← The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
661. Your Business To-Do List Is Too Long—Here’s How to Fix It
00:25:23
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Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into a successful business, and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams, no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support, and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Hey, hey, Product bosses. I know a lot of us want to get organized. That's my word of the year. One of them is discipline. And it's that discipline and kind of getting organized and staying organized and really kind of minimizing my overwhelm this year. So if you're anything like me, you're probably juggling spreadsheets or you might be guessing like what stock do I actually have on hand or do I have enough to make these raw goods, Right? Especially if we've just come out of the holiday season and maybe you're just crossing your fingers that the right stock levels or that when you restock, you order the right amount. But I know that a lot of times when we're sitting in inventory, it's actually just chaos. It's like, is this organized? Is it organized in my head, is it organized on a spreadsheet? I have a piece of paper jotted down somewhere. I don't know. Right? But here's the deal. We're going to move into this year without the chaos. It does not need to feel this overwhelming. Because what if managing your inventory could actually be simple, right? Simple and not stressful and actually really informative. That's where Katana comes in. Now, I love Katana. It is the inventory management software that I have recommended for years and it's built specifically for product based businesses like yours. And with Katana, you are going to save time. You are going to know the exact details about your inventory, especially when it comes to time to reorder and how to streamline your operations, all so that you can focus on what you do best, which is being the visionary, which is being creative and making amazing products and taking care of your customers and focusing on sales. So if you are ready to ditch the overwhelm and get your inventory under control, I'd love for you to schedule your free demo for katana@theproductboss.com katana and you can see how Katana can be a game changer for your biz and make 2025 a breeze. Hey. Hey and welcome back to the Product Boss podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Snyder, and I'm so glad to be with you today. Okay, so in this podcast you always hear me talk about physical product based business and you can hear coaching calls once a week where I'm coaching product bosses, all ranges, people just starting to multimillion dollar brands and how they can build their lives and their businesses can fuel them. Right? So how could they have their wealthy life, their life of freedom and have a thriving business and the steps in between? Now, one of the biggest questions I've been getting asked recently is how to grow when you're a solopreneur, how to do these things and not burn yourself out. And so this episode today is for my soloprene, but also you're all small business owners. And I'm sure you're wearing literally all the hats, juggling all the things and feeling like there's never enough time in the day. Does that sound familiar to anyone? And I've been there. I even have a team and I feel this way often. And I get it because I know, like, you're wearing all the hats. You're the maker marketer, customer service rep, social media manager. And personally, if you're blending things, you're also the, you know, taxi driver or uber driver, I guess, depending on how you want to talk about it, right? But you're driving kids back and forth. You're running around getting groceries, cooking. You're like the chef in the house, all of the things. And somehow we're supposed to blend it all. Somehow we're supposed to do it all. So here's the truth though. You don't have to do everything yourself. And I know what you're thinking. All of a sudden you're like, whoa, Jacqueline, I can't. I can't afford to hire for help. Like, can't afford a team yet. I can't. I don't have, you know, I'd love for someone to, we'd all love to have a personal chef, a chauffeur, and someone to clean up after us, right? Like, that would be amazing. But we're all of those things. So what I want you to know is that when you are building these businesses, I want you to be able to get your business to operate as a machine, right? Operate as a sales engine so that it can work for you and not the other way around. And that way you do have time to do the things that align with your values. When you do have a sales engine for a business, the business is generating income and profit. That should be able to help you outsource tasks, get software to automate things, machinery to help with stuff, people to pack and ship. You know, just. It gives you more options. When women make money, the best thing that we can get out of it are options. Okay, when we make our own money, the options for things, we don't have to take all options, but we have options to make things happen. That's where the freedom comes in. So I want to dig into some of this today so that you realize that sometimes it's not about working harder. It comes with time management and prioritization. So let's get real for a second. So I know this, but when running a business, being an entrepreneur and doing it solo, I'm sure you feel like you're constantly trying to put out fires, right? Or juggle balls and things are falling. You might be waking up to orders or. And scrambling to fill those orders. I know so many of you that are kind of like, you'll get an order, and then you actually hate the fact that you got the order because you now have to make it and send it out. Maybe you're scrolling social media trying to figure out how to make that thing work. Maybe you're just not motivated in the morning or at night, or you don't know what to do and you just realize you're not really making progress. There's really nothing really happening. I know that this is so hard. Like, if I don't have something to anchor into in the morning, I could waste an entire morning. I'm definitely a night owl. And so I need something to anchor me in the mornings so that it gets my brain working. So I love to listen to podcasts in the morning, for example, because then I wake up, I listen to business podcasts. I wake up, my brain gets energized, I get ideas. I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna go take action. That's just a tool that I use. But it's also that time management and prioritization, because time management isn't just about squeezing More tasks into your day. It's about making sure you're focused on the right tasks. So I want you to ask yourself, are you spending your time in ways that are going to create that long term success you want or are you kind of stuck in these things daily that really aren't moving the needle right and they're leaving you exhausted and overwhelmed because you're like, I just keep trying but nothing's working. But are you working on the right things? Is your time in these buckets that your time is so valuable moving the needle where you want? So here's some quick strategies that you can use to reclaim your time. Okay, so there's the power of prioritization. So you hear me talk about the 8020 rule and we talk about the 8020 rule. When it comes to knowing what to sell in your business. We call it your best sellers or the products you're known for. So 80% of your revenue can come from 20% of your products. Okay, 80% of your revenue can come From 20% of your products. So what does that mean? That prioritization means that you're only focusing on 20%, the top 20% because 80% of the revenue can come from that. This is the 8020 rule. We can also use this for time. So if you can focus 80% of your time on the revenue generating activities, the needle movers, the things that are actually going to do the things you want, like sales, marketing and fulfillment. And then 20% of the time on the nice to haves. Like do you need to tweak your website right now? Do you need to post a reel right now? Do you need to scroll social media right now? What do you need to be doing in this moment? 80% of your time should be focused on that. So if you work, I was going to go with an easy number like 10. We'll go with 10. Just cuz easy. You work 10 hours a day. 8 hours are on the revenue generating activities. Okay, but let's go smaller. I'm just going to, I'm going to use my calculator, my handy dandy calculator to help me with simple math. But it's hard sometimes. Okay, let's see if four hours a day to work on your, on your business. Okay, so if you had 4 hours and 80% of that time, that would be 3 hours and 20 minutes. 3 hours and 20 minutes out of your 4 hours you're working on the revenue generating activities that could be learning how to generate revenue. And then at some point, once you learn how Actually taking action. And that's where you work on sales, marketing and fulfillment, right? Your sales engine. Then with your extra 40 minutes, that's when you get to go to the other stuff. So think about that, think about how much time you might be wasting because you're not prioritizing needle movers, you're not prioritizing the revenue generating activities, the parts that are part of your sales machine, your sales engine. Okay, next. Batching. Batching like a boss. Okay, so context switching is really hard. And I was telling my husband this the other day. Like my kids were, I was working on something and my kids were coming in and asking me questions. He'd come in and like throw a random thing at me and I'm like, can you guys stop talking to me just until I get done with this? Because every time you come and talk to me about something, it's a context switch. And when you context switch, I think it's something like it takes 10 minutes to get back to what you were working on. So look at that loss of time. So instead, like right now when I'm recording podcasts, I've shut my door, which means nobody interrupt me. And instead of switching from task to task, I'm set up. I needed to record a few podcasts. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna take the next, you know, hour, two hours, whatever it is, and I'm only going to record podcasts. So that means I'm turning off my notifications, I'm not checking my email, I'm not going down a social media hole. My husband earlier, you know, we'd moved to a new house. We have a bunch of like extra random things that like we had as furniture that we're not, there's just places we're not doing and like my daughter's old bed, things like that. And he's like, you know, I'm gonna list these on Offer Up. Great. So he's like, and I was like, great, let me show you like two other things I want you to list on Offer up. Just to get this stuff outta my house. And literally five minutes later I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm gonna take a shower. And I was like, weren't you just gonna list stuff on like, weren't you literally just walking to the garage to list stuff on Offer Up? And he's like, yeah, after the shower I was like, no, no, because you're gonna take a shower, it's going to change your mode. Like go and finish that one task, do that One thing and then context switch and then do the shower. I did the same thing earlier. I was really motivated to work. I'd finished one big thing. My mom came over to take my grandma out to lunch and she's like, you know, do you want to go to lunch? And I was like, I gotta eat here so that I stay in my brain space, which now I'm recording podcasts, I'm getting stuff done and if you listen to any of my episodes recently, I've been dealing with a lot of stress, so I need to get a lot done. So I have to batch. You have to set that time aside, try not to context switch and then batch. So are you batching? Content creation. We don't have to do a real a day. Do them on one day and then post them throughout. Packing and shipping. You do not need to pack and ship every single day. Your terms and conditions on your website can say, we ship orders Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we ship orders Tuesdays and Thursdays. You do not have to ship every day. Admin work, right? There's the four hour work. We used to say I check emails at 10am and 4pm every day. That would be like a thing you can choose when you're out actually going to go sit down and check emails. Maybe in the morning you wake up, you check emails, you don't look at your emails again until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. You could do that. You're in making, making. I know so many of you are like, I'm going to make and make and make every single day. Because that feels like you have the most control over it. But what if you were in making and production and all of that a certain time of the day, knowing how you work, maybe your brain is most active in the mornings and that's when you do your deep hard work, updating websites, writing emails, things like that. And then the making might be something you can do later on. It doesn't take as much focus. You play music, a podcast, watch something and you that later just batch it. And so same thing. It could be that Monday, Wednesday, Fridays from 11 to 3, you're making and then the other days you're not doing stuff. You're not doing that right. You're doing other things. Because you have to divide your day up into departments. You have to divide your day up into the needle movers that we talked about, that prioritization. Because the overwhelm comes from my friends. Especially if you are a parent, your kiddos are at home, maybe you're homeschooling. You're nine to five and you need to work in the fringe hours. But even if you're a full time product person and you have all the time, we also waste our time. So just think about these two things. Hey friend. Okay. I want to talk about something that I know that you really need. But so many people have all the reasons why they don't do this. We really need is we need to build an email list. I'm going to tell you that there are two things that you need as a product based business. You need an email list because that is your asset, you actually own that and that's a direct communication with your customers. And you need your own website because you can't build on borrowed land. But right now I want to talk about email marketing because email marketing is actually the way that you are going to drill drive sales in your business. It's the way that you're going to stay connected. Forget thinking that social media is the way because guess what? The algorithm chooses who they want to send your images and reels and all the things to you. But emails really gets you connected with your customers. So if you feel like you're trying to connect, you're trying to sell and you feel like you're wasting hours trying to get the job done, or you feel like you would just like an easier way. My friends, this year it's time for a change. And that change is Klaviyo. It is the number one email and SMS marketing platform that I recommend specifically for product based business owners. Did you hear that? It's for product based business owners, people who sell products online. And the reason why it's so amazing is that it's got these incredible capabilities and it's seamless with so many of the tools and the platforms that we recommend. So with Klaviyo, you can send personalized messages, you can automate campaigns, and here's the best part. You can boost your sales and your revenue without having to do much more than type in a few things into your keyboard. Okay, so Klaviyo makes your emails feel like they are talking directly to your customers, right? Your customers are going to feel like it's a one on one conversation with you and it's super easy to set up. Even if tech is not your thing. Trust me, tech's not my thing either. And this is amazing. So if you're ready to see it in action, I'd love you to get started for free. Now all you have to do is head to the productboss.com klaviyo that's the productboss.com/k L A V I Y O and turn your email list into your best performing sales channel that you own. Hey friends, are you unsure of what to say on social media or what to even send in your weekly emails? Well, what if creating content could be easy? Would you be looking for a shortcut to creating consistent content? Yes, consistent content. Because you know, consistency is key. Well, let me tell you, you are not alone when you feel like you're struggling on what to post or what to write in emails. And we know that you have that product part of your business down. But, but as you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know that to get more people to your products, to buy your products, you need to create great content. Oh, I know, I see. I keep saying content and that's the dreaded C word. And we can't tell you how many product bosses tell us that they want to create great content for their audience and their customers, but they don't know what to say or they are so busy they can't find the time, or they really, really, really don't want to be the face of their brand. Well, no worries because that's exactly why we created a year of content. It is shortcut to creating consistent content that resonates with your audience and brings more loyal customers who can't wait to buy your products. If you want to see how easy this is and how easy it is to create content for your audience and your customers, head to www.ayearofcontent.com. and then the third tip is automating and delegating. Okay, so even without a budget for help for any sort of support, you still can get support with automating things and delegating things. So there are tools and systems that can take work off your plate. So automation as simple as social media posts, you don't even need to get external apps anymore. On Instagram, for example, you can schedule posts to go out. You can do it all, get in your phone, schedule it, don't have to think about it till next week at the same time, emails. So we love Klaviyo. For example, for e.com it's klaviyo.com the product boss. We have a link for it here. You can have entire welcome series built in and automated. You do the work, it goes, you do a sale, you could pre write all the emails and it goes, you have post purchase where people have bought from you and then they get an email post purchase that can get set up, you do not have to think about it. It can all just get automated. And delegation is where you do start to ask for help and you do ask other people to do stuff. But the automation is the easiest and there are free ways of doing this and there are paid. Some of my delegation is I pay somebody to buy my groceries. And who is that somebody? Whoever picks up the order on Instacart. I pay Instacart to shop for me because I don't love going to the grocery store. I get real cold in there. And I actually find it a way to save money because you can actually look at it as you're ordering. You know, you're putting stuff in your cart, you can see the total before you ever check out, versus when you're at a grocery store and you're just adding things to your cart. Then they ring the whole thing up, then they give you the price. It's kind of like on if you ever watch Top Chef and they give them like 30 minutes to shop and a 200 budget. And at the very end they're like, you gotta put back the, you know, extra truffle, you can't afford it. Or you know, like, I don't want you having to do that. One, I want to help you make enough money that you, you don't have to ever do that. But two, that's the way that I delegate someone to do my grocery shopping and then Trader Joe's, I delegate someone to cook for me because I'll get some pre made meals. So give yourself that grace and find the way that works for you. Find the way that works for you so that you, the owner of your company, the boss of your business, has more time to look at the revenue generating activities, the needle movers, the things that are actually move the business forward versus the stuff you don't have to pay attention to. And that's what I want for you. I want you to be able to build businesses that work for you. Sales engines that move the machine, right? You want the engine of the machine to make the machine work. That's why when people invented machines, it was amazing. Let's just think about a bicycle. The human was the machine moving the bicycle originally. Your legs, your energy, your effort. Right now you might feel like you're on a bicycle, lugging an entire trailer behind you uphill both ways. That might be what you feel like right now. What I want to do with you, my whole goal through the episodes that I do, my programs that I offer is to get you either the electric bicycle if you want the bicycle or get you the car, the truck, the van, big rig truck that can pull it all up the mountain both ways, right? I want you to get the machine to work for you. I want you to build your machine. That's that engine in the machine that can go for you. You get to sit in there, hey, you got a Tesla, it could drive you, right? But I am still not 100% on that one. I'm going to still sit behind the wheel and pay attention. But I'm old like that, so that's what I really want. If I'm going to use an analogy for you, I want you to get you off the bicycle with your own effort, having to do everything uphill and get you some sort of engine machine that works for you to make everything easier, to get you up the mountain faster with less of your sweat. There's still going to be energy put in, but less of you having to do it all. Okay? And that's one of the biggest things I want to, I want to push for you. So please remember. I know, I know it's tempting to try and do everything yourself. It might be an expectation you grew up with. It might be, I can't, there could be all these like scarcity stories, like I can't afford to get someone to help me with this or this is the way it's been done. Whatever the story is, I want you to remember this. You did not start your own business to be a slave to your business. You didn't leave working for someone else and building someone else's dream to work more hours for your business without benefiting from it. The benefit for having our own businesses, for being entrepreneurs is time freedom and financial freedom. It's both. It's the both and, and a lot of times it does take our time initially to build so that we can have more time at the back end. I'm not the kind of person that's like, you can just do this in four hours a week and not really do anything and push a couple buttons. That's not product based businesses. It's not the businesses that I'm teaching on how to build. But when you do build systems, you do have automated tasks. You do batch your time, you focus your energy the 8020 rule, and you focus your energy on the needle movers, the things that are actually working and creating revenue for you. And you create a sales engine that works for you without you having to constantly push it yourself. This is where you start to set yourself up for the freedom that you want of time and of money and that you can keep doing it for the long haul. And that's how you're gonna do it. That's why I've done it. And that's how I teach my students. And that's. I'm gonna continue to support you in doing right. I want you to work on your business. I want you to work within your life. I want you to find this, the, the freedom in it and not just be in it. In it. Okay, so here's my challenge to you this week. I want you to think about what you're doing and I want you to pick one thing that you're just not gonna do anymore. Like one thing you're just gonna throw out the window. I don't know why I'm wasting my time on that. I'm gonna stop doing it. Then I want you to pick one thing that you're like, huh, I can get help with that. I can either streamline it, automate it, or delegate it. Easier to do. This is something I teach instead of the academy, for example, that's how we have all of these templates in the product boss Academy. Because it was like, let's just streamline this process. Okay? Automation. You're going to send emails. Can you build klaviyo to send your emails for you, for example? And delegating, can you ask for help? Can you ask someone to do something? Even if it's like telling your kids you're going to do your laundry this week or getting your groceries delivered to you? Yes, you're going to pay an extra fee, but what's your time worth? Even that small change can free up more time for you to focus and batch your things versus be in the grind. And then I want for you to think for your business. The needle movers, what is the biggest place that you're most overwhelmed by? Okay, so is it I need to get more people to know my business exists. Do I need to work on the audience, the acquisition of people to know we exist? Or do I think I have people that actually have to get better at selling? Or is it both? Right. Because what I really want for you when you're building the sales engine is I want you to have one sales channel that is your direct to consumer channel. It's your connection with that customer. I see this as places of like social media shops. First and foremost though, E commerce, like having your own website. Some of you find this to be like, Etsy might be your connection, but I would say like in person where it's you and the customer. And it's kind of your job to get in front of the customer, direct the customer and really there might be a couple like transaction fees, but really it's you and them. Okay, then I want you to think, do you have a scalable channel? So what's a scalable channel? A scalable sales channel is one where you don't have to do all of the work to make it happen. The two scalable channels I love are Amazon and wholesale. So Amazon is one in which you get on Amazon fba, which is fulfilled by Amazon. You get the products, the product listings which we walk everybody through in multi stream machine. So you get the products listed, Amazon has the customers. The most you have to do is you pay per click to get people to be aware of your brand existing on Amazon. But you get your products listed, you ship your product in, you do fulfilled by Amazon and Amazon does the fulfillment, the customer service, all of it. Transactions, the returns, all of it. Okay, that is a scalable channel because you don't have to do it all, you just have to put in the product, make sure you manage the listings. But it's not, you don't have to be, you know, waving people down on the street corner be like, hey, come here, come shop for me on Amazon. There are easier ways of doing it and there's built in eyeballs to that channel. The second channel I love, love, love for scaling is wholesale. It's one of the number one ways I grew my business and the business I've been in for years. Wholesale is one again. You do a lighter lift, you find the buyers from retail shops. Some people use fair. The way I teach my students is not to be completely reliant on a platform like fair. I don't like you guys being reliant on anything a hundred percent. So I also teach you how to find the stores and reach out to them and get them to buy. And you do wholesale because once you get 50 stores, a hundred stores, even 800 stores, okay, I have a student with 800 stores right now. They operate at scale. So then they have more product from you than just one, right? So imagine 800 stores each selling a hundred products. That is at scale. That is massive. All you have to do, I'm going to go with less. Let's say you get 50 stores to work with. Those 50 stores each buy from you. Now they're working on getting their own customers, they're working on selling your stuff and they're like distributing. Imagine them as the pollinators, right? Like butterflies and bird. Yeah, birds, butterflies, bees. They're the pollinators. They're spreading your products all around the country, all around the world for you. You just have to be the flower that they come pick it up from. It makes it so much easier. You do not have to fly like Santa in the middle of the night and, and give gifts to all the children. You have all the help in the world. Okay, so that's how I want you to think about it. I want you to have a strong direct to consumer channel in person. Your own e commerce shop, potentially a social media shop. Sometimes the marketplaces like Etsy. But I don't, I don't coach on Etsy because they can shut you down. But it's a place that a lot of people start and they use the same tips that I give for e commerce on Etsy and it works. So that's why I'm going to keep those all lumped in together. And then I want you to have a scalable sales channel. The scalable sales channel is from what I teach Amazon and wholesale things that can scale without your effort. That's your self driving car, to be honest. Right. The Tesla, the self driving car. That's the scalable sales channels. And I want to make the direct to consumer ones your electric bike. Okay. That's how I want to make it so much easier for you when you can make that decision. So that's. I know I went on a little side tangent, but make a decision direct to consumer sales channel that you want to really work on and then a scalable sales channel and then start to imagine if you haven't started already, what business would look like if you had those two focuses. It brought in eyes to your company. Right. People started discovering you and you had an easier sales engine for direct to consumer and you had a self direct driving sales engine for your scalable channel. Imagine that and make that decision. And if you want to share it with me, DM me on Instagram at the product boss. I love getting your messages. Send me a message of what you've decided to do. I'd love to hear and I want to see what you do. Okay. Really excited for this. So until next time my friends, keep building, keep growing and keep building your wealthy life because I know that your product business is the way for you to get there. All right, thanks so much.