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Are you an APA member yet? December is the last month to be a founding member of the ADDO professional association. With APA, you get free access to all of our 12 monthly masterclasses and recordings, invites to Smallpod mastermind groups that meet monthly, discounts on all offerings and live events from adoesthetics, a digital monthly magazine, and so much more. All of that for the very low price of $300 per year. And as a founding member, we guarantee that the price will never go up.

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As long as you remain a continuous member.

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Go to attoesthetics.com and click on the ATTO Professional association tab to learn more and join today.

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Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, a podcast for spa owners who want to step up their leadership and business skills and step into the role as spa CEO. I I'm your host, Daniela Warner, CEO of ATTO Aesthetics and founder of the Growth Factor Framework program where we teach, coach and guide spa owners in scaling their spas to the next level of growth and unlocking freedom in their life and their business. I'm so glad you're here. Now let's dive into the show.

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Hello my dears. Daniela here and welcome to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. What a week it has been. Thank you to all of you who hung out with me last week for Next Level Growth. We just wrapped it up. Next Level Growth, if you have not heard, we've been talking about it a lot. But if you have not heard, it's our virtual event that we've hosted for the past few years. It's all around planning and we really dive into this, this planning process that I've been refining over the years and it does need constant refining because it's going to change depending on what season of life you're in. But I feel like when I say it's about planning, that's that's really far too simplified. It's, it's really how you plan for a both and life. How do you ensure that you have time for your family, your hobbies, your friends and still be devoted and able to hit your business goals? Now, we talked about seasons of life and for me personally, I'm entering this new season of motherhood where where My kids are 4 and 7. We are fully, fully, fully in the birthday circuit. There are parties almost every weekend, sometimes two different birthday parties where my husband and I have to divide and conquer. We've got karate and dance and swim happening after school. I really honestly like if you look at my day to day, I spend a Lot of time in the car and I love it. I enjoy it because it's important to me to be present with my kids even in those mundane tasks. Right. I get a lot of audio books in and I also get a lot of great conversations with my kids now. I'm also deeply passionate about this company, about our team, about the clients that we are so blessed to work with. I love entrepreneurship. I love building things, I love solving problems. And that right there is the tension. Right. How do you remain present both as a mom and within your professional life? It could seem like you can't have both. Right. If you, it's. I mean, being a mom is a full time, full time, full time job. And as an entrepreneur or if you're building your own career path, that is a full time, full time, full time job. Neither one of those things mentioned your own self care, your own hobbies, your own social life. Right. So there's so much goodness in life in the world. How do we set ourselves up for a both and lifestyle? Well, in my 43 years on this planet, the only way that I have somewhat figured it out is through intentional planning. And let me tell you, I by no means have all of the answers. I have gone through some pretty crazy struggles as, you know, as these seasons of life switch, I regularly am trying to navigate what the most productive and efficient work schedule is for myself. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit. But the thing is, it's hard. It's just hard. And I'm someone who is blessed to be in partnership with a very present spouse, with a very present, who is a very present father to our kids. I have support with household responsibilities. And even with all of that added support that so many people don't have, it's still really, really hard. So, you know, shout out to the single moms out there. My goodness, I am in awe of these women that are building businesses and raising incredible kids on their own. I just really honor you if that is your situation, because it's an added layer of hard and there's still so many that are doing it. Incredible. But whatever your situation is, I really believe that proper planning and learning how to be as productive as possible in all aspects of life will not only save you time, but also make you happier and more at ease. Right. We don't want our adrenal glands just firing 24 7. We want to be able to enjoy our children. We want to be able to enjoy, you know, a long bath. We want to be able to enjoy building our business So I want to share with you six different productivity hacks for busy aesthetic professionals. Now, some of these you're going to be like, okay, duh. But the point is not in knowing these things, the point is actually incorporating them into your life. That's where it makes the biggest difference. So number one, plain and simple plan what you will accomplish each day. So as a part of the closeout of the previous day, I want you to look at your calendar and total side note here, if you are not using Google Calendar, please do yourself a favor, get Google Calendar. I went through in next level growth. I talked a lot about how to do a calendar audit, how to use different calendars for your kids calendar, your work calendar, your personal calendar, your shared calendar with your spouse or partner. If you're in partnership, your you, your food calendar, I mean whatever you need on there, really get it digital. And I see you all you pen and paper kind of people. I have a notebook next to me, I write in it every single day. But it needs to actually be on your calendar to know what to do and when. So if I'm looking at my day for tomorrow and I understand, okay, I am back to back with calls or you know, if you're a provider, I am back to back with appointments. That's not going to be a day that you're going to try and accomplish a CEO task. That's going to be a day that you're in provider mode. And so, you know, maybe you have a day with wide open space. Make sure instead of just going in and checking your email and then just getting dragged down 15 different rabbit holes and having an incredibly busy day that at the end of the day you're like, I don't even know what I did. I was non stop the whole day, but I literally accomplished nothing on my to do list. That's what happens when we're not setting intentions. So part of the way to help make you more productive is understanding are you a morning person or are you a night owl? And I 100% through and through am a morning person. So if I have something hard to do, if I am writing a new piece of content or developing a longer term strategy for the company, whatever that thing is, that is going to be first on my list. And I am going to have my first hour of my workday dedicated to accomplishing that particular task. That's before I check Slack, that's before I check Monday, that's before, before I am checking email or anything like that. I'm diving into the thing that longer Term is going to move the company forward. Okay. So getting really, really clear on what those things are and making sure that you're prioritizing the right things, that's going to help you hit your goals faster. Number two is creating a dedicated workspace that makes you happy. Now, I think your environment in general affects your mood, affects your productivity, affects so much. You know, I remember even just during COVID we moved from a beautiful house. There was nothing wrong with the house, but it didn't have a lot of natural light. You know, it was just kind of standard ceilings. It was very gray in the colors. And with everything that was going on with COVID I had a newborn, so I wasn't sleeping. You know, my son was born right at the beginning of COVID It was just felt a little bit dark. And when we moved into our new house that had big, giant windows and high ceilings, energetically, there was a shift. It was because we were in a new environment. It was a new environment that made me feel inspired. It made me feel excited and productive. And so we want to do those things with your workspace as well. I very much value cleanliness, and sometimes I move a little fast, and my desk can be a little bit crazy. But I know that when I start the day, I want everything. I want my mouse pad lined up straight. I have, you know, pretty colored mouse pads. I have crystals around me. I've got all these things that make me feel organized and clean and professional, which affects my mindset. There's actually a book called Grit. If you have not read that book yet, I highly recommend it. It's by Angela Duckworth, but she talks about there's significant research that shows that when you are in routine, you're able to become productive faster. So, meaning, like, if I need to get into flow, like a flow state of work, for me, that typically takes 20 or 30 minutes to get into a state of flow. Well, when I have a routine where I come to my desk and this is where I work, it's easier and faster for me to get into a state of flow than if I'm like, I'm going to work at the front desk today, and then I'm going to work in my treatment room, and then I'm going to work in the back office, and then I'm going to work at home. You're not able to get in flow as quickly as possible. So keeping track of that and really understanding, like, when I'm at my desk, this is work mode, and this is my routine, and I have my glass of water. And I have, you know, whatever the things you are, you need to be able to get into flow. That's what I want you to focus on, to make sure that you can be as productive as possible. Because that alone can save you hours of time. All right, Removing notifications from your desktop. This is number three. If you have a Mac. If you go up into the right hand corner, there's like, it looks like an on off switch. And if you click that, there is a button called Focus and it has like a half moon on there and then you can hit do not disturb and you can leave that for an hour until this evening. There's focus settings that you can do things on. And that makes it really helpful to not get pop up notifications. I know now we can get our text messages and, you know, all sorts of things. Um, I've, I've actually been on a coaching call where I did not turn off my notifications and I received a FaceTime call from my mom on the same computer. And that was the day that I learned my lesson to make sure that I always, when I'm working, have do not disturb turned on. So I'm not getting these, these things that will distract me. And for example, I am someone who regularly has about 700 tabs open on my desktop. That is not a productive activity or skill. But that is just how my brain tends to work. I'm opening tabs and I'm leaving them open. So I know to go back to them or if I look at them regularly when I'm working on something individually. You know, I was recently doing a lot of refining to our Spa Manager course. And you know, we taught it earlier in the year. We're now in it right now, teaching it again. And before we taught it again, I wanted to take what we learned from the first round and refine it. And so when I was going through the slides that I was updating, I made sure that I had kind of pulled that slide away and there were no other tabs that I could get distracted to kind of go down some rabbit hole over there. So pull the tabs that you're working on so that you're not going to be jumping around. All right. And make sure that you have that do not disturb. I am sure that PCs have some sort of feature. I just don't know what it's called or how you do it. But on Mac, super easy. Okay. Productivity tip number four. Only check emails during dedicated times of the day. That is the quickest way to get completely sidetracked from your bigger picture goal, you can be busy with email all day. People sending you requests and wanting to know if you can do this or do that. That is going to be the fastest way to get you off track from whatever your particular goal is. Now, I typically will do email right after my lunch break. I'll do a quick, you know, five or ten minute check in and then I do a quick check in at the end of the day. Now I am blessed to have this incredible human named Christy that basically managed my whole life. She does the majority of email for me and then she'll put the ones that I need to respond to in into a For Daniella folder. That was something that we've been doing for the past couple of years and has made a huge impact in my time. And also remember our environment. You know, those little red notification bubbles drive me absolutely bonkers. And so for those of you that have like 12,000 emails, that gives me anxiety. And so I like my inbox at zero every day and Christy helps me to do that. I feel productive, I feel accomplished. If it doesn't bother you, who cares, right? It doesn't matter. You don't have to have your inbox to zero to be productive. I know that about myself. I know that that bothers me and makes me feel behind. And so I'm doing everything that I can to make sure that I am operating in the best way for myself, that I'm not going to be overwhelmed when I leave work and go pick up my kids. I'm not going to bring that energy with me when I'm at work. I'm going to feel productive and like I'm accomplishing things and not like I'm just a hamster running on a wheel. Right? We've got to be self reflective enough to understand what our specific trigger points are, what our needs and desires are. Okay. All right. Number five, use templates for repetitive tasks. Now you can create templates in Gmail for emails that you send regularly like client follow ups. You can do this with if you are a Mango man account. You can set a lot of these things up via forms and also flows to allow you to send still personalized messaging to your clients. Social media templates also can fall into this category. Something that we've done this year that I am just thought was the coolest idea. I just patted myself on the back for this one was creating like an evergreen spreadsheet for social media. So what are the things that you talk about over and over again? And we did this for our Growth factor students at the Spa CEO Intensive. We created this template spreadsheet where the tabs at the bottom were like chemical peels, facials, RF microneedling, waxing, medically assisted weight loss, whatever the specific things are. Then we also put specific promotions like retail reversal or mini event. Maybe Shed the Dead, if you're doing a Shed the Dead party. So that the images and the copy of these posts that can easily, easily be reused, you have them in one nice, neat, easy location to be able to grab them and not reinvent the wheel. Right. Why are you spending time, money, energy, recreating posts that you already have? Change one or two of the sentences, change the graphic and go with it. You know, there's a lot of content that is very reusable and evergreen and with proper storage and proper planning, again, you can save lots of time and money on that. All right, and last but not least, I want to talk about some really incredible softwares. So some of the three that we use a lot that I would say help with productivity, Loom, Signal and Slack. So Loom, if you have not heard of that, that's L O O M. It's like a little software that you can use to share your screen, like film your screen. You're. There's a picture of you in a little circle in the bottom. So if I want to talk to somebody about a spreadsheet or a template or an email, I can film a, you know, three minute loom that would have taken me, you know, 20 minutes to write out in an email. And then when you finish filming the loom, it gives you an A URL. So I'm not like downloading something and then uploading it. I can just plug that loom, I can hyperlink it and whoever the recipient is can view that loom. This is a really, really great tool to use when you're creating SOPs. It's quick, it's easy. If it's under five minutes, it's free. I think the paid version is about a hundred bucks a year, something like that. So it's an inexpensive service that again, think about how you can use this piece in your onboarding. Think about how you can use this in your SOPs. Think about how you can use this to make sure that you're clearly communicating with your providers, with your management staff, all of those things super, super helpful. We also use Signal, which is a messaging app. It's very similar to WhatsApp, similar to Voxer, that type of thing where you can do images, video, voice messages, text, text signal, is just the most secure and the one that is trusted the most by people who are concerned especially with security. So Signal, we have a work chat that if I need something, you know, urgently, I can communicate via signal. And that's been, you know, incredible to get things done quickly. And then Slack helps to remove email. So we essentially have these different topics that are longer threads you can do. We have the paid version of Slack, so that allows us to do voice messages, we can do image, we can do video, we can do text, all kinds of things. And the amount of emails that that has kept out of my inbox is incredible. And it's also a lot easier to search rather than going back through these different threads. And you eliminate the need to hit reply all, because how many people don't actually hit reply all? And then it's again wasting time to go back and forth to make sure that everybody has the right information. All right, so let me just do a quick recap here. So, six productivity hacks for busy esthetic professionals. Number one, plan what you're going to accomplish each day. Make sure that you know your most productive time of day and honor that time by working on the hardest thing during that time. Number two, create a dedicated workspace that makes you happy. Number three, remove all notifications from desktop. Number four, only check your email during dedicated times of the day. Number five, use templates for repetitive tasks. And number six, use softwares like Loom, Signal or Slack to communicate more effectively and more clearly. All right, I hope that this helps you bring more happiness and more ease into your life. Remember, done is better than perfect. Keep going, keep striving, keep working for that both and lifestyle. And I'll catch you on the next episode. As always, if you want to keep keep the conversation going, I want you.