How To Grow Your Business & Find Time For The Creative Work, Too

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love and you wanna squeeze it until its eyeballs almost pop out. Today’s question comes from Benj and he writes:

“Hi Marie. I love your show because it gives me so much insight.” That’s awesome. “I’m a fine artist and illustrator and looking to grow my business. Most of my time is spent responding to people, crafting email responses, social media marketing campaigns, etcetera. I’m the creator and manufacturer of my work. How do I balance creating engaging artwork whilst growing my business? I have a tough time attempting to balance the two since I’m a one man show. Thank you so much, Benj.”

Benj, fantastic question. This is something that I struggled with in my early days too. I spent many years as a one woman show and, you’re totally right, it was not easy. But I have a few strategies that made it possible for me to work in the business, meaning creating and writing and coaching, while also working on the business to grow it, and I still use them to this day. But before I share those, the first thing I want you to do is clearly define what you mean by grow your business. What exactly does growing your business look like for you?

Do you wanna bring on a virtual assistant or a junior illustrator or a team of illustrators and have a studio that produces more work? Do you wanna stay a one man shop but just get a higher volume of projects and assignments? Or is your dream to simply make a lot more money from the volume and kind of projects you already do, which will mean increasing your rates and perhaps winning bigger projects?
The more clear you are on what kind of growth you want, the easier it’s gonna be to create it. Cool? So be sure to get clear on that piece first. Now let’s move on to 2 strategies I use that might work for you too. Now, you may have heard of some of these before, but remember, there is a big difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something experientially because you do it and you practice it every single day.

With that said, strategy number one is batch your time into tasty time chunks. And, yes, I’ve made that sound as much like a sheet of cookies as possible.

Here’s what I mean by tasty time chunks, Benj. Let’s say you need to complete a new illustration, respond to emails, talk with a potential new client, and craft a week’s worth of social media. And, of course, you wanna work out and eat a good lunch too. And, yes, it all needs to get done today. Now, you can use tasty time chunks to set yourself up for massive success like this.

9am to 9:45, work out.

10am to 2pm, illustration. Meaning your phone’s on airplane mode, inbox is paused, and you’re in your creative cave.

2 to 2:30 pm, lunch. And, if you want, a quick check on emails for anything urgent.

2:30 to 3pm, new client call.

3pm to 4:30, complete social media campaign for the week. Maybe you have some fresh ideas from your potential client call.

4:30 to 5:30pm, you clear through emails.

While you might not be able to stick to that plan exactly, it’ll give you a great chance to get your most important results for the day which include working in your business, doing the actual artwork, and working on the business, marketing and talking to new clients. Now, of course, you can just wing it, which most people do, but without tasty time chunks it’s likely your day is gonna feel like an overwhelming, hot mess, kinda like this.

And that hot mess has some serious consequences. Besides feeling stressed out because you’re drowning in to do’s, which will kill your creativity and the quality of your life, haphazardly bouncing around your day is deadly for your productivity. Check this out.

With tasty time chunks your results, or what you get accomplished in that day, would be very likely to look like this. Conversely, your results without tasty time chunks would look like this.

And that’s a proven fact because research tells us that whenever you toggle back and forth between tasks all day, it adds up to a whopping 40% loss in your productivity. I use tasty time chunks every single day. So, for example, when I need to write MarieTV, I block off a set of hours and sometimes whole days just for that creative work. I don’t take meetings, I put my phone on airplane mode, and I don’t check email. Then I make time chunks in my calendar for other likeminded tasks like responding to emails, having back to back meetings, doing reading and researching, or even if I wanna get out of the house and get stuff done, I batch my errands into tasty time chunks too.

Strategy number two is leverage smart, time-saving systems. So you said you spend a lot of time responding to people on email. I bet you’re wasting a lot of time saying the same things over and over and over again. So, for example, are people sending you one off emails about projects? Are they asking about your availability, your timelines, your prices? Wanting to go back and forth a bunch of times before they actually book you for the job? If so, I want you to create a step by step process, some kind of system that people have to go through in order to work with you. So first, make sure that you’re communicating what your potential clients need to know before they reach out so that they don’t have to ask you. Maybe some things like this.

Available for new work starting April first.

Custom illustrations begin at one thousand dollars.

50% payment is due upon booking and final 50% due upon completion.

Then think about the questions you’re always asking. For instance, if you’re always saying, “Can you tell me more about your project? What’s your timeline? What’s your budget?” You can ask those exact questions in your contact form and skip a significant amount of back and forth. So you might wanna check out a resource like Gravity Forms where you can set up a series of questions on your website that someone has to answer before they contact you about work.

And if you tend to waste a lot of time scheduling meetings over email, try a free app like Assistant.to, it works wonders. Now, of course, there’s likely a point in your work process that does need to be individualized, and that’s fine. But if you wanna grow your business and still have time and energy to do the creative work too, you wanna leverage yourself and your time by creating smart, automated systems that’ll help you do more great work with a lot less effort. Now let’s wrap this up on a Tweetable.

“The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: I did not have time.”

Benj, that was my A to your Q and I really hope it helps. And if you haven’t seen our other fantastic episodes on productivity, you should watch them. I’m gonna put some links for you below.

Now I’d love to hear from you, and it’s a two parter today. First, have you ever struggled to both do your work and promote your work? What specific strategies help you strike that balance? And are you using tasty time chunks or smart, automated systems in your business? What actions will you take now that might be able to help you get more done with less effort?

As always, the best discussions happen after the episode over at the magical land of MarieForleo.com, so go there and leave a comment now.

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Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.

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