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If you are going to build a second stream of income outside of work, you need to have the right plan. When I was running a clothing line in 2017 and 2018, I was making designs at work – before I began working remotely. My boss warned me multiple times and so did the CEO. A few months later, I was fired for being too distracted at work. There’s a time for everything. If you are going to earn more outside your 9-5, you will have to find balance. You don’t want to hurt your career while you build it – in fact, building something outside of work should accelerate you career. Here’s a guiding principle to help:
Guiding Principle:
Rigidity creates flexibility
Think of the first time you learned to colour inside the lines. It seemed rigid at first, but it ultimately helped you create beautiful images. Being rigid at the beginning of a new project will eventually give you the flexibility you are hoping to experience later. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new things or experiment – it just means you should create rigid systems that allow you to keep your momentum.
You’re only human
You are only human, which means you are bound to make a mistakes. Never trust your memory. The only reason I have been able to generate more than $200,000 from my side hustles while traveling every other month and leading a team at my full-time job is because of the tools and technology I use. I’m going to share the most impactful ones in this issue of Paid in Full. I encourage you to use them to become more efficient with your time.
Calendly
This is a staple tool I feel like I can’t live without. You can connect multiple calendars to Calendly so you don’t double- or triple-book yourself. I have my work email, 3Skills email and personal business email all connected in one place. When people book time with me – whether it is my personal or professional life – it doesn’t clash with anything else. I maximize my day by using 15- and 30-minute Calendly events. You can do the same thing. Friends, strangers, students and clients all go through my Calendly to book time with me. This also saves me hours instead of going back and forth to find time that works for everyone else.
Zapier
Zapier changed my life. Zapier powered the year we scaled our 3Skills program from $70k - $230k. We could connect our application forms to our Slack and trigger automatic meetings and enrollments. All the tasks that took a few manual minutes to accomplish every day were suddenly automated. You can use Zapier to automate tiny tasks that eat up your time. Remember: you want to earn more money while using less of your personal time.
Clickup
Organization has never been my strength, but I’ve improved because of Clickup. My documents, playbooks, projects, resources and content calendars are all in this one place. I use it for my personal life too. If I need to write a project brief so I can delegate a task to someone else, it’s in Clickup. When I created my media kit for my LinkedIn brand deals, I did it in Clickup. Moving houses and planning a group trip – Clickup. It changed my life.
Record everything. This is a massive cheat code in productivity and delegation. When I needed to train the first sales rep and coach I hired, I could depend on recordings of previous customer calls I had run successfully (and unsuccessfully). I drew from my business’s experience to teach new employees how to do what I had been doing over the past few years. Fireflies.ai joins all my calls to transcribe and record them for me for future reference. Whether I’m having a 1-on-1 coaching call, attending a meeting, or onboarding someone, it’s there. This allowed me to duplicate my knowledge and hire people who could work as well as me. If you want to work less as you earn more, record everything you are doing now.
Typeform
Collecting information you can process and synthesize quickly will allow you to streamline your time and build the most important things – especially while you’re working full-time. I use forms for everything. If someone reaches out to work with me, I don’t just ask them random questions – I send them a form to fill out. This form allows me to collect their contact information, the reason they’re reaching out, what their goal is and even time to book a direct call to follow-up. The best part is this tool ties directly into my email list, Calendly, Zapier, Slack, Google Sheets and more than 100 other platforms. Use forms to save time.
Last but not least is the greatest time saving tool I have ever come across – and it’s a feature on my iPhone. If you use an iPhone, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. Here you can create shortcuts for everything including links, forms, entire phrases and your contact details. When I type “P1” on my phone while I’m texting, it will auto expand into my phone number. If I type @directions it will send someone exact directions to my home from a major intersection. If I type @website or @masterclass it will send the link to my masterclass. Think of how much time you spend looking for links, copying and pasting, etc. If I have to type anything more than twice, I immediately add a shortcut. This hack allows me to buy back and save countless minutes that would definitely add up into days. These shortcuts are synced across my devices and they work on every website and app I use. It’s a massive timesaver.
These are only some of the tools I use at the moment. They are a small part of all the systems I have built over the years. I share all of my tools in my new cohort-based course, the LinkedIn Revenue Accelerator.
Finding balance doesn’t need to be complicated. Use technology to become more efficient so you can do more with less.
Recommendation of the week:
Set up at least ONE tool from above
Not all of these tools will be relevant to where you are – especially if you aren’t building anything yet. But there is always an opportunity to buy back time at every stage of your career and life. Pick one of the tools I listed and set it up in a way that works for you. If you’re not sure which to use, try a few for free and then decide.
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Find your balance.
Tobi
If you’re interested in learning how to build a second stream of income outside your 9-5, my new cohort-based course the LinkedIn Revenue Accelerator is now accepting applications until May 5th. Cohort starts on May 6th. You can apply here.