Are you being intentional and strategic in planning for productivity and growth in your business? In today’s episode, Jade Boyd joins us to discuss setting goals, maintaining your business, and the three key steps for achieving business success: clarity, systems, and maintenance.
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Guest Bio:
Jade is a business + productivity coach who helps burnt out service providers simplify and scale their business so they can earn their dream income while working part-time hours. As a “Business Minimalist”, Jade believes that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. She helps her clients build custom strategies and systems that save them time while increasing their profit. Jade lives in Iowa with her husband and daughter. She spends her free time obsessing over her plants, reading 50+ books/year and doing DIY interior design projects.
Today’s episode is brought to you by my Client Hub Template inside the DIY Systems Template Shop. Business owners often have their client information spread across a variety of different tools, making it hard to access the information they need to make critical decisions. That’s why I built the Client Hub Template for Airtable, to take the guesswork out of building your own!
Find it Quickly:
00:27 – Meet Jade
1:20 – Becoming a Productivity Coach
6:10 – Balancing Business and Personal Life
7:38 – Setting Goals for 2025
18:22 – Quarterly Planning Tips
23:23 – The Importance of CEO Time
24:33 – Planning Strategies for Business Owners
26:04 – The Role of Tools in Business Planning
27:31 – Exploring ClickUp for Task Management
28:44 – Four-Part System for Business Organization
35:40 – Centralization, Organization, and Automation
39:18 – Simplification and Business Strategy
Mentioned in this Episode
Making Data-Driven Decisions in Your Business with Ally Anderson
FREE Double your Profit While Working Less Masterclass: jadeboyd.co/doubleyourprofitmasterclass
The Quarterly Reset: jadeboyd.co/quarterlyreset
Connect with Jade
Website: jadeboyd.co
Podcast: https://pod.link/1603107498
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jadeboyd.co
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the business first creatives podcast. It is the second episode of the year, and I am here with productivity coach Jade Boyd. Now I must admit inviting her on here was a little selfish. I think I need what she has to say, maybe more than the rest of you. So you’re welcome that I invited her on here to do it in a podcast format.
Jade, welcome to the podcast.
Jade: Thank you so much for having me, and also it seems really strange that this is the first time we’re ever meeting, you know, face to face, virtually, because I think our paths have crossed so many times, so I’m really excited to be here.
Colie: So guys, Jade talks a lot about goal setting and increasing productivity in your business. And also that thing that I like to harp on, which is to make sure that you have a business that’s aligned with your life and not the other way around, just to give you guys like a little sneak peek into what we’re going to be talking about today.
So first, before we jump into the conversation, why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you got into the space that you’re in now as a productivity coach?
Jade: Yes. Oh my goodness. Um, everybody’s story feels like you could go on and on and on, right? So I’ll try to keep this short, but long story short, my journey started really as an MBA student. I was studying marketing in a graduate program full time and kind of staring down, uh, The, the path of going back to a nine to five and was having all of these interviews with alumni who are in all these different, you know, niche marketing fields and trying to figure out what do I actually want to do?
Like, I love marketing. I love business, but all of these job descriptions. Sound horrible. And so that, that’s really my origin story. I was lucky enough to get an internship. So in a full year, full time, two year program, the summer between your two years, you do a business internship. And I was lucky enough to have a, an amazing experience working for Grand Canyon as a business consultant for the summer and that summer.
I like to say that my business started at the bottom of the Grand Canyon because I had this experience living there for 10 weeks. We didn’t have internet. We didn’t have cell service and I was doing work that I felt mattered a lot. The national parks have an incredible mission and to be living at one and experience that at the same time where you’re working on the business side of things was so fun and so rewarding and also felt like I had so much balance.
I mean, part of that is just disconnecting from the internet. Let’s be real. But after having that experience, I was like, wow, if something this incredible is actually possible for me. It was kind of my aha moment that You know, more than a nine to five could be possible. And so while I was there that summer, I kind of vowed to myself, like, if this is possible, then I’m going to try to figure out a way to make this happen so that I can have a life to outside of work and not do work.
That I hate to find something that does feel meaningful. Now, how that turned into productivity coaching is an even longer story. So I had a laundry list of business ideas that I was considering after I graduated and eventually was like, you know, I just need to pick one and go with it. And photography was the easiest thing to start really quickly and start making money quickly.
It was, you know, low startup costs. considerably lower than starting a coffee shop, which was another thing on my list. And that’s where I started. I very quickly realized that working with businesses was so much more fun for me than shooting weddings or, you know, seniors or portraits or newborns or anything like that.
So I niched into brand photography and along the way, my clients started asking me to help them with backend things in their business, like a smorgasbord of, can you help me create a marketing strategy? Can you help me with social media? Can you help me set up Dubsado, which. Now I’m just referring everybody to you because that was not something that I enjoyed.
Um, so really just started saying yes and doing one off projects and eventually pivoted into business and productivity coaching. So it’s, I am a productivity coach, but I feel like when you’re working with businesses, there’s so much overlapping between how to be productive. But as a business owner, Productive is measured by the bottom line, right?
Like profit and how much time you’re putting into your business and how much you’re getting paid at the end of the day, like everything that you do or cross off a list, it’s only productive if it leads to results that are meaningful for you. So I like to say that I approach business coaching with a productivity standpoint, but then also as an Enneagram, I’m just obsessed with all things.
Productivity, and it’s just part of my personality at this point. So that naturally influences the way that I teach and coach and help business owners create systems that actually work.
Colie: I will say I don’t consider myself to be a super organized person and one thing that has come out of this year and kind of migrating from only helping photographers and other creatives to set up like CRM systems and Dubsado and HoneyBook and kind of moving over to Airtable to help people manage and organize like their entire business.
I feel like I’m a business organizer now, and I never would have given myself that label. So this year was definitely, I’m taking the perspective of, I want to help you with your whole business, not just your client experience, which is like the CRM part, but like also. I might not be very organized myself, but just don’t do as I do, like do as I say,
Jade: Yeah.
Colie: get along perfectly.
I mean, I am, I am a work in progress. That is what my t shirt needs to say is that I am a work in progress when it comes to organizing and especially in the year that I’ve had. I feel like I have leaned way more on like support systems for organization and making sure that things don’t fall through the cracks.
Not really for the client portion, but like my business as a whole in terms of running it as like, you know, the CEO of my own business. So it’s just fascinating to hear how you approach your business coaching with productivity mindset. And I also did not know that you started off in photography. So see, I did not know that little tidbit about you.
Jade: Yep, I was in photography for a brief stint. I very quickly realized that I love the business side more than the client side. It’s never a good sign when you book a new client who, and then you have that feeling of like, oh man, I, I actually hope they didn’t book. Yeah.
Colie: Oh, I, yes, I totally understand that. I enjoyed the photography for a very long time, but I enjoyed the business. At least as much as I enjoyed taking the pictures. So I do feel like we’re really rare birds in the photography world, because I would say 80 to 90 percent of photographers are just absolutely obsessed with the art, with the creativity, with snapping the shutter and getting what they get.
And when it comes to like the running the business side, they’re like, okay, no, you mean, I just can’t say that I’m a photographer and give them a way to pay me. And like, that’s the end. Like marketing, communication, all of those things help you create a sustainable and profitable business. But you got to focus on that or you got to pay somebody to help you focus on it.
I mean either one works.
Jade: Yeah, I was going to say going back to you doing for your clients what you want to do for yourself. It always works better when you can just hire somebody to do it for you. That’s, that’s the only way that things really get done, right? Especially things that you’re, uh, procrastinating on,
Colie: I mean so it’s January. It’s January now when this episode is coming out. And I originally was like, Hey Jade, come on the podcast and let’s talk about setting goals. But then you said that you were not going to be setting goals for your own business in the traditional way. So let’s start with how you are going to be setting your goals for 2025.
And then we’ll kind of get into like some tips and tricks and things that other people should be thinking about, because. You know, January is like the great restart for every single business owner. No matter if you’re a photographer, a website designer, I don’t know if you sell mugs, whatever it is that you do, January is typically like a nice time to just sit and think about your business and make plans and also make plans to follow through with the plans.
Right , because it’s not just about like, I’m gonna do this, and then there’s never any accountability. So how are you planning on setting goals in your business for 2025?
Jade: Yes. So, man, where do I even start? So I think about business and this is kind of my coaching framework in the process that I go through with my clients. I think about it in three steps when it comes to setting goals and setting a direction for your business. The first step is clarity, right? You have to have some semblance of clarity and where your business is headed.
There are some seasons of life and I think this comes back to building a life First business being really honest and aware of the season of life that you’re in and how your business plays into that. There are definitely seasons of life. that it makes sense for you to set big goals for your business and go after them with all of your heart.
I truly believe that. And I’ve had seasons of my business and in my life where that’s been the case. The season that I am in right now that I’m coming to terms with is I’m a first time mom. I have a almost six month old right now who is not sleeping and limited childcare, like by choice. I really wanted to spend.
as much time as I possibly could with her during her first year before we go the daycare route. And so being honest with myself of like, okay, if I’m choosing to put these things into my schedule first, and this is the season of life that I’m in, then business is going to look a little bit different. So first step is clarity.
Again, This is that season of reflection where I think we’re naturally kind of looking back and it’s the end of the year. So we have our numbers coming in for finances and marketing and we’re just kind of looking at like, okay, what’s working and what’s not working? But also as creatives, we all have these laundry lists of business ideas, right?
It didn’t stop when I graduated and started a business. Now, the list is getting even longer and Being really honest with yourself about what matters most and choosing a direction, because if we don’t take that time to get clarity, what we end up doing is chasing one thing one day and another thing the next day and never committing to something for long enough for it to actually stick.
Because even if you launch that product or service, or do the rebrand and after a month, you’re not seeing the results, that doesn’t mean that it’s not working. And so Looking at business with that long term perspective of like, okay, what’s the bigger direction and making small pivots instead of, you know, completely changing everything every other month.
So first step is clarity. Second step is to systemize. So once you know where you’re headed, breaking that down into those smaller pieces that are less overwhelming, having that plan in place. And then systemizing, because we don’t have time to do everything from scratch every single day, you gotta get some automations, everybody’s time is limited, you have to have some systems to fall back on, on those days, like, as women, every day is not the same, we do not have the same energy levels every day, we don’t have the same level of motivation every day, we have personal struggles come up in relationships, and, you know, houses flood, natural disasters happen, and so, during periods of time, which happens no matter what, stage of life you’re in.
Life just happens. You have to have some systems to fall back on if you want to make consistent progress along the way. So step two is systems, and then step three is maintaining. So this kind of comes back to what you said about planning to have the plan. Having those periods of time set aside. And I like thinking of this in terms of like, yes, you have your annual planning session, but that’s pretty much it.
Probably not enough. You probably need at least a quarterly planning session, if not a monthly, what I call CEO days, which is just a monthly planning session. That little dedicated time where you are holding yourself accountable to stepping outside of your business for a little bit to get the bigger picture and see like, okay, what is working and not working?
How do I not burn it all down and take an incremental step in a different direction? this month. And step by step is how things happen in business. Whether we like it or not, we see those big success stories, you know, overnight success stories, which most times are not overnight stories, but you can absolutely get lucky in business.
And I wish that for all of your listeners, that they do just happen to get that great feature, or, you know, that magical door opens and it, it blows up their business in the best way, but we can’t really plan for that. And so. focusing on those small steps in the right direction. And then coming back to how this is playing into my life this year, like I said, it’s not the season for me to like 10x my business.
And so right now I’m really in a season of maintaining. And also scaling back in several areas. There’s, one offer in particular, I started like a local, group of entrepreneurs to have a co work club this year and have just decided it’s something that I love and I love those ladies so much and it’s been so fun to like grow our businesses alongside each other this year, but that’s something I’m not doing next year simply because I’m being really realistic about how much time I have and.
What matters most again, and if I’m doing the business thing, I, I only have so much energy to put into so many offers. And so for me, it looks like scaling back and focusing on the offers where I feel like I am making the highest impact. And for me, that’s through my more long term coaching program, where I’m able to work with a handful of entrepreneurs really, really deeply over the course of 12 months.
So for me, again, I’m in more of a season of maintenance and perfecting my systems and incrementally improving rather than setting grandiose goals. And I will say, this doesn’t mean that you don’t need to have an idea of where the money is going or it’s coming from. Because, yeah, financial planning and projecting is something you need to do whether you’re setting big goals or not.
If you want to run your business as a business, that’s, that’s the nature of things that you have to kind of be aware of where the money is coming from and what your expenses are month to month. So it’s not that I’m just like willy nilly showing up like, Oh, I’m just going to do whatever I want next year.
If anything, it’s making me be a lot more intentional and it’s hard. It’s hard saying no as a business owner. And. It’s hard when you have multiple passions and you want to do everything to the best of your ability. And for me, I feel like it’s almost a personal journey, that I am not looking forward to, but I am looking forward to in some ways, you know, like growing as a person and really putting my identity outside of who I am as a business owner and learning to have that identity be something that I can hold myself without.
What I do, or the results that I get, impacting how I see myself.
Colie: I feel like there’s two completely different paths and I don’t feel like I’ve ever felt this way as much as listening to you talk right now. So you had a successful business. And then you became a mom and now you’re kind of going into maintenance mode. And I’m assuming that once your kid is in daycare and you get more of your time back, you are going to be in a growth mode, whether it’s huge growth or just a little bit of growth.
But I was on the opposite side. I had a child. I was a college professor and then I took a little time off because we were doing fertility. We had moved to a new state. There was a lot of change that was going on. And then I got pregnant. And then I had my daughter and the thing was, I was like, I’m not going back to a classroom.
What am I going to do next? So I started my business at the beginning of motherhood. So my business kind of grew as my time increased. from having my daughter home with me because she was home with me for the first three years. We actually didn’t go the daycare route until she was in preschool when she was three.
But when people ask me, you know, Colie, how did you build this business? Okay. Well, my business like, you know, 12 years ago looked very different than it does now. I only had like, Five hours a week to work on my business when my child, you know, was napping or when she was in preschool. And then as we put her in more days of preschool and she went full days, that was when I turned from like baby growth into like full size scaling.
And so I just, I feel like it’s so interesting to hear you talk about things. So I want to reemphasize one more time, the three things that you said. First, you need clarity. Then you need systems and then you need. Processes to maintain while you’re going. And I will say listening audience, if you have not listened to last week’s episode with Allie Anderson, I specifically brought her back onto the podcast to tell you the five numbers that you should know from 2024 before you make any plans in 2025.
And some of them are what Jade has already said. So please go listen to that episode. If you did not listen to that episode. I want to say, I also feel like you are bringing together a lot of things that I have had on this podcast and kind of talking about them all at once. Like I’ve had Ashley Kang on here to talk about monthly CEO days.
And so I feel like if people want to explore what that is and what that means, When you should have more information in front of you and how you schedule those and what kinds of activities you do. I mean, I have that podcast episode as well. And then you mentioned quarterly planning. So I’m going to say, I do it a little differently.
And then I want to ask you to give our audience a little bit of tips towards that. I literally just got back from a working Gebhardt, who is one of my business besties. And we try to do this at least twice a year. together and individually once a quarter, if we can pull it off. But basically we go hold ourselves up in a hotel so that no one asks us what’s for dinner.
No one expects us to drive them to and from school or their volleyball games or a theater practice or whatever it is. And we just work on our business. A lot of it is planning. A lot of it is like doing things that have been on our to do list that we finally have the time and space to knock out, but like, that’s my version of quarterly planning.
And I feel like I do it so much better when I am removed from my house and I actually have the time and space to just focus on my business. and nothing else. But that’s not traditional quarterly planning. So Jade, what are some tips that you could talk about in terms of making sure that every business owner is scheduling that time to do quarterly planning?
Because of course, this is January. Again, we’re thinking about your year but you have to have incremental things that you can do in order to assess your progress and maybe make some modifications. So what do you want to say about quarterly planning? Because I know you have all of the thoughts.
Jade: Well, it’s so funny that you bring up the hotel retreat because that’s exactly what I did last weekend
Colie: Oh,
Jade: I had the same for the very first time in my business because in the past it’s been very easy for me to carve out time to focus on my own business without distractions. It’s just a matter of like telling my husband, Hey, please don’t talk to me.
We both work
Colie: leave me alone.
Jade: a whole thing. Um, this year is the first time I went to a hotel to do. It’s weird because December is like quarterly planning, but it’s also annual planning at the same time. but typically every quarter, what I do is set aside a day on my calendar. And next year, traditionally, I’ve only worked Monday through Friday, but because we’ve decided that We want to keep our daughter at home.
That’s looked like blocking out a Friday and getting additional child care in home so that I am able to like, go in the basement and shut the door for a full day and be able to go through this process. and I know that a lot of business owners are like, especially business owners who aren’t. natural planners or are not planner obsessed or don’t have that personality type like I do.
I think there’s a lot of almost annoyance of like, wow, that just seems like way too much. That’s a whole day and it takes so long and just like a lot of frustration with that. But for me, I found that Taking a step back, not only does it give you more perspective, like even going to a coffee shop, I see everything completely differently once I leave my house as somebody who spends a lot of time at home.
So if you can go to a hotel, great, a coffee shop, anywhere outside of the place where you regularly sit down and work will help you get better perspective. Sometimes I think about it like flying in an airplane when you get that 30,000 foot view, and I don’t know if I’m the only one.
Colie: No, I wrote, I wrote an email about it, Jade. I literally said, I am more productive at 36, 000 feet am anywhere else on Earth. Seriously.
Jade: me, it, it literally being in that different perspective, I think about, you know, seeing the tiny, tiny houses and just like how small my problems are and you know, like how it puts it in perspective of like, oh, now I see the big picture up here and it’s, it’s a different experience, but. Quarterly planning and getting outside of your house is kind of giving yourself that perspective of like, okay, I’m going to step out of the weeds for a minute and really look at the big picture and get a different perspective. And if you have somebody like Sabrina, who’s amazing or a business Partner or a really good friend who you can do that process with.
It’s even more powerful because other people are going to see things that you can’t either. But generally I go through those same three steps, like clarity, reflecting on what happened and what needs to change moving forward, reviewing my systems, putting that into a plan so that I know exactly how that is actually going to happen in the next 90 days.
And then maintaining, making sure that I have time set aside for my CEO days and planning for the next quarterly reset is what I call it.
Colie: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important. It’s, it’s one of those weird things that we overlook, but like you should always have your next one on the calendar when you finish one, because you, you never want to get into a situation when you’re like, Oh, I completely forgot to do quarterly planning this quarter.
Okay, now what do I do? Like, it’s always good. To be honest, I tend to do this during the summer and when you have a school age kid, you’ll understand, but when you get that school calendar and it has all of the holidays, it has when they have their, you know, games or whatever. Practices or whatever it is, like I sit down and I put all of that on my personal calendar.
And if there’s any days automatically where I know that I am not going to be able to work, I have to mark those off then and after all of that is done, that is usually when I’m looking at my calendar to try to plan when I can have these opportunities to go to a hotel by myself or. To go meet a friend, or one thing that we did this year that was a little different was, uh, me, Sabrina and Annamie Tonkin, we’re all attending a conference in Michigan.
And so we did a working weekend before the conference began. Like, we’re all going to get on a plane. We’re all going to be gone. Let’s just go a couple days early. And I mean, I got so much work done that time, but like, it’s just being aware of like when you can have time and space for these things. And when you can’t, it just makes it better.
And I feel like I’m always looking forward to it because I, I feel like if I haven’t had a chance to do like that big picture planning and I look on my calendar and I see, Oh, that weekend, that is what I’m going to be able to do it. It does really put me at ease. Like it, it. it helps me to say, Oh, well, if I get stuck in the client work or if other personal things come up, like I’m feeling ill or whatever it is, like, at least I’ve got that chunk of time where I know that I’m going to be able to evaluate my business now and where I want it to go before I make any big decisions.
Jade: Yeah, and I would say that you’re planning either way, right? Like if you take the time to plan a quarter at a time, you’re planning, but also if you don’t do that, then you’re planning the day of and being like, Oh man, by 9am today, I have to have like these outfits clean and this is the plan for the weekend.
And so I have to do X, Y, and Z. Like either way, you’re thinking through those things. It’s just way more stressful when you, you know, Delay it and force yourself even on like a weekly or daily basis to be planning one week at a time. is really, really stressful. And again, I know that people are not in the same season of life or business.
And so that’s not always possible. But if you can set aside time in whatever way that looks like to get that perspective, I see it like the best form of self care that you could give yourself as a business owner.
Colie: Yeah, that CEO time, you should put it on your calendar and like you should protect it. Now, Jade mentioned that she loves to do full CEO days. If you don’t think that you’re going to have time for that, start small. And the reason that I say that is because once it goes on your calendar, like you really should protect that, like you protect having time for your husband’s birthday.
Like you shouldn’t give it up easily. I mean, you know, if your kid gets sick, that’s one thing, but otherwise, like this is time on your schedule and you have made the plan in advance. And so you do want to make sure that you are starting small so that you can build those kinds of healthy habits. And then as time, you know, you feel like, Oh, well, that three hour chunk is not enough time.
Now I’m ready for a full day. Because again, what you said, like, when we say that we plan for a whole day, or in my case for a whole weekend, you’re like, Oh, my gosh, like, what could you possibly have to do that takes three days? Well, you’d be amazed at what you can get done in three days. I mean, yeah. So protect the time is what I’m going to say in relation to that.
Jade: Yeah. And then again, going back to having somebody do it with you, I feel like naturally that can give you a little bit more accountability so that you’re not tempted to flake out on your own business. If you have a partner who you can, like, meet at a coffee shop for four hours to go through this silently, but together so that you’re not canceling on them either.
Unfortunately, most of us have in, uh, easier time saying no to ourselves than no to other people. And so body doubling as a productivity tip to hold yourself accountable to making time for things like that.
Colie: Yeah, would be amazing. Absolutely. Okay. You know, we had to talk about tools, Jade, right? And honestly, I want to talk to you about tools because I want to make sure that everybody knows that the first step to what Jade is here talking about has nothing to do with picking a tool. Like often when people come to me, they’re like, Oh, I need client experience systems.
I’m like, okay, well, what do you want to do with your clients? And then they start talking about Dubsado or HoneyBook. And I’m like, yeah, we, we actually haven’t gotten there yet. Like, we need to talk about what you want to do with your clients and what you want your experience to look like. And then we will figure out a tool that is good for you to manage that.
But so I just want to say up front. Jade has a fantastic program that she shows you in ClickUp. It’s amazing. I took it and I can’t use it. Why? Because ClickUp does not make sense for my brain. So I kind of took like all of these things and created myself something in Airtable. And this last working weekend with Sabrina was when I actually got to put it in practice for like three days straight in focus.
And I did so many improvements to it, but. That is just the means of organizing the way that you do it. You have to think about the planning and the things that you need. And, and, you know, all of the structure comes before the tool. So for someone who’s listening and they’re like, Oh, well, I don’t even know anything about tools.
Like Jay, just give us a little plug. What is it that you love most about using ClickUp in order to keep track of your planning and your organizing and your business?
Jade: Yes. First of all, I’m just so glad that you pulled that out to the bigger picture of like, okay, let’s talk about your workflows before we choose a tool because that is so, so important. And ClickUp for me, I’ve used it for over five years now. for anybody who’s not familiar with ClickUp, it’s a task management tool that Their tagline is one app to rule them all.
And so every single year, and I would say, like, every single month at this point, they’re coming out with new features and it is a very robust tool that can do so many things in terms of workflow automations, email automations. Working with teams, my virtual assistant and podcast editor and I are all in there having conversations about podcast episodes.
There’s just so many features that you can potentially use, which when you’re first starting out, and if you’ve never used a task management software, or even something like Trello, or, you know, spreadsheets to manage your business, if that’s the level that you’re at, coming into ClickUp can feel overwhelming.
But again, going back to the system, And I’m so glad that you pointed out that like, okay, I like the system, but I built it in your Airtable because that worked
Colie: Yes! Mm
Jade: it’s on pen and paper or in ClickUp. Asana is very, very similar to, ClickUp and, you know, Airtable spreadsheets, however you want to do it.
But it’s a four part system. So first, getting clear on your goals. And these are the four categories that I think about in all areas of my business. From, you know, blocking my calendar from writing my to do list. Reflecting on my business. I look at these four categories. So goals are kind of like those one time projects or tasks that you’re doing to move your needle in a certain direction.
So it’s not something that you’re doing every single month. So you think like, Oh, to reach my goals, I need to market my business. And. Deliver a podcast every week. Like, yes, that is helping you reach your goals, but that is a marketing task. It’s not a one time project. And oftentimes we do get caught up on those repetitive tasks and are so in the like, okay, content every week, working on client stuff every week.
There’s the admin tasks that I have to stay on top of sales tax, all of those things, and then we don’t actually black out time to work on those one time projects, like creating that new course, which. For many reasons, there’s so many productivity challenges because we have mindset blocks about doing things new for the first time.
There’s a huge learning curve to doing things like that. It takes a lot of intentional time and thought to sit down and do projects like that, that are huge. They can be really intimidating. And so the first section is goals and making sure that you’re being really intentional about making time for those projects and tasks that are the one time things that are hard.
harder to prioritize unless you’re intentional about them. So that’s the first category. The second one is marketing. So again, all of those things that you’re doing to attract and book new clients. That looks different for every single business owner, but marketing is the second category. I think of it like the lever that you can pull to make money in your business.
Unavoidable. Again, it
Colie: Unavoidable.
Jade: but you have to do it as a business owner or hire somebody to do it. The third one is client work. So, Clients, customers, at some level, you are serving people who are paying you for your expertise. And so that work takes time, even if it’s passive income, that could be customer support for your courses, or that could look like building business connections if you’re running an affiliate program and making affiliate income, right?
And, Like documenting those links, whatever that looks like. And then the last category, like I mentioned, is admin. And this is kind of like the catch all. I have to do it, unfortunately, but it’s not going to move your business forward. It’s just going to keep your business from like burning to the ground.
Things like doing bookkeeping, which yes, it’s important to know your numbers and that helps you set goals, but also You have to do it like you got to pay taxes to stay in business and run a legit business, right? It’s not gonna be like, you know what if I spend 20 more hours on bookkeeping this month, then you know But it has
Colie: You’re not going to make any more money regardless of how many hours you
Jade: less money
Colie: Yes.
Jade: So those are the four categories that I have set up in ClickUp and in my course again It can be really overwhelming to jump into a tool that’s not So I try to keep my template as simple as possible, and I take my students behind the scenes and what my ClickUp space looks like, and I show them different automations and different, um, different ways that I’m utilizing ClickUp for my own business, but then keep the template really, really simple.
So that from a starting standpoint, it could be. As simple as having organized lists for your business, really, and using the views that look more like spreadsheets. And then what I suggest for people who are hopping into ClickUp is to iteratively get more advanced as you get more comfortable with the tool.
but also know thyself. And if pen and paper is what works for
Colie: for you. Mm hmm.
Jade: I’m not saying burn your business down and, you know, try to fit into this tool that’s not working for you. but you can’t get away from systems. Tools are flexible. Systems,
Colie: Or not.
Jade: most likely not.
Colie: Yes, and I will also say it’s not that I am paper adverse, although I write down random shit on many different pieces of paper and they end up everywhere. So I will say listening audience, if you are a paper type of girl, I just want you to put it in one spot. I want it to be a planner where you can’t rip pages out or I want it to be like if you’re writing on individual pages that you are somehow.
Filing them and organizing them in a way. Cause it’s the same thing when I talk about content creation. Now I’m like, I put it all in air table so that I don’t have random post its all over my desk. And I’m constantly trying to remember, Oh, where’s that post it where I had that really good idea from like two weeks ago, electronically organizing the four categories that Jade just talked about is awesome, but you can still start on pen and paper or even a simple spreadsheet and go from there.
Start simple. You just need to start.
Jade: Yep. 100%.
Colie: And I think it’s weird. Like I was listening to you talk and then I was kind of remembering what your template looked like in ClickUp. And while there was a lot of space between me going through the program and actually figuring out how to create this thing in Airtable that I wanted, I do now, I do now find myself, I’m like, Oh, like I have a hub or a table where it is kind of like a spreadsheet.
And every time I have what I’m calling a task, I’m putting it in there, but the labels. our admin, client work, content creation and marketing. I mean, and then I called it like project work. So I really did think about your four categories and while everything’s getting dumped into one spreadsheet, I am using views.
So if like, let’s say that I’m in a client work mode and I want to make sure that, you know, all of my clients have been taken care of for, you know, a specific amount of time, I can look at the view that only filters and shows me the outstanding tasks. for my client work. And then instead of crossing them off a list, I just click a checkbox when they’re done.
And then I can have other things happen. Like this weekend I set up to where I can actually send my clients progress reports when I write myself a progress report inside of my productivity and task management system, which I was like, Oh my gosh, this is a game changer. Like this right here, this is going to save me extra steps and keeping my clients apprised of where I am inside of their setup.
Jade: Yeah, I like to say that having a podcast is probably the one thing that I can’t get away with pen and paper because I have no idea how I would manage the, I think it’s like 32 something subtasks for every single episode between me and the two other people who are working on podcast episodes. And if I was trying to do that with pen and paper and like voxer messaging, I think I would go.
Crazy. And so
Colie: I just had a mini heart attack.
Jade: yeah, I, I do think that you can, especially when you’re starting out in business, if you don’t have complicated workflows to set up and you don’t really need a lot of automations to stay on top of things, but I think every business owner is going to reach that point at some point where they’re like, wow, I, I cannot do everything on this list and I can’t keep on top of it.
And it gets, it gets more complicated trying to do it without a tool like ClickUp or Asana or Airtable at some point.
Colie: Well, I’ve got these three things that I think of when it comes to creating systems for your business, for your life, whatever it is. The first thing is centralization. The second thing is organization. And then the third thing is automation. And so when I am talking about creating client experience systems in your business, most people automatically jump to the automation.
Oh, okay. What can we automate? And I’m like, no, first I need to give you one place to go for everything. Because as business owners, we waste money. So much time, like, for example, running our podcast, if you’re sending emails to your podcast team in Gmail, but yet you guys have all of your podcast notes in some random Google doc, and then you guys are doing scheduling and Calendly, that’s 3 different places where you have information related to the podcast.
And we haven’t even gotten to the tasks and the subtasks. So the 1st thing is finding 1 place that you can centralize. And then once everything is in that one place, you have to figure out how to organize it so that you’re not constantly using a search function or reading through and scrolling through everything to find what you need.
And then comes the automation where you’re like, okay, well, we seem to be doing this over and over again. Do I really need to do that? Like, is this something that I need to tell my team member on every single episode? Is there a way that I can just get it to where it tells them for me? That’s when the robots come in handy.
Yeah.
Jade: We just got a robot vacuum completely side, like tangent here, but we love him so much.
Colie: I mean, but even that is automation because, I mean, I don’t use one anymore, but we had one when Chloe was little. And so you program the robot to start vacuuming your house at certain times of the day. So, I mean, even that is like automation and outsourcing, which is magical.
Jade: Yes. And I love what you said about centralizing. And I think that also comes back to business strategy. Like I said, um, I’m a business coach and a productivity coach, and I just don’t think that you can separate the two because from a business perspective, if we’re measuring productivity in time and profit, the more like services and offerings you have, and the more diverse your workflows are, the harder it becomes to find a tool that can do everything that you want it to do and do those things well without being kind of like, janky and really confusing to set up either or, you know, for yourself, but also confusing for your clients to navigate if it’s not truly built for that product or service.
And so from a productivity standpoint, tying it back to the business strategy, that is what I focus on from a business perspective, really. niching down, which, you know,
Colie: I
Jade: has its connotations. Yeah. Like figuring out what is that one thing, that one product or service, or that signature program that you want to sell 80 percent of the time that you can invest the time and effort in, especially if your time is limited and you can’t do a hundred percent in 10 different services.
What is that one thing that you can focus on? Knowing that on the backend, your clients are going to ask you to do so many other things for them. And it’s not a bad thing to say, yes, repeat clients. are like the bread and butter of marketing. And if you can get to that point, that is amazing. But at the same time, if you’re starting from scratch and you are scrambling to get new clients or you’re not profitable and you’re wasting a lot of time, it might be because you’re trying to do too many things at the same time.
And so something like this, even as simple as like finding a tool to organize your stuff in, to keep things in one place, if you’re not Tie like tied in on the business strategy side of things and streamline their first streamlining your systems becomes infinitely harder.
Colie: All right, Jade. I feel like we’ve talked about so much, and the one thing that we didn’t really hit is simplification. I mean, I feel like we could go on, like, random tangents with that. And maybe I’ll just have you back on the podcast to talk about that at a different time. I feel like January is a good time to, like, Talk about simplification.
And I will just say, going off of what Jade said just a moment ago, before you are like, Ooh, January, new year, new me, do not create five new offers and try to expand before you look at what you did in 2024 and first try to simplify, make those hard decisions as to what worked for you and what didn’t. And letting go.
of offers that are not serving you, that didn’t serve you in the past and are definitely not going to serve you, you know, in your new season of life. I do encourage all of us to like. ask those hard questions. Like, is this really an offer that you need to hold on to? Is it really making you profit? Is it really making you happy?
Is it really making you a good return on your investment? And so I feel like you need to have like those feelings about things before you actually sit down and try to make some like bigger picture decisions for your business going forward for the rest of 2025.
Jade: 100%. And I like going into that planning session, like for a month before I took that hotel retreat, I was just dumping ideas as I was having those feelings because recency bias always comes in where you have one bad day and you’re like, I hate this
Colie: I hate it. Burn it down.
Jade: And then you have a good day and you’re like, you know what?
Everything is great. I just love what I do. And neither of those are true. And so it’s good to kind of be tracking over at least a month period. Or keep a note on your phone or in your planner, whatever centralized place that you have to be tracking those things as they happen so that you’re not ending the year thinking like whatever happened in December is how you’re feeling about your business the whole year, because that’s probably not the case.
Colie: Yes. All right, Jade. I feel like you and I could just talk about this, these subjects forever, but is there one piece of like closing advice that you want to give the listeners as they approach their first planning session of 2025?
2025?
Jade: goals versus systems. I told you this when you originally asked me to come on. I feel like my mantra has been, um, like James Clear in my mind systems, not goals. I think going into 2025, that’s where I’m at. But again, you can’t get away from systems as a business owner. Your business will not outgrow the health and the streamlinedness, I don’t know what word you want to call that, of your systems.
And so for the business owner who is looking towards 2025 and maybe has big goals, maybe is just maintaining, I think that we all need to take a step back and look at our systems and, focus on incremental improvement, which is not the shiny thing or exciting thing that you’re going to post about of like, Oh, I automated one email today and it’s going to save me an hour this year, right?
Like it’s small steps and they’re not the most exciting projects to work on. And if you’re not like us and love the systems things and like, Ooh, what can I experiment with next? It can feel like really hard work, but. Those implications and the benefit that you get from that long term when those things are working again and again and again in your favor, it creates that snowballing effect.
And so, this is probably biased because of where I’m personally at, but my closing advice would be focus on your systems and the goals will come. Like, if your systems are tied in, it’s only a matter of time. Stick with it.
Colie: Yes, I mean, and I love what you said about incremental changes because incremental changes are not sexy, but incremental changes are what actually give you the biggest wins in your business when it comes to the admin, the projects, the client work, the categories that you’ve already discussed with us here today.
Jade. Okay. This is our first time meeting face to face and it will not be our last, but thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. This was an amazing conversation. I never thought talking about productivity would make me so happy.
Jade: Well, I’m so happy to be here and I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I’m just here to spread the productivity, gospel, I guess. Thanks.
Colie: There you go. All right, everyone. I sincerely hope that if you do nothing else from this conversation that Jade and I’ve had today, I would like for you to sit down, get your calendar and make a plan for your first planning session for 2025. There are a few more episodes inside of this series going forward.
So please come back and listen next week. All right, that’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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