next stage, you must have figured out that it’s time to charge more. It’s time to start charging premium prices. Your first order of business is to figure out how much it costs for you to do business, and also the cost of goods sold. The first step is to calculate what you should be charging for your products and services. We have a video on our instagram that details this exact process. You can watch the video by clicking here. You can use this guide from our instagram, pricing guide.

There are plenty of calculators that can be found online. Regardless, it’s time to calculate the price. Here’s an overview.

1. Calculate your Personal Expenses

2. Calculate your Business Expenses

3. Calculate your Sales Goal

4. Figure Out How Many Clients You Need to Get To Crush Your Sales Goal

5. Build Your Main Offer based on Your Sales Goal

Once you’ve built your new price, add an extra 3% for merchant fees if you're doing business online.

Why use this method to calculate your prices? Once you look at all the numbers, you’ll notice that you might actually be losing money and that’s what you don’t want. That project you did for $50? You should have charged $300. Don’t sell yourself short based on what you think people will pay you. Let your services speak for themselve. If that doesn’t make you want to change it up, I don’t know what else will. When we have this talk with clients, the response is always the same: “Holy crap, I’ve been losing money all this time!”. And they never turn back. Don’t miss out on your money. You deserve it!

Photo by Morgan Housel on Unsplash

Increase At A Regular Rate

Now let’s talk about actually raising your prices. Let’s say you have a service priced at $100, but you want to start charging $3000. The jump can seem scary, but don’t let it scare you off. You could make the jump, but that may be hard, especially from the people we’ve talked to about raising prices. One thing you can do is to increase your growth at a consistent rate, or even double it with every quote. In due time, you’ll get there. If you’re at $50, next time is $100 and so on. A steady increase is less daunting and you’ll still see results quickly. It’s up to you when you want to stop.

However, you need to make sure that your service is valuable for the price. Make sure you’re raising the price on services you know people will pay for and value. Don’t try to market that product you threw together in under 5 minutes at a large price point because you read it was a good idea. Most people we talk to are impact driven, and struggle to take that price leap. If you just want to make quick cash, this blog post isn’t the right one for you. Charging millions of dollars for something you threw together doesn’t provide value for anyone. So make sure you have the services or product to back up the price.

Make Them Feel Their Pain

It’s also important for you to establish the difference between value and price. Price is just the perceived value of a good or service. When a potential client can see the value in what it is you’re offering, they will find it worth the price. Think about how you might shop for your clothes and shoes. You buy certain brands because you find value in them, right? Or maybe you avoid big brands because you don’t see the point. That’s how you have to think about clients. They will absolutely pay for what they think is worth it.

When you connect with a potential client, you aren’t just selling to them. You’re assessing and seeing if your products and services can help them. The easiest and most effective way to do this is to just ask. Make sure that you find their pain points and allow them to sit in that pain. Bring up your price point first, then make sure you let them sit in their pain. Ask them questions like “What have you tried?” or “Have you hired someone to help before?” When you force them to think about all the things they’ve tried, their mind is going to say “Oh crap. I really do need help.” It really hits the nail on the head and shows them why they need you.

Now It’s Time

Let’s do a quick recap of what you need to do.

1. Run it through a pricing calculator to know what it costs your business to make it. 9 times out of 10, you’re losing money. Knowing what it costs to make should be your incentive to charge more.

2. Increase at a regular and comfortable rate. That rate could be 5% if that’s what you’re comfortable with. Every time you say it, increase it.

3. Make them feel their pain. Ask the questions that will make them reflect on what went wrong. Yes it’s awkward, but it’s necessary for both your and their businesses to grow.

If you liked this info, make sure to follow @koloraddikt on Instagram where we post information that will definitely help your business with pricing and more like this post and this. You can also shoot us a DM if you have extra questions! Now go make your money.

GETTING STARTED WITH TRELLO FOR BUSINESS

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Staying organized can be crucial to keep your business running smoothly and profitable. Our personal favorite tool for productivity here at Kolor Addikt is Trello. If you’re unfamiliar with Trello, Trello is an online tool that allows you to organize your task lists, resources and other key pieces of information.

Trello is an excellent tool to keep track of different aspects of your business like marketing workflows, client project management, and overall business operations tasks. If you’re struggling to stay organized, need better visibility in your business, or just desire a better, easier system to use then keep reading.

https://trello.com/guide/create-a-board

The Anatomy of Trello

Board

Trello board is inspired by the Japanese Kanban board, which features 3 columns: To Do, In Progress, and Done. The general purpose of this board is to keep track of the company workflow and what is being completed throughout a period of time. Some examples of boards we have are creative projects, marketing, and boards for individual coaching clients.

Using multiple boards gives us room to get an overhead view of different areas of Kolor Addikt without it all being jumbled together. If someone wants to review marketing assets, it will be on that board. Do yourself a favor and separate your tasks into different boards. It might sound tedious, but it allows you to separate and compartmentalize better.

Lists

Lists are the designated categories for each of your tasks. As stated above, as a beginner, the three categories are to start with To Do, In Progress, and Done. You also have the option to add more lists to your board, for instance, a backlog list for tasks that aren’t a priority but will be needed at some point in the future.

Set up your board with any categories you see fit. This can change depending on the board and what you’re using it for. For example, our Marketing board also has a list of items that need to be reviewed/edited, which is helpful when you have a team working on different tasks. In short, use the lists to supplement your specific workflow.

Cards

Cards are where the magic happens. Here, you add your tasks to the board. Within cards, you can add details like descriptions, assigning team member(s), due date, start dates and attachments like references needed to complete the task.

Need clarity on a specific task? It’s as easy as tagging another team member in a comment on a card. On our team, we also use the IN REVIEW reminder on our cards, to show when an item should be reviewed before the actual due date. There are so many different ways to change up Trello, you can tailor it completely to your own needs.

Maximize Your Boards

Now that I’ve helped you get familiar with Trello, I’m going to tell you how you can get the most out of it! Here are a few things to get the maximum productivity, whether it’s just you or if you have a team.

1. Different boards

2. One of Trello’s most convenient features is that you can make designated boards for each part of your business, like a general board, a marketing board, a client board, and any other board you need. With separate boards, it's much easier to get visibility of all the tasks in your business.

3. Use labels

4. Trello lets you create and add labels to any card within a board. They’ll show up at the top of each card which makes it easier to classify task types at first glance. We like to use them to label each card with the month of the task, and also the type of task i.e. Blog Post, IG Post..

5. Add Checklists

6. If you have specific instructions or steps for a task, add a checklist to cards. They can be as long or as short as you need them to be! Use these to make sure you don’t miss anything in your process.