Productivity habits to grow your small business with Chelsey Newmyer

Lex:
Wasted work is the enemy of entrepreneurs. As a small business owner, you want every minute to pay you back in multiples and with an endless to-do list, you really can't waste time on low impact activities. But how do you stay focused on the work that pays you back by getting real about what you can actually achieve and what you need to achieve it To help you do that, I interviewed productivity coach Chelsey Newmyer.

Chelsey and I talked about how you can bust through procrastination and focus on the work that gets you to your goals. We talk about how to figure out what to work on each day, how to establish routines that actually work for you, how looking backwards can help you move forward faster and what to do with the millions of ideas you have daily. I'm Lex Roman. I help creatives make smarter marketing betts, and you're tuned in to the Low Energy Leads Show.

Before we get into today's episode, I want to make sure you know about my upcoming webinar with Pathfinder SEO on the impact of AI on SEO strategy. Whether you've relied on Google in your business or you offer SEO services to your clients, you're not going to want to miss what Pathfinder has to say about the changing landscape of SEO. It's free to join us Friday, October 27th at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. Find the link to register in the show notes.

Lex: Chelsey Newmyer, welcome to the show. 

Chelsey:
Thanks so much, Lex. I'm so excited to be here. 

Lex:
I'm thrilled to have you here. I've been following your journey for so long and every time I listen to your podcast, it really just puts me at ease, which is why I'm thrilled to share your methods and your mindset with our listener today. 

Chelsey:
Oh, thank you. 

Lex:
And I always like to start off by hearing a little bit about your origin story. When did you start working for yourself? What made you want to go off on your own? 

Chelsey:
Oh, sure. So I feel like I am one of the classic covid business moments where I didn't have to commute anymore once the pandemic hit and we all went remote, and so with those extra 30 minutes of my day, I decided why not start a business? But the reality is I had been thinking about it for a really long time. I've always been a productivity nerd. I call myself that person who wanted to not only improve the skills that I had and being efficient and effective in my job, but also helping others. How could I help my coworkers? How could I tutored for a long time? And so this was really, the pandemic just gave me a little bit of extra time I needed to be home and sit down and kind of think it through. So that's what gave me the time, but I've been thinking about it for a really long time, so it all kind of came together in that perfect way. 

Lex:
Can you tell us how you found your first client? 

Chelsey:
Sure. So it was actually a former coworker who used to work for the independent school where I was working. I was a nonprofit. I'd been working at nonprofit my entire career, and so we worked at the same independent school and she reached out and she had actually taken her business full time, maybe six months before the pandemic hit. She as a graphic designer and once things kind of started to ramp up again, she reached out and said, Hey, I just need help with my schedule, because her son was home and she was just kind of juggling a lot of different things at the time as so many of us were. And so she reached out and wanted some help and it was a great fit because I knew her really well and I knew some of the work that she was doing, so it was a lot of fun. 

Lex:
Yeah, I mean, I think getting your first clients from people, that is a really strong strategy. Did you reach out to people in your network or how did they know that you were shifting into your own business? 

Chelsey:
Oh, I absolutely did. I brain dumped as many people as I could possibly think of and did some combination of Google Mail merge and personal emails, and yes, everybody in my network got some email saying, Hey, you know me as this productivity person. I've made it official. Let me know if I can help you. 

Lex:
Can you share with us a little bit about what you're offering now, the different ways that you work with clients now? 

Chelsey:
Yeah. I mostly work one-on-one with clients, so I do coaching. The packages all look a little bit different depending on their needs. So I could do where I call V I P or intensive sessions or longer term ongoing coaching. And then I also work with, I'd like to jump into different programs and do one-off trainings as well, because sometimes people just need that little bit of extra motivation in a particular area, and so I can jump in and tailor the conversation to them. 

Lex:
Yeah, absolutely. We had you guests speak inside growth trackers on that because the work that you do with productivity, with procrastination, prioritization is so paramount to all of the things that we do, and when it comes to lead generation, it can really get in people's way, right, because especially if it's an activity that you really don't like, but as a business owner, you kind of have to do marketing and sales, and so yeah, it was amazing having you in there and people asked you questions about how do you break down big projects? How do you manage all of your ideas? You gave us so much great advice. We're going to cover just a little bit of that today. 

Chelsey:
And I truly believe that my business was started with the inspiration that productivity is personal because I had read so many different productivity books, and so many of them are written for folks who may have these really high level executive type jobs, and so the information doesn't translate down to the person who is working their business while also working at a full-time job or they're juggling multiple things. And so that's why I like the one-on-one. I could do group coaching too. I have a couple options for that, but I like the one-on-one because then I can really make sure that the advice you're getting, the tools you're getting recommended are going to help you and be something that you can stick with. 

Lex:
What are some of the warning signs that you see that people are struggling with this, that they are using the wrong kind of productivity methods for their lifestyle? 

Chelsey:
It's really about that jumping around. So I believe in experimentation. I believe in trying different things out. I am the first one to see a recommendation for some new productivity something and to try it out and experiment with it. But you also really need to step back and say, what do I actually, what resonates with me? What aligns with the strength that I have and the life that I currently live and the life that I want to live? So for example, I could spend hours and I have spent hours digging into Asana and setting up beautiful plants in Asana and mapping out everything for a launch or for email marketing, and then I abandon it two days later because I'm not a digital to-do list person. I use frankly half sheets of recycled paper as my to-do list. I don't even use a planner where I see people getting stuck is that exactly like you said, they think that they need to conform to what everybody else's schedule looks like. 

Chelsey:
I spent years beating myself up because I wasn't someone who could get up and go for my run. I hated it. I would do it for a couple days and then fall off and then have a really hard time getting back into it. And finally I realized that if I just wake up, give myself 30 minutes to have a cup of coffee, baby, check my email putter around, then I can go for my run and I'm totally fine. It's great, but we just see all those expectations set by other people or we Google how the rich and famous have their morning routines and we think we have to do it just like that, and you don't, and it should be what is going to make the most sense for you, and what is something that you enjoy so that you can stick with it. 

Lex:
Yeah, I love that. Amy Porterfield did an episode that was all my friends' morning routines, and every single one was like, I wake up at 3:00 AM wake, I do four hours of meditation. I was like, I'm not going to do any, this is not helpful. 

Chelsey:
No, no, there is no meditation in my morning routine. There is no, and so exactly. It's inspirational for sure. I love listening to those kinds of episodes. You can always glean something that sounds like, oh, that might be nice to work in, but at the end of the day, if you can find something that works for you, then you're not going to beat yourself up for not sticking to it. And I think that's where we get really discouraged when we try it over and over again. If it's just not the right fit doesn't mean, 

Lex:
Yeah. How have you cultivated that of the example of you waking up and being like, oh, I really just need some low key time before I go on this run. How do you cultivate that? How do people start recognizing that for themselves? 

Chelsey:
Honestly, it was kind of this weird chicken and egg thing when I started coaching because it forced me, as I was asking clients these questions and really getting to understand their routine and their preferences, it actually really forced me to start thinking about my own because I wanted to share examples of how I've made these changes and how I've, again, continued to increase my productivity, but it's so much more than that, right? Productivity is not just how many things we can get crossed off our to-do list and how we manage our time is not just what we're doing with every single second. So if I was forced to start paying attention throughout my day and saying, okay, this was a really good day. What made it good? What did I like about it? Why was I so focused today? And then reverse engineering into some of those practices and routines that then work really, really well for me. 

Lex:
That is so key. The power of the reflection practice I think is so key. And you have a pretty refined reflection practice that you do. Is it monthly that you do or weekly that you look back at your metrics? Can you talk to us about your reflection practice? 

Chelsey:
Yeah. This is part of, again, me trying to pay attention to what my routines and habits look like. And my morning routine is a binder where I literally, I feel like a little high schooler. I color in the front of it, but it's a binder and every day I review my goals and do a little bit of journaling. It's more of a diary than any kind of deep work in there, but it's just a nice moment to talk about my day or again, do that reflection and then every week starting on the first of the month, so it's not like an every Monday thing. It's really when the first of the month falls. I look at my metrics and my data and go back in my business and figure out what was going on. I'll take notes and say, oh, I did a bundle this week and that's why my subscriber number spiked. 

Chelsey:
Or it's two weeks after the bundle, which is why my subscriber number plummeted this week. So it, it's really great to be able to go back at the end of the year or every couple months to again see what kind of patterns I'm seeing, what's worked, what didn't. And it was really funny. I was going back through 2022, which was kind of a hard year for a number of reasons, and as I was flipping through my entries, I realized, oh, this I had X was happening, which is why Y didn't happen, or it just allows you to give yourself some of that grace and space so that you can recognize what's going really, again, celebrate your wins, but also give yourself that grace to say, this was a really hard time, and so I showed up here instead of there, and that's okay. 

Lex:
Yeah, it's super undervalued, I think to recognize that the different seasons of your life, your business, and to be able to do that reflection and say, this was the best case scenario for this time, given all factors involved. And I also think we forget how far we've come and we forget what has worked in our business when we're in a downturn and we start to feel like nothing's working. But if we have that record of like, oh, this is what happened last year, even just a quarterly record, it's so powerful to look back on. 

Chelsey:
Yeah. 

Lex:
One of the things that you capture is some of those big milestones over the year. Do you have an annual reflection practice as well? 

Chelsey:
I do. So it's the weekly, I do those numbers monthly, I do more of a bigger review. The tool that I use has some prompt questions of where I want to spend more time and what I want to focus on, and then the year review, it looks a little bit different every year. I'm still experimenting. What I, what found though is sometimes I'm an out of sight out of my in person, which is why I really like the binder I've created because I look at those goals every single day, do the month reflection of like, oh, I want to spend more time reading this month, but if I don't look at it again until the end of the month, it, it's not a very particularly helpful reminder. So for me, I had to find a tool that reminded me every day of what I was focusing on, 

Lex:
And I love because I think people are so obsessed with automation and AI and it's like it must be digitized. It must be automated, but I find that productivity experts, you very often are using analog tools. Did you create those worksheets or you have a method that you download or something like? Yeah, tell 

Chelsey:
Us about. Yeah, something I downloaded, I'll share the link with you if I can find it and to perhaps include it somewhere for listeners, and it's called Unraveled. I've used the same tool every that part of the annual review process is the same thing I've done every year. I'll find the name of the person who did it because she does these beautiful workbooks that I actually print out and have used those for a number of years. 

Lex:
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Lex:
Another practice, I know that you have, is it all the things list or the brain dump list? So this is a huge challenge, right? Entrepreneurs especially that got so many ideas, they're swimming in it. Tell us a little bit how you manage idea overload. 

Chelsey:
Yes, so your brain dump list also called mind sweep also. I mean, there's so many things you can call it wildly different from your to-do list, your brain dump list. That's the biggest thing is I think people create to-do lists that are really brain dump lists. And not every week, maybe every week, every two weeks, I do the brain dump, and that's really where I think through all of the different clients that I have, all the different functions of my business, my life. I'm also a nonprofit, so what do those clients need and get it all onto a piece of paper, and then from there, I can pull the tasks that I do on a day-to-day basis so that my to-do list is much more streamlined. Three to five things, these are what's the most important, but the brain dump list is just kind of the safety net where I know that the task is captured. 

I know that I'm going to be able to organize it and prioritize it as appropriate. It's taken, again, different forms over the years and over time to really figure out what works best for me. I used to color code like crazy. I used to do all kinds of different things, and now it's really just a rather boring list of black pen on white paper, and it's organized by client rather than by priority because I prioritize on my to-do list. But it's such a great way because, or tool, because if something pops up with a client or with an idea for a new program that I want to offer or a new workshop I want to teach, I can write it on there, trust that it's going to be captured, and then it doesn't derail me or distract me throughout the day from the most important things that I have to get done. 

Lex:
Yeah, I think that's the struggle, right? It's like I have this new idea and sort of how quickly can I assess whether it should take me off my course or whether I should set it aside and how do I build that practice? What are some ways you see people managing that, like the idea overload and embracing change, embracing that maybe the plan you set forward is maybe not the right course of action. There is possibly something that could interject there or being more disciplined about that and saying, Nope, I'm going to stay on track and I'm going to do that webinar idea later. 

Chelsey:
So one of my biggest productivity hacks is actually planning everything the night before, writing out that to-do list for what you want to do tomorrow. Today, again, really thinking through what are going to be the most important three to five tasks that I need to do? How can I make them super actionable? And then just closing out all the tabs and everything so you're not walking back into 30 chrome tabs open and inboxes out of control. But if you are someone who gets really easily excited by a new idea or a new opportunity, I said, jot that down and see if at the end of the day it still resonates with you, what can be moved in the to-do list this week or this month to make space for that item? Is it the right time? Is now the right time for that activity so that you hit some kind of milestone? 

Chelsey:
I always use the example of if you're someone who wants to have a Black Friday sale, you got to start thinking about that in August, September. You can't be thinking about that the week before and have the biggest impact. So unfortunately, if you are inspired by a brilliant Black Friday sale idea on Thanksgiving, it might not be in your best interest to really dig into that. I'm not saying not to, but you just have to make that decision for yourself and recognize, okay, well, maybe I can take advantage of this, or maybe it can look like this in December and it's something at a different time. 

Lex:
For entrepreneurs especially, I think for entrepreneurs who come out of a corporate environment or a team setting of any kind, I think one of the biggest challenges I see is that they're not forced to do those kinds of rituals, or there's not an external pressure to be like, Ooh, how do we get ahead of this? How do I schedule my day even? And so I find that people are playing a little fast and loose often, and they just sort of wake up and hit the ground running with whatever feels good for that day. How do you recommend people cultivate a little bit of the discipline of how to structure their day and their time? 

Chelsey:
That is the hardest part of all of this, right? I can give you all of the brilliant ideas and all of the strategies, but without that critical piece of discipline, it's all going to fall to the wayside. So I mean, hiring a coach, hiring that accountability can be a really important, getting into a group coaching program really of any kind can be really important just because you have someone else who's looking out for you, and even if they're not calling you out on it, you still want to show up. You still want to demonstrate progress and support the other members of that group by your performance. So really, for me, that works really well, but people respond to different kinds of accountability. Some people have really strong inner accountability. That's like someone like my sister, she sets her New year's resolution and that girl reach them every year. 

Chelsey:
It's so frustrating, and I'm someone who needs a lot of external accountability, so I really enjoy working in group coaching programs or with a coach. If you are someone who is a bit more of a questioner, then it's making sure that you truly believe in what you're doing. Have you found the why? And remind yourself frequently of what? Why is behind your business or behind that project that you're working on. Or if you're really someone who is just off doing their own thing, then frankly, you've probably made it this far off doing your own thing, so do your own thing, right? Again, there's not a particular structure that anyone has to fit into with this, but that discipline is I just remind myself, this is what I'm working towards. These are my goals. This is what I want to achieve. Unfortunately, this thing that I don't really want to do is going to help me get there. 

Lex:
Super powerful. Reminding yourself of the why about the space of procrastination. You said something when you came and spoke in growth trackers, like procrastination is information. Does that sound accurate? 

Chelsey:
Yes. 

Lex:
Tell us what that means. Procrastination is information. 

Chelsey:
So I love talking about procrastination because it's such human experience, and even the best of us deal with it every single day, and so there's lots of different reasons we procrastinate, and I think people forget that. I think people think like, oh, man, I'm just feeling so lazy today. Or they beat themselves up about why they can't get this thing done, and oftentimes what it's telling us is that project is too big and it's not specific enough to you to get started. You don't like it, which is a very reasonable thing, and you just need to find a way to make it more fun for yourself or to build in some accountability for it. You're scared whether that's scared of failing or scared of looking foolish, or you're a bit of a perfectionist, and so we have to get to the deeper cause of where that's coming from, or you're someone who responds well to a deadline and we need to build that in a little bit artificially so that you're not actually missing really important deadlines for yourself. 

Chelsey:
You have to build in some of that buffer if that's your procrastination reason. So it's really just paying attention. If you find yourself what's up next on your to-do list, you find yourself clicking around and all of a sudden you're on a deep dive somewhere else or you've picked up your phone. Just again, it's that moment of intentionality and awareness to say, what's actually going on right now? Where is this coming from? What do I need to do? Because if you are avoiding sending up a new email funnel, you're probably avoiding it because that's a huge task, but I bet you could write the introduction email for it, and so if that's your task, I bet you could get that done if that's how your to-do list was framed. 

Lex:
Yeah, exactly. And that's why I love marketing experimentation so much because it is like the combination of what you do and what I do so well, which is like, yes, maybe you do want to go down that path because it is going to lead you to a result, but why don't you just try a small piece of it first and let's see how it works out. Let's see how it feels for you. First of all, does it feel joyful, sustainable for you, and does it drive the result that you want? Right? There's almost always a smaller version of that project. I think that's what happens. People put these giant amorphous things on their to-do list, and it's like, well, yeah, if you're going to dominate the world, then that's going to be a big project. 

Chelsey:
Yeah. I was actually coaching someone recently and I asked her, I called her out on a little bit. I said, can you read me your to-do list for today? And she had right email funnel or create email onboarding funnel for her freebie. I was like, that's huge. No wonder you don't want to do that. How do you know what's done? Where do you even start with that? What are you going to write about? There's so many questions and so much more information you need with that big project. So your to-do list should be tasks. It should be what's the very first thing you can do, whether it's the small step you can do to make progress towards that bigger goal without getting overwhelmed, so you have that plan in place where to start. 

Lex:
And I would challenge people also to see, could I go to market with that faster? Could I go to market with a smaller version of that email funnel, see how it does so I have more confidence that I'm on the right track? I think one thing that we do with marketing projects and specifically is we build a lot of our own assumptions into it, so we subconsciously recognize we're building a lot of assumptions in, and it could be a lot of wasted effort, and so that feels bad, and so making it smaller and saying, well, let's see if that first email that I write lands great, maybe I'm right about the path here. I'll add the second email, and then I'm testing it as I go. 

Chelsey:
I also think there's a fallacy about how much we can actually get done every day. So people think that if they write that big project on their to-do list, that they're actually going to be able to accomplish it, and that's where time blocking actually is incredibly effective because once you map out, when you're going to work on each task, you start to realize, okay, actually I can't fit as much as I thought I could in every day, and that's always a good reality check for me. If I get a little ambitious, I'll do power hours, time blocking, whatever you want to call it, and I'll write out, okay, this hour I'm going to work on this thing, and then at the end of the day I'm like, oh, shoot, I have way more tasks than hours today. And that's a good reality check too. 

Lex:
Yeah. It goes back to your reflection practice, which is if you're looking back on every day and you're like, wow, I don't get done the things that I set out to do every day, and maybe I'm setting myself up for failure every day. 

Chelsey:
Exactly. 

Lex:
If people are struggling to work on the right things, if they find, I think one thing with marketing in particular, if your business, if you're not a marketer, it's not that fun to work on marketing generally, and so maybe you're procrastinating with client work or with something else that feels like business work. What are some of the things that you invite folks to think about when it comes to, I know I'm working on the wrong things. I know I'm missing these value opportunities, 

Chelsey:
So I define productivity as working on the right thing at the right time to help you reach your goals. So the right thing is the task itself. The right time is going back to the beginning of our conversation where it's that scheduling, right? Are you a morning person? Are you an evening person, introvert, extrovert? What are all the different ways that, what are things that impact your schedule that you can't control? And so how can we work around that? So the right time is when you're going to be most focused for that task, and then all to help you reach your goal faster. So when we're thinking about our goals, often as entrepreneurs, that's a money related goal. We need to make money to be business owners. So in that, when we look at it through that lens, I always tease the example of changing all the colors on your website is not a moneymaking activity, but reaching out to five people in your network that are potential leads or know people who are your ideal client, that's activity. And so we have to just keep looking through our tasks through the lens of how is this helping me reach my goal for the day, for the week, for the quarter, whatever that might be, but making sure that it's all goal focused. 

Lex:
Yeah, a simple question. Very powerful answer though, especially if you write that down. I'm changing the colors on my website. Yeah, not sure that that's achieving a goal. 

Chelsey:
Exactly. 

Lex:
Chelsea, if you could give one tip to our listener about how to find their best clients and how to make sure that they are staying focused on that, what would it be? 

Chelsey:
That's a two part answer to this, because how you're going to find your best clients is probably actually being yourself. I struggled a lot with how to get my personality to show up in how I'm writing emails or how I'm showing up on Instagram, and once I started doing that, I just started connecting with people who I was just having a lot more fun with, who understood how I like to coach, how I like to talk about it, that I'm going to be, we're going to get the work done, but we're going to have fun about it, and I'm going to tease you for the silly habits that we all have. So really showing up as yourself is going to help you get the best clients in terms of staying focused and making sure that that other piece of it, finding the right clients. I think it's just that balance of getting really excited about all the new possible opportunities they have, but really building that all off of the fundamentals of your business. You have to put the right things in place before you can't do Z before you do a, and that sounds like such boring advice, but I think I spent the first two years of my business in X, Y, and Z, and just because A, B, C was kind of boring. But now that I've done those beginner steps, I feel much more confident and comfortable with everything that I do in my business. 

Lex:
Yeah, absolutely. And I love your advice about coaching, whether you hire a coach or you join a program, because I agree that that's such a pitfall. People are like, oh, no, I can do it by myself. But I really think we all need that sort of peer support. We all need expert support of some kind in our business, and having that just external forcing function makes such a big difference. 

Chelsey:
Yeah, even just receive time. I mean, the coaching program I'm in, sometimes the people in it are just saying like, Hey, I can't get my Zoom to do this thing, and instead of googling it for 20 minutes, they jump in the Slack channel, we answer it in two. So it's also just a time saving strategy. Yeah. 

Lex:
Would you like to share, is there anything that you're doing that you want folks to know about? 

Chelsey:
Yeah, so until the end of 2023, I'm having a V I P offer, so this is redefine your time, V V I P session. So it's 90 minutes with a month of Voxer coaching afterwards, and it's really designed for the folks who are growing their business alongside working in some capacity, whether that's as a freelancer consultant working in a nine to five, and they're trying to juggle a lot of different things. And so I'm really excited about this because those are people who are one highly ambitious, typically also really good at managing their time, but I know that they're feeling overwhelmed. I know that they're feeling really scrambled and just need some one to help them come in, set their schedule up, give them the routines and habits that they need so that they can dive into 2024 ready to rock. 

Lex:
Oh, powerful. So get in on that with Chelsea. Amazing. I've linked that down in the show notes. Chelsea, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. 

Chelsey:
Thank you so much, Les. This is a lot of fun. 

Lex:
One of the things I love about Chelsea is how she adapts to meet us where we are with productivity systems. As Chelsea herself says, productivity is personal and she encourages us to take it one step at a time, being realistic about how much we can get done and becoming more aware about what types of support we really need, check out Chelsea's podcast From Overwhelmed to Under Control wherever you're listening to this episode.

Find her work at chelseynewmyer.com. Her redefine your time VIP session is also linked in the show notes. If you're tired of wasting time on marketing activities that don't pay you back, you should learn how to make smarter marketing bets with us inside Growthtrackers, Growthtrackers is my marketing experimentation program for creatives who want to crack their client finding formula. Grab your guest, pass on my website and tune in Fridays when I host Growthtrackers live on YouTube to give you the inside scoop and how to get back your time and money while staying booked with client work. You can find some of the past live streams on the Growthtrackers live playlist on my YouTube. Until next time, keep your energy low until the value will be high.