Read Time: 5 min / Work Time: 4 hrs

Hello there Reader,

If your feed is full of easy hacks to make a ton of money on your lunch break or while your kid sleeps….you are not alone. The reality is that for most people it will take years and thousands of hours to grow a big list or build a program that sells on autopilot to make those promised 'millions'.

So what happens if you don't have that much time to build your side-business or a digital program?

⚠️Give up? Don’t even start? No way!!

What if I told you there are 5 small changes that boost efficiency and put you back in control of your time? Are you ready to start working on the things that get you closer to more money with less work? These go-to prioritization and mindset tools I use every day will help you get clarity on what you can realistically 'fit in' 2 hrs and in what order.

Regardless of how much time you have, here is my sure fire way to do the meaningful work that will get you closer to your goals!

Goal-Set For Success

It’s easy to splash ‘$100K or $1M in revenue’ in your yearly planner before you realize that you haven’t even come up with a tested offer yet. On paper everything is possible, but nothing kills your willpower as much as missing the mark day after day.

One of the best things my team and I do to avoid this planning fallacy is to set very easy goals to start with and build up as we get consistent work and ‘wins’.

Not that long ago I started blogging. I didn't know a thing about it so the first goal I set for myself was to publish once a month. Then, to publish once a week. Now, 6 months in, the goal is to promote the blog posts on social media to increase page views.

Looking back, if I had set a massive ‘10000 page views in 3 months’ goal, I would be so off the mark, that I would write off blogging as the ‘wrong’ strategy and move to the next thing.

The same way you wouldn’t expect a kid to run a 7 min mile, you can’t expect big results if you haven’t built up to that level.

👉 Now, your turn…take a look at the targets you’ve set for the business or yourself and come up with a couple ‘quick-win’ goals. I bet you’ll feel invigorated after crushing those easy targets and building proof that you can achieve bigger things.

3 is the New 1

A good rule of thumb is to assign 200 hours to any major project in your business (build and launch a new program, master ads, social media, etc). So if you only have a couple of focused hours a day, start thinking of quarters as the new timeframe to crush projects (3mos instead of 1).

Not going to lie, it feels awful to give 3 months to create a new mini course, but it is just simple math and human nature.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years” - Bill Gates (others say this too!)

👉Back to you - Pick any of your goals and list every task you need to complete that goal. When you write all the little things, you realize that even if you work 40hrs/wk you’ll probably run out of time.

Adopt the 1:1:1 System

I bet you pop open your phone in the morning and get at least 5 new business ideas that sound WAY BETTER than what you are doing right now. Isn't that so?!

That’s basically how I started and stopped my Youtube channel 3 times, launched and closed a membership, had a high ticket and a low ticket offer, tried free challenges, paid challenges, ads, social media …The list of half-baked projects goes on and on.

The reality is that if you are juggling kids, a full time job or other commitments, nothing will kill good ideas as fast as pursuing ALL THE IDEAS.

That’s why my team and I only work on 1:1:1 per quarter

It means 1 PROMO, 1 PRODUCT, 1 PROJECT.

For example, this quarter we are focusing on Social Media/IG (Promo); Affiliates (Product or Offer) and the backend focus is the blog tracking and optimization (PROJECT).

When I come across new strategies, systems or trends, I only look into it if it can directly improve any of those 3 areas I’m working on. It’s a hard ‘NO’ (next tip by the way) if it is about something else.

Not sure what your 1:1:1 should be? Here are some ideas for digital products:

If you have a combo that you are focusing on right now, reply to this email and let us know…I’m always curious to know what you are up to.

'No' Comes First

Saying ‘no’ can be hard, especially to yourself. If you have set a goal and tasks, you must protect the time, focus and energy to complete the tasks even if it sounds like a really great opportunity.

It is not just for important decisions like launching a podcast or investing in a new course…you have to say ‘no’ first to everything and then assess if you actually need to do it.

There are so many reasons why we say YES even when we know we should say NO: we don’t want to be mean, it is actually a great opportunity but wrong time, you remember how it feels to not have any options, so you take all the ones in front of you, and it goes on.

Here’s a sneaky example.

I found out that some newsletters are paying if you refer subscribers to them ($4/sub, what?!). Classic example of a great opportunity, just not on the schedule 🙂 So I went on to comb through hundreds of newsletters, create an account, link my Stripe, create a pretty link, think of a promo strategy…

3 HOURS LATER - my actual tasks weren’t done and got pushed to another day 😭

Saying ‘No’ to awesome opportunities is by far the hardest change I had to make - and the one I struggle the most to maintain. But if you committed to a 1:1:1 then you owe to yourself to see it through - no distractions.

Double Up or Cut in Half

Don't you hate when you spend a whole day planning your work just to be totally behind by Tuesday? One of the best ways to ease into the 2hr workday is to plan way more time to complete tasks than you think.

It is easy to think that you can write a blog post in 2 hours (hello this post :) but if you are not the Michael Jordan of blogging, maybe you want to build a backup of 2 or 4 hours into your plan.

Another way to do it is by cutting your tasks in half. Decide what is the minimum needed and finish it first.

By giving yourself the permission and the time to actually complete something you will build the resilience and the technical abilities to take on tasks faster in the future instead of getting frustrated and giving up.

You might notice a theme in this post. it is easy to ADD on…but bouncing back from constant misses is tough!

So what do you think of those changes? Easy-peasy or Heck-no? I’m not gonna lie, those are hard but I encourage you to give it a try this week. Start by choosing your 1:1:1 and laser-focusing on those tasks.

Could you do me a big favor? Reply back if you try or if you use any of those productivity hacks successfully, will ya? I wanna see if this stuff is working for you too :)

I’m cheering you on.

Roberta

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