Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / A quick exercise in focus and delegation specifically for entrepreneurs who have brain clutter (like me)

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A quick exercise in focus and delegation specifically for entrepreneurs who have brain clutter (like me) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to today's show. I'm Doon Roshin, your host and hype girl.
• 0:06
  Today, I'm stepping you through a semi-quick exercise I learned recently to help me focus, prioritize, and declutter my busy brain. I hope it helps you and that you get something out of it. If you do, please think about leaving us a review or sharing this on social media. If you listen on Spotify, there is a lovely little button that says follow just underneath the artwork, which I highly recommend you press.
• 0:33
  Okay, let's get into it. This is me for Female Startup Club. Hi. I don't know if you feel the same way as me, but sometimes I am way overwhelmed with all the different things I'm meant to be doing and keeping on top of, like creating and growing this podcast, to my newsletter, to our private network hype club, the non-alcoholic wine company, and everything else that goes in between that.
• 1:01
  My guess is that I'm not alone in this. When you're at that stage of the journey, when a lot of the grind is only on you to push things forward, it can be hard to figure out what to focus your time and energy on. You get overwhelmed, you feel cluttered in the brain, and it's important to press a bit of a reset and refocus.
• 1:24
  So here's a quick exercise when it comes to focus and delegation. I say quick because this episode is a quickie, but the more time you spend figuring out these different lists I'm about to step you through, the better off you're going to be on getting clear on how to focus. A few weeks ago, we had our resident business and marketing coach, Kelsey, step us through a simple exercise that is so super useful, so I wanted to share it.
• 1:51
  We did the exercise specifically when it comes to marketing, but I took that and adapted it to my business overall and blended it with some thoughts on outsourcing and delegation. So stick with me here while I step you through it. In essence, the goal is to understand every single task, big or small, that you do and trim that list right down so you are laser focused on what your immediate goals are over the next few months.
• 2:20
  I'm sure you've already got your big picture annual goals that you're loosely working towards. And that's great. If you listen to the show, you'll know I set myself one or two big goals in a year that I work towards. Last year in 2020, it was pretty simple. I wanted to get to 100 episodes of the podcast by the end of the year. And I achieved that on the 29th of December.
• 2:41
  And this year in 2021, I haven't actually told you what my goal is, but you are going to know soon enough and I will have achieved it. But in this exercise, we're not thinking about those big picture goals. We're actually drilling down to quarterly goals. We're thinking about a three month window. So the first step is to spend some time thinking about what those three month goals are.
• 3:06
  And I mean, really think about it. Is it to hit a certain revenue target? Is it to have a thousand pre-orders before launch? Is it to grow your TikTok? Those are the kinds of things. So take a piece of paper and write out all the different goals you might have, like every single one. Make a long list.
• 3:24
  Some of mine were growing my newsletter to X amount of subscribers, growing my podcast to X amount of downloads, onboarding X amount of new members to Hype Club, growing my personal TikTok, growing the brand TikTok, getting X amount of sponsorship dollars.
• 3:42
  There are so many small goals you have within a business and your marketing. And when you actually see that whole list on paper, you're like, okay, whoa, that's a lot. I'm not sure if I can focus on everything to do it well. Let's work backwards and figure out the important stuff. And like, if you are laser focused on just a few goals, you could easily achieve them.
• 4:07
  And so once you have that long list, you can start to really consider what your priorities are. And think deep when you're doing this. What you want to do is end up circling just two or three. Keep it super clear. So you essentially have really clear goals that you can dedicate three months of laser focus to so that you actually achieve them. And make sure that everything in your marketing and your day-to-day efforts in your business point towards these goals.
• 4:36
  I am sure this is what they call laser focus, and that's what we're gonna go on here. So at this point I have my top two, and at the moment I have a bonus third one on my current list, but to give you an example,
• 4:51
  When I was looking at all the things on my list, I was also thinking about, well, where am I in a good position to excel here? Obviously, growing this podcast stood out really easily. Of course, that's where I should be focusing. It's already in motion. It's already got this incredible...
• 5:07
  foundation to go from. So of course, for me, that makes sense to be a priority. Yet when I was looking at the goal of growing Female Startup Club's branded TikTok account, it was much harder to think about putting that as a priority. So even though I really want to focus on that in the future, I was able to be kind of strict with myself and know that it's not a right now kind of thing. That one is a much bigger push. It requires a lot of time.
• 5:37
  thinking, you know, logically, thinking logically about what you should be focusing on. At this point, you've got your two or three goals. Then you need to start working on a second list. For me, this list actually took a while longer because you really need to sit and think about every single thing you're doing on a daily basis over the course of a week, like a general week.
• 6:04
  And I mean everything, even the really, really, really small admin things. Essentially a line by line breakdown of every single thing that you dedicate your precious time towards. So like, are you posting on Instagram every day?
• 6:20
  Are you doing outreach at scale to new retailers that you want to stock on your brand? Are you doing customer service? Are you replying to emails? Are you packing orders? Are you pitching journalists? Are you taking casual calls with different people to learn about stuff? Are you creating content? All of the things. What are all of the tasks you're doing over the course of the week across your different areas in the business?
• 6:47
  And then this list needs to be split up into two different columns. The first is called the what you should be doing list. And the second is called the what you should not be doing list, i.e. what you can outsource to someone else or cut altogether.
• 7:05
  And then the goal of this part is to really make sure that your list of what you should be doing actually leads towards your goals. So go through each item on your should be doing list line by line and ask yourself if this aligns with your top two or three goals. Some are really easy. You know that only you can do that specific task because it requires you to be doing it and that leads towards your goals. But some you'll also quickly realize should not be in your brain at all for right now and is adding to the unnecessary clutter.
• 7:33
  When you've established both of your should be doing list and your should not be doing list, you can start creating a third list.
• 7:40
  take the should not be doing list and pop a note next to it, whether it's still important enough to outsource or whether you should park it completely for now. It's not to say that you'll never revisit it. It's just to say, Hey, this isn't leading me towards my goals and it's not worth outsourcing and the time budget to do that. So it just needs to be taken off the list altogether for now. And that's a really good thing. And over time you actually become better at doing that. You become better at quickly identifying, Hey, you know what? This isn't,
• 8:09
  what I should be focusing on right now. This isn't in line. So when I do this exercise, casually, I come up with new tasks that I can either pass over to my VA, Jane, who is amazing, by the way, highly recommend having some support in terms of a VA. We create an SOP or a standard operating procedure, and she incorporates that into her workflow. And it's completely gone from my list.
• 8:34
  Or I cut it out altogether and let it leave my brain. It's not a priority. Simple as that. Done. The point is to cut your list down as much as possible to drill down on the key things that you should be focusing on that are in line with your core goals.
• 8:49
  So as an example, if you own an e-com brand, you might have had on your original task list that you're packing and shipping out orders yourself. But you can identify that it isn't helping you reach your goals of driving X new sales per month. It's just taking up your time and your mental energy. This probably shouldn't be on your list. Maybe that's something that you should consider outsourcing to a 3PL to handle that for you. And it doesn't need to be right now, but, you know,
• 9:17
  Moving it onto that list that you should not be doing and then kind of working towards that. Maybe you're uploading your own Instagram posts on a daily basis. While the content itself might be helping you achieve your goals of new sales, maybe the admin side of things could be delegated to a VA.
• 9:34
  Eventually, you'll have two really clear lists of the things you should be doing that propel your business forward and are in line with your goals and the things that you shouldn't be doing that aren't serving you right now. And obviously, this isn't just black and white. It's something you can iterate with ongoing because your goals might change or you're able to offload more or you're able to add more and you have more capacity. But it's a good way to get clear on what you should be focused on and clear the clutter from your head and get rid of all the other stuff.
• 10:05
  From there, and maybe this is for a whole other mini episode, you can actually start mapping out what the specific tactics are in your marketing strategy that also help you achieve your goals once you're really clear on those two or three. But that's all for today. Let me know what you think of this short and sweet episode and whether it helps you when it comes to deciding what to focus on, your top priorities, and delegating to free up some brainpower to use on the big stuff. I will catch you next week. Bye.
• 10:50
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 11:14
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 11:37
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.