Do Weekly Podcast

Geoff Khan, the sworn enemy of James T. Kirk, once shared an ancient Klingon proverb when he said Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold. While Khan was pretty much spot on, he’s apparently never eaten a delicious homemade cookie during his tortured, eugenics-enhanced, existence. Natalie, never one to welch on a bet paid up with a delicious plate of cookies. But we know that’s not why you’re here.

We recapped our episode about updating your social media profiles. Natalie and Alex share their social media profile updates and observations. There was a lot of out of date information that we updated. As web-based businesses, it can be a little embarrassing when your social media profiles are inaccurate. However, it’s not a big deal because that’s why we are doing this. To find the problems; the things we missed and fix em!

One of the things that came up was that we had to think about our social media profiles with a little more intent. What social media profiles matter to our business? Which profiles will we regularly update? Natalie added one on Instagram, and Alex added an Instagram profile for his company, too.

Also, Natalie came up with an odd issue while trying to set up a Linkedin Profile page for her business. LinkedIn requires a physical address now, and a standard PO Box will not suffice either. Alex did some research and found that the United States Post Office offers a service called Competitive PO Box Street Addressing. That program will help Nat get around the issue in the future. We’ll check back with her in a few weeks to see if she went through the setup. Alex uses the address at his Co-Working space since they handle mail.

This week’s challenge: Schedule a vacation

Vacations. They’re nice, really nice! So many small business owners fail to take a proper vacation. In 2014, the lender OnDeck, conducted a survey of small business owners and found many of them hadn’t planned a vacation for the year. For those business owners who did take a vacaction, a whopping 67% of them said they still checked in on work while on vacation. Now is that a real vacation? Natalie says “#$%^ no, it isn’t!”

We can all agree that all work and no play makes for a dull business owner. Natalie and I set out to discuss this very thing and then made a plan of action. People need time away from work and when they do they need to be present and fully embrace their time away from the office.

For Alex, the last time he took a vacation without his laptop was before he owned a laptop. Lame! Natalie shares some of her top tips for handling time away from your business. She discusses how to plan for your vacation including how to make sure you have the right people and resources in place. She also talks about being out of town and communicating those dates with your clients and customers.

Resources for completing this challenge:

* 5 Ways to Plan a Vacation as a Small Business Owner by Joshua Johnston

* Twelve Tips for Managing your Business during a Vacation by John Rossheim

* How small business owners can have a worry-free vacation by Kristin Eriksen

*

Howdy, folks! It’s time to do a thorough Spring Cleaning…of your Social Media Profiles! In this week’s episode not only do we assail you with possibly the world’s worst beat-boxing but we also discuss updating your social media profiles — or creating them if you don’t have the right ones for your business. We also learn that Natalie owes Alex cookies because (shocker), Nat didn’t do her challenge from last week. She tries to get out of baking cookies by saying she had to go to the ER but Alex wasn’t having any of that nonsense.

This Week’s Challenge: Update (or setup) Your Social Media Profiles!

Creating content is just one of the things a business owner has to do to get eyeballs on their website these days. However, it’s 2018, and we all know the impact (and power) that social media has in our day-to-day lives and on our businesses.

Many small businesses either have no social media presence or worse, if they do have one it’s woefully neglected. Even savvy social media marketing aware business owners are guilty of ignoring their social media profiles like your Do Weekly Podcast hosts.

So we’ve set about to fix that for ourselves, and we bring you along for the ride!

Your challenge is to review all of your existing social media profiles and ask yourself the following questions:

* Does this social media platform work well for my business?

You don’t need to be on all social media platforms. We advise that you find a few profiles that you like, that you feel will help you tell your business’s story.

* Is your social media profile’s information up to date?

When we asked this question of ourselves the look of uncertainty made it immediately clear that we didn’t have the first clue as to what was on our profiles and sure enough they needed serious updating.

* Do you need to create a social media profile for any existing platforms? 

In other words, is there a social media platform your business should be on that you don’t maintain an active profile for? If you’re a brick and mortar business, we recommend Yelp or Google My Business (Alex strongly suggests).

Show Notes

* 3:30 — Recap of last week’s challenge, setting up an email list.

* 18:09 – This week’s challenge: Update (or create) Your Social Media Profiles

Resources for finishing this task

* For updating and schedule social media posts across multiple platforms we highly recommend Coschedule.

* Facebook Business Page Information

* Starting an Instagram Biz Profile

* Article: How to Choose the Right Social Media Network

* Competitive Street Addressing for your PO Box

Final thoughts

Remember, Y’all, it’s hard to keep on top of all of the day-to-day things you’re responsible for. But if we take the time each day to do a small thing those small things add up and turn into an avalanche of amazingness. So just keep doing the thing!

In this episode, we talk about all the rain in Los Angeles, set a goal to get to 30 episodes of Do Weekly, get hopped up on licorice, and Alex makes up some sayings that totally don’t exist. We share our shiny new elevator pitches, high five, and then head into our brand new challenge – setting up an email list.

This Week’s Challenge: Set up an email list

So many small businesses do not maintain an email list. An email list is just a list of contacts of people who are interested in what they do, whether they’re past paying customers, current customers, or prospective customers. It’s one of the very best tools a small business can have.

A lot of small business owners neglect creating an email list because they may not realize how valuable it can be. They might also avoid staying in frequent contact with their list for fear of feeling sales-y. It’s also one of those things that’s so easy to procrastinate on. It’s so easy to think it’s a busy week and you’ll email your fans next week. Except week after week, it gets neglected.

The truth is, there are people out there who are huge fans of your business and what you do. Folks who would love to know about new products or services you’re offering. Folks who would really appreciate knowing about a sale, receiving a coupon, or learning about a special offer. So your task this week is to gather up the contacts you’ve already got and set up a system for keeping track.

If you’ve already got an email list, it’s time to take a look – is it up to date? Do you stay in touch regularly? It might be time to send out a note to the list and to make a plan for sending out regular messages. Think about what would be interesting to your customers.

Resources for finishing this task

* MailChimp – a free-to-get-started professional email list service (Natalie’s favorite)

* Active Campaign – Alex’s favorite email list service

* 8 Ways Small Businesses Can Build an Email List Faster by John Rampton

* The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Email Marketing Success by Jessica Lunk

* 3 Easy Ways to Build an Email List For Your Small Business by Syed Balkhi

* 5 Best Email Marketing Campaigns for Small Businesses by Phil Frost

After you’ve done the task

Write and tell us about it! Tweet us @doweeklypodcast, use our contact page, or email us at [email protected]. Let us know how many folks you gathered up for your email  list and what kind of message you sent out.

In this episode, we listen to Alex complain about how much last week’s challenge sucked even though it was useful. Now that you know where your time is going, you can look for places to make changes so that you’ve got more time to devote to the tasks that move your business forward and that you find fulfilling. Then we dive into the next challenge – create your elevator pitch.

Note: We tried a new venue for podcasting for this episode and it came out very echo-y. Lesson learned. We won’t record there again. 

This Week’s Challenge: Create your elevator pitch

You might think that an elevator pitch is just for Silicon Vally tech bros, but any business owner ought to be able to concisely and confidently explain who they are and what they do. We’ll review some tips and pointers for creating a good pitch and keeping it short.

Writing your pitch is one thing, but the really important thing here is actually delivering the pitch. So after you’ve got it nailed down, you need to practice, practice, practice. We recommend rehearsing to family and friends, to your pets, in front of a mirror, and most importantly, on video! Record yourself with your phone or computer delivering your pitch to look for body language, facial expressions, and any odd ticks you might not be aware of.

Now you’ll be all set the next time you meet someone who asks “What do you do?” or the next time you attend a small business meetup or chamber of commerce meeting and are asked to introduce yourself to the group.

Resources for finishing this task

* Crafting an Elevator Pitch from Mind Tools

* Perfect Pitch: How to Nail Your Elevator Speech by Laura Katen

* How to Create a Successful Elevator Pitch for Small Business Owners from Factor Finders

* 12 Elevator Pitches from Small Businesses by Amy Saunders

* The Best Elevator Pitch Examples, Templates, and Tactics by Kurian M. Tharakan (though we thought these tended to be way too long and heavy on jargon)

After you’ve done the task

Write and tell us about it! Tweet us @doweeklypodcast, use our contact page, or email us at [email protected]. Send us a link to a video or audio of you doing your pitch, or just write it out for us.

In this episode, we review our brand new about pages, Alex freaks out over a little red paint in a photo, and then Natalie drags Alex kicking and screaming into the next challenge – inventory your week.

* Natalie’s new about page

* Alex’s new about page

This Week’s Challenge: Inventory your week

There are 168 hours in a week, and though you may not realize it, you might not know exactly where all that time is going. This week, we’ll pay attention to where we’re spending our time so that we can look at where we can make some changes that will improve our work/life balance and our productivity.

Look, we know this is a hassle. But you’ll probably be surprised at how much time you’re losing to some time-wasters that have become habits. And it’s only a week. You can do anything for a week.

If you’re tech-savvy, you might set up a Google sheet that you can access from a phone, a tablet, or a computer where you can enter how you’ve spent your time hour-by-hour. Otherwise, you can use good old pencil and paper.

Resources for finishing this task

* Google Sheet template for inventorying your week for the tech-savvy approach

* Printable worksheet for inventorying your week for the pencil and paper approach

* Deep Habits: The Importance of Planning Every Minute of Your Work Day by Cal Newport

* Deep Work by Cal Newport

* Americans are spending more time on media thanks to multitasking by Rani Molla

* How Do Your Social Media Habits Compare to the Average Person’s? from Entrepreneur

* How Much Time Do People Spend on Their Mobile Phones in 2017? from Hacker Noon

After you’ve done the task

Write and tell us about it! Tweet us @doweeklypodcast, use our contact page, or email us at [email protected]. We won’t make you share your whole inventory (unless you want to) but let us know what you learned and what changes you’ll be making.

In our first ever episode of Do Weekly, we take a little time to introduce ourselves, to discuss why we’re starting this podcast, some things we hope to accomplish, and then we dive into our very first challenge – update your about page

This Week’s Challenge: Update your about page

We tend to put together a quick couple of paragraphs when we put together our about pages for our websites, but this page is actually a really important tool for potential customers and clients getting to know you and what you’re about. It’s probably because it’s really hard to be objective and write about yourself and your own projects.

It’s a good place to tell your story, explain what you’re passionate about, what pushed you to start your business, what sets you apart from  your competition, and what kinds of customers and clients you like to work with.

What if you don’t have a website (yet)? No excuses – you can still sit down and put together the content for your future website. What if you have a website but it doesn’t have an about page? Now’s the perfect time to add one so that your potential customers and clients can get to know you.

Resources for finishing this task

* How to create an about page that generates leads by Neil Patel

* Ten rules for writing a compelling about me page by Bernadette Jiwa

* The 5-step process for writing an about page that connects (and converts) by Leanne Regalia

* 10 about us page examples that are probably better than yours by Lindsay Kolowich

* How to write an amazing about page by Julia McCoy

After you’ve done the task

Write and tell us about it! Tweet us @doweeklypodcast, use our contact page, or email us at [email protected].  Send us a link to your shiny new about page. We can’t wait to see them!

We’re so excited to announce the upcoming launch of the Do Weekly podcast. Look for our first episode April 2.

Do Weekly is a weekly challenge podcast for small business owners, by small business owners. Each week, we’ll tackle a challenge that helps us make our businesses better – from updating our websites to ordering new business cards to heading out for networking events to ironing out finances and taxes, we’ll help you get all those back-burner projects done.