I'm Jen and I run my own business and YouTube channel and these are my
following productivity hacks to help save you more time if you're an
entrepreneur you want to start your own business and you feel like you don't
have any time let me tell you you actually do and these are the tips that
are gonna help you get in those extra minutes in your day I'm gonna share the
following tips this video is brought to you by Dashlane, stay tuned until later
in the video for more about that and let's go first back to my office so we
can tell you all the productivity hacks a little bit easier. Welcome back to New
York this is not my office but rather a beautiful mural right nearby oftentimes
the streets of New York are my office when it comes to doing video so found
this awesome mural I've actually featured it once before if you can name
that video, wow I am impressed but anyways let's get back into it... okay
so tip number one is saying no this sounds like the easiest thing ever but
saying no to projects that might come your way but might not be the perfect
fit is one of the hardest things especially when you're starting out on
your entrepreneurial journey one of my favorite Youtubers Matt D'avella just did
an entire video about this and Matt talks a lot about minimalism and you
know limiting things that might be distracting in general whether it be
digitally or physically in your life and I think it's so important to say no. I
could do a whole video about it I could talk for hours about it but the point is
if an opportunity is not worth your time you gotta say no especially in the
beginning when you are used to saying yes to a lot of different things that
come your way you get to a point and there's a turning point for everyone at
a different time for everyone when you basically realize okay this would be
great exposure maybe it's a good clip but if in the end it's not really worth
the amount of time I'd be putting into it for the amount of money I'd be
getting out of it then it's a distraction it's not good for the long
term this is you know it totally depends on the person your financial situation
at the time everything like that one of the turning points in my career was
figuring out what is my rate so creating an actual rate card that you stick to
and saying okay if this is worth so many hours of
my time which equals $500 I am NOT going to do any deals that are less than $500
and figuring that out for yourself whatever that number is whatever that
amount of hours is is so crucial to make sure that you are not wasting your time
doing projects that are not worth it so it depends on the person it depends on
the situation but definitely do that math figure out okay if I do this many
projects in a year that equals this and my goal is to make this much amount of
money in a year, divide that by the number of months and
weeks and hours and figure out what is my actual hourly rate even if it's
freelance even if it's you're not normally paid but figure out based on
that new hourly rate that you've calculated in your head figure out okay
if I'm not getting this much worth out of a project that cost me this many
hours of my time that's when you will need to start saying no more often okay
now on to the next one number two do the task you don't want to do first it
sounds super basic and so easy but this is something I constantly struggle with
and I wish I was better at but basically if there is a test that you really don't
want to do you got to do that first in the day get it done early so that the
rest of the day you can relax and say okay I've earned this time I can
actually do the things I want to do the creative fun stuff I will totally get
lost in a creative fun edit for a video and then not email a client back that I
need to email back and I'm like what am i doing ah that's the one thing I should
have done first and it just helps me to get that stuff done no one wants to deal
with okay well I have to like write it up a certain way I have to make an
invoice I have to do tax stuff no one wants to do that stuff but if you get it
done first it makes the rest of the day so much easier and you achieve a lot
more in the long term. Number three goals over to-do lists sometimes you're in a
job for long enough you kind of get caught up into okay I'm just gonna do my
to-do list for today my to-do list for today my to-do list for this
and oftentimes you can go a year without thinking about the bigger goals if you
are you know not thinking bigger picture and that is a terrible trap to get
caught into and it's something that I've you know learned with time is to make
sure that your to-do list those little lists of that you do every single day
are helping you achieve those bigger goals so start big think really big
picture okay I want to write a book by this time or whatever it is and then you
have to do the math and figure out well in order to do that I need to do
research I need to plan out I need to write every single day for an hour and
then add that to your to-do list and check that off and then once you sort of
checked off these little things that build up into a bigger thing that's when
you can really start achieving those bigger goals for your business and
honestly just feel more accomplished than just crossing off little things on
a to-do list because getting those emails out and sent oftentimes
doesn't get you very much farther and you want to make sure you're thinking
bigger picture when you are making these goals it is really crucial to make sure
that each goal is smart SMART which stands for specific measurable
achievable realistic and timely all of your goals should be very specific so
not just I want to do this big general thing make sure that they are also
timely given a deadline and give it little deadlines on your way to the
bigger deadline so that you're actually held accountable one thing that a lot of
people don't talk about is I like to put my goals sort of in front of my face so
that I'm always reminded of oh remember when I said I was gonna do that I need
to make sure that I'm doing it I don't want to check in one year later and say
oh I completely forgot that was a goal at all I want to actually be you know
sticking to it and reminded of it regularly so that I can actually achieve
it. One thing that I've done to help remind
me of these goals is to actually make a vision board it sounds super cheesy I
know but I actually loved it I made a vision board for my apartment last year
I made a vision board for my life of what I wanted it to be and in the very
center I actually put a quote that I found all of these quotes on like
Pinterest and stuff like that one of them it said
"Never be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life" and... a lot of
different little words that embodied all of this to me which was balance focus on
friends on family on you know loved ones all these different things find some
photos online digitally or it can be pulled out of a magazine whatever you
want to do just try to figure out what do you want your life to look like in a
year or whatever that a time might be for you and then keep a reminder of it
very close by so that you can constantly see it for me I actually put it on the
back of my phone screen so that basically whenever I'm like looking at
my apps I can see it behind there and be like Oh have I done that ooh I want to
you know think about that thing so it's just been helpful for me. Number four the
80/20 rule or the Pareto principle this basically states that 80% of your
results stem from 20% of your actions which is so crazy and so true when you
really think about it one of my friends actually spun this and said you should
spend 20% of your time creating and 80% of your time marketing which is such an
amazing and such a smart way to do it if you actually spend 80% of your time
sending those emails to make sure people know what you're creating and can see
your work then you would have so many more eyeballs and so much more success
in the long term because unfortunately in today's world there's just so much
noise out there it's hard to find awesome creatives so if you're spending
all your time creating and not enough time marketing no one will know and see
your work so you know figuring out that right percentage that right ratio
finding the right ratio for you is difficult and 80 percent of it on
marketing might be impossible for some people but if you can just sort of get a
little bit closer to that I think then you're definitely doing something right
I definitely don't spend 80 percent of my time marketing and sending those
emails because it's not the fun stuff but I'm trying to be better about it and
I'm constantly trying to increase every as time goes ... thank you loud truck for being so loud...
It's like moving slower to say hi...
gotta love it like I mean it's like they've never seen someone talked to a
camera before I don't get it I mean they've definitely seen this like
keep moving come on come on. Number five use apps to save you time
and money thank you so much to my sponsor Dashlane, which is a super helpful
password manager also has a built-in VPN I highly recommend it can support my
channel by clicking the link down below to try premium for free for 30 days and
then if you enjoy it and you want to sign up you can sign up with my code
which is just my name Jennifer O'Brien no apostrophe no space just Jennifer
O'Brien just to clarify this app is free for mobile and for desktop but if you
are interested in some of the premium features which are some of my favorite
features then you will want the premium and the those features are drumroll please (drumroll sound effect)
you can store encrypted photos like scans of your passport or insurance
card Dashland has a built in VPN so you can browse safely and securely on
unsecured Wi-Fi networks it makes it easy to share password access to vendors
family friends without actually sharing the exact password. The past two years
I've used a couple of different password managers and it is just such an easy way
to keep your life digitally safe secure and also I completely forget passwords
all the time and I'm constantly clicking forgot password and it's just it adds
sometimes you know extra 20 minutes to just log into something that I needed
for like five seconds so I'm actually the worst at this as a content creator I
have subscriptions to so many different services from Adobe where I create you
know in Photoshop or Premiere Pro or things like that I'll actually create my content but
then I also use like little tiny apps for my insta stories I also use music
for my videos like Epidemics Sound which I love linked down below I do all of
these different things that help me create what I'm creating but they all
have different logins and if I were if I had to remember every single password I
never would I would have to constantly be clicking forgot password which I used
to do so it saves me so much time because I
have over 50 accounts for social media and different services that I use
regularly and I counted it recently it's absurd and I just I don't have time to
remember all those passwords and to use the same password over and over again is
not safe so using something like this has saved me so much time and just made
my life as a creator so much easier I hope you enjoyed this video it is a
totally new angle for me in this channel it is a lot of the behind the scenes
that I'm constantly doing but not always thinking about and articulating in video
because running a business running a YouTube is really hard so if you're
interested in learning more about the behind the scenes of what it's like to
run your own YouTube channel and business and all these sorts of hacks
that can save you time and money let me know if you want more of this I will
totally make more videos like this even just all the apps that I have logins to
so I was thinking maybe like you know best apps for mobile best apps for
editing insta stories because I have that many apps on my phone just for
editing instastories, if you're interested in any of this or even more give other
angles let me know in the comments down below thank you so much for watching and
supporting this channel it seriously means the world to me okay let's do the
outro back in California and then let's come back I don't know which one
which which way we you tell me what do you want
maybe both okay let's do both ... and we are back here in sunny California out of my
office in the cold winter of New York and I just wanted to say thank you for
watching keep watching there's a ton more videos as always say yes to new
adventures and I'll see you next time bye
I did it okay and my alarm is gonna go off in one
minute I gave myself a certain amount of time to get this done and my alarm is
legit it's gonna go off in one minute because I'm good at my time I give
myself a specific measurable goal that had a deadline!