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Kathi Burns  0:04  
Hi there, I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Organized Energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at ThePodcast@OrganizedandEnergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at organizing energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hi, everyone. This is Kathi with Organized and Energized and I'm here with Jenn now. Jenn has been working in corporate America and running her own agency for the past decade. She knows what works and what doesn't inactivating content that the key online success. Today we're going to talk to Jenn about her recommendations for the best use of our existing content. Hi Jenn, thanks so much for joining me on the show.

Jenn Neal  1:09  
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Kathi.

Kathi Burns  1:11  
Yeah, absolutely. So you've been in corporate America, you were there for a decade? What did you do then?

Jenn Neal  1:17  
Mm hmm. So all I have ever done in my entire professional career is marketing for small businesses. So I worked in corporate fresh out of high school for about 15 years, and then I've run my agency now for 13 years.

Kathi Burns  1:33  
Okay. And what do you think of what's the main challenge that you saw for your clients at your agency right now?

Jenn Neal  1:42  
Um, oh, the main challenge that we saw, honestly, is leads because we all need traffic and leads, right? And the number one go to that everybody does, that I know you're even doing yourself is like, really, hey, I have this program. And then I'm gonna go run Facebook ads. And that's how you get leads. And it's, I myself have done the same thing. And Facebook takes a big cut. And I think that that's the biggest pain, right? So I've figured out a way to cut your ad costs in half, at least if not more.

Kathi Burns  2:18  
I love that. We got to hear about that for sure. So, we're all entrepreneurs and we've been entrepreneurs for a long time, both you and I. When you start to feel a little bit bluesy or a little bit overwhelmed, do to kind of regenerate, re energize yourself and your business.

Jenn Neal  2:36  
Um, that's a great question. So for me, it comes down to well, a couple of things. One, I made sure that I have to take care of myself. So to re energize and reinvigorate, I actually, like, literally calendar out time to spend time with family and friends and to be creative and to go connect with nature and to meditate and exercise and all those things. Because otherwise, it's just all work and I totally burn out.

Kathi Burns  3:06  
Yeah, work life balance is so important. And when we're so enthused about our business, sometimes it's really hard to just say, okay, like, around us can say you're looking a little bit stressed out, it's like, really, I'm like, all happy. But you know, you got to stop and regenerate yourself. In fact, I just did an hour meditation earlier this morning. So I had a back to back to back to back schedule. I'm like, okay, let's Zen out a little bit, right? You got to take care of yourself.

Jenn Neal  3:37  
Oh, no, I just think that we one other thing that I love and because I live in Idaho as well. So like, when the weather is permitting, if I get to a place and I'm just like, man, I need that meditation or that escape or whatever, I just go stand in the middle of the river for like, a good 15 minutes.

Kathi Burns  3:57  
You live right by a river?

Jenn Neal  3:59  
Yeah, well, pretty close. I'm gonna have to drive but you know, it's yeah. So that's that's a good invigorating thing for me.

Kathi Burns  4:06  
Yeah, no doubt. So it's usually pretty cool, isn't it?

Jenn Neal  4:11  
Well, you know, we have all four seasons here like for sure. Right now it's winter and it definitely feels like winter but late spring through early fall it's all river weather.

Kathi Burns  4:27  
I love I love love love floating down the river in a canoe are a favorite one of my favorite things of all time. So I'm with you on that. Now my husband does ice baths. So he goes and sits in rivers right now he go in your river in Idaho and sit in it for a little while because he's a madman. But you know, for each its own, right? Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about hacks. What's what's your favorite hack for entrepreneurs who want to create more freedom within their business? Like what do you do or what do you recommend that people do this need more free time and more, more ways to expand themselves?

Jenn Neal  5:08  
Oh, such a great question. Um, I'm not going to take credit for this, this I got from Alec Scharffen. Plenty of other people do it. But it sounds like more work, but doing a time audit, and literally recording every single thing that you're doing by like five to 15 minute increments. And like, my favorite hack for that is I actually just use a time tracker. And I literally put in there eating, sending emails, calling family, you know. And so whenever I am working on these different things, I hit that time tracker. Because what that allows me to do then is look and see where I'm spending more of my time. And what I can delegate, or what I know that it becomes a roadblock that I need to focus on and say, when I'm in that mode, like okay, get off a social. No social, right?.

Kathi Burns  6:04  
Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love the time tracker. So is it the time tracker app that you use on your computer? Is that what it is?

Jenn Neal  6:12  
Yeah, I actually have Time Doctor because my whole team uses that. But, um, I mean, whatever it is just Yeah, tracking your time. So you can look at stuff. You know, I even played with at one point, somebody else done this as well. But there's these little like, it's like a fidget cubes. Yeah, and it's like, I don't know, like 16 sides or something like that.  And, and the they actually have custom stickers on there. And it tracks to an app. So literally, like you can put on their own eating Oh, I'm on. So you can customize what each of your own things in whichever side is face up, tracks your time and just sends it right to spreadsheet.

Kathi Burns  6:52  
Sweet. Oh, my gosh, that's like so sophisticated. Okay, I have to find that I'll put the link down in the show notes for everybody. Because I even want to check that out. You know, it's a time management coach, I help people all the time to really figure out what do they do with their time? And if you don't know what you do, you don't know what you shouldn't do. Okay, let's see. Oh, yeah, I shouldn't probably be doing that for that long. Right? So oh, I love that's a really, really, really good hack Jenn, thank you so much. And that's a wealth of information. In fact, I think I'll put both the links in there. The app that you use, as well as a little cube, and Pomodoro cube, but it's only four sides and with ADD and ADHD to start and stop when they're supposed to. But the time tracking things perfect. Okay, so you've had your business for 13 years? What's the one lesson that you'd say that your businesses taught you personally? If you had to say one, right?

Jenn Neal  7:55  
Yeah, well, you know, I will actually say this one is life balance. And this has been a hard lesson to learn. For me in fact, earlier this year, my husband and I actually filed for divorce. But then we totally became friends again, and fell back in love and like, we never actually got divorced, but, but it was largely on my part because of life balance. Right? Yeah. And so it's, it's so, so important. And I'm gonna have a therapist as well. And it's always, you know, she's like, I challenge you to work less. And I'm like, right now, and what I found is actually, like four hour work days are make you so much more productive in, in all aspects of life.

Kathi Burns  8:47  
Yeah. Would you say that's what more common is you like the four hour work days that you actually get off, spend time with your husband, have dinners and that type of thing? Did you? Was that your ticket?

Jenn Neal  9:00  
Yeah. Um, well, yes. But also in the fact that giving myself permission to work on myself, right? So I'm still working for six to eight hours a day, easy. But part of that work time is I build in, okay, this is when I'm going to meditate this is when I'm going to exercise. This is when, you know, I'm going to read and journal and so I'm, I'm doing work. But to me, it's, it's like in order to be a whole person. I have to schedule these things in you know, and then I'm done working at this point and but everything it's so hard to do, but it all becomes so much easier.

Kathi Burns  9:47  
In the more in the zone we are the more we get done anyhow. And there's been all the studies with all these virtual people now and working four day, weeks in it the four day worker actually gets more done in the five day worker, I think it's the same thing.  I remember Tim Ferriss when he came out with a four hour workweek. It was like, Whoa, blow our minds, right? And, and it's not necessarily something that you can do easily. But to do once a day, I think is a really good key. That's the path forward, right? And then to have two to three hours to work on yourself. Oh, yeah. I really like that. That's, that's a golden piece of advice. Wow. Okay. So, if I have missed asking you anything, what would be the one thing that I should have asked you that I did not ask you?

Jenn Neal  10:44  
Um, I would say mistakes learned from or lessons learned.

Kathi Burns  10:49  
Okay, let's hear him, girl. Let's have a couple.

Jenn Neal  10:53  
Oh, well, I actually, um, in fact, I'm, I'm working on a co authored book. And so I was having to write my chapter. And so this is definitely forefront of mine. But, um, you know, working with all these companies through the years, I always preach to them like you're doing too much. You have to niche down. What are you focused on? Who are you serving? Like, focus, focus, focus. When it came time for me to do that for myself? I'm like, oh, yeah, I totally got this, but I didn't. And then I'm like, Okay, no, this is this is my niche, but it wasn't a niche. And it literally like it took me it took me a good two years, to really because I can pivot in my business from doing like all things automation, okay, and building funnels and websites, and like, all these things, right to saying, Now, this is all I'm going to do. And I went through the rollercoaster of emotions of like, No, I'm niching down, what am I leaving behind what? You know, and like, once I finally just conceded and said, okay, I really do have to knit pick something.

Kathi Burns  12:05  
How about that one? or that one? nope, maybe that one.

Jenn Neal  12:08  
Everything became so much easier. And it took me two and a half years to like, finally learn this and really adopt it. So I would I was saying really identify, like, are you really niched as much as you should be? It's it makes business life and personal life way easier.

Kathi Burns  12:29  
It does is so much less confusing, but it's very scary. I think when you first start a business, you want to be all things to all people because you just want business, right? And then and then you've been in a decade or so. And then you're like, Oh, you never took the time to niche down. And then you have clients, you're like, I'm not sure if we're even a good fit. And so and niching down is a hugely super, super important thing. I totally agree with that. And in my profession, as professional organizer, we all started as generalists, and then we figure out what we want to do, who we want to help what we want to organize and take it from, and I think if you out there have not niched down and you're kind of new in your business to definitely think about you the most thing that what I think in in probably agree with this is like what was that client you love to work with? Like, who was that ideal client? And that's a niche. Right? And what kind of project were you doing? Was it making you excited? Or was it like making you feel drained out? Well, then another niche to do or not to do? So do you agree with all that as far as how you determine your niche?

Jenn Neal  13:40  
I totally did. I just love that you said that. Because when I you know, when I was starting my okay, I how do I figure out what I want to do? Because I'm a total super nerd. And so I can do all these things. You know, someone's like, oh, go figure out Infusionsoft. Cool no problem. But just because I can doesn't mean I should. And that was a big, like, saying no and huge thing for me. And, and so the way that I actually personally do said, Okay, here's where my niche is going to be, is I had to go back to the data. And so I looked at all those clients, I literally created a spreadsheet. And I ranked all of our clients on how much did we like working with them as a team, right? a scale of one to five? how profitable was it? Um, what, what else did we rank on? How profitable is it lifetime value of the customer. How much we liked working with them, type of project, um, and then level of success that that that customer had. And so I kind of just looked at all of that and looked at the numbers and then we picked like, who are the people that we really like to work with and what are the commonalities that they had in between and then that's right kind of narrowed it down. And really, I just landed I'm like it, it all comes down to content and content, like effective content distribution. So that's how I landed here. But it all came from data.

Kathi Burns  15:11  
You are quite the nerd, aren't you? I really don't why can you Infusionsoft is like, up in the head. If you're me to Infusionsoft, there's no possible way. Thank God for people like you. But I think that's the takeaway for today really is just because you can doesn't mean you should, that's such a huge thing to think about. Because, yeah, I mean, a lot of us as well as entrepreneurs, that's what we do. We create, create, create, we can do a whole bunch of stuff. When we first started our business, we're doing everything anyhow, until we learn how to delegate or have the funds to delegate. But you know, there has to come a point in our life in our business where we stop and figure out what we should not be doing, and who we should not be helping, like what you know that that's not the ideal client. It's something to fire clients. But we only define our clients from time to time, because they either stress us out, freak us out, or we can't help them anyhow, so that's a true sign of professionalism is saying no, really, I think.

Jenn Neal  16:15  
Yeah, yeah. And it gets to be a lot of fun, too. And you're like, Yeah, I know where this is going. I'm saying no now.

Kathi Burns  16:24  
We are going down the trail that you do not want to go to. You're killing my Zen man. Hey, well, it's been really, really fun. Now, I know you have something to give the audience that's listening, and I'm so interested in what you do. So I cannot wait to discover more about you. But what are you going to give the listeners today?

Jenn Neal  16:46  
So um, I actually have a link to a free link here to a paid masterclass that I used to do. And what it does is it literally walks you through the process of what we're doing. So from the point where I said, I had to figure out all that data. And then kind of show you the journey that I took, it took me about two years to really perfect this model. And it's not rocket science. And it's nothing new. But literally like, instead of just using paid traffic, or just trying to use organic, social or creating a blog, right, combining all of those things together, increases the effectiveness and decreases the cost of all of them. And so it's so I walk through kind of this entire process of how this works. And there's video trainings and downloads to so that you can actually walk through all the steps and kind of figure out how it applies to your business.

Kathi Burns  17:50  
That is a huge gift. Wow. Thank you. That's very, very generous and I so appreciate it. And I'm sure everybody else will make sure to grab your download gang, because that's very valuable. I'm going to check it out myself for sure. So hey, thank you so much. I just ever so appreciated this conversation. And I know that there's a lot of really good takeaways that our audience has taken away. So take it away girls, and I will see you on the other side. Thanks a lot, Jenn.

Jenn Neal  18:18  
Awesome. Thanks, Kathi.

Kathi Burns  18:28  
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you, to me have a stellar day.