MP080 - Save Time and Money with the Macpreneur Productivity System
Teaser
You excel in your solo business, but is your tech setup slowing you down? Discover a simple, game-changing, three-part framework to turn your tech into your biggest business asset.
I'll unpack all of this after the intro.
Welcome
If this is the first episode that you're listening to, welcome to the Macpreneur tribe, and if you're a long-time Macpreneur listener, thank you for tuning back in.
As a fellow solopreneur, I appreciate that you dedicate these 15-ish minutes with me every week. Over the past few months, I've had the chance to interact with other Macpreneurs, and some of you have expressed interest in being able to connect and discuss with other solopreneurs who run their businesses on their Mac.
Now, before launching a Macpreneur community, I'd like to be sure that enough of you actually want that. So, if this idea sounds interesting, then head on to macpreneur.com/community, where you'll be able to join the waitlist.
So, get the chance to become one of the founding members by visiting macpreneur.com/community.
Are you working on the right part of your business?
Many solopreneurs recognize the need to take time to work on their business, and when they do, they will usually focus their time and attention on two sales and marketing strategies, which, obviously, are very important. However, what they tend to neglect or overlook is how much their tech setup is key to efficiently and effectively implementing those strategies.
And so, in this episode, we're going to explore why and how optimizing your tech setup is not just important, but essential to support the growth of your business. The first part will cover the why, and the second part will cover the how.
Why optimize your tech setup?
There are two main reasons to spend a little bit of time working on optimizing your tech setup.
It can help you save time and money.
Reason number one to save time, well, we all have 24 hours in a day, not one second more.
And I don't know about you, but since I crossed the 40-year-old mark, I definitely need between seven and eight hours of sleep minimum. And I will also do a power nap to stay sharp after lunch.
On top of that, every day I want to take time to exercise, learn, and reflect. With my eldest daughter currently being homeschooled, I want to carve out time to be available for her, and also most days now I'm taking care of cooking lunch for her, and sometimes cooking dinner as well.
So what I'm trying to say is that the time that we have to work both in our business and on our business is already quite limited. So the more efficient we can be, the better.
Now, an optimized tech setup can also reduce and prevent tech incidents that would then inevitably result in unwanted downtime.
The second motivation is to save money by minimizing hardware and software-related costs.
If we don't pay attention, it's very easy to be spending several hundreds of dollars every month on software licenses and online service subscriptions that we may have used only a few times or some of them that provide the same set of capabilities.
On top of that, optimizing our tech setup can reduce the need for hiring a VA. But it can also maximize the return on investment when we hire a VA.
And by preventing and reducing the likelihood of tech-related incidents, it can help us avoid needing to resort to costly data recovery services. And if I'm talking specifically about data breaches and security incidents, those are usually associated with additional fees, admin fees, legal fees.
They could lead to reputation damage, and worst-case scenario, lead to bankruptcy.
How can you optimize you tech setup?
And so the question is, how can we, solopreneurs, optimize our tech setup?
Well, I've come up with a simple three-part framework that I call the Macpreneur Productivity System, or MPS in short. It's an acronym where M stands for Mac productivity, P stands for process efficiency, and S stands for security.
MPS Part 1: Mac Productivity
So let's start with Mac productivity, which is all about tackling the three killers that I introduced already in season two: unnecessary clicks, repetitive typing, and file clutter.
And as I said, it was the focus of season two. If you have not listened to that yet, you can check it out at macpreneur.com/season2.
If you'd like to assess how good you are at tackling the three killers of Mac productivity, I would suggest taking the free quiz that is available at macpreneur.com/score.
MPS Part 2: Process Efficiency
So the second part of the Macpreneur productivity system is process efficiency. If we take a step back and look at what we do as solopreneurs, we will see that actually there are three main processes.
The first one is business development, which means generating leads and acquiring clients.
The second one is operations, which includes everything we do to serve our clients.
And then the last one is the finance process, which includes everything related to invoicing, budgeting, bookkeeping, and so on.
My philosophy: 1% better every day
My philosophy when it comes to process optimization is that I have a continuous improvement mindset, and I believe that this is essential if you want to stay competitive and if you want to grow your business.
Now, it requires patience and persistence, and in my corporate years, I've discovered an approach that is called 1 percent better every day.
I really like that because not only does this make process improvements more approachable, but if you look at the compounding results, it produces astonishing results actually. So if you do the math, 1% is 1.01. If you are 1% better than yesterday, you have a 1.01 multiplication factor.
So, if you take 1.01 and you put that to the power of 365, being 1 percent better every day will result in a thirty-seven times improvement after a year.
Eliminate -> Automate -> Delegate methodology.
And so the way that you can achieve that is by following a simple methodology.
And for me, it's a three-step methodology. It's eliminate, then automate, then delegate.
And from that methodology, you can derive two principles.
So first of all, never automate what can be eliminated. And principle number two, never delegate what can be automated.
If you have a VA right now, it's highly likely that you're paying for tasks that either shouldn't even be done or could be performed through automation.
If you don't have a VA yet, I would say that now is the perfect time to start working on this, and here is what I recommend doing.
So first of all, you would pick a process. It could be something related to business development, operations, or finance. Then you will choose a task. And then for that task, I recommend outlining the steps required to perform the task.
Let's take the prospecting process, for instance. So, imagine the next time you will engage in prospecting activities, I would recommend opening Apple Notes and then creating a note. There you would document every step that you do, every action that you take. So, you would document which files and which folder you open, which tool you are using, and then what you do in those tools.
In essence, what you will do is create the first version of an SOP, a Standard Operating Procedure.
Now, the idea is to go through that SOP several times and take note of any redundancy, like needing to copy the same thing multiple times, going back and forth between the same tools.
There is another common inefficiency that I've observed: the need to manually copy-paste data between different tools, whether locally on your Mac or between web services.
At this point, you might be thinking, "But Damien, I don't have time to do that. It seems complicated and I don't have time."
Slow down to go fast
Well, a friend of mine and a budding solopreneur, Kerri Burchill, has a motto: "Slow down to go fast."
That's exactly the same principle when it comes to improving process efficiency.
And remember, the goal here is simply to be 1 percent better today than yesterday.
It might feel like you're losing a lot of time, and to be honest, at first, it will slow you down for sure.
However, you will be exercising muscles that haven't moved a lot yet.
So it's like when you practice a new sport, right?
You will have muscles that will be sore at the beginning, and then over time, you will see first the benefits of doing it, meaning you will discover that it saves you time.
And then, the more you do it, the easier it will be for you to start documenting the process and discover improvement opportunities.
Season 4 URL
Now, I won't be able to cover everything you can do to improve your process efficiency in this episode. The good news is, it's the focus of season four.
Yes, we've just started season four with this episode.
And so, for those of you who discover this episode after April 2024, you can batch listen or you can watch season 4, Netflix style, by visiting macpreneur.com/season4.
MPS Part 3: Security
So, the last part of the Macpreneur productivity system is security, which itself has three pillars: confidentiality, integrity, and business continuity.
So, confidentiality is making sure that the data that we use in our business, both for ourselves and for our clients, remains confidential, right? That there is no data breach.
Integrity is making sure that nothing can tamper with the data, so that nothing can change or alter the data.
And finally, business continuity is to make sure that we can still operate in case there would be some incident.
And so, security will be the main topic of Season 5, which will be starting at the end of April 2024.
So, if you're listening or watching after that time, you can also check out all the episodes via macpreneur.com/season5.
Now, if you would like to work on your Mac security, I have released a Mac security checklist in PDF format that covers the three angles of Mac security: confidentiality, integrity, and business continuity.
If you want to know more about that checklist, you just visit macpreneur.com/msc for Mac Security Checklist.
Recap
Okay, so to recap, I've started the episode by talking about the importance of working on the tech side of your business, in addition to sales and marketing.
Then I've introduced a simple framework: the Macpreneur Productivity System, the MPS system, which stands for Mac Productivity, Process Efficiency, and Security. It's a simple framework, but it is not necessarily easy. So, you will need to take some time to document your processes and then look for inefficiencies.
And that's why I've created the Macpreneur podcast because I know it's not easy to stay up to date with the rapid advancement of technology.
Every year, there is a new Mac operating system, there are new tools, and new web services coming out all the time.
And so, through the Macpreneur podcast, my hope is to be able to distill, first of all, my knowledge and the 10 plus years of experience that I have running a business on a Mac.
But also to give you the heads up on new tools, new strategies, and also making sure that you use known and proven process optimization strategies.
Want to implement MPS?
Now, if you want to jumpstart the improvement of your processes and implement this Macpreneur Productivity System, I am opening up a few private coaching spots.
To be eligible, you would need to sign up for a 360 Tech Diagnostic Service. The goal of this service is to clarify where to work on in priority.
It is composed of three parts.
First of all, there is an online assessment with questions regarding your current tech setup.
And then we will have a roughly 90-minute Zoom call during which we'll do a review of your tech setup, but more importantly, I will give you my top three recommendations to improve your business.
After the call, you will get a summary report of our session.
Now, if you decide to work with me one-on-one after the diagnostic, then I will actually deduct the diagnostic fees from the first coaching pack.
And so, if you want to learn more about this diagnostic, just visit macpreneur.com/diagnostic.
As usual, I will put all the links that I've mentioned at the top of the blog post that is accompanying this episode.
Next
So that's it for today.
In the next episode, I will help you optimize your business development processes by exploring Mac apps and web services that can help you automate repetitive tasks when it comes to prospecting and lead generation activities.
And until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day!