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Why I Favour Long Form Content Over Social Media

Why I Favour Long Form Content Over Social Media

by | Sep 25, 2024 | Content creation

“If you aren’t having fun creating content, you’re doing it wrong.”
~ Ann Handley

I think I’m probably in the minority as a business coach who doesn’t push my clients to spend time hustling on social media. Not because I don’t value social media, I certainly do but because I value something else more.

As someone who, as a little girl, wanted to be an award winning novelist when I grew up and who has a, not so small, obsession with books, using my love of words and writing to grow my business has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my business journey.

In fact I started my “business” journey as a personal development blogger and managed to build a solid and loyal audience before I ever sold a thing. Which meant when I finally did start selling my life coaching services, it wasn’t to crickets. It was to a group of people who had been following my journey since 2011 when I decided to ditch convention and change my entire life (for the better).

After transitioning to Business Coaching back in 2017, I needed to start my whole audience from scratch (minus a few people who followed me over from my life coaching business). I knew that content was going to be a key way to do this but the internet felt like a different place. In 2011, my personal development blog had grown quickly and organically, with little effort from me but starting a new blog in 2017 felt more daunting. The internet felt more crowded and noisy but despite that, after a stuttering start, I ploughed on. By 2019 I had a solid content marketing system in place and was publishing and repurposing content on a weekly basis.

Now, my content is one of the primary ways I connect with my audience. Nearly everyone who hires me or attends one of my workshops will tell me that they’ve read my content and it played a part in them wanting to work with me. I now have a bank of over 230 long form articles. It’s worth noting that by “long form” I typically mean 1000 words plus, which means well over 230,000 words written to date. One day I hope to turn some of those words into a book!

This bank of content has proved to be invaluable to me and is why I often encourage my clients to take a similar approach. Now if you are reading this and the thought of regularly writing 1000+ words fills you with dread, then this might not be the approach for you. But if you are a fellow wordsmith and love the idea of using your writing habit to grow your business, read on for 10 reasons I favour long form content over social media.

1. You can go deep and give more value

As someone who likes to go deep into things, going deep in my content suits me well and it has the added bonus of allowing me to give more value in my marketing. If you think about it, the amount of value you can provide in a short social media post is always going to be far less than in a longer, more in depth piece of content. And the more value a reader gets, the more likely they are to consider investing in your services.

2. You can better demonstrate your expertise

The more strategy, advice and insight I can share with my readers about the struggles they face in business, the better able I am to demonstrate my expertise. The impact of this is that it cultivates trust that I have the expertise and knowledge to support my audience to get where they are trying to get to.

3. It’s a great way to share your point of view

A lot of people think that the only place to share their point of view is in the copy on their website, but I’ve built a thriving business with old and outdated web copy on my website but with new, fresh content regularly going up on my blog.

It’s in my content that I really do share my point of view on business growth, I tell people what I really think, even (and especially) if it means going against the mainstream view.

Doing this allows my right-fit clients to buy into my approach and also repels those people who aren’t a fit. Which is great because I am definitely NOT the right business coach for everyone.

4. People take their time over it

Consider for a moment how you digest content. If you are anything like me, when on a platform like Instagram, I would guess that you spend much of your time scrolling. Why? Because that’s how the platform is designed. Social media platforms are not designed for going deep, they’re designed to keep you hooked on scrolling and if you have ever got into a downward scrolling spin, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

When we digest long form content, it’s usually on a blog or in a newsletter or on a platform like Medium or Substack, all of which are designed for deeper engagement with the content. A platform like Medium for example is actually designed to minimise distractions. I know when I open up Medium or read a blog on someone’s website, I’m going to take more time over it than I would if it were a reel or post on Instagram.

5. People find it when they are searching for it

When you write longer pieces of content in the form of a blog or article, there exists the possibility that people will find it while they search online for related information and advice. This means that when someone comes across your content, they are wanting to access content just like it, rather than simply seeing your content in a social media feed, regardless. of it’s relevance.

It goes without saying that if people have an issue that they are searching online for guidance on, that they are more likely to really engage with the content they find and even invest in services associated with that content to alleviate the problem they have.

That’s definitely been the case for my clients — I have had several clients apply for coaching because they’ve come across one of my articles and then gone on to read more of my blog posts or join my list. By contrast, I almost never have people hire me because they found me on social media.

6. You own the content

When you write for your own blog or newsletter, you control the content and the audience is your audience. No external provider can come and close your website down. When you put all of your content on social media, you can lose it overnight. if Meta, for example, decides to close down or freeze your account. I’ve seen it happen and as you can imagine, getting access to someone in an organisation like Meta to help restore your account is just about impossible.

I’ve also known people whose businesses were reliant on a flow of clients that was coming from social media and then the algorithm changed and suddenly their reach plummeted and their sales dried up. I’m not usually one for fear mongering but when you put all of your intellectual property on social media, I really do think you are taking a risk.

7. It suits my personality

As a highly sensitive introvert who doesn’t like spending too much time on social media, long form reading and writing is my preference. I think it’s fair to say that many of my clients are similar. If I prefer to read more high value and informative articles outside of social media, then I’m prepared to bet that many of my ideal clients feel the same.

Plus the idea of making reels and short pithy posts for social media just doesn’t inspire me. Having said that I am hoping to branch into video later this year!

8. I can do it less often

Most of the people I know who are killing it on Instagram (and I do know a few who are) are creating reels 2–3 times a week, that includes planning the reel, recording the reel, possibly editing or redoing the reel to get it right and then publishing the reel — 2 to 3 times a week. That feels exhausting to me.

With longer form content, like for a blog or newsletter, people don’t expect to receive fresh content every day or every few days, they expect to receive it every 1–2 weeks, which means as a content creator, I don’t have to work on content every day. I have Mondays blocked off for my content and I put out a new newsletter (which I later repurpose into articles and social media posts) every few weeks, which feels super manageable considering my busy schedule.

9. It’s easier to make a long piece of content short

The other reason I love long form content is because it’s far easier to take a longer piece of content and chop it down to shorter pieces than it is to start with a short piece made for social and then try to turn it into a longer piece.

All of my long form content ends up on social media, but it’s not created for social media. It starts life as a newsletter and then later gets repurposed into a Medium article, a blog, a text post on LinkedIn, a text post on Facebook and then maybe at some point it might make its way to a carousel post on Instagram. From one long form piece of writing, I can get many more other pieces out of it.

10. When you go deep in your content, you can repurpose it for bigger things

It’s not just easier to go from long form to shorter content, it’s also much easier to go from a longer form piece of content into something even bigger like a workshop. Many of the paid workshops I’ve run or free workshops I’ve done for other people’s audiences started life as a newsletter. Because I really explore ideas in depth in my writing, I often have the basis for a 60–90 minute workshop already done.

As I write, there are even more benefits to long form content popping into my head but this piece, at over 1700 words, is already probably long enough!

If you love writing and want to harness your creativity to grow your business, you might be interested in my brand new 7-week live group program, Content that Connects, starting on September 23rd. For all the details and to sign up, head to: www.carolineleon.com/content-that-connects/

Where My Clients Come From

Where My Clients Come From

by | Aug 21, 2024 | Client Creation

“All things being equal, people will do business with — and refer business to — those people they know, like and trust.”
~ Bob Burg

I want to share with you where my coaching clients come from in the hope that it gives you some insight on where to focus your attention to get more clients into your business.

It goes without saying that the number one question I get asked by my clients is how can I get more clients? Much of what I teach and the strategies I share are designed precisely to help conscious business to answer just that.

Lately, as I’ve been pondering this age old question, I’ve been thinking a lot about my business and the steady flow of new clients I enjoy and asking myself where do my clients come from? When I consider the various ways in which people come to me, I’m able to see the fruits of my earlier business building efforts.

My hope is that in sharing these details with you, you’ll get a sense of the work you need to do now, so that you too can have a steady source of new clients coming into your business, down the road.

How I know where my clients come from

It’s important to note that I’m able to make this analysis because I ask anyone who enquires about my coaching services how they found me. If you don’t currently do this, I highly recommend you find a way to do that. I ask the question in my 1:1 coaching application form but you could just as easily ask it in your client intake form.

My referral source categories

Before we dive into the numbers I want to share with you some details about the categories of my referral sources. My recording of this data goes back to late 2021 when I switched from using gift sessions to an application form as the CTA on my coaching sales page. My analysis covers 74 applications where a referral source was indicated. These roughly break down into the following categories.

Social media — this is pretty self-explanatory. For the record I’m on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter although I’m most active on Facebook.

Google — this is where someone either googled a term like “Conscious Business Coach” and found my website or searched a topic like “Discovery calls alternative” and found one of my blog posts.

Client referral — this is where a current or former client has directly recommended me to someone.

Word of mouth — this is where someone has shared a piece of my content or talked about me in a group or shared a post about me — often I don’t know who this was or had no sight of the recommendation because I’m not in that group or I don’t know the person in question.

Colleague referral — this is where one of my colleagues has personally recommended me to someone.

Hubs — these are places that I share my teaching, knowledge or content where my ideal clients already hang out (like Tad Hargrave’s Marketing for Hippies Membership or The Focalizing Institute). There is some crossover between hubs and colleagues because for example a colleague like Tad Hargrave might personally recommend me to someone (which I count as a colleague referral) and then other people might discover me from the classes I’ve taught inside his membership program (which I would count as a hub). In essence both leads have come via Tad but for slightly different reasons, which I felt it was important to parse out.

Personal connection — This is when someone I know personally decided to hire me.

Before we dive into the numbers, I’d love you to consider which of these you think sends me the most leads and which send me the fewest. I’ll admit, I was surprised by the results the first time I did this analysis.

See below for an pie chart overview of the breakdown.

What the numbers tell me

So to present the information another way, let me list out my referral sources from top to bottom:

Colleagues send me 32.8% of all my coaching client applications.
Hubs account for 17.2% of my 1:1 applications.
Client referrals and word of mouth both account for 15.6% percent of referrals each. 31.2% in total.
Google searches accounts for 14.1% of applications.
Social Media accounts for 3.1%
And personal connections account for 1.6% (this was actually only 1 person overall).

What these numbers tell me.

People matter more than content

If I add up colleagues, client and other word of mouth referrals, this accounts for 64% of the applications I’ve had in over the few years. That means that the majority of people who decided to apply to work with me, did so because someone they trusted recommended me.

Given how much time I spend on content, that surprised me. I also wouldn’t have guessed that the majority of my client applications actually come from colleagues, some of whom do very similar work but no longer do 1:1 the way I do.

I don’t employ any particular strategies to bring this about but there are some things I do and have done, which might explain this number.

One thing that I’ve always done is to share generously about my colleague’s offers, even when they might compete with my own offerings. I do this because I want people to get access to the right resources for them, even if that means they spend their money elsewhere. I also only share products and services I truly believe in and many of my colleagues are doing amazing things in the world.

I also don’t subscribe to a scarcity mindset, I truly believe that there is enough clients for everyone and that my right-fit people will choose me because what I offer is the best fit for their needs, not because I was the only coach they knew about!

Something else I try to do is thank those colleagues and clients personally when they send people my way. If it’s a colleague who sends people regularly, I might send the occasional note to let them know that the person they recommended me to did in fact start working with me and that things are going great. If it’s a former client, I’ll reach out to say thanks and maybe even offer them a gift session as a way to say thank you and to be of support to them.

Another thing that I have done for as long as I can remember is create relationships through outreach and just simply being out in the world building and nurturing relationships. Several of the colleagues who send people my way, came as a result of a connection we made online or inside a program we were in together.

The big takeaway here is that I have invested heavily in BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS, not to gain anything, more often to be of service to others.

Content does matter

Even though personal recommendations are by far the most important source of clients for me, content does still matter, with Google searches, social media and teaching in hubs accounting for 34% of the applications that come in, my content still plays a huge part.

If we take google searches, I can tell you that around 3 or 4 articles are bringing in the majority of google leads. One in particular, has me ranking on the 1st page for the search term “discovery call alternative”, which is a piece I wrote about gift sessions way back when I had no idea about SEO or the fact that many, many coaches are looking for a more ethical approach to sales calls.

I also invested in an SEO program last year to make the most of all the content I have written but haven’t yet had the time to implement much of what I learned, so the success I’m having on Google is not coming from lots of SEO work but just my general commitment to creating content that serves my target audience and answers their most pressing questions.

Teaching in hubs has definitely been a great way for me to find new clients and a way that I really enjoy. Not only do I get to present my “content” to someone else’s audience, but they get also get to experience me in real time, which I’m sure has an impact.

Social media is having the least impact. Who knew!?! Well I did. I’ve known for sometime that people rarely say that they found me on social but I must admit, I do still find it a bit surprising that so FEW people do. Whilst I will continue to be active on social media, it does give me some comfort that my livelihood is not at the mercy of the algorithm and means that I can prioritise more enjoyable marketing activities than posting on social!

I should also note here that several people who gave a name of someone they heard about me from, also stated that they then joined my list and read my content for some time before reaching out to work with me.

So even though those personal referrals are so important, I’m confident that my content does a great job of helping people to get to know me better. I also believe that my content is one of the ways I’ve built trust with colleagues, who see what content I’m creating and come to understand my point of view and therefore feel better able to refer me.

The key takeaway here is to CREATE CONTENT THAT SERVES. Stop trying to create content that sells and instead create content that expresses your point of view and really answers the questions your potential clients are already googling.

Another takeaway here is the importance of DEMONSTRATING EXPERTISE. I think my content does a good job of this but when I teach in someone else’s group program or mastermind, I inevitably get more subscribers, sales and client applications. 

I think this is because I’m giving people a really good insight into how I work, what I stand for and the approach I take when it comes to business growth. Lots of people also give me the feedback that they like my down to earth nature, which I love hearing too!

A note on personal connections

You might be wondering why so few clients are coming from personal connections — well that’s because I live in a small town in Catalunya, Spain, where I barely speak the language and where a large proportion of the population are over 70.

That’s why all of my relationship building activities are happening online but if you live in a place where your ideal clients also live, don’t forget that building relationships via hubs and colleagues could work really well in your locality.

I’m curious to know what you make of these figures. Is there anything in here that surprises you? Is there anything you might do differently in your business as a result of reading about where my clients come from? Or do you have any questions for me? If you said yes to any of these questions, please let me know in the comments.

If you love writing and want to harness your creativity to grow your business, you might be interested in my brand new 7-week live group program, Content that Connects, starting on September 23rd. For all the details and to sign up, head to: www.carolineleon.com/content-that-connects/

5 Elements Your Freebie Needs To Be Successful

5 Elements Your Freebie Needs To Be Successful

by | Jul 9, 2024 | Ethical Marketing, Uncategorized

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”
~ Bob Burg (The Go Giver)

I want to share with you my best advice on how to make your freebie a success.

Here’s the thing. Not all freebies are created equal. You’ve no doubt experienced the disappointing freebie. The pithy PDF that promised you all the answers to your greatest struggle, only to find it didn’t contain anything you didn’t already know. If you’re anything like me nothing has you reaching for the unsubscribe button quicker.

I gave up on freebies like these many years ago after handing over my email address countless times, only to feel disappointed at first and then deeply irritated after being bombarded with sales emails thereafter. Not cool.

As you might imagine, I offer a different approach.

What I recommend to my clients instead is what I call the “Generous Freebie”. Something that is blow your socks off useful for the people who sign up for it.

What follows, are the key elements I believe any freebie worth it’s weight should include plus some examples of the types of freebie that tick all of these boxes.

1. It’s actually free

If you are going to offer something free, please don’t make it a hidden sales pitch. Don’t offer a gift, only to bombard people with sales emails afterwards.

For years now I have even been offering freebies without making people sign up to my newsletter as a prerequisite because my thinking is that it’s not really free if people have to pay with their email address but I’m changing that.

I think as long as you are super clear up front that people will be added to a mailing list and given an easy way to unsubscribe afterwards if they want and you don’t then use this as a means to send lots of sales emails, then I don’t think it’s a biggie to add people to your list. The key is to be clear and transparent.

2. It offers real value

If you are going to offer a freebie, have it be something that really is of value to your people. That means taking time to create it. If you can whip up a freebie in 5 minutes, the chances are it’s not going to have an impact.

So my advice, don’t just throw something together and slap a big promise on it.

Put in the work to actually create something that will support the recipient to make progress on the very problem you help people with.

It’s my belief that when we can offer real value to a person before they’ve spent a penny with us, they trust that we’re not just after their money and we actually care about them and their journey, which begins a relationship that in many cases will result in future sales and it’s such a lovely way to do business too!

3. It demonstrates your expertise.

Find it hard to explain what you do to prospective clients? A good freebie will show them the impact of working with you. No convincing pitch necessary.

Think of your freebie as a place to really shine. What skills and expertise do your ideal clients need and how can you bring these to the fore in your freebie.

My whole approach to business is to focus on demonstrating expertise rather than trying to manipulate and cajole people into buying from us. What could you create or share that truly demonstrates your gifts?

4. It’s generous.

Yes the clue is in the title — given I call it the generous freebie, what I’m talking about here goes above and beyond the pithy PDF. We’re talking about something that has actually taken you time to create or takes you time to deliver, something that people won’t quite believe you’re offering for free.

I’ll get into examples later on.

5. It’s visible.

It doesn’t matter how generous or valuable your freebie is if nobody knows it exists, so if you are going to take the time to create a truly generous freebie, you must also invest the time to promote it.

If you are struggling to grow your audience, a good and well promoted freebie can draw people in who otherwise wouldn’t be ready to buy. It’s a great way to take people from not knowing us to getting a better sense of who we are, what we’re about and how we can help, leading them to stick around (join our list, lean in etc).

So, now that you know what it takes to create a generous freebie, you might be wondering how on earth you’re going to package all of that into one free offering. Don’t worry, I have some examples.

The free workshop — why not create a free workshop that really helps people in your niche? You could run it a few times a year for your audience and even offer it out to other people’s audience. I’ve been teaching free classes for other people’s groups for years and they’re always a heap of fun and I nearly always get a load of new subscribers and/or clients.

The free challenge — this is one of my favourites and I’ve run several over the years, including my Outreach Challenge, My Content Challenge, My Spring Clean Your Business Challenge and many more besides. They’ve proven time and time again to help me to expand my audience, nurture those already in it and give generously to my audience.

The free session — for years, my most generous freebie was a 60 minute coaching session and when I had far less clients, I gifted these regularly. These days, I rarely offer gift sessions simply due to constraints on my diary but when I feel really inspired to, I do. Not only have these been an amazing way for me to meet and get to know people in my audience but I’ve also got lots of new clients over the years from people who loved the session enough to want to continue working with me.

And now for some examples from people I love.

My own brand designer and former client, Nathalie of Utterly Create offers people a free lite review of their brand. Something that definitely ticks all of the boxes.

My favourite copywriter, Lauren Van Mullem hosts free Craft and Copy hours, where you can hang out with her and do crafts while getting your copy questions answered.

I’m not sure he does them anymore but Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies used to offer 60 second niche reviews in his stories on Instagram. You can see the videos of these here.

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How To Create Your Ideal Business Schedule

How To Create Your Ideal Business Schedule

by | Jun 26, 2024 | Productivity, Uncategorized

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~ Annie Dillard

One of the very first things I ask all new clients about is their working schedule. More often than not, people readily admit that their schedule is all over the place and is something they know they need to work on. Even so, the vast majority of those will also admit that they feel some level of resistance when it comes to scheduling their day.

Rather than see having a schedule as liberating, they typically see it as something that will restrict their freedom and despite craving more structure, find themselves railing against having a schedule.

I totally get it. After well over a decade of working 9–5, I fully embraced not having a schedule when I first quit my career in pursuit of running my own business. For years I had to get up at 5.45am to catch a train at 7am in order to get to work for 9am, followed by feeling trapped in my place of work for the next 8 hours, only to repeat the same gruelling journey home again. I’ll admit, a schedule like that is enough to drive anyone to question their life choices, no matter how appealing the salary.

Despite this, I soon realised that having no schedule meant that I actually felt like I was either always working or never working and as a result doing very little to move my business forward. Having structure is what helped me to be able to really work when I’m working and rest when I’m resting.

The piece that people miss, however, when I bring up the topic of schedule, is the word IDEAL. Having a soul-sucking schedule is nobody’s idea of fun, but what if you could create a schedule that honours your passions and desired lifestyle and maximises your chances of creating a successful business doing work that helps you to change the world for the better? That’s what I’d like to show you how to do today.

Step 1 — identify when you don’t want to work

When designing your ideal schedule, given that life is more important than work (no matter how important your work is), I invite you to consider all of those times on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis that you DON’T want to work.

In my ideal schedule for example:

On a weekly basis, I don’t work on the weekend (Saturday and Sunday), this for me is FAMILY time. I also don’t work before 9.30am, this for me is MY time to exercise, shower and enjoy a slow and mindful breakfast.

On a daily basis, I don’t work over lunchtime, taking at least 1 hour for lunch on Mondays and Friday and on Tuesday — Thursday taking 2.5 hours as I have one or both of my sons home for lunch. I also don’t want to work beyond 6.30pm as my boys are home from school by then and that when we start family time.

I also have 2 x 30 minute breaks a day. One at 11–11.30am and one at 4.30–5.00pm.

In terms of annual holidays. I know that I want to take 2 weeks off in August for our family holiday as well as time at Christmas and Easter and I usually block these off for the year ahead. Most of the business owners I work with have never booked off their annual vacation time ahead of time. If that’s you, I highly recommend it. I typically take 7 weeks a year off.

On a monthly basis, I also usually take the 5th week of the month off on those months that have 5 weeks. This year, that’s March, May, August and November. I organise my 1:1 subscription and my group program so that I can take those off.

Now it’s your turn, when WON’T you work on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis? Once you’ve removed the times you don’t want to work, you should now have your working hours.

Mine for example are as follows:

Monday to Friday, 9.30am — 12.30pm and 3.30pm to 6.30pm.

That’s 6 hours a day, 5 days a week = 30 hours a week. 45 weeks a year.

I choose to work full-time because my boys are in school and I like bringing in a full-time income. I’ll share with you later how I bring flexibility into those full-time hours.

Step 2 — Identify what types of work you need to do

One of the most common questions I receive is what should I be doing to grow my business on a day to day basis? Of course, this will vary from business to business but I do believe there are some activities it’s important to incorporate into your weekly business schedule. These are:

  • Client hours — for me these are my 1:1 sessions and group program calls
  • Lead generation hours — these for me are my working together calls and times I am speaking or presenting to other people’s audiences. For many of my clients it might be when they are running gift sessions.
  • Admin — love it or hate it, we all have admin and inboxes to manage.
  • Content Marketing — this should include time to create, repurpose and promote your content.
  • Authentic outreach — if this isn’t something that you already do on the regular, I recommend scheduling time specifically for this activity.
  • CEO time — this is what I call the time I need to spend working “on” the business rather than “in” the business — it might be, for example, when I create the content for a new workshop or make changes to my website or create new systems or processes.

Step 3 — Identify when during your working hours you want to do each type of work

When we work on what is important. Many people will, for example, argue that the best time to do creative work is in the morning, when our brains our the freshest, but what works for one person may not work for another. Taking time to explore what feels ideal to you is key here.

To give you an example, here are some of the things I have found work best for me.

I don’t like doing video calls first thing. I like a slower start to my day so I don’t allow clients to book sessions before 11.30am.

I don’t like to do more than 4 video calls in any given day so the maximum slots you’ll ever find available on my schedule is 4 and on many days it’s far fewer than that.

I also like a slower start and end to the week so I only have one 5pm client call on a Monday and the rest of the day is dedicated to content creation (and my new art class!) and Friday’s are kept call-free and what I call my CEO day when I can catch up on client work, marketing and product and service creation.

The beauty of having Mondays and Fridays largely free of calls is that when friends or family come to visit or we want to go away for a long weekend, I can usually book these days off without too much hassle. It does mean I have a pretty intense Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but having a light Monday and Friday and the weekend off in between works well for me.

Step 4 — schedule these as recurring appointments in your calendar

It’s one thing to have your ideal schedule written down on a piece of paper and quite another to have it scheduled (and colour coded) in your online calendar. Personally, I recommend Google Calendar and here’s a screenshot of mine.

This image is my IDEAL schedule which I have as a seperate calendar inside Google calendar but my actual calendar looks pretty similar — I won’t share for confidentiality reasons.

If you are worried about having your days blocked off like this, know that you can mark appointments in Google calendar as busy or free so that you can have something showing in your calendar as for example “save for client session” but marked as free so it’s still bookable via a scheduler.

Also, your days don’t have to be as scheduled or as full as mine! Yours might look very different.

Having my schedule like this might look restrictive to some of you but actually the fact that I have a slow, leisurely start to my day, a long Spanish style lunch, morning and afternoon breaks and largely call free Mondays and Fridays is a dream for me after years of 9–5pm and hectic commutes through central London!

Step 5 — lean into your schedule with grace and compassion

Going from no schedule to following a full schedule is not something I would recommend. I’ve been working on my schedule for years and given much of my day is non-negotiable because it’s with paying clients, I have to stick to a schedule for the sake of my sanity.

If you have less client commitments right now, you’ll likely have more freedom to move things around and test and tweak your schedule to see what works and what doesn’t. It’s natural that it might take some time for you to fully lean into following your schedule so it’s important not to beat yourself up if you don’t follow it perfectly.

The most important thing is to give yourself grace and notice where you’ve scheduled to do something but consistently fail to follow through, looking at why that might be and making adjustments where necessary.

I often talk about building for growth. So even if you don’t need a schedule this defined right now, it’s easy to find yourself in a position down the line, where you’ve become a slave to your schedule. So why not design it to suit you now before you find yourself working evenings and weekends because you gave potential clients free reign to choose when worked best for them rather than you?

I’m curious, how does this land? Do you have a schedule already or has this piece given you food for thought? Feel free to hit reply and let me know.

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The 5 Strategies I Use To Beat Procrastination

The 5 Strategies I Use To Beat Procrastination

by | Jun 5, 2024 | Productivity, Uncategorized

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
~ Spanish Proverb

The dictionary definition of procrastination is this:

The action of delaying or postponing something.

If you’re anything like most business owners I know, you’ve experienced procrastination.

Most likely when you attempt to do something that will move your business forward. Common tasks that you might find yourself procrastinating on include: marketing, writing copy, creating new products and services and/or doing your outreach (cultivating connections across your network).

When we delay or postpone taking action on the very activities that will help us move our business forward, we are, in essence, sabotaging our chances of success. Overcoming procrastination, therefore, becomes an important endeavour.

Whilst I do still procrastinate from time to time, over the years I’ve learned various ways to minimise and even prevent procrastination from derailing my best efforts.

1. Pay attention

Procrastination is one of most insidious companions to our attempts at productivity. It’s pretty common for procrastination to rear its ugly head the moment we try to do something productive or creative in our business.

If we’re not careful, procrastination becomes such an embedded feature of our day to day working lives, that we don’t always notice when we’re in its grips.

Raising awareness of the fact that we’ve slipped into procrastination mode and doing what we can to understand what lies beneath it is the first step to overcoming it.

When you notice that you’re procrastinating, try reflecting on what your procrastination is trying to tell you. Is there fear around the activity you are trying to undertake? Is there a reason you’re avoiding taking action.

Acknowledge the procrastination instead of giving into the habit of it is key.

Another line of enquiry you might take is to reflect on the importance of what you are trying to do, in essence, asking yourself, what are the consequences of allowing procrastination to win here?

The key is to not let procrastination become a habit. Notice the way it shows up for you and recognise when you’re dealing with procrastination to get better at overcoming it.

2. Block out time

When we’re not yet fully booked with clients, we often have a lot of time on our hands to work on our business. This should be a blessing but more often than not it becomes fertile ground for procrastination to bloom. I wrote about the consequences of too much freedom here.

My advice is to not give yourself hours to do something. Give yourself a deadline. No more than 90 minutes in one sitting — start shorter if you are not used to time-blocking.

For example, I block out most of Monday to work on content creation but I make sure I have regular breaks and clear actions for each chunk of time. Block #1 might be dedicated to drafting my newsletter, block #2 to getting it to a final draft and block #3, sourcing a picture quote, one last proofread and sending it out.

It’s far easier to avoid procrastination if I give myself 3 x 1 hour blocks with clear goals in each than to simply give myself all morning to write a newsletter.

3. Plan ahead

Don’t sit down at your desk to work unless you know what you are going to do or you’ll waste the time you’ve allocated trying to figure out what to work on.

This is especially important if you’ve got a lot of time each day to work on a high number of things (i.e. a long to do list!). I like to give myself no more than 3 tasks to complete per day and I plan these either the night before or first thing in the morning before I get into things.

Having a huge to do list plus countless hours ahead of you to work on things is a recipe for procrastination, so avoid it by doing the thinking before you sit down to do the working.

4. Work with others

Something that has helped me massively while working on my business is co-working. I find that if left to my own devices, it’s all too easy to get distracted and fall into a pattern of procrastination but when working with others, I get so much more done.

Co-working works especially well for me when I get to declare what I’m hoping to achieve (planning ahead) in the session (blocking out time) and when I have to report back at the end of the session how I got on (accountability).

Co-working can be done in person or online. My favourite online co-working tools are: The Cabin, Flown, LWS and Focusmate.

5. Take regular breaks

If you stack blocks of working time together without breaks, it’s as good as not blocking out time at all. The key is to have full breaks between your working sessions.

My mantra when it comes to being productive in my business is to “Work when you are working and rest when you are resting.”

Problems arise when we sit at our desk and engage in procrastination activities, like scrolling on social media or mindlessly searching the internet. We come to blur the line between working and procrastinating. If I catch myself doing this I immediately stop and take a break.

Taking a break for me means stepping away from my desk and going to do something completely unrelated to work. This might be watching something on TV, reading a book or taking a short walk to clear my head.

When we don’t do this the boundaries between work and breaks become blurred, impairing our ability to focus when we’re working and impairing our ability to really switch off from work when we’re on a break.

And there you have it, 5 things I do on the regular to stay productive, avoid procrastination and ultimately have a better work-life balance.

Did you find these helpful? I’d love to know which of these you might try. If you want to let me know simply comment and tell me!

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.