Do Weekly Podcast

Did you do last week’s challenge? If you did, then gosh golly you’re a swell person and a good egg!

Last week, we took up the task of sending gifts to our favorite-ist clients ever! Granted, we were SUPER late on the challenge. However, a good gift never goes out of style and they’re appropriate to give any time of the year!

I sent out a variety of gifts to my clients over the holidays. I sent out books, notebooks & pens, and gift cards etc. Natalie took to Etsy (not a sponsor) to purchase some succulents for some of her clients. Boom, bam, bop! All done!!

As for this week’s challenge, things are gonna go off the rails. This week we talk about Chambers of Commerce!

Why ought you consider joining a local Chamber of Commerce? Joining a Chamber of Commerce has a number of benefits! Most obvious is the the near-instant expansion of your business network. With a broad network, you never know who might refer your next client to you!

Depending on what committees your Chamber has you could possibly be on a committee that grants you access to new business opportunities (like a welcome committee for new business openings).

Also, Chambers of Commerce interact with local city government and advocate strongly for local businesses. Getting access to local City officials can sometimes be of benefit when you’re coming up with your next great business idea. Officials may have resources that you need like volunteers, space for events etc.

If you happen to already be a member of a Chamber, consider possibly joining a new Chamber of Commerce or consider looking up your Chamber’s Events or committees to see if there’s something of interest you can involve your self in.

Companies not sponsoring us this week.
* Etsy

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

Photo courtesy of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

The post Episode 036: Chamber of Commerce appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

We know. We’re super late with this episode. Dear reader and listener, it’s my fault! I was traveling through the South and, well, I got waylayed by my own sense of notgonnadothethingIshouldbedoing.

Life is hard when you’re on the road and admittedly I dropped the ball on you and my Pod-partner Natalie.

That said, even though the holidays are safely behind us, it’s still a good idea to think of your customers and clients the people who help your business go and do something nice for them!

Our previous challenge was to write a blog post. Did you do it? You had, like, a month to do it.

Natalie and I both did the challenge…on time! According to Nat, we each win one-million dollars! We each did a pair of blog posts and outdid ourselves on the blogging.

Natalie did some blogs for her products Simply Schedule Appointments and Draw Attention.While I wrote a blog post for my business and one for another business (where I sell a WordPress addon for ActiveCampaign).

People trust your business to provide a service and value. That’s a high honor, people giving you hard-earned money to do something of value for them. So it’s time to reward that trust! Let’s go just a little bit above and beyond.

Companies not sponsoring us this week.

• Buffer

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

Photo by Damian Zaleski on Unsplash

The post Episode 035: Gift Giving For Your Clients appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

We’re zooming right along to the end of the year and our weekly challenge was to get ready for it. Natalie got her 2019 planning books in order to begin her campaign for the next years’ shenanigans and categorized all her expenses.

Natalie and I both paid the IRS for quarterly tax obligations. Fun tip: The IRS will accept no more than TWO payments from you each day. Fun right?

Each of us is going to take a week off at the end of the year, maybe even two weeks!

Write a blog post. If you can, do it on your own website. Medium or LinkedIn work, too. Make sure to share it around.

Since we’re in the middle of the holiday season you can write about any number of related topics, depending on your business. However, I might suggest keeping it simple and keep it doable. Try thinking of things that you appreciate about the holidays, perhaps write about products, people, and services you are grateful for. Just make sure it’s timely.

Also, the blog post doesn’t need to be a gargantuan task either, it can be a short blog post. So get out there and write.

Companies not sponsoring us this week.

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 034: Write a Blog Post appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

Did you take care of yourself this week? Well, you were supposed to! Nat and I challenged you, our listeners, to take better care of yourself by doing one thing a little bit better than you normally do. Our challenge for you was to be more mindful over what you eat. Take better care and eat more healthy or wholesome meals.

For us, we don’t really take the time to prepare meals for the week so we end up eating out a lot more than we should. For Natalie and I, it simply means that we need to create time during the week to either prepare food or actually do some shopping and purchase healthier choices at the market. I do a combination of both. I don’t really like to prepare a week’s worth of food since it tends to get a little gross after three or four days. So I’ll prepare about 3 days of food and then mid-week I’ll make a trip to the store to buy a couple of items to finish the week out. Natalie, makes good use of a couple of subscription meal delivery services, like Blue Apron (not a sponsor). Which reminds me, in a pinch I’ll have groceries delivered if I don’t think I’ll be able to get to the store. Instacart is a good service. I’ve also used Amazon’s Prime Now, which delivers from Whole Foods, if you have one in your area.

We’re staring the end of the year right in the face, people! Have you minded all your P’s and Q’s? That is, have you gone through all the things that your business requires you to ensure that you’re ready to kick-off 2019 all responsible-like?

If you’re like us then probably not. Natalie and I issue you a challenge to get ready for the end of year and get a start on preparations.

What do end of year small business preparations look like? Obviously, it’s going to be different for every business.

There are a number of things to consider and I’ll provide a list (by no means is it exhaustive):

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 033: End of Year Preparations appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

Last week we turned the microscope on ourselves and updated our branding for our businesses.

I did this challenge by reaching out to a talented and skilled friend. But even before that, I took to a marketplace (Fiverr) to get some initial concepts. I got about four in total, spent about $50 and figured I’d be better off by having a professional do the work.

My friend, Yianni, does great work and posted it to his Instagram. I approached him, let him know what I wanted to do. He asked me a lot of questions: How do you feel about your business? How do you want others to feel about the work you do for them? How do you want your business to be known? Those were just a few questions he asked and it was important to think of my business in this context.

I updated my logos, I had an identity kit made which includes fonts, sizing, colors, and logo mark treatments in different colors, which is great when working with other designers.

For Natalie, she technically didn’t do the challenge since her business is undergoing some changes where it may not make sense to change or make updates to her biz.

Natalie and I talk about nourishing yourself and taking better self-care by controlling and modifying the things you eat.

Both Natalie and I are prone to eating out if we don’t have enough time to prepare meals. We’ve kept food journals and employed other methods of tracking our food intake.

Food is important, if not the most important thing, to keep a focused and healthy mindset where it comes to your life and business.

The best thing to do is to make yourself a priority. When you don’t have time, make time. Period. You are your business’s most important asset. So take the time to prepare meals, putting off other less important items.

If you truly don’t have time, then make some time to do grocery shopping or use a service like Prime Now or Instacart to have food delivered to you, or even services that do chef-prepared meals can be a good alternative. Perhaps buy pre-made meals to shave even more time of preparation. There are a lot of options here.

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 032: Nourish Yourself appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

Natalie and I challenged our listeners to Have a Plan. Creating a plan helps us to not stress out about the things we have to do each and every day.

Natalie is a natural at planning but she still derived value from last week’s challenge. She was able to, to draw from Stephen Covey, “sharpen her saw” and reconfirm her planning strategy.

For me, I did decide to go the Bullet Journal route and took pen to paper this week. Bullet Journaling has been a fun practice thus far. It’s easy to get setup and all you need is a basic note book and pen/pencil.

While I did a good job at the tactical planning (day-to-day) but I’m lacking the big picture planning (strategic planning). So that’s an area that I can improve on.

All in all, I think the challenge was super helpful for me. My big take away is to be consistent, find something that works for you, keep it simple and don’t forget to plan for the future.

Let’s jump in the time machine folks and go back in time! Let’s go back about fifteen episodes to be precise when we organized our branding assets (Episode 15: Organize Your Branding). We asked you all to get your branding assets in order, business cards, logo artwork, anything that has your mark on it.

It was a two-part challenge because this thing was going to take a lot of time.

So, for this week’s challenge, we’re going to refresh our branding!

Branding is what helps people identify our business, something that gives our shop an identity.

Options for refreshing your branding

Hiring a professional designer

Behold my new business cards.

Pricing can be all over the place. There’s really not a standard. Some desginers may charge around $10,000 to start. That said, there are a lot of designers who charge far less, who are incredibly capable. So do your work. How do some designers charge so much more than others? Well, that’s a whole other article. The important thing to note is that a good designer wants to understand your business; they want to understand how you will use the logo mark. Where will your logo appear (shirts, cups, vans, trucks, commercials etc)? That all plays a factor in the pricing. What is the value of your brand to your business? I say it’s pretty darn priceless. Don’t skimp here.

Pay good money for a professional that fits within your realistic budget. There are designers who will fit your budget, just make sure the scope is clear. Perhaps a minimum budget of $1,000 is a good budget to start with.

Hire a low-cost service to create/refresh the branding.

You could look to a low-cost marketplace such as Upwork or Freeeup (who were on our podcast a while back).

Often these services, for their lowest-cost professionals, you’re dealing with someone overseas. They are a lot cheaper than the US-based professionals. You can sometimes run into really poor experiences, timezone difference challenges, language barrier challenges and more. So it takes a lot of effort to really suss out the right professional. To that point, I really have grown to like Freeeup quite a bit because of how they do the quality control for you. You choose a rate that works for you, location preference, and then they connect you to a freelancer. On upwork, you have more control but it just takes time to sort through the professionals.

You could look at Fiverr, too. Even though they tout things for five bucks, you often spend a lot more than that. I’ve used Fiverr for quick concepts but, really, I haven’t gotten much of value from them.

So maybe you get some quick concepts built and then hire a pro to further define that concept.

Pro tip: Ask your designer for an identity kit guideline. It’ll keep your design assets in order and having one place to see colors, fonts, marks etc.

Unsponsored Shoutouts and Recommendations!

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 031: Update Your Branding appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

During last week’s challenge, we looked at trying to find new ways to squeeze money out of our businesses. I looked at doing a workshop for small business hours to build out a simplified business website.

Natalie initially thought about doing a cotton candy company. Definitely out of left-field but she opted not to do that. So Nat looked at doing something a little more fun. She floated the idea of doing a subscription service that caters toward people who like to travel. It’s a fun idea for her and exploring and travel are things she does a lot of. I also suggested she get into mentoring and coaching.

Plans. Having a plan is a good thing, Natalie says. Everyone has a different way that they like to go about their day. Natalie plans for her week, month, and even her year! She does this to keep herself on track and keep her life and work-life organized.

Natalie keeps either a small notebook or laminated task list she printed up to list out her daily tasks. She puts down three MIT (most important tasks) each day. You don’t have to get crazy about it either, there are a lot of techniques to manage your day like bullet journaling. It’s not a thing that I use, I’d rather use good ol’ pen and paper.

Natalie advises creating plans not only for day-to-day but also a weekly plan, then a monthly plan and then a yearly plan. That’s a lot of planning. Personally, I keep it to a week and a daily plan and a weekly plan.

Regardless of how you choose to plan things, keep it doable (as we like to say around here). It’s important to organize your work week obviously but don’t forget to also schedule some me time as well.

Resources

Unsponsored Shoutouts and Recommendations!

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 030: Have a Plan appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

Volunteering. It’s a great public service to donate your time and money to worthy non-profit causes. Nat and I already volunteer our time to a pair of local organizations such as Girl Develop it and also the SBDC (Small Business Development Center). So we may need to re-evaluate what we do, for whom, and see if we can give more. Natalie has volunteered with Girl Develop It Los Angeles and has decided to donate her time to a local NPR affiliate Radio Station. I donated to a Maker Faire in Downtown Los Angeles, at the LA Public Library. So whatever it is that you are interested in, find a way to donate your time or resources. You’ll feel better about yourself while helping your local community.

This week we talk about finding new streams for your business. We’re often deep in the weeds of our businesses and it’s hard to look at things from a fresh perspective.

Natalie says that trying to identify a new revenue stream can be helped when you try testing out partnerships with fellow friends, business owners, or collaborators. Although, she notes that scratching your own itch is a great way to identify sources of new revenue streams. For her product, Draw Attention, for instance, she wanted an easy to use product that allowed people to create image maps easily.

I also went the route of a digital product, two of them in fact! I had a goal that I wanted to get into digital products and generate about 5% in revenue.

The thing I would note the most is to identify pain points in your business or questions that your clients are asking you. What do they ask for the most? If you were to generate an FAQ (frequently asked questions) what would it say?

Also, get an objective opinion from an outside or 3rd party. Ask for opinions, you never know where inspiration will come from. I remember the first time a client recommended to me that I should do maintenance plans or retainers. It was a no-brainer except for the fact I didn’t think about it. I guess it wasn’t a no-brainer after all

Quotes to Float

“My business is not my source of income, the universe is my source of income and my business is merely one channel for that income.” — Mariska Anderson

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 029: Create A New Revenue Stream appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

Natalie goes to FreeCon (Freelance Conference) and Alex grapples with the fact no one wants to hear him talk.

Last week’s challenge was all about self-care of the rigorous variety. I re-dedicated myself to a CrossFit gym I joined earlier in the year. I’ve been feeling down and out the past few weeks. But going back to the gym and committing to a schedule helped. I feel like a beast after a workout. Also, I’ve purchased a block of yoga classes, which I found to be beneficial when I started them up a couple of years ago. The strength work and yoga have helped me to relieve a lot of stress and tension that I’ve been carrying with me physically. It’s been great.

Natalie signed up for a block of swim classes, a new session of belly dance classes. So that kid is going to be busy, just like she likes it. These activities will keep her busy about four days a week.

The benefits of working out are without question. It helps relieve stress, keeps cholesterol down, but really helps one maintain balance not only physically but also emotionally.

Giving back. Giving back to our local communities and charities by donating money or your time. We’re big believers in giving back as much as you take.

Your challenge is to donate or give your time to an organization that you are passionate about or organizations that are well-aligned with your business’s core values and mission.

Nat and I already volunteer our time to a pair of local organizations such as Girl Develop it and also the SBDC (Small Business Development Center). So we may need to re-evaluate what we do, for whom, and see if we can give more.

Natalie has mentioned the Tap Root Foundation and Jericho Road as places one can donate their skills and time.

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 028: Giving Back appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.

Just really quickly, we’re a fan of Katie’s Cupcakes. It’s where I bought Nat’s challenge failure cakes.

Last week we challenged you (and ourselves) to do competitor analysis. We each chose three different competitors.

Natalie’s analysis noticed that no blog posts were getting published by her competitors, very little social media presence. She looked at a big company as well. She noted an ad campaign that they ran. Upon further inspection, she noticed the company didn’t offer a piecemeal service. They offered a full online suite or package from website dev, social media presence, ad campaigns and more. The pricing was done as a yearly fee. She found that their reviews were mostly very low, customers were unhappy, that there were negative blog posts as well. She found that the company was hiring (70 job openings in fact). All the open job postings were for salespeople and account reps. So no talent was being hired to produce the work.

For myself and DigiSavvy, I was looking at the competition I had for keywords. So I looked at competitors who came up tops. I looked at why the competitors were ranking so highly in search. I used SEMrush to analyze so that I could analyze backlinks to my competitions websites. Backlinks are links back to your site. Backlinks are also highly valued by search engines in assessing a website’s rank.

Another competitor I found was getting hit with a negative SEO campaign. I notified the business owner and let them know they were being targeted in a neg SEO campaign. Even though they’re a competitor, it’s still okay to be collaborative and also to be a good neighbor. It’s just good karma. Google provides tools to disavow bad or spammy links to your website. Many of the sites outranking me are either doing better social media, have better links, or are older.

One tip here is that when you have link text pointing to your site, ask the people placing the link to use specific alt text.

We’ve been feeling sluggish folks. For myself, I haven’t been as physically active I should be. I’ve been neglecting my CrossFit (which I recently started), and I haven’t been consistent with my running.

Physical activity impacts, naturally our physical health and (not so obviously) your mental health.

So we recommend as part of the challenge this week is to implement physical activity in your weekly routine. At least two hours and thirty cents per week. Whether it’s a walk or a strength training routine just lean into it. Add a couple of days per week, maybe fifteen minutes per day. It doesn’t have to be a full hardcore thing either. Just start a thing and try to keep at it. Or restart a physical activity that you’ve let become stagnant, or start a new thing.

As always, don’t forget to leave us that gushy 5-star review on iTunes and what not. And remember, kids, keep it simple and most importantly Keep it Doable!

The post Episode 027: Lets Get Physical appeared first on Do Weekly Podcast.