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Creating a Balanced Schedule as a Self-employed Designer
74 Plays1 year ago
In this second Spilling The Design Tea Episode, we (Cass & Amanda) discuss how we keep a balanced work schedule including planning around our personalities, our weekly schedule breakdown, and how you can avoid burnout and overworking yourself.
Let us know your thoughts and what you'd like to hear more about in our next episodes!
Our Templates & Courses for Designers: https://FoxtrotBranding.com/education
0:00 Intro
2:21 Weekend Highlights
5:03 The importance of a balanced work schedule
9:39 Our personal work styles
16:36 How our schedules and work environments have evolved
19:38 Our Mon-Fri daily schedule
25:28 Puzzle-piecing your services and desired schedule
28:10 Falling into overworking & burnout
31:28 How we set up life and work to-do lists
36:34 How soloprenuers can keep a balanced schedule
39:06 Answering a question from designer
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Transcript
Introduction to Cass and Amanda
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, welcome everyone to Spilling the Tea. We are Cass and Amanda. I'm Amanda, that's Cass. We are co-owners of the design studio Foxtrot Branding and we're super excited to talk with you guys today about another topic. This is our second episode and it's still new to us. We're still figuring things out. I had to restart this intro like three times, more than three times, so. It's fun. We're working through it. We're getting the marvels out. We're working through the technical issues.
Balancing Work and Home Life
00:00:24
Speaker
yeah but In these episodes, we share about navigating our lives as designers and business owners and the challenges and rewards that come up along the way. So today in this episode, we're going to be discussing creating a balanced life. So balancing your work and home life, setting up your business to really support you and your own personal needs and your own personal work styles. And so this is gonna be really helpful if you're a new business owner or a freelancer, and maybe even if you're trying to manage starting your business while you're working at another job too. Hopefully we can provide some insight there. Yeah, I feel like it's a relevant topic. We kind of put out some like different ideas on Instagram about
00:01:00
Speaker
What we might want to talk about for this episode and creating like a balanced schedule was the number one voted thing. We also put out like a reel this weekend that was using like a trending sound and like video about as a designer and creative, like all the different things you want to be doing at the same time in your business, like trying to prioritize that, like.
00:01:17
Speaker
you want to make a podcast, you want to make a merch line, you want to do all these things, and it's hard to prioritize it and make a schedule that actually allows you to get everything done, but then also allows you to live your life and not be working 24-7, which is very important to me and Amanda.
Coffee, Tea, and Personal Stories
00:01:32
Speaker
We are big on work-life balance. It's going to be a good conversation and just about how our schedule has been in the past, where it's at now, and some things we might also want to just be working on for ourselves in the future too. Yeah, so before we dive in, what are we drinking, Cass? I've got my little, I'll show you my mug, my cute little cat. I need a caffeine mug. Oh, that's so cute. Where'd you get that? Very cute. I think my dad gave it to me. Aww. Very cute. He knows I love my cats. You can't go wrong. Anything with a cat, like- Anything with cats. We're gonna like it. That's great. I'm an- I've got iced coffee. Muffled grandma, basically.
00:02:04
Speaker
I got ice coffee, just in a plain old mason jar. i Normally my go to most mornings. I like showed my mug and didn't even say what was in it. I'm just drinking tea. It's just like honey, lemon, ginseng tea. It's really good. but Sounds so nice. I was like, here's what I'm drinking, this cup.
00:02:20
Speaker
ah Let's do our weekend highlight. I think that's the thing we're gonna try and keep doing just we're doing these once a month But I think it's fun to just kind of catch up from the weekend and share something we did that was a highlight of our weekend So what was yours Amanda? Mine was that all my family it was like all in town at the same time Which like rarely happens because my brother he lives in Montana right now But he came down to visit kind of last minute and now my mom is like officially moved from back. But yeah, it was just really nice. We all like cooked together. We made chai o which is like a Vietnamese kind of like roll, but we kind of make it different. Our families like adapted the recipe. And it's just like ah our my whole family's like favorite meal to make basically. So it was just good to like catch up with everybody and be all in the same place at the same time. It was nice.
00:03:01
Speaker
Wow, that for some people, that would be like a nightmare and for some people that weekend. Yeah, yeah, I can definitely get chaotic, or especially if I'm like, you know, getting together with the whole family and all the distant relatives and everything, it can get a little chaotic. But like, this is just like my core family, siblings, parents, grandparents kind of thing. and That was really nice. Oh, that's fun. My weekend highlight is much more selfish. I got my hair done on Friday, i mean which was very nice. I was ready for it. It is very pink. The pink is a little higher than I was expecting, um but it's fun. I'm rolling with it. It works with their new brand colors. You guys will see soon we're like doing kind of a brand refresh and we're bringing in like a really fun kind of like magenta fuchsia kind of pink in there. And so Cassie's hair is perfect.
00:03:48
Speaker
matches. I know. We were planning for our photo shoot and I was like, man, I wish I had like a pink accent. Bitch, your hair is pink. Right? It was literally pink already. You just got it more pink. I don't know. I don't know why I was thinking it. I already have the perfect accent. I'm excited for the photo shoot though. And yeah, I gained to like roll out that new color palette. Now I'm seeing that magenta color everywhere. Like we have like some crepe myrtle bushes and like, I see them against the blue sky. And I'm like, it's our brand colors now.
00:04:15
Speaker
I love it. That's kind of what I was inspired by when I was trying to like rethink our brand refresh and the colors. Like I kept just like looking all the flowers like around here in Tennessee. And then when I went on a trip this spring to Colorado, it was like all those beautiful spring mountain flowers just had such vibrant like hues to them. I was like, I want this like breath of fresh air kind of feeling like all the mountain flowers of vibrancy of that I was like, I want to bring that kind of like vibrancy and energy to Foxtrot. So that's kind of where I was like pulling those colors from initially. So I'm very excited for us to like get that refreshed and soon. I do feel like we've like turned up the saturation and the vibe I see. Yeah, because I think we we started everything was little a little more muted. And I think that was kind of like the more the vibe back then, you know, but now it's like I love all the energetic colors. And that's more in line with like the type of client work that we do for our clients. So I think it fits really well. But yeah, so let's dive in then to our topic today, we're going to be talking about just how do we actually manage our schedules.
Struggles and Strategies of Business Ownership
00:05:10
Speaker
and And I think that's like so hard as business owners, especially I very much struggle with this just because like your whole life you grow up and you have a lot of structure and then all of a sudden,
00:05:20
Speaker
You're an adult, you have your own home or your own office running your own business. And it's like suddenly I'm in charge of everything. It takes a while to kind of figure out. And I think it took us a long time to figure out, you know, what is the best schedule for us? How do we manage our tasks? Are there certain days for certain things? So we'll kind of like talk about this. Like how do we focus our time and energy so that we can be the most productive at work, but also really enjoy the work that we do so we can enjoy our lives and not feel like burnt out. and just be the most efficient that we can be. Yeah. And ultimately, like we want to have a balanced schedule, I think, so that we can have like that mental peace of mind for me. like I don't want to be feeling like at the end of the day that I didn't get everything I needed to done or feeling like my work is carrying into the weekend. For me, it's really important to be able to as much as possible, like have that disconnect. And for me, I get that mental piece when I feel like I accomplished what I needed to. So it's almost about tricking my brain or having these structures that tell my brain like you started it, you did it, and now you're done so that you can fully relax for the night or for the weekend.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah. And I think something we especially struggled with to at the start was finding like pockets of time where we could have uninterrupted work time. So you can like get into that deep work, you know, they call it I think in the past, we were taking client calls just like anytime any day. And we didn't really have structure to how we spent our workday. It was just kind of like, here's all the calls and all the tasks. And let's just see how much you can get done each day. There's like no organization to it.
00:06:45
Speaker
And that does make me feel very burnt out. And it also makes me feel like I cannot like deeply focus on anything because I'm not setting like like aside big blocks of time for that. I think one of the like the best changes that we made in our business was structuring our schedule so that we could have like themes to each business day. And we only have a specific kind of client call. Like, ah specifically, I'm thinking of like our sales calls, we only do those on Tuesdays now. That was like a ah game changer, I think. Because suddenly, like, okay, now I don't have to worry about getting myself ready to go, you know, I don't have to do my whole like makeup and outfit every single day if I don't want to. And I don't have to be ready to like stop what I'm doing for another client just to hop on another call every day. It gets so exhausting. And when we were in our like first year, and also I think into the second one, we were co-working together. And I think like your your physical space really affects your ability to focus and create a a schedule that really helps you accomplish as much as
00:07:45
Speaker
impossible so that was an interesting time when we were like physically together every day because now we're fully remote and we didn't even like make the decision really to go fully remote we did that when covid happened so that we were kind of forced to do that but that was an interesting evolution for a business because when we were co-working together Our business like wasn't fully at the level of, okay, we have to be prioritizing our work sessions or else we're really going to fall behind. It was like we were still building up our client's house and we were just like figuring it out. And I feel like most businesses probably go through that at the beginning where you're just like starting to get busier, but you know you have a lot of like free time so you don't have to be as strict with your schedule. Yeah, I feel like in the beginning, our work was a lot of marketing and like just learning how to run a business that was most of the work we were doing. And we would have clients here and there, but it would kind of just be like one at a time. And so I think we just had a lot more time dedicated to other tasks. But now that we do have like, you know, different sectors of our business to you know, we've got the client side and the education side, we kind of do have a lot of different things to balance. And so it is really important to have like themed days. And also like for some people, like having the amount of structure that we do might be too much structure, or it might be not enough structure, just depending on your work style and like your background too, because we started our business as this was pretty much our first professional endeavor, we had some other jobs before. And Amanda, you particularly did some design work, um but mostly contract,
00:09:12
Speaker
But I say that because like we didn't really come from like a corporate background or having really worked for any other employer like as a full-time employee. So when we were entering or starting our design business, we were like just figuring out for ourselves, like what does a big girl job look like? Well, I guess we get to define it for ourselves. So if you're someone coming from a corporate job or having been a full-time employee, your transition into freelancer being a business owner might look a little bit different too. But Amanda, what do you feel like your preferred work style is? Yeah, I think I like to have big, like I said, big blocks of time to do deep work if it's like creative work, which is a lot of what I do is like the brand designer.
00:09:51
Speaker
So I feel like I need, you know, big chunks of time for client work. I'm kind of a sporadic worker too. And I kind of have to like do certain tasks depending on my energy levels. And then I've also kind of like Cassidy recently, you know, you've kind of been exploring like, do I have ADHD? You got a diagnosis. I've been exploring that too. And I talked to my doctor and I didn't get an official diagnosis just because it's like to get that on paper I think cost like a couple thousand dollars or whatever but they were essentially like yeah based on your answers on this questionnaire like yes and we can help you get on medication so that's something I'm exploring now just super helpful and that's or I hope it will be helpful so something
00:10:25
Speaker
with that for me is like I don't always have the exact same energy levels or interest in certain tasks at any point in the day so I kind of will have like my to-do list for each day. I try to keep it to like three to five things just depending on the complexity of the tasks and then I try my hardest to like organize them in priority or by energy level so I like to do like the very like low energy very easy quick tasks first because that kind of gives me like the dopamine hit of like checking those off my list and then like mid-afternoon is when I didn't have more creative energy. My brain is more awake. That's when I can do like the deeper client work. so That's kind of how things work for me personally on like a day-to-day level. How do you feel about like setting structure for yourself, like a self-employed person? and like How does that work with your personality? It's hard honestly.
00:11:10
Speaker
Like I honestly really really struggle with it. Like I think because we're business owners and we work from home like I almost have like too much flexibility. And so sometimes it's really hard for me to like stay disciplined or easily decide like what is top priority. I don't know sometimes that just is really hard if it's not like someone else is telling me what to do. And that's why like having really strict due dates is great. Like I do work good under pressure. I do like that's why I love our VIP day service because like I like the time crunch because that motivates me to work harder and stay more focused.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was just, I kind of like work in bursts and I work a little sporadically. I have to arrange my energy levels and arrange my tasks, but yeah, so so I feel like I was more organized, but I, I mean, I do feel like it's organized on the outside, but on the inside, it still feels like a struggle though. You know, that's the thing too, because it is like a huge benefit to be able to set your own schedule. But sometimes it almost comes with like um a different mental burden of having to be like, Oh, I've got all this stuff that I have to do. That's kind of weighing on me. And yes, I can do it in my own time. But if I had someone like telling me exactly when to do it, I would probably feel less stressed because I'd be like more consistently knocking things out. Yeah, because I think for me, it's like, I do get overwhelmed by all the tasks and all the decisions I have to make in a day. And I think I'd probably get more easily overwhelmed than someone else maybe. And so like, this is again, maybe like an ADHD thing, but just like kind of like shutting down if I get too overwhelmed. So it's really important for me to try to best manage that as I can to prevent myself from shutting down because then I'm not going to get any work done. And so something I'm trying to work on and practice for myself is like,
00:12:45
Speaker
You know, I need to work on my discipline, but also work on like not having such a black and white mindset of like getting stuck in these negative mindsets of like, Oh my gosh, like I'm so overwhelmed or others so much to do or it's so hard. And that just makes me feel worse.
00:12:58
Speaker
So then I shut down and don't do the tasks. So trying to remind myself that like you can do this, let's just do this one easy task first. Let's try to like knock these out. Like you can do it like trying to walk myself through things and it is exhausting. Like to be honest, I love owning my own business and like I don't really know if I ever see myself like working for someone else again. I feel like I'll probably always choose this kind of lifestyle of like working for myself because I do love the flexibility and freedom, but there are just like those other hard parts that come with it of just like, you have to be more disciplined, you do have to make more decisions. And that can be a little more tiring for sure. Totally. And I'm sure that's super relatable to most freelancers. And that's not for everyone, you know, not everyone likes that.
00:13:40
Speaker
I talked to a lot of my friends and I'm like, yeah, like you could totally start your own thing. And they're like, no, I would you never and just I just know that's not for me. Like they would totally panic about like the pressure of like bringing in their own income, managing their own schedule, like It's just not worth it to them. I think for us, the the pros outweigh the cons and you just have to navigate those challenges. Just like you would have to navigate other challenges if you were working for an employer. you know There's going to be pros and cons both ways. You just have to decide which one has like the most
00:14:12
Speaker
pros for you. I think for my personality, I kind of have an interesting background because I was homeschooled throughout pretty much all of my education. So I think that set me up a little bit for being pretty independent when it comes to like completing tasks and having to make my own schedule.
00:14:30
Speaker
I always really craved the structure though of public school so I didn't really want it to be that way but since it was I kind of had to make the best of it and yeah I think it formed me into being the kind of structured and regimented person that I am now so I definitely thrive on a lot of structure and I just am very naturally drawn to creating structure for myself and like my schedule every day when I want to get things done. I really love to do lists. I love checking them off because it too i'm still so like it helps me feel like I'm being productive. It helps me feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. There's definitely some morality tied to it which is not healthy and I acknowledge that I'm a good person because I did a good job today. Or like I did all the things like there's absolutely some toxic productivity that is built into me that I have to really like be aware of but overall as a person I do really thrive on structure but also I have realized that I have those ADHD like tendencies and kind of cycles that I can get into as well so I totally relate to just feeling like I'm not getting anything done so I'm just not gonna do anything because I feel so overwhelmed by it all so I definitely relate to that too but I think
00:15:42
Speaker
me and you have a little bit of different personalities when it comes to schedules and structure, but I think that plays nicely for our business. and That's really a big pro of having a partnership because it would be so much harder to be a solopreneur like the majority of designers that we're friends with um because you have to youre you don't have anyone to really report to or like have that accountability with. so I do appreciate having a partnership in that way.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, I really think it takes like a certain kind of personality to want to even be a freelancer or business owner. I think you do have to be someone like you said, like you grew up like with a lot of like independence, and I think it's important to have like independent self motivation, definitely um have kind of like a drive for success, you know, and I think that's always been a big driver for me. Like I, I really like having goals and trying to work towards them. And that makes me feel really good, you know, like knowing that I achieved something big that I was working towards.
00:16:36
Speaker
And as as our business has evolved, we've definitely experimented with our schedule. we We've changed as people and our our lifestyles have changed. Like I said, we ended up going fully remote.
Remote Work and Productivity Tools
00:16:46
Speaker
So that really changed things for us, like not being in person every day. I think we actually got a lot more productive.
00:16:52
Speaker
Well, especially because we were in like a co working space, but we didn't have like a private office. So we're like at this long, like dinner table looking thing, you know, with like, it's a community community space. And so there's always people talking or they always want to talk to you, which is like super fun and great. But then you're getting distracted like a ton throughout the day. So it is kind of nice to just like our own spaces now.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, and we would also like talk to each other so much be like, Hey, did you answer this email? Hey, should we check in on this? And so we would not get any like extended focus time is very hard because we were just right next to each other. So once we went from remote, maybe be a little more insecure then too, because we had like just started. So I think like we were always just like,
00:17:31
Speaker
Hey, how do we answer this email? Or what's our voice? Like we would, it felt like we had to do like almost all the tasks at the start, we did them all together. So we can kind of like create that baseline of like, how do we function as Foxtrot as a unit, you know, to do that, like in person and to have that in person connection, um so that we could build that trust with each other and like figure out how we wanted to blend ourselves into a single business.
00:17:54
Speaker
I think that was important to have that time and then we went remote and I think we had that like strong enough relationship to be able to now we just communicate over Slack. We'll have a meeting or two every week with the both of us and we're in constant communication. So it doesn't like people would be like, how how is that now the demand has moved or now that you're fully remote? Like how are you guys doing it? I'm like, it's normal. Like, I don't know. It's just really different to me. yeah know This is my everyday life. Like I talked to Cassie every day. I'm like, I don't know.
00:18:20
Speaker
Just part of it. Yeah. and And now we are able to more easily that we're not like in the same office at those boundaries of like, I'm going to check notifications in a bit and like work on this one thing that I need to, or we're going to have a specific meeting about this. Like we were just forced to get more structured about it. And I think we, once we did that, we realized kind of some things that were important to us in a business schedule. For example, having those specific days for certain meetings or like with projects, having certain project meetings or check-ins at certain points and those things like changed and evolved but with our last kind of like year and or year beginning planning meeting we set some new days for certain types of meetings we want to have and I think it's working really well if we kind of want to talk about like what our Monday through Friday schedule looks like.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think they'd be helpful. And I think especially when we talk about like meetings that we have with each other, I think you guys listening, you can still apply that to yourself. I think especially if you are a solo entrepreneur, it probably is going to be helpful for you to like set a meeting like a team meeting with yourself. You're like, Okay, well, I'm the designer and the the art director and the social media manager, but kind of have a meeting with yourself. So you can sit down and like say in this block of time, this is like, I'm going to do this task. So that's kind of how you can apply some of these things that we're going to talk about how we set things up for meetings with each other at least. So yeah, kind of thinking about like our Monday through Friday, what that looks like on Mondays, those are our days where we always do like a check and call in the morning first thing. So we'll kind of just look at our schedule for the week, see what we're both up to. If we have any questions for each other or things we haven't tackled from last week, we'll just kind of wrap all that up. And then the rest of the day is just like getting business tasks done and maybe some client work, but it's not usually like deep creative client work, at least for on my end. And then we will have our kickoff calls or our strategy calls with clients. If we're starting a client project that week, we'll have that on the Monday afternoon. So like in the morning, I'm usually just kind of like getting my bearings and then we'll have that meeting with the client. But we typically don't do any
00:20:17
Speaker
work from that meeting until like the next day, we'll kind of just like take all of our notes, gather all the information, basically kick off the project and then start on the actual behind the scenes client work of it a little bit later in the week. Editing cast just popping in here to say in this next part, when we're talking about calls on Tuesdays, we're specifically talking about sales calls. So then our Tuesdays, those are our like call days where we'll still we we we do try to keep all calls to like the late afternoons too, because that's just what we decided works best for us.
00:20:46
Speaker
And we've also found that works totally fine for our clients. That was scary to like kind of jump into because I think when we first started our business, we felt like we had to be available like anytime any day because we just assumed that other business owners or our potential clients were just like going to be so busy and they couldn't like work on our schedule. But over time, we found like we almost never have a booking issue by just having like a few hours available on one day of the week. Like that, that has worked totally fine for us. And I hear a lot of other designers have that concern too. So I think just like, pick what works best for you. And we just try to tell our clients, like, if you don't see a time that works for you, just let us know. And we can find a time outside of that, but that almost never happens. And I think the benefit of doing this and having like just one day a week for your sales calls, which is what we do on Tuesdays.
00:21:33
Speaker
I think that just helps so you can kind of like time block those tasks and just have one day a week where we are like in sales mode. It was really hard for me at the beginning to be like in sales mode on any random day, any random time, like I feel like I need to mentally prepare, I need to just like have that time blocked aside just for that kind of task. So that's been really beneficial for us. So Tuesday mornings, though, before sales calls, we're usually just doing Again, other client work or preparing for the sales call, maybe doing a little research, making the notes for those calls, that kind of thing. Do you have anything else to add on our Tuesday's structure? No, I just think it's nice to keep it to a single day too for like project management sake and like sending proposals. Like we're really trying to get more structured with that part of our project management and hopefully bring someone on to help with that. So I think having those all on a certain day so that you can send out proposals on a certain day. And then that flows into Wednesdays, which are our VIP days.
00:22:25
Speaker
If we have a VIP day, we don't have one every Wednesday, um but we'll usually have a couple each month. So if we do have a VIP day, that's all day long. If we don't, we are just doing client work on Wednesdays and then on Thursdays. We do have Thursday afternoons reserved right now for some different types of calls for some smaller services that are more just like session-based rather than being a full project timeline that are truly just like an hour, hour and a half call, we're working on kind of filling those up. But that's kind of what our Thursday afternoons are reserved for right now. And I would say sometimes on Thursdays, we also do if we're doing like a full project, so not like a two week intensive or VIP day. But if it's like a full length project, Thursdays are also our dedicated day for
00:23:11
Speaker
doing review calls, which again, those are are that's only like one review call per project. So we may only have like one of those a month or so, just depending on if we have a full service booked at the time. um But that that's also a good like time slot for that. Those are more rare now, which is kind of nice, like It's nice to have a call slot open, but a lot of times we don't end up even filling it, which is kind of like a relief. You know, when I look at the schedule, I'm like, oh, I don't have any calls to first day. Yeah, I'm always happy if I don't have calls. Great. It's nice. It helps you kind of plan around your day and just take the pressure off of that day and feel like you don't have to fully get ready or you could go out to a coffee shop and work and feel like you have more flexibility within. Like the schedule brings more flexibility, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it
00:23:56
Speaker
a But it's always looked out for us. And then so Fridays, sometimes depending on the the week or what we've got going on, we'll try to do like a check in call in the morning. If there's not a lot not a lot happening, though, we just like well, we're like, we'll just slack real quick and send a message about what we're what we're up to. We do also try to take Fridays like half days off. And that is so nice to have kind of like an extra long weekend as often as we can. So most of the time we're trying to get all of our work done, like Monday through Thursday, do a call on Friday, maybe a few little tasks and then check out for the day if we can. And most of the time that works really well for us. I would say we we do get most of our work done during the week outside of that, which is so nice. And I think like, I'm sure there's going to be like designers out there who are like, what, how in the world do you do that? How do you manage to do that? I think just having the good time management, which is
Income Goals vs Work-Life Balance
00:24:43
Speaker
still a struggle. It's not something that I say is easy, but good time management and like prioritizing your tasks every day and
00:24:49
Speaker
and just not overworking yourself. I think there are a lot of designers who overwork themselves a lot. And I think there's a lot of things that we've done over the years to really streamline our processes and to raise our rates so that we don't have to overwork ourselves to make the same amount of money that we do now. And so I am really proud of us for that and like how we've been able to like build our prices up, build our confidence, and really streamline our services. And so like now we can have like a pretty chill work life balance like it's it's it does get stressful sometimes because running a business I don't think is ever going to be totally peaceful. But I think we've really afforded like a very nice life for ourselves the way that we've set up our business and that just feels so
00:25:27
Speaker
so rewarding. It ebbs and it flows for sure. There will be certain times throughout the year where we'll have a launch of something or there'll be something that requires extra work that we don't take the half day Friday and sometimes we'll need to like pull a weekend's day to work on it or if there's a client project that we just like really want to take you know sometimes we will opt into that extra work or if we wanted to like boost our income. you know Sometimes there's things we'll opt into like that, but for the most part, it is really, really important for us to have that really balanced weekly schedule. So we have done things to prioritize it and tried to work through some like transitions to get there too, because to do that, we've had to, yes, update our pricing and
00:26:09
Speaker
raise our rates in some areas, but also accommodate like the ah the economy and what people are willing to pay for things and how even like people's perception and what they want out of like courses and educational resources. We've had to like transition a lot of things and that's not always easy to like figure out how to make that work or how to update your services or how to start doing VIP days or offering these shorter timelines so that you know you can continue to make the income you want, but not necessarily being a bunch of eight week timelines because that can be exhausting. Yeah, I think over time, we've just kind of like figured out a really nice flow of our weekly schedule because like we have all these puzzle pieces, right? It's like we've got like the different service structures. And so all of those are different size puzzle pieces. And then we have all our, you know, our education side and calls and things that we do there for doing like live coaching. And so it's just like figuring out how to fit all these puzzle pieces together. And that was like ah that broke our brains at the start of our business. I remember we have this photo, I think this might be in Pro Design business, but we had that image of that big huge piece of paper that where we were like trying to like draw out our client timelines, because we had like all these clients booked, which was awesome, because we had all this work. But it was like, none of it was making sense. We didn't have like a really good, concise project workflow for those. And so it was just such a mess. Yeah. It was like, how do we overlap all these timelines? How many clients can we work with at one time? And that wasn't even taken into consideration, like other types of resources or products we'd want to make. I was just trying to figure out like how to fit all the clients in. So it does feel really hard to like work through those things. And just when you feel like you like have a good thing going, a lot of times you'll be like,
00:27:46
Speaker
I have an idea for a new service or actually I kind of want to like change the format of this thing and that will kind of make you have to rethink it all. so I think that's one of the like ah unique things that comes with being an entrepreneur. of like You're constantly having to do so much mental work to think through the puzzle pieces of your offerings to make sure they make sense, they stack well, and ultimately for us, like they're going to allow us to keep the schedule that we want. like I think you really do have to fight for the schedule that you want and you have to prioritize what's most important to you. and For some designers, it might be like making the most amount of money or like getting to a certain income goal. and If that's like going to be your number one, that's probably going to put you in a place where you are overworking yourself and you don't have a lot of work-life balance. But if your priority is going to be getting your schedule to where you want it to be and be able to take a lot of time off, you might drop your income goal a little bit to be able to do that because I think like if if our main goal was to make like a certain amount of money and we didn't really care about like when we clocked out of work or how we got to take like a half Friday or the vacations like we would probably be taking on like a lot more projects and like in the past because I mean if you remember like when COVID hit I mean I remember I just worked all the time because I there's nothing else to do and I also think like I have way less energy nowadays than I did just a few years ago like I think the older I get the more I'm like
00:29:04
Speaker
No, I'd rather like go live my life instead of like sit on my computer all day. Like, so now I yeah value more work life balance. But those were kind of weird years, you know, with COVID going on. And we were younger, I think we had more energy. It was also the start of our business still, I think we were only like maybe two years end. So it still felt like we had a lot of like energy to just like really put into our business. And so we were working like a lot.
00:29:27
Speaker
and and It wasn't even like a conscious decision to be like, yeah, we're gonna like we're going to take on too many projects. It didn't feel like that. I don't know if you think it feels like that for most designers. You just kind of like wake up one day and you're like, shoot, I am like over my head with client work. Especially when things were going well, so we would like all of a sudden, you know we booked all these projects and we're excited, but then we're like, oh shit, actually, this is like well too intense. like We have too many projects. and we overbooked ourselves. And so I think that's just something you learn over time is like, what is your limit for how much you can book? What is your limit for how much you can do in a day? How much you can do in a week? You figure that stuff out over time. So over time, we really learned like how long certain projects will take us or we've actually created more like package services. So now we know this is our exact timeline, exact process for each of these projects. And that helps a lot when it comes to scheduling, too. It makes those puzzle pieces easier to fit together, basically.
00:30:21
Speaker
And I also want to say like, there's absolutely no shame if you like find yourself in a place where you're just like feeling very overworked, or you've taken on too many projects, because like we literally all get there.
Task Management with Notion and Basecamp
00:30:33
Speaker
And sometimes, especially if you're feeling financially insecure, or I think we all feel that way as an entrepreneur, like you just feel like you can't pass anything up. Like Amanda, have you watched um the most recent video from Cal Lauren, where they were kind of talking about like where they've been the past couple of years? Oh, I haven't yet I've been wanting to They're a graphic designer and so they basically were just talking about how they got to a point where they were extremely overworked because they felt like they just could not say no to anything. I just want to like make sure I say like that is a place where so many of us find ourselves. I'm not being like, oh yeah, we don't do that. like We did used to do that, you know, and like sometimes you get to a place where you're feeling like you have a great balance and then you kind of fall back into being overworked again and you have to like pull yourself out and be like, okay, let me restructure my schedule now for where I'm at in this part of my life and how the business is going here so that I can make sure I find balance again. It just, it really does ebb and flow.
00:31:28
Speaker
So, maybe next we could talk about our kind of like daily to-do lists and things we kind of keep on our Basecamp or Notion checklists. Basically, the things that we're doing in the periods where we're not having meetings throughout the day and we kind of have like this open window in the afternoon or like on a full Wednesday because we don't have any meetings on Wednesdays. If we don't have a VIP day, we can talk about like what that looks like and how we prioritize things.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I think we both kind of have different processes, maybe when it comes to like managing day to day tasks. I've found um just over the years that like what works best for me is like, I need to have all my tasks for the week on one spread, one page. I use Notion. and I love using Notion for my personal life stuff. I don't really foresee us using that for business ever, because I don't think it has what we need. But I know a lot of designers do love Notion for business management, project management kind of stuff. But I really like using it because I created my own like week view. So any tasks that I have for work, but also for my personal life, I even have like my fitness program, like what I'm doing at the gym each day on there, like I need to see like, wow, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, like I need to see them all wait out in one place. And then I break it up by personal tasks and work tasks under each column for each day. So that is so nice for me, because I feel like I need to have
00:32:43
Speaker
And I don't even know if I fully can explain why I need to have a full week view, but I feel like I will easily like maybe forget things or lose track of like the importance or priority of certain things if I can't really see how it's all fitting throughout the week. and That also helps me I guess balance if maybe one day looks a little too heavy, then I can like pull those task boxes to a different day. And that just makes it easy for me in my brain to like see okay, like how much can I like realistically do in a day and plan out my full week? So that's how I do it. I can't just do like our our task checklist for clients and Basecamp. I love Basecamp in a lot of ways but I don't really love their like task checklist system because I can't do the week view and I can't include things for my personal life. And for me as someone who does struggle with like time management, time blindness, not knowing how long things are gonna take, I do really have to put in the extra effort to like break down my tasks for each day for the whole week so I can see it. Yeah, I feel like we keep all of our client timelines and due dates in Basecamp. So if we want to pull it into like a personal checklist, like in Notion, or I can pull it back into my to-do list, my like client to-do list or business to-do list in Basecamp, I can pull it into there. For me, I keep a daily to-do list and then right below it in Basecamp, I keep a weekly or like
00:34:01
Speaker
just at some point in the near future checklist and I need to get better about like actually keeping the things that I want to do like just today because I've kind of when we've come back from vacation I've just let it kind of like become a homogenous thing but ideally what am I gonna do from this list of 20 things like what am i going to pick yeah but I try to keep like three-ish main things up there for the day And then if I get through those things, great, I can drag something else up there, but I will prioritize it. And I'll kind of, that'll be like one of my first things that I look at in the morning and I'll be like, Oh, I need to make notes for this call or, you know, whatever I need to do very first. I'll kind of get those things done. Like you said, Amanda, how you want to do like the smaller things in advance. So that's kind of where I will work from. And then Basecamp also gives me any to-do lists for things that are going to be coming up tomorrow. But yeah, I feel like most people we probably max out at being able to do like,
00:34:50
Speaker
three-ish bigger tasks for the day. I feel like that doesn't necessarily count things that take five to 10 minutes each, like making some notes or responding to an email, but we probably all max out at those three-ish main things we can get that way. Three focuses, yeah. Yeah, I would say so. And like you said, if it's smaller things, sometimes I might have up to five or six items on that list, but But that's also because I will put certain things like respond to this client email, like I will put that on my to do list because i I won't like I won't remember, honestly. Yeah, like I just I that literally will slip my mind if I don't write down this very simple task of responding to an email. But then that also gives me the dopamine boost when I do do it. And I get to click that off. And I'm like, Great, I did things, you know, because I think there's like, it's and this probably is for everyone, maybe even outside of like,
00:35:38
Speaker
having ADHD or something like that. I'm sure everyone faces this, but just like getting at the end of the day and feeling like, what did I even do today? Because it's like, it's hard when all of your work is like digital. And you don't really have like tangible things to look at me like, wow, look, I completed this thing. Like it's all just like on the computer. So sometimes if it's not in front of me, I will forget it. So it's nice to have this checklist of like, okay, look, I've been doing my work like I've accomplished things today. Yeah, I totally relate to that. I also will add some of those like smaller things to my to do list so I can kind of check them off as I go make sure I don't forget them. I'll also if I like think of something on the weekend or at night, ah sometimes I'll pop into my base camp app and just like add it to that list because that that will let me like fully let go of that thought. Yeah, I have to do the same because like I'll I'll just obsessively be trying to remember if I don't write it down.
00:36:25
Speaker
So I do that with yeah everything like I just I just put it all on the list or I put it on my like phone notes app or whatever if it's just like a random thought or something to come back to. So like we kind of have each other to check in on our schedules and kind of keep that accountability. But what What would you say to a solopreneur or somebody who is like freelancing on their own if they are struggling to feel if if they're feeling overwhelmed about their schedule and struggling to stay on track with things? Do you have any thoughts or like ideas that you would give them? Yeah, I mean, I don't think it'd be too different than what we're doing. I mean, it's nice that we have the accountability. I'm sure there's ways you can find accountability to as a solo entrepreneur, you can
00:37:04
Speaker
join groups online, you can join groups locally, go to like networking or like work meetup co working kind of events or or go work at a co working place that can be nice to just to have that accountability. of Oh, I'm sitting here and I'm working. Like body doubling is like a very helpful thing to like be working simultaneously with someone else.
00:37:22
Speaker
But also, I think it would be important to follow our suggestion of like setting certain days for certain focuses in your business, because I think otherwise things get a little chaotic, you get kind of lost in the weeds, you're not really taking control of your schedule. So you're just at the mercy of whatever your clients asking for any point, you're like, okay, sure, they just asked for this, I guess I can do it today, when like, really, you might have other things that you need to do today. So it helps you prioritize not get too overwhelmed or things won't get too chaotic. I would choose your focuses, choose your top three things each day you're going to try to do and don't overwork yourself. That would be my biggest advice is just just don't try to do it all all the time. Yeah, give yourself the grace and know that like It might take some trial and error to figure out a schedule, but ultimately setting out a schedule and some guidelines for yourself is really going to feel a lot better in the long run, even if it feels uncomfortable at first because you want to be like checking your email every five seconds or like responding to that client because you want to make sure they're happy if you're like me.
00:38:18
Speaker
Maybe just having like one day, it's like, okay, this this day is my sales call day. This day is my like business owner CEO day, like this is where I'm doing tasks for my business and my growth. Maybe have one day that's like social media content creation or batching that kind of thing. That's something I'm still trying to figure out like what day would work good for me because I currently do not have a good process for like creating social content like I need like a day.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah, so just like picking these picking these days, maybe one day you're like, okay, every Friday I go to the coffee shop. And that's like a fun thing for me like to round out my week and go to a coffee shop and work on a few admin tasks. Just make it fun for yourself and make it easy for yourself. Yeah, give yourself those little like things to look forward to in the week. I think that's really important. like I really look forward to our half Fridays off. And if I can't take it, which like happens sometimes, i'm like I feel like deprived of it.
00:39:06
Speaker
Okay, do we want to answer a question from a
Client Payment Strategies and Conclusion
00:39:10
Speaker
designer? Yeah, let's do that. Okay, so we have a question from a designer, they sent this in on Instagram. So you can follow us on Instagram at foxtrotbranding if you haven't already, because we'll try to post question boxes every month before we record these, you can ask whatever's on your mind. But one designer Olivia asked about payment plans, they said they can be really hard for a designer because the money is so spread out. So how do you guys manage payment plans? What would you say Cass about like how we've kind of structured that to best support our business. Yeah, ah to preface, I feel like different designers are going to do it differently. But for us, it is important that we have the full payment before we send over final delivery of files or designs. I think some designers might do more extended payment plans, but we have just decided we don't really want to risk that. So we don't do extended payment plans. However, we do break the full project cost into
00:40:00
Speaker
a few different payments, typically two to up to four, depending on how big the project cost is and how far out the client is booking. For our projects that are VIP days or two week intensive, those are typically 10K and under. So we will break those into two payments. The first one is always going to be their deposit, which is non-refundable to book their project. That compensates you because you need to have a deposit because you're taking on that work. You're saying no to other work for that time period. So that has to be non-refundable. Yeah, because if they were to ghost or cancel for whatever reason, then you're it's going to be really hard to fill that spot randomly last minute. And so your business is going to be out like double the income basically. Um, so it is really important to do that to protect yourself. And then we'll have a final final payment or a couple final payments that are due. Usually we spread those out like midway throughout the project. And then before we deliver final files before like the last week of the project or in the last week of the project, they'll make their final payment and we'll deliver the files. If you wanted to do extended payment plans for your clients, honestly, we don't have like a ton of experience in that. Like I'm not sure how other designers would do it. I just don't feel comfortable with that risk.
00:41:10
Speaker
personally, because I feel like every other designer I've ever heard or talked to, they're always like, don't ever send final files without payment. Because there are some people who will take those files and never pay, like they will just take that. And that's essentially like stealing that work, you know, and like, you know, maybe something comes up for that client. And they're like, I listen, I can't make the final payment can we? You kind of, yeah, so for us, we just don't see another way to do it. We've worked with other service providers who do more extended payment plans. It's probably you got to weigh the risk. Like how much money are we talking? um Can my business afford to take on that risk? so Or even if you want to expend the energy to manage that, I could see yeah um you can have legal things in place and you can have stuff in your contract that's like,
00:41:51
Speaker
You could revoke their their license, like used to to use the work, but it's like, I would just rather not even allow the opportunity to ever happen. I would rather just get the payment before sending final files. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Well, we'll wrap it up here. Thanks so much for joining us today, guys. Thanks for watching till the end. We look forward to our next Spill the Tea episode next month. You can find all of our templates and courses for designers at Foxtrotbranding.com. We've got some exciting things coming up for our courses in the next couple of months, so definitely follow us on Instagram at Foxtrotbranding so you don't miss any updates there. And we will talk to you guys next time. Yeah, see you guys later. Bye guys. Bye.