Productivity Tech Solutions and Bonus Tips for Work From Home Professionals

Hey friend, are you struggling to stay focused while working from home? It can be a challenge, but one that I know you can overcome. This episode will help you become more productive in your business while working from home.

Here are some key things we cover and resources for you to check out.

Asana - https://dash.partnerstack.com/invite/a2f750fc99de41578d130a9962a51e3b

Zapier - www.zapier.com

30 day free trial of Kajabi - https://app.kajabi.com/r/zt3f7AsH/t/briosbr8Free download solopreneur success sheet

Darren Hardy - The Compound Effect

hey PIE tribe buckle up for a new episode of the passive income examiner. The number one podcast for budding entrepreneurs and business owners, looking to diversify their income with passive strategies. Welcome to season two. Focus on building successful online businesses with evergreen marketing solutions. I'm your host Lindsay Sutherland. Thanks for joining me.

What's up pie tribe. Welcome back to another episode of the passive income examiner. Can you believe this is episode 90? Woo. That means we're only 10 episodes away from episode 100 and I'm feeling very excited about this. And I wanna run a contest and give away some prizes because you know, it's in celebration of a hundred episodes. It's been a lot of fun and I'm excited and I wanna give away some pretty cool stuff. So here's, what's up. Let's be friends on Instagram, head over to Instagram and hook it up, follow me at the passive income examiner and then send me a message. And if you want, I'll follow you back, say follow me back and I'll follow you back. If you have a brand or something like that, and you wanna grow your brand. I'm happy to follow you back. Also share one of my posts and tag me.

I've got tons of content on there, I've got reels that are informative. I've got episode highlights that are pretty cool and, you know, feature some of the best episodes that we've had. So head over there, I've got mindset tips. I got it all going on on Instagram. So head over there, follow the passive income examiner on Instagram, share a post and tag me when you tag me, you'll be entered to win. And here's what you get to win drum roll BA all right, enough with the theatrics , uh, you will be entered to win a strategy session. Now, for those of you that are beginners, this is really great because we could do all about clarity. This is one of my favorite things to do with people who feel a little overwhelmed and not sure what direction to choose what's right for them. And there's so much information out there pulling you in every direction.

We bring it all together. And I am really good at helping you get clear on what's inside of you so that you have direction and that you can start taking action. That is inspired because heaven knows when we take inspired action. It is so much more effective than anything else. Number two, for those of you who are more advanced and want to dive into some more strategy on content or marketing strategy, boom, you get it a full on strategy session where we will map out the next steps that you need to take in your business to blow it up. All right. So friends, it doesn't matter if you're just getting started or if you've been at this for a while, either way, this is something that you're gonna want. And I am going to give everybody who shares my content and tags me on Instagram, a strategy session, every single one.

So, oh my gosh. I just said that out loud. I didn't even plan on that, but that's how generous I'm feeling right now. And I want you to take advantage of it. So head over to Instagram, follow me and share something there. Tag me at the passive income examiner. Heck even DM me. Let's be friends and mean it. And then, uh, we'll set up your strategy session. All right, cool. Now moving on to episode 90 today, we're getting into the meat and potatoes of productivity. And let me tell you, I think this is the number one thing that home based business owners struggle with. So first we're gonna dive into some tech that will help you be productive. Obviously it's Tuesday. That means it's tech tip Tuesday, but we are gonna go beyond the tech and I have a download. That's gonna help you be more productive and a couple of habit suggestions that will also help.

So this episode has everything from contest and giveaways, all the way to strategy. so stick around to the end, cuz you're gonna wanna be here for the whole thing. All right. So when it comes to being a home based business owner and you're working for yourself at home, let's talk about mindset first. You know what? I'm gonna reverse this. And I know I'm, I'm feeling a little squirrly today. Can you feel it? I'm excited. I had a really awesome cup of coffee outside. I got to write in my journal and read. I had the most relaxing and fruitful morning, just such a beautiful morning. And I think that is totally coming through here on this episode. So I'm sharing all of that good energy with you guys. All right. So number one, productivity cannot be a thing in your life if you don't intend it.

I mean, this has to be the number one. I don't care how much technology you have, cuz if you have all the tech in the world, but you don't use it, what good is it right? If you have all the downloads in the world, what good are they? If you don't use 'em number one show up for yourself. This is by far. The hardest thing to do is the mindset piece. I know because on days when I have a podcast episode to schedule like maybe a guest is coming on or I'm a guest on someone's show and it's scheduled at six in the morning, cuz maybe they're in, you know, the other side of the world and this is the best time that we can connect by golly, I get up and I get ready and I show up for that. But when it comes to myself, getting up early and doing it for me, it's so much harder, right?

We all know, but I will tell you this. And this was one of my fears when I started working for myself was that I was gonna sleep in a lot. And I'm, I'm a morning person in general, but what can happen is our cycles get messed up our sleep cycles. So we might be pushing through on a deadline where we're staying up till midnight crunching and trying to get things done. We're pushing ourselves. Our eyeballs are being held open with toothpicks. You get me and we tell ourself the next day, oh, I stayed up late. I should just sleep in. I should just catch up on those Zs. I know I'll be more productive if I do, but let me ask you a question and you need to ask yourself this. When you have a regular job and you stay up all night for who knows what reason your kid is sick, you just couldn't sleep.

You were in a good book. You want to binge watched something on Netflix. It doesn't matter what the reason is. You stay up all night and you have to get up and get to work the next day. Guess what you do, you get up and get to work the next day. Right? So why is it any different when we're entrepreneurs, when we're working from home? It's not, we have to tell ourselves it is a non-negotiable get up. Now I will say there is one good thing that saves my butt every morning is I take my son to the bus. So by that time I do have to get up to take him to the bus. Imagine if you had a half, two situation and if you can't imagine it and you can't hold yourself accountable, then schedule something so that, you know, you have to get up and get your day started.

That's my suggestion. all right. The mindset piece is so big. It's the like number one thing. If you can't do that, then the rest of this episode is pretty much pointless. all right, everybody can do it. I have faith in you. You can do it. Okay. So let's get into some of the tech. So here are some high level tech that you need. One is a scheduler. I will tell you, I live by my scheduler. It's Calendarly, which is great. I now pay for the upgraded version, which I didn't always do, but when it comes to scheduling guests, I want them on one calendar. And then I have client calls on another calendar. And then I also block off time for myself and my business. I am telling you if it's not in my calendar, it is not getting done. Like it's not going to happen.

As far as like events go, not tasks. I don't, I don't, I'm not that crazy with my calendar that I put every task in my calendar. I do map that out. And I'm gonna talk about that in just a, a little bit here. But, um, as long as I have a spot where all of the events can live, I'd no longer double book myself. When I am talking to somebody in a different time zone, I don't get it messed up because heaven knows I will miscalculate or so that actually did happen to me. And that's when I really got serious about using my scheduler for everything. Uh, I had scheduled a call with a client, a potential client who was in Australia and we were going back and forth talking about the times that we were gonna meet up. And I put it in my calendar for that time, because I was thinking Pacific time zone, where I'm at.

She was thinking her time zone. And next thing you know, I show up, she didn't, she's not there she goes. Yeah, it happened yesterday. I'm like, oh my stars, because she's a day ahead. see. I don't want that to ever happen again, ever. So I immediately used my calendar, my Calendarly. And then that was that done. Any online business who connects with people outside of your zone, you need that. And even if you use it for people within your zone, your radius, your timeframe, it's a lifesaver. Okay. Zapier, Zapier is something that I recently learned about and Holysmokes when it comes to taking care of a lot of that little tedious stuff that we often end up doing. When, for example, two tech, two technology, things that we might have that don't talk to each other Zappier is the go between that makes that communication happen.

So for example, I use Kajabi for my CRM, which is a customer retention management tool, customer tool, whatever you call it. I put my customers there, email management. It's also that that's Kajabi. Then I have my website on Ws. Now, when people sign up for my newsletter on Ws, I was manually having to put them in to Kajabi. And that was only until I discovered Zappier Zappier. Now,when somebody signs up for my newsletter on my website, it automatically adds them to Kajabi for me. Haha. It's like magic, but there's so much that it can do. And I still only have the free version I'm telling you. It is great. You get so much out of it for free. It's pretty cool. Um, I use it now for other things too. And there's even other times where I come up and I'm like, oh, I wonder if zappier can do that.

And then it does. It's amazing. Like it blows my mind how many integrations it has. It's pretty cool. Okay. The third one is a task organizer. Now I already talked about a scheduler and that kind of manages events, but task organizer. Now this is a twofer. This is a twofer to be productive. You have to organize your tasks and everybody kind of already has their own little system. I'll tell you what my system has been thinking back to my management days. I had a piece of paper on my desk, multiple papers, and I would write all over them all over them. It was embarrassing. It was really messy, but I was moving at like a mock speed all the time. I wrote on whatever the heck was in front of me at that moment. so, um, that habit has progressed into all these other areas of my life.

And now that I'm working from home, I started having the same thing and then my desk was getting cluttered with all these random notes. And a lot of these notes are super awesome ideas. And if I don't put them in a, in an organized system, then guess what happens? I forget about them or I carry this is the worst part carry, forgetting about them is one thing. But carrying them around in my brain is the worst because it feels like constant pressure. Like I have so much to do. And really all that's happening is a lot of this doesn't have to get done right now, but because I don't wanna forget it, I'm putting all that mental stress on myself and it's actually making me less productive on the things that I need to get done. Like I mentally space out because my brain can't hold any more information.

So this is why a task system is so good. And there are so many good task systems out there. Personally. I like Asana, but there's Monday there's um, I mean Monday is way, much more robust. It's a whole project management system there there's let me think. To-do list. Tick. Tick is one I've known about that's just task oriented. There's just oodles and oodles of them. I recommend you find one that you like. And the reason I recommend finding it in a text space and not the written space for all of those of you that are listening, going like, well, I just hate putting it in my phone. I'd just much rather write I'm a paper person. I get it cuz I am too. But when you have it in your phone, it will remind you. And that's the nice thing. When you have it in the app.

I love that about Asana because I can schedule, I can create whole projects, my big ideas, and then I can list out these tasks and I can assign a due date and all of a sudden it's gonna come up and remind me, oh yeah, I had this idea. I could go do that. Or I reset the date if I'm not ready. But the point is it isn't forgotten. I don't have to carry it around with me mentally and stress over remembering it because I know the system will remind me. And lastly, paper, doesn't jump up and slap you in the face and say, Hey, look at me, right? So if you write it on a piece of paper and you put that paper somewhere or you lose it, guess what happens? Boom, it's gone. Now, this is what I'm talking about for big tasks, ongoing projects, that kind of thing for your day to day, every minute of your day.

I like paper. I do like paper for that. And this is where this free download comes in. All right, this is listed on my website and I'm gonna link it down below. It is called the solopreneur success sheet. This is a document that I created that eliminates it completely eliminates the need for, uh, day planners. Now, one thing that I noticed is that I was carrying around day planners and I tried a lot of different planners. If you go back to some of my episodes, you'll even hear me. I touted about one that I just thought was so great. I, I can't find it right now. It's in my office. somewhere because I don't use it because it was too big and bulky. And I thought at the time, oh, if I got something big and bulky, I can't possibly forget about it. I'll have to take it with me everywhere.

But the truth is I didn't take it with me. Same with, um, Brendan Burchard's book. I love the ideas in the book. I just don't use it because it it's something that requires me opening it every day, looking at it and I won't do it. I just know. I mean all the good things, but I don't do it now for those of you who use it and you've trained yourself, good for you. That is. But for anybody else, who's like me. Who's a paper person, but just won't stick to using the book, consider this option, the solar entrepreneur success sheet. So it is designed to help you track your daily and weekly tasks goals and set up your tomorrow, all on one piece of paper. So eliminate bulky journals and planners that just become paper weights and stay focused one page at a time. So basically I, I fold the paper up and I put it in my laptop and I can take it with me cuz I always will take my laptop with me or my purse.

And then the other benefit is each day you just transfer over what you didn't get done. You just transferred over to the next page. And it's awesome because it helps you keep it top of mind. So you can get that in the link below. It's also on my website under resources, freebies, I should say it's under freebie's. Um, so definitely feel free to go check that out if that's something that lights you up. All right. So back to tech. So one other thing that we wanna talk about when, when we're talking about productivity is an email management system. Now again, a lot of options here and I didn't wanna get too specific on different things, but if you're an online business owner, this is a requirement. I mean, this is also one that, let me just go on a little bunny trail and say, don't just get the cheap version.

You will regret it. Especially if your landing pages are built into that. So I did this, I did this where I went with a recommendation. Not that it was a bad recommendation, the person I got the recommendation from uses the system. So it works for her. Um, and that is get response. I personally was not a fan of get response. I don't like their checkout system. I didn't like their user friendly interface from my perspective. And I really stuck with it a long time trying to make it work because I'm pretty determined like that. But it just seemed like every time I needed help their help, people were gone like off or, um, they were unhelpful for LA. It was just not helpful. So what I had done though is I had already set up so many of my podcast episodes to drive traffic to these landing pages.

And I was building my list. It was working out great. And then, oh man, I changed. I had to change. I just had to cause I couldn't keep going. So invest in a program that you love. That's what I'm telling you to do. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's Kajabi, if it's Kartra, if it's Sam cart, if it's convert kit, there are so many of them out there. I recommend getting, going through them, looking at what they offer. Here's some things to be looking for. You're gonna wanna be able to do landing pages because the last thing you want is to have to use one tech for landing pages and another tech for email and, and database management. You want it to be able to do tags. You wanna be able to segment your list. You want it to be able to send cute emails.

I will tell you that is something that, um, a lot of people they get into doing it. And then they're like, man, these are just so boring the templates. So you wanna be able to know what it's going to look like for your end user. And you wanna know that it's easy for you. Now, the only way to know if it's easy for you is to sign up for a free trial and go try it out or watch a bunch of tutorials on YouTube. So that's my recommendation of things to look for when you're exploring that. But invest in this do do spend the money. This is the one tech I will say. If your business is gonna be online business, bite the bullet and spend the money on good software for your email management system, from the beginning so that you don't have to change later.

I really, really can't stress that enough. And that's why I use Kajabi because after I was on get response, I had an interview, which you can listen to the episode with, um, Shane Sams, who's got membership mastery and he was like, hands down. I'm about Kajabi. And so I checked it out. He wasn't the only person I knew using Kajabi. I knew quite a few, quite a few people that were talking about it and raving about it. And you know what, after using it now for a while, I I'll tell you I've been exploring other options. Not because I wanna switch, but because I'm really curious. The biggest objection I hear with Kajabi is, um, the price, the initial cost is more than people want to spend. But when you look at things like convert kit or, um, Sam cart or any of these, even Kartra when your list gets bigger, it, it actually ends up costing sometimes more than Kajabi, but Kajabi doesn't charge you for a big list.

They charge you by the products that you offer and by the pipelines. So, you know, just do your research and really think big don't think small when it comes to choosing your email management system, I cannot express that enough. Okay. Oh, and by the way, if you want to a 30 day free trial instead of a seven day free trial on Kajabi, click the link below to access your 30 day free trial with Kajabi. All right. That was a crash course in productivity. Now I wanna give you one little strategy that I learned from Darren Hardy, who, by the way, wrote the book, the compound effect. If you haven't read that book, you must put that on your list of books to read or listen to. It is a game changer. When it comes to productivity, he is the productivity master. Now that book is filled with suggestions, but this is one that I used that immensely changed my productivity habits forever.

And I'm gonna give it to you right now. Okay. It's really simple. And by the way, this goes back to the productivity sheet. The so entrepreneur success sheet, you can use this methodology. I'm about to tell you with that sheet, if you don't, you know, if you want to use that as a guideline, okay. Number one, do a brain dump, number one, do a brain dump. That means take all of the ideas that are in your head and throw 'em out on a piece of paper. Actually, I just did this again yesterday. I do this often, but I organized a piece of paper and on the left it said daily, the middle, it says weekly. And then on the right, it says projects. And I just brain dumped everything that was in my head that I needed to get out. And then I put it under the right classification, whether I need to do it every day, do it every week.

Or if it's a project that I can work on because as an entrepreneur, as a, as a creative soul, because that's what I believe most entrepreneurs are. I have a challenge where I am really good at coming up with ideas and starting them. But sometimes I'm not always good at finishing. So I have made it my mission to go through my projects one at a time. And I am not allowed to move on to the next one until this one is done, but that doesn't stop me from coming up with ideas. So I need a place to put them and that's where a sauna comes in. So I got it out. All of my brain, I put it on paper. Then I go into as sauna and I schedule it out as a project to remind me later of what I want to do. So this is a very good organization tip that I learned years ago from Darren.

He talked about this brain dump. What is the benefit of the brain dump? Well, the benefit is that when you're head is face is empty, you can think more clearly and focus on the things that are in front of you rather than feeling like you're hurting cats and those cats being your thoughts. And you're trying to do this and you're trying to do that. Or you pick up your phone and the next thing you know, you're on Facebook scrolling and you don't know why you picked your phone up to begin with. Oh yeah. It's because I was trying to look up blah, blah, blah, in my email. Right? Like we do that all the time. That mindlessness that happens when our brain is cluttered. So this brain dump is so beneficial to getting all of that out of your brain. Okay. The other thing that he does after he does the brain dump is he organizes his day by time.

And again, you'll see this on the solar entrepreneur success sheet, but this is what I do. I organize it by time. I say, okay, these are the things I wanna get done today. I'm gonna put these into this block, that block, that block, that block that way, while I'm going through my day, I can periodically check in and say, okay, where am I in this process? Did I get these things done? Did I get that done? Oops, I didn't get this done. I need to move it down here. So I'm monitoring my day and I also hold myself accountable to getting things done. Now, one thing he talked about, and this was a pretty interesting statistic. He said, when you get interrupted, it takes the human on average 11 minutes to refocus. That's a lot. If you think about how many times you get distracted throughout the day, trying to bring it back and get refocused.

Oh my stars. It's a lot of time wasted just getting yourself refocused. So by choosing one activity and being intentional saying, I'm giving myself 90 minutes to focus on this thing or 30 minutes, or from this time to this time, here's another great strategy I use. If I have a huge project and I wanna work on it a little bit. Each day, I dedicate 30 minutes or an hour to that project. And I get, as far as I get, right. I doesn't matter if I get it done. It just matters that I worked on it and I feel so good and so productive when I do that. So listen, I hope this episode was really beneficial. It went on much longer than I expected. Just was looking to give you some strategies and some tips. I will link all of those things in the show notes that we talked about. The so entrepreneur success sheet, the Kajabi 30 day trial, as well as a list of other tech that we talked about in here, just to give you, so you have a quick resource for that. Then I want you to head over to Instagram and let's be friends connect with me and share one of my posts to be entered, to win a free strategy session, give away for the hundred episode hundredth episode contest. Oh my gosh. I can't believe it is this so exciting. All right, then that's it for this episode five bye for now,