(Hence the radio silence here at the blog.)

Nothing major – well, sometimes major, but nothing life threatening – and part of the bumpiness is that I was continuing to operate in systems that weren’t really a good fit, which led to a general feeling of disorganization (not true chaotic clusterfuck disorganization, instead it was “umm…I feel like I’m missing something but I can’t quite figure out what…” disorganization, which is almost worse).

Once I got the background issues sorted out (which could, and might, be a whole ‘nother blog post in & of itself), I realized the next thing I needed to do was overhaul my task/project management system, practicing what I preach, and I figured I’d bring y’all along for the ride.

First off, here’s the video that goes over the process, in case you’d rather watch that (or want to both watch and read, you good student you!):

And for the detailed notes, read on!

Step 1: Recognize what’s not working

When I chose Teambox for my project management tool, there were several very specific things that drew me to it:

• the notes feature (ability to add notes from Google Docs or Evernote – with an API – and a built in notes feature) 
• the calendar view
• additional features like time tracking and Gantt charts
• ability to function with large teams

I still think Teambox is a great tool & I actively recommend it to others. However, these things didn’t wind up being that helpful to me once I actually got to using it – my clients who use larger teams tend to have their own preferences for project management systems so the awesome team capabilities were mostly lost on me, I use Google Docs and Evernote so much that I almost always have a tab open with them anyways, I never used the built in time tracking or Gantt charts. The calendar view was really the only feature that I used, and even then, the inability to drag and drop tasks on a calendar or view things on a weekly calendar bothered me more than I thought it would.

I also discovered that Teambox was lacking a few features that I didn’t really think would bother me but that wound up contributing to my larger sense of disorganization. Namely, there’s nothing for recurring tasks or the ability to add tasks quickly and easily. There’s no shortkeys to quickly add a task without having to add a due date, project and task list, and user to do it (which seemed unnecessary since I was mostly the only one using it and 95% of the tasks I put in it were for me).

The lesson here is that sometimes you don’t find these things out until you actually start using your systems and tools. And when you do realize that something isn’t working, you need to acknowledge what it is so that you can fix it.

Step 2: Create a plan of attack

I remembered being impressed with Flow before when I had done a review of it, so I signed up again. The first thing I did was check for the things that were important to me, which I knew from trial and error with Teambox – Flow has recurring tasks and a few other features I wanted (drag and drop calendar view, quick add tasks, weekly calendar view); plus the features that I needed (ability to duplicate task lists, for example).

I knew that I was ripe for:

1. adding recurring tasks & old habits back into my workflow
2. creating templates for everything I possibly could (I had kind of half-assed templates here and there, but nothing complete)
3. making and organizing a list of low-priority things that needed to be done when I had the time (as is, they were listed in Teambox with deadlines, but they just kept being moved back, which made me feel unproductive and slackerish)
4. making a list of projects that I wanted to work on when I had the time/energy and storing them someplace easily accessible

I also remembered what worked before – assigning different themes to different days, and roughly sticking to them. Knowing all of this gave me a clear path to use as I was rebuilding my productivity systems.

Step 3: Implement your plan

Once I had a plan, here’s what I did:

Set up Flow in a way that made sense to me

Flow has folders and then under each folder, there’s task lists. I created folders for Bombchelle (which has task lists for content creation, business development, and administrative), marketing and promotion (because there are so many sub-projects under that that a “marketing and promotion” task list would quickly get cluttered), client work (with a task list for each client), workshops & classes (with a task list for each workshop or class), backburner projects (see bullet points #3 & #4, above), and templates (see #2 above).

Made a list of those recurring tasks & habits I wanted to put back in place: 

 Created a list of templates that I needed

This is fairly self explanatory – I created a list of everything that I did on a regular basis. I already had some task list templates built into Teambox that I copied over, but I added more. My total list of templates looks like:

• free teleclass
• one off class (like the Systems Don’t Suck class I ran recently)
• the one day intensive service
• action party
• workshop
• the service streamliner service
• launch management
• client intake for project management clients

As I’m writing this, I realize I should probably add a template for the Get Your Shit Together sessions, but that’s low priority since it’s such a simple service – so “Create template for GYST sessions” was just added to the “biz dev & systems” task list under “Backburner projects”.

Started creating those templates

The next step was to actually create the task list templates in Flow. This was really pretty easy for a few reasons:

• When you go to the main screen for a task list, you can easily add tasks by just typing it in & hitting enter, making it simple + easy to add multiple tasks in a row as you think of them
• Like I said, I already had several of these templates either done and in Teambox or kinda halfassedly done in Google Docs or in my head
• The templates for several of the services were pretty similar – for the action parties, workshops, and classes, I created the workshop list first, then duplicated it twice, adding or subtracting tasks as needed to turn it into a template for an action party or a one off class

As I created the templates, I did two things: 

I wrote down the one-off tasks that would make things run smoother, and filed them under either the “biz dev & systems” or the “admin” task lists under the “Backburner” folder:

I also wrote down the task lists & noted down which of those tasks should have how-to manuals written for them, so that they could be easily delegated later:

The resulting list of how to manuals was put under “how to manuals” under the “Backburner” folder.

Last but not least, I’ve got placeholder tasks to help make sure this all actually gets done:

• do 1-3 tasks off admin backburner, every Monday (since Monday is admin day)
• do 1-3 tasks off biz dev backburner, every Friday (since Friday is biz dev day)
• write a how to manual, every Friday

Step 4: Make sure that it makes sense to you

All the organization in the world won’t help if it doesn’t work with your natural patterns & rhythms. This way of doing that I just described? It might work fabulously for you. It might not. Parts of it might work and parts of it you might find too complicated. For me, it’s just the right level of knowing where everything is at and having a way to sort it that makes sense to me.

I seriously considered creating and adding a tagging system (because you can tag things in Flow and sort by tag, too) to prioritize backburner tasks (with #P1, #P2, #P3) and to sort them by time (#short, #medium, #long) so that when I went to do tasks off the backburner, I could choose to do a quickie task or choose to do a high priority one that might take longer (or attempt to find the highest priority task that would take the least amount of time). However, although the idea of having that system set up gives me organizational tingles of happiness, I know for a fact that it wouldn’t work very well for me in practice. So I didn’t do it.

Whew. Okay, now that that’s all done – any questions on how I use Flow? Any questions on using these four steps to get yourself organized? Any commentary on the crazypants weather? (I talked to my mom in Missouri on Friday – they woke up to six inches of snow. SIX INCHES. WHAT?! Get your act together, May.) 

Maybe not everything, but…let’s face it, Buffy was a pretty instrumental force in my teenagerdom (and is something I still love with a fierceness today). It’s my “security blanket” show that I go back to again and again…not just for the witty repartee (“I mock you with my monkey pants”) but there’s all kinds of smartness within…including some business lessons.

Prophecies are tricky creatures.

You tried. It was noble of you. You heard the prophecy that I was about to break free and you came to stop me. But prophecies are tricky creatures. They don’t tell you everything. You’re the one that sets me free. If you hadn’t come, I couldn’t go. Think about that.

At the end of season one, it’s revealed that there’s a prophecy that says that Buffy will face the Master (a powerful vampire) to keep him from breaking free, and she’ll die. At first, she wants to avoid her fate (because o hai, she’s sixteen), and then decides to face up to it…only for the Master to tell her that if she hadn’t gone to fight him, he wouldn’t have been able to break free. Oops.

Lots of potential lessons to be learned from that scenario, but the one I want to highlight is that when it comes to our business, our prophecies can be self-fulfilling, whether we realize that or not. If you’re convinced you’re going to fail, it’s really easy to not put in 100% effort, after which – shock! – you fail, and you get to say “I told you so” to yourself. Luckily, the flip side can go for being convinced of your success – if you know that eventually you’ll be successful, you are thatmuch more likely to stick it out until you actually are successful.

There’s no such thing as controlled circumstances.

Wesley: I have, in fact, faced two vampires myself. Under controlled circumstances, of course.
Giles: No danger of finding those here.
Wesley: Vampires?
Giles: Controlled circumstances.

The first…I don’t even know how long…I was in business, I kept trying to do things the way they “should” be done. I want to have a well-defined USP that fit the formula everyone touted and I wanted the popular blog theme and I wanted to base my services off of what had worked for other people. I wanted a cute, tidy catchphrase for my business and I wanted successful, easy launches, and blah blah blah.

I was endlessly frustrated that I didn’t have everything down pat already, and it took me forever – forever! I still have to remind myself! – to realize that 99% of my fellow biz-peeps don’t have it all down either. (And the longer I’m in business the more I have a sneaking suspicion that the other 1% are just good enough bullshitters to fool themselves & everyone else.) I recently listened to an interview with Charlie Gilkey and one of the things he emphasized is how long it took him to have any kind of a semi-streamlined description of his business & what he does, and how he still feels like that’s something he has to continually work on.

There’s something to be said for constant improvement, and there’s something to be said for trying something that has a high success rate for other people, but in business as in vampire slaying, there’s no such thing as controlled circumstances – a should-have-been-successful launch can fail, a slapped-it-together-in-10-minutes post can go viral, and something that didn’t work for you a year or two years ago might be just the thing you need to try right now.

You need a support system.

A Slayer with family and friends. That sure as hell wasn’t in the brochure.

Over and over again throughout the series, it’s pointed out that the only thing that keeps Buffy the usual Slayer fate (a young and brutal death) is her support team of family and friends, affectionately referred to as the Scooby Gang. Without them, she’d have died unpleasantly in season one, despite her initial reluctance to having any kind of backup.

This is a common observance for business and life success, too – we know that we’re the sum of the five people that we spend the most time with, and we know that our friends can bring us up or drag us down, and we know that mastermind groups are a good idea, and all that jazz, but do you actually put it into practice? Do you know who your Scooby Gang is?

Being a leader isn’t easy.

Xander: You’re our leader, Buffy, as in “follow the”.
Buffy: Well, from now on, I’m your leader as in “do what I say”.

Multiple times throughout the series, Buffy has to balance being the leader (and in many senses, a general of sorts) with being a friend. It’s not always easy and it causes rifts more than once. We can learn from some of her missteps (like, yanno, “do what I say and don’t ask questions” doesn’t generally go anywhere good), but seeing that dynamic play out also points out how difficult it can be to balance a leadership role and a friendship role.

You can be friends with your assistant and the people on your team and your business partner, but everyone involved needs to know that there are boundaries and differences between the “friendship you” and the “leader/manager you”. You need to be able to give directives and honest feedback without it ruining your friendships. Not an easy skill to learn but definitely worth the un-burned bridges.

That’s what I’ve got for Buffy-based business lessons (say that three times fast) – think I missed anything? 

This post is part of the awesome Word Carnival. Read more posts on this month’s theme: Close (Biz) Encounters of the Sci-Fi Kind.

My week did not start well. I had a super-awkward ending to a date* on Sunday (which was kinda my own fault, but still not fun), didn’t sleep well, and woke up headachey and groggy. (Which was also my own fault, given that I decided pink lemonade with tequila** and staying up late with friends was a good way to feel better about the date snafu. Knowing that it was my own fault didn’t make me feel any better on Monday, though.)

Plus, I was still catching up from SXSW. I know the signs of burnout and I know when I’m there, and while it’s been a while since I’ve wound up well & truly burned out, I can recognize when I’m teetering on the edge – the combination of the final push of work to get Rock the System done and the usual conference shenanigans (lots of new friends, lots of walking everywhere ever, lots of free drinks) almost did me in.

I was also looking at a reallyeffinglong task list for the week…with the knowledge that I had to get as much as possible done, because my little sister is visiting me for five days starting next Sunday. And bringing a friend. And they’re staying with me (and my dog), in my 400 square foot apartment. Which, don’t get me wrong, is great – I don’t get to see my family often and I’m really looking forward to some quality sister time, but the fact is that I will get little, if any, work done next week and then I was supposed to lead an all-day workshop next Friday.

Cue hyperventilating. 

I was looking at everything to do, feeling overwhelmed, upset, and still ego-bruised from the date, and I very nearly had a panic attack. Yikes.

And an hour or two later, I was feeling much better. Not 100%, no, but better than hyperventilateypanicattacks. What did I do? And more importantly, what can you do next time panic comes knocking when you’re already on the verge of burnout? 

Get some support

The first thing I did was go somewhere I knew I could be supported. I posted a request for virtual hugs in the Love & Money Revolution Community (which is awesome – new members are added on Monday, so feel free to message Rhiannon & ask to be put in, or just request to join the group). It’s a lot easier to walk yourself back from the verge of tears when you have other people reminding you to calm the hell down (with love, of course) and be kind to yourself.

Where do you get your support from? Do you have a specific person or group of people that you can turn to when things get rough who’ll have your back?

Take a step back

Once you’ve got some support and you’re at least a few feet away from the “everything sucks hairy donkey balls” zone, it’s time to take a step back and look at what’s on your plate. Look at what’s overwhelming you and see what you can do, even if you don’t want to.

One of the things that was freaking me out was the knowledge that, at the end of five days of having people all up in my business, I was going to be teaching a workshop (ironically, on avoiding burnout!). I didn’t really want to push it back a week, but when I thought about it logically, that was easily one of the highest impact things I could do. That way, I’ll know that I’ll be able to deliver a kickass experience to the attendees, and I’ll be able to enjoy the time with my sister without having the workshop hanging over my head.

In the same ballpark, is there anything you can do that will make you feel better even if logistically it’s not that big of a deal? I changed the wording on my services page to let people know that I’m currently booked up for project/operations management clients. It took all of about five minutes, if that, but it made me feel infinitely better knowing that that was out there (even though, realistically, if someone had emailed me wanting to work together, I would have just sent an email back to the effect of “sorry, booked up for now, here’s who I’d recommend”).

Reprioritize

Once you’ve done the immediately obvious things, you can reprioritize. One of the projects I had on the to do list (in priority slot #3) for this week was the Making Habits Happen Kindle book. Which definitely ties in with my larger goals for the year (building a platform, increased visibility, writing more), but it isn’t going to be an immediate money generator and it’s probably not going to bring me new clients (since the topic isn’t 100% aligned with what I do here at Bombchelle).

When I did my brutally-honest assessment of what I could do, I realized that it’d be fine to push this project back a few weeks and that doing so would free up a lot of my time/mental energy. Nobody’s waiting on this except for me and the return on my time-investment is more long-term than short-term. Pushing it back is what I decided to do, and I felt a lot better for it.

Back the hell away

Not to be confused with step #2. That step is all about getting an accurate assessment, this step is about getting away from your work. Take a break! Go outside, walk your dog, go sit at a coffee shop, read a book or a magazine. Just get away from the computer, whether it’s for an hour or the rest of the day.

After I did all of the above, I felt so much better. I still managed to get some work done (including outlining & starting on this post!) and I was no longer on the verge of tears. There’s still the need to keep from being burned out – especially since this week is pretty heavy on client calls & socializing – but I’m off the brink and aware of what I need to do to stay away from that brink.

If you’ve found yourself on the verge of crispy lately and want even more burnout-combating strategies & tactics, come join us at the Kick Burnout Kit. Learn how to price for burnout prevention, systematize & streamline your services, & create self-care systems and start putting it all into action in one day!

*I am a magnet for awkward. I seriously am. I keep repeating to myself during these dating adventures/mishaps that someday it’ll be good material for my memoirs. 

**Yeah, I’m classy. 

Photo credit: Jody Art via Compfight cc

How Teamweek works:

It’s basically a really pretty, interactive Gantt chart. In case that means nothing to you, what it translates to is that you can see how long tasks are supposed to take and see them overlapped on top of each other in a visual way, instead of just seeing them as a list of boxes to check. There’s also:

• color coding
• to-do lists/subtasks
• milestones
• ability to assign things to a person
• project & client labels

Pricing: $4/month for each “manager” user, $2/month for each normal user

How it could work for solopreneurs:

Teamweek is clearly advertised/intended towards teams of 3+ people, but I wanted to see if I could come up with ways that solopreneurs or smaller teams could make it useful,

• The first thing that came to mind would be using it monthly or quarterly planning. It gives you a nice clean way to see how your projects and other life events (family visiting, you travelling, etc.) overlap/interact with each other – this is the first way I show to use it, from 0:00 to about 4:10 in the video
• It could also be used for visual weekly planning, depending on your organizational needs, as highlighted from 4:10-7:13 in the video
• It’d be GREAT for launch planning – it would let you see how all the pieces overlap (I show this from 7:13 to 9:40 in the video)

If you’re a really creative type and want something that compliments a more “to do list”-y app (like Wunderlist), I think Teamweek would definitely be worth the $4/month. And if you’re planning a launch and want to keep everything on track, it’d definitely be worth looking at as well. I don’t think I’m going to become a regular user of it (I’ve gotten spoiled by Google Docs integration/notes/etc.) but I’ll definitely be sending people to them and probably using it to help plan my next multi-person launch. Definitely check it out!

I’d definitely recommend Conqu for people who are managing a small (less than five member) team, especially if everyone on the team uses + is versed in GTD as a productivity system – I can only imagine that’d make it a million times more effective.

Pricing: The tool itself is free with unlimited tasks/projects, but you can upgrade to ConquSync for $53/year. This lets you:

• sync across multiple platforms
• invite others to your workspace
• have offline functionality (update tasks offline and they’ll sync once you get online)
• send tasks via email
• make a one-time import via Remember the Milk or Toodledo

Availability: Get it on the web, as a download for Mac, Linux, or Windows, in the Android or iOS marketplace, for your Nook color, Blackberry, or Kindle Fire. Whew.

Features: 

• Clean, easy to use design
• Recurring tasks
• Color coding
• Ability to differentiate between “date scheduled” and “date due” – this could be handy for seeing how much padding you have left before a task really needs to get done so you can decide if you want to push it back or not
• Lots of different filters – tags, date due, context, project
• GTD based, so like I said – if you use that, this’d be a great choice for you
• Delegation & ability to see at a glance what tasks you’re waiting on being done by others

Notes:

Wunderlist 2 is pretty much the same as the original Wunderlist, not a lot of changes – slightly more streamlined UI, the ability to add notes & subtasks, and more task/list sharing capabilities. But if you missed the other review or want to see what the differences are, here’s a video review for ya!

(PS: Wunderlist, bring back my pretty purple damask backgorund. Pleeeease.) 

Here’s four of those things:

#4: I’m too fucking stubborn to do anything else.

This pretty much sums it up better than I could:

I’ll try to sum it up for me, though, anyways. Because this is my blog and I do what I want.

Let’s face it, guys: there’s not a lot of options for a 24 year old who wants to look however she wants (meaning: rainbow hair and tattoos) and doesn’t have a college education. So it’s a good thing that I’ve been dead-set on working for myself for a long time and that I’ve never given up on it.

I’m fairly certain that being incredibly stubborn, while a setback in the world of traditional employment (or at least, my experience with traditional employment), is the only thing that’s got me anywhere at all as far as my business aspirations. Clearly being smart, talented, and good looking (and, uh, modest) helps too, but I think the “screw you, I’m not quitting” attitude is the main contributor to all the progress I’ve made. Hence my “fail better” tattoo (one of the recent batch I got a few weeks ago – three in one sitting*). It’s nice that there’s at least one area of my life where being massively stubborn is an asset rather than a setback.

*By request: tattoos #1, #2, & #3! (I have seven total, so that’s not all of them, but that’s the three I got in one sitting a few weeks ago.)

#3: Freedom and flexibility!

This is a total stereotype, but it’s true. Running my own business allows me a kind of freedom I definitely wouldn’t have otherwise – I can set my work hours based on what works for me (fun fact! the reason I rarely book morning meetings is that my neurotic brain starts waking me up around 6 AM convinced that I missed the meeting and my client is going to hate me with the fire of ten thousand suns), take off when I want to, and base when I work based on how much I get done instead of just logging hours.

I do think there’s a trade-off that’s rarely discussed in the “rah rah entrepreneurship” articles. Yeah, sometimes I have a four day work week, and I can take off for random things like “the weather is nice outside, let’s go play!” But sometimes, I work late, or on the weekend, or I finish my workday so mentally wrung-out I can’t do anything but eat and watch a New Girl marathon.

There’s a powerful sovereignty (for me) in doing what I do, but I also think it ties up a lot of my mental processes that would otherwise be free – I have friends who have “normal jobs” and I’m 99% sure they don’t spend near as much time thinking about their livelihood as I do. They get to “shut off” from their job in a way that I find nigh impossible to do. Sometimes I think that mental freedom must be nice, but in the long run, I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

#2: I get to do something that matters to me. And I get to make the last call.

If you’ve read my about page, you’re probably aware that I’ve always been kind of an idealist. My principles have always been really important to me, and that’s one reason that working for myself matters so much to me – I know the behind the scenes working of my business. I know there’s no sweat shop labor involved anywhere, and I know that what I’m doing actually makes peoples’ lives better (because they tell me so and then I get sniffly and go hide to preserve my tough-gal image).

The associated benefit of that is that I get to make the last call. One of my last jobs before striking out into the big wide world of self-employment was working at a call center for an electronics store that shall not be named. There was this incident during the holidays where an older woman called in. She was honestly borderline hysterical – she was on a fixed income, and her and her husband had been saving for months to buy their son a new computer for Christmas, but then she went to buy it and it wasn’t on the site any more.

I spent probably close to an hour talking to her on the phone, getting the specs for the computer, finding out what her son was going to use it for, and then going through the site with her until we found something that was a good fit and in her price range. She was so grateful she was on the verge of tears, and after she placed her order she asked to speak to my supervisor – I’m assuming she gushed about me. (‘Cause, you know, I’m awesome.) I got to say bye to her, and then she hung up; the supervisor stayed around to say “I’m glad you made her happy, but that was probably too much time spent on one phone call for the purchase amount she made.” I don’t even remember what I said, but I clearly remember wanting to say “Screw you, what was I supposed to do?!”

It’s pretty awesome that I can do whatever I want and then say “Why? Because I’m the boss, that’s why!” Not needing to justify your actions to anyone = awesome. 

#1: You guys.

MUSHY MOMENT! Yeah. You guys. Not just my clients and customers – though I love them too, of course – but everyone I’ve met through this wild and wacky journey. Colleagues, friends, mentors. So many of my closest friends, people who have kept me going when I was thisclose to saying “fuck it all” and wallowing in self-pity for days on end, I wouldn’t have met if I didn’t work for myself.

I don’t know how to describe what it feels like to have clients that you would genuinely love to grab a few drinks with, customers who email you unprompted to tell you how something you made has affected their life, colleagues that help you up and dust you off when you hit setbacks, mentors who say “if I have faith in anyone, it’s you”. Except to say that it feels incredible and amazing and makes you want to give everyone big sloppy kisses and I am sosososo(x a million) grateful.

Now I have to go get some tissues, dammit.

This month, we’re trying something a little different for Word Carnival. Instead of a topic, we’re going with a theme, and that theme is love. We hear it’s all you need. Check out all the other awesome Carnies to catch their creative takes on this month’s theme here.

But what is accountability, anyways? We could go look it up in the dictionary, but that’s boring. In short, accountability means that someone is going to hold you to doing what you said you’re going to do – someone knows what you’re supposed to be doing & will call you on your shit if you’re not doing it.

However vital I think accountability is, there’s often an important piece of it missing. You can have the best accountability coach or partner or network in the world, but if you aren’t holding yourself accountable, it’s all going to be for absolutely naught. You won’t make any progress, you’ll be frustrated (and your cohorts will be frustrated too, because nobody likes holding up dead weight), and you certainly won’t be living up to your full potential. And that’s a damn shame.

“Okay, nice thought, Michelle,” you say. “But how am I supposed to start holding myself accountable?”

1. Get honest.

We, as humans, are extraordinarily good at bullshitting. Both other people and ourselves, but ourselves more than anyone. If you want to stop stalling out & start making forward progress, you have to get honest. It might hurt a little bit. If you’ve painted this inner picture of yourself as someone who’s doing their very best with what they have, and then when you think about it, you realize that you aren’t giving in 110% effort because you’re afraid of giving it your all & then failing, it can sting a little. But if you aren’t clear + honest with yourself about what’s going on in your current situation, you can’t fix it.

Note: honesty is not the same as cruelty. This step is not an excuse to beat yourself up and tell yourself you’re worthless, and if I catch you doing that, I will kick your ass. This is about getting an accurate assessment of what’s been holding you back, even if you aren’t a fan of the results of that assessment.

2. Get support systems in place.

Once you’re honest with yourself about what’s been holding you back – whether that’s a shitty attitude, a tendency towards laziness, an awful work environment, unsupportive friends/family, or the massive purple monster that follows you around and beats you up, you need to figure out how you’re going to circumvent that with your new support systems.

For example, if you tend to get distracted when you’re working by shiny objects like Facebook & Twitter, you can install StayFocusd to block you from those sites during your prime work hours. If you consistently forget what your priorities are, you can write ‘em down & put ‘em above your workspace. If you struggle with feeling alone and unmotivated, you need a support group. And so on.

3. Do the freakin’ work.

No shortcut here, unfortunately. Put in some blood, sweat, & tears. But once you’ve done steps one and two – got brutally honest with yourself and put in support systems to remove things that had previously blocked you – you’ll find this step much, much easier. When you know why you haven’t made progress in the past & you’re taking active steps to fix that, it’s approximately one-point-five million times easier to buckle down, do the work, and make the forward progress that’s been eluding you for the past forever & a half.

One of my least favorite things about accountability the way it’s usually done is that it often turns into nagging. True accountability should be about respect, trust, self-knowledge, and support – not “Did you get it done yet? Didya? Didya? Oh, okay, well, I guess there’s always next week.” If you’re being honest with yourself, you’re ready + willing to do the freakin’ work, and you’re in need of support systems, but want to avoid the nagging factor, then check out the Accountability Rockstars Club – enrollment opens today, & is open until February 16th (or the 30 seats available fill up – whichever happens first!).

Hi, I’m Liz. I work a full-time “corporate” job, and have some fun freelancing on the side to sate my multipod tendencies. I’ve been called (in the same conversation) a:

• workaholic
• flake
• lunatic
• slacker
• someone who hides behind work because her life is going to hell in a handbasket, AND FINALLY…
• good person, if a little frazzled

Whew. With all those expectations hanging over my head just from one person, you’d think I’ve had collapsed by now under the weight! And yet, I still show up on time for my job, I still meet client deadlines…what am I doing wrong that someone I trust would tell me these things?

I didn’t have systems in place to make sure that my 9-to-5 (and my little bits of extra) didn’t take over me. I suck at setting up boundaries, and I’m a perfectionist and a pleaser. I want to make it work, and work properly, and what’s a little sleep or a cancelled dinner if I achieve that?

Answer: It’s my sanity, and the opinions of those close to me. So I found a method to tame my madness: keep a basic schedule of my important activities, and frame my routine around it.

“But Liz,” (you may say) “it’s already frustrating to operate on the timetables of others. Someone else is setting my work hours and has expectations. Then I supposed to fit in a yoga class to relax, plus run little Susie’s soccer practice, drive Jimmy to flute lessons, and watch this coming season of Game of Thrones. It’s going to look like a mess!”

First off, slow your roll and take a deeeeep breath. There’s something pretty darn awesome about all those things you listed above — you know when they happen. You also know when you’re expected to be at work — yes, sometimes late nights and emergencies occur (I work with technology, I’m an expert on the 2am “It’s BROKEN” phone call), but on the whole you can map out your “requireds” of the day without a huge time or money investment. So what’s stopping you from jumping on the time management bandwagon?

Now, identify your show-stopper when it comes to scheduling. There’s two major pitfalls that will stand in your way: time and fear. You may not think with everything you have going on that you have time to pause and map it all out. But stop and think a sec — if you map it out now, you can identify all those tiny holes in your schedule that you’re losing in the bigger picture of “OMG MY DAY WHAT HAPPENED TO IT??” Once you identify those, you see your wiggle room. You can feel it, instead of feeling the “fuck my overwhelm!” and you can take advantage of it.

Fear is a lot harder to handle. It’s amorphous and internal, so you can’t point to it and go “there, that’s why I’m not managing my time better!” Not sure what you’re afraid of? Maybe you’re like me, where free time/down time felt like a failure, instead of a blessing. Maybe free time means time to realize things you’re avoiding — a doctor’s appointment where you may get bad news, catching up your zillion items in email, returning that one call you just don’t want to make. Whatever the fear, it’s real to you and thus, in your way. So acknowledge it, give it a good cuddle, and remind your fear that you’re doing this for YOU and not the doctor, the email, or the phone call.

There are as many lifestyles, work schedules, and setups as there are fish in the sea. But the core habits and systems Michelle advocates are universal, regardless of whether you set your own hours or someone else expects you to be in a certain place for 8 hours a day. Systems are extremely important to me, as someone who straddles the world of the freelancer and the full-time employee. If you give just a basic system a shot, you may be surprised at how much good it does you, too.

Liz Patt is a creative soul, jill-of-all trades, consummate drinker of caffeinated beverages, and connoisseur of chocolate. Her background is in IT Administration, writing, and editing. Liz sightings may occur in many a coffee shop, usually with her iPhone in one hand and her Kindle (or the occasional paperback) in the other. Find her on Twitter as @awanderingliz.

This is something that I really agonized over, and to be honest, it makes me nervous as all get out. But this has been one of my dreams for a while – in 2013, I want to focus on working like this and on doing more classes & workshops, like the 2013 Planning + Systems + Strategy workshop. (There’s still a few days to register for that, BTW! Check it out here or download the preview workbook here.) You can see all the new service deets here (shoutout to Tanja, who has been invaluable in helping with the copy).

I thought it’d (hopefully!) be not only interesting but useful & informative, as either a potential client or as a fellow business owner, for you to read some of the reasoning & motivation behind the new services and why I decided to make such a drastic switch.

Why retainer rates instead of hourly rates?

There are so many ways to answer this question.

For one, charging a flat monthly fee removes surprises for both parties. My clients know exactly what they’re going to pay each month, and I know exactly what I can expect to make each month from my client work. It also lets me work with other kickass service professionals, which is something I’d been wanting to do for a while – I liked the idea of moving to a more “agency” style service, but that would be difficult (nigh impossible, really) to do while still functioning in an hourly model.

For another, what I’ve realized with my clients is that they really aren’t just buying my time – they’re taking up residence in my brain 24/7. I’ll be thinking about my clients’ businesses while I’m eating or in the shower or on the bus – it’s not something I can switch off (or that I want to switch off!). Given that, I don’t think an hourly business model makes the most sense.

The last, and probably most important shift for me, was realizing that I want my business to feel high-end. I want to be Nordstrom, not Target. I want working with me to be a really fantastic experience loaded with bonuses, surprises, and fabulous service (think: yearly retreats, monthly self-care surprises, special gifts).

This is what sealed the deal in switching business models for me – I realized that I literally, mathematically could not provide that kind of service for my clients and still make a profit with the hourly model I’d been working in. I’d be actively losing money and unable to pay my rent.

That took a lot of the emotional money issues out of it, for me – I had to ask myself, “Is it more important to me to provide an absolutely amazing experience for my clients, or to avoid dealing with my discomfort of switching pricing models?”

Overall? It’s just easier, simpler, & more elegant, for everyone involved.

Why would someone pay for these packages instead of just having a VA?

You’ll notice that hours of VA work are included in each of the tiers, with the hours increasing as the price increases. Of course, you’re paying more at each retainer level than you would be if you hired just a VA. So you might be wondering – why not simply work with a VA?

My clients will get more out of these VA hours than they would be if they were working with a VA 1:1 – because the VA is working off of a clear, organized task list that ties into the bigger picture, instead of just handling things on the fly. That’s actually one of the problems that business owners run into when they start to delegate – they just kind of hand things off as they come up, without a bigger picture view of what they’re handing off and why, and what impact handing those things off (vs. handing other tasks off, for example) has on their business. Which, of course, is still effective, but it’s not the most effective way to do things.

Another thing is that since I’ll be working with several VAs at once within this model, I can give my clients’ work off to someone who specializes in that particular task – whereas if you’re a small business owner working with VAs 1:1, it can be difficult to have several “on hand” with different specialities. (Think tech wrangling vs. customer service vs. writing or editing.) And it might not even be financially feasible, depending on how your VAs structure their payment. This way, that’s taken care of for you.

Why not just have an online business manager (the way you used to work) instead of using this model?

Mainly, because I decided to make this switch for very specific reasons – it wasn’t just done randomly.

One of the things I’ve run into is working with clients who – to be utterly frank – have kind of shitty VAs. I’m not dissing on virtual assistants as a whole because there are a lot of incredibly awesome ones out there (and I’m looking forward to working with them in this new model!). But I’d run into issues like the assistant not having great communication or timeliness skills, assistants having issues accepting assignments from me, things like that. Having kickass VAs that I have an ongoing relationship with will solve a lot of that.

The other thing I’ve run into is that my clients are not usually natural system thinkers. Which is totally fine, obvs, because that’s where I shine. But that has some ramifications – namely, by the time I come on the scene, there are usually very inefficient, broken systems in place when it comes to teamwork & generally getting shit done. And, as with so many things, it’s really much harder to fix something that’s broken instead of creating a strong foundation from the get-go. This way, I can handle all of the system creation internally within my business, which sets things up for everything to get done super-smoothly.

It really comes back to what I said in point #3 about retainer rates, above - I honestly believe that this is the best way for my clients to get a seamless, frustration-free experience with better results than they’d get from the way I had been working.

What’s this mean for Bombchelle going into 2013?

Like I said in the introduction, in 2013 I want to focus on this style of work and on classes & workshops (including in person ones, which I’m super excited about). I’m going to be discontinuing my one-off services on December 31st (so if you’re interested in getting some 1:1 planning + systematizing done, make sure to book your’s now – you can use the service any time before January 31st). I love doing them and I get great feedback on them, but I don’t feel like they’re the highest leverage spot to put my attention and I don’t want to have too many things on offer at any given point and confuse people.

I’m also going to be working on doing more writing & creating more things like the planners – I’m in fact working on a Kindle book that should be out by the end of the month, and have plans for at least two more in 2013.

So – those are my reasons for one of the biggest shifts in my business yet, & some info about what that shift means for my biz. I’d love to hear your thoughts & stories of similar switches you’ve made in your business below!